Garrick stared as Rudra crumpled to his knees and collapsed.
Smoke coiled around his scorched body, drifting upward as the transformation flickered back to bruised and cut human skin.
But even unconscious, he wore a grin of defiance.
Garrick assessed himself in disappointment and anger.
One arm gone, armor melted off his chest, agony etched in every line of his face.
His own team lay scattered, dead—Torren and Kaya's ragdolled bodies across the rubble—and the ruin of the slums around them was silent.
Juno's heartless corpse lay back in the burned and destroyed, barely standing, shack that Micheal called home.
Elena's body couldn't even be recognized as her head had been burned off of her shoulders.
Garrick's gaze flickered between Rudra and the bodies, rage boiling beneath frozen features.
The town that they were supposed to protect lay destroyed, ruined as a consequence of their battles.
