The man he was hunting was about to flee.

There was no way Red could allow an escape, so he used the blood in Kaan's body to stop the man in his tracks. As intended, Kaan froze and became unable to move.

Red located the drops of royal Habrin blood that powered the Emperor's Sosia. Predictably, the puppet was close to Kaan. The two were glued near the throne his father was so eager to protect.

Red used said drops to teleport into the Sosia. A dull explosion occurred as Red broke apart the Sosia's body with his arrival. The room was quiet aside from the dull thuds of broken bone and flesh falling to the ground.

While everyone processed what he did, Red used the Sosia's blood to break apart every other puppet in the room until only the two men who mattered were left.

"You fucking bastard," Kaan said after the cries of the deceased stopped.

Red stared at Kaan, his eyes memorizing the man who would never haunt him again after today. The one truth he hated to acknowledge was staring him in the face.

He was his father's son.

Red was the spitting image of Kaan. Of all the sons the Habrin Emperor spawned, only one looked precisely like said emperor. How ill-fated he had to be to carry this man's genes so perfectly.

The similarities that bond the two through shared blood were barely visible at this moment due to stress—silver, and off-hues of black streaked Kaan's dark hair. The healed, scarred face was now lined with wrinkles and lines of stress. Kaan's proud shoulders were thin and weighed down by the burden of being prey.

"I used the same play you did, Father," Red said. "I ensured my prey was exactly where I needed it to be."

A long string of curses came out of Kaan, but Red ignored this as he watched the man he once feared fold like a cheap blade.

"Where is your flesh stash," Red said once Kaan finally shut his mouth.

"You think I'm going to tell you, you stupid shit?" Kaan said.

"It doesn't matter if you do," Red said. "I'll find it and get rid of it."

Kaan snorted, but that action turned into a coughing fit. Bright red eyes filled with spiteful hate was aimed at him as the other man put it all together. "You...you...fu..." Kaan spat out in between coughs.

Red stared holes into Kaan as the other man lost everything in his stomach. Red ensured that Kaan retched up everything; not even the stomach acid was left when he was done. The stench of vomit was ignored by both men as the two locked eyes.

What little strength and power Kaan had drawn from his pound of flesh was gone. In its place was an old man Red could crush in a heartbeat.

"Why aren't you finishing him already," Acuzio said.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

The Dragon God had caught up and was now setting fire to everything his flames could reach. That meant everything was slowly burning.

"I want to prolong his suffering," Red said. "He doesn't deserve the mercy of a fast death."

Kaan started shouting at Red and Acuzio, but they ignored him to continue their conversation.

"Then just curse him," Acuzio said.

"How do I do that?" Red said.

Acuzio hummed and hawed as he moved his head in thought. "It's been thousands of years since I've had to think about the process." He said when he finally came to a conclusion.

"Show me," Red said.

"No." Acuzio said, "That's too much work. Just cover him in blood and imagine what you want his penance to be."

Red shook his head as he fought the desire to chuckle. He should have known better than to trust that Acuzio would give him honest advice. Still, he cut his hand and directed his blood to cover Kaan's mouth shut.

The persistent squeakiness of the other man was finally silenced.

"Cover him in blood..." Red said as he used his power to move all the blood in the room to circle Kaan. "He doesn't deserve penace but he has earned his pain."

Kaan wriggled and flailed in Red's blood bubble, and Red watched every second of it. Red tightened the constraint, but to his shock, it sparked an explosion. Kaan's body fell apart due to the pressure.

As he froze, a tempest of unknown feelings and emotions flooded Red's brain. He hadn't meant to kill Kaan so quickly.

The happiness and pride he expected to feel was nowhere in sight.

All he had was an emptiness in his chest. Why didn't he feel any joy?

What more would it take for Red to feel something other than rage and hunger?

"Well, that was anticlimactic, huh." A sharp feminine voice cut through the haze within him with its unexpected interruption.

"Aphra," Acuzio said with a strange amount of affection.

Red turned around to see what the Dragon God had.

A woman he had never seen before strolled through the fire that was eating the room. She parted the flames that licked at her without breaking her stride. The fire Acuzio set off all but jumped to join her flesh, and all of the heat disappeared with that action.

She had a shit-eating grin that was all too familiar. Her golden hair was threaded with amber that shone like gold. Her red eyes burned like banked embers that matched the flaming heat of her gold-plated armor. She used a silver-blue longsword to tap her shoulder as she moved past the two staring at her.

"Aphra?" Red said as he eyed this woman. He could see the magic pulsing in her veins, and it was one that he recognized: the burning glow of gold, orange, red, and black. Only one other had this Aurora Borealis of lights burning through their flesh. "Don't you mean Mordecai?"

"I do go by that when I take the male form," Aphra said as she kicked away Kaan's dilapidated remains. "He was such a disappointment. If he had eaten you when you were born, it would be him standing here alive. This is what he gets for not listening to me."

Red said nothing as he eyed Aphra and processed her words. Merin and Red had long assumed that her relatives had planned this, but was this the actual plan?

Aphra sat on the throne and slammed the shining blade into the ground between her legs. She turned her burning eyes on the two across from her and smirked.

"You didn't really think you could just destroy my country and get away with it, did you?" She said.

"Why would you let me grow powerful enough to do so," Red said as he fought to maintain a blank expression.

"I was bored," Aphra said with a shrug. "I created Habrin for the same reason. It's always fun to see what the mortals would do if I sprinkled a little power into their lives."

"I'm going to ruin what's left of Habrin," Red said. He saw no reason not to state the facts as he saw fit.

"You'll have to go through me," Aphra said with a dark chuckle. "I was so pumped about this upcoming fight I accidentally burned through my last form. You owe me a fun fight now. I liked that body."

The eagerness of a match with Aphra replaced the haunting emptiness of before. This was how Red was supposed to feel after Kaan's end. He should be energized and ready for more.

Red looked down to see how Acuzio was processing this, but the duplicitous dragon was already halfway across the room beside his sibling.

Merin. Red used his bond to call out to her, you're going to want to be here for this.