Raime…
I walked this world aimlessly, carving a path
With my blades and my fury, I fought
Hearing the lamenting of the women and children
As I carved flesh and scorched the land.
It was my goal to be the greatest, the strongest
I would craft a throne of blood, bone, and pain
I alone hoped to sit in that mighty throne
Yet I found myself unworthy of it
As I fell at your feet, overtaken by your grandeur.
As I became witness to your might
I pledged my unyielding fealty to you
To you, and your grand ideal for change
And deliver us unto a new era.
But at the height of your reign, the empire fell
Your great kingdom fell, conquered by our enemies
And with it, all my hopes and dreams fell with it.
Yet I could not accept your death
I could not accept that you would fall
You, who had no equal among men or gods
Even now I know that you are out there
Somewhere, plotting the revival of our empire.
When you return, I shall bend my knee once more
To you, O great King Dagon, God of Blood
Point the way and carve a path for me to follow
I shall lend you my blades and my flames
to tear asunder, all your enemies.
Only when you return in all your greatness
For I will accept no other master than you
All pretenders shall be driven to madness
Flayed alive and left to writhe in agony
To rot and burn, and beg for a merciful end.
This I swear, O King, I will only serve you.
He stared Marcus down, even though he was lethargic from releasing so much energy to destroy a moon with his bare hands.
This fight had taken more out of him than he had expected it to.
Although he was far from being as strong as Malthael, he hadn’t expected to be lacking in strength for Marcus to give him this much trouble.
Already he has used over a third of his reserves in this fight alone.
Between accelerating the flow of time, increasing his physical strength to overpower Marcus’s own strength, regeneration, and even going so far to use his magic…
Marcus is indeed a formidable warrior, even without Ender’s assistance, but what does he plan to do without him?
Compared to himself, the output of Marcus’s soul was far weaker, but with Malthael’s soul within him, he can endlessly replenish his reserves whenever he wants to.
Not only that, but it seems that the effects of his flames have worn off, or perhaps…
“It seems that you are no longer plagued by madness. I must admit, I am impr-”
“Silence,” Marcus commanded, forcing Raime’s voice to be cut short by sheer force of will.
The single word had such impossible weight to it that regardless of Raime’s superior soul, he could not seem to overpower it.
This doesn’t make any sense! How can he still hold such power even without Ender’s aid?
Though he had not seen Marcus display it, he knew that he had the power to manifest the God of Wrath’s power. He had seen such strength from the Forrosan people, and seen it from Ender as well. Because of that, he assumed that Marcus was using that strength to dominate Raime’s will to speak, but there was something missing.
The obvious tell of that god’s power, which was the blood red glow in the eyes, were not present in Marcus.
They were bright blue, and so too was his lightning.
How can his will be so strong even without the Wrath God’s power?!
Marcus then let out a heavy breath, his eyes closed for a brief moment, and opened once more as he raised his arms out in front of him, with Light Taker now in his right hand.
He then turned his hand until the point was aimed at the ground and let go of his sword.
“Just this one time Raime-”
His words, permeated with the overwhelming aura of his will made manifest, froze him in place. Yet as the sword continued to fall from his hand on its way to the ground below, time began to slow.
A mass of energy pulsated from Marcus’s body and encompassed the landscape all around them as his next words came with excruciating clarity, “-I invite you into my kingdom.”
When Light Taker struck embedded itself in the soil, the ground began to tremble as spires of black stone erupted all around them and rose so high that it pierced through the clouds. The buildings scraped against the sky like the claws of an archdragon.
So mighty was their size that none other save for the towers of Alken and Velken could match them, but...there were so so many of them.
As he stared at the buildings all around him, he felt that his ability to speak had been restored as he asked, “W-What is this place? Is this your kingdom?”
“In this land, I littered the streets with the corpses of all my enemies and claimed this city as my own. In this kingdom, there is no one who reigns higher than myself, least of all, the likes of you and your dead king,” Marcus said to him, his words laced with so much cruelty and malice that it made Raime’s skin crawl.
It felt so familiar to King Dagon, but that familiarity felt like a bastardization of his greatness rather than a homage to it.
“This is where I will tear your flesh from your body, shatter your bones, bleed you dry, and rip your skull from your neck,” he proclaimed.
He said it with such certainty as if he were giving him a prophecy of Raime’s own death.
