When you're in the midst of a raging fire, it's easy to forget that there's a world outside. You become totally immersed in the heat and chaos, surrounded by a sea of flames that stretch out as far as the eye can see.
All around you, there's a cacophony of crackling flames, billowing smoke, and scorching hot sand or glass beneath your feet; you would not be able to tell. Your shoes would slough off in moments, leaving the soles of your feet exposed, in a constant state of regeneration and scorched decay. You feel the heat pulsing through your body, suffocating your lungs and making your skin feel as though it's about to burst into flames. The only thing that keeps you going in such an environment is a biologically enhanced body, honed through a [Flesh Smith] skill.
In the midst of an inferno, the heat emanates from the ground itself. And soon, the boiling sand beneath your feet becomes superheated glass, scorching every inch of skin that touches it. With every breath you take searing your lungs, the intense heat and light reflected through the glass beneath you would at points feel like standing on the surface of the sun.
Now try to conceive of surviving all that, but with explosions of heat and fire erupting wherever you stray too long, and beams of fire continuing to lance towards you from unseen locations and angles, threatening to roast you alive.
Now consider that despite all this, you keep moving, your feet pounding the ground. Maybe it's the way the superheated sand crunches beneath your feet, or the way you seem to see every swirl and grain of sand and smoke, frozen in time, hinting at the coming unseen beam of fire, and effortlessly move your body out of the way. Or maybe it's just the adrenaline pumping through your veins. You stand your ground, pressing forward unafraid. You feel invincible, like nothing can stop you. And so far, nothing has.
And then you see them - the lances of ice that jut out from the flames like jagged teeth. They are small and giant, deadly and serene, and with one wrong move, they threaten to skewer you. You dance around the lances, dodging and weaving like an ember caught in the hot winds, feeling some pain as a close shave shears the skin off your back. You swing your fists, destroying them in a shower of steam, but they keep coming, relentless in their pursuit. You shatter every one that comes.
You remember stories of games played by barbarian children, where they mimic the use of mana and skills, without actually having any, using ice and fire. In their snowy mountains, the children of the Hailpeake Horde use a small amount of dried cloth or leaves and surround it with ice in a container that withstands heat. Next, the young ones ignite the leaves or dried bark and cloth and quickly drop a few ice cubes onto the flames. The ice instantly melts and turns into steam, which expands rapidly due to the heat, causing a small but satisfying explosion they hurl into the air or at each other, giggling as they dodge. Parents are usually careful about the games their children play; a city dweller might fret over their toddlers playing games with toy swords. But a barbarian parent would simply hand them a real one and say, “Go practice.”
The memory arrives too late as the once-frozen water makes contact with the scorching environment. It shatters under the shockwave of force from a fist moving at blurring speeds, and chaos erupts. The ice, once solid and still, suddenly becomes volatile, exploding in a shower of shards and steam. The frozen element is pushed to the brink by the intense heat surrounding it.
The air is now thick with clouds of flames, smoke, sand, and steam, making it difficult to breathe, let alone see.
But then you remember; you can [Teleport].
***
Evan teleported several times in the air, ascending until he reached several meters above the inferno that enveloped half of the desert. From there, he could spot the winged humanoid made of armour in the distance—a dot on the horizon growing closer. He needed to do something, and fast.
Amidst the clouds of smoke and steam, R’Hazul began to speak with a slow and measured tone. "Smoke is like a veil that obscures everything. You must rely on your other senses to navigate through it," he remarked. ” Even now he’s still trying to teach me? Read the room!!! Evan wanted to yell in response, despite the distance between them. He had to resist the impulse, mindful of the damage his burning lungs had received from the scorched air below.
He had been storing kinetic energy this whole time, preferring to dodge the lances of heat and ice and only shattering the ones he couldn't avoid. His bones were practically humming with unreleased energy. He could hear a buzzing in his ears, growing faster and deeper as the energy bounced from point to point, begging to be released. In his vision, the whole world shook and blurred along with his body; his bones vibrating at insane speeds, his muscles visibly rippling and shaking as he hung in the air. He breathed deep from the untainted air around him.
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“Who knew steam could be so suffocating?” Evan muttered to himself, relieved to regain his ability to speak. It had been like standing on the edge of an active volcano, every breath he’d had to wrestle from his surroundings.
In the seconds he spent in free fall, his mind worked in overdrive, and Evan formed a plan. He would strike R’hazul with every last ounce of his strength and stored energy, and immediately teleport towards the large dimensional portal. It didn't seem to have a set location as the swirl of images and visible mana continued to shift and warp along its surface. He spotted R’hazul in the heart of the blazing desert, an eye of blue flames inside a swirling circle iris of red and orange fire. Explosions, beams of fire and streaks of steaming ice lanced outwards wherever he turned his gaze, he noted that Esme, Darren and Gideon were nowhere to be seen.
