A second black blade slashed at her head as Gnoll attempted to retreat out of range. However, the woman's second blade blocked it with ease and a swift kick collided with Gnoll's chest, sending him flying back further and faster than he anticipated. A growl emitted from the hyena before he rocketed off into the trees once again.

He bounced back and forth like an elusive rubber ball thrown by none other than Hercules himself. His ricochet nature was surely an attempt to disorientate his enemy and then attack their blind spots, but Bellanode just wasn't falling for it. She twirled around in her chic dress and held her arms out wide as if dancing about in the downpour of leaves and branches.

'Is she baiting him, or just insane?' Arik thought to himself.

A flash of sparks shot out as a streak of black collided with her form before darting off to the trees without a moment to waste. Then another, and another. Shortly after, Gnoll was coming in for a new attack every couple seconds that Arik could barely make out. Bellanode met each attack with a block rather effortlessly, as if she knew his move before he did.

'How can she react like that when he is moving so fast? Either they have fought too many times before and this is an old trick, or she is just that much faster than him.' That thought was enough to make a chill go down his courage challenged spine.

The thoughts of Cyanide mentioning her dodging bullets played in his head, and suddenly, they were beginning to make sense.

'Cyanide!' Arik's heart dampened as his brain flipped upside down. 'He stayed behind to hold the DES back as I escaped. But if Gnoll is here, then what does that mean for him? Has Cyanide been defeated?' The theory was an obvious possible outcome, but Arik had never truly considered that he may lose. He always seemed so... untouchable.

Realization of fortune rushed as a forethought as Arik broke distraction from the super powered performance before him. He looked at the rest of his body to see he was completely free of the now completely disappeared Rupert. His body had also fully recovered from the taser attack, although he still carried a dull ache in his muscles.

'What the hell am I doing? I need to be running away as fast as I can while they distract each other.'

Arik stood up slowly, fearing that any sudden movements would attract the eyes of the battling evil deathless. His shield had vanished some time ago without him even noticing, the two figures demanding all of his attention and bravery. But activating it now may do more harm than good. After all, it's glow was nearly impossible to miss, like a torch in the night.

Arik carefully looked around for a clear direction to run away from the fight, but he was no longer sure which direction was the correct way to go. The entire reason he ran off into this forest was to get to Cyanide's rendezvous. If he went the wrong way it could be over for him.

'Even so, perhaps just getting away from these two is good enough for now.'

Just then, an epiphany struck his dome that felt like an assured way out. Hope had finally presented itself and Arik was not going to hesitate.

Every pound of Arik became weightless as he activated his flight echo. He kicked off from the ground and soared up into the air, aiming for a brilliant sky peering through a hole in the canopy above.

'Dammit. How obvious. If only I had flown away from the beginning then maybe I'd be there by now. And as long as they can't also fly I basically win.'

About ten feet from the reprieving breach, a strong pressure grabbed hold of Arik's entire leg and yanked him from the light like an anchored blimp. Looking down, he saw a gigantic emerald-scaled viper constricted around his leg as if attempting to choke the life from its prey. Only the snake wasn't actually a snake. It was the transmuted arm of Bellanode who stood down on the ground with burning rosy eyes.

"Just where do you think you're going?" she sang while deflecting another attack from Gnoll.

The snake hissed and further tightened around Arik's leg before Bellanode pulled her arm in, brutally ripping Arik from his floating place in the sky and toward the earth. With a quick bit of finesse, Arik managed to activate his flight echo one last time just before hitting the ground and softened the fall significantly, although any abrupt movement still hurt his half broken and ragged body.

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The snake began to magically shorten in length as Bellanode pulled Arik in, dragging him through dirt and mud alike with a sadistic smile on her face that rivaled Gnoll's. There wasn't enough strength in Arik's body to fight back, so he conjured his shield once again and gritted his teeth.

A flash of shadow bounced off of the ground between them and a tall fan of blood gushed out of the snake's midsection like a horror movie. Bellanode immediately screamed as the snake loosened on Arik's leg and rapidly slunk back to her arm. Arik could feel his own blood rushing back throughout his partially numb leg.

