Chapter 1: Yafu’s Revenge

Finally!

Yafu leaned in from an obscured vantage point. He had his energy completely contained and discrete. Detection was failure. Failure was a non-option. He had waited for this moment for more than half of his life. He had no intention of making a mistake now.

Yafu smiled. Going unnoticed was a skill too honed for him to let the weight of the moment disrupt his execution, even in the face of fearsome opponents. Even his glee of seeing one such opponent arrive at the warehouse did not break his concentration.

It truly was a great triumph for him. His years of research and investigation, peaking in intensity over the last few cycles, had led him to pinpoint that the people he so desperately wanted to meet would be here at this place at this time. Here in this seldom used compound in a seldom visited sector of Revival City. Despite his faith in his conclusions, he had doubts of seeing their fruition on the chosen night. Papers, maps, and rumors seemed superficial until he was seeing his target appear in front of him. And yet, there was no mistaking the first guest after him to this place. Her name was supposedly Taia from his research, but more importantly her appearance matched a lead female member of the Poison Fang. He could not wait to meet her colleagues. 

Several more people made the entrance to the warehouse. A few picked an understated flamboyance manipulating their energy to seem to appear out of thin air. Taia seemed unamused and continued focusing her energy in scanning the room. The room was a large circular atrium with several balconies about thirty or so feet above the ground level. Yafu squatted on one of these balconies. Invisible to the naked eye and all but the most sophisticated of soul aura gazes. There were no windows to be seen. Taia continued her scan for any abnormalities. Her naturally blue eyes gained a faint yellow hue from her endeavor. A tall raven haired woman with sharp angular features, Taia had a piercing presence about her that added to an intimidation factor felt by Yafu as he tried to escape her detection. She was clearly a stronger energy user and very effective detector but Yafu’s concealment was so great that it rendered this expertise superficial. His concealment abilities made him a bit of a savant when stacked up against his other still developing skills.

“We appear to have total privacy.” announced Taia, “Where are Shen and Cirko?”

Shen and Cirko. Yafu’s heart rate quickened at the sound of the first name. Shen was the leader of Poison Fang and Yafu’s primary target. He would accept failure for all the other members of the group if he could get to that man.

“He is coming soon.” Everyone in the room directed their eyes to the balcony opposite where Yafu was hiding. Yafu felt a chill run down his spine. A pressure emanated from this new speaker. A lean, tall man, whose entire body was covered in black cloth except for white mask with two large red stripes crossing his face vertically at the eyes, his arrival caused even the members of the Poison Fang to tense. This had to be Cirko. There was no one else who matched the description. Cirko, allegedly the newest member of the Fang, had begun appearing only recently in military reports and underworld rumors. His novelty explained why even the Fang, a group known for having a lethal sense of loyalty, lacked trust with this man as he made himself known. There was not much other intel on Cirko, except for his raw power and ruthlessness. Origin unknown.

One of the male members to the immediate left of Taia responded. “You should hope Shen arrives soon. His trust quells our doubts.”

Cirko descended to the ground level from his perch on the balcony. He landed silently on the floor contradicting the near thirty foot drop he made. As he landed on the outer edge of the circle formed by the group, he replied coldly, “His trust excuses your doubts.”

Nothing was said after that for nearly twenty minutes. Many of the members paced around during this time. A few sat down or leaned on the walls. The only two who did not move were Cirko and Taia. Taia kept her gaze directly on Cirko. Cirko's facial whereabouts were obscured by his mask but it was highly doubtful to Yafu that he wasn’t returning Taia’s gaze. Then, all of a sudden, the main door opened and Shen walked in.

All the members immediately straightened their posture and turned towards their leader. Shen walked up to Cirko. “How are you feeling, my friend?” Shen was a short, stout man with a large torso and compact but wide limbs. His jet black hair was long and wavy and he had a thick full beard that gave him a grizzled look. He had a long face with a pair of intense green eyes.

Cirko turned his head for the first time since he had last spoken to look at Shen. “Impatient.”

