The night after leaving New Nashville was rather dark; unlike the days before, the mist chose to stick around and clung thickly to their bodies as they huddled in a small house at least a couple of miles away from New Nashville. Colt sat near a window, his eyes honed in on the night around them, seeing the barely perceptible shadows outside.

  There weren’t monsters, and even now, he wondered if Denny had a way of keeping tabs; he’d run his perception for any trace of Edicts. Trying to see if there was some kind of thin way for Denny to keep watch on where they went, but he detected nothing. Julia even ran her perception, too, trying to practice out her new Edict: Surge, but overloading the air around them with a wave of water mana in an attempt to overpower anything…

  It was essentially like tossing an EMP with mana; Colt didn’t know if it would even work in normal circumstances, but she also said she didn’t feel mana on them.

  So, basically, Denny had just let them walk out of the city and demanded they leave in twenty-four hours. In his supreme confidence, he was betting he could find and deal with Colt and his group if they failed to comply.

  Colt massaged his eyes as he looked in the dark.

  Whatever tools the guy had for tracking weren’t based on tagging them and following them along. Probably something to do with the scouts. He didn’t think for a moment that Denny was going to just assume they left the city. The guy was going to check somehow.

  Which meant that they needed to put the plan into action tonight.

  “You’re going to stay up?” Colt asked Nate. The soldier sat near him by the window, his eyes scanning the dark with a narrowed focus.

  “I got a quest.”

  “From your Icon?”

  “Yes. ‘Conquer New Nashville,’ boding, but given I’ve contracted to what amounts to a historical warlord, it makes sense; it’ll change my Edict, or so the reward says.” Nate rubbed at his knuckles and sighed, “Here we are, forced into a corner. We could just leave, but none of us want to leave Jimmy behind.”

  “We won’t be leaving New Nashville behind. At least, I don’t intend to. The people there don’t deserve to be ruled by a dictator. But this morning isn’t about conquering New Nashville. So I’m sorry, I don’t think your or my quest is going to be fulfilled tomorrow,” Colt kicked his feet up and picked up the sack nearby. Within it, he felt the pulsing beat of a metal heart. In his lap, the pulse was an ominous thing, a reminder that the contents had been a very real body part of a giant.

  Nate settled with a small grunt of acknowledgment.

  “We get Jimmy out, and then we deal with New Nashville as a whole once we are all together.”

  “You want to overthrow a government.” Nate broke it down to the core of it.

  Colt rubbed his chin and gave a small, sad chuckle. “I don’t know. Leaving these people under the heels of a man who’s going to tighten the screws and strip more and more of their freedom—people will end up dead for him. I’ve been thinking. We’re growing, gaining power and strength… What is that power and strength if we hoard it to ourselves and let others abuse theirs? First, they're designated as 'low-class citizens' and given fewer rights… What if they take more and more because they need more soldiers for Denny’s ambitions? Does it sit right with you?”

  Nate was silent for a long time, staring into that dark street with Colt. Somewhere out there used to be light poles, which brought a touch of day and brightness to this dim and foreboding atmosphere. New Nashville was out there, somewhere, a beacon of light in the dark. Colt already found that he missed his bed in that city's safety.

  “I’ve fought for worse causes. They said it was for freedom, that we were protecting those who are free. Tell me, what does being in the Middle East do to enhance the freedom of people in America? What does me and my brothers bleeding and dying do? This, I see it as more straightforward. There are people there who need help. You ask me if I think it’s right to overthrow Denny’s government—I don’t think it matters if it’s right or wrong. I think we have to do what the people there deserve, even if they don’t know how to ask for it.”

  Nate kept to silence settling further in his chair as he looked out at the darkness, his eyes keen and sharp, jaw set.

  As always, a stalwart ally who, for Colt, was an invaluable sounding board. If they were in agreement about how to exercise their power, then it was a good place to be.

  Colt fished out the metal heart from the backpack, feeling the steel steadily beat in his hand. This could be a tool for a future weapon, but it might also have something in it that could help Nate.

  With it heavy in his hand, he extended the beating heart to his ally. “We didn’t have time to talk about this, given your fight. But I got this from the last boss. I think it belongs with you.”

  Nate accepted the morbid piece of metal with a peculiar look; his eyes flashed as they no doubt inspected the information. “Thank you.”

  With it beating in his hand, he turned his eyes to ask Colt, ‘Are you sure,’ no doubt, figuring out that the material could’ve been used for a weapon, that instead Colt had given it to him to advance his Edict as well.

