Finally!

Yafu had to restrain himself to avoid shaking in excitement. He perched far above on a balcony near the rafters as the first hooded figure walked into the ground level of the abandoned warehouse. In addition to his obscured location, his aura concealment technique rendered him completely indistinguishable from his surroundings. That would be disrupted if he moved too much in the physical plane. This discipline was his only option now that his enemies had arrived. He would lose a fair fight with these people. Yafu had to catch them by surprise. Detection would be a failure. Failure simply could not happen tonight.

Thankfully for Yafu, going unnoticed was a skill he had honed to quite a high level. This mastery made it easier to shoulder the weight of this moment. Tonight had a chance to be one of great triumph for him if he succeeded. He had spent years of research and investigation to reach this point. His obsession had peaked in intensity over the last few months, as the opportunity afforded to him tonight became apparent.

After years of chasing rumors, Yafu had at long last gotten one step ahead of the Poison Fang. Everything he had pieced together had pointed to them meeting here tonight in this abandoned sector of Revival City. Yafu did not fully believe his hunch was actually correct until now. Papers, maps, and reports had a superficial quality to them. Seeing his targets physically appear in front of him was much more satisfying than chasing ghosts.

There was no mistaking the first guest to walk into this place. Her name was Taia from his research, but much more importantly her appearance matched a lead female member of the Poison Fang. Yafu could not wait to meet her colleagues.

Several more people made their entrance to the warehouse after the first woman. Most shuffled in silently, but a few were a little bit theatrical with their arrival. Taia seemed unamused and focused her energy and soul aura on scanning the meeting space for intruders. The warehouse itself was a large circular atrium with several balconies about thirty or so feet above the ground level. There were no windows to be seen. Yafu stayed squatted on one of these balconies. His superb technique continued to render him invisible to the naked eye and all but the most sophisticated of soul aura gazes. He hoped it would be enough to fool Taia.

Taia continued her scan for any abnormalities. Her naturally blue eyes gained a faint yellow hue from her endeavor. A tall, raven haired woman with sharp angular features, Taia had a piercing presence about her that added to an intimidation factor felt by Yafu during their cat and mouse game. He knew she was clearly a stronger energy user than him and a very effective detector. To his great relief, she did not seem to sense Yafu as her eyes moved over the space he occupied.

“We appear to have total privacy.” announced Taia, “Where are Shen and Cirko?”

Shen and Cirko. Yafu’s heart rate quickened at the sound of the first name. Shen was the leader of Poison Fang and Yafu’s primary target. He would accept failing to kill all the other members of the group tonight if he could get to that man. Shen had to face the consequences of his past choices tonight, one way or another.

“Shen is coming soon.” Everyone in the room directed their eyes to the balcony opposite where Yafu was hiding. Yafu felt a chill run down his spine. There was a pressure emanating from this new speaker that Yafu could feel across the room.

The speaker himself was a lean, tall man, whose entire body was covered in black cloth except for white mask with two large red stripes crossing his face vertically at the eyes. His arrival caused even the hardened members of the Poison Fang to tense up. Yafu thought this had to be Cirko. There was no one else who matched the description.

Cirko, allegedly the newest member of the Fang, had begun appearing only recently in military reports and underworld rumors. His novelty explained why even the Fang, a group known for having a lethal sense of loyalty, lacked trust with this man as he made himself known. Besides his raw power and ruthlessness, Yafu was unable to find much other intel on Cirko in his research. His origins were a complete mystery.

One of the male members of the Fang, standing to the immediate left of Taia, chose to respond. “You should hope Shen arrives soon. His trust quells our doubts.”

Cirko descended to the ground level from his perch on the balcony. He landed silently on the floor contradicting the sound a near thirty foot drop should make. As he landed on the outer edge of the circle formed by the group, he replied coldly, “His trust excuses your doubts.”

Nothing was said after that for nearly twenty minutes. Cirko’s arrival pushed the number of Fang members to eight. Unless they added new members very recently, this meant they were all here except for Shen.

A few of them nervously paced around during this time. Some sat down or leaned on the walls. Yafu stayed as still as a stone. The other two who did not move much were Cirko and Taia. Taia kept her gaze directly on Cirko. Cirko’s facial expressions were obscured by his mask but it was highly doubtful that he wasn’t returning Taia’s contemptuous gaze. Then, all of a sudden, the main door opened and another man walked in. Yafu knew instantly who he was.

All the Fang members immediately straightened their posture and turned towards their arriving leader. Shen walked up to Cirko. “How are you feeling, my friend?” Shen was a short, stout man with a large torso and compact but wide limbs. His jet black hair was long and wavy and he had a thick full beard that gave him a grizzled look.

