Chapter 49: SUN SKINNED

Angle’s sleeves caught fire before the bounty hunters nearest him understood what had changed. The flames eating through the cloth were almost incidental; the real heat stayed compressed against his body, and dense golden light pulsed beneath his skin as though sunlight had been forced into his veins with nowhere left to escape.

Something flashed across Angle’s vision while the broad hunter slowed in front of him.

〔 RIVEN POWER OUTPUT: 200% 〕

Angle stared at the message for half a heartbeat before it changed again.

〔 RIVEN POWER OUTPUT: 300% 〕

〈 RIVEN POWER OUTPUT: 400% 〉

〈 SAFE OUTPUT THRESHOLD EXCEEDED 〉

〈 CONTROL UNSTABLE 〉

"What the hell..." Angle barely got the words out before both hooked cords snapped toward him from opposite directions.

He stepped forward instead of retreating. One hook passed his shoulder, its metal edge glowing orange as it crossed the heat surrounding him, while Angle caught the second cord and pulled the hunter straight into his reach.

His fist struck the man’s crossed guard.

There was no wide explosion of fire. Heat and force compressed into the point of impact before bursting through it, throwing the hunter across the street and through an abandoned stall. The wooden frame ignited before his body had finished breaking through it.

Sio redirected a spear through a portal and still found enough time to stare. "Okay, that is actually really cool."

Two bounty hunters rushed Angle together, apparently reaching the same conclusion that numbers might fix the problem. Angle pivoted and drove one leg through the first man’s guard.

The impact launched him sideways into his partner. Fire erupted across both of them, but one had entered Angle’s reach too deeply; the heat caught his clothes, hair and skin at once, swallowing his scream beneath a violent rush of flame.

He hit the ground already blackened.

Angle froze.

For a moment, the market around him seemed to become distant. The crackle of burning cloth remained, but everything else blurred beneath the sight of the body at his feet. He had hit people harder before. He had broken bones, burned weapons and left opponents unable to stand, yet this had taken less than a second. He had not chosen to kill the man. His body had simply produced more heat than he understood how to stop.

The second hunter rolled desperately through the sand, trying to extinguish his burning coat, while the smell of scorched wood and flesh reached the people nearest them.

"Angle!" Arch shouted. "Pull it back."

"I’m trying."

Another warning filled Angle’s sight.

〈 RIVEN POWER OUTPUT: 450% 〉

〈 HOST CONTROL INSUFFICIENT 〉

The golden light beneath his skin brightened rather than fading.

A frightened hunter farther back released a compressed blast of air toward him. Angle lifted one arm on instinct, and the heat packed around his body finally escaped.

The air blast disappeared inside it.

So did most of the awning behind the attacker.

Cloth became drifting ash before it touched the ground. A wooden support post blackened from top to bottom, and patches of sand around Angle softened into dark glass beneath his feet.

Sio’s excitement disappeared. He opened a portal beneath another attacker, dropped him several meters away and looked back at Angle.

A few minutes earlier, Sio had been proud of turning a single portal into half a dozen attack angles. Angle had apparently reached a level where approaching him had become an attack by itself.

The baby creature clicked beside Sio’s ear when the spearman rushed again. Sio opened an entrance near his hip and moved the exit beneath the man’s rear foot, while the baby independently snapped a tentacle around his ankle and dragged him farther off balance.

Sio sent a portal punch into the man’s ribs and shoved him away. "We’re still contributing," he muttered, though even he heard how much weaker that sounded now.

"Papa."

"At least somebody appreciates me."

Arch was too occupied to comment. The stone-armed Riven and the staff wielder pressed him together, forcing him to preserve the one heavy impact already stored inside the Siphon Aegis.

The staff came down again, but Arch slipped aside instead of absorbing another strike. Once both men committed to following him, he planted the gauntlet against the ground and released the stored force downward.

The impact travelled beneath the street before erupting directly under the two attackers. Both were thrown apart while nearby stalls barely shifted, the force contained to a narrow patch of ground.

Sio glanced over despite everything. "You could do that?"

Arch moved before either opponent could recover. "You never asked."

"That answer is becoming a problem."

Angle’s problem was considerably worse.