"You bitch!" she screamed as the snake's head morphed shape into her hand and the scales sank into pale skin. She hunched over and held her arm which was bleeding rather heavily from a slice in the forearm. Her swords had vanished, as well as her smile.

Gnoll catapulted through the air from the top of a tree behind Bellanode. With both swords pointed at her back, he was going in for the kill.

'The blind spot.'

Before he could carry out the coup de grâce, three long chrome blades sliced through Bellanode's dress and jutted out like an insidious spike trap. Gnoll's eyes widened in fear, but his momentum was too vast to redirect. He slammed into Bellanode and she skidded along the ground several feet before coming to a stop, her legs never buckling under the full weight of Gnoll's force.

Gurgling and coughing was let out as Gnoll attempted his best to breath through blood as his body was impaled on the blades of Bellanode like needles to a voodoo doll.

Arik scurried back away from them into the base of a tree, his olive green eyes searching for some semblance of a new escape route. But instead of a route, they landed on an item almost out of sight at first glance. One of Gnoll's shadow wreathed blades had found purchase in the waist of Bellanode, sticking out the other end of her just like the blades in himself.

Gnoll's bestial form began to fade away as he struggled to raise his free arm over his head to sink his second sword in her neck. But before he could get far, Bellanode quickly spun around twice, the smile having made a reappearance. Her swords retracted back into her flesh mid-spin and Gnoll's body rag-dolled away into a bloody mess on the ground. The sword in her abdomen vanished as soon as Gnoll let go of it and the other the second he had landed.

Arik stood up slowly and braced for whatever was coming next behind the comfort of his shield. But he was astonished to see Gnoll reduced to such a state so easily. The speedy assault that he displayed a few moments ago seemed to be something that even Cyanide wouldn't be able to handle. And yet, he's dying.

Bellanode looked to Arik as she held her wound with bloody fingers. "You're not mute, are you?"

"No."

That was the first word Arik had uttered since he left Cyanide. Due to his options dwindling dauntingly thin, perhaps diplomacy was the best line of action for him now. 'If she runs with Cyanide then surely she has some kind of reasoning to her,' he thought hopefully.

"Then tell me, did the DES get a hold of Cyanide?"

"I don't know." Arik's eyes fell a bit as he replied.

She opened her mouth to speak once more but was cut off by an explosion of wind emanating from Gnoll's body. Blood and dirt blew up in every direction and the fallen leaves and pine needles danced around like a proper ball. Arik shielded his face from the shock and debris but Bellanode's face had twisted to scorn as she dashed to Gnoll's position in almost an instant.

Just as the gust of wind ceased, Gnoll began growing his dense coat of hyena fur and rolling over onto his hands and knees. All of the recent wounds that were once scattered along his body were now completely missing. He looked up from his apparent discombobulation to get kicked in the upper torso and face by a superpowered leather boot. His body flew back ten feet before rolling into a backwards somersault and skidding on the ground. Blood slowly trickled from his nose.

Gnoll looked up to see Bellanode's entire body begin to crackle with a growing lurid red lightning. He responded by slapping both of his palms on the ground and laughing maniacally in a way Arik was not used to. In some weird turn of events, Gnoll seemed to be his happiest while Bellanode appeared to be her most vexed.

Almost simultaneously, both of the evil deathless' attacks went off in grand splendor. The red lightning dancing around Bellanode had emboldened and shot from her pointed hand as commanded in a huge bolt of electrical discharge that raised the surrounding temperature of the field at least ten degrees. But before it could ever reach Gnoll, the ground between the two cracked and shook apart before exploding into a massive geyser of virulent water, just as when he had made his entrance before. Though, this geyser was even bigger than the one prior, shaking the ground like an earthquake and causing a concussive pressure that could be felt from where Arik was standing.

The geyser threw thousands of gallons of water into the air that the enormous foot-thick bolt of lightning collided into like an arrow to a shield. The combination of presumably magical elements resulted in a sudden explosion of steam that filled the forested battlefield like a fog of war. Arik blocked his face from the hot and humid vapor with his shield, but there was no escaping its permeation.