“Rise and shine, gentlemen,” Elmore boomed throughout the tent, fighting away the urge to whack his slumbering cousins awake with a gentle tap of his staff, “we have a busy day ahead of us.”
“But it's sooo earlyyyy,” Ash dragged the words out, face engaged in a fierce kissing match with his pillow.
“It's midday. And we have an important meeting scheduled with this territory’s higher-ups. Now get out of bed before you fossilise there.”
Apparently the laws of time didn’t apply to Ash, for he spent the next several minutes conjuring up wild excuses as to why he should be permitted extra time in bed, allocated for his obviously incredibly important beauty sleep. Consequently, sacrificing more energy than what it would’ve taken to simply get up in the first place. Koa watched his brother complain about as melodramatically as he’d come to expect, having arisen out of bed himself several hours ago at this point. Their journey to the Reptilian Clan’s base had been, perhaps, the worst stretch of Koa’s life since the time Ash had been selected to head off to First Rite instead of him. Of course, being the older sibling of them both, it made sense for Ash to be chosen, but it still rattled Koa to the bone to be bested by someone who put in a tenth of the effort as him, for ten times the reward.
The sound of Ash and Elmore arguing had become a familiarity Koa had become used to channelling out. Amongst a few unconnected words and defiant huffs from Ash, the most he caught from the conversation was a final ‘do as you will then, I’ll go by myself’ before Elmore left, slamming the flap of the tent as aggressively as you could to a piece of fabric. It didn’t quite have the intended effect he knew his cousin to have been aiming for.
“Suit yourself,” Ash mumbled, before promptly tossing his covers back over himself, yawning within seconds.
Koa sighed, observing, through the slight translucence of the tent’s thin fabric, the scene of several large boats bobbling upon a lake filled with murky swamp water. The expansive vessel of throthing, mud-brown liquid was situated in the almost pinpoint centre of a territory filled with nothing but wading patches of similarly dirty water, and hunching plantage from which both animals and Unbounded alike scuttled across. Based on the regal air that infested the entire proximity of the area, the ships served as the home for the most powerful, or politically important of the clan. Likely, there would be a few representatives of the Amphibian Sect lurking aboard up there with them, but the vast majority of the sister sect had their own base, further out.
It made no difference to Koa, who, sprawled out on his bed with nothing to do, was about to try his luck at joining Elmore’s discussions when he overheard Ash rustling in his own cot. An inclination arose within him.
He decided to act upon it. “Ash?”
There were a few unintelligible sounds, that Koa would have recommended his brother to consult a throat doctor about, before a lethargic, ‘yeahh?’ could be heard — with all the excitement of a man being sentenced to his death behind it.
“When do you think we should start our training with Elmore?”
It had been a Passing or so of non-stop travel, and neither of them, contrary to Juniper’s words, had begun anything remotely training-like.
“Did you seriously just ask that?” Ash sounded fully awake now, apparently kicking into full alertness just to spit in the face of physical exertion. “Come on, Koa, I know you haven’t been away from the family for a while, but you really should work on getting to understand how the world works. If I intended on running through formations, or activating my Mark a bajillion times a day — or whatever Elmore would make us do — don’t you think I’d have started Durations ago? Elmore already knows I’d refuse to train, that’s why he hasn’t even attempted to try pressuring me into doing it. I’m stubborn as hell. As for you, he probably assumes you don’t want to either. You should be thanking me, I saved you a lot of hassle.”
His voice was so patronising, it was at moments like these that Koa wondered why he had ever wished to be alongside his brother in First Rite.
Koa departed without another word, leaving his brother to waste away the day immersed in the depths of his dreams. Just because you can get by in life by lazing around, Koa inwardly mumbled to himself, doesn’t mean that the rest of us can.
This was the sentiment that played on his mind all day, every day. Even now, spotting his cousin playing cards at one of a few tables set beside the lake, it plagued him relentlessly.
All his life, he’d trained non-stop to match his family of prodigies — and for what? All those hours, and he hadn’t even shattered the boundaries into Emblazed. Koa’s only abilities over a typical child’s strength were the physical. Standard bodily training seemed to go his way, being one of the select things that did, earning him a somewhat lean build which he wasn’t too ashamed of. But Marks? Ichor? Infinity?
He couldn’t wrap his mind around any of it. Sure, the topics were understandable enough in theory, but no matter how much he tried to utilise his Mark to its limits — the depiction of his patron god, Chantal, laying down Unbounded that made it their primary course to disrupt the nature she oh-so-loved — just never would grow. So, to this day, and until he cracked the code of Mark-growth, he would be stuck rigidly at Enkindled for the foreseeable future.
“Elmore!” He called out to his cousin, not paying attention to who exactly he was seated next to. As soon as he did, he immediately regretted being so brash.
