With a flick of his wrist Silas drew his revolver and levelled it with the Mutant Sergeant. He could see the light in its glassy eyes, shining with a leafy green colour. This was a mutant made from an Empyrean with at least Six Gates, as strong as Glass. The veritable horde behind it shuffled silently along the street until it stood motionlessly behind the mutated sergeant.
“Run!”
With a sudden shout, the now family of three ran down the road and followed the Director’s trail. A flower of light bloomed at the end of his barrel as Silas pulled the trigger and a stone suddenly shattered in the Mutant’s palm.
A deep bestial howl burst forth from the Mutant Empyrean and Silas felt his ears ring. With a crouch, he grabbed the cheap revolver from Henry’s corpse and started firing blindly into the horde with it, using his good revolver to fire only four shots at the Sergeant.
Its figure swayed and stumbled back as three of the shots landed solidly in its torso, the last one flying wide and hitting the mutants behind it. Chunks of flesh erupted from the wounds and the green eyed mutant bled a thick black tar like blood onto the street. Whilst strong, Empyreans and Mutants alike were still threatened by firearms. The issue wasn’t damage output.
Without a second thought Silas suddenly pulled his shoulder back as he felt a heavy fist crash into it at breakneck speed. He diffused just enough force to not get sent flying even as the strike easily popped his shoulder out of its socket, dropping Henry’s revolver.
“Stop!” Silas roared out and his fear energy plummeted to a near zero, purple and blue flashing through his eyes as the late Sergeant suddenly halted in place for only a brief moment.
Still reeling back from the punch, he borrowed its momentum to pivot on one foot and send a sharp kick at the back of its knee. When his foot met the creature's knee it felt like kicking a steel plate but the momentum forced it to kneel nonetheless.
Just as the green light flashed in its eyes and the mutant regained mobility, Silas levelled his revolver with its knee and fired his last loaded bullet. The creature screamed in an uncharacteristic agony as it fell forward onto the street.
Biting his tongue, Silas refused to acknowledge the pain and the scream that doing so would bring, not willing to pull more attention to the fight. The time for pain was later. He could already tell that he had hurt his foot from that kick and while it lost most of its ability, that didn’t mean he could kill it yet.
If he tried to use his knife, its arms would simply rip him to shreds. If it had waited to attack him with the horde, Silas didn’t believe he’d fare anywhere near as well. Speaking of, he looked up and saw that the previously organised group of mutants had begun growing agitated- they hadn’t attacked?
The thought had barely registered in his head when the green eyed mutant let out a thunderous cry and the horde abruptly looked up all at once, their eyes locked on Silas’ figure. He didn't even realise he was running until the mindless screeches of the horde behind him and the rapidly changing landscape registered.
Following the Director’s trail, he’d be safe from any mutants in front. The issue was he’d also lead a bunch of feral beasts straight to them and Silas sincerely doubted they’d survive that. The only other direction he could adequately believe to be empty was where the late Sergeant came from, assuming his horde was gathered from them. Which was the road to the Market District.
Were there more groups like this one, led by a mutated Empyrean? Why were his eyes green? Did anyone survive? His face paled as he began to absorb an immense amount of fear energy, being forced to use his Talent to quickly cleanse it all for use. This alleviated the headache from exhausting it all, but also lead to another problem-
Would these people survive the horde he led to their hiding place? When Silas thought of this, it didn’t take him long to answer his own question with another. Should he just die, then? The orphanage kids he grew up with, they were family. Henry and Martha helped him out, he could only do the same. But these random people?
Silas kept running.
He could tell many of the houses had noticed his plight too as the fear energy rose more and more until it hit a plateau. Then when he first sensed a source of fear disappear, he started ignoring that sense entirely. Even so, he still had to listen to the screams.
Maybe they hadn’t barricaded the first floor enough. Maybe it was just bad luck and they chose the wrong time to try and escape. Maybe the fear was too much for some of them. It wasn’t his fault, right? They should have left once the gunfire stopped. It can’t be his fault.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
With a grunt, Silas holstered his revolver as he ran and did his best to hold his dislocated arm in place as he ran. The pain from each step as the dislocated shoulder shook was maddening but he couldn’t just pop it in right now. As it was, he didn’t know how to just pop a shoulder in place let alone while running.
Eventually the fear energy stopped coming in as he ran and he lost track of time, only focusing on the intensity of the roars from the horde. While some got stuck for a variety of reasons during the chase, the noise attracted many of the stragglers. Silas wasn’t sure where all the Variant Mutants were but he simply counted his blessings instead of thinking about it too much.
