Koa had drained his Mark to the limit by the time he noticed the sand.
It came in trickles at first. Leaking through the tiny slots in his wooden walls, designed to give Koa an insight on what exactly was going on outside. Now they were stuffed shut.
Walking through the embers of azure fire was the oddest experience of his life. Remus had explained the general idea of this sort of protection, sure, but Koa’s mind got jumpy whenever he took a step — like he was trodding across hot coals.
Alas, the appearance of the grains gave his mind something to settle on for the time being. He manipulated the walls to shove them away instantly, at a speed he assumed to be enough to outpace the increasing sands.
So he waited a few seconds. Then thirty. Then for a minute. He was tempted to go longer, his tension rising higher than ever, when his instincts roared.
Launching to the side, Koa pushed himself against a wall as detritus and smoke exploded through the interior. He coughed, stumbled backwards until he slid to the floor, and watched wide-eyed as the scene cleared.
In the centre of the room, what looked like the wooden equivalent of a cannon ball sat. Koa scrambled to catch his breath, used a ledge to pull himself up, and all the while stared at the gaping hole in his roof. His mind seemed to go blank. Like his brain had decided ‘if reality is crumbling, I might as well too’, and arranged an early retirement. Leaving an empty skull to gaze stupidly, mouth agape, at the fractured ceiling.
It only kickstarted back into action when he registered the noise of whooshing air. In short, another projectile.
Whoever was attacking clearly wasn’t finished with him.
It was at times like this that Remus’ flight would have been the most useful tool in the world. With his ginger companion preoccupied, Koa improvised. He pushed against the wall, commanding his creation to part, and tried not to shiver as he stepped through a wall of harmless blue flame. That would never not be weird.
His Mark wasn’t as drained as he originally thought it was; enough to summon a bloated beanstalk to evade the scene, anyway. Koa slipped down it as the sound of another wooden boulder making contact slammed his eardrums. He felt his skull rattle, landed with a mix of apprehension and fear addling his thoughts, and clenched a pair of clammy fists.
His wooden barricades were all the more impressive down here. Smoke funnelled out of the crest of the structure, the logistics of that coinciding with Remus’ fires a topic he didn’t dwell on.
Koa dashed across the grass below, small patches of it charred where debris had been thrown. Sand suffused the atmosphere with a growing density, but something told him that was unrelated to the projectiles. At least, wood and sand manipulation of this magnitude varied too much in Koa’s mind for their source to be one and the same.
So something else then. If the most likely culprit for the dust storm ravaging the skies was the Sand Clan, he’d have to rule that out when considering which sect was after the destruction of his fortress. And Koa didn’t like what his mind was leaning towards.
But Maris had planned against that, right? Was the last thought he had, before three great steaks shot across the sky.
Three more orbs of wood shoot towards him. Koa’s aggressor was seriously lacking in creative ingenuity.
For a tense second, he stood and watched. Only after some chin-rubbing, and a calculating frown, did Koa realise the projectiles weren’t after his woodland mansion. No, its target was much more specific than that.
They were coming for him.
That was the last hint Koa needed. He couldn’t deny his clan's presence any longer.
At the end of Koa’s outstretched fingers, tiny pricks of wood manifested. All at once, being careful to aim their path towards the three skyborne cannonballs, he swatted both palms forward.
Each toothpick transformed as they flew, one for each digit. In their place, ten spears shot unceasingly upwards. They stabbed into each projectile, either splitting them off into tiny chunks, or sabotaging their trajectory.
Instead of sitting down to observe the aftermath, Koa ran.
Despite the energy overwhelming to his open senses, his creation at risk of being toppled minutes after its erection, and the imminent danger of it all, hope flared in Koa’s gut. It was a fool’s hope, and he knew he was stupid for latching onto it, but did so all the same.
If I can just speak to them, maybe I can resolve this. Maybe I can make this all work.
Koa reached another stretch of ruins. Lines of walls, stone foundations, pillars, and other structures stood without any visible expansion. Set up against them were the camps of the Tempest Clan, with the majority of their men and women preoccupied in the skies. Drifts of wind carrying clansmen filled the air. A few turned their heads at Koa’s sudden appearance, but they appeared rather preoccupied with a larger threat.
