The price of power, p.74
The Price of Power, page 74
part #2 of Infinite Realm Series
“I am a warden of the Guild. Surrender, and your deaths will be quick!” Zach yelled. There was no point trying to deceive them and offer leniency, as the punishment for what they had done was clear in all of the Infinite Realm.
They looked taken aback for a moment, and then one of them—probably the leader—stepped forward. He looked at Zach and spoke.
“A single warden? A gold rank at that? Ha!” he chortled. “You have a death wish, warden?”
Zach didn’t respond, but instead calmly returned his badge to his waist.
“Turn away, warden. We can’t kill you, but we will make you hurt,” the leader said.
Zach sighed. What they said was true. Bandits knew better than to kill wardens, but there was a lot that could be done to someone without killing them. They could capture him and torture him for years without anyone checking in, or just beat him up and letting him go. Wardens avenged their own, but there was a difference between beating up a warden and killing one. The Infinite Realm was too large; there were too many criminals for the wardens to bother going after someone who didn’t kill one of their number.
“There is a bounty on your heads,” Zach said as the bandit in the back of their group, who looked only slightly drunk, was suddenly grabbed and pulled back into the dark without a sound. “You have done terrible things. The bill always comes due.”
The leader brandished his weapon in a theatrical manner and Zach took advantage of it. Zach’s Qi moved through his body and {Calm Before the Storm} settled around him. Then, he used [Ethereal Leap] and jumped forward, summoning a rapier in one hand with his Ethereal Sword and pulling out his dagger with his other hand. The bandits were startled, and one even managed to fire off a ball of white light at him, but Zach was still in his leap and the attack passed through him harmlessly.
Zach stabbed forward with his rapier, his |Perfect Tempest Dance| making his movements fluid. He triggered his Last Heir of Terra and Old Heritage, feeling his stats skyrocket. The leader moved his hand to defend, and somehow managed to get it up in time. His sword deflected Zach’s rapier, but Zach pirouetted and opened up a gash on his ribs. Immediately, he danced away as other bandits attacked. He focused on defense, deflecting and pulling them away from the fire and into the dark. He used his wind skills to batter them and make it even harder for them to see.
His eyes saw in the dark, his new skill proving quite useful. As the bandits attacked him, he evaluated their power. He didn’t have a skill or perk, but he could tell by the power of their strikes and the abilities that they used. They were all around level 160, if he was not mistaken—powerful, but poorly trained.
Zach kept moving backward, forcing them to follow in a line, only one or two able to attack him at a time. A shadow moved behind them, and one more bandit was pulled back, a dagger piercing his chest and eliciting a sharp exhalation of breath as his lung was punctured. None of the other bandits noticed.
Four of them were left, each seeking to strike Zach, but never to kill. He took advantage of their reluctance to go for kill shots, and he opened up wounds on all over their bodies. He could see them getting frustrated with him, their attacks getting stronger and more desperate. They were realizing that while Zach wasn’t stronger than them, he was better.
The leader’s sword suddenly burst into light and he executed a swiping attack that sent a crescent of light at Zach. Instead of blocking, Zach used his |Spatial Evade| and his body flickered, the crescent passing through at the moment when he moved slightly forward.
And then the shadow among them pounced again. This time, there was no attempt at stealth; instead the shadow stabbed the dagger in the bandit’s shoulder and twisted, eliciting a scream of pain.
The other bandits noticed this time. Two of them turned and the shadow pulled out the dagger from the bandit’s shoulder and then cut his throat, bathing the other two in blood.
For a moment they were frozen, and one of them screamed in anger. The bandit leader turned as he dashed away from Zach, and saw his two remaining friends covered in blood. Zach felt a sensation of horror fill the area—his technique made it easier to resist it, especially considering that it wasn’t targeted at him.
One of the bandits covered in blood screamed in horror, his sword swinging widely around him.
“It’s an illusion!” the leader yelled as he ran back toward them, but he was too late. One of his friends turned with wide eyes at the other and then stabbed him in the stomach, taking him to the ground and hitting him with his fists as the man died. Then the shadow came close and hit the bandit on top with the pommel of the dagger in its hand. The leader prepared an attack, but Zach used his [Ethereal Chains] and caught him, the green-tinted chains misting as they curled around him, preventing him from moving.
The shadow walked closer and then dismissed the skill and then Naha was standing there, staring at the leader. She wore a female ravzor body, black as night, with burning orange eyes. She tightened the grip on her dagger as the leader started yelling.
“I have Essence Crystals! I can give them to you, and the two girls too. Everything that I have—” Naha broke his jaw with one powerful blow, forcing him to his knees.
“You should take him,” she said, her eyes turning to look at him over the bandit leader.
Zach glanced at the other dead bodies and then back at her. “Was this enough?” he asked. There was no need to elaborate what he meant.
Naha shuffled uncomfortably, but then nodded her head. “They were…terrified at the end.”
