Chapter 62: Vows
‘Eleven hundred and eleven…’
Zan finally finished exploring and memorizing every energy pathway in his right arm. The youth smiled triumphantly. Memorizing such an amount of twists and turns would make anyone go crazy, much less a fifteen year old boy. The youth practically burned every pathway into his mind, making sure that he could fully saturate the energy pathways instantaneously. Now that he had finished such a grueling task, he could take a small break to celebrate the milestone.
Zan flexed his right arm, admiring the large and defined muscles he wielded before he willed the energy within his chest to flood his arm. An interesting phenomenon appeared once he did. The gray arm started to darken and turn fully black. His skin started to gleam like the sheen of metal, and within the traces of light that bounced off of it, was a faint color of red. The color that he leaned towards when he manifested his power of will.
‘Interesting…’
The youth wished to test his power, but he knew that if he swung his arm within the carriage it might just become totally destroyed. So despite his eagerness to experiment with his boost in power, the youth dispersed the energy within his arm. Lightly plopping down on a comfortable pillowed seat, a look of boredom expressed itself on his face.
Zan’s face slightly jumped up and down from the speedbumps along the rocky path. Bumps were quite frequent along the stoney road leading to the slave city. Well, there wasn’t really a road since supplies did not come from this direction. In fact, there was nothing but the wastelands to the north, and only the elite of the elite could safely traverse that place. The nuclear wastelands then, became a mystery to the general public and whatever information was found, was generally kept on a tight lock.
Looking in the opposite direction they were going, Zan started to remember all the rumors that he heard of the northern wastelands. One detail in particular, stood out from the rest. He heard the rumor from an argument between Delon and Nel, about slaves who tried to escape towards the north.
…
“Haha! You, of all people, are actually telling me that we should be retrieving those fools?”
“As their masters, it would only be right of us to collect them back…”
“They ran from us in the first place and I have to admit, it was a great plan. Why not let them enjoy their newfound freedom! Hahaha!”
“Delon! You know what dangers lurk there.”
“I do know. I was there for that expedition with you, don’t you remember?”
“Maybe that thing only viewed us as ants, and that was the reason we lived.”
‘But we have to at least tr—’
“Then go yourself, you fucking fool!”
“That ‘sword’ split the very skies and smashed that storm caller into meat paste right in front of me.”
“If you want to face those metal monsters then do it yourself.”
…
‘Metal monsters…’
Zan thought back to the black metal beast. To date, it was the most powerful foe he had ever faced. The youth compared Balon to it, and while the youth concluded that the beefy dragon boy somehow just barely had a tougher defense than it, the metal wolf unleashed devastation that could easily level villages. Luckily Zan was nimble, for if even a single laser hit him even his eldritch flesh would have been vaporized.
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‘Heh. Hehehe….’
Despite the near death experience to what Delon and Nel called a ‘metal monster,’ the boy held no fear within him for the Northern Wastelands. At this very moment, Zan was making a vow to himself to come back here and face more of those tough beasts. The youth afterall, was a battle junkie. He fought for the sake of fighting, of proving to himself that he was superior above others through the measure of his strength and the heaviness of his fist.
‘I’ll come back after beating the shit out of that guy…’
‘No…maybe…’
The youth thought over that statement. A recent event in particular diverted his attention from the constant joy of fighting and training, and towards something much, much more important to him.
‘Elea…’
‘Where are you, sister?’
‘After I beat him, I’m going to turn the surrounding kingdoms upside down just to find you.’
Zan made another vow to himself, before shaking off his gloomy expression and focusing once again on building his strength. This time, his focus was going to go towards his left arm. As the youth restarted the process of conjuring his will and placing his eyeballs directly on the skin of his arm again, a reanimated hand fell from the ceiling of the carriage.
Quin plummeted and latched onto Zan’s face, covering his eyes, nose and mouth.
“Arghserhgwre!”
Flailing around in pure surprise, Zan pried off the slightly enlarged hand from his face, looking at Quin with impatient confusion.
