The internal buzzing of power humming through Solera’s channels brought him out of the nothingness. Right as he realized the power seemed foreign, his head was assaulted by excruciating waves of pain, as if it had been folded up like a parchment and was being ripped asunder. All around him was darkness, like he was trapped in a mental cage from which he could not break free. He desperately wanted to scream, but for some reason, he couldn’t!

“... I’m saying the power is leaking out, ma’am… going straight to his body from the channels…”

In between each head-splitting barrage of agony, he could hear the faint voice of a young man, nervous and tremulous.

A soft, yet forceful hand grabbed Solera’s forehead and kneaded. Foreign power smashed into his Lake like a rock into a pond and blasted power out into his channels. As power leaked out of his channels and into his body, a completely foreign feeling enveloped his channels, as if they were being gripped by a soft and slippery membrane. Something in his head clicked together, and he found control of his mouth, letting out a bloodcurdling howl.

“Interesting.” A woman’s blunt voice, tinny and slightly muffled, spoke as the hand moved down and stifled Solera’s scream. “I can see his channels are unusually weak. What do you think?”

“I… I agree, ma’am. They are the most porous I have ever seen.”

“Continue treating him. As for…” An especially grueling pain hit Solera for a few seconds, causing him to lose track of what the woman was saying for a moment. “... don’t bother.” Receding footsteps.

“Ma’am?” Shock could be heard in the young man’s voice.

“You know what I mean. Put them down!” The woman barked.

Them? Who was “them”? Was it himself and the other prisoners? Was this woman just going to kill all of them?

For a moment, he felt this was incredulous. But he again remembered everything that had happened, and sighed inwardly. Nothing more was to be expected from the people of the Tornado Sect. Without exception, they were ruthless and callous.

“Elder Zmenoy.” A flat, monotone voice. Rasmurnov’s voice. Just hearing it sent fiery hot rage coursed through Solera’s blood vessels. He ransacked his mind for control over his muscles, but he just couldn’t seem to find anything! It was inexplicable!

Why? Why now, of all times, when Rasmurnov was only meters away from him? The only thing he had left to do in this world was to kill this man. It was as if he was being tortured by some higher power which derived pleasure from watching him stand at the precipice of his goal, unable to take that final step...

“Such an act goes against the established directive pertaining to the rules of prisoners of war. You cannot kill them.”

What? Solera’s fury subsided, replaced with complete bewilderment. Was he hallucinating? Why would Rasmurnov possibly say that? Why were they being spared, when they had tried to kill everyone? Why?

“Which rule do you speak of, Rasmurnov?” Zmenoy’s voice was incredulous. “The one telling you to grant them reprieve during inundations? Or the one telling you to kill them one by one in the event of crime by an unknown perpetrator? The bureaucracy is bloated, and their rules are a mishmash of contradiction.”

“I do not seek to make sense of the law, only enforce it.”

She snickered. “If that were true, you would be a bit busy here.”

After a moment, Rasmurnov responded. “I am not ignorant. The capital has given you extrajudicial authority, but the prisoners remain under mine.”

“They will die.” The woman’s voice had turned sinisterly quiet. “Do you think these Edenese sheep will get away with destroying my base? All here will die.”

“They will be brought to the prison camp and tried.” Rasmurnov’s voice remained as emotionless as ever.

For a long time, there was only silence. Solera’s mind, too, was silent. He could not process what Rasmurnov was saying, because it did not make any sense. Most definitely, he was hallucinating. Or already dead and in Sky, his perception of reality warped beyond recognition.

“I can see why everyone despises you, Rasmurnov.” Zmenoy snarled. “You take them and get the fuck out of here, now.”

“Give me the boy.”

Another silence ensued. Solera’s eyes abruptly flashed open, only to see an endless expanse of textured gray. Sky? No, it was not Sky, but sky. Clouds. Another burst of pain erupted in his head, creating circles of color flashing across his vision. Against all expectations, he was still alive.

Zmenoy’s hushed whisper drifted into Solera’s ears. “He has a cultivation class of ninety-three, Rasmurnov. Ninety. Three. Other anomalies have been detected as well, and need further investigation. If he dies under your watch, the council will have your head on the dome, and that’s if whatever Edenese noble family he belongs to doesn’t hunt you down first.”

Solera’s eyeballs flicked around. Beside him was a young man, his hand placed on Solera’s exposed sternum. Only now, could Solera feel the insane quantity of healforce shooting into his body from the boy’s gauntlet.

“I apologize, Zmenoy. This is outside your area of authority. I will do what the council has dictated, not you.”

“Rasmurnov…” The woman’s voice dripped with fury. “I am the angriest I have ever been. Do not forget your place, or you will lose your life.”

Solera twisted his head to his left to see a tall, slender woman with a smooth, featureless golden mask covering her entire face. Long, silver hair flooded out from behind the mask and onto her robes. Next to her was Rasmurnov, whose robes were dusty and torn. His face was more expressionless than even the woman’s mask. His glassy eyes moved away from the masked woman and onto Solera, where it lingered.

