I watched as the brother I admired and looked up to ran towards me with open arms. I gotta give him props. Being able to control a stemata like this effectively in such a wide range is no easy feat. He’s a diligent person with a plan that’s been executed rather well.
It’s a shame that he has to die right here…
I immediately opened my mouth and began to activate my stemata. As the world began to move in slow motion, I noticed that he already had his staff activated and ordered three skeletons to surround me. Sadly for him, I’m not as weak as I used to be!
I punched the chest of one of the skeletons and sent it flying. With that opening, I jumped out of the box he trapped me in and activated my stemata.
“GRAHHHHHHHH!” I roared flames, a wave of flames that immediately incinerated the other two skeletons. When those flames reached Daniel, however, he sprouted a wall of skeletons to block the attack. Once the brunt of it died out, he released the wall and let the skeletons fall to the ground. Our first exchange was already over.
“Do you know how many people have died over history? Your stemata is practically cheating!” I mocked him.
“You’re one to talk about cheating! Taking advantage of an older brother’s love for a cheap shot? You should feel ashamed of yourself!” Daniel stuck his tongue out to mess with me.
“My older brother died in that mob attack years ago. Anyone that rose from the ashes as a terrorist and took his place is no brother of mine!”
“I’ll take this fight, Danny. You’re obviously too emotionally invested in this.” Chief Enyeto stepped between Daniel and I. His monstrous stature hasn’t changed one bit.
“You’re implying that I haven’t been invested this entire time! This is the future of our people on the line!”
“No…this is different. From that exchange alone I’m certain of it: If it came down to it, you wouldn’t kill him.”
“Whatever!” Daniel walked over to a nearby tree and sat down. “You got five minutes! If you can’t take him in five minutes, it’s my turn!”
“That’s fine by me. I can handle this in four.” He turned towards me and prepared his fists for battle. He’s not even drawing his sword. After all these years, he seriously still thinks I’m too weak for his swordplay? I honestly feel insulted.
No matter. My stemata is enough to end this fight in a simple exchange. I only need one win condition, after all: hit Enyeto with it, and then hit Daniel with it.
Enyeto and I stared at each other, studying the slightest movements of the person in front of us. Within an instant, we rushed towards each other. I started the exchange by opening my mouth, and Enyeto immediately assumed that I was going to fire off my stemata. He leapt into the air and was right above me
This is it! This is my chance!
The wider area I cover with my eternal flames, the less effective they are. The best thing about that fact though is that the inverse is true! All I have to do is concentrate it at a single point! Concentrate every bit of the energy into one attack! This is a technique I’ve been working on to beat these two! I charged my attack to a single point: his head.
“Blue Wyrm’s Breath!”
With flames burning so hot, they turned blue, I encased Enyeto’s head in a ball of flame. He fell to the ground and dropped to his knees in a fit of scorching hot pain. Goodbye, Chief Enyeto. I’ll never forget those days we ate together.
“Now…” I turned around and faced my brother. “It’s your turn. I’ll burn you to a crisp and erase the tainted history that you created!”
“Two points.” Daniel explained while pulling the blades of grass from the floor one by one. “Point one: You know better. You couldn’t possibly believe the story they’re spinning.”
“Yeah, but with a stemata like that, we could’ve escaped and—”
“Two: what gave you the impression that an attack like that would kill a man like Enyeto. He’s just as immortal as my ideals!” He crushed the blades of grass he held onto. I widened my eyes at the realization of Daniel’s confidence. I whipped my head around only to be met with Enyeto’s fist. The strength of the thing was so strong that my metal jaw was immediately fractured and destroyed, the pieces scattering all over the floor. He didn’t stop his assault from there. He put his fists up and kept pummeling me. With each hit, I lost more and more ground. Every time I’d try to make space and recover, he’d close the gap and continue the onslaught. But how? His head was supposed to be consumed by the blue flame until nothing but ash was left! So how is he still moving?! How is he able to turn the tide of the fight so easily?!
That’s when I saw through my bloodied and swollen eyes, the sole reason for the loss of my matchup. The man I was fighting was not Enyeto, but a shadow of his former self. The attack I used can burn until nothing is left. By adjusting the parameters of it, I developed a technique that could do it at one concentrated point. But all of these things are useless because of the people I’m up against.
This man’s face was engulfed by my blue flames. A large corner of his face was even burned down to the bone, revealing part of his skull. One would wonder how this was even possible, but I could immediately tell…in the divide between the singed skin and the skull, I could see the skin trying to heal itself over and over. That bastard of a brother actually did it…he managed to Overclock his stemata!
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Enyeto grabbed me by the collar of my shirt and threw me through the door of the council of six museum.
As my body slid across the room, I recovered as quickly as I could and analyzed my surroundings. The council of six museum was a singular room that was a circular dome that had upright casings of each Chief except for Enyeto and Wennot. They each rested in a tube of glass in the wall to be displayed for any visitor. It has a glass ceiling and marble flooring in the shape of interweaving blue and white diamonds. And with the loss of my stemata and Enyeto not looking the least bit fazed, my back was pretty much against the wall.
Enyeto walked into the museum and Daniel followed directly after and flipped the switches to turn on the lights in the room. With each step Chief Enyeto took, the lights built into the floor illuminated the room in a faint light that rivaled the moonlight that seeped in from the roof.
