Arylos gazed into the burning city, preparing himself for what follows. He felt bad for sending Iris away, but he knew full well why she couldn’t join him. He pulled out his burning sword and walked through the archway into the city.

Inside, the city was silent save for the flames. Corpses laid about on the ground, many burned, others dismembered, many with crushed bones and limbs with entrails scattered on walls from where they fell. Some impaled on spikes and some burned as solid stone corpses in the exact positions they were in when they died; a death so instant and brilliant that they did not know what happened. These burnt souls felt searing, unholy pain for an instant and then nothing.

Arylos had seen fire burn like this before; he knew exactly what it was.

He swung his sword, extinguishing the flames bellowing along the sword, and lifted it high in the air. The air hummed and the flames burning the city leapt from their places and gathered towards Arylos’s sword, dancing around it and his arm as he pulled the flames in. The spectacle lasted only brief moments before Arylos lowered his sword and the city fell dark and silent as all of the flames were extinguished and his sword went quiet and Arylos returned it to its sheath.

Once silence fell over the ruined city, Arylos could hear a slow clapping behind him, coming closer.

“Now that's what I call an impressive display,” a voice of boredom and indifference called out, accompanied by further clapping. “You really are what the old man says you are.”

Arylos turned and eyed a skinny man wearing wolf pelts around his waist and leaving his heavily tattooed torso exposed, decorated with runes and designs of various knots and symbols. The young man sported red hair tied back and a thick beard decorated with braids tied off with metal clips and bright hazel eyes. Yet he was unarmed; no sword, no shield, no weapon.

“And here I thought you would be bigger,” the man continued, sarcasm heavy in his voice. “Wasn’t your kind supposed to be so perfect and grandiose? So much larger than us pathetic insects crawling around on your perfect world.”

The two men squared up to each other as Arylos’s growls became more audible. “What do you want?”

The man laughed as if Arylos told him a joke and turned away to stroke his beard. “Ohh, I think you know the answer to that, big guy.”

Using his beard stroking as cover, the man turned and struck Arylos in the jaw to which Arylos did not react save for a deep sigh. The man followed up with a flurry of punches to Arylos’s gut but only got a groan of annoyance. The man reached out for one more punch but was caught in Arylos’s hand who began to slowly twist the man’s arm away, to the man’s shock as he tried in vain to pull his arm away.

As fast as lightning, Arylos reached down and unsheathed his sword and cut the man’s arm off before running him through the chest with the blade. However, the man only laughed and pulled the sword further into his body and gave Arylos a flurry of strikes to the face with his intact arm before Arylos kicked him off the sword and brought the sword down across the man’s torso, slicing his chest open down to his gut.

The man backed away, continuing his maniacal laughter. Arylos watched as the man’s dismembered arm disintegrated into dust. The man’s tattoos then began to glow a soft blue and his arm grew back in an instant from the stump and the flesh of his wounds squirmed and healed over without a scratch.

“Care to try again?” the man mocked while cracking his knuckles as the glow from his tattoos faded.

Arylos shook himself free of shock, processing the magic he saw at work. Templarians heal, but they don’t heal like that. The man ran at him and Arylos ran past him, bringing his sword across the man’s stomach and through his back and out the front. Arylos then tightened his grip on his sword and pushed downwards, bringing the sword out through the man’s lower torso and spilling his guts into the snow. Arylos then brought his sword around and cleanly cut the man’s head off and his body fell to the snow, his laughter finally silenced.

Arylos took panting breaths as he watched the body, waiting for any other kind of motion and still processing what he witnessed. After painful moments of silence, Arylos lowered his sword, but still waited for the body to reincarnate. If the man is a Templarian, he would only have a couple of minutes before his body starts the process, at which point Arylos can kill him for good.

A minute passes and yet the body is still and silent. Arylos begins to grow concerned; no Templarian worth their salt would give up now.

Crack

The bones of the body begin to snap as the tattoos begin to glow a soft blue once more. Arylos watched in horror as the body began to pull itself back together; entrails flowing across the snow and pulling themselves back into the stomach as the skin healed over. The man’s arm reached out and reached for his head and got up from the ground as the head began to laugh. The body finally placed the laughing head back on his neck as the severed neck healed back over as the blue glow faded.

“Not bad,” the man commended with applause. “I almost felt that. But you’re slow and weak, old man.”

Arylos finally understood what magic he was seeing and the man he was fighting. Arylos readied his sword but the man took his opening and ran behind Arylos and struck him in the back and Arylos could feel his spine crack as a shooting pain ran down his legs. Arylos howled and sucked air into his lungs and then turned to face the man and opened his mouth wide and roared as a sea of searing flames poured from his mouth, drowning the laughing man in flames that reeked of burning flesh.

Arylos cut the stream of flames short and howled in pain as the man, still burning alive, kicked Arylos in the jaw, knocking him to the ground and dropping his sword into the snow.

Arylos rose to his feet and felt his spine pop back into position as he repositioned his dislocated jaw with a disgusting crack. Arylos examined the strange man glow once more and his skin healed back over from the burns as if nothing happened. Arylos was desperate for a new strategy at this point, trying to come up with anything.

“You can’t win, old man!” the man mocked as he ran up to Arylos, intent on finishing this here and now.

