Chapter 3 Nothing Left of Her

His mother's truth was simple, "I can cut anything". Common enough among those with the severance aspect.

And for years, he's seen nothing withstand her slashes. Not even Dax's chains.

Truths relied heavily on the user's imagination and their belief in their truth. 

Ezra didn't see Dax as someone able to visualize restraining his mother. They were both on the same tier but she was chosen by the shepherds and spent years fighting at the wall. She must have been everything he wished to be.

And there was no defeating a failed possibility.

His mother was also a monster in her own right, with a will so strong her truth seemed insurmountable, unbreakable.

He had no doubt she was on the verge of a breakthrough. If she lived another year he was sure she would've reached it, the rank of Exalted.

But that wasn't enough to survive a living catastrophe, a class seven monster that hunted gods during the age of calamity.

There was nothing left of her when Ezra finally went back for her, only a scorch mark where she no doubt once stood and a sense of wrongness as if reality there had burnt as well.

Even his ability refused to acknowledge that anything existed there. 

During his mourning, he often wondered if her soul was even spared.

Dax and the hunters found him weeping in the snow that day, they questioned him for hours, he half expected them not to believe such a tale but Dax had been waiting for such an opportunity.

The Chief was dead and he was the only suitable replacement. No one questioned him when he swiftly ordered a burial and a period of mourning as his first act as chief.

"You know. I see it. Your face, you know."

The words snapped him back to the present, the pain in his ribs and the unfortunate situation he now found himself.

The troll pointed at him and then the woods.

"You take me. Show me place. Lizard always leave mark. Burn. I find"

"Sorry, the location eludes me at the moment. Maybe you could ask again in a few hours." 

The troll frowned.

"Hm. Think you smart. Wrong."

Ezra smiled wide. 

"Sorry to disappoint."

"Sorry. Yes. You will be."

It happened fast. The troll reached for something on his back as he stood up. It was an axe, the biggest Ezra had ever seen and he swung it like it weighed nothing. His target, Eric.

"No!"

Dax screamed, imposing his truth on the axe and it stopped instantly, inches away from cutting Eric in half.

The shockwave sends Eric and everyone behind him flying into nearby buildings and the snow.

In that moment, Ezra channels his lumen, augmenting his strength and breaking Dax's chains.

Dax was still relatively new to being an ascendant, he excelled in restricting animals, people on a lower tier and small monsters like goblins. 

Ezra noticed Dax spent small amounts of lumen as he did but against stronger foes he tends to put his all to enforce his truth on that target.

The truths wielded by ascendants were only sustained as long as there was a steady supply of lumen and with the axe headed for his son, as expected Dax channeled all he had to stop it, depriving the chains of their own supply.

Without lumen, reality saw his truth as a lie and instantly rejected it.

He initially estimated Dax's supply was on the verge of running out by now and planned on stalling till it did but this….

'This works too'

With the commotion, no one heard the sound of the chains breaking and Ezra didn't stick around to find out if he was wrong.

He immediately sprinted between the nearest buildings and headed for the woods.

He felt bad for abandoning the village but to be fair, they abandoned him first and there was nothing keeping him here.

At least that's what he tells himself.

"Catch boy!"

"Kill the rest!"

He heard the troll roar behind him and sensed about fifty goblins immediately chasing after him and then…

BOOM!!

Fifteen new life forms entered his range and from what he sensed, one of them was an ascendant, the others were a mix of whispers and beastmen.

The Cavalry had arrived but Ezra didn't once look back, it didn't matter, they couldn't defeat that troll and he wasn't sticking around either.

He could hear their screeching behind him, getting louder and louder.

In seconds he reached the woods and so did they.

How long would they chase him for?

How far will he be able to go?

He was in pain and starving, probably not much.

These thoughts plagued him for a moment before he steeled himself for the inevitable. 

He would have to fight his way out of here, which meant he'll need to properly utilize all the lumen he has left.

Directly fighting the swarm after him was surely a death sentence. So Ezra cooked up a plan in those brief seconds.

He had a head start, and he'd patrolled this forest for years and stalked the grounds hunting prey, sometimes for days.

Even without his strange ability, he knew this forest better than most of the villagers and at the very least he knew it better than the goblins.

He smiled and made a bee line for a nearby tree. He claimed the tree to the top before jumping to the next one, and then the next till he reached a hole he had dug earlier in the summer to hunt deer.

Reaching the hole concealed by a large bush, he jumped in, covered himself in dirt to mask his scent, shut his eyes, calmed his thoughts and waited.

This wouldn't be a fight as one would think.

Yes, Ezra was a skilled fighter, drilled endlessly by his mother on various forms of combat, but he didn't care too much for it. Mainly because he rarely had use for it in the village.

One thing he did care for was hunting. He was obsessed with it, spending days — sometimes weeks — tracking prey with his mother, most times it was wild game, other times it was the occasional monster that stirred too close to the village and needed to be put down.

It was the only time he didn't have to suffer the presence of others. His ability was useful in his life but it came with a drawback.

He knew everything three hundred meters in every direction around him, from the heart beat of the birds that flew low enough for him to notice, to the butterfly that broke its wings in the rain, to the worms in the earth living carefree.

He often felt like he was one with the world this way. It gave him great comfort growing up — that he wasn't unnatural like they whispered, maybe he was more natural than any of them.

All that information flowing in constantly was used to him now but humans always liked being focused on. So growing up in a busy enough village, he had to learn how to block out a lot of things to focus on the individuals.

Even if they were kids hitting him, adults cursing him, his mother drilling him…. He had to focus on them. Feeling like he was everywhere and forcing himself to be singular like when was taxing.

But now, there weren't any humans to distract him. So Ezra became on

e with everything again. There was now just him, the world and his prey.

And one just stepped into his range.

The hunt began.