"Don't get smart with me," Denton growled. His anger sparked to life but was a fair bit more subdued than usual. This kid, Henri Bernard, was not acting at all like how he was expecting and that unnerved him greatly. Denton's first instinct was to pummel him until he quit moving, but, unfortunately, now he was second-guessing that part of himself. That line just looked too big to be crossing right now . . . He knew the rumors, the Esconians- the emperor's slave soldiers - were grooming them. Training them to join the army! Was the Bernard kid that competent? Would the Esconians hunt him down if he hurt him?

Damn, damn, damn.

There was one advantage that Denton had, however, that helped lessen Henri’s act: Denton was surrounded by friends and those friends were casting nervous, questioning glances at their leader. Regaining control of his thoughts, Denton glared down at Henri, and took a step-forward, clenching his fists tight.

“Yer home, h-uh?” There was sadistic glee on his face. “So that’s what Terry meant? Ha!”

Roland finally came up beside Henri, the smile still on his face, and was resting his hand on the pommel of his sword, like usual; he looked down at Henri quizzically and then to Denton.

“I can take both his friends,” Roland offered helpfully. “You n’ Denton can finish up where you left off, yeah?”

Behind him Denton's friends were all awaiting their leader's orders. Words wouldn't work on people without the mind to use them, they weren't exactly bright and clearly didn't want to talk. It was becoming a waste of effort, and yet Henri was trying his best to prevent a fight from breaking out. He didn't quite like the idea of having his best pal take on two people, but either way with the odds stacked against them one of them was going to have to, unless...

It appeared as if Henri was giving Roland some kind of order from Denton's perspective. Something was uttered, something quiet that they didn't want him to hear.

"Only if we have to." Henri muttered to his friend.

Denton wasn't giving him any verbal material to work with. He was told not to get smart, any reply to that would cause a fight to break out. What the fuck did Terry mean? Probably something dumb, and he didn't want to give him the opportunity to answer, since from this point anything that came out of his mouth would be him goading him into a fight. Aurelius told him to think and use his head. What was the best course of action? Hrrrrm.

Suddenly Denton would feel a striking pain in his abdomen. Somehow all the tension and worry about his friend and his home had been unleashed through his leg and into the ball of his foot which he buried into Denton's stomach as hard as he could. Funny how it happened.

Actions spoke louder than words apparently, but hopefully by taking out the leader he could avoid a huge fight. Only if this worked though.

A sudden movement on the fringe of sight caught and held Denton's attention. Unfortunately, to get a better look, he had turned towards it, and was quickly overcome with a sudden, blinding pain as the air in his lungs was forcefully pulled out in one, large gasp. Experience in fighting told him it was entirely possible to now grab Henri’s foot, throw him back, leap onto him, and beat him until he was a bloody, broken mess. The want to do this was incredibly great, in fact, but he just could not make his body cooperate.

Denton sagged to his knees and clutched at his stomach and side. What happened? The thought desperately raced through his head as he went over events. The kick was strong - powerful, even - and then Denton turned into it . . . He opened himself up to it. He’d never live this down.

“Stupid,” he said as he shakily rose from his knees and one of his friends rushed forwards to support him, “you stupid son of a bitch. I hope yer whole stinkin’ house burns down around you!”

The second friend threw the plain, brown jug he was carrying onto the ground with a hollow thud. Empty.

The fight could continue, Denton could get up and whip some ass, but he’d need a couple of minutes . . . To catch his breath, to reassert his strength for his friends, and to push the thoughts of what Henri had done from his mind.

Roland, on the other hand was all smiles, at least up until the ‘burn your whole house down’ comment, and was about to comment on that when the jug hit the ground; instead, a look of disgust and horror wiped the smile right off his face.

“Oh no,” he nearly whispered. “Terry isn’t here,” he suddenly realized out loud.

All this comment about burning his house down had Henri up in arms. This would never end, it would be a constant war between him and Denton because he was told to make a dickjoke about his mother, and his house would burn down and he'd be paranoid about it until the moment it happened. But he wouldn't be paranoid for long. The hollow thunk of an empty fuel jug would confirm his fear.

This whole time while he was preoccupied with his staring contest with Denton, Terry had fucked off and was going to set the lighthouse on fire. What happened to THINKING, why didn't he THINK of that!? So much for that.

Now it finally came down to the wire. Roland would have to hold off the two while he went to save the lighthouse, he was built like a machine with military experience and a sword, he could handle it, and Henri would be back soon in no time to lend a hand.

