by Aaron Oster
Roy could feel the twister growing closer, the pounding of the wind growing more and more extreme. Even with his Full-body technique, he was barely able to keep ahead of it, dodging and weaving between the trees and hoping against all hope that the city was close by. More than that, he hoped it would still be standing in the wake of the monster’s attack.
He very much doubted the creature had stuck around once this storm had begun, but he was unsure about the level of damage it had caused before the storm had come blowing in.
After a couple more minutes of running, Roy began to feel a very distinct drag on his back as the powerful winds of the tornado tried to suck him in. Had he been any weaker, Roy suspected he wouldn’t have stood much of a chance. As it was, it slowed him enough that the tornado began to close in at an alarming speed.
One glance over his shoulder was enough to tell him that he had perhaps a couple of minutes before it caught up. If that twister caught him, then he and Aika would be finished. Perfect-Body or not, a force of nature of this magnitude would rip through him only slightly slower than it would Aika.
Then, the wall loomed right before him, towering some fifty feet high. Roy didn’t even have a chance to think, leaping into the air and stepping down hard. His foot blurred, and the loud boom of displaced air was all but drowned out as Roy threw himself skyward. His foot blurred down again as he flew upward, bringing him higher and higher.
There was a brief moment when he hung over the top of the wall, the mass of whirling wind and destruction right at his back. Then, he kicked forward with both legs, launching himself over the wall and into the city proper. Roy glanced back nervously, watching the tornado slam into the wall. Shockingly, the wall didn’t so much as budge as light flared all across the stone, hidden scripts activating as the tornado made contact.
Within seconds, the power had been sucked from the twister, pulled into the stone itself. Roy barely had time to blink in surprise before the tornado vanished completely, leaving the remains of trees, rocks, and loose earth to fall to the ground below. In the distance, Roy could see more tornadoes coming down, smashing into the forest and ripping up massive swathes of trees.
He was still staring back when Geon screamed in his mind, right before a lance of forged white light came flashing up at him, slamming into the shield cloaking his body and tossing him sideways.
Roy spun in the air, disoriented for a moment, before kicking up, launching himself higher. He took in the landscape below instantly, made of wrecked homes and stone buildings laying in rubble. Small figures in the distance were running to put out fires. People lay in the streets, dead and dying, and the party of Martial Artists below him was all preparing techniques to blast him out of the sky.
They appeared ragged and disheveled, not at all like the Martial Artists he’d grown up with. Their robes were torn and muddied, covered in patches and signs of constant repair. That alone was enough to tell him that this wasn’t exactly a rich city.
Additionally, he noted the colors of the Belts around their waists. They were all in the low Greens, not a single one of them above 1st Dan.
The series of blasts shot up, slamming into him, and this time, Roy didn’t bother dodging, taking the full force of all of them without so much as flinching. The Martial Artists below had looks of shock on their faces when their attacks simply skittered off the armor cloaking his body.
He was blasted back up into the air — he’d started to come down — but that was only due to the fact that there was no opposing force or something with which to brace himself.
Roy kicked upward, blasting himself back to the ground, and before any of the others could react, he was among them.
“Would one of you be so kind as to take me to someone in charge?” Roy asked, trying to be polite.
The Martial Artists screamed, leaping back from him and powering up techniques once more.
“I really wish you wouldn’t do that,” Roy said, his hand flashing out and snagging the hand of the man whose technique was forming the fastest.
With a flex of his fingers, Roy crushed the technique with his own, squeezing the man’s fist with just enough force to cause immense pain but not outright shattering the hand.
“You can’t threaten us, invader!” another man shouted, a look of indignation plastered across his face.
That same look of indignation remained when he suddenly slumped forward, eyes rolling up as Aika struck the back of his head. The others whirled, clearly shocked to see another attacker in their midst, though any decent fighter should have known when he’d released her while they’d still been up in the air.
“You should listen to him,” Aika said, then looked up worriedly as Qi began to swirl together, forming the start of a funnel cloud. “We should probably all get inside. I don’t much like the idea of being ripped apart by this storm.”
“Silence, invader,” yelled another Martial Artist. “We are perfectly safe from the storm. Our flawless walls protect us all!”
“You mean the walls with the gigantic breach in them?” Roy asked, pointing across the wreckage of some nearby buildings to where a massive hole lay in their walls.
He didn’t know a whole lot about scripts, but what little he did know told him that a breach like that would damage the integrity of anything designed to keep the city safe from tornadoes that formed straight above.
If storms like this were common, then it only stood to reason that the city had a way of protecting itself. That had proven true when one of the twisters had vanished as soon as it made contact with the wall. He had a feeling that all those scripts had a way of shielding the inside of the city as well, likely by projecting a dome over the entire thing to dissipate the destructive winds.
However, with the wall breached on one side, he didn’t think the city would be receiving that protection anymore. At least, not until they repaired the walls. The citizens all seemed to realize that at the exact same time, as they suddenly disengaged and began running, all screaming a variation of the same thing.
