Born of Fire: The Dawn of Legend (28 page)

EeNox chuckled. “Wish I could have seen that.”

“Fuck you,” he growled.

“In all seriousness, though, think about that day, or better yet, the one where you fought him the second time.”

“What about it?”

“You clearly weren’t in any danger then. If he really had gotten the upper hand and tried to kill you, enough people more than capable of protecting you from him were there to intervene. His brother alone could have ended another potential skirmish before TyRoas even managed to bound at you.”

“You think so? As I recall, he just stood back and watched us go at it.”

“Yeah, well…you’re right in that case. Still, character flaws aside, had you been in any real danger, he would have stepped in and ended the fight. That’s not the issue, though.”

“Oh,” Rex said, raising an eyebrow. “And just what is exactly?”

“The fact that it was you that time who instigated the fight, not TyRoas.”

Rex went to retort but stopped when he realized that as much as it upset him to admit it, EeNox was right. TyRoas had made no attempt to strike first, rather, he had been dragged by NyRo to apologize, which he did in fact do, albeit half-heartedly.

“I remember seeing the look in your eyes, Rex,” EeNox said seriously, lowering his voice. “The mere sight of TyRoas made you angry, very angry. So much so that you couldn’t hold it back, could you?”

Rex could remember how he had felt in that moment. The way his skin flushed and his blood boiled just at the mere sight of TyRoas’s face, the face of his enemy.
But why was he my enemy,
he wondered
, because he attacked me? Given
what he had already learned about why he did what he did by that point, he really could not blame him for his response to finding him in the forest, especially under such peculiar circumstances. Still, all rationale had been immediately thrown aside when he saw him and been replaced by a seething rage and desire to strike back. Not in defense, but like EeNox had said, vengeance.

“Scared as you may have been the first time,” EeNox continued, “you didn’t even think twice about lunging for him the second time you met.”

“It wasn’t like that,” Rex said through gritted teeth as he clenched his fists on the table and leaned forward.

“How do you mean?”

“You make it sound like I was being crazy; like I was the one with the problem.”

“Weren’t you though?” he asked innocently.

“No!” Rex shouted angrily as he raised his fists and slammed them back down on the table, completely destroying that entire section of it. EeNox jumped back, startled by the sudden outburst. “I wasn’t looking for trouble, but he, on the other hand, wasted no time in playing the role of judge, jury, and executioner on the spot. He came looking for, and found, more than he could handle. Then all of you expected me to what—simply say ‘apology accepted’? Fucking insulting.”

“Rex, it’s okay,” EeNox said, raising his hands up in front of him in an effort to try to calm him. “Just relax, all right?”

“I don’t take requests,” Rex replied, bearing his teeth and rising to his feet. “I was scared…I didn’t know what had happened to me. I still don’t know what happened to me.” His voice grew lower, more distant, as if he was somewhere else. “My head…so full of things that I don’t understand.” Rex could feel the back of his skull screaming with searing pain, like it was slowly splitting open. EeNox could now see the telltale signs of red fire igniting around him as Rex seemed to slowly come undone right before his eyes. “I wasn’t bothering anyone, wasn’t trying to hurt anyone. I just wanted to stop feeling so scared…lost and confused. Then he came. Tried to kill me! I was so afraid that I didn’t even realize what was happening. I just remembered feeling something breaking out and then it was…over.”

Rex looked up and saw EeNox had backed against the far side of the kitchen with his back pressed firmly against the wall. It was then that he noticed the destruction at his feet, where he had reduced yet another section of the large stone table to crumbled rock.
His feet
, he suddenly realized in wide-eyed horror. The stone floor beneath them had been burnt to the point of melting almost a half a meter into the ground. Rex stepped out of the hole and regarded it inquisitively for a moment before looking back up to EeNox, now with a look of uncertainty: the kind born of latent fear.

Seeing this, EeNox felt something surge up inside of him that took him by surprise. Gone in that moment was the image of the sinister and dangerous enigma, replaced by one of a boy no older or even different than him, except that unlike him, he had not been fortunate enough to have had guiding hands to explain everything he was going through. Now he began to understand that while possessing a power that could be deemed monstrous if left unchecked, Rex himself was no monster, just a scared and confused boy. Had he been in his position, could he say for certain that he would behave so different? “Come on,” he said, regaining his composure and stepping forward.

