[KoJ] Chapter 94: Slip from Fire

The earth churns and rolls in the way only the Other Side can. A vortex of dust crashes against my scales, and rips through the fire elemental’s form. Her form distorts involuntarily as the intense winds wash over her, yet she pays it no mind. A storm that would rip even Ceph into a bloody cloud, nothing more than an annoyance.

“What happened here?” She asks.

A thunderous roar detonates a dune near the edge of my vision as if to answer her question. I don’t feel the need to add on. It’s obvious she knows the answer.

“This is wrong. The Titans are supposed to protect the world from the Anatla… not destroy it themselves.” It’s hard to tell if the girl is talking to me, or simply speaking her thoughts. “Eldest Ember wouldn’t lie.”

The elemental is so enraptured by the battle of Titans beyond my sight that it’s as if she has forgotten my existence entirely. Yet, her flames linger near the rend back to the Warped Tunnels. If I have any intent to get rid of her, I’ll need to move her away from the distortion before I unblock it.

Just because she’s stopped actively fighting me, doesn’t mean she will accept that will allow me to return to the pact nations. She’s made that clear.

I slither away. If she can see the Titans from here, then she, like most sapients, sees through light. She’s already shown she can gain a comprehension over spacial distortions simply from her flames passing through them, so the bend covering the rend should seem like any other air.

All I need to do is wait for the landscape to change enough that it is unrecognisable to her senses, then I can return and… and punish Ceph.

“Hey, where are you…” The elemental turns to follow, only to stop as something else catches her eye. Her flaming gaze rises in surprise. “The Titan Alps reach here too?” She shakes her head. “Even if the Titans aren’t as honourable as Eldest Ember said, the Anatla are many times worse. This Beyond, you cannot work with it. Whatever it is you think you will get from it, I can promise it won’t end well.”

Where does she get this certainty? “What makes you think that way? The Beyond has destroyed nothing, while you can see for yourself what the Titans have done.” I flick my tail over the landscape. “Why should I trust them over the being that taught me most of what I know?”

The elemental hesitates, her gaze flicking back to the distant monstrous battle, before it hardens. “I have seen into their realm. There is no land. No sun. No life. Nothing exists except their forms which extend into eternity. Titans may have destroyed this half of our world, but they have left the continent with people mostly untouched. I would rather things as they are, than the unknown of the Anatla.”

Frustrated at the flaming creature’s persistence, I pick up the speed. Unwilling to let me slip away, her fire clings to my form, carrying her along. Elementals; always so persistent. For the first time in a long while, I’m striking an unmovable wall. Nothing I do gets rid of her for longer than a single, brief moment.

I’d hoped she’d stay behind near where the rend was, but that hasn’t worked. Obviously, she’s lingering near me not to continue this cyclic argument about the Titans and Anatla, but so she can follow me should I return.

Still, I have a plan. I move veer towards the distortion dense region.

“The Beyond wishes to wipe the world of Titans. Even if it hadn’t promised to bring Scia back to life, that desire is enough to help them. The Titans care nothing for those lesser than themselves.”

“I met you while you were destroying an entire city. Do you really have ground to stand?” Her accusation is enough to give me pause.

“They attacked me,” I hiss.

Despite my aggravated response, the rage flowing through my veins has simmered enough that I am no longer blind. I realise now that I destroyed countless lives in my fury. Most of which had nothing to do with my attack. My immediate response to the agony of that weapon had been to lash out at anything in my way. I lost all sense of reason. All that mattered to me was vengeance and the death of my competitor, at the expense of the weak.

In that way, I acted no differently than a Titan.

Another deep hiss rolls from my throat, but this time its fury is only directed at myself.

The elemental ignores it, seemingly focusing on something else I’ve said. “This Beyond promised you to return someone’s life?”

Her eyes flash with sadness, as if remembering an old memory. I consider using it. As annoying as elementals are, she’s not a Titan. Maybe the Beyond would be willing to offer her the same deal. But before I can open my jaw to speak, her brows furrow and animosity overwhelms her features.

“You would take this Scia from her place in the Eternal Inferno? Her body has already returned to the Cycle. No matter if it’s possible for the Anatla or not; doing so is wrong.” Her voice hardens. “It is unnatural. Her energy has already given a thousand other things life. What would happen to them should Scia be returned to life?”

I don’t legitimise that thought with a response. Unnatural? Who decides what’s natural and what’s not. Besides, even if her strange beliefs are true… a thousand lives for Scia’s? I don’t think I’d hesitate.

“You’ve shown me what you wanted.” The elemental is frustrated, but she remains cordial. “Now why don’t you lead us back. I’d rather not stay here.”

There are enough natural distortions around now that I feel comfortable to enact my plan. “Will you stop me from returning to the pact nations?”

Her flames twirl in agitation. “I will not let you attack them.”

“Then you will stay here.”

A rift opens before us and in an instant we are crashing through the depths of the Other Side’s distortion-dense caverns. The elemental clings to me, never letting go as her flames explode in intensity.

That is fine. I already know I can’t brush her off so easily.

She screams something lost in the crash of gravel grinding over my scales. If I hadn’t taken so much damage from the Henosis’ bomb, I would have been able to shrink down to a size far more manageable to slip away. Unfortunately, the smallest I can safely bring myself is to a metre thick and a couple dozen long. Plenty tiny enough to slip through the wide pockets of air within the gravel, yet I throw myself into the walls constantly. The elemental hates it a lot more than I do.