The broad hunter had climbed from the broken stall, but he no longer approached. Nobody did. Every bounty hunter close enough to feel the heat was backing away while Angle stared at the charred body lying several meters from him.

〈 RIVEN POWER OUTPUT: 500% 〉

Angle’s face tightened. "No."

〈 CONTROL FAILURE 〉

The heat answered before he could.

It burst outward in every direction.

Sio saw the nearest hunters throw themselves away and opened the largest portal he could manage between Angle and the crowded side of the market. The entrance widened until its edge trembled, the strain dragging through Sio’s shoulders and making his vision tighten at the corners, but he kept forcing it open while shifting the exit beyond the settlement toward empty desert.

Most of the blast racing toward the crowded side disappeared through it.

A pillar of golden fire erupted beyond the buildings, bright enough to turn the distant sand white for an instant. What escaped around the portal still scorched a wall, ignited abandoned baskets and cracked the glassy ground around Angle.

Sio staggered when the portal collapsed. Heat rolled past his face, and the baby flattened itself over his shoulder as sparks drifted through the street. For the first time since the fight began, several civilians who had been watching from distant doorways disappeared inside and slammed their shutters closed.

"Angle!" Sio shouted. "Whatever you’re doing, stop getting stronger!"

"That’s what I’m trying to do!"

The broad hunter looked toward the burning desert beyond the settlement, then toward the body Angle had left behind. Whatever amount had been written beneath Sio’s face on the bounty board suddenly seemed much smaller.

"That bounty isn’t worth dying for," he said, and nobody challenged him.

The hunters withdrew quickly, dragging the injured with them and leaving behind weapons that had become too hot to touch. Angle never followed. He remained where he was until the light beneath his skin finally began retreating, his breathing uneven while black glass cracked beneath his boots.

Arch approached only after the heat weakened enough to stand near him. He stopped close enough to help but did not touch Angle immediately, his eyes moving from his son’s burned sleeves to the body several meters away. "How much control did you have?"

Angle looked at the burned body first, then at his own hands. "Not enough." His fingers curled slowly, as though he no longer trusted them to remain still.

Sio had several jokes available and used none of them.

They left before the settlement could decide whether to thank them, arrest them or charge them for everything Angle had burned. Hours later, the market lights vanished behind the northern road, and they stopped among scattered rocks where the desert night had replaced the day’s brutal heat.

Angle wore one of Arch’s spare shirts and sat farther from the others than necessary. Arch noticed but left him alone, gathering dry brush into a shallow pit while Sio lowered himself near the future fire.

Sio looked at the wood, then at Angle.

Angle didn’t even turn. "No."

"You don’t know what I was going to ask."

"You looked at the wood and then at me."

He extended one finger. A tiny flame appeared at its tip, so controlled that it touched only the driest brush before disappearing.

Sio watched the campfire catch. "At least this part is useful."

Angle threw a pebble at him without looking, which Sio took as improvement.

The baby creature spent dinner in Sio’s lap stealing dried food from his pouch. When Sio mentioned the Impossible City while quietly talking with Arch, every tiny eye across its body opened at once.

He stopped mid-sentence and looked down. "You know that place, don’t you?"

The baby made a soft clicking sound. When Sio mentioned the enormous entity that lived there, its body became completely still against his legs.

Arch noticed too. "It recognizes something."

"Probably its parent." Sio scratched lightly beside one of its eyes. The idea still sounded ridiculous, but considerably less ridiculous than it had yesterday.

Later, after Angle finally fell asleep and the fire had burned low, Sio kept the baby creature against his chest instead of setting it beside him. He wanted to know what would happen if he deliberately brought it with him this time.

He closed his eyes, concentrated on the familiar inward pull and held onto the awareness of the small body in his arms as the desert faded. Entering the City came more easily now, the sensation no longer fighting him the way it once had.

◇ ───────────── ◇

The Impossible City returned beneath its strange sky, and Sio opened his eyes with the baby creature still held against his chest. He set it down beside him, watching as every tiny eye across its body opened at once and turned toward the distant streets.

Across the city, the enormous entity stopped moving.

Then all of its eyes turned toward them.