There was a squelching sound like the world’s biggest grape being squashed, and then Violet ran.
Belindo let out a guttural screech, raspy and overflowing with hatred. All intention to converse in the common tongue was abandoned, as Violet fled to make her escape.
Her bull Unbounded was surprisingly fast when pressured. Violet supposed there was no greater motivator than Belindo’s fiery snout at your heels, but nevertheless, they were cutting it close.
The reptilian mass himself was too close for comfort. He made to eat them both whole, jaw clamping open and closed like the snapping of mechanical equipment going bust. A volley of Supreme arrows flew towards Belindo’s other eye, but the giant had learnt his lesson.
A taloned limb swept forward, taller than the highest oaks rising out of a forest, and saved Belindo’s other eye. Violet risked one last glance at the gory smudge that was his damaged side, as impaling arrows made Belindo scream.
His foreleg was bleeding heavily. Far more damage than Violet could have hoped her created arrows capable of. The Steel wasn’t of a calibre to permanently maim Belindo, unfortunately, but it would take time to heal.
As Eshika appeared like a lightning bolt right before Belindo, the Right-bearer finally snapped. He would not continue to fight like this. Only on his terms.
His wings became flapping whips as the air slackened, like a rope put under too much pressure. Violet only had enough sense to clutch onto her flying Unbounded, before the tempest struck. One second there was no air pressure at all, and the next, it felt like her skin was being flayed off.
Her Unbounded’s pitiful wings failed to combat the summoned storm, all the other elements previously under Belindo’s control abandoned. All of his focus, his afflicted rage, was focused on hurling them away, on empowering the breeze to become the ultimate killing device.
They were falling, falling. The sky above was a mess of destroyed dirt, flickered away into crumbling sections. Violet was dazzled by dying fires being exhausted, rain smacking against her cheeks from the falling pillars of water, and every aspect of Belindo’s rampage being undone.
One rogue gust swept her Unbounded away from her, and then Violet really did know she was screwed. She could only look down now. The ground, a flat canvas a light yellow, was rushing closer. Ever closer, until the prospect of using her only means of escape occurred to her: Violet’s Mark.
But that would really mean the end of her grand scheme against Nova. Yet at the same time, she couldn’t see any other way out of this. It was either being damned to her death here, or escaping. Perhaps to receive another end at the hands of someone else later, maybe even Nova, but she could afford to get past this stumble.
The weight of the cost was something that made her have second thoughts in the face of certain death. But Violet wasn’t a complete idiot. There would be another way to defeat her father. Even if she had to fall back on her Mark now, she could-
Eshika grasped her. A flying Eshika, rushing through the air with the grace of an arrow. After a moment of bewilderment, with much blinking and head shaking, Violet laughed. Laughed until her guts threatened to spill out of her mouth and Belindo grew more and more distant.
“Thank you.” Violet managed to form words when she slowed down. There was a rush of energy that made the hairs on the back of her nape shoot up. “Are reinforcements finally coming?”
“Seem to be.” Something made Eshika’s shaky smile fade. Violet had no clue what, couldn’t pinpoint it for the life of her.
Then she looked around at exactly the type of reinforcements she was referring to.
Down on the ground, like the ashes of dead candles sparking back to grim life, dark entities blossomed.
Shadows.
----------------------------------------
Remus and Tanguy were sprinting for their lives when the world turned black and white.
Things hadn’t gone to plan. The squads had become separated, a few had even turned to infighting, and Remus couldn’t see the bright side of things, no matter how hard he tried. The ravine was all but abandoned; reduced to a grave no-one had bothered to shovel over.
Tanguy, Aziel, and Remus were all working together to clear out the area while Hadrian and Veida tried to gather the rest of their squad. Remus had no idea how successful they were, and for the time being, set himself to grilling Unbounded.
“Fifty-five.” He shouted out, after obliterating the face of one insectile fiend.
Tanguy seared a group of three. “Forty four!”
Remus could hear Aziel’s smile. “Guys, I really don’t think making a point system out of-” an eruption of blue blinded them all. “Sixty!”
