Infernal Flame Fragments

The vision locked in and Sytus was in a different form. She wore a cloaked, hyper-accelerated velocity ergonomic tac jacket. The undersuit protected her organs from feeling too much of the stimulus. Rain poured down in heavy stacked flows. She stood tall on the grassy hillside that overlooked the road.

Her katana was not full length—slim and sleek—hugging her hip and upper left quadricep. The comms were built into the upper chest portion of the jacket.

“Heads up, Sy. Convoy headed your way.”

The female voice leaked with a sense of urgency.

Sytus lifted her arm, tapping a button on her glove by the knuckle.

Nearby, BaTeal leaped then stomped on the ground. She chewed the grasshopper with glee. The high-pitched frequency filled her eardrum. The miniature dragon, no bigger than a child’s ball, whipped her head around—then zipped out of reality.

Her fists tensed with intense anticipation as the convoy approached. Intermittent sparks of ionic energy flickered in and out of the grass, weaving a pattern of chaotic metaphysical potential.

Sytus drew her blade. The sheath was repositioned to its usual position. Her bonded partner, a protector that changed her path, reappeared on her shoulder with a snap.

Like an arc reactor, the energy spun around BaTeal at first, then the pair zipped out of reality.

Inside the cargo truck sat a metallic structure. Roughly three feet wide, two feet high—a half-moon shape. Smooth silver surface, panel indented toward the center. Ratchet straps cinched tightly across it.

Two guards sat on either side, rifles ready. A thud hit the roof. Both snapped their heads upward. The comms lit up across the convoy.

“She’s here.”

“She’s up top.”

“Kill her.”

“Fuck—she’s—” The voice cut short.

One of the front lesser-armored vehicles veered off the road, erratic, disappearing into the tall whip-like grass.

Sytus snapped back into 3D space—standing on the hood. Arms relaxed at her side. BaTeal perched, claws gripping the jacket. The katana idle back in its sheath.

She raised a circular device and swiped its rim. Red arrows lit up, cycling from left to right. The driver hesitated—then swerved. Too late. The device magnetized to the vehicle with hefty authority. Sytus was already gone. The explosion crushed the front end into the concrete. Heated, twisted steel cascaded outward. Orchestrated shrapnel pierced the road.

The gunner’s hatch burst open. A guard aimed forward.

Sytus snapped beside him.

The blade slid through his upper chest and neck.

She dropped through the hatch—

—snapped into the center of the crew—

—flurried strikes, compressed and precise—

—gone before the bodies fell.

She placed four charges along the rear.

The explosion launched the vehicle upward.

Metal screamed. Shrapnel tore outward.

It crashed on its side, blocking the road.

The cargo vehicle slammed into it.

The rest followed.

Chain reaction.

Complete stop.

Dazed guards poured out.

Sytus moved.

Zip. Snap.

One by one—silenced.

Bullets sprayed, useless.

She dismantled them all.

She cut the rear door open.

BaTeal perched calmly.

Straps sliced.

The device sat there—quiet, harmless looking.

But if it reached the power source… everything could be remade.

She wouldn’t allow it.

Two guards inside—mangled, twitching.

Ignored them. She moved to another truck.

Engine started.

She secured the device inside.

“I have it. I can move it. Heading your way.”

“Good. We’re moving to you for support.”

She slammed the vehicle into reverse.

The two surviving guards stumbled out—opened fire.

She cut the steering wheel loose, sending the vehicle drifting in the opposite direction.

The guards removed their helmets.

Top knots revealed.

Their faces… shifted.

Muscles expanded.

Nostrils flared.

Jaws elongated.

A second row of razor teeth grew in.

Their bodies stretched—several feet taller.

Armor flexed with them.

Wolf men.

Creatures from before the first cataclysm.

Preserved. Restored.

Brothers—still. Brothers no longer bound by time.

In the rearview mirror—

they looked massive.

Wrong.

Primal.

Ancient.

Sytus lost the road for a moment.

Just staring.

They charged on all fours. Jagged concrete tore beneath them.

Closing distance fast, Sytus gripped the wheel.

One slammed into the back door, the other landed on top of the truck.

“Hell… no.”

She pulled her hood off as her eyes narrowed. BaTeal gripped her tight. The energy—

They zipped from the wheel—

—snap, the katana cut through one arm—

—snap, back in the driver’s seat—

—stabilizing the wheel, she also pressed the gas—

—zip—

—snap—

—struck the one above.

The wolf brothers raged—visibly frustrated.

“Catch her, brother. Watch… a pattern.”

They analyzed while sustaining cuts.

“Yes… I see it.”

