The wind at this altitude is a physical thing. It bites at my exposed skin, searching for warmth to steal
I am crouched on the edge of a small mountain ridge, my boots digging into the scree to keep me from sliding off the edge. Below me, stretching out into the valley like a dark stain on the landscape, lies the city of Aubermans.
It used to be a jewel of the Verion of the Empire as a whole. It was home to one of the primary Crystal Mines. The architecture speaks of that former glory. I see high stone arches, sprawling refinement plants with brass piping glinting in the dull light, and the massive, gaping maw of the mine entrance nestled against the northern cliff face like a hungry mouth. I was impressed, this city was way more advanced than Lont. Most of the people there would of had their minds blowns to see this type of technology.
Now, however, it is a fortress of the Federation.
I narrow my eyes, focusing through the biting wind. The natural pigment of the world had long drained away for me. The green of the scrub brush clinging to the cliff, the brown of the rocks, the pale blue of the sky all gone, replaced by a high-contrast landscape of muted greys, deep charcoals, and suffocating blacks.
It is the world as a predator sees it. It is a dead world, stripped of beauty to reveal intent.
I scan the city streets, miles away and thousands of feet down.
To a normal human, Aubermans would be invisible maybe they would see a blur of stone from this distance. To me, it is a hive of activity.
I see the Federation soldiers walking and patrolling in the streets. They are jagged shapes of dark grey against the lighter stone of the cobblestones. Their movements are crisp, disciplined, but I can see the tension in their postures. They are nervous. They know we are coming. The war has been grinding closer to them for weeks.
And I see the civilians.
The remaining citizens of the Empire who haven't been executed or sent elsewhere as slaves look like ghosts. They are huddled in doorways, scuttling through alleys with their heads down, carrying water buckets or scraps of food. They look tarried. They look worn down to the nub by weeks of occupation. Their fear is a palpable to me even from this distance.
This way of seeing the world is annoying. The only time I see color anymore is in combat. When the blood flows, when the adrenaline spikes, when the Fearmonger feasts on active terror rather than passive dread that is when the red bursts through the grey like fireworks. It is the only time the world feels real.
I sigh again, the sound lost in the howling wind.
I turn my head to the right, where the rest of my strike team is crouched in the shadow of a massive boulder, sheltering from the wind.
Lucian is checking his sword and daggers for the hundredth time, his face grim but his eyes alive with that reckless spark. Vihaan is staring at the city with a look of hungry anticipation that makes him look deranged, his fingers twitching against the hilt of his karambit.
And then there are the new additions.
Sola and Lopez. Two soldiers assigned to my command by General Callum Icepelt.
Sola is a tall, lanky woman with hair cropped short to her skull with electric yellow eyes. She bears the Mark of the Gale an Air affinity. She looks confident. Lopez is stockier, a man of few words with a kinetic reinforcement Mark that allows him to hit like a siege engine. He is calm, chewing on a piece of dried meat.
And finally, Imara.
She is looking at me with a mixture of horror and resignation, clutching her pendant of Aren so tightly I can see the imprint of the metal in her palm. The pendant is something new she started wearing it was a heavy cross, distinguished by the center point where the lines collided. Instead of a clean joint, it exploded into a stylized sun.
"Imara," I say, my voice cutting through the wind. "It's time."
She shakes her head, looking at me somberly. The wind whips her robes around her legs, making her look like a mournful statue.
"You are insane," she says. "You know that, right?
I smirk.
"Sure am," I drawl, checking the straps on my gauntlets. "But that's fine because those fuckers won't expect it. They're watching the roads. They're watching the valley passes. They aren't watching the sky."
"There's a reason for that," Imara shoots back, her voice rising in pitch. "People don't fall from the sky and live, Ayato. You'll be by yourself for a good forty-five seconds to a minute before I can send the others after you. Forty-five seconds in the middle of an enemy stronghold, surrounded by who knows how many Federation Awakened."
"Forty-five seconds is an eternity."
I smirk
"Hey, don't judge," I say dryly, flashing her a look. "I've finished in less. Some people call it premature; I call it efficient."
Lucian bursts into a bark of laughter from where he was sitting on a rock. "Nice one man"
'Either way the Colonel told me to make it happen. So I will do my job."
I rise from my crouch and I shoo Lucian, Vihaan, Sola, and Lopez back with a wave of my hand.
"Give me room," I order. "I need a runway."
They step back, giving me a clear path to the cliff edge. Lucian gives me a salute that is half-mocking, half-respectful. Vihaan just grins, flashing teeth.
