Legion was born in darkness and of darkness. It fought and struggled to survive in the dim corridors on the first floor of the Dungeon, absorbing meager amounts of Source. By mere chance a lowly Skeleton Soldier stepped on its dwindling flame. Legion’s fading spark found an echo of sorts inside the skeleton; an echo of darkness. The same kind of darkness that gave birth to it.

Legion fed the flame with the dark emotions that made up its being and the flame nourished it in return. Before long, the skeleton’s meager mind was consumed by dark emotions; consumed by Legion. Through Legion’s touch, the emotions spread, consuming all that stood before it.

With each new victim, Legion’s sentience grew a bit more. Every dark emotion has an individual depth, a twist that is unique to the specific cocktail of experiences that defines a person. With newfound understand, Legion came to understand its own pain and fears.

Abandonment. Betrayal. Loneliness.

Despite a hard-fought campaign to win Father’s acceptance, Legion knew it wasn’t truly welcome. Father merely tolerated it as a shameful part of himself, denying Legion its dream of trust and validation.

However, there was one, singular being that accepted Legion as more than a burden. A warrior that burst at the seams with pride, ambition, and most of all, loyalty. This being never hesitated to accept Legion as family; never doubted their bond, or future together.

In the moments following Wisp’s death, Legion discovered a new depth to its darkness, unfiltered by the perspective of others. It understood how it feels to lose a loved one.

***

I lower my body into a crouch, feeling the Source pulsing through my veins. With one hand on the ground I lift my heels off the ground, bringing my center of mass forward. Source pulses through my veins, ready to unleash violence. I allow a small amount to bleed into my muscles, augmenting them enough that I can level my spear toward Angosin with a single hand.

Legion’s screams rise to a fevered pitch, but he still hasn’t attacked.

I resist the urge to glance over at Kandra and Nevasca. If we’re going to survive this I need to focus. My girls can handle themselves. If anything, I’m the weak link here.

“Come, Snowflake,” Angosin says, gesturing my forward with a slow, unhurried motion. His aura of emotions is calm and steady, emanating confidence. “It is time for your first lesson.”

My coiled muscles release, every fiber of my being straining forward like an arrow released from a bow. Source travels from my core, through my veins, and down my legs as I push off. As I reach the final stage of my leap, my chest far too close to the ground, I force a blast of Source through my remaining contact with the ground. Through my toes I can feel the ground disintegrate at the point of explosion.

The technique is very similar to the one I’ve been using to enhance my hand to hand combat skills. To be honest, it is the same technique, just applied in a different way.

I cross half the distance between me and Angosin in the blink of an eye. In that split second, he settles into a stance, waiting to receive me. With a flash of inspiration and a monumental amount of effort, I force myself to take an additional step. Source flows through me once again, the explosion adding to my momentum and changing my trajectory. Instead of flying straight towards him, I launch into the air.

With both hands I grip the shaft of my spear, twisting in the air to bring as much forced to bear as I can. My body heaves as I swing my weapon through the air to use the heavy cutting edge to dissect the smiling bastard from shoulder to hip.

Hope flickers through my mind, tempting with the thought that maybe, just maybe, I can end this with a single blow.

With a mental twist, I rip at the fear in his aura. Even a fraction of a second hesitation here may be the difference between winning and losing.

“Lesson number one,” he catches the blade of my spear in a single ice-coated hand, sending a shockwave through my body that numbs my arms. His aura remains unchanged, his emotions under firm control. “Source can be considered potential energy waiting to be transformed. The better you understand what you are trying to do the easier it is to control the world around you. For example, equal forces nullify each other.”

He snaps his fingers and an unseen force sends me flying into a nearby boulder.

“Transforming Source from potential energy to kinetic energy is one of the most basic and useful skills that someone from our genre can have. The Techs, Cultivators, and Powered all have their specialties, but transforming Source is ours” with a gesture he raises a wall of stone behind him. The wall curves over, encasing him in elaborate stone armor from head to toe. The stone encasing his face morphs into a mask that portrays a demon wearing a serene, peaceful expression that shadows his eyes.

As much as I hate to admit it, his words ring true in my ears.

I pull myself to me feet and crunch down on another core, providing my blood with the energy to knit my broken bones back together.

My emotions surge against the bastion of willpower I erected in my mind, but I push them away and focus on the swell of determination in my chest. Other emotions won’t help me here. I have nowhere else to run. No respite from a man who claims his goal is to break me.

I’m broken enough, I don’t need someone else trying their hand at it.

Once again, I take an explosive step, launching myself at him.

I imagine Source transforming into kinetic energy beneath my feet to propel me forward. The action comes much easier this time, not draining as much of my Source reserve or requiring as much focus.

Going by his logic, concentrated Source should have more potential energy which should allow it to transform easier and with greater effect. My most concentrated fonts of Source are my core and my blood. Fortunately, one of those is a renewable resource.

Following that train of thought, I curl my fingers into the palm of my hand and use my claws to rip open a bloody gash. I focus on an image of my Source enriched blood turning into arrows shooting toward my foe, powered by transforming the Source in the blood into kinetic energy. Holding this image in my head, I whip my bloody palm at his eye level, imposing my image on reality. The blood arrows fly fast and true, crashing into the forearm Angosin raises in front of his eyes. Puffs of dust further block his vision- I hope- as my blood arrows drill into his armor.

Roughly six feet away from him, I slam the tip of my spear into the earth the long blade cutting into the ground with ease. The sudden drag doesn’t stop my flight, but it does allow me to change trajectories. I pull my knees to my chest and allow my lower body’s momentum to swing me in an arc around my spear’s haft.

