Reginald inhaled deeply, relishing the feeling of his lungs working within his chest as the cool air was drawn in through his nose, basking his throat and sinuses with a delightful chill.

Bermuda was among the colder parts of Unix, and in all of his eight centuries he was quite sure there was no place in the continent with a greater nocturnal beauty. The buildings were tall, but not towering, the streets limited to flame lamps in lieu of arclights. With their glow refracting through the icy mists which rolled through the city some nights, it was entirely possible to see the warmth.

His shoes clapped against the cobbles, waistcoat and trousers allowing plenty of the air’s bite to graze his skin, and yet though every nerve in his body demanded he shiver, Reginald couldn’t help but savour the bracing atmosphere.

This was how a city was supposed to look. As far from a disease-ridden rathole as it was from something which resembled the left-overs of a contest to build the most obnoxious, oversized structures possible.

It was a place of people. With the edges and hostility serving only to draw attention to the softness and intimacy about the place. There was life to the air, even in the night. He could taste it in the mist, hear it in the distant laughs. A place with vitality enough that even the quietest night served only to make those rare, loud few audible from farther.

Allowing himself a smile as he continued on his way, Reginald took in the sights immediately around him. He was walking down a residential area, though one of the higher class ones. The houses were large, but not absurdly so, and there was space aplenty in the clean, carefully maintained road.

Reginald was getting old. Surely the sight of such a mundane place would not have brought a smile to his lips a century ago. If it did, the reason would most certainly not have been the very mundanity itself.

He trudged along, sighing at his own sentimentality.

As he walked, his mind drifted to more important matters. It was, after all, the purpose of his entertaining such evening strolls. To relax himself, free up his faculties for more important consideration rather than leaving them to be clogged by unneeded tension.

Karma Alabaster was an issue. Her plan was surely to gather some irrefutable evidence of Unity Eden’s erratic behaviour behind the scenes. From there she could either present it to the world, using genuine altruism and his brutal killing as an excuse, or allow herself to be stopped, at which point it would inevitably get out that someone very powerful had prevented such information from reaching the light.

Quite an elegant plan, and one Reginald himself had only figured out once he’d received word from his spy network that some extremely pointed questions were being asked of people who had had contact with Eden.

Ordinarily that sort of easily-traceable nature would have been an enormous fault in any endeavour. Not this one, though. Not one where being interfered with may well be better than being allowed to act as one pleased.

He found himself smiling once more, this time at excitement rather than whimsical affection. Seventeen years old and she’d formulated such a perfect political attack in under a day. Alabaster was going to make one hell of a rival, he thought. She was formidable now, in another century… He felt a chill run down his spine just thinking of it. What a wonderful girl.

Turning a corner, Reginald couldn’t help but turn his nose up at the sudden drop in the level of care, attention and maintenance evident in the street he found himself walking into. One of the lower class districts, he realised.

There was no cobbling or paving on the roads, merely dirt, compacted and hardened by thousands of footsteps. That, and the huge number of minuscule indentations and scuffs visible even in the lamplight, spoke of the dense population of the place.

Of course the rows of now wooden houses, suddenly halved in height and thirded in width, would have given one much the same impression. Particularly their being close enough together for a neighbourly handshake to be had through windows.

Quickening his pace, Reginald hurried on his way through, eager to escape the stale, tangy scent clinging to the air. It had a vaguely familiar note to it, as if similar to a dozen smells he’d experienced before, yet not truly alike any one of them.

Lost in his thoughts as he was, he didn’t notice he was being stared at until he was near to the end of the street.

Reginald raised his eyes from the dirt floor, bringing them to focus on the figure standing just a few metres from him. It was a strange sight. Brown hair, cropped and spiky, with what looked like well-worn workman’s clothes, thick dark fabrics forming trousers, shirt and a waistcoat, complete with a pair of great, heavy boots.

It wasn’t until he realised the man was wearing a pair of spectacles, light glinting from their darkened lenses only slightly, that he recognised Bob Danielz.

A moment later, the Demigod’s magic reached him. Overwhelming, like an army thousands of mystics strong, compressed into the form of a single man. The sudden exposure to such power blinded and deafened his supernatural senses as a sudden cannon blast might to an inept’s eyes and ears.

