The smoke, the dust, the smell of burning hair and flesh and bone. A hope darkening as mind was left in the shadow of itself, a memory welling up higher with no regard. The strain of over used muscle, of pushed back tension, the burning rash on everything not covered, the chaffing back of heated armor on skin… The empty feeling of the weapon in his hands falling to pieces. Ash and embers upwelling through the air, a stumbling forward off his taken away crutch. Eschenwald reduced to an empty handle again but… different in his mind. Weightier, off balance. A different sword, a different time. But the same vision. The same burning battlefield. The same bodies of his team laid bare.

Tall trees turned to torches, the earth to black of every shade. The blade in his hand barely named but just as fiery, yet now reduced to torn apart splinters and melted metal. The air broiling his face, the sound lost in the ring of concussion, the fires flaring across his tabard as the winds blew away their last. An explosion, a sacrifice, a fall back to earth, a different crater, a different edge. But the same enemy.

The spray and splatter of them bursting, screaming and running as those flames consumed them. The relief of a stand taken against overwhelming odds. A cost. Blood boiling away, caking into the ash falling over him, already dead flesh charred and scorched before it could disappear into their bottomless appetites. But the last to fall, the last to make this sacrifice to stop this advance. He burned the brightest. And fell upon them to save the only survivor left. Erdwut.

The fires burned away, the land reduced to grey and black, the world lost in increments of broken time. But a glimmer of hope in the devastation. An ember, a source of power… relinquished. Taken up from that ashen forest. Taken from this field of burned away bodies. A will, a mission. A noble purpose hidden and given form only by its wielder. Yet… seeking another. Seeking someone greater. Someone unbroken. Someone… other than Erdwut.

And yet he carried it away. Took it as his own, forced it as his own. To only the shame of those burned away bodies.

Now though those bodies were back. But with no cleansing fire to hide them away. David laid strewn not far, skin boiled to sloughing and his right side just… gone. Maya not far behind him, desperately fighting the scold to get up, trying to get to his side, yelling against that deafening ring to no avail. Buster was down, sword falling over her, weight too much and strain driving her prone. Jacob beside her… cut in two, frantic stare upward gulping for a breath he couldn’t take. Zeleny, cut and bruised but little else, wrenching out from behind Buster and running beside him just as frantic. Trying to find any hope and failing just like those desperate eyes.

Far back a smoking pillar, a still standing shield. Zeus’ Strike. Back to the world, front to Kabar fallen in his shadow. No dusted loss taken from him, but a fall oncoming. Skin burned away and bone embering, a denial of that siphon, but not of its heat. But another life spared from its true death. And Samurai… laid out not too far. Floral and green blacken with dust and burn. A side lost, arm and leg and face. But still a smile. Still that true smile. As his only hand relinquishing a sword to his son’s. As it fell away limp. A blade now paired with his own, and wetted with tears and blood akin.

Another team failed, another pride lost in fire. Another handle… scorching his palm. Rejecting him. Leaving him. Telling him… to relinquish. As he should have long ago. Because this power was not his to sequester. He was only there when it rose from that burned away forest. It allowed him to carry it, now its will was demanding he relinquish already! His strength wasn’t enough, his will not enough, his lie overlong and too much of a burden. He had to let go, give the blade up to the one it sought, let someone stronger fight this already lost battle. Its will stubborn… But right. But also enflaming!

Only adding more heat. More fuel. More fire. More pain. More fury. More molten devastation to this rumbling volcano it was refusing to die with. This melting away stoicism, unleashing the wrath that had been all that was left of him in that ashen wake. The only thing left of the self-hating lie that was… Erdwut.

