A coffin of sand seems like an impossible thing… what with loose grains and all. How could a few cubic meters of the sand trap a person who could knock a 50 tons large rock of Mana stone a few meters away? But these grains of a sand were bound tight by mana and even with his massive strength Kush wasn’t able to break through.

“IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIYYYYYYYYYYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHh…” he screamed trying to put all the strength in his body driving the sand away.

Parth still analyzing the situation still didn’t react to Kush’s struggles. He was still trying to figure out what being would have so much mana and spare time to waste on them. Kush put all his strength in his only arm trying to break containment and final managed to make an airway for himself. His lungs were getting crushed under the tremendous pressure of the sand coffin. His nostrils and mouth were being filled with sand, sand was filled the underside of his nails and was pushing them off, his ears were filled with sand too, he couldn’t open his eyes under the tremendous pressure of the sand and the sand grating against his skin made it so that he couldn’t feel anything. All his senses were sealed shut, it was at this point, he let go of mana emission and the sudden shift in weight from a few hundred kilos to 50 tons caused the sand prison to break and Kush was falling from about 10 m in the air in a soft ground of sand.

He removed his braces and went limp on the ground.

“Cough… Cough… Cough… Cough… Cough… Cough… Cough… Cough… Cough… Cough…” he went removing all the sand in his lungs

“HEEEEEEEEEHHHHHHHWWWWWW” heaving at air. The ‘sand’ seemed surprised by the sudden change in weight and didn’t approach Kush instantly, giving him the precious few seconds to straighten his bearings. He opened his hands and let Tanka drop to the ground and slapped against his ears one at a time to remove the sand from his ears.

“Congratulations, you made me… remove my braces… now face the consequences!!” he said wheezing after each phrase.

Just as he finished his sentence, the sand from all around him rose up in the shape of a wave trying to drown him. “AAAAA” screamed Kush as he brought his axe down in a

“BANG”

A blow so profoundly strong that it would send shivers down the spine of mightiest of generals. Even Parth was a bit surprised by this blow. The blow split the wave of sand in two and the land shook for a couple of seconds. The sand stopped for a fraction of second and then commenced its onslaught of attacks this time in the shape of multiple spears 3 meters long and 10 cm in diameter, coming from all directions. Kush could block most with his axe, but 2 managed dig in. His natural defenses were but paper before powerful spears as they continued digging into body and managed to pierce his liver and one of his kidneys. Blood entered his mouth as he started coughing up blood “Cough… Cough… Cough… Cough…”.

Just then a spear from the top of his came down on him to finish the job. He had been fighting continuously, the damage from pushing the several 10s of tons of mana rock, walking across the arid desert in those braces, being burnt by the blood of the worm and then getting attacked by the scorpions pushing him nearly to death. Even though he got a few hours to ‘repair’ himself, but that was only enough to let him walk straight without the need of an aid. This fight forced him to expend himself to the extent that he almost died once and then had to remove his braces to continue. The blow from before may have been powerful, but still not his full strength. The two sand spears may have been the final nail in the coffin.

Kush dropped to his knees, before grabbing on to the two spears. He knew leaving the weapons in was the right thing to do to stem the loss of blood from the body, but it was only a matter of time before the opponent would let lose the sand in his blood stream and then he would become a puppet in its hands. This was also why he suddenly increased the weight on his braces to suddenly break away from the opponent.

He needed to be quick to remove the spears so ignoring the pain he put all his strength in his arm and pulled “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA”

A scream which would send shivers down one’s spine originated from his mouth as he fought the urge to stop his hand. Parth could see the strength the sand needed to push back the spear in Kush from the increase in glow radiating from the sand. The spear in the kidney was starting to come lose too since ‘the sand’ was more concentrated on the one Kush was pulling. As soon as Kush noticed this he used his jaws to grab onto the spear in his kidney and pulled it out. The sudden action Kush perturbed ‘the sand’ and it lost concentration on the first spear. Kush fighting for his life, pulled with everything he had and managed to pull it out too. Blood started pouring from both his wounds as he wheezed trying to pump some life in his body but all it did was pull the blood in his mouth back in his lungs inducing a cough. He didn’t have any time as the unhurt ‘sand’ leapt back into action and this time with renewed vigor hell bent on destroying everything in its path. Changing into spikes of various length coming from all directions. Kush charged head first into the spikes in front of him and destroyed them with his axe since he knew he would be done for if he didn’t run right now. But the spikes right after being disintegrated re-formed themselves and sped in the direction Kush had escaped to, along with the rest of the spikes. For a few seconds the game of cat and mouse continued. At first it was 16 spikes behind Kush and another 8 from the rest of directions. Kush once again smashed the ones in the front and ran outside the encirclement. Now 24 spikes were chasing him from behind and another 8 from the rest of direction and then

‘Slam’

Came the sound as he once again broke encirclement and rushed outwards now 32 spikes were behind him. Slowly the number of spikes increased till 400 of them were following him. When looking from a distance it looked like a funny game but to Kush who was being chased around, each second seemed like his last. His vision once again turning blurry blood dripping all over the ground. Right before he could swing his axe for the next volley, his knees buckled and…

“Arrey…”