The sensation passed, however. And it passed quickly. It was one born of shock, after all.

Reginald studied Danielz, finding himself wondering what the man was doing before him. He was not an organiser, nor did he have any connection to any of them that Reginald knew of, and Bermuda was far too big a place for two of the only three Demigods in the city to stumble onto one another in a random street by mere coincidence.

He stifled his questions as the butcher began walking towards him. The man’s lips split in a wide grin, displaying rows of jagged teeth, and his head remained facing Reginald directly.

“Mr Danielz,” Reginald said, forcing a smile as he did so. “I must say I wasn’t expecting to see you here of all places, whatever are you-”

His words were crushed in his throat as he saw Danielz’s magic begin to encase his body, hurriedly bringing up his own in response as every hair on his body stood on end, filled with rigidifying, electric terror.

There was suddenly a delay between the fall of each foot and the thudding of shoe against dirt which followed it, just a hair, yet enough to be extraordinarily disconcerting.

With his reactions and perception of time enhanced to their current level, using an entire quarter of his potency, the sound seemed to take close to a second to cross the few metres between them. The footsteps themselves, however, seemed to come no slower than before. Danielz’s body was enhanced by his own magic, it seemed.

Such was the power of a Demigod. The world froze around them, the only motion of relevance to their transcendent senses being that which was produced by their own similarly empowered bodies. For a moment Reginald thought himself mad for unleashing such powers at a whim.

His doubts died an instant later. The ground beneath Danielz’s left foot seemed to shrink, as did the air above it, and he went from a dozen feet away to just a hair out of arms’ reach. Reflexively, Reginald raised a hand and felt for a second of his abilities. He hadn’t prepared it, however, and in the delay it took him to divert the necessary potency, Danielz took another step and swung an arm forward in a punch.

The blow landed true against Reginald’s face, and he felt his nose flatten against Danielz’s fist. The momentum from the strike forced him back, bringing the wind whipping by his ears fast enough to tear them free of a lesser man, and a moment later his back struck the ground.

Reginald gasped instinctively at the impact, feeling the shock travel through his back and permeate every inch of his body. His momentum kept him sinking into the ground, the force of his descent displacing the dirt and subterranean stone with such violent speed as to send it barreling apart.

When he finally came to a stop, his head pounded and swam, vision blurred in disorientation and ears ringing as he lay in a crater. Danielz was staring down at him some ten metres above, and as Reginald’s sight cleared he realised the butcher’s body was supported not by any solid ground, but by the air itself.

The grin hadn’t left him.

Danielz leaned down, then seemed to kick off the air just as he’d been standing atop it. The substance appeared no less solid to this, and the movement launched him towards Reginald like a musket ball. Rolling to one side, he barely twisted his body out of the butcher’s path.

As the Demigod’s collision with the bottom of the crater threw air and dust outwards in all directions, Reginald scrambled to his feet and concentrated on his magic. By the time Danielz emerged from the newly formed dust cloud, he’d successfully distributed his remaining potency between two more abilities.

He used the first with great haste, feeling a rush of energy wrap itself around his body and seemingly detach his mass from the universe’s notice. With his newfound lack of weight, Reginald kicked off the ground as Danielz had the air, launching himself upwards.

The wind flung his hair back as he soared higher, and after a few moments he twisted around to stare back down at the ground. The sight made his heart sink.

A hundred paces down, the street he’d been walking through had vanished. Replaced by a crater thrice as wide as the stretch of road, and half its length. The atmosphere around it was filled with debris, pulverised stone and dirt clinging to every particle of air and making a smothering blanket over the area.

It swirled in strange patterns, like currents on the surface of a lake. Shifting, spinning, whirling around, up and down like a thousand miniature vortexes, slowed so greatly by his Immortal senses that it scarcely seemed to move at all. Rendering the air’s every minor shift clearly visible.

Those fortunate buildings which had been located beyond the crater’s border were barely any better off.

While they hadn’t been smashed to splinters, few were more than piles of snapped planks and crushed roofing tiles. The remnants of the structures had been shunted back by a wall of shifting earth, leaving most of them half buried.

