Tread Lightly – Among Monsters And Men

A deep gasp of Ether fills my entire body with power, momentarily offsetting my throat which is slit wide open, spitting blood into the air. I can immediately feel the Ether within my body begin to boil and revolt against me, the amount of Ether in my body instantly going beyond my limit of control.

My entire frame shakes with both power and the inability to control said power as I shakily stand and walk toward the woman. I’m too stubborn to just give up here and die, and I’m way beyond any other time I’ve ever crossed the Edge but I need to last long enough against the acute Ether saturation for the brothers to arrive with the Concoction. The substance should save me.

I vibrate with inner Ether that rages against my control and I do everything to keep the Ether within me and not melt me down to a puddle of flesh. The chains that bind me loosen so much that the loss of my carotid artery doesn’t matter as much, my vision stabilizing and the haze in my mind transforming to razor-sharp focus. The pure amount of Ether momentarily offset the effects of lethal injuries.

There is one good thing about my current situation, though, and that is that because my body is beyond the limit, the razor of death approaching, the Bloody Palm no longer has to be careful in healing me. The artifact no longer has to worry about pushing me over the Edge because I’m already past it. So, my wounds immediately start mending together, slashes grafting into thin scars, broken bones building themselves back together, and ruptured organs reconstructing themselves all within just a dozen seconds or so.

With this healing and empowered body, I turn the shambling walk toward the woman into a powerful run step by step as I push more and more Ether into my body. I’m already past the brink, what’s a bit more? As I do so, though, the headache reaches a peak, the pain literally being the main obstacle in moving both my body and Ether. It prevents me from reaching my death-bound peak.

The woman isn’t the first to notice my movement, but instead, it is the man, Oliver, with the foresight ability that does. He turns on his heels the second that the Ether enters my lungs and sprints back at me, barking a warning to the woman.

“Watch out! Kids not done yet!”

Oliver intercepts me and stops me from reaching the woman. He takes a swing at me and I sidestep the punch with such speed that even though he expected me to dodge it, he can’t dodge my counter. I strike him right in the chest with my dagger, the blade sinking only a single inch into his torso. After the single inch, it feels as though I am stabbing into a block of steel. I can visibly see the Ether around where I stabbed congealed and causing the muscles of his chest to tense greatly.

He looks at me with surprise with the dagger in his chest before reaching behind his back and pulling out a new weapon. A sawed-off shotgun that glitters with pink specs around the barrel like muzzle smoke.

Oliver brings the weapon to bare right in front of me and I only get a split second to dodge to the side before he pulls the trigger of the obviously enhanced weapon. I feel a burst of pain erupts alongside a deafening boom from the shotgun that destroys the bottom left of my torso completely with a burst of smoke from the gun that clouds my vision.

I stumble to the side from the blast that eviscerated me and the man follows through the smoke from the gun using his foresight and strikes me in the head, instantly sending me back to the ground. The impact causes my brain to shake and my vision to blur. I am unable to even spend a single second to understand how my dagger didn’t hurt him at all.

I can hear Oliver laugh again through the blinding smoke that was released by his shotgun.

“Damn kid, the bounty was right! Yur’ hard as shit to kill! Look at him, Rebecca! He’s squirming!”

Who laughs at this kind of situation? How is this man a Hunter? Some of these Vengeance Squad members are fully insane. I now understand what Johnny was talking about. The Gunfighter might be cruel and a hardass, but he cares for others. That is obvious. Why else would he be fighting against the Hunters if he didn’t?

I cough out pieces of my organs but prevent any Ether from leaving me with a painful cramp amidst his laughs and anger rises within me at his insanity. Anger that the Bloody Palm matches. I can feel the Ether within me nearing the point of bursting, not from my lungs as usual from holding Strugglers Gasp for too long, but instead from everywhere.

My own Ether is rebelling because the cells of my body have become too suffused with Ether and the only thing I can do is increase the pressure, momentarily forcing the unruly Ether under my control. And the Bloody Palm joins me in this endeavor, no longer tentatively helping me, but instead sending huge pulses of rejuvenating Ether that further increases the density of my Ether.

