A WEEK LATER

Five of them, tails swinging about in fury, aiming for a single target while shrieking in that signature ungodly tone that Raimeh usually did. They attack simultaneously trying their hardest to squash him to bits. But he was too fast. He moved nimbly through the jungle of tails, ducking one, deflecting another, side stepping as the tail zipped past him. They stop attacking with their tails and fire those projectile, broken off from their spine. He dodges all of them with ease, catches one of the projectiles and sends it flying into the head of one of them, killing it. One jumps at him and attacks with its massive claws but he drops flat on his back avoiding it. He props himself with his hands on the ground, kicks it and sends flying into air. As it flies he catches it by the tail and smashes against another one, their spikes impaling each other.

Before the two left can react he moves in a flash and stomps the head of one of them with his feet, separating it clean from the body and sending it into the ground. And for the last one he fires a blast of energy at it, destroying everything but its tail.

It’s been just a week thought Kirveas as he sat observing Yuga’s performance against the raimeh. And in that one week he’d gone from struggling against one of them to taking on five of them as a warm up. It was nothing short of “impressive”. The raimeh were weak, very weak in fact but they’d normally be a threat to a voyager only probably a few weeks after their first sail. After he explained the basics, he instructed Yuga on how to control drive to enhance himself and not long after he was showing results. Remarkable growth in speed, strength and sensory ability. At this point he could detect raimeh from meters away, their number, their sizes and even their differences in strength. He’d also gotten proficient at mal control, firing off blasts of energy with ease.

No memories, an odd appearance, remarkable talent and a personality that made him unfazed by most things. Everything about him was strange. What else would he learn about him as time passed?

“You’re quicker than last time” said Kirveas. Last time being a few hours ago. “The next spot would be-“

“I think I’m done with this. Going to explore now. And I think we should move on from raimeh, training with them has gotten fruitless.” said Yuga.

“Do as you wish. I did have something in mind anyway. Whenever you return, we’ll do something different”

He nods then turns to leave. Yuga had spent the last week training endlessly. It was thrilling and he’d made progress but it’d gotten stale. He needed something fresh. What could he do for fun though?

***

The day was over and Yuga had spent the most of it not doing much. He’d tried out different things. He did some target practice, using snow balls to knock down birds high in the sky, he’d hit one or two before they all fled. He tried out the fruits on trees in the area, all of them were bitter and he spat them out in disgust. Where was Kirveas getting his fruits? Kirveas…..Who was he really? He didn’t say anything about himself and left to wherever everyday “looking for someone”. Someone important to him? He wasn’t ever in the mood for talking so all Yuga had was himself for entertainment. That was all he knew, but that was ok as long as he got food and training.

He tried out mal control, firing of blasts of mal energy at huge rocks, obliterating them to smithereens. The rest of his activities for the day was just aimless walking. It was now evening and he’d come a long way from where he left Kirveas. He’d come to small cluster of trees and sat there for a while, getting ready to head back. The trees were light blue with different colours of leaves. But something was off about this place, there wasn’t any wild life he could see or sense but there was something he could feel besides the trees, from one of the trees. He carefully approached the black sheep tree. It looked completely normal, not much different from every other tree. Was something hiding in it? No, all he could sense was the tree but it just felt slightly different. He inspects the tree next to it and notices something very odd. Both trees are exactly the same. Their shape, size, the number of leaves, down to the very last vein on each of them. He scrambled up and down both trees searching for any differences at all but he found none.

That’s not normal. Trees don’t have clones of themselves in nature and just right beside them too. So this one that feels weird is a fake? How do you get fake trees?

He decides to check it out. He breaks the branch of the real one and sap just oozes out. That’s normal, what about the “fake one”?

But as he tries to hit the “fake one” the tree vanishes out of sight and he’s startled for a moment. It vanished? An illusion? No, I can still sense it. He could tell it was still there, he scanned the snow where the tree once was but all there was, was snow. But there’d been a fake tree maybe fake snow was possible too. He fires a very small blast of energy at the snow and from it flies a bird, up into the sky. A bird now.

He jumps high up in the air in pursuit, getting to the altitude of the bird and tries to catch it. He catches it but it vanishes again. What is it now? The air? Yuga thinks as he falls back to the ground. As he falls, he sees the air reform into a bird and flies away. He falls back to the ground with great force, his form printing itself in the snow. He quickly gets up and continues his pursuit on land. It flies for several miles and he follows it without losing sight of it. It finally drops into a tree, transforming into a small rodent with large round ears, bead black eyes and colourful fur riddled with bright red, green and orange. It lands and scurries down the tree along its stem to the ground. It runs out into a small patch of green grass, the only one you’d see for miles.

It ran along the grass, pacing back and forth and after a minute or two it stopped. It looked around the area as if checking if someone was watching and then finally relaxed, not noticing Yuga who was nearby behind a tree, observing it. Was that an inhabitant creature on this planet too? What if all around the planet there were fake trees and fake objects hiding in plane site. It transformed to different things at will, trees, animals and even the air. What else could it turn it into?

After confirming it wasn’t followed it changes form but this time into something abstract.

Is that what it really looks like?

It was a ball of blue gaslike mass with a yellow glowing core that pulsed at a constant frequency. He slowly approached it, coming out from his hiding spot. The creature drifts back as it notices him approaching and it’s yellow glow pulses with a higher frequency as if in alarm. He stops just before the creature, staying still so it doesn’t get scared away. The pulsing calms down and it approaches him slowly. All the living things it turned into were colourful, maybe it liked colourful things. He wills his hair to change colours, it took a lot of concentration to pull off and didn’t last for long but he tried anyway. He changes the colour from torquoise to light green to a deep blue and then made it a flash of different colours. The creature was fascinated. It floated around speedily in excitement as if it had found an old friend. How did it see? It had no eyes Yuga thought.

It circled round and came back to him and then it did something Yuga found a bit jarring. It transformed again, it grew larger, slowly forming skin, then flesh and then it grew hair on its head that was different shades of blue. It had changed itself into a perfect copy of Yuga. He stood speechless staring at a perfect copy of himself, from his hair to his skin colour, down to every last scar. It also copied the clothes he wore. Thankfully. This was very eerie, cool but eerie.

“That’s weird to look at, can you change back?” asked Yuga.

It somehow understood and changed back to its gas form. “What else can you change to….. “

He points up to the clouds and immediately, the entire area is filled it mist. Then it changed back awaiting another order.

“This’ll be a fun night.”