“I believe I did say that!” Gareth roared, searching for enough of his senses as he could to kick Rhona several yards away. “Umgebung verbrennen!”

With his cry and his arms extended to his sides he created a ring of heatless purple fire around him and Rhona, concealing them from everyone else. No one dared get near them unless they wanted to slowly burn to the point that they stopped breathing. That was the effect Gareth’s Brennen Casting techniques had. The capability to use such rare powers came of two conditions: the first was years of tremendous training, exerting one’s self as long as they could stand. The second was copious amounts of mental trauma starting from as early on in life as possible. With both conditions being rarely met together, Gareth was one of less than a dozen users of the technique class ever. In fact, he was the only one alive.

“He never taught me that…” Stefan whispered to himself inside the tunnels. “What more did he hide from me?”

Gareth spat out blood that accumulated in his mouth as he stood up, Rhona getting to her feet as well. They remained as far from one another as they could right at the edges of the circle.

“If even so much as your heel crosses my boundary, I will expand it so rapidly that everyone outside burns miserably and slowly. Rhona… you’ve become quite powerful since I last saw you. I’d like to avoid fighting if we can. It can go either way. Let’s talk.”

“The only thing I have to say to you is that you will leave this building either in handcuffs or on a stretcher.” Rhona said, narrowing her eyes.

“What was that?” Gareth asked mockingly, increasing the intensity of his flames. Only then did Rhona back down somewhat.

“You have a question? Make it quick.” she hissed.

“What happened to Halsten and Gunnar?” Gareth asked, wishing to know the status of his brother and the Titanian Emperor, and uncle and former general of the Titanian Military respectively.

“Why does that concern you? You’re a fugitive. The business of the state is no longer your matter.” Rhona stood her ground.

“It is when a third of the military’s top brass is waiting outside like sitting ducks, waiting to be roasted.” Gareth sneered.

Rhona suddenly hunched over, not quite falling to her knees. The sound of ripping fabric underneath her armor reverberated in the air. Immediately following was the clattering of her cuirass against the floor, revealing a white compression shirt covering her torso. Within seconds, large appendages sprouted out of her back, having rested dormant under her skin since she had left the Great Temple of Pizna. They were covered in thousands and thousands of pristine white feathers. As Rhona returned to standing vertically, she had a sadistic grin on her face, much to Gareth’s horror.

“Wings…?” Gareth muttered, showing true panic for the first time in their encounter. “What the fuck did you sacrifice to—

His sentence remained unfinished as Rhona dove forward faster than Gareth had ever seen her and wrapped her arms around his broad chest with immense force. With strength built up in her legs she jumped, using her new appendages to ascend at such great speed that she and Gareth looked like little more than a blur to the onlookers around them. The force generated a trembling of the entire building and profuse amounts of dust and debris throughout the air which lingered for more than a few moments.

“We have to regroup with Jay!” Ivan cried to the two teens under his wing inside the tunnel.

“Are we just going to leave the Anbieter out there?” Stefan protested, grabbing Ivan’s shoulder.

“There’s no getting him back.” Ivan said, his tone glum.

“I…” Stefan said, trailing off. Seeing his brother again in Titanian dress, finding out Meinrad was the traitor, and witnessing Gareth ambushing the conference were all so absurd that he found it impossible to accept that his leader who had protected him so fiercely was not returning, even though he had implied it many a time.

“We need to keep moving.” Ivan reminded.

“He’s right.” Anwen solemnly agreed as Ivan had already began jogging off.

“But he… he was supposed to…” Stefan stammered with a sniffly voice.

“I know.” Anwen said, using her hands on Stefan’s back to encourage him to move in Ivan’s direction.

Gareth’s skin, once as impervious as his fully-Titanian sister’s, became red and hot from the friction of mere air resistance. Rhona had broken through the sound barrier, sending a wave of booms across the land below. They had been travelling upwards for minutes—they were now well over ten leagues in the sky. Unable to create constructs or use the single pistol he had stashed on his utility belt and with the added effect of his hindered vision, he resigned to using pure force to stop Rhona from taking him further into the oxygen-poor atmosphere of Earth. He had to approximate where her face was and in one powerful shove he had managed to hit her in the eye. But that wasn’t all. He continued to press his thumb into her eye socket until she cried in agony as she felt her ocular organ melting. She unconsciously let go of him, which was what he desired. Instead of plummeting straight to the ground, his feet rested on platform constructs created from his Reserve. Rhona remained airborne; the flapping of her wings becoming louder to remain stagnant in the air.

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

“You’ve become cruel, Rhona,” Gareth backed off, panting. The Reserve in his body struggled to balance itself between rejuvenating his burnt skin and maintaining the power to keep pressing on against his sister. “Halsten wouldn’t have let you fall so low.”

