Gadreel looked at his bare feet and curled his toes in the burgundy ground. He then did his setups. And as his senses became enhanced, he could feel all the eyes on him. They dug into his skinny parts and drilled through the bone. Maybe they looked for his soul. Gadreel almost smiled in despair at the thought, as he knew they would find nothing.

Then he raised his head and firmed himself for a step toward William who was waiting, standing proud like a lion, waiting for its prey to come to him.

There was a chill in the air that made Gadrel shiver. As he did, he could almost hear the silenced chuckles of the crowd. They were laughing at him. At his efforts. What kept him moving was the idea of victory and vengeance against those people. He would remember what he felt like at this moment as he had them executed.

He looked around the crowd, searching for Sherridan. The stands were raised into the air by solomonic columns. From there came the only light source in the arena. As per tradition, the watchers illuminated the spectacle, holding on their palms materializations of their essence the radiated faint blue light.

More spectacular than that, however, were the frescoes on the dome roof of the underground. On it, there were depictions of angles and demons amid bloodshed. Wings of white and gold, red and black. All to receive just the faintest of light.

Suddenly, William's voice grated his eardrums. "I am so very disappointed in you, Gadreel. We could have done great things together."

Gadreel mumbled in return.

"Look at me," William said quietly, voice rising. "Look!"

Gadreel's eyes snapped to him in surprise. And he drew in a quick breath through the nose. It was cold. He was out of place. "It... T— this doesn't have to be this way."

William looked disappointed before squinting his eyes into dark slits. "I know it feels unfair. You were not made for combat. Quite the opposite, I imagine, but this is what you led us to. Accept your fate, and die with dignity."

"I don't want to," Gadreel muttered, hair falling over his eyes.

"What? Tch. Speak like a man."

"I don't want to die." Gadreel gritted his teeth and glared through locks of hair. "I won't die."

William swept his hair back and looked down at him with wry amusion. "And how will you achieve such a thing, I wonder."

Gadreel made it into the center of the arena and took his stance, much practiced but unused. He stayed on his toes and kept himself straight.

"Try you might," William said lightly as he settled into his low stance, and then with a voice as low as the depth of hell, he finished, "but you won't."

Then they both struck out. Gadreel knew combat, but it became obvious that it was not to the same extent as William. Gadreel was slight in frame and not particularly tall, while William possesses a muscular frame and fearsome explosiveness.

Their fists and arms met as they twitched and twisted in reaction to each other's movements, but the only one taking damage was Gadreel. William was simply stronger and fought in a way that came to trading blows.

One punch dug into Gadreel's ribs. He wanted to ball up and collapse, but he kept going. At that moment, he felt that he couldn't take another. In the next encounter, he dodged a punch, grabbed William's wrist, set a foot behind William's, and summoned all the torque he could muster before getting the first good hit in. His knuckles met William's cheek, and William grunted as his head flew back on the impact, but Gadreel still wagered he hurt himself more.

Immediately after, William rushed in ragefully. Gadreel felt a spike of fear at the usually-collected man acting like such an animal. But he recovered and decided to take advantage. He repositioned his feet for maneuverability and waited to use William's force against himself. Then there was a flash of movement, and his ribs were hit again. Twice.

He crumbled to one knee, and William's took hold of him, locking him in a position where his upper body was leaned back to the extreme. He couldn't use any of his major muscles, effectively paralyzing him. But William couldn't throw hard strikes without abandoning the position.

William took Gadreel by the hair on the back of his hand and glared down balefully at Gadreel's twisted expression. "Tell me, where did you get these kinds of skills?" Gadreel didn't answer. "Tch. Who are you really?"

"Good question." Gadreel smiled despite the pain and rather uncomfortable position he was in. "I never felt that 'Gadreel' truly lived up to it."

William let out a small chuckle, seemingly only for contrast, when his face went dead, and he kneed Gadreel in the chest. Next came an elbow, but Gadreel managed to barely avoid it as he managed to break free.

He was back on both feet, but his sense of balance was confused, leading him to stumble back. William had seemingly expected it, as he was rushing at him the very next second. His attacks were even more ruthless than before, his whole body behind each one. Gadreel managed to dodge the first punch and kick, but then William jumped into the air and twisted his body so rapidly the next thing Gadreel knew was being on his back, head bobbing from side to side.

William gave him no rest, jumping on his chest and starting to rain down blows. It had become apparent to everybody that William had no interest in the types of duels the elite usually held.

Essence duels were a show with the events being the acrobatic maneuvers of inhuman speed, the use of compression, and creative adaptions of materialization. Beams were of course forbidden to protect the audience, but other than that everything went. The flashier, the better was the rule when fighting for a crowd.

William, however, had no such allusions. He simply bashed in Gadreel's skull in the most violent way he could imagine, while trying to break Gadreel's limbs whenever he tried to fight back. All Gadreel could do was minimize the damage. Block what he could and roll with what he couldn't

There was a reason William was not materializing a blade and stabbing Gadreel straight to hell. He wanted to make it last. To make a point.

