Chapter 31: Bad Blood

“My, my, you’ve grown up to become a fine young man. Shall I have the maids put sandals on your feet, rings on your fingers, and a robe on your shoulders? Shall we slay the fattened calf and celebrate your arrival? Your mother took you from me, from your rightful place, but lo and behold, the prodigal son has returned.”

Dominion’s voice, it was just as Sirius imagined it, deep and dark as the caverns below the sect’s temple. The insidiousness of every word he spoke, it made Sirius sick. He had waited his whole life for this moment, when he would finally kill Dominion, but to be here, standing before his father, a new desire overtook him.

“Why?” he demanded. “Why go through all this? Why subject the world to such suffering?”

“Fitting questions. What would drive a man to subjugate mankind? Tell me, which do you fear more? That my answer will revile you, or that you’ll agree with it? That you might end up walking down the same path someday?”

“Answer me!” The throne room shook as a pulse of spirit energy was released.

“To satiate my hunger, my need to devour all in creation. It is a desire that I was born with. It wasn’t a sense of greed, the obsession with owning everything, it was the compulsion to eclipse everything with my will, to become everything. Everything you’ve seen has been the result of my war with the Old Gods. Once I am powerful enough to take them on, I shall devour them and become the true Almighty, and from there, the entire universe will be made mine, made a part of me, and I will be all that exists. The Old Gods, the earth, mankind, they will cease to be, and in their place, there will only be Dominion.”

“You enslaved the world to satiate your own ego?!”

“In this world, it is eat or be eaten. I’ve gotten this far because my will has surpassed all others. Three Guardians and more than a billion souls, I’ve subjugated them with nothing but the power of resolve. No spells, no bargains, no help, no cheats, I silenced their wails of agony with a voice louder than all of theirs combined. Why should I play nice with those who are weaker than me? What is wrong with taking that which I’m strong enough to take? Community, family, peace, the future, you can preach their values all you want, but they’ll fall on deaf ears. I only hear the growling of my stomach.”

“And for all that, you tortured my mother? You tortured all of those other women for your war?!”

“Like I said, I’m compelled to devour everything. I stole her hope, her joy, her sanity, her purity, even ownership of her body, everything that was precious to her. Do you know what we’re floating directly over? The former Misato estate, where every day, I raped her and her sister until they bled, and there was no one there to stop me.”

In the blink of an eye, Sirius lunged, aiming for an elbow strike to Dominion’s throat, though he blocked the attack. “You’re just as much the monster I always knew you to be! The world will never be free as long as you’re alive, and neither will I! I’m going to take great pleasure in splattering you across the walls!”

“Go ahead and try! You won’t be the first son I’ve killed!”

He threw Sirius into the air and aimed his hand at him, unleashing a blast of unholy power. Sirius was sent smashing through a row of columns supporting the ceiling, but he felt no pain and managed to deflect the oncoming blast with a swing of his hand. Coming to a stop at the last pillar and pushing off, he turned it into dust with his dismount and rocketing towards Dominion. They each threw a punch, their fists colliding and the resulting shockwave shattering the entire throne room.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Sirius roared as endless tons of broken stone fell around them.

“I trained myself to fully master my body, my emotions, my desires, in order to ensure that my will would surpass all others, but it wasn’t enough. For me to subjugate demons and the like, I had to make sure there were no weaknesses they could exploit in our battle for control. I resolved to see if I had what it takes to purge those weaknesses. I found a woman, tricked her into falling in love and marrying me, and she gave birth to a son. I killed them, all of them. My parents, my siblings, my wife, my child, everyone who was supposed to mean something to me. And you know what? It was unbelievably easy. I felt no remorse, no pain, no regret, no fear. If anything, it was disappointing. After that, I went to a mass zombie grave upstate, and twenty years later, here we are.”

“You’re insane!”

“That’s what my wife said as I plunged the knife into her chest. This is the price one must pay for supremacy!”

Sirius spun around and swung at Dominion’s head with a kick, but he again blocked the attack and countered with a kick of his own. Sirius jumped back to dodge and fired a spirit blast, powerful enough to kill a high-level spawn. The blast washed over Dominion without any resistance, but when Sirius halted the attack, his father was revealed, wrapped in smoke but completely unharmed.

“An attack like that would have perhaps tickled the third Guardian, but it won’t even do that to me.”

‘Sirius, long-range attacks aren’t going to work. We’ll stick to our plan.’

“Yeah, I know.”

Sirius closed the distance and threw a punch and Dominion once more blocked, but while he had originally been smiling, his face twitched in pain. He jumped back to reveal a hole opened up in arm, caused by the Argata strike that Sirius had delivered. Rather than blood, human souls were shooting out. Dominion put his hand on the wound and forcefully healed it.