Cirko turned his head to look at Shen and replied, “Impatient.”

Shen nodded. “I hope we all can end the waiting tonight.”

Shen then directed his next words to the entire group, a sense of importance and ambition accompanied every sentence he spoke. “Brothers and sisters of the Fang,” All around Shen these hardened deviants and criminals perked up like children to hear him speak, “we stand at an unlikely culmination of our impossible journey. For generations, we have been told that our destination must be unreachable at best, fantasy at worst. The impossibility of our goals have left us quite alone in our struggle, abandoned by the many who share our beliefs but let the frustrations of our forefathers temper their dreams. We are the ones who did not break. We are the ones who sacrificed so much and received only ridicule for our burden. But we may finally be able to show fruit from our labor tonight. And this fruit is truly the sweetest known to all those who walk these paths with us across the Biterrain. My friends, with Cirko’s help today, we shall finally find the fabled Earth.”

There it was. The crux of Yafu’s opportunity; Earth. Yafu knew he had no chance in a straight up fight. His skill level in the combat application of soul energy was high but only relatively so. Amongst the Fang he was hopelessly outclassed even without their numbers advantage. However, the Fang had one glaring weakness they could never compensate for. This weakness was their purpose.

Like most people across the Biterrain, the Fang were followers of the gospel of the Immortal King. This mythological figure was the legendary founder of all civilized society across both planets of the Biterrain. There was no place you could go and find a person who had not at least been told of the King’s virtues. He was a man whose reign was as golden as his disappearance was mysterious.

There was so much chaos initially in his absence dating about seventy thousand years ago that no one today could really fully explain how the King had disappeared so suddenly. The only universally accepted surviving fact of his disappearance was his planned departure for Earth, a much hypothesized third planet, shortly before he vanished. Many attempts to locate and travel to Earth in the ages since had been brought about by the religious zeal of some of his followers. All had failed miserably. Most of these failures have been lethal or incredibly debilitating to those who tried.

And yet, here gather the Fang. Their motivations were clear for them as they were clear for the men and women before them. The gospel insists that the Immortal King could not die and therefore a line of thinking emerged that he must still be on this Earth. Some followers and prophets had even preached that Earth was a type of heaven that would be enjoyed by those who were able to join the King there. Others claimed Earth was a cursed place for taking the King away from his Kingdom. This theory usually concluded his followers must someday liberate the King so he may finish the process of turning the Biterrain to paradise. Regardless of the spectrum of ancient interpretations, Earth remained a fabled fascination for the populace.

Despite this iconic status within the culture, doubt has become the dominant attitude towards Earth in more modern times. Every passing century, failed attempts to prove even the material existence of Earth have piled up against the few old papers and documents preserved vouching for it. The more secular powers across the planets had all pretty much banned attempts to reach Earth for safety reasons a few generations prior. As a result, genuine attempts to reach the third planet were now only reserved for the outcast and fringe elements of society.

The Poison Fang were such fringe individuals. They were ruthless terrorists who were pariahs even in the more militant circles of their practice. But they were also true believers and determined to forge a path to the promised land despite the obvious risks. In Yafu’s amateur theological opinion, the only thing they were speeding towards was a predictable disaster. The aftermath of their folly tonight would be Yafu’s best and likely only opportunity to accomplish his long dreamt about goal; To kill Shen.

“Our time approaches.” Cirko’s voice was plain and declarative as if he was trying to minimize his vocalization effort for the evening. It was likely he simply did not enjoy talking all that much.

Taia glanced at Cirko and then looked Shen in the eye with a shallow pleasantness that poorly masked subdued hostility. “We give our lives as we always will for the dream. It is a shame that we may only have one life to give. It makes every action we do with our dedication inherently risky. We cannot afford poor advice or instruction.” She then turned her fierce gaze back to Cirko. Cirko kept his head oriented towards the center of the room where it had been since right after Shen had walked in.

After a period of silence, Shen interjected, “So many before us have paid with their lives. A cruel irony, the ritual that has failed them was the correct one to get to Earth. Why then did they fail?” Shen began to turn himself to look at each member of the Fang individually as if to induce heightened attention to his next words. “They failed because they did not anticipate an enemy lurking in the shadows. An enemy who wants nothing more than to burn those whose faith is strong enough to persist. A being of hatred. But also a being who is vulnerable once you know he is there. Cirko knows. And he has generously gifted me the knowledge. Now I match his generosity many times over to all of you by taking us to the promised land. We need not fear. The only unbeatable enemy is an enemy that we don’t realize exists. We no longer suffer from such ignorance. Now that our enemy’s greatest strength is destroyed, his greatest weakness becomes apparent. A weakness we can only fully exploit at the place we are now, and at a time that is quickly approaching. Prepare yourselves to your roles on Cirko’s mark. He is our guide.”

