“Look, I don’t make for a good prisoner.” Remus pleaded. “Trust me, no-one’s been able to keep me locked inside a cell for any longer than a few days. So how about we skip over all that malarkey, and get to the part where I miraculously escape?”
There was one piece of good news, despite the berserk Frost Clanswoman ahead, despite his energy and Infinity supplies that wouldn’t last for another minute, and despite his litany of open cuts. It was the fact that the God-Graced Tushar, while he could sense his energy, wasn’t coming to Remus.
He was bringing Remus to him.
“How does defeat taste?” Lumi grasped his attention, enveloped in a bundle of clouds that were disguising this ordeal just nicely.
Unless they had a Mark with amplified sight or something, no-one in the crowds would be able to see what was happening inside. Which meant the Frost Clan could kidnap him without a hitch.
“Like piss.” Remus scowled. He took another look at Lumi’s arsenal. Two dozen lances, at least a hundred arrows, a group of swords that were passing the time by duelling each other, and enough projectiles to cover the world over. If he did so much as move an inch, they would all come crashing towards him.
Suffice to say, moving wasn’t an option. Not if he liked his head on his neck, that was.
Encompassing them both, like millions of tiny spiders were weaving a net around them string by string, an orb was visibly forming around him and Lumi.
And Remus could do nothing to stop it. Slowly, with exaggerated slowness, like a great illness were ailing him, he took in the scene. A mix of chagrin, reined-in ire, and everything else explosive within him threatened to boil over.
Teaming up with Maris and angering the Frost Clan had all been to escape Nova. Who he had originally angered on a pathway to get away from Damosh. Who Remus had only upset in the first place because Edmar was crushing their sect with that very same King’s taxes.
All he could do was run, from bigger fish to bigger fish. But they weren’t progressively getting tougher, Remus’ enemies were just gradually increasing in number. He’d been picking fights he couldn’t handle from the start.
Now it looked like it was time to start paying the consequences.
The orb was fully formed, finally cracking around them. Remus had one second to register the water flooding towards him.
He was fully immersed within a second. With no way to fight back, no chance, he deactivated his Mark, let his Bank rest, and focused everything on recovery. He let the water carry his body to a slab of ice in the sea, a vibrant blue, and didn’t resist as the chains of the same material encircled his wrists.
He couldn’t breathe. He held his breath, settling his eyes on the image of Lumi’s distorted face through the liquid. The same repeating sound coursed through the ocean a few times, muffled and unintelligible.
“Remus . . .” he thought he made out, tensions rising. “Remus, I’m here.”
Her voice sprang into clarity, and so did his vision. He inhaled a smidge, expecting to be able to breathe, and almost drowned. Summoned fire freed the fluid from his nostrils in one scary instant.
“Oh Remus, you didn’t think I would let you breathe, did you?” Remus could have understood the motives of revenge, yet this woman was straight-up sadistic. “I’m just adding clarity to your final moments. Water control is difficult for us of the Frost Clan — I’m sure your master Maris had no issues — though I thought I should spare the effort to let you see this.”
Remus frowned, more than he already was from the threat of a slow, agonising death. Drowning could not have been a pleasant way to go. What exaggerated his glower, however, was that he identified exactly where they were — as well as the pieces of detritus floating around.
They were at the sunk glacier.
“Just where you took from me,” Lumi indicated her charred stub in place of an arm, “I’ll take from you.”
She leaned forwards, so as to be only an inch away from Remus. “Everything.”
Then she simply watched. Her arsenal still sat there, waiting for their master’s command, the slightest nudge of the mind, but she never gave it. Remus realised, after perhaps a minute of holding his breath, that she was going to let him die the natural way. To sleep with the fishes.
He looked around, movements Lumi probably wrote off as the last lunacies of a dying man. Tushar, or any one else for that matter, were nowhere to be seen.
So he bit the bullet. He activated his Mark, every drop of Infinity in his system poured into one last exertion. Every morsel of energy, both Mark-based and physical, all of that rampant Ambition accelerated by the reaper’s scythe that was hanging over him.
Remus saw it now. Like one last horrid apparition to haunt him. Reality’s sick joke of a send-off; a farewell card. But Remus would scrunch it up, shove the contents into his mouth, and chew on it like a lunatic. All while staring at the ancient eye of the cosmos, all whilst rebelling against every speck of logic that kept the universe whole.
Flames burst out of him. Sickening white in places, a multicoloured jumble in others. He let the temperature rise, his chains instantly sublimating — it was so quick he didn’t even see it dissolve into water first.