  “You’ve earned it,” Colt said, trying to put him at ease. And Nate’s eyes turned back down to the heart, trying to make heads or tales of it.

  Colt reached into his bag for the other object. In his hand was the piece of meteorite, the dark purple even present in the darkness of the night. He felt it whispering to him in his hand even now—deep down and within, his most powerful Edict began to stir.

  Did it sense his intention?

  “If you’re going to keep watch, I’m going to find a quiet corner and try something.”

  “You’re advancing it? I can feel it now, the way it’s moving.” Nate finally tore his attention from the steel heart and looked surprised. His perception of Soul had advanced, whether through the training of his meditation or diligent practice of investing stat points.

  “It is.” Colt tossed the meteorite and then caught it again; the rock buzzed in his hand. This would be the gateway for his fight with the Edict; he felt reasonable about his chances, but there would always be uncertainty. Even now, he remembered how close to death his first brush with this Edict had been. Movement wasn’t like Cut. It was more primal, raw, and wild by its very nature. “It’ll be the edge I need for what we’re facing.”

  Nate furrowed his brows. “Believe in yourself. You’re capable of things I didn’t even think possible, and you’re why I’ve learned to push just as hard in this new world. Win.”

  Colt took those words to the heart and stood, retreating from the window. With Nate as guard, he felt confident in his ability to focus and hone in on what he was doing.

  Now, with his trusty friend keeping watch, he was free to focus on his meditation and concentrate on pushing further than ever before.

  He pulled back from Nate—away from Sarah and Julia, who slept in the other room. And found a small little space in the back of the apartment that housed a broken washer and dryer, he closed the door behind him and then settled down on the simple tile floor of the room. With the door closed it was dark. A pure black dark that opened the mind to the void around him. No one to focus on, nobody to worry about protecting, no outside city suffering under the heel of a dictator.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  In here, in this room, was just Colt, alone in a void of his own design. And here, he would face down his Edict, not only for his own personal power but also for the good of New Nashville as a whole.

  The meteorite sat in his hands, its surface shaped by countless years of moving through the cosmos, a constant force of movement as it traveled the stars. He pictured it traveling, the imposition of Movement a part of its life, all it knew, really in the void of everything else out there. And not only that, it had to move fast—incredibly fast—part of a giant whole.

  The stone in his hand grew hotter as he held it, searing pain like a burning piece of coal until he no longer felt it at all.

  For a second, his vision shifted, less of being in a dark void, but rather, him, sitting on the asteroid that this came from. Also moving rapidly through the void of space.

  His concentration, paired with poking at the ancient Edict had yanked his soul and mind… Somewhere else, somewhere far away from the little laundry space he’d settled down in.

  Darkness all around, dotted by tiny little lights, strapped to an object with a destination it didn’t know. It didn’t matter. The only thing that did was going forward.

  Colt was there; his breath cold, disappearing with every intake as the void sucked all the oxygen away, as they sped through the cosmos—above was the plethora of stars, all of which moved in their way; it was a universal constant. To live was to change. To change was to move.

  In the back of his mind, he felt the demon stir.

  The comet began to speed; flakes of rock broke off behind them. Colt felt the need to grasp at the rock, knowing not how he got here, but he was no longer aware that true reality was him sitting in a room. He’d been transported, someway, somehow, to where this was, where the root of movement came from, and an object that might’ve been spawned a billion years before his time—and here he was strapped on. Colt’s fingers dug into the surface of the rock, trying to use cut on instinct to make holds.

  The Edict failed here, swept away as the comet sped faster and faster. It was too weak to have any influence in a realm such as this. The demon began to laugh as the comet rocketed even faster; a piece of stone broke off as it spiraled head-first toward a planet. Heat, oxygen, all of it began to disappear as Colt strengthened his grasp as much as he could.

  Everything around him was a blur as they headed straight towards a foreign planet, one that looked like Earth but certainly wasn’t. The continents were all wrong.

  Seconds now, he would be ripped from the asteroid, torn to shreds as the speed at which he moved conflicted with the atmosphere. Resistance from the tiny molecules of air and their friction against his skin would shred him apart, remove him from existence. Movement lingered there, pushing down on the gas pedal that was their speed. His muscles strained, and his fingers screamed as he clung to the piece of rock that even now was coming undone into millions of pieces.

  Logically, a rock shouldn’t increase speed as it approached a planet. But logic gave way to momentum, to the universal Edict that pressed down on the situation. They were ratcheting up, going faster, pushing the bounds of what could be achieved for the sake of doing so.

  He was going to die.

  Movement was too strong an Edict.