Thalia…
Although she wanted to be supportive and cheer on her brother, she couldn’t help but feel bothered by the appearance of that thing named Ender that was controlling him.
His presence was far unlike anything she had felt from Marcus, void of any amount of warmth or kindness. A being of cruelty and violence, but one that obeyed her brother’s will.
“So that’s Ender…,” Selene said, as if she were confirming a suspicion she had.
“Y-You knew about this?” Thalia asked, bothered that it was kept from her.
“I did, but I didn’t know until after Marcus, Ruvick, and I had a discussion over it. We’re still trying to piece together everything we know about it,” she said.
“Why didn’t you tell me about it?”
Selene blinked in surprise as if realizing she wasn’t supposed to share that with her and looked away while fidgeting with her hands.
“Selene!”
She sighed and looked back at Thalia apologetically as she said, “I’m sorry, I really am, but I’m certain that this is something Marcus wanted to keep to himself. The story behind Ender has already caused him so much stress that telling you about it won’t make it any easier for him to deal with it. In fact, I’m certain he’s enraged that Ender has even shown up in the first place.”
Thalia folded her arms angrily as she said, “Yeah, I bet. My brother just wants to keep me out of the loop so I can live a normal life even if it means I’m not allowed to worry for his sake.”
Selene had a pained expression on her face, showing that she was struggling to approach the topic without making Thalia even more upset, but the damage was already done.
First it was the fact that my brother was a mob enforcer, then it was hiding the fact that William was my father, and now this? What else could my brother be hiding from me…?
Then, something started to change with Ender as he and Marcus started arguing over dominance of who was in control until her brother won in the end.
Yet even as her brother was in control once more, she still had an uncomfortable feeling about him. His anger was overwhelming, but unlike how his eyes would change from blue to red to reflect that, they kept the blue glow about them.
For some reason, Thalia was bothered that the red glow of his eyes would not reappear to reflect his anger. It was as if he was choosing to show his true emotions in this state specifically to not allow Ender any leeway.
“Something feels different about this,” Selene said, noticing the change as well.
“What’s go-
“Silence,” Marcus said as the word carried through not just the spatial battlefield but through the audience as well as everyone in attendance fell quiet.
For some reason, his words were laced with enough power to have an effect on anyone who heard them.
“Just this one time Raime, I invite you into my kingdom,” he said as he dropped his sword and the landscape, torn to pieces from their battle, began to change.
As black stone erupted from the battle and took on the form of a cityscape, it continued to expand farther and farther until she could recognize it.
When she felt that she could speak again, she muttered, “Is that…Manhattan?”
Selene looked down at her curiously and asked, “What is Manhattan?”
“Its where I was born and raised, but…he called it his kingdom. What does that mean?”
Marcus then began speaking of how he fought and killed the other gangs and said he claimed the city as his own.
“What kind of place was Manhattan like that your brother would have to go to war for?” Selene asked.
“Its not the same thing as going to war for your country or anything like that. Manhattan and the other cities in New York were full of criminals and gangs. If I were to describe Marcus going to war, it would mean that he went after those criminals and killed them all,” Thalia explained, feeling sick to her stomach for having to think about him killing people again.
“The criminals that Marcus killed, did they hurt others? Did they kill and victimize other people?” she asked.
Thalia felt confused by that question as she paused to stare at Selene before answering, “Well, I think most of them did. They wouldn’t be in a gang if they weren’t criminals.”
“If that’s true, then why is it such a bad thing that Marcus hunted them down to clean up his home of the filth that lived there? Why do you make it sound like he is a bad person for getting rid of evil people?” Selene asked, with poorly hidden disappointment in her voice for Thalia to describe her brother in such a negative light.
For this, she had no answer as she could only stutter in shame and doubt in her own thoughts as she watched the battle unfold.
But then, Selene noticed something else about the battlefield that Thalia hadn’t picked up on.
“Is this Manhattan you spoke of really that large? No city in all of Erebus is that massive,” she said.
“What do you mean? From what I can judge, Lycea is a larger city than Manhattan.”
“Then perhaps that must mean that Manhattan was just one of the cities he claimed as part of his ‘kingdom’. Can’t you see the other cities all around it? There’s over a thousand of them.”
“What?!” she exclaimed as she tried to look beyond her brother’s fight and took in the sight of every city that was recreated with black stone.