I stand there for a moment, letting the gravity of the situation settle on me.
It has been three weeks since we arrived in Verion. Three weeks of mud, blood, and constant movement. The "Glorious Army" the General spoke of has been grinding its way inland like a slow-moving glacier of violence. We have taken back multiple crystal mines and liberated even more towns and cities, leaving a trail of broken Federation bodies in our wake. Their control has slipped considerably and now they probably control only about 20% of Verion now; as the fist of the collective Empire crushes them to dust.
But the closer we get to the coastal port where they first launched their attack, the denser the enemy resistance becomes. The Federation isn't attempting to push forward anymore nor are they trying to retreat; they are instead digging in. They are fighting for every inch of ground.
I look down at the rank insignia on my chest, pinning the collar of my fatigues closed against the wind.
First Lieutenant.
I trace the cold metal with my thumb.
I am the youngest First Lieutenant ever in the history of the Empire. It is a distinction that earns me glares from lots of markless soldiers who have spent years trying to earn their way into an officer tab as well as other Awakened who think It's favoritism for me having three marks. I also receive awe and admiration from just as many who believe the faction of the Church that says I am a sign from the gods. The first King reborn.
Annoying, I think bitterly. All of it.
I shake my arms out, loosening the muscles. I need to be loose. I need to be fluid.
The others have moved back to a safe distance.
I take a deep breath, tasting the thin mountain air.
I need fuel.
I close my eyes and reach into the darkness of my own mind. I don't suppress the voices. I open the cage door and kick it wide and allow them to fill my mind with their vile.
Wake up, I whisper to the beast.
I call for the bloodlust. I call for the anger of the boy who starved in the outskirts. I call for the sheer, unadulterated rage that makes up my life.
The reaction is instant.
The voices in my head don't scream. They don't roar.
They whimper.
It is a sound of pure joy, almost sexual in nature. It is the sound of an addict getting the needle, a lover getting the touch. It is disgusting, and it is powerful. It shivers down my spine, electric and hot.
Yes... they hiss, the sound slithering through my synapses. Let us break them...
I allow my worst emotions to fuel what was about to happen. My heart rate drops, then spikes with a heavy, powerful thudding that echoes in my ears. My vision sharpens even further in the greyscale world, every detail of the rock in front of me standing out in high definition.
I turn to Imara.
I nod.
"Do it."
I go back several feet, digging my heels into the frozen earth. I crouch low, like a sprinter in the blocks.
I propel myself forward.
I send up rock and dust from behind me as my boots tear into the ground. I run towards the edge of the small mountain, gaining speed with every stride, channeling the supernatural strength of the Awakened into my legs.
I hit the precipice.
And I launch myself.
I throw my body into the void, arms spread wide.
For a split second, there is just the silence of suspension. I am floating over the abyss, miles above the valley floor.
This would not work under the laws of physics. I was a good forty to fifty miles away from the city of Aubermans and probably hundreds of feet above it. A fall from this height, at this angle, would almost surely kill even an Awakened. I would be a smear on the cobblestones.
But I am not alone.
"Mass reduction!" Imara screams from the cliff behind me.
I feel it instantly.
A strange, sickening sensation washes over me. My stomach lurching into my throat. I feel light. Impossibly light. It is as if my bones have turned to hollow bird bones, as if my muscles are made of cotton. Gravity loses its grip on me. I am a feather caught in an updraft.
Then Sola must use her trigger because a massive, concentrated gust of wind, channeled by her Mark, slams into my back.
Because my mass has been reduced to almost nothing, the force doesn't crush me. It accelerates me.
I am shot out of the sky like a comet.
The wind roars in my ears, deafening and violent. The landscape below blurs into streaks of grey and black. I am traveling at a speed that makes my eyes water, tears streaming back toward my ears.
I tuck my arms in, streamlining my body, angling myself downward.
I am flying.
I watch the ground rush by and just based on the blur of the terrain I know I am covering miles in seconds.
I grin, the wind tearing at my lips. I congratulate myself on a plan well formulated. It is insane, yes. But it is brilliant. We bypass their patrols. We bypass their walls. We will take back this city and open the gates for our Markless Soldiers to come through.
Thankfully we only had to kill a few Federation soldiers who were in the mountains, scouts who never saw us coming, to secure the launch point.
I focus on the city. It is growing larger, rushing up to meet me.