“Get to the underground shelters! The walls are down!”
Aika walked up to Roy’s side, watching as the people began dragging the injured to small metal doors set in slanted frames at the sides of many houses.
“Which do you think belongs to the clan head?” Aika asked.
“Look for the biggest house,” Roy suggested.
The wind began to pick up overhead and the two of them looked up, Roy noting how dense the building Qi was getting. Never in his life had he seen such an intense storm, especially not one made of Qi. He hadn’t even known it was possible for it to form naturally like this and was almost jealous to not be a Wind, Weakness, or Darkness Artist. Cultivating in a storm like this would save him weeks of work at this stage, as it took a lot of refined Qi to forge into Chakra.
If he could skip the entire step of weaving Qi from Essence, it would be amazing.
Roy was snapped from his daydreaming when Aika grabbed his arm, dragging him deeper into the city. Roy shook himself, releasing his hold on his Full-body technique and following her. Having to keep that technique going for as long as he had had placed tremendous strain on both his body and mind, and Roy found himself to be suddenly exhausted.
Large techniques like that were best used in bursts, not for prolonged periods. It was why most Martial Artists only kept techniques like that up for about half a minute at a time. Well, that and the fact that most didn’t have the capacity to keep them going for any longer without putting themselves at a serious disadvantage.
“Does that look like the kind of place they might be?” Aika yelled, her voice barely audible above the roar of the wind.
Roy squinted his eyes through the dirt and dust being whipped up by the storm. He could see a sprawling stone structure, perhaps three times the size of the others. There might have been a gate in front of it, but that was all he could really see right now.
“Let’s hope so,” he yelled back.
The how
l of the wind began to rise in volume and pitch, keening unnaturally as they sped up, making for the gates. A flash of silver lightning blasted down from above, and Roy hurled himself to the side, bearing Aika to the ground.
The ground to their right was scorched before they even hit the floor, and Roy realized that it would have missed regardless. Because had it not, there was no way he’d have been able to move quickly enough to save either of them.
“Thanks,” Aika said, regardless, as he helped her to her feet.
They started running again, noting the sky growing darker and darker as the Qi types began to blend and mix. Roy knew they were nearly out of time. Now that they were close enough, he could see the fence. Together, he and Aika vaulted over it, almost immediately spotting the low doors against the side of the manor.
The wind stopped just as they reached the doors, Aika wrenching one open and Roy dashing in ahead of her. Just then, the pillar of wind struck the ground, demolishing dozens of buildings in an instant. Metal and stone were ripped from their moorings, dragged up into the whirling funnel of death and destruction.
That was the last he and Aika saw of the outside world before they dragged the doors shut, closing themselves off from the outside world.
Oddly enough, the noise level dropped off almost right away, leaving the two of them blinking down the descending staircase to the closed metal door at the bottom. Seeing as the overabundance of Wind, Darkness, and Weakness Essence didn’t reach underground, it was much easier to sense all those gathered below.
At least a hundred people, if not more, were down here, which meant that they might finally get the answers they were after. Well, unless these people would be as uncooperative as those aboveground. For some reason, Roy thought that these people would be a lot more rational.
18
The door blocking off the underground bunker was all but torn off its hinges as Roy entered, Aika trailing just a half-step behind him. He took an instant to take in the room — clean, opulent, with low tables, plush cushions, and an overabundance of food. Clearly, the rich in this city lived well, while those outside were left in squalor.
The head family was distinguishable, as they sat near the center of the room, dressed in finery and being attended to by servants. There were six of them, the oldest appearing in his middle years, while the youngest seemed no older than ten or eleven. And one and all, every occupant in the room had their eyes trained on the strangers that had barged in.
Their shock didn’t last for long, the apparent leader of this city calling out in a voice that sounded as though it should belong to a petulant child.
“Intruders! Guards, toss them out into the storm. We can’t allow any riffraff in here.”
“Enough,” Roy said, his voice carrying, despite the fact that he didn’t actually yell.
He didn’t like the idea of using brute force to intimidate those who were so obviously weaker than him. It was exactly what had been done to him all his life. But if he wanted to get the information they were after, he knew he had little choice.
With an internal sigh, Roy unveiled his Core, allowing the power to blaze forth in a golden storm. His Belt, having been restricted the moment he’d released his Full-body technique, burned away in an instant, changing from a solid Green to a shining Red. In hindsight, he probably should have simply left his Core unveiled from the start, but it was a habit by now to restrict his power, and it had been done subconsciously.
Immediately, the weight of his presence was felt by all those in attendance. The Martial Artists who’d risen to toss him out were driven to the ground, their faces slammed into the stone and their bodies pinned in place by the sheer force of his spirit.
All the others here were similarly affected — well, except for the children, who Roy was careful to spare. The city leaders were driven face-first into their tables, shattering the fancy dishes arranged there before their faces impacted with the floor.
“Now that I have all of your attention,” Roy said, his voice sounding very loud in the sudden silence, “I would like some answers.”
