Rowan cast his line over the water, his rowboat drifting over the calm surface of the lake. He was a human of moderate height with brown hair, brown eyes and decently formed features; just another face in the crowd.

  Not that there was much of a crowd in his sleepy little village.

  The water was so clear that he could see all the way to the bottom. Most lakes had dangerous fish that lurked in the depths, creatures that had already begun to ascend the tiers of mortality, but his village leader—a harmony elf in the fourth tier of mortality— had taken care of such problems in their village.

  It was another peaceful day and Rowan smiled, the sunlight streaming down from above basking him in its warm glow. A fish tugged on his line and he began to reel with gusto, thrilled that he had gotten a bite so soon. It was a big one too, if the resistance it was putting up was any indicator.

  He reeled and reeled until he could see the metallic coppery skin that was the namesake of the copperback. The water was clear, but the ripples of the struggling fish had obscured it until he had pulled it in closer.

  Once the fish was at an acceptable distance, Rowan grabbed the net that laid inside of his little one-man rowboat and dragged it through the lake, capturing the fish. He then pulled it up out of the water, staring at it in all its glory—it was indeed glorious— as long as his forearm and nearly as wide as his torso.

  He shouted his victory to the sky, “Eating good tonight!”

  He then laid it upon a wooden plank and took a small, sharp spike out of a wooden box by his side that he jabbed into its brain, just behind and above its right eye. He then took a small knife and cut the gills to bleed the fish. Following this step Rowan stuck the fish in a small bucket filled with ice water.

  Their village leader, Talaria, had conjured the ice for him.

  As he thought about her, his cheeks flushed red. Elves were always beautiful, but she was so kind and powerful too, having awakened several affinities. He knew that one couldn’t climb the ten tiers of mortality—especially all the way to the fourth tier—without copious amounts of killing, but he couldn’t imagine Talaria taking a life.

  She was just so—-

  His adolescent musings were interrupted by an acrid scent as smoke billowed over the placid water of the lake. Rowan felt an alarm rise in his chest. Smoke? Why would there be smoke near our little village?

  Their village was so small that it didn’t even have a name and Talaria was enough of a deterrent for other villages to leave them alone, being one of the most powerful beings in this insignificant, forgotten piece of the Never Ending Forest.

  Still, even if all Rowan had ever known was his village and this little lake, that didn’t mean that he hadn’t heard stories about all the lands that existed beyond their village. Most of these tales revolved around endless violent clashes for territory and active potential that occupied most of the Warring Realm, giving the namesake to their realm.

  He hoped that wasn’t the case right now, but he began rowing with alacrity back towards his village. His heart beat in his chest. His father had died in a hunting accident when he was very young. His mother fell victim to the raid of another village, before Talaria had come to their village and acted as a bulwark against such events.

  All he had left were his two little siblings. They were twins. Amy and Max. They were a mischievous pair but he looked out for them the best he could. The thought of anything happening to them sent spikes of panic through his chest.

  He didn’t know for sure if anything bad was happening, but all the smoke seemed to be coming from his village. Tears welled in his eyes as his paddles pushed through the water of the lake. If they…

  No, he shook the thought away.

  I shouldn’t have gone so far out today. I should have stayed closer. I should…

  Recriminating thoughts with no logical basis tore through his mind as he paddled faster and faster, his arms burning from the exertion. After all, he only had the bare minimum of active potential, only having killed weak fish that had never grown into any sort of threat, even to a human child.

  The closer he got, the more that smoke filled his vision, poured into his lungs and consumed his world in an unnatural greyness. The air was no longer pure, but saturated with heat and gaseous debris. He kept on rowing, still unable to make out the village through the smoke.

  He wasn’t even sure if he was rowing in the right direction anymore or if he had gotten turned around. He had tried to maintain a straight line, but he had never paddled with so much force before and his paddles curved in the water as he rowed.

  Still, without any knowledge one way or the other all he could do was keep on paddling with a desperation born from his desire to ensure that his little siblings were all right. Eventually he saw orange flames flickering somewhere far to his left.

  Rowan’s heart sunk in his chest. He realized that their village had been attacked, the orange flames rising in a shape vaguely reminiscent of the square buildings in their village that Talaria had used nature and earth magic to form. This also meant that he had indeed started rowing in the wrong direction.

  If only…

  But no, even if he was there Rowan could have done nothing. He was less than an ant in comparison to Talaria and the homes wouldn’t be on fire if Talaria could have prevented that from happening.

