Ash paced back and forth across the sparring chamber, occasionally leering back towards the northern entranceway.
Come on. He thought, the phrase repeating in his mind like clockwork, or a psychotic parrot. Come on, Koa, come on. What’s taking you so damn long?
This was the same sparring chamber he had originally fought against his brother in, over a year ago. The same one where he had been publicly humiliated. The thought brought a sour taste to his mouth, and Ash held no qualms with spitting on the ground at his feet.
Finally, the door opened.
Koa stormed in, a bored look in his one remaining eye. He didn’t seem too angry at being beckoned back to the sparring chamber, but Ash saw past his brother’s composed front. In actuality, Ash was driving his brother insane.
“Brother.” Koa said the word without affection. It was empty of meaning. “I understand that the outcome of our original duel upset you,” he looked around, as if worried that woman would storm into view. Again, Ash felt a sickness stir in the pit of his stomach. How could his own blood marry himself away to someone like her? “This however, is simply ludicrous. You do know the definition of insanity, don’t you?”
Ash came to a standstill, his feet pressing hard into the ground. With the newfound power of a Foot-Solider, a Rank he had climbed to within Durations of that initial fight, a crack formed in the stone. If Koa was impressed, or thought his brother was acting like a child, he didn’t show it. It was like Koa had lost half of his personality, when he lost half of his sight.
“I again call on the Fallen Leaf section of our sect’s ancient code.” Ash looked away from his brother’s face, like just looking at it disgusted him. “I’m perfectly in my right to call anyone in this clan to a duel.”
There were more details, such as this only being applicable to those of the same Rank. Ash had never experienced more motivation in his life, when he had originally learnt of the legislation. Every day, he would wake up and train, train deep into the night, until twilight’s claws were upon him, and until he would finally faint. Then, whenever he could stir consciousness back into his body, the cycle would begin anew. Again and again and again and again and . . . all until Ash finally broke past the boundary into Foot-Soldier.
“I’m sure when our wise, and scholarly ancestors penned those laws, this—” Koa pointed vaguely all around “—wasn’t what they had in mind.”
“Who’s to discern the meaning of madmen, from the barbaric ages?”
“So you admit laws made so long ago cannot be logical, especially if they originate from the barbaric times?” Koa took a step forward, like he was finally getting a foothold in this argument. “This is the tenth time this Duration you’ve called me here.”
“You’d better hope I make it the last then.” Ash punched his knuckles together, Donovan’s gift resting on his fingers. He imagined them crushing Koa’s jaw. The image made him smile.
“I’m getting Juniper to rewrite the laws, you know.” Koa too drew his web halberd, no longer concealing his irritation. He leered at Ash the same way you would stare at a stain on the carpet. “She doesn’t approve of you wasting so much of my time. Some of us actually try to contribute to the clan we’re a part of.”
Ash widened a toothy grin. This was it, his brother was getting angry. He wouldn't hold back. Ash always got the impression during their bouts that even while still beating him, Koa was careful about it. He was always holding back. The sincere fool couldn’t stomach attacking his only brother. Now that false facade of brotherly comradery would finally fall.
Ash took one stride forward, every muscle in his body seeming to tense in preparation for a fight. His lips kept trembling, like he couldn't decide if he was above or below trash-talking. Ash leaned forward at the waist, ready to sprint forward, ready to render his brother a bloody-
“Koa!”
The pair of them froze. Ash couldn’t decide what was greater: his own exasperation, or the fear in Koa’s eyes.
Within a second, Octavia flounced into view. She walked up to Koa, her arachnid form enough to make Ash grimace. She locked eyes with Ash, and neither hid their resentment.
Octavia turned her attention to her husband, pinching his cheek with two fingers. “I lose sight of you for one minute, and you’re already in another duel with this lunatic?”
“Octavia, regardless of what changes Juniper plans on making, it is my legal obligation to-”
“I don’t care what the law says if the law is stupid! We already know the outcome here.”
Koa smiled, warmth seeming to ease the tension out of his body. How he could completely relax in the company of a freak like her, Ash would never know.
“You’re interrupting.” Ash spoke to the woman, regardless of how much it pained him to look at her. “Unless you’d like to duel me too?”
Octavia took a step forward. If it wasn’t for Koa putting his hand on her shoulder, she might have actually taken him up on the offer. Octavia was a Foot-Soldier too, after all. “Don’t tempt me.”
“Octavia, let me handle this. It’ll only take a minute.”
Ash laughed. “Okay, brother. Let’s see how well that confidence translates into action, shall we?”
Octavia huffed, crossing her arms. “You’re all bark, no bite.”
Emerald energy began to swirl around Ash. Infinity swept through every single tube that made up his Standing Trooper Mould. It was designed to keep him up and fighting for as long as possible. Exhaustion was virtually impossible. Nevertheless, he wouldn’t need the endurance. He didn’t intend on making this last long.
Tree branches snapped out the ground at Koa’s feet, and Ash dived forward.
