The cavernous expanse seemed to go on for as far as his Engorged eyes could see, but Remus' attention was rather preoccupied with the onslaught of Unbounded eager to cleave off his flesh. The bug-like beings the size of hands darted about the place on spindly legs, masses of leaf green with freakishly long antennas. Violet observed his struggle from a higher perch with a placid expression, supplying the exhausted man with the occasional, extremely helpful comment of ‘watch your footing,’ or, equally as insightful: ‘remind me again why I agreed to train someone with two left legs?’.
Remus kept his mouth shut, as much as it would please him to jab back, and instead focused on avoiding the hookish fangs of the Unbounded. Their bulbous eyes of blood-red rather well reflected his own dour mood. His customary apron, lovingly stitched together by his own mother, was now defamed by the murky blood of the dying beasts, who hadn’t dissolved fast enough to not leave their mark on the material. It would grudgingly remain there for as long as it took him to find an adequate stain-remover. Which, in other words, meant that Remus would have to find some other appeal to wear instead, sooner or later. He didn’t know which prospect was scarier: his mother’s reaction at his illegal escapades, or the look that would emerge on her face if she ever saw the state of her handiwork.
He was just in the midst of this thought process when a pointed end pricked across his forehead. Remus turned in a cry, instinctively put a hand to his head, and scrambled backwards like a fool as a swarm of the bugs neared. The wolf Unbounded didn’t seem to trudge this far into the grasslands, and for Remus’ training, Violet had settled on him murdering hordes of these vaulting pests instead. He’d gotten rather effective at avoiding any danger on his hunting trips, being sure to only roam around sections of the plains home to regular, flesh and blood animals — not the false, fabricated life essence the Unbounded threw together in petty mimicry. Violet had taken the initiative that she would be overtaking the meat-gathering position, after Remus returning to camp without so much as a scratch had become a habit, and he instead . . . Well, Violet threw him into the middle of the nearest family of Unbounded. Daily.
Only problem was, while he would usually only have to worry about two to three of the wolves, Remus wouldn’t think you were lying if you told him hundreds of the bouncing things were down there to keep him company. Apparently, Violet couldn’t care less about the precise nature of whatever situation she tossed him head-first into. Their power in numbers, type of Unbounded, and even partially their Divine Rank equivalence didn’t seem to unnerve her, though you would be hard-pressed to find anything above Emblazed-similarity out in this wilderness. To Violet, a fight was a fight, and for Remus' training, the first encounter she stumbled upon would be the one he had the misfortune of dealing with.
Much to his misfortune, today seemed to be the day she selected a brawl that was unwinnable, no matter how much mindless motivation Remus basked himself in.
A dozen spots of his skin roared in pain as tiny pincers dug through the fickle shielding. The Unbounded layered over his body as if deciding his next outfit for him, apparently finding the leaking droplets of his blood to be of high nutritional value.
Remus spun on the spot, wrenched as many of the overgrown insects as he could off his form, only for yet another to place itself quite contently on the top of his face. Without thinking, in a testament to the emerging heat progressively boiling his blood to volcanic temperatures, he squeezed the life out of the wailing lifeform. This backfired immediately.
Now not only was the leaden liquid dripping from his attire, the revoluting stuff was blinding him.
Through the muck and constant humming, the distinct laugh of Violet entered his ears, reverberating across the cavern walls in a gong-like echo. “Lucky these are only Engorged-level enemies at best. Any higher, and that blood may have been acidic.”
Remus struck wildly into the invisible expanse. Some of his blows connected, but he couldn’t help but imagine how stupid he must be looking, beating illogically into the gloom. “Aren’t you supposed to be helping me here? Sounds to me like you only agreed to oversee my progress just to patronise me.”
“No,” Violet sighed. “Patronising you is only half of the deal, unfortunately. Anyway, stop jabbering and remember the footwork I taught you.”
Remus was trying his best — he really was — but typical movements through combat weren’t designed for what felt like a thousand enemies coming at him in one fierce barrage, all of them unrelenting. Grunting, he rubbed the blood out of his eyes, thanked the gods that his eyeballs hadn’t melted into a gory mush, and launched into a sprint. If he was going to succeed here, Remus needed to get out into the open; this cave was far too claustrophobic. More space to move would equate to more space to evade . . . or perhaps a wider area for these god-forsaken Unbounded to attack him from, but cheerful thoughts like that weren’t exactly doing him any favours.