Shen nodded. “I hope we all can end the waiting for our dreams tonight.” Shen directed this reply to the entire group, a sense of importance and ambition accompanied every word he spoke. “Brothers and sisters of the Fang,” Shen continued as all around him these hardened deviants and criminals perked up like children, “we stand at an unlikely culmination of our impossible journey. For generations, we have been told that our destination must be unreachable at best, fantasy at worst. The impossibility of our goals have left us alone in our struggle, abandoned by the many who share our beliefs but let the frustrations of our forefathers temper their dreams. We are the ones who did not break. We are the one who sacrificed so much both in our prospects and our personal legacies. But we may finally be the ones able to show fruit from our labor tonight. And this fruit is truly the sweetest known to all those who walk these paths with us across the Biterrene. My friends, with Cirko’s help today, we shall finally find the fabled Earth.”

There it was. The crux of Yafu’s opportunity; Earth. He knew he was no match for even the weakest member of the Poison Fang. His skill level was high but only relatively so. Amongst the Fang he was hopelessly outclassed. However, the Fang had one glaring weakness they could never compensate for. Their purpose. Like most people across the Biterrene they were followers of the Immortal King. This mythological figure was the legendary founder of all civilized society across both planets. Nowhere could you find a person who had not at least been told the virtue of the Immortal King. The man whose reign was golden as his disappearance was mysterious. There was so much chaos initially in his absence dating about fifty thousand cycles ago that no one today could really fully explain how he had disappeared so suddenly from the Biterrain. The only universally accepted surviving fact of his disappearance was his planned departure for Earth, a hypothesized third planet. Many attempts to locate and travel to Earth in ages since had been brought about by the religious zeal of some of his followers. All have failed miserably. Most of these failures have been lethal or debilitating to those who try.

And yet, here gather the Fang. The motivations were clear for them as they were clear for the men and women before them. The teachings insist that the Immortal King could not die and therefore a line of thinking emerged that he must still be on this Earth. Some followers and prophets had even preached that his promise of immortality as real and that it was waiting for those who could make it to Earth. Others claimed Earth is a cursed place for taking the King away from his Kingdom and his followers must someday liberate him so he may finish the process of during the Biterrene to paradise. Regardless of the spectrum of ancient interpretations, in modern times doubt has become the dominant attitude towards Earth. Every passing century failed attempts to prove even the material existence of Earth have piled up against the few old papers and documents preserved. The secular powers that be had all pretty much banned attempts to Earth for safety reasons a few generations prior. Genuine attempts to reach the third planet now were only reserved for the fringe because the outcome every time since the disappearance of the King has been catastrophic failure. The poison Fang were such fringe, extreme individuals. Ruthless terrorists who were pariahs even in the more militant circles of their practice. But they were true believers and determined to forge a path to the promised land despite the obvious risks. In Yafu amateur theological opinion, they were speeding towards predictable disaster. The aftermath of their folly tonight would be Yafu’s best and likely only opportunity to kill Shen.

“Our time approaches.” Cirko's voice was plain and declarative as if he was trying to minimize his vocalization effort for the evening.

Taia glanced at Cirko and then looked Shen in the eye with a shallow pleasantness that poorly maksed subdued hostility. “We give our lives as we always will for the dream. It is a shame that we may only have one life to give. It makes every action we do with our dedication inherently risky. We cannot afford poor advice or instruction.” She then turned her fierce gaze back to Cirko. Cirko kept his head oriented towards the center of the room where it had been since right after Shen walked in.

After a period of silence, Shen interjected, “So many before us have paid with their lives. A cruel irony, the ritual that has failed them was the correct one to get to Earth. Why then did they fail?” Shen began to turn himself to look at each member of the Fang as if to induce their heightened attention to his next words. “They failed because they did not anticipate an enemy lurking in the shadows. An enemy who wants nothing more than to burn those whose faith is strong enough to persist. A being of hatred. But also a being who is vulnerable once you know he is there. Cirko knows. And he has gifted me the knowledge so that I can now match his generosity many times over to all of you. The only unbeatable enemy is an enemy that we don’t realize exists. Now that his greatest strength is destroyed, his greatest weakness becomes apparent. A weakness we can only fully exploit at the place we are now, and at a time that is quickly approaching. Prepare yourselves to your roles on Cirko’s mark. He is our guide.”

On cue all eyes in the room turned to Cirko. There was no more conflict remaining in the eyes of those in the room, just an intense focus on their goal. Cirko raised his hand into the air, paused for several seconds, and then clenched his fist.