Fiercer fires broke out, engrossing the first in their shroud. They were stoked by the risk of death, by the absence of oxygen in his bloodstream. Yet in its place, Flaming Gold took on a rejuvenating quality, egging his every action on. Each stride of his energy seemed to Remus like a great flourish, a fabulous mockery of reason suffused by raw, intoxicating emotion.
He soon realised he was evaporating the water faster than new liquid could take its place. All around, with igneous stone hurtling through his vortex, a sphere where no liquid could enter sustained itself with his energy; his unmasked power.
Remus carried that eruption like a heavy load on his back. Up and up he rose, Lumi’s screams masked by the crackling of his nightmare world. Of his new technique, his screaming mind found the sense to name: Eruptive Gold.
They broke the surface, and never before had Remus inhaled quite so vigorously. His energy was tapped. The physical, divine, and mental. All he had to his name were a set of ruined clothes, and the tiniest drabs of power needed to control that of which he had already unleashed.
But he needed to get back.
He opened his spiritual senses, the kind of thing Koa always had the knack for but never him. Remus focused on Tushar’s power, sensed the movement within it, represented by energetic swirls of motion.
It was a far cry from Maris’ power of mobility, which allowed her to move anywhere she damn pleased. It would be enough though, to bring him back. If only he could manipulate it — which, seeing how he had no authority over the Frost god Jokull, was impossible.
Yet there was someone nearby who could. Someone who would probably do anything to avoid death at the hands of a clumsy Emblazed.
Remus focused on Lumi’s energy, distinctly less . . . potent than the lingering remnants of Tushar’s. He honed in on it, mentally-speaking, and swam through his sea of fires. He reached her, and his jaw dropped for all the wrong reasons.
Lumi was fighting a war, expending all her divine resources into restoring her armour. It was lost to Remus’ circus of colour just as quickly. In the many instances where her skin was exposed, he saw that it was burnt; leathery. Most would heal, though a few looked pretty severe.
That sight there, of his warring fires basking Lumi like her hatred for him put into physical form, made Remus sick to his stomach. He’d done enough damage, and yet forces bigger than himself forced him into this corner. This sick string of cruelties. Remus’ power could do this to an innocent bystander in the deranged play of his life, and yet Remus was helpless, utterly helpless, against any of his real foes. Even as physically harmed as he was, it put his guts into knots to see the real, unfiltered consequences of his actions. Sick. It made him sick.
Though not nearly as sick as what he was about to do next. “Take me back.”
She gurgled something. Likely a profanity. “Die!”
“Take me back,” Remus swallowed a stone in his throat, “or you die.”
“You’re-” Lumi cried out in agony. “You’re lying! You'll run out of energy eventually.”
“Maybe. Or maybe I have enough power left in the tank to fry all your armour at once. How many seconds do you think you could last in this hellstorm with no protection?”
“You’re bluffing!” Her words were confident, but Lumi’s voice certainly was not.
Remus kept silent for a moment.
“Am I?”
Lumi looked at him, eyes wide, teeth gritted. She reminded Remus of a scared puppy, one equipped with the foreknowledge that it was about to be put down. That probably wasn’t the best analogy, because Remus felt about as righteous in that moment as someone who kicked newborn dogs for a living.
She shot him with a stubborn look, all the more icy and intruding from the pain. Tempered by the torture. “Fine.” One syllable, and yet Lumi pronounced it like it was some unintelligible sound. “Fine!”
Remus was sceptical, and with each passing second, the radius of Eruptive Gold was minimising. He tried to slow it down as best he could, and simply hoped Lumi wouldn’t notice.
She didn’t seem to, thankfully, but Remus kept vigilant even as the oval formed around them. He let his fires fade away to make room for the construct, but always kept just enough present to stay threatening.
“No funny business, alright?”
Lumi didn’t say a word, which didn’t inspire confidence. Nevertheless, he could tell they were being transported somewhere. If it was the right place, was yet to be seen.
The oval shattered. The instant Remus stumbled out, and recognised the arena, he let the fire fade.
He fell to the floor, cool to the touch, and thought about how strange this all must appear for the crowds. Great fogs obscuring their fighters, only for both contestants to disappear off the face of the earth. Then they both reappeared, collapsing in simultaneous motions of purest exhaustion. All in all, it couldn’t have been a good match to watch. Nor had it been one to partake in.