With another painful cough, I roll onto all fours, blood dripping from my body in huge spurts each of which is similar to a full hand’s cup of liquid. Then, I shakily stand once more and raise my unarmed fists toward him. Laughs continue from the man despite me getting back up.

“Look at this Rebecca! It’s incredible! I think he heals even faster than Andrew could heal us!”

I hear the woman to my side scoff with disgust at the man as she turns away from me.

“Stop torturing the kid, Oliver, it’s not right.”

“Who cares if it’s right? He’s wanted for the murder of a veteran Hunter. He deserves so much more than what he’s getting.”

“Just kill him, please. I”m going to Frederick, the poison bitch is helping Johnny, now.”

“Yeah, yeah, go suck up to the Colonel now that your boyfriend is dead.”

“Shut up you dick.”

Their toxic argument gives me some time to recover, the Bloody Palm frantically doing all it can to reconstruct the ten-or-so-pound chunk of me that was blown off by the sawed-off surprise. Despite how much I need the healing, though, I never once for a single moment consider boosting the palm with Daydream. Never again.

So, I raise my arms at the man who seems to see a half second or so into the future. Then, just before I recover all the way, he rushes back at me with a smile. I return him a face of grim determination as I flow all the Ether I can possibly control at the moment to boost my legs. Speed has always been my closest ally. Maybe if I move fast enough I can keep him away long enough to immobilize him or his ally.

Oliver takes the first attack with another sweeping attack toward my legs, and I respond with a leap backward and I pull out the artifact that I have left in my backpack ever since Dakota has grown too big for it.

Law’s Light. The female head that emits light like a lantern from its mouth that can bind targets within its radiance.

I use the gap between the two of us to rush Ether into the artifact and make the light bare down onto Oliver, slowing him down greatly as I continue to backpedal and flee from him. Then from there, I use the advantage of speed to keep him just far enough away from me for the light from the head lantern to affect him.

After just ten seconds or so of this, I hear him holler out to the group of people fighting near us, specifically at the woman Rebecca who just joined the fight against Primrose and Johnny. He is unlike Vernon and Virgil when they were first beset by the light, I assume the higher Sigiled or resistance to Ether makes him more resistant to the light of the artifact.

“Rebecca! Help! The kid’s got another artifact!”

Rebecca dodges back from a swipe of Primrose's deadly scarf as she turns back to look at the two of us.

“What?! Another one!?”

I stare at her while also keeping focus on Oliver just hoping that she will ignore the bastard, after all, she seems to hate him too, at least just a little. But unfortunately for me, they are still a team, and she turns away from Primrose to go and help him. I guess getting another ally to help fight Johnny and Primrose is a priority.

Then, she gets low to the ground and uses her claws of Ether to accelerate rapidly toward me, much faster than I ever could with Bloodhound’s Step, although it is quite reminiscent of it. Ether more people than I thought looked up to the old man, or that the stance is an efficient method of movement for a good number of Sigils.

With the distance that she’s at and how she’s rapidly closing in on me, I turn the light from Law’s Light toward her, instantly making her slow down. And the chains that wrap around her from Law’s Light only continue to grow as she nears, slowing her down the whole time.

But there are two enemies, and with their directions of them, I can only get one of them within the light at a time. So, with a realization that I would be forced to fight one of them soon, I chose one. I chose the man that I’d much rather kill even if he’s going to be much harder to put down.

So, I swiftly set down Law’s Light with a burst of Ether to keep the artifact running while it faces toward Rebecca, the woman with deadly claws. Rapidly, she grows stiff and slows in her approach. Then, I turn to Oliver, the man who derives enjoyment from torturing would-be criminals.

The man appears to be a bit slower than before as he moves toward me. I take this time to try something new because his combination of foresight and steel skin is going to be incredibly difficult to break.