Sirius held up his hand, wrapped in spirit energy. “Everything you’ve built, I will tear down. Every spirit you’ve enslaved, I will set free. You are a poison and I am the cure!”

“Well done. Not only can you bleed me of strength, but you have the final Guardian coaching you. That’s right, I sensed him inside you before you even reached the state. You may have power, but not even you could have harnessed it so artfully without help. You’ve delivered the final key to me, and once I kill you and take his power, the Old Gods and the universe will be in my reach!”

A forest of black tentacles erupted from Dominion’s back and surged towards Sirius.

“Grandmaster!”

‘Right!’

Spirit energy began to pour from Sirius’s back, taking corporeal form just like when Dominion would harness his shadow. It solidified into the form of the Grandmaster’s dragon head, and with a furious roar, he opened his jaws and unleashed a storm of white flames. The fire washed over the oncoming tentacles and reduced them to less than ash. With that opening, Sirius charged and attacked Dominion, only to once more be dodged.

“You’re going to have to do a lot better than that, son!”

Dominion threw a punch that caught Sirius in the cheek and sent him flying. With the throne room collapsing, Sirius crashed through wall after crumbling wall before ending up back outside. That attack he received, it wasn’t just physically powerful. The dark power it contained was unlike anything he had ever encountered, more toxic and eviler than even Fenrir and all of Dominion’s other minions. It wasn’t just physically damaging, it was anti-life. He felt like his soul had been burned.

For a moment, Sirius couldn’t move. His mental bearings had been scrambled. In that instant, Dominion appeared above him and tried to drop a guillotine kick. Sirius countered the kick with an upward punch with his middle finger partially extended. He jammed his knuckle into Dominion’s dropping leg and unleashed a full-power Argata pulse. Dominion hissed as more souls were allowed to slip free, shooting out of his wound like compressed air out of a ruptured tank. This was an opening that Sirius didn’t miss and swung his leg up, catching Dominion in the temple. The blow sent him crashing into one of the courtyards below and continuing to smash through wall after wall.

Sirius chased after him, but swerved to the side when his father tried to ward him off with a dark blast and closed in. He ducked under his guard and popped up for a blow to Dominion’s other temple. His fist narrowly scraped his face and Dominion countered with a punch to the ribs. Before contact, Dominion transformed his arm, making his hand the size of a beer keg and wrapping it in bone that was harder than steel.

Just like Dominion, Sirius was sent crashing through a labyrinth of courtyard walls while struggling to recover from the burn the blow had given him. He managed to stop himself and Dominion closed in with a wide kick. Sirius brought up his right knee and dropped his right elbow, slamming them together around Dominion’s ankle and catching it in a vice before the attack could connect. He jumped up with his other foot and kicked Dominion in the balls while his free hand delivered a nose-breaking punch.

Dominion was thrown back, but despite his injuries, he didn’t lose focus. He gave a flick of his wrist and threads burst out of the ground around Sirius and wrapped around his arms. They were made of Dead Matter, and with all of the power that Dominion put into them, Sirius didn’t have enough time to break free and took a knee to the chin that knocked him on his back.

“You disappoint me!” Dominion cackled as he punched Sirius straight down in the chest with devastating power.

The force of the blow threw the courtyard into upheaval and Sirius was sent smashing through layer after layer of subterranean passages, with the whole floating fortress threatening to be ripped open. His ribs were broken and the skin on his was chest blackened by Dominion’s malicious power, leaving Sirius barely conscious and kept awake only thanks to the Grandmaster. He eventually managed to stop himself in one of the lower tunnels and leap back, narrowly avoiding Dominion shooting down the shaft that he had created in his descent. The two men faced each other, with one gasping for air and the other grinning.

“I sense your fear. You’re right to be afraid of me. All of the power you’ve gathered, all the friends you’ve made, all of the people you’ve saved, I’m going to devour it all. I’m going to take away everything precious to you until your life is nothing more than a void.”

Sirius tried to get up, but that last blow had really done a number on him. With an injury like this so early in the fight, his chances weren’t looking good.

‘Sirius, don’t let him get to you. I know you’re holding back, trying to save your stamina and keep something to fall back on, but pacing yourself isn’t going to get you anywhere. He has strength on his side, but so do you. Don’t worry about getting tired, don’t worry about running short. You wield the power of the infinite, use it. If you hit him with your maximum power, your peak will rise, every punch stronger than the last. Keep fighting, keep evolving. Besides, while he clearly has combat experience, he hasn’t trained like you have. You’ve been polishing your technique for almost twenty years. Show him the fruits of your labor.’

