“Well, they’re gone,” Daniel said when Pavel and the draconian didn’t reappear after a few seconds.

“For the best,” Anton remarked as he began to shine brighter, like a sun that slowly began to engulf the whole room.

Everyone had already made it out of the room and into the hall, save for Alexander, his men, Anton and himself. He could enter Limbo now, but he wanted to hear what they had to say to one another before it came to that, but more than that he had something to say.

“What are you doing Alexander?”

Alexander turned towards Daniel, pausing his dash towards Anton with a wry grin plastered across his face, “Just stay back kid. Get in my way and I’ll kill you. I’m not bluffing here.”

The fact he'd stopped his dash surprised Daniel more than he thought it would.

“And is that really what you want? What happened to all that talk of defying the Blood God? Was that all for show, or did you not even mean it from the beginning?” Daniel asked calmly.

Alexander shifted where he stood, looming tall. “Don’t speak to me in that tone. I see what you’re doing, and I'm telling you that it's not even worth trying. I'm not some fool. You're just underestimating my position in this. Not that I blame you, everyone does. There’s no use denying her boy. Not when I’m surrounded by her. Hells, even now I this situuation fun! The tension, the emotion in the air, all of it.”

“So it's just like I thought then, you only deny her when everything to do with her is far, far away from you. Who are you even kidding? Have you even been trying all this time? What are you doing Alexander?”

A knife flashed through the air, and Daniel tilted his head, allowing it to fly past and bury itself in the wall behind him.

Alexander’s smile was gone, replaced with a complicated look that Daniel couldn’t quite decipher.

“Do you think this is easy? I’ve been doing this for centuries, fighting for longer than you’ve been alive. She’s not easy to overcome. Hells, right now I don’t even want to. You’re making a fool of yourself with this little talk.”

“Don’t want to,” Daniel repeated back to Alexander, the words leaving a bad taste in his mouth.

“No, you want to, but you’re an addict surrounded by his preferred drug. This is just the expected outcome.”

“Watch your tongue,” Briden said sharply, but Daniel cut him off.

“I thought you were stronger. You impressed me when you stood up to your abuser, declared your intention to refuse her outright, but look at you now!”

“That’s not fair,” Alexander declared.

“Life’s not fair. You parade yourself around like some kind of king or hero, but then you go and do something like this.”

“I’m ridding the city of those cursed by the Blood Moon.”

Daniel sent a glance towards Anton, who was growing brighter and brighter.

“No, you’re fighting the leader of this city, occupying his time and indirectly killing hundreds as a result.”

“He has her blood in him!” Alexander yelled, the joy in the madness absent from his demeanor, replaced by anger.

“You know it’s wrong, you know you’re being influenced,” Daniel said calmly.

“And you’d know? You’re just some kid. Not two months ago you only had a single card to your name, and I saved your life, and now you think you’re my equal? Think you can lecture me? It’s laughable!”

“You didn’t save me. I’d already trapped that spirit in Limbo. All you did was make my life easier. The exact opposite of what you’re doing right now.”

Alexander was fuming where he stood, the opposite of what Daniel had seen in the draconian settlement. The melancholic, reasonable man who wanted to fight back against his oppressor was gone, replaced with this thing before him.

“I haven’t known you for long, but I can say with confidence that this isn’t you,” Daniel said, his words a declaration that he refused to back down from.

“This is me boy, and it has been for centuries.”

With that Alexander turned and stepped toward Anton, and Daniel found himself with a choice to make. He had his own escape plan he could take. It’d be easy. He could just think about being in Limbo, and then he’d be there, and then he could travel safely until he reached another city.

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

It would be so, so easy.

But was that what he wanted?

What did he want?

Ever since coming to this world it’d been one thing after another. A desperate climb to power that should have been a slow walk. All for the sake of living an easy life, but as Alexander moved towards Anton, Daniel felt his chest tightening, his eyes narrowing, his fists clenching.

‘What do I want?’ He thought again.

Daniel entered Limbo reflexively, his enhanced body feeling the amount of power emanating from Anton suddenly turn violent.

A rush of smoke filled the room in an instant, knocking away the roof and walls in a blast that Daniel could only assume originated from Anton.

Alexander and the draconian though seemed okay. No, scratch that, the draconian fell to a knee. Not dead, but likely injured. Meaning that whatever Anton had done had worked to some extent.

‘I’m stronger now, and my contract isn’t going to compel me to fight Alexander. It specified helping the family within reason and fighting Alexander when everyone’s already abandoned the property or is in the process of doing so is far from reasonable.’