For a second, Reginaled felt the unspeakably strong urge to fish through those piles for survivors. To see if he might save even a single one of the residents. He crushed the thought quickly.

There would be no survivors. Not from something like this. Besides, even if there had been, he doubted the one responsible would give him the chance to fight for any life but his own.

The currents of dust gathering below suddenly parted, cast aside like curtains about a window as something ripped through the air. Reginald recognised the concussive wave for what it was, a Demigod kicking off from the ground.

He readied his defence as Danielz shot towards him. The butcher closed in moments, and as he reached the halfway distance between them Reginald noted his flight was most peculiar. Rather than producing a weightlessness in himself and applying thrust through energy projection, the man seemed to be kicking off at the air beneath him. Closer to sprinting than flying.

Any observations were cut short as Danielz came within his range of a few metres, and with no small amount of regret in his heart he acted.

With a quarter of his potency placed into enhancing his body, and another fifth in his flight, Reginald’s third active ability was making use of an entire fifty percent of his total. It irked him that a twentieth was left unused, but his annoyance was far from his greatest concern.

Reginald drew magic from his vessel and sent it coursing through his arm, allowing it to pool in the palm of his hand, and the tips of his fingers. With a wave, he released the pit of energy on the space before him.

Using the Cutaris sphere to provide heat, and the Utalis sphere to form it into broiling gas and liquid, he conjured a jet of flames to consume all before him. They burned purple, or at least they would, were they cold enough that the reaction caused by their presence was as gentle and docile as mere burning.

The air around him hissed as the moisture fled from it, then hissed no more as the resultant steam was torn apart, obliterated so completely by its proximity to the attack that whatever pieces remained were too small even to be gas, let alone carry sound.

He had held his breath before casting the ability, for if he had not there would have been no chance to inhale for several moments, as anything breathable about the atmosphere around him was destroyed along with everything else.

Bob Danielz disappeared inside the arcane conflagration, the light released by such an unearthly build of power so great as to render him invisible. Not even a silhouette or shadow could be seen through the wall of fire.

The blaze lasted only a few moments, though even that was due only to the fact that its fuel was magic in place of oxygen. As the inferno died, it revealed the form of Danielz.

His skin was reddened in parts, blackened in others. Having taken serious burns from what should have reduced it to atoms. His clothing had survived, albeit with holes charred into more than one section, thanks to the same magic which shielded its wearer. The man’s spectacles had not been so lucky.

The items had apparently not been shielded as his other apparel had, and were nowhere to be seen. Either that or they had been shaken free in his flight, Reginald really didn’t have the mind to care which. He was far too concerned with the sight their absence revealed.

Eyes ringed with a red so deep it was like burning blood, what should have been the whites taking a blackness darker than the heart of a jet, illuminated only by a single prick of brightness in the pupils that seemed somehow brighter than in any normal man’s. As if to mock them by regurgitating that much of a gleam even while swallowing all other light.

A butcher’s eyes.

***

Zilch felt his brow moisten and chill with sweat as he stared at the city. He couldn’t see who was fighting, with his pathetically human reaction time he could scarcely even find them to the nearest acre as they tore through the city at a hundred streets per minute, but their presence was clear by what they left in their wake.

Another tongue of flames lapped up the air above Bermuda, extant only for enough time that Zilch could register it as a flash of light, yet surely blazing for several moments to the eyes of those whose battle it was weaponized for.

Brief though it was, the attack was thrice as near to the ground as the first had been. Zilch felt his heart lurch at the sight of however many hundred buildings, this time shops and other businesses in the town market, igniting like a thinly spread layer of black powder before a spark.

Eighty feet, it seemed, was insufficient distance from the fire of a Demigod.

By the time the smoke had risen above the lowest of the burning roofs, another series of clashes plagued the city elsewhere. Cobbles flew through the air like bullets, street lamps were torn free of the ground and sent spinning away by shockwaves as though they were toothpicks, and all the while the air was split by one great cracking after another.

The sound of a whip being wielded by a master. The sound of something leaving sound itself behind it as it flew.