Once he stopped the fire of course. He nodded to Roland in approval, signalling that he should carry on his two against one idea, and shot off like a bullet towards the lighthouse.

Roland didn't immediately join Henri to save the lighthouse. No, instead, he walked directly in front of Denton and stopped; he narrowed his eyes and hardened his face to the point where he looked like a completely different person than before. No playfulness, no smiles. This was the Roland Dufort that only showed after he got sufficiently angry.

Like the crack of a whip, Roland balled up his fist, reared back, and hammered Denton with a meaty thwack that sent him spiraling to the ground in the blink of an eye. Startled, his friends instinctively took a step back, and then, regaining their senses, made to move forwards but were stopped by Roland unsheathing just enough of his sword to show a glint of metal.

“Right,” Roland said without inflection, “carry that trash back to town,” he gestured to Denton who was struggling to get up, “and tell him I’ll be looking for him later.”

Releasing the hilt of his sword, Roland made to stroll by the three men, directly in-between them and Denton, but stopped again, just beside Denton’s head; he pressed down on Denton’s chest and forced him back onto the ground. Resuming his walk, Roland lifted his leg and placed the heel of his foot just above Denton’s head, and soon after, Denton blacked out.

Roland made his way after Henri as quickly as he could.

The closer Henri got to the lighthouse the more he would be able to make out a figure standing just at the entrance of the building, facing it; he backed away suddenly after attempting to stuff something into a small crack opposite the way the door was meant to open; it appeared that breaking into the lighthouse took more effort than they had thought. Still, they had managed enough to do some damage . . .

Fire quickly spread up and around the frame of the door and smoke, thin at first, but quickly thickening, was starting to show. They had used a thick, foul smelling oil that burned slowly, but fiercely. Rare stuff.

A foul burning aroma permeated his senses before he even saw the fire. Smoke, he was too late, and he should probably be running away from the lighthouse instead of towards it.The whole town would be able to see the mushroom cloud explosion from a distance. If he lived to tell the tale, he would be unemployed, stuck back in his mother's home, robbed of all of his possessions. That's why he just had to do it.

Do what?

Dashing at whippet speed, he was quickly coming closer and closer, planless. Panic was driving his legs, but it shouldn't be at the wheel of his brain too. He still had to try to think. There was a pump at the side of the house, if he was fast he could put it out. First he'd have to prevent Terry from stopping him.

The last thing this situation needed was more fighting,there was no time for that, so he'd resort to a scare tactic. Terry would have to have the biggest set of balls not to run away from a screaming man wielding a giant knife.

"HRWAAAAAHHHHH!!!!"

Even before Henri brought attention to himself, Terry had turned to look at him, back at the lighthouse, and then wished himself to be somewhere else; he didn't want to be here and he definitely didn't want to be the one Henri caught doing this to the lighthouse . . . He didn't even have anything against Henri! He tried to stop Denton earlier and after looking through the crack, he had told Denton it looked like this was where Henri lived--this was taking everything way too far, way too fast!

But Denton wouldn’t listen . . . What was he supposed to do? Make Denton change his mind? Nope, that was not happening, but now, at least, it was done, and Henri was coming and he was waving around--

“Oh, oh god nononono,” Terry chattered skittishly and backed away, nearly into the door, itself, and then bolted forwards and away from the lighthouse as fast as he could. Ignoring Henri outright, he wouldn’t quit running until he was safe and back in town. This was the final straw, he decided, and he was done with it all; he was done with this town and its people, and for all he cared, Denton and Henri could both go to hell.

That left the lighthouse and the fire, and the looming threat of it all blowing sky high and taking a sizable chunk of the cliff face with it. The smoking was now turning a more discernable black and thickening up, too; it was not looking good, to be sure.

And there it goes, Aurelius’ voice bounced around the inside of Henri’s mind and was immediately followed by a faint, buzzing sound. Noise. The sound of static. What will you do?

"AAAAH!"

They both charged towards each other, filled with energy, their eyes on their targets,ready to end this here and now. Nearing each other, they prepared themselves and...

Completely ran past each other. Neither of them wanted to have anything to do with one another, and thank goodness for that. Imagine Henri running, screaming, flailing his weapon only to approach Terry and kindly ask him to leave. It would be a tough act to play down, and he didn't want to have to make Terry leave. They both went their separate ways, as they should, none of them had time for petty skirmishes anyway. Nobody did. The place was going to blow.

Henri's real target was the water pump at the side of the house. There were a few installed in the area. Grabbing a bucket, he held the handle, and frantically began pumping ice cold ocean water into the container. There was a hose attached to the pump (it came with a weird handle that you turned to switch between the faucet and hose) but he couldn't pump and hose the fire down all at once. He'd need a second person, but Roland was busy taking on Denton and his lacky. He needed help.

