Remus had been conscious for several minutes at this point, but he continued to lay upon the shore motionlessly.
Tiny waves washed over his lower body every other second in a steady rhythm. Sand coated his pores in a chafing, irritating layer he was keen to rinse off. Yet alas, with a beaming sun directing its mighty gaze at him, a docile lethargy robbed him of the motivation. Nevertheless, the prospect of becoming sun-burnt didn’t entice him. Taking a breath, he scooted up into a sitting position.
Only for his body to recoil. He winced, crumpled back down, and groped his chin. It felt numb, pins and needles supplying an uncomfortable touch to his jaw-region. But, testing his teeth, he found them all perfectly back in place.
So enough time has passed for minor injuries to subside, Remus pondered, forcing himself deeper into an oncoming wave. The wall of liquid washed away his second-skin of sand. How long exactly have I been here?
His stomach grumbled, his skin felt tender to the surrounding sea salt, and an obfuscating fuzziness overlaid his thoughts. Not exactly painful, but not ideal either. Like he was always on the cusp of a headache.
Getting to a stand proved a herculean task. Nausea submerged his stomach in that sickly feeling, wearing Remus down, and every breath brought a spike of pain behind his abdomen. An activation of his Mark quelled the pain; cleared his head a little. Nevertheless, no matter how long he had been lying back-first upon that beach, his rib hadn’t fully healed.
Without Tanish’s nullifying powers, he likely wouldn’t be able to move without shedding new tears with each step. But Remus put that sobering thought somewhere deep in the nexus of his mind, focusing on a more immediate issue: hunger. If he hadn’t eaten for multiple days, it was no wonder why he felt so exhausted.
Maris really knows how to treat her loyal servants, Remus scoffed, adjusting to the light of the beaming oasis with a few finalising blinks.
The island was broad, but he was fairly sure he could eye either end. Especially to his right and left. It might have been a mile or two of land altogether, choking with emerald greenery from end-to-end. They were difficult to make out among the overgrown shrubbery, but ruins so old they were only just about recogniseable caught his attention. Rumours of the sect-base of old jogged Remus’ memory, a certain founder whose name was eluding him cropping up too.
But food.
It had been quite some time since Remus had been forced to live solely off the land. Everything he and Violet had learnt together, the accumulation of Passings of experience, felt like untrained mental muscles. It was all still there, somewhere in the depths of his noggin. The issue was simply searching through those unused corridors of mind to retrieve such precious info.
And who was to say predators wouldn't be laying in wake, somewhere upon this prehistoric landmass? The last thing Remus wanted was to be pressed by a gang of Unbounded, or any other standard beasts, for that matter. Though it wasn’t all glum; no human touch to pluck the lands in centuries made for a vast array of plants to pick from.
He feasted off berries, other foreign fruits, and anything he didn’t suspect to be poisonous. As ample vigour began to return some presence to his form, Remus found himself itching once more to carry out one particular task. The reason he had gone to this wildlife exhibit in the first place. To master the old arts of the Ambition Sect; to return an ancient spark so desperately needed.
Nothing had struck out to him until he reached a trio of monoliths. Three erected pillars of stone with verbose inscriptions, and a sole engraving above each respective script. But what really caught Remus' eye was the figure lounging upon the crest of the central stone.
Remus blinked, reached out a hand, and teetered on calling out when it simply vanished. He blinked again. Nothing.
Am I going mad?
Having learnt to trust his intuition when it came to potential dangers — as they always proved to be way past mere possibilities — Remus demanded more brewing power from his Mark. Head glancing from side to side, he saw nothing more than unkempt vegetation. Remus shoved down his sceptical inhibitions, reading from the first stone pillar. It was oval at the top, like a gravestone.
An illustration of a circulatory system overlaid the vague drawing of a human body. Across the various veins, arteries, and other networks, a writhing substance flowed through. Only after reading through the inscription below, written in a tongue not unchanged by the winds of time, did Remus realise it was fire.
“Setting your circulatory system aflame.” Remus double, then triple checked the engravings. It was all correct. But something that sounded so innately dangerous, it made him reel back and grimace, wasn’t exactly appealing. Sure, Remus knew the flame of his own Ambition couldn’t harm him, but survivalistic instincts, primaeval ones, advised heavily against it. He’d even set his own organs aflame before, like the time he’d enveloped his heart to protect himself from a Greed Sect clansman. But still, he found himself stiffening at the thought.
Unfortunately, Remus wasn’t blessed with any more time to dawdle and scrutinise. The end of a dusty shoe sent him flying.
Right into an ancient tree, the roots of which expanded a metre across and deep into the ground. He only avoided breaking another bone by expending blue flame through his fingertips at the last second. Hovering in space, he took a deep breath.