Evan made his move, plummeting towards the earth like a bolt of lightning, his body shaking with energy as R’Hazul spotted him. As Evan fell, he clenched his fists tightly, his muscles contracting and releasing, causing a ripple effect that was visible on the surface of his skin. He began a series of teleports growing faster and faster each second, dodging lances of heat, explosions of flames, planes of superheated sandglass that hurled themselves at Him as R’hazul summoned them, and eventually the talons of the winged armour creature, he could see it all. Soon he was a blur, appearing only for moments as he shot forward before teleporting again, and again, and again. He was a streak of constantly building speed across the flaming sands, teleporting with each breath while gaining more and more momentum in the void between spaces. He could feel the mana slowly depleting from his core, and his body, as the world blurred into lines around him with each new teleport.
Evan focused and felt the world around him slow down, his enhanced synapses firing as his brain operated at extraordinary speed. Even in his accelerated neural state, he was moving so fast that things still appeared as blurs, rapidly passing him by, and the humming in his bones was louder than ever—a deep, ever-present gong. Summoning all his determination, he directed his focus to the heart of the firestorm where R'Hazul stood, and hurled his fist forwards with everything he had before teleporting towards him at blinding speed.
Evan appeared inches from R’hazul, launched from the void, fist moving so fast towards his teacher's face it could barely be seen.
And missed.
R’hazul had somehow seen him in the instant Evan appeared, and dodged, twisting so Evan caught him in the shoulder instead of the chin. The energy racing through his being released in a burst of power, and everything went white.
A massive explosion rocked the desert, the air around them shook with the force of the blow, a wave of energy radiating outwards as giant plumes of sand rose metres in the air. A crater forming around them exposing the rock and sediment beneath, as R’hazul and evan both went flying in different directions.
A single chipped piece of dark metallic flesh, a true Dragons flesh, no larger than a fingernail, fell into the crater.
R’Hazul landed on his feet some distance away sliding across the sands, as Evan did the same.
“You injured me” R’Hazul muttered, as he rose, the low sound of his voice covering the desert “ how long has it been since I last lost flesh?” he continued to himself as he stared at a small chip in his dark collarbone. Then laughter boomed and echoed through the barren desert.
“Hahaha! Amazing! I must have you!” he roared as Lightning began to crackle all over his body.
Evan had had enough. His muscles and bones were aching from the backlash of releasing so much energy at once, and the intense heat emanating from R'hazul's metallic body had singed Evans' fist on impact. He needed to end this and continue his journey.
His teacher now stood, in the centre of a new storm of ice and fire, lightning arcing around him intermittently, leaving streaks across the ground beneath him. He stood still with his arms rising as several spinning panes of superheated glass formed around him from the sands. R’hazul manipulated them to layer in front of each other, one after another, glowing so bright it became hard to miss him in the new sea of fire. Suddenly a beam of light burst forward at frightening speed.
It was so fast Evan barely caught it as his new instincts caused him to shift and turn his body to the side, it was all he could do to avoid the beam of light as the sheer heat from being next to it burned his skin to a crisp.
“So many surprises! Who knows, you might even survive the Extraction Ritual, and manage something even the gods couldn't!” R’hazul continued, as the arcs of lightning multiplied and glassed the sand around him, streaks of heated sandglass rising in the air.
OK, time to go. Evan resolved. Whatever R’hazul truly was, it was beyond Evan. For now.
He would head to a new land, through the portal, and turn his body into an unstoppable force and a true power. Then He would use his [Postcognition], when he'd mastered it more, and he would be back. And when he came back, he would claim every piece of knowledge and jewel of power his teacher had to offer.
A [Teleport] sent Evan high up, and away from the portal, staying only a second before teleporting again, wary of what he’d decided to call the ‘DeathBeamOfAnnoyinglyFastLight™’. The beam of light was shifting wildly as R’hazul turned the panes of sandglass, trying to strike Evan between teleports, but he had no real way of predicting exactly where his student would appear. Evan teleported the final distance to the portal as R’hazul looked away. Within a breath, Evan would be free to begin his ascension, gaining abilities no one in this world but Esme could even dream of.
He appeared in front of the giant portal, hands stretched forwards, fingers inches from being taken to an entirely new plane. He could feel his heart pumping at the endless potential just a breath away.
Then he couldn't feel his heart at all. In front of him was a hand covered in blood protruding from his chest, he turned to see Gideon smiling down at him, and leaning closer towards his ear. Gideon spoke to him.
“See you soon”
Everything went black. Then burst into colour.