Immediately the five Fang members furthest away from Cirko and Shen began to channel their energy. Four of them in a yellow thunder-like discharge, one with a red. They directed their output at the center of the semicircle they had formed by where they were standing. Shen and Cirko now began to glow, signaling they were beginning to focus their energy reserves as well. Shen glow was yellow like the majority of his comrades although his was a brighter more vibrant tone of the color. Cirko’s energy was a brilliant crimson red, by far the rarer of the two colors that were seen in the Fang and the Biterrene as a whole.

The two leading men began to move their hands and arms in unison. The poses were familiar to Yafu. He had never traveled outside of Revival City much less to the other world, but he had seen people use the ritual to do so. This one was similar but not identical. It made sense. The task was the same in every sense except the destination.

The ritual continued for several minutes. Each passing second Yafu waited for his opportunity. He did not know what exactly would happen. There were no accounts of survivors of this ritual that he had found in any archives within the city’s extensive collection. His best guess was a large explosion. In that scenario, he just needed to survive the blast long enough to make sure it killed Shen. This combination of attention and anticipation caused him to begin to sweat and he could feel his muscles tense up. The discharge from the five opposite Cirko and Shen began to swirl slowly and pick up speed. The mass at the center of the semicircle began to froth like boiling water. Suddenly there was a quick flash of light from the mass. The members of the Fang did not flinch or break the process. Yafu on the other hand nearly leapt from his balcony but stalled himself before his feet left the floor. That moment of jumpiness was just enough to disrupt his concealment for a split second before he recovered.

Cirko and Shen both shot their heads toward Yafu’s perch. By that point Yafu had reconstituted his discreteness with the balcony, rendering him imperceptible once again to normal human senses. It might have been too late. 

“What’s going on?” shouted a discharging male member of the group breaking his facade of calmness and letting his doubt rise from his gut to his face.

“Nothing, I see nothing abnormal.” Shen snapped back before composing himself in a more pleasant manner, “Please continue, it would be disastrous to stop now.”

Shen had moved eyes onto the questioning member in an attempt to confirm he was not breaking form and perhaps to warn that this man that he was being watched for deviation from the ritual. Cirko, on the other hand, kept his gaze towards Yafu's balcony.

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“Everyone must keep their roles going. We have come too far to stop. We either face success or death.” Cirko’s voice started off with a quiet menacing tone and began to crescendo into understated rage. “However, there is no coincidence that would draw both Shen and I’s focus to the same spot.” Cirko continued his hand poses as his masked face turned toward Taia and the one other member of the group not contributing currently to the ritual. “Start at the far balcony and search. Find the intruder and kill them.”

Yafu knew he was in a dire circumstance now. He had to move from his spot. That much was clear. However, the more he tried to move the less effective his camouflage would be. His energy would begin to stick out from the background energy around him. He was going to need to thread the needle if he wanted to stay undetected. Move too slowly and they would get too close to him for any concealment to work regardless of how well done it was. Move too quickly and he may as well just announce himself. He was too weak to fight these people head on and too slow to escape from them. This detection meant there was a good chance there was no scenario left where he survived, but he had to act on the chance that there was. 

Yafu’s mind began to race in desperation. There was only one entrance or exit to this compound; a small door beneath the balcony opposite from where he was. Yafu had arrived several hours early and positioned himself in the opposite end of this door for his concealment to be most effective by putting maximum distance from the door where the Fang would enter and likely perform a scan of the room.

Yafu sized up his immediate opponents. He had two people searching for him. The Taia woman and the other man. This other man had a large build and a slight hunch on his neck. He had begun to back up towards the exit. They’re smart, he will be impossible to get around with his frame. That likely meant Taia was coming to corner him. She had been the first one sent here before the others. That meant there was a level of trust for her to scope out threats. It was not a good draw for Yafu.

Taia began to walk over in a deliberate manner towards Yafu’s balcony. Her eyes took on a soft yellow hue as she began focusing her energy on detection. Yafu was facing a very deadly math problem. His concealment was holding up but like regular vision, Taia’s spiritual vision would become stronger and stronger the closer she got. Any attempt to leap to another balcony would siphon off too much energy for him to maintain an adequate shield to her prying eyes. If she detected Yafu’s exact location, she was going to be able to kill him without much difficulty.