An action that cost him a blow to the back of the head. Brains feeling like mush in his skull, Remus poured all his Ambition into resistance, letting himself drop and roll unceremoniously along the forest floor.
If today — no, wait, it had been a few days since his encounter with the Frost Clan — was anything to go by, misfortune came in pairs. He couldn’t go two conscious days back-to-back without the universe dealing him some sort of atrocity. If Remus ever took up gambling, gods forbid it, sheer bad luck alone would rob him of every coin.
His invisible assailant brought on the pressure, undetectable, yet hitting with such force that every point of contact was sure to bruise. Remus’ bones jangled in his trembling skeleton, his stomach twisted into a knot, and it was all he could do to stand upright as his face was painted a purpled mess.
Even against the Frost Clan, he hadn’t been outmatched this badly. Remus would have bet his every tooth that the attacker was multiple Divine Ranks higher than himself. What kind of hermit lived out in this wilderness in the first place, and how on earth had they amassed such unfathomable might? Had the isolation chafed away at their sanity?
Using anger like a waterstone to harness his focus, Remus sidestepped right as a blur whirled past his head. A blast of sapphire burst out of his palm, but they’d already escaped. Doubling down more, Remus turned faster than he ever had, almost spraining his ankle in the motion. Fighting with a damaged rib wasn’t ideal, but drinking to the point of numbness on his own Ambition made it manageable.
A rapid punch of his own landed. It felt like it had slammed straight into metal.
Squealing, Remus grasped the appendage, hopping around haphazardly and hopping he hadn’t broken anything. Allowing a coat of protective flame to shield him, Remus couldn’t seem to steady his breath.
If fighting directly would only get him killed . . .
Remus blasted through an outcropping of trees, burning any speck of green in his path to char. He was back-tracking now, not really taking too much consideration to his exact placement. Acutely aware of how astonishingly fast his anonymous opponent was, Remus didn’t know how long he had until yet another strike landed. Every multi-coloured petal swaying by caught his attention, any one of them possibly his opponent’s disguised form blurring past. He couldn't trust any of the strange sensations this place provided him: the ubiquitous scent of wet grass, the chilly, billowing winds sweeping gently over everything, and particularly, the human-shaped mass before him.
Without having to think, heat amassed in an extended hand. It shot outwards, consuming the shape whole. With such speed he felt like he was flying, Remus landed directly ahead of the blazing bundle.
Huffing, he swiped sweat off his brow, the physical presence of his own Ambition blazing brighter than any morning sun. A satisfied smile fluttering on his lips, Remus examined his defeated enemy with growing suspicion. Hair that fell back to their nape sparkled through the pillar of blue, imposing features unmoving on their youthful face. They weren’t excessively young, but you wouldn't class them as middle-aged either. Most accurately, far into their twenties. But then again, the unaging effects of higher Ranks had really screwed with Remus’ perception of age. Their hands were poised in a fighting stance, unmoving, a bandanna sweeping back like there was a perpetual gust of wind wrapped around the man's forehead. A raucous eruption of emotions twisted round Remus’ heart, as precise descriptions were roused from the depths of his memory.
Without an ounce of doubt, this was Enrique. The founder of the Ambition Clan.
Only problem was, they were made out of metal. It was a statue.
Remus realised this far too late, turning around too slowly to escape a direct uppercut. Besides the fact his back was pounding with pain once he collided with the ground, his teeth threatened to bend unnaturally yet again. A foot pressed into his back, the rib rebreaking in a surge of agony no amount of Tanish’s power could disguise.
Seething, the image of that first monolith and its teachings returned to Remus. In a motion so bizarre, it took all the concentration he had, every vein in him set ablaze. A network of sizzling blue sent his body into overdrive.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Time seemed to slow. To the extent that Remus had enough space to breathe, and skirted out of the way of his assailant’s fist felt like it was nothing. A fissure spread through the ground where the man had struck, but as Remus came to a steady stand, their actions had lost their superhuman touch. No longer did Remus feel overwhelmed, like a puppy coming into this world with nothing but a vague sense of danger.
So much throttling might surging through his legs, Remus leaped into his attack. With a sound that felt like a whip cracking, Remus dug a blazing fist into the man’s chest. A surprised expression overcame his opponent, and a version of Remus in his right mind would have abused this instance as the opportunity to attack again it was.
Instead, Remus opened and closed his mouth stupidly, as he recognised Enrique’s features.
The founder was the spitting image of his statue — or perhaps it was the other way round. Remus didn’t have too long to scrutinise their appearance, but the only outlying difference was the symbol for nine etched onto their forehead.