I make a flat hand, similar to when one is going for a high five, and try to emulate a knife with my fingers as I move at him. Then, I use the pressurized and highly volatile Ether that barely listens to me to rush into my hand, forcing it to twist, turn, and combine the whole way down.

Great resistance meets my attempt at Braided-Strand Ether, but to supplement my lacking skills in Ether manipulation, I move my whole body in concert with my mind’s eye. I twist my whole body forward in a striking motion toward Oliver, using my hand like a knife seeking to pierce through his chest.

I feel a measure of success when I see radiant, multicolored Ether emerge from my forearm that runs down to the tip of my fingers, the manifestation of color being one sign of Braided-Strand Ether. The multi-color surprises only me as I strike out at him, for the man expects the strike and he uses his forearm to deflect my right arm covered in Ether to the right. Then, he brings his sawed-off up once more from his hip.

His face lights up with satisfaction at deflecting my would-be final strike as I take another step from the deflection and twist my entire body in the other direction.

Then I force my Ether to entire my left arm in a similar way but because of how it moves from my other arm, it is filled with much more tension. Tension that forces my Ether to braid itself and increase its strength as it leaves the inside of my body out onto my left hand’s knife shape. I take the bet that the man's foresight is a strenuous ability, one that cannot be constantly used.

The blade of my hand-knife rapidly nears the man’s left side as his eyes go wide in shock at my follow-up attack. He was too slow to attack me before I could follow up because of the residual effects of Law's Light. That, and he didn't use his foresight to notice the attack ahead of time.

My bet was right because if he had noticed my follow-up attack, he would have backed up instead of drawing his sawed-off, effectively making my effort moot and my attack miss. But instead, his arrogance got him or maybe his want to save energy, could be either that made him underestimate a dying enemy. I guess no one ever told him that even a drowning man deep in the ocean will struggle.

So, this time it is my face that lights up with satisfaction as I feel my empowered hand covered with Whetting and pushed with the power of Strugglers Gasp sink deep into the man's side. I hear him yell out in pain as I follow up the left hand’s knife strike with another twisting strike empowered by Braided-Strand Ether once more. But this one is an open palm that lands straight onto the dagger that still lays just barely embedded into his chest, the light armor that the man is wearing keeping it in place.

Unfortunately for me, Oliver reacts in time to not be skewered through with the dagger. The man dodges back which partially offsets the force of my fist, and instead of the blade going through him, the blade only goes in about a full finger’s length. My left arm, however, does rip out of his side, causing heaps of blood to drop onto the ground below.

He stumbles back to catch his breath and recover as I do the same, the Ether that I used making the whole world shake around me in pain, disorientation, and the onsetting effects of acute Ether saturation. I’m on a timer, and I’d rather be on a timer with no threats around me. He's wounded, but with the variety of Ether I've seen today, I bet even missing half his body isn't necessarily lethal.

So, I charge back at the man, this time ready to use the new skill that I’ve learned more effectively and to put him down once and for all. But as I do so, the man yells with a loud grunt, and the film of vibrant red Ether that surrounds him spikes in density and looks more similar to a haze instead of a thin lens. At the same time, I see the muscles around the wound in his side twist and close the hand-sized hole, preventing most of the blood from exiting.

I recognize what he’s doing as a Sigil skill maybe even more than one, but one that I have no idea of the purpose of at first, after all, I have no clue what his Sigils are besides a possible Augur. My experience and knowledge aren’t enough, but an idea does come to mind as he rushes me down with incredible speed, the ground shaking underneath each step.

He could be an Abbot-Augur combination. Nothing else that I know of makes sense, but Abbots are known for being able to use something called “Vigor”. Now I don’t know if that’s a skill or a special type of Ether, but the man that is crashing down toward me seems to be quite vigorous.

My thoughts fly at a thousand miles a minute as the man moves seemingly just as quickly straight in front of me, the dirt beneath breaks like old mud as his fist slams into my chest.

