There was such a thing as overconfidence.
Seconds away from collapsing where he stood, Remus had learnt this, like seemingly every lesson in his life, the hard way.
Three days. For three days, the two of them had exhibited impossible speed. With only occasional rests dispersed throughout the day, and a brief night’s sleep, Violet and he had charged valiantly ahead. The very outskirts of the Ravaged Lands lay less than a mile ahead — somehow meeting the terrible expectations Remus had come prepared with, and surpassing them.
Canyons separated the land into dusty chunks, layers of sediment looming hundreds of feet high above lethal drops. Sand littered over the lands encompassing these ravines for presumably the entirety of the city’s coverage, and in the distance . . . Destruction ensnared anywhere the eye dared stray. Craters dotted around the place, looking no more like natural erosions than the remains of an explosion, reiterating exactly what the rumours of this place had warned Remus about. Death, skirmishes, and above all else, chaos were commonplace in this hellscape.
And yet, Remus was beyond determined to enter its reaches as quickly as possible. There was no way, not on this perpetual battlefield of Descent, that he was going to let the last few days’ mad scramble go to waste.
Was he personally investing a little too much in a stupid game? Most definitely. Was he setting himself up for immeasurable disappointment? Quite possibly. Was that going to stop Remus, or dissuade him in the least bit? Not in the slightest.
Victory was in reach, and tearing through the dusty skies overlaying these fresh environs, Remus felt giddy with excitement. Violet was nowhere in sight, probably entire acres behind.
Ignoring the constant hum of distant conflict, and doing his best not to focus on the array of skirmishes popping up on several patches of dry land, Remus smiled gleefully to himself.
A few seconds now. One final stretch and-
Remus cackled with uncontained insanity. Reaching solid ground, and recalling his flames. He landed awkwardly. Nevertheless, blinking the sand particles out of his eyes, and ignoring the exhaustion sapping away at his vigour, nothing but mirth flooded him.
. . . approximately for three seconds, before he noticed the young woman standing smugly, arms-crossed ahead of him. For a fleeting moment, he couldn’t help but find them oddly reminiscent of Violet. Remus blinked, his idiocy slapping him across the face as his brain computed.
“Damn! And I was this close at finally beating you in something.” He hovered a digit slightly over his thumb as demonstration.
“Aw well,” Violet didn’t bother to get that cocky quirk out of her lips. “Someone has to constantly best you, might as well be me.”
Remus didn’t ask how she had managed it. With a little thinking, the answer was obvious. Right as they were in range of the finish line, she had reverted to her standard practice of jolting over a larger distance in one go. It was clever; infuriatingly clever.
Nevertheless, she had won fair and square. “Congrats.” He tried not to say it grudgingly. “Now then, we have this blessed sight to enjoy.”
“Is there dust in your eyes?” Violet grimaced at the ledge’s lip. “This is where things really get dangerous. There’s no Divine Ground protecting us here, not even in Hell’s Floor. You have to prepare yourself.”
No snarky replies left Remus’ mouth, as much as he wanted to clear this sudden shift in mood. Everyone had heard of the antics the Anarchy Syndicate pulled here. Greed, Fury, Suffering. Only three of the clans that called this circus home. The list continued with sects that sounded just as appealing, but despite his aversion to those groups . . . wouldn’t Tanish, the god of Ambition, fit right in? Tanish had always been unaffiliated, never opting to join one of the major godly alliances.
But out of all these traits, be it Fatigue, Disease, or any of the other members he’d mentioned, it was only one fatal concept the others derived from: Ambition. Remus had seen twice now how one’s own drive could lead them down a dangerous path: both Tanguy and Aziel’s cases. Thrice, if he counted himself into the equation. To grasp his desired future by the horns, Remus couldn’t allow himself to become consumed. He couldn’t let his desires pave the way for anarchy.
“Are you listening to me?” Violet asked. “We’ll have to be discreet to survive out here. There are small batches of civilization within, but those safe havens are few and far in between. You got that?”