How could he have done this to himself! He had everything lined up until he had that slip-up. Just too wired. Even then, his mistake was so small only Cirko and Shen detected him. An impressive feat considering the amount of energy swirling right near their faces.

A rush of adrenaline shot through Yafu. A hyper childlike excitement coursed through his soul. There was a move on the board for him. The odds were still stacked against him, but he could do something other than wait for his inaction to lead to his annihilation.

Knowing his odds only got worse with time, Yafu set his final maneuver into motion. Turning to face the balcony to the immediate left of his own, Yafu watered his concealment down for the briefest of moments. In these fleeting moments he prepared himself to jump to the balcony directly to his right. Then he restrengthened his concealment.Taia sniffed this out almost instantaneously and lept like a predator cornering its prey. She landed on the railing of the second balcony and opened her stance to deliver a killing blow.

Cirko, still not breaking focus, shouted, “Bring the body to the light.”

“There is no such body here.” Taia responded, clearly frustrated by the possible inclinations of her initial failure. She quickly lept to the original balcony Yafu was on and found the same result; Nothing!

“Find this intruder. There are no more doubts. We all saw him try to escape.” Shen took a much less scolding tone than Cirko, but it was clear he put immense priority on the defeat of this unknown enemy.

Ironically, Yafu was now much closer to Shen then he was to Taia. He had not jumped to the second balcony, he had only made it appear that way. When he restrengthened his concealment, he retreated back to his original position, gambling his life that Taia would try to prevent a desperate escape to another balcony. She proved him right and her use of energy to propel herself at superhuman speed towards his supposed new location ended up being the final key to his move. His immediate priority had not changed. He had to stay concealed to stay alive. But his means had to change. At a basic level he was using distance to augment his concealment from the Fang. After his blunder, the Fang tried to remove this advantage by cornering him with Taia. He needed a new advantage. In the moment before Taia’s strike, he found one. 

Taia’s sudden use of energy to power her strike created enough background energy for him to camouflage and move without standing out to the others prying eyes. He used the precious few seconds he had created to drop down to the ground floor, paradoxically removing his greatest ally, distance. One Taia reached the second balcony her energy use began to ratchet down as she contemplated her next move. This was the moment of truth for Yafu. Would the swirling pool of energy he now hugged be enough assistance to allow his energy to stay anonymous?

Yafu stood on the outer edge of the border of the rotating energy which had begun to plume into a hemispherical shape He was now in between this mass of pooled energy and the Fang who surrounded it. Literally right under their noses. He just had to blend in with the energy dissipating from the mass. Holding his nerves back, Yafu silently counted to five in his head. Nothing. Taia had leapt to another balcony and was methodically combing over it. They clearly still thought he was moving from balcony to balcony. Yafu did not have the ability to maneuver like that and maintain camouflage, but the Fang had no idea what his limitations were. 

Despite this small victory, Yafu had still just prolonged his survival. He still had to overcome the daunting obstacle of the hunched man to guarantee it. This was a brutal problem to have because of its simplicity. Yafu had always felt he had an advantage in more complex situations. Complex problems bred creative solutions, allowing him to overcome opponents with more obvious advantages over him. This was not one of those problems. The hunched man stood right in front of the narrow exit. Yafu could only go through him by design.

Yafu's mind raced for a solution. He threw everything at this, allowing his mind to fly to asinine solutions if only to get lucky and stumble on to one that had a chance of working by accident. He shimmied very slowly around the edge of the energy pool, circumnavigating clockwise as to avoid being in the crossfire of the five who were still discharging energy to the right of him. Even a closer look at the exit did not offer any reprieve. The hunched man’s back was inches away from the closed door. There was no way to open it without physical detection, much less energy detection.

Yafu kept racking his brain, eyes darting around the room looking for any way he could get the man to move from the door. His eyes went from member to member of the Fang. Each one had an energy signal of an apex predator, nevermind the fearsome appearance of several of them. There was likely no way to disrupt these people enough to escape.

Yafu’s eyes finally fell on Cirko. Even only seeing his mask instead of his face put a sense of dread into Yafu. He had the most gruesome energy of them all. There was an insatiable fury to how his energy flowed. In addition to awe, Yafu felt a sense of hopelessness looking at this man. I was lucky to have made it this far. There was no way I was going to get away from him. Even the way he entered the room this evening. He had even the Fang on their toes. They didn't even realiz-. 

