Unwieldy (Fantasy & Hammers)

[Sarius]

Chapter 30: Prophecy

I walked as fast as I could without making myself seem like a madman, meaning Rethi had to just about run to keep up.

"Master Max! What happened?" he just about yelled after me. I turned and gave him a scolding look. Here, in the middle of the street, was definitely not the place to expose information that could lead to me being identified as a Champion.

Rethi withered beneath the look but continued walking alongside me while keeping a watchful eye.

The walk was brief as we made our way up the stairs to Mayer's home and burst through the door, almost running into Mayer, who was standing in the hallway sipping tea with eyebrow raised. He spoke a moment later.

"Such a rush to meet me in the morning?" I laughed somewhat tersely.

"Yes actually. I can shift now." Mayer's eyes lit up slightly, a little bit of excitement flaring through them. I realised that I always felt and saw people's emotions far more visceral when I had the attention of their eyes.

"That's good news. It generally takes a lot for me to train someone to shift, and even an expert needs a few weeks at least." I furrowed my brow, did he not know?

"Mayer, did you know that the Sharah is a method of shifting?" Mayer's brows now furrowed as well.

"Theologically, yes. It was said that those with the highest commitment to the Sharah were capable of creating storms with their steps. I have met a few that were capable of something similar." I simply deadpanned and looked directly into his eyes.

"Looks like it's just the Sharah'hin that have managed to do so." Mayer continued to look me in the eyes, his surprise evident before he muttered something about Champions and ran a hand over his face with a sigh.

He waved me into the lounge room and we sat, Rethi taking the extra seat near me and listening, his eyes wide with wonder or something similar, I wasn't paying enough attention. Mayer looked at me for a moment, then asked what had happened. I recounted the attack from the Jothian boy, and then explained, in as much detail as realistically possible, the feeling of using the Sharah for shifting.

"Then right after all that, when I was sitting down with Rethi, 3 notification appeared at once. I don't even think I have had 2 at once before." Mayer nodded patiently, but I could see the growing worry in his eyes. I decided to not look at it further lest I see the real magnitude of his worry.

"How well do you remember what they said?"

"Pretty well. The first one was just an achievement for shifting the first time I think," Mayer nodded, "The second was about a Prophecy. Something about a blasphemer being in a prophecy that even the Sharah'hin had forgotten," Mayer closed his eyes and started rubbing the bridge of his nose, "And then the last one was about becoming an Apprentice Sharah Hammer Wielder. Stuff about walking the path of the Sharah." Mayer didn't even try to disguise his groan. I didn't dare check his emotions, that would probably only make me even more worried than I already was.

It took Mayer another 5 minutes before he spoke again, but Rethi and I simply sat and waited for him to speak like lost puppies.

"Okay," Mayer started, "first of all, nothing to worry about with the shifting, that seems normal enough, despite it's pretty odd usage. We will test it later, but I have a good idea of what it may be, based on your description. The prophecy..." Mayer thought for a moment before speaking again, "I don't know of any prophecy including in the Sharah or Sharah'hin. Prophecies, however, I do know a little about, and they are terrifying and horrific, and always, always have an element of disaster, no matter how positive it may seem." He held my eyes, asserting his point before he sighed and continued.

"Prophecies are just one big question. They wait around and linger until someone eventually solves it. If you become part of a prophecy, then you will become part of the outcome as well. Prophecies never state certain outcomes, and only speak in riddles and uncertainties, even ones directly relayed by the requisite Gods themselves. If I were to be perfectly honest, I wouldn't even bother go looking for what the prophecy says, because all it will do is muddy the waters when the prophecy eventually happens to you."

I was part of a prophecy? Me? The most unequipped possible person for the job. Basically anyone of the other champions could probably deal with a prophecy better than I could hope to, but I was the one that had to stumble into it?

I felt an unreasonable little flame of anger burn in my chest for Mayer. Don't kill the messenger seemed so reasonable when I wasn't being told that I was a part of a prophecy, especially one that we didn't even know what it entailed. Was it the end of the world? Or was it about a kingdom or a war? There were too many options, and it only made the flame in my chest burn a little hotter.

I don't think I had been this angry in years about anything, let alone since coming to this wild place.

"What's a Sharah Wielder?" I asked recounting the achievement I'd got, curiosity overtaking my misplaced anger.

"Ah, old and powerful Sharah'hin. Like blade priests of sorts. Opponents that, if I were to ever fight them, I'd be wary about."

"What were they like in battle?"

"Frankly, they were terrifying," Mayer laughed a genuine laugh before thinking further, "When a Sharah Wielder showed up, it always became a legendary battle. I never saw one fight personally, but I've heard the tales and seen the aftermath. As far as I could tell, they fought like a storm of blades, and nothing ever truly came out in one piece when they were involved."

"A storm of blades?" I couldn't honestly reconcile what I had done with my measly usage of shifting and a storm of blades. Mayer nodded.

"I suspect that it is because the shifting they used was telekinetic in nature." There was a slight gasp from Rethi. I looked towards the boy, and gave him a quizzical gaze. Telekinesis isn't that crazy a concept, possibly on of the more boring ways that you could use magic, or shifting in this world.

"Really!? Kinetic shifting is actually possible? I thought it was a myth! Everyone says that it breaks too many Laws!" Rethi blurted excitedly.

"Breaks too many Laws?" I asked directly after, looking between the two. Mayer smiled at Rethi.

"I'm surprised you know of any shifting theory. It's not generally something that a person in a small village would go out of their way to learn." Rethi blushed a little and mumbled about a book he'd read a few times.

"The Laws are the rules that are set by what I guess would be our Gods, or maybe the universe itself. They are not inviolable, by using shifting, we can utilise Ether to ignore some finer details on the weaker end of the spectrum, and entirely break multiple laws on the stronger end." He stopped to take a sip of his tea that he was probably keeping warm with shifting as we spoke, "Telekinesis is one of the types of shifting that was at least thought of as impossible without either incredible power for little usage or a specialised method. It falls under the same category as space, time and gravity shifting. Though, some methods have been used to allow for shifting of them, but they tend to be very… destructive."

"So you are saying that the Sharah'hin have basically been sitting on the method to reliably and efficiently utilise telekinetic shifting?" Mayer laughed and nodded.

"Quite the scandal, really. The Sharah'hin that know of the telekinetic shifting will be extremely unhappy that a Blasphemer found the secret, and you will be hunted by them without doubt." He must have seen the worry that I felt, and the worry that I could feel radiating off of Rethi in that moment.

"It is bad, I won't lie to you, but there are solutions." At his words, my gaze grew quizzical, and then he grinned almost wolfishly. I could feel Rethi shiver beside me.

"Rest well, we will meet tomorrow morning for some true training."

---​

It had been hours since that talk. There had been one person that I was told to go convince of a post-mortem today, earning me one more Mind stat. Which was stupidly low in comparison to the massive increase of twenty in the morning, plus the four from earlier that week. So, a twenty-five Mind stat increase. I was a little bummed that the increase from convincing people of post-mortems was so small in comparison to the twenty increase from learning how to shift. I had been warned by Mayer, or the ancestral teachings of Ryan, that this massive increase wasn't going to last. After a ridiculous amount of work I finally managed to shift, and received a good reward for it, I think. However, Ryan did say that the rewards didn't scale sell. Would that mean that I would achieve another big milestone to only receive ten measly might, even if I work for months?

I shook aside my dark ponderings. For now, however, I felt amazing. The last time that I had felt anywhere near this good was when I received the achievement after the almost three-day stint of hammering in fences. But now it was multiplied by at least three. My body felt more fluid, courtesy of the increase in agility and the increase in strength made every action feel just a little more achievable, except for using the hammer, which only seemed to retain the same difficulty no matter how strong I got.

The really amazing one, however, was the increase to Mind. The effects of the increases didn't truly come into effect until after the talk with Mayer, but now the world seemed far clearer, like I was looking through foggy glasses before. I could feel every sensation in far more detail and the little subtle nuances to the Sharah that I had to fight so hard to find and incorporate into my katas were far easier to find, it was almost natural even.

I could sense the shifting of ether in my movements. The whispers of imperfections in my movements called out for me to fix them. It was almost trippy to perform the Sharah now, and it felt far less like a simple kata now, more like it was a language of movement.

I realised that my katas were the equivalent of babbling like a child, there were some words hidden behind many sounds and expressions that weren't comprehensible at all. The hours passed and the moon bloomed overhead in a spectacular showing of just how bring the night could be.

My katas began to rapidly progress into something that was somewhat legible. Once I started to feel what felt like little sparks of energy coursing through my limbs it was as if I was intoxicated with the rhythm of it, no longer was the Sharah something that I had to think about and maintain every little motion, now it was like movements flowed by themselves, like all I had to do was tell my body to do one thing and it would do five follow ups to that one thing in response.

That training session was both the most constructive session of the Sharah that I had ever performed, and also felt like the absolute shortest.

I felt like I was only just getting somewhere when a sword came slicing towards me from the gloom of the early morning.

On instinct, I moved away from the sword and without looking or thinking I made a similar motion as I had done so yesterday. This time, instead of the strain of walking through mud, it now felt more like water, and the pull on what I now assumed to be the ether inside of me was far more willing to acquiesce to my whim. My body began to virtually hum with power just before the movement was entirely completed, and when it did the snap of power within me releasing was immense.

The next slash from the sword was soundlessly swung wide, sending the arm of the assailant careening off to the right, before it was quickly and expertly reeled in, and remained at the assailant's thigh.

It was eerily quiet, given the amount of power that I had thought that was contained in that blast of kinetic energy. I gave the assailant another look, expecting to maybe see one of the older Jothian boys or their father, but was instead greeted by the face of a jovial Mayer. With Rethi off in the back watching on with wide eyes and gaping mouth.

"That packs quite the punch, Max." I was about to open my mouth to apologise, but Mayer waved his hand dismissively. And turned to walk away, assumedly with us to follow but before he turned he leaned in closer to me.

"Don't use that on anyone but me until you have that under control. That would have ripped Rethi's arm off." He winked at me, a little grin the met with the mischievousness of his eyes.

Then he walked off, Rethi and I scrabbling to follow.

 

[Sarius]

Chapter 31: Combat

We walked after the man with some level of cautiousness. The initial attack had been a surprise, and I wouldn't let that be true for another.

I kept on my guard, and Rethi at my side did the same. We walked the familiar road to the clearing outside of town, leaving behind the small town for the time being.

When we reached the middle of the clearing, Mayer simply turned, which startled both me and Rethi into a ready stance. I noticed that Rethi's ready stance was good, and Mayer saw the appreciation of it in my eyes.

"The boy hasn't been slacking. He has been my most willing student besides yourself, and he always ends up sleeping out by where you are practicing." Rethi froze, as did I.

"I didn't know that?" I said questioningly in Rethi's direction. The boy went bright red and stammered a bit, but Mayer's gave a wide grin.

"I'm surprised you didn't notice it, especially after Rethi being so close by when you were attacked by the Jothian boy." And Mayer was right too. Rethi had no reason to be there unless he had been there for far too long in the night. I turned to Rethi again and, without meeting my eyes he mumbled.

"I like watching it. It's soothing and it's like it makes a nice sound." A thought sparked in my brain, but I pushed it down for the moment. This wasn't the time for questions and answers.

Mayer then waved his hand in the air dismissively.

"Alright, since you are both trained to the point where it is reasonable that you learn actual combat, both in your physicality and in technique, it's about time we did that. Along with that Max, you will be learning to control your newfound telekinetic abilities, and hopefully not blow any arms off today." Mayer laughed light heartedly but I didn't. Not exactly a humorous mental picture for me.

"We will start with a simple hand to hand bout between your and Rethi. Max, you will have to pull your punches." He stated and waved his hand in our general directions. We turned to each other and hesitantly raised our hands in a guard. Mayer just made a short, harsh sound that we took to mean 'go'.

We hesitantly circled each other. I was far bigger and stronger than Rethi, this wasn't really a fair fight, and I don't think it was meant to be. I was probably the strongest person physically for miles, by virtue of the stat system that seemed to be all important to the Champions.

I didn't want to hit Rethi, or really participate in combat all that much in the first place. Call me weak, or a wuss, but I was born as far away from violence as I possibly could be and raised in one of the fairest societies in the world. Violence was the furthest option in my mind when it came to how to solve an issue.

But here? As seen by the actions of that Jothian boy, violence wasn't so far from the surface, always a possible action to take. Now, I had to adopt that mindset, or be crushed by those who did.

I put my hesitancy aside and moved in swiftly on the boy. I tested his reaction to a simple punch. His reactions had very clearly been modelled after the Sharah, and he was surprisingly good too, his movements spoke of little discordancy to my ears. He obviously didn't have the breadth of time that I had put into training, but he made up for it with his obvious swiftness, recovering from slight missteps without delay.

I was still faster, though. I punched again, and saw through his actions and moved in swiftly, using my far superior strength to then restrain him thoroughly.

Rethi put up a struggle, but it was futile. I was far superior; it was like wrestling with your older brother before you hit puberty.