  Maybe Amy and Max made it.

  This thought filled his mind. He convinced himself that this could be true as he rowed towards the inferno that used to be their little, nameless village.

  It took him a while and by the time he arrived, the flames had died down a bit, the sandy-pebble mixture surrounding the lake not serving as further fuel for the flames.

  Now that he was closer he saw that most of the buildings had not been set aflame, only a few. He beached his rowboat, pushing it up the sandy pebble strewn, sandy shore so that it wouldn’t drift off as he ran towards where he hoped to find his siblings.

  His hands were trembling, his knees weak as he coughed amongst the thick smoke that obscured everything. He stumbled over dismembered limbs and decapitated heads, pools of viscous crimson blood and fell into a pile of innards from Anya, a friend of his.

  He puked. Then he cried, tears streaming down his face.

  Anya who I used to compete in rock balancing with, Dillon, my fishing buddy, old Moro who used to give me treats.

  Names and characteristics of people who were now reduced to butchered, occasionally charred corpses flashed through his mind one after another. That was when he reached the house where he knew Max and Anya would be.

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  His fingers clenched, rivers of tears coursed from his eyes and his heart felt like it had been torn out of his still beating chest, but he opened the door, hoping beyond hope that somehow they had survived the slaughter.

  Yet when he opened the door, he screamed. The sound was full of a profound anguish born of a simple life, simple relationships and a simple understanding of the world.

  For when he opened that door and entered their little one room home where they hung woven curtains for privacy, he found his little siblings. First, he saw the torso of his little brother, only ten years old. The torso ended in a stump, where a head should have been, asking him if he had caught anything good.

  When he panned his head a little further after his initial outburst—reduced to mute horror at the visceral, surreal scene—he saw the head. His brother's final emotions would forever be immortalized in his mind: a mixture of defiance and anger.

  For Rowan was sure that he had died defending his twin sister, Amy.

  Then he saw his little sister's head, her pretty blonde hair that she had gotten from their mother coated with crimson, her glassy eyes wide in panicked fear. Next he saw her body, so little and skinny splayed upon the ground in a gruesome manner, her arms wide from what was surely her last stumbling step.

  Both of them had been neatly decapitated. Rowan hoped they had not suffered. They didn’t deserve to. They deserved to still be alive, curious and vibrant, filled with the same zest for life that they always showed. Not corpses who would never grow into the man and woman who they could have become.

  Rowan had heard from a wandering storyteller that there was a realm where one goes after death. He wondered if that were true and hoped that Max and Amy would go on to live vibrant lives of their own there.

  Those hopes were distant, however. Everything felt distant. After his initial reaction, he felt empty and confused. In this drifting state he walked over and closed both of their eyes. He then picked up the head of Amy and walked outside, cradling her in his arms.

  When he did he saw a silver being covered in geometric orange-red lines that looked like flames, with that same color weaving into odd short tendrils where his hair should be standing amongst the smoke of the village. They were humanoid, but more dynamic in form and sleeker than humans.

  They noticed his presence and turned around to look at him. They were obviously male and their eyes contained three layers of swirling liquid silver and orange-red. These swirling liquids formed patterns from moment to moment that he could not decipher. Rowan had never heard of this species before.

  He looked at them and a fluid fury filled him, drawn from the source pools of bonds that were now severed—his siblings, friends and neighbors— once filling him with joy and companionship and now only sorrow and rage.

  “You killed them?” Rowan asked, gesturing towards the village and the head of his little sister.

  “No,” the being responded in an odd, flat voice that shifted speed rather than tone. “My katan did. I only killed Talaria.”

  Rowan had no clue what a katan was, all he knew was that he wanted to attack the being no matter how futile the gesture, but held himself back.

  Instead he asked, “Why?”

  The being responded, “She was a traitor. She was a member of my katan who fled. The katan is a lifebond. Therefore my men slaughtered this village she seemed to care about and I dragged her along, dismembered but alive, making her watch.”

  Something about the emotionless tone and the dispassion caused Rowan to feel confused, his rage becoming something closer to defeat. He knew this man could kill him as easily as he took a breath. Still, he couldn’t help but attempt to gain some closure.

  “My little sister… my brother. They were innocent. Good. Just children. Why did you kill them? Thats….that’s what a monster does. You’re a monster.”

