Violet skidded across a floor of ice, slush mingling with the leather of her clothes. A blur launched itself towards her, and in accordance to Violet’s will, both the lump of frost she was clinging to and the rest of her disappeared in a rush of energy.
They rematerialised further out into what appeared to be an accurate recreation of an entire sea. Clinging onto a strip of blue, Violet stared wide-eyed at the wider glacier they had snapped away from.
Upon its apex, Verity rivalled her glare, unveiling a rapier. She pointed it forward and down, mounds of snow, ice, and pure slush zipping around her in a chaotic entourage. Scrambling around to empty her own pockets, Violet uncovered no weapons on her person. She wanted to cry out, to whimper until she garnered enough pity for some overseeing god to throw her a bone — some kind of sharp end she could use to defend herself. No divine intervention came, and Violet was left to dodge and slide around her tiny chunk of rime.
The projectiles faded out of the air in bursts of amaranth, only to reappear behind her, but there were too many for Violet to deal with all at once. Snow whipped at her limbs, leaving a scathing, burning sensation across her skin. Pushed back to the very edge of the platform, Violet could tell she was mere seconds away from being cast overboard.
It hadn’t been long since Verity had tossed the two of them into the ice-field, but the water had developed a tiny, millimetre high span of ice along several patches of the liquid. If the slamming waters below were chilly enough to form that, their temperature would be more than sufficient to inflict a fatal wave of hypothermia. The notion to escape, to get away and back to the bulk of the glacier, occurred to Violet.
She didn’t have time to set it into action before a glint of metal alerted her. Violet sent her Mark steaming, blipping away as far as she could. That was what Chaos was at its core: the action of taking things out of their rightful place, to strip legions of atoms away from their natural positioning. And thus relocating them to wherever her mind willed it. Of course, there were other things at the Chaos Clan’s disposal, aside from spatial manipulation, but in the heat of combat, you didn’t experiment. You stuck with what you knew.
Violet imagined herself being torn metres away from that sinking lump in the sea. She needed a break after that round of abusing her Mark senseless, and desperately, but with her sister on her heels, that was a luxury she wouldn’t be receiving anytime soon.
There was a tugging disrupting her Mark’s command, unphased shackles making the distance seem all the more daunting. Verity was fighting back, not allowing the chaotic energy to drag her anywhere. Violet returned from that black limbo, the mental exchange all taking place within the breadth of a second.
There was a resounding clink from mere feet away, the grey blade of a polished sword deep within their dissolving podium. Violet was lying sideways, head inches away from the embedded weapon. She gulped, not blinking for even the slightest second. She means to kill me!
“Veri-” She muttered, before cold, unforgiving tides became her world.
The two of them in one tangle of limbs sank, Violet’s body suddenly gripped from head to toe by a cocoon of frosty savagery. Allowing her Mark to rest, Violet grabbed tightly onto her sister, holding her breath before any more liquid could freeze her insides. They were barely submerged for but a second, before yet another subversion of reality rendered the frothing waters replaced by striking winds. They were noticeably high up. How high, Violet didn’t have the time to register, before Verity tossed her entire body downwards.
Violet crashed onto the icy surface, an impact that encompassed her entire form sweeping through her. Rolling to the side, she narrowly avoided a second sweeping; this time delivered by Verity’s sword.
For a solid minute she ducked and weaved, her sister teleporting about the place in a ruthless circle. Violet contained her own interspatial joltings to a minimum, partly out of exhaustion, partly out of panic, and mostly to avoid retching where she stood.
Cuts tallied her skin one by one, only the brushing of Verity’s sword and the throthing waters below keeping the moody silence at bay.
“Are you one of them too?” Violet panted. “One of those things?”
Verity ignored her, not showing the slightest reaction at the words.
“What did you do to my sister’s body huh?” She huffed, crying out as her shoulder was left wide open. “Discarded at the bottom of a dump somewhere, or are you donning it, like some sort of sick doll?”
That was enough to quiver Verity’s lips. “Stop speaking.”
Violet centralised every speck of energy in her bleeding body, trembling drunkenly with a hand extended. Chaotic energy swarmed around Verity’s rapier, causing it to lay stagnant in the air. Whatever was playing around with her sister’s body narrowed their eyes, brandishing both their physical and mental wills on the weapon.