Blood spread from bodies impaled with great leaves that, strangely, appeared to shine in the sunlight. Putting a hand over his sensitive eyes, Koa realised the reason: they were half-metal. One side overgrown leaf, the other a strange innovation in The Wild Clan’s weaponry, one Koa had been yet to see.
The treacherous gold of Ichor flowed like water seeping through paper. Thuds resounded; the thuds of corpses littering the ground like the final buzzing of flies.
Every time Koa blinked, the number of dead expanded. Vaguely, the whispered hint of something inexplicable, Koa thought he could spot a grey shape spinning blindingly fast.
His mind raced. A thin layer of oak armour amassed over his body, but how reliable the material would be against whatever that lethal blur was, didn’t invoke confidence in Koa. From the corners of the place, Wild Sect clansmen rushed for him.
It was hard to gauge with how much energy was interchanging all around, but something like that of a Foot-Soldiers’ aura radiated off each of them.
Juniper appeared upfront, moving too quickly for Koa to have noticed previously. The grey blurs all flew towards her in unison, becoming stagnant inches before they would graze her skin — much less draw blood.
“What is this, Juniper?” Koa asked. The clansmen to his side now pointed their weapons to him, the threat of the Tempest Clan dead and soaking below. Koa was sick with the thought that clans were fighting each other simply for the opportunity to fight Maris for the throne. What a pointless thing to throw away your life for. They aimed their cutlasses his way, but none of them proceeded. Koa didn’t have to speculate on whose call they were waiting upon.
“I should be asking the very same thing to you, dearest Koa.” She smiled disarmingly, but it didn’t reach her eyes.
“Look, I know you don’t see me in the greatest light right now.” Koa glanced at the point of a sword and had to stop himself from looking at another. His eyes kept twitching to the faces of those clansmen. Not aggressive, but their stoic looks weren't exactly friendly either. “But we made a deal. I’ll face Ash fair and square when the arranged date arrives, but that’s not yet. So I’m going to ask us both to be reasonable here and go about our own business.”
Koa inhaled sharply. He’d heard of Remus’ welcome to the Ambition Sect, when they’d perceived him as an outsider looking for trouble. He supposed that must have been awfully like this conundrum, only Koa struggled to see an ending that was even remotely as happy as that. The current peace of the Ambition Sect. No, he was more likely to be outed as a deserter, or worse, before he brought his people to a new age of prosperity.
And the worst part was, he couldn’t fault Juniper. From her perspective, their unit with Elmore had failed, fumbled their second chance, Only then to end with a valuable member of the clan meeting a premature end. Someone who’d possessed the potential to rise to sect leader. Now the only survivors from her sect had reduced themselves to arguing.
Yet Koa couldn’t rest easy when the Pet-Keeper was still out there.
“And I’m sorry.” He felt obliged to add.
Juniper frowned. Something indiscernible in her eyes told him she wanted to say more, but kept things brief, with: “why are you here? If you’re not with us, then who?”
Koa stood rigidly. “I’m just passing through. I plan to train in Hybrid and got stuck in all this.”
Technically, he wasn’t lying, but Koa hated bending the truth so liberally.
“Really?” Juniper muttered emphatically. “Last time we conversed, you were still in Hell’s Floor. That wasn’t long ago. Quite the achievement to have travelled so far. That isn’t even addressing your elaborate fortifications. Looks awfully like you’re trying to defend a certain someone.”
Koa gulped, opened his mouth, when all heads flickered to an oncoming man.
A screeching figure, hair hanging messily across his sunburnt face, activated a Mark that encompassed his entire body. Koa only took seconds to realise it was the Tapestry of a Mercenary Ranked. A fierce gale blasted through the clearing, sending bodies and rubble flying.
A Wilderness clansman grasped onto Koa, trying to keep him in their midst as all present were swept into the air. Targeted winds appeared beneath their bodies, like invisible platforms of cloth shifting to maintain them. Several people anchored themselves with plants dug into the ground below, but an unlucky few were sent higher.
Like balloons with an endless supply of helium, they probably would have flown off indefinitely, if Juniper hadn’t intervened
The God-Graced turned towards the newcomer, an entire canopy’s worth of leaves appearing behind her. Koa noted that they were the same half-metal variety as before, only noticeably smaller.
