Unwanted Inheritance

The first thing Zane noticed was that he was surrounded by mist. It swirled around him, countless, indistinguishable shapes forming within it. It held a lifelike presence to it, something not hiding within its murk, but the fog itself being alive.

He tried to move, to escape it, yet no matter where he went he was trapped within it, at its center, at its core. He didn’t understand, this was his mind, his place, why couldn’t he control it?

“I think I can answer that,” said a cool voice behind him.

He turned to see a woman emerge from the mist, her skin brown and veiled with a swirling pattern of countless tattoos. They raveled their way around her, adorning her with a mystical, powerful air. Her hair was a dark as night and hung down past her shoulders, distinctly unkempt, the way of a warrior.

“My name is Maya, I, like you, am a slayer, an ancestor of the legacy from before your time,” she said, her voice sounding like the ocean, cool and calm at one moment, raging with the wrath of nature in the next.

“The reason you cannot ‘control’ this place is because it is not simply your mind, but the mind of every one before you. You are merely the current active user of this consciousness. I suspect you already knew this, or at least had an idea of this phenomenon. The skills you have discovered hint at this.”

He didn’t have an answer for that. He did know this, deep down; he just let it lay there unacknowledged. The idea of his mind not being his alone was unsettling, yet at this moment he found it to be almost a relief. The one gift given to him in return for his old life.

“Then you know why I’m here,” he said slowly, as if tasting his words, to check for accuracy.

“I do,” she said simply.

He stood there and waited, expecting her to go on, expecting her to do something. Yet nothing happened and he waited, and waited, and waited. The fog continued to swirl around them, feeling them, touching them, until finally his patience was up.

“Then train me!” he shouted and launched a fist into her direction, hoping to spur the other slayer into action.

She merely waited until he was moments away from contact, then disappeared. Zane went flying forward into the mist, his momentum dragging him along. When he managed to stop himself he turned to see Maya standing behind him, a smile beginning to play at her lips. Dark shapes could be seen in the fog behind her, becoming more substantial with each moment gone by. Then they began to come out of the mist, men and woman of various backgrounds, styles and auras. He instinctively knew who they were, his ancestors, the great slayers of his line. All fallen, and all dying for the action they were bred for.

They spoke as one, a union between them, a chorus of voices, “You are Zane. The most recent of a long line of slayers. You are one and you are all, the sum of not only yours, but all of our experiences. As you have been given this gift, so shall you pass it on to the next generation. Your will channels the spirits of all who come before you, your fist carries the weight of hundreds. So shall you learn and so shall it be.”

So shall you learn and so shall it be.

The words echoed across the dream world, bouncing off of unseen boundaries, reverberating throughout the air. He could feel the power of their words; it danced on his skin, and felt like it bent the very air around him. Voice like weapons, that can crack like a whip.

Maya stepped forward from the group, a solemn posture now taking her form, “We have assessed your talent, and your weakness. Your past holds you back as it shall continue til the end of time. You must embrace your history and move on. Only through this can you be great. Do you, the chosen, accept this?”

He knew that this would cause him more pain than he could have born in the physical world. He kept his past hidden for a reason, he had loved and he had lost; now he resented. He saw the truth in her words however; if he was to become strong he must give up the chains that bound him. Even if those chains were made from love.

“I accept,” he said, stepping forward.

So shall you learn and so shall it be.

The words slammed into him as the world shifted around him. The fog swirled at an incredible rate, the shapes of his ancestors apparent within it. He fell to his knees, overcome by the change, then he was swept further into his mind, into the folds of memory.