This time. He vowed. Things will be different.
----------------------------------------
Things, two minutes of fighting proved, were not different.
Ash was sent flying to the floor, his body rolling up and down until he came slamming into the wall. It felt like his brother had forcibly rearranged his spine. He sat there, blinking out tears of rage and pain, until he could see clearly again.
Koa and Octavia were talking, but like it mattered. The world was a distorted pudge of noise and sensations, Ash’s vision blurrier than looking through condensation on a window.
He blinked, things getting a little clearer, and recoiled at what he saw.
His brother, reaching out a hand. “Come on brother.” He spoke like a father used to his child’s misbehaviour. “Let’s get you sorted out.”
Ash had been right about feeling something different about Koa this time around. He hadn’t held back. Now there was more blood than skin on Ash’s face, and with every little motion, his body ached.
He spat venom. “I don’t want your help. God help anyone that does.” Ash’s throat was sore, so the words sounded like scar tissue stitched into the shape of syllables.
Ash dragged himself up to his legs, and stumbled back down. He put his weight on one crouched leg, wobbling as he tried to move into a stand.
“Here.” Koa walked over, apparently unfazed by what he had just said. “I really think you should accept help for once and stop all this-”
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
A wooden wall sprouted between Koa and Ash. It took all of Ash’s energy to form, but neatly divided the arena into two. Ash could hear his brother’s muffled voice on the other end, but ignored it outright. Ichor spilled at his feet, and he hobbled away, glaring at the guards on either side as if just daring them to try and stop him. Part of Ash was spoiling for another fight, ignoring the fact that, in this condition, a stone’s throw could probably knock him out cold.
He kept walking, walking, ignoring the raised eyebrows and pursed lips every passer-by shot his way. Ash was tempted to growl at the ones who baulked for too long, compelled out of pure spite.
His skull throbbed, but not solely because his brother had barged him in the head one too many times. That played a part too, but so did the ferris wheel of questions looping over and over in his mind. He thought of Elmore, but more specifically, his cousin’s ruined legacy.
I was supposed to secure the future of the clan. Now even Koa is stronger than me. Now our sect is in shambles.
They couldn’t secure the throne for any longer than a Rebirth, when some monarchs stretched their service out for years. Doing so by battling against swarms of other sects, fighting for what should have been their rightful turn on the throne. Now, if they didn’t grow stronger soon, it would be at least another six, dreadfully long years until a Wild Sect monarch would be called King or Queen again. They had failed, like so many other clans, to snoop the crown away from Maris when her tenure came to an end. Juniper didn’t even seem to want to try any longer.
Ash had no idea how he hadn’t seen it before. Everywhere he looked, at every passing face, at every empty chamber he passed, or in the leaves of each and every tree the Wild Clan held around their base, he saw it: weakness.
A younger Ash would have seen nothing but comfort and security. When you’re young like that, it’s like nothing can break your little world. The glassy existence you pave for yourself. But living in a glass house isn’t safe for anybody.
Elmore’s death had sent that delusion shattering. Ash had still been chasing after the fragments when this feud with his brother began. When Juniper had orchestrated that first bout, in an attempt to make them see eye-to-eye.
Kind of hard to do that when one of them was blind.
Now this. One year, and Koa had gotten nowhere.
His heart wouldn’t stop racing. Every cell in his body was swimming in dread. The Wild Clan was going to fall into anarchy if he didn’t stop it. Ash didn’t know why, but something told him that fact was absolute. If only he could put a face to it. That probing presence in the back of his mind.
Ash blinked, and everything vanished. At first, he was sure he had fainted. This was just some weird interphase where his consciousness hadn’t quite slipped away from him.
Then he blinked again, and nothing changed.
The blackness expanded around him, whole and complete. There wasn’t a smidge of colour anywhere the eye could see. It wasn’t as if the place around him had been splashed with a dark shade of black, it was the absence of colour altogether.
It wasn’t dark, however. As contradictory as that seemed, Ash could look down and see the Ichor still glistening on his fists. It was just his surroundings that appeared to be hollowed out of everything.
“Where am I?” He tried to turn in a complete circle, only to stumble once more. The surface he fell on wasn’t distinguishable from the black all around. In fact, it was hard to describe. Not too soft, not too hard. Like he was sitting on a force of pure energy, no matter to it.
“That is the question, isn’t it?”
Ash was ashamed to admit he flinched at the noise. But you try to stay vigilant, stained in your own blood and transported into the middle of nowhere. Quite literally.
What is this? That was one question Ash was unsure if he would ever get the answer to.
“This is but one corner of your mind, Ash.” When Ash pulled a horrified expression, the incorporeal presence barked in laughter. This was more like a jester screaming down his eardrums, than a devil whispering into his ear. “The part you try to suppress. Your darkest tendencies brought to the forefront.”
