Part 2. Stranger Mountains: Survival
Further, he just had to keep going further.
It had been weeks since he felt the warm jungle air, once he flickered over the first slope he didn't look back.
He had covered lots of ground in this time, using his clones and his own speed to venture forward, as well as utilizing the untapped natural energy around him.
The boy was forced to slow the speed which he had traveled at however, as he was quickly running out of energy.
Not the spiritual energy inside of him, or the natural energy surrounding him, but the metabolic energy his body needed to live.
Within the first few days scaling the mountain sides he was able to sense a goat, and after killing the animal with the snow that constantly drifted down, he was still hungry.
He had no way to cook the meat, no way to make a fire, not that he knew how to, so he continued to starve.
Melting the snow provided him with water, but the slow, ravenous hunger was getting to him mentally just as severely as physically.
His stomach was so empty that any time he moved, breathed, did anything that required his body action, it hurt.
For days his clones had been running the mountains, looking for anything edible, while he stayed seated in the snow.
It wasn't just the hunger that was the problem, the freezing temperature bit at his skin, sucking away the water in his lips, and chilling the air to the point breathing was undesirable.
The thin mountain air only furthered that problem.
Any many ways the mountains were more dangerous than the jungle, it was almost nostalgic how he was dangerously edging the line of death.
Sitting down shivering, he was going through an endless loop of establishing his problems and trying not to complain about them, without knowing he was doing it.
The snow and shivers that racked his body occupied him, passing time, until he sensed a pair of clones sliding down the slope to where he sat.
Carried in between them was the broken body of a ram, the wool only serving as a painful reminder he didn't have a shirt.
Two of the animal's limbs were broken, twisted and bent in multiple sections abnormally as it bleated in agony.
Out of breathe, one of the clones yelled down to him, "Hey! Get ready!"
Confused, the boy simply sat up straighter waiting for his clones to bring down the abused animal and question them.
Reaching the snow level of the boy the clones rolled the ram on its side, one cruelly holding down the head into the cold, exposing a set of nipples.
"C'mon, we caught this bitch getting milked by her kid" he muttered darkly before he nudged the other clone "help me roll it over"
His clones were not physically limited as he was by the lack of food, but they were getting more and more mentally unstable when he created him, and his encounters with the creatures of the strange jungle had desensitized him to harming other living things.
A cold, rubbery nipple was forced into his mouth, and as he added suction the most disgusting, yet satisfying type of milk filled his mouth with warmth.
He closed his eyes letting a deep sigh of content escape through his nose as he continued to feed on the rams milk.
The liquid gradually became colder with less coming forth at each mouthful, so he quickly manipulated the liquid he felt inside of the animal to gush forward with a boiling hotness until he sucked the ram dry.
That's when his eyes snapped open, when he tampered with the temperature of the liquid inside the ram he was enlightened with a new possibility.
Using his long nails and new burst of energy he tore into the underbelly, drawing a muted groan, and started pulling out blood coated chunks.
He effortlessly boiled the blood and began tearing his teeth into the meat, his hunger growing with each bite.
The clones wordlessly stood by with stern faces, watching their creator consume what was left of the animal.
He was slipping, and he knew that for a fact.
Boiling an animal for food? That was a day one technique, he even had used it before in the jungle.
He had the ability to switch icy snow to boiling water in a second, so why had he stayed so cold?
He had brief moments of clarity, before his thought process turned back into loops.
The mountains ended up being stranger than he had first thought.
He was slipping, and he knew that for a fact.
An endless cycle of gaining distance, devouring animals, and grooming himself had become the staple.
He had taken to running his nails through his long hair which he let hang past his shoulder, trailing the sharp edges over his cheeks, and without provocation tearing away at his own itchy skin.
He was simply another strange creature, running on instinct.
Then, he found the cave.
He didn't remember much of anything, he just knew that he was stumbling down the darkness of a cave found in the mountain side with long, awkward strides like he was failing to imitate a human.
Eventually the dark tunnel began to illuminate, and he walked into a small clearing of soft grass that tickled his calloused feet, with a pure pool of spring water, all under softly glowing crystals in the cave ceiling of blue and green colors.
He unintentionally took in the nature energy permeating the secret alcove in the depths of the mountain, his skin flushed and his eyes bounced from hollow blue to bright green.
His eyes widened on their own accord as he took in deep breathes as if he were previously drowning.