Mayer called it, and I moved away. Rethi looked a little chastened but took it in stride.

"Now, Rethi, you see where you stand. You are strong maybe for your age, maybe you could even beat some older boys, but as soon as you get into a fight with an adult, you will be crushed. Plain and simple." Then Mayer turned to me.

"Time for you to learn where you stand." A feral grin bloomed on his face as he started to move forward. An instinctual and primal fear came along with that grin. I quickly began to backpedal, but Mayer moved deceptively fast. He gave me no time to prepare, and quickly began punching at me with ferocity I hadn't experienced before.

I dodged as best as I could with the little warning I had been given, taking a glancing blow to the shoulder, and feeling like someone had thrown a rock at me. My steps became uneven, and I quickly moved to correct it, but Mayer was there, ready to capitalize.

I desperately moved away as I felt the fist sail through the air and tried to take advantage of the man's overly forwardness and kicked out at his legs, ultimately hitting him.

A little bit of satisfaction ran through me when I realised that I had hit him but was then let down when I felt like I had just kicked a boulder.

Mayer laughed what might have seemed like a pleasant laugh but was overshadowed by his fist hitting into my chest with all the force of a truck. The wind was pressed out of my lungs with an almost audible woosh and I was left lying in the dirt, panting, and trying to get my breath back.

A hand appeared in my vision and I grabbed it. Mayer lifted me off the ground like a carboard box and pulled me onto my feet.

"And now you know your place. This is the start to becoming strong. Knowing that you are incredibly, pitifully weak against any who want to do you harm." Mayer pulled the sword that he had attacked me with before out of the ground, where he must have stuck it somewhere in my 'fight' with Rethi.

"I won't be using this for today and will only be teaching the sword later to Rethi, as he is the only one able to actually use it. Today will just be bout after bout," He looked towards me, feral grin still present, "and you, Maximilian, will come to learn just how brutal a fist fight can be."

Brutal it was. I didn't not believe the man when he said that I would learn, but I think I simply underestimated how badly I would want out of this whole thing.

Rethi was far quicker to adapt to the brutal tactics needed for a fist fight, and started to do some serious damage, even when I overpowered him almost absolutely. And because I apparently regenerated from wounds incredibly fast, Rethi had been commanded by Mayer to go all out, no holds barred.

This did indeed mean that he did everything from biting, doing his best to mangle my scrotum. It is just as unpleasant as it sounds.

The sheer brutality of the boy actually began to shock me when he managed to get a finger inside my eye socket, and temporarily sent that eye blind. It recovered mere minutes later, thankfully.

There was a newfound respect for the small boy and his brutal tactics. He didn't even seem remotely fazed by his actions, and I was the total opposite. If I hit Rethi just a little too hard, I immediately felt bad.

At least at the beginning.

It didn't take long for Rethi to Iron that out of me. I knew that tomorrow I'd see the boy covered in bruises and feel absolutely terrible, but when the boy is trying to gnaw your nut-sack off, you aren't exactly giving much credence to that thought.

It only took a few hours, and Rethi was entirely worn out and probably sore on every inch of his body. I thanked the boy, and apologised for it all, but the boy just grinned haphazardly and trudged off home.

I now realized that it was just me and Mayer now, and that meant that things were about to get 10 times worse.

After an hour of sparring with Mayer I was fairly sure I had broken most of my major bones in my body. Mayer was clearly just as brutal as Rethi, and many times more skilled at doing damage.

One time he had grabbed and flung me by the jaw, ultimately breaking the jaw and ripping open my cheeks from the force of the throw, that felt odd when my cheeks began knitting themselves back together.

The moral of this lesson became clear throughout the many hours of abject torture. It showed me all the places I excelled, and where I faltered, and gave me an opportunity to change it on the fly to avoid the next horrible injury.

The upside to this was that I learnt that Champions were effectively impossible to kill unless you did it all in one go with a mortal blow. If you give them a minute to run away, then you have to fight a Champion who is back at peak physical condition.

Totally unfair, but I can't say I'm complaining. It's a major asset to me and makes it far less likely that I could die, but I'm not invincible. No matter how you look at it, it the injury is grievous enough, or in a bad spot, I will still probably die from it, despite my ludicrous healing ability.

It did mean, though, that I could effectively train in battle like you would in a game. Balls to the wall.

I trained for many more hours, until the sky began to darken when Mayer spoke, breaking out almost silent string of bouts, aside from grunts and occasional screaming, of course.

"That's enough of tearing you apart," I sighed in relief, "It's time to work on this telekinetic shifting of yours."

I nodded, then stood there, unsure. Mayer rolled his eyes.

"Just try to hit me with it again, hold back if you can." I shrugged and made the same move that I had two times now.

It worked perfectly, all the different pieces coming together to perform a single movement that made my body crackle with energy. This time, I restricted the feeling of pulling from within me, limiting the amount that had been pulled from what I assumed was my reserves.

There was a soundless explosion on Mayer's chest. But he didnt move and acted as if a pillow had hit him.

"That's good. You did an excellent job at restraining the amount of ether that went into that particular blast. We will call it a kinetic blast for now, seeing as that is all it does. I have a suspicion that it is less a blast, and more a transference point for kinetic power that you are pushing kinetic energy through, resulting in the blast."

Honestly, that was a more advanced analysis than I was expecting. Not that I thought Mayer was dumb, or an idiot. More that I was surprised at the almost scientific way the magic was described. I nodded my head.

"I feel like it is one word in a sentence, and that it is simply the start of it. Like saying 'I' or 'You' to start a sentence." I shrugged, a bit ashamed of the incredibly unscientific and imprecise and somewhat clunky explanation. Mayer however, seemed to appreciate the idea and thought on it for a moment.

"That is an interesting way of looking at it. It certainly makes a degree of sense. For example, there are many ways to enact a shift. Some use incantations, some use rituals, and some use simple hand signs to enact it, some even simply use their mind, but there is always a way that they enact a shift. It seems that in the case of kinetic, or telekinetic shifting, you must use your entire body to enact a reliable shift."

I was immediately glad that Mayer could use the sparing information on how it felt to further his understanding, as well as making me not look like a fool.

"So, I guess I will have to discover more words to the language?" Mayer nodded and smiled appreciatively.

"Exactly. I cannot say that I am an expert of all things shifting and the various ways that they can enact a shift, so I don't have many reference points but my own way that I shift, which so happens to be the polar opposite of how you do so." He outstretched his hand and a little ball of flame floated above it.

He had made no obvious incantations nor movements to suggest that it had anything to do with the physical, so it only really left one option.

"You shift with your mind entirely?" Mayer nodded and put away the little ball of flame.

"So, my advice on exactly how to shift would do far more harm than good when it comes to this quite unique way of shifting. It will more than likely come to you as you practice more and more, but you probably won't be able to do anything all that interesting for a while, if my experience has anything to say for it." I agreed with that. It was a bit crazy to ask for more than this only a day after I had gained the ability to shift. Mayer had told me that it usually takes seeks at least to shift for the first time, so I had a sneaking suspicion either the Champion abilities or the Sharah is helping me out here.

A thought hit me. Mayer instantly saw the thought hit my brain, but said nothing and watched on, eager to see if anything were to come from it. Mayer and Rethi had mentioned Laws before. It seemed to just be a different name for physics principles and such, which means I had a tiny little bit of an understanding.

The current, at least as current as when I was still on earth, physics theories all tend to agree that energy never really gets destroyed or created out of nothing, it just changes form. So, you might ask where the kinetic blast is coming from.

I summoned my hammer, the silver soul metal leaking from my hand into a solid shape far quicker than I could have done so many days ago and hefted the oversized thing onto my shoulder. I thought about what I was going to do for a moment and then turned to look up at Mayer.

"Mind if I hit you in the chest again?" Mayer's eyebrow arched in amusement and interest and he nodded. Only a moment afterwards I made my move.

Before, I was using the stamp of my foot as the point where I 'released' the ether from within me to enact what I had 'told' it by letting it go from me. But releasing that ether is only one part of the whole.

The action itself was like the words, and the releasing of the ether was like a full stop. But when you are saying a sentence, there is more than simply just words and a full stop.

There is emphasis.

I made the same movement as before, but as I completed the move, I held the ether in for just long enough to slam the hammer downwards into the ground, releasing the ether upon impact.

Mayer's eyes went wide as he was hit by an incredible force. He was blasted back, forced to utilise air shifting to stop him from flying upwards and away from the ground. He skidded to a stop, his feet never truly leaving the ground, but leaving little trenches in the ground where the man had travelled to a stop.

I was immediately worried and unsummoned my hammer and ran over to him. I asked if he was okay, but I only found him laughing uproariously, clutching his stomach in a bout of unguarded mirth.

He managed to wrangle his laughter in to where he was only giggling every few moments and spoke.

"You can tell me about how you did that later, but for now, I think that I am going to go eat dinner and go to bed. Definitely don't use that on anyone but me just yet." He laughed, and walked off towards his house, leaving me to ponder.

---​

Mayer sat over his desk, writing into a small journal, humming thoughtfully to himself.

He wrote:

Day: Whatever, forgot to count.

Started the boys doing real combat training today. Rethi seemed to surprise Max with his ferocity, which is good. Rethi will probably never grow to be as big as Max, but I can teach him to be more ferocious and cunning. He is even progressing quite quickly in the Sharah, just about as immersing himself in the practice as Max himself. The boy goes out and watches Max perform for hours, even sleeps out there.

Max doesn't seem to realise, but Rethi just about deifies him. Respects him more than me by far. Rethi will be a good addition to Max's repertoire of people to know in the future. And maybe even my successor, in all the ways that implies.

Max isn't a natural born fighter like Rethi. Doesn't quite have the brutality in him. But for what he doesn't have in natural talent he tends to make up for in wit. He is never going to be as good as Rethi will eventually be at skilled fighting, but with some of the things that Max has going on in his brain, his seemingly unending dedication to training and his burgeoning power, I can only see that he will thrive in a fight.

At the end of the lesson I decided to go over some of the shifting to try and analyse his ability. He made some interesting remarks, and then he got this strange glint in his eye. Maybe it was realisation, or maybe it was something else, but not a moment after he summoned his weapon and enacted the same shift as before, but now using the hammer as a focal point (?).

I didn't get an explanation off of him. I couldn't let him see the damage he had done to me, or I think he would have been scared of what he could do. He is too soft to experience real consequences for his power just yet. Soon, but not yet.

Mayer sighed, then put away the pen that he had bought many years ago for a ludicrous price, and even all these years later it still worked like it was new. He let the page dry for a moment, shifting some air over the pages and then closing the book.

He got out of his chair and winced, he moved towards his bed and sat down, then slowly prying himself from his shirt. Underneath was a chest covered in purple and black. Every movement hurt the older man, not having experienced so many broken ribs in many years. He grabbed a small vial from his dresser and downed it without even looking at the contents. He growled at the foul-tasting concoction but laid down on his bed and started to feel the mending of flesh and clicking of bone as it knitted itself back together. As well as the horrific pain that came along with any good healing potion.

It was going to be a long night.


A/N: Four chapters remain...

 

[Sarius]

Chapter 32: Double Time

The world whirled around me as Rethi hammered his fists into my skull. The sickening, jarring blows knocked my onto my ass and into the muddy earth. I groaned in pain and disorientation.

Mayer had strictly forbidden me from hitting back against Rethi for the time being, I was simply becoming too strong physically to reasonably control my strength in fights as vicious at they were getting. It had been maybe a week since we began the training, and already Rethi was destroying me in sheer ability. Of course, if I were to actually hit back I would wipe the floor with him, but he would tear me up with scratches and bites even if I did want to.

I sighed, laying in the mud for a moment while the vicious scratches and lacerations healed on me. I mentally checked my stats while I naturally healed the damage.

[Might: 53]

[Mind: 36]

[Agility: 42]

Honestly, I had learned to keep tally of my stats in my head as the achievements hit. I hated bringing up the stupid stat screen, in all of it's simplified ridiculousness, but I needed to make sure I wasn't too far off with my own tally sometimes. Big numbers though.

I lifted myself off the ground with a grunt and got back into a fighting stance. The stupid stat screen always managed to get me angry enough to keep going.

Rethi came towards me like lightning bolt. I dodged easily and cleanly. This repeated until Rethi caught me out on one dodge, and then I would resort to blocking his attacks, then he was get a hold of me and start tearing me up till I go down.

This was how it went, over and over again for hours. Rethi was a very dedicated boy, especially when it came to fighting with me.

It would, however, be remiss of me to not mention that I wasn't playing by the same ruleset that he was.

He was playing the game of 'whatever it takes to win.' I was playing by the rules of the Sharah, and only the Sharah.

For example, once Rethi manages to hit me once while I am using exclusively Sharah movements to dodge, I then immediately switch to using exclusively Sharah moves to block his attacks.

This way it doesn't take an hour for Rethi to bring me down, and I get to understand the Sharah more in more situations. Another benefit to doing so?