“Why did you do tha—”
Before he could fully finish his question that was likely to have gone unanswered, a piece of thick paper that was stuck to his face fell, and landed right on top of his lap. Zan looked down, and what met his eyes was a drawing of a spider, an orb, and a woman. The youth could easily tell the drawings were made by Quin, as he saw his artsmanship before.
The youth’s eyes went wide. Zan was so preoccupied with the memorization of his energy pathways, the coming fight against Balon, and the recent friendship with Gayle that he completely set aside the orb’s request. He looked at the reanimated and for some odd reason he could feel that Quin was looking at him with seriousness. His instincts were telling him so, and he believed in it.
Az Zan touched the drawing, he felt the edges of the piece of paper and noticed that it was not just a single piece of thick paper, but layers of thin drawings imposed on top of each other like a makeshift storyboard. As Zan lifted the first piece of paper, he was met with the second drawing. And that second drawing was…a drawing of a broken sword?
The sword broke near the hilt yet despite being broken, the sword seemed to radiate a circle of rainbow light, or at least that’s what Quin drew around it.
“Where did you get colored ink?”
“...”
‘Right…’
Zan lifted the second drawing and was met with the third. The third drawing…showed a red haired boy holding the broken rainbow light sword, and fighting the spider. The fourth drawing, was simply a big large X on the spider with the red haired figure sporting a large smiley face on his head.
“Pfft. Okay, funny…”
The fifth drawing…was Zan stabbing a white orb with the sword.
“What?”
“What is this? Why should I do that?”
Zan asked and he got no answer, he simply received the same vibe of seriousness that he got before.
The sixth drawing…was the same red haired figure battling two figures. A brown haired woman, and a gray man Zan knew as Mila’s husband.
‘Why would you want me to fight your family…’ Zan thought in his head as he lifted the page to view the next drawing.
The seventh and last drawing…was Quin’s family all holding hands. This time, Quin was not a reanimated hand, but a boy who stood right in the middle of his family, holding both his mother’s and his father’s hands.
Zan stared at the last drawing solemnly. While it was easy to connect the dots on what Quin wanted from him, it was harder for him to digest the sheer insanity of that request. Quin…wanted him to reunite their family in the afterlife. He was directly asking him to kill his mother, and possibly whatever remained of his father.
As much as Zan loved battle, he did not seek murder. The youth’s body count before his battle with Balon was a surprising, number one. Though, life could sometimes be worse than death, and that was something the man who hurt Elea knew more than anyone.
Getting back to the main point, the youth was no killer. Not yet, at least. Zan could bring himself to kill in decisive moments, when he really needed to. But now, his mute friend in the form of a reanimated hand was asking him to murder his parents. The weight of that action was not something Zan was prepared for.
Zan looked at Quin, and shook his head. You could argue that Zan would be stopping a monster from racking up more bodies, but the youth simply did not want to kill Quin’s mother. He was no hero, and it was not his responsibility. Yet…perhaps fate may guide him towards a certain destination. Whether Zan could utilize his power of will at that single opportune moment, it was something only the future would reveal.
Quin looked at him, yet the hand didn’t react. It didn’t droop in sadness or spaz out in rage, instead it calmly walked over to Zan’s lap with its dancing fingers, pointing at the drawing of the red haired figure killing the spider. It grabbed another piece of paper, and emphasized the reality in that drawing too. It was the drawing of Zan stabbing the white orb with the multicolored sword.
“I don’t know anything about the orb, so I can’t tell you if I want to do that.”
“But…”
“I guess I can kill that spider…”
Quin the reanimated hand, backflipped in joy.
‘Why am I helping anyway…’
‘Do I feel bad for him or something?’
‘He has helped me in the past…’
‘I would have killed Cole and that girl he seems to like...’
The hand walked towards Zan’s hand and closed all of its fingers. Zan looked at it confused, before the reanimated hand stuck out its pinky and gestured with it.
“A promise, huh?”
Zan proceeded to stick his own pinky out, and hook fingers with the reanimated hand.
“I’ll beat down both of those fuckers.”