“What?” Rex replied distrustfully.

“I have an idea.”

EeNox led him out through the fields to an area that wasn’t being used for farming. The plants here were lower, coming only to their knees, allowing for greater ease of movement. Scattered around them were several large rock outcroppings, where to their surprise they found LyCora laid out, napping in the warm mid-day sun.

“Fancy meeting you here,” EeNox said, stopping just short of where she rested.

LyCora lifted up her hood and glanced over to the two of them before scowling. “Wish I could say the same,” she replied, lowering her hood back down in front of her eyes.

“What brings you way out here?”

“Rest and relaxation, which I’d like to get back to, so feel free to keep going on your way.”

“Actually,” he replied with a grin, knowing full well his answer would sit less than well with her. “We were coming here.”

“Seriously?” she replied in a sardonic tone.

“Yup. It just occurred to me this morning that Rex here could do with some lessons on how to control his flame.”

LyCora suddenly shot up and peeled off her hood. “You mean you’re going to encourage him to use it?”

“Well, sure, why not? How else is he going to adjust to life in EeNara?”

LyCora seized him with an unwavering gaze, like a predator fixated on its prey.

“Why would it matter that he knows how to control his flame more here than anywhere else?” she asked suspiciously. “And why doesn’t he know how to, anyway? How old are you?”

Rex stared blankly for a moment before pointing to himself and replying, “Who, me?”

LyCora sighed. “Who else?”

“Fifteen.”

“That’s what I figured, same age as us, which means you were born during the same breeding cycle. So why can’t you do something as basic as control your own flame?”

“Never got enough practice, I guess.”

“Not enough practice?” she replied in disbelief. “You can’t be serious. Not much use for it where you’re from?”

“Well, no, actually; I would have thought of a great many good uses for it back home,” he replied thoughtfully as he thought of all the heinous acts he could have committed on those who were foolish enough to cross him, which seemed to be everyone towards the end. “It’s just that…well, I never knew it was there.”

“So you were like my sister?” EeNox asked.

Rex nodded. “That’s right. Her eyes look just like the way mine used to.”

“That’s hard to picture given how bright they burn now. I’ve never seen a flame burn so bright in any living thing.”

“That’s because no flame does,” LyCora explained. “Or at least is supposed to. In any case, I still can’t believe you grew up without its use.”

“You can’t miss what you never had.”

“So what changed, I wonder? When exactly was it that you started being able to use it? When did it first ignite?”

Rex pondered the question, mulling it over in his head. Try as he might, he could not recall the memory of when he was first able to ignite his flame.
Strange
, he thought.
Why isn’t it there?

“Well?” LyCora pressed.

“I don’t know. I have no memory of when it happened. Come to think of it…I can’t even remember anything that happened to me leading up to my awaking here in KaNar.”

“Hmm, how odd,” LyCora said while twisting one of her long braids. “Still, something must have triggered it. Your flame lay dormant for years. Without proper treatment, the only way to reawaken it would be to suffer a traumatic shock.”

“Traumatic shock? Like what?”

“You tell me, Rex. Can you think of nothing? Nothing at all?”

“I…don’t know…” Rex could feel his mind reaching for something, but what it was he could not see. Still, to feel it so close was maddening. The harder he pushed the further it seemed to get, until all that was left was the sound of someone calling his name. He opened his eyes and saw that this time it was not coming from anyone he could see. Both LyCora and EeNox were standing in silence, staring at him with looks of worry and even fear.
Why are they looking at me like that?
The voice was now accompanied by another sound, this one evoking a sense of malice. So powerful was it that he felt himself being overtaken, consumed by a feeling so black that he could no longer see anything else—except two glowing lavender eyes that spoke to him.
Doom Bringer
.

EeNox suddenly looked nervous at the sight of Rex, who began to emit a steady red glow. “Uhh…Rex? Are you all right?” Rex did not answer, his gaze fixed forward with eyes set ablaze. “What’s wrong with him?”

