Cole…
Marcus looked at him with wide eyes, as if horrified with the idea of having to fight him.
He doubted that the reason was out of fear, for if he really defeated Malthael then he had nothing to fear from a battle between the two of them.
He did not know why Marcus rejected the idea of fighting him so vehemently, but Cole did not care. He was going to put his all into this fight and beat as many answers out of the man as he could.
“If you will not make the first move, then I WILL!” Cole shouted in challenge as he focused his spiritual energy throughout his entire body, but more so in his legs, and leapt forward.
In his right hand, he held the sword ‘Skofnung’, which he had named based on the Norse legend of a sword of the same name.
His sword was made of Black Iron, and even though it did not have any special properties and only served as a conduit for spiritual energy to flow through, its real strength lied in the hilt.
He used this sword to kill the Lich King of Verglas and his twelve Dread Knights. When the Lich King fell, the souls of his warriors tied themselves to Cole’s hilt and pledged their allegiance to him.
His hilt was made out of the femur bone of an ‘Omen Knight’. A being of such terrifying power that it took Moyako Kaneko herself to defeat him. Among the scorched bones of the Omen Knight, therein was a scorched femur bone that remained. It was strong enough to serve as a hilt for Cole’s sword and the Arcanence that radiated from it was able to grant him strength. For a long time, the strength granted to him by the hilt in his sword would run the risk of turning him into a wraith if he used too much of its power. Yet, ever since the twelve Dread Knights tied themselves to the hilt, that weakness had been mitigated.
With this sword, he would defeat Marcus, for that he was certain.
As he rushed towards him, his body turned into water vapor to hamper Marcus’s ability to track his movements.
With absolute focus, Cole watched as Marcus’s body remained still, unable to react in time as he launched the first strike.
At the very last second, he reformed his body back into a solid form with his arm pulled back, and thrust his sword towards Marcus’s heart.
At such close range and at such speeds, it should be impossible for anyone who had not yet released their magic to be able to dodge or defend against his attack.
Cole kept his eyes trained on him and even though his sword was only inches away from reaching him, even though Marcus’s eyes showed no reaction or any sign of noticing that he was being attacked, Cole felt nervous but did not pull back.
As his attack was so close to reaching him, he thought to himself, For someone to have defeated The Archdragon Malthael almost single-handedly, how can he be so easily-
In the split second before Cole’s sword could pierce Marcus’s body, his blade was smacked away by...his bare hands.
What...how?!
Marcus looked him in the eyes for a brief moment and as he did, a brief flash of blue light sparked from his eyes.
In the very next moment, Cole’s entire life since coming to Erebus flashed before his eyes.
It happened so fast, all of his memories replaying in his mind, that it made his life feel so insignificant.
Cole froze in place as he felt that his life was about to end in that very moment.
It was then that Marcus decided to speak.
“Cole, you should give up on trying to fight me. You have no chance at defeating me, and I’d rather not have to fight you at all.”
Hearing that broke him out of his fear induced trance and he shouted back in anger, “To hell with that! You need to answer for what you did, and I intend to beat those answers out of you!”
He swung his sword at Marcus once again, this time as a wide slash, yet once again, he smacked away Cole’s sword with his bare hand.
He did it as easily as one would when batting away a fly.
How was he doing that?
“If its answers that you want from me, all you have to do is ask,” Marcus replied, his voice infuriatingly sincere.
Cole gritted his teeth in anger when he heard that.
“No…no, I don’t want things to end like that. Where is the satisfaction of gaining closure if I don’t fight for it?!” he spat back at him as he pulled his sword close to his chest, placed his left foot forward, and swung his sword at Marcus wildly.
With every swing, every slash, every stab that Cole made in an attempt to reach him, they all failed. Marcus parried them away with his bare hands with such minimal effort that it was like fighting against a god taking pity on him.
“It seems that you have already done your fair share of fighting while in this world. You’ve long since earned the right to those answers, you only need to ask for them. I’ll give them to you without a fight, just stop this,” Marcus said with a pained expression on his face.
“What do you know about my struggles in this world?!” Cole shouted as he tried to launch a feint attack by swinging his sword at the left side of Marcus’s neck but turning to water vapor at the lasts second and switching the position of his body and shifting the momentum so he was attacking from the right.
Despite Cole’s attempt, his attack was still deflected effortlessly.
“I know everything. I scanned your memories after your first attack. You have quite the list of achievements to your name,” he said with a hint of respect in his voice.
Cole took an involuntary step back in horror of having his mind violated in such a manner.
“Y-You…read my memories?”
He tightened his grip on his sword even further as he said, “Flattery will not improve my mood or lessen my anger towards you! I will not stop until my sword reaches you!”
He focused his mind on his magic as he said, “Perfect Storm: Release fifty percent!”
From all over Cole’s body, an enormous torrent of water burst forth. Within moments, the two of them were knee deep in a body of water the size of a lake. It spun around Cole’s legs as if he were the center of a whirlpool.
The water that he released from his body started to compress and focus along the edge of his sword.
