In the pursuit of power, some fall to the darkness. Others overcome it, and become that much stronger because of it. Those that don’t do either, are probably dead.

Motivational poster somewhere in the Multiverse.

**

It was when Fon fumbled with her second arrow that she knew the grave mistake they had made.

This had been her life for the months following the Tutorial. Danger. Fear. Murder. Earth had devolved into a savage crucible of survival, weighing power above all else. Simply because now, power was the only thing that kept you alive. If one didn’t possess the strength to help themselves, then their life was as good as forfeit.

She didn’t even bother to fire her next shot. She knew that they had already lost. They couldn’t see what she could. Jonathan, the fool that had brought him here, was out chuckling, mocking the being that would be their demise. The man himself didn’t even seem to care, his body remaining deathly still. Despite that, Fon could see the way his tightly bound muscles twitched, eager to spring into rapid motion the second something threatened to wound him.

Beside her, her childhood friends sneered with sauchenfraude at the meagre power the man appeared to possess. They hardly noticed the boy standing behind him, someone sitting at the height of level 40, as he back away, his features scrunched in a mix of confusion and amusement.

The imbeciles she called her ‘friends’ could only bring themselves to notice the weakness of the level 24 loitering before them. Even worse was the fact that his aura was severely depleted.

Each and every one of the group’s members were already in the mid-thirties and Fon despised the method they took to reach their power. Perhaps that was why she was the weakest of them all.

They had all changed in these troublesome times, warped into people they’d no longer recognise. Even Fon. To combat the dwindling supplies of the town - and quite frankly the entire surrounding area - they had taken to thievery, utilising Jonathan’s powerful ability to teleport to places he’s been prior to lure in unsuspecting victims from the better-off parts of the world.

Australia was doing great apparently. Fon was at least grateful the man had enough decency that he didn’t just ditch them and stay there. Anyhow, the problem truly started when they no longer just looted the people he brought and sent them on their way. It was when they began to kill them. Kill them for power.

Her friends noticed the ease of which levels were gained at the price of human life, and they were all too happy to strengthen themselves. They tried to rationalise it to her, saying it was ‘them or us’, or telling her that ‘the world’s changed’. Even then, she didn’t care. What they were doing was wrong. No mixing of words would change that.

She didn’t even know the people around her anymore, and she was too afraid to just up and leave. Putting aside the situation of food and water, she was merely level 21, a far cry from that of her companions. The only pride she felt in all of this was that she had never fallen to the point of partaking in the killing, only getting by through powering up on the ‘participation bonus’.

On the same side of that coin, however, she had never tried to defend those they killed. Only protest against their own actions afterwards.

She had been ridiculed for it, threatened with mention of the horrors of the new world, yet her mind refused to bend to their idea of survival. Even if she died, Fon Tanya would die a human being, not some monster that killed others for her own gain. That rule was final, and in the end, her friends respected it, although she knew they taunted her behind her back. No longer was she truly welcome among them.

Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, the reason her team members – not friends, she finally decided – kept her around was simply due to the usefulness of the Ascendancy she had received. Around the town, where monsters were overly abundant, Shards of blues, and purples, and even golds were rather common, she was lucky enough to have gotten a hold of an Epic Shard of Awakening.

Sight of the Moirai, her Ascendancy, granted her the unique ability to see and perceive the true nature of the various energies around her, greatly assisting her team in gauging the true strength of their foes when ambushing. It focused deeply on foresight and foreseeing the future along with energy perception, courtesy of the strange violet fluid within her Shard.

As one would expect, her team’s utilisation of it dwindled as their arrogance grew, however. No one ever really ever exceeded the power of what their aura displayed, and no longer did they feel themselves as mortal as they were. Now, she felt that they needed her powers more than ever.

Before her, the man was a beacon of power, wearing a simple brown leather jacket, one of the sleeves hanging loose from the obvious lack of an arm. His brown hair was matted and beastly, hanging down near his eyes, and his face was covered with thin but jagged scars. His appearance spoke of combat, and in this day and age, combat spoke of power.

He was unlike any person she had ever seen before. While his aura seemed feeble compared to those around him, it possessed a horrific depth that even her abilities struggled to parse apart. Over time, she had come to learn of the various energies at play on their newly transformed planet, and while aura was one of them, she knew of three more.

Well, four, now that she had met the monster standing before them.

