Troy jogged down the long path that led to the dump, worried that something may have happened to Arson. Her heart thrummed wildly at the thought, not even slowing as she came across Khalif who also ran toward the dump, heaving for breaths.
“What are you doing? Can you not travel through the void or something?” Troy yelled down the path as she quickly caught up to Khalif.
“Yes, I can, but Jade said, Jade said if I want to increase my mana capacity, I have to, increase my stamina,” said Khalif taking deep breaths in between each few words doing his best to maintain oxygen in his lungs at all times. Troy was far more accustomed to long distance running from what it seemed, and decided to slow down to match his pace even though she wanted to sprint ahead.
“Do you know what’s going on? I called Jasmine but may have jumped the gun on that, just got worried when I got a flurry of calls and texts from the staff with the red alert signal,” said Troy. Khalif glanced in her direction, his gaze serious as her Overlay pinged, noting that she’d received a video from the young man.
She opened it, and her eyes grew wide. One of the orphans on staff recorded a video that displayed all of the actions within the dump earlier that day. Troy’s eyes widened. The video displayed a massive hole being ripped into the ceiling as many of the laundry staff worked below a chaotic storm of energy held above the dump.
She couldn’t believe what she was being shown, and nearly took off in a dead sprint, but the constant changes in her overlay forced her to focus on the alarming video content, rather than even the direction she was running.
She saw a pressure storm rain down around the warehouse, destroying everything the nearly invisible meteors of power touched. Through a cracked door of the warehouse the recording orphan watched mountains of trash be obliterated, spreading a dust cloud of carnage in every direction. Yells within the warehouse caused the orphan to look back to witness Jade struggle through the area above them all.
Troy gasped when she realized the man beside Jade at various points within the video was the king of Maelstrom. She stopped running to watch, her heart dropping into her stomach at the mayhem; thankful that an odd barrier separated the orphans below from where Arson floated in the sky. His body was seemingly a catalyst for whatever unknown situation had caused the destruction of the villa positioned above the warehouse.
The video continued and Troy saw abilities that indicated to her that Almarine had been involved, watching massive hands made of mana protect the area from incredible forces that Troy couldn’t ever imagine having to face herself.
Even when the insanity concluded, the video did not. The orphan sneaking onto the roof of the warehouse to see a ritual take place. The details of the next moments shown unfathomable to Troy and foreign to practically any who saw the footage.
Troy winced at the brilliant light and the mana storm that formed a tribulation in the sky, unable to look away from the video content that played in her mind. Only to be immediately dazzled by the villa being reformed in a matter of breaths just before the video ended. Troy looked over to Khalif to question everything she’d just seen, but the young man was already shaking his head at her, having no answer as to what had occurred.
“Come on, we have to hurry. I don’t know what is going on, and none of that looked good…”
You better be okay, little buddy.
…
Jasmine walked into the room that Arson slept in, all of her friends were already inside, making her the last one to arrive. Everyone looked at her as she entered and she tried to give them a pleasant smile, feeling the mood in the room to be more than a little somber.
“How is he?” Jasmine asked, and Xani chuckled surprising Jasmine, not expecting that reaction to her question at all.
“Who the spark knows at this point? The runt took a nap and his body tried to snatch the sky from existence, I guess… who knows?” Xani said with a faint smile on her lips.
“You say that like you are surprised. After that bloody video you sent me, I feel like my people and I are lucky to have made it out of our exchange a little while back alive,” said Khalif as he looked around to the others in the room.
“Yeah, our little buddy has a truckload, no a building load, no wait, a sparking ocean of power maybe. I don’t know how to describe what I saw earlier. One moment I’m cooking dinner, and the next the sky is ripping itself apart, and this little brat looks like he’s just sleeping the day away... peacefully,” Rob said smirking as he gestured toward the sleeping Arson.
“Anybody else feel strange about all this?” Xani asked, moving to sit on the far side of Arson’s bed, allowing Jasmine to sit in the chair she vacated.
“What do you mean?” asked Troy, her hand resting atop Arson’s own. Troy, already sitting on Arson’s bed, was now positioned across from Xani .
“Well, I know myself, and the limits of my own power very well, but the more I think about what I’ve been able to do recently, the more I wonder if I’m being affected by something outside myself,” Xani stated simply. Troy’s eyebrows raising as she looked away from Arson’s sleeping figure and toward Xani’s questioning gaze.
“You too?”
“What are you guys talking about,” Khalif asked with an intensity that no one in the room expected from him.
“I mean, just the other day when Troy and I came into the Augustine compound looking for you, I blew apart a large portion of the building you brought down almost as if it was nothing, and previously I would have probably come close to doing something close, but not…” Xani motioned, bringing her hands close before spreading them outward in an explosive motion.
“What are you trying to say? Do you think Arson has something to do with that?” At Troy’s question, everyone looked at Xani and the young woman nodded.
“Come on... think about it. You pulled in so much power that you thought you were going to blow up, after you ran back holding me and Khalif, and that was after Khalif brought down an entire compound... single-handedly I might add. And no one thinks that all of that is a little too much to be a coincidence?” The group nodded in response to Xani’s question, an immediate silence filling the room as the team thought to themselves.
“I mean it would make a lot of sense if Arson was somehow affecting us,” said Rob, with a furrowed brow.
“I’d be lying if I didn’t admit feeling like I could cook for days recently. I even asked Jade about it, thinking that all the mana enriched food was giving me extra energy, but who knows, maybe it wasn’t the food alone…”
“It's not only that, anyone else feel like they’ve been getting random bursts of inspiration? I normally get a good idea every once in a while, but every day? It seems like all of us are pushing boundaries as easily as breathing recently, if you ask me,” Xani said looking around at everyone gathered. Jasmine looked toward Arson and nodded to herself before she spoke up.