“Don’t speak his name when you abandoned him!” Rhona cried, her left eye now only a half-liquid, half-solid lump of white flesh dripping from her eye socket.

With both siblings now both half-blind in one way or the other, the playing was leveled somewhat. She charged at him with a fist cocked back in attempt to knock him out, but Gareth adjusted his stance just in time to avoid the brunt of the hit, although he did slip off his constructs for a moment before remaking another pair to catch his fall.

“You two treated me like a stranger in your own home until our disgusting excuse for a father finally passed on to hell. I just decided to take care of myself for once!” Gareth rebutted as two round disc constructs manifested in his outstretched hands, which he flung at Rhona ferociously. She managed to knock one far away using her vambrace but wasn’t quite quick enough to dodge the other one, which grazed the side of her helmet, severing it diagonally. The armor piece fell off of her head and down to the ground far, far below. Her platinum blonde hair became undone from its bun and fell behind her shoulders.

“We were just children… we didn’t know any better!” she defended herself viciously.

She produced ranken from her hands that zoomed toward Gareth and wrapped themselves around his chest and legs, pulling him to her at the same speed to a waiting fist that crashed into his abdomen, causing him to throw up blood. Using his injury to his advantage, he projected the substance onto Rhona’s face. With her already useless eye, her vision was even more subdued. He created two more platform constructs in the manner of stairs and ascended them. He lifted his elbow to the height of his head and smashed it down on Rhona’s skull, sending her hurtling downwards far below. He knew that she would collect herself and fly back up soon.

I hadn’t expected her to have become so strong, he thought as he readied himself for her return. No… maybe I’ve also become weak. That must be the price I pay for living among the Terrans.

Like a flash of lightning and with an enraged battle cry, Rhona whizzed upwards with her fist above her head, striking him in the chin. Gareth opened his mouth to let several of his teeth fall out.

The battle continued for two hours in the skies above Shargara, occasionally raining blood down onto the damaged Linden house. As fists flew into heads and knees were thrust into stomachs, it was clear that this was not traditional Titanian weapon-wielding warfare like the countless battles between Karesti and Solich armies in generations past. This was much simpler and more primal. It was a contest of pure strength and will, not of numbers of men and differing ideologies.

A clash between an Angel and a devil.

As the night progressed further into darkness, there was more of Rhona’s blood being shed than Gareth’s. Her face no longer bore the beauty and majesty she was known for, swollen and sullied by the fists and blood of her brother. But she still did have some of her strength.

“You… will not lay a finger… on the nation I swore on Father’s grave to protect.” she said, her resolve unwavering even though her speech was nearly indecipherable.

“I gave you… so much time to speak…” Gareth wheezed, certain that some of his ribs were broken. “I didn’t want it to come to this…”

He was too tired and weak to react meaningfully as Rhona pulled off the faulds protecting her waist, revealing a knife she had concealed inside that was tied against compression pants she wore under her armor.

“I know… I’ve made you exhaust enough Reserve that this can have an effect…” she breathed as she took it in her exhausted and shaky hands, pointing it at Gareth’s chest, the breastplate that concealed it covered in dozens of deep fist-sized dents.

A Reserve neutraliser? One stab from that… and anyone hit by it will be no stronger than an Uninitiated Terran for months. There’s a reason so few have been made. In that case… I have to neutralize her as well.

Staring each other down with whatever weak vision they had, they screamed in ways that emulated their Karesti ancestors as Gareth sprinted forward on continuously created platform constructs and Rhona gliding at him with acceleration that seemed to make the clouds move.

With the Red Devil’s fist harboring more Reserve than it ever had before and the Demon Princess’ weapon held before her, an Utrium blade tip that delivered a dose of potent anti-Reserve was thrust into his armored shoulder blade only a moment after his fist plunged through Rhona’s shirt, skin, muscle, stomach and bone, exiting through her back.

Rhona slumped forward, her head falling against Gareth’s neck as the Reserve constructs below his feet began to flicker.

Gareth’s eyes widened as he processed what he had just done. But it was too late.

“Gareth,” she weakly said as she no longer had the will or ability to fight, having lodged the knife into his back. “You asked me what I sacrificed to get these wings, right?”

“Don’t talk,” he said sternly, still stunned. He watched as the feathers on her wings slowly started to fall off, the appendages themselves gradually starting to shrink. “You’re only making this harder.”

“I gave away a year of my life to Pizna,” she said, uncharacteristically calm. “I’m so glad… none of us know when we’ll die.”

Horrified by what she had said and what he’d done, still more so the latter, he pulled his arm out of her body and pushed her away, her atrophying wings no longer able to hold them both up. They began to plummet to the ground.