Call of The Dead

Mark watched as the two people chase and finally fight each other from a tree. He was burning to get more energy, but this time he controlled his range and temperature so that he wouldn't cause another wildfire. Who knows what it might bring this time?

The fight was over before it really began. The one chasing was now trapped, rooted to the ground, while the forest was on fire that was spreading faster. Mark didn't understand what they were saying to each other. 'This is really pissing me off. Do I have to learn every language in this world to converse or understand someone? How many languages are there in this world? Please don't be as many as earth?' he thought as they went on with their conversation.

A yell from the one rooted to the ground by the skeleton arm brought his attention back to them. The area around the one walking was drained of any life. Ash replaced the plants; the ground was blackened, and the insects were destroyed. It surprised Mark to see the forest so devoid of life.

He wanted to get closer, to see what was happening better. He used to fire around them to get as close as possible without them noticing anything strange. Their conversation seemed intense.

The fire inside the one being held dwindled as time went by. By the end of the conversation, a sword went through Robert, the fire diminished, almost about to be extinct. 

As Darius put Robert's body on the ground, Mark wanted to help him, so he reached out, but they couldn't understand each other. With no option left, he tried to go through the sword wound. But the surrounding energy was rejecting him. He coated himself with a fire made of SOURCE ENERGY. There was a hissing sound as he passed through the wound. 

Mark found himself in a pitch dark space, with a ball of fire in front of him. The ball seemed to have lost a lot of fire as it was neither hot nor that much bright nor that big; the fire was extinguishing. He reached out to it with his fire, to share his flame with it. The moment he touched the flame, he found himself in a different place. 

It was a lavishly green plain with a giant castle at the foot of a hill On the training ground of this castle, two figures were fighting, one child with red hair, and a middle-aged man with azure hair, cut to his shoulder. There were three more children, two boys and one girl who looked to be the same age as the boy fighting the adult. All of them had a wooden sword on their hand as they watched the fight. The clash of wooden sword drowned the heavy breath of the child and the small laughter of the adult as a parried yet another attack with ease.

It was a sword training. And the boy was improving and learning from his mistakes fast, but it wasn't fast enough as no matter how hard he tried, he always failed to land a single hit. Not even the tip of his wooden sword can touch a piece of his cloth. 

As his sweat trickled down his cheeks, his frustration boiled like hot oil. Unable to contain it, he used astral essence to coat his sword with flame, and tried to attack, but the wooden sword burned to ashes before he could even hit the sword of his opponent.

"Always quick to anger, Robert?" said the adult as he laughed after a low kick to Robert's leg, causing him to fall to the ground on his butt. 

The other children laughed together with the adult. One of the children, who had a brown, raced towards Robert and extended his arm. Robert looked up at him and accepted his arm grudgingly.

"You are getting better at controlling your anger," said the boy.

Robert then asked as he dusted off his butt, "what do you mean? I lost control again."

"You lasted thirteen more seconds than the previous spar." Said Darius with a smile.

The visions then changed again, showing Mark distinct memories of the man called Robert. But not all the memories, just the ones that were filled with intense emotion or some he felt more passionate about. The more intense the emotion, the vivid the memories became.

He saw the moment his parents died, the moment he met his new family, the day his uncle died, but mostly it was his memory of Darius that was more vivid and there were many of them. Mark also witnessed Robert's wartime experiences, yet these memories appeared distorted; he saw his uncle's face with each enemy he killed. Every time he lost an ally, he saw his uncle's face instead of theirs. Every day was torture for him. His dreams were nightmares filled with the death of his uncle, his parents, his friends, his allies. Most nights he would spend it awake planning his revenge against Darius, if he ever found out where he was. But that was just his fantasy, something to keep him sane after witnessing the massacres of war and its brutality. He used to think of war as something honorable, but now… it was something he dreaded.

By the end of the memories, he saw a Robert floating on a dark sea in pitch-black darkness. The only source of light being Mark himself, and the small fire that was burning in his heart. But it was also losing its light, as Robert was slowly sinking into the dark sea. 

Mark slowly approached him. He had his eyes closed, but his eyelids were fluttering. He placed his hand on Robert's heart of fire, forming a connection for them to communicate their intents.

Mark wanted to say he would help him, but considering the norms and cultures of this world, he instead said, "worship me and I will give you the power to take your revenge."

'He isn't going to ask if I'm a demon or something, right?' thought Mark, as he waited for an answer.

"I don't know if you are a demon or an abyss god and honestly, I don't care. If you can give me the power to kill him, I will do everything you ask of me. Even if it costs me my soul." Robert answered with no hesitation.

It was an answer that surprised him. 'How desperate is he for him to make an actual deal with a demon?' but masking his surprise, Mark answered, "good. Call out my name, God of Flames, and accept me as your god."

The moment Robert called out his name, he felt a thread extend from him toward the heart of fire in Robert. 

Robert's heart throbbed louder with every second. Mark funneled his fire, made of SOURCE ENERGY, into it.

*****

Darius was walking away, deeper into the forest, when he felt an immense heat from behind. When he turned to look at Robert's body covered in blue flames, with the ground he was resting on melting into a lava.

Confused, he stopped walking away and instead tried to approach him. But the fire was so intense that his cloak slowly began to burn. Taking a step back quickly into the shadow of the dense forest, he removed his cloak and quickly put out the fire.