The smoky figure of Anton shot across Limbo, his sword falling down towards Anton before being reposted by his own as they entered a frenzied melee.

‘It'd be so easy to just sit here and watch this play out,’ Daniel thought, rubbing his thumb along the hilt of his father’s knife tucked away in his belt.

The two men mixed into a blur of smoke that Daniel couldn’t quite tell apart, smoky apparitions of power emanating from the two as they clashed.

Daniel watched and thought back to the card that Anton had given him. How he’d saved him from Douglass. He would have died without his intervention; he knew this for a fact. At the same time the help and advice that Alexander had given had been both sincere and had likely saved his life as well, despite what he’d just told the man.

Daniel thought back to how Alexander had come and warned him of Navarre back in the draconian settlement, how he was even now living in squalor to fight against something greater than himself, and even while submersed in that strife he’d made the time to warn others of it.

Both men had helped him in their own ways, saving his life in their own ways. So what did he want? He thought about it, really thought about it. Watching them fight from the safe distance of Limbo. Untouchable, and yet so close. Right there, right in the embrace of Limbo, watching them fight Daniel found that the answer to his question, and it was simple.

‘I just don’t want them to kill each other.’

===

Anton watched as the shadows around him moved. The building itself was hard to distinguish from anything in it, and worse he couldn’t tell where the portal user currently was.

The card that’d been added to his deck was certainly holding him back, but that was nothing compared to the card he’d lost in its place.

Follow the Wind wasn’t a traditionally strong card, but it was what held his deck together, nearly as much as his legendary did. It was an uncommon and only did one thing. It allowed him to perceive the world around him as if everything was normal, by its own description. It was vague, but in essence it allowed him to see through illusions, mimicry and the like, but more important than any of that it allowed him to perceive time like it was moving slower while in the form of lightning.

Without it everything just moved too fast to easily follow and he was forced to resort to his older method of fighting. Something he hadn’t used in decades.

Anton shot forward, picking out Alexander from the shadows by the electricity in his body as he moved across the room with a crack of thunder and swung his blade. The world flashed by, and in the next moment he was fifteen feet past the red haired man, the tip of his sword glistening with the faintest trace of blood.

Anton winced though as he felt a sharp pain, and looking down at the form of his leg still composed of lightning he found the faintest of cuts.

“Good, good,” Alexander said from across the room. “This is how real men should fight. No flickering around and probing like scared boys, but instead moving with the reckless determination to kill!”

The red haired man laughed and swung his sword before him in a taunting motion, but a portal formed in the trajectory of the blade and Anton found himself ducking to avoid a blow aimed towards his neck.

“Still perceptive, huh. I’d have thought you’d lose most of that when you lost that card of yours. That’s how it usually goes. So many people lean so heavily on their decks that a single piece being removed leaves them tumbling to the ground. Truly, you impress me!”

Alexander crouched down slightly, holding his sword partially over his shoulder with two hands, while grinning wildly.

“Show me more! Show me your perseverance, show me your strength!”

Alexander rushed towards Anton, shooting from where he stood with the aid of Steps of Giants as dozens of portals opened up around him, releasing lizard-like creatures some dozen feet long and tall as horses. They stood of four long scaled legs and looked toward Anton with harsh predatory eyes before immediately joining Alexander and rushing forward.

“You know,” Anton quietly said, more to himself than anyone else as he watched the monsters rapidly approach him. “You’re really underestimating me here.”

Anton lifted up his hand as the beasts moved closer and then snapped his fingers, eliciting a small spark of electricity. Immediately every beast dropped to the floor, rolling and tumbling over one another before lying on the ground, dead.

But before they could come to a stop Alexander appeared from behind one of the creatures, sliding under its belly as it collapsed to the floor while swinging his sword toward Anton who to his credit, tried to step back, but misjudged the distance and shot into the wall behind him and crashed into it violently.

“Anton,” Alexander said with a loud sigh as he stood back up before smiling once again. “I really thought I had you there, and I’m sorry to say this but I need to speed this up. As much as I hate to admit it Daniel was right about one thing. If this goes on much longer the city will fall before I can clear it of the moon blessed. I’m sure you understand if I speed things up, Briden!”

The name echoed through the room for a moment before Briden appeared with the snapping of a portal, still on the other side of it and holding his hand outwards as he activated a card, uttering its name loudly for all to hear.

“Universal Language,” and the world went white.