I couldn't help but stare at the man in front of me.

He looked so unfettered, so free. His burgundy tunic fluttered in the gentle wind that had raised with the coming of the morning.

But what was even weirder was that he was alone.

No Flow-cart, no Flow-scooter, nothing. He had come on foot.

How?

We were still so distant from Sundoor that I couldn't even see it from here.

And he had gotten here on foot in less than an hour?

How was that possible?

No… my tired sense told me that I had to know more.

I Traced him, uncaring of the consequences.

 

???

 

Fuck

It had been blocked.

My Tracing came back showing question marks.

However, he felt it. Lester turned toward me; a wider smile adorned his lips for a moment. Yet he said nothing.

"You gave it your best, brat, now rest, and stop being rude," said Terence, giving me a kick on my clock-arm, the one with which I was holding myself up.

"Thank you for weakening it, Terence," said Lester Teriman moving his gaze from me to the High-Inquisitor. His voice was high, but not fastidiously so. Just enough to be pleasant to the ears.

"Are they sending a Crawler? We've lost quite a few because of that beast," Terence asked.

Lester nodded. "It'll take its time, but it will come here, start gathering the dead. I'll finish things up.

He walked toward the creature, which was once again ready to attack the downed Citizens by the rock.

"Tracer," he called.

I knew he was referring to me, "Point it out for me."

I did. I pointed to the Citizens.

"You've done a good job," Lester said, giving me his back. "I've seen Skills like yours before. They are rare, especially around these parts, which would make you Faris's son. Cyrus told me about you. Well, even if he hadn’t, I would have recognized you; you look just like your father."

He shone in Flow, exuding it from all over his body after saying those few words, then he launched forward with an explosion. A heatwave washed over us as he shot toward the Titan's direction with a speed that I believed impossible.

The shockwave generating in his wake was enough to send me with my back on the ground.

"You knew Lester, boy?" Terence asked.

That man knew my father? How? Logan hadn't told me about it, well, he had stopped meeting my parents when they joined the war, so maybe that guy had met my father during the war.

"I don't. I barely knew my father."

"Well, it doesn't matter anyway; fathers are overrated. You should look for a master more than a father. Someone to teach you proper things instead of disappointing you, expect something from you and weighing on your back, when you are in your prime," Terence answered.

I still felt as frail as wet ground washed away by the stream, but I turned toward him, raising an eyebrow at him.

"That's a shitty thing to say."

He smiled back, "I had a shitty father, but I had a good master."

I tsked, then focused back on Lester Teriman.

He was literally shooting cannon blasts from his hands. And he flew above the desert, the explosions turning sand into white-hot glass, as he tried to hit the still slippery Titan.

"It won't take long; my debuff eats at undead like wolves on an exposed bone," said Terence.

The overly detailed example hit me right in the guts, making me remember my recent experience, still too vivid in my memory.

Yet, I pushed it back, focusing on the crazy battle in front of me.

I had no idea how much Flow was passing through the body of that man, but he had long since exceeded the Sand-Crawler's cannon threshold, yet he kept on blasting away.

I could feel the Shade in the atmosphere parting away at every one of his blasts.

It was crazy, unbelievable.

Now I knew how that fabricated story I had told to the young nomad chief might not have been that far from the truth.

 

At some point, the Titan started his escape. It was clear that it could not get out of the sands while that man flew around. If it hadn't been turned into an undead, I doubted Lester would have been enough to take the creature on, or at least not on his own, but with the inherent weakness to Flow that being an undead had given the beast, it was unlikely it could sustain many more of those blasts.

Yet, I couldn't allow it to escape. It could not finish, not like this.

I had to do something.

"Terence," I called.

Azim rebuked me with, "It's High-Inquisitor!"

But I didn't care; not even Terence seemed to care.

"What?" He said to my call.

"Can you communicate with that man?"

"Yes. What did you have to say?"

"He must hold back. The woman governing that creature is a hot-headed bitch. If he fakes weakness, she will stop running and attack. He could blast her out of the Titan's mouth in an instant if she does so."

"Alright."

Terence took out an especially big voice-bridge and started explaining things to Lester Teriman.