On cue all eyes in the room turned to Cirko. Shen had successfully rallied his troops. There was no more conflict remaining in the minds of those in the room, just an intense focus on their goal. Cirko raised his hand into the air, paused for several seconds, and then clenched his fist.

Immediately, the five Fang members furthest away from Cirko and Shen began to channel their soul aura energy. Four of them released it from their fingertips in a yellow thunder-like discharge, the other one with a red discharge. They directed their output at the center of the semicircle they had formed by where they were standing. The beams of energy met at a central point and began to create a growing sphere of soul energy from this central point.

Shen and Cirko both started to glow as well, signaling they were beginning to focus their soul energy reserves. Shen’s glow was yellow like the majority of his comrades although his was a brighter, more vibrant tone of the color. Cirko’s energy was a brilliant crimson red, by far the rarer of the two colors that were seen in the Fang and the Biterrain as a whole.

The two leading men began to move their hands and arms in unison. The poses were quite familiar to Yafu. He had never traveled outside of Revival City, much less to the other planet in the Biterrain, but he had seen people use the ritual to create a portal to do so. This ritual was similar but not identical. It made sense. The task was the same in every sense except the destination.

The ritual continued for several minutes. Each passing second Yafu waited for his opportunity. He did not know exactly what would happen or when. There were no accounts of survivors for this ritual that he had found in any archives within the city’s extensive collection. His best guess was a large explosion. In that scenario, he just needed to survive the blast long enough to make sure it killed Shen. If some other disaster occured, Yafu would have to pounce on the Fang’s leader at his weakest. This combination of attention and anticipation caused him to sweat and his muscles began to tense up. The sphere created from discharge from the five opposite Cirko and Shen began to swirl slowly and pick up speed with every rotation. The mass of energy at the center was frothing like boiling water.

Suddenly there was a quick flash of light from the mass. The members of the Fang did not flinch or break the process. Yafu on the other hand nearly leapt from his balcony reactivity but stalled himself before his feet left the railing. That moment of jumpiness was just enough to disrupt his concealment for a split second before he recovered.

Cirko and Shen both shot their heads toward Yafu’s perch. By that point Yafu had reconstituted his camouflage with the balcony, rendering him imperceptible once again to normal human senses. Despite this, Yafu feared his recovery might have been too late.

“What’s going on?” shouted a male member of the group as he discharged more yellow aura into the central mass. He had broken his façade of calmness and let his doubt rise from his gut to his face.

“Nothing! I see nothing abnormal.” Shen snapped back before composing himself in a more pleasant manner, “Please continue, it would be disastrous to stop now.”

Shen had moved eyes onto the questioning member in an attempt to confirm this man was not breaking form and as a warning to him that he was being watched for deviation from the ritual. Cirko, on the other hand, kept his gaze squarely on Yafu’s balcony.

“Everyone must keep their roles going. We have come too far to stop. We either face success or death.” Cirko’s voice started off with a quiet menacing tone and began to crescendo into deep rage. “However, there is no coincidence that would draw both Shen and I’s focus to the same spot!” Cirko continued his hand poses as his masked face turned toward Taia and the one other member of the group not contributing currently to the ritual. “Start at the far balcony and search! Find the intruder and kill them! We cannot allow any disruptions!”

Yafu knew he was in dire circumstances now. He had to move from his spot. That much was clear. However, the more he tried to move the less effective his camouflage would be. His personal aura would begin to stick out from the background energy around him.

It was going to take him threading the needle if he wanted to stay undetected. Move too slowly and they would get too close to him for any concealment technique to work regardless of how well done it was. Move too quickly and he may as well just announce himself. He was too weak to fight these people head on and too slow to escape from them in an honest chase. If Taia found his exact position, he probably had no chance of surviving. Yafu could not linger on that scenario now, he had a small window to act and survive.

Yafu’s mind began to race in desperation. There appeared to be only one entrance or exit to this compound; a small door beneath the balcony opposite from the one he was on. Yafu had arrived several hours early and positioned himself at the opposite end of the entrance in order to put maximum distance from the door where the Fang would enter and likely perform a scan of the room.

Once he scanned his surroundings, Yafu moved on to sizing up his immediate threats. He had two people searching for him. The Taia woman and the other man. This other man had a large build and a slight hunch on his back. He had begun to back up towards the exit. They’re smart, he will be impossible to get around with his frame. That likely meant Taia was coming to corner him. She had been the first one sent here before the others. That meant there was a level of trust for her to scope out threats. It was not a good draw for Yafu.