I see the walls. I see the guard towers. I see the Federation banners snapping in the wind. I see the tiny grey figures of soldiers looking up, pointing at the streak in the sky.
It is terrifying. It is exhilarating.
As I approach the city, watching the details resolve from smudges into buildings, I recite my ever-trusty mantra. It grounds me. It keeps the voices from taking the wheel completely in the ecstasy of using their power with no constraints.
"Fear is the Mind Killer," I whisper, the words snatched away by the slipstream, lost to the roar of the wind.
"Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration."
I permit it to pass over me and through me.
I am over the city walls now. The roofs of Aubermans are flashing beneath me.
I aim for the central square, a large open plaza near the Mayor's estate which the Federation is using as a command post.
"Sola!" I scream, though she cannot hear me. She knows the timing.
As I exit the range of Imara's power, my weight suddenly returns. The sensation is brutal—like a ton of bricks suddenly settling on my shoulders. Gravity reasserts its dominion. I begin to plummet.
But as I fall, I feel the second gust.
Sola conjured another competing gust of wind, a massive updraft positioned perfectly over the city.
It slams into me from below.
It doesn't stop me. It slows my descent, acting like a giant, invisible cushion. It bleeds off the terminal velocity, turning a fatal impact into merely a violent one.
I brace for impact.
CRASH.
I hit the ground.
I land in a three-point crouch in the middle of the town square.
The impact is heavy. The cobblestone under my feet cracks and shatters, sending a spiderweb of fissures radiating outward. A cloud of dust and pulverized stone billows up around me, obscuring my form.
I slowly stand up, dusting off the shoulders of my uniform.
As the dust dies around me, settling on the grey uniforms of the enemy, I look around.
The enemy Federation soldiers have gathered around me. There are about twenty of them in the immediate vicinity, a mix of infantry and officers. They are staring at me, mouths open, eyes wide. They are still shocked by my appearance. One moment, the sky was empty; the next, an Imperial officer dropped from the heavens and cracked their pavement.
They hold their swords loosely, their brains struggling to process the threat.
I draw my sword.
The sound of the steel leaving the scabbard is the only sound in the square. Shhh-ing.
I smile. It is a wolf's smile full of teeth and bad intentions.
"Welcome to the Empire," I say pleasantly, my voice carrying clearly in the stunned silence.
I look at the nearest soldier, a sergeant with a thick mustache who looks like he's about to wet himself.
"What is the purpose of your visit?" I ask politely.
I take a step forward. They step back instinctively.
"Do you have a pass for entry?" I ask, tilting my head.
The shock finally breaks.
The soldiers around me seem to get over the sheer absurdity of my appearance and realize that I am one man, surrounded by twenty. Their confusion turns to anger.
"Kill him!" one screams from the back.
"No passes?" I ask, feigning disappointment. "Do you wish to enter as POWs then?"
"ATTACK!"
Before the infantry can raise their swords and charge me, movement flashes to my left.
I can sense a Federation Elite. He steps out from a behind behind me. A tall man with a beard covering his face and short clipped hair.
He thrusts his hand forward.
The cobblestones burst open as a massive, thorny vine erupts from the earth, aiming straight for my chest. It moves like a striking cobra, green and deadly, aimed to impale me.
I dodge.
I side-step quickly, a blur of motion. The vine hisses past my ear, missing me by an inch, and slams into a stone fountain behind me, shattering the masonry.
I look at the Elite. I look at the vine quivering in the stone.
I turn back to the soldiers, shrugging.
"No?" I say pleasantly, spinning my sword in my hand. "Oh well."
The voices in my head scream in delight.
"Guess you get to exit as corpses," I whisper.
And I move.
I lunge forward, abandoning the pleasantries. I am a blur of grey and black in my own vision. I close the distance to the nearest soldier before he can even blink.
My sword flashes. There is no counter attack. It is an execution.
The blade bites into his neck, severing the artery. Hot blood sprays across the grey world—a vivid, shocking splash of red.
Color returns.
The square explodes into chaos.
"HE'S A DEMON!" someone screams.
I am already moving to the next one.
The Vine User roars, summoning more tendrils from the earth. They snake toward me, grasping, tearing up the ground.
I leap over a sweeping vine, using the soldier I just killed as a stepping stone.
"Forty-five seconds," I mutter to myself, counting down the time until my backup arrives.
I land in the middle of a cluster of three men. I release my Fearmonger.
A wave of pure, distilled terror washes over them.
They freeze. Their eyes roll back in panic. Their hands shake so hard they drop their weapons.