  Flashes of the life he’d leave behind ran through his head as they sped to the surface of the planet, as they raced faster and faster to death.

  He saw Jimmy toiling away in New Nashville, Denny laughing at him as he suffered stitching together bodies in the dark. He saw Nate, his broken body torn to shreds by monsters. He saw Sarah, her eyes gouged out and her head on a pike—he saw Nick crying in the void and Julia, broken and listless, with the last light of life having vanished from her eyes.

  He saw his mother, her disapproving frown as she stared at him for all those years.

  "Worthless," she'd say, looking at another report card with C's, D's, and an F. “How did I raise such a useless child?”

  He saw himself next to a cutting board. The inferno of an oven blazed hot in their trapped little hell. His hands worked, cutting raw chicken, piece by piece, the slime and dead meat cubbed, then shoved in a plastic container to be cooked. Donny laughed at him as he worked, never letting him finish, shoving more chicken there for him to work away his life with.

  Movement roiled and laughed, pumping the speed up as his fingers gave, as he lost hold of the asteroid—torn and thrown into the air alone, his body searing with pain as skin flecked off and burned away to the atmosphere. Below the land came into view, a myriad of oceans and rocks he could crash into. He’d never make it. He couldn’t move there. He’d burn up in the stratosphere, never to even hit.

  For someone who’d lived so stagnant for most of his life, trapped in the circumstances of his own making. Who was he to tame such an Edict?

  Movement was change.

  Colt screamed, no air in his lungs; his head was a bloody mess as vessels burst in his eyes, coloring the world below with a shade of crimson.

  No.

  NO!

  Colt's hands tightened. He felt the swirling Edict around him, the behemoth that was the primordial form of his Edict—HIS Edict. It belonged to him. It worked for him. He was no longer the same man who toiled away in the kitchen, too focused on the present to change and grow—every day was a step forward. Every day since the system hit, he’d grown, worked, and struggled.

  Pain ran through his body as his Soul clashed against the Edict. It buckled, tore, surged, waved, and twisted and slithered beneath his will. Trying to get his hands free as he pressed the one remaining thing he had, his sheer will. His proof in himself.

  Colt was no longer stagnent. He was just as much alive as the Edict itself.

  Every day. Every step.

  Colt’s fingers clutched as the invisible Edict.

  It screamed and fought.

  He slipped but clutched again.

  There was no such thing as perfection, no such thing as getting it right the first time—there were always mistakes, always moments where you lost control. But if you tried, if you moved forward just a little bit, it was progress. It was change. It was movement.

  This time, his fingers caught. He yanked the Edict and felt the raw rushing force around him. He felt how his skin tore with the wind, how fast he was spiraling to the planet below, toward his death from the wind and air.

  Movement was his.

  He stripped his body of its momentum, of all the Movement. The pain stopped, and blood dripped from his eyes and nose, yet he hung, his body still hundreds of thousands of feet above the planet, a blessed moment of stillness as he felt the Edict swirl, felt his movement hang in the air like a held breath. Asking what he wanted to do. Was he to stay here, hanging in the sky? Stale?

  Colt laughed.

  Of course not.

  He exhaled and flung himself back at the planet, speeding faster than before. This time, though, he shifted the air around him, discarding those particles that tore at his flesh, slicing through them as he let cut weave into his movement. The truth was that the pain and that pesky resistance only slowed him down. No. They could go faster together, he and movement.

  They spiraled toward the planet, racing towards their crash to the end.

  This, acceptance of change, acceptance of the speed and momentum, this was what this glorious Edict demanded of him. Colt embraced it the way he would with anything he loved, and together, they danced toward the planet, pushing each other to go faster.

  Land spun closer; the jagged rocks below a certain death.

  Colt didn’t let up. Pushing down faster on that gas pedal at the encouragement of his Edict, when they hit rocks, he simply cut through it, fading out into the blackness. Pushing even faster.

  Faster. Faster. FASTER.

  Colt laughed as they sped to the heavens once more, his Edict tumbling around with him, proud that he'd embraced its lesson.

  ———

  *Meditate* (Intermediate) has gained a level!

  *Meditate* (Intermediate) has gained a level!

  *Meditate* (Intermediate) has gained a level!

  *Soul And Mind Fortitude* (Intermediate) has gained a level!

  *Soul And Mind Fortitude* (Intermediate) has gained a level!

  *Threadweaver* (Basic) has gained a level!

  You have gained 1 point of Soul!

  You have gained 1 point of Soul!

  Your understanding of the Edict Movement has evolved. Movement (Minor) has become Movement (Lesser)

  ———