He turned his attention to the clan heads.
“If I let you all up, will you give me those answers? Or will I have to keep you pinned here while I beat them out of you?”
“Would you really?” Geon asked, sounding oddly excited at the prospect.
Roy ignored him, lessening the pressure on the city heads enough to allow them to answer.
“We would be happy to provide whatever you need, oh powerful master,” the man croaked, his words accompanied by the frantic nodding of his wife.
Roy’s Spirit Sense swept over them quickly. Their Belts placed them at 2nd and 3rd Dan Blue, the highest he’d seen in this place so far. He just wanted to make sure that they weren’t hiding anything from him. After a moment, it was made pretty obvious that they weren’t, and Roy finally pulled in the power he’d been exerting.
There was a collective sigh of relief as he did, the others in the room rising fearfully and keeping their eyes trained on him as they did.
“Good job,” Aika whispered as they made their way over to the shattered table.
Roy hid a smile as he sat, Aika taking a seat next to him and facing the clan heads with unblinking gazes.
“May I offer you some refreshment, master?” the man asked, failing to hide the tremor in his voice.
“No,” Roy said. “All we want are answers.”
“What kinds of answers?” the man inquired, swallowing nervously.
“Your name, for starters. As well as that of the land we are now in,” Roy replied.
The man looked momentarily confused, but when Roy narrowed his eyes, the man was quick to speak.
“But of course, great master. I am Ushi Akushu,” the man began, earning a snort of laughter from Aika and a small twitch of Roy’s lips as he tried to hide his amusement.
“Wow. His mother must have hated him to give him a name like that,” Geon commented, his voice tinged with amusement, and Roy could see why.
Roughly translated from the old tongue, the man’s name meant ‘cow who smells bad.’
“Go on,” Roy said when the man paused.
“Right,” Akushu said, clearly trying to hide his indignation at Aika’s amusement. “This is Ushi City, home to our great Ushi clan—”
“I don’t care about the city name,” Roy said, cutting him off. “What is the name of this land? And why is it always so dark and rainy here?”
The man looked genuinely confused for a moment.
“This is the Weeping Darklands. So named because of the constant storms.”
“And what part of Safaia are we located in right now?” Roy asked.
Akushu’s brows came down further this time, suspicion coming to his face.
“You are not from the Darklands, are you? You are outsiders.”
“Clearly,” Aika said, joining the conversation. “But you haven’t answered the question.”
The man looked as though he wanted to protest her involvement, but a glare from Roy told him that that would be a bad idea.
“I don’t know if we’re even technically part of the continent,” Akushu said. “The Darklands are connected only by a thin strip of land, and since things are so different here, we rarely have outside visitors.”
“What do you mean by ‘different?’” Roy asked.
“The passage of time, for one,” the man said. “Time here moves at a much faster pace than it does in the outside world. In fact, for every day that passes outside, two pass here. The lands are warded with powerful enchantments to keep anyone from simply entering except through the one passage you must have come through. Not many from the outside even know this place exists.”
Roy mulled over the information for a moment in wonderment. How could Doragon have gotten in here, then? Why had he even come here? If time were truly moving at double the speed of the outside world, then wouldn’t he want to avoid this place?
“There’s more, isn�
�t there?” Aika asked, interrupting his musings. “Something you’re not telling us about these lands. If time here moves at twice the speed of the rest of Safaia, then all of the powerful Martial Artists would be here. Being able to train and having only half the time outside pass by is an incredible thing, one that strong fighters would definitely take advantage of. So, what is it?”
Roy and Aika stared at the man, their eyes boring into his as he began to sweat. Finally, his wife spoke up, her voice shaking with nerves.
“They do not wish to awaken the Beast,” she said, not able to meet either of their gazes.
“What Beast?” Roy asked.
“A monster lies dormant beneath the Darklands,” Akushu said, seeming resigned. “An ancient creature so powerful that not even the Scions would dare take it on. The enchantment blanketing these lands keeps it asleep, but that’s not the only thing. The lack of anyone truly powerful keeps the monster’s hunger at bay. If powerful Martial Artists started showing up, the Beast might take notice.”
“Is it as powerful as the Ancient Cavern Beast that has risen in the Burning Hills?” Roy asked.
Akushu’s face paled, and he and his wife shared an alarmed look.
“The Bringer of Fire has risen?” Akushu asked, his voice rising several levels in pitch.
“If that’s what it’s called, then yes,” Roy said.
It was his first time hearing the name, but the massive blanket of red he’d seen could only be made up of one of the eight Paths, and that was Fire.
“The monster slumbering beneath us is its twin,” Akushu’s wife said, looking as though she were going to be sick. “We have never seen her, but legends say that she once threatened to destroy the continent before a great Martial Artist sealed her beneath these lands.”
Roy and Aika shared a worried glance, and just from the way she looked at him, Roy could tell they were thinking the same thing. Was this why Doragon was here? Was he, for some reason, looking to wake this second Ancient Beast?
