Chapter 5 – Life 3 – Year 89 – The Monkey

Okay, wow, that was intense. Let’s break that down. For one, that life lasted a lot longer than the kid who blew himself up. For another, she had a completely different personality. Oh, and that was another thing! I had been a girl that time! The memories of the young man violently rebelled at the thought, but the memories of the scientist seemed… relatively ambivalent. I couldn’t even remember if the scientist was a man or woman, actually. So many faded memories…

Well, there was one thing that definitely hadn’t faded. The messages in my mind’s eye had mentioned my next life would have increased ‘affinity to the Air’ and that Silver Arrow girl certainly took that and ran with it. She had magic powers! It upended all known physics, but she could focus on the air currents and guide them with her mind alone. Yes, it took some sort of energy that took a while to recharge, but that just raised further questions! What was the energy received from killing monsters? Or, as the messages called them, Demons? What were the 6 new moons, and how did they relate to these powers?

And that fog lizard… it didn’t seem to follow the rules. The 6 moons represented Earth, Water, Air, Metal, probably Fire, and maybe… Life? But that lizard had clearly specialized into Fog, which no monster I had heard of in any of my lives had done before. Then again, the message said Silver Arrow had wounded a “Rank 2” Demon, that had to be the fog lizard because it didn’t mention her killing it. It also mentioned “Rank 2 Elements” as something, so Fog was probably that. How one would get such an element without a specific moon to focus on was a mystery, though.

There was also the mystery of what a Yin or Yang focus meant. I vaguely recalled that Yang was sometimes considered masculine, but it clearly didn’t control the sex of my next life, so that wasn’t it… if I wanted to learn more, I think it was time to choose a-

Choose your next Focus: Yin or Yang

I was JUST GETTING TO THAT! But yes, Yin focus. I wonder wha-

Focus Chosen. Reincarnating…

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-t a Yin… Yin… what was I thinking of, again? I can’t remember…

I got out of my aging bed, sighing. I didn’t usually remember my dreams, but this one had felt important somehow… I vaguely recall it being something to do with the Watchers, which made it seem even MORE important, but the more I concentrated, the more it faded. I sighed.

Over the past few years, there had been rumors across the desert that the Watching Moons were not only the harbingers of monsters, but also the source of great power. As the daughter of The Inferno, the greatest warrior of our tribe, I was supposed to be destined for greatness. But try as I might, I couldn’t replicate my father’s abilities. Every time he went into battle, he entered what he called “the Haze”, where he not only felt less pain, but also delt burning damage with every strike of his spear. He said he owed it all to the Red Watcher. He spent hours every night looking at the red moon, using the anger it gave him to fuel his crusade against the monsters.

I worried for him. He threw himself at monsters with wild abandon, often times not giving himself enough time to heal from one encounter before going straight to the next. I was told that had been the case ever since I was born, and I suspected that was true in large part due to the death of my mother in childbirth.

Long ago, they say, the ruins we live in were a massive city called ‘Dubai’, where people were wealthy and dying in childbirth was almost unthinkable. Now, we are running low on supplies, medicine, and fresh water. We are living in the bones of a civilization that could do almost unthinkable things. They say the structure we live in was once the tallest building ever built, but now it is reduced to metal and rubble.

Sometimes people pack up and make to leave, somewhere across the desert, to places with strange names like Europe or Asia. We never hear from them again, and it is unclear if that is because they died in the process, or the simple fact that no-one wishes to travel here. Of those willing to eke out an existence here, all were born to those who did the same.

I break out of my thoughts when a young servant girl arrives to see me. “Miss, your father is going on another expedition to the Rock Tiger’s Crystal. For this expedition… he wishes for you to join him.” I sighed. I suppose this had been inevitable. My father longed deeply to destroy the tall crystal structures that dotted the landscape, named only by whatever monster was regularly spawned from whatever depths they had. People tended to agree that if the crystals could ‘run out’ of monsters, they would have done so by now. Destroying them seemed the only way to stop the monsters, but even large explosions had left not a single crack.

Even worse, the monsters gathered around their crystal, as if they were guarding it. It made the areas around the crystals good training grounds, at least according to my father. He regularly organized expeditions with the crew of warriors that longed to be as powerful as he. Some had actually seen some success, like Amir, who could throw out daggers of metal with impossible cutting power, or Fatima, who could dash forward and cut a monster in half with a single strike. There were times, apparently, where for a woman like Fatima to fight would have been considered blasphemy. Now, in the new era, all who could fight did so. It was the only way to survive.

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Then there were others, who had not obtained any special power, regardless of how long we stared at the damnable Watchers. Others like me. My father assured me time and again that someday I would obtain power ‘soon’, and that then I would go with him on his crystal hunting expeditions. Now, it seemed, he had given up his patience, and wanted to see what I could do. I didn’t want to disappoint him, but neither did I want to die.