They smiled knowingly, before shooting out their own current of aquamarine flame. Remus didn’t see much of them from there.
Ambition versus Ambition. It was like Remus was fighting himself; an alternate version only about one thousand times more powerful.
Enrique’s onslaught was undeniably the more potent of the two, but Remus was even more disadvantaged by a scrambled mind. How was Enrique here? How? He should have been reduced to ashes within his coffin aeons ago. Something beyond Remus’ understanding was occurring here, something that unnerved him to the bone.
At the worst moment possible — fate’s favourite time to traumatise him — Remus lost control. The flames circulating through him rebelled, and unfounded pain sent him crashing. Blinking out moisture, and choking down whimpers, every tiny movement of Remus’ body earned a divine smiting. It was all he could do to keep his eyes open, twitching as he assumed the position that elicited the least pain. There was none that matched such a description, so, in a more accurate assessment, Remus squirmed.
It was only after a few minutes of slow, horrific recovery, that Remus realised he wasn’t being bombarded with killing blows. Sitting upright, his blurry vision was slow to clear.
Enrique stood with his back to the log of a tree, one foot over the other, chewing on a stem. “Relax,” he raised the plant out of his mouth. “The pain will subside slowly. I myself recall the shock of using Flaming Gold for the first time.”
Remus had to fight an internal war to get the next words out. “Flaming . . .Gold?”
“It’s the name of the ability you used.” He spoke casually, as if it was perfectly normal to still be alive. “Where you flood your circulatory system with Ambition. Hence the name. You quite literally set your Ichor on fire. Though I doubt you needed me to explain that much.”
The action of nodding now beyond strenuous, Remus' jaw recoiled. “Yeah.” Was all he could mutter. There were so many questions he wanted to ask; a boundless number of enquiries. But at that moment, hunching against hard ground, he could only ask one. “How?”
Enrique frowned, but not without following this up with a sly grin. Remus got the impression he would have smile lines if not for his Divine Rank. What had he been . . . Warlord? God-Graced?
“How what?” He began finally. “How am I here?”
Remus put a thumbs up, but that hurt equally as much as nodding.
“Well, I’m not alive, per se, if that’s what you're asking.” Enrique’s form suddenly grew ghostly transparent. “I died well before anyone alive currently was born.”
He scowled again. “But that isn’t exactly true either. There’s that man for instance. Probably a few others I can’t name.”
Sheer curiosity, and quite possibly good timing, allowed Remus to speak without immense resistance. “That’s nice and all. But care explaining why you decided to beat up an injured man?”
“Ah,” Enrique didn’t sound sincere in the slightest. “Apologies for that. I wanted to gauge your general strength, and this seemed the most effective way of doing so.”
Remus grumbled, but dropped the matter there. There were topics far more important to get to. Keeping petty grudges wasn’t something he could afford. “How are you speaking to me? The Ambition Clan is being held captive right now. If you could retur-”
Enrique shook his head. “Not possible. I’m bound to this island. As for how I’m here . . . I don’t suppose the Spirit Clan is still around?”
At Remus’ blank look, he exhaled. As if it was the most disappointing news in the world. “Should have thought as much. Makes sense a clan as dangerous as them were wiped out. The power to bring a memory of someone temporarily back, even in a far weaker form, is just about the scariest thing I can think of.”
“But you decided to use it yourself.” Remus didn’t refrain from putting out.
“Yes.” He agreed. “With just about a third of my life’s savings, I asked those ancient clansmen to keep me bound here. To let me reawaken when someone of my own clan arrived once more.”
Remus could see the reasoning behind that last bit. “So if anyone not from Tanish arrives here, they’ll just see an overgrown island with a few monoliths, and won’t bother to stay?”
“Right on.”
“What’s that number on your brow?” Remus mustered up the courage to ask. “Was suiting random symbols trendy in your time?”
The man howled with laughter. “Gods no! Your coming here activated my presence. Ancient energy from the Spirit Clan, possibly the last strand on Decent, has enough power to keep me here for nine days. That’s what the number indicates. You have a Duration with me. A far weaker, restricted version of myself, but you have Enrique the founder at your service nonetheless.”
Remus shivered. The power to revive the deceased, even if temporarily. What if someone was still out there, clutching onto that ancient power somehow, just like Enrique had? It was unlikely, but Remus would have to be the most optimistic man on earth to deny its possibility. Never was the most deceptive word of them all.
But only a Duration. Nine days to master techniques so advanced they had been lost to time. Even if he had his hands on a few more Durations in the worst case scenario, the Ambition Clan was a ticking time bomb. He would have to be quick. And these injuries of his were doing nought to help in that regard.
“Teach me.” Remus requested desperately. “Without these techniques, the Ambition Sect doesn’t have much hope. Please.”