Looking around the beautiful temple of nature he continued to draw in more energy, picking up a very hidden source outside the cave radiating intent like he had never felt, that of a trickster, of a cruel predator toying with its prey.
He recalled the days past in the mountains, but with each one passed his memory became blurrier until it was one long stream of subconscious instinct, eating and moving.
Focusing further on the twisted energy seated a distance outside the cave mouth, he spun on his heel and walked back with resolute goal.
His steps turned to a heavy jog, then light footstep spring him forth, until he blurred out into the snow, several feet from the energy.
He squinted his eyes as he was sensing something that should be there, and yet all that appeared was snow.
When a pair of electric purple eyes revealed the massive, humanoid snow leopard, he was wholly unprepared and rocket back into the cave by a swing.
The boy was on his back when his facial features lit up with fury he had not felt in this life before.
He flickered into the open once more where the leopard stood, triple his size engulfed with muscle, and its mouth curled up as if it was smiling condescendingly at the boy, which was not the right thing to do at all.
The leopard's claws struck at his neck at a blinding speed, before they cracked on the boys durable skin.
The boy did not react further than simply reappearing with his arm through the middle of the creatures midsection, his finger tips glowing with miniature balls of energy.
That's when the leopards body dissolved in a swirl of purple smoke.
The disappearance was strange, alarmingly so, but he had kept the snow leopard in his senses the entire time and clenched his fist, hard.
Miles away, the snow that the leopard was running across rose up, contorting around its body and crushing it, leaving the once again unanimated snow white and red.
Almost immediately after the death his eyes shined even brighter, his thoughts cleared, and his body relaxed.
He wearily walked back to his secluded spot of grass, mentally commenting on the absurdness of his situation.
That's how his days upon the stranger mountains passed, climbing higher peaks, securing the nearest food, and just going through the motions until whatever strange event happened to befall him next.
Most recently, it was a beneficial event.
As the altitude grew higher the winds became stronger, to the point his clones were sometimes dead locked scaling it. That's when one of the desperate clones slashed his energy focused hand through the wind and split it around him.
For a brief moment he was taken back to the rainy days on top of the lake besides the great tree, before he came back to his senses and absorbed what this meant, that he had the possible ability to control yet another element.
And so he had his clones continue their climbs, purposely journeying up the windiest parts in attempt to gain so semblance of control over the wind, which had begun to pay off much faster than the rain control as he could now take shelter from the harsh gales without lifting a finger.
His skill with manipulating water continued to stubbornly grow to new heights, he would clear the snow in his path up the mountains until he could focus his energy and lift his hands, the snow following the motion, completely up, revealing barren rock.
The largest test of his water manipulation had come when he was using his energy to vertically scale a particularly sharp incline.
The wind had been harshly assaulting his ears when a deep, distant rumble sounded from far above him.
The boy had paused, reasonably expecting the unexpected, as the sound echoed out over the snow.
Following the initial sound, more explosions of noise sounded off closer and closer, until his nature-enhanced vision kicked in and he was able to see past the white blanket of snow.
Only, when his view penetrated the thin layer of snow and wind that limited his sight, he was able to see more snow.
It was how much more that was the problem, far above him thousands of tons of snow rolled down, picking up speed and mass as it descended.
His breathing went from deep and controlled, to frantic and panicked.
With no feasible way to stop the force of nature, he was witnessing his death come crashing down...unless he used the nature against it.
With firm resolution to at least attempt to survive, his natural energy funneled through him and he shakily rose his hands.
As the snow sped up, gathering even more weight before it collided with him, he let loose a long, strained yell as his fingers spasmed, and his veins flexed.
Stalled above him, was billions of pounds of water in its colder form. For a single second he let himself revel in the feeling of relief, before painstakingly spreading his arms to allow the snow to fall past him.
He knew with certainty that before the mountains he would not be possible of such a feat, showing that his abilities were still improving whether he was aware of it or not.
That force of destruction had rivaled that of what he was capable, and resolved his decision to completely become one with the nature energy, he would need improvement for any future disasters such as that one.
Climbing the hills, splitting the wind, using natural energy, his new mantra to satisfy his strange need to train himself.
He did not necessarily know to what he was climbing, but logically there had to be a tallest point of them all, and he would use that vantage point to build off of what he already knew and escape from the slopes.
The boy had awoke without memories, but with a purpose to train. As his skills and knowledge grew, so did his apathy to life, and he revealed in his encounters with the creatures of the mountain just for some foreign emotion to remind him of the life he was still living, still surviving for another day.