He was the liveD once more with hot blood running through his veins as the cold masses below sought him out. Aurelius swiped his hair back as he looked down with drained eyes and showed his teeth like a threatening animal.

Particularly pale mercenaries with ritualistic scars on the sides of their eyes rushed up the pillars to confront him. Aurelius hadn't noticed them before. He didn't recognize their origin, but their skill was doubtless. They jumped from pillar to pillar, burying their materialized blades into them before jumping further up with remarkable speed.

Aurelius calmed his nerves, and even the slightest of trembles left him. He was perfectly still, standing on the platform above the chandelier. Still, his heart thumped in expectation and only got faster.

Beams shot up. Aurelius burst into movement. He rushed forward, leaving his platform behind. He began to plummet the long distance down to the masses and braced himself. As expected, the ones who had been trying to make it to him were startled.

One of the scarred men yelled out, and they all jumped at his falling figure in the dark. Aurelius materialized another platform and stopped his fall. He downed into a crouch before bursting up. His arms moved wildly, and a series of slashes shot at the group all around him.

They were pushed back, but without a moment's notice, Aurelius singled out their leader and leaped. He closed the distance in a second, and soon all he saw was their leader's terrified eyes before he was dead.

The men screamed out, and Aurelius felt his exhilaration rise. He turned at them with a devilish smile. Pushing himself off the pillar their leader was impaled on, he hurled himself at the group. They yelled out some word as they attacked him. Revirum? It might have been Zalfarian. But in the end, who cared where they were from? They were dead in 13 seconds. Aurelius let them fall freely to the ground and splatter.

Beams shot up, but not as many as before, as their ineffectiveness had become evident. After dispatching the scarred men and any others who followed him up, he latched himself onto one corpse and fell with it. Nobody seemed to realize where he was, as he'd disappeared from sight. The speed picked up, and his overcoat flew up. By then, it was too late to shoot him. He stood up on the corpse and concentrated on his legs.

The corpse beneath broke the impact, and the ones around him scattered. It didn't matter. His landing was perfect, and in a crouch, he fired off a long slash at foot-level. It severed tens of feet at once. With its unpredictability and undetectability for the ones behind, it was the perfect attack.

Aurelius got up into his stance and was assaulted once again. Something within the mass of mercenaries had changed. The dominant emotion was not greed anymore but fear. An overwhelming dread filled the dim hall of the castle. They had finally realized Aurelius was exactly who he was said to be. In all their lives, they'd seen numerous dominant combatants. However, they had never witnessed an individual who reigned over violence in Aurelius' fashion. In all the world, there was only one King of Violence. Now they knew who it was.

Pride was death. They had no room for it. They assaulted him in droves without concern for being the one to end it. Their survival instinct made them act in unison against him. But they were too uncoordinated, sloppy, and, most of all, late. When others took enhancers, they lost a part of themselves. Aurelius only gained. With black blood in his veins, he became alive, and the images flashing in his eyes became mere illusions to his heightened being.

He didn't understand it. He didn't even want to. It was so beautiful and pleasurable that he didn't dare to analyze it. All he knew was that he had been made for enhancers.

As the world became a stinking mess that stung Aurelius' nostrils, he became closer to it. Even as his ears burned with gurgled screams, Aurelius roared out even louder. The tearing of flesh was ceaseless. Bodies bent and broken in ways Aurelius had never imagined possible became common imagery as he fought the superhuman beings with sharp, striking movements and ever-building momentum that could only destroy.

But even as more than a hundred corpses lay on the ground, individuals wiped and groups exterminated, Gadreel had made no move.

Aurelius got stuck on the sight that was intended to be glanced at and let out a noise from the back of his throat. It was a kind of primal rage that he used to pave his path, hurling himself over a group encircling him. He spun in the air, gathering his momentum before lashing out, sending an enormous slash at Gadreel, who sat at the end of the hall bathed in blood. There was a flash of lightning, and the world was painted blue and white for an instant.

Then the slash hit. Gadreel didn't even move. The full brunt of the all-out attack was blocked by his guard.

