The noise inside Dan’s head was loud, louder than Ryong Aang’s most fearsome roar. As though he held an earthquake in his palm, Dan’s entire right arm was shuddering violently. Dan himself was sure that he was screaming back but he couldn’t hear anything but the hurricane of information flooding his mind.
His right arm was shaking as though he held an earthquake in his palm, a volcanic eruption burning itself inch by molten inch up his arm. Every moment of agony was extended, stretching out Dan’s perception of time. The furious pain was snaking up Dan’s body, splitting into different paths of conflagration to Dan’s throat, his heart, more still heading towards his stomach and legs.
There was nothing Dan could do but endure. His teeth smashed into each other as his jaw locked, an automatic response by his body to keep the pain inside rather than letting it out. Dan had been hurt before, sometimes badly, but there was no comparing this pain to another. It was obliteration. It was the void made real within his skin.
There was no room for thought, so there was no room for understanding. Dan had no knowledge of why he was burning. That was irrelevant. There was something base to Dan’s soul which did not require intent, something which bore over the pain and made a more base truth apparent.
This trial would not break him.
Even as the stabbing, bulging agony pushed deeper and deeper through his flesh, Dan found his muscles and claimed them. Starting with the fingers of his left hand, Dan seized command back of his faculties. Once he was confident that he could move his fingers consciously, not an automatic response to his destroyed nerves, Dan moved onto the next. Though he was uncertain of the passage of time, Dan was pleased with the speed he regained control of himself.
It felt like many times longer before Dan was able to bend the arm at the elbow. Eventually, the rotation became his own to control again. This process was completed for all of the muscles in the arm, each sinew and the connecting cartilage required focus. Focusing on the limb was intensifying the pain but Dan raged against it.
Caustic, boiling acid had replaced his blood. Frozen icicles replaced bone, filled with hidden pockets of annihilation that released with every thawed moment. Where Dan could feel his hairs, he felt a syringe pushed fiercely into a follicle, the end tipped with magma and the plunger filled with horror.
Still. Still. Dan held onto something. Disconnected from the overwhelming torrent of explosive sensation was a different force. Something was pushing against the pain. Dan was so focused on regaining control of his body that it was not until his left arm, neck and torso were under command that Dan could inspect this strange, very welcome buffer.
“Ah, there you are.” Dan could have screamed with joy at the sound of Kumiho’s soft, calm voice, if only he had command of that faculty. Actually, now that he had more of a sense of himself, he could tell that was screaming already. “Don’t worry, we’re nearly in control.”
Dan did not respond. A slip of any concentration would send the whole house of cards tumbling down to the ground and destroy his progress. Kumiho would know this. A portion of Dan’s beleaguered soul was being protected by her, after all. The power pressing down on Dan was only weathered because of her, he was sure. A fervent, obsessive desire to thank Kumiho properly for her help burned inside Dan next to the flames of agony.
“Don’t worry about that,” Kumiho’s words were painted with a smirk as she read Dan’s hope, “you focus on you.”
Dan did as he was told. Except for his right arm and his face, the top half of his body was under command. Dan could not open his eyes or hear anything around him but he could flex his fingers and thrash with his left arm. He chose not to, any actual frantic energy could set off a new wave of pain. Taking a deep breath, perhaps the first real breath he had taken in minutes, Dan cooled his lungs and prepared to work on his legs.
Kumiho swaddled him in soft, luxurious calm and comfort. She forced the sensation of contentment in front of the pain like a shield wall in front of a cavalry charge. The fox spirit met the charge of agony like a stalwart honour guard. This was her body too, Dan realised. Much like Ryong Aang had made its place in and around Fa Lian’s core, Kumiho had done the same. How much of her personality had shaped who Dan was now?
He didn’t mind.
Who he was now was a fighter. A struggler against fate and misfortune. A defender of his allies and a terror to his enemies. If all of it was Kumiho, he would bow his head and thank her for forging the weapon that he had become. If her guidance had simply led Dan to his natural strength then the respect would be just as warranted.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
Whatever the root cause, the person he was currently burned on the floor.
Belligerence started to rise up in Dan as he pushed the burning coals further down his body. His top half was mostly under control, save for his right arm, and the twitching in his eyes would soon become command of his sight. Dan was excited to see what was occurring… and whether to be angry.
Why? Why was it that he was taking the brunt of the damage? He had just thought of his allies… where were they? Kumiho aside, were they leaving him to burn? Had he not done enough for them? Had Dan’s power not saved life after life, put paid to the plans of aggressors, sometimes before the aggressor could cause damage? Dan had done all of this and yet he lay stoic and alone on the cold hard floor.
“It’s not fair,” Kumiho’s purring was agreeable and soothing, “but this is the lot of the powerful. Yes, you are asked to do more, to shoulder heavier burdens. This is because you are the only one who can.”
“It’s so hard, Kumiho. I’m so tired.” Dan should not have spoken, even inside his head, even to Kumiho. With that small admission of weakness, the agony flared back to life in Dan’s being. There was barely an inch of him that did not scream in surprise and disappointment. The pain threatened to steal all of Dan’s progress.