Remus fumbled to a stand, collapsing three more times before managing it. It was like reconstructing his body from the ground up, using each muscle and joint in turn to support himself, like a carefully built house of cards.
The crowds were a vague buzz in his ear. Remus found himself, with the last whispers of thought in his mind, hoping that Lumi had fared okay through all the damage he’d inflicted.
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It was almost euphoric as he took a stand, but his bloody smile faltered. Something felt wrong. Off.
Remus looked down at his feet. His sandals had been destroyed during the fight, his feet a sight too ghastly to describe. What really troubled him, however, was what lay even lower below. Ice.
By the time Remus registered it, it was already too late. The frosty sheet melted, his ensnared chains somewhere amongst them.
The tides devoured him. He was lost in that frantic movement, every pitiful struggle inhibited by his absolute fatigue. Not even the irritation could replace what missing strength left vacant, the desperation at the thought he was going to lose the bout, lose his chance at entering the front lines, a torture of its own.
All he could remember later was that coolness. That icy, piercing coolness. The image of Lumi’s expression, perfectly matching both qualities of the agonising liquid, persisted even as the depths dragged him under anew.
Remus had failed. Yelps that were little more than sombre partings of the lips escaped him, as darkness washed all away.
----------------------------------------
Travelling to the Water Sect, to seek knowledge from the likes of Maris, was a grim prospect all on its own. That fact was only perpetuated by the route Koa had to take to get there.
Right through the everlasting darkness of Territory Two, the Insect and Arachnid Sect hive.
The place was troubling to describe. Thick cobwebs up above, and other organic matter weaved by bugs, blocked out the sun at nearly every turn. The ground was oddly moist, squelching with every step Koa took. Trees spread out everywhere, insectile string spreading off each, so Koa’s clothing was already bundled by it.
He tore the silk off in occasional fits of rage. This place did not sit right with him. Enough that even he, who prided himself on always being the most level-headed in the room, couldn’t help but cringe or squirm at every turn.
The place was best encapsulated by the word repulsive. The morass that never ceased at his feet likely disguised thousands of eggs deep within. He imagined clansmen watching him, two beady eyes staring out through the gloom. Koa shook his head, but the apparitions never left.
It reminded him, oddly, of the bottom of a well. A ginormous well punched into gods’ knew what. It would explain the moist mantle that was the floor, and all the critters ringing in his ears.
Bored, or a sort of boredom subdued by a wary mind, Koa approached the bugs in question. There was no surprise to see the tree they inhabited was nearly completely covered. Activating his Mark — one of the only few proper light sources down here — he tried his hand at controlling the creatures yet again.
It came easily this time, the precise movements of Wilderness energy becoming increasingly ingrained into his muscle memory. For several minutes, Koa immersed himself in the task, getting the bugs to do gradually more elaborate things. He was starting to enjoy the challenge in the labour, if anything could be truly enjoyable down here, when something in his peripherals caught his eye.
Koa took one full look at it, and promptly screamed.
He covered his mouth with both palms instantly, blinking three times at the image. Like the slow processing of a photograph; a device the Matter and Sight clans were still developing. The corpses of two clansmen laid wide-eyed, entangled by a thick mess of cobwebs. They were pale, mouths-agape in less shock-horror than startled surprise.
Someone, or something, had killed the pair of them too fast for either to react. And whatever it was, it had to be somewhere nearby. Koa shivered, approached the bodies, and slid down the eyes of both men. It was hardly a worthy service; not a true farewell, but it was the best he could do on the spot.
Koa stood there for a few seconds, settling his frantic heartbeat. It wasn’t seeing the dead that set him into a frenzy, it wasn’t anything like that. It was the thought that they had been prepared, he couldn’t help but think, like food. Ready to be feasted on. The only question was by what?
He walked on, hoping that the gods were feeling merciful enough to spare him from the sight of another rotting body. They weren’t the tourist attractions Koa was keen to stumble across on his journeys.
The woods marched on for an eternity, the place feeling to Koa like some enclosed pocket universe. A place where there was no morning sun; no glimpse of starlight to seal off the night. There were only all the critters of the world, calling out through the endless murk like some alien symphony.
He twisted through that endless realm like an intruder, a being from far, far away. The place changed little as he trekked on, the occasional inky shape twisting in the night. His eyes would always flicker to those dark impossibilities, cloudy for a split second before disappearing completely. It made him doubt his own mind.
When all alone, with everything invisible in night’s forever forest, that wasn’t a very nice thing to be confronted with. All he had was his mind; he couldn’t let that last frontier fall.