A screaming searing hand crushing around that defying handle, heat pouring off as if it were always merely an extension. A catalyst. A medium to throw it around and direct it. A relic more universal than ever let on. But that heat, that fire, that melting composure. Its sear outmoded, it denial denied. It was a sword, his sword, his pride, his fight against the darkness. He refused to relinquish, refused to give up, refused to accept another team torn to pieces by this constantly returning menace. This will, this resolve became physical and real. Molten flow exuding and spreading. Covering, locking that taken blade to his hand. Refusing to relinquish. Refusing to just die! Refusing to accept this end again!

The dust below glassed and melted, tabard flaring at its edges too weak to sustain. Strained muscle disappeared, stoicism sacrificed to the roil beneath it all. And eyes a light in their own fire. Their own wrath. All to oppose that euphoric blasphemous star that should have just died already! That obsidian flow blasted back, that mask shattered by a war cry too gone to hold tempo, and a captive sword reignited to jagged molten serration. Rippling, peaking, sawing itself apart. Bearing its teeth, and bearing more than it wanted for itself.

Plate mail white hot, tabard burning to ember, soul alight, and will a casualty. Erdwut charged, and challenged that star for all it represented and all it had done. For all that his pride was worth. For that the lie he’d held to had curried him. For everything he was and would always be. That volcanic blade tearing through the air, one hand fused and the other disregarded, counter balance and simple fury all that could be draw up from this magmatic avenger of too much already. This illegitimate inheritor of his founder’s power. Bringing it all to bear to burn it away. Cleaving his shame apart with no more finesse than machete… And yet failing that too!

Volcanic spikes met lolling plate, only to shattered and splattered apart. The heat of his conflagrating soul not enough to withstand the caustic nature of this abhorrent armor. Crimson arcs intercepting, ripping will made physical apart for the energy it was. Even if it was a hollow snack. That energy not its to move, to form, to take. That blade, that will, refused to be taken. Even as it was conscripted to this suicidal madness. A single concession in that blunted impact. This wrathful soul could still yet wear down this bottomless hell.

A reverse, a shift, that magma machete slashing back through the same arcing point defense. Its blade reformed just as terrifying, but ending up just as ripped apart as the first time. And the second, and the third, and the fourth. Lava scattering and filling the air like dulling sparks. Red caustic arc ripping it counter without worry or fear or even care enough to not stop grinning like a mad man. Laughing at the futility, at the expenditure, at the uselessness… At the smell of overcooking meat.

*KRANNGG*

The slashing away stopped in a claw, armor holding in spite of the heat. That dulled edge and charring soul losing its power. Failing its cries. Yet still Erdwut would not despair, refused and refused and refused again. The muscles in his arm burned, strained, were outclassed. That coopted and stolen blade shifted against his demanding will, wrenched sideways on. And vulnerable.

The other claw was a blur and its results impossible to avoid. Eschenwald again shattered to the winds, but with more lateral direction. And more meat in the crossfire. Erdwut was shot away, sparks and spray and volcanic ejecta hurtling him on. Following his rut in the dust and glass as his back ricocheted off. As he was returned to that melted starting point he so dreaded. And that living resentment broke its maw wider.

“HeHYHAHAAH!!! So much fire and yet nothing to show for it! So much sacrifice for nothing!!”

The weakness in every hand, those broken and gripping and trying to hold on to something already gone. The despair enforced and crushing.

“What was it…?! Don’t give your life for an inch of gain or some nonsense?! Para always was a hypocrite wasn’t he, but his lessons seemed to have gone right passed his pupils!!”

The strain against a weight insurmountable, both from within and without.

“And so much pointless wrath over a single rebuke…! Did I guess right before?! I thought I could smell burning flesh and shame! And I leaned so much from RIPPING Para’s mind apart that it all just fit together nicely! That sword doesn’t want you anymore! It never did!! HHEHAahahaha!!!”

The strain to stay in control. To not fall into the trap of wrath and vain waste. To fight the despair and get up on your own.

“OHhh such easy prey! Such simple bait! Such a… pitiful wastes of good MEAT!!!”

And failing hard.