A few seconds later, Lester started diminishing his power output before slowly tumbling in mid-air, then started to go back.

He was putting on a nice show.

The man flew back toward the rocks, down which, Sundoorians had been hurt aplenty.

As he landed on the sands and started caring for the hurt Sunguards, I could feel the Titan slowly lower its escaping speed and finally turn around and start a slow approach.

It proceeded so slowly that even the sands didn't leave any ripple.

"Is it coming back?" Asked Terence.

"She is."

Meanwhile, Azim had been caring for the fainted girl; I had remembered her name at this point. Something along the line of Caitlin. But I was exhausted, too tired to really care much about the little details, but she was waking up.

"It's disappearing…" was the first thing she said, "My sealing is going to disappear in seconds…"

"Fuck…" Terence said.

Indeed, that was troublesome. I didn't precisely know what alternating to a Ghost form did to the Sand-Wyrm, but it nullified its extreme Flow weakness.

Roughly at that moment, I decided that this whole situation had to end.

I got up from the ground, sighing. “Have you got a dagger or something I can borrow?”

Terence’s brow perked up, yet he dug in his pouch, coming out with a rather decent-looking dagger.

“I’ll be borrowing it.”

I took the dagger and put it away; then I conjured a Shadow knife looking exactly like Spectre's Dignity. I was used to its weight and form.

I was close enough that my throw would reach the rocks, and if I timed it right, it would even reach up to the creature's attack point.

"If I die here, take care of my sister. She is not only a Flow-blessed. She's everything I have and the most special and talented girl you will ever know. She belongs to the City." I did not really know to whom I was saying it, but Terence was the one that answered me.

"If you live through this, I'll make sure you are going to take care of her, and you'll do it while nestled safely within Sundoor's walls."

I smiled to myself and gave him a nod without even turning back. I sincerely hoped he was not one of just talks.

With my clock-arm charged back to the limit, I closed my eyes, trying to single out the form of the Titan.

I had to let go of everything else, wind, the breath of those nearby, the laments of the fallen, the cries of the creatures that, after being attracted by the fight, had understood that it wasn't their place to join in on the fun, but most importantly the sound of my beating heart.

The only thing I needed was to focus on my Tracking.

It took me a few long seconds to do so, but then, be it my general weakness or my desperation guiding my instincts; the world started blurring.

Slowly everything disappeared; the only things remaining were the Titan, my dagger, and I.

Everything else was black as the deepest nights, while we were highlighted in the powerful orange of Flow.

I could see all the possible moves the Titan could make, but the more it closed in on its target, the fewer and more detailed they grew.

I started picturing my throw, how it would fare, up to where it would reach. The trajectory my knife would take was well defined as I steadied my breath.

When finally the Titan's attack lined up with the projection of my throw, I launched it.

 

The moment the monster jumped out of the sand, it was intangible; however, Lester's swiftly evaded.

Yet, I had no idea what kind of Attribute a Ghost needed to resist the massive Flow blast with which Lester Teriman immediately answered to the assault, but it was enough to say that it didn't even put a scratch on the Titan; it passed right through it.

Then my dagger reached the tallest point of the Titan's attack, ending right inside its still open beak.

I was inside of its mouth the next second.

The phasing to Ghost creature did not hinder my transfer, but the moment I was washed into its smelly saliva, I wished it would have.

Still, neither the saliva nor iIts fetid breath seemed to hinder the woman that hugged one of its huge teeth and had her feet inside a pocket of flesh she had likely carved herself.

I threw the dagger I had borrowed out of the Titan’s mouth. Then with another shadow throw, I was right by Kaleeki’s side.

I grabbed her; she shrieked like a River-crab being boiled alive for the surprise. But then we disappeared.

 

---

 

When we reappeared, rolling into the sands together like a pair of lovers, my eyes went to the Titan.

It had gone berserk for the abrupt disappearance of the Tamer guiding it.

Then I could witness Lester Teriman turn the Blessed Hour into day when he released the most massive blast of Flow that I had ever seen and likely would ever see.

The Solar Flare whipped with a giant explosion at the creature that had decided not to dive back into the sand, and it literally tore the monster apart.