Koa abruptly halted. Footsteps, interwoven with the occasional word. Two people, he suspected; alive this time. He slipped behind a tree, demanded every speck of his body to become silent, and listened in.
“-the dead.” One voice crept into clarity. “Bring em’ back.”
The other grunted in response. Koa, curiosity winning over wise fear, peered over to get a closer look. He swallowed back a shriek.
Arachnid clansmen had a habit of appearing as vile as possible. Koa was no arachnophobe, but these people pulled something primal from the depths of his being. Their eight tendrils dangled unnaturally alongside their mortal arms, one of the duo afflicted with a score of bulbous eyes along their forehead and upper cheeks.
Fangs jutted out of their mouths when they did so much as mutter a word. Which wasn’t often, seeing how fixated they were on their task. Whatever it was. From watching alone, it didn’t seem much more than a bunch of marching. An activity this duo obviously held humongous passion for.
They were almost out of sight when they abruptly stopped. One of them slapped themselves across the face, which must have been agonising with that many eyes. “Ohh no . . .”
“What?” The other asked, voice a far cry from the deep baritone of the other. “Don’t tell me-”
They nodded. “There’s not enough to . . .” He paused, as if forcing down vomit. “To feed.”
The other one walked away for a second, hanging their head. Then suddenly, with all the explosive abruptness of an atomic bomb, they stomped their foot. “Damn it! We’ll have to leave another batch ready for the others.”
“What if no-one comes through?”
“Someone will — they must do.” He grasped the bridge of his nose between two fingers, and Koa was starting to wonder what all those other, hairier arms were for.
The two started performing the strangest dance ever performed this side of the Mortal Realms. Their tendrils acted in tandem, and Koa found himself transfixed by the rushing movements. They were crafting away at spindly strings, the name variety Koa had seen covering this entire place.
Soon, within a few seconds of the intricate flourish, the two immersed themselves into a sort of cocoon. Inside, they vanished. Blending in like a chameleon did to their surroundings. Koa could still see the silk of course, but that was like seeing grass in the middle of summer.
That sight gave the darker corners of his mind all sorts of fuel to play with. What if any cobwebs we pass are concealing people just as these were, all waiting to snatch us up and-
The dead group Koa had stumbled upon flashed in his mind.
-feed.
Koa didn’t dare move for a short while. Doing so felt to him at that moment like the equivalent of throwing his life away. Like addressing a death wish to the grim reaper himself in neat handwriting.
Only when he could muster up enough confidence did he turn aside, striding towards a completely different direction. All he cared about now was leaving this territory. Hell, he’d willingly walk through the Shifting to get to the Water Sect if it meant avoiding this freakish place. This was all too much for merely training.
He tripped against the roots of trees, and choked down a cry everytime he waltzed into a spiderweb. On and on he marched, waiting to get out, hoping to get out any second now.
This was the route he’d entered from, right? He was definitely going the right way, he was sure at one moment, so why was he so doubtful the next? He could only think in questions. Questions pouring into other questions with no heed for rhyme or reason.
Wherever he was going, it must have been a direction away from these cannibal clansmen. There was no possibility that even if he wanted to, that Koa could sleep here. If that meant he had to walk through Territory Two for days straight, with nothing but sips from his waterskin to keep him going, then so be it.
Koa almost thought he would make it, a few hours later, eyelids beginning to droop, when he sensed it. A shift in the energy of the surrounding region that would alert even the maggots in their burrows.
Koa staggered backwards, back hitting a protruding boulder. He would have screamed at the strings that coated the thing, if he didn’t have bigger fish to fry. Fish that were far too big for his already over-cumbersome plate.
A beacon of purple sent the wind whirling for miles, and Koa felt the locks on his brow flicker up. He didn’t need to be a master of energy reading, as proficient as he was, to sense the Chaos emanating off it.
Koa had risked walking through Hybrid. His line of thinking at the time was that while Juniper wasn’t very happy with him at the moment, the God-Graced was a reasonable woman. She’d let him stroll off wherever he wished, as long as he wasn't fraternising with the enemy, or getting up to something else equally mischievous. Whether she would count seeking guidance from Maris as the former was yet to be seen. But what slapped Koa in the face was a deadly realisation: that he had been looking at things from the completely wrong angle.
It shouldn’t have been his own God-Graced he was worrying about. It should have been Nova. An Unbounded of equal power who had a much bigger bone to pick with him.
