Heart of Ember

Guess who forgot to hit publish yesterday... Me. It was me. I'm an idiot. Anywho, enjoy the chapter. Working on the next one but it's coming a little slowly so there might be a wait.

Mark sat in the park after work, waiting for Imara to arrive. They'd agreed to meet an hour after he got off to give him time to get home and change and he'd gotten here a bit early, giving him some time to sit and think about the implications of what Tara had told him. From what she had said, her ability, 'logomancy' she'd called it, boils down to intuition and hunches on a preternatural level. If she focused, she could explore further than hunches but according to her, it wasn't further than a day or two at most. The very notion of any amount of future prediction should have been outlandish to him but even only a day after his entry into the Dead Ocean, he was finding it hard to see things as impossible.

His rumination on the implications of Tara's prescience was interrupted by a gentle flick on the head, looking up to find mild cleavage and green hair in that order. Imara had on the same jacket as yesterday, now paired with tight fitting, black yoga pants and a T-shirt that read 'Hope is something you give yourself' with an old man, bald on top but with an excellent beard. "You always look like you're brooding while you wait for a girl," she asked before flashing him a grin. "Come on mister dark and stormy, you're coming with me."

Mark stood to follow, pulling his jacket a little tighter around him as he asked, "sorry about that, got to thinking about something. Did I really look like I was brooding?"

"Big time. Scowl and everything. Saw storm clouds hanging around and everything." Her grin grew as she teased him over it. "You said you were going to try and met with your boss's boss today, right? How'd that go?"

"He pointed a gun at me and interrogated me." The flatness with which he said that might have concerned professionals but Imara seemed to just nod and take it in stride.

"Well, you're still breathing, so it must have gone OK." She began walking and Mark followed after her. He was thankful that her jacket hid her butt, making it easier to avoid taking glances. "Bit of a walk but we should be fine. Wanted to say sorry if I made you uncomfortable at the diner yesterday. Might have jumped the gun a bit."

"The diner...? What are...? Oh, the boo-" he cut himself off before he rather loudly spoke about boobs in the middle of a park. He lowered his voice as a blush grew on his cheeks. "Jumping the gun or not, I enjoyed the birthday gift. Unexpected as hell, sure, but you'd have trouble finding a guy who regrets seeing boobs. We'll just... work with it, I guess."

Imara seemed unsurprised by the response, nodding along. "I thought you'd say something like that. If 'we'll work with it' is code for 'you should do that more often', you'll need to play your cards right." There was a faint blush on her skin but not as much as yesterday or anywhere close to how badly Mark's face had reddened. When Mark went quiet on that subject, she decided to pick at another thread of conversation. "Figure out anything new about your powers?"

The total non sequitur snapped Mark out of his silence, momentarily fumbling over his words. "Oh, not, uh... No, not today. I don't want to expose myself too much, they think I can just use wind magic. Subtle enough to where it might have just been instinctual use throughout my life."

"Not a bad cover. If it's gonna happen to anyone, a potent is the most likely. Taking my advice and keeping your other powers more secret then, good."

The pair continued their trek for another minute or so, soft banter back and forth without much substance, when the usual background noise of city life died away. Engines and honking faded with a little of the world's saturation.

You have been pulled into a Grave Zone. Obtain the Keeper's permission to leave or take control.

Mark looked around in surprise for a moment, Imara immediately dropping into a wide stance. Her posture radiated the surety of training, an adept's confidence. That made Mark calm down slightly, making the mental effort to bring his knife out of his inventory and ready to bare. With his back to Imara at her own movement, they minimized blind spots. She was as in control as she could be of the situation when the whistling began. It was a low and slow version of 'Ring Around the Rosie', giving an eerie and malevolent feeling to the whistling. Both of them looked to the alleyway where the whistling came from, the deep shadows giving way to reveal two men in leather vests, biker regalia worn with evident pride. The left one was shaved bald, a beard covering his chin, while the other had a crew cut that had a sloppy feel to it, as of someone bad done it with dull scissors while drunk.

Lefty cracked a smile, brandishing an honest-to-god morning star as he looked at the pair of them. He started talking, speaking to a rhythm while sounding like he'd had his nose broken multiple times in the past. He had an accent that sounded like some blend of New England. "Little fish, little fish, you shouldn't swim alone... sharks lurk all around." His tone was borderline lecherous, some sick pleasure derived from making them uncomfortable.