Fucking incredible… Lester Teriman had been able to one-handedly kill a Titan creature with the size of multiple buildings.

Its body was torn right in the middle; then, its belly exploded in an obscenity of gore that came raining down on the whole battlefield.

The creature's two halves were still moving when Teriman blasted them again and again, finishing what he had started.

I could feel the whispers telling me of my contribution caressing my senses, but first, I would have to deal with the smelly woman already staggering up by my side.

Oh, she was gonna get what she deserved, or, at least, she would pay me back what she owed me.

Whatever the Inquisition was gonna do about her was not my business.

I would have preferred if the nomads went freely about their road, wherever that road was gonna take them; the problem was that their road clashed with mine.

With a sigh, I got up from the ground, and as Kaleeki, mad and incongruous as Wildhag, started coming at me, I welcomed her with a clock-arm punch straight on her mouth.

Shook as she was, she had no time to answer my sudden attack; she was almost forced to take the punch.

But I didn't doubt that the punch had taken its fair share of teeth. And damn, it felt right.

"That was for the headbutt," I said.

"But this one… this one is for the leg."

My new leg, covered in slime and sand, hit her right on her downed knee.

No. I did not hold back this time; I wanted to shatter it.

That was why the crunch I heard and her screams confirmed that my revenge had been accomplished.

She had tried to flatten us with her Titan; she deserved even worse. But I was too tired for that, and most importantly, too sympathetic for their cause.

"Son of a Moon walker!" She screamed at me.

I shook my head as I removed the broken bowstring from my bow; Moon walkers, whores, streetwalkers, terms that barely made sense in our society.

The colorful term was used to describe a profession nobody had the leisure of practicing in a village.

Even before the plague, when Murkstall gave it their all, there were no Moon walkers among the villagers.

We had borrowed that term from the City; there seemed to be plenty walking those streets, slaves were taken for that reason, becoming Moon walkers for those that wanted to create people with the right Sub-Classes made for dealing pleasure.

After binding her hands with the bowstring that she was not going to break free of, I let myself sit on the sand near her.

I took the picture of her with her parents that I had stashed away with me and threw it at her face.

"Now you've got to explain to me why a nomad like you has gone so far as to make her whole tribe hate Shade-cursed. For fuck sake, your parents were Shade-cursed too…"

"Shut up; you are nothing but a City-sucker, a boot-licker for those bastards! You would never understand!" She exploded into a crazed bough of laughter that was soon broken by body-shaking sobs.

"You are just like them, kowtowing for the City. Prostrating for them, doing everything you are told because that way you might get to stare at them down from a less distant alley!"

"Even if you got into the City, what do you think would change!? You are a damn Shade-cursed! You are going to live in the slums! Isn't the freedom of being a nomad better than living in a giant place that doesn't give a flying fuck about you, that will always treat you like a farm animal and shit all over your face, or just point at you when they look for somebody to blame for something!?"

I let myself fall with my back to the sand, letting go of a big sigh, "So it was that? Your parents abandoned you to try and get you to a better place in which to live, and because of that, now you think you can hate an entire race of people? What did they do? Joined the war and never came back?"

She gritted her teeth.

It seemed like I had hit the spot.

"Pathetic, really." I snorted. And there I thought you had a big reason to hate the City, while at the same time hate the Shade-cursed. Instead, you are just another sad person, disappointed by life, like all of them. Like all of us."

"Who do to you think-"

I didn't let her speak though, I continued, "My parents have done the same, you know? They went to the war and never came back; they were trying to give us a chance at a better life, now I understand. I don't even hate them for that anymore because I'm trying to do the same, for my sister's sake. If I do hate them, it's because they could have come back but never did so when they had the chance. Still, you see? I'm not like you."

I got up, staring at her bloody face, "I don't even hate Flow-blessed or the City for being what they are; my resentment has to do with their uncaring attitude in our regards. But I'm not going to waste my breath with you. You're much too eaten by hate to understand my reasons. I'm just going to tell you what I heard recently, by something much too big for me even to begin to comprehend." I cleared my throat, trying to imitate the sound in which the Sun modulated its voice when it spoke to me, "Where there is light, there must be darkness, but the opposite is also true. And trust me when I say that it came from a source very high in the social ladder," I added with a chuckle.