Learning the language of the Sharah.

The movements I use are curated 'words' that I believe are most effectively and making 'sentences' that denote dodging or blocking. This is mainly done with footwork, but Mayer has been displaying more upper body movement upon my insistence. I think that he only really wanted me to learn the Sharah for its foot movements technique, until I stumbled upon the 'language' of it.

The arm movements have added more words, and better ways to express myself through the language, but I still felt like a toddler who was mashing words together in desperate hopes to find a sentence that described what I wanted.

The only thing that I had going for me in this regard was that my body would tell me when I screwed up a 'word' or got a 'sentence' horribly wrong. The Sharah toed the line in what the body was truly physically capable of. Not in a muscular sense, or else I'd simply overpower it and out-stamina it with my seemingly endless supply, but more in the sense that it toed the line of physical impossibility. If you made a step wrong, it wasn't too uncommon to have to use another 'word' to offset the mistake in the previous 'word', thus creating a 'sentence' that didn't make sense and would fail.

Don't worry, it's as confusing to practice as it is to try to understand. Mayer seems to understand the idea of the whole thing and agrees with my methods in trying to train it, but he cannot hear it the way that I do. Rethi, however, is able to.

Rethi has a spectacularly sharp mind when it came to fighting and movement, and so the Sharah seemed somewhat within his wheelhouse. He didn't have the same comprehension of it that I did but was quickly able to tell when I did something that 'sounded' bad.

Unfortunately, he didn't seem to have much interest in uncovering the Sharah like I do. He is interested in the shifting of it, but I think he sees the Sharah in the same way that Mayer does, a means to an end, rather than a path to follow.

My ability to shift, admittedly, hadn't increased by all that much since I first was able to use my kinetic blast.

I had found the first word to the 'sentence' and found that I could give it emphasis with my hammer, but other than that, I was awaiting the second word that I could use.

Rethi began stabbing at my eyes and ears with his fingers, and his finger did manage to get into one of my ears, followed by the familiar pain of having my eardrum destroyed.

I raised my hand in surrender, and Rethi stopped. I didn't surrender often because there was always valuable information to be picked up from every part of training as vicious and hardcore as this, but I wanted to rest my mind for a while.

Rethi tailed me silently, his eyes on the trickle of blood leaking from my ear. I could feel his hesitation, his mind whirring before coming to a halt and his mouth spitting out a question.

"Does it still hurt, Master Max?" I slumped down in the shade of a slightly taller bush that we had been using to store water and clothes. I raised my eyebrow as I pressed my fingers to my ear, feeling no pain, and began to scrub at the side of my face and neck when the blood trickled to.

"No, the eardrum has healed already. Why?" Rethi laughed and scratched his head, his unkempt hair rustling has he did so.

"I mean, when I hurt you and stuff." I gave him a flat look and he stammered on, "I poke your eye out and rip it out of your head, and not ten minutes later you have a new eyeball in your head. Sometimes you don't even make noise when you get hurt, and most times you make noises that could be the sort of grunt you do when you get out of a chair or sit up on a bed." I laughed and nodded.

"You're right, but no. I do still feel pain. In fact, I believe my sensitivity to the pain has only really increased. I know all the shapes, colours and tastes of it now, thanks to you and Mayer," Rethi gave a wry grin, "What has actually changed, is more how I deal with it."

I looked up to the sky and found it was starting to get later in the day. After a moment of thought, I laid back my shirtless body being graced by the cool embrace of the vibrant green grass.

"Rethi, I'm not sure that I've been the best employer to you in these past few weeks." Rethi immediately opened his mouth to protest, but I waved the words away.

"I've found myself in a tough spot, Rethi. That means that my focus it going to be all over the place, most likely for a very long time, maybe forever. However, right now I have time and I feel like I'm not using it as wisely as I really should be." I said, staring off at the sun that was slowly being occluded by our orbiting planet in our shared sky. I turned to him after a moment, finding his face with a slight furrowed brow.

"I don't think that's fair, Master Max. You are a Champion. I don't mean that because you are one, that you're not tied by the same rules as everyone else, but more that you are suddenly in a worlds wide game for survival of the fittest." I nodded gently.

"Maybe." I ran a hand over my face, feeling a sort of exhaustion that could only be found in stress. The small boy grinned at me.

"Master Max, a war is coming, and you are preparing yourself for it. I am just a kid of fourteen years, when it all comes down to it. I wouldn't be able to face what is coming, not yet, but you can." The boy looked up at the sun, the sun hanging in the sky by but a thread.

"As far as I see it, Master Max. You have my interests at heart. You have this world's interest at heart. I don't know what your plans are, but I'm sure that it will be something that I can wholeheartedly follow." Rethi turned his face to me, his face steel, absolute.

"And I will follow." The boy stood and brushed his pants off, slowly walking away.

I was a little shocked to hear those words. In that moment, I saw the absolute will that Rethi had behind those words, and it was both endearing and absolutely mortifying. Endearing in that I know I have someone who believes in me and what I can accomplish, but absolutely mortifying in reality of the belief he has in me. I am just a guy. I'm not special. I can kind-of-sort-of read minds, but other than that I am totally useless in the face of a collision of my world's best and brightest.

I could never compete with Einstein in physics, not even remotely close. There was almost surely some seven-year-old with a better grasp of physics than I do. It was just that, but with everyone that was a Champion.

It came to me as a freezing cold stab to the gut.

Mayer once spoke of the power of empathic shifting; that I would be able to use it to convince a room of some of the most powerful people in the world to achieve my own goals.

It was becoming more and more obvious to me, as I my mind began to whir, that I was going to have to do just that. As my mind hit maximum speed, I felt a familiar concoction of calm and pondering that was Mayer's eternal emotional state.

"Mayer, let's talk as we fight." I yelled, while standing from my position. Mayer's ever precise form was striking against the glaring sun, its red anger on the horizon for being forced away in favour for its sibling.

Mayer whipped forward, and I punched into his attack, knowing that it wasn't possible to dodge or block his attack effectively enough.

"What do you wish to talk about?" The man's deep but gentle voice rumbled as My fist hit his shoulder like a pebble hitting a boulder, and he broke my shoulder bone. I cracked out with my leg, meeting his lifted leg's shin and likely fracturing my own shinbone.

"I'm going to need to convince Champions to join in with my idea of protecting the world from those that wish to go home." Mayer grunted and threw and punch into my stomach that made me reflexively keel over, and he then slammed an elbow into my back, while I took weak shots at his legs and stomach.

"Indeed. You're unlikely to ever to be strong enough to do this alone, and not vicious enough to do so either." He shot a knee into my face, breaking many facial bones.

It took over a minute of pummelling before I was able to talk again.

"I need to know what happened last time to do that. I need an idea of what will happen in the future."

Mayer nodded while I punched and kicked at him and he simply brushed them away with his blocks.

"It took over 2 years to get the war into the public eye, but by then the Champions had all created their own camps, all defined by their almost complete lack of regard for the people their actions affected. They introduced technologies that destroyed kingdoms and economies and waged campaigns that sucked the life from the earth and destroyed the population of nations. You need to find a way to avoid that."

I coughed at a foot was rocketed into my chest, breaking basically everything there and probably puncturing a lung.

"I think I need to find those that don't care to go home." My fist flew at Mayer's face.

"Good choice, those that wish to go home are the hardest people to convince of your goals." He caught my hand and crushed all the bones in my fingers and pulled harshly, ripping my arm out of its socket.

"I think I may have to amass an army created of those that don't care to go home and use their skills to create an opposing force to the 'go-home' groups that will inevitably form. Only one can go home, after all." Mayer nodded.

"You need to somehow keep those Champions that ally with you in check. You will need a powerful inner circle who are able to police those that misbehave in your camp. To find such people will be nigh impossible." I grunted in pain as he slammed a foot into my pelvis, shattering it.

"Maybe so, but I think a true neutral party would be a good place to start. I have a feeling that a science-y type would be best. I can't imagine many of them have much interest in going home, but they are probably most likely to play both sides of the war. I need to get one of them on my side, at least. They will be absolutely invaluable, even in comparison to an extremely strong warrior type."

"Good thinking. You are already making headway on your ideas. But be warned, that you do not truly have long till the war comes into fruition. It will only be cloak and dagger wars for so long, and with you amassing a team, it will only be a catalyst for a faster moving war."

I laughed a pained laugh, prompting an eyebrow raise from Mayer.

"Seems like I need to speed up my training then." I grinned; my teeth covered with blood.

Mayer laughed and came at me, double time.


A/N: Three chapters remain...

 

[Sarius]

Chapter 33: A Beast to Wield

Training became horrific after that. Without my need for sleep, rest, or even breaks, Mayer had me doing some sort of training at all parts of the day.

The initial period of strenuous exercise only lasted maybe a week and a half before it seemed like I wouldn't receive achievements for them so easily. Mayer made me move to training my Agility next, after my Might, and it took around the same period to cap out for that as well.

However, while I sustained a particularly terrible injury in training, I received this.

[A Blinding Pain: You have experienced and overcome a horrific pain. +1 Mind]

And after that, it was on.

Mind training had quickly become one of the highest priorities, especially after coming into direct contact with kinetic shifting. Thus, Mayer started to inflict more painful and horrendous injuries upon me.

This usually resulted in Mayer using his shifting abilities to injure me. Including charring an arm to the bone, and letting it heal. If it had healed from a clean cut at my elbow or shoulder, it would have been fine, probably would've barely hurt in comparison. But as it was regenerating from the vestiges of the charred remains, the extreme pain was astounding, as I could feel the nerves firing back up and into the destroyed flesh.

It took less and a fourth of the time than it would've if the arm had been cut off, so it became our new priority for me to learn where the limits of my regeneration was.

Mayer did know that complete destruction of the brain was fatal for most Champions, and also if all blood was lost that it was also fatal in disadvantageous circumstances—such as a magical wound that wouldn't heal with no way to counter it.

However, over the month of extreme training, I had to learn where the lines of effectiveness were. When was it simply more effective to cut the limb off and let it regenerate on its own, rather than sit and wait for it to heal without intervention?

The line became clearer and clearer over time, with a more instinctual edge to it. We kept the system as empirically accurate as we could, but in the end my gut instinct lined up with the results almost perfectly.

Burns, for the most part, seemed relatively easy for my body to repair, but extreme mangling took far longer. Let's say that my limb was absolutely obliterated under a huge rock. It would take far less time for me to cut it off, because then it isn't a game of piecing the jigsaw back together, and just following the pre-set pattern in my DNA—or something like that.

During this same time, Mayer began to teach Rethi the sword. A short sword, in Rethi's case. Just as he had been with hand-to-hand fighting, he was also a bit of a prodigy with a sword. Mayer had told me that a reason for his excellent growth was that he had a real, living opponent that he couldn't kill but could damage as much as he wished. Practically the best practice dummy that existed.

It made sense to me, and Rethi's blade taught me a lot of harsh lessons, and the same was true for my body teaching Rethi harsh lessons about his blade. Turns out, when your enemy doesn't care about being cut, he can trap your blade in between his own bones. Painful, but useful.

With my healing, Rethi's sword caused a lot of pain, but was all healed quickly. Many of the fatal blows that Rethi was training to execute barely hindered me. I was, however, terrified of blunt weapons.

A sword made a clean enough cut, especially with a master using it. My healing is naturally strong against that sort of damage. If a blunt weapon hit my centre mass with enough force, it would deal enough damage to put me out of the fight for at least a few good minutes.

Of course, that amount of damage, from either weapon, would generally kill those without crazy amounts of power and defence like Mayer.

Rethi also started to grow, and pretty rapidly at that.

The little runty beggar started to gain mass and height. Shooting up to a surprising five foot five, his body soaking up nutrition and physical training like a bone-dry sponge. At this point it had only been three months into the training, and maybe four months since I had first brought him to my employ.

It was a relatively classic, if exaggerated, growth spurt. I wasn't sure if I had ever met someone who had grown an easy five inches in almost as many months, but after asking Mayer, he told me that the foods that we were eating were of extremely high nutritional value, and that he wasn't remotely surprised—especially with it coinciding somewhat with puberty.

Apparently, there were villages that were founded extremely close to areas that housed extremely nutritional foods and game, and some of those villages commonly had children in their mid-teens be six foot five or taller.

It seems my height wasn't unusual in the grand scheme of things, after all.

For all the progress that Rethi made in his physical department, I made in the mental department.

My understanding of the Sharah soared throughout my training. I learned many words, most of them either having little effect on what I already understood or were effectively totally unusable for the time being.

The most useful words that I ended up learning were those that allowed me to shape the way the 'kinetic blast' formed. For example, it allowed me to visualise the kinetic blast as water that would hit the target and wrap around and almost spray the kinetic energy off to the sides of the target.

This could theoretically be useful if I used kinetic blast at someone and they had people behind them that I also wanted to effect, creating somewhat of a shotgun of force. I wasn't to fragment the force of the kinetic blast, and it seems like something that will be outside of my wheelhouse for a while yet.