“I know Nova’s an Unbounded,” Violet grunted, each step forward a herculean task, “and soon all the Mortal Realms will too. It's over.”
“Stop struggling, sister,” Verity spoke, just about stringing together a few words of the mortal tongue, “you might have slipped out of my grasp last time, but not today.”
“Don’t call me that!” She shrieked. “I’m not your sister. I never will be.”
The sword quivered in the air, stuck in response to two streams of screaming commands. Verity scurried away from its handle, hissing, turning a burnt palm over, as steam streamed from the hovering pommel. “Continue to turn a blind eye then. Not that it will matter.”
Her mental hold on the weapon didn’t slip, and under the pressure of two conflicting wills, a chip appeared in the sword. Then a riddling crack, before the thing split apart entirely. Metal shrapnel skidded across the slippery ground, sinking into the devouring waters below.
“Save for the Rank difference.” Violet breathed in deeply, “we’re on even footing now.”
Verity smirked. “I wouldn’t count on that.”
The woman let out a guttural roar, her skin sinking into an expanding layer of pure white. The silky veil covered her whole, tiny points of black emerging out of the pearl pigment in a false impression of eyes. Before Violet could wrap her brain around the foreign entity before her, the Unbounded opened its slit of a mouth. “I only carry out what I do for the greater good. I am but the lesser of two evils.” Clawed hands shot before her in a fighting stance. “A shame you could never see that, little one.”
Stumbling back, Violet failed to compose herself. Her heart simply refused to settle in the confining cage of her chest. The being before her exuded only the strength of a Foot-Soldier . . . but what Unbounded equivalent of the Rank could pose itself as a perfect copy; a flawless clone?
Something else was happening here, something she would likely never live to discover the truth of.
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Remus tasted blood.
You would expect ichor-infused lifeforce to taste a little different, to perhaps carry a rich tinge to it, but no — that same old coppery taste lingered on his tongue.
A branch twisted around Remus’ bloody arm, locking it in place with a refined grip that wouldn’t do so much as shake. Despite his insistent attempts at tearing it aside, all Remus accomplished was staining the branches more aggressively with fat drips of gold.
Elmore sat a few feet away, sipping at his waterskin and minding his own business. He appeared all together fine for a man who had just participated in a mad scramble. Maybe a little untidy, or you could venture so far as rakish, but otherwise, the Emblazed had only suffered from a few scratches.
“So,” he finally put down his drink to address him, “I’ve decided to let you live.”
“Go to hell.”
The older man sighed, getting up. “Don’t be unreasonable now Remus, I had no part in Tal’s death. Do you think I wanted to hear that man’s final cries? Edmar’s at fault here, not me. I detest that man just as much as the rest of us.”
Remus knew he was grasping at straws, but he didn’t care. He needed someone to blame, some target to redirect his self-hatred towards. Two people had died as a result of his actions. Tal and Iris . . . he saw their faces even now, overlaid upon any flimsy sight that would cross his vision. Not even in the refuge of darkness, as he shut his eyelids so tightly they hurt, would their ghosts elude him.
“Couldn’t you have-” he whimpered. “Done something? Anything?”
Elmore turned to the side, not quite facing him. “I tried. I promise you, I tried. But I have my own sect to think of. A people I one day wish to lead. I won’t let the Wealth Sect deliver any harm onto them, no matter how little.”
Remus fought down the urge to scoff. The Wild Sect were literal royalty, in a sense, so they weren't exactly in great jeopardy when it came to financial troubles. Nevertheless, he had to respect a man who put his people before himself. Tal would have done the same, and Remus, ignoring the constricting of his throat, would pick-up where the man had left off.
Gods, what have I done?
The man stretched. “My cousins should catch up with us soon,” he murmured, turning around in a full circle, “unless they’ve lost our trail . . .”
And so Remus was left with no option, no last trick in his arsenal. Elmore and his company would drag him by the hem of his tunic all the way back to First Rite. Back to Ruling’s prison; back to the insidious hands of Edmar, who wouldn’t hesitate to render his body into a bloody pulp, left to rot in some unseen crevice of the great city. His sect would have no saviour to undo the damage he had inflicted, no means to survive as their taxes went up and up — and whose fault was it but his own?.