Zach grimaced, but nodded his head. He tightened his fingers around his Great Dagger of Essence Siphoning and approached the bandit leader. The man looked at him with wide eyes, his jaw broken, tangled up in chains. He was trying to speak, but there was nothing that could save him. He knelt and then stabbed the man through the heart, feeling the Essence flow into him from the dying man.
He sighed, and looked up, seeing Naha’s eyes glued to him. It unnerved him sometimes when he caught her looking at him. He pulled his dagger out of the bandit and stood up. She had already used her dagger on the others for her gains, taking their stats for her own.
They went over their bodies, looking for anything of value, and when they did they put it in their storages. Afterward, Zach took the head of the leader and put it in a small box, and then in his storage. Finally, they walked back to the camp and set free the two women who had been captured.
Zach barely managed to get through their crying and thanks, the wails of relief. He understood, and yet he didn’t feel like he deserved it. They hadn’t come to save them, they had come only because Naha was getting restless and they needed a bounty that she could use to alleviate her…needs.
They escorted the women to the nearby town, collected the bounty from the guard house—barely two hundred Greater Essence—and then left, heading back to the neighboring territory.
Zach and Naha walked into the city, Reeser, and headed toward the Adventuring Guildhouse. She changed to Nyathulla’s form, which was a necessity when they dealt with other wardens. Zach tried not to look at her, as the only thing he felt when he did was guilt. He knew that it wasn’t really his fault that Nyathulla had died, that it was her own actions that had led to her death, but he hadn’t avenged her either. He had spent enough time with her to get to know her, and he felt sad every time he saw Naha wearing her body.
But he had made his choice, and he didn’t regret it.
Naha was more important to him than anything else. They had been on the road for just over three months, and had been hunting criminals ever since. It was all that they were doing. Zach had leveled to 150 with the Essence that he gained from his monthly contributions and the bounties that they were doing. All, except for this last one, had paid well, since the only bounties they hunted were those for those that required proof of death.
Each bounty was between 4000 and 8000 Greater Essence, and the bandits had been their ninth bounty. The Essence accumulated quickly.
The two of them checked in at the Adventuring Guildhouse, and then walked nearby to an inn that catered mostly to adventurers. They got a room and walked up, asking for dinner to be taken to their room. The common room was filled with other adventurers and a few wardens, but Zach and Naha didn’t interact with them much. He saw a few people taking a long look at them, some frowning. While cross-race relationships were not uncommon, seeing someone with a cthul was. Their race had the lowest birth rate, and they rarely had relationships with other races.
It didn’t bother Zach much, and certainly not nearly enough to stop posing as a couple. He still didn’t feel that it was safe to have Naha out of his sight for long. And in reality, they were a couple. Not that they had done much since Zach had learned the truth. The things between them were…weird. Naha was acting very subdued, following his lead and doing everything that he asked her to. Mostly, she appeared completely sane. She could speak with other people with no issues; her outward facade was perfect.
When they were alone… That was when her madness manifested itself. He had asked her to explain completely how it felt to her, and what it made her do. It was his understanding that pretending was easier than being herself, that her mind could keep itself together if she was playing a role, but the more time she spent playing that role, the more often she needed to satisfy her needs to kill, to make people feel horrified.
When alone, she didn’t pretend—she let her real self be known. Zach was conflicted. She was so alike the Quell that he used to know, only…more relaxed. Her eyes were brighter, and sometimes he could see the madness in them.
They entered their room and he saw her relax, and then her body shifted back into her Quell form. She always took that form when they were alone, probably because she felt that he was most comfortable with it—which he was. He had asked her about her original shape, but she had told him that she didn’t have it anymore, that she had lost it a long time ago. It didn’t really matter. Naha was a shapeshifter and Zach was trying to wrap his mind around that. To her, one body was as good as any other.
She turned around, looking at him from the center of the room as he walked around her and toward the chair near the right side wall. He took a seat and sighed, his eyes meeting hers.
He was struggling with his own feelings. His love for her was on the one side, and his desire to keep people safe was on the other. He understood the reality of the Infinite Realm, far more so now that he’d had the chance to see it firsthand. It was a brutal world filled with brutal people. Each person whom Naha and he hunted down and killed had been evil, at least in Zach’s eyes: rapists, murderers of innocents, and those who generally caused chaos and mayhem.
Zach looked at Naha and knew that she could’ve been like any one of them; that if she had made more noise and killed more people, she could’ve had a bounty on her head, just like they’d had.
And yet… Zach knew that she could be better. He didn’t think that he could’ve fallen in love with an evil person. She was just…damaged. The power that the Framework granted had twisted her, and the people around her had pushed her in this direction, made her this way.
But this was his path now. He had decided that he was going to help her, that he wasn’t going to abandon someone that he loved again. This was his new purpose in life, something that he felt was a good and worthy goal.
He took a deep breath and then spoke.
“Naha, I think that it’s time we had a real talk about the future.”
CHAPTER 57 – PRESENT – Zach
Future
Naha looked at him with an inquisitive look in her eyes, and Zach stood up from his spot in the chair near the wall. He walked over and guided her to the bed, having her sit next to him. Just being this near her was hard. They hadn’t been…intimate since that night three months ago. Neither one of them wanted to make a move. It was understandable; there were things that neither one of them knew about each other that they needed to learn now. Zach had learned who Naha really was, and she had learned who he really was: someone willing to go against everything for someone he loved.