Mark's knife hand trembled subtly as he held his ground, Imara standing firm and ready. Her voice came out hard and defiant as she asked, "what do you creeps want?"

The one on the right picked up the thread this time, a sadistic expression barely even bothering to hide itself as an unpleasant accent came from him, vaguely southern but prickly and coated in grime. "What every man in this world wants. Good food, good booze, and a good fuck. It'd be real kind if you'd help us with that. We'll even let your boyfriend there watch."

Mark's eye began to twitching at that, Imara's foot grinding against the ground as she speaks through clenched teeth. "Get the hell out of here before I stop playing nice."

The pair look at each other and share a quick laugh before Lefty starts talking again, bouncing the morning star in his hands. "Maybe we need to teach this girl some manners, she's bein' a real bitch, eh Petey?"

'Petey' just sighed and pulled a gun out of his waistband. "Don't know how many times I gotta tell ya, that damn mace ain't half as intimidating as you think. And don't call me-" He was cut off by a crash of stone around metal and meat. Imara had brought her fists together, the concrete ground arching up and meeting with enough **** to deform the steel of the weapon. Petey gripped his wrist, crying out in pain as the stone kept his mangled hand in place. Mark could see blood gushing out of the stone quite profusely. With the gun out of the equation, Imara kicked a chunk of the ground into the air, roughly the size of a moderately large dog breed, and hit it with her hand flat to the surface. To Mark, it looked almost comical how the stone was shoved forward much faster than the movement might suggest. The comical nature died away as Petey was hit in the lower body by the rock, taking his legs out from under him and letting him hang in agony from his still pinned hand.

Around the time the rock connected, the bald one managed to vault the stone arch, weapon brandished as he charged for Imara. She pivoted and seemed to be ready to strike when something caught her eye and she froze like a statue. The mook closed in and swung, expecting her to retreat so he was only able to hit her with the haft of the spiked ball on a stick. She was thrown sideways by the hit, landing on the floor in a heap. The bald man looked down at her with a disgusted look as he raised the morning star up high.

Before he could bring the **** blow, a quavering, angry scream came from behind him, a sharp knife digging into his back. Mark pushed the blade in deep, hitting between the rib cage and floating ribs and trying to take the large man to the ground. While he did stagger to the side, mace falling to the floor, he didn't fall.

Lefty tried to turn and grab hold of Mark but with Elemental Tap running, Mark was able to keep behind him. The knife was pulled out before opening another deep wound. Blood gushed out and soaked the leather jacket as Mark worked to keep him from hurting Imara. A few of the stabs glanced or bounced completely off the bone until one was placed just right, the big biker falling to the ground as his legs just gave way. Mark's ears rang as he kept going. He wasn't going to let him hurt her, not on his life.

Mark didn't know how long he'd been there, stabbing at the man until, out of breath, he missed and sent the knife at the concrete. The tip of the blade broke off as it impacted the ground, blood spilling from a wound riddled body. Movement from Imara snapped him out of his daze and he scrambled over to her. She'd seemingly come to after being hit but instead of sitting up, she laid there, clutching at her side and hyperventilating.

Mark got close but didn't touch her, he didn't want to spook her. He softly called to her, "Imara, it's OK. You're safe, he's..." Mark's words died as he thought about what he was about to say. That man was dead and Mark had killed him, stabbed him who knows how many times. He looked at his hands and saw them covered in blood that wasn't his. He had to fight not to wretch, scrambling away from the cooling corpse of the bald biker. Two notifications jumped into his view in spite of his panic. Reading them did nothing to help the panic.

Mark scrambled further away, turning to vomit onto the ground a few feet from a trembling Imara. He felt cold as he trembled, sweat breaking out on his forehead as a familiar but strange fire burned in his veins.

He had to fight against his desire to curl up into a ball, using a goal to keep himself from doing so. He had to check on Imara. He crawled towards her, very intentionally not looking to the side. If he didn't see it, it didn't happen. As he got to Imara's side, he took a breath and righted himself to check her over. She might have a broken rib but nothing too severe in spite of the power behind that hit. As he got into her field of view to try and calm her down from her clear hysterics, he saw just how scared she appeared to be. When he finally got words from her, they didn't help the terror he was steeped in.

"No... no, no, no, no... Why did it have to be them...?" One of her eyes welled with tears of dread. She curled herself into an even tighter ball, nails digging at her arms in a failed attempt at a self-comforting embrace. "I can't... I won't let it..." Her voice trailed off as the tears rolled down her face.

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