The Forgotten Legacy

Shaun knew what he was planning to do was stupid, reckless even, but he just didn’t care at that moment. What had occurred with Viv had pissed him off, more than he had let on, the things she had said had been ridiculous. Even after only knowing her for a few days he thought that she had understood him enough to know that he would put the people he cared about first, but apparently her opinion of him was lower than he even realised. It annoyed him and he had to do something productive to clear his mind.

He needed time away from everybody, to process his emotions and also to let out some of his anger, the first thing that came to mind was raging through a dungeon, going on a killing spree that would reduce the pain he felt, but he knew, in his current state he wouldn’t be able to get much further through the dungeon than he had previously, which would just annoy him further. What he needed was something more, something to make him stronger, that’s why he had decided to take the next step in his heritage and bond another advanced element.

This wasn’t exactly a spur of the moment thing, he had been thinking about it for a while, around if he should do it and also what advanced element he would aim for. He had been putting it off though, not wanting to draw more attention to himself than he already had, but it was way to late for that, everyone, from those from Earth to the reps from the major factions knew who he was, and all had an opinion of what he would become.

Shaun quickly dispatched the ants, leaving one of them alive but unable to truly attack or move, before settling down on the ground and working on calming his mind. He knew the process this time around, not that it would make it less painful, just slightly quicker. He would still be in here for a good few weeks, if not months, surviving off of the meat he had left in his inventory, which was a huge step down from what he had been eating in the restaurant, and the water he had gathered and kept for emergencies.

It took him a long time to enter a stable mind set, but it was something he needed to do, he couldn’t start the process of creating his next element until he had managed to take all of the pain and anger and put it in a box in his mind, sealing it shut to deal with later. Not exactly healthy, but it was needed.

His next element was already decided, he was going to form together water and air to make ice. An element that would have a huge effect on his ability to fight, one that was considered both powerful when it came to fighters but also useful for dealing with larger enemies and crowd control situations. It was exactly what he needed in the dungeon to accelerate his process given the rising number of monsters he was needing to fight.

The process was going to be simple, grab an unattuned mana mote, combine air and water into it, using earth again as the stabilising factor to keep it contained and condensed. Before staring he inspected his mana channels again, his lightning affinity still shining the brightest, releasing an overwhelming power compared to the others, but that wasn’t what he needed to focus on. He looked closer at the bonds between air and water, seeing something that was very similar to what had been between air and fire before his last bonding experience.

Not bothering to delay and further he reached out of his body with the three elements he needed, grabbing hold of a mote with a tendril of water, quickly adding air and then encasing it in earth. He needed to play around with the amount of water to air ratio, and decided he would start it with a majority of water, then adding air into it until the balance was formed, then continue adding until it was completed. The process this time around was much easier, when he started adding air to the water inside of the mote of mana he found that he only needed a small amount of air compared to water, enough that the water would freeze over, the combination of the two elements felt a lot less volatile than lightning, but equally as powerful. As soon as the mote started glowing an off white colour, only having a tinge of blue to it he felt the change, like last time if he didn’t contain the mix of elements it would explode out into the dungeon, effectively freezing everything inside into cubes of ice, something that was not on his to do list for today. Instead, he compressed down with his earth element, needing to push more power into it as the glow increased, until what felt like hours later the ice element was formed and stabilised.

It felt like it took a lot longer for the ice element to complete the process than it had the lightning, he wasn’t sure if that was due to the different nature of the elements or just because he hadn’t put enough power into it quickly enough, regardless, it had worked. All that was left to do now was bring it inside of him, which he knew was going to hurt, but nowhere near as much as when he got to the final step of pushing the entire stream through his body at the end. Shaun pulled the ice mote closer to him, dragging it into his body. The result was as expected, the thigh he wad pulled the ice through had frozen solid, the pain this time was different to last, at first he felt pain, a throbbing that turned into a stinging until all feeling just stopped. He didn’t know whether to be thankful or scared of that, but he continued on placing the mote into a bond between his air and water streams, fixing it in place and ensuring that it wouldn’t go anywhere. When he was comfortable that there would be no adverse reactions within his mana channel, he moved his focus to his frozen leg. He knew he would need to defrost it before continuing and that the only way to do that would be slowly heating it with fire. He took his time doing it though, not wanting to cause any further adverse effects on his leg, which took a while, and when his leg did start to defrost the pain returned 10 fold to what he had experienced when he brought the mote through his leg, causing him to clamp down on a scream, while blasting a healing wave of nature at the deadened leg. It took a while, switching between fire and nature to completely heal the wound, but in the end it was back to new, if a little raw.

He couldn’t help the smile that spread across his face at the success of his first mote, having done it with a lot less trouble than the lightning, although it did take longer than he would have liked. One down, a few hundred more to go.