Another form of the kinetic blast was effectively a cube of force, which acts very similarly to the original, unshaped form of kinetic blast, but kinetic blast originally starts with more of a ball like shape, so the cube allows for more surface area to be effected by the blast. The 'water' kinetic blast technically would effect more surface area, but is far less powerful than both the cube and the spherical blasts.

Mayer and I were desperately working on being able to create a slashing or piercing blast, but all the ways that felt like they could pan out dead ended abruptly, which initially made me think that I needed more kinetic energy to produce them. That ended with me simply putting many holes in the ground.

It was frustrating, because I felt like I had all the words and the emphasis to properly create an edge, but it just wasn't coming to fruition like I had hopes. That was when I started to feel like I was getting sluggish with every action that I completed in the sentence that I thought would allow me to do a slash blast.

It took me maybe a week or so to figure it out. With Rethi's help, really. I was explaining the issue to him, showing him step by step what I thought I was doing correctly, when he asked me, 'who the hell speaks that slow?' For months I had been taking a slow and methodical approach to it all, but if this were really a language of body movements, then I was totally forgetting 'cadence'.

With that little glimmer of a thought, I started training at speeding up my movements, whilst also teaching myself proper cadence of how to enact a shift.

It didn't take long before the way that I moved to enact a kinetic shift changed drastically.

Mayer had commented, day one, that if I had to make the big movements that I was doing to shift a kinetic blast, then I would be useless in combat. I desperately needed to find a way to properly shift without having to make too many crazy movements.

The concept of cadence changed everything. Not only did it bring about the understanding of 'speaking' quickly and sharply to enact a 'bladed' shift, but also how to speak quietly and subtly. It was when I casted my first raw kinetic blast against Mayer with him barely noticing the movements that I realised just how deeply nuanced the Sharah really was.

When I found more and more of these concepts and added them to the list of things the Sharah was comprised of, I began to feel like I was floating face down on the surface of a sea, staring into the inky blackness, knowing something is there but too mesmerised, and perhaps terrified, to swim down.

With the new understanding of cadence being applied to my use of the Sharah, everything was recontextualised. For example, training with Rethi where I was only allowed to defend.

Beforehand, I was simply using the tempo and speed that I thought was needed and was fit for the situation, but now that I was being aware of the natural cadence that the words wanted to be spoken in, and the context that surrounded them, my mistakes in dodging became far fewer and my blocking became extremely effective.

Before long, it was a game that Rethi simply couldn't win. In a head on fight, even with a sword, Rethi wasn't able to down me. It felt good, but I knew deep down that it was a pitiful win. With the abilities that had been granted to me by default for being a Champion, it was surprising that it took this long for me to reach this stage. Mayer had laughed at me in his gentle way when I told my thoughts on the matter.

"Don't worry about it. It wasn't like you didn't work to get to this stage. Also, keep in mind that you are basically self-learning one of the most elusive martial practices in the worlds. Your comprehension of the Sharah continues to blow me away, and I am one of the only foreign 'certified' practitioners."

It made me feel better, but even still, the threat of the Champions who were at least this good on the first day here. Over the few months that I had been training the thought slowly began to eat at me, terrifying me more and more until I started panicking during the night-time hours. Mayer had nodded at me and told me that it was the curse of a man tasked with a job far bigger than himself.

It was still a few more weeks until I managed to shift the kinetic blade, which graced me with an achievement.

[Sharp as a Tack: Through movement and a great deal of mental effort, you have sharpened raw kinetic force into a blade. +5 Mind]

The notification brought a begrudging smile to my face. It was the largest upgrade in Mind I had received in months now. Kinetic blade had taken a lot of work to properly shift, and it would be a long process of taking the crazy mess of words and cadences and minimise it down as much as possible to that I could one day cast it without crazy dance-like movements.

From then on out, the remaining month or so resulted in me learning to better wield my hammer. Mayer helped me with the basics of wielding an oversized and overly heavy weapon, but I was left to my own devices to leave how to use it in conjunction with the Sharah.

At first, I tried desperately to compensate for the massive size of the weapon with massive, slow and incredibly loud movements, and after Mayer knocked me on my ass a few times the way I wielded the hammer began to shift.

Rethi was too weak for me to play around with my hammer near him, so he mainly watched on the sidelines, training in some fashion all the while.

Over the course of a week, I went from completely overkill compensation for the size and weight of the hammer, to calm quick and quiet movements to compliment the hammer.

In that week, it became abundantly clear to me that I would never be the centrepiece of the fight, it would be the hammer. It was simply too much of a behemoth to treat any other way.

So, instead of trying desperately to wield it I simply let it wield me.

The massive thing really only needed a little nudge from me, and clever use of gravity and centrifugal force, and I had a hammer that could bludgeon someone to death in a simple swing, much like the forest wolf that I had killed on the first day.

I learned to quickly summon and unsummon the weapon once a big blow had been dealt, in preparation for when it either got stuck in whatever I had hit with the blow and also so the enemy wasn't able to exploit the downtime of my trying to reposition the hammer so that it could be swung again.

Once I mastered the ability to summon and unsummon the hammer, my ability to wield the hammer went up exponentially. The time it took to summon and unsummon the weapon became second nature, making the swings in which the hammer was still in the process of forming from the soul metal much easier to reliably land.

It was when I added shifting into the mix that I started to understand just how dangerous I really was.

I could both use the hammer as a source for kinetic force in shifting, which Mayer quickly told me that he would rather wasn't used on him or any living creature without the intent to maim or kill. However, the problem with this was that to properly utilise the kinetic force took a lot of concentration and wind-up time. It took almost ten seconds to do it reliably and without the kinetic potential dripping through my fingers.

Instead, I could use my own kinetic force to compliment the force of the hammer itself, which was far more achievable.

At this stage, all it really consisted of was using a kinetic blast on the hammer at opportune moments to add to the force of the hammer's movement. The transfer rate of the kinetic blast into the hammer was poor, but at the moment it was the best option I had.

I mostly used the stamp of my feet because the weight of the hammer itself actually contributed to the strength of the kinetic blast.

When the month began to come to an end, I started to actually come around to feeling comfortable wielding the beast of a thing.

It was only then that Mayer approached me, with a grin that would put the Cheshire cat to shame on his face.

"Congratulations, you finished basic training. How about a good old beatdown?"


A/N: Two chapters remain...

 

[Sarius]

Chapter 34: Brutality

The first blows from Mayer came fast and hurt just as much as they always did, making the bones inside of me rattle and creak like wonky floorboards.

I quickly moved to the side, dodging another set of blows and summoned my hammer, swinging it down over head. Mayer dodged with ease, but I used the missed blow's kinetic force to create a cube shaped kinetic blast, launching Mayer back off his feet for a few meters. He was much more prepared for the blow in comparison to the first time he'd taken it head on.

I quickly unsummoned the hammer, letting the metal melt back inside of me. Mayer didn't give me the chance to ready another blow, and he closed in as soon as he saw the hammer begin to unsummon. He flanked me with all the ferocity that Rethi usually showed in his bouts with me, landing a painful kick to my side and cracking a few ribs that immediately began to heal.

I slammed my foot into the ground, enough to push Mayer away from me slightly and put him off kilter. I moved into a flow of words, a sentence of the approach of a predator. The words took me uncomfortably close to Mayer, and I rose my knee into a powerful strike between the legs. Mayer grunted, but grabbed hold of my arms and threw my body towards the ground.

However, I expected that he would try to throw me, so I prepared a sentence, and used the force of the throw to then launch Mayer into the air, allowing me to use his grip on me against him, ultimately slamming him into the ground instead.

I used the words of retreat as Mayer got up from the ground, dusting himself off.

"Good going, Max. You're a much better fighter than you were only a few months ago. Your insight into the Sharah shocks me more and more every time I see you use it." I could only give a dry chuckle.

"Don't be all conciliatory, Mayer. We both know that you are playing with all your limbs tied behind your back," I looked the old man over, seeing nothing but a few minor abrasions, "I don't see any real injuries on you, anyways. It'd take me hours to take you down like this." Mayer took a step, and then he was right in front of me.

"I guess you're right." He said, as his hand flew towards me. I dodged the first, forming the hammer in my hands and in the way of the second punch. His fist recoiled off of the hammer, and he grimaced.

"Bet that didn't feel any good." I grinned, using the shaft of the unformed hammer to fend off a few attacks. Mayer grunted, but didn't bother replying. I swung the formed hammer head at him, making him step back. I followed him, using a centrifugal motion to retain the force of the swing. Mayer held back even further, but I proceeded to use all my might to force the hammer to swing over my head, the massive silver coloured hammer streaking through the air like a comet.

Mayer dodged slightly to the left and kicked the hammer head off to the side, nullifying any kinetic force that I could have pulled from a missed swing.

I began to unsummon and move back, but Mayer was on me. His first fist landed directly on my throat, crushing my windpipe with ease, and then he started pummelling me in my face and upper chest.

I was still very vulnerable to being knocked out, so I dodged and weaved as much as I could, but the limited access to oxygen, and the desperate wait for my windpipe to regenerate, made it incredibly difficult to keep up, landing me a few solid hits to the head and both collar bones being broken.

When I felt my windpipe regenerate with a familiar sickening pop, I took a long, slow breath to stop me from coughing too much, and used my willpower in the moment to focus on coughing the blood from my lungs quickly.

I hated coughing up blood, but I had gotten good at it over the months I had trained. I was constantly breaking bones and having flesh ripped up in my face and throat, so I had to get good at managing it in battle, because it was likely going to happen more than once.

Mayer raced forwards at me, trying to capitalise on my current task, so I spat a mixture of blood and mucus into his face, making him recoil somewhat. I took a deep breath and roared as I started to execute my most dangerous sentence.

The movements were smooth, and extremely snappy, the air around my limbs almost vibrated with the excitement of my silent words. My body danced with a deadly promise. Mayer's eyes widened and he began to quickly move in to try and stop my incitement of the shift.

He was too late. As my foot slammed against the ground, the fragile earth giving way beneath my monstrous strength, an invisible blade screamed through the air, seeking to bisect the older man in two.

Mayer dropped to a knee and reinforced his position, putting every physical defence that he could between him and the blade of raw kinetic energy. The invisible blade hit the arms that he had erected in front of his face first, tearing and biting into the muscle of his forearms. He quickly began to rise against the blade, defying the force and trying to guide the force to a less vital area of his body.

It took him a few seconds until the force behind the blade was depleted, barely able to make it to the bone of Mayer's forearms. He rose to his feet, opening his mouth, ready to congratulate Max on his newest addition to his arsenal…

Then he saw the hammer slam into the ground in front of him, the earth shaking ever so slightly as I angled the handle of the hammer towards the man's centre mass and grinned like Rethi did. A vicious little expression, almost demonic in nature.

I let the immense energy from the hammer blow hit the end of the hammer, blasting it up from the ground, rocketing the shaft of the hammer forward towards Mayer's chest like a spear blasted from a cannon, with only the meagre guidance of my hands as a guard rail of sorts.

Mayer desperately tried to twist away from the blow, but the immense speed of the shaft was overwhelming. It caught the old man on the shoulder, an issue more with my aim than Mayer's reflexive movement.

As saw as the shaft touch the man, I realised that this was different. This wasn't like every other time I had hit the man, where he would shrug it off with so little damage that it was almost infuriating to me.

This time the shaft began to chew through Mayer's flesh. I heard the crack as the bones of his upper arm, collar bone and shoulder were pulverised by the sheer force of the blow. My stomach dropped as I saw the shaft of the hammer dig into Mayer's flesh like a hungry shark, devouring his meat and feasting on his pain.

The man then yelled– no, he roared.

There was a blast of almost incomprehensible energy, in that moment I saw the natural elements surround Mayer and aid in the ways that they could, the earth rose around the man's legs, the air at his back pushed with its mighty gale, the flame flickered into life, fed by the wind and burning like gets at his back, and the water drained moved with the earth, aiding it in forming and solidifying like stone around his legs. And what brought it all together, was the golden glow of a powerful light radiating off of the man, of a power far more than anything I'd encountered before.

Mayer's roar lingered in my ears, the force of the elements assisting him with all their might, spurred onwards by the warm, golden light that wreathed him.

Before long, the force behind the hammer had been depleted, and Mayer's power disappeared along with it. Mayer's body slumped to his knees, his hand hovering over the damage to his shoulder.

I raced forwards, suddenly terrified of what I had done to him.

"Mayer!" I almost yelled. Mayer grimaced as he looked up at me.

"Yes boy, you fucked me up pretty hard." He said, a harsh pain in his voice, but none of the venom that I had almost expected. I ran a hand through my mane of brown hair nervously, mind whirring with what words I could possibly say to rectify this.

"Oh man, I didn't mean to…" I stammered, but the man slowly interrupted me with a grunt.

"Of course you meant to, you idiot. I was pushing you to do it." He looked up at me and gave me a pained grin. "Look at how damn strong you are, boy. You're so strong you could probably kill me if you did it right!"

Mayer's voice was pained and laboured with strain from the injury.