Koa looked from left to right, his heart thumping; any attempts to settle his breathing like trying to freeze the sea over. When that failed, he swivelled round one hundred and eighty degrees in a mad panic.
At all times, he kept the deepest focus he could conjure on the movement of Nova’s energy. Koa’s Mark was deactivated, and had been so for hours on end. To sense any lingering remnants of his energy output would be a fearsome challenge, though if there was anyone up to it . . .
Koa knew he had to act quickly. He just hadn't the slightest idea what it was he should be doing.
Scrambling around like a maniac, Koa could think of nothing more foul than risking death at the hands of the very same man who had orchestrated both his cousin, and close friend’s demise. He began looking at random objects in his vicinity. The last desperate moves of a man soon to die, but one thing caught Koa’s attention.
The cobwebs.
No. His mind warned. That’s stupid. Dead stupid.
He could hear Nova at this point. Broad advancing sweeps. Barely, but it forced Koa’s body into overdrive: the very limits of fight or flight mode.
It might be dead stupid, he conceded, but I’ll be dead myself if I laze around here another second!
Koa dived for the webbing, sinking into the insectile silk like it was an old, rickety bed. Here came the dangerous part. There were different levels to activating your Mark, different degrees of power. He tapped into it ever so slightly, like opening a door by a crack. Chantal’s power seeped through him, but so barely it was hardly tangible. He focused on the tiny spiders all around, forcing down the initial disgust he held for the hundreds of them.
Then, when everything seemed on the cusp of falling apart, he commanded them. With the barebones strength emanating from his Mark, Koa couldn’t be sure if or when this would work. Nova would no doubt be able to recognise the tiny strands of energy he was putting out into the world, he just hoped it wouldn’t be anytime soon.
The spiders, after a terrifying pause, began to climb over the silk encasing him. His skin crawled just looking at them, knowing that hundreds of the tiny arachnids were close enough to graze his skin. Thankfully, Nova’s imminent appearance to crush his skull was more than enough motivation to kickstart him into grim focus. The webs were mended before his eyes, strands connected; severed ends weaved together.
The notion to imbue Infinity was risky, but unlike a Mark’s energy, all Infinity was the same. As long as he didn’t use too much, it wouldn’t be a large enough fluctuation in the atmosphere for Nova to think twice about it. Fortunately, what Koa was attempting right here fit perfectly into his Bank’s purpose. Crafting a web was an involved, intricate process, and pouring his Infinity though the Delicate Touch Mould was like passing water through guided pipes.
Right when Nova arrived, his work was complete. The webs didn’t look any different to Koa, except for the fact they were more full.
Nova was in his human form, thankfully. Otherwise Koa might have actually retched instead of verging on it. The leonine man was tall, muscles bulging through the tight-fitted shirt of black he wore. His arms were covered in bandages, the kind used in training, though Koa could easily imagine them goldened by blood — just not the man’s own.
His signature manbun was forgone in favour of letting his blond locks down. They drooped over his back, reaching his hips before each hair perfectly ended there. Koa observed all this in one split second, before the man looked exactly where he was.
For but a second. The Unbounded’s gaze drifted, and he slowly circled round, taking in the scene. Right when hope flared in Koa, the Chaos Unbounded spoke.
“Koa.” He called, voice melodious “Koaaaaa.”
The Unbounded smiled. Like a cold-blooded killer eying up their next victim. “I sensed Wilderness energy emanating here. I managed to watch your little escapades with the Reptilian Sect through Perpetual Sight, and yet you seemed to be having so much fun talking with frogs that I didn’t want to disturb you.”
Koa shut his eyes closed, tight. How many opportunities had he given Nova to kill him? All whilst being none the wiser.
“I kept following your trail, but as you must understand, I’ve been forced to undergo a stretch of reconstruction, as of late. I lost sight of you. A spot of ignorance on my part that I must admit.”
He continued strolling around, looking at different trees, and poking his head through various bushes.
“When I sensed your Mark blasting off down here, I assume for training or the like, I almost got giddy with excitement. Finally, I could get a little revenge. I sense no protection from Maris on you, wherever you may be. You’re the one pawn in all of this that isn’t currently off-limits. So you should understand my frustration at the prospect of losing you.”
Nova flared into Unbounded form. Eerily like Violet’s fiend counterpart, in a hulking, hunched-back freak of grey-white. It was like Nova couldn’t decide if he wanted to become one of those paladin-esque Unbounded, or the variety that became true, city-stomping monsters.
“I won’t be making that same mistake again.”