“Improperly seasoned! A bit of fear sure, but just as much overly tough bravery and love! And of course that same RAW feeling of just empty flesh! A familial trait?! Or are you just being spiteful!”

Powers flared in those over gripping hands. Heat and light and over compressing gravel. And swords were found for the cutting promise they offered as relief to this torrential fire.

“Huh… such as waste! Para would be ashamed! But what can be done about it now?!”

A claw raised from its dismissive shrug of tainted expression. The siphon wreathed frame inside flaring with those taken and stolen. Threatening to take more. And yet seen for all it truly was…

“Except do better the next time!”

By the rage rising around it.

“And make sure the meat is properly steeped in the despair it deser-“ *SCHESCHESCHESCHEEEEeeenn*

That claw separated and separated and separated, slash after slash dicing it finer through every bleeding bloated gap. Twin swords ripping through, aggression of style the only thought spared. The only path forward. The only acceptable means to put this menace down and avenge those taken away. A swirling sphere of contrails with Shimakaze at its center, swords too fast to see and too far gone to hold back. A raging island wind daring to glare into those infinite red eyes. To make them pay for another taken from him. Even as they followed him by with a still rising grin. As greater rage found its mark in the wake. In the form of a flying fist made of flash formed brick.

A Maya shaped missile of beyond lividity, of pure revenge and anguish fueled hate, making contact in that moment of slashed opened defenses. Armored snout crumpling in, teeth and stone shattering out as metal buckled to scrap. Recoil throwing that mangled visage back. Right into the blazing fire whipping in line. Its neck wide open and targeted hard, kindred rage connecting Kabar and Maya and all of them together with a true common purpose. White hot thermal line wrapped around, melted into it and cooled in an instant. Hardened around it like a noose to hang it from. But that shared purpose had lower planes.

A yank and spare of that whited over heat, a rocket assisted lariat to bring this monstrosity down. Added force denying any rebuttal to this fall. And searing in the message that this rage bore with it. Talons slipped free, back reaching angle acute with the ground. But more rage needed to express itself and turn this fall into the death sentence it was. As that oscillating slab of named steel came careening down on to flatten that angle home. Buster’s rage far more matured and wrought to this meteoric edge.

The chest refused to cleave, armor holding or oscillation held back to pancake this piece of shit to the ground it tore apart! It still buckled plenty, with a bone snapping tone as Para’s sternum took the hit in tandem. The dust and glass and scattered slag impact, ground met and the hammer strike rebounding through its twinkle. No more control left in that singular hand, only enough to twist and shoulder as the final flare came from on high. All the colors of the rainbow swirling around, etching that airborne dust in cascading wavelengths. All converging into pure unadulterated light of-

“FUCK YOU!!!”

A roaring tearing flare, rivaling her trainer’s for its stellar ferocity. And the burning loss screaming down with it. Glass refracting and twinkling Zeleny’s rage back into the colors it furled, making it known for every fiber of this monster’s being. Melting metal and bone, frying flesh in its choice of cooker. Forcing all eyes guarded but staunchly watchful. For that menace star to refute even this justified rage.

For those claws to stab their melting glass bed, to lift this ever rivaled star back up to offending attention. The blaring waves and frying air hid nothing, not the reforming snout sparking back to full visage, not the rippling surface taking this sunshine for all it was worth, not even the bubbling viscera trying to melt out of its gaps. But least of all… its retaliation.

Another rising flare counter, another doomed to die star rising through the armor, rising against blind rage turned self-destructive wrath. Zeleny lost to her own loss, ignoring the pull trying to draw her back. But not the physical warm tug on her foot. That sunshine ceased in a reflective instant, at last outshined by that rising crimson sun, finally being see by that blind wrath for the death about to fire back.

That tug became its own pull, her flight denied as Kabar yanked her down to earth, yanked her back to reality. The same reality swiveling its maw about to crash this lapse down upon the both of them. A heap of light and heat crashed together, too slow to flee, too recoiled to shift, but not without a shade to fall behind. A whistling hurled sword shaped shade.