“This scenery reminds me of those times you’d sneak to watch us train all those years ago.” Enyeto looked around and reminisced. “I wonder…do you miss those days as much as I do? Oh… my apologies.” When he laid his eyes on me, he really realized exactly what he did.
“I destroyed your jaw. It’s not as if you can speak to me. I guess this is it, Jack…”
Enyeto began to approach me and as he did, I remembered the kind man that would play with the kids back in the village. The same man that would try to cook with chief Aiyanna, but would add too many spices. He was a kind man.
It’s a shame how time changes us…
I quickly drew out my trump card. The item that I kept in my back pocket for the day I crossed paths with my brother again.
The black mask had red strokes of ink on it. These red strokes created the imagery of screaming, stretched out faces. They were representative of souls begging, pleading for an escape from the eternal damnation within the blue crystal on the forehead of the mask that was the starting point of all strokes on the stemata.
Daniel’s eyes widened and he immediately screamed out “Enyeto! Stop him before he activates that stemata!”
But it was too late. I donned the mask and activated its power. When I did, large mounds of red flesh started to flow out one after another and transformed into featureless humanoid creatures. They kept popping out of the scene until I had an entire army at my disposal. This is it! The moment I've been waiting for!
My stemata is one that I found through a broker that knows of the black market. It’s a stemata that consumes flesh and turns it into these creatures that follow my every command. I spent the last ten years gathering my army! Chasing down and hunting terrorists in the shadows for this!
“AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” I let out a war cry and as I did, the army of flesh soldiers did as well.
Daniel took a step back out of what I assume to be regret, but Enyeto kept his place. “You’re no better than a pufferfish, Jack. You and I both know, this poor display of strength isn’t enough to stop me—”
A soldier was inches from making contact with Enyeto’s face, but he quickly leaned his head ever so slightly so it hit the blue flaming side. He then grabbed the soldier’s arm and neck, spun it around, and threw it into two other soldiers that were advancing. He then rushed headfirst into the army before him, as the army surrounded and enveloped him, I couldn’t see what was happening until countless bodies went flying out, almost like an explosion, away to reveal Enyeto. He really was a monster sometimes.
Through the split-second opening he created, he bursted through and kept charging. In response, I created a giant mound of flesh that quickly formed into a 7 foot tall monstrosity that was bigger, and more built than Enyeto. However, his charge didn’t falter for even a second when faced with this new obstacle.
Almost as if planned from the beginning, he lowered his stance, wrapped his arms around the knee of the giant, and yanked it down as hard as he could. The giant wasn’t expecting a maneuver like that so when it happened, it got floored with little resistance. Enyeto did it all in such one quick motion, that he recovered out of it with a simple spin from a crouching to sprinting position. Now there was almost nothing standing in the way between him and me. The army and giant right behind him made me realize: he knows he can’t actually kill any of these things, so he’s taking me out to dispel the effects of the stemata. Not bad.
That doesn’t change the final stage of my plan though. In fact, everything I did was to slow you down for this exact moment, Enyeto!
He quickly pulled back his fist and just as quickly shot it right towards the gem on my mask’s stem crystal. He was millimeters from caving my skull in before several giant red arms encased him. In this cocoon, I enacted the final step of my plan. Out of my black mask sprouted a twisted and warped form of the former terrorist Hives. I found out that under the right conditions, my stemata allows me to even absorb stematas for my flesh soldiers to use. I know that Hives’ poison won’t work, but if he was shot with his stemata at point-blank range, then that’ll surely be enough to take him down or at least weaken him—
Before I could even claim my victory, the cocoon of arms cruelly exploded into thousands of cut pieces as Enyeto was revealed to have unsheathed his sword. As he was falling, he tackled me to the floor. Hives’ stemata dropped right next to me and I turned my body to try and get it, but Enyeto drove his sword perfectly through both of my hands to keep them bound to the floor.
“AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH—” My screams of pain were immediately interrupted by Enyeto’s barrage of punches. With the contact of each earth-deafening hit, my world became darker and darker until I realized that this was probably it for me.
I’m sorry I couldn’t bring some level of grace to the clan’s name.
The smiling faces of the Rosarians gathered at the village center eating and dancing together flashed through my mind.
I’m sorry, guys…
Chief Enyeto
With Jack knocked out, the army of fleshed mounds behind us dropped to the floor and became pools of liquid blood and skin. I rose from the position I had Jack pinned him and gave him one last look.
“You made me use my blade, Jack. Rest well in the afterlife, knowing that you’ve grown exponentially as a warrior.” I ripped the sword out and was bringing it down towards Jack, but stopped just short of his neck.
“Is there a reason why you’re stopping me with your stemata, Daniel?”
“I just had a great idea! How about we teach him a lesson? The punk deserves it for all the trouble he just put us through! We’ll keep him around for as long as possible for his personal torment!”
He’s dressing it as a scheme, but in reality, his mind is at war between fulfilling what he set out to do, and leaving things half finished. It’s all because of his lingering bond with that brother of his that he’s having such difficulty severing.
I just wish he were more honest with his feelings at times.
“Fine. I’ll tie him up.” I sheath my sword and immediately got to work.