For real this time, there was nothing Remus could do. It was all over.
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As the Shifting burst into a sandy vista, Violet materialised upon a crumbling dune. A flash of purple followed her own, and mere seconds later, a clawed hand tore the braids out of her hair.
Violet tripped into sand, as Verity dived upon her. With no time to resort to anything more cunning, she grasped the Unbounded’s arms, flattening herself against the carpet of grains below. The creature roared inches away from her face, flecks of spittle splattering out of its mouth — open wide enough to split the jaws of any regular human.
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Grunting, Violet lifted her arms centimetre by centimetre, keeping the fiend at bay. “What are you?” She roared. “What are you!”
Reappearing feet away, now standing, she punched the Unbounded squarely in its distorted face. It waddled backwards a few dizzy feet, the being apparently unaccustomed to the form after doubling as Violet’s sister for years on end.
“What are we, but a reflection of our memories?”
The creature’s attempts at speech sounded viscerally wrong, as if the entire universe had made a million mistakes in sequence, all leading up to the abomination standing right then and right there — a virus of the cosmos yet to be put down. It mimicked the beauty of language with every croaked word; with each uttered syllable. What was once birthed to connect people, now served as a tool to sever those very ties.
Everything about the Unbounded seemed to be a deliberate mockery: not just of her sister, but of the world as a whole.
Violet would do everything in her power to put it down. Not just out of contempt, but out of a sense of righteous duty. She couldn’t let these venomous husks plague the human realms, left to their own devices to ruin the lives of others. As they had hers.
“If only she was still there.” She muttered, blipping behind, and kicking the beast in its defenceless back. Once more, it tripped forwards. “What did you do with my sister? At least tell me that. Please.”
The Unbounded kept its mouth shut, withering in uncontained fury. A series of blows like no other left Violet’s mouth overflowing in a fountain of gold.
“I know you felt something before,” she blurted desperately, in between the punches, “I saw Verity somewhere deep within there. I want to know if that was really her, if she isn’t fully gone.”
It gripped Violet from the throat, the dark abysses of its eyes glancing around in peculiar shuffles, as it narrowed down upon her. Even in those pits devoid of emotion, something tangible was transferred between them. Something like . . . pity.
“What you see is but an echo. I’m sorry . . .” It hesitated. “But Verity is dead. Moreover, the entire Chaos Clan.”
Violet laughed, which would have appeared positively insane with her face coated in blood. “Dead? The Chaos Clan isn’t dead! I don’t know how many of us are left, but I-”
She paused, her attention grasped by a quaint oasis over the dune. The water sparkled in the moonlight, and below the crescent moon, both Violet and Verity were reflected. Except, in this image, the two of them were one and the same. Violet stared thoughtlessly at her skin, coloured the shade of ivory. Her voice croaked. “ . . . What?”
Violet glanced downwards at her own tremulous hands. Except these couldn’t be her’s, there had to have been some sort of mistake. These were the palms of a monster.
A hand not unlike her own patted her shoulder. “Now do you see sister? Now do you understand?”
“No.” She choked. “Nonononono . . .”
The Unbounded continued, but Violet wished it would just stop. To cease the suffering. “We didn’t know why that girl’s memories persisted so strongly with you, to the point that your own history, your own sense of self, was overlaid. But I promise you,” the demon extended a claw towards her, “stop this, and come with me, and everything will be okay. Justice will be delivered.”
In the span of a second, everything slotted into place. These had been the answers Violet — if that name even belonged to her — had been searching for, for the better part of her entire life. Now she desired nothing more than to sink into a foetal position, cradling herself, as all the pain washed away. Veida had known of my true nature all along, hadn’t she? It occurred to her in a defeated realisation. No wonder the woman abandoned me, she knew I was a monster.
Verity shifted anxiously, awaiting for her response.