The kingdom that Marcus had claimed to have conquered was the entire state of New York.
Marcus…
Raime spread his arms out wide, extending his blades, and imbuing them with his flames as he charged forward, with cones of air following behind him.
The sensation of time being accelerated around his body was far easier for Marcus to pick up on now after suffering through the madness.
For some reason, the flow of time felt like more and more tangible after breaking out of the state of madness.
Have I transcended to the sixth dimension…? Is that all that Raime’s flames can do, simply forcing his victims to experience a dimension that their minds are incapable of processing?
If not for the power of the scarlet lightning, he wouldn’t have been able to recover and adapt to that dimension.
Putting that aside…
Marcus was PISSED.
Ender…I never gave you permission to come out. After I rip this bastard’s head off, you and I are going to have a lengthy conversation for showing yourself in front of my sister.
Ender was silent for quite some time within his mind before he replied, understood.
He flexed the muscles in his arms and hands as he tightened his fingers together, and focusing the effect of his gravity curse mark into his hands.
As he raised his arms to meet Raime head on, the light around his fists were dragged behind as they moved through the air.
As fast as Raime was, the only reason he could move so quickly was because of the acceleration of time around him. Without that, he was only slightly faster than an SR-71 blackbird by releasing kinetic energy from his body to propel himself forward.
Marcus could very easily match that manipulation of time, but on top of that, he could propel himself at the speed of lightning…perhaps if he could manipulate Light Taker in a certain manner, he could move even faster than light itself.
Regardless, Raime’s only edge was being massively physically stronger and having a greater base output of spiritual energy.
His flames of madness were an excellent counter for a short time while Marcus was still struggling to adapt to a higher dimension, but now they were worthless.
Raime was only a single step away as he raised his right arm above his head and swung his blade down to cut him down, but Marcus caught it barehanded with his left hand and held it there.
Frustrated, Raime swung down with the other blade and it too was caught.
He tried to pull away but Marcus’s grip, paired with the increased gravity around his body to make it impossible for him to be moved, meant that he was going nowhere.
Raime then pulled back his head and a bright glow appeared from the back of his throat as he roared, bathing Marcus in dragon fire.
Yet he took on the full brunt of these flames without his armor, without bothering to defend himself as he knew they could do nothing to him, and smiled up at Raime.
Marcus then raised his right foot and slammed it into the side of Raime’s left knee and shattered it. He stumbled and fell down to one knee, grimacing in pain as the dragon’s breath halted but was held up in Marcus’s firm grip on his blades.
Shocked that he was not suffering from madness, Raime asked, “How are you not affected?”
Looking down at the man, Marcus replied, “Because I have ascended beyond them.”
In the next instant, he snapped the blades attached to Raime’s arms and shoved them in between his ribs, puncturing both of his lungs, before slamming his forehead into Raime’s own.
The impact was so great that he sent the Dragon Kin crashing through the ground and into the created subway system below.
Marcus followed after him and found him standing up after landing in the train tracks, struggling to reform his blades after having them snapped off.
He landed on the tracks next to him and Raime spun around to face him but Marcus held up his hand to tell him to wait.
“Go ahead and heal if you want, I’ll wait,” he said.
Raime stared at him, confused, but decided to heal anyways.
As he did, Marcus noticed that he used up far more spiritual energy to repair his body than what seemed necessary to do so.
As a dragon kin, his bones are far stronger than that of gods or humans as they are imbued with incredible amounts of energy. It requires significantly more spiritual energy to repair that kind of damage. If you wish to wear him down, continue shattering his bones, Malthael offered helpfully.
Are you really going to watch as I brutalize your own son? What a heartless father you are…, Marcus mocked him.
My son is a warrior. It would be far more disrespectful to deny him a proper warrior’s death. Kill him with all the strength you have.
I intend to.
As Raime’s broken knee reset and his blades reformed, Marcus lunged towards him.
Yet as Raime swung his left blade in a wide slash, even as the air pressure of his swing destroyed everything in its path, Marcus turned into electrical energy as he passed through the tracks under him and reappeared behind him.
He then grabbed hold of Raime’s right arm and slammed his left knee into his elbow, breaking it and bending his arm in a twisted angle.
Before he could react, Marcus planted his foot at the base of Raime’s spine as he kicked him down the tracks.