“Water, when under intense pressure, can slice through anything. If you were to force Niagara Falls through a hole the size of a ballpoint pen, you could slice through a mountain. Imagine what this could do to you being compressed to the thickness of a sword’s edge but with far greater pressure.”
Hearing this, Marcus’s eyes narrowed in annoyance.
“If you keep this up, you will only end up humiliating yourself. I suggest you stop this nonsense now, while you still have some dignity left,” he said, anger creeping up in his voice.
Maybe he is finally building up the nerve to take this seriously…
“Say whatever you want. I will not stop until I’m satisfied,” he spat back at him as he lunged forward once more ans swung his sword at him with all his strength.
If Marcus tried to smack away his sword or deflect it, the pressurized water along the edge will surely slice through his hand and kill him.
As Skofnung passed through the air, a high pitched whine could be heard as it neared its target...only to pass by him harmlessly.
Cole’s eyes widened in disbelief.
His attack wasn’t parried or deflected, it was redirected. Marcus held up two fingers in the air as if to demonstrate to Cole what he had done.
He had placed his fingers on the flat of the blade to push it out of the way rather than smack the edge away.
How can he fight so effectively, making a complete fool out of me, and while using the bare minimum amount of magic to do it?
Frustrated, Cole pulled his arm back and launched a flurry of rapid fire thrusts, hoping that one of them would be able to land.
Yet, try as he might, Marcus’s fingers proved to be more than enough to fend off Cole’s efforts.
In an effort to catch him off guard, he launched one final thrust, and when it was redirected to the side, he changed his momentum and attempted a feinted slash.
Yet his attack was read so easily as Marcus raised his blade so that it passed over his head rather than through the side of his torso.
“God dammit!” he cursed as he pulled away and swung his sword down on him, yet found his sword caught in between Marcus’s left thumb and index finger.
“If you will not stop, then I will disarm you,” Marcus said calmly, but with anger clearly present on his face.
In one swift movement, he pulled back his right arm and swung it at Skofnung. His right hand wrapped around the blade and as he closed his fingers around it, he shattered it in his hand.
The base of the sword cracked like glass and and the tip was still held firmly in the pinch of his fingers.
As if discarding a piece of trash, he flung the tip of the sword aside while backhanding Cole in the face.
He fell to the ground as his brain rattled in his skull from being struck in the jaw. If Marcus had used any amount of magic to enhance that punch, then it likely would have been a fatal blow.
Cole had rune formulas designed to turn his body into water if he ever suffered an attack that would be fatal, allowing them to pass right through them.
That meant that Marcus intentionally held back the strength of his fist so that it would land regardless of his rune formulas.
Since he read my memories, that must mean he knows everything that I’m capable of. How am I supposed to fight him now?
“You can’t,” Marcus answered, reading his thoughts.
Cole bared his teeth as him and yelled, “STAY OUT OF MY HEAD!”
He looked down at his sword, with its blade broken and only its hilt remaining, he would have to repair it later.
Still, it should have been impossible for his sword to have been shattered so easily. It was made of Black Iron! A metal of such strength that it was only second to that of Adamantine. Granted, the gap in strength between the two was as large as the sky is to the earth, but still. It is not such a fragile metal that anyone could break it, much less with their bare hands.
Marcus’s fingers should have been sliced off the moment his fingers touched the pressurized water flowing along the blade, yet he wasn’t harmed at all.
“If it takes my full strength to land even a single hit on you, then so be it,” he said as he stood back up uninterrupted.
“Full release,” he said as the water around him did not increase in volume, but its current became far more powerful.
He raised his hands and all the water around them began to flow behind him and rose in height.
Marcus looked up absentmindedly as he watched a tsunami form in front of him.
“Lets see you try to dodge or deflect this!” Cole shouted as he dropped his hands and the wave fell on both of them.
Marcus sighed in exasperation as he raised both of his hands, extended them to either side of him, and right as the water was about to crash upon them, clapped his hands together violently.
The shockwave that followed eviscerated Cole’s tsunami into a trickling rainfall, yet it somehow left him completely unharmed. As if Marcus had allowed it not to hit him in the process.
A minute passed as the two of them stared at each other silently, Marcus with a look of indifference, Cole with a look of confused rage.
Every effort he makes to land a hit seems to fail so completely that its as if he is being toyed with.
Like a hunter that had caught his prey in a trap, but allowing it to believe that it can fight back for its own freedom even though it will never come.
But he did not want things to end like this.
Cole summoned the waters that had fallen as rainfall back to himself and started launching an endless barrage of projectiles at him, hoping to overwhelm him with an endless number of attacks.
Yet try as he might, Marcus continued to swat them away, or just flat out hold his hand up and absorb it through his palm.
Cole then raised his arm to the sky and shouted, “THOR! BRING DOWN THE RAIN UPON MY ENEMIES, AND WITH A CLAP OF THUNDER, STRIKE HIM DOWN WITH YOUR LIGHTING!”
Within seconds, a storm cloud formed above them and a heavy rain poured down upon them.
Whenever Cole manifested the power of Thor, a heavy rain would fall and the droplets would be so heavy that they could flatten entire towns or erode landmasses.
In spite of this, Marcus stood unbothered by the storm.