Sirius took a deep breath, finally able to breath properly. He stood up and assumed his preferred stance, and after another deep breath, spirit energy began shooting from all of his runes with indescribable pressure, like his body was threatening to explode because the power just couldn’t get out fast enough. The darkened flesh on his chest was mended and his injuries were erased.

“I promise you, you will starve.”

Before even Dominion could react, Sirius appeared and delivered two Argata strikes, one to the solar plexus and the other to the Adam’s Apple. The force should have knocked Dominion back, but Sirius hooked his foot around Dominion’s ankle and pulled him forward. He grabbed Dominion’s raised leg, tossed him into the air, and kicked in the back of the head where the skull met the top of the spine.

Souls were shooting out of Dominion, but Sirius didn’t let up. He jumped up to continue his bombardment and Dominion tried to knock him back with a spirit blast. Sirius dodged, grabbed his outstretched hand, and delivered several sharp jabs to his pressure points. Dominion severed his arm to escape and leaped back, managing to get his feet on the ground. As his arm regenerated, Sirius came at him like a machine, and no matter what Dominion did, his son’s blows were making their marks while his own attacks were either being deflected or dodged. Even worse, the attacks he received just kept getting stronger and stronger and causing souls to escape at an accelerated rate. He had already lost more than half a million, an alarming milestone.

Dominion managed to open up some distance and collect himself. “Finally, a decent fight! You’re more like me than you realize.”

“Whatever we have between us will be destroyed when I kill you.”

Dominion began to laugh and his body was shrouded in darkness, a god-like level of power erupting from him. “Ah, look at my boy, so grown up. I guess I can take the kid gloves off now.”

Blight’s pistol was firing like an Uzi, with each bullet being deflected by Shahti’s urumi. That said, Shahti was only managing to stay alive by the skin of her teeth. The bullets he fired were enhanced with demonic power, making them faster and more durable, and with telekinesis, he could alter the trajectory. Her urumi was just thin steel layered with arquerite, so she had to protect it with a layer of spirit energy. In between his shots, she countered with energy blades launched from her rune-encrusted hand. He dodged them just as she did, as well as deflecting them with his saber.

Fighting on the roof of a building, they were an unusual match-up, as they had similar fighting styles. Since she had the longer reach, Shahti remained stationary as she always did, firing blasts from between her defenses. Blight, on the other hand, was always on the move, dodging her counters while searching for a blind spot or opening to shoot at. While she herself was invisible to him, he could read the movements in the air caused by her swinging blade and energy attacks.

Once he was out of bullets, he discarded his luger and charged into the fray. He blocked the first swing of the urumi, then ducked his head as she hurled an energy blade, and countered with a dark blast of his own. Shahti swerved to the side and made another slash, this one cutting through his left ear. The wound smoldered, caused by Sirius’s energy and the power of the Nexus Strain competing with his healing abilities.

Shahti was only channeling some of Sirius’s energy and couldn’t shave away souls with each successful attack like he did. She had to keep wounding Blight, keep accumulating the foreign power in his system until he could no longer heal himself and would begin to degenerate. Only then could she deliver a finishing blow and actually break all the spirits free of Dominion’s control.

Blight ignored the injury and closed in, blocking another slash of the urumi and dodging the spirit blast that came afterward. He thrust out with his flattened hand, aiming to pierce Shahti’s chest like a spear. Shahti blocked with her own hand while projecting a barrier from her runes. She used the force of the attack to launch herself back, and once the range was satisfactory, she resumed swinging her urumi to maintain her defenses.

Blight paused and assumed a stance while working to figure out a strategy. He never would have expected a human to be so powerful and skilled. All of her movements were ungodly fast and strong enough to oppose his attacks. However, she was also predictable. She’d use her urumi to keep enemies at a distance. Once someone got in close, she wouldn’t be able to swing it and would force them back with a spirit attack. If there was a pattern, he could find a way around it.

He charged once more, moving at top speed. This time, he dodged the urumi outright, letting it swing over his head. She followed with another blast, but he deflected it with his hand and thrust his sword into her palm. She hadn’t anticipated he’d go for her hand and couldn’t fire another blast, and her urumi’s swing hadn’t made a full rotation. Yet as Blight tried for another bare-handed strike, the end of the urumi zoomed over Shahti’s shoulder and pierced him right between his nonexistent eyes.

‘She controlled it with telepathy!’ he realized.

After her fight with Fenrir, Shahti didn’t drop her guard and made another swing while he was disoriented, slicing off the upper half of his skull. She held out her urumi above her, coiled it into a drill shape, and then thrust it through Blight’s ribcage, blowing open a large hole in his chest. She took no chances