As she unleashed them all, memories returned back to Koa. In his youth, training amongst his generation of Wild Sect trainees, rumours about the exact details of Juniper’s powers had engrossed them all for days on end. So efficient was The Wild Sect, that rarely did Juniper actually have to intervene, or at least not in events any of them would have been privy to.
All God-Graced had a soul-inscription. It was the key to the penultimate stage’s advancement, unlocking an entire second subject of power. Decades, if not centuries of introspection was often required to work out what exactly resonated with someone on such a spiritual level. As for what Juniper’s was, it wasn’t an ability the sect leader often flaunted off.
Back then, Koa had been left in the dark. Presently, with a volley of leaves expanding at her will, turning the palms into deadly metal blades, Koa finally had the answer to that question.
The spinning blades Grew, headed directly to the attacking Mercenary.
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
Immediately, the pressure keeping the rest of them afloat dwindled. Koa fought the urge to cover his ears, when the manic attacker screeched. With the air visibly throbbing with power, the Mercenary used up a large chunk of his energy, a defensive tempest erupting out of him.
A tempest that lasted all of three seconds.
Koa rushed out of the fray, pushing aside a startled Foot-Soldier in the process, and diving ahead.
He didn’t know what he was doing, but staying here certainly wasn’t doing him any favours.
It wasn’t as if Koa was needed, anyway.
Even with his back to the ordeal, he could still hear the clinking of metal with perfect clarity. The howls of a dying man soon followed, but Koa kept his eyes straight ahead. Straight ahead, as metal upon metal tore the Mercenary to shreds.
----------------------------------------
Ash approached his sect leader only a minute after the man perished.
He’d been ordered to act as a sentinel. Watching passively as one of four. Their only job was to screech out if danger arrived, but, clearly, someone had been a little slow on the uptake.
Now an entire squadron of Tempest Clansmen and their Splintered Rank laid dead. Unrecognisable, but most certainly dead. His boots squelched on the blood-soaked grass, and he stumbled rather awkwardly on a splattered stone floor more times than he’d like to admit.
Before, the position would have bored Ash to death. Standing idly as his peers enjoyed the brunt of the action. Looking back, his lens a sort of grim retrospection, it was almost laughable. Boredom wasn’t a freedom his wandering mind would allow any more. No, he had spent most of his shift blocking out memories. Or at least attempting to.
Ash’s dark recollection had been so immersive, the clamour of noise from behind took several minutes to claw past the walls of his reverie.
He ran as fast as he could, but whatever he’d been expecting . . . it wasn’t anything like the bloodbath settling beneath Juniper.
It would have been good-natured to apologise for the delay, but Ash could only stammer. “W-what happened here?”
“It's pretty self-explanatory,” she said quietly. Her eyes scanned the brutal scene she’d created with something akin to sadness. “Your brother was here.”
“He was?”
That came off a little louder than Ash had intended, but his scrambled mind didn’t have room for things like courtesy and manners.
“Ran off just a minute ago, in fact.” She pointed over to a great silhouette on the horizon Ash had yet to notice. “He erected that not long ago. It's a rather nice piece of architecture, but right now, it’s standing in our way.”
Flashes of emerald on silver made Ash blink. They sped towards the blazing structure, and in all the time it took to draw a breath, they embedded themselves into the building. The sound of distant bombs went off, and great wooden hands sprouted from the weapons. They latched onto the building, crushing it to smithereens. Soon, even the hands themselves caught ablaze, but long after Juniper had stopped caring. All that was left was a distant pile of burning timbers, which, oddly, never did seem to wither.
“Go after Koa.” She commanded. “He went that way. You'll catch him if you’re swift.”
Ire dragged itself out of the pit of his mind, a vile creature all the more eager to bear its hideous face now that trouble was brewing. Ash’s inhibitions dropped, he took a step in the direction Juniper had indicated, before sense screamed out at him. With a deep breath, he obliged it.
“What about our duel? Don’t I have to wait?”
“Not exactly. If you defeat your brother now, knock some sense into him, that would be a perfectly viable shortcut. We can cancel the whole affair afterwards.”
Like an iceberg clawing to the surface amid his sea of anger, reason forced him into action. Ash nodded, before running off.
