by Kindred Ult
'Perfect,' a voice inside Varus that was not quite a whole thought, but that was instead more of an instinct, told him. 'There's no way he can get both of us. His gauntlet will only get one at best, and we will catch him if he tries to dodge. His mace has too much slack in its chain for him to hit one of us in time, even if he did shorten as far as he could with both of his handles. It's just like I said, his length is his weakness.'
Then something clicked in his head, like a realization finally making itself known to him, and he jerked back in surprise.
"Demenn get back!" He yelled desperately, as he himself was already beginning to do so.
Demenn, having trained himself to take orders, jumped back almost before he had fully realized what Varus had said, and even as it was, both he and Varus only barely managed to get out of the way of the spiked ball as it whizzed a perfect circle in front of them. Luke chose Demenn, who was still in the air, and rushed the few feet between the two of them before kicking him in the chest with his huge feet. He followed the kick with a large burst of frost, so that when Demenn flew across the room and slammed against the wall, he was immediately frozen there. His head was still free, as were his legs after the knees and his arms after the elbows, but the magical ice which held him down was stronger than even he when he did recover from the kick and began trying to break out. Luke turned about swiftly and charged Varus, his flail could not have had more than five feet of chain throughout the entirety of it, and Varus had to backpedal and beat his wings furiously in order to keep himself from being impaled by the spikes. Even as he moved, his mind worked furiously to figure out how Luke had defeated their attack.
'What was that? He shortened his chain... The first handle must house some sort of extra dimension which allows him to hold extra chain inside it so that he can shorten it in case he is caught just like how we did.'
Luke shot his hand to the ground, causing an earthquake to once again rumble the ground and, when Varus took top the air once again, shot wind at him once again. Varus saw it coming, though, and tucked his wings close to him so that he was too aerodynamic to be affected by the winds. Next, however, came a blast of fire that, strengthened by the driving winds, flew all around Varus and blocked his vision. The heat was bearable for him, but his vision was completely obscured, and as such he could not see what Luke was doing next. His mind spun with possible scenarios as to Luke's next move, but there were too many free radicals. Too much had only recently been learned of Luke that could not be easily refined into set rules. Who knew what else he could do? It was in this state of unrest and uncertainty that Varus was unable to foresee the five continuous streams of lightning that burst through the fire around him. They started out wide, but quickly closed until they ringed him about, preventing him from flying to one side or the other. Then, when he saw Luke's spiked ball come through the smoke left by the fire next, the only way he could then fly was upwards. And even then, he knew that he could not outrun the mace.
'It's okay, though, I should be able to get out of its range in time, at least. Unless...Damn it!' He redoubled his efforts, pumping his wings as hard as he could. 'His chain can lengthen as well as retract. I-I can see it, but there's nothing I can do about it!' It was then, after he had reached the roof of the cavern and looked back down, watching the chain behind the ball extending to twenty, then thirty, then fifty-feet long, that Varus realized he had placed too much trust in his ability. 'I made the same mistake as Dimitrious. And now I'll suffer his fate.' The ball extended to almost one hundred feet before it rammed into Varus. He had held out his sword and buckler in an effort to dull the attack, but when they connected, he realized that the ball still had more than enough power. The spikes blew through his shield and rammed into his chest. When he hit the ceiling his breath was blown from him and his ribs were crushed while several organs were pierced through. Blood spewed from his mouth, and after the ball was pulled down and out of him, he still hung in the air for a moment, before finally plummeting to the ground.
As he fell, though, he looked at Lucifer, and his eyes widened. He saw it. He saw everything. His ability to foresee actions sped throughout this battle to its ending. He wished he could tell all of the others what he had seen, tell them his warnings, but his lungs were pierced through. And then he saw the end, saw the choice he must make. He looked at Lucifer once more and saw him smile and nod. Then, as his consciousness began to slip, Varus let go of his sword. It spun through the air away from him, before falling handle-first into a crevice. Even as its blade stuck up, Varus hit the ground, and the world went black for him. His last thoughts on his sister.
Luke walked up next to him and looked around. Brand was bent over sweating and panting, Demenn was still stuck to the wall and was trying unsuccessfully to free himself from the ice, and Niethel was still on the ground from all of the explosions that had been occurring. He grinned savagely.
"Now, I wonder who I should kill next."
"I doubt that that question was directed towards me, but I believe that if Demenn gets out, he will undoubtedly cause you the most trouble." Lucifer was obviously having too much fun.
"Thank you, my lord," Luke turned towards Demenn. "I think that you are right."
