Jaimess A. Corey.
***
“Welcome to the conclave!”
As I’ve done many times over the past decade, I fought against rolling my eyes at the exuberance of my Doppelganger. Here we were, at the base of a forested mountain range in the dead of night. And he was screaming.
“The hunter or the beast.” He pressed on in a devious spectacle of a whisper. “To find the path of the Ranger means to find either of these beings within ourselves. Our…” he rolled his hand as if to find the word. “Playing with those Tengu pushes us towards the beast- the divine beast- within ourselves. Here.” He gestured to the vast expanse a final time. “We shall find it.
“Alone!”
The final word was like a resounding beat of a war drum, signaling the disappearance of my clone into my shadow and bringing about the peaceful silence of the night. Leaving me, at last, alone or, perhaps accompanied by whatever beast my clone assumed was inside me.
As Toril, Ed, Lucia, Giorno, and Jonet- oh Jonet- had done, I’ve grown ever closer to my clone since the day he was summoned; although I felt no need to do something as ridiculous as giving him a variation of my name. Regardless, he was me and he was my opposite. Thus he knew the repressed or unacknowledged things locked inside the deeper parts of my mind. He could see the beast within me as clearly as I could see the stone outcroppings peering from the trees above.
“Are the others aware of this as well?” I asked the endless echoes of the night, knowing full well the answer. Duke, Curious Twig, Rebecca Plassein, Zeke Smeal, and Toni Forester; the other rangers were somewhere in the endless reaches of the Bodhi Tree’s territory, in their chosen environments. Be it in the swamps or forests or badlands or the sky itself, they were given the truth from their other selves. And then they were left to fend for themselves.
“Of course they are.” I found myself sneering just as I noticed the ground passing beneath my skipping, paper-wreathed feet. “Trained in the ways since birth, most of them. While I, Jaimess A. Corey, studied to push quills.”
It was not a statement born from resentment. Only a fact. An acknowledgment of the cards we were dealt at birth. Of the ways we were expected to spend our years of living. I, for one, was groomed to work numbers. I wanted to work numbers, law, and order. Until I met the Tengu.
Naturally, I knew already the answer to my dilemma. To hire someone else or have my Doppelganger run those things in my stead. Aside from that, I could be both a Ranger and the leader of a Noctis Legion. I knew that. What I knew not was how to awaken this supposed beast within me. Or rather, I could not form thoughts as to what it could be. Namely because understanding was often a thoughtless process.
While my mind had been distracted, my body had been running as if it were a separate entity. Covered from head to toe and backed with wings of paper, I’ve been prancing up the cliffside, searching for a hole or cave to call home. Gripped tightly in my right hand was my favored mace while one of the many leafed short-swords made by the artificers sat in my right. A new addition to my skill set since I began my tenure at the Bodhi Tree, dual-wielding.
Though my sixth sense wasn’t as nearly as strong as it was that day, my other senses were heightened to the extreme. Through the mana fueling my nose and ears, I felt as if I had the smelling and hearing prowess of Skoll or Hati. Through my brimming eyes, I had the sight of Pora Bora. Bringing the clarity of this foreign environment into sight no matter where I looked.
Despite our travels across Epethia and my time here, these lands- woodlands- were an enigma to me still. The greens and browns of the forest canopy and floor held so much variation of contrast when compared to the grays and whites of Odissi. The snow-capped tundra was like the Underworld itself in the face of the million sounds spreading from unseen directions. Everywhere, there was life. Overwhelmingly so, at times.
“Have I made a mistake, choosing this place?” I again asked the air as I sat atop a perch before a dim cave near the peak of a great cliff. “Should I not have chosen a tundra or snow-capped peak? Or are all mountain expanses the same to the likes of Tengu?”
I knew not. And that, I disliked more than most things. Not knowing. Losing my sense of self, becoming bestial, or succumbing to the primal urges that dwelled within sentient beings was something I disliked even more. And the fact that it only increased my self-doubt, I disliked that too.
Growth. That was something I loved, though. So I stepped into the dank cave and immediately felt something amiss. A presence, powerful and primal yet intelligent, watching me from the many corners of the stalagmites and stalactites breaking up the rough stone. Something large. Large and full of malice.
Sensing its intensity forced my fingers tighter around the hilt of my weapon almost in an attempt to summon the beast within. If it worked or not, I could not say. I could say only that I was reminded of the Tengu once again at that moment. Though they seemed different. Human. Like me in my winged paper form.
I held onto that image and thus those feelings- feelings of joy and gaiety and the high of my mana senses being overcharged and allowed my instincts to toss my weapons aside. Knowing that the reaching hands of my clone would pull them to safety, I began hopping in place excitedly; for whatever reason, but only twice. Then balanced myself atop a single foot. I placed the sole of the other flat against my knee. My right rose as if I was to scratch my head, only for my fist to be held in place by my ear, palm outward while my free hand was extended. Then my senses bloomed, spreading far beyond this dank cave and the beast within. But I waited.
If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.
A far-too-familiar crackling vibration of the air spurred magic from my body without my conscious action, shrouding me in a veil of black powder before an electric lance harmlessly crossed my chest. Meanwhile, the beast within charged right into my assailant's open maw while I attempted to study its features. Only a scaled, serpentine thing with many legs made its way into my perception before darkness spread around me. Then came an immense pressure as if the cave itself had collapsed.