The rolling gravel beneath his feet turned into the distinctive squish of wet grass, and Remus had never been so thankful to see sunlight in his life, however otherwise gloomy the morning weather was. As his eyes adjusted, he was slowly able to gauge the true extent of the swarm, and whilst not precisely the quantity he had pictured in that damp space, it still wasn’t a crowd he would place any bets on defeating easily. Violet was close behind, obviously restraining her own potential speed to match his, and yet Remus was finding her presence more distracting than anything remotely approaching the sagely mentor he had envisioned her being.
The lands had become less green in the Durations they had been travelling, adorning a light yellowish pigment that wouldn’t do much to disguise the dead bodies of the insects he intended on littering there. That was of course, if he wasn’t fortunate enough to disperse them into fleeting strands of Infinity before they could hit the ground. How exactly he would accomplish the feat of rendering the eighty or so creatures into servants of the netherworld wasn’t certain, but he sure as hell planned on putting up a worthy fight.
Violet would of course come to his defence if the situation grew truly sour — but other than that, for the most part, Remus was on his own.
He veered aside as two Unbounded came for him, tore a branch off the nearest tree, and batted the duo into a bloody pulp as if it were a bat. More came as he backed away in what Remus would’ve liked to call a strategic withdrawal, and as he slowly regained his resolve, his defence reached a stable point of reliability; the incorporation of simultaneously using his hunting axe in the other hand proved quite formidable. The Unbounded seemed less accustomed to the great outdoors, stuffed away in that foul cave of theirs until unfortunate wanderers like him took the plunge into their humble abode.
Are they . . . fleeing? Remus cocked an eyebrow, smashing aside another Unbounded as up above, the rest of their kin appeared to be rushing off in the opposite direction, as if migrating birds.
“Is that really it?” Remus spoke softly to Violet, who of course had somehow managed to scale a tree overhanging above him. “Feels awfully anticlimactic, I was just getting into the groove of things.”
Violet didn’t say anything for a moment, as though bewildered herself. “Knowing Unbounded . . . watch carefully Remus. Watch very carefully.”
This only caused his confusion to irritate him further. Did she have to be so vague, was it really required? He couldn’t complain for long, however — the next thing he laid his eyes upon made sure of that.
One moment the sky above was the backdrop of nothing more than a few evading insects, the next, Remus nearly dropped to his knees as the horror washed over him, crushing the marrow of his bones into a fine, fading powder.
The Unbounded were clustering together in one almighty form, a vague shape of sorts that didn’t seem to make out a particular pattern, at least not one that Remus recognised.
“Gathering into a stronger whole . . . “ Violet mused, as if in a trance. “That’s scarily intelligent for Enkindled equivalents. If they were any smarter, they’d likely be able to coordinate an attack force that even I may find myself struggling against.”
She spouted these words of doom and yet didn’t move an inch, as the critters' obnoxious buzzing evolved into an eerie, sky-splitting declaration of war.
“So,” Remus began, finding himself sweating for reasons that had nothing to do with exertion. “Is this the part where you step in?” He was tempted to add a reluctant please?
Her frown communicated indecision, and a second of hesitation would do Remus no favours. Indefinitely more so, if it meant another second where he could be squashed into a spot of grease. One that didn’t have the privilege of dissipating peacefully back into nothingness.
Violet leaned forwards as he dared to take a step forwards, as if eying something he couldn’t see. “Wait!”
The monstrosity before them, whooshing through the breeze in great whippings of air pressure, wasn’t as keen to the idea of patience. The assembly of Unbounded whose scientific names — much like the wolf foes he had faced prior — continued to elude him, had abandoned their leaping means of manoeuvring in place of all-out wing reliance. The tiny, grey, barely detectable attachments could hardly be seen from this distance, paper-thin as they were, but that didn’t appear to be what was troubling Violet to such an ominous extent. The girl was extending a hand off in his direction as if forcibly warding Remus off, despite being yards away and above him.