“Loud and clear.” Remus retained a flinty expression. “How far to Hell’s Floor from here?”
Hell’s Floor was a vague mass, and how much land it actually encompassed was a heavily debated topic. Nevertheless, Violet’s estimations were quick. “We could probably make it in a day if we blitzed our way there, like we have up to this point, but . . .”
“But?”
“That’s a one-way trip to amassing attention. So, we’ll have to approach on foot, with no flashy powers. Taking that into account, our best case scenario is within a few days.”
Remus threw his arms up at that, but several hours of arduous walking later, he wished Violet had been correct. Her guesses had been overly-generous to the land they would have to cross. Sure, it was difficult terrain, but not difficult enough to save the two a premature encounter.
It was the incessant clanging they heard first. Like a god banging his head against a planet, over and over again. Yet such sounds made up the general ambiance of the city and so, for the longest time, blended in. Though, with no collective structure, Remus still didn't understand why the Ravaged Lands was counted as a recognised city. As far as he was concerned, this was less a civilised collection of neighbourhoods, and more a pitstop you took on the road to actual hell. Only after a few minutes of the persisting noise, did it occur to Remus that something may have been afoot.
When entire mounds of earth began to shift, it was no longer a question of if. Without a word, the two of them rushed off in respective blurs of colour. Forgoing holding back to avoid causing a ruckus, the pair of them soon discovered the source of this turmoil.
A skirmish, waged between members of two opposing clans Remus couldn’t identify. Looking down into the man-made ravine carved around the battle, Remus may not have known who exactly was fighting, but the abilities being showcased alone were enough to intrigue him.
Men and women on one side of the tunnel, clad in a mixture of stygian black, extended hands to their side. Remus watched, fascinated, as one man, whose brow was bugling in focus, appeared to manifest something in his palm. A red article surfaced in his hold, and Remus had to squint to identify the object. He almost gagged when it mentally clicked. A living heart, still beating.
The man crushed it to bloody shreds, without an ounce of hesitation.
One of the men making up the opposing side crumpled to his knees, clutching at an empty chest. A lifeless glint devoured his eyes, and life deserted his dying husk.
Given no time to mourn their loss, a collection of clansmen sporting a vicious red donned fighting stances. Streams of smoke left their nostrils, as if they were literally steaming in anger. A foot before them, the mist concentrated into hulking masses, gangly arms manifesting at their sides. The grey apparitions grasped nearby enemies, crushing their bodies in an agonising end.
It was simultaneously the most comical sight Remus had ever witnessed, and by far the most terrifying.
In tandem, he and Violet stumbled backwards. All-consuming voids had appeared in several locations, dragging anything within a ten foot vicinity. The colourless pits muffled even the screams of its grasping victims — an insatiable vacuum.
His heart racing until he thought it would burst out of his chest, Remus stared wordlessly at the massacre. Two shadows in the distance duked it out in mid-air, the air swooping for miles at every exchange of blows.
“We need to leave,” he managed to utter over the pandemonium of noise. “We’ll be crushed like ants if we get caught up in this.”
Violet only nodded, as if muttering another word would seal their fate.
Scrambling his mind for who these two clans could be, Remus arrived at no clear answer. He let his survivalist instincts take over, creeping swiftly towards an empty pit that ate into the ground. What sect steals your heart — in the least romantic means possible — or summons warriors of smoke from their noses?
He received no clear answer. But as he dived into an abandoned stretch of tunnelling, his only concern was getting out of here unscathed. Judging by the deserted supplies lying about the place, this had been one of the sect’s trenches, up until this fight had broken out. Suddenly, Remus didn't feel so cosy here.
“This is dangerous.” Violet spoke the obvious. Remus didn’t blame her though; his own mind was too fried to speak coherently. “One of those sects was the Fury Clan: followers of the Rage deity Lorcan.
“Sounds like a nice guy.”
“His ambassadors certainly aren’t. But that does explain their abilities. Slight flame manipulation and those mist entities they can weave. They literally smoke with rage. The other clan however . . .”