“This feeling,” LyCora said. “I’ve felt it before. Wait…no…”

“What?” EeNox asked. “What is it?”

They both felt an eerie chill that expanded outward from the pit of their stomachs. Then a sound unlike anything that walked, swam, or flew in EeNara echoed through the air, a low, guttural sound that made them both look up. It was coming from Rex, but not as he was, instead like a feral beast, driven mad with rage as he stood before them seething with savage-looking teeth and thick, pulsating veins in his neck and arms.

“What’s wrong with him?” EeNox shouted.

“No,” LyCora whimpered. “Not again…”

Without warning, Rex cleared the distance between himself and the two of them, burning a trench in the ground beneath him. EeNox scarcely had time to react before he was sent flying through the air, backhanded by Rex, skidding to a painful halt some ten meters away. Looking back, he was surprised to see Rex relentlessly chasing LyCora, who was doing her best to stay out of his reach. “Rex, what’s gotten into you?”

Rex did not respond or even look back. He just continued to charge after LyCora, whose blue flame danced wildly around her. Igniting in crimson fury, Rex roared angrily and reached out to grab her, but he missed as she leapt out of the way in time to spin around and see a blast of red fire shoot out of his outstretched hand and blow the rocks she had been laid out on to pieces.

With a look of terror, she fired a blast off blue flame at Rex, scoring a direct hit to his chest and knocking him on his back. She breathed a heavy sigh of relief before gasping in horror as he rose back to his feet, seemingly unfazed.

Igniting once again, Rex charged forward, forcing LyCora to leap over his head and land behind him, where she unleashed a torrent of fire into him.

Rex was pushed down into the ground where he skidded for several meters. Not giving him a chance to bounce back as quickly as he did before, she fired blasts of flame in rapid succession before moving her hands in a series of complex gestures.

Rex felt something grab hold of his wrists and ankles, binding him to the ground. He looked to either side of him and saw that the knee-high plants that covered the entire area were tightly woven around his limbs, acting as restraints.

EeNox stepped up next to LyCora and watched as her flame surged through the soil in the surrounding plants that were now being used to hold Rex down. “That was some quick thinking,” he said. “I see you’ve learned a few new tricks since you were last here.”

“Call the power of my flame a trick again and I’ll line you up right next to him!”

“Whoa, easy! I just meant your abilities are starting to mirror that of your mother’s more and more.”

LyCora gave a sarcastic laugh. “That’s the first nice thing you’ve said to me since I arrived.”

“Stop hiding yourself away every time you come through and I might have the opportunity to do it more often.”

Rex was now fully immersed in his instinct to fight, driven by the abstract fragment of a memory, one that brought with it a sense of anger that called him to battle. No longer was he standing in the field amongst those he had come to know, but rather in the ruins of his damaged mind, fighting an opponent shrouded in ambiguity. He began struggling harder against his restraints. Despite being just plants, the flame that was now coursing through them made it feel like he was being shackled to the ground by heavy chains. Still, he could sense the amount of power that was pumping into the long leafy stems, felt the limits of its strength. Albeit impressive, he had felt his own flame surpass it in power. For the first time since the day in the forest, he tried to slow the fury raging inside him and concentrate on controlling his flame. It was like taming a wild fire burning out of control that consumed all it touched. It was, however, his—meaning if anyone could master it, it was he.

Slowly he pulled it back from all sides as he focused it within himself. He could feel it wanting to burst forth in all directions, but he managed to keep it restricted to just him. He then concentrated on matching it with the flame that was currently ensnaring him. Once he sensed the limits of its strength, he slowly turned up the heat on his own, increasing the output of pressure.

LyCora had been monitoring his flame and immediately sensed what he was up to. Not willing to be outmatched, she clenched her fists and drove another surge of flame into her makeshift restraints. “Bastard. Try getting out of those now.”

“LyCora, I really don’t think this is a good idea,” EeNox said.

“And what would you have had me do exactly?” she replied, motioning to the scattered rocks that had once been the stone outcropping. “Allow myself to be scattered all over this field?”