Taia began to walk over in a deliberate manner towards Yafu’s balcony. Her eyes took on a soft yellow hue as she began focusing her energy on detection. Yafu was facing a very deadly math problem. His concealment was holding up but like regular vision, Taia’s spiritual vision would become stronger and stronger the closer she got. Any attempt to leap to another balcony would siphon off too much energy for him to maintain an adequate shield to her prying eyes. If she detected Yafu’s exact location, she was going to be able to kill him without much difficulty.

How could he have done this to himself! He had everything lined up until he had that slip-up. How could he have been too wired? Even then, his mistake was so small only Cirko and Shen detected him. An impressive feat for those two considering the amount of energy swirling right near their faces.

A rush of adrenaline shot through Yafu. A hyper childlike excitement coursed through his soul. There was a move on the board. The odds were still stacked against him, but he could do something other than wait for his inaction to lead to his annihilation.

Knowing his odds only got worse with time, Yafu did not hesitate to set his final maneuver into motion. Turning to face the balcony to the immediate left of his own, Yafu watered his concealment down for the briefest of moments. In these fleeting moments he prepared himself to jump to the balcony directly to his right. Then he restrengthened his concealment. Taia sniffed this out almost instantaneously and leapt like a predator cornering its prey. She landed on the railing of the second balcony and opened her stance to deliver a killing blow.

Cirko, still not breaking focus, shouted, “Bring the body to the light.”

“There is no such body here.” Taia responded, clearly frustrated by the possible inclinations of her initial failure. She quickly lept to the original balcony Yafu was on and found the same result; Nothing!

“Find this intruder. There are no more doubts. We all saw him try to escape.” Shen took a much less scolding tone than Cirko, but it was clear he put immense priority on the defeat of this unknown enemy.

Ironically, Yafu was now much closer to Shen then he was to Taia. He had not jumped to the second balcony, he had only made it appear that way. When he restrengthened his concealment, he retreated back to his original position, gambling his life that Taia would try to prevent a desperate escape to another balcony. She proved him right and her use of energy to propel herself at superhuman speed towards his supposed new location ended up being the final key to his move. His immediate priority had not changed. He had to stay concealed to stay alive. But his means had to change. At a basic level he was using distance to augment his concealment from the Fang. After his blunder, the Fang tried to remove this advantage by cornering him with Taia. He needed a new advantage. In the moment before Taia’s strike, he found one.

Taia’s sudden use of energy to power her strike created enough background energy for him to camouflage and move without standing out to the others prying eyes. He used the precious few seconds he had created to drop down to the ground floor, paradoxically removing his greatest ally, distance. He was now hitching his wagon to the swirling pool of energy. Could he become like a drop of water in the ocean by standing by this immense ball of soul energy? Would the swirling pool of energy he now hugged be enough assistance to allow his energy to stay anonymous?

Yafu stood on the outer edge of the border of the rotating energy which had begun to plume into a hemispherical shape. Now wedged in between this mass of pooled energy and the Fang who surrounded it, he was hiding literally right under their noses. He just had to blend in with the energy dissipating from the mass.

Holding his nerves back, Yafu silently counted to five in his head. Nothing. Taia had leapt to another balcony and was methodically combing over it. They clearly still thought he was moving from balcony to balcony. Yafu did not have the ability to maneuver like that and maintain camouflage, but thankfully the Fang had no idea what his limitations were.

Despite this small victory, Yafu had still just prolonged his survival. He still had to overcome the daunting obstacle of the hunched man to guarantee it. This was a brutal problem to have because of its simplicity. Yafu had always felt he had an advantage in more complex situations. Complex problems bred creative solutions, allowing him to overcome opponents with more obvious advantages over him. This was not one of those problems. The hunched man stood right in front of the narrow exit. Yafu could only go through him.

Yafu’s mind raced for another solution. He mentally threw everything at this, allowing his mind to fly to asinine solutions if only to get lucky and stumble on to one that had a chance of working by accident. While he thought, he shimmied very slowly around the edge of the energy pool, circumnavigating clockwise as to avoid being in the crossfire of the five who were still discharging energy to the right of him. Even a closer look at the blocked exit did not offer any reprieve. The hunched man’s back was inches away from the closed door. There was no way to open it without physical detection, much less energy detection.

Yafu kept racking his brain, his eyes darting around the room looking for any way he could get the man to move from the door. His gaze went from member to member of the Fang. Each one had an energy signal of an apex predator. There was likely no way to disrupt these people enough to escape.