The fearful quarters of Remus’ brain warred with the ambitious portions in a fiery negotiation.
Those Unbounded, his curiosity teased, they must be powerful, musn’t they? What other chance out in these barren grasslands do we have of facing such a foe? Even Violet is quaking in her boots!
All the more cause to stay away! His sensibilities argued, unearthly spittle flinging all over the courtrooms of his mind. Yes we must grow strong, and yes we must do it quickly. But mindlessly flinging yourself into danger isn’t the way to do it.
His laid-back half scoffed. And how would we have gotten this far, exactly, if we hadn’t sought out just that? We would still be a hopeless Death-Marked cutting his fingers against shed-tools forever!
For an uncertain pause, it appeared that reckless action had proven itself the dominant combatant, and Remus trodded a few paces forwards. Only for his last remaining specks of logic to practically sucker-punch him.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
Finally, concluding their case in an array of images other than words, Remus internally winced as the faces of those he’d harmed passed across his internal eye. Tal, his clan, Violet for a time, and that poor old guard in green who would have to explain how two Death-Marked had shattered through a wall of sheer stone. It was enough for it to occur to him that he was on the verge of willingly walking into his death, and he leaped back in a frenzy — in the same manner as a small creature would, realising a lethal fall is directly below them.
“What do you want me to do?” He muttered, sucking up his pride and consulting Violet for her advice. “Us together may have a chance to subdue the Unbounded, though despite how much it stings to say it aloud, it would be mostly you doing the heavy-lifting. Or, fleeing is an option-”
“I think you’ll find,” Violet began, crimson eyes unmoving from whatever sight she was observing that appeared to have locked her eyes in place, “that none of that will be necessary.”
Remus frowned. Still, she had to refrain from giving him a straight answer. On the bright side, which was more difficult to consider than you’d think, when a nightmarish amalgamation of the worst of nature’s insects were coming for your head, at least Remus now had an additional incentive to advance. Perhaps finally at Emblazed, if he ever did ascend two additional Divine Ranks, he would catch a glimpse of whatever it was that she seemed so set on spending the rest of her life gazing at.
“What is it? Stop the long-con and spit it out already!”
In reply, she merely uplifted a finger towards the Unbounded.
Remus glanced at the same old sight before turning swiftly back. Nothing had changed. The Unbounded were still bobbling ever closer and closer, equalling out the shortening distance at a frightening rate. “I can’t see as well as you, I’m only Engorged, remember? Just tell me — what are you seeing?”
He first heard the eruption of incarnadine, then felt its gushing heat, before he ever did lay his eyes on the lethal fumes eviscerating the local woodlands.
Remus’ balance failed him, and the ground abandoned his feet, a wall of sheer flame blocking Remus' view entirely of the advancing enemy. He blinked, expecting the visual trick to expire, but it never did. All previous ambition was nowhere to be found, and he scurried back, as if every inch away was an additional year added to his rapidly depleting lifespan. The body of the inferno soon faded, and with it, the congregating Unbounded didn’t even have the luxury of Infinity dispersion, no exception to hunger of the fire. Only a few offshooting lines of fire remained, eating into the quickly disintegrating trees. Such was the great calamity they faced, being a flammable object in the immediate vicinity.
“Violet, we have to get-” Remus cut himself off. The girl was nowhere to be found.
One hurried glance down at the smoking expanse, and her dashing back was visible to him. Grunting, Remus struck the ground with his bare first.
Must she explain nothing to me?
----------------------------------------
Violet entered the ranks of the charred hunks of wood, not entirely certain on what she would be greeted with there. Of course, with her training, her utmost objective was to push Remus to his absolute limits, but Unbounded of this intelligence were nothing to play with. And that was without taking into account what could have effortlessly slaughtered the gathering, as if by a click of their fingers. It was almost enough to send chills down her spine . . . almost.
Smoke polluted the sky in greater quantities as she marched on, pivoting her path to the direction where it was strongest. Her eyes watered, and her nostrils outwardly objected to such an extent, that Violet had no choice but to place an arm before her nose. It did little to dissuade the wretched scent from suffocating her, but at least the ashy smell wasn’t quite so strong. Blotches of red riddled the clearing, making it a mighty annoyance to jog through in an orderly fashion.