Aurelius' feet splashed in blood as he landed, and immediately he left the groups of mercenaries behind. He was doing what he should've done long ago. The thumping of his feet echoed as his power dug into the ground and sent him flying forward. He was just strides away from Gadreel and could almost smell his blood when he was hit back. She was fast. Faster even than before.

Aurelius blocked the strike aimed at his chest but went flying back in a shockwave. The mercenaries he left behind were coming. He repositioned his feet before going forward again and met the purple-haired woman who had come forth as well.

He drew himself back before stepping in and trying to impale her. She ducked with unnatural smoothness and tried to attack him from below. He dodged, took her hand, and tried to break it. She, however, bent along with the twist of the hand and delivered a hit to his ribs.

Aurelius' body was shot through his numbness, but he didn't let go and shot back with an elbow before trying to slash at Gadreel. The woman took the elbow to the side of her head but rolled with the blow before wrapping Aurelius' arms up with hers.

When she drew his hands, they came face-to-face. It was then that Aurelius saw her dark eyes in the holes of her pure white mask. They were eerily similar to Cade's, but older, more experienced, and possessing a brutal desire.

Aurelius ripped himself free, spurred by primal instinct, and pushed away. He slid far to the side of the throne and put his attention on Gadreel in a last-ditch effort. He outstretched his arms and put them together, ready to fire a beam. Suddenly he came to a stop, his mind pausing on a detail.

Stolen novel; please report.

Gadreel sat on the throne with his guard in front of him, where she and Aurelius' encounter had taken place. But his posture betrayed no tenseness; he sat with his shoulders back and one leg loosely crossed over the other as he looked away. He wasn't even looking at Aurelius!

In that wasted moment, Aurelius had been surrounded once again. Aurelius's instincts fired up as Gadreel's guard looked about to rush in.

Then Gadreel spoke. "Sherridan, stay where you are." His calmly reprimanding words made the hall go quiet for just a moment, as everyone was taken more by his voice than his words.

Aurelius struggled to process his choice as he was assaulted once again. It was a vivid reminder of the odds he faced as mercenaries he'd never seen before poured in. But in the heat of the battle and with the enhancer flowing through his body, he sank into a rhythm.

He warpped around the hall, maneuvering around pillars and different groups with his body in a frenzy, but even as visceral images assaulted his mind, he found himself internally at peace.

It was dead silent; he stood on clear water, little ripples spreading from his feet. He looked down at his naked body, which he could also see in the distorted reflection on the water.

His eyes stung at the sight of his scarless body, but he wiped them of tears. It was fiction. A mere fantasy. He couldn't stay young forever. He reached his hand out and gazed at the empty horizon through his fingers.

He wondered at which point he had grown so old. It seemed like yesterday that his possibilities were endless, and now he could see nothing in his future except bloodshed and death. When did his mind become so scarred it could not imagine his body without any?

Aurelius looked down at his hands, and his lips quivered. 'I'm... so lost in this world.'

He heard wet steps and turned around. His breath left him, startled at what he saw. A boy wearing dirty shreds of clothes walked toward him crying. The boy looked up, and under his disheveled auburn hair, there were a pair of crying silver eyes. So innocent and human, Aurelius almost couldn't connect the boy to the Gadreel that now existed.

Aurelius was hesitant to let him get close and stepped back. Seeing this, the boy paused before breaking out in an even louder wail. They were the cries of a broken child. Like Aurelius was when he lost his father.

"Why?" the boy cried, his voice wavering and clogged with snot. "Why am I even alive?" He hiccupped as he aimed his pleading eyes toward Aurelius.

Only the discovery of the hopeless abandon that the world whisked children into could produce such grief. The pain was so upsetting that it seemed like there was nothing in the world that could compensate for it. But children always found a way like children did. Through fantasy.

Dreams made children endure many a dark night.

Aurelius wanted to be a hero. But then again...

"I... don't know," Aurelius answered. It was all he could answer.

Suddenly the boy stopped crying. Aurelius expected him to begin again, but he began to wipe his eyes. Slowly at first. Then with a violent swipe as if disdaining the tears. He spoke again, his voice deep with a dark charisma that only Gadreel could possess. "I find the question quite simple. You are alive because it is your will, like it is for every organism. And deep inside, you know you yearn to be alive. To be stirred. So be honest..." He looked straight at Aurelius, who found his body covered in scars and wounds once again. The fantasy had ended and with a simple question delivered by Gadreel with his gaping eyes plunged him back into reality, "What stirs you?"