There it was. The one detail Yafu was looking for. Cirko had come into the room from the balcony but Yafu never saw or sensed him enter through the door. He also did not use energy to disguise his entry or the rest of Fang would not have been surprised as they would have sensed the energy use in the preceding moments. Two scenarios remained. He either was at the complex before Yafu, which made little sense since Yafu would have been killed when he walked in, or there was another way in. A way in is a way out.

Yafu had a plan now. He would wait until the ritual hit a crescendo and then leap toward Cirko’s balcony and pray the exit would be something obvious such as a window, so he could escape before the Fang reacted. That meant he had to watch the ritual carefully and guess correctly when he had an opportunity. He also would not get a second chance. The opportunity would almost certainly be the disaster he had initially anticipated on the balcony. Only now he was hugging the energy pool for cover, making him the least protected from catastrophe unless he jumped right before it occurred.

Yafu stood still on the brink of the ticking time bomb of energy for what seemed like an eternity. It was likely only a few minutes. He was keen to not make the same mistake he made earlier by being too jumpy and blowing his cover. The energy pool had continued the froth occasionally emitting small sudden light flashes. Yafu did not budge. Not falling for the same shit twice. 

Shen stopped his hand motions and signaled to the discharging members. They cut the energy flow off. Now only Cirko was interacting with the pool. The pool itself began to constrict and slowly collapse inward. This was likely Yafu’s moment.

He readied himself to jump. His odds were low but they were not zero. That’s all I’ll ever ask for. As he anticipated his jump he did a quick scan of the room. Cirko was now locked in deep concentration as he tried to guide the pool to a desired state. That was a huge win already as the most dangerous piece was seemingly off the board for his dash to freedom. Taia was still up in the balcony searching for him and the hunchback was glued to the door. Both had thankfully not evolved past the first stage of Yafu’s game. Almost every other member of the Fang had backed away from Yafu’s position making them less immediate threats. The only one still in a threatening location to react quickly enough was Shen.

Shen! Looking at him made Yafu’s blood boil. He instinctively reacted to cool off his anger for a brief moment. But it came back and he made no such self-regulating effort the second time. Immediately Yafu’s decision making shifted. He had spent so much time letting his survival instinct drive him in the last few minutes that he almost retreated from his destiny. He forgot he was prepared to die tonight. He did not need to escape. That was a failure for him. He had his chance right now to succeed. He could ensure this foolish endeavor would be Shen’s last. He saw the energy pool continue to constrict as pressure built to incredibly high levels. It was quite impressive to Yafu that Cirko was holding it back but it was time for the ritual to end.

Sensing the pressure had built to lethal amounts within the pool, Yafu made his move. With a ferocity only reserved for a suicide charge, Yafu charged at Shen. Shen sensed the charge before it reached him and instinctively dug in and leaned forward as to not be knocked backward. There were few people who would be able to knock him backwards and Yafu was not among them. Yafu knew that. He was not going to knock Shen backwards. He stopped right in Shen’s face using his catlike athleticism to shift his momentum on the spot. Shen briefly saw this intruder, barely old enough to be considered a man, appearing seemingly out of nowhere. A messy, dirtly, vagabond. He did not know who this person was and was stunned that someone looking like this had been the one sneaking around the meeting of the Poison Fang. He was so shocked he did not react in time to prevent this man from locking his arms underneath Shen’s shoulders and lifting Shen and himself up into the air. Shen’s posture and stance was defensive to a forward charge but was vulnerable enough to a backwards grab.

Yafu used every bit of energy he had to propel Shen and him up and backwards into the air. He heard a brief amount of gasps but nothing that indicated someone would react quickly enough to save them. He was right. They crashed into the pool of energy with a great force. Yafu closed his eyes expecting a quick and fiery death. A few seconds passed. The next thing he felt was a hard knee to his gut shattering at least one of his ribs. The pain caused his eyes to fly open. He immediately saw Shen. The knee had been so forceful it broke their embrace. Shen gave him a look of fury and contempt as they began to drift away from each other. Yafu tried to get in close to Shen to prevent his escape but found that he had no real control over his momentum. He seemed to be floating in an empty frictionless void preventing anything other than his inertia from controlling him. Shen and him continued to drift apart in this void for a split second longer before the blinding flash of blue light knocked Yafu unconscious.

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