On a grassy field next to a coursing river, human and reptile clashed. Moving faster than the normal eye could possibly follow, their every collision was immediately followed by a booming shockwave.
Jack pushed his focus to the limit and his perception of time seemed to slow. With every chaotic, uncoordinated move he had made in this fight, Jack had slowly gained experience using the technique coursing through his veins and pumping electric power to his every muscle. He could now compensate somewhat for the exaggerated momentum.
While he wouldn’t be considered graceful by any metric, when next they engaged, Jack was somewhat under control. He stepped into her range—or to put it more accurately—he shot forward like a bullet from a gun and stomped on the ground in front of her so hard that it left a small crater.
Lizzie had already begun to counter by the time Jack got his bearings and reacted. Her right-handed water saw was cutting through the air at his neck level. He ducked beneath the deadly blade just in time to see the other saw coming to cut his head in half vertically.
He stepped to the right and slipped that strike as well only to catch a thick tail to the head as Lizzie spun away from him. The teardrop shaped streams of water rushing over her body cut into Jack’s face along with the force of the tail which hit him like a tidal wave.
Jack landed on his back and slid to a stop just at the edge of the rushing river. Bits of foam from the white waters sprayed against his right cheek.
His opponent was leaping at him to either finish him off with her blades or force him back into the river. Realizing that those were both terrible options for him, Jack spun and kicked off of a boulder that sat on the riverbank beside him. He shot across the ground and rolled backwards to his feet.
Unhappy with the direction the fight had taken, Jack retreated and avoided the lizard lady for a moment to consider what had gone wrong. He realized that the tables had turned the moment that he had slowed down and tried to fight her face-to-face.
That favored her fighting style, not his. The chaotic way Jack had been moving was the only thing that was throwing her off. He could of course return to hurling himself around his opponent like an out of control hurricane.
But how could he guarantee a solid hit with his Kinesis if he couldn’t even follow his own movement? If he missed that punch, he would get torn apart by an alligator with boobs.
Jack thought about asking Zachias for his advice, but that big blue asshole had already said that he wouldn’t help anymore. He could suck a fart for all Jack cared. It was up to him to figure this out on his own.
A plan came to Jack after a few moments of frantic contemplation and he stopped and faced Lizzie in a fighting stance. She looked surprised as the thin veins of lightning that he had been glowing with disappeared.
Jack had dropped the technique empowering his body.
He watched his opponent as her slitted orange pupils narrowed in calculation. She didn’t take long to decide to attack again, as Jack had expected. The two techniques that she was maintaining had to be costing her Qi.
The reptilian woman dashed in swinging her spinning disks of water that could cut through rocks as easily as they did the air. Jack backed away from one and then rolled away before she could slash him with the other.
He came up on one knee twenty yards away from where he had started. Apparently, even without the body enhancement technique empowering him, advancing to the Spirit Realm had made him truly superhuman.
Jack stayed on the ground for a moment while Lizzie chased him down. He came up swinging with his right fist. When she saw the hand covered in shimmering power coming for her, she abandoned her attack and dodged.
The next few exchanges followed the same pattern. Jack avoided her water saws like a vicious plague and she stayed away from his Kinesis covered fist.
They fought back and forth across the battlefield in a flurry. Jack kept an eye on their positioning and began to circulate his qi in the same enhancement weave as before. He held off on manifesting the technique, knowing that he would only get one shot.
Jack took a few shallow cuts from the water saws and he was forced to receive more than a few injuries from the chain mail-like armor streaming over her body. He grit his teeth through the pain and waited for the perfect moment.
Finally, their battle made it back to the spot that he had stopped at earlier and two things happened in quick succession. First, Jack sent a healthy chunk of his Qi into the ground beneath his feet and manifested the weave that he had been circulating. The lightning veins reappeared all over his body shining brightly enough to be seen through his clothes. Also, the power that he had channeled into the ground lit up a script that he had etched into the ground next to the river.
His opponent’s reptilian eyes widened in surprise as a thick bolt of lightning erupted from the script and caught her in the bottom of her elongated mouth. This was a trick that Zachias had once used on him during one of their simulated fights. It interrupted the flow of her fighting style and left Jack with an opening that he was prepared to take full advantage of.
Then, they both felt the moment when Emrys won his fight and the avian beastkin died. A surge of wind Qi was overwhelmed by wood and Gadnuk’s mental presence disappeared from the world.
Jack, who had not been expecting that particular turn of events, hesitated for a fraction of an instant before throwing his decisive punch at Lizzie’s head. It was just enough to allow her to swing the tip of her tail around to block Jack’s right-handed strike.
Between the empowering technique and the Kinesis, it was a devastating blow. Jack hit with the speed and power of a lightning bolt. One moment he had instructed his arm to throw, and the next there was an explosion of force blasting from his outstretched fist.
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The last thing he saw of the lizard beastkin was her back as she turned and dove into the river behind her. Half of her tail was completely destroyed and she left a trail of blood that was quickly carried away by the surging waters.
Jack immediately thought about how hilarious it was that a big lizard had just escaped him by giving up her tail.
He let his technique die and backed away from the river before turning around. He kept an eye out behind him in case she came back, but he doubted that she would. Now that Emrys was done with his opponent, it would be foolish of her to stick around.
Jack basked in the satisfaction of having finally won a fight with nothing but the skill he had earned. He hadn’t even used his weapon.
With that thought, a glint of metal caught the corner of his eye. Jack turned and found his spear lying on the ground. He was dismayed to see that it had been cut almost in half. The scripted black shaft was barely hanging on from where the bird had slashed it with his wind blade.
Jack couldn’t believe his eyes. “How could a Spirit Realm being even put a dent in one of your weapons?” he asked Zachias incredulously.
