Sharp glints pierced into Xerxes from both front and back. The heat of his own body steamed him inside his armor. The struggle ahead, called out in his mind. The threat felt so real it could cut him apart.

The stalking did not last long. The moment Archeseus pounced, Xerxes was ready. His face took on a prismatic, rainbow sheen. A smile on his face. The Qi filled punch, smelling of death, crashed onto the prism unproblematically.

A massive swing from Xerxes found Archeseus with the flat of a bastard-sword slamming into his guard. Xanthip slid under Xerxes’ preemptive strike. She passed through the membrane and latched onto both his legs. The membrane pushed her arms off, it was a hard surface, unbending. Xerxes stabbed downward with the massive sword and Xanthip clasped it between her palms. “GHA!” She grunted with force, pushing against Xerxes, the tip of the blade right above her sternum. From behind Archeseus grabbed Xanthip’s legs and pulled her body under the mass of plate armor and hair. The sword cut into the floor, Archeseus had already flipped over him and as Xanthip sent palm strikes aiming for his head he swept with his legs to kick the bastard sword out of Xerxes’ hands. Yet as he did so light flashed from between the wooden floorboards. An explosion them all flying across the room. Archeseus fell to the ground, standing up as fast as he could in a crouch. One of his legs bleeding heavily. Parts of his bone visible as chunks of flesh had been torn off. The gaping wound stung even as the wind touched it.

Xerxes landed perfectly safe, he did not stop for a second. He rushed to the inner wall of the massive room and much to the surprise of the other two, he pulled out two planks of wood.

Before he could continue a broken piece of wood flew straight for him. It passed through his prism and his armor and tore into his forearm, cracking through bone and half popping out the other side. Xanthip stood still in surprise. Xerxes screamed something foul.

“TAKE THIS!” Archeseus shouted, right next to Xerxes as he twisted from the soles of his feet to his shoulders and the plank on his hands splintered apart on contact with Xerxes’ Skull. The man fell backwards, rattled. His head bleeding, his arm useless.

Xanthip rushed forth and lunged to the air. In one swift motion she flew down from above, spiked plank of wood aiming to connect his skull with the wooden deck. Xerxes at the last moment grasped a necklace around his neck and snapped it off. The Jagged red stone at its end bloomed with fire. A great inferno rose up, forcing the siblings to dodge away as it crisped the wood on the floors above till the roof and more. Char and coal and ash rained from above, and sunlight rushed in to fill the large empty room.

Xanthip let the plank she had used as a weapon, now burning coal, fall. She couldn’t hold it anymore. Even that sent pain coursing through her. Her skin and flesh melting and scaling off, red and dark and blistering.

Xerxes, aswoon, pushed himself off his back. Yet Archeseus was upon him. He tried to grab onto his armor, the shield pushed him away, in spite Arcehsesu spread his arms wider still. His claws tinted with black Qi cracked into the shield as he clamped down. His one good leg stabbing into the wood as leverage. Xerxes could not move forward as his shield locked him in place.

“LET ME GO!” He shouted and kicked with his leg at Archeseus exposed bone. “AGH!” Archeseus screamed, cracks seemed to sound out as his fractures traveled along the shin.

Xanthip, grit her teeth and rushed in, another plank of hardwood in hand she slid past Archeseus and torqued with all her power. She whipped the makeshift weapon down.

“HA!” Xerxes laughed as the plank cracked and broke on his skull, blood spurted out of his head, over and down, his skull most probably fractured. He reached forward despite it and without even seeing grabbed onto Xanthip’s face, her features mushed up in his gloved palm. She grabbed onto his forearm and pulled it down, his grip slipped. But his smile did not fade. He pushed once more, sending Archeseus back, just enough.

He held firm at Xanthip’s belly and pulled with his broken bleeding arm, his gauntlet off, having disappeared somewhere. A contraption, mechanical and empowered was there instead of his arm. It exploded forth with the hot spark of gunpowder and a sharp, blood red crystal projectile lodged itself in Xanthip. She flew and crashed into the wall. She slid down, vomiting a pile of blood. With one last kick at the leg Archeseus fell down bone splitting apart. Xerxes was at the wall in a blitz. He kicked Xanthip aside, as she clutched at her wound, forcing with Qi her muscles to tighten around the sharp crystal.