The fist that meets my chest makes all the bones within and my lungs instantly shatter and all the air within me exit with a small whirlwind that sends me flying alongside the force of the punch. My information was not in-depth enough to matter, another sign of my inexperience.

I go flying for dozens of feet before rolling to a stop, hitting several objects along the way, one of them even being Law’s Light, my entire body screaming with intense pain and suffering. Every piece of me warns of imminent collapse. As blood begins to stream from every orifice from me, the pressure of Strugglers Gasp no longer keeping me together, I hear Oliver curse.

“Fucking Hollow. I saved up an entire month's work of meditation for that single punch. I wanted to use it on Johnny. Not on some random kid who just won’t die. Fuck! I wanted the reward for him. I guess yours will do.”

His voice makes anger rise within me even more, but the voice in the background quickly fades as every part of me does the same. The collapse of myself rapidly approaches. The warning that Virgil gave of flesh melting and people turning to puddles of meat comes to my feeble mind.

Whispers begin to eat at me now that I’m at my weakest with all the Ether in my lungs expelled, leaving only my body that is so badly suffused of Ether that every piece of flesh is starting to slush and melt.

These whispers are odd, though. Because they are not only the whispers of the Bloody Palm, I hear other familiar whispers. The kind that I would hear every night before bed as a child.

I focus on these whispers, curious as to what they are as I die.

While I do so, they grow even louder, slowly gaining substance as the rest of my senses fade into nothingness leaving me in a dark emptiness. An emptiness not unlike that of when the Bloody Palm attacked my mind.

But the void quickly fades into a memory, one that I actually do vaguely remember and that at first seems to follow what I recall.

It’s a memory of Ma reading a book with me, having me read most of it, her only helping with difficult words. At first, it seems like a completely normal thing for a parent to do for a child until the words of the story hit me. The oddness and grimness of them seem unfitting for an eight or nine-year-old child.

“The cold is all-devouring. The winter unending. I wished only to return to my family with the food I had required, but the blizzard arrived. And it was so much worse than any other I have ever experienced.

The chill was piercing. The winds cutting. The snow insidious. It felt as though the world itself was trying to kill me, a dark pressure weighing heavily on my shoulders.

But I continued forward. My family needed me. There was no one else that would give them what they needed to survive through the winter besides me. But oh God was the cold so terrible.

After just a few hours, I lost my toes, the chill clipping them off as I walked. The loss of my toes make it hard to walk even in boots.

After several hours, I lost my fingers, the winds making them unresponsive and brittle. This made me unable to carry anything as I walked besides what was on my back.

After half a day of my journey, I lost the ability to walk, the frozen air taking my legs, and within a few hours of that, I lost feeling in my arms.

Like this, unfeeling except for the chill that slowly crept into my core and brain, I lay unmoving for almost a full day. Eventually, the cold reached my heart, my core, seeking to extinguish the flame within.

But amid unending winter, a cold so wanting that my body could only last a mere day, I found there was, deep within me, an invincible summer.

Deep within me lie a heat that could never be extinguished, for I was needed. My family required me and as such, I could not disappoint them.

And so, I survived the cold until the next day, and then the next. But eventually, my invincible summer died down in heat and was slowly turned into a small blaze once more. But that was not all that was dampened, so were my dreams. My dreams of seeing my children and wife once more time. It was all siphoned from me by the cold.

No that's not right. The cold only made me doubt myself. That the summer was not enough. That it was impossible for me to survive in this winter. This lack of confidence quickly made my dreams freeze, turning into sculptures of ice deep within my mind.

Only when all my dreams and motivations became inert did the summer within fade fully. The summer may have been inextinguishable, but my will was not. The loss of my internal strength caused me to quickly enter the embrace of Death. As I was taken down by the grim hand of Death, though, a man come across my body covered in snow. He rolled me over and sighed at the fact I had just recently passed.

If only I had lasted just a single moment longer. If only I believed in myself just a little bit more. The mind is a powerful thing, our most powerful tool, in fact. Why couldn't I just use it?”