Chapter Forty: Birth By Flame

Less than half an hour later, Ronin arrived at the coordinates he was given, and was unsurprised to find himself standing in front of a massive black and white church. The night air was still, only seeming more so the closer he got to the church, the silence of the time growing more ominous as he moved nearer it's doors.

Deeply unsettled, he realized that it was quiet.

In the middle of a city...right beside a church that's open and running 24/7.

 Looking around, he found a window several stories up and whispered, "Activate: Speed."

Preparing himself for the rush of power, he was surprised to find there was none...for the first time, his ability hadn't worked.

Panic filled his mind as he began to rush through all the reasons this might have happened.

 Maybe he'd run out of Aether somehow.

What if his power was just gone?

That thought filled him with ice and he shook it off as he began to hear murmuring from inside the building, a cacophony of sound that grew louder by the moment.

This went on for several minutes until suddenly, with no warning it stopped and was replaced with an inhuman scream that tore through some deep primal part of him that he didn't know he had.

Losing his caution, he threw open the doors and was stunned by what he found within.

Within the room there was a massive, almost too big to fit within the decadent cavity that made up insides of the church, two headed lizard that, if he didn't know better, he would have sworn was a dragon.

It's scales glistened as though each of them burned with a life of their own, as likely to reach out and grab him as the heads of the lizard were themselves. Beyond comprehension, Ronin began to feel his mind fight the very sight before him, as though the massive reptile were far beyond his ability to accept it. 

Within his mind, he heard a tearing sound, like metal being ripped in half, a sound he assumed was his mind breaking. Amidst the exhaustively loud shattering his mind was fighting, he heard a tone, high and pure, and a thought came unbidden to mind.

So what?

The tearing sound began to rescind and in its place was a burning sense of rage, the audacity of the High Cathols filling him with some misplaced sense of indignation that only grew when he finally looked past the dragon and spotted Mira.

She sat in a vat of cavernous black, the tail of the dragon resting within the same pool of inky black shadow. He watched for a moment, fighting the rage as he noticed that the dragon was getting smaller and smaller until eventually it had shrank entirely into the vat.

The young Nekoum began to glow and continued screaming, her irises flashing white while her sclera flickered black and her hair shifted rapidly in and out of various shades of red.

As he watched, he felt hard, thin fingers grab his arms and begin dragging him into the room, making a strange click-clacking sound with every step. He fought against them as hard as he could, focusing his anger on the effort and broke free relatively easily, though seeing his attackers filled him with even more anger.

Skeletons, their foreheads adorned with bright white circles, roared with impossible volume at him, readying swords they seemed to already be carrying.

Looking back, Ronin saw that the priests and people surrounding Mira had begun to disperse. Blasting forward with unexpected speed, he struck the skeletons with a sword from his inventory so hard that they shattered to the ground. Gasping from the unintended exertion, he turned, exhausted, to try and save Mira when he heard the strange clacking sound again, the sound of the skeletons re-forming and walking, undeterred, toward him.

Reaching into his coat, he pulled one of Scalpel's concoctions from it's inner pouch and injected himself with the iridescent liquid, gasping as the energy hit him so hard he could barely stay standing.

The world around him turned black and white as he focused on the skeletons, their bony bodies skittering toward him, swords raised, but moving slowly. Squinting gently, he rushed them again and again, only to see them return to form after being dismantled time and again.

He felt the air around him begin to warm and cursed the side effects of the strange medicine he'd taken when a sickeningly languid voice rose up above the sound of the skeletons reforming.

"Most impressive, Ronin. Most impressive, indeed."

Rolling his eyes, Ronin asked aloud, "What now?"

From the darkness of the pews that Ronin had barely noticed in his fight, a pair of purple eyes glistened as the voice spoke again, "Very few have the endurance necessary to destroy my favorite toys once, let alone repeatedly in such a manner."

A man walked from the shadows and Ronin recognized him, though he couldn't place a name on the dark man in front of him. Dressed in all black, a t-shirt and jeans wrapped in a cloak with a furred hood, the man said, "Forgive my manners, my name is Jet...and you are interrupting something very interesting."

Ronin looked at the skeletons, now standing unnaturally still, and at Jet and asked, "You're a Cathol?"

Jet laughed and said, "Me? No. You could call me an...independent contractor. The Cathols offer interesting work that lets me further my research every day. It's nice to not have someone who can kill me breathing down my neck all the time...something I think you can empathize with quite well."

Cocking his head, Ronin asked, "If you're not a Cathol, why are you helping them?

Jet motioned and the skeletons disintegrated into dust that began flowing into the darkness within his cloak as he said, "From one researcher to another, I'd think you'd recognize someone gathering research materials."

The darkness in the church lifted and Ronin realized that the lights had been on the whole time. It was what the light revealed that made Ronin's stomach flip.

Within the aisles of pews were hundreds of fresh corpses being stabbed and hacked repeatedly by skeletons similar to the ones he'd been fighting. 