It wasn’t until I heard a distinct cracking that the beast within looked around and saw jagged teeth peering from the dim light of the red-hot stone of the cave wall. I was in the serpent-thing’s maw, I realized, but not before the beast thickened our carbon skin with a layer of obsidian that broke into countless shards on the creature's grating teeth. I felt my mana trickling from my well as one hand pressed against the roof of the monster’s mouth. Then I felt a wide smile spread across my face as my bones and muscles burned with the gentle prickling feeling of a bolstered body.
The ribbed fleshy plate before me cracked against my palm a moment later, but the beast within paid it no mind. With a spear of obsidian protruding from my back, holding me in place atop the tongue, my legs spun out in a dance that cracked or shattered the beast’s teeth outright.
It thrashed about with a pace that quickened with each damaged tooth, squealing so loudly in pain that it forced me to increase the density of my carbon layer lest I be rattled to death. But only after I spawned obsidian daggers to keep myself held affirm to the tongue.
While it flailed, I clawed forward ever deeper into its maw. And when I heard that distinct crackling, I clawed more manically until the sound of the attack and the dim light of the electrical blast was far behind me.
There, in that dank cave of acid, flesh, and goo, I focused again on the beast within and on the exchange that had just happened. And soon after, looked down to see an obsidian fan looming from a diamond handle gripped in my hand.
Seeing it spurred the beast within into a frenzy of spinning and slashing- nay, a playful dance through the length of the dark cave, displacing voluminous pockets of air and slicing through the soft innards of the beast with no regard to its well-being. The beast within was having fun. Thus I was too. We were engrossed in play. Up until the thrashing stopped and I saw light once again.
I emerged from that dank cave and stepped into another. One filled with as much bloodshed and carnage as there was stone and dust. The creature was perhaps ten meters in length and as big around as a decent shack, a measurement made difficult by its mangled flesh. Nevertheless, the serpentine body was covered in blue scales, which would have given me the initial impression of a dragon, if not for the dozens of clawed feet running along its length like a milipede.
I watched those very feet be dragged away by none other than my Doppelganger and undead companion, though I paid them no mind. I was somewhat entranced by the duality of mind I was experiencing, wherein confusion and respect for the monster ran through the mind of Jaimess A. Corey while disappointment and boredom ran through the mind of the beast within him.
“I’ll be sure to add it to the list.” I snorted after noticing my clone's knowing stare. “Whatever it is.”
My clone was uncaring of my rhetoric entirely. He instead tossed a few books my way and I needn’t even glance at them to determine what they were, so I turned my sights on the tenebrous woman brooding alongside him.
“You stay for a moment,” I said to her. “I wish to talk.”
My clone, knowing the intention behind my actions, only stepped towards the shadow. Calling over his shoulder. “Don’t take too long. You don’t wanna lose that feeling.”
“Right,” I said, taking both a seat and the books from the ground to flick through the former.
As expected, the topic was centered around surviving in the environment I chose. How to find resources and use them effectively. How and where to build shelters. The types of creatures that called this place home, most importantly. That was the topic of the first book at least. The second was about an art called Bushcraft. Making tools or structures or otherwise surviving off of the bounty of the forest using axes, saws, knives, and hands. Surviving using natural resources. Ranging with little danger, essentially. A useful set of skills, I was sure it would come to be just that. Though many of the structures called for a not-insignificant amount of labor and wood.
While I had the first in excess, the second was a limited supply. Even in this vast forest, dead trees were a limited resource and the need for firewood was a near-constant. And so too were those structures flammable.
“Perhaps that’s why you are here with me, to cover the flammability of my paper?” I turned back to the woman as I sent a few origami goats to keep watch along the cliff face. She had a doll-like face that painfully reminded me of Jonet. Though her features were the same as any other shadow undead, there were no death marks on her; that I could see at least. Giving the undead woman an eerie sense of innocence.
"It is." She curtly signed in the hand code of the House of Cole. A wordless tongue that rippled in darkness, giving even the mouthless a voice of endless whispers.
“You remind me of Jonet, you know?” I said back. “Are you a part of her family?”
"No idea who that is." Came her uncaring signal.
“Alright then.” I sighed. “Tell me of your sentence. Why were you to be executed?”
“Piracy.”
“You were a pirate?” I scoffed. “That warrants execution?”
“It does when you sink a ship ferrying some Phaegrathean VIPs.”
“And even in undeath, you show little remorse.” I rolled my eyes and began to wave her off. But she surprised me with what rippled through the darkness.
“Execution was the price of my crimes. A price I've long since paid for. In undeath, I’ve been blessed with a second chance to do more right than I have wrong in life.”
“You want to do right by Amun.” I chortled. But not because my words were rhetorical. Far from it. It was because despite her being undead, despite her connection with Amun, she seemed to have no clue as to his true nature. As did most of the Legions. “Closer to a villain than he is a hero, our God and Guildmaster. But he is neither. He is simply Amun. A divine being we can't come close to comprehending. Thus he is beyond such distinctions. We, in turn, are the heroes and villains bound to his soul. Both sides, embodied into many beings, as extensions of our God. To some, our actions will be good. To others, evil. Even his actions will see us as heroes or villains in someone’s story.
“Doing right and wrong are matters of personal perspective. But being good or evil isn't such a thing for you, or even Amun to decide. Such things are to be decided by the realms. So, let us make a bet on what the realms will think of us at the end of this journey.
"Will we be heroes? Or villains?"