Buster’s sword and empty shoulder slammed in succession, lonely bulky arm wrapping around the pair as oscillation revved to fight disintegration. As that star died and flare it last, and splattered over that slab of steel. Twin rivers of plasma burning passed them, only forked in defiance for however long that could last. For as long as the spike of hardened earth below that star would allow it to last.

The river’s elevation shot up, earth and rock pressed together into a spear slamming its source high and closed. Maya not done beating this thing to death, as neither was Kaze. Plasma backfire recoiling that maw, exposing that neck for those swords to slice apart. Successive slashes, back and forth and forth and forth, gap sliced over and over, even as it healed back amid the sparks and spray. That retaliation falling back down on this opportunistic attempt to decapitate it.

Sandals shattered the glass flowing around them, fleeing back with both swords crossed and deflecting hard, but a claw was already round its way, with the raking cargo it had borne for too long. Crimson lightning whiting out the battlefield in an instant of lost focus, more strike than siphon. More display than end. Those crossed swords bunched together, traced and battered in that instant as Kaze was blasted back. As the other closer claw flashed up in similar cracking retaliation. Another plasma white out instead aimed dead at Maya already crashing up as much concrete as she could muster. A wall exploded to shrapnel and another electro shove out of the way. Back slammed to the dust and front beaten and bruised.

Annoyances and unreadied meals thrown back, Resent refocused on his closer prize still hunkered behind that defiant slab. But it was still plenty conductive. A whirring, a more normal charge up in but a moment. A moment too short for Buster and her charges to get clear. That same red lightning, turned down in amps but no less blistering in its frequency. Arcs raking and dancing over that slab of metal, and passing through to the bare shoulder pressed to it. Muscles seized, that bulky shielding arm turn traitor and passing this torturous taser down the line. Contacts burned, hearts skipped beats, senses overloaded with pain all across the spectrum. Nevers on fire, screams the only able response as Zeleny and Kabar fell to the ground unable to withstand. Left to writhe as Buster fought with everything she had.

A more direct route to his want, to just burn the pain into them if they proved too foolhardy to break themselves. To prove that even expending a little power was enough to make their disparity clear. To prove this fight was pointless, useless, vain and little more than a last ditch attempt at salvaging their pride.

At salvaging Erdwut’s pride. The burn was unbearable, his soul scorching just as bad as his hand under all of this magmatic will. The hilt wanted free, refused to accept even this much as anything but desperation. Refused to accept any alternative. A toxic relationship built on disregard and weakness coming to a head. Falling over and drowning in the constant reminder of his loss and shame. In his failure. In his inability to do anything about it but refuse to let go. Refuse to be left to drown in the ash and dust of his own nightmares. He needed this blade, but it didn’t need him. It didn’t want him. It wanted out, it wanted more, it wanted something he couldn’t give it. It didn’t care for what it left behind, what it broke in the wake of its leaving, it just wanted him to relinquish already! To let go of this shameful display and end this lie he’d forced upon it.

That he’d forced upon everyone. That he’d raised as a standard to rally and follow. And in turn lead them all into the same burning battlefield he couldn’t escape from. All so they could die for his stupid vanity! So they could die to this monster ripped straight from that nightmare! All so they could suffer because of-

“LIKE HELL!!!”

Two hands, no two claws slammed his back out of the burden tearing it down. Slammed him with all the power they’d sequestered for just this purpose.

“They died saving the ones they cared about!!!”

His nerves lit up like a fire burning out from the wrong way, but reforming in that burn like nothing he’d ever imagined.

“Saving the ones who couldn’t save themselves!!!”

The scorch of his soul was outshined and out done, the flames tearing his palm apart nothing more than a faded in feeling.

“The ones they loved and cherished with everything they had!!!”

