Skill Hunter -Kill Monsters, Acquire Skills, Ascend to the Highest Rank!

Ike explained everything to Wisp and Mag, to the extent he himself understood it. Mag bounced along, bobbing his head thoughtlessly, simply absorbing the information without question. Wisp, on the other hand, frowned deeper and deeper with every passing second.

“So you… became the storm, or… the storm became you? And it told you things? And then the Prince and the King… are both pieces of you that Brightbriar carved out? Wait, hold up, how old are you? And… huh? Rosamund, too? What the fuck is going on with you?” Wisp demanded, crossing her arms at him and frowning deeply.

Ike raised his hands. “It made a lot of sense to me in storm-form, but now that I’m back to normal again, I totally agree with you and I have no idea. I just know that this all made sense, but… I don’t know. I’m not aware of how old I am, other than how old the System said I was, and I don’t remember anything of the Prince’s or King’s life, except what they’ve shown me. I mean, I remember my childhood. I remember it being… a normal childhood. Uneventful. My uncle raised me, and he remembered my mother having me, so it’s not like I’m a puppet, plus—”

“Plus we’ve all seen your insides more times than we want to.”

Ike gestured at Wisp. “Exactly. I’m a human. I don’t know how Brightbriar made me, or what happened there. Even then, the Prince indicated that he was human before Brightbriar turned him into a puppet, and he’s part of me, but…”

Wisp shook her head. “Crazy.”

Ike nodded, feeling the same emotion. “So… I don’t know. I barely understand this myself. Explaining it to you is really the best I can do.”

“Damn. That’s complicated mage shit, right here. See? This is what I’m talking about. Humans! Humans are so complicated. They’re complicated for no reason, too. Just out here doing weird-ass things for no reason except to make things more complicated…”

Ike put his hands up. “It’s too complicated for me, to be honest. I don’t know how any of this went down, but I really wish it hadn’t. About the only part that makes any sort of sense to me is the storm. The storm… feels right. Everything else feels wrong. Like a loss. But the storm feels right.”

Wisp gave him a nod. “Is the King yours, at least?”

“I haven’t tried to absorb him yet, but I know I could.” Ike hesitated, then sat down and closed his eyes. No time like the present.

He plunged into his core. The storm still raged around it, clashing endlessly in his core. The forces that made him up, fighting against one another. From out of those forces, he sensed the Prince, lingering at the bottom of his core like a big block of stagnant cool air to force the more heated parts of his core into a flurry.

The King was there, too, a bright spot of heat and pride at the very apex of his being. It turned to him with gleaming eyes and stared into his. “You understand now.”

“I’ve only begun to understand. If the Prince was punished by Brightbriar for losing control of his country, then what happened to you?”

The King snorted. “Indeed, you have only begun to understand. The Prince was not punished. He was avenged. Brightbriar loved him dearly, the obedient child that he was. I was punished. I dared to break free.” It stretched out its hand, and Ike touched it.

He was submerged into memory. A glorious city, raised under the King’s banner. It had been Brightbriar’s, but so weakly cobbled together under his rule. The King took on that weak conglomeration of cities and states and made it one glorious union, a grand country in its own right. He was their rightful leader, a leader who needed no one to control him or order his every motion. He threw off Brightbriar’s reins and took the lead for himself.

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And Brightbriar grew hideous.

Puppets besieged the region. He fought them off, time and time again, built walls and defenses such that Brightbriar and his puppets could never enter, and would be instantly detected if they did. His power was so far beyond anything Ike had ever seen that it was shocking; even Brightbriar couldn’t stand up. Over and over, he fought Brightbriar off, and in so doing, continued to unify his land of warriors, while simultaneously empowering his best fighters. His country grew stronger and stronger, until it became a dominant force in the region. It seemed there was no stopping him. Brightbriar would not win. He could not.

But Brightbriar didn’t need to win. He only needed to bring his rebellious child to bear.