Rapidly, the distortions grow more numerous. As I speed towards the amber barrier, my own bends add to the mess. The already difficult to traverse expanse grows beyond its natural state.

I noticed this earlier, but the girl’s flames act like water or sand; they pass through every bend regardless of how wide-spanning the overall inferno is. Unlike my own bulk that destabilises distortions too small to hold my body, she flows through them all. In such a dense space, her burning body is continually pulled in a thousand directions at once. No matter how good the senses over her body are, that is enough to make anyone disoriented. It took me what must be hundreds of years to become as good as I am.

And I only make it worse by inserting my control through the natural bends, holes and rifts, and shift them.

The task is obscenely difficult, and my mind strains both from trying to control so many different distortions at once, and trying to keep the constantly changing paths in check. But it works. Each time her flames pass through a bend, they flail around aimlessly, unable to discern which way is her core body that clings around my scales.

She quickly gives up on the inferno flooding the caverns, as it rapidly becomes more of a hindrance, and pulls all her efforts into engulfing my form alone.

Just what I was waiting for.

I dive down until I’m mere metres from the amber barrier — the solid, endless wall as unchanged by spatial effects as always — and crash my tail against it. The resulting force throws me through a bend that scrapes along my scales with such power that the elemental is almost thrown off by it alone. But that is not all. A ring of holes pops into existence around my body to scrape off any remnant flames that remain.

Finally, I’m free of her.

As I slither away, she tries to follow, but the complex weave of distortions makes it impossible for her now that she has to rely on sight. Her flames race outwards, only to curl back in on themselves. Other tongues of fire shoot out through random rifts, only to appear a hundred thousand metres the wrong way.

It takes me a minute to return to the rend back to the warped tunnels, unblock it, and appear across the other side of the world. The elemental unable to follow. To make even more certain she won’t stop me, I seal the rend once more and slither towards the surface.

With that out of the way, it is time to meet with Ceph.

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Solvei was stuck.

She’d been trying to play it cool while the almost-Titan had calmed down. The creature’s appearance, and ability to speak, had been shocking, but she’d already stared down enough impossible beings that she didn’t back down when it had threatened the land where those she considered close lived. The last thing the áed would allow was something to threaten those she cared for.

But she very quickly discovered that not only were her flames too weak, but the enhanced fire of her spear too. During their brief brawl, Solvei had tried her best to replicate the way Ember’s lingering flame had pushed beyond the barrier to plasma, yet she had quickly discovered that it would not come easily. Thankfully, the snake, like so many things since she’d passed the second binding threshold, struggled to actually harm her.

It was the only reason she hadn’t panicked when she found herself impossibly far from home.

Solvei had been desperate to never let go of that serpent, as she knew it was the only way back, yet she’d failed. Now, she was stuck in this unthinkable landscape with no way back. No way to her team. And this had to happen when they’d finally had a lead that could help them stop Armageddon.

It had taken her days to find her way back to the surface of this strange, destroyed land. Even with her flames able to permeate the flowing rock, the snake had brought her so far down. Not that it had been easy to escape the mirror maze of portals it had trapped her within.

The glowing wall in the depths was a suspicious sight. Solvei had seen the same unique amber shine back when she and Tore had fought Kalma. When the woman had accidentally attacked it, she had been more terrified than Solvei had thought a being as powerful as her could be. If it was here too, it had to be important. Was that the barrier against the Anatla spoken of?

When Solvei reached the surface again, she suppressed the dread of being alone in a place so alien, and gaped. The sky was nothing like back home.

The Ember Moon was gone. The dust in the air wasn’t thick enough to block her sight, and yet the bright red ever-present light of the moon was gone. The moon was never gone. As the guiding light of all beings, it should always be Northwest.

Without it, she felt lost.

At least the Titan Alps remained. She’d risen from the gravel incredibly close to them, so they took up half the sky with how high they rose. Though, even they seemed different to what she was familiar. Unlike the massive mountain range that held countless other mounts on its back, this was smooth. Like the sand dunes of the wasteland. Of home.

Thinking of the place she grew up, she recognised that a lot of features of the Other Side were shared with the deserts, but not nearly close enough to make her feel comfortable. The land moved like an ocean, and that in itself was enough to send a shiver through her flames.

Ignoring all that, there was one thing about this place that just seemed… impossible.

The sky was fractured.

Not in the same way glass or earth broke, but it held a distinct sense that it was marred. Patches of the Nightfall Shroud stretched across the sky. Its recognisable rot-like growth remained the same, but it was sparse, as if the dark blue sky itself had ripped back control with force.

The shade that had stolen away the sky from the Nightfall Shroud was that of an early evening — at least one from before the Ember Moon gained its red glow permanently — yet the sun was high in the sky. The Eternal Inferno shone with far more intensity than usual as well.

Solvei didn’t know what to think about the sight, so she didn’t. She turned, and flew along the base of the Alps. Without the serpent to lead her back home, it was the only option that seemed palatable.

She decidedly avoided the two brawling Titans that continually destroyed the horizon with each attack. Whether Ember was mistaken, or things had changed since she’d been active, the Titans were clearly not as amenable as she’d thought.

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sorry about the delay on this chap. i rewrote a couple times, and i'm still not satisfied. feel like i could do better for the link between YF and KoJ.

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