Still, Violet remained trapped in her own reverie. From deep within, she felt the resource she had been straining for swirling, a once dormant entity sparked into life. The Infinity that she would’ve sacrificed a leg for simply awaited to be tapped into. It was almost laughable, in a perverse sort of way, that she had ever wondered why Teviel had denied her of her vision. What deity would gift an imposter any sort of power?
Benumbed, Violet allowed the energy to swirl through her body, cleansing and reinforcing her entire form cell by cell. Her fatigue rolled away, remnants of a distant past, displaced by a quaking sense of vitality. The strength of a Foot-Soldier, to accomplish anything she could possibly want and more, flooded up her limbs. The concentration of Infinity that made up her body, or at least most of it — the ruse of her disguise seeming to encapsulate even flesh and Ichor — deepended. Her Unbounded body wasn’t even wholly of Infinity, it occurred to her. Even among devils, she would be a black sheep.
Once more, she lowered her gaze onto the Unbounded’s hand. They may have been kin in literal terms, but she would never be Verity.
“Sister?” The beast pleaded.
Power gushing through her in intoxicating waves, Violet grabbed her palm.
They smiled. “See, that wasn’t so-”
As purple light flooded the area encompassing them, Violet tore off the Unbounded’s arm. She felt the mass still dangling in her grip, even as the pair of them were stripped away.
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“Just what is taking them so long?” Elmore mused out loud, staring forwards impatiently.
The words didn’t transfer to Remus. Sure, they ricocheted off the air particles through the atmosphere, arriving at his ears and inside his eardrums, but he didn’t process the words. Their meaning was lost on him.
Instead, his mind only had room for one sight. It was of his right hand, golden blood dried, but with one striking issue. An issue that would haunt Remus for the rest of his life.
His ring finger had been completely severed off.
Elmore looked over, in a manner that read as him being about to complain, before he too noticed the laceration. “Holy . . .” He swallowed. “I didn’t intend to maim, I- I’m sorry.”
A thousand flaming, ire-driven insults lingered on Remus' tongue. There were so many jabs he could spout, so many words of hatred he could fling to ease his pain if but for a moment. Instead, he muttered, “It's okay. You did what you had to. This is wholly my fault.”
A sect on the brink of economic collapse, two innocents dying, and a severed finger. Was this what his legacy would amount to? Was this the extent of all that he was, of all that Remus would do during his brief time on this planet? He certainly couldn’t argue that he deserved better, but truly, he had never meant for things to play out like this. Not one detail. If he could just go back; if the clocks would simply reverse a few Passings, none of this would have ever happened. But Remus knew better than childish sensibilities like that. History was set in stone. He had made his bed, and now, if it preserved the last shred of his dignity, he would lie in it.
As the Shifting regurgitated a forest, at first superimposed over the flatland, before displacing it entirely, Remus vaguely noted that Elmore’s summoning of a tree might be the most direct command the land was obeying. He flickered his head up, as if to take sanctuary in the tranquil swaying of the leaves, before several things happened at once.
Up ahead, the vague silhouettes of wandering teenagers stumbled into view. Elmore turned to face his cousins, a relieved smile appearing on his lips. “There we are,” he exhaled, “now we can finally leave this damn pl-”
An explosion of colour, of such an incredibly bright variety that Remus couldn’t identify the purple undertones, and all four of them were forced to cover their eyes.
Before Remus’ mind could make a very obvious connection, two hulking masses frolicked into view. Well, they less sauntered than they did charge. Remus watched, mouth agape, as two Unbounded wrestled together, one of the creatures very noticeably armless on their left side.
The tree keeping him in place must have truly been one of a kind, for not even his last ditch struggles could escape their winding fingers of oak.
Elmore was the first to take action, summoning a wooden pike fitted with a stone end out of the immediate surroundings’ resources. Wood and earth collided in the span of a few seconds, and the man twirled the staff in experienced hands. He cannoned forwards, only to abruptly halt metres away from the conflict.
At the level these two were fighting, he would only get himself killed.
“Die!” One of the Unbounded roared, and the most concerning part was that Remus couldn’t identify which of the two it had been. It was the second phrase he had ever heard an Unbounded to utter, and the false sound of it, the distorted enunciation, was something that would stick with him for life.
Something about the creatures was screaming at Remus, like a distant echo of the past. Nevertheless, he couldn’t for the life of him pointpoint what it was.
