“Fuck it,” Henry muttered under his breath,

“What do I have to lose?”

In an instant he was beside the fallen cherub in need of an extra-late term abortion. Ni expected this, of course, and in a spray of acid disappeared as Henry’s skin boiled. It wasn’t the first time he’d used acid, so Henry was well aware of Ni’s goal. He needed to disorient the close-range fighter and generate space with which to control the tempo of this battle. This meant Ni would not be going down, nor would he get too close to the building behind them as it would obstruct his movement.

Henry took a diagonal path forward and upward at about 45 degrees in order to space himself closest to wherever Ni would be going. Ni, however, had anticipated this, and instead had made his way down and towards the grass and walled space of Henry’s dorm.

Below them the spectators found themselves greeted with an acid bath. Why they had decided to stay there was beyond him. This was the obvious and only outcome of such a pointed provocation as to write it in skin. The penmanship was all too clear in meaning and in expected outcome. How any could be so blind as to read it wrongly in a place of pupils attempting to learn the art of combat was asinine.

It wasn’t of much concern though, it was unlikely there would be consequences in harming those purposely or ignorantly walking between the path of a gunshot in a shooting range. If they meant to, well, this was the intended outcome, and otherwise it was a miracle they survived so long at all.

Ni did not ascend from his position. He did not flee as Henry once again made his way down. And yet only when Henry found his way to the bloated corpse of a fetus experiencing livor mortis in perpetuity, it did not move even as he popped it from existence. There was no power to it, so it was clear this had been a fake.

Far above him, Ni laughed for the first time Henry could hear. It was the rasping of an old man choking on a snake, but the impression of joy was distinct. Ni had Henry exactly where he wanted, and Henry had played exactly into his hands.

From the crowd a swirling of red mist began to form from those whose faces had burned away and whose flesh had dissolved into acid. The stones were burned where the caustic mixture had landed, and there were piles of flesh everywhere, but they had already begun to fade. In their place came the swirling action of a tornado forming from the ground up. Henry clawed at the air in an effort to destroy some part of the technique, but it was futile. What good were buckets of water removed from a ship with a hole in the stern? The entire battlefield had become Ni’s to control, and they both knew it.

Some of the bystanders remaining within the area of Ni’s effect tried to run, but it was too late for that. Most students had long-since evacuated to reasonable distance, but that most were now safe was no consolation for the few who remained.

Blades of red mist swirled through them, and with each return of the tide their flesh was torn away, stripped and poured out only to find its way back to them only in passing to claw for more. Some screamed, some fell to the ground, some continued to run in a vain attempt to escape. These last students only died faster for their hubris.

A proud few began to hurl techniques upwards towards Ni and to Henry at his dorm, but Ni was far too high and Henry was far too quick for these to have any effect. This did not stop them, it only made them faster and their techniques lose form as all sense of composure died with their screams.

It did not take long. By the time the circle was empty, it was no longer possible to see out from. The mist had thickened to become something more akin to an actual wall of blood than mere mist, entirely encompassing Henry to prevent his escape.

Henry shrugged. This was hardly the most dangerous situation he’d been in. The mist closed in, but Henry lost no composure, instead he made his way to the center of the red mass and sat down, legs crossed. He closed his eyes and pictured himself from above at Ni’s vantage point— he was the rock at the center of this storm. He was the unstoppable, unmovable, unconquerable and immense force at the center of this whirlpool that had formed only for him. It was not here by chance. The tides of blood do not swirl here and now for none; they were here for his sake alone.

Ni once again broke into a fit of laughter, though it was almost inaudible through the wind.

“And what exactly do you hope to accomplish in letting me cut you apart?”

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Henry did not reply. The words passed like water through the ears, pouring into one and out the other with nothing in between to stop their course.

The red waves, on the other hand, quickly closed in to begin taking effect. Small slices began to form across every patch of skin. Small tears formed in Henry’s robes that had long since been stained fully red. His hair, short and yet waving for the intensity of the wind, grew yet shorter and soon Henry’s scalp was exposed.

