Immediately, Kelvin’s eyes opened. His first reaction and he thought was to run. But something within him, something original and primal rose within him to meet the threat.
The sigil surged, and with it the energy spiraled from his palm in a whip of crimson flame. The chain went forward, striking the Ragger on its side which fringed it into a half-crushed shuttle car.
The beast growled as he rose without been affected.
Kelvin dodged to the left as the Ragger made a quick thrust towards Kelvin and barely missing its fangs. Kelvin rolled to the ground, his hands dashed to the ground, he thought to himself, "no spear, and no backup".
The Ragger came towards him again with a loud groans.
This time, Kelvin invoked the flame. His sigil erupted a shining light. A dome of fire flared around him to shield him from the Ragger thereby forcing the Ragger to move back. But it was just raw, unstable with no much power. The shield broke and pain stabbed through his ribs.
Kelvin muttered to himself while gritting his teeth "Come on, I am bound to a Tyrant so I can handle a Ragger."
He placed a reinforcing steel within a glyph circle, and the lines lit with runic fire. With his other hand, he called forth the surge, his surge, not the Xerion’s surge.
The flame answered him. It lifted up his arm and gathered all his fingertips together. He launched it in a controlled blast, as a searing arc that slammed the Ragger square in the chest.
The creature groaned with a loud voice and vanished back into the Rift Scar and a great silence fell all over the place.
Kelvin stood panting with his hand trembling, the sigil on his arm was cooling to a dull glow at that time. "I had won" Kelvin Muttered to himself.
He stared down at his hands his fingers were twitching with the residue of flame. His control was still rough, raw and incomplete. But he had done it.
Kelvin thought to himself so, "I didn’t die although I have not been able to summon xerion" and that meant one thing to him that he could learn.
At that time he turned to leave, a quick movement on the horizon caught his eye. Rift shadows. He was not alone anymore. The world had begun to notice the heir of the End-Tyrant.
Immediately Kelvin stepped out of the monorail station, the air he breathe felt heavy.
The sigil on his arm shines beneath his skin like a cooling magma, beating in a slow intervals. Every heartbeat of his echoed with faint whispers that is not the Xerion’s thunderous voice, but it was a smaller and scattered echoes.
Rift energy lingered on him like smoke glued to a cloth, the voice was invisible yet was potent enough to stir the instincts of things that stays where man no longer dared walk on.
As he reached the shattered husk of what was once a covered pedestrian skybridge, he took a moment to look at the cityscape, from his stand point the ruin was breathtaking.
High and renowned towers stretched into the fog like a broken fangs and the Rift scars were painted with uneven streaks of violet through the sky. The End-Tyrant’s bond had not only cut his flesh, it had opened his senses. He could feel the impulse of a nearby Rifts, the way they move behind walls of space like unseen fires.
He needed guidance. Books could only give him knowledge but not to carry him so far.
As Kelvin was moving he made his way to an old guild ruin settled in the middle of a collapsed cathedral. It was a known place to some scavengers, but few dared to be there.
People always say that spirits use to wander around its halls, the ghosts of failed tamers loops around. But at that point Kelvin didn’t fear the dead all he needed is to gain mastery over the power locked in him.
He feared what he was becoming.
The cathedral’s stained glass that had been shattered for a long time has been replaced with moss and shadow. The beast skulls adorned the archways all the way as trophies of warning. As Kelvin passed under the broken arch, the sigil on his arm flared softly as it glows.
"Something is here", Kelvin muttered to himself.
Right inside the cathedral’s heart was a circular chamber lined with the decayed banners of the old Dominion Guild. A stone that stood like a low throne was at its center, made with the same runes that now coiled around Kelvin’s body. He approached it in utmost suprise.
Immediately he got close the runes lighted up, followed by a voice that rasped, "heir".
Kelvin stood still immediately while he gazed around with his spear drawn, but no enemy was in sight.
Instead, from the shadows, he saw a figure that stepped in tattered robes with a mask covering half of their face because he saw more than one face on a body as time didn’t permit him to count the faces, the other half burned and twisted.
"Who are you?" Kelvin asked the stranger with his weapon raised.
The stranger tilted their head. "I am the one who failed. One who is aware of what you carry inside of you."
Kelvin hesitated and asked. "Were you a tamer?"
"I am a Warden of the Rift not a tamer," the figure corrected him with his voice like a gravel grinding steel. "But I was not chosen by a Tyrant. You are the one that was chosen, that means you are already drowning in the shadows of lack understanding and control of what you have inside of you."
Kelvin felt the sigil move. "I can learn to control it. I just need..."
"Time?" the Warden interrupted him. "There is no time for you, boy! The Rift tides will soon rise. And your reek of draconic power that you barely understand may destroy you and that could be your end."