Putting irrelevant matters aside for now, Remus glanced down. Elmore had thrown his bag aside before charging valiantly forwards. It was only a few feet away, the distinctive glint of steel surging hope within him. Not bothering to be discreet considering the circumstances, Remus fumbled with his legs, catching an end of the sack and dragging it closer. With his free hand — only one of his limbs entangled by the tree — he grabbed a standard cutting knife. Cleaving through the wood with this seemed to take forever, but with Elmore’s focus away from maintaining the wood’s strength, and metal on his side, he knew an escape for him would be etched out eventually.
Elmore whipped his head over his shoulder, delivering a glare as deadly as a blade’s edge to Remus. “Oh no you don’t.” He said firmly. “Not after everything I’ve done. This mission isn’t over just because a few Unbounded interrupted us!”
His voice grew hotter with each word spat out, the man's features now somehow unsightly to look at. All surface-level patience and ease of mind disappeared, kindling for a deeper emotion surfacing in what may as well have been a volcanic eruption. Elmore’s face turned red, and he stuck a finger towards Remus. “Why did I ever grow to pity you, even for a second?” He edged closer, weapon lofted suspiciously. “Don't you understand Remus? This is nothing personal, but I need this victory — the embarrassment from having my own younger cousins nearly best me in power . . . my future would be jeopardised. So I’m going to kill you. Yes, that will set things right.” He muttered, in a tone that read as plain as day as him reassuring himself. “Your blood, and I’ll be the sect prodigy once more. All will be fine.”
“Even over the lives of your kin?” Remus spoke softly, not the barest hint of an insult creeping through. “You would let your cousins die?”
A war of emotion ravaged Elmore’s face. His features contorted so dramatically that Remus could hardly encapsulate precisely what the man was feeling. The two of them looked over to the duo of battling Unbounded — which in itself was a bizarre sight — and to the direction in which they were headed. Directly in their path, helpless to face the two goliaths, were Ash and Koa.
“You might not be able to defeat the fiends about to crush them.” Remus continued. “But I’m certain you would be able to evacuate them both away in time. Correct?”
Elmore took one last glimpse at Remus, before setting his face to the ground.
“Damn you Remus,” Elmore croaked, turning to face his family, “damn you.”
Elmore scampered over in a blur of movement, reaching his kin in no time. Cutting through the last of the now brittle branch, Remus set himself free from Elmore for the second time, watching with a grim smile on his face as the trio rushed off.
Out of one mess into another, he thought solemnly, concentrating back on the Unbounded fight. It was dawning on him to flee, to search for Violet, when one of the creatures toppled over.
The ground trembled, vibrations riddling the earth in worming trails as the limbless Unbounded began to dissolve. The second towered over the first, panting before its form seemed to . . . shrink?
In a bizarre transformation, Remus blinked, and Violet was standing over the crumpled form of an older girl. The two of them were almost inseparable in appearances, but Remus had heard Violet’s description of the girl many times prior.
Violet, who had just been a hulking Unbounded mere seconds ago, kneeled by the body of her dying sibling. Remus joined her without a word, not daring to question a thing. He wouldn’t yet, and though Violet’s alternative form had bewildered him beyond belief, the bereavement of one’s own flesh and blood demanded respect, and above all else, patience.
Her body dissolved slowly, in accumulating wisps of fading white. The strands of Infinity that made up the creature’s body had already begun to disperse into the atmosphere. Violet didn’t have long until Verity would disappear for good.
The girl appeared to be at a loss for words, scrambling for the right thing to say. Remus understood that sensation greatly. That feeling of obligation to utter nothing but profound words, that would put all at ease was a nice thought, but a matter of seconds was not ample enough time to express everything she wanted to say in a few succinct sentences. So she didn’t bother saying them openly, hoping Verity’s understanding of her would be enough for them to understand. That the wistful look capturing her face would get the message across just as well as any rambling monologue could.
“Goodnight, Violet.” It ushered in a weak, hauntingly human voice, delirious eyes staring upwards, to nothing in particular. “Goodnight.”
“Goodnight Sister.” Violet sobbed. “Rest well.”