Jonathan galvanized the remnants of his musculature, and shot forwards, skipping along stepping stones of purple fire. Slothari’s wings erupted into a frenzy, and sent her through the sound barrier, and towards Jonathan. Her fists flashed out, and he barely deflected them, landing a hit of his own. Normally his weakened state would have been no match for the potent circle lord, but she was on her last legs too.
A bone broke beneath his strike, and he summoned his mana to his hands, sending a drill of azure energy into his foe. It was a callback to his first days in the Hells, and a slight tinge of nostalgia crossed his psyche as he used the technique. He had grown so much since then, but there was still far more to learn, and far further to go.
Slothari reeled, and Jonathan struck again, but this time his hand was caught. Slothari twisted his wrist around and flipped him off his elemental construct. Then her elbow descended, wreathed in green fire. His armor warped before it, letting the strike hit his abdomen, which had already been torn apart by the sword of Slothari’s Nephilim form. It opened up again, and blood spurted out coating Slothari’s remaining arm. Jonathan let out a gurgle of pain, and focused his Rune of Vengeance into his right fist, focusing on its conceptual nature. Divinity spiraled down into it, and he punched, just as Slothari prepared to behead him with an overhand chop.
His fist sank into her sternum, and he let his remaining Divinity loose. A flare of red flame tore into Slothari’s body, carrying her backwards. Her wounds were points of ingress for the caustic flame of Jonathan’s rune, and it rampaged through her body. Gouts of fire shot out of her orifices, and her wings stopped beating. Before she could fall, Jonathan caught her with a plate of elemental light, and coaxed his failing body and elemental power into motion, preparing his stamina for one final strike. It all came down to this.
Chapter 38
Slothari glared up at him, hatred burning in her eyes as she struggled to move the flesh of her latest form, battered and broken from the battle. Even though Jonathan was hardly in a better state, she wasn’t used to being weakened. All of the battles she had been involved in had ended in complete victory for herself, with barely any struggle. Against someone like Arkanon, perhaps she would have been pressed slightly, but as it was, Jonathan was the first person in eons to bring her down to such a lowly state.
“What a monster…” She whispered softly, as her hands lengthened into claws tipped with a virulent emerald poison. The world darkened as he loosed her elemental domain, the pure energy of mutation changing her body, fighting to realign broken bones and patch up pulverized flesh.
As she worked, she watched her foe traversing the thermals before her, his unique method of flight conveying him at speeds that could hardly be called impressive. He was at the end of his rope, but going by the steely gaze she could feel on her, even through his banged up helmet, he was still in the fight.
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She had fought well so far, but in a manner more suited for oppression thus far below her, rather than against an equal. Tricked by Arkanon’s presence, she had thought both men to be of an equal threat. Then Jonathan had taken her arm, and in her most powerful form to boot. That had been the beginning of the end for her towering ego.
As her body bulged and groaned beneath the weight of her last ditch elemental manipulation, Jonathan finally responded with his own. Weakened as he was, Jonathan could barely summon a slight breeze of purple fire as opposed to the howling maelstrom of obliteration that normally leapt from his fingers at the first opportunity.
“How will you die…” He found himself muttering. It was a mostly unconscious question, but one that Slothari responded to.
“Die? To think a mere mortal has even brought that thought to my mind. You may have brought me to chasms of weakness never seen by my eyes before, but I shall not die here.”
Her eyes lit up with a steely light, both metaphysical and tangible in nature. Green pools of fire seemed to blaze on her face, representing a will capable of taking the weight of eons on its unwavering back.
Jonathan gazed back as he continued to drift towards his foe, his own will and destiny intertwining within himself. Every battle he took part in, he grew in some way, and this was no different. His arrogance, while somewhat deserved, had been carefully pruned by the shears of hardship and pain. Nothing he had gained in this world had been by anything save his own grit and determination. Compared to this beast, this thing that stood before him, he was deserving of his might.
“Death comes for everyone, Slothari. No matter how long they might live. It came for Granath, its cold hands tearing that bloated worm to the depths of a true hell. It will come for Angranor, waiting on his dark throne.” Jonathan grinned. “It will come for you.”
His muscles twitched as he sent the remainder of his stamina into them, briefly bringing his strength back up to an acceptable level. His fist hurtled forwards, and Slothari’s rose to meet it, her claws cutting wounds in reality itself. As strange monstrosities of twisted flesh and mutation rose from the air around them, writhing in the heat of Tartarus, their fists struck home.
Jonathan grunted as he felt his body tearing apart as Slothari ripped through his failing armor, from his groin to his neck. He felt muscles tearing in ways that they were never meant to, and a good portion of his remaining blood falling like rain to the churning seas of lava far below.
In turn, his gauntlet hammered Slothari’s head down into her own spine, vertebrae snapping like twigs as he drove his fist further and further down. He roared as the worst pain he had ever felt threatened to tear free the moorings of his sanity, letting his mind drift off into the darkest places of the psyche’s midnight. A lesser man would have died from the shock and pain. Hell, Jonathan should have died. Somehow, he kept going.
“What makes me so special? What makes my quest any more deserving of fulfillment than any other?” He wondered. Then a jolt of realization hit him. “Nothing does. There is no grand fate for my life. Only what I can achieve alone.”
Darkness soon claimed him, but before it did, he heard Slothari’s last words, gurgled, and broken. “He’s coming for you, Angranor… This is what happens when you play God.”