Before he could slam into the wall, Marcus chased after him and grabbed him by the back of his neck. He then tightened his grip as he turned part of his body into electrical energy once again and dragged his face against the tracks at the speed of lightning.
It took Raime a moment to realize what was going on before he plunged his left arm into the ground to stop himself and broke free.
Marcus stopped just in time to see him turn around and face him with a gruesome appearance as so much of the skin on his face, throat, and chest had been ground off of him that his organs were barely contained within his chest through patches of skin and muscle that were still held together.
His eye sockets were hollow after having them burst from having rocks shred them to bits as a bloody skull stared at him and roared.
Even through all that pain he must be experiencing, he is still fighting…
“You have my respect for your will to continue fighting. I promise I will make sure you die in spectacular fashion,” Marcus said to him, to which Raime replied by charging at him once more.
He turned into electricity once more as he reappeared behind him, but Raime spun around as he gnashed his teeth at him, attempting to bite Marcus's head off, only to be met with an uppercut slamming into his throat.
“Railgun!” he shouted and sent him hurtling up through the roof of the subway.
Very close to them was the Central Park Tower, of which Raime crashed into at an angle, breaking through multiple floors and shattering all the windows.
His ascension stopped as crashing through multiple ceilings slowed him down enough that he slammed into one more before falling back to the floor.
Before he could get back on his feet, Marcus’s hand broke through the floor, gripped his face firmly, and dragged him down to the floor beneath it.
He then slammed Raime on the floor with his left hand and snapped the fingers of his right as Light Taker reappeared in his hand in the form of a dagger before he stabbed it into Raime’s chest.
He then twisted the blade in his chest while sending a current of electricity into his body, causing him to spasm uncontrollably, before using Light Taker’s omnipresence to appear thousands of feet above the building.
While holding onto a chain in his left hand that connected him to Light Taker, he maintained the paralyzing current of electricity while condensing as much spiritual energy into his right fist.
“Don’t worry Raime. You won’t have to suffer for that much longer,” he said as compressed the energy he collected even further.
Finish it.
“Railgun-”, he said as he slammed his right fist into the chain and traveled down its length, increasing the mass of his body with the gravity curse as he fell.
When his right hand wrapped around the handle of his dagger, he and Raime crashed through the floors of the Central Park Tower as Marcus roared, “-Deadbolt!”
The resulting impact shattered all of the surrounding buildings and flattened the cityscape until all that was left was a crater.
Shockingly, Raime’s body had managed to hold up even under all the force of that attack rather than being reduced to paste.
Though he was extremely lethargic and nearly out of energy, he tried to fight back as he swung his right arm to stab him but Marcus grabbed the blade, snapped it, and stabbed it through his right hand.
He tried once again with his left but its blade too was snapped of and used to pin his left hand to the ground.
He then tried one last time to breath fire at him, but Marcus put his knee on Raime’s chest and grabbed his throat with his left hand, raising his right high into the air.
“This is the end. The battle is over, but knowing you, you will never yield,” he said as he slammed his right fist into Raime’s face.
He then raised his fist again, and punched him once more.
And again and again and again and again.
He slammed his fist into Raime over fifty times before the only sound that came out of him was tired, pained groans.
Huffing from exhaustion, Marcus pulled Light Taker from his chest and stepped off of him.
W-What are you doing? Finish it! You dare dishonor my son with this shameful end?! Malthael roared into his head with anger but he ignored it as he used his magic to prop up Raime’s body into a sitting position.
He then walked around Raime as the Dragon Kin’s eyes followed him, wondering what he could have planned next.
“W-Why…why won’t you…just finish it already?” he asked in-between exhausted breathes.
“I have to make an example out of you first,” he replied as he stood behind him and grabbed both sides of Raime’s head, placed his foot at the base of his spine, and started to pull.
Raime grunted with effort as he struggled to resist Marcus’s effort to rip off his head, but those grunts quickly turned to screams of agony as muscles began to tear, skin was ripped apart, and the bones in his neck cracked until all of it gave way.
The sickening sound of flesh being ripped apart in such a manner echoed from within the crater as Marcus tore Raime’s head of his neck, with blood gushing from his neck.
While gripping the hair on his head in his right hand, he took in a deep breath, and just before he raised it high into the air for all in the audience to witness with a look of horror, he roared at the top of his lungs, a war cry of victory.