Jet snapped his fingers and Ronin was struck by a disgusting scent so strong that it seemed to be physically oppressive. 

"Is this...is this your research materials?"

Jet laughed and said, "The Cathols are kind enough to give me as many bodies as I need if I help them. Usually they're already dead, but sometimes they let me enjoy the action of sowing what I intend to reap."

Though he could feel the effects of the medicine wearing off, Ronin felt as full of energy as he had when he was fighting the skeletons and in a rage rushed the smug bastard.

Shooting repeatedly for Jet's head, he couldn't land a single hit on the man, though he couldn't explain why. As he reached him, Ronin pulled a sword from his inventory and swung for his head angrily, a swing that Jet blocked with his bare finger without moving an inch.

Striking as fast and as hard as he could, Ronin felt as though he were no more to this monster than an ant was to a mountain.

Smirking, Jet looked him in the eyes as he held the sword blade in his bare hand and said, "Do you really think you have a chance against someone who can raise the dead?"

Gently twitching his hand, the sword shattered in his hand and he said, "I'm so disappointed in you...I was told you'd be entertaining, but it seems like you're just a hypocrite."

Glaring hard at Jet, Ronin asked, "What makes you think you know anything about me?"

 Smiling wider, Jet said, "Developing those weapons you sell must have required dozens, if not hundreds, of test subjects. Nobody knows better than I do that the only way to develop a weapon effectively is to use them against their intended targets. You may have been able to get data from the blood starved people here in Neyk, but what about before them? How many lives have you ended in the pursuit of progress, Ronin? I may enjoy the process more, but how different are you from me?"

Ronin heard Trigger's panic filled voice at this, "You're not the one who has to watch innocent people get killed with your weapons," and was brought to a full stop.

Jet laughed again and said, "Never really thought about it did you?"

Ronin shook his head and said, "I'm not evil."

 Jet stopped laughing and sighed, exasperated, as he said, "Neither am I, Ronin. There is no good or evil. There is no such thing as a moral high ground when you develop weapons to lay waste to countless waves of faceless people."

 Jet walked within touching distance of Ronin and whispered, "There are no heroes in the Dark City, Ronin," and gently pushed him away.

The soft action sent Ronin flying through the air where he hit the wall so hard that it shattered part of it as he collided with it.

As he began to fall from his collision with the wall easily a hundred feet in the air, he wondered if the fall would kill him.

Sinking through the air, he felt briefly weightless, but began to wonder if he'd been set on fire due to the heat. I'll need to talk to Scalpel about this side effect if I survive this, he thought as he felt something catch him gently and his descent path changed abruptly.

Fighting through the encroaching darkness, he saw a pair of cat ears and said, "Did a cat catch me?"

A voice returned, high and firm, "I swear by Jevah, Ronin, if you weren't so cute and interesting, I'd drop you right on your damned head."

Rattling through his memories, he connected the voice to a name and said, "Mira?"

She looked him in the eyes and nodded as she responded, "The one and only."

They landed hard and Ronin felt like all of his bones had to be broken, biting back a scream through sheer force of will.

Setting him down gently in a pew, Mira said, "I'll be back...I've got one more asshole to burn."

Ronin mumbled weakly in confusion, "Burn?"

Without a word, Mira disappeared in a gout of flame, appearing beside Jet, her hands burning bright and fierce, as though a wildfire had been contained within her palms.

Jet turned to the small girl and said, "Ahhh….how I missed this. Doesn't it remind you of the old days, sis?"

Mira's eyes flashed orange and red and she struck out at him as she said "Shut up."

Ronin watched as best he could, though he expected her to miss since she was moving so slow, though it seemed that Jet was moving slowly as well.

To his surprise, her strike hit him square in the chest and he shot back so fast that Ronin almost couldn't follow his trajectory.

When Ronin had hit the wall, he'd shattered the wood and stone that made up the church, but Jet hit the wall and kept going until he was deep within a hole in the wall. 

Grabbing the sides of the wall, Jet laughed, largely unhurt and looking for a good time as he shot forward at the girl, now completely engulfed in flame.

She spun toward him and threw her hands in his direction, creating a spiralling stream of fire that burned so brightly that it lit the room up even brighter.

Catching the stream in his hand, Jet's eyes glistened bright purple as he raised his free hand and the darkness of the room returned, unaffected by the light of her fire.

His voice, clearly joyful, rang out from all around the room, "Yeah, just like old times, sis. You just don't have the oomph to get me, never will."

As he finished speaking, his laughter spread through the room, seeming to permeate the darkness itself, as though he were part of the shadows.

Suddenly the dark was lifted and the room was simply burning in the artificial light.

Reappearing near him, Mira picked Ronin up as gently as she could and said, "Let's get out of here."

"What about the Cathols?" Ronin asked weakly.

Casting a dark look at the vat she'd been lying in, Mira said, "Let them burn."