Both leaped to the top of the vehicle, standing back to back. The claws on their feet gripped the metal, anchoring them in place. They endured a flurry of strikes.

The brother facing forward lunged.

The other waited—timed it—

—and snatched Sytus mid-motion, gripping her under the arm.

Above, BaTeal clung tightly.

The second brother seized her other arm—

—and tore it free.

Sytus shrieked.

Her severed arm—BaTeal still attached—spiraled toward the rushing ground.

Sytus collapsed to her knees.

One of the wolf men knelt in front of her, eye to eye.

“You don’t actually possess power,” he said calmly. “Without that creature… you are harmless.”

The truck began to veer—subtle at first.

He drew back his arm—coiled—

—and swung.

The vehicle clipped the bank.

Top-heavy—it flipped.

Sytus lay broken on the ground, bleeding out.

The two brothers stood meters away, breathing heavily—the device in hand.

Sytus, helpless, panicked—her voice reaching upward to nothing.

They approached her.

“You fought with precision. Impressive.”

“Yes… that was difficult.”

Their forms shifted—returning to human.

“Take time. Witness life before you bleed out.”

“These are your final moments.”

BaTeal snapped back into existence—clutching Sytus.

The energy spun faster than before.

Particles around them flickered—like a forming field.

Sytus felt it—

energy pouring into her body.

It lifted them from the ground.

But this time—

she didn’t vanish.

She felt it in her fingertips.

Pulsing. Zapping.

Control.

She wielded it.

A surge burst forward—like lightning, but wrong—

not striking into the world—

but pulled from it.

Vacuum energy.

It hit the brothers.

They stiffened—but did not fall.

The device reacted.

It woke.

The connection formed—

between the brothers, the device, Sytus, and the dragon.

The world… shifted.

Time moved without them.

They were no longer bound to their reality.

Like a space you could walk—then rewind—

all intersecting points folding inward.

They stood together—

on a bridge between worlds.

A singularity.

A witnessing place.

A hub of possibilities—

of what the planet could become—

of what any world could become.

Time behaved differently here.

The neural bridge pulsed—

deep iridescent blue—

with lighter pulses threading through it.

Memory pools stood upright—

liquid suspended like mirrors.

The liquid spilled onto the bridge.

It reached them.

Synced them.

The mirrored fluid merged with Sytus—

her body connecting to the network.

They were no longer standing.

They were suspended—

inside a vision.

Witnessing—

another version of Sytus.

And her dragon.

Sytus was not in her normal form. She was but a void. Her energy hummed with a purple hue. BaTeal stood towering beside her, a mere silhouette with that same purple hue inches from her being. Those eyes, however, spiraled away from their center, spiraled outward into the depths of their corruption.

A stream of dark antimatter pooled from the dragon’s mouth to Sytus’s hand. She pressed the energy into the rocky wall face. Consuming the rock, it twisted and zipped inside the antimatter orb. Like a drill, she plowed through the mountainside.

BaTeal followed behind, controlled and smooth. The orb would lose energy, only to be replenished quickly by the dragon.

Sytus billowed through until it opened up.

Looking over the edge, there was no bottom. The light diffused and suffocated past a certain point.

She climbed onto BaTeal.

The pair dived and vanished into the darkness.

They fell further and deeper until ruins filled with a golden light lined the ground, signaling the bottom was near. The dragon’s wings opened and they glided to a halt on the ground.

Sytus dismounted and scanned the area.

The ruins on the ground were small and subtle—a faint golden light one would miss unless one had previous knowledge they were there.

Sytus raised her voice.

“The one that dwells here, I know you are here. Come out and face your own kind.”

Lili, the one whose father was the Ronin, emerged from a golden pool that had liquified across the stone ruins. Her brilliant appearance looked as though she had been dipped in melted gold. Her eyes, however, showed the color of her human past.

“I’m not here to obey the likes of you,” Lili said. “You have twisted your gifts and given up your true path. You are my kin, but you will not leave this place. Your dragon, your partner, your guide in power has failed you. And you have failed her. You have failed all of us. I will correct that mistake.”

Lili gathered a quick, concentrated sphere of golden energy.

Traditionally that energy had been used for healing, but over time she had learned to sharpen it into a weapon when needed.

She gathered a quick palette of the energy emitting from the waters. The flow rapidly collected upward toward her chest, bursting into controlled light intertwined with prisms of healing energy—much like light refracting through crystal.

The burst collected.

Then it left her proximity.

Sytus curled her fingertips.

Voided energy leaked from the sides of the dragon’s mouth, grating against her teeth. Two streams flowed around each of her shoulders until they tethered together, vertically elongating into a wall defensive structure in front of her.

Another burst struck.