Laughter consumed them all; the shallow kind. Remus wanted to keep a positive attitude above all else, but memories of their men falling into hysteria at the mention of the Supreme Fiend wouldn’t leave his head. Now they were stranded here, in the middle of nowhere, walking aimlessly while a Right-bearer may or may not decide to show their face.
He shot down a dozen grey masses in quick succession, venting his worry about another concern. Violet had sprinted off to confront Nova, a Right-bearer and God-Graced equivalent, and he had let her. Okay, maybe he couldn’t possibly have talked her out of it — if Remus had to name any bad qualities of Violet, her stubbornness came to mind — but letting her go alone? With no help? What had he been thinking?
Remus wanted to screech out. To drop to the ground and punch his fists raw against the rock until everything somehow became okay. If anymore of their squadron died, or gods forbid Violet . . . there was a very high chance he wouldn’t be able to handle it.
“Hey, guys?” Aziel came to a stop. “Do you notice that?”
“Notice what?” Tanguy frowned. Then, at once, he and Remus opened their internal senses. Then the words stopped.
When the shadows appeared across the landscape, it took Remus about one second to put two and two together.
Had he been any faster, he would have ran. Should have.
The nearest shadow grasped his shoulder. It wasn’t terribly strong, and Remus could have very easily shook him off, but he didn’t dare risk it. For this was the Old One — or at least a copy of him. Either way, with tensions as high as they were, Remus wasn’t about to escalate things. Not without first attempting to talk things out.
“Your liege.” Remus’ lips went dry. Was that the right thing to say? “What a welcomed surprise to see you here.”
Remus wasn’t falling anyone. Neither Aziel nor Tanguy would have the proper context to appreciate the gravity of the moment, but nevertheless, he saw them grimacing in the corner of his eye. When no one said a word, Remus had a very painful pill to swallow: they were leaving this for him to handle. No, that was far too crude an assessment. There was nothing they could do.
“Remus.” The shadow spoke, awfully like the Projection sent to the Ambition Clan so long ago. “Out of interest, and nothing more, answer me this: why shouldn’t I slit your throat right now?”
Remus gulped, his Adam's apple bulging as if he were highlighting a target for the apparition. How could he respond? The Old One had always been stubborn. You didn’t convince him; you posed an argument for him to debunk.
With his very life on the line, Remus knew he had to keep things simple. “We’re on the same side, fighting for the same cause. You want to kill as many Unbounded as possible too. To exterminate the Right-bearers.” It wasn’t a question. The only way Remus was going to get through to the Old One was through logic. Intelligent reasoning based solely on the facts.
“There are many fighters with the same ambitions. What separates them from you?”
Remus was sweating bullets. All around, the Old One’s shadow constructs lingered everywhere. How far was their range? Miles? How many miles? A number that Remus didn't need the precise details of to know how impressive the stunt was.
The Old One could easily challenge his deity for Shadow godhood. To begin to embody his subject area so much, that even the god who had originally gifted him his Mark would have to kneel. But the Old One wouldn’t. He was too dedicated to his god to duel him to the death.
So, for now, he verged on godhood, and no more. The height of power the Mortal Realms could offer, and the upper-echelon of God-Graced, or the sister Rank of Godling. Damosh and Juniper were mid-tier examples of their respective Ranks in comparison. And they were some of the strongest beings on the planet.
What word had the man inscribed onto his soul at God-Graced? It must have been something very complementary to Shadow, for Remus saw no techniques the man used unrelated to his encroaching darkness.
Darkness. Remus recalled reading something about that not long ago, whenever he went on long streaks of research to supplement his training.
“Your soul.” Remus ignored the question. “Darkness, isn’t it? That’s what you inscribed.”
The Old One raised his head, in a movement too subtle to be called a nod, but was essentially the same thing.
“I heard you can see into people, if they’re willing, or are too weak to resist. That you can see into the darkness within. Well,” Remus raised his hands, “why not see me for yourself? In full. You decide if I’m worthy of living.”
Now his friends had to speak up. “Remus,” Aziel interjected, “no-one has to die.”
“Exactly. And what better way is there to prove it?”
Tanguy looked at him gingerly, but said nought.