“You’re weak!” the man howled as he struck Arylos in the jaw, fracturing it.

“Worthless!” the man roared, striking Arylos in the sternum.

“An outdated relic!” the man screamed, striking Arylos’s face with his knee.

“I thought you of all things would make me feel something!” the man shouted, headbutting Arylos.

“But you are just as pointless as the rest,” the man lamented, grabbing a weakened and bleeding Arylos by the hair. “You are soft and powerless. Against my power, you are nothing.”

Arylos looked in horror as he saw the man’s hazel eyes begin glowing purple as the man wrapped his hands around Arylos’s neck, squeezing with the force of two crushing boulders as Arylos’s vision began to grow dark.

“What happened to your people?” Iris’s voice sounded in Arylos’s head.

“We died by our own hubris,” Arylos’s own voice answered. “Because we thought we were so much better.”

Arylos felt his strength return as his wounds slowly started to heal and he reached for the man’s arms, trying desperately to fight back. Arylos’s veins began to glow a burning red as hate filled his heart; a seething anger that began to burn the attacker’s hands.

“At the end of it all, we destroyed ourselves.” Arylos’s own voice continued.

Fighting back against the choking pain, Arylos let out a blood curdling howl, defiant to his crushed throat as flames bellowed from within his chest and steadily poured from his throat, giving voice to his hatred.

He remembered it all. The cold, the fires, the chaos. Standing at the edge of a sundered world, bathed in orange blood and a burning spear as he watched a storm of ice and fire on the horizon. At his feet lay a corpse of a young, beautiful woman with red hair, her orange blood staining her white dress.

Anger. Hatred. Fear. Despair. Grief. Arylos became lost as his own body convulsed and tore, unable to bear the weight of his anger any more. As his vision faded, he thought once more of Iris and felt a touch of peace enter his heart upon seeing her.

“I am the last of my kind.”

Arylos roared in a deafening sound that drowned out all else. A cry so deep and filled with hate that the man could only whimper as he watched the Titan turn into something horrifying.

The man could only look on in horror at the defiance of this creature he had bound, the monster he cornered, the carnivore he weakened. Arylos lashed out with a punch so great that the shockwave was deafening and knocked the man backwards, shattering his jaw and fracturing Arylos’s own arm.

The man froze a moment on the ground while reaching for his jaw, as if astonished. After another moment of processing, the man howled in pain as if he had never felt pain before.

Arylos slowly rose to his feet, his muscles pulsing and brimming with power as the air around him hummed as four black wings grew from his back. The man could only watch as the Titan walked towards him with a murderous intent in his eyes, the ground breaking under his footsteps.

Arylos’s growling voice was more threatening than before. “You desire pain? I will grant you the gift of pain so sweet you cannot imagine.”

The man jumped up to his feet and rushed towards Arylos who dodged his attack effortlessly and struck him hard in the ribcage, causing the man to cough up blood.

“You’re weak,” Arylos whispered, following up his punch with a strike to the shoulder blade that made the man groan.

“Worthless,” Arylos growled, striking the man across the face with a slap that ruptured the man’s eardrum, making him scream.

“An insignificant speck,” Arylos snarled, keeping his voice calm as he struck the man in the sternum, breaking the bone before grabbing the man by the hair. The man stared into Arylos’s burning red eyes as his pupils became slits. “You lose the ability to feel pain and think that makes you untouchable, even by me. You’ve got a lot of nerve, boy.”

Arylos continued his onslaught; fracturing bone, crushing organs, twisting limbs. He was slowly turning the man into little more than a bloodstain in the snow, each strike ringing out with a shockwave that kicked up snow and resulting in screams from the man, begging Arylos to stop.

Arylos then wrapped his left hand around the man’s neck and squeezed even tighter than the man could have tried with both hands, slowly crushing his throat like it was made of crackers. The man tried desperately to speak but could not find his voice. He inevitably resorted to punching Arylos repeatedly, but the Titan shrugged off each hit like it was a fly, laughing all the while.

“Come now, is this really how you want to die?” Arylos asked calmly as his grip tightened. “Struggling will only make this worse for you, but if you think about this, it could end in your favour.”

The man ceased his struggle, and quickly nodded. Arylos eased his grip but held the man fast.

“What is it you want?” the man asked in a hoarse voice.

“I want just one thing from you,” Arylos spoke calmly, almost chivalrous. “I want you to go back to Asgard and tell Odin that if he sends another little shit like you after me, I will not be so forgiving as I have been as of late. I won’t let the next one go home; I will slaughter them without hesitation, without question. They will not be given the chance to beg for their pathetic life. Send one, send an army; Odin will be getting heads on a stick sent back to Asgard. Do you understand?”

The man was silent, afraid of what Arylos was suggesting, trying to process the message he was about to deliver. This was an impossible thing to demand of Odin.

Arylos snarled and his nails grew and pierced the man’s neck as he tightened his grip. “I said do you understand me?”

“Yes, I understand!” the man panicked as he felt the pain.

Arylos smiled and let go of the man. “Then we’re done here. Get out of my sight before I change my mind.”

The man backpedalled and ran off into the trees, out of sight and out of Arylos’s mind. Arylos let out a relieved sigh as he fell to his knees as his body slowly returned to normal, his wounds and age taking a toll on him.