Finding Contentus

Chapter 156: Overview

The dust settled, the ash calmed, the snow melted, the clouds conversed, and the riveting waters from fire and ice blossomed across the transforming Mootlakeng.

The shadowy Ferrou remained locked in isolation, traversing the changing landscape, a much needed improvement from the desolate state he had left it in over a decade ago.

The Racaan spirits resorted to tranquil humming in the aftermath, melding with the fluctuating music of nature, emitting beams of multicoloured firelight. Thunderstorms, summer storms, winter storms, every storm for that matter circulated around and throughout the evolving province, reviving it while the stars formed a coat of stripes over the atmosphere.

Ferrou monitored the process up close like a parental phantom. He was so far away between planes, yet closer than he had ever been to his field of goals. To resurface from death was to experience the suffering incurred during the entire span of a lifetime. To die was an unpleasant sort of pain, but the sensation of revival was even more excruciating when factoring in the fact that such pain had to be replayed, revisited.

Reborn.

A ferocious state of suffering for his tortured soul.

Hence why he had to take the torturous pain from the tortured ones, and bear it all on his own. A cleansing of the constant agony he endured. Did that magically make things right? No. Being strong was about having the right to utilise strength for the sake of necessity, to achieve results none even conceived to be plausible, let alone imaginable.

In a morbid way, his plan of manifestation worked like a cursed charm. Ra played his intolerable part well, keeping Him chained in an eternity of captivity, providing Renero, providing Ferrou, with the necessary weapons to wreak havoc like a natural disaster.

To finally — exercise the Right of Retaliation.

"Amoar," Ferrou said, casting a weary look at his older brother's spirit, sitting on a high skeletal tree branch, looking down at him like a judging leopard. "My purpose is to be the Bringer of Succession from the defects of prior shortcomings. Just as Genesia and Neosa birthed me successfully, I in turn birthed their evolutionary success. As well as Mpho's. Do you concede on those points?"

Reasons. Justifications. Explanations. Yet the guilt continued to fester, corroding him. His beastly instincts warded off the feelings of guilt like they were pestering flies. That was the price of having goals to aim for with a determined throw. Didn't matter if there were bodies in the way of the spear. Didn't matter if the spear went through innocent bodies or guilty bodies. Didn't matter if the body was that of a child or an elder. Only the goals mattered, and the spear had no choice but to reach those goals indiscriminately.

Or so Ferrou repeated to himself until the repetitions became muscle memory.

Amoar's spirit sighed in pity, causing thorns to fall off like barbed leaves. "I acknowledge your points, my long lost brother. If that is the conclusion you have reached, then what purpose does it serve a relic such as myself to dispute it upon review? Look around you." His encompassing gesture made the thorns rustle. "Your ambition has triumphed."

Not yet. There is still so much to be done. From your side and mine. The anticipation of witnessing the final products almost made him forfeit control. "You could have still fought me," Ferrou objected, accusing eyes following Rassy's spirit in the rays of the nearby gales. "You both could have fought me, even as I consumed your strength."

"You're just looking for fights that already have decided outcomes," Rassy raised. "Besides, our dispute predates you. Our fighting has been centred around you and against this world. This is declared by Rays, climate of Oya."