Soon later, Terence McLamar reached us with a following of Sunguards.

I let myself sprawl back to the sands.

"You should have stayed by your brother's side, Kaleeki. One should never abandon one's family," were the last things I told her before the Sunguards raised her up and took her away.

Then, still from the sand, I spoke to Terence, "I'm gonna hold you to that promise."

He grinned in response, "I believe that with your powerful companion's help," he said, nodding in the distance where a Flow-cart with somebody shooting Flow-blasts from a massive greatsword made of pure Flow was speeding toward us, "there isn't much we aren't going to obtain. Oh, I'm so gonna get my hands on you, boy. Whether you want it or not, I'm going to be your master."

I don't know if it was what he said or the tone he used, but it felt a little damn creepy.

Still, I let myself sprawl on the ground.

It was about time to celebrate.

I had done it.

I could still hardly believe it.

I had taken out the threat before Lester-fucking-Teriman!

If they were not gonna give us something for that accomplishment, and after pushing our luck with Nova's presence, then I had no idea what else I could do.

 

After a sigh of relief, I felt my stress wash away. If I just wished it, I felt that I could fall asleep right then, but maybe it was better if I didn't. There would be time for that; I needed to see my whispers, I doubted they bought much, but whatever it was, it would definitely be better than nothing.

 

You've earned 1,236,279 Soul fractions. Soul fractions for next TechnoHunter level: 400,000/400,000

Class TechnoHunter has leveled up to 41. You have gained 1 Attribute point. Where will you invest it?

 

You've earned 1,108.,34 Soul fractions. Soul fractions for next TechnoHunter level: 410.000/410.000

Class TechnoHunter has leveled up to 42. You have gained 1 Attribute point. Where will you invest it?

You've earned 698,134 Soul fractions. Soul fractions for next TechnoHunter level: 420,000/420,000

Class TechnoHunter has leveled up to 43. You have gained 1 Attribute point. Where will you invest it?

 

You've earned 278,134 Soul fractions. Soul fractions for next TechnoHunter level: 278,134/430,000

 

Perception, definitely Perception.

 

A nearby Animancers wishes to give you his share of Soul fractions; do you accept?

 

What?

What was that?

I immediately sat up, looking at Terence.

"Is that you?"

"Who else?" He was grinning, "Do you see any other Animancer that can manipulate Soul fractions here? Because sure as the Abyss I don't!"

"I… I didn't know one could do that."

"Oh, it's peculiar to me," he said, scratching his regrowing beard, "Do you want it or not? We're all maxed here. It would go to waste."

"Of… of course I'll take it!" I said, maybe a bit faster than I deemed worthy.

Terence chuckled; go ahead then, accept it.

 

Where do you wish to allocate the Soul fractions?

 

TechnoHunter Advanced Class, Level 43 (278,134/430,000);

Red Tamer Advanced Sub-Class, Level 34 (128,589/340,000);

Loki (Adult Golden Netherlion), Level 34 (163,736/340,000).

 

Can I… can I split it? I asked the whispers.

There was no answer.

Damn…

Red Tamer then.

 

You've earned 1,127,255 Soul fractions. Soul fractions for next Red Tamer level 340,000/340,000

Sub-Class Red Tamer has leveled up to 35.

Focus + 1

Almost as much as my contribution but just with a debuff!? Damn…

 

You've unlocked Frenzy Skill Passive Perk.

 

Frenzy (Skill)

• Major Perks: When your pet’s Health is lower than 30%, their Strength is doubled, but their Willpower is halved.

• Minor Perks: Sealed

• Passive Perks: Strength + 3

 

Strength Bonus… Not bad, I lacked one that came from a Skill.

 

You've earned 915,844 Soul fractions. Soul fractions for next Red Tamer level: 350,000/350,000

Sub-Class Red Tamer has leveled up to 36.

Willpower + 1

 

You've earned 565,844 Soul fractions. Soul fractions for next Red Tamer level: 360,000/360,000

Sub-Class Red Tamer has leveled up to 37.

Strength + 1

 

You've earned 205,844 Soul fractions. Soul fractions for next Red Tamer level: 205,844/370,000