Across the table from Elmore, a figure of obvious importance sat. Reptilian eyes were set into an otherwise ordinary face, the woman occupying the chair of almost inhumanly good posture. Those amber slits for eyes bore into Koa with no obvious intentions behind them. For some reason, that spooked him beyond belief, as if his mind couldn’t quite decide if he were in danger or not.
“Is this one of the two cousins you were referring to?” She enquired, receiving a sharp nod from Elmore.
“Yes, Koa, the younger of the two.”
Elmore indicated an empty chair at his side, and in motions gawkily stiff, Koa took it.
“You’ve come just in time for some vital news,” the women spoke, who Koa had long since deduced to be the leader of the clan, “we’ve heard stirrings from neighbouring territories. News that might be able to pinpoint the fugitives’ location, and their motivations.”
Both relatives leaned into the edges of their seats.
“Sentinels of Territory Eight are prone to be extra cautious than most guards put on watch,” she spoke slowly, with each word waning away at Koa’s already thin patience, “to the extent that they have outposts just bordering on the outskirts of their neighbouring territories.”
“Guards of the Earth or Desert clan?” Elmore asked. Territory Eight was known for its long standing civil war between both groups, and to think they spent valuable resources on keeping watch, when blood was constantly being shed, sounded a little far-fetched. But then again, periods of temporary peace were always being reported about in the news, only for subsequent articles to showcase both sides' slow descent back into senseless battle yet again. It was an unceasing cycle, triggering most level-headed people to do their best in avoiding the two clans entirely. So Koa wasn’t especially keen to get involved with the territory, but if it meant getting closer to Remus and Violet, and earning Juniper’s respect after nothing but lifelong disappointments . . . well, a little civil tension couldn’t hurt.
“Earth clan.” The woman answered the question, which Koa had completely forgotten about in his own private reverie. “Near their mountains. Lots of vantage points up there. Ignoring my dislike for the clan, they say they spotted two individuals matching their descriptions heading towards the Flame Sect territory — Territory One.”
Territory One. Koa wanted to curse as the soul-crushing realisation they were an entire territory away debuted all hopes of catching the pair any time soon.
“Why hasn’t this been reported to First Rite, if they knew both criminals were on the run?” Elmore posed an interesting question, disguising his own disappointment behind hundreds of layers of outward formality. It was impressive, a trick Koa was tempted to ask his cousin to teach him once this was all over. He had always struggled to hide his anguish, when faced with the weight of the disappointed looks of The Wild Sect’s higher-ups.
“News transferring between our cities is far and few in between. After you asked for any information on the fugitives, I asked for accounts of all and any sightings from the local look-outs. Those regularly present around the general areas of Hybrid they were most likely to have emerged from. Seeing how we’re in the south-east regions of the city, the areas most direct from First Rite, something was bound to turn up eventually, and that it did.”
“Eliane, you said you might know what their reasoning behind all this is,” Elmore spoke, “you really think this isn’t just a desperate rush away from the gables of First Rite’s courts?”
“No.” Eliane said firmly. “It’s likely they're participating in the Earnest Trials. Remus was a Death-Marked, correct? The god of Ambition is said to bestow any victor of the trials with a Mark personally. It might be his last chance at getting anywhere in this world. After doing a little digging, I discovered the first trial is held below the Infernal Bays. That’s likely around their current location right now.”
Elmore burst out of his seat, knocking it over. “Then we have no time to waste.”
He dropped a bag of rattling coinage onto the table. Both First Rite and Hybrid shared the same currency of Inklings, so Eliane would have no trouble using them.
This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.
“You’ve already paid-”
“No matter,” he cut off her objection, “your crucial assistance deserves more. Hopefully, it’ll also be enough to overlook the abruptness of my departure. Wake up Ash, Koa, we’re leaving.”
With that, as well as dragging Ash out of bed, and receiving additional supplies from an insistent Eliane, they were gone within the hour. See, Koa was trapped between two impressions of vast dislike. He didn’t want to stay at the Reptilian Base’s crew of ships, or, more accurately, that flimsy net of loose cloth they called a tent for any longer than fate heeded. But, then again, traversing through nothing but damp swamp for miles upon miles was enough to send him down a spiral of dread just thinking about it.
It was a catch twenty-two, though one of the two decisions was unavoidable. No matter how long he wanted to delay his exit as his future self’s problem, it wasn’t like he had a choice in the matter. Elmore seemed to be refreshed with a newfound surge of resolve, a second wind of motivation putting new life into a journey that had been quickly becoming stale. For how long it would last, was the question, though Koa himself was of the stark disposition that left him devoid of any aforementioned ‘inspiration’.