“I will bring him.” He said, his empty eyes boring into Solera’s like an all-consuming void. “You are entitled to send an escort to accompany me.”

Solera wrenched his gaze away, a shudder running through the entirety of his broken body. Those eyes unnerved him more than the most grotesque monster he had ever seen.

“Hmph.” The woman snorted and walked away. After a moment, everyone dispersed with the exception of the channeler treating Solera, who in turn left after another channeler with fresh reserves of power arrived.

For an hour, nothing happened. Solera stared up at the gray clouds, thinking to himself. Nothing made sense to him anymore. He remembered bringing down the cavern upon himself as he lost consciousness, yet he was still alive when he should be dead. His rebellion had been put down, yet the man who had executed innocents without qualm was fighting against the execution of confirmed killers. But the most confounding thing of all was that he seemed to have been singled out by the leader of this military outpost for absolutely preposterous reasons.

Cultivation class ninety-three? From Rasmurnov’s stare and from the channelers treating him, Solera knew they were talking about him, and yet he could not believe it. Back when Skadi, a confirmed immortal and suspected seraph with the inhuman levels of mental prowess and control accompanying such titles, had tested him, he had said Solera was only class eleven. Every class represented a ten percent increase in strength and durability with respect to the first cultivation class. Seventy-eight levels… that meant he was nearly eight times stronger than before. In two or three months?

Absolutely unbelieveable. This could not be true for countless reasons, the most glaringly obvious one being that he had not seen any such improvements over the course of the journey. No; he had been this strong, or perhaps stronger, long before he was forced into this disastrous prison march where the only power supplied to him was from the crystal and the rift in his soul. It was impossible for him to have cultivated even one percent of what would be required for such an improvement. And what other anomalies? Porous channels? What did that even mean?

Nothing made sense. But this was reality. Solera could feel it as he regained control of his body. The throbbing pain of broken bones and ripped muscles coursing through his entire body, the occasional raindrop falling onto his bare skin or his open wounds, the headsplitting migraine, it was all too real.

He despised it. He had expected to die in the uprising, and yet he had not. And now they would not even kill him. Not killing him… that meant they didn’t even see him as a threat. No; they viewed him with contempt and disdain. Solera howled bitterly, the tears streaming off his face. Being spared by the enemy was pathetic. He would rather have died there. He screamed his anger at the clouds, but nobody listened to him. Even the channeler at his side ignored him.

Without warning, he was hoisted up onto a sling and carried through a pile of rubble to the other prisoners. They were arranged in one long line, their limbs each bound by a cord of twine. Of the two hundred they had set out with, only around thirty prisoners remained.

Rasmurnov stood at the front atop a small boulder, his hands clasped behind his back. He had changed clothes, his tattered gray robes swapped out for another set of gray. In front of him, again, was an axe and a tree stump.

“All of you here have taken part in an act of insubordination against your captors. You will be brought to the prison camps, where you will be tried and undoubtedly executed.”

Solera’s eyebrows rose. It was comical, really. The man who had executed innocents to find a killer now required himself to bring killers to some kangaroo court before executing them. Yet as Solera heard Rasmurnov emotionlessly narrating his decree, he felt that some semblance of familiarity had returned to his world. This was exactly the Rasmurnov he knew. Only someone who had a total apathy for human life could be so self-contradictory when it came to the pursuit of justice.

“The remainder of your journey is short, but I must make sure none of you rebel again.” Rasmurnov picked the axe up and beckoned for the first prisoner to be brought again. Solera wryly wondered if Rasmurnov was only going to bring the bodies to trial. At this point, he expected anything.

The axe came down and chopped the man’s hands off. Even as he screamed, the next prisoner was brought forward.

“On the off chance that you will not be executed, we will implant regrowth seeds so that no permanent injuries will occur.” Rasmurnov drawled as he chopped another set of limbs off. Beside him, a channeler shoved the tiny pellets into the bleeding limbs of the first man. Solera looked on, stupefied.

He had just said he expected anything, but he was caught completely off guard now. Rasmurnov was lopping hands off and simultaneously allowing them to regrow on the “off chance” the prisoners would be spared, when he had expressly said it would not happen. Did this man take some sort of perverse pleasure in being crazy?

The air was split apart by shrill curses and howls of agony. Yet Rasmurnov was oblivious to them, his axe methodically descending, again and again, each stroke the same as the one before it. A small pyramid of hands had formed by the time Solera was the only one left.

Rasmurnov’s eyes fell upon Solera. He beckoned with a bloodied finger at him.

“Enough.” Zmenoy snarled. “Half his bones are broken. He isn’t going to do anything.”

“Law is blind to privilege.”

The sounds of grinding teeth could be heard. After a moment, she stormed off. What a weak woman, Solera thought in the back of his head as he was dragged forward. He found himself staring into those jet black eyes again. The very core of his being burned with hatred, hatred that he was being spared by his most hated nemesis, hatred that he could do nothing even when he was less than a meter away.