Except Dan focused on that small spot of something which wasn’t pain. He would not allow himself to slip here. The tiny vestibule that survived the destructive agony was exactly what was needed to push past it.
Determination.
Vibrant, unstoppable and dense. It was a diamond within Dan’s sense of self, a solid rock of control. The core of his being. Dan cycled mana as he focused on the tiny, infinitesimal portion of himself that the flames could not burn away. From this focus point, Dan recovered control of himself much quicker. Once he was wiggling his toes of his own volition, everything but his right arm under control, Dan finally opened his eyes.
All at once the scene came back to Dan.
No time at all had passed or not enough to be noticed. As though the world were paused, Dan could see the huge bottom room of the tower in full clarity. It took a moment to realise he was looking out of his manasight just as much as he was using eyes. In the frozen world, Dan burned and took in the situation.
Calliope lay on the ground, still battered and bruised but with a full and undestroyed arm at her side. Dan had saved her, at least from the control she had been placed under. That was good. He owed Calliope a lot and the thought of Mania’s filthy energy taking hold of the powerful woman was almost too much to bear. The shadows of his command were banished from her, however, and Dan was pleased.
Thinking of Mania caused Dan to find him.
The yellow skinned man seemed to be in trouble. That sounded about right. Shade was, in every way, the better fighter. The two were clashing, sparks sitting suspended in the air as their blades met. Shade’s face was contorted into a mask of rage, fury clear on his features as he let out his familial frustration upon his murderous younger brother. Shade was also hurt, a cut on his arm was pulsing with vicious green energy. It reminded Dan of the majaal Bloom and smelled of a sharp, nutty scent.
With his attention on Shade, Dan could see around him a collection of wounds, slashes on the world. Previous uses of his ability had left unstable portions of space that could be opened once more with shocking ease. Now that Dan realised his manasight was far more keen than before, he put closer attention to the battlefield. Some of the pain in his arm was lessened by focusing on the chaos and organising it.
The greatest source of both chaos in need of organising was on the other side of the room. Dan was, once again, happily correct that Fa Lian would have no issue with Steel Fever. Much like Shade’s ability had left marks on the world, Steel Fever’s did the same. Except where Shade left small slashes which leaked his dark mana, Steel Fever destroyed the space. Air, sound, even Dan’s mana found it hard to refill those dark portions.
It did not appear to slow Fa Lian down one bit. She burned with magical power as she bore down on a cowering Steel Fever. A cloak of crimson mana wreathed around Fa Lian and spread upwards from her shoulders and fanned out from her waist. She looked beautiful. She wore a vibrant collection of dense, feathery mana, combining to give her outline the appearance of a bird of pure flame.
She had become the phoenix of Guan. The legend which told of their people’s rise from what Dan now knew was the fiery carnage wrought by the soul relics. Majestic, powerful and probably unstoppable, Guan Fa Lian was everything that her people needed in a leader, even if she didn’t want to be.
“She’ll be okay, won’t she?”
Dan turned his physical head and looked at the speaker, Guan Yo Shen. The man had been waiting beside Dan as he contained the power which even now threatened to break free from control. “She’s going to be more than okay. It’s you I’m worried about.”
Yo Shen laughed but Dan wasn’t joking. The two of them were suspended in a strange sub-space. Below the tower. They floated in a small box of nothing, contained just under the floor of the colossal monolith of bone. Dan looked at him and saw the man who had taken him from Park Man-Shik’s forge and pushed him into a new life. The older man continued laughing, his mirth seeming to fall away with each chuckle until finally he sighed and spoke.
“There’s nothing you can do for me now, Dan.” With a surge of movement and finality, the perspective of their little box of nothing changed. Suddenly Dan was face to Face with Guan Yo Shen and the intensity of the moment was overwhelming. The man was no longer laughing but there was a good humour in his tone. “The most powerful force in the world looked into my soul and found it lacking. I always thought that I was the hero of a grand story but…”
Shen sighed and the tired smile on his face became melancholy. He shrugged his wide, muscular shoulders and held up two empty palms to the sky. “It seems, instead, I am more of a footnote in your’s, Guan Ah Dan.” As Shen spoke his name, he nodded towards the painful right hand which Dan had been ignoring as much as possible.
“I wish I could see how far you rise.” Now, the emotion in Shen’s voice became thick with sorrow. “Take my sister with you. Don’t let her get tied to the throne and never leave. Tell her I’m sorry. I never meant to… well. It doesn’t matter now,” He cleared his throat and donned his charming smile, all the shadows of sadness cast away with the tiny gesture. “Go. You have work to do.”
As though the last vestige of Yo Shen’s control had been lifted, Dan felt the pressure in his hand vanish. He could finally look down and see a spear clutched firmly in his white knuckled grip.
No. Not a spear.
The Spear.
Dan could now feel the power coursing through. The pain he had felt was the energy of the Spear probing through every inch of his body. His mana channels had burned with the Spear’s light and been reforged. Dan’s muscles moved as though they had never felt the pain of exhaustion and perhaps never would. Dan watched as Yo Shen surveyed the man before him and nodded at what he saw. He was right. Now Dan could get to work.
Now, Dan could move forward.