“What are you doing?” Zyla demanded as the weapon she was trying to stab through Leo’s neck was shakily lifted away. “How are you doing this?” Her eyes widened in astonishment as the young man proceeded to overpower her. He squeezed her wrist until the dagger fell to the grassy floor with a soft thud. She lashed out at Roy with her foot, using his chest as a springboard to rip her arm away and create distance between them.

The youth took a single stumbling step back before he evenly met Zyla’s furious yet wary gaze. “Kneel!” she barked at Roy, who gave her the faintest of smiles before stepping forward. Zyla took a step back in response, confusion blossoming on her face. “I, your master, order you to kneel, you pathetic worm!” she shouted.

Roy stopped at her command and Zyla gave an obvious look of relief, until he slowly lifted a hand to the collar around his neck. Green arcane symbols that weren’t visible before began to glow along the white metal as his hand gripped the edge of his collar and began to pull. “Your words hold no power over me.” The collar blazed to life like a descending star, an ominous creak filling the clearing. Then in a spray of shrapnel, the collar shattered.

“No-no-no…how is that possible?” Zyla muttered to herself as she backed away, her body trembling. She glanced down at her arms as if in shock to see them shaking. “This can’t be happening. I refuse to let this happen!”

She planted her foot in the ground to stop her retreat and bared her teeth at Roy as rage seeped into her voice. “I was chosen by the heavens themselves, and I refuse to be cowed by a classless nobody like you!”

“Well then let’s see which is stronger, the heavens or the abyss,” came Roy’s cool reply.

Zyla let out a wordless cry as she rushed forward, a metallic black creeping up the pale white skin of her arms. The single dagger still in her left hand shimmered before melting like a candle before a flame, flowing over her hand to form a thick gauntlet with a sharpened blade protruding above her knuckles.

The transformation finished by the time she arrived in front of Roy, who stood stock-still, his face as expressionless as ever. Zyla let out a furious swing with her right arm, a shockwave rippling through the air with the force of the blow as she aimed to cave in the younger man’s skull.

He waited until the strike was inches from connecting before swaying to the right, letting her arm breeze by his ear, and the force it contained to explode behind him. It ruptured the ground, uprooting plants and trees alike as it carved a furrow in the earth for several feet before dissipating.

Roy gave no outward reaction as he proceeded to sidestep her follow-up strike, causing the bladed gauntlet to slice through a wisp of stray fabric instead of piercing the center of his chest. The strike held much of the same destructive power as the first, and a large portion of the undergrowth was speared apart as a lance of force shook the clearing.

So, this is a class…Leo thought as he strained to watch the brawler unleash a flurry of savage blows that devastated the surrounding area, Roy continuing to remain a step ahead of each one. He was glad their bout was moving farther away from him; he hadn’t regained control of his limbs yet, and any one of those strikes would see his body splattered across the clearing. His fogged mind still held enough sense to wonder why Roy had saved him, and how he was able to fight against such an overwhelming opponent, given the disparity in their levels. It seemed the youth wasn’t able to strike back under the ferocious onslaught, so it was only a matter of time until he made a misstep that would prove fatal…but lasting as long as he had was impressive in itself.

A nudge on his stomach drew his attention back to his surroundings. Pride loomed over his body, her snow-white fur blackened and burnt with several patches seared away entirely to reveal painful red burns beneath. He tried to move his hand to brush away some of the soot from her normally pristine fur, but only managed to squirm his fingers several inches in the air before his strength gave way.

Pride gave him a look of agitation before rushing away to disappear under the archway of the behemoth tree. Hopefully, the cat wouldn’t do anything too foolish.

By the time he turned his attention back to the fight, Roy’s clothes, which had already been little more than rags, were now shredded mostly beyond use. His shirt was completely scrapped, revealing a toned torso riddled with countless old and new glossy scars that didn’t belong on a young man’s body. Several fresh nicks on his skin leaked small trickles of blood from blows he had not fully avoided, and his hair had become a frayed mess, yet the look in his blue eyes showed of disappointment.

“Is this all you can do?” he asked, a frown tugging at his lips. Zyla growled in anger at the ridicule and tried to continue her one-sided pummeling. Instead of dodging her next strike as he had been doing, Roy slapped her wrists, redirecting and guiding her blows away from him.

“Enough of this charade...” He spoke up again after several more seconds. Red motes of energy flourished to life around one of his hands like thousands of tiny fireflies. He weaved between Zyla’s next two furious blows with the fluidity of water before thrusting his hand into her stomach up to his forearm with the sickening sound of parting flesh.

The beautiful woman gasped, her face contorting in shock and pain as she stumbled and clutched the hand sticking out of her gut. The metallic color around her arms faded back to pale white, and the dagger reformed above her left hand to join its brethren in falling to the soft earth. Roy removed his hand with a flourish of finality, flinging away some of the blood clinging to it and leaving Zyla to fall to her knees, her hands desperately trying to prevent her innards from spilling out.

She stared up at Roy in confusion as blood leaked down the corners of her mouth. “Why…hide…” she croaked out at the youth who stood above her like a king issuing judgment.

“Because a lone slave escapes notice. Be thankful that even someone as insignificant as you can play a part in something greater,” Roy concluded, bringing his hand down to carry out the sentence with a quick slice. Zyla’s head flew several feet into the air as her neck erupted in a fountain of blood. Her body remained upright for a moment before going limp and toppling into the mud with a soft thud.