“I thought it was just me, but I have to admit to feeling odd about how much I’ve been able to get done since I joined up. But I just thought it had something to do with adrenaline or the high of making lots of money,” Jasmine admitted with an embarrassed laugh. The others in the room all rolling their eyes at the same time as if they’d planned the action.
“What, I did, I’m not used to all this Cultivator stuff, not like any of you really know what Arson’s abilities are anyway…” The group all shared a look at Jasmine’s comment and Troy began to nod slowly.
Troy didn’t dispute the claim, not wanting to admit that she’d personally always been able to draw on excessive amounts of power. However, she had to agree that her recent sparks of brilliance had also felt odd. Not that she wasn’t already intelligent, but the confidence she felt since meeting Arson had allowed her mind to escape the clutches of a seemingly perpetual depression that she’d lived with since entering puberty and being adopted.
“I wouldn’t be surprised, it's not like he didn’t already tell us we’d all be working for him someday. For all we know the brat can see the future,” Xani said underneath her breath. The room went silent once more and Jasmine burst into laughter, the rest in the room giving her strange looks.
“Oh don’t look at me like that! Am I the only one who completely forgot about this little psychopath, on the roof of the orphanage waving that flag around screaming at everyone. I thought it was just me he yelled at that day,” Jasmine said laughing. She jumped up onto a chair reenacting a younger Arson, acting as if she was waving a giant flag in the air.
“It is time. Time for you all to see my greatness. Time for you all to know my power,” yelled Jasmine. The others beginning to laugh at her rendition of Arson.
“You, yeah you over there, you will be my gatekeeper, and you over there, you will organize my books,” yelled Jasmine pointing at Khalif and then Xani.
"Don’t act as if you don’t know what you will do for me, you will create the finest meals I’ve ever tasted!” She pointed at Rob and laughed as she fell into her chair once more.
“Guess he was right when he said I’d help him manage a world larger than my ego was prepared for…” Jasmine trailed off, once hurt by the words, yet now she felt that maybe the young man had been speaking from a place of purity rather than a place of superiority.
“I wish I could have been there to see that,” said Troy, looking back toward Arson and smiling warmly.
The group continued to share stories for a while longer, until they concluded that they needed to return to their duties. Jade still hadn’t dismissed them, and though they all feared that Arson’s coma would lead to the woman kicking them out of her home, they promised each other to do their best for Arson until the time came where their fears became a reality.
The group left the room and the moment the door latched, Arson stirred, rolling over in his sleep. It wasn’t but a few moments after they’d all left that Arson’s eyes opened. An image of the most vibrant lands in all creation manifesting in his eyes before he blinked and his eyes returned to normal.
He slowly sat up and looked around, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. A deep grumble emanated from the depths of his stomach, and Arson yawned loudly, wondering how he’d arrived back in his bedroom. The last thing he remembered, speaking to Xani on a rooftop.
“Hmm, I wonder what happened…”
Images flashed through his mind. The fall he’d taken rushing to the forefront of his foggy conscious before his eyes went wide, and he once more felt his stomach groan with the need for food, the last seven days of his life feeling like nothing more than a long nap.
Looks like I survived, everything feels okay, well…
“Sparks I’m hungrier than a bloody blackhole…”
…
Ash walked through sections of the bronze sector of Maelstrom, knowing that her father wouldn’t approve, but she didn’t care. The man was far too busy to figure out where she was or what she was up too.
The closer she got to the compound she funded for her own activities within the CityNation the more the smell of smoke filled her nose. She was completely familiar with ashes and soot, as she felt herself to be the embodiment of her families flame. An icon of everything to do with the eternal flame. She thought the Augustines must have partied too hard, maybe over doing it with a celebration, barbecue and fireworks on her mind, until she crested the opening for the archway that led into the compound.
It was there that she saw everything in ruins. Everything she’d helped improve. Every building she’d given credits to have constructed, all either broken down, or completely burned to cinders.
Ash couldn’t imagined how many Cultivators it must have taken to make something like this possible. Especially within the Bronze sector. Powerful Cultivators weren’t common in the local regions that surrounded this compound, so Ash assumed her friends must have been attacked by dozens if not more, potentially an entire enemy gang.
No one of minor importance could have achieved this, nor would they have wanted to, without reason… Ash couldn’t fathom anyone that the group, she heavily associated with, could have angered. It was one thing to retaliate, or even be daring enough to start a gang war, but to disgrace the Augustines by using their own familiar element to destroy an entire compound. That spoke of hatred, revenge, and retribution.
A fire began to burn to life within her chest and Ash felt herself involuntarily clenching her fists as fire began to crawl up her arms from her fingertips, rushing up the lengths of her arms to intermingle through the ends of her hair. She looked around and after a while finally found a group of seven of the main branch family of the Augustine clan.
The group was huddled around a bonfire of bodies, Ash completely alarmed by the flames that stretched into the sky, the body count incredible, not only to witness burning, but to be forced to accept had been lost to whatever event had occurred to take out what seemed like 100 or more of the Augustines.
She had to force down her flames as her own power wasn’t as timid as the members of the Augustines own flames were. They all were born of flames, their mana born of elemental fire, but Ash’s own flames were born from the creators of fire and the destruction that came with the blood of dragons. The two distinctions incomparable.
“Who did this?”
Many members of the group jumped. The core members of the Augustines obviously still on high alert after being attacked the way they had been. It had been days from the attack, so the little reconnoissance they’d done since the death of the majority of their members had managed to turn up only one detail, the head of the group around the bonfire of bodies meeting Ash’s eyes before speaking only one simple phrase.
“BlackHole Conglomerate…”