"I'm going to try to put the fire out, I'm open for suggestions."

Aurelius' presence and voice grew silent as the buzzing static increased in volume. The noise so imposed itself on Henri that the rest of the world looked motionless, quiet and lifeless. The upper right portion of Henri's vision would split, cracking like an egg's shell, and deeply embedding a score of snaking lines across his field of vision. These lines widened, rearranged themselves, grew tight together, spread apart once more, and formed a small frame, a window into a white expanse of nothing. This window situated itself where the original lines appeared.

Quit worrying, Aurelius commanded. Look to the fire.

In reality, Henri wouldn't be able to see much of the fire, really, because the majority of it was behind the door of the lighthouse; however, he would be able to feel it . . . Its warmth was clearly present in his skin. It was a good feeling.



The words appeared in Henri’s mind as naturally as his native language; he could speak these words, he would know, instinctively, and he knew enough of what they meant to know that they held significance.

His world became still in comparison to the loud humming of static, which filled the air so thickly he felt as if he were going to drown in it. He even felt his chest tighten a bit, but that could have been the smoke filling his lungs.

Everything became busy, in different ways. His world was still sure, but there was such a bizarre cacophony of effects, it looked like his life was a photo that a child scribbled onto angrily. Cracks, things splitting into fractures and breaking apart, redesigning itself until it formed a strange window, and what else are windows for but to look through?

There was nothing on the other side. Some window, it didn't show him the fire or his lighthouse, but the more he stared through it the more apparent a certain phrase became. In mei anima, iaceo lacuna. In mei anima iaceo lacuna. For all it's strangeness and incomprehensibility, there was a certain comfortable familiarity about it, and the way it fell out of his mouth seemed natural.

"In mei anima iaceo lacuna."

All at once, the heat that Henri felt at the core of his being was dwarfed and replaced by a newer, stranger sensation running up the length of his arm; it would last for all of a second before a familiar crystal began to surface from the limb. The crystal, fully emerged from Henri, would hover above the ground, and just beside its host and was visibly smaller than he would remember.

With the crystal’s emergence, the window, too, came to purpose, and a gigantic, black eye peered through; it blinked once, twice, and then closed fully before fading away; in its place, a silhouetted figure appeared and stopped, and faced Henri.

Almost as though it had defaulted to a form it had known long ago, the figure was roughly humanoid and was becoming more so as time went on. It was changing--adapting to a new standard.

Now, the silhouette’s mouth--if it could be called that--split and closed, and its eyes narrowed: Fire, it said, is easy. A four piece puzzle, the silhouetted figure backed away, lifted its arm, and extended a finger. Remove a piece of the puzzle and what do you think will happen? But be careful, the figure--now quite obviously Aurelius--warned, each piece can be just as dangerous as the puzzle, itself. Try moving one.

Like Aurelius explained, there were four pieces to the puzzle, and the most obvious piece was that of heat and was also probably the easiest for Henri to move about. If thought on, Henri would find that he did, in fact, posses the knowledge required to drawn on a piece of the puzzle and move it, and place it somewhere else . . . The problem, however, was where he would place it? A lot of damage could be caused if he haphazardly doused the fire by torching something else.

A crystal emerged from his hand and a giant eye appeared through the windows, peeking at him through the physical fabrics of reality, or something like that, like it was -behind- the world. Aerulius. Henri's arm tingled and his heart raced, taking time to think had been the theme of the day, but everything that was happening around him surpassed all logical thought. It was a struggle to keep his breath steady, holy shit.All along what happened in the ruins had some significance, he wasn't crazy.

Now how could he make sense of this situation and solve this puzzle? Puzzles to Henri were more literal, pieces of wood or cardboard cut into certain patterns you had to piece together to reveal a colourful image. That was a puzzle, he did a bunch of those when he was a kid, but how did any of these pieces fit together, which pieces were part of the puzzle? They could be anything! What did he think would happen if he removed a piece of the puzzle...

Well right now, he didn't have time to think. He didn't have the luxury of time, as of one of the puzzle pieces were literally consuming his house while he tried to figure this out. This puzzle piece had to go. Obviously he couldn't reach his hands into the flame and physically lift it away.

Maybe he had to command it. Pointing his finger at the fire, he hoped it could somehow lift it just by pointing at it, and thinking hard about lifting it away from his house. If this worked, he would try sending the fire into the ocean.