The expedition followed the coast, where we could vaguely see the remains of the ‘islands’ created in times long gone. The large spiders and lizards we killed were still considered ‘regular animals’, though the older ones among us said there was nothing ‘regular’ about them. Still, at least they weren’t monsters, and fled when sufficiently startled.

Then, yelling. A Flame Monkey had been discovered by the scouts. My father, naturally, went to see it. He had a particular problem with the monsters that used Fire element, as if he alone had domain over the flame. He called himself the Inferno for a reason, after all.

It was then that father did something I hadn’t expected. He wore the monkey down, made it too tired to spit out more flames, but didn’t kill it. Instead, he captured it and brought it back. With Amir guarding it, in a makeshift cage, my father explained his reasoning. “My daughter, it has become clear to me that you need further… incentive, to reach the kinds of power we need to survive out here. The expedition will leave in two hours. At that time, you are to kill the Flame Monkey. None of us will help you. If you fail, the monkey will surely slay you. I do this not out of hatred, but out of love. I simply love you too much to let your potential be squandered. I know you will succeed, and soon you will know it too. I would wish you luck, but no daughter of mine NEEDS luck to win.”

He refused all my pleas for mercy, my promises that I would dedicate myself to my training, everything. The other members of the expedition similarly ignored me. He had clearly warned them of this plot beforehand. I considered walking home, but we were too far for me to survive the trip without supplies. My father, for all his faults, was quite clever.

I eventually accepted my fate. I would die unless I could master the arts of flame, like my father. I had always gravitated more towards the other Watchers; the Blue Watcher that governed the water, the Yellow that controlled the Earth, the White that guided the air. Even the Brown, to some extent, promised power over the vast structures of metal and artifice we made our camp in. Even if I had failed to access these powers, I had at least felt some sort of resonance. The Red Watcher, along with the mysterious Green Watcher, though, were almost silent to me. And the only other thing in the sky, besides the punishing, hated sun, was…

The Moon. The True Watcher, as it was sometimes known. One of the few common points that we had with our ancestors was that we could always look up and see the gray orb, larger than the Watchers and dotted with strange divots and lighter patches. No-one said they felt anything when looking at the Moon, not like it was with the Watchers, but I had always preferred it. The Watchers were solid colors, completely featureless. The Moon, in contrast, felt more… real, more natural.

I took strength from the fact that my destined fight with the monkey was going to be as the sun set and the moon rose. The warriors among us considered this an inopportune time, but I always thought the desert at night was beautiful. Plus, more practically, the flames of the monkey would likely be more visible at night.

I readied for the fight. Amir had sometimes spoken of a core of energy he could feel within himself, growing over time. I had never felt anything like that, but I *needed* to. I knew my father was too convinced I would find his strength through adversity; I knew he was willing to put me in a true life-or-death situation to ‘prove myself’. I strongly suspected that I was going to die here.

I looked at the monkey, whose flame had returned to near perfect strength. What did it have that I didn’t? Why did it have abilities with flame, stronger than anything my father could do, from birth? Was it even truly ‘born’, or was it just a construct of one of those damn crystals? If I had that kind of power, my father would be following me into battle, rather than commanding me to fight to the death.

The world was unfair, I knew that. Even before the Apocalypse it was unfair, and now it was simply brutal. But I couldn’t stop thinking about how specifically unfair it was that the Watchers, the monsters, and my father’s warriors all had these strange abilities, and I was left with… well, NOTHING!

I screamed at the Red Watcher overhead, both internally and possibly out loud. Finally, I was feeling the anger that my father delt with every day! I screamed at my father, at his guards, at their mothers, anything I could think of. In the end, that backfired a little bit, as one of the guards chose that time to let the monkey loose from its cage.

It looked at me with its bloodshot eyes and let out a howl. It ran towards me at full speed, and I had to use my spear to keep it from approaching. After a few minutes of being stymied, it howled again, much louder this time, and let out a gout of flame. Oh, this was it, I was going to burn to death!

…any minute now…

Wait, why wasn’t I hurt? Why wasn’t my skin blackening and singing, as many of the monsters my father fought were? The monkey looked as confused as I was. Even my father would have dodged out of the way and attacked in kind by now!

I began to feel in some way similar to how Amir described being full of energy. The monkey kept pouring out its flames, and that was all that I felt? How? Why? But most importantly…. Could I use that energy?

As the monkey poured out more and more flames, it got more and more tired. Meanwhile, I felt energized like never before! I pointed my spear at the horrible thing… and a gout of blue flame launched out! The stream lasted for far less time than the monkey’s own, but it seemed to be far more powerful, judging by the horrible screams of the thing. I took the initiative to stab my opponent with my spear. That did it, it was dead. I didn’t feel the same rush of energy that the warriors described when killing a monster, but I was ecstatic.

I lifted my spear, with the monkey still attached, and pointed it skywards. I gave out a wordless yell. Soon, my father joined me. Then, the rest of the warriors.

I was different than the rest of them… but I had finally found my path to power.