Phon grumbled back to consciousness, wondering why the hell her body and clothes were drenched. Before she could assess her surroundings, she was pelted in the face with another splash of water.
“Damn it!” she heard Drim cry as she wiped the water from her eyes. Looking around, there were several crude buckets that he’d obviously made filled with salty water from the ocean. He was now dumping one of the buckets on Xard, but he didn’t stir, and then moved on to Kada.
“What the hell are you doing, Drim?” Phon questioned him when he came charging at her with another bucket of water, stopping him in his tracks.
“The fire- You’re- it doesn’t hurt? But you’re all on fire!” What on Rathe was he talking about? Phon looked at her arms and then glanced at the rest of the body, and it all seemed fine besides being soaked.
She then looked at Drim properly and saw the problem. “No, Drim, it’s your eyes. They’re what’s on fire!” She had seen his pupils literally burn with passion before, but this was something else. His eyes were entirely engulfed, the flames lapping at the air around them. “Try to calm down!”
“Okay, okay,” Drim set down the bucket and took a few deep breaths. The fire in his eyes dwindled until it was extinguished completely.
Once the other two had woken up a few minutes later, they got to discussing what had happened.
“So, we need to clear this up first,” Drim was direct. “Everyone heard that voice, right?”
“Yeah, that’s something that will be stuck in my head for the foreseeable future,” Xard was still rubbing his head in annoyance.
“Doesn’t look like it was just us either,” Kada held out her phone which prompted the rest to check theirs. They’d been out for a few hours, but that wouldn’t usually warrant how much their devices had blown up. Each of them had endless notifications: texts from other members, countless news articles, and dozens of emergency notices from various government agencies.
Something became exceedingly clear. The entire world had heard her voice.
“It looks like the oppressive feeling was isolated to Ledmer,” Phon quickly deduced. “None of these reports mention anything like what you two experienced.”
“Yeah, it doesn’t look like anyone else experienced any pain,” Xard agreed. “From my channels, it looks like the voice directly led to a few car accidents and minor injuries, but it doesn’t seem like there’s been any correlated deaths. So that’s something.”
“There’s a lot of argument online about whether it was real or not, or just some mass hallucination,” Kada shared what she found. “Apparently, her voice wasn’t recorded on any devices, so there’s no actual proof it happened. The only remnant is everyone’s memory of it.”
“And of course we’re getting the brunt of the blame here,” Drim merely sighed. “I guess it can’t be helped since we were directly named by… whoever she is. Don’t suppose you want to enlighten us any further?” he tilted his head down towards his chest.
“I don’t think there’s anything I can add,” Eleen answered sheepishly. “I tried saying several things about her while you were unconscious but was cut off every time. It seems the only new thing I can mention about her is her gender. I guess with her speaking to everyone, it couldn’t be hidden, so there was no further point for that restriction to exist.”
“I have a question for you,” Phon actually took an active interest in their mother for once. “Uncle told me a long time ago that when you developed your Premature Cognition and were asked about it, the only thing that you kept repeating was, ‘I heard her voice.’ Is this the same voice that we just heard?”
There was a long pause of silence until Eleen finally stated, “I can’t say.”
“Well that’s a definitive ‘yes’,” Drim almost laughed with a bit of snark. “I’ve been dealing with her cryptic answers long enough to understand that if the answer was actually ‘no’, then mother would just say so.”
“Actually, let me rephrase that,” Eleen was suddenly more stern and serious. “Listen to me closely, because this is something I can actually say now that I can refer to her directly. It is also the exact words I will say in the future if I am ever being limited. SHE will not let me answer.”
That really told them a lot, but it was too much to process for now. They could discuss this mysterious being for hours later on and test theories against Eleen’s new favorite catch phrase. What was more important now was figuring out exactly what had happened to them.
“Does anyone feel any different, y’know, after being ascended or whatever?” Kada was the first to bring it up.
“Not really,” “Nope,” both Xard and Phon, answered at the same time.
“Same, but still a bit groggy,” Kada lamented. “Turns out a forced nap during the middle of the day doesn’t make you feel great.”
“Really? You guys don’t feel well?” Drim was strangely confused by that. “Because, I honestly feel amazing, like I just woke up from the best sleep of my life. I couldn’t tell you a time when I've had more energy.”
“Lucky you, I could use a nap,” Xard laid back into the grass.
“Huh, what’s that on your arm, Xard?” Kada pointed something out, and the others took a glance. “There, on the underside of your left arm, just below your wrist.”
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“Well that’s new,” Xard rubbed his fingers over the new marking. It was a ‘0’ calligraphed in some fancy font. “I have no idea what it means, though.”
The rest checked over their bodies, but there were no discernable new changes or markings, and their Curse Marks seemed unchanged as well.
“Okay, I get that we’re all interested in how we’ve ‘ascended’, but we can figure it out back in the comfort of our own compound,” Phon suggested that they depart. “I’m sure we have plenty of fires to put out too.”
She wrapped her ribbon around her eyes to teleport them, but them mumbled. “Huh.. that’s weird, what’s—”
“Phon, what’s happening with your hair?!” Drim was suddenly worried.
“Eh, something happened?” Phon removed her ribbon to look at them
“Aaaaand it stopped,” Xard reported.