She looked to Remus, as if waiting for an answer. He shrugged. “No clue. Summoning voids and crushing hearts — I don’t see the correlation myself. But there must be one.”
Based on the formation of the forces, this place was the property of that unknown clan. Their last line of defence. Who was to say traps galore hadn’t been laid here? And without the knowledge of what exactly their subject of power was, anticipating any nasty surprises would be difficult.
Nevertheless, this place seemed to lead away from the conflict. In Remus’ humble opinion, the best direction there was. Flying through, and Violet teleporting metres ahead, they reached a section of buried huts. Seemingly the headquarters of this place.
They then proceeded to do something exceedingly idiotic. Even for Remus’ standards.
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Backs pressed to either side of the wooden exterior, they prepared to dive in. If there was anyone lurking here, and Remus was in their shoes, he would hide in this tiny building. Flames wreathing across his arms and fists, he prepared to fight if the need arose. Violet summoned a small, palm-sized rift in space, revealing the inside of the expanse from another rift she’d located within the hut. She peeped through with obvious anxiety, which did nothing to improve the clamminess of Remus’ hands.
At last, his tension dropped. “It's safe,” she assessed, “but let’s keep our guards up. There are some powerful people near us. Perhaps . . .” she killed that thought there. “Let’s just enter.”
His throat still dry, Remus practised caution as he emerged into a small, dim room. It wasn’t anything fancy, with dirt walls only kept at bay by a few select planks, and the grace of sheer luck. He got the troubling notion a hundred tons of earth would crash down upon them any second. It wasn’t a prospect that encouraged bravery.
There was a table at the centre, slanted at one angle due to the uneven land at their feet. Three chairs created a ‘U’ shape at the desk’s back, and crates of cargo sat nestled into one corner. Remus watched as Violet walked towards a board at one side. It was a list of names, each a squiggle until Remus looked closer.
Violet scrutinised those names with a glare. “A register of everyone in this clan . . . the Greed Clan.”
His stomach restricting, Remus had trouble digesting that. Damosh’s original sect, before, as a Godling, he became the founding-father of the Wealth Clan. At her side, the number of the names stuck out to Remus. Well over a hundred. A smaller board, inside of the frame of the first, read a smaller, but reasonably extensive list of names. A tiny, spidery font revealed it was a list encompassing their sister sect; Wealth. It didn’t take Remus long to find Damosh and Edmar there. In fact, Edmar was placed right below the Godling.
“That’s weird.” Remus whispered, the scene suddenly feeling very fragile. “How come-”
Reading a stretch of writing by Edmar’s name, his question was answered for him.
Edmar, right-hand man of Damosh.
The need to keep quiet suddenly left Remus, a shout leaving his lips. Oh well, with the havoc taking place outside, it wasn’t like the sound would travel far. But nevertheless, Violet had flinched at the yelp.
“What?” She turned her eyes to where he was looking. “What’s the-”
The pair of them stood there, but Remus found his body unbelievably rigid. “Out of all people, Damosh promotes the one man who has it out for me. If he’s the main consultant during political decisions, my sect really is screwed.”
My sect. The phrase brought a whole host of concerns with it. On a technical level, you couldn’t be part of two clans at once — the world simply didn’t work that way. But, just as equally, he felt a part of both. Even his most recent duel with Tanguy had him referred to as of the Carpentry Sect by word of mouth, but something told him that unlike an Oath, the precise details of the agreement didn’t matter, if the intent was there. Reality wouldn’t hand him an answer so easily, on a silver platter like that.
His quest to save the Ambition Clan at least had a tangible plan that, whilst insanely difficult, could be accomplished. His way forward in that regard was clear. The Carpentry Sect on the other hand . . . what was he to do? One strong clansman, one possible leader. With Edmar’s hold more unyielding than ever, that would never be enough. Sure, once he earned money as a powerful ally on the front lines, he could save them some difficulty, but how much?
An idea sparked in Remus' mind. Two struggling clans. If they were to come together . . .