He had decided to help her, to be by her side, and she had agreed. Somewhere deep down she knew how broken she was, and she wanted to get better. Zach was certain that he couldn’t have forced her to do anything that she didn’t want to do—even now, when she had evolved a skill to tier 6 and put her love for him inside of it.
Zach understood that it was not a perfect fix, and that she would need to freeze more parts of herself in her skills if she was to become better. The reason why he had decided to have her seal her love for him was simple. In part it was because he knew that she did love him, and that meant that he didn’t ask her to do something that she might not want to do. In part, too, it was because it would allow him a way to reign in the worst of her urges, while not really taking away all control from her. Just because you loved someone did not mean that you couldn’t disagree and even act against them. It just made it more likely that she would listen to him.
And he knew that her love was real, because even before she evolved her skill, she had been willing to do as he asked. Early during their trip, they had made a set of rules, a code, which said that she would only ever kill criminals, those with bounties on their head for death. In any other situation, she would follow Zach’s lead. He wasn’t naive enough to think that there wouldn’t be situations where they would be faced against people that weren’t criminals but wished them harm. This was a brutal world with different rules, and he had come to accept that.
They had also made a decision to use their daggers on their bounties, to both get stronger. But their ultimate goal wasn’t something that they had talked about. They were just…traveling aimlessly, hunting criminals.
He looked in her orange eyes, studying the face that he had fallen in love with. He knew that it was just a mask, and he had made peace with the fact that she would never have a single form that would be just hers. She would always be changing, her form shifting. It was who she was.
He took a deep breath, deciding that enough was enough, that he couldn’t keep letting the guilt rule him. He had made his decision and he believed in it. Even if she wore the skins of those she killed, she was his.
He took her hand in his, startling her, and then spoke.
“Naha,” Zach started. “We need to decide what it is that we want to do, what our goal is.”
Naha blinked and tilted her head. “I… I’ve always wanted to punish those who had killed my people, but they… They are too strong for me. They are High Rankers with great power.”
Zach nodded in understanding. He knew her history, how she had been twisted into what she became, and he understood her desire. She wanted vengeance, and he had spent the last decade seeking the same. He wanted justice for the death of humanity. And yet, since he’d arrived here, he realized that he might go his entire life without getting it. He had to make peace with that, to set aside his desire to go out into the world and find Ryun, to look him in the eyes and make him pay for what he had done.
His time with the Wardens had taught him that this world was genuinely infinite and he might never again set his eyes on Ryun. He needed something else in his life a new goal to strive toward. Naha was a part of that. He wanted to build a life with her. By her side, he had felt most like himself in a long time, he had felt happy, and he didn’t want to lose that again. He needed her, probably as much as she needed him.
“So our goal, then, is to grow stronger. To become powerful enough that we cannot be pushed around by others. Powerful enough that we can choose to have whatever life we want to have,” Zach said. It was a simple goal, but he felt better for having said it. Since becoming a warden, he had spent a long time studying, learning about this world and how to advance properly. Now was the time for him to really focus on that task.
“That isn’t nearly as easy as it is to say,” Naha said.
Zach could tell that she was more “herself” now, which was a result of their recent bounty hunt. It was strange that he was able to tell that now, but it was inevitable from the moment she stopped pretending in his presence.
“All that I’ve heard since I arrived here was that advancing is hard and dangerous, that one shouldn’t rush or they would lose their lives. I think that all of that is a lie; a way to keep people down. Or perhaps it is the truth, and everyone else is just…faint-hearted. They don’t want to take the risks and try to get stronger.”
Zach took a deep breath and shook his head. He had seen this in the others, when they wanted to level before going back to the dungeon, deciding that security was more important than power. “You and I, Naha, we are not like that. We are Rankers. We have lived through the horror that the Framework brought, and we survived. You say that it isn’t easy? I ask you in return: when have things ever been easy for us? You have spent hundreds of years struggling, and while perhaps you have not gained power in the form of advancement, you have improved. I know you had been holding back on that roof. I have seen your mastery over your body and your powers, and I know it eclipses my own. So no, it will not be easy, but I know that we will prevail. The wardens will give us the opportunities to fight strong opponents, and our daggers will let us grow faster than others are able. We will get stronger, Naha, I promise you that. And after…after, we will see. This is an infinite world. We can go beyond the reach of those who want to control others. We can carve a place for ourselves out there somewhere.”
By the end of his speech, Naha’s eyes were almost glowing. “You really believe that?” she asked.
“Of course. I know what I am capable of. I spent ten brutal years on my world; I have seen death, and survived battles that should’ve killed me. I carry within me a promise for those who died, for those who gave their power to me. I know that I might never be able to fulfill that promise, but that doesn’t mean that I can stop preparing and growing in power. That is what my goal is, and I hope that you want it to be yours as well.”