  The being walked towards him the silver skin of his right forearm liquefied, becoming a long curved sword that flickered with flames that swirled from the geometric patterns covering his body. Rowan stood petrified as in a single motion that seemed to split time itself, the being pivoted, the sword vanishing for a moment from his perception.

  Rowan felt a searing pain from his right ha— he looked down, stump. His right stump, where his hand should have been. His sister’s head fell out of his hands and impacted the ground, more blood still trickling from her neck in a thin stream, dying the ground crimson.

  “Respect—human child—is very important.” The creature said, the liquid silver and orange-red swirling slowly in his eyes. “So is power. We inari gain a large portion of our power through momentum. If I had not pursued vengeance then my momentum would have faltered. The suffering of those important to Talaria was part of the momentum of my vengeance. If Talaria or any of you had more power then you could have killed me instead. That is the way of the Warring Realm. ”

  Inari… so they were inari, Rowan thought as he scrambled to pick up his sister's head with his one remaining hand.

  “That…” Rowan closed his mouth before voicing the denial that welled up in his chest.

  The Inari smiled, revealing double rows of small, sharp teeth. “Good. You have already learned a small amount of respect. I have no reason to kill you. Perhaps you shall also find momentum in vengeance. Farewell, human child.”

  With that, the inari man walked in a way that seemed too precise, the speed increasing from moment to moment, quickly leaving Rowan’s sight in the smoky remnants of what had once been his home.

  His hand lay upon the ground, the wound already cauterized from the heat of the inari’s blade. It had been a clean strike, faster than he could have believed or ever witnessed. It had almost seemed like the inari had been teaching him—like a master to an apprentice—at the end, encouraging him to seek vengeance.

  As if he could pose no threat anyways.

  This stoked that liquid fury that had been building in him. It was as if the blow had also cauterized his anguished emotions. He still felt gut-wrenching sorrow, but he felt something else. Those currents of rage from earlier, like during a storm when the lake became dangerous to row upon. He felt like that, full of darkness and depths arising from his simple life as a villager.

  Rowan used his left hand and right stump to bring Amy’s head to a sandy part of the beach as he stumbled upon the guts and viscera of those he had known all his life.

  On his way he discovered Talaria’s body as well and cursed her for bringing this fate down upon the village. For bringing the inari’s terrible momentum of vengeance down upon them. Any childish crush vanished as he stood amongst the destruction that her presence had wrought and cradled the cooling, dismembered head of his sister, his hands stained with her blood.

  He then tenderly placed Amy’s head upon the beach, facing towards the lake she loved so much and spent an hour digging with his left hand, unable to use a shovel without two hands. He then did the same for her body as well as Max's head and his body, trudging various times through the landscape until it began to feel routine and natural, as if body parts, heads, guts and blood were a natural part of the terrain.

  He worked through the night and as dawn broke upon the horizon, saturating the peaceful lake he had known all his life in golden glory, Rowan did not feel the usual excitement as he wondered what catch he would reel in. He did not hear the bickering of his sibling or them shouting good morning as they pestered him to bring them along..

  He always told them he liked the alone time, since they were always so close together and that the boat was too small, but now he regretted not spending more time with them. It would have been cramped, but he could’ve let one of them tag along some times.

  Now, he would never hear their whining or joy again. Never listen to old man Moro’s stories, ask Danny to make him a new fishing pole or awkwardly try to strike up a conversation with Emma, a girl he had a crush on. No, the village that had been his whole life was destroyed, those he had known all his life dead.

  He was alone and all he felt were currents of rage that suffused him, pulling him along towards the words that the inari man had left him with. Perhaps you shall also find momentum in vengeance. Those words echoed in his mind.

  Rowan did not want this.

  I wish I had the power to make sure nothing like this ever happens again.

  He didn’t want the vengeance of that inari man, a fiery destruction. No, he wanted a power that could also nurture and give life, like the lake that his village fished in, drank from and sat around to watch the sunset each night.

  But also like the storm that people feared would blow their way, or the riptides that one had to watch out for. He wanted that sort of power. He wished dearly for it.

  I wish I had the power of water.

  Unbeknownst to Rowan, his thread of fate upon a tapestry that represented all of existence was woven with a thread from the origin of water for Muse had heard his earnest plea and adjusted his fate accordingly as she sat on the ledge of her wishing well, listening to the chorus of intent of the denizens inhabiting the Myriad Realms.