A raven shot out of the white ash cloud. Its black feathers thrashed on the wind, and it landed on a piece of debris. It looked around with its deep green eyes.
The surrounding area in the forest was turned into a deep crater. Massive chunks of stone, torn from the earth's bowels, lay scattered across the crater floor. In other parts of the area, the ground had been superheated into flowing lava that seeped down the stone walls.
Trees engulfed in fire, burning anything that came within reach. Unfortunate animals passing by burst into flames, turning slowly into charcoal. The fire was so intense it drowned out all other sound, its roar impossible to ignore.
Thick, choking dust and a strong smell of burning flesh hung in the air. Dim, barely visible light spilled through the dusty clouds.
The bird stared at the mound, then pulled its head back and struck the rock repeatedly. Strike after strike, the rock began to crack.
With a final, thunderous strike, the rock split in two along a jagged line, then fractured into four great pieces and an arm, clad in torn and battered armor, shot up through it.
The armor was riddled with holes, deep scratches, and rivulets of blood flowing through the gashes.
Startled by the arm, the bird shot into the air thrashing its wings
"I… will not… give up," Lue shouted as he stood up from the debris, his cape hanging in tatters. Blood flowed from every opening in his armor, streaking his body.
As he straightened his back, he coughed up a handful of blood and looked at the Triad, who stood right alongside the edge of a crater, watching with its deep, empty eye sockets.
Now Triad, missing its middle head and bottom left arm, had only its three arms left to use.
"I will free you" Lue said as Triad disappeared from his view.
Lue exhaled a long, slow breath that emptied his lungs, and closed his eyes. Within the darkness he listened to the sounds all around him, searching for his opponent.
He heard a scraping sound alongside the rocks in his right ear. He rotated his torso ninety degrees to the right and struck Triad in the third head.
Lue gritted his teeth as he screamed at the top of his lungs while he pushed his hand deeper into Triad's skull. Crunching and crushing rang out through Lue's fingers.
With a scream, he slammed his hand through Triad's third head, which sent him flying backward into the crater's walls.
The first head trembled from left to right as a gurgling scream escaped its mouth.
Lue groaned in pain as he grabbed his forearm tightly. A pulverizing gaze struck him from behind, digging into the back of his skull. He whipped his head around.
The cloaked man watched him fight desperately, and from the darkness under his hood, it seemed like he was smiling, a disgusting yet horrifying smile. A chill spider-walked down Lue's spine. Triad. His eyes shot back to his active opponent, but he was met only with a kick to the head.
A sickening crack echoed through the armor as Lue vanished in a blur, slamming into the forest far beyond and carving a trench through the trees. An enormous cloud of dust and ash emerged deep into a forest, over the trees.
Shallow and unsteady breathing echoed through the armor as the world became a blur of motion and pain. Lue didn't feel himself flying, only the sudden, earth-shattering impact as he carved a trench deep into the forest, coming to rest under a shower of dust and shattered leaves painted red.
"W… What is this?" Lue's helmet's right side fell apart as his green eyes shot wide open. His pupils shrank to pinpricks, his mouth agape and trembling. His nose was bent sideways; blood spurting from it like a river.
Lue slowly grabbed nearby grass and stuffed it right in, clogging the blood from escaping.
"This strength… Just like my father…" Lue said as he swallowed his saliva.
"No… it's just my imagination." With a quick swipe across his lip, Lue stood up and tightened his fist.
Across the clearing of shattered trees, Triad stood waiting, like a silent statue. Lue took a step forward, and in that moment, Triad vanished from his sight again.
The moment it vanished, Lue threw a punch to his left expecting his opponent to be there, and right on time he smashed into Triad's chest. "Predictable"
Lue didn't stop at that; he followed with dozens of punches to Triad's torso. One after another, he sent Triad flying through the trees, breaking them apart.
"Hey! You are certainly strong, but at this point we are just destroying the environment," Lue said. "Don't you have anything better than just punches? You know, it gets to the point."
Maybe this will provoke him. I'm not good with words but I can't have him organized, Lue thought.
Just as Lue finished his thought, a sharp pain shot through his shoulder. Without being able to react, Triad flew at him and had pierced Luke's shoulder with its sharp tail.
"Maybe… not," Lue muttered as he ripped apart Triad's tail. But he stayed silent, as if pain did not faze him.
Lue grabbed the Triad's right bottom arm, spun him by his axis, and ripped the arm out of his body after a few rotations.
Triad gripped its teeth and sent Lue flying through the air with a punch to his head. Landing right by a river of fresh lava lake.
Fuck this… It hurts. There is a limit to what I can ignore. It fucking hurts…
How is it possible for him to just disappear and reappear like this? Even my father can't do that. And he is one of the twelve best!
There has to be something with him… Some power. He has to have something, but it's not like I can do something.
Just… Hit-and-run tactic. Just like Father had taught me.
Lue burst into a sprint with every ounce of strength he had left. He ran towards Triad, who observed his every movement. His empty eye sockets of his last left head
"All I need is to break your last head!" Lue shouted.
He ran right into the Triad, tackling him to the ground. But mid-air, Triad struck Lue's back, causing him deep, consistent bleeding.
"Good thing you are an idiot!" Lue punched Triad as he kept on a defense with its remaining arms.
Thud! Thud!
Punch after punch echoed through the forest as Triad's arms slowly gave in, splintering under the force of Lues' strikes. The cracking of bones began to sound from deep inside Triad's body.
But Triad wasn't alone. Lues' fingers were giving in, too, breaking and bending under the pressure. Lue's Blood splattered around them in a circle. Still, Lue didn't seem to care. He just kept swinging, punching like his life depended on it.
With a deafening crack, Triad's arms snapped in two.
A grin stretched across Lue's face as he brought his fists down on Triad's last head, crushing it to ash. But before he could so much as breathe, a final, desperate blow caught him in the side—sent him hurtling through the air, over the lake of lava, and straight into a tree.
His back slammed into the green, leaf-heavy tree.
Ribs gave way on impact, shattering. A few tore through his skin. His arms slumped limp at his sides as all strength bled out of him.
"This… hurts," Lue muttered.
The cloaked man slowly walked toward Lue, his voice low and satisfied. "Well... just as I expected. Dead, no matter what."
Lue's lips curled into a faint smile as he looked up, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth. "Heh... I wouldn't say that."
"You're lying in a pool of your own blood. You're losing more of it than any dead man I've seen."
"Humans are resilient," Lue murmured, his voice weakening. "Didn't you know?"
The cloaked man tilted his head, unimpressed. "I wouldn't know about that. But one dead... and one more to go."
Lue's hand trembled as he raised a single finger, pointing weakly toward the distance. "You don't... need to search for him. He's right there."
In the distance, Mytri was sprinting with everything he had—arms thrashing forward and back, legs pounding the earth like pistons. His breaths came in ragged gasps, but his voice thundered across the field.
"Don't you dare! Lay one finger on him and you're dead!"
The cloaked man turned, watching the charging figure with calm curiosity. "Is that so?"
Lue's gaze drifted toward his father. A warmth flickered in his eyes, fragile and fleeting. "Dad..." he whispered, confusion creeping into his voice. "Why are you... upside down?"
The world tilted upside down.
Blood erupted in a violent spray. Lue's head drifted through the air, his warm, kind smile frozen for just a moment before the light behind his eyes dimmed into nothing.
Mytri's scream tore through the air—raw, broken, feral. "NOOO! WHYYY!"
He ran. Not with form or reason, but with fury. Every ounce of strength, every shred of his being, poured into the single goal of reaching the cloaked man and tearing him apart.