***

Reginald released yet another jet of flame, then grit his teeth at the result. The air between himself and Danielz seemed to stretch out, increasing three, five then tenfold in length and leaving the attack travelling far further than its maximum range. The moment the fire abated, the space contracted to its natural form, and the butcher’s charge continued.

Raising a forearm, Reginald blocked the man’s kick, feeling a spasm of pain run up to send his fingers twitching as the strike sank deep into his very bones. He shot backwards from the force of the blow, and without letting up for a moment Danielz charged after him.

Gritting his teeth in equal parts frustration and pain, Reginald concentrated on his magic. He drew it back from the fire projection, then started diverting it to other abilities.

The process of switching abilities mid battle was a long one, depending on the ability of the switcher. Reginald could do it in about as much time as it took his heart to beat six times, and even with his enhancement magic that was a dangerously long lull. Mitigated only in part than five percent of his potency had already been left over, free and unassigned to any other ability, therefore far easier to dedicate to another.

He felt the flames lost to him, buried along with the other dozen or so abilities he’d learned over the centuries, and as the butcher reached him he found himself with the urge to scream his rage at the length of the process. Biting back the anger, Reginald took a defensive stance.

Danielz’s assault was an impossible one.

The butcher threw a right punch for Reginald’s body, only for the world to contract at the last moment and leave it impacting his jaw. A knee shot upwards for his ribs, far too shallow to land as he backed off, only to do so anyway upon the space Reginald managed to put between them with his dodge being halved.

Blood filled his mouth, tears filled his eyes, pain filled his body. All Reginald could do was curl his arms and legs around his body, presenting as few unguarded targets as possible while Bob Danielz struck him.

The man’s strength was indescribable, greater even than Reginald could have achieved had he an ability with all of his potency dedicated to the same effect. And yet it was far from the most terrifying weapon his opponent was wielding against him.

He felt the jittery start that came with an ability being prepared, and wasted no time in using it. As Danielz drew his arm back for another strike, Reginald hardened the air before him into an impenetrable wall. The barrier would have stopped a cannonball without the slightest strain, and yet it warped around the butcher’s fist like a mattress being stepped on.

Reginald didn’t wait to see if his defence would hold up close, and hurriedly backed away from the wall just in time to feel it break apart into a thousand howling currents of air, screaming out in all directions.

Elemental magic, or rather the kind based on the four elements hypothesised by ancient Olympian scholars all those millennia ago, was his specialty, what made it worth going to the extra effort of combining Utalis and Cutaris into a single ability, was the fact that it produced far more power with the potency placed into it than pure energy. The drawback, however, was that that power output hinged on an abundance of the element being manipulated.

Thousands of feet in the air, Reginald imagined the thin atmosphere meant it would be more or less even with a more conventional barrier.

In the time it had taken Danielz to break the barrier, Reginald had flown some dozen paces from him. The distance was a petty thing, and the butcher began to shrink it only an instant later, but it was a start.

Raising his hand, Reginald channeled magic through into his eyes, feeling the sting as masses of heat build behind them, then grinning with the satisfying push-back caused by the power’s release. Twin streams of magic arced towards Danielz, neither one any thicker than an inch yet both faster than a musket ball.

They struck the man cleanly in his chest, eliciting a grimace from him as his momentum reversed and he was flung further back. A weak thread of smoke emerged from both the spots on his body where the beams had made contact.

Simple energy manipulation was, Reginald reasoned, often sufficient. Particularly when using a cast which would make more complex, already reserve-draining abilities unfeasibly taxing.

Danielz straightened up an instant later, all hint of pain having disappeared from his face, and shot back towards Reginald. There were rumours that butchers were different in more ways than just magical. That their bodies were inhuman, reinforced in ways that made them more resilient than any human could hope to be.

Those rumours seemed to be true, as Reginald could detect no difference in the man’s physical enhancement ability which could otherwise explain how little he was damaged.

He stretched his arms out, building another barrier from the outermost sections first, then unleashed a second blast of energy, once more from his eyes.

Danielz shifted his trajectory slightly, and space warped the change from centimetres to inches, sending the streaks of power ripping harmlessly through the air next to him. It appeared that Reginald’s feint would work only once.