The possibilities that sparked excited Remus. But he didn’t want to get ahead of himself. The prospect of the Carpentry Clan receiving paid work to rebuild the remains of Brison’s home was thrilling, sure, but would never work whilst the sect was enslaved.
More than anything, Remus had to survive. If he just held on long enough, he might be able to salvage something from this mess. Something beautiful.
“Come,” he turned away from the list, not an iota of ire in him whatsoever. “We have things to do, both of us. We’re not going to die as collateral damage. Especially in a conflict we have nothing to do with.”
Violet appeared surprised by his sudden boldness. But she agreed with his words completely. “How are you feeling?”
“A bit drained, but content.”
“No, I mean physically.”
“Physically?” Remus’ eyes blazed a neon blue, lighting up the dark interior substantially. Flames licked at his fingers. “Never been better.”
Violet cracked a smile. “Good. We’re going to dash out of here. Screw being discreet; it's not like we’ll attract any attention with this battle going on anyway.”
Remus nodded. Together, they slipped out of the room, emerged from the crest of the trench, and-
Something he couldn’t fathom knocked Remus aside. Hard. He rolled across the trench’s floor, golden blood leaking from the inside of his mouth. One of his teeth sat awkwardly in his mouth. Teeth were one of the few things an Enkindled could heal, but still, it took an activation of his Mark to numb the pain. Violet took the brunt of the impact. Her body was hurled upwards, and her arm-
Remus screeched, for that was the only action that would prevent him from retching. Violet's arm had been crushed, broken so badly, he wasn’t sure how well it would heal. It hung at her side limply, the sleeve of her shirt cut to shreds. With a horrified expression, Violet disappeared in an explosion of purple. She rematerialised at his side, and what she did next was enough of a surprise, that Remus didn’t think his body could take any more excitement.
The destroyed limb spasmed, writhing, before, bizarrely, settling back into place. Violet’s face turned a sickly green, but otherwise, she was fine. “Unbounded ability,” she explained, sounding exhausted, “I sacrificed some of the Infinity I gathered last Duration.”
She grasped his arm, tugging a stupidied Remus. “Come, I don’t want to have to sacrifice any of my power again.”
Snapping back into focus, he set off with her. For about three steps, until yet again, the two of them were tossed back. In winds so furious they tore at Remus' skin, two paragons of power crashed into the ground ahead of them. Terrain shifted at the impact, and winded, Remus couldn’t breath for a few moments until his chest decompressed.
Manic laughter filled the air, as the gigantic man being pressed into the ground refused to stop beaming. He suited the greens and blacks of the Greed Clan, only with a much fancier outfit. It probably would have looked better, if not for the array of tears stripping the outfit of its appeal.
The women jamming him down with forceful, world-shattering strikes, was of equal mirth, an insane look in her eyes as she delivered blow after blow. “Die, die, die!” She squealed in delight. With that kind of force, you would think she was trying to shatter the world’s pangea into continents.
A blend of flames and fog enveloped the woman, in an ethereal kind of armour. From where Remus was thrown, in a wall of sifting dirt, he watched as the man below seemed to fall out of existence. An empty void in the shape of a person sat there in his stead, jewels and gold spurting out of him in an unstoppable current. The woman was forced away, but he wasn’t finished. Not by a long shot.
As a ravenous pit expanded rapidly away from the male sect-leader, Remus and Violet realised something vital in one shared moment.
They had been caught amidst two warring God-Graced. Two God-Graced, who, between them, didn’t hold a shred of sanity.
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Edmar bowed beneath Damosh’s throne, an assembly of witnesses gathered to either side of the two. The Godling himself, sat with his chin perched on a hand, dressed as ornately as ever, in a long cloak of — could you guess it? — gold. Rhinestones were sown into the material, and a crown settled on his head, contrasting his poisonous, green skin.
The King recited his speech methodically, with all the excitement of a man being sentenced to the rafters. “And so, I couldn’t be happier to name my loyal servant, Edmar, as my personal consultant. I can assure you all, his wisdom will be crucial in all future decision-making.”