His muscles tensed beyond what he’d ever known, power on power forcing its way through him and eating away at the weakness drowning out all else.

“They died!!! So that I could bring them BACK!!!”

A flare, a white out, a luminous expansion of blue fire tendril. That burn turning the air around him into a plasma halo, and flashing away down lines blazing into visibility. Lighting up this dark pit for all that their misunderstood connections were worth. Chaining and chaining and chaining to everyone lost to this burning nightmare made real.

“Now get the hell back up!!!”

Flesh charred, viscera spilled, disintegrated being adding to that black pit of emptiness. All of it lit up. All of it burned with a new brighter light. But not the dying light of destruction and gluttony. The blinding light of returning existence.

“And fight like you fucking mean it!!!”

Bodies on all sides, lives straining to keep back the dark. Connection on connections on connections. That which was lost restored. That which was waning brought to brilliance beyond comprehension. And life returned to those dead on the ground.

“Take the power you’ve so egregiously feared and use it!!!”

“This is your chance!!!”

“MAKE IT COUNT!!!!”

A hand stained in blood and tears was relieved of their added burden, blinding halo giving way to a father taking back what was given in death. That smile brighter than it could ever have been, and paired steel faster than either could even imagine. Unison hearts beating in tandem, moves matched down to every angle, the crimson blots once keeping them back danced to ground and rippled apart, and those flashing edges turned that wretched arm to a fine shimmering mist of alloy and blood all the way to the shoulder blade. And all of it faster than that risen resentment could hold sway over. As those eyes were matched in their wanton perception.

And out done as those other fatherly hands present found their own revenge for their son’s pain. Golden wreaths of personalized energy screaming a fist of condemnation, a right hook of god given power slamming into the side of Resent’s flabbergasted head. A thunderclap of cracked open air, a raking and mixing of that poured in electricity, but that hand and chosen recoiled off. With purpose and structure. That golden jagged wreath turned to jagged chain, to discharge sent to ground. Power once lost to the gravity well ripped free and thrown away to where it belonged. Where Resent was going to in kind as his position shadowed.

That slab, that Oscillasaurus, that knowing metal heart. It came hurtling down from on high, with two hands reunited again on its overlong hilt. And pissed the fuck off!! The ground cracked as the other shoulder cleaved clear to the thigh, the breaking air alone carving into what escaped this truer meteoric vengeance. But even with his torso cleaved and leaking, this resentment refused to just be outshined.

That rippled mist of metal and arm flared with sparks finding their end pints, that body split in two raked and pulled back together. Those twin red suns glaring back at their returned opponents, pure death and matching speed of action and perception. But all of it drowned in an instant of overdriven hydraulic pressure. A column of water to rival those stellar beams of burning energy crashed over its back, subsumed it in righteous bravery maxed beyond its wanted bravado. David’s fear swing the other way hard. But not lost into blistering blinding wrath, shared purpose pushed to its absolute. As that column turned to solid snap.

Freeze so fast it frightened the air into screaming terror, and locked away that crimson lightning trying to rebuild its resentful master. A pure, clear, focused crystal. Jacob’s artistry manifested and pushed to extremes. And yet still not finished in its conjoined aptitude. A team made closer than it ever had been. And the other absolute brought to bear on their wanton enemy. Light in all its colors focused down to a point, a shining drop of stellar light to outshine this malevolence. And a lesson to never take away what Zeleny holds dear.

That column turn cannon, their teachers’ lessons outstripped and made proud. That light focused, refracted, and blended back. A rainbow of back blast following it in the instant it took to hole those walling clouds. Its target creeping back in its creaking prison, only to see the vengeance it was due show it what a real star looked like! The cannon shattered, the sky shattered, the air turned to a rainbow of glass shards and light. And that resentment was made to rue to near totality.