By the time the butcher’s fist shot for Reginald’s throat, he’d closed the barrier and filled the area in front of himself in. Knuckle met air, and the steel-like atmospheric pressure strained against the man’s strength for a moment, then gave.

Reginald had time to widen his eyes in shock before Danielz was reaching into the barrier. His strike had lost much of its momentum pushing through the wall, yet he didn’t need much. As Reginald tried to back away, Danielz’s hand caught him, closing around his throat with more pressure than he’d felt in centuries. Maybe ever.

The blood began to pool beneath the butcher’s grip, and he could feel his windpipe physically straining against the intense grip. Magic increased the beating of the heart, along with most other bodily processes. That meant that even from the perspective of his enhanced reactions, Reginald had only seconds until he lost consciousness.

Falling unconscious would cut off his abilities, making him no more durable than an ordinary man. Even if it lasted only a moment, it was death.

He struggled against Danielz, placing a palm against the man’s wrists and unleashing all the energy he could. The attack began to sizzle flesh, and the butcher’s lips curled in pain. A moment later Reginald gasped, or tried to, as his enemy’s other hand slammed into his stomach.

Something gave way inside him, and the air was forced from his lungs only to find its escape cut off by Danielz’s own hand. Tears streamed Reginald’s eyes, blurring his vision as he coughed and spluttered. His instinctive response to empty his respiratory system stopped, and his body screaming in confused agony.

Through the blurry wall of his imperfect sight, Reginald saw Danielz bring a fist back once more. He saw it for only a moment, however, before it disappeared, his head snapping back and a thousand stars swimming in the moistened haze obscuring his vision.

Another blow fell, and another. Reginald fought against each one, kicking blindly, thrashing like a trapped animal and reaching out with one hand while his left remained wrapped around his attacker’s wrist. All the while he flew sightlessly, dragging them both through the air for no reason other than the instinctive desire to move.

His heart began pounding in his ear as they spun and whirred through the skies, the tears ripped free of his eyes by the intense winds. He could see clearly, see the monstrous eyes of Bob Danielz as they remained locked on his own. Those empty pits as devoid of humanity as they were of light.

In a last, desperate effort, he placed his hand against the man’s face and unleashed another blast.

***

Karma saw the flames on the horizon. The orange hue of the fog clinging to the rooftops, dyed by the burning wood and flesh below. Even from as far away as she was, she could feel the magic of the ones responsible. Indescribable. Inhuman, even. More akin to a pair of tidal waves crashing than a battle between people.

There was another explosion, this time closer to the Crux. A street disappeared and was replaced by another crater, and a moment later the sound reached her. A chilling sound, not for what it was, but what it told her.

She’d been confused at why there had been thunder in such a clear night sky. Now she had her answer.

***

Danielz’s grip on Reginald’s throat eased up, his head forced back slightly as the gushing blast of kinetic and thermal power. For a moment he considered aborting his attack, taking the opportunity to place more distance between them. Before he could come to a decision, Danielz widened his maw and bit down on his hand.

A spike of pain shot up Reginald’s arm, the shock cutting off his energy in an instant and jerking his arm back. The limb stopped, however, held in place by the butcher's vice-like bite. Reginald began building up magic in his other hand, aiming to strike Danielz once more in the hopes that the man’s mouth would be forced open.

Instead, with staggering speed, the butcher whipped his own arm back, fist clenched, and swung it for Reginald’s face. He just barely wedged an arm in-between his head and his attacker’s hand, yet it made little difference.

The blow landed hard, and sent a crack reverberating deep through Reginald’s body. The bone had taken damage. That was only a secondary priority, however, as the force of the strike launched Reginald back, while Danielz’s teeth remained locked over his other hand. For a brief moment, he thought he’d be held in place by the fanged grip. Then he felt the pain at the base of three fingers intensify.

His hair was whipped in front of his face by the air as he hurled backwards, a sickening ripping being audible only through his own body as the sound waves used his flesh as a medium.

As shocking as the agony was. As paralysing, almost mind-ruining, it was nothing next to the instinctive panic that threatened to overwhelm Reginald at the sudden numbness of everything above the digits’ knuckles.