Golden light shot out of Zyla’s body like multiple rivers, twisting in the air before descending to converge on Roy, who knelt to retrieve one of the woman’s daggers and her body. He strode calmly toward Leo, dagger in hand and dragging Zyla’s headless corpse along the ground, seemingly unencumbered by the vast influx of experience that swarmed his body. The waves of potential stoppered off, the remaining energy easily absorbed by the younger man, who paused next to Leo’s prone form. Roy met his helpless eyes with a cold sideways glance before continuing past him, stopping another dozen paces away.

Zyla’s carcass was flung unceremoniously to the ground, Roy’s bored expression never changing. He used the tip of the dagger to slice open his left hand from the center of his palm to the tip of his index finger, letting the blood flow freely for a few seconds before crouching to draw strange symbols in the freshly formed grass around the body.

Confused and with mounting trepidation, Leo tried to pry his arm off the ground once more. He managed to lift his entire hand this time before his depleted body gave way. The sound of footsteps alerted him to others and he turned his head back toward the Creeping Horror to see Pride approaching with the two green-collared siblings in tow. He had all but forgotten about them in the commotion.

The brother and sister duo walked with about as much anxiety in their step as he felt. The brother grimaced and the sister looked as though she might hurl as they spied Roy hovering over the mutilated body of their former master. Still, the two continued what felt like a forced march by Pride to Leo’s fallen form.

“You want us to heal him?” the young man asked Pride, who gave a brief swish of her tails in acknowledgment. The siblings, who for a moment Leo thought were twins, shared similar features. They both held the same auburn hair that reminded Leo of autumn leaves, and they stood just under six feet with an inch or two in variance. Their faces were drawn and figures gaunt from malnutrition, but the determined look in their amber eyes spoke of an unbroken will.

The girl knelt on the grass next to Leo and placed a slender hand on his chest. Green energy seeped from her fingertips and tingled his body as it seeped under his skin. “Umm, I don’t sense anything physically wrong with him,” she said, her brows furrowing in concentration. “How did this happen?” she asked absently. Leo managed to move his face just enough to arch an eyebrow at her question.

She blushed furiously as she realized the only two capable of answering her question were the beast and her almost paralyzed patient. “Right, you can’t speak! Well…um…”

“He used more potential than his body was capable of handling,” drifted Roy’s voice as he continued his gruesome work.

The color in the young woman’s cheeks vanished as she looked up at the young man nervously. “T-thank you,” she stuttered before turning to look down on Leo. “If that’s the case, your mind should adjust on its own after a few days.”

Days! The word sent his other brow skyrocketing to join the first. Gods knew what kind of torture Zeld would perform on his helpless form! His concern must’ve shown through because his action quirked a smile from the girl’s face. “Don’t worry, I have a skill I think will be able to help.”

“Lila, you know we’re not supposed to use that skill on an outsider,” her brother scolded, placing a hand on her shoulder.

She backed him down with a glare. “We would’ve died following Zyla’s orders if it wasn’t for him. We owe him this much.”

Leo shot a look at Pride for assistance, no longer sure if having his mind experimented on was the best course of action, but the feline’s eyes were fixated on Roy. Her burnt fur stood on end and tails flicked in alarm as she watched him work.

Lila let out a huff of annoyance as she saw his reluctant gaze before smacking a hand to his forehead. Leo turned back to face her as she rolled her amber eyes at him. “Honestly, it’ll be over before you know it.”

His vision turned a neon green as images in his head were suddenly picked up like they had been sucked in by a vortex. They whirled around in his head, breaching the surface of his subconscious then diving back under before he caught more than a glimpse of what they were. He saw his sister’s face flash by, eyes wide with concern and unshed tears as she looked down on him in the same way Lila first had, then the image was gone, replaced by the shadowy ceiling of a large warehouse and the sound of a deep voice stating, I accept your conditions.

His thoughts slowed and the green light engulfing his vision faded as he took in a gasping breath. “It worked!” cheered Lila before she schooled her features. “Ahem, I mean of course it worked.” She stood and brushed the dirt from her ragged purple dress and held out a hand to help him up with a smile.

Leo tested out his newfound control, tensing and relaxing his muscles a few times, before slowly raising his hand to accept the gesture, callused fingers born of weeks of sword work gripping soft and delicate ones.

She lifted him just as a brilliant flash of red light shot up into the air, reaching all the way to the ceiling above. Everyone’s gaze immediately became fixated on Roy, who knelt head bowed in submission before the display that had arisen from whatever ritual he had performed.

A weight bore down on Leo’s body in a manner similar to what he had experienced with the Elder Chari, and he strained to stay upright as his feeling of trepidation grew to a cacophony of alarm bells. He expected a demon or some other horrendous abomination to reveal itself, but what stepped out of the unholy light was a man.

The man was lean and tall, towering over seven feet in height, with lavish clothes entirely devoid of color. He strode forward purposefully, black cloak rippling behind him while one of his gloved hands went to scratch a prominent jagged scar underneath his right eye. His charcoal eyes glowered in anticipation and glee beneath a well-groomed head of black hair.

He looked down on Roy’s statuesque form. “You’ve kept me waiting, Reign.” He spoke, his voice a smooth baritone that sent chills down Leo’s spine.