“Yeah, the tips of your hair started glowing purple all of a sudden.” Kada was jazzed about it. “It was really cool. I hope it happens again.”
“More weirdness for the pile,” Drim was starting to feel tired along with the rest of them. “Just when being a Fiend was starting to feel normal.”
◆◆◆
Back at the compound, there was an impromptu meeting late that night with all members and residents present to discuss what had happened. It went on for longer than anticipated to answer everyone’s questions and to try and alleviate their concerns. But what it mostly boiled down to was that they didn’t really have many answers.
The following morning, each of the now ascended Fiends went their own ways to try and figure out any changes. None of them still had a fully formed idea of what was going on, but the consensus was that something was different about them.
Kada decided to venture into the mountains, knowing how catastrophic her Curse could be. She really had no idea what had changed about it, but felt almost like a tingling in her fingers. The only other thing of note was her breathing, it never changed and was never labored. Even as she climbed a mountain, the air never felt thinner as it usually should.
When she felt she was safe enough distance away from the compound that she could start experimenting, Kada plucked a leaf from a tree near the top of the mountain. She melted it in her palm as usual where it sat as a small puddle. Nothing was noticeably different, yet Kada still felt that same tingling, except now it was in the leaf as well—like she could feel everything the melted leaf was touching.
Kada reformed that leaf and let it flutter to the ground. She touched a new leaf that was still attached to the tree and applied a bit more of her power. The leaf melted, but so did the branch it was attached to. The liquid wood splattered to the ground, and now through it, Kada could feel the dirt beneath.
Even though she wasn’t touching the melted wood any longer, she still applied a bit of her power. The ground beneath the liquid started to melt as well, and she could feel her reach expanding more and more until it had become a massive puddle. She stopped there and reverted the changes. The ground was back to normal, with the broken branch and leaf resting on the surface.
She understood the gist now. Things she melted could melt other things that she herself wasn’t touching. This was pretty groundbreaking. Up to this point, the reach of her Curse was limited to everything she could touch. Sure, she could touch materials and melt that same material, but the damn world had to go and figure out how to counter that. While it was amusing watching them waste so much money to randomize materials, she now had a counter for their counter.
But just how far could she take it?
Kada grabbed a completely new leaf and focused. She poured in energy and let it flow for as far as she could reach. Nothing had melted yet, but she was feeling the world around her, like she was tracing the entire area with her fingers. She wasn’t quite positive how far her reach had extended until it felt like she was straining herself, but it was well beyond her current frame of reference.
Then, she melted. The leaf went first, turned to goop. Then the branch. Then the entire tree. Then the ground. Then the mountain. Within about a second, the entire mountain had melted. It held its form for just a moment, and then the entire thing popped like a water balloon.
Kada sank immediately—submerged into the watery sludge that had been the mountain. She knew from her recent experience how serious this was, how catastrophic it could be. That much mass had just turned into a spontaneous flood. Not even paying attention to how far down she’d submerged, Kada reached out with both of her arms. She had to stop this.
Immediate pain tore at her muscles as she grabbed the imaginary edges of the water. She couldn’t see it, but all the melted material around her had stopped flowing. It already felt like her arms were going to be ripped off, but she couldn’t just leave the liquid like this. Even if she solidified it all now, it could ruin the topography and habitats of the land forever.
Kada needed to remake the mountain, but she had never dealt with controlling this much melted liquid before. Hopefully, her new ascension would help with some of the heavy lifting, but it still hurt like zjik when she tried to move it.
The water was very stiff at first, like trying to pry open a tight jar, but it loosened the more she pulled. More and more, the water flowed around Kada. She guided it with her arms like she was performing a dance, swirling it around her. The flow got easier to control with each motion, but she felt like if she stopped it again, she wouldn’t have the strength to start it back up.
Kada had to rebuild this mountain in one shot, and before she wore herself out from exhaustion. Luckily, there was one shape that she had always found confusingly easy to make with her Curse: cones. And what was a mountain but a rocky cone—well the more classical depictions of them anyways.
The mountain would certainly look different, and any plant-life would now be incorporated in the structure, but it’d be more or less what it once was. Kada continued to shape and form the mountain around her, moving herself to the very center of the liquid so that she could control it appropriately from all sides.
Once she could feel it was the form she wanted, Kada released her Curse entirely, and the entire mountain solidified. She felt the heavy dirt and rock wrap around her, pinning her in place and burying her alive at the core of the mountain.
Kada now used her Curse in its standard form to swim out of the mountain, popping out the side about halfway up. She found it hard to get her footing, since the ground was now a lot more slick and slanted—the surface a perfectly smooth cone. It wouldn’t stay that way for too long once weather eroded it, but it would be a spectacle for a while, for sure.
“Wait, how was I breathing that entire time?” Only now that the crisis was averted did she realize that she hadn’t drowned to death. She hadn’t used her breathing device, so she should have had problems from the moment she went under water. After a bit of testing, Kada realized that she could now breathe underwater as if she was breathing standard air.
In a moment of panic, she felt around her neck to see if gills had formed like a fish, but everything was normal. This was just a little bonus to her now even more overpowered Curse.