Renevere Mars: Part Three

Episode 24: Duren's Shame

Ren felt a push and she released Duren's mind immediately. She didn't want to see anything he hadn't wanted her to, and she had certainly seen enough. It had all flooded her mind in only moments, even though the memory spanned several weeks and should have taken hours to view. Memories were like that; in someone's mind, time didn't really exist. When she came back to her own consciousness, the two of them still stood, Duren with his hand on hers, holding it to his cheek. Her other hand was clutching the fabric of his jacket quite tightly, a reflexive reaction to what she had just seen. She loosened her grip.

"Duren, I-..." He let go of her hand, but she didn't want to back away. "I..." She didn't know what to say.

Duren moved away from her and leaned against the wall, arms crossed. He wouldn't look at her.

"That wasn't your—"

"Don't bother," he said sternly. "I've already gone over it 100 times in my head, and there are dozens of ways it could have ended with my Master alive."

"With hindsight," Ren allowed, raising her shoulders.

He looked at her. "With following orders."

Ren bit down. It all made sense now, at least, even though it didn't at the same time. Duren blamed himself. He had been given specific orders not to use his power, and that power ended up being what caused Itai to die.

"Lady Rexus's order didn't make any sense! She had no idea what would happen—"

"Not none," he said bitterly. He was staring off at nothing again. "She had intel, unclear and uncertain, that this member of the Red Order was tracking something in the North. Something to do with dark energy... I know so much more now than I knew then about dark energy and how it behaves. For a while, I'd thought the Red Lion had pulled more energy out of me, controlling my dark energy somehow. But now I know that's not the case."

Ren listened intently to his explanation.

"As you know, there's energy everywhere around us. The art of energy gathering is to draw usable energy into the body to restore your own, or even hold more energy than you naturally possess, though that comes with its risk. The danger is doubled, tripled even, when the energy that's gathered is dark energy, which is poisonous to humans and most living things. Dark energy will quickly corrupt the natural energy a warrior possess. You've seen it."

Ren nodded, remembering all too well the first time she had seen Duren use his Black Poison Cha. The terrible Braxus and the way Duren had killed him. His cha had rendered Braxus unable to use his own energy as the black energy corrupted his own. Duren had killed Braxes with knives, but if a larger dose of black energy had entered him, he would have died quickly and terribly from energy corruption alone.

"Well," Duren continued, "in many ways dark energy has a mind of it's own, as it's naturally occurring in the world, though not in humans. I imbibe my dark energy with my own natural energy to maintain control. The Red Lion wasn't so capable. She was toying around with forces beyond even her understanding... That amulet around her neck..."

"That's right," Ren remembered. There had been so much in the memory to process she had almost forgotten about the amulet entirely. "It was... floating, sort of."

"The amulet of Muertolom," Duren said. "I'll spare you the history lesson, but they call it cursed, like some mysterious magic. Really, it doubles dark energy. On average this does very little, but when I released my concentrated dark energy, it doubled in size. The Red Lion knew enough about dark energy that she was able to block me from casting at her with her own energy, but she wasn't able to fully control it on her own. But because I seriously underestimated the amount of energy I would need to control this double portion, I lost control, and I depleted my energy reserve to the point where it could no longer sustain the seal which protects my body from the energy in my eye."