A molten glowing hole too bright to bear witness, the forest beyond alit by unfortunate downrange. That roiling eye in the clouds haloed and portholed, letting the real sun break through at last. A familiar experience rendered tenfold as that scrap metal monster fell back to ground… and finally felt its expenditure. That gaping hole, that molten heart, it only just thundered and fizzled in regenerating crimson. Claws feeling their weight at last stabbed down, talons cracked melt and bucked its whole up. A vengeful spotlight rounding back to make rue of this revival… but only seeing a white claw of ripping bedrock cresting that scorching sun to shade.

A new drowning, flowing concrete quagmire flattening with sheer force of matter loosed. Bones and plates and expenditure erased, yet corruptive will finding its place. That current of Maya’s totality crashed to cavitation, a breaking rock of red flaying power sheering away and roaring opposition to his fully refused meal, his empty usage. Those scorching tendrils baked and cracked, splintered that flow to seek back what it had been denied. Finding first only a rainbow of counter to stymy their riptide. A new pillar, a reversing geyser of fire from on high, the revived Phoenix adding what he could to the fray. Making his own loss felt as much as it could be. Only for that loss to be returned to him in split apart fire.

A sudden new halo, that rainbow destroyed, that maw recoiling like a solid shot was all it could fire in time. A sufficient rebuke, that flaring bird splattered to mist and swirling limbs freed… yet not wreathed in vermilion taking. But brighter azure giving back! An obliterated torso shining back into restored existence, tethering connection framing through and pulling back everything ripped asunder. To all surprise, even that recoiling menace star. As the final total of his thought of casualties whipped over his flanks with a heat truly stellar.

Thermal lines, a white heat too bright to be held, blast wrapped their torrential length over and over that only just restored armored chest, trapping claws to their sides and melting layers with just press alone. But Kabar’s vengeful heat was not alone, Cauterizing hands found their hold ahead, and their own extremes in their bluing out cores. A blue fire that wreathed up those lines, turned heat to more than just simple forge. Turned hold to more than just stymying hold. Metal boiled, a blast furnace of convection with the fire bowling through from all sides. That broken in grin melted down, tried to turn back to rip that fire apart. But caught sight of its final gleaming end.

This power, this fury, this shared connection of a demand thought of only selfish and wanton. A framework, and lattice, a matrix of power binding through and highlighting everything to its finest particulate. Like there was nothing standing in his way. In Erdwut’s way. The will in his hand felt this fury in kind, its wants irrelevant as it found finally a commonality. A shared will to rend this monstrosity to its core. And a form to make it wholly so. A gleaming white bastard so bright the air could not hold in its light. Nor as the glass at his feet as he wound up to make this real.

The blasted earth heaved, too scared to splatter to melt in the presence of its fury now truly manifest. A counter wave of molten breaker, to signal an end for all to know and see as that gleam hurtled its path with the might fitting a telluric body wrested from the sky. A comet of white, tail only just as that sword found its wind up. And its pitch struggling for the defiance it burned with. Blue fire lines finally snapped their limits, melted claws tearing free in swirling agony. Just to intercept this unstoppable swing. As much lightning, as many arcs of raking torment as it could pour into being. More frying dust and ripped apart air. No focus or hope just a need to cut him down!

A bolt found home, a shoulder splintered out, a bone turned to dust and dust back to bone! An unstoppable force now truly so! More rakes and slashes, more bodily loss and losing of that loss. A faced halved by this fear wrought suppressive fire, a skull rent away to show this fury burned deeper still. But it all reformed, it all returned, it all came back just as this fury had once feared. That it had fought, bleed, and never forgotten. That still haunted and undermined and fueled. But now this power was his, this power was theirs, this power was refuted as the miasma it had been marked as. Now it was the only thing making this possible! This refutation of the nightmare burning a hole in their reality! This burning fury turning darkness to light! This titanic swing rending metal apart, splitting wreath and skin and organ and bone and everything that made this monster what it was! And slicing its mark of strength and skill onto this finally outlasted black hole once and for all!