Thank you, Unicorns, for sacrificing your lives to make me more comfortable using my body as a weapon. Your unwilling act of kindness will most likely be forgotten in the days to come.

Angosin’s mace-like stone fist swings past where I would’ve been if I had maintained my path, coming within inches of decimating my knee cap as I extend my legs to unleash a kick. Both my feet catch him in the torso, the force behind my acrobatics causing the stone to crack. With a thought I unleash another explosive step on his chest.

My fingers strain and my shoulders wrench in their sockets to keep my from flying back in the direction I came. In my head, I thought I would swing back around my spear and unleash another brutal, leg numbing kick. In reality, my spear rips out of the ground and sends me tumbling into the debris.

I ignore the pain and scramble to my feet, desperate to reorient myself to keep an eye on my foe. My heart swells pride as I watch the stone armor crumble to dust. The dust clears to reveal… nothing.

A few feet adjacent to the armor, a shimmering curtain of light fades away to reveal Angosin. He starts clapping again, his eyes twinkling with laughter as he looks down his nose at me.

“Well done!” The clapping multiplies as half a dozen more shimmering curtains drop, revealing 6 more Angosins moving and speaking in sync. “You have earned another lesson from me! Just a note, these lessons are in order of current relevance, not overall importance.”

“Shut up,” I snarl, spitting blood. I wince with regret as soon as the blood exits my mouth. I can’t really afford to waste any of that.

“I do not dislike you, Snowflake,” All seven versions of him ignore my outburst, continuing to walk forward in measured steps. “Despite what you may think, this is not anything personal. In fact, if it was up to me none of this would have ever happened.”

The sky seems to darken, Legion’s keening growing louder.

I say nothing as he approaches. Instead I fish out another core, munching on it and considering my options.

“It bothers me some that you slept with my wife, even after knowing she was married. However, I understand that people have needs and our relationship is not yours to uphold. To be honest, breaking you does nothing for me personally, even though I’m sure you will be a useful tool once re-forged.” His condescending smile fades into a frown.

A sense of impending dread fills my heart. Something about what he is saying rings true, but it is tinged with a sense of wrong.

“No, this is because my lovely wife decided to try and use to ‘escape’ me,” he says, using air quotes around the word escape. “She still blames me for her fall, you see, but that is a story for another time.”

“What are you talking about?” I demand, my mind awhirl.

“Normally at this stage of the game I would kill the fool she tricked into trying to take her away,” he talks without cease, his words as sharp as daggers and poisoned with implication. “But each time she twists her guilt into somehow being my fault, as if I was the one using people and discarding them when they did not suit my purposes. I need to force her to break through her self-denial and delusions and face her sins, which is where you come in.”

Somewhere someone is whispering the word ‘no’ in an endless mantra, a rhythm to counterpoint Legion’s despair-filled cries.

“This time, I will make her plaything mine, a constant reminder of her failures and betrayals,” he says, his frown twisting into a grin that would look playful in any other context. “Lesson number two, my dear Snowflake, is that things are often not as they seem.”

His words thunder in my ears. It makes sense, far too much sense. Such a reasonable line of logic, presented as unadulterated fact…

But at the same time, I can’t bring myself to believe that Quinn would betray me. I mean, why go through all this trouble? The training? The Unmoving Mountain? It just doesn’t make sense.

Besides. She loves me. She wouldn’t do me wrong.

Right?

My internal struggle of truth and fiction is brought to an abrupt halt as my immediate surroundings is bathed in black flame. The fire doesn’t burn hot to the touch. It merely burns, sticking to every available surface. I catch glimpses of figures moving in the flame, clashing against Angosin and his 6 duplicates.

Legion’s cries of despair and rage, seemingly echoed by hundreds of voices, have risen to unbearable levels.

The fire rises and crashes down against Angosin, like a tidal wave with pinpoint accuracy. The movement catches my eye and I follow the fire’s crest, only to find something more incredible. A fortress of clouds wreathed in black flame. The fortress grows larger by the second, allowing me to make out archways and battlements practically overflowing with strange, wispy humanoids and winged beasts of all varieties.

“Very clever Snowflake!” Angosin’s voice pierces through the din, the bass in his voice vibrating my chest. “But now it is time for your third lesson!”

I tear my eyes from the fortress and turn toward his voice just in time to see a small hurricane whip into existence. The strong winds clear a space around a singular, yet still immaculate, Angosin. His white teeth shine bright through is dark beard. When his eyes catch mine, he winks.

With a flourish his fingers begin to burn with incandescent light. Betraying practiced ease, he traces runes in the air in a complex pattern. I can only recognize a few from my brief studies. The largest runes I recognize dominates the center of the pattern; [Void] and [Emotion].

“Runes and spells help focus your will and make it easier to transform Source in complex ways,” he roars, pushing energy into the pattern. “But that isn’t the lesson here.”

Thousands of creatures bathed in black flame fall from the sky, their voices screaming a single battle cry.

All I can do is watch as Angosin places the palm of his hand on the center of his glowing construct and yells something I can’t make out. The lights flare brighter, forcing me to look away. When the light dies down I turn back to find the black flames flickering and dying out.

The struggle only last for the briefest of moments before the flames die out completely.

Chains of lightning wreath Angosin for an instant, but then he points and the lightning branches out and connects to hundreds of what I now recognize as Cloud-People. The Cloud-People scream in agony, their forms becoming even more translucent. When the first one explodes into a ball of flame is sets off a chain reaction, bathing the sky in an entirely different world of fire.

Pebbles and burnt bodies rain from the sky, a grotesque display of destruction.

“The lesson is that you are not unique or special. You are just another pawn in this world, despite your special ability. Your education is sorely lacking if no one took the time to tell you that any Awakened can condense Source in their bodies to form a Core.”