Luke ran at where Demenn struggled and returned his flail to about eight feet. He stopped, though, when an arrow flew in front of his face. He turned to face Niethel as blood dripped from a line across the bride of his nose.
"And here I thought you were finished off." His voice was thick with menace.
"Like hell." Niethel laughed weakly and began to ready another arrow to his bow.
"Well then, I'll have to fix that!"
When Luke turned around, Demenn breathed a small sigh of relief and struggled even harder, though his efforts were still in vain. He stopped, chuckled, and said the words that made fire spurt from his hands. Still, even under the heat, the magical ice melted painfully slowly. Demenn groaned. This was going to take some time.
Niethel, for his part, put the arrow back into its sheath, followed it with the bow, and drew both Wulfsbane and his dirk. As his feet settled, he found that he was ready for death. He had done all that he could have done, and all that he could feel was pride that he had stayed with Demenn this time. "Only two arrows left, anyway."
Luke stopped his charge ten feet away and lifted his gauntlet into the air, causing five large rocks to burst from the ground and shoot at Niethel, then followed these with a swipe of his hand that sent them spinning and turning under a gale of wind. It was only after this set-up that he spun his morning star above his head and launched it at his target. Niethel took a moment to study the rocks, then jumped into the air, his arms spread out to his sides. Luckily, the wind caught him first, and he tumbled along inside its grasp. Then, like a speck of dust evades the grasp of a sweeping hand, he found himself slipping past one rock and then another. His twisting body went through all of them in only a second, before righting itself like a cat, landing on the last one, and jumping up once more. His second leap sent him just barely over the mace, and when he landed, it was right behind the ball.
Quick as life, his right hand shot out and wrapped itself around the chain, even while still holding his sword inside it. Luke only laughed and pulled back on the chain, as well as bringing it closer to him by means of the dimension in the handle. Still in mid-flight, Niethel flung his dirk with his left hand. The blade flew true, but it was deflected only inches away from Luke's face by his gauntlet. Luke then dropped his weapon just in time to smash his fist into Niethel's stomach. Blood and vomit came from Niethel's mouth as his eyes widened, his ribs cracked, and his body ballooned around the strike, but even as Luke smiled, Niethel lifted both of his hands up with Wulfsbane inside them and slashed down with all of his strength on Luke's gauntlet. The hand was still up by his face, where it blocked the dirk, and as such it was completely defenseless itself when the sword came down between the second ad third knuckle of the pointer finger and sheared it in half like butter.
'Was I useless, then?' He felt the blak maw of despair closing in on him, but then he looked at Luke's left hand and smiled. 'No, at least I was able to take out that gauntlet, and his hand too. Sophella would be proud. Heh, I'm proud. I guess I did all I could.' Then he looked at his bow and smiled. 'Well, maybe not everything.'
Luke had learned from his previous notions, however, and was already stalking in Niethel's direction to make sure he was dead. Before he could even advance five steps, though, Brand was in between the two of them. He was panting, his unnaturally long tongue lolling out of the side of his mouth, but his posture was straight and Luke felt that he could somehow keep on fighting forever. He also felt that he could not kill Brand without his weapon, gauntlet, or other hand, so he turned to Lucifer.
"My lord, if I have sufficiently entertained you, I would like to request the return of my left hand in this fight." His voice was subservient, his posture bet in a pseudo-bow.
Lucifer appeared to think for half of a second. "Hmm, alright, but just because that punt you gave him back there literally made my night."
"Thank you my l—" Luke was not able to finish the sentence, because just then Brand was upon him, jumping in the air, spinning, and ax-kicking down on top of him. Sweat poured down his face, but his voice was strong as he barked.
"Like hell I'd let you do that. I'll kill you before he gives it back." Luke skipped back, letting the kick pass him by, but lunged back in when Brand's foot collided with the ground and threw out a leading right-handed jab. Brand hand-sprung back, then immediately rolled to the side, dodging Luke's follow-up kick. He came out of the roll instantly and spun around, morphing the wood that had been on his foot into a spike that connected to his open palm like an extra finger. He stabbed out with his right hand just as Luke turned, and Luke was barely able to block with his left hand. As it was, the spike still stabbed into his left forearm, but stopped inches away from the gap between his ribs. Luke quickly twisted his left arm to the side, catching Brand's arm off-balance in the process, and then wrapped his other, good hand, around Brand's torso and other arm. Brand was held fast.
"You are good, elf." His fingers were still not back, but he had to make the most of it. "You may even be as strong as me."
