October 11, 4021 11:56 [Lahab Mutajamid Desert]
“We will not bow to your sacrilegious tenets! If we are to be cast into oblivion then we shall do so fighting with honor and dignity!” King Rahman proclaimed, leaping down from the Dabbah. The force of his landing created an impact crater kilometers wide, sending a wave of ice and snow in all directions. Nearby soldiers bore the brunt of the disruption, crushed to death or suffocated underneath its volume.
Clad in regal white armor lined with patterns wrought from gold, the king was an imposing figure. His sleek helmet concealed his facial features completely, allowing Hart only a view of his reflection.
The Hyena grinned, his crimson hair flowing in the wind. To an outsider, it would have appeared that the leader of the Yuèliàngian forces had shed the safety of his Lancer in order to meet the king head-on in an honorable duel to the death. In truth, however, it was Hart’s depraved sense of accomplishment—his need to quell the voices of naysayers. He had no qualms with pulverizing Rahman underfoot with Hollow//Fragment, but the feat would have been quite simple to dismiss.
“He only won because of Uturian technology! They are not innovators, just simple grave robbers! This new ruler is unfit to lead!” these hypothetical critics screamed in his ear.
Though no citizen of Yuèliàng would dare utter such grievances in public for fear of retribution, Hart would not even give them the satisfaction of thinking about them. If he were to seize control of Yuèliàng, he would do so with no contest. The people needed to accept his rule unanimously and without question.
He cracked his knuckles, his fingers twitching. They longed to tear out the king’s still-beating heart. Hart imagined the feeling in his palm as the pulse of the final Levantan ruler slowly faded. He salivated at the thought, his fervor for royal blood at its peak.
“Honorably, dishonorably—it doesn’t matter to me. All I need is for people to see me rip you apart. There won’t be a shred of doubt in their minds once we’re done here. Levante and Yuèliàng will be mine!”
Enflamed, Hart rushed at Rahman, and the king followed suit. A deadly clash of fire and ice ensued, creating a dead zone enshrouded by superheated steam.
Their battle was ferocious, the clash rending the dunes asunder. Sand and snow erupted around them as they crossed arms.
The king of Levante brought down a sword of ice, its frost permeating through the air, freezing the lungs of those who drew too near to its illustrious allure. Hart grinned wildly, unperturbed by the cold. He swung upward, with a burning sword, pronged like the antlers of a deer.
The collision of opposing elements sparked another violent explosion as the two combatants shrugged off steam burns, their suits of armor straining to protect them under the magnitude of the assault they enacted upon one another.
Hart flipped effortlessly through Rahman’s attacks, striking swiftly and precisely. Rahman, on the other hand, made no attempt to evade his attacks, instead raising a shield that seemed to cool the Hyena’s wild flames.
“You put up a good fight for an old man!” Hart jeered.
“Perhaps forty years of age is old in your eyes, but I’d like to think that I still have a full life ahead of me. You, on the other hand, will expire shortly!”
“I’m not some overripe fruit to simply spoil and wither away,” Hart snickered.
“Blasphemous creatures! Your very existence defiles that which Allah shaped. You took His creation of man and twisted it into the unnatural abominations you call Homunculi—artificial beings—fake humans. You mock His design with your sick obsessions with immortality and surpassing the limitations of humanity. For your treachery, you sinners have been cursed with diminished lifespans,” Rahman seethed.
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Hart burst into laughter at the scolding. Something about his enemy accosting him as a father would do to his child—it was humorous. He would revel in killing the king of Levante; the satisfaction of the act seemed even sweeter now.
“That’s rich, coming from someone that manipulates the elements! Did your god allow only you to change the human outcome as you see fit?”
“We do what we must to survive, but we live just lives,” Rahman answered without hesitation. “You people will not be satisfied till you’ve picked our corpses clean,” he hissed, venomously.
Hart simply shrugged. “You got me there. There will be no burials for your people. Those who’ve perished will be used for experimentation, and those who refuse to surrender…Well, they’ll suffer the same fate.”
The king’s fists shook with fury. “You dare—”
“Not me—it’s just how we operate,” Hart replied.
“You will pay. You must be taught a lesson, lest you repeat their mistakes.”
“Whose?”
The king went silent.
“Fine, have it your way. I’ll pry it out of one of your men. I’m sure at least one of them will be ready to talk…once I’ve shown them the corpse of their lifeless king!”
Deftly, Hart’s pronged sword slipped through Rahman’s defenses, finding an opening in the socket between the pauldron and cuirass of his armor. The king grunted in pain, slamming his shield to the side to dislodge the sword from his shoulder.
Hart jumped back; his stance had changed. His sword appeared supple, snaking around Rahman’s shield to deliver a second blow to his other shoulder. The apparent flexibility of the blade did not diminish the rigidity of its strikes.
In truth, it was Hart’s swordsmanship and the degree to which he manipulated his wrist that imbued it with such an effect. The Hyena’s lithe frame allowed him to maneuver about lightly.
They exchanged attacks at a blistering pace, slipping in jabs and swipes. Cuts were evaded, or they were deflected, the momentum of strikes used to each combatant’s advantage as an opportunity to tip their opponent into a compromising position.
Hart side-stepped an angled swing from the king’s sword, the resulting force creating a blizzard behind him.
The dance of blades brought with it a tempo like no other. Each swing of the sword possessed enough strength behind it to cut a mountain as Rahman aptly demonstrated, lopping the peak of one such formation in the distance.
“You should be careful with that, you could really hurt someone!” Hart mocked.
“Enough!” Rahman boomed, releasing a shockwave of freezing air.
Hart raised his sword, turning it so the flat of the blade faced the attack. A violent heat permeated from the blade, protecting him from the man-made storm.
“Two can play at that game!”
He swiped the air, cleaving the cold. Without a second thought, Hart engulfed himself in a raging hellfire. Rahman responded by encasing his armor in ice, spawning glaciers with a wave of his sword.
He launched the glaciers without reserve, sending a barrage of mountain-sized icebergs crashing into Hart. In a blur, they evaporated. A single burning figure barrelled towards Rahman, a demonic glow exuding from it. The energy it radiated melted everything in the vicinity.
Stormcloaks and Homunculi alike halted combat to escape the wrath of Hart’s flames. For a moment, Hart of Qin had ceased to be mortal, ascending instead to the plane of the immortal.
“Rising Sun,” he uttered calmly.
Dauntless in the face of such power, Rahman bin Alsamawi Al Mumit, Levante’s last great king, made his final stand.
In the ensuing years, the tale of their legendary battle would be regaled countless times, if not for the spectacle, but the sheer carnage it resulted in.
The exchange lasted exactly ten seconds. Ice and fire clashed one last time through a squall of devastating strikes. Blades crossed with such fury and speed that the tundra melted, flooding the dunes. The immediate area turned to glass due to the heat, and soldiers nearby burned to ashes.
Before Hart could remove Rahman’s heart, he ceased to be. Blackened dust—remnants of the king—slipped through his fingers. He clenched his jaw. “I picked the weakest one to fight,” he scoffed. “Damned Kami, you were wrong.”
“You made your point, all the same,” a voice chided.
Hart clicked his tongue in frustration.
There was nothing left for him to savor.