I spin, my sword a silver arc of death.
One. Two. Three.
Three heads hit the ground. More red splashes against the grey.
I feel the power surging through me. The voices are singing now, a cacophony of joy and bloodlust.
I duck under a burst of vines from the officer. The power of the attack bursts apart the building i was standing in front of.
I laugh.
I turn toward the Vine User. He is the threat. He is the Elite.
He looks at me, and I see it. I see the fear taking root in his eyes. He realizes, too late, that I am not trapped in here with them.
They are trapped in here with me.
"Your turn," I say.
But sadly the battle has drawn the other rats out like hornets from a kicked nest. From the side streets and the main boulevard, more federation soldiers pour into the square. There are dozens of them now and every second more rush to provide backup. Infantry with long spears, heavy shock troopers with tower shields, and a line of marksmen raising heavy crossbows.
They encircle me. A wall of steel and malice.
The Vine User grins, sensing the shift in momentum. He thinks he has me. He thinks numbers matter against a predator.
I stop running. I stand perfectly still in the center of the killing jar.
I close my eyes for a fraction of a second.
Shadow Dance. I let the tension in my muscles dissolve, not into weakness, but into fluidity. I become shapeless. I become formless. I let go of the rigid concept of a "body".
I've had ample time to practice my battle art over the last few weeks but it's not complete yet.
"Multiply," I whisper channeling my Illusions.
I push my will outward, slamming it against the minds of every soldier in the square.
The air shimmers around me.
One Ayato becomes two. Two becomes three.
End the end three perfect copies of myself split away from my body. They don't flicker like bad holograms. They are solid. They catch the light. They kick up dust when they move. They are breathing.
I am not just projecting light; I am weaving these phantoms directly into the visual cortexes of the enemy. I am hacking their perception of reality.
It takes everything I have.
My head throbs with the strain. I use my entire mental capacity to control them, splitting my consciousness into four streams. And my brain feels like it may explode anytime.
But I hold it.
"Kill it !" the Vine User screams, looking confused as he tries to figure out which target to impale.
My copies move.
They don't move in unison. They move with independent chaos. One lunges left, one rolls right, one leaps straight into the air.
And I move with them.
We are a pack of ghosts.
"Loose!" the officer screams.
The crossbows click in unison. A swarm of bolts whistles through the air.
They tear through the illusions, but I make the illusions react. I make them dodge. I make them deflect the bolts with phantom swords. To the soldiers watching, it looks like six master swordsmen parrying an execution squad. In reality however the bolts just went through all of the illusions harmlessly.
A spearman lunges at a copy to my left, thrusting with a heavy iron tip. The copy blocks.
The spear hits nothing but air, but I reach into the soldier's mind and pull the trigger on his tactile receptors.
Clang.
He feels the vibration of steel on steel. He feels the resistance.
The copy lunges forward and drives a sword through his chest.
It is a phantom blade. It cannot cut flesh. But the soldier looks down, sees the steel burying itself in his sternum, and his mind screams DEATH.
He shrieks, clutching his chest, collapsing to the ground in convulsions, his brain convinced his heart has been pierced.
I weave through the chaos. I am the only real thing in the storm.
I slide past a soldier engaging one of my doubles. He is frantically parrying attacks that don't exist, sweat pouring down his face, terror in his eyes as he fights a ghost.
I step into his guard.
"That one isn't real," I whisper in his ear.
My real sword slides between his ribs.
Red blooms in the grey world.
I pivot.
Another soldier swings a heavy mace at a copy rushing him. The copy ignores the blow and slashes his throat. The soldier drops his weapon, clutching his neck, choking on air, convinced he is bleeding out even though his skin is unbroken. He falls to his knees, gasping and I maneuver myself towards him delivering a brutal downward slash to his neck.
The voices in my head explode into laughter.
Look at them dance! they howl, delighted by the madness. They are fighting ghosts! They are dying of fright!
I am a blur. I am everywhere and nowhere. I position myself constantly in the blind spots, letting the copies draw the aggression, letting the copies take the hits.
The Vine User sends a massive thorn-whip tearing through a cluster of two Ayatos. They disperse like mist, reforming instantly behind him.
He spins around, eyes wide with panic, vines thrashing wildly around him to keep the us at bay.
"What are you?!" he screams, lashing out blindly.
I step out from behind the screen of my own illusions, right in front of him.
All three copies mimic my movement, raising their swords in perfect unison, surrounding him in a circle of steel.
"Does it matter?" we all ask at once...