The physical energy of the man was boundless, far exceeding anything her teammates possessed, even sitting ten levels above him. She had eventually come to learn that it was the energy personification of Stats. A veritable maelstrom of power surrounded him, lashing out at the landscape and leaving traces of his energy behind, wisping away to nothingness.

Streaks of savage fire and furious gusts suffused the air around him, something she recognised as Augments, although they were far more powerful than those of her comrades. Scarily so. Those beside her took no notice of it - their senses mundane compared to hers – but the raw power they contained left her knees shaking.

A boundless vitality of blue and green lightning flickered off the frame of his body, speaking of infinite radiance and change. She had seen similar things happen to everyone she’d met, although never at a scale like this. She would have been mesmerised by their glow too, if not for the final energy she sensed prowling among the others.

It was the deepest of blues – navy, if not bordering black – a chilling, dreadful fog of miasma that was born to reject the very reality around it. The frosted fingers of the dark steadily rose off of him in wisps as his power began to mobilise, and she shuddered in primordial terror. It reeked of hunger and ancient fury. It was merely an energy, but she could feel the pure greed it contained within.

And quietly, it whispered to her, craving for her death and screaming for its freedom. She didn’t know nor have the meams to what it wanted, yet she knew it cared not. It was hungry, and it needed to feast. It had desires, and it needed to fulfill them.

Fon’s back was reduced to a swamp of sweat as the raging tornado of energies around the man churned and twisted. Panicked, she turned to her companions, desperately attempting to warn them. But it was too late. Gael, their vanguard, had already readied his greatsword and used his first Technique to flash forward.

She spared one more glance for the man as her bow tumbled from her hands. The storm had appeared to have reached its full power and was twisting furiously. Then, suddenly, the maelstrom dispersed. Her eyes widened.

Fon didn’t even have time to perceive the flow of energies as Gael swung his blade down clumsily and the monster’s singular hand blurred upward and grasped the dulled edge without so much as a sign of effort. The ground shuddered beneath them, and his attackers’ eyes bulged in shock.

Over to her side, Jonathan gulped and Fon saw the air shimmer with the use of his Ascendancy. His aura was already halved in strength from the act of teleporting all three of them, though he still shot bolts of warping space toward the man.

He clicked his tongue and stared daggers at the others, “The fuck are you waiting for?!”

A plume of crimson flame lit up the sky and Gael’s sword was instantly reduced to molten slag. Fon’s comrades faltered for only a second at the display of might before charging forward. A second passed by and Gael was struck hard in the stomach, bile spewing from his mouth from the raw force contained in the strike.

Two more combatants joined the fray as Gael stumbled backward. Maya cut in to the left and Xavier to the right, their respective daggers and axe keening the air with their passage. The man blocked both daggers with whatever armour was hidden under his sleeve, and his leg snaked out and smashed Xavier’s kneecap to splinters before his weapon could even get close.

His Augment fizzled from his axe as it scattered to the side, the man himself collapsing in agony.

Fon watched on listlessly while the other attackers hesitated once more at the easy display of violence. She knew they had never wondered what it would be like to be on the losing end of a fight. This lull in movement was all their monstrous opponent needed to land a foot at stunning speeds into Maya’s chest, making her ribcage crackle sickeningly as she was shot backward, skimming over the pavement like a stone across a pond.

Behind the seemingly unbeatable foe, Chris phased into existence, although his flesh was bulging and twisting in a way that made Fon’s stomach drop. A set of long talons grew from his fingers, and he swiped down toward the neck of their opponent.

We didn’t even know…

As his strike progressed, his body shifted more and more into the form of something else, and the archer spectating it all bore witness to the split-second confusion their ‘target’ adopted upon his face. The beast that was masquerading her comrade growled in victory, and the very next second a blade appeared out from the man’s sleeve and found itself stabbed through the creature’s eye socket.

No, not a creature. A Skin Walker.

Instantaneously, as its body was shed of the weapon that had slain it, it began to melt down to goo, splattering upon the cement beneath the battle.

Still hissing in pain on the ground, Xavier grabbed and threw his axe toward their opponent, managing to catch him in the back by surprise, although from his angle, it skittered off the jacket with nothing more than a small gash and torn fabric. His target spun around rapidly, a projectile weapon that Fon thought looked like a dagger flashing out and piercing the thrower through his shoulder.

