Jericho didn’t budge an inch. “A machina of fire? I prefer cold showers though. I can’t go easy on you.”

He swapped the estoc into his offhand and looked up at the ceiling. Opening his mouth wide and gagging, Jericho reached down into his own throat. He dragged out a longsword machina forged from onyx. Squinting with a red dragon’s eye, it rattled with enigmatic energy. “Behold your death, Black Hole Sun.”

Abdul furrowed his brow. “Strike this fool down, Primus.”

Primus shouted back. “Affirmative!” The claymore’s voice filled with excitement. A tinge of shaking nervousness showed too.

Abdul burst forward with a diagonal swing descending toward Jericho’s throat. “Falling star,” he evoked.

Jericho braced for impact, guarding with his dual blades. The two clashed machina endlessly, each letting battle roars loose. Dust kicked up as the force traveled from blade to legs to ground. Cracks splintered and crept away from the stone underneath. Only a step apart, Abdul and Jericho shifted their angles and footwork, both deflecting dozens of vertical and horizontal swings birthing sparks.

Abdul slipped his head to the right, whizzing by the agony of a downward strike that cleaved the ground, and grabbed Jericho’s face. Explosive combustion blasted from his palm to propel the foe tumbling meters off. Abdul rushed forward to grab the ankle of The Doctor.

Chanting, “Feather”, he slung up the weightless corpse with ease and added, “Elephant”. It slammed down to pin Jericho who struggled to move, wheezing for air. The cracks below branched out further.

Red electricity festered on Jericho’s face as his flesh healed quicker than its boiling devastation. Abdul stomped forth and stood over him. He took a deep breath and roared raging blaze all over Jericho’s uncovered torso. The heat rivaled the lava-filled lower levels of Yellen. Enduring groans intensified to bloodcurdling screams as Jericho’s skin and metallic muscle melted away to reveal a charred black skeleton. He fell limp.

Abdul leaned over, exhausted, and caught his breath. “Regenerate from that,” he beckoned, walking away.

Not even five steps later, a low chattering caught his attention. Abdul snapped toward the skeleton. Its teeth clattered together. Swarming crimson lightning writhed across the corpse. Jericho’s bones swelled from their shriveled charcoal-like state and his muscles of devil’s metal sprouted, stringing, webbing, and draping together. That clacking of his jaws was laughter.

He laughed like a manic madman. “What a drag! Never in my entire existence have I been brought so close to death! The boy, Ley, was the last to leave a scratch on me! I left his mark to remind me that I was alive! But this?! This?!”

Jericho shoved the weighed corpse from his hips and stood, overwhelmed by eerie twitching. He swung that onyx machina into thin air without a target.

Abdul watched an abyssal lingering line trace the weapon’s path in open space. Everything existing within its territory vanished. Or was it consumed?

He blinked and found Jericho inches from his face, thrusting the machina forward. Unable to fully react other than a startled step back, Abdul felt the black blade slice the left side of his neck. A void appeared there, leaving a hole and fountain of hot blood to spew everywhere like a geyser.

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For the first time in memory, the fear of death rattled him. In a panic, he planted his feet and spewed volatile flames to hold off Jericho. Tightly applying pressure to his throat, he turned and bolted off to hide behind a wall.

Abdul’s heart beat out his chest as echoing thoughts devoured his mind. I’m gonna die! I’m gonna die! I’m gonna die!

This primal fear now of all times confused him. In the past, he’d always daydreamed about being murdered or shot on the battlefield. What way outside of war did he know, after all? And what destiny did warriors have other than death? After Xavier’s death, this idea became the only future he could imagine. It became his fate.

Any dreams of a life beyond war shrived up with his brother. Did he truly not want to die?

His doom never came. He peeked back at Jericho who paid the flames eating his body no attention now. That freak healed faster than Abdul could hurt him. Abdul let go of the wound. He looked down at his fingers to see no blood or wound. “What the hell is going on?” He mumbled. “That was fatal.”

Primus seemed unsure. “Don’t ask me. I’m as confused as you are right now. Just don’t let that blade cleanly cleave you again.”

“Looks like we’re not out of the fight yet. I’ve got no idea what his machina does though. Let’s tackle this from another angle.”

“A trap?”

“We can try.”

Jericho turned the corner to face him as he continued to turn tail. “Why are you running, damn hawk? Was your stoicism fake?”

Abdul turned into a spacious dining chamber riddled with corpses, broken furniture, and debris. He scavenged around in a hurry as Jericho continued to shout out to him. “You’ve got me real perplexed now! That was a killing wound, right? And that machina of yours… that’s not the source of your flames. It’s ki manipulation! You’re just full surprises.”

Jericho entered the room to corner Abdul who stood braced against the far side wall. “There’s no way I’m mistaken… your heightened soul and talent. I know because I’m the same. A perfect homunculus. Damned manmade god in the flesh. Where did you come from, brethren? Tell me, which facility?”

Hundreds of questions ran though Abdul’s head, but he shook them away to focus on the current task. He glanced down at his feet where the omnipresent fissures reached. The two of them fighting for only a few minutes shook the first level to the verge of caving into the next. We’re really tearing up this place. I need to be careful.

They better not be under us right now. Isaac. Elise. Sasha.

“Anchors and anvils,” he spoke.

Jericho only had enough time to catch a bewildered glance of his demise. A great mass of dead owls, wooden tables and chairs in disrepair, bloodstained swords and daggers, and even a loaf of bread floated above him. “What in—,” They crashed.

Abdul watched them snap downward faster than expected, flattening the man. The floor crumbled and gave with a scattering cloud of grainy dust, devouring Jericho. A sinkhole tunneled deep.

Abdul rushed forth and peered into the chasm to find three levels of collapse and a pile of undecipherable rubble many stories below. That massive heap dragged Jericho to the lowest, darkest pits of the sanctum.

Both Primus and Abdul let out a long exhale, uttering “Good grief.”

The claymore machina looked up at his wielder. “We work well together, human. Or should I say homunculus?”

Abdul looked hesitant. “I wouldn’t have had a chance without you.” His eyes sharpened and quivered. “But him and I are the same? That’s what I am? Disgusting.”

What was this horrible sickness he felt? The crimson images sending his mind through cycles of remembrance, denial, and frenzy? Homunculus? Facility? Manmade machina? The Apparatus? The Red Room? The hooks? The slop? The swines? The screams? The scents? The scars? The men in white?

Abdul paled as he rested his fingertips on his chest, with breath and heartbeat sprinting. What was this distance and numbing fog? Who looked through these eyes?

These memories aren’t mine. They can’t be. That didn’t happen to me.

Primus grew worried. “Are you okay? Need a hug? I don’t have arms, but we can figure something out.”

Abdul’s face fell blank, and his mouth hung listlessly open. Now completely calm, it was as if a switch flipped in his head. “What’re you on about?”

“Well, you’re sad, right? Don’t those kinds of things help?”

“Sad? What I feel is…” He stared off at an unremarkable wall, voice monotone and fatigued. “What were we talking about again? I spaced out for a minute there. My head hurts.” Focusing down to the bottom of Jericho’s grave, he remembered something and got wide-eyed. “I hope the others are well.”

“We should catch up,” Primus replied low, unable to read his wielder’s mood whatsoever.