Yafu’s eyes finally fell on Cirko. Even seeing just the mask put a sense of dread into Yafu. He had the most gruesome energy of them all. There was an insatiable fury to how his energy flowed. Yafu felt a sense of hopelessness looking at this man. He was lucky to have made it this far. There was no way he was going to get away from him. Even the way Cirko entered the room this evening was scary. He had the entire Fang on their toes. They didn’t even realize…

There it was! The one detail Yafu was looking for. Cirko had come into the room from the balcony but Yafu never saw or sensed him enter through the door. Two scenarios remained. He was either at the complex before Yafu, which made little sense since Yafu would have been killed when he had walked in, or there was another way in. A way in is a way out.

Yafu had a plan now. He would wait until the ritual hit a crescendo and then leap toward Cirko’s balcony and pray the exit would be something obvious such as a window, so he could escape before the Fang reacted. That meant he had to watch the ritual very carefully and guess correctly when he had an opportunity. He would not get a second chance. The opportunity would almost certainly be the disaster he had initially anticipated on the balcony. The difference now was that he was hugging the energy pool for cover, making him the least protected from catastrophe unless he jumped right before it occurred.

Yafu stood still on the brink of the ticking time bomb for what seemed like an eternity. It was likely only a few minutes. He was keen to not make the same mistake he made earlier by being too jumpy and blowing his cover. The energy pool had continued the froth occasionally emitting small sudden light flashes. Yafu did not budge.

Shen stopped his hand motions and signaled to the discharging members. They cut the energy flow off. Now only Cirko was interacting with the pool. The pool itself began to constrict and slowly collapse inward. This was likely Yafu’s moment.

He readied himself to jump. His odds were low but they were not zero. That’s all he would ever ask for. As he readied his jump, Yafu did a final scan of the room. Cirko was now locked in deep concentration as he tried to guide the pool to a desired state. That was a huge win already as the most dangerous piece was seemingly off the board for his dash to freedom. Taia was still up in the balcony searching for him and the hunchback was glued to the door. Both had thankfully not evolved past the first stage of Yafu’s game. Almost every other member of the Fang had backed away from Yafu’s position making them less immediate threats. The only one still in a threatening location to react quickly enough was Shen.

Shen! Looking at him made Yafu’s blood boil. He instinctively reacted to cool off his anger so he could keep focus. But the rage came back almost instantly and he made no such self-regulating effort the second time. Yafu’s decision making shifted. He had spent so much time letting his survival instinct drive him in the last few minutes that he had almost retreated from his destiny. He forgot he was prepared to die tonight. Yafu did not need to escape. That was a failure for him. He had his chance right now to succeed. He could ensure this foolish endeavor would be Shen’s last. He stood still as the energy pool continued to constrict. The pressure was building to incredibly high levels. It was quite impressive to Yafu that Cirko was still holding it back singlehandedly.

Sensing the pressure had built to lethal amounts within the pool, Yafu made his move. With a ferocity only reserved for a suicide charge, Yafu dived at Shen. Shen sensed the charge before it reached him and instinctively dug in and leaned forward as to not be knocked backward. There were few people alive who would be able to knock Shen backwards and Yafu was not among them. Yafu knew that but knocking Shen backwards was not his intent, anyways. He had a different plan.

Yafu stopped right in Shen’s face and used his catlike athleticism to shift his momentum on the spot. Shen briefly saw this intruder, a messy, dirty, vagabond who was barely old enough to be a man. Shen did not know who this person was and was stunned that someone looking like this had been the one evading the Poison Fang so effectively. He was so shocked by the turn of events that he did not react in time to prevent this attacker from locking his arms underneath Shen’s shoulders and lifting Shen and himself up into the air. Shen’s posture and stance was defensive to a forward charge but was vulnerable enough to a backwards grab.

Yafu used every bit of energy he had to propel Shen and him up and backwards into the air. He heard a brief amount of gasps but nothing that indicated someone would react quickly enough to save them. He was right. They crashed into the pool of energy with a great force. Yafu closed his eyes expecting a quick and fiery death. A few seconds passed and he felt nothing until he took a hard knee to his gut, shattering at least one of his ribs. The pain caused his eyes to fly open. Yafu immediately saw Shen floating in front of him. The knee had been so forceful it broke their embrace. Shen gave him a look of fury and contempt as they began to drift away from each other. Yafu tried to get in close to Shen to prevent his escape but found that he had no real control over his momentum. He seemed to be drifting in an empty, frictionless void that was preventing anything other than his own inertia from controlling him. Shen and Yafu continued to drift apart in this void for a split second longer, before the blinding flash of blue light knocked Yafu unconscious.