Zachias reply was cutting. “Did you really think you were wielding something that powerful?”
He took a moment to laugh at Jack which sounded like rolling thunder in his head before continuing.
“You could not lift one of my personal weapons if there were a hundred of you working together. That entire scripted key around your neck was just something that I used back when I was in the Spirit Realm and forgot to throw away. Sufficiently advanced beings can create and manipulate their own pocket dimensions. They do not need to use scripted tools to interact with them.”
Jack realized how foolish he had been for thinking he was wielding a weapon fit for a god, but the shame was quickly forgotten when he realized what that meant. “So where did you keep the good stuff?” Jack asked mischievously, thinking about pulling Zachias’ body out for the first time to go through his alien pockets.
Zachias was quick to dissuade him from doing that. “It does not matter. You need to be able to manipulate space by yourself before you can access my real treasures. And if you take my body out of the separate space it is in now, every Celestial being on the planet will sense it and immediately come here to take it from you.”
Deciding not to risk that the blue warrior was telling the truth, Jack let go of the scripted piece of metal around his neck. He would come back to that subject eventually. But for the moment, there were other things to focus on.
Jack watched with interest as the forest of giant thorns that Emrys had created began to shrink. He felt the druid manipulating the wood, but there was no great swelling of Qi like he would have expected from such a working. The forest only seemed to dig its way deeper into the ground, falling away to reveal the being standing in the middle.
He was still not used to seeing the druid in his human form. Emrys had already dropped his armor technique so Jack got a good look at him for the first time. Long black hair fell down his back covered by a sleeveless white shirt. He wore straight brown pants with no shoes. Jack wondered if he had made himself clothes because of their talk.
Emrys’ skin was light brown and his facial features were more delicate than Jack’s with dark eyes. He stood at just over six and-a-half-feet tall with a relatively thin frame and long arms. The only way that Jack would have known he was not looking at a human was the small patches of bark that showed sporadically on his neck and arms.
As Jack walked up the hill, he also saw the body of the bird of prey beastkin that he had taken to calling Gadnuk in his head. The corpse had been completely perforated by Emrys’ thorns.
“Damn” Jack said as he bent over to look closer at the myriad holes in the bird person’s body. “You Swiss cheesed that mother fucker.”
Emrys tilted his head to the side questioningly. “How do you know he only mated with mothers?”
Jack laughed out loud and then shook his head. “Never mind. That one must not translate very well. Samuel L. Jackson would hate this world.”
Suddenly, both Jack and Emrys were startled by the sound of casual applause. The loud clapping floated down from atop the towering, three-hundred-foot tall wall beside them.
They looked up in shock and traced the noise to a man who sat with his feet hanging over the edge of the massive marble structure. The sun hung in the sky behind him, so Jack squinted and used his hands as a visor, but he was still unable to make out the stranger’s features.
Until the slowly applauding man kicked off of the wall and began to fall to the ground.
What now Jack thought to himself exhausted from the battle.
He watched the man plummet thinking about how much of a bummer it would be if this clapping man was committing suicide.
Jack got his first good look at the stranger as he neared the ground. He was taller than Emrys’ human form, easily more than six and a half feet tall. He appeared to be in his mid-thirties with thick grey dreadlocks that trailed above him as he fell and a full, salt and pepper beard.
The clothes that the man wore seemed to suggest that he was a martial artist. From the loose fitting black pants and wide belt, to the open vest and his black canvas shoes. He was covered in muscles with a physique that would make a champion body builder break down in envious tears.
As soon as Jack got a good look at the man, he felt Zachias freeze with profound shock in the back of his mind. Jack got the sense that if Zachias had been there in person, his alien heart would have stopped right then and there, his blood freezing in his veins.
“Impossible” the blue warrior whispered in Jack’s mind.
The strange man did nothing to slow his fall as he shot to the ground behind Jack and Emrys. Even still, when he landed, his knees barely bent if they moved at all. There were no craters left behind or even deep footprints. It seemed to defy reason.
His deep green eyes met Jack’s and he gave a few more claps with a kind smile on his handsome, bearded face. Jack could sense nothing from the man’s spirit, but some deep instinct told him that he was looking at someone with real power. Zachias’ fearful reaction seemed to support this instinct.
“Well done” the stranger said in perfect English with a similar accent to Jack’s. “Multiple breakthroughs in one battle is impressive for one of your level. Although, you should consider that those who advance through conflict tend to either go far or die quickly.”
The tall man leaned closer to Jack and studied him for a moment before tilting his head to the side. “I get the sense that you do not really care one way or the other. How intriguing.”
Jack was stunned to silence by this turn of events. Only an hour before, he had been strolling through a beautiful grassy field by himself.
The man smiled at Jack’s confusion and showed his gleaming white teeth. The canine teeth caught Jack’s eye, as they appeared to be much sharper than a normal human’s.
The moment Jack looked directly at those teeth, his eyes began to gush with tears of blood. He lost consciousness almost immediately.
When Jack came to, he was standing in the exact same spot as before as if time had been reversed. He reached up and wiped his eyes, checking to see if his hands came away bloody.
They did not.
“What the fuck just happened?” Jack asked urgently. “Did I just die?”
Zachias answered with a defeated tone. “Yes.”
“My apologies” the wild looking man said nonchalantly. “I forgot myself there for a moment.”
“Zachias” Jack thought gravely. “Who is this?”
“He is one of the two most powerful beastkin the Universe has ever seen. The End Wolf. Fenris.”
Jack realized that he was standing in front of a being of unimaginable power. One that had far surpassed even the gods that ruled this world. A being that had accidentally killed Jack by smiling at him and then brought him back to life just as effortlessly.