It took him several moments of blinking to realise that they were gone, and once he did the pain only increased further. His lungs and throat became raw and strained, his screams so feral and primal that it took him a second to even recognise the voice as his own. Danielz leaned forward, grinning like a viper as he drew back for another strike.

Reginald held his hands out, aiming to harden the air and buy himself a few moments to think with another barrier. He failed, as the moment he flexed the fingers of both hands to manipulate his magic, another trio of hot spikes ran up his right. The shock turned his scream into a gasp, and Danielz rammed his fist into his mouth the moment it opened.

There was hot, metallic blood washing over his lips and tongue. Solid lumps swirling around his mouth amidst the liquid, fragmented teeth, most likely. Reginald tried to take in his surroundings, to keep track of Danielz, but his vision was nothing but drifting, shadowy images and blinding spots of light.

All he could feel with any surety was a bizarre shifting in his insides, what was it? He knew, yet couldn’t quite bring the knowledge to the forefront of his mind.

Reginald’s ears were ringing, yet that ringing began to die down. As if tied directly to it, his eyes began to correct themselves too. Moment by moment his senses sharpened once more, and his mind cleared along with them.

Flying. That was the sensation. A sudden acceleration, followed by a flight.

The great, grey wall before Reginald finally settled into a coherent form, giving him just enough time to identify it as a building before his impact.

***

Karma found her hands curling into fists at the sight of Bermuda Tower’s destruction. It started from the top, the impact striking it as a bullet would a wooden log. Such hardness and force combined with a minuscule form gave the collision a penetrative effect, sending it punching its way through the roof and continuing down through the lower layers.

Once it ripped through a section, the shockwave that followed tore the already destabilised material apart, launching it out in all directions as though a pile of powder kegs were detonating within. In truth, such petty explosive force was far from the magics being unleashed.

Continuing on further into the belly of the building, the pair of Demigods reached the ground floor in a fraction of a second. Even plowing through lacquered stone floors and ceilings, their speed was such that Karma was barely able to follow while enhancing her own body.

What was left of the tower, shattered chunks and slabs of disconnected stone, began to fall. Of course, on the timescale the initial impact had taken place, and with Karma viewing it with the perception of time necessary to even register the Immortal battle, gravity took an age and a half to pull it down.

For several moments, it almost seemed it was standing still. Each of the thousands of fragments remaining hanging in the air, suspended by some invisible force. It didn’t last long. The further they fell, the more they sped up, and soon they were clearly moving even to her preternatural senses.

Before they reached the ground, however, a great carpet of dust and debris stretched out from it. She guessed it was propelled by the Demigods’ initial impact, as its speed and force was great enough to consume dozens of buildings adjacent to the tower in less time than it took the falling stone to even visibly shift.

It was numbing. All those people. Hundreds. Thousands, more likely. Possibly tens of times even that. Their homes and lives wiped out in a few tragic moments by a pair of Immortal children too juvenile to take their battle elsewhere.

Madness.

***

Reginald gasped in lungfuls of air as the force of the impact rocked him, then coughed it back out again as the masses of powdered stone irritated his throat. The coughing brought tears to his eyes, which clouded his vision, the lack of air brought a pounding to his ears, which clouded his mind, and for a few moments he found himself wondering if he would actually die.

An Immortal, a Demigod, suffocating in a fallen building’s debris. It would, if nothing else, make for an amusing legend.

However, Reginald had no intention of letting himself become a story.

Seizing his scattered thoughts with a mental fist and dragging them back together, he brought yet more magic to his fingertips. His will extended out of his body, meshing with the air all around him, and as he felt each and every particle of the atmosphere fall tightly under his control, he began to cleanse it.

Dragging them towards him, forcefully separating the airborne debris and pushing it back away with yet more air, he sent a torrent of breathable atmosphere towards his own body. Once he’d produced enough to fill the area within two or three metres of himself, he hardened the outsides and formed a bubble.

The first inhalation he took was among the more blissful things he’d experienced in his life, but the moment his lungs were filled once more and suffocation was not his greatest threat, Reginald became aware that Bob Danielz was most likely still alive.

And he’d just surrounded himself in an opaque dust cloud.

It took him less than a heartbeat to decide on his next course of action.

