7 years ago

Somewhere in the Tottariel Valley.

Denizan Estolas was patrolling the outer ring of the valley as he always did in the early mornings, so early that the moon was still visible in the sky and the dark purples and blues of the night haven’t yet given way to the path of the sun marching with the light of a new day. He had just tracked down a powerful monster that had wandered too close into the valley for his liking. By the looks of its path of destruction, the creature was immense, as big as ten men and stronger than twenty. At least Unarmed men, but certainly not as strong as an experienced Silver Wielder as himself.

He had come close to it a few times, but the beast managed to elude him at every chance he came close to a sneak attack. For its great size, it seemed to anticipate Denizan’s approach with a fair amount of time and planned in advance, disappearing into the terrain like it had never been there in the first place. He believed the monster had some sort of camouflage or even transmutational skill that allowed it to mimic its environment or maybe temporarily fuse with it.

It was clever. Perhaps too much. He hadn’t been able to see the creature clearly, but its stench was worrying. It smelled sick, putrid even, and the red dust he had found on the corpses of animals the creature had left half devoured on its path pointed towards a haunting conclusion: it came from the Slaughterlands.

The rust dust was fortunately dormant and harmless outside the red wastes of the Metal World ruins, at least on its own in such a small amount without any source of corrupting power to harvest it and control it. The beast itself was another matter entirely. It didn’t seem like it was transforming the fauna it killed, so its level of infection couldn’t be very strong. Otherwise, he would be dealing with a much bigger problem and a lot more monsters.

He had made sure that there were no tracks of surviving animals from the monster’s rampage, using all of his skills and Perception to watch for traces of Rust Rohmat in the air in case of flying animals, but there were none to be found. Things were under control. For now.

Although the situation could get out of hand very quickly if it reached a village with enough human population to sustain a Surge and Denizan didn’t like the direction the beast was going. For the untrained eye, it would seem kind of random, but he knew better. The patterns were an indication of intent, hidden by seemingly random fits of violence and destruction on the environment, of masking the true goal of the creature. It was going towards Denizan’s town. He had taken far too much time to figure it out. His family was in danger.

“Emperor, please, let me be in time. [Moonwalk]!” Denizan prayed, his words a call to the power of one of his Core skills. His feet became half translucent as he was running, the effect crawling upwards until his legs were surrounded by a pale light, a gradient of visibility that made him look like a floating ghost. The hunter’s Rohmat focused, calling upon the water of the forest.

Every drop of dew in the leaves of trees above and blades of grass below, the sweat in his face and the humidity of the air around him gathered under each of his steps, the droplets of water coalesced creating soft round platforms illuminated and shaped by the pale light, rising him in the air as if he was going up on a bright stairway of little moons towards the heavens.

Over the treetops, Denizan could follow the path of the creature with ease. It was growing more and more destructive as it came closer to his home. Trees torn apart by a powerful force, the wood splintered and rotten, crimson red mold growing over their remains as if they aged decades in minutes. The ground was cracked and dry; the grass covered in the red dust of the monster's footprints. But... something was wrong with them. The tracks were deeper and wider, as if they were... growing. Could it be? Was the creature getting even bigger?

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But there was no mistake, it really was. The monster was turning into a full on giant if it couldn’t be called that already before. Was it absorbing the Rohmat around it on its rampage? Combined with its capacity to hide, it made for a truly deadly combination of skills. Adding to that its infection of Rust, Denizan worried that it could also grow stronger with its size. He pushed every fiber of his being, pulsing the Rohmat of his Core to its limits.

He had to be in time. He needed to. But his [Moonwalk] was a skill for mobility and aerial superiority, mainly for stealth hunting from a vantage point without being noticed. It wasn’t as useful for a long pursuit, as he depended on the Torrent Rohmat he could channel while he moved.

He was forced to go back to the ground not long after, as the creature’s path had absorbed too much of the ambient Rohmat to channel it into his skill. He couldn’t use all of his Core reserves of power if he wanted to have enough to fight it, although he was starting to worry with the creature’s monstrous growth that he could not do that anymore without the worse case scenario.

Even with his Silver level Agility, it took him almost an hour to reach the creature, but by then, it was too late. After ascending the hill at the top of the town, in front of the garden of the small but cozy white stone house, the monster laid burned to a crisp, its form drastically reduced in size down to barely that of a person, turned into charcoal and creaking rustflesh stinking of old blood.

Burn marks covered the round stones of the path towards their home and the nearby trees, some of them still burning with bright white flames like funerary torches. The garden was ruined, gone the colorful flowers, now nothing more than blackened memories of their peaceful times together. A wide splash of blood reddened the entry doorframe, dropping on the fallen, crushed door.

Denizan walked past the unrecognizable corpse of the monster, whatever it had been, and into the house.

“Helion?” He asked, his voice trembling with doubt and concern.

“Dad! In here!” called for him the muffled cries of a small child. A fast scan first, searching for any additional danger, Denizan went towards the room with the barricade of shining spears blocking it. Tightly put against the wooden door, the spears of solid golden light formed a double protection, with as many blocking the way vertically as there were spears coming from the opposite stone wall as a deathly deterrent. The moment he touched one of them, all the spears flicked and faded away in tiny specks of Radiance Rohmat.

He knew what it meant.

The door opened and a child with a worried expression came out of the room, his clothes, face and dark locks covered in blood. The Wielder’s heart skipped a beat, but his trained Perception quickly saw that the boy showed no signs of injury. It wasn’t his blood.

“Dad!” He rushed to him and hugged him with his tiny arms, staining his pants with the half dried blood.

“It’s okay Helion, it’s over.” In more ways than one, Denizan lamented, his eyes closed with a heavy weight on his soul.

“Dad, where is mom?” The dreaded question escaped his son's lips, hurting him in ways that no wild creature ever could.

Denizan looked into his son’s eyes, but he didn’t find fear for his own safety. There was steel in those eyes. A determination to see things to their end. The boy knew the answer already, but he wanted to hear it from the man he called his father.

Lacking the words to express himself, he averted his gaze, only to find something that made the situation too real to keep his emotions in check anymore. Tears in his eyes, he looked away from the terrible testament to the events of that day. He kneeled down and embraced his son tightly, enough that no one, nor even the Emperor could take him away.

“She is gone, Helion. Your mother is gone.” Sobbing, the Wielder fought against the pain in his chest, his heartbeat a rumbling of a coming storm. “She is never coming back”

“Are you going to disappear too?” The child asked, defeated and devoid of energy, probably exhausted after trying to escape the room.

The Wielder hugged the boy even harder, the water from his tears lifting in the air by the sheer force of his barely contained anger impulsed Rohmat. But his rage wasn’t directed towards him. He knew very well who was really to blame for the pain Helion would carry forever with him.

“Never. You are my son. Now and forever.”

Denizan felt his son nod in his shoulder in silence. “I don’t want to feel this way again.” Said Helion with too much conviction for his young age. “Helpless.”

“You won’t,” affirmed him his father in a somber yet determined tone. “For better or for worse, today ends your childhood. It’s time to start your training. You must earn the right to hear the Emperor’s Word”

On the floor next to them, now visible after the spears disappeared, rested the symbol of that tragedy that would haunt them both for years to come.

A single golden feather, vanishing slowly in the air. A testament to what was lost.