The ashes of the forest gathered around Robert, covering like a cocoon on top of the blue fire. 

As Darius watched in astonishment, Robert's body slowly began to be revealed and he slowly stand up. The fire consumed Robert's clothes. The ashes retreated to form a cloak and pants. His eyes, normally a deep brown, now blazed with molten fire. Intricate runic patterns adorned his skin, glowing with an intense fiery hue that pulsed in time with his heartbeat. Blue flames engulfed his forearms, dancing and flickering with the controlled intensity of a forge, not the chaotic ferocity of a wildfire. The air around him shimmered with heat, distorting the forest landscape as if viewed through a haze.

Darius stepped into the clearing, his eyes focused intensely on Robert's abrupt changes. His eyes flashed an eerie green before turning back to their ordinary black. "You have changed, brother."

A silent stare greeted him; Robert tilted his head slightly and, in a voice that overlapped many others, growled, "You will pay for your actions."

As Darius raised his hands, the earth trembled, and from the ground emerged a legion of skeletal warriors. Their eyes glowed with an unsettling, flickering green fire.

Darius moved first, his skeletal minions surging forward with a chilling clatter of bone against bone. Robert responded with a swift motion, his hands igniting in a burst of blue flame as he launched a wave of fire at the advancing horde. The front line of skeletons disintegrated under the onslaught, their bones reduced to ash before they could close the distance. Their ashes flowed like a river by the wind before being added to his cloak, darkening it. The fire spread quickly, igniting the dry underbrush and climbing the trees, casting the forest in a flickering light destruction.

Unperturbed, Darius drew upon the life force of the surrounding vegetation. The lush greenery withered and died, its essence funneled into a dark vortex of energy that formed between his hands. With a gesture, he unleashed the energy, a swirling mass of green and black that hurtled toward Robert. Robert met the attack head-on, raising a shield of blue flame that burned the dark energy, dissipating it into harmless sparks.

Their duel continued, each exchange of power intensifying the destruction around them. Robert launched fireballs with pinpoint accuracy, each explosion shaking the ground and sending shock waves through the forest. Darius countered with blasts of necrotic energy, each one leaving a trail of decay in its wake. The skeletal warriors continued their relentless assault, only to be incinerated by Robert's flames.

As the battle wore on, Robert was gaining the upper hand. The runes on his body glowed brighter, the fire in his eyes burning with greater intensity. He moved with increasing speed and precision, each motion a fluid dance of fire and fury. When surrounded but the skeleton warriors, he would use the ashes to obscure his surrounding and then light them up, killing every dead soldier, almost killing Darius, but he would escape him shielding himself with necrotic energy and opening a portal to teleport outside of Robert's fire range. Darius, despite his efforts, was being pushed back, his necrotic energy waning in the face of Robert's relentless assault.

Mark thought, 'looks like we might win. Now, I just have to make sure that I don't run out of SOURCE ENERGY.' He open his system, and saw that he still had about 25/54, enough to finish this. That was when he felt something staring at him. He looked around the forest but found nothing but trees, bushes, animals. And the feeling of being stared at was getting stronger by the second. But he remembered something about his ENERGY EYES. They were meant to see only the 3rd dimensional space. 'So, maybe whatever is staring at me must be from a higher dimension.'

The fight went on and the more they gained advantages, the more intense the stare became. And that was when he saw it: a green thread that was extended from the back of Darius and into the shadows between the dense forest far away. He recalled that normal shadows didn't block his visions. 'There's something there.' Mark thought as he looked toward the end of the green thread. 'Whatever it is, it will emerge from there.' 

As the fight came to the end, he saw two green hues being emitted from that same spot. 'Whatever it is, it's coming out now.'

Sensing he might lose, Darius decided to do something drastic. He took out a bone dagger, carved with some runes, that glowed with a faint green hue. He cut both of his palms, stretched them out, and clenched them. Blood dripped down to the ground as Darius started to chant in a language Robert didn't understand. 

Robert tried to dash towards him, but something pushed him back. The harder he pushed, the harder something pushed him back. The air around became still, the wind quite down; the birds stopped their songs and instead held their breath.

The silence grabbed Mark's attention from the shadowy figure with green eyes, back to the fight.

His blood formed a giant glyph on the ground. His chants became louder by the second. More runic symbols were added as time went by. Mark couldn't do anything to stop the ritual. He didn't even understand what the ritual was for.

When Darius finished the ritual, a dark portal opened behind him, the same portal that opened up when he was about to fall, the same portal that chilled both Mark and Robert down to their souls. Still giving them the same feeling as before, but much stronger.

It started small, the size of a peanut, but slowly the portal became bigger until it was thirteen meters wide.

A giant wolf's head, with black furs, peaked out of the portal first. Slowly, its entire body was out of the portal into the open ground. It looked like a nightshroud wolf, except it had green eyes instead of golden. And before they could comprehend what it was, another wolf's head peaked out of the portal. But this time it had white furs, with the same green eyes.

When both wolves were on the ground, the portal behind Darius closed slowly. He fell to the ground, vomiting blood mixed with his insides.

The wolves payed him no attention and only focused on Robert, specifically his blue flames on his hand. Both wolves howled, literally shaking the ground beneath them.