He turned his focus back on the apparition. “Read me. I’m an open book.”
The Old One considered him. Then, a movement drowning with conviction, he tapped Remus’ forehead. He only used two fingers, similar to the movement Donovan had used to conceal them, way back.
That was an annoying ability of the Shadow Clan. Remus hadn’t faced any assassins in Passings, but he still had a nervous habit of scanning the floor for tiny, dark, circular shadows — the only telltale sign that a disguised Shadow hitman was in range.
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But unlike when Donavon had used the ability, Remus didn’t feel himself become invisible. It was the polar opposite. Like he was more physical, more at one with the world around him. Remus blinked, the subtle chill of a crisp autumn morning rushing gooseflesh across his arm.
He turned to greet his shadow. It was eerie, and anyone sane would have probably turned tail and ran at the sight. But much to the contrary, Remus felt himself drawn to the inky mass. It was like looking towards a mirror, but instead of at it, to settle on stationary glass, his eyes seemed to go through. Seeing beyond.
Remus tore his eyes away, an embarrassing sound escaping his throat. Thinking of your past, recalling it, that was one thing. But memories were like photographs. They faded with time, acquired a little damage here and there, wilting away sometimes as quickly as the smallest flower. You could remember them as much as you wanted, and many would no doubt preserve. But never could you be sure that they were perfect. To say with absolute conviction that they were flawless, one-to-one copies of the real event.
Memories, however, if not persisting wholly in the mind, left their mark on people. You were moulded by them, changed even if in the most insignificant ways. Where they rotted to dust in the forgetful chasms of the mind, your memories etched the soul. Forever.
That was what Remus saw now. One glance, and a thousand old scars were burst back open. Remus was raw, his darkest secrets, inhibitions, deepest desires all laid out on the table for all to see.
He saw himself as a seven year old. Obnoxious, young, and so ignorant, it made him sick. Oh, you sweet summer child. He thought, with a painful ache in his heart. Remus saw himself in his early teens, watching a thousand tiny moments string past one another, as over a decade of bottled-up hatred bubbled up, in a deadly concoction — threatening to explode. But for so many painful days, nothing changed; his eruption of emotions never quite hitting that breaking point.
He tried to close his eyes, to block out the flood of memories. His forced trip down memory lane. But one glance was all it took.
Remus saw himself at Edmar's feet. The worst state he could imagine being in, other than dead. The images continued to fly by, one after the other, an endless stream that only got faster.
It was like he was living the past over, only in a thousandth of the time.
Days bled into a full Duration as he studied in his family’s library. A dark night spent laughing along with Tal to fight off the terror. Falling from the cliff as a newly advanced Engorged, just happy to be alive. Travelling with Violet.
The Trials of the Earnest. Losing his finger.
The jumps between memories were becoming faster; more dramatic. Riding on a momentum that, not under any circumstances, would relent. No matter what Remus had to say about it.
Reaching Enkindled, melting the Frost Clan’s glacier. Training like a madman with Enrique.
Remus felt like he was in a court of law, with the Old One serving as judge, jury, and executioner. What he would say about opposing the Frost Clan like that, for his own gain, he didn’t know.
Reclaiming the Ambition Clan as an Emblazed. Assisting Maris with consolidating the throne. Fighting for his very life in the arena to earn a spot in the front lines.
Everything became too much. Remus couldn’t breathe, couldn’t make a sound, when everything paused. The memory of battling Lumi was still around him, like an ice sculpture. As still as the blood in the heart of a dead man.
What was that? He heard the Old One ask, and if Remus wasn’t mistaken, actual intrigue bled into his voice.
“What was what?” Remus replied. Whether his real lips croaked those words, he couldn’t be sure. It was hard to tell, so lost in this dreamscape.
Time began to unwind around Remus. He was floating at the central axis of a broken clock, time spilling around him this way and that in a turbulent sea. He became a spectator to his own life, and it was the worst play he could think of.
It was night. Remus looked up from wet ground beneath his feet to a manor he recognised instantly. Suddenly he knew where he was; knew what the Old One was so interested in.
The attack on the Chaos Clan base. Like he was being hooked forward, the events of that night whooshed past him.