Without fanfare, the man yanked on the wire and brought Xavier to the ground, smashing his head against the pavement and knocking him out cold, “Well. That was anti-climactic.”

The onlookers had long run and hid, hoping themselves to be safe from the brutality of combat. Fon supposed she should have long done the same by now, but she was frozen still by fear. Honestly, she was surprised those poor scavengers weren’t. They were always waiting, hoping their group would spare them something they stole. Often, they did.

Maya, with blood dribbling out from her lips, rushed back into the fray and sent two of her blades spinning toward the man beating them down effortlessly. He batted one aside with the blade of his own, although the other caught him in the stomach.

Promptly, it was ripped out and it found itself pierced straight through Maya’s foot, stopping her charge instantly. She squealed in agony and tumbled to the ground. An invisible force smashed down on her neck as she tried to get up, and she slowly choked herself unconscious as she gasped for air.

Now, only Fon and Jonathan were left. And she knew neither of them were willing to go through with the battle at this point. Instead, she fell to her knees, her weapon long kicked away from her. It didn’t look like the man was killing any of them, but hopefully, the act of surrender would let her get away unharmed.

Jonathan threw curses toward her at her ‘cowardice’. She paid his words no attention, only watched on morosely as his aura bottomed out and the asshole swayed where he stood. She felt him try to fire another ball of warping energy as he began to retreat, but he fell to the ground unconscious. This wasn’t the first time it had happened.

Jonathan commonly emptied his aura, and it always resulted the same way.

The man raised a brow in his direction and approached slowly. Fon’s eyes widened as Maya’s body began to shift and warp from within, and she heard her foe click his tongue. His arm reached out toward the Skin Walker as it transformed back into its original form, and an atmosphere of oppression settled over the area.

As the beast rose to its feet, its shadow bulged and warped to impossible proportions as spectral black chains shot out of the ground and wrapped themselves around its body. The user of the Technique had his hand trapped in a claw grip, and slowly, his fingers closed in toward his palm.

Fon had to restrain herself from gagging as the chains suddenly tore through the beast and disappeared back into the shadow they came from. Sloppy chunks of it smacked onto the pavement, and they sluggishly began to liquify. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately for her, the man’s remaining aura bottomed itself out, and after a brief expression of confusion crossed his face, he passed out just like the teleporter had.

It seemed like they’d both be out for quite a while.

The teenaged boy that had originally stood off to the side ran over to the man and called out to him. Fon couldn’t even begin to understand what he was saying, her ears occupied by the pounding beat of her heart as it raced.

She had just witnessed her entire team get taken down in mere minutes, let alone the fact that almost half of them were those accursed creatures. She had no idea how long they had been hiding among them, and the thought that her childhood friends were dead left her feeling sick to the stomach.

Quietly, Fon tried her hand at sneaking away, but another aura billowed out and encompassed her the next second, this one easily enough to turn her into a shuddering mess. It was over twice her own level, and clearly from that of the boy. He looked satisfied that the man seemed ok and was now walking over.

Fon sent a silent prayer to whatever god was willing to listen as his hand lightly touched her back. She felt his aura transform itself into something else and inject her with what she assumed to be a poison. An Augment invaded her body seconds afterwards and she felt the spread of the poison rapidly increase in speed.

In a matter of moments, she found herself paralysed. She let some of the tension fall from her shoulders, not that it actually did anything. She thought it was understandable she was being captured, as she had been a part of the group that attempted to ambush them. She just hoped they weren’t as cruel as how her comrades had been making out people to be as of recent.

She struggled weakly against her poisonous bindings, but her body refused to listen to her no matter how much effort she expended. The boy wore a kind, albeit rough expression on his face as he looked down at her. He gave an apologetic smile and moved to paralyse the other two people that had been rendered unconscious.

Gael was still conscious, albeit left retching from the blow he had received to his stomach. She even heard the boy wince and pat his back consolingly before she sensed the paralysis take over. It seemed they had all been taken captive.

Forcefully silent, she couldn’t help but look out over the gooey remains of the Skin Walkers. Perhaps it was a good thing that her friends had been killed and replaced for all the atrocities they committed. Maybe it wasn’t. She only knew one thing.

Now, she’d never have the chance to bring them back to themselves. They were gone. Forever.

A single tear dripped from her eye.