The water surface gave out from underneath, and Aurelius went sank into its depths.

He found himself roaring as his body throbbed with exertion against the remaining enemies. He held blades of essence in his hands, gritting his teeth while he kept the two enemies on his dies at bay. The man with the blue demon mask and the remaining of the five black assassins.

He was assaulted from behind and twisted. He delivered a sharp counter. Instant kill. No need to even look who it was. In the same, he hurled the corpse at one attacker before firing off a slash. The assailant managed to block it, having observed Aurelius do the same to many others. It didn't matter. Aurelius rushed at him, having expected it, and impaled him through the corpse.

When he had disposed of them, he looked around and found only five mercenaries remaining. The ground was littered with nothing but bodies lying with their eyes open in a pool of blood so vast that one couldn't see the floor anywhere. At such a sight he could do nothing but laugh. The mercenaries were holding onto their wounds, all from different groups with no coordination left.

Aurelius' laughter's echoes sounded evil even to him, but he no longer cared. He looked around at the pathetic remains of the once mighty ambush that would have destroyed any army but could only give him a few wounds. "You all—" He could barely speak in his hysteria. "—are already dead." He followed up with another burst of laughter that made the ragged soldiers rage.

Without a second of hesitation, Aurelius was back in the battle and dodged all attacks and maneuvered with way into the midst of two assailants. One had his face painted, and the other wore a mark with his slit eyes barely visible. Aurelius took the more aggressive one with face paint by the wrist and elbowed him before turning to the other. The masked man aimed a ball of compression at him, so he hurled the dazed one with the face paint into him. The ball of compression did a number on him while Aurleius used the distraction to circle around and attack the masked man at an angle. It was a straightforward punch that spelled the end to the man, crushing his skull.

Right after, Aurelius found himself surrounded by the three remaining ones and not in the best position, but he maintained his ferocity. He turned and deflected attacks, dealing counters to create distance. He hit a remaining veteran with a palm strike before spin-kicking the assassin. Then he turned to the man with the blue demon mask and was about to finish the job.

Then he heard a light step in the blood behind him that carried a power far more immense than what he had faced so far.

It was as if he heard a cold whisper in his ear as he sensed a murderous instinct so sharp that nothing except another such instinct could combat it. He pushed the blue mask rapidly before twisting in a hurry. He knew it was her before he saw it. He didn't know why it was now that she entered the battle, but he'd been wary of it ever since he first saw her speed.

But it was even more terrifying than he had thought.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her cloaked figure as he turned, but for what seemed like the first time ever, a person disappeared from his sight. She turned into a blur. And as he turned around, his senses seemed to slow down. For just that moment, it seemed like he could sense every slightest unit of time.

A curved blade appeared in his sight, making its way closer and closer to his face before it was all he saw. He knew it but could do nothing to stop it from happening. A freezing sensation spread from the corner of his right eyebrow as the blade cut his skin like it was nothing, separating one part from the other, driving a drift that opened a flood of blood.

Aurelius' mouth went wide in a silent scream as the blade dug deeper. While he turned to the left, the blade sliced to the right, crossing from his eyebrow down into his eyes. Aurelius tried to minimize the damage, but it seemed futile as the blade slashed his eyelid. The pain was so delicate and burned on the sensitive area before going even further down to his cheekbone and ripping through the flesh.

The moment spurred on, and Aurelius heard as Sherridan skidded to a stop behind him.

"Men always forget." Her voice sounded indifferent even as she achieved more in an instant than the combined efforts of hundreds of the world's most elite mercenaries. "A soldier with a mouth is never perfect."

Aurelius' scream went from silent to deafening as he cupped his right eye, blood pouring down onto his palm.

Suddenly he felt the malevolent spirits of the corpses gather with the thick stench and surround him with pressure, begging for him to die. His blood loss began to make his head heavy, and his energy was fading as his lungs gasped for air in desperation. For the first time, he really processed it. The idea that he—like all men—could die.