Heretical Fishing-Chapter 61Book 4: : Full Caveman

Within the confines of a chi-laced building, a brilliant light flashed into being, drowning out the kaleidoscopic rays of only moments ago. Maria barely noticed. “Sit,” she said. “We’re short on time.”

“What—”

“Sit down, cousin!” Keith urged. “They need your help!”

Trent’s eyes darted around, scanning until they landed on his mother and sister. He didn’t need to sense their cores to know that something had gone terribly, terribly wrong. White-hot rage flared in his core, coalescing as flames that sputtered from his palms.

“Down!” Maria felt her command hit Trent’s awareness like a meteor. His internal state quaked with aftershocks as he dropped to the ground in a cross-legged position. “We can make use of your fury,” she continued, voice soft, filled with all the compassion it had lacked only seconds earlier. “Don’t waste any emotion on me.”

Shaking, he closed his eyes. Maria became intangible once more. When she rejoined Slimes’s awareness in the cloud of pink chi surrounding the two corrupted cultivators, he welcomed her with a happy burble. It was a small gesture. His way of cheering her up. And though it didn’t work, she thanked him all the same.

You rest for now, she urged. While you still can.

He burbled again, readily obliging—his strength would be needed later.

Reaching out a hand, Maria attempted to pull a part of Trent out into the swirling chi. It should be possible because of his breakthrough, but that didn’t mean it would be easy. His concept of himself—the ideal that shaped who he was and what he’d become—immediately complained. His core seemed to deny her efforts, telling her it was wrong despite how much he wanted to help.

But then she gave it a nudge. A push, really. Okay, fine, maybe it was actually a full-bodied tackle, in which she drove one of her knees into his metaphorical spleen. A girl had to do what a girl had to do. With all the will not currently suppressing the corruption’s growth, Maria slammed into Trent’s core again, reminding him of past events he’d prefer to forget.

His deformity, both physical and mental, by an alchemical concoction. His family’s arrival in Tropica. The battle. His father’s madness—the foolish monarch’s eager embrace of corruption at the expense of all else.

His mother and sister. The former, beset with relief and guilt at seeing her son alive. The latter, similarly moved, able and willing to let go of the foul essence that had been infecting—

Flames consumed the mental image she was projecting, the thoughts burning away as Trent was drawn into the cloud of healing chi. Lines of orange streaked through the pink haze.

You know nothing! his disembodied voice screamed, a wild blaze fueled by howling winds.

Flashes of his own memories appeared in a rapidfire procession that were incinerated just as fast as they arrived. His mother, her willing participation in poisoning her own son. His sister, the scorn with which she treated him, the many times she abused his affliction to her own benefit. Each instance threw a tree’s worth of logs onto the burn pile, and though they didn’t burst into flame, the heat slowly increased as their moisture evaporated, edges catching fire.

Maria controlled the flow of air, her soothing chi ensuring his fury didn’t devour them all. She nudged him back toward the positive—a mistake. He railed against her denial. She tried again, easing him toward pragmatism instead. This time, her touch was subtle, make sure he knew she wasn’t trying to snuff out his flames.

It was not hard; she didn’t want to extinguish his anger; she wanted to harness it. Maria replayed some memories she’d just witnessed, her memory able to recall them despite the former prince showing her dozens per second.

He and his sister, peeking overtop a parapet as a bucket of stolen milk tumbled down toward the guard whose eyes always lingered too long. Tryphena again, this time a woman, laughing and joking with Trent about a royal that had fallen down a single step, twisted his ankle, and tried to blame one of the palace guards—only for the accusation to be denounced by the siblings in a public and embarrassing manner.

The memories of the queen were much easier to curate; they were many. Tens, hundreds, then thousands of them flashed by, all depicting the same look: an expression of a mother’s pure love. Even with the unpleasant looks and mental impairment afflicting him, she had never once treated him as anything but her only son.

And, Maria reminded, loathe as the concoction was, Penelope—your mother—believed it was the only way to save you.

As she gave him that final push, she knew it would work. His fire and fury sputtered, having consumed enough to be dismissed. But Maria couldn’t allow that. Using all of her spare attention, she opened up vents and let air in, the oxygen of multiple bellows flowing directly into the pile of logs and smoldering coals that Trent’s core had become.

Wha—What are you doing? His formless voice was confused. Demanding. When Maria didn’t immediately respond, a spike of paranoid terror tore from him, wedging itself between them.

***

All too late, Trent realized the truth. Maria must have been infected by the corruption, and she was trying to burn them all down—he could think of no other explanation. She’d successfully goaded him to join her, fanning his flames in all the right ways.

Yet part of him remained in his body. He sought to escape, hammered all of his will in that direction. He had to get Fischer—the traveler was the only one who could stop Maria and save his family. But a pulse of chi from his captor knocked him on his ass. Before he could stand, it smothered him, pinning his limbs to the ground with immovable weight.

From there, the burden moved to his chest, revealing an emotion Trent had never expected to receive from Maria. It… it was love. Not the romantic kind, but that of a younger sister. The love of a daughter, a mother, a community. The kind of adoration that let a parent lift a horsecart off their child. The kind of devotion that moved someone to run back into a burning stable, risking themselves for the chance to save a lame mule.

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He’d been wrong. Maria hadn’t been infected.

Why…? was all he could wonder, her actions antithetical to her message.

She didn’t answer, instead lifting the chi that had held him down. It poured into his bonfire, joining the jets of air that turned the edges of wet logs into red-hot coals. When the two forces of nature met, everything changed.