The pain was quite little, but compounded over every open and closing wound. A thousand papercuts formed and with just the slightest focus were mended. Henry allowed every part of this— he would rip away the facade of weakness that had long since covered him and reveal power to shine through every scar. He would shed this skin of stone and find out what lay beneath. He would replace every patch of untainted skin with scars to shine yet more. He would find out what the sword embedded deep within him was made of, and rely on no one else in this process.

Henry did not need help, he did not need comforting from the ever-larger wounds that tore away first as blood to compound the mist and then as proper chunks of flesh to batter him with oh so many stones. The mist picked up rocks and debris with their path, and while they had stopped moving in at any discernible pace, below them the ground was being eaten away by their weight and ever-increasing speed and power.

Objects found their way into the cloudless storm; rocks and watches, teeth and fingernails, eyes and chunks of Henry’s own flesh and skin soon bombarded him alongside the sawing motion of the wind and waves. Blood poured from every inch of Henry’s skin, and pain grew in equal measure to the opening of nerves to air.

It may as well have been a shower of broken glass or the descent into a vat of acid; either would be hell for any immortal, but not Henry, not now. The pain meant nothing. The loss of body meant nothing. He would come back stronger. He would come back reforged.

There would be nothing left but his best self. There was no alternative to this, there was the path forward and death all around it. Either he would find himself amidst the pain or he would lose himself to the power he had at every fingertip. All he needed was to call upon it and he would be able to kill Ni so quickly the cherub would not even be able to speak.

Ni had already come oh so close to death in the void, and yet Henry had allowed him to live. Why? Because there was strength to acquire and this was the best way. A strong opponent is always the fastest path to mastery— to push oneself to the limit alongside one doing the same. But Ni wasn’t.

“You’re slipping. I expected more from you.” Henry taunted the not even child.

Ni gave him no words, but the speed of the winds increased.

Henry’s healing had no more skin to give, and it gave way. Flesh was open to the world alongside every nerve and sinew. If anyone else were there to see this it would be unthinkable for them to see him as anything but a mutilated corpse, but he was not. No, this was not enough. Skin gave way to muscle and fat that itself gave way to bone, but it wasn’t enough. How could it ever be enough? He needed to strip away every ounce of weakness— to reforge himself completely from nothing.

The winds stopped at bone. Henry’s tissues dissolved, but within him there was no more red to give. Ni slowed the winds to a crawl, but Henry’s voice boomed in his eczema-ridden ears despite once again his lack of tongue.

“Why do you stop?”

The child yelped in a voice much more fitting to his appearance than any shown before, but the winds did once more increase in speed.

Hell descended to earth. The earth had long since been bored through some hundred feet below Henry— seated on a pillar at its center in the one place the grinding did not touch. At some point the burrowing had stopped, perhaps because Henry found himself at the very center of the swirling hellfire that lacked only heat, but now it again began to tear the earth away.

Henry allowed his little pillar-seat to vanish, but not for gravity to take effect. He continued to float at the center of a now-spherical vortex that bound itself ever-tighter in orbit around him. His spine was bent inward in the same instant it made contact, and Henry found himself contorted into an ever-tighter ball. For some minutes he was compressed like this, until at last Ni decided enough was enough and accelerated the mass further still.

Around the two a sphere of some thousand feet had been carved out of the earth, though Henry’s dorm itself was unharmed— alongside the ground beneath— as if by magic. The radius expanded at lighting pace, and the stragglers that had gathered just beyond the zone of death to watch were dragged in. When the first fell, the rest ran and flew away, finally acknowledging that to see this unfold was to embrace thoughts of death, but for many it was again too late.

With each fallen body rendered giblets to the wind, the power of the thunderless storm increased in sound and magnitude until even the slow runners were overtaken.

Before the faster ones were killed, however, a barrier was erected, though no professors made their way to stop the battle itself. A slow response, it seemed, but enough to prevent a true mass-casualty event. Only some few dozen corpses had fallen inward, but this was more than enough to allow a resounding boom to form as the giblets exploded past the point of the propagation of sound through matter.

Only then did Henry begin to feel his bones give way, and in the next instant his body was gone.

A single point of red light dissipated to nothing, and Ni slowly wafted down to inspect the damage. Only when he saw nothing remained did he finally acknowledge victory, though even then it was hard to accept.