His Bank was coming along nicely, or as far as it reasonably could have considering the short time that had transpired. Infinity swept down to his legs, going off course from his Exuberant Patronage Mould. This would have been more difficult, had Ash's Bank been anywhere near completion.
For the time being, he raced ahead. The ruins of the woodland mansion drooped, the wrecked timbers almost reminiscent of a frown. A war of blue and purple light raged through a pack of trees off to the side, and Ash almost fumbled to a stop at the sparkling sight.
So he really did join them, he thought sourly, returning to his run after only a second’s apprehension.
Clansmen of various sects brawled all around, ruins reaching a newfound level of wreckage that brought a pang to Ash’s heart. Every coronation, they were chipped away at a little more. How much more of the structures had stood only a few decades ago? How much would stand in, say, a decade or so from now?
Piece by piece, Rebirth by bloody Rebirth, they were destroying their past by repeating the same mistakes.
It was this thought that tormented Ash’s mind as he rose over an incline in the land.
Wild energy snapped him to attention. They were at a more natural section of the city, shrubbery and trees dotted about the place.
Ash ensured his Mark was fully deactivated, settled his Infinity so that no atmospheric turbulence would give his presence away, and strolled forwards as quietly as possible.
His chest ached. His hands, for some reason far removed from exhaustion, were drenched with perspiration. He still, after all this time, couldn’t fathom why his brother had deserted them in such a fashion. By a technicality, he may have been more of a victim in all of this than a criminal, but that didn’t give Koa the right to make such a drastic decision. A selfish decision.
Is this what Elmore would have wanted? What would his late cousin think?
Even the mere thought of Elmore’s name brought back a swell of memories. He tried to compose himself. He managed to drown out the onset of tears, but he knew his eyes would be red and stuffy nonetheless.
There was only one obvious hiding spot for Koa in Ash’s mind. His brother must have taken the same precaution as him in shutting his Mark out, but even the remnants of a Mark’s power, like permanent constructions, were easy to spot.
One tree hidden well enough amongst others, nondescript and unimpressive, was noticeably younger. Ash steeled himself, pushed back a fist, and unleashed all his power at once.
If fighting his brother would make him stumble, he had to mentally detach the relation in his mind. He was acting in service of his clan — for Elmore — and that was all that mattered.
The tree erupted into a thousand splinters with one pulse of his Mark. Koa stood trembling there, and for a moment taut with tension, they stared at each other.
More than enough was exchanged with that one glance. Ash hesitated for one second too long, and his brother took the opportunity.
A wooden fist flew towards a stupified Ash. At the last second, he launched himself out of the way.
And just stood there.
He exchanged looks with Koa again, his heart leaping into his throat. He choked on it for a second, unable to separate the image of his own flesh and blood from a potential enemy of the clan.
Koa stood pensively, his lip a thin, tremulous line. His shifting eyes told of emotion equally as untempered as Ash’s own, and, despite his best inclinations, and the logical lines-of-thought his mind was supplying, his heart bled with pity. Poisonous, ever confusing pity.
Ash thought of their parents raising them, providing the both of them with everything they needed to exhibit greatness. He recalled the days they’d spent whacking each other with toy sticks — infantile games taught by the clan to prepare them for later training.
A wild, slithering tendril of vines cracked at Ash like a lasso. He caught it in one hand, thorns tearing through his leather gloves to draw blood.
Why were they fighting? Even as he yanked the vine out of the ground, and tossed it metres away, the question replayed in Ash’s mind. He knew the right response off by heart, better than the lines trailing down the back of his hand, but each replay of the answer only left him less satisfied.
Walls of earth and birch wood shot up protectively in Koa’s path. In his second burst of Infinity, Ash vaulted over them. He landed smoothly a foot away from his brother, who promptly tossed a messily summoned clump of wood, right at his face.
This time, with Ash too perplexed and caught off guard to make a move, it struck home. Meagre pain flared up Ash’s cheek, and with it, the fury that had possessed his every movement only minutes ago returned.
He jolted ahead, grasping Koa by the throat. “Come back to the clan.” He instructed, a little too aggressively for his own good. “You need to come back.”
“But the Pet-Keep-”
Ash tossed his brother into the nearest log. Before Koa could manipulate the wood it contained, he was on him again.