"Shut it Mayer, I don't want to kill you. What the fuck should I do to help right now?" I said, my words coming out a little too fast, and almost tripping over each other.

"I have them!" A voice called out from ten or so metres away. I turned quickly, seeing Rethi stand their with an awestruck expression, holding a small wooden box in his hands.

"Get over here then!" Mayer growled, and Rethi ran over with nimble feet and quickly opened the box, pulling out a sizeable opaque vial and then handing it off to Mayer quickly, before nervously awaiting more orders with bated breath.

Mayer practically threw the thing down his throat and grimaced at what was probably the taste of it. He reached out to Rethi's shoulder and patted it gently.

"Did you get to see something good, kid?" Rethi nodded with fervour.

"It was amazing! You were both so fast, and Master Max's shifting was so fluid, it's like he knew what was coming! And…" But I interrupted the boy's rambling excitement.

"What the hell are you talking about! I almost killed you!" I said, a little bit of anger leaking into my voice. I was met with a quizzical gaze from Rethi, and an amused one from Mayer.

"Of course, Max. That was the whole point." He laughed gently and gave me an almost admonishing look, "You didn't actually think I was so strong that I'd be able to stop you forever, did you? I was overwhelmingly powerful in comparison to you months ago, but back then you were basically just a normal human with a big ass hammer. You are five times stronger than that just in raw statistics alone, along with your usage of the Sharah and kinetic shifting. You are probably somewhere in the realm of twenty to fifty times stronger in a fight than you once were." He laughed painfully.

"You are growing to become a real monster, and you don't even realise it yet."

I didn't know how to respond. I knew that I'd grown stronger, but twenty to fifty times stronger? That was insanity to my ears. I could barely conceive of myself being anything in the face of the old soldier, his overwhelming might now vanishing abruptly to show me the reality to my unprepared mind.

"I didn't want to do that to you." I said, unable to stop looking at the gory mess that I'd turned the older man's shoulder into.

"This is the first step for you, Max. You don't know what brutality is. Not truly." I almost opened my mouth, ready to decree that brutality was all I experienced for months in training, but Mayer cut me off.

"No, you don't really know. You have experienced brutality knowing that it couldn't truly kill you. This is your first true example of that. The first step in becoming a true warrior. A true Champion." Mayer looked me dead in the eyes, and I knew that he was right.

It was all still too much like a game to me. All too easy to brush off and forget once the wounds heal. But now I've brutally injured Mayer, and I know that there is no way that I'll ever truly forget that wound. The pulverised flesh and bone leaking blood.

"Why now?" I said, my voice quiet against the whirlwind of emotions in my mind.

"Because now is the best time. Now you need to go out and truly fight. This time, against the environment." He grinned.

"You're gonna go monster hunting."


A/N: One chapter remains...

 

[Sarius]

Chapter 35: A Little Trip

I sighed for what felt like the fiftieth time this morning.

Preparing for the trip was… interesting.

It came along with about a weeks' worth of preparation. The length of the trip itself was probably a handful of days to the location and the same back, but entirely depended on the pace that me and Rethi set.

If it were just me, I would sprint full tilt for a day or so and be there, but Mayer said that was too easy—another way to exploit my statistical advantage over gaining any real, worthwhile experiences from the trip.

I didn't really agree, but Mayer knew his shit, and if he thought that it was pertinent enough to discuss, then it was probably worth adhering to. As much as I was dreading the send-off in a few hours, anxious beyond all logical reasoning, I saw it for what it was. A bird flies the coop situation.

Even back on earth, I had never really managed to get out of my parent's house. I had reasons that could be used as a compelling and rather convincing case, but the real truth was that I barely had an independent bone in my body.

Not that I was totally reliant on everyone for everything, but I can't say that I worked particularly hard for anything specific, and even then, I simply cruised on by in life. The height of privilege, I know. I was waiting till after university to really figure out my independent living situation and all that, but now that was the furthest possible worry I could have.

Instead, I was effectively preparing myself to trek across unfamiliar lands, using only intuition and information that I can gather from people to find ultra-powerful people who may or may not obliterate me on sight.

Luckily, neither Mayer nor I were complete buffoons, and sending me out on that sort of trip with essentially a wave goodbye is considered to be sending me to my sure death. Though what I'd gain on this trip that would help outside of this sleepy little road town? I couldn't possibly know.

Rethi was off saying goodbye to his newly acquired girlfriend. Gram's daughter, Alena. I say 'newly acquired' in the sense that they only realised that they were dating a few months ago, but they were basically dating beforehand too.

She clearly despised me, for whatever reason she had cooked up. According to Rethi, she was a vindictive one, and that seemed to be the main reason she had no friends, other than Rethi of course. Other than there not being that many children running around, of course.

Rethi, after a while of being around Mayer and myself, had become a very relaxed kid—an unlikely voice of calm, given the way that he fights. He was probably the only person I knew that could put up with the girl, judging from my few interactions with her over the past months—none of which went well.

It was then that Rethi made his appearance. He looked a little more haggard than he should be this early on in the day, and his bags were hastily packed, meaning that he'd probably have to properly repack them—before Mayer saw them and made him unpack and repack everything 'army style'. Which was code for painfully meticulous, of course. Not to say that it didn't work.

"Got a good chewing out?" I chuckled. Rethi grunted, unamused by my prodding.

"She still thinks that you've enslaved me or something. I have no idea why." He grumbled moodily, a distinct departure from the usual chill atmosphere he assumed. I could think of a few possible reasons why she might think so but saying them out loud would be counter-productive, to say the least. So, I merely shrugged and put the young girl out of my mind. She was going to be the least of our worries out on the road to have a nice blood fuelled tea party with a monster of some sort.

A few hours passed of preparation and double, triple, and quadruple checking that we had everything.

Mayer showed up a few times and pointed out minor things, and so on.

Then the big send-off came and went, in which Mayer briefed us on why we were going out there, and what we were probably going to face.

"We haven't had traders come by from the smaller road towns to the south for a good few weeks now, and everyone is struggling to get by with the resources we have from the north. The people who do manage to come by were almost all attacked by a group of monsters out along the path a few days out. You are going to go there, investigate and eradicate if necessary."

With that, he had sent us off.

Mayer had taught us how to interpret this kind of information and how we should handle it. He wouldn't give us any more than what he already had because, simply, you wouldn't get any more information in a real monster subjugation request.

And so, the journey began, with Rethi on horseback and myself on my own lovely mare. We took it easy. There was no point in rushing our way there only to be too fucked to do anything but get killed, so we kept the speed reasonable.

The first few hours of travel consisted of us talking about the theoretical points of the subjugation, like what monster it was likely to be, how far along the path they would be, etcetera. But really, it was basically shooting the shit. There was no way that anything that we were saying would hold up to the reality of the situation. The conversation started to morph and contort into whatever appeared into our heads at any given moment. Which eventually lead us to the topic of Rethi's choice in women.

"I have no idea how you can put up with that, to be perfectly honest." Rethi looked at me funny for a moment, and then shrugged.

"She really isn't that bad." I gave him my best blank look.

"Remember the time she saw you covered in my blood and she decided that she'd run around the town telling basically anyone who would listen that I was torturing you?" Rethi looked sheepish.

"No-one got hurt in the end, it really wasn't that bad." My blank stare continued.

"She tried to stab me. With a broken broomstick handle."

Rethi opened his mouth to reply but closed it and sighed.

"I know. I know. She's crazy overprotective. Always has been." He looked down at the horse that was shifting beneath him as it sauntered down the path and scratched at the back of the horse's mane.

"I don't think she has quite gotten her head around me not needing protection anymore, and my attitude changing to reflect that. It's making her worse. Paranoid even." I nodded. The boy certainly didn't need protection anymore. It was doubtful that anyone in the small town would be able to lay a finger on him before he had ripped their throat out.

"Maybe she is unsure about the power dynamic of your relationship shifting?" Rethi chewed on his lip for a bit and grunted in affirmation.

"Maybe. We are on rocky ground at the moment, with me coming out here with you. She thinks I've gone insane." I laughed.

"Maybe we have. We are going out, hunting for a group of monsters. Most people would think that we were crazy." Rethi joined in with my laughter and we moved on to lighter topics, like shifting and the Sharah.

The sun eclipsed by the other planet in the sky, turning the sky a brilliant golden colour, the planet warping the light slightly making it almost look like a golden orb. It was quite the marvel, something I'm not sure that I'll ever truly get over seeing.

Our conversations slowly died down into a comfortable silence, like a fire that once blazed, but now hummed with delightful warmth.

The path became less maintained the further we went out, becoming more and more uneven, which would have made it much harder to travel on foot. It wouldn't have bothered me at all, but I could see why the addition of the horses was a wise move by Mayer. So still, despite the rapidly eclipsing sun, we forged ahead, agreeing to set up camp two or so hours before the sun truly disappeared.

It was in those few hours of walking that I started to feel a strange sensation on me. Tracing me. I looked around not truly perturbed, but a little wary.

The sensation went away but came back a few times over the course of the next few hours. I couldn't pin the feeling on anything in particular, so I had to leave it alone for the time being.

Rethi and I struggled to set up camp, despite doing it with and without Mayer's help on several occasions. The change from open plains to the outskirts of a towering forest apparently made for a much more difficult time setting up tents.

It took us a good hour to properly set up the camp and the fire, and then another thirty to make and eat a simple dinner, which I ate more out of habit than any nutritional value I could get from the simple soup.

The one benefit that came with being sleepless was that I was always capable of taking night watch.

I didn't tire, so a drop in perception due to fatigue wasn't something we needed to worry about. A fact that Mayer had made abundantly clear that we factor into our decision making on the road. It was also another one of my 'cheats', in his words.

Honestly, unless Mayer hadn't shoved the importance of having a watch rotation down our throats on many an occasion, we wouldn't have even bothered having me out on watch in the first place.

This time however, I started to see Mayer's reasoning.

The feeling from this afternoon was back, and much stronger this time. It became abundantly clear that either someone or something was following me, and it was close.

I didn't move, making sure that whatever it was wouldn't be alerted to the fact that I know they are there. I readied a sequence of movements, primed to obliterate anything that so much as moved.

It was then that I heard it. A small, almost imperceptible shuffle in the woods near our camp.

I sprang into action, swiftly moving from a sitting position into the proper stance, then flowing into a collection of movements that sung of destruction. I snapped towards the source of the sound and slammed my foot into the ground with a sharp pounding motion. I felt the power of the slam rush through me and begin to run its predetermined path through my body as I finally understood what it was that my eyes were telling me.

My mind went into overdrive. I desperately forced body to move a little more, to change directions of the blast just a touch. I growled with the effort it took to change a sentence already set in motion, but my complaining legs and arms complied.

The diverted force shot outwards, raw energy roaring towards, and then into the base of a tree, exploding a haphazard circular hole in the sturdy wood, sending splinters flying everywhere, some even stabbing into my flesh only to be pushed out less than a second later.

I stood there dumbfounded for a second, my eyes and mind disbelieving. However, after a moment of this, my mind kicked back into action and, almost involuntarily, I roared.

"What the actual fuck."


A/N: Stay tuned in the next few days for a new chapter and an announcement!

 

[Sarius]

Chapter 36: A Stowaway Found

I had, quite honestly, been a little angrier than I should have.

Though it may have presented as being angry at someone, I was really angry at me.

I should have known. It was so clearly obvious that it was almost painful to observe in hindsight. I guess that's what I deserve for going lethal straight away, rather than being normal and sleuthing it out before trying to explode them into tiny little bits with a kinetic blast—something that Mayer had specifically said to not use on anyone but him.

I sighed and ran my hand through my dusty brown hair, brightened from the light of the campfire that had been resurrected from coals in the middle of the night. Rethi sat in front of me, half dressed and eyes wandering between the two of us, unsure who to be angry with in the first place. I looked to my side, seeing a short, dark-haired girl sitting next to me, somehow both shellshocked and also wearing a combative expression, one that I had become well acquainted with over the past weeks and months.

"What exactly happened, Master Max?" Rethi asked, kindly but worried. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Alena Gram, Rethi's girlfriend, make a scandalized face. I quickly interjected before she could start yelling.

"Had been feeling eyes on me all night and was trying to figure out what it was," I paused before I continued, "I acted rashly and decided to get the jump on whatever was watching us."

The moment after I finished speaking, Alena's top boiled over and she began to yell.

"Damn right you acted rashly! You almost killed me, you murderous-" Rethi turned to look at her, his eyes flashing a brilliant green in the light of the campfire.

"Alena. What are you doing out here?" He slowly intoned, each word a carefully laid brick, a platform for Rethi to stand on. Rethi was surprisingly good at this stuff, he had obviously handled a few situations just like this. The master was at work.

"I, uh…" She trailed off, looking for words while sneaking scathing glances at me. After a moment of Rethi patiently waiting for a response, he nodded at her, as if he had heard an enlightening string of words. I raised an eyebrow, honestly more amused than any shade of angry now.