He looked up, held out his hands, and said, “I must admit, your magic is quite impressive. To be able to control the weather, that must be quite the issue for your enemies.”
Cole scoffed at his attempt to sway him with more flattery.
“The manifestations of Thor do not end with just a bit of rainfall,” he said as he raised his broken hilt into the sky and electricity began to crackle from its stump of a blade.
Thunder roared from the clouds above as it responded to Cole’s power.
“Now, STRIKE HIM DOWN!” he roared alongside the storm as he swung his broken blade in Marcus’s direction as he called down the lightning.
With a bright flash and thunderclap so loud and deafening that it would have burst his ear drums, Cole squinted and flinched from the recoil of his own attack.
When he opened his eyes wide enough to see clearly again, he returned his attention to Marcus and noticed that he had moved, as if he had been struck by Cole’s attack.
However, just as he was about to celebrate the small victory of finally landing an attack, Marcus turned his body back around to look at him and raised his right hand.
“I’m sorry Cole, but not even your greatest attack will be enough,” he said as he held the manifestation of Thor’s lighting within his fingers.
Marcus had caught the bolt of lighting and presented it before his eyes to witness in horror.
Cole had used that attack to take down the Lich King of Verglas, the lighting had scorched through the death root that infested his body and made him immortal. It had been so fast that not even the Fell King could react to it.
“It is time for this battle to end,” Marcus said.
Cole blinked and found that he had disappeared.
Then, in the corner of his vision, Marcus was there, still holding Thor’s bolt of lighting in his fingers.
Marcus’s left hand grabbed the back of Cole’s neck and despite his attempt to turn to water to escape his iron grip, his magic was being absorbed as he was kept in place.
He then tightened his grip on the bolt of lighting in his fist as he raised it into the air and slammed it into Cole’s chest.
After putting in so much effort to take him down, after throwing his entire arsenal at Marcus, in the end, he failed to land even a single strike and lost as his strongest attack was used against him.
When the bolt of lighting slammed into his chest, he was met with the final image of seeing Marcus as he was now, and how he was as Enderman back when he killed his parents.
How kind of him to wait until I became an adult to kill me…
Then, it was over.
Marcus…
He hated that he had to humiliate Cole in such a way, but he figured it was necessary to make him abandon the idea of trying to hunt him down. He didn’t need anymore enemies trying to kill him all the time, so he intended to break Cole’s spirit by showing him how powerless he really was against him.
He waited for the announcer to call for the end of the match, and when it finally came, the spatial battlefield was brought down and Cole was healed back to normal.
His eyes flew open as he came back to life with a gasp. His head quickly turned to look at Marcus and he let out a curse.
“Did I really lose to you so easily?” he asked.
“You had no chance of beating me from the start,” he answered coldly as he turned around and started walking away.
But then, Cole laughed with a dark tone to his voice as he said, “I have to wonder what your family must think of you. They must be so proud."
Hearing this, Marcus froze in his tracks.
He then turned his head around slowly as he looked back at Cole and said, “What did you just say to me?”
“Well? Does your family know the kind of person you are? A mass murderer? The mafia’s bitch? Truly, your parents must beam at the mention of your name.”
He tried not to let Cole’s words get to him. Even though Marcus wondered that about himself, it was much worse to hear it told to him by someone else, even worse still to be told to him by one of his past victims’ son.
“I hear that you came to this world with a little sister in tow. Does she know -” he attempted to say, but before he could finish, Marcus appeared in front of him and buried his fist into Cole’s gut.
His body lurched forward in pain but Marcus grabbed hold of his neck with his left hand and slammed it into the ground.
As Marcus kept him pinned to the ground, he said in a menacing voice, “May her name never leave your mouth again.”
He then slammed his fist into Cole’s face and did not stop until he could feel his nose break and his face become a bloody mess.
As he held back his fist, Cole spat blood out to his side, and with a watery voice, he said, “There he is…there’s the Enderman I was looking for.”
Marcus’s face, twisted in anger, was reflected back at him in Cole’s eyes and became even more enraged.
Rather than throw another punch, Marcus snapped his fingers and Light Taker appeared in his hand.
“Do it…finish me off like you did my mother and father,” he said as his expression seemed to welcome Marcus’s sword.
“Gladly,” he replied as he brought down his sword.
But before he could run him through, his arm was held back within a man’s firm grip. Struggle as he tried, he could not break his arm free of that grip.
He then turned his head to look at who dared to stop him and realized that it was Captain Dean who had appeared on the arena floor to stop him personally.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing Marcus? Have you forgotten where you are and what is happening around you?” he asked as he struggled to hold him back.
Marcus then blinked as he looked around and remembered that he was still in the arena.
The fight was over, yet he was still trying to kill Cole, in front of all these thousands of people.
Then, Marcus’s eyes landed on Thalia.
Her hands covered her mouth in horror as she watched what he was doing.
He had tried to kill a man in cold blood, right in front of his sister.
He then looked up at Dean, snapped his sword back into its sheathe, and said, “Let go of me.”
Dean did as he asked and watched in stunned silence as Marcus walked away, ashamed to have nearly killed a man in front of so many, and worst of all, in front of his sister.