Without warning, Henri's untrained mind became sharp and focused, and taut, too; it was almost on the verge of snapping in two, in fact. There was an almost physical connection between the ocean and the fire, and, at the very center, Henri. The comfortable warmth of the fire that Henri had felt earlier was entirely gone now and in its place, the vast coldness of the ocean began to creep into him, and chilling him to the bone, to his very core. An act of God was not something he could do carelessly or halfheartedly, and even the smallest mistake would cost him his life. Commanding the ‘puzzle’ pieces was not entirely accurate, they were not alive, they were not sentient, and although there did exist methods to call to them and give them life, Aurelius’ gift was nothing quite so fantastical.

And then his mind really did snap.

Suddenly, Henri would find that he could focus equally on the ocean, the fire, himself, and the task he needed to do. Each subject was split between his mind in equal parts and without strain, either. There was nothing to it, it was normal and mundane, and Henri might as well have been doing it all his life, for as easy as it now appeared . . .

With his focus now split, tethering bonds would began to form between the subjects and each one served as a tool to be manipulated by Henri’s willpower and thought. He could not simply command the fire’s heat to travel from point A to point B, but he could acknowledge that the coldness of the ocean and the warmth of the fire were not so different a thing; he could say--declare with certainty, even--that the heat of the fire was naturally attracted to the cold, vast ocean, and that the ocean’s pull was quite strong. Much stronger than where the fire was presently burning, in fact. The process was simple, really, and with Henri’s mind so split, incredibly easy to understand; he needed only apply his will to the newly formed bonds and manipulate them just so. There was, however, still a need to be careful . . . No matter how easy it appeared, there was always the risk of applying too much force or doing things backwards, and stoking the fire into a powerful inferno instead.

Do it now, Henri Bernard, Aurelius lowered his arm and came close to the window once more, or you may lose this chance forever.

"Nnng!"

There was a strain in his mind, as if he could feel the efforts of his concentration, and the more he tried to ignore it and apply focus the harder the strain became. Freezing cold sensations crept up his body leaving behind a trail of goosebumps and raised hairs, this splitting headache and these chills, was he ill?

On the other hand, a hot tingling sensation swept over him, causing him to perspire and pant like a dog, splitting headache worsening. Hot and cold all at once, it felt impossible to handle, and the splitting headache increased until finally, the two sensations split.

He split. Or his consciousness split, but somehow the two sensations seperated themselves into difference focuses, pressure was allieviated and there was a sort of command center, a himself in the middle with a clearer mind to make sense of it all.

"Okay so.."

Two bonds, warm and cold, this wasn't PHYSICALLY moving them around, he had to treat them like, essences or something. For all his training with Aurelius he still wasn't one for words, but he would best describe it as both of them becoming one? He had to make cold and hot the same thing, what do you get when you mix the two together? Do they become neutral or something catastrophic? Looks like he'd find out.

There was the focus on the fire, and the focus on the water, and if they were himself and his focus, then he had to try to make the two focuses the same? Slowly he'd close his eyes and try to make the two bonds one. Think, like Aurelius said.

Henri's conclusion was not an accurate one, but, all the same, it was not entirely inaccurate, either. The truth of the matter was, he was trying to make the two opposing elements one in the same, in a sense, but there was more to it, too; he wanted the heat to travel to the cold and away from the lighthouse. What works, works, however, and his attempt to save his lighthouse, this time, would, in fact, work.

At first, there was no significant sign that anything, if at all, was happening, but with sudden ferocity, there was a smacking boom in the distance, towards the ocean, and a loud, cracking snap from the lighthouse. A remnant of the fire, smoke, bellowed from the door, now broken and splintered, and hanging from what remained of the hinges. Dissipating quickly, the smoke thinned out and revealed the fire to be extinguished . . . Quite thoroughly so!

A sheet of thin ice covered scorch marks on the floor, walls, and ceiling. The temperature in the lighthouse plummeted and became harsh, harsher than any winter a resident of River’s End would have ever experienced in a hundred years. With enough concentration and willpower, Henri could have probably made it snow . . .

Someone with a heavy-footed run came to a noisy stop behind Henri and with the fire now dealt with, Henri would find that some of his mind was now focusing on whoever was behind him and was creating yet another bond; he could have manipulated that bond, too, if he tried, just like he had done with the fire and the ocean, and, like before, if he so wished, he could plunge the icy cold of the ocean into whoever was behind him and kill them on the spot.

Only, now the focus was fading and Henri’s mind would go dim and concepts that had been so easy to understand ten seconds ago were suddenly impossible to grasp.