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Gadreel had his own reasons. But he was beginning to forget them as his animal instincts began to surface in the whirlwind of violence.

Suddenly it stopped. William quit punching and slapped Gadreel's guard open before putting a hand on his face. Gadreel heaved a breath that stank of iron. William pressed his cheeks and deformed his mouth.

"How I wish you could see yourself now," he said, and Gadreel knew he sincerely meant it. If he'd had a mirror, he would have shoved it in Gadreel's face. "I wonder what made a pathetic scoundrel like you think you could overtake me. You should've settled for your position." William spat before showing a diabolical grin and smothering Gadreel's bruised face with his blood. "A brat like you. Even afraid of his own blood. You just never learned how to shut up and take it."

Gadreel was largely unbothered by words, but when that last sentence clicked, his mind coursed with electricity, and an impulse shocked him to the core. Something in him that had been repressed for so long was triggered.

He didn't know what it was. He couldn't make it out. It was simply recognition of a mark left by a grimy sensation, pain, humiliation, and sadness. All emotions long forgotten. Like they had never existed in the being he now was.

Still, he lost control, and the sense of strategy that he had held at the back of his mind evaporated.

With a groan that turned into a roar, he raged and lashed out. He slapped William's hand away with unseen speed and hit him straight in the nose. He fell back, and Gadreel followed. The position was reversed, and Gadreel held nothing back, mind-blind with memories of savagery.

He rained down on the surprised William, who bled for possibly the first time any of the occupants in the vast arena had ever seen. Only a drop from his nose, but soon followed by more, as Gadreel materialized a blade for the first time. He ripped William open. He punched to keep him down while he shoved the dagger in and out anywhere he could. William protected his vitals and allowed only minor wounds, but he was on the losing end.

It was power unlike anything Gadreel had ever felt before. He was making an evil spirit—feared by all—crumble under him.

But like all good things, it didn't last. As Gadreel went for a stab at the neck, William made his hands come to a dead stop. His grip was firmer than anything Gadreel had ever felt before around his thin wrists. There was a crack. Gadreel's left wrist was bent and broken. He barely got a chance to feel the pain from that as William shoved him back before kicking him in the chest so hard he was launched back.

William kipped up with rigorous haste and was on his feet before Gadreel. When Gadreel tried to rise, William was there and shoved him down. Back on one knee. The same position as before, but now William didn't want a word.

He materialized a fine, thin blade. The sharpest Gadreel and ever seen and put it down diagonally against Gadreel's forehead. Gadreel was in silent suspension before the pain. It wasn't bad at first. Only cold as it cut through his flesh and blood began to drip down. However, William pressed down until it scraped bone. Gadreel's mouth opened in a gasp, and he jerked his body with full force, only for his chilling fear to expand into every bit of his skin and bone, telling him that he was trapped.

Trapped in that vast moment, he truly felt like an animal. No comprehension of the ego. Just an observation of the world and an instant reaction according to instinct. He was conscious but nothing more. He was alive and he would soon be dead.

Then William began to drag the blade down across his face. And his silent gasp turned into a scream he had never before experienced. It was the gut-wrenching scream of a being that had done everything to experience something but was about to die horribly without ever grasping it.

The pain was electrifying, waking every cell in his body to action. And he twisted in William's grasp to his best ability, praying the universe for just one opening to wrangle himself out.

It never came, he was held frozen but so alive that he could feel every single movement of the blade marking his bone with its downward passage. All the while, William stared down intensely into his eyes.

Before it finally overcame his cheek bone and opened a hole at the side of his mouth. Only then did William take the blade from his skin and let the blood pour down his ruined face.

While still holding, Gadreel in the same position, William turned around.

"What do you think, Richard? Has he learned his lesson?" he yelled up at the president in the stands, his voice so frighteningly usual.

Gadreel had space to move, but his eyes were hollowly staring at the dome roof, no will in his body any longer.

"Surely he must have," the president responded. "But what does that matter?"

A grin spread on William's face. "Nothing," he said, his voice dark. Then he drew his hand back, ready to put the blade in Gadreel's heart.

Gadreel absent-mindedly took a loose hold of William's wrist, as if pleading. William scoffed and cut the wind with a whistle.

In that millisecond before the blade penetrated Gadreel's chest, his eyes regained themselves, and he saw, on the frescoes of the roof, amid the demons and angels was God.

At last, Gadreel realized the perfect moment when William least expected trickery. And in the same, a course of his own energy traveled into William's body, and with a thought, he snapped William's pathways.

A hand hit his chest, but there was neither a dagger nor force in it. There was a brief instant in which nobody knew what had happened, after which William realized it to some abstract extent and was mortified.

Gadreel didn't hesitate. He may have been on one knee, but William's essence was only now continuing its flow, so when Gadreel moved, William was still. And with a movement enhanced to its maximum, Gadreel jolted and threw the most forceful punch of his life into the solar plexus of William with a shockwave, breaking him for all to hear as the crushing of ribs resounded throughout the arena.