Rasmurnov stared right back.

“You want to kill me.” He flatly stated.

Solera’s eyes widened with shock, then narrowed with hatred. “Yes,” he spat. “I will end you, even if that’s the last thing I do. So you better kill me right now.”

Rasmurnov shrugged.

“Kill me, Rasmurnov! Why won’t you kill me?!” Solera shrilly screamed as the axe lifted into the air. “WHY WON’T YOU KILL ME?”

The axe came down, and his hands fell away. Solera stared at the stump in absolute horror. The clean split, where his hands had once been.

“I’ll kill you!” Solera screamed as he was pushed aside, to the doctor. “In half a year, when my hands grow back, I’m fucking going to kill you! I’ll turn you to dust, Rasmurnov! Just you see!”

“Let’s get a move on.” Rasmurnov turned his back to them and began walking down the stony mountain trail.

In other news, I've finally got around to remaking the prologue (the first one was posted on the blog but not here, because I was unsatisfied with it.) I'm putting it down here, but also at the beginning of the first chapter.

A clear blue sky shone down on Halo City, the capital of the southern continent. It was a day in paradise, like every other since the Halo Cult had been created. Birds circled in the skies above, their eyes gazing down at the gleaming city of blue below them. Children ran about the translucent blue ground, laughing as they tumbled through market stalls and siehnti stairways.

The bridges were bustling, as always. Each over thirty meters wide and however long they had to be. Farmers entering with their produce, and exiting with their earnings. Cultivators, their blue robes rippling in the light wind. Street peddlers advertising their wares. Officers patrolling their designated areas. The tarpaulins dangled below the complex grid of bridges, collecting the power emanating from below.

The power stations, one each for the eight buildings surrounding it. Lush plants, the largest in the world, grew in the spacious verges which ringed every bridge and tower, nurtured by the small aqueducts next to them. The cultivation temples and libraries, the barracks and refineries, the arenas and agoras. This was the largest city in Land, the pinnacle of human achievement, created entirely out of the siehnti left from the War of Bloodlines and two millennia of accumulated blessings. All balanced above the yawning abyss of the Hellhole, the great blessing and curse of the southern continent.

Created during the cataclysmic War of the Bloodlines, the Hellhole had allowed devils and their demon hordes to cross over. They ravaged the southern continent for a thousand years until he vanquished them like the Ancients did the primordials. Now, the chasm enriched the entire southern continent with its power emissions, a monstrous feat given the continent was over eight hundred billion square kilometers.

He stood there, seven kilometers above the ground at the top of the highest tower in the city, looking down at the gaping darkness of the abyss. He had tan skin and brown eyes which seemed to drink in the light, a stark contrast to his translucent blue armor, which glittered with the light. On his mind was not the blue sky or the blue city, but the black darkness of Hell.

“Letting the Harbinger’s descendants in Eden live on was a mistake.” He spoke. The sunlight diffracting through his armor danced across the ground as he turned around. Behind him sat three women and two men. Like him, they were all youthful in appearance, the result of millennia of unhindered cultivation even after achieving immortality.

One of them, a woman with rich caramel skin and a completely unblemished face, shook her head in disagreement. “The Harbinger was human, and so are his descendants. You were not wrong to spare them.”

“He is far beyond human now. And his intent is clear: to reestablish that hellish kingdom of demons, the Garden.” The man spat the last word out with clear disgust.

A bald youth chortled. “No greater euphemism has ever been made, true.”

“No single person has ever done greater damage to Land than the Harbinger, not even the bloodlines. Summoning was the darkest art ever made, yet it is not dark enough for him. Did you read the transmission from this morning? He had the audacity to-”

“We need only journey to the western continent again.” The caramel-skinned woman stood up from the glittering ground. “It will be the fifth time this millennium, but we cannot delay when it comes to that man. Already, Land has lost two continents to the nothingness. If the western continent follows…”

A dark-skinned man raised a hand to cut her off. “We cannot. The Harbinger himself cannot enter Land. His descendants are human, and their devils hide as he did when we first sought to destroy him. Let us approach it in a more indirect manner. Otherwise, the Pantheon will use our actions as leverage against us in future negotiations.”

“The Pantheon has amassed too much power.” The man spoke. “And our knowledge of their affairs in the central continent remains as scant as ever, despite all your efforts. If they continue their impious actions towards us, I will have to take action, no matter if they are man and not monster.”

The dark-skinned man frowned. “Bahamut... ”

“Enough discussion. We will go with your proposal.” The man nodded at a woman, who wore on her head a translucent, jelly-like helmet with faint, red lines glowing under its surface. “Adela, contact Eden’s neighboring countries and the Pantheon. They will help us… no. We will help them with their territorial disputes. As far as everyone is concerned, it will just be another war in the Warring States.”