"So, Alena," Rethi continued with his slow intonation, "you followed us out here, on foot, to a place you knew would be dangerous. You then tried spying on someone you knew to be one of the more powerful individuals in our area, for possibly hundreds of kilometres, and you didn't expect that you might be killed?"

His tone the entire time was not chiding, nor was it accusatory. He was reframing the subject of the conversation itself. From Rethi's standpoint, I was beginning to see how he was less angry with me, past the fact that I'd come close to accidentally killing his girlfriend. But also, because we are out on a main travel road on Virsdis, a historically hostile planet. If you were going to do something so colossally stupid anywhere, it better not be on Virsdis.

Alena had nothing to say to that, brightening to a shade of red that only contrasted her pale features from her dark hair further. It was a mix of anger and embarrassment that I felt swirling around inside of her. She was a mess of emotions, this girl—always was. It's why I was so sceptical of why Rethi would even think about getting together with her, for really any reason.

But, in her, I think I saw a small inkling of that reason. It's definitely not because she was hiding a golden heart, but because that anger and indignation extends from a desire to protect. Just an overwhelmingly unhealthy manifestation of it.

Rethi sighed heavily, placing his head in the palms of his hands. The boy had been wired with worry after being awoken by my shouting. He had thought it was bandits, he had been prepared to kill. Instead, he had to deal with the near death of his girlfriend.

"You know why I told you that you couldn't come. You knew why." Rethi said, exasperation leaking into his voice. It wasn't venomous, but a mixture of sadness, betrayal, and disappointment. Rethi stood up, his muscled body extending upwards to his full height that loomed over his girlfriend, even if she'd been standing. He looked her in the eye for a moment, a small battle of wills, before Alena gave up and looked away towards the trees not so far from the small camp. Rethi turned to me, seeking guidance.

"What do we do?" Alena swung her head around, indignation flaring.

"You are letting that… man choose what happens to me?" Such vitriol from such a small woman, it was almost surprising. I didn't bother to give her a response.

"Well, she's already out here, and was committed enough to run the whole day as well," I looked at her, honestly slightly impressed, "so I don't think we should even bother bringing her all the way back to town just to have to ride all the way back out here. If she wants to risk it with us, then she can." I shrug my shoulders, and Rethi looked concernedly towards Alena, who's expression betrayed the small wave of relief I saw in her.

"But what if-" Rethi started, but I waved away his question.

"That's all you. If she is going to put herself in danger, then she may as well have someone around who can help her if she royally screws it up." It was a risky call, if Alena were injured for whatever reason, it would come back to this decision being the origin of the problem. But I couldn't honestly see Alena just giving up following us. I barely knew the girl and even I could tell that she was fanatically devoted to Rethi, for whatever reason.

Rethi looked at me, confused. He hadn't ever really had a position of authority or responsibility, aside from caring for his mother, so to essentially be given the wherewithal to dictate how to manage his girlfriend on this trip was a new experience.

"Anyways, I'm going to bed. You can sit out here keeping watch with your girlfriend. At least we'll have more people to keep watch." I gave a nod, and I was off to 'bed'.

Of course, I didn't sleep, I hadn't slept in months at this point. Oddly enough it had become hard for me to understand why I ever enjoyed sleep, other than the simple refreshing of the mind. Now I found the idea of sleep, or willingly giving myself to unconsciousness, a deeply unsettling concept.

So, instead of sleeping, I spent my time listening and experiencing and thinking. A sort of meditative technique for those with infinite mental and physical stamina. I had initially developed it as a mental rest while performing the Sharah, but it became something that I simply did in downtime that couldn't be used effectively for anything else.

At first, pushing myself to feel and experience the emotions and thoughts around me was hard, if not downright uncomfortable. Me being a natural empath and also capable of shifting were supposed to be mutually exclusive. But for reasons unknown to me or Mayer, other than the canned response of 'you're a Champion', it wasn't. I haven't been able to scrounge out much information of the Long Dead or Soul-Seekers, other than what Mayer knows. Everyone else just know of them as legends, beings that once existed and now definitely do not.

How my ability to interact with ether independently from being a natural empath wasn't immediately obvious, though I guess it was intuitive enough. I was able to 'transfer' a small amount of my emotion sensing empathy through my ether, something that I was sure would strengthen through becoming more adept with shifting and utilising ether.

Which, at the moment, I was definitely not adept at. Sure, I was capable of using shifting, enacted by the Sharah, but when I just tried to move ether on its own; it was a whole different ball game, and I wasn't even knowledgeable enough to be able to understand why.

I could hear the quiet but relatively tense conversation outside of the tent. It came down to the fact that Rethi was disappointed that Alena wouldn't let him trust in his own judgement, and Alena was mad that Rethi would allow himself to be subservient to me. Fair enough, I'm not sure I'd take too warmly to a partner of mine being subservient to someone else. But I'm not sure she cared to believe that Rethi was not a slave, and never would be.

It was a long night after that. I was still a little shaken by the fact that I nearly blew a hole in the chest of a young girl. Cold blooded killer, I am not.

The sun began to peek from behind Virsdis, the warm glow slowly adding colour to the rough canvas of the tents. The early mornings were enchanting on Virsdis. Virsdis had a side that was always facing the sun, the light side, and a face that was permanently dark, where the Nightfell have taken up residence—in the legends, anyway. Night on Virsdis came when Orisis blotted out the sun with its mass for ten hours as it passed in its orbit around Virsdis. In the morning, after ten hours of night, Orisis moved just enough to let the sunlight refract off of its atmosphere, creating a bright and almost heavenly display of the 'sunrise'.

I wonder if people awaken early to see it, or if the other Champions look upon this and think as I do. Maybe they are too busy doing anything else other than look at it, in fear of potentially coming to find that this is more than a proving ground. Or maybe that this world was anything more than a game that the God who had put us here had created just for us to mess around in.

I got up out of my reclining position, readying myself to tackle the day, when I felt a pair of eyes flit over me, just for a second. I was instantly snapped out of my reverie, as I quickly spread my ether out, trying to connect to anything I could with it, trying to use my natural empathy as a sort of radar.

I found Rethi and Alena sitting on the ground near where the fire was, and something else. I moved quickly towards the tent's opening and threw the flap open, only to see Rethi and Alena sitting by the last whispers of a campfire.

Rethi's alert eyes wandered over to where I was standing and gave me an odd look as I stared intently at the campfire.

"Everything alright, Master Max?" I hesitated, giving the boy a nod only after a few seconds of staring at the campfire. I could have sworn I felt something. In fact, I'm entirely sure I felt something. What it was, I couldn't know, but it was a far odder experience than the silly girl tailing us, who was slumped onto her boyfriend's shoulder, sleeping away her watch duty.

I gave Rethi a light scolding eye for that, and he scratched at his face sheepishly.

"Alena, up." I said, calmly. She awoke slowly, her eyelids fluttering and then finally opening, starting with a squint. It was a rough wake up, made harder by the fact that she was forced to run after us for the whole day, so she didn't fall behind. She groaned out something in a very teenagerly way. I chose to ignore what it may or may not have been, based on Rethi's shocked expression.

"We are going to pack up camp and get moving for the day. You are expected to help pack up, and then you will ride on one of the horses while we travel. There will be no complaining, or I will take you back directly to Master Gram. Are we clear?" I state harshly. Not too harshly, of course. She was still a kid. But the differences between a kid here and a kid back home are immense. If she couldn't pull her weight, then that was her fault and many would not grace her the option of being escorted home, no matter her gender or age.

Alena wiped sleep from her eyes and nodded, getting up with Rethi and I to pack away the canvas tents and roughly washing the cooking tools that Rethi had used last night. It took thirty odd minutes before we were back on the road, the grumbling girl up on my horse, trying her best not to fall off, with adequate help from Rethi, though I suspect that he was trickling out information because he found her jostling around on the horse's back secretly hilarious.

Throughout my jog alongside the horseback riders, I continued to search for the origin of that odd presence that I had felt only hours before. It was something almost wholly alien feeling to me, and yet I couldn't catch even a whiff of it.

I was concerned that there was more than just a little girl following us.


A/N: Hello, hello! Welcome to the first chapter of the new backlog of chapters that I've written for Unwieldy.

From now on, there will be somewhere between 3 and 4 chapters posted a week of this story, but not to fret! You can get more of my content in reading my other stories, Fixture in Fate and Ribbon! Also, if you're interested in having a place to chill out and receive updates on my stories, check out my Discord as well!

Of course, this is all find-able in my signature!

Hope you all have an excellent day!

 

[Sarius]

Chapter 37: A Slip of the Tongue

The trip was slated to take around three to five days, depending on our pace. With Alena around things stayed approximately the same. Though she was clearly just as inexperienced with travelling as any of us, at least on horseback.

I really didn't care all that much about her presence, I was fairly confident that I could take this whole shebang on by myself, and the addition of Rethi was really just so that I had a companion that had skill and experience. Something I was beginning to realise was just as invaluable as having experience and skills yourself.

It made me reflect on the stories I had read in my fairly recent youth. Stories of ultimate soldiers and academics, capable of doing every task themselves, an island of their own. In fact, they may as well be walking countries, all the expertise and skill that you'd need was available until it was convenient for the plot to strip it away to make the character rely on someone.

I had realised that I wasn't going to be one of these characters. It just wasn't a realistic possibility. Sure, maybe I had literally double the time than a regular person, on account of not needing to sleep. But that would still mean that It'd take twenty years of fixated devotion to do what a 'regular' person was capable of in forty.

So why not trust in those that had been walking that path for far longer than I? Would I not trust in Mayer because I have surpassed him in my insights, if not execution, of the Sharah? No, of course not. His opinion is still valid and extremely valuable to me, especially where my common knowledge of shifting and the general limits of extra human strength. He had been moving his body with the kind of strength I have only just begun wielding for decades.

So Rethi was immensely valuable to me, in an odd way. A 'manservant', loyal and willing to do dirty work to execute on the goal of his lord. Though I wasn't happy with the title and was thinking that 'right hand' was going to be a better descriptor in the near future.

The road was increasingly becoming less maintained as we ventured forwards, fields to our right and forest to our left. The maintenance of the roads barely ever reached out this far, probably because there wasn't much reason for loggers to come out this far, unless they want to deal with more wild forests and more dangerous beasties, which I guess is exactly what we are doing.

My light jog beside the horses faltered as their speed slowly declined into an amble rather than a trot. It marked the first break for the day, the sun well and truly in the sky by now.

Both Rethi and Alena hopped off their horses, Alena grumbling and rubbing her ass, giving my horse the stink eye. I just chuckled as I whipped out a fresh apple, offering it to the beast who gratefully took it from my hand.

These horses had been impressively determined through the yesterday and today, making great pace. Mayer had procured them from a horse nut in the town over the other way from which we were travelling. Interestingly enough I could have easily ended up in that town instead of this one if I had walked upstream instead of downstream on that first day. Might've ended up as a stable hand to survive if I had.

Alena walked over to Rethi who was currently letting his horse drink generously from the stream that followed the road we were following. It'd veer off at some point, according to Mayer, but never far enough to worry about getting water.

I let my horse free into the field after taking off a training short sword from a clasp on the saddle. It wasn't quite as sharp as the one that Mayer had loaned Rethi for actual fights, that one could easily cut through bone if wielded right, Mayer had demonstrated as much on me.

"Rethi!" I yelled out to the boy, who turned before the sword hit him in the back of the head and deftly caught it. Mayer had done that during training to the both of us, so we did it to each other to keep each other up to snuff. He looked down at the training sword and grimaced as he turned to look at Alena, who instantly wrote her own story as to what was going on.

"Give it your best today, we don't have much time before we are fighting for real, and we want to make sure we both don't die a stupid, horrible death." Though it was incredibly unlikely that either would happen to either of us, I really wanted to make sure that the boy wouldn't end up with an injury that would hamper his future for whatever reason. Small nicks were fine but, call me overconfident, we should be able to take out this whole group of forest wolves without being touched once. In fact, I wouldn't be at all surprised if Rethi could do it singlehandedly—his training with Mayer really showing just how much work Mayer had been putting into raising Rethi as his 'heir'. If we couldn't take out these wolves together, then I'd be more than a little disappointed in myself.

Rethi steeled his expression and moved forwards, throwing the scabbard off of his training sword, which was standard issue army if I remember correctly, and threw off his travel cloak, waiting for me to do the same. I just shook my head.

"If I get hit then ruining my clothes is my punishment." Alena's eyes widened; she'd seen what that sort of sword could do to someone. She was baffled why I would care more about by clothes than my bodily integrity. Strange how priorities change when you pain and injury are fleeting to you.

Rethi nodded and raced forwards, starting with a mix of the approaching steps in the Sharah and a flurry of sword strikes that Mayer had been belting into his head for months. I deftly dodged each flurry, knocking the last strike away with my forearm on the flat of the blade, then moving closer to push the boy back.

Really, this was a game of tug of war in opposite, just with more swords and grievous injuries.