Ash had the worst of it. He was so drained, he couldn’t even conjure the will to complain. Koa was tempted to just pick him up, cushion him over a shoulder, and carry his brother for the remainder of the way, for how much his waddling gait was slowing them down.
What he needed right now was a distraction. As much as the blossoming shade of green reminded him of home, this putrid, almost pitch variety that coloured everywhere he looked was going to send him mad. Elmore wasn’t saying anything, a determined look in his eyes seeing onto some visage of patriotic glory, teetering on delirium. Perhaps with this version of Elmore, one whose veins were coursing with the vigour to conquer any task set before him, it would be the perfect opportunity to ask the question lingering on his lips.
“Elmore?”
“Yes?”
“ . . . Are we going to begin training anytime soon?”
His cousin abruptly stopped, leaving a rocking ash to collide face-first into his hamstrings. He swayed to the side dangerously, only snapping awake at the last second to stop himself from toppling over.
Elmore turned to Koa. “Training? You want to train?”
His tone of voice — for some unbeknownst reason, dripping with unspoken disbelief — very nearly offended Koa. Did his own cousin take him for a slacker, like Ash? Did his entire family share the same impression, believing his inability as a result of, out of all the possible reasons, laziness?
Koa wanted to cry out in anguish. No, my legacy will not be reduced to the wasted potential of a layabout.
“Yes.” He answered briskly, as if his resolve was an irrefutable fact of the universe. “More than anything else.”
Elmore allowed the subtlest sign of a smile. “Okay, yeah. We can train. You’re Enkindled, right?”
Turning his head away, Koa blushed. “Yes.”
“Shouldn’t be too much trouble to advance from here . . .” Elmore muttered, scuffling about with a borough drooping overhead.
Easy for you to say, Koa scoffed.
He handed over a leaf to the boy, who simply glanced at it blankly, as if expecting something spectacular to occur. Nothing did. He looked up for answers.
“Levitate that leaf for as long as possible. Maybe grow it out a bit too, if you can.”
Koa grinned, as if part of an inside joke Elmore wasn’t privy to. “Come on, I can levitate a leaf. I’m not that far behind. Anyway, wouldn’t this exercise be better suited to someone of a flying, or wind focused Mark?”
His cousin displayed no emotion. Instead, he grasped the bags slumped over his shoulder, and tossed them towards Koa. By instinct, Koa grasped them, scrunching his leaf of most valuable training utility in the process. Before he could cry out in complaint, Elmore rambled on in explanation.
“In nature, plants and wind come hand in hand. It's how flowers reproduce — transferring pollen via the convenient passageway of the air currents. Thus, we can allow some light plants to hover through the air, but that's about the extent of our mastery over the winds.” As he spoke, he stripped a snoozing, sleep-walking Ash of his own supplies.
Yet again, the pouches and sacks were thrown haphazardly in Koa's general direction. “And yes, obviously you can do something as simple as that already. I’m not ridiculing you. But even the simplest of tasks, when intensified, can be damn well gruelling. For now, as I can’t teach you one-on-one properly, lest our targets escape our trail, keeping the leaf airborne while sustaining all that load should be challenging enough. Think of it like doing a simple exercise with extra weight, or a harder variation of it. It's the same principle. When you can keep it up for twelve hours, report back to me.”
Koa had to fight down the urge to cry out in dismay at that impossible goal.
Breathing already growing ragged, he focused. The Mark on his left leg radiated in activation, sending an almost undetectable trickle of energy whirling through his body. With his spare hand, he picked a fresh, wet leaf from a nearby branch, and focused his will.
It spun in the air for a second. Two more, and then a third — each subsequent nanosecond requiring a more demanding appliance of his willpower. A fourth dragged by impossibly slow, and then, inevitably, with a grunt that would shake the heavens, it collapsed into a puddle to his right, beyond use.
In a fit of rage, Koa nabbed himself a third leaf. This one didn’t even last a moment before flipping out of his control. Koa cursed in a resounding profanity, a vital realisation occurring to him.
This was going to be the longest journey of his life.
----------------------------------------
Remus stood before the dancing streams of fuming lava, a dozen or so rivers interconnecting to the larger whole at their centre. Barely perceptible things swept through the current, as if it was nothing more than a hot bath, and in the corner of his vision, Remus eyed even a few guards backing away from the fire nervously.
Hadrian’s next words explained the reasoning behind this, besides basic human instinct. “This, my friends, may very well be the hottest concentration of lava throughout the entirety of the mortal realms. Not just any old fire-resistance will aid you in its shores, so, if I were you, I wouldn’t be tempted to push my luck. But please, go ahead, if the urge beckons you, take a plunge into the infernal waters!”