“The Pet-Keeper is a God-Graced equivalent!” The words poured like hot molten out of his mouth. Ash wasn’t used to throwing his weight around like this; he never did. But in reality, he harboured more innate strength than even he realised at times. “Your Emblazed friend isn’t going to bring Elmore back from the dead, or help you kill that monster. He’s a criminal. I don’t care what great deeds he’s accomplished-”
Koa grappled his arms, desperately trying to push him off in a use of his own Infinity.
“-He’s still an enemy of the clan. And Violet is an Unbounded. An Unbounded working with Nova!”
“She’s . . .” Koa spluttered through his restricted throat. “ . . . not working with him.”
Ash tossed Koa onto a stretch of mud. The resounding crunch that followed couldn’t have been good, but he doubted he’d broken anything. He wasn’t fighting quite that intensely. Not yet at least. But with the way Koa was acting, like an impulsive brat, it was increasingly difficult to restrain himself.
With a broad, downward sweep of his foot, Ash planted a boot over his brother’s chest. Even as hands grasped onto his calf, trying to shove him aside, it was no use. A secondary blast of Infinity might as well have made his leg solid stone. Koa could struggle as much as he’d like, it made no difference, Ash’s hold may as well have been the fist of a god.
This was all rudimentary Infinity usage, going against the network of his Mould to simply infuse whatever part of his body required strengthening. It was almost amateurish, but more than enough to deal with his brother.
Koa tried to say something, only to be impeded by his constricted chest. Besides, Ash wasn’t listening. He needed to get his point across. Whatever it took, Ash was going to instil common sense into Koa. It was his duty as the older brother.
“Listen to me Koa.” Ash spoke through a snarl. “Early or not, I’ve bested you in a one-to-one showdown. Now come back to the clan. We can strike down the Pet-Keeper and the rest of those Unbounded vermin, while keeping in Juniper’s good books. If not for me, if not for the sheer principle of it, do it for Elmore’s memory. Stop this idiotic nonsense and come with-”
All at once, the trees around Ash sprouted to life. Ash had to double-take, his eyes uncomprehending of the sudden reversal of roles. There were a dozen of them in total, each grim-faced and the spitting image of a haunted forest from a children’s book. Wicked grins, hollowed indents in the wood itself, opened up to the empty darkness within.
Twisted branches, six or so all at once, slapped into action. They swooshed into his sides with the might of a battering ram, and instantly, Ash squawked. All the air left his compressed lungs, and saps of strength departed his body like unhappy residents.
Koa rolled out from under him, launching into a sprint. Ash spat, swept out unfiltered energy to push back the distortions of nature, but the advancing evergreens sauntered forwards. Their thick canopies soon veiled Koa’s fleeing back.
Gooseflesh washed down his arms and back. He wanted to scream out, and actually did as the urgency of the moment struck him.
If he gets away now, with fuel still left in the tank, I won’t have won the duel. We’ll still have to fight.
That was a more petrifying thought than anything else Ash had been forced to stomach thus far this coronation. After getting so close to putting an end to this charade, having to wait over two full Passings would be insufferable. This ended now. Not later, not soon, now.
Donovan’s gift hung on his fingers, blades of wood cleaving through the air at the ends of his knuckles. At the same time, he focused the remainder of his Infinity, every last drab, to follow the actual path of his Vault. Despite their incomplete state, it accelerated the process significantly, empowering his Mark.
Ash focused his Mark to dismantle the structure of the hostile trees, at the same time as his summoned blades cleaved through everything in sight. There were more than Ash had originally estimated, but they, too, one after another, fell into bark.
By the end, he doubted more than a minute had passed. Sweat leaked off him in great sheets, and every incessant breath dragged his shoulders up and down.
But Koa was nowhere to be seen.
Ash’s brother had obviously been downplaying his actual endurance. He was probably using a substantial chunk of power to dash away even now.
Ash nibbled at his fingernails, shook his head frantically, and screeched. A second later, he dashed ahead, ignoring the exhaustion crawling through every fibre of his body.
It was a hopeless endeavour. Koa would be unreachable at this point, but he sprinted anyway.
Damn it all. The rapid movement of his thighs felt useless below him. Damn it all.