The further she tread, the more obvious the source of all this havoc became to her. Had they really travelled so far already? The days had consisted of much of the same as of lately, to the extent that time held no meaning to her slacking mind. Violet’s perception of the concept was about as accurate as a potato’s understanding of quantum theory.
Should she really be testing her luck out here? As much as she loved to gently show-off in front of Remus, Violet, in the harsh metrics of reality, wasn’t really all that strong. The fact she had escaped her sister was a miracle in itself, and in the grand scheme of things, an Emblazed was about as remarkable as an individual pebble in a stone road.
Her all-out run had been reduced to an almost tiptoeing advance, and right as she was considering withdrawing back to Remus — if that worrywart hadn’t already come crashing down after her — an armoured figure sprang past, followed only a few feet away by a luminous amber. Violet blinked as the two strange sights vanished within a second of appearing, a wave of disconcertion scrambling her previous train of thought. She had barely registered the wailing man’s shaved head before three more of the glowing creatures arose out the remnants of two nearby trees that had crumpled upon each other. They were almost exact replicas in appearance to the foes she had planned on having Remus fight. Only, their skin was a radiant lemon, with a sac of alarmingly crimson fluid attached beside wings of disproportionate size. Her Mark flared into action, and the Unbounded’s bodies contorted, before setting alight in a flaming eruption.
Panting out of shock, Violet inspected wide-eyed at the gap in the ground the mini-explosion had caused, the last drips of lava solidifying into a rocky product. Equipped with the new knowledge that . . . what should she call them . . . that magma flies existed, Violet could identify multiple flocks of them dashing about the place, with frantic clansmen doing their best to handle the situation.
Well, she inwardly mused, ignoring the glow of that terribly vague Mark streaking across her forearm, might as well help out while I’m here.
Violet grinned, despite the circumstantial madness reigning king around her. For the first time in what felt like generations, she might get the opportunity to test her limits. Sprinting to the nearest cluster of the flies, this initial excitement quickly weared off.
Two people were huddled at where she guessed to be roughly the centre of the ramshackle battlefield. One of them was a man so muscular it put even Remus’ accounts of his great grandfather to shame, and might have posed a challenge to Nova, if that predatory beast in man’s clothing could ever be bested. His leather armour reminded Violet of her own, only about a hundred times the size, and dyed a fierce black that was somehow striking, even against the backdrop of deep night. Contrasting this was the mane of red that coloured his neat stack of hair. What she first mistook for a tattoo, before realising it was a Mark, wormed its way up the man’s chin and forehead, and from the short glimpse she caught, it depicted an outburst of red that you didn’t need many active brain cells to assume to be fire.
The woman at his side offered much sparser details, veiled almost completely in a beige cloak that only her face popped out of. Her eyes were subsequently her stand-out feature, the almost ebony shade of green withholding a sort of wisdom that, much like the majority of her appearance, was masked. Though in this case, it was behind a mien of intent ferocity, which seemed solely focused on defending the valiant people that made up her beloved sect. They were huddled back to back, hands outstretched, and with their expressions set grimly.
Several troops had gathered before the duo, obviously of lesser standing than the well-adorned couple.
“It's no use sergeant,” one man spat, who Violet couldn’t help but notice was also shaved down to the centimetres, his scalp only one quick trim from baldness. “We’re doing more damage to the outskirts than we are to them!”
The sergeant’s voice was about what you’d expect from a mobile pillar. Gruff, each syllable as if boulders stringed together, but surprisingly, there was an undertone of kindness. “Forgive me, I didn’t anticipate the difficulty of this task. I should have sent you all back when we had to move out of home territory . . . Oh well.”
He turned to the woman at his side. “Veida?”
Apparently that was enough to communicate a question, for Veida nodded.