He appeared, one day, over the King’s capital city. With him, the tortured husk of a mountain, distorted beyond belief, frozen in its final death throes. A force even the King couldn’t equal. A being his entire country could not surpass.

In one great clash, the King sent Brightbriar flying directly out of his region, but the mountain could not be handled so easily. He sent most of his warriors away. They needed to survive, to continue to keep the country safe from Brightbriar. Only the strongest, most loyal of his soldiers remained.

“The Old Guard,” Ike realized.

They were mere husks of themselves when Ike met them. In their glory days, they were powerful warriors, strong beyond measure, the strongest of the warriors under the King’s banner. They, and the King, banded together, but they could not defeat the mountain. It would break free and pummel their land, flatten their hard-won defenses, and let Brightbriar in once and for all.

There was only one recourse: to seal it away.

All their power poured into one great seal, a great mark upon the sky itself. They sealed it away, knowing that the seal was imperfect, that they would need victims to refresh it, that the trial would be instated to hopefully find those strong enough to handle it, when the flickering end of its life force finally burned to but a glimmer, and it could be handled by those who could fight it at a low enough power level that their mere battle did not shatter the barrier that constrained it. The King split himself in half. Half to remain in the seal in the form of a skill, all its power devoted to keep the seal stable; half to search the land for willing heroes, who would try their hand at the trial, in return for half of his power and his kingdom, were they to succeed, who would know death was at hand if they lost.

Instead, the King found Brightbriar. His other half was transformed into a skill and hidden away.

What happened after that, he did not know. The skill was insensate. How he came to be the possession of a self-proclaimed King of Magpies was beyond him, as well as how he had escaped Brightbriar’s clutches. Perhaps that was part of his punishment; perhaps Brightbriar had simply tossed him into the woods and forgotten about him, thinking him doomed. Nonethless, here he was, a part of Ike once more.

Of course, my name was not Ike, the King declared, as his consciousness faded away, melting into Ike.

“Yeah? Well, it’s Ike now,” Ike shot back.

The King laughed. It’s that brash attitude that might let you succeed. You have my blessings, foolish warrior. Seek as many of us as you can find, for you will need as much of your original power as you can muster.

“That’s right. Mine. Not yours, not ours. Mine,” Ike said aloud. He wasn’t a kind enough soul to share. He was himself, and that was that. If something wanted to become his, it could become his. If it didn’t, then it would become his anyways. He had a feeling that those who lacked such a strong sense of self might have struggled to absorb these fragments, but Ike had never been one to sit around and question who he was. There were new pieces of him, now, bits that didn’t quite feel like him; but that was it. Before long, they’d be part of him, too.

He opened his eyes and stood.

“Got the King?” Wisp asked.

“Got him.”

“You have any other bits of yourself hanging around?” she asked, half-teasing.

Unbidden, Ike’s hand touched his storage ring, where Rosamund’s head lay, somewhere deep in its depths. Instinctively, he shook his head. Not now. He needed some times to come to terms with being Rosamund. And on top of that, she was the one who remembered Brightbriar the fondest of every piece he’d absorbed so far. She’d barely been betrayed, and she still believed in her father.

Compared to the Prince and the King, he knew her. It felt personal. And not only that, private. Something he should confront alone, not with a noisy peanut gallery.

“No, but I know where we can find some more,” Ike said, lifting his head. He pointed off to the horizon, in the direction of the other empty regions.

“Aren’t you tired of puppets yet?” Wisp asked.

“More than you could possibly know,” Ike replied. He sighed, then pushed to his feet. “Let’s go. I don’t know how many pieces of me there are, or how many I need to defeat Brightbriar, but the more the merrier, right?”

“He’s probably got some yous under his control as powerful puppet soldiers, don’t you think?” Wisp suggested.

Ike opened his mouth, then frowned. “No.”

“What?”

“Ugh, I hope not…”