Brand's smile belied his obviously tiring body. "Yea, I also know how to use all of my limbs." The wood morphed itself like melted metal out of Luke's arm before forming itself into another spike on Brand's knee, which then shot up into Luke's stomach. This time, it was only Luke's reflexes that saved him, as he turned his body to the side just when he saw the strike, and was therefore able to stop any damage to his major organs. Still, the weapon slammed into him with all of the considerable force Brand had displayed before, and for the first time in the battle, Luke felt true pain. He yelled, picked Brand up with his one hand, spun him around his head, and threw him at the far wall. The momentum of the throw ran out before he truly made it, so Brand was able to recover on his feet and slide across the tiles before coming to a complete stop facing Luke once again. And yet, even though he was unhurt, he was forced to look on as Luke's left hand swelled up and regrew its four missing fingers.
Still, his face was placid. "I guess life just isn't that easy."
Luke lifted his hand in front of his face. He flexed the fist, turned it about, and smiled. "Yep. Are you ready to die now?"
His shoulders heaved with a heavy breath. "Yes, but not here."
They charged at each other, and once they were close they broke out in the fastest, most brutal close combat Brand had ever been in. They fought with such strength that it took only two clashes between them to kill a tree up above, and he must have thrown a hundred in the space of a minute. He heard their cries in his mind, tasted their bitter pain in his mouth, felt them dying within his own skin, and yet they only pushed him to fight harder. He punched, kicked, kneed, blocked, elbowed, chopped, and dodged with all of his might, and Luke gave just as much back at him. If not more. Brand would have loved to use the remaining root he had for offensive purposes, but he had to constantly shift it back and forth from his shins to his forearms so that they did not break when he defended against Luke's strikes. Even though their strikes were faster than the human eye could follow, they still stayed close to one another, not letting up for a second. They both knew that the first one to step back would be a dead man.
Each time Brand attacked, he was blocked, and when Luke attacked, the result was exactly the same. But he soon began to notice that his hits were beginning to be blocked slightly sooner, and his own blocks came just slightly later than the ones before. He could feel the way the flow of battle was going, but there was nothing he could do to change it. Even as he ground his teeth and tried to throw every attack faster, and every block with more precision, his body simply would not respond like he wanted to. He was breaking down.
'It's just like the time I fought Demenn.' His mind raced even though his body barely responded to its commands. 'I can't keep up. I'll die like this. I can't do anything.'
And then the world slowed down. For just a moment, he felt a bead of sweat flow down his cheek with agonizing patience. His chest expanded, and one long, belabored, wheezing breath flowed down his throat like he was about to leap into a freezing river. He tasted the blood that had accumulated in his mouth, and was reminded of his wife from centuries away. What dominated every one of his senses, though, was the knee that was heading straight for his chest. It came so slowly that, for a moment, he thought he could stop it, but he soon realized that he had been fooled by a fake swing from above. His hands were too high. He was basically already dead.
'That's the one, isn't it?' He asked no one in particular.
'Yes.' a voice that sounded like an acorn growing into an oak answered him. 'We have allowed you to use our lives because we realize the depth of your conviction, and because you have never hurt us before in any way. But now you will die, and the loss of all of our family will have been in vain. We have given you this moment because we can save you, and because you have the ability to be a great influence on this land. However, you must promise us two things. The first is that you will allow us to completely absorb your werewolf abilities in order to help sustain us from the damage you have caused, and the second is that you will stay in this forest and tend to the trees until as many as you have destroyed today have regrown.'
The knee still continued to grow closer, but Brand had to think. At first, the idea of giving up his werewolf abilities terrified him, because he would have to lose his eyes. But then he realized that he had fought most of this battle without his eyes, and that when he had looked at Nasoren with and without his eyes, she was beautiful either way. It was then that he realized what this decision was truly about. Nasoren was all that mattered to him at this point.
'Would she live such a...mundane life, just to be with me?' The thought disturbed him, but he found that, inside himself, he already knew the answer. 'At least, with only my inner sight, I'll never see her as anything besides the true beauty that she is.'
'Entity,' he paused. 'I accept.'
'Very well.' And just like that, time sped back up until it felt like it was faster than it had eve
r been, and the knee slammed into his chest faster than death. Brand's world went black.
Demenn watched Luke's battles against Niethel, Varus, and Brand with increasing desperation. The fire spell he had activated had still only taken out about a third of the ice, and he was still almost completely trapped behind it. It was beginning to become clear to him that he would not be able to free himself before Luke overcame and butchered his comrades before killing him as well.