No one volunteered. Veida held her head in her hands, sighing. If this was Hadrian’s idea of a humorous joke, Remus’ stomach did not find it amusing in the slightest.
As the guards strolled up to a dense wall, set into a mountainous uprising of the igneous earth encompassing them all, Remus merely stared at those fiery waters, thoughtless.
Well, not entirely.
After all these hours of mentally putting it off, they were finally here — the Infernal Bays; the same location he had read in those dusty history books, back in the comfort of his own clan . . . his own family. And now, because of a reckless decision that had sent him further than he had ever trodden in his life, he may never see them again. He flinched, eyes shooting towards the opening stone doors, revealing the image of nothing but pitch black darkness behind their groaning gears. Just a few yards away, in a surreal visage he imagined facing a countless number of times, but never truly considered the daunting grandiose of, was his destination for the entirety of the next Duration. A sickly sensation was building up in his chest, and Remus had to fight the urge to gag.
At his left, he sensed Violet. “How are you feeling?”
Another presence, this time to his right, put a hand on his shoulder. The strength the grip implied was enough for him to infer who it was. “Have a breather, you can take as long as you need. We still have some time until dawn.”
Remus only now recalled, amid the gushing seas of his emotion, that, despite the illusion of daylight this illuminating pit was applying over the general area, that it was very nearly the dead of night. A star-filled sky sat above them.
“I’ll be fine when I get down there. It's worse just waiting to seal my doom, y’know?”
“Hey!” Hadrian roared. “Let’s not get pessimistic already. I know that you can do this Remus. There’s not a chance in hell that any other Engorged who's ever undertaken this trial has prepared as excessively as you have, nor as vigorously. And, remember, people have been in the same position as you are right now, and succeeded. If those past victors were at the same Rank as you, what's stopping you from accomplishing the very same in the present?”
Remus mumbled something.
Hadrian put a hand to his ear, leaning in with exaggerated perplexion. “Hmm, what was that?”
He spoke up slightly. Yet still, it was unintelligible.
“Pardon?”
Remus groaned. “Yes, I suppose you’re right.”
Laughing, Hadrian slapped his back mirthfully with enough force to kill a rhinoceros. A nervous grin played on Violet’s lips. “That’s right,” reaffirmed Hadrian, “I’m always right — ignore my wife’s objections to the matter. If you don’t surface in nine days time, holding aloft a shard of Infirnite in glorious victory, I’ll eat my own leg!”
The three of them laughed. As his final hour passed by until Remus would take the plunge, he spent it engorging himself on his last meal, and raising his spirits with the crucial assistance of them both. As time drew short, and the cavern-mouth appeared more ominous than ever, a sense of responsibility swelled up in Remus’ chest. Losing wasn’t an option at this point. Too much was hinging on these trials: the future of his clan, the future of his advancement, and, somehow more immediate than the rest, his own uncertain fate.
Veida called from the side, and Remus knew it was time. It was pitch black at this point, and Remus would’ve been wholly blind, if not for the thousands of gallons of flaming liquid blazing at his back with a raging luminescence.
Guards formed short lines on either side of the entrance way, and, taking a deep breath, Remus made his way directly ahead of them. Even from a few yards away, the humidity of the cave system could be felt like a malicious tease of what was to come. He took a deep breath, Violet, Hadrian, and Veida at his side.
Violet said nothing, her solid look alone striking him with a much needed rush of confidence. It was almost enough to subdue the terror coursing through his brain upon the slightest glance at the airy cave, and its unspoken depths hidden from view.
Key-word ‘almost’.
Squinting at the sky, the crescent moon beaming down from above amid an abyss of nothing, save a spark-filled emptiness, Hadrian spoke severely. “It is time.”
As Remus took the tentative first step forwards, the Mercenary winked at him. “I’ll see you on the other side.”
Remus was suddenly acutely aware of the supplies pressing against his back — lovingly packed from the sect that had shown him nothing but generosity.
Now but an inch away from the wrath of the underground, his eyes passed over their faces, besieged by an innumerable amount of emotions. They warred and conflicted so intensely, that no particular feeling bled brightest above the others. But Remus could feel it clearly through the stuffy atmosphere, a bittersweet vacuum reigning supreme, the core from which all the other sensations could only spring-off of. He found his throat to be constricting rather uncomfortably; the result of something entirely irrelevant to the clammy passageway looming for miles before him.
He turned, in one last wild movement. “Thank you all!” He screeched, desperate to flood the explosive emotion out of his system.
Taking his final look of the outside, he vaulted forwards at a sporadic pace. Gravel dislodged in the wake of Remus’ scattering feet, the shrieking doors crawling shut behind him. A pathetic spurt of moonlight perished in the face of a chilling darkness, and then all was quiet.