Silas turned another corner and the view suddenly became clear in front of him. A vast expanse of fog hid much of the finer details but he could still see what was important- many more dead guardsmen on the ground and the sloped road leading up to the Market District. Whatever danger was there, he’d be more confident of escaping in the narrow streets. Numbers lost their advantage there.
He heard it before he saw it. A deafening screech covered up all other noises as a rock crashed into the street next to him and sent Silas stumbling. He looked back only briefly to see the pair of green eyes staring at him from within the fog. Then, another stone split the fog as it soared through the air to make him a second Henry.
Three seconds was all he had to dive to the side and barely avoid getting his skull obliterated. He ignored the pain that letting his dislocated arm hang freely would cause and used his good hand to push himself to his feet and start sprinting. He needed to be faster. Stronger. If that mutant got any closer he’d have too little time to dodge.
Excessive movement had already forced his wounds back open, forcing him to seal them shut with blood energy. The shoulder left him with a useless arm and now he’s got an even stricter time limit. Fuck.
Reaching into his pocket, Silas pulled out the ice crystal and popped it into his mouth like a piece of candy. He grabbed his dislocated arm by the wrist and pulled it as straight as possible out in front of him as he ran. The muscles in his shoulder burned like they were on fire, too tense to easily pop the joint back into place. Doing so felt like scraping his bones together.
Yet Silas powered through. A soft click and the joint naturally fell back into place even as he ran. The pain persisted but now it was bearable enough for the adrenaline to ignore. He knew that a lack of a sling would cause pain in the long run, but that could wait. Right now the ice crystal was promptly dissolving in his stomach and flooding his flesh with cold energy that needs to be controlled.
His body quickly went on auto-pilot as he frantically used the cold energy to search for his Third Gate, relying on the enhanced senses and instincts from the Nightmare Seed as he ran. Every few moments he’d be jolted out of his introspection as a head sized stone crashed into the street next to him.
According to the nameless ascension art, proper digestion of power before each Gate was key. While he’s not untalented by any standard, he also wasn’t his brother. A day between the Second and Third Gate simply wasn’t enough. Now, he could only hope to brute force it and hope he was close enough that the Catalyst can open the Gate anyways.
The ice energy acted as a carrier and led his blood energy all around his body in search of the Third Gate and massively dropping his reserves with every breath. His blood energy would collide with ephemeral barriers all throughout his veins and waste energy breaking past them, yet none was a proper gate.
As the catalyst led his energy towards his legs he suddenly met the signature resistance of a Gate with nearly no blood energy left to open it with. He looked behind him and saw the horde slowly catching up, as well as the feeling of weakness spreading from his wounds.
Silas took a deep breath and pulled handful after handful of food from the bag at his hip. He barely chewed as he forced the food down to quickly generate more blood energy. His veins bulged with a bright icy blue colour as the ice energy quickly fed off of the small scraps of blood energy with every passing moment.
Before Silas knew it, he had already almost reached the top of the slope with the mutants close behind. Green Eyes was still at the base, limping forward with his shattered knee. A few minutes of running at full speed had felt like forever. His limbs were like lead and all that kept him going was pure force of will. The pain had become secondary, barely a thought in his mind. What was a little pain in the face of life?
The Third Gate opened up a crack and Silas’ eyes opened wide. The world energy surged around him and poured into his body in a torrent that threatened to rip his flesh apart. With every wave, the world energy pushed impurities out of his body before being refined into blood energy and pouring into the Gate.
This time no paralysis occurred, just like when opening the Second Gate. Where opening the First Gate can be likened to upgrading a framework as a whole, the next two gates were simply accumulation. Otherwise, Silas would never have dared to break through on the run like this.
His body quickly filled with blood energy once more, taking advantage of the wellspring of world energy and replenishing his reserves all at once. Not only that, the strength of his body nearly doubled in a few moments and only continued increasing as the impurities were pushed out with his sweat.
Upon reaching the Third Gate, you hit the natural human limit in every sense. At this point, one could even risk breaking through to Physique Establishment. Silas quickly felt his speed increase as the buildings suddenly began to blur in his peripheral vision, mixing with the fog and turning his vision a strange menagerie of greys, reds and browns.
Silas didn’t keep running, though; choosing instead to slow down once he believed he had lost the horde and Green Eyes. He was twice as fast as he was with only Two Gates and the basic mutants were a little slower than he was then. Hell, he was almost sure he reached 30 miles an hour. It wasn’t difficult to avoid the basic ones anymore.
Whilst Silas was silently assessing where exactly in the Market District he was, he was also actively focusing on his fear energy again. Not a drop was coming in from the surroundings which meant either everyone escaped or simply died. He was just deciding where to go next when the loud chime of a bell almost overwhelmed his senses.