The tropical night had settled over the sprawling wooden sanctuary with a heavy and humid grace. The evaporative cooling towers hummed with a low and rhythmic vibration, sending a constant stream of chilled air through the vast corridors of their eighteen thousand kilometer environment. Lifeless was tired beyond the limits of his hyper dense anatomy. The six months of felling forests and the five months of grueling construction had drained the very marrow of his bones. He retreated to his private sleeping quarters, collapsing onto the bed of silk and moss without even removing his boots. He fell into a slumber so profound that it was as if he had slipped into a temporary coma.
While Lifeless lay in the dark, Jarvis stood on the wide porch of the central manor, admiring the ocean. The water was a black mirror reflecting the brilliance of the stars.
The master of the tides watched the phosphorescence in the waves, his mind racing with the scientific possibilities of the land they had conquered. He stayed there for hours, watching the tide roll in and out, until the sun began to rise over the ten million square kilometer expanse of their kingdom.
Lifeless slept for nineteen hours. When he finally opened his eyes, the world felt sharper, yet he felt a growing restlessness in his limbs. He knew that the island was beautiful, but it was also a cage if they remained stagnant. They had to somehow train and grow stronger. The divine threats they had faced were only the beginning. He stood up and stretched, his muscles snapping like iron cables. He found a roll of thick linen and some raw cotton in their storage room. Lifeless wrapped a bandage and cotton on his knuckles, securing them with tight knots. He walked out into the clearing where a single ancient hardwood tree remained standing as a sentinel near their gates.
He began punching the tree with no current. He did not use the red or white energy that flowed through his veins. He relied solely on the mechanical force of his sixty four kilograms of dense mass. He struck the trunk with a rhythmic cadence. Left. Right. Left. Right. The wood groaned under the pressure. The bark shattered and flew like shrapnel. He increased his speed, his fists becoming a blur of motion. With all his strength, he delivered a final, thunderous straight punch that pierced the heartwood. The tree shattered and the massive canopy began to tilt. He watched as the giant collapsed to the forest floor with a sound that shook the cooling towers.
"This is too boring and weak," Lifeless said with boredom on his face. He looked at his wrapped hands. The cotton was stained with the green sap of the tree, but his knuckles did not even ache.
He found Jarvis by the irrigation canals.
"The trees are nothing. We need something that fights back."
Jarvis nodded, his eyes gleaming with the same hunger for progress. "The high ridges. The furged sun bears have been encroaching on the northern roads. They are starving for something more substantial than deer."
They headed toward the territory of the fulminated bears. The air grew hot as they climbed, the thermal radiation of the beasts turning the jungle into a furnace. As they reached the obsidian plateau, they saw four massive figures moving through the haze. The bears were hungry and angry. They had been displaced by the construction of the manor and they were looking for a blood sacrifice.
The first bear launched itself like a copper avalanche. Lifeless felt the ground tremble beneath his feet. He dived beneath the first swipe, the heat from the bear's claws singeing the back of his shirt. He pivoted on his heel and throwed a right hook that connected with the bear's jaw. The sound was not a thud but a sharp, metallic crack that echoed across the plateau. Before the beast could recover, Lifeless drove his lead foot into its face, knocking it down with a force that cracked the volcanic stone beneath its skull.
The other three bears closed in, their eyes glowing with a predatory fire. Lifeless felt his pulse quicken.
This was what he needed. The second bear lunged, and Lifeless performed a perfect parry, slapping the massive paw aside and stepping into the creature's guard. He unleashed a shovel hook that sank deep into the bear's liver, the internal pressure causing the beast to vomit a mixture of bile and heat.
The third bear tried to catch him in a lethal embrace, its massive arms closing in like a vice. Lifeless dropped low, avoiding the grapple, and surged upward with a front punch that caught the bear directly under the chin. The snap of its neck was audible over the roar of the wind. He did not stop. He moved like a shadow, a ghost of meat and bone. He dodged a wild swipe from the fourth bear, spun behind it, and delivered a hook to the base of its skull that sent it into the dirt.
"Still not enough," Lifeless muttered, his voice cold.
He moved toward the shoreline where the advanced whales breached the surface. He dived into the water and swam until he reached a massive bull whale that was over eighty feet long. Instead of killing it, he dove beneath the creature. He gripped the underbelly of the beast and began lifting up the whale. He surged toward the surface, his muscles screaming as he forced the gargantuan mammal out of the water and into the air. He did this again and again, using the living weight of the ocean giants as his personal weights until his skin was red from the effort and the salt.
When his muscles were swollen with blood, he returned to the shore. He began running the whole island. He pushed his pace until the world became a smear of green and blue. He felt the friction of the air burning against his skin. His heart was a drum of war. He pushed himself harder and harder until he can't breath, his lungs feeling like they were filled with molten lead. He checked his internal sense of time and distance. He was moving across the ten million square kilometer island at a speed that reached two hundred miles per hour. He was a human hurricane, a blur of meat and bone that ignored the laws of physics.
He finally returned to the central manor, collapsing onto the porch steps next to Jarvis. They sat in silence for a long time as the sun began to set over their eighteen thousand kilometer empire.
"Why do you push yourself like this?" Jarvis asked softly, looking at the steam rising from the skin of Lifeless.
Lifeless looked at his scarred hands. "My life was miserable from the moment I could understand the world. I was a slave before I was a man. I was a tool for people who hated the light. Wherever I am, chaos is there. It follows me like a curse. I lost my only friend in the snow because I was not strong enough to stop the world from breaking. If I stop moving, the chaos catches up. If I stop growing, everyone around me dies."
Jarvis looked at the massive wooden city they had built. "You think you brought the chaos here?"
"I know I did," Lifeless responded, his voice heavy with a grim certainty. "This island is majestic, but the darkness is always watching. I have to be ready to kill it."
The conversation was cut short by a strange sensation. The wind suddenly died. The birds in the animal cages fell silent. The cooling towers seemed to stutter for a brief second. Both men stood up, their instincts screaming.
A man was standing at the edge of their clearing.
He was tall, dressed in robes of a color that seemed to shift between grey and white. He did not have a weapon, yet he carried an aura of such immense pressure that the grass around his feet began to wither and die. He did not speak. He did not move. He simply stared at the two boys and the massive manor they had built.
Lifeless gripped the hilt of his sword, his knuckles turning white. Jarvis raised his hand, his current beginning to flicker around his fingers. The stranger did not look afraid. He looked like a gardener examining a weed that had grown too large for his liking. The air grew cold, a familiar Antarctic chill that Lifeless recognized with a jolt of terror. The chaos had found them. The master of the island looked into the eyes of the intruder and realized that his training had only just begun.