He didn’t stop working, he repeated the process over and over again, no matter what he did the ice element took longer to stabilise than the lightning, but that was fine, at least it was working. The only breaks he took were to eat and drink, get some naps in, regain his mana and move to the next wave of the dungeon to saturate the air with mana again. Time passed in the dungeon, how much he wasn’t sure, but when he was on his short breaks he would think over his interaction with Viv, pulling it apart and looking at it from every possible angle. By the time he had moved onto the 19th wave he was done with creating the ice motes, now fully saturated. Catching a worm and holding it captive had been beyond painful, taking him hours and lots of planning each time, but he couldn’t stop the process.

During this time he had also come to a few conclusions on the mess with Viv and the others. The first being that it wasn’t entirely Viv’s fault. She acted out of line and shouldn’t have said what she did, that he knew, but he also could have given them all a heads up before going into that store, he could have spent an extra few minutes explaining the arrows, hell he could have even given them theirs first, and the situation would never have occurred. If he reversed the situation, put himself in Viv’s shoes, he didn’t know if he would have reacted much better.

He had made promises to them, about making them equipment, helping them get stronger, and if he was looking at it from Viv’s perspective what Shaun did in that shop did look like he was throwing away all of those promises for money. Still it wasn’t her place to question him like that.

By the time he had come to this conclusion, he realised what he was doing, throwing away all caution and bonding another advanced affinity, with no real preparation, was dangerous and stupid. If he appeared back in the dungeon room, in a state similar to what he had been in when he bonded lightning, the reps would know in an instant what he had done, exposing that he had even more affinity than he let on, exposing his heritage, and really causing his own death sentence. That led him to his final conclusion, he couldn’t leave the dungeon until the process was done, finishing with either him living with a new affinity, or his death.

With nothing left to think about he started the last step on moving the ice motes through his mana channels, forming another stream. As soon as he started he knew that it was going to suck, when he did this with lightning a chain reaction went off through his body, forming connections in an instant, with ice though, it was like trying to move an iceberg through the ocean, it was slow, and he needed to apply a lot of mental force to get it going.

Connecting the first two motes was exhausting and it didn’t get any easier as he continued the process. As he did he felt his entire body start to decrease in temperature, his breath had become tangible in the air, like when you breathed hot air on a freezing day. His body had become stiff, unable to fully move without feeling like he was having to crack his joints and skin with each little movement. He laid down on the grown when this started, wanting to get as comfortable and spread out as possible. Time continued to drift by as he continued forming the stream, he didn’t take any breaks, not able to stop the process now that he had started, and just fully focused his mind on the task.

When the stream was fully formed, the rush of power that started running through his body was too much to handle, he couldn’t move though, only endure. As the seconds ticked by he felt himself fully freeze over, starting at his fingers and toes and moving up his arms and legs. When the ice fully encased him his last thought was of dying as an icicle, and if he could have he would have laughed at the thought. But quickly darkness fell over his vision, even with his eyes open he couldn’t see, eventually his mind froze and his heart stopped beating.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

“What do you think he meant, when he said that he would either be dying in there or getting close to it?” Gabe directed at Eric who was standing next to him, both waiting until the 30 minute timer hit zero and Shaun would reappear.

“I don’t know. But this is Shaun we are talking about. Do you ever really know what crazy stunt he is going to pull? The last time he did something like this he came out practically dead with lightning running through his veins. This time? Who knows. But he will be fine. He always makes it through.” Eric had managed to deliver all of that with a confident smile, trying to relieve some of the stress that Gabe was feeling, but inside he was as messed up as he was. Shaun didn’t deal with betrayal well, and what happened in that store was messed up. Viv had tried to talk to them, but he sent her away. Currently she was pacing back and forth at the edge of the room, continuously looking back at the dungeon and them, she looked terrible, her eyes were bloodshot from crying and she looked seconds from a full breakdown, but at that moment it wasn’t his concern, Shaun was.

“Do you really believe that?” Gabe asked him. “You saw him when he went into that dungeon, he was a mess! He looked like he was seconds away from cracking and rampaging through the tutorial. You know what happened when we turned our back on him before. We made a promise to each other to never do something like that again Eric! He is family, and we stick together. We brought Viv into this and what she did hurt him. That’s on us.” Eric looked at Gabe, he knew that he was still punishing himself for what he did to Shaun all the way back in the first stage, he had tried to help him through it, but there was a part of Gabe that couldn’t forgive himself for what they had done, even if Shaun had.

“I have faith that Shaun will make it through whatever is happening in there. We will be ready if he needs help. We have his back, just like he has ours.” Eric said trying to comfort Gabe. Don’t make me a liar Shaun, come back to us. I don’t care how, just don’t leave us alone here.