Danielz didn’t have Reginald’s ability to manipulate the air, and Immortal though he was, he’d still need oxygen. That meant that he’d have been forced out of the dust cloud. As he was here to kill Reginald, he wouldn’t have the option of simply letting him escape. Not unless he wanted Reginald to disappear and remain surrounded by a dozen high-level mystic bodyguards at all times.

In other words, if Reginald were Danielz, the first thing he’d have done after finding a spot with breathable air would be to find another, higher spot with the largest possible view of the dust clouds.

He’d need to act quickly once he had it, and his own magic would give Danielz his location the moment he emerged from the floating debris, but if he acted quickly, he’d locate Danielz first. A hair’s breadth of an advantage was still an advantage.

Closing his eyes for concentration, he prepared to scroll through his mental map of the city in search of the tallest building near Bermuda Tower. After a pause, he extended his magical senses to the general vicinity in the hopes that he could detect Danielz.

No such luck, standing amidst a cloud of magically-pulverised stone and searching for another mystic was like trying to find burning magnesium amidst a bonfire. Intensity only went so far to overpower quantity, after all.

Concentrating back on his mental map, Reginald quickly found the most likely location of his enemy. He frowned, glancing around at the dust and realising he had almost no way of discerning which direction he was facing.

Sighing to himself, he realised he’d simply have to rely on luck. There was a reasonable chance that he was facing the same direction he had been just before impact, at least.

Realising he was stalling, Reginald steeled his ancient nerves and charged towards what he assumed was Danielz’s location. His bubble acted as a great wall, dragging against the air as he tried to fly and slowing him immensely. Without missing a beat he allowed it to collapse, taking in one last fresh breath and holding it as he swiftly sped up.

When Reginald emerged from the mass of dust, he locked eyes with Danielz and found a feeling of triumph building in his chest. It began to melt away, however, as he saw what was happening to his enemy.

Bulging veins, potency increasing beyond belief, a grin splitting his face and revealing jagged, blood-stained teeth.

It was too late to abort his charge.

***

Another shockwave, and another section of the city destroyed. Something tore through the ground, clearing what looked like an entire league in barely a few seconds and gouging out a canyon-sized section of earth and stone as it did so.

Hundreds of buildings disappeared into the cavernous rip in Mirandis, either toppling into it as half their foundations were ground away or simply being obliterated as they remained directly in its path. By the time whatever it was stopped, everything within several miles appeared shrouded in dirt.

Zilch could still see, though. He could always see. Whether something was covered in dirt or a ceiling, so long as it was within Bermuda, it would never escape his sights.

Reginald Tamaias’s broken form was clear in his sights. Embedded in the far wall of the jagged ravine, right arm twisted and bent in several different directions at several different points. His hair hung over his face, yet his features were still visible to Zilch. Destroyed. More akin to a pile of crushed raspberries than a human’s face.

Bob Danielz walked towards him, his movement easily observable to Zilch in spite of the magic flowing through him. He strode across the air itself, and upon reaching Tamaias the butcher seized the man by his throat and pulled his unconscious body free of the wall.

There was no spark of magic about the man. No unearthly power strengthening him. For all his might, he was just a man now.

Danielz gripped the lower half of that man’s jaw, his grin widening for a moment as he pulled his arm back. Flesh tore and bone snapped, and it came free with his grip. Blood sprayed from the lower half of Tamaias’s ruined head, coating Danielz and falling to the bottom of the canyon like cirmon rain.

The butcher flicked his wrist, letting the mandible follow the blood in its descent, seemingly requiring no more exertion to release it as he did to rip it free.

Tamaias’s legs kicked out sluggishly, his head twitching and his hands spasming. Zilch couldn’t tell if they were an attempt to fight back or simply his dying convulsions. It made no difference, after a few seconds they stopped completely.

Danielz tilted his head, as if examining the mutilated corpse to ensure all life had left it. Apparently satisfied, he cast it aside and disappeared from Zilch’s sight. Not teleportation, simply the imperceptible movements of a Demigod travelling as fast he could.

The man’s fallen enemy broke apart as he struck the stone at the bottom of the pit, bursting like a grape against the uneven bottom and adding bone fragments and entrails to join the blood which had already been coating it.