Violet witnessed this all behind the cover of a drop in the land, an almost completely vertical few feet of dirt able to conceal her hunched form. Intrigued by what she saw, she stood up a tad straighter. As if on cue, Veida and the unnamed man looked upwards, the Mark on the latter of the two pulsating in emerging power. Her breath catching in her throat, Violet’s eyes widened to their limits as they held their arms aloft suddenly, the first burst of red expanding from the centre of each palm. The liquid streams of magma-turned-lava didn’t appear to abide by the laws of gravity, hovering securely, and, like a spiderweb gradually being expanded by its creator, gushed out in several directions.
Violet had never ducked so fast in her life when one blazing current came rushing overhead, lasering through nature’s architecture before making contact with a magma fly the girl hadn’t registered the presence of. It had been attempting to catch her unawares, she suspected, like a portable landmine. She wasn’t certain on whether she should be thankful for the Unbounded’s death, or beyond irked at almost being caught in the crossfire instead. Violet was only just taking into account that perhaps she couldn’t blame the duo for the mishap, as she had crept in against their knowledge, when the insect’s innards erupted in one last squeal. One last agonising outcry to herald its death.
As if a universal dirge signalling the massacre of hundreds, the sound scattered across the field in an eerie, insectile melody. Violet had never heard bugs share a harmony, and even as the sound subsided in place of delirious cheering, she wasn’t keen to ever hear such a thing again.
The network of flame passages still persisted for a few lingering, tenuous moments, before at last sinking back into the pair’s hands; both of them exhaled in great relief.
“It is done, Hadrian.” Veida proclaimed, the humming of the few remaining fires like an encompassing bonfire.
“So it seems,” he swept himself down. “Let’s just hope this was enough of a message to the Unbounded not to gather inside our territory. I’m so very tired of accidental eruptions.”
His exhaustion dripped from every word, and Violet seemed to sense her own fatigue growing by the mere droning noise of it. A yawn worked its way up her throat, but she did her best to suppress it. Based on the grandiose of that little demonstration, these people weren’t to be messed with. Sure, for Remus’ future endeavours, they would need to be confronted eventually — and Violet herself wasn’t exempt from this either, with the Undercrossing not a possible route to the heart of Hybrid, she would have to rely on the volcanic lands of the Flame Territory as her route over — but Violet had experienced the wary alertness one experiences after battle. Enough so to know that one paranoid Flame Sect soldier, and her sudden appearance might very well result in her early cremation.
Alllright, now I just need to get out of here, report to Remus, and then plan a letter of gree-
Her thoughts wavered, as movement behind sent Violet’s instincts spiralling. She had leaped several feet backwards, causing a ruckus in the process, but her imagination sewed such heart-wrenching imagery that she failed to care. Verity, her sister, would emerge out of that scorched bush, she was sure of it. With a nagging comment, a demeanour empty of any and all emotion, and not forgetting the few chiding comments of disappointment Verity was sure to fire her way, Violet’s hand felt for her hunting knife. She was foolish to think she could escape, to break away from the shackles of her clan.
As a muscular arm presenting bare skin broke through the bushy coverage, she realised she was mistaken in that thinking; it would be Nova on her trail instead. And who better to properly deliver a humiliation, only fitting for someone of her degree of failure? His laughs would quake the earth as he dragged her back to that manor, that awful, accursed home she would strip to its timbers if she could.
Alarmed voices spouted comments of alarm, but Violet took no notice. Her Mark that painted the image of Teival, all blurred out in the most infuriating of ways, sent ethereal power through the Ichor that coursed through her heart.
Pebbles trembled, roots uplifted, and the immediate environment shifted in a hundred unidentifiable, minuscule ways. She would not let her family ruin everything, she could not-
A man who was very distinctly neither Nova or Verity strolled forward through the charred greenery, a smile on his face, and hands grasping a tray upon which a jar sat. A purple liquid lay inside.
“Celebrations are in order!” He shouted merrily, expecting applause. When the man received none, he opened his eyes to the shocked faces of the soldiers all around, fixated on Violet’s impromptu appearance. “ . . . Or maybe not?”
Violet gulped at the expectant looks fired at her from all angles. Most of them weren’t aggressive, simply cautious. Understandably so.
Getting herself slowly up off the ground, Violet reaffirmed her grip on reality, and brushed herself down. “Now then,” she exclaimed after a moment. “Where should I begin?”