Xerxes grabbed at the gap in the wall slapped a talisman on his forehead and crystal started forming around him from that point. It grew in chunks and pieces, hard crystal like ice it formed out of nowhere. Before he was encased in crystal he pulled on a lever. “Say goodbye you Fucks! And to this horrid place as well!” A manic glint flashed in the young man’s eyes.

A sizzling sound stretched on after the end of his words. As the ringing of the bells and the bellows of the horns sounded out from the overtaken compound. The screams of children and the cries of women echoed out, the shock of the betrayal and death, and cold unfeeling steel dug into their hearts. The stink of blood, piss, and guts tinged with the smoke of old burnt wood was the last thing Xanthip remembered before the world lit up.

Hundreds of explosives went off all over form inside the pillars and walls of the main building. Thousands even. A mushroom cloud rose up into the air, the wind flattened as the sound destroyed and the ensuing crash of shrapnel as they were pushed out by the explosion, falling from the sky, cutting through the air. Logs and planks and bricks and stones, they drizzled the compound with death and despair.

The explosion uprooted trees, sent families and gangs of spiritual beasts panicking, and it even rustled a particular dragon who flew up into the sky. It stopped what it had been doing, much to the exhausted human’s chagrin, down below, and rushed to the sky. It saw the explosion, the death and carnage. Its eyes pierced through the veil of time, the link of souls and saw the truth of what had happened.

It communicated a snippet of that to the human below it. A dark hum of energy threw him off balance, sent him falling from the path of poles he had created in accordance to the dragon’s sparse teachings. He jumped out of the water, ran to the shore and blew all the water out of his body with an angry shout, the only way the tiny human could try to reenact the ways of the Celestial beings. He wore that scattering of cloth he called clothes, clasped the weights he lived with on his limbs and body, and rushed out, angry, desperate, humiliated.

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~~~~~~~~~~

Archeseus woke up with a start, his eyes hazy and blurry. He grabbed at the hands holding his broken leg steady. They moved even through his grasp, tying splints to correct the bones. “STOP!” He groaned, pain flared as the injuries on his face, still tender, opened up again.

“I don’t know who you are, but answer me. How is my sister?” Archeseus asked, he struggled to rub the shoot covering his eyes, he just couldn’t reach it.

“Miss Xanthip…” The young voice of a rambunctious young man brought an image to his mind. Xanthip rustled awake, blood dripped down her wound as her concentration waned. “Ru Feng? You’re alive? You’re parents are worried sick.” She said and Ru Feng was on her, soothing, holding the wound on her belly. “They have every right to be. You need to focus. Stay alive.” He said.

His voice was fresh, hot in the dead cold, under the ashen clouds in the sky. The skies were angry once more. Finally Archeseus managed to clean his eyes enough to open them, His beard was growing, a teenage stubble. His Hair was cut clean, his form was even more massive than before and injuries could be seen all over his body. He had lost even more fat and now looked like a proper monster of muscle and unlimited strength. Archeseus could see that Ru Feng despite his disappearance had not been idle. He moved down and ripped the bandages off his legs with a grimace.

“Leave, Ru Feng. I will get her back there myself.”

“What are you talking about? How can you carry anyone in your state?” Ru Feng probably glared at Archeseus, he did not bother to look.

“Get me a fire, and a leg. This is an order as your Second Patriarch. I will not drag you into my problems. You’ve chosen your path as we have chosen ours. Now Quickly!” He ordered and waited with baited breath.

What followed was torture. Archeseus grabbed a blade with his own to hands, chopped of his broken leg, seared the injury shut and and then welded on another leg, a foreign one. It was all done through constant screams of horror and pain. His Teeth nearly cracked from how hard he bit on the stick he had placed in his mouth.

Yet it was done. Archeseus got Ru Feng to secure the foot that did not belong to him tightly and he pushed himself up. He drove Qi through the foreign foot and held it tightly, moving it back and forth, as if it was a rock. He could only do rapid, sharp, moves. Yet it would do. He knelt before Xanthip and pulled her over his shoulders. Having wrapped her wound to secure the jagged piece of crystal inside her stomach so that she wouldn’t bleed out.

“Ru Feng… Get Stronger. Live your life. And when you feel ready to be the hero you dreamt of being, return to your Clan, just showing your face would be enough.” Archeseus advised before he left the compound, forever to be forgotten. He walked slowly at first but got faster and faster as he lunged with one leg and boosted the crutch that was the other leg with Qi to hop over the land at great speeds. From above black snow covered the large clearing, purple lighting rumbled in the skies of ash clouds.