It dissolved against the barrier.

The structure slowly unraveled into wisps of fading energy.

Lili, the golden healer, leaked through the ground with her brilliant waters.

Sytus paused.

The dragon streamed voided energy and Sytus spread it, engulfing most of the area.

Lili’s waters leaked from above through the rocky surface. A burst of her power slinked toward Sytus from behind.

The dragon streamed against it, but the blast carried a second surge of power, sending the dragon skating violently against the rocky wall.

Dazed.

Unconscious.

Sytus slid and scraped across the ground.

Her face remained cordless—expressionless—except for shapes forming around her nose and eye sockets like a shifting mask.

Even without facial movement, frustration built within her.

This was not a test she was meant to endure.

She had controlled the power. Bent it and her dragon to her will.

Who was this ancient ancestor, who had failed from her perspective?

This was not someone capable of challenging her.

She was beyond anything this relative could hope to accomplish.

Let alone stop her.

She had not earned the ability to heal.

It was Sytus’s claim.

Her birthright.

From her perspective it had always been meant for her.

Lili was merely a vessel, meant to house the power until Sytus had gained full control of the dragon.

This was the moment to take what had always belonged to her.

“You hide in your waters,” Sytus said. “You hide in the stone. But your power will flee from your grasp and into mine.”

Lili leaked behind Sytus.

Behind BaTeal.

The next burst was so concentrated, so sharp on a quantum scale, it sliced the dragon’s wing and half of her front leg.

The dragon collapsed.

Sytus screamed.

“I did not come here to fight a coward. I came here to take your power.”

She formed a sword from the dark void energy of her dragon—a katana inherited from the ancestors of Lili’s human era.

A blade once mastered by Lili’s father.

Sytus plunged the voided katana into the ground, filling the earth with void energy. The energy locked into place, severing Lili’s ability to travel through the ground with her waters.

Pulling the blade free, Sytus flipped it and hurled it into sections of the rocky walls, sealing those paths off as well.

The constant stream of energy flowing from the dragon’s mouth, combined with Sytus’s effort to wield it, demanded immense focus.

Lili appeared from the ceiling.

Her own katana wrapped in healing waters.

She struck Sytus like a dying star tearing away from its gravity.

The two blades clashed.

A light so bright it engulfed the space.

Lili could no longer escape.

Sytus’s focus split.

The two clashed in a series of strikes, slashes, and parries.

Until Sytus stamped on the waters tethered to Lili.

She noticed then:

Lili could not function without the waters.

Sytus targeted them with a consumption blast—a different form of void energy.

This attack sought to absorb.

Consume.

It worked.

Not fully.

But enough.

Lili returned briefly to her human form, as though she had never possessed the power at all.

Very human.

She looked into Sytus’s eyes.

Then she called the waters back.

Returning to gold.

She melted the waters into Sytus.

At that moment Sytus’s humanity began bleeding back through her shape.

Their eyes met.

Lili spoke plainly.

“Sytus… please. This cannot be your path. All you have seen, all you have endured—this does not need to define you. You are a protector, not a servant of consumption. Don’t let it steal your heart. It is not too late.”

Sensing Sytus overpowering her, Lili redirected all her waters into healing the void corruption.

Sytus, pushed to her limit, could no longer contain the upper echelon of her potential.

She raged.

She screamed.

The dragon and Sytus fused—becoming one being, one vessel of absolute power.

She cursed Lili, melting her out of existence,

and absorbed her healing ability.

Her voided energy twisted and swirled.

Her form monstrous.

Gigantic.

Swirls of golden light flickered within patterns of consuming purple and black void power.

She had taken the ability.

Stolen it.

Now it was hers.

To bend.

To control.

The vision ended. The fluid dissipated.

The brothers stood in silence for a moment—then one spoke.

“That was… my daughter. Lili.”

The other shifted, watching Sytus.

“She called you kin.”

Sytus collapsed.

“Brother… we can’t let her die knowing this.”

A pause.

“Maybe she is the one from the prophecy of our youth.”

“…Maybe she is.”

Lili’s father—once known as Ronin—drew his blade and sliced his palm. He pressed the wound against Sytus’s torn arm.

Her eyes snapped open.

The wolf blood began its transformation

Thank you for taking the time to read my work.

I know there are areas that could use more refinement, and some parts may feel rough or incomplete. Today was a bit chaotic on my end—my (very energetic) kids made sure of that—so this is the best version I could get on the page.

Some moments may read more like fragments or concepts, but this piece is part of a much larger story I’ve been building for a while. This is also the first time I’ve shared any of it, so I truly appreciate you giving it your time and attention.

Thanks again for reading, and I hope spring treats you well.