The lines of fire in her pink haze spread out, the entire cloud taking on an orange hue. Similarly, his flames grew red with healing essence, each of their aspects feeding the other. It was deliberate at first, meticulously shaped by Maria’s will, but then they harmonized. Rather than two separate forces, their power became one, his flame exuding her compassion, her mist radiating his heat.

With Maria’s awareness freed, she let out a ragged yet content sigh through their newly forged connection.

Your family doesn’t need Fischer, Trent. I called his name, but that was only so he’d bring you back.

The words stoked something deep within him, jostling still-green logs toward the blazing heart of his core.

They don’t need more cleansing, she continued, her voice speaking directly to his soul. We already tried that, and it left an empty void in its place—a patch of nothing in which the corruption took hold once more.

The slogs were thrust straight into the center of the inferno. Even in that white-hot nexus, however, they resisted, their fibers too wet.

What your family needs, Trent, is a reason to persist.

The logs creaked as if squeezed by a vise.

Something to live for.

The wood cracked, threatened to burst apart.

What your family needs… Maria’s voice was calm and strong and sure. Is you.

Every single piece of timber within his burning soul split into countless pieces. Each drop of liquid evaporated, the flames took hold, and the bonfire became a conflagration.

The world roared with their power.

*** ƒreewebɳovel.com

“Holy shit,” I said, the words speaking themselves as my head darted toward the west. An amalgamation of Maria and Trent was pouring from my not-a-prison, the two wasting no time in healing the captives.

It was remarkable on a whole bunch of levels. First, I’d never sensed such a pairing between anyone but Maria and myself. A lesser fella might have experienced some jealousy… Okay, fine, I was a little jealous—but a healthy amount, I reckon. Second, their wills had taken on aspects of each other, only adopting the pieces that amplified their own powers. No, Maria and I had never done something like that, and no, I still didn’t have an unhealthy amount of jealousy over it, thank you very much.

I considered reaching out through our connection and giving my fiancée the mental equivalent of a yo, what’s up? But knowing it might hurt their plans—and also that the impulse was just the primitive part of my brain wanting to go full cavemanover my darling Maria helping another bloke heal his family—I instead focused on the third and final reason it was remarkable.

I shouldn’t have been able to feel their chi at all; there was a season-finale anime battle occurring before my very eyes.

Claws’s unnamed raccoon zipped around the inside of the earth elemental’s dome of rock and sediment like a cracked out Sonic the Hedgehog, releasing bolts of lightning every meter or so. A high-pitched sound came from him, and I wasn’t entirely sure if it was his voice or his speed doing it. Regardless, the eeeeeEEEEeeeeeEEEEeeeeeEEEE of his looping passage was both enjoyable and humorous.

“Do you want me to teleport you now?” I asked Bonnie. “I needed you here as an anchor for Claws.”

“What? Just when it’s getting good?”

I snorted. She’d sure changed her tune, but I couldn’t exactly blame her. “Why can’t I look away?”

Bruff, Borks agreed, both he and the bunny astride him tracking the raccoon’s relentless gyration.

Said mammal’s master, Claws, hadn’t really been doing all that much. She’d unleashed an absolute storm of electrical essence after shooting from Bonnie’s arm, but since then, had just been standing on the deck with her forelimbs raised high, looking like she was gathering the energy for a Spirit Bomb.

Nothing was forming, however. It wouldn’t put it past her to mess with me, and I started wondering if that was the case, but then the hair on my arms stood on end. I gazed up through the chimney, and rather than the expected predawn light, I found churning storm clouds.

Well shit, I thought. Looks like she developed a new—

Boooom!

I both saw the strike with my eyes and felt it in my chest. It was natural lightning, but that’s where normalcy ended; the sky webbed with so many blue-white forks that the nearby villages might think Zeus had returned. I wouldn’t be surprised if it spawned a religion or two.

The effect it had on the earth elemental was similarly impressive. Claws had been the intended target of each strike, and they’d exploded through the surrounding walls to get to her, leaving dozens of Rocky-sized holes through which I could now see the outside world.

The black atmosphere above had almost immediately vanished. From west to east, the purple sky became an orangey yellow, foretelling the sun’s arrival. This light, cast over Bob’s deck, revealed smatterings of rock, soggy silt, and other debris separated from the ancient being’s body by myriad thunderbolts.

I knelt to inspect one, making sure this wasn’t part of some trap… but no. Not a drop of chi remained within—the damage was permanent.

Psssst, came a stray thought, communicated to me in a very ottery whisper. Watch this. A chirping noise accompanied the invitation, sounding like the call of a thousand birds.

I couldn’t resist looking. A ball of electrical energy surrounded one of Claws’s forepaws. It wasn’t her chi—it was condensed, naturally occurring lightning. Her head bent over backwards to look my way, and when her gaze locked with mine, she waggled her eyebrows.

“By the gods…” I whispered, catching myself just before I fell to my knees.

“What is it?” Bonnie asked.

I ignored her, instead narrowing my eyes at Claws. “How do you know what a Chidori is? Have you been rummaging around in my head?”

Claws’s lips parted to reveal dagger-like teeth. Blue jolts danced across them. Not bothering to straighten, she launched herself upward on streams of lightning, doing ten backflips—or was that eleven?—before twisting and preparing to unleash Kakashi’s signature move.

Eleven! she trilled as her paw lashed out. And a half!

“Huh…” I said, watching her electricity-covered limb blow a hole the size of a car into the earthen elemental. “There was a half rotation, wasn’t there?”

Yuuuup! she agreed, her brilliant grin mirroring my own.