Re Feng looked on from atop the hill with a hard glint, face of stone. His sword like brows knitted together as he marched on back to his training ground. His emotions were conflicted yet he did not stray from his decision. He knew not if this was yet another mistake, but Archeseus had spoken of a truth. It did not matter whether he was right or wrong. This was the path he had chosen. Now he would see it out. If he wanted to become the man he could be proud off, that is. In his hand he carried the wrapped leg of the Patriarch.

At the ruins of what once was the proud, thousands of years old Main building of the compound in a hole dug from inside the tons of broken debris, unnoticed and untouched by Ru Feng or the others, was a severed leg stuck in crystal, broken pieces of heavy armor that shone reflectively under the purple lightning crackling in the dark skies.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ru Shi was woken up. Her blurry eyes stared at the tearful face of Argea, her little hands pushed on Ru Shi’s waist, urged her forward. She got up, still dazed, and followed the little girl out. It was the moment she exited her tent that the cries of despair reached her. A tingle in her ears sobered her a up, the daze of sleep rushing out of her, she ran after the young girl and the smell of rotting flesh knocked her in the head. She sprinted across and up the road, leaving the perimeters of Scavenged City, to the place where the Laertis Clan still resided in limbo. The wind traveled against Ru Shi, ruffling her wild hair with its cold caress. It smelt of blood, tears, exhaustion. So much blood, Ru Shi shuddered. She run into the settlement of tents and reached its very center after Argea.

She skirted around mourning women, mothers, children, crying to the skies cursing whatever their minds could conjure up. There on an empty grass patch lay two people. Archeseus and Xanthip. Archeseus was awake a hand axe gripped tightly in his knuckles, he held onto it so tightly his whole arm had gone pale white. “GH!” He chopped down and the leg he had seared to his own was cut off, burnt and healing flesh and all. He had to make sure no foreign flesh was left to infect him.

“What are you doing Patriarch!” Those around him moved too late to restrain him. In between gasps and painful, hissing, breaths he waved them off. “It’s not my leg anyway. Forget about me. Do something about Xanthip!” He ordered through clenched teeth, and Ru Shi, stunned as she was felt a weak tug at her sleeves. Argea’s two little eyes as black as the night sky burned her with a desperation that could very well form into hate and rage in any moment. She was shutting off.

Ru Shi, now fully awake, rushed forth. She barked an order for every step she took, herbs were to be brought, to be bought. A large tub was to be made and filled with steaming hot water, and kept hot until she said otherwise. They would need beast blood, bone marrow, the sap of sapling trees, mortars and pestles. “IF! You want to save her, you need to follow my orders to a tee. That goes for everyone!” Ru Shi urged strongly as she checked over Xanthip’s state. She was not breathing.

Ru crouched on her, she placed both hands on her Chest and pounded in rhythm. “SHIT!” She shouted in panic as she pushed Xanthip’s chest inward till it almost broke, repeatedly. “Get Me blood of her blood type, plastic tubes and bags! Needles, knives, Anything!..” She shouted. What could she do? What should she do? Would it be better to call it off? Pass the sentence? And what about Argea then, Archeseus, Carius or Atlas. Why did she care about them in the first place? As long as her family was happy, she was happy, all she needed to do was go to them, and she would feel alive and well, she could escape from these horrible feelings eating away at her.

“Fuck… Bring me Spirit Stones! Anything that exudes dense Qi! We need stimulants!” An idea flashed in her mind, she spoke before her analytical self could catch up. Since when do I care so much? Why do I go out of my way? She questioned.

“Call for Anthony! Sir Anthony!” She gave one last order even as her hands grew numb, sweat gathered at her curved nose, dripped onto Xanthip’s neck.

“You don’t need to go far! Get my blood.” Archeseus said, catching everyone there off-guard. Some of them rushed to do so, berating themselves for not thinking the idea.

“It’s not like you have much either, Patriarch. You may die.”

“I already did.” Archeseus chuckled as he lay down. He felt near to nothing as tubes or needles were inserted in him and his blood entered directly into his sister’s blood stream. His vision faded slowly. His fingers went cold, his head buzzed and swam. He felt almost high in a sense. He was fading away. Yet he did not grow anxious, fearful, weak. As he said, this is how it should be.