"Collateral damage..." Riven repeated.
Those words hung around his head, a crown of thorns.
It's a phrase he used many times when others got hurt from his actions, whether accidental or otherwise. Even though it was a military term, it always had such an evil tone to it that chilled even the most heartless men's blood, and Riven was no exception.
Falling to his knees, he pinned his grandfather beneath him.
Then he raised his hand.
"Wait!" Ignatius shouted, knowing what was coming but unable to stop it.
But Riven didn't hesitate; he just delivered a crushing punch to his face, instantly shattering his nose.
"Stop," his grandfather moaned.
But before he could even get a chance to process the pain fully, another punch landed, then another, then another, then another. Soon numerous quick and powerful blows pounded his face till Riven's fists blurred and just became like mallets pounding flesh at superhuman speeds.
His grandfather's face was brutally reshaped with an impact that sounded like an explosion and caused the ground underneath his head to shake. Riven flattened his nose, split his lips, and painted swelling and redness on his cheekbones.
However, even as he committed the brutal act, he felt nothing—not anger or hate; he felt empty; it was like he was doing a monotonous household task.
This is unnecessary and counterproductive, he told himself, but even knowing that, he still wasn't able to stop himself from raining down more punches on his obviously beaten foe.
Managing to look up at him through his nearly swollen-shut eyes, Ignatius saw it clear as day: not a single flicker of his grandson, who once looked up to him; no anger; no contempt; just action with no life behind it.
This is not him, he thought, and with this revelation, it gave him the power and focus to summon the last of his internal magic.
Prying his right arm from the pin, he pushed Riven back, causing the flurry of punches to stop for just a second. But that was all he needed before he raised his hand, quickly summoning a glowing arrow-like projectile and pointing directly at him.
He blasted a sharp flame, aimed straight for Riven's heart. "Die and let his body rest."
The arrow pierced clean through Riven's chest, but this only caused Ignatius' swollen eyes to widen further as the person above him simply dissolved into swirling smoke at the point of impact.
The flame arrow passed harmlessly through the empty space where his torso had been, streaking onward like a comet.
In utter shock at the sight, he was about to ask how, but before he could say a single thing. From far behind them a desperate shout rang out.
"Alice—watch out!"
Riven's body was already turning away in response before he could even reform back to flesh.
He saw the flame arrow hurtling towards the woman he saved.
She was in the middle of the chaos, arms outstretched as she shoved more camera-holding civilians away from the scene, not even hearing what was shouted to her.
Her husband was scrambling to shield her in a vain attempt to stop the arrow that would burn through both of them and anyone behind Alice in an instant.
Eyes tracing the projectile's path, Riven's body again moved without his say, launching him off his grandfather and rocketing toward Alice.
Seeing this, his grandfather's eyes widened for a second. A smile spread across his face, a relieved feeling giving him the energy to shakily get back to his feet as a burst of laughter rang out from his throat.
"You almost fooled me, you spirit," he said as he wiped blood from his lips. "You almost made me think you were him, but my grandson, my blood…"
"Riven would never make such a foolish mistake!!" he shouted at the top of his lungs as he threw out his two arms towards the blazing police station.
Following the invisible command, the flames that were otherwise untamed since the firefighters stopped battling them rose in the air, leaving the structure they engulfed. As if pulled by a magnet.
The fire gathered above his head, growing into an enormous sphere of fire.
Riven was cursing himself in his mind as his hand reached for the flaming arrow; his lower half was smoke, while his upper half had his wings materialized, accelerating faster than he ever had before.
Meanwhile, his grandfather was behind him.
"Ingrate!" he wheezed in spasms.
"You could have beaten me, but you threw it away. You threw it all away, and you have the nerve to call yourself a god?" he shouted like a madman as he threw the sphere downward.
The giant ball of flame hurtled downward just as his hand reached the arrow.
"Destruct!!" His grandfather shouted and instantly imploded the exact moment Riven got to Alice.
And then there was a blinding flash of light and absolute silence before...
BOOOOM!!!
The explosion was catastrophic.
The sheer impact of the blast sent waves of energy surging throughout the city, turning it into a pitch-black night, like someone set off an EMP.
But that was nothing compared to the epicenter of the blast when the sun-like attack landed; the ground beneath was instantly vaporized as if an artist erased the ground with a few swipes of an eraser.
And as if that wasn't enough, the flames stretched hungrily in all directions, reducing everything in their immediate vicinity to ash. Rubble and scrap metal were all that remained of the police station and public service vehicles that arrived.
Peering over the crater's edge as the fire continued to roar beneath him like a portal to hell, he laughed.
"You're such a dull god, spirit, or whatever you are," he mocked, his body running on pure adrenaline.
"You should have known valor won't win you a fight," he said offhandedly as he flung out a hand, summoning the flames to rise above to illuminate his handiwork.
But as the fire tore itself away, Ignatius stumbled back in shock, his eyes going wide as a chill struck his heart and cooled the adrenaline flowing through his system. Looking through the smoke, he saw something that defied rational phenomena:
Covering the entire center of the smoldering crater were two black wings, larger than anything he'd ever seen; they were basically engulfing the bottom to middle of the crater, and under those wings was a massive amount of smoke, like strings that spread out like a web. In that intricate web were people from the crowd, paramedics, and firefighters alike.
And at the center of these wings was what sent a chill down his spine, and, for the first time in his life, he was genuinely scared.
Standing up slowly was his possessed grandson at the epicenter of the crater—not a scratch on him. Expressionless face never fading, his cold gray gaze met his grandfather's, sending him falling to the ground in shock, fear, awe, or just a mixture of all three.
Riven gazed at him through the crowd that surrounded them.
But just as his mind was reeling and cold sweat droplets ripped out the sanity he had left, he saw something: Riven started to wobble from side to side, and before anyone could react, he dropped to his knees, then collapsed to the ground in a heap.
He ran out of magic.