Don’t show me. He pleaded, but only to his mind. I can’t see it again; I mustn't.
His brief fight with Milap outside the manor. Violet rushing through the twisting mansion with an army of Unbounded coming for her neck. Meeting with Akuji.
This one part played in real time, so the Old One appeared to be considering it wholly. Their discussion was liquid gold to someone like the Old One, someone who had previously believed Violet to be lying.
Yet Remus could pay that no attention. He looked to Donovan, standing stoically in the corner as the others discussed all, and then to Elmore. Ever amiable Elmore. Even after losing his own finger to the man, he couldn’t hate him. It would be easier if he could.
“Don’t make me watch them die again. Don’t make me.”
The moment bounced to another, the Old One musing over all that had been revealed. Akuji’s death heralded the arrival of Nova, and Remus felt the overwhelming urge to squint his eyes shut, to squeeze his fists tight, and close out the world. But by this point, he was anchorless. No mortal flesh coated his soul. He was a detached entity, totally and utterly immersed in the revealing power of one of the strongest God-Graced Descent had to offer.
But not only that. Remus was staring into the pits of his soul, and it winked back.
Donovan dying in the same vein as Akuji. Popping skulls and bursted heads spinning in Remus’s mind, as Elmore being torn apart too joined the dance of misery.
Time diluted, forwarding and reversing as if the Old One was intent on extending Remus’ torture. The memories waltzed around in intricate dances taking place somewhere in-between time.
It was all too much. Remus was intent on simply ceasing to think; to erect a mental dam on the flood harassing his mind. But then one more instance came into perfect clarity. Like a phoenix rising from the ashes of the past, the Old One brought back to life one crucial instance. Lowering the limelight of this torturous ball of mistakes onto Milap.
More accurately, Remus and Violet working hand in hand to kill the Right-bearer.
The vacant ballroom of his mind came to a close, and like glass shattering all around him, reality returned.
As if that out-of-body experience wasn’t nauseating enough, reality in turn offered its own bout of sensory overload. Remus was lying on the ground, droplets of water he recognised as rain slapping his fevered cheeks.
He was breathing so intensely. Like some rogue spirit had possessed his vacant body, taking it for a sprint. Remus pulled himself upright, staring at the Old One with as much spite as he could muster. In the corner of his peripheral, he saw that his shadow had vanished.
“Admittedly,” the Old One began, with apparent hesitance, “that does change things.”
Tanguy and Aziel moved to assist him up, but Remus was too stubborn, and perhaps a bit too self-absorbed in that moment to care. He pushed himself up, took one last breath, before exploding.
“Was that really necessary?”
“Killing Milap . . . someone like you.” The Old One looked up at the grey sky above, as if there was something very wrong with whatever being controlled this universe. “Had I not seen it myself-”
“You’re not-!” Remus cut himself off, that last saving grace of sense potentially the difference between life and death. Impudence would not be accepted. “Tell me: what was the need to replay the events of that night so many times before me?”
“You specifically requested me to delve into your soul, did you not?”
“Yes,” Remus conceded, “but-”
“But what? You never gave any guidelines on what I could and could not access.”
Remus wanted to say more, but the need to keep blood flowing to his heart won over any other rash emotion. “So what now?”
The Old One stood there, considering him for a moment. Anger and pain bled into a mess of fear, and it hit Remus all at once that this could be it: he could die. No-one dead or alive on this earth could say anything about it. Tanguy and Aziel were too loyal for their own good — they would come to his aid if the sect leader pulled any moves, but what could a ragtag trio of army troops hope to do, against a man that was a global superpower in himself?
They would get themselves killed trying to usher his certain corpse out of here. Reality was finally going to show reason. Remus’ bleeding luck was going to drizzle out, and it was a miracle he had held out so long in the first place. Any second from now, the Old One was going to snap into a decision and splatter Remus’ lifeforce-
“Go.” The Old One swivelled round.
Remus’s entire body jolted in one colossal flinch. Had he not been so surprised by the Old One’s words, he would have flustered.