The blade whizzed through the air as he used the force of my push to spin around and slice at my other arm, which I ducked and swept at his feet. He jumped, stabbing towards my lowered form. I moved in closer, reaching under his armpit and taking his sword wielding arm and throwing him further back.

Rethi, not one to be caught on his ass, flipped mid-air and caught himself on his knees. I approached, unrelenting, punching out with heavy blows, enough to make the shorter boy's body creak with the effort of parrying them with the flat of his blade. The reason he wouldn't try to sneakily slice my hand with the edge of the blade is because I have caught his blade in the bones of my hands one too many times for him to try that with.

I laughed as I approached, making the boy grin with exertion and a battle drunk glee. The exchange only lasted a few more seconds before Rethi took a last, desperate lunge at the precipice of the water stream. The world slowed as the blade approached my face, but I thought of something far more interesting.

I used the split second to bring my hand up, and jam it onto the sword's tip, impaling it to midway through the blade. As painful as it was, it really didn't feel like all that much anymore. Pain was a hollow feeling, more a signal to my brain that my body had been violated than an actual sensation anymore.

The blade slowed to a stop, and I grinned at Rethi, who could only look on in exasperation and frustration as I pushed my hand all the way down to the hilt and commandeered the pommel straight into the boy's chest, winding him and pushing him the last step before the inevitable plunge into the water.

It took Rethi a moment to resurface, before he took a gasp of air and proclaimed:

"That's cheating!" I only laughed, quickly followed by Rethi's laughter from within the stream.

This was when I turned to Alena, who simply watched on in a mixture of horror and fascination.

"How does it feel to know your boyfriend is a badass?" Alena gaped as I laughed. I started to idly yank out the sword through between my middle and ring finger, quicker and surprising less painful than pulling it out the long way. I threw the blade aside and started to walk back towards my horse.

"Wait! That wound needs to be treated!" Alena called as she ran over to me. Amused I turned to her as she roughly gabbed my wrist and lifter it to her face so she could examine it, only to see the wound quickly begin stitching itself back up, the ligaments and muscles reattaching to the relatively unaffected bone within the hand, before the skin slowly begun to repair itself. The skin was always the slowest to regenerate for whatever reason, but the skin didn't really add all that much functionality if you didn't mind a little pain, so it was fine by me.

"How…" Alena trailed off as she watched the miraculous healing that comes with being a champion.

"A gift of sorts, you could say." Her eyes turned to mine, questioningly. Her dark hair complimenting the striking blue of her eyes.

"Life shifter? Are you one as well?" She asked, a pure intensity dawning on her face. Rethi, who was taking off his damp clothing and wringing it out, stood very, very still. The reaction was immediate. Alena's face lost all of its glee and her jaw clamped shut.

"A life shifter?" I said thoughtfully. Alena paled with a stricken look, her emotions darkening severely. Rethi discarded the clothes he was drying in a pile in the grass.

"A life shifter?" Rethi said, his voice a bit more shocked, and… worried?

Alena didn't deign to answer us, as she quickly walked away to where my horse was standing, her mind whirling with a frankly astounding number of emotions—a prominent one being fear.

"I assume being a life shifter isn't exactly a prestigious title?" Rethi nodded and I sighed.

"Is it because of something stupid? Or is it well founded?" Rethi looked pained for moment before he answered.

"They are also called Abomination Makers, Master Max." Well founded, then. There was a moment of pause before the boy walked over towards his girlfriend and placed a hand on her shoulder. It seems that Gram was hiding more than he was letting on. A life shifter, huh? So, a healer, figuring from how Alena reacted to my regeneration. Could I have seen this coming? Maybe.

I knew that Alena was weird, which was a good enough reason around these parts to suspect that they had something going on. Gram and Mayer were good examples, me included, I guess. And looking back on it now, I remember Gram's face being very similar to his daughter's when I had asked about medical horrors of the past. Abomination Makers. Interesting.

To me, there was hardly a taboo. As long as you were able to shift it, then there was something to it, in my opinion. It could be as simple as shifting dust into existence, and I wouldn't knock it until I knew whether or not something astounding could be done with it. Life shifting sounded like a good candidate for being able to do some crazy shit.

I did some menial chores, brushing the horses, heeding them, drying off Rethi's clothes before I decided that the two lovebirds had been given easily enough time to talk.

"Alrighty then, are we done exposing deep, dark secrets to each other?" I got two glares out of that. I offered a chuckle.

"Good! Time to get a move on. On the way we can talk about how this life shifter stuff works." Alena paled, and Rethi looked about ready to go in and defend her.

"No, Rethi. I am not going to have someone travel with us whose powers we aren't sure of. If she is unwilling to talk about it, we will ride all the way back to town just to drop her off. Mayer will be made aware of the reason." Rethi paled and Alena paled even further. Rethi looked at Alena questioningly before she nodded hesitantly.

I threw Rethi's now only slightly damp clothes at him, who redressed quickly and jumped on the back of his horse and gently begun to warm the horse up again.

"Get ready for another awkward conversation." I laughed as Alena struggled up onto the horse. And rode after Rethi, ignoring me.

"Ah, sometimes Rethi makes me think that I'm the supporting character." I chuckle as I began to jog after the two teenagers.


A/N: Hello! Another chapter of Unwieldy down, and yet another strange thing within this little town. I'd bet my bottom dollar that Mayer was the reason for all the strange things happening. Maybe its a cosmic balance sort of thing. Either way, hope you all have a great day!

 

[Sarius]

Chapter 38: Hope

The ride was punctuated with an uncomfortable silence. I calmly jogged alongside Alena, keeping my words to myself while the girl mustered the willpower to speak. It took a long time, hours in fact. For me, it may as well have been a blink of the eye, especially for someone who had trained in the Sharah for days at a time.

"A life shifter is able to take hold of the physiology of a being, and transferring ether into it, allowing the shifter to manipulate the body of the subject with extreme precision. Often used to both heal and harm." She recounted woodenly, as if reciting from a textbook. I wave my hand with mock impatience.

"The real story." I simply stated, for I knew there was one. No-one reacted to having an ability the way Rethi did without something being up. She grumbled discontentedly but sighed like a child trying to avoid her chores—only to do them in the end anyway.

"Life shifters have a bad name. There is a fair amount of them, but if you don't know what you are doing with the abilities then you can just as easily kill as you can save by total accident." She shuffled uncomfortably of her horse.

"So, there are many life shifters running around with no training trying to heal people and killing them instead?" I questioned, knowing full well just from the girl's storm of emotion within her eyes that it wasn't even remotely close to the full truth.

"Yes, and the cults." Rethi supplied quietly. Alena glared at Rethi immediately, but Rethi showed no sign of remorse.

"Cults?"

"Yes, cults," Alena sighed, "they are large conglomerations of mainly life shifters who are obsessed with… human augmentation." I hummed. Ending up with the nickname Abomination Makers wasn't exactly singing the praises of the success of their experimentation.

"I imagine that they aren't great people."

"No. They routinely kidnap and experiment on children for years." She spat vehemently.

"And you? What are you?" She looked shocked and a little hurt before she swallowed her discontent and replied.

"I–I want to be like my mother…" she paused for a while, and Rethi's attention laser focused on her, I assume this is the first he's heard of this, "she was a shaman in the tribes of Orisis. Father travelled out to meet her, hearing legends of one of the most powerful life shifters alive. Once they met, they became an unstoppable team of medical knowledge, Mother having an instinctual and experience-based knowledge and Father having a scientific and evidence-based knowledge." She ran her had through her dark hair, brushing it from her face, only for the unfortunate breeze to defy her attempt.

"So, you want to someday combine your father's medical sciences and your mother's innate abilities?" She quickly nodded, staring at me as if I were going to argue with her. I just shrugged.

"Sounds like a good idea to me." I say and continue to jog. There was an air of stunned silence and listening in on her emotions only told me how surprised she was that someone wasn't openly combative against her ideals. I raised my eyebrow and her, giving her a small smile.

"You know, where I am from people could only dream of people capable of life shifting as it is here. Damn the medical research, we had tonnes of that, just the ability to edit someone's body so completely would change how we approach medicine for years to come. For this world to have people capable of what you can do? You are extremely lucky." Now even Rethi was looking at me oddly. I had gotten good at telling what Rethi was thinking, just by virtue of being around the kid most of his waking moments and seeing almost all of the expressions he had to offer—I didn't even need natural empathy for it. So, I continued.

"I know you don't think much of it now. What could a person capable of only saving one life change? Especially when tens of thousands die from simple physical injuries." I turned to them, wondering if they were following along. Alena looked suitably confused, but interested, and Rethi's attention was focused—as it was whenever I talked about small snippets of Earth, something I didn't do very often, the wound a little too fresh. I hummed with thought, trying to find the words I wanted.

"But what about when that is no longer a concern? When the same protection afforded by the most powerful kingdoms on Orisis spans the entire planet and this one, when monsters slowly become less and less of a threat as humanity and other races advance to such a level that they can be easily dealt with by a group of common soldiers. What do you think is the next biggest cause of death?" Rethi began to think, but before he could even think of an answer Alena spoke confidently.

"Disease." I snapped my fingers and shot finger guns at her cheesily.

"Precisely. Once monsters and wars stop killing everyone, the next big issue will be illness, probably. I'm sure that the larger kingdoms have come up with ways of mitigating the spread of disease, they can't have their populace be wiped out by a random virus. But when it becomes the largest cause of death, there will be a massive push behind improving working and living conditions, putting in standards for the food you eat, what materials are used to construct things, the creation of sanitation as a societal concept. Eventually, the world will reach a point where it becomes almost impossible to make anything any cleaner or more sanitary without massive changes in life as you know it. So, after the world has begun to clean itself, and the spread of disease has been mitigated to a point where many diseases will simply disappear, and many will be mitigated in other ways—like inoculation and later on, vaccination. So, what is the next frontier?" The two kids looked at me, enraptured by what I was saying, but unable to look that far into the future on a dime.

How could they be expected to either? When the world was so concerned with actually surviving against monsters, what does disease matter in the grand scheme of things? I chuckled at their obviously feeble attempts to pick a 'new frontier'.

"What about diseases that have nothing to do with cleanliness? What about diseases that stem from lifestyle choices, or simply from existing in certain parts of the world and the insects that happen to be there too? What about birth defects that an unlucky child in thousands is afflicted with, or the various mental disorders that are inherited, at least partly, through genetics?" I shook my head at the two children in front of me who couldn't possibly know just how terrifying and destructive these diseases are.

"But with this power of yours? Life shifting could change all of that. Imagine that you were able to identify a chance that a child was potentially to be born with a rare genetic disorder that would make it impossible for them to live even a few years. Right then and there, you could eliminate that possibility right from the parent's genetics and the unborn foetus. You could stop the cycle altogether." I smiled at Alena. It was a moment of thinking before she seemed to slowly come to terms with just how far her ability could potentially stretch. I shrugged.

"You have a long way before you reach even remotely close to that level yet, especially without accidentally making someone start leaking blood through their eyes." I laughed lightly and Alena looked slightly disheartened by that, fuelling the darker parts of her emotions more severely than I had expected.

"But just because the goal seems unachievable, doesn't mean that it isn't worth pursuing. And who knows, you might accidentally achieve it." The who teenagers adopted thoughtful looks, and even Alena's storm of emotions seemed to calm down for a moment while she pondered. It'd be interesting to see what came out of this. Best case I get someone on my side that is able to heal people, and in worst case, I sow the seeds of my idealism.

We walked in mostly silence for the rest of the day. Maybe the two teenagers had things to think about after my spiel, but that was fine by me. Silence was a good tool, giving way to some of the best thoughts in the end.

The day slowly trended towards night, and after one more stop earlier in the day, we decided to take it in for the night, quickly setting up the tents and a campfire. We ate a quick dinner together, Alena and Rethi spending most of their time chatting quietly amongst themselves, which was fine by me, mostly because of the fact that I could feel the eyes on me again. I was sure now, the unknowable, alien feeling was coming from the campfire of all things.

Honestly, I was less creeped out by it at this point, and simply confused. By all visible metrics, it was an entirely normal campfire, nothing even remotely interesting about it. But irrespective of my perception, there were alien emotions simply existing within the fire itself.

When the two kids decided to go to sleep in the same tent—how scandalous—I stared into the fire, directly where I felt the emotions coming from. I think I spent a little over an hour staring into the fire before the emotions disappeared entirely. That just made me even more confused, was it contingent on–

"I'm sorry I didn't introduce myself sooner, your companions were… having a hard time getting to sleep, as it were." I jumped up from my spot on the ground, immediately summoning my hammer into existence the fastest I ever have. I took a swing at where I heard the voice coming from, and there was a loud thump as the hammer buried itself into the ground beside a portly man dressed in fine clothes, but not fine enough to be nobility. His face was the epitome of welcoming and hospitable, his head was balding too, only seeming to match his welcoming figure. I was entirely sure that the hammer was going to hit the man but soundlessly, and seemingly effortlessly, he had managed to dodge the blow entirely.