The man, the founder of a sect so impossibly old, the first of Tanish, beamed down at him. “Of course. This was precisely why I implanted myself here in the first place. If any danger was to arise for the Ambition Clan, I would be there to help them. And after all these years,” a hungry look consumed his eyes, “I am all yours.”
“Set your Mark ablaze right now,” he suddenly stepped forth, “let Tanish numb your pain. By the end of this Duration, my Enkindled friend, I will have made you a monster.”
----------------------------------------
Sleeping in the middle of a warzone was exactly as hard as it sounded.
Yet, nevertheless, Koa and the rest of the travelling party bunkered up in an empty stretch of land as best they could. The luxury of warm, lit, and scented rooms were a thing of the past. After their last little incident, none of the group were courageous enough to risk any of the inns.
Besides, this deep into tho Hell’s Floor, the opportunity for sleep was so far and few in between, that Koa’s head couldn’t tell the difference between a pillow and concrete. The entire expanse of mud was rife with conflict at every turn, regardless of the hour, and they were lucky to catch half-an-hour of uneasy rest every few hours. This was one of their more fortunate instances. Two entire, uninterrupted hours had passed so far. An unexplainable miracle frankly too good to be true.
And yet Koa’s mind refused to make use of it. No matter how utterly exhausted sprinting away from random conflicts made him, lethargy was a slim foe for a greater emotion. Pure curiosity, demanding his attention.
Elmore sat cross-legged at the mouth of the dank cave they were occupying. The constant trickle of the rain, and the remote whisperings of death only indicating what was happening outside, should have been enough ambiance to set them off asleep. But Elmore let the downpour patter across him, completely motionless. Koa would have thought him asleep if not for the occasional shifting motion he made.
What on Earth is he doing? Koa thought incredulously, both annoyed by his lack of sleep, and too intrigued to fully care.
Some time later, it was hard to fully keep track of how long had passed, a bang far louder than the others sparked alarm into all of them.
Donovan got up so fluidly, it was like he had been conscious the entire time. “A battle is closing in our location, by the sounds of it. It would be wise to keep moving.”
Ash took several minutes to rouse, as usual. Their lack of quality resting time was probably his idea of the worst fate a human could endure. Though with time, after some drooled complaints, and a few shakes from Donovan, he managed to get up eventually.
They were packed up and ready to go within minutes.
By the time Koa and his brother had gotten outside, the damp moisture of the air hitting them, Donovan had gone off to scout out the immediate area.
Elmore, now standing, coughed into a fist. It was mumbled too much to be intelligible.
“What?” Ash asked sleepily, rubbing his eyes. “What did you say?”
“I’m sorry.” Elmore eventually managed, turning around slowly and gritting his teeth.
Frozen, hand mid-sweep through his tousled air, Ash’s eyes widened. “ . . . Pardon?”
Fully facing the pair of them now, a profound look seized Elmore’s features. “I apologise, alright? I was jealous of you before, Ash, I admit it. I hated how fast you were progressing, hated how effortlessly everything came to you. I was . . . yeah, to put it simply, envious.”
Koa took his own pause. It wasn’t that he hadn't thought his cousin capable of admitting his faults and apologising, he simply hadn't expected it in this regard. And to Ash, of all people. Still, the words, raw-cut and real, struck a chord with Koa. He too, even if only admitted inwardly to himself, or at the crescendo of a heated argument with his brother, had held a similar line of thought all his life. But to think that frustration was shared, even with someone as seemingly capable as Elmore, made him reflect. Thinking back, Koa was left scratching his head on how he hadn’t noticed the cause of his cousin’s previous animosity far earlier.
Not saying a word, Ash held Elmore’s gaze blankly.
“I was worried you would usurp me in the running for sect-leader,” he confessed, looking flustered. “That sounds ridiculous in retrospect, but it's true. Besides, my interests at heart, at their surface level, all link back to the sect’s prosperity. Growing talent can only be a net positive in that regard. ”
Ash found it in him to open his mouth at last. But the movement felt disjointed; forced. “You don’t have to worry about that . . . sect leader? Pff, I’d never take up that responsibility. Too much paperwork, too little sleeping.”
He forced out a laugh. It was awkward, terribly uncomfortable. But it seemed to settle everyone’s nerves. “Good, good.” Elmore smiled, swivelling away from them. “But who knows? Maybe one day, once my time as sect leader passes, it could be one of you two who picks up the mantle.”
A stunned quietude enveloped the brothers, as Elmore took off at a pace far too leisurely for a deadly battleground. For the first time in Passings, he stood up a little straighter, a jovial air about him freed from a now lifted weight.