“You and your companion perplex me still, and it brings me great grief to know an imp like you actually contributed to society. But I can see your worth.” The Old One’s neck snapped behind his shoulder, or at least this apparition of him did. “Do not disappoint me.”
Like that, the shadow fizzled out. Likely to reappear at some other locale where he could grumble about Remus in peace.
The dozens of other apparitions all sauntered around the place, but they kept their distance.
A wide-eyed Remus looked from Tanguy to Aziel. For a second that felt longer than any hour in his short life, only the sound of rainfall flooded the atmosphere.
“What now?” Tanguy eventually asked.
Remus blinked a few times, as if still waking up from a daze. “We move. Come on boys, we can’t be of much help sauntering around here.”
“Wait.” Aziel held out a warding arm. “Do you two see that, the direction all those shadows are headed?”
Remus gazed over to the monochrome army, all marching in their own semi-physical way with an undeniable cohesion. They definitely had a set destination in mind. In fact, many of them were beginning to pour out in a straight-up sprint.
But to where? Remus followed the direction of their movement, and for the third time in the last ten minutes, felt overwhelmed in every sense of the word. The presence of the Old One hid their scent, like a pleasant layer of fondant over a fermented cake. But now that Remus had the opportunity to inspect a little more closely, that insidious force assaulted his senses.
The Supreme Fiend.
If he looked long and hard, using all of his extended vision refined over multiple courses of advancement, he could see it. A solitary soldier in a land of white ruin; a shattered landscape of his own making. Supreme Rot formed an ashy line in the distance, several locales in-between ravaged with equal severity.
Remus inhaled hard. “The Old One’s here to put an end to him.”
“That’s more relief than I can ask for.” Aziel exhaled deeply. “Pity we can’t dispose of him ourselves, but I suppose we should leave it to the professionals.”
Tanguy looked like he had just seen a ghost. Which, in a way, he just had, in Remus’ shadow. “If the Old One wasn’t here, how long do you suppose we’d have survived, before he came shambling?”
“I think I’ve imagined my own demise enough for one day. Let’s just be grateful. Quickly now, we have to locate the other squad members before any harm can be done to them.”
There was the very real possibility several of them were already dead, but Remus didn’t quite feel like addressing that. Neither did the others, based on their stiff expressions.
Aziel crouched, cupping hands over his eyes like they formed fleshy binoculars. “I can see it all.”
That caught Remus’ attention, hook, line and sinker. Fighting so often at Aziel’s side, he sometimes forgot the man was a whole tier above him. While Tanguy and Remus could vaguely glimpse the Supreme Being, Aziel was gifted with a much clearer view.
Remus forewent their more urgent concerns in the name of curiosity. “What do you see?”
“The line of the Shadow soldiers are starting to reach him. There’s a lot of them actually. Looks like the Old One is spreading himself thin throughout the whole battlefield.”
“Does he have enough strength left to take the Right-bearer down?” Tanguy enquired.
“Yeah,” Aziel said, as if it was funny. “There are hundreds of them there. Seems to be centralising his power around here.”
Aziel whooped. “We’re winning. The shadows keep falling to the Rot, but more and more just keep coming.”
Despite their discrepancies, Remus had to admit, that was an awfully smart plan from the Old One. Circumventing the Fiend’s main advantage, and successfully outnumbering him in tandem.
Maybe this would be a swift end after all. The being who had infected Andreas with Rot deserved little more.
“Alright. Another Right-bearer down. We should get a move on.”
“Hold on.” Aziel spluttered.
Remus didn’t like the tone of those words.
Tanguy didn’t either. “What do you see?”
“I see . . .” Aziel gulped. “The Fiend is doing . . . something.”
“How insightful.” Remus sighed. “Look, are we going to dilly-dally, or what?”
“No, you don’t understand. I don’t know what’s happening — I couldn’t tell you for the life of me. But it's not good. We should . . . we should run.”
Remus barely had time to process those words when the Supreme Being screamed.
Like a sandstorm drifting in through a sudden wind, a wave of Infinity washed over them all. It hit Remus like a brick wall, and it was all he could do as the onslaught never did cease.
Perhaps the Old One wasn’t as effective as he had first thought.