Ash hurriedly dragged himself back from what he suspected was the source of the noise. When his back seemed to hit an invisible wall, praying to Chantal, the goddess of the Wilderness, seemed like an appropriate course of action. Not even the gods seemed to know if there was an afterlife, but Ash was willing to place his bets.
“Why are you running? What, do you think I would hurt you?”
Ash didn’t say anything.
“Ah, the silent treatment?” The presence sighed. “Okay then, looks like I’ll have to make my appearance.”
The swish of air from a guillotine falling would have been a more appealing sound than those words. Ash took a deep breath, sent whatever power he could rushing through his Mark, and let the viridescent glow add colour to the abyss.
One look at the being, and Ash’s breathing rate was impossibly quick. Enough adrenaline to kill him wasn’t enough, it was like his body was trying to inhale every speck of oxygen to have ever existed.
The being was impossibly tall, and lanky. Its head was owl-like, beady eyes that somehow gave the impression of wisdom instead of stupidity staring into Ash’s soul. The closer the being came, the more Ash felt the impulse to scream, scramble, and do half a dozen things that wouldn’t present him as the brave foot-soldier he envisioned himself to be. Now that self-perception was wearing thin.
What if Koa was right? What if Ash really was going insane?
The being snickered, its head tilting to the side, revealing its strange, curved shape as well as owlish appearance. Like an axehead. As for its body . . . Ash had to squint. It blended in perfectly with the darkness all around. As if this being too was part of it — just another cavity in space.
“Are you Unbounded?” The question sounded stupid to even Ash, but this creature felt so beyond anything he’d ever faced. Ethereal in every sense of the word. Like it transcended Infinity itself, a curse cast down from another plane of existence.
Something told Ash that he should have recognised the entity by now, but he couldn’t put his finger on it for the life of him. He was a little too delirious for thinking, and it was sapping all his energy just to keep pumping out power from his Mark. If it would have any effect somewhere like this, Ash hadn’t the slightest. Still, he always felt a little safer with its steadfast power flowing through him.
“Oh I think you know what I am, somewhere in that mind of yours. I’m not exactly a new arrival.”
Ash swallowed. “What do you mean by that?”
The owl’s face curved, each tooth exaggerated in a rictus that could chill the bones of the most stone-faced. “Do you really think you became so power-hungry out of your one volition? After your brother defeated you, you really were quite the pitiful thing. But emotion! So much emotion to work upon. Like a pile of oil for me to stoke the flames of vengeance upon.”
That sounded like the response he would expect out of a smithy, after handing them a large chunk of ore to beat into shape. Like Ash was a malleable thing, to be hit and swung into some grand design.
But it was the contents of what they were saying that really made Ash break into a sweat. It made sense now: Ash hadn’t felt like himself ever since that duel. That was a logical conclusion, of course. He would have no doubt changed after such a massive string of losses. But now, if he looked past his anger at Elmore’s death, his anger at Koa seemed to belong to someone else. Like it had been injected into him.
His mind was split into fragments. Many of which don't even belong to him.
He turned back to the being, the Shadow-Man, or so he looked like. A mix of rage and fear made Ash ball his hands into fists, to leer at the creature with open opposition.
Laughter, like a mountain shaking, made Ash a little less resolute.
“You wish to fight?” They carried a mocking tone, like Ash was a mouse confronting a tiger. “You wish-”
Unfiltered power rushed through Ash. He ignored the aches and pains weighing him down, and leaped into a punch. He wasn’t sure how many of his techniques would work here, so send wilderness energy billowing through his body. His limbs acted like branches accepting the grace of rainwater; the touch of sunlight. His body was a conduit for the power.
And still, his first mistake was blinking.
When Ash next opened his eyes, he was rolling across the ground, muffling his screams, and grasping at an arm that definitely shouldn’t have been at the angle it was. Broken, no doubt about it.
“Why must you suffer? I offer you power, I give you power, and you spit in my face!”
Each word was like a sonic boom, slamming into Ash’s body. He didn’t try to get up, didn’t try to do anything. There was no escape here. His Standing Trooper Mould was still drawing out power in thin remnants, but it wasn’t enough. It made no difference if his Mark was drained or not. The outcome of this encounter seemed already decided.
“I can heal you, I can make you stronger than any previous Right-bearer.”
Ash couldn’t speak, feeling like invisible spikes were pressing into his skull, each trying to invade his brain and claim it as its own. Like an anti-vaccine, infecting his mind, drowning it with dark intent.
“Stop resisting, hush.” He took on the tone of a lullaby. “Rest . . . rest. When you wake up, this will all seem like a bad dream. Nothing more. Your weakness, the ruinous state of this earth, the backwards way you mortals look at us Unbounded.”
Ash’s eyelids drooped, the tears slipping out into the abyss.
“We are the cure. Now, rise, my paladin. Rise.”
White light seeped through everything, through Ash’s closed eyes and into every crevice of his sheltered psyche. The great absence was filled, blazing brighter than the sun ever could.
And Ash lost himself.