He dropped to the ground. Parth nocked an arrow in his black bow and was about to shoot when he saw Kush slam the butt of his black axe on the ground and slashed with it the next instant. A lot of the sand on the ground had turned red from the streaks after streaks of the blood from Kush. Just before the spike could hit him they were broken down again. Once again more spikes were surrounding him. Parth couldn’t hold back now and nocked an arrow on the bow and let it go. The arrow blew over the most the spikes surrounding Kush and gave him the opportunity to dig his axe into the solid ground to block out the rest of the spikes. Next the spikes dissolved themselves, Parth used this opportunity to leap next to Kush with back to him. He said “This guy’s a monster, the sheer amount of mana he possesses is enough to convert sand into a living weapons. You can’t fight this guy using normal means!! Your attacks does not impact him and if his sand is left inside your body, he can rampage around at will. Frankly even I find this guy to be a headache…”

While Kush could hear what Parth was saying, he wasn’t registering anything. He was delirious, his vision blurry and judgement skewed. He was angered by the fact that an opponent he couldn’t even see was playing around with him and all he could do was run around scared for his life. He raised his hands to Parth, Tanka in hand, and raised two fingers and said “I need about two minutes…”

“For wha…” asked Parth before being interrupted by incoming tsunami of sand.

Parth picked up 3 arrows and fired them in quick successions in three directions, the power of the travelling projectiles disintegrated the sand tsunamis in all directions, blowing it to smithereens, the ‘sand’ quickly reconstituted itself into pillars falling on the two opponents which Parth managed to blow away effortlessly. As soon as pillar broke sand it became a hand intent on grabbing them which Parth blew up without any efforts. The ‘sand’ on realizing the power of foe ramped up the rate of attacks. It wasn’t going all out against Kush, spear after spear formed around them and Parth was blowing them away. Kush was simply bent at his back his axe placed horizontally against his body, he was preparing…

Parth was leisurely taking care of the attacks from the ‘sand’; what actually concerned him was what Kush was doing. “What the fuck us he doing, he is emptying his body of mana and all of it is concentrated in his axe, the fuck is he trying to do blow himself up?? Or worse blow both of us up??”

Kush was finding it hard to concentrate due to obvious reasons… every thread of ether being released from his body into Tanka felt like it was reducing his life by a month. The easier option would be to let Parth handle it, but his father would disprove of it. With every passing second his knees kept on bending and buckling and life passing out of him, finally after two and a half minutes he was ready, but his consciousness was fading in and out of it. He did not really need to say it but he really liked shouting out the name of his move but instead he simply warned Parth before swinging his axe horizontally “Duck… bhaiya…” it was then that Parth realized what he intended to do and ducked under Tanka’s handle and let Kush perform a 360 deg sweep with his axe.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA” screamed Kush from pain releasing the monumental move.

And then it happened… a golden light was emitted from the axe. The light was about 23 m thick above the ground and it went out in the shape of an circle parallel to the ground whose radius kept on increasing endlessly. Whatever came in its path was obliterated, leaving nothing behind. All the sand was obliterated to extinction. A huge arc was formed on the ground with Kush as the centre and radius of 22 km. nothing was left, only a giant patch of barren land.

One would expect a ‘boom’ when things collide but the fact of the matter is, the two colliding things are supposed to be on equal plane for a ‘boom’, the physics of attack was something which was above the concept of matter and mana. It was a move invented by the hero Poseidon, though Kush could not even come to close to imitating it, the mere fact that a hero used this as his finishing move was testament to its potency and counter for this move was surely not present on the entire Bhoomi, surely not in this place… and hence no ‘boom’.

Within a minute everything quietened. The dome was gone the sand was gone and because Kush couldn’t properly control his powers the ground and sand had been obliterated as well. A 10 kilometre radius basin that was formed around the two opponents at a depth of around 300 m at the centre. They were standing on the only landmass in the entire area which was about 10 m in radius and as one would have guessed 300 m high from the bottom most point of the basin.

Kush fell on his knees, his eye blood shot, his body devoid of ether, his strength sapped. All the pores on his body including his anus were bleeding. He fell to the side his axe in hand. Today he had etched the entire landmass around him with something permanent. Parth looked around them to look for the perpetrator when he saw a boy barely 17 to 18 years of age lying there stuck to inside of the giant dome shape, Kush had created.

Parth saw the boy, determining if he was alive or not from distance was difficult even for him. He was pretty sure the boy this young could not be the perpetrator, but if not the perpetrator then who was he? And how did his body survive complete obliteration of the monstrous attack which sent shiver up Parth’s spine as well?

He carefully picked up Kush and leaped across the entire 10 km distance to where the kid was and checked him for life. Parth was surprised by the fact that the boy was alive too!! Just then he heard something… if sounded like flowing water!!! “How fuck is there sudden onslaught of this huge wave of water when there wasn’t even a drop before??”

Just then Parth grabbed the boy roughly and jumped out of the pit in one go. He then turned around and saw as the entire pit was filling with transparent clear water, the massive quantity of water from the walls of the massive basin was coming in waves crashing against each other creating an ear splitting rumble. Within the hour the basin was full!!

Parth was flabbergasted, his eyes wide. After a few minutes of surprise there was smirk on his face as he shook his head. He remembered the fact that Kush didn’t have a Karmic power, he remembered what torturous thing he had to release a power this devastating and then he closed his eyes, took in a deep breath and uttered “Monster…”