"Ah yes, the hammer I've heard so much about. If I remember correctly you weren't able to wield the beast of a thing for a while there. It's good to see that you have made progress." The man smiled encouragingly, in a way that I felt to my very core. It was inexplicable, but I had felt the same once, what felt like years ago now.

"A God."

The God before me raised an eyebrow.

"Indeed. Lord God of the Hearth Court, at your service. Fast on the uptake." The man moved to sit again, gesturing for me to do the same.

"I try." I said with not much humour in my voice.

"Yes, I know. It's not exactly a normal occurrence a God descending to meet a Champion. In fact, if I recall correctly, the last Court of Gods that authorised contact with a Champion ended up being culled." The man chuckled to himself. Though, the joke was a bit morbid for my tastes.

"So then, why would a 'Lord God' deign to come meet one such as myself, if the price for so doing is that high?" I looked into the God's eyes and felt that same alien set of emotions, but amusement bubbled to the surface most prominently.

"An interesting conundrum, isn't it? There is a reason of course, and that reason is you." The God looked into my eyes with a thoughtful expression on his face.

"Me? What's so interesting about me in all of this?" I asked, genuinely intrigued by the turn of events. Surely I'm not the most important Champion on probably even Virsdis at the moment, so that's certainly not the reason.

"Intention! Intention, my dear boy." The God yelled out. He saw my eyes glance worriedly towards the tent that both Rethi and Alena were sleeping in and he chuckled mirthfully.

"Do not worry, I am a Lord God, I know how to set up a few rudimentary sound cancellation wards and such." My eyes narrowed, seemingly lost in thought for a moment, but I prompted him.

"Intention?" I resupplied.

"Ah, yes. Intention. Do you know what those that fought in the last Champion War lacked so severely? The ones who were fighting against those who wished to return home, back to Earth?" The God pretended to ponder. His words were almost like an actor gently guiding his audience to the conclusion he wanted them to reach. I just raised an eyebrow at the God, and he chuckled merrily, delighting in being called out in his act.

"Intention. Champions that wished to go home were filled to the brim with it. Their burning need overwriting the care for any life, army, kingdom, or Champions that would dare get in their way. And what did we have to combat them?" He asked, a slight variation on the pondering expression. This time it was more like an academic, conversing with another about complicated topics only they could speak on at their respective levels.

"Nothing." I said, but the God's face fell, becoming a stone guise of distaste.

"Fear. All we had was fear." And I felt it through his eyes. That burning fear existed still within the God's chest. A wildfire of worry and anxiety over whether there would be anything left to be the God of.

"So," the God regained his jolly expression, his emotions equalizing once again, "this time, before the storm truly hits, we need something else to power us." He smiled, the simple expression filling me with an emotion that I wasn't so familiar with, a complex thing born of dire circumstance. That emotion was…

"Hope."


A/N: Hey there! Hope you all had an amazing Christmas! I didn't post yesterday to spend some time with my family and enjoy the day as best as I could, but I'm back onto it now! Full steam ahead for little old me!

Hope you all enjoy a Christmas gift, just for you!

 

[Sarius]

Chapter 39: A Welcoming Smile, A Quiet Word

I nodded slowly at this God. It was an interesting gambit. To try and employ hope as a tool to drive the races of this world to survive against the oncoming war, it wasn't the easiest ploy.

"And how are you expecting to do that, exactly. It seems that the races did pretty well last time, all things considered." I said, feigning a nonchalant demeanour. The God smiled heartily at me; the warmness almost radiant.

"We of the Hearth Court have long since played the quiet game. We are Gods of hospitality, of safety," he extended one arm as a scale, "however, we are also Gods of silent politics and quiet conversation." The God extended his other hand, forming an equalized scale. He grinned at my raised eyebrow.

"So you are hidden daggers of sorts?" The God scrunched his face up in distaste.

"No, no. We aren't nearly so uncouth. Well, some of us are, but as a whole, no. What we are, is the largest and most powerful conglomeration of deific information brokers." His grin became radiant once again, filled with sly and cunning.

"So, you collect information by sneaking peeks on people around campfires and in your domains?"

"Precisely, young Maximilian!" He winked at me. He knew my name without me telling him. Great.

"So, if you are successful as information brokers, why is the Lord God of the Hearth Court here to speak to little old me?" The jovial innkeeper laughed merrily and made a show of 'thinking' about his answer.

"Well. Let's just say that some other Courts believe us to be too powerful to be a self-interested party. Other than the divine power we receive as payment for our efforts, of course." He smiled pleasantly, but if I could read anything from him, I could tell he was decidedly unhappy with that fact.

"The other Courts are effectively trying to hold down your power in fear that they wouldn't have a chance against you? Rather flattering." He chuckled dryly at that.

"I admit, it does sweeten the deal a little. However, it does not help when we see the worlds crumbling in front of us and we are powerless to do anything, lest the Courts themselves go to war." He looked dismayed, but it was more acting. He perked right back up soon after.

"So, you have chosen to involve yourself now? For what reason?"

"Why, it is as simple as it could be, young Champion. It is our domain." As he finished the word, I felt a strange alignment in the world that surrounded me, as if the world itself handed over its dominion to the God sitting in front of me, bowing at his feet and awaiting his order.

"You're intending to get personally involved?" The God scratched his full bearded chin at that.

"No, Gods are unable to truly effect the worlds. Influence? Yes." His sly grin returned to his face. He was an undeniably amusing God to be around, so bombastic in his intonation, hand gestures and faces, acting his way throughout the entire conversation. He was a social enigma incarnate, somehow being the person capable of making friends with anyone, hold a salient conversation with everyone and be the whole world's best friend. I just sighed, a bemused smile poorly hidden on my face.

"So, you have come to 'influence' me?" He grinned.

"Well, you certainly were a candidate. We were looking for Mayer, initially—even though he has already been 'claimed' as such." The large man winked at me conspiratorially, not elaborating on the interesting tidbit, "The man is a true war hero. He is well respected amongst the Courts. Even Arun is partial to him." The jolly God scoffed. Arun, the God of Death here. Wasn't he supposed to be impartial?

"He is, of course. He's a Death God. But he's still a living being, capable of just as much, if not more emotional variance than you or I. Though it is hard to win his trust." The smile on the God's face was beyond pleased with himself. I rolled my eyes.

"So you were looking for Mayer and ended up finding me along the way?" He nodded.

"I believe one of us found you during a conversation about goals," He smiled genuinely, "and you spoke words I wasn't sure that I'd hear a Champion ever speak. Some of the Champions are more inclined to protect, but you are far more inclined than the rest. It begs the question, are you even part of the same species?" The God's question was joking, but also holding enough truth in it that it worried me. If a God, Lord God even, found an observable difference between myself and the rest of the Champions, I couldn't help but worry if it was possible for me to relate to them at all.

"Regardless of the other Champions, your mindset has been unique so far, especially when dealing with the common folk. Your strides to ensure the safety of those in your employ, and even those that wronged you was unique in the fashion you approached it in. The letter was genius, by the way. That Jothian boy who attacked you is going to become an accomplished carpenter, it's quite the sight." The God nodded his head to his own assessments. Him knowing these strange tidbits was frankly unnerving. But I believe it just goes to show that the Hearth Court is capable of extensive research, even into the lives of those as small as the Jothians.

"So, I'm an interesting prospective? For what?" This prompted another round of thinking. Although the thinking was simply an act, I could take a small peek into the emotions of the God and see the whirlwind inside. He winked at me, knowing of my intrusion.

"To be truthful with you, you are the only prospective. We are effectively set on you. If you do not accept, then we will recede into the shadows of the divine realms and simply let what happens, happen." He smiled sadly, making it clear what option he would prefer I take. I waited for him to continue, and he sighed, scratching his balding head in what seemed like genuine awkwardness. Awkward and this God were almost two entirely different concepts.

"What we intend to give you is a Court Blessing." The mere mention of the blessing made the air shimmer around me, becoming strange; warm, inviting, pleasurable, safe. I realised it was but a taste of his domain. Just the mundane tip of the iceberg.

"I assume that is a big deal?" I said, acting nonplussed, but entirely failing. Even the God himself couldn't help but look… stricken.

"An incredibly big deal," he coughed into his fist and sighed, looking up to the stars, as if for guidance, "giving even a blessing is a large investment, from a single God. Blessings are usually given by lesser Gods inside of large courts, though Gods without a court sometimes do as well. Mostly so they can gain power for themselves. It comes at a high cost, effectively gambling divine energy with one of the races against the world itself." He paused to take in a large breath of fresh air, clearing himself of the nerves of what it seemed he was about to do.

"However, sometimes there is a blessing given by a major God, even a Lord God in exceedingly rare cases. They do this to create a direct link with their followers, maybe to reforge a church from the ground up if destroyed, to run a crusade or very rarely to handle a social issue. It is almost never done for the benefit of the races as a whole." Gloomy, I had to admit. Gods who care, but don't really care.

"So we have the power grabbing Gods, and we have large and already powerful Gods solidifying their own power within the world and managing it." He nodded heavily.

"And then we have Court Blessings…" he waited for the effect in the air to disappear, looking mildly annoyed, "they are in a totally different league than the rest. A Cour–" He looked up to the stars with an angry gaze, before returning to the conversation, "This sort of blessing," he waited for a moment and nodded contently, "is like going absolutely all in with a fortune that nothing but the greatest of empires can produce in their lifetime, in one single bet."

The jovial God that had initially greeted me was gone. Now, in front of me, was a man that was loading a six-shooter with three bullets, spinning the cylinder and cocking the gun. His immense seriousness was borderline oppressive.

"Why?" I asked simply. He smiled at me with immense sadness.

"It is the only hope we have. The only hope that the second war won't spell the doom of both the worlds and the divine realms alike." He shook his head with emotion and re-focusing on the task at hand.

"We intend to offer this blessing to you. We wish for you to, quite literally, become our living, mortal avatar." I knew it was coming, but I couldn't believe it. The God let me have my moment, intensely gazing into my own eyes. I could feel all of his emotions, and they were all resolute in their conviction.

"What do you want me to do with this power you are granting me?" I asked, the hesitancy leaking into my voice. He only smiled.

"Whatever you feel is right. We have been watching you for a long time now, Maximilian. I myself am the origin for those blessed as Soul-Seekers. You are not one of mine, nor even a close relative, but I can see your emotions just as well as you can, only that I have seen far more than you. I have lived through thousands of generations, looking for those that embodied what I am. You are a young prodigy of what I am, in essence. Almost a facsimile of values. Safety, hospitality, the quiet word, and the convincing smile. I may be a God, an old and powerful one at that, but we are more similar than you might think. The races always seem to forget that we are they and they are us."

I couldn't help but be a little shocked. To be compared so closely to a God, of all things, was frankly baffling. My mouth had dropped agape at some point, but I didn't have the willpower to close it. I was a God's gambit.

"What will you grant me?"

"A seed. A seed that will separate you from the God you are subject to. One that will wash your name as a Champion, and institute you into this world in truth. A seed that will bankrupt us." He smiled, gaining back some of his humour. I smiled weakly in return.

"I'll no longer be a Champion? Will that get rid of the powers I have?" The God shook his head.

"The powers you have are yours to keep. Only your God would be capable of undoing the physical transformation, and once you are bereft of his chains, he will be unable to affect you. You will, however, lose your link to him." I guess that means that I lose the stat numbers and achievements.

The stat system was rigid and uncaring for realistic progression. I received very little progression through practicing the Sharah, and only at a breakpoint in which I managed to shift was there a payout. I shared Ryan's suspicion that the stat system would stop being an ever flowing source of power and begin a decline into shackles that kept us weak enough for the god to bring us back, but powerful enough to destroy the worlds. I hadn't levelled, past the initial one I had received. It was true that it had potential to make me absurdly powerful, but how powerful?

More powerful than a divine seed, gifted to me by an entire court of Gods, willing to gamble their everything on me? Even though the 'everything' was completely abstract to me.

I don't remember much about the God that I presume was God. I'll blame it on the headache I had and total shellshock. But I remember one thing. He seemed self-serving. You could say that making a decision based on what I feel about a God that I know basically nothing about, and only half remember, is a bad idea, and you are totally right.

But what choice do I have?

Do I trust a God that I only met extremely briefly, and sent me to an entirely new world—enacting a war of catastrophic proportions for those that live there? Using those lands as a testing ground for what is tantamount to human nuclear missiles?

Or do I trust the God who sits right in front of me, offering me everything, doing almost everything but literally pleading with me use their power to save their worlds from my own people. People who, while smart, may cause civilisation ending damage to the worlds I now inhabit and will likely die in, someday.

Maybe I was right on the cusp of earning a new achievement that would truly shed light on how powerful and gracious the God I met so long ago is.

But I doubt it.

It's time to lock the door to the old world and throw away the key, no matter how painful. I muster all my bravery I can, in front of the most terrifying decision I will ever make. I raise my voice, shakier than I'd like, but surer than I'd hoped.

"I accept."


A/N: Oooh shit! I wonder how many of you saw that one coming?