Crucial, Edmar thought with a rasp, as in, I’ll be taking over ninety percent of affairs, while you lounge around drinking wine.
The gathered crowd clapped with forced enthusiasm, light filtering into the room through decorative mosaics at either side. They were at the apex of the Wealth Sect’s tower, also known as Damosh’s throne room. It was typically only used for grand ceremonies such as the extremely rare coronation, the Day of Descension opening ceremony, and the appointing of important positions.
This little gathering fell into the latter, and finally, Passings full of negotiating his way up the political ladder, Edmar had, at last, landed the position he oh-so desired.
Yet still, this was only the first step of his plan. Edmar eyed Damosh’s throne, pure, bejewelled gold dazzling his eye. One day, it would be him sitting there.
Then, he would show the world how to really govern a city.
The speech now over, Edmar stood, shaking hands with the rest of the bearded politicians. He did his best not to scorn at his two-faced opposition. They may have smiled and laughed merrily, but that false joy didn’t reach their eyes. Hatred settled there, and Edmar knew, given the chance, they would much sooner stab him in the back.
“Ladies and gentlemen, please excuse yourselves. I would like a private word with my consultant.”
Relief filled Edmar as his competition departed. But then again, were they even worthy of that title now? Failed competition wasn’t competition at all. In fact, he promptly saw to it to forget their existences all together. After today, he would never have to talk to them again. If that wasn't a big enough burst of joy to get him through the day, Edmar didn’t know what was.
Tapping the arm of his throne, Damosh levelled his gaze at Edmar. “There were more protests this morning.”
Edmar didn’t mutter a ‘yes’. Nor did he nod in confirmation. Damosh wasn’t asking.
“Any damage?”
Now, Edmar did nod. “A scratch on the Wealth Sect tower, I am sad to inform you, my Lord.”
Truthfully, the man didn’t feel a drab of remorse. Edmar would let the tower burn to its foundations if that ensured him the crown.
“The perpetrators have been punished amply, I am certain?”
“Silenced, your grace.”
He seemed to relax somewhat. “Good, good. Keep their disposal quiet, hm?”
“Of course. But if I may, Sir, how far can the Elimination Act be stretched?”
It was a question Edmar had been playing with for Passings on end. The ancient law that allowed Marks to be activated on Divine Ground, if the person they intended on attacking was counted as a criminal. Except, the laws themselves had never been addressed; never realised as a set list. Nothing was set in stone. By a technicality, the Wealth Sect would be allowed to cause all the harm they wanted in First Rite, without risk of being attacked back — their only concern would be keeping it hush-hush. But how far could they take it? Classifying someone as a criminal simply for leaving a scratch unintentionally was a push, but how far could they push?
Damosh raised an eyebrow. “As far as we need. Say, I could, by some vague inclination, register breathing as a crime. Then, by right of the act, the Wealth Sect could use their Marks against anyone.”
“Excuse my scepticism, my Lord, but mustn't there be a catch?”
“A catch?” Damosh let out an empty laugh. “The catch, Edmar, is that you have to rule over an area to abus- I mean, utilise this loophole. But lucky for you, the King of this city is also the leader of your sect. So you, my loyal servant, also benefit. Just don't go telling any old person about this. Very few people, save for myself, have discovered this little technicality.”
Just as I suspected, Edmar thought. Another reason I need kingship.
Edmar always worked efficiently, but sometimes, people slipped through his grasp. Including that ginger Death-Marked whose name . . . no, he couldn’t quite recall it.
But with the resources Damosh had, and the authority. Anything he desired would be his.
But not yet. He may be teetering on Vanguard, but even the Splintered Ranks wouldn’t land a scratch on a Godling. Still, while he waited, the second best thing wasn’t too bad. Not bad at all.
Edmar recalled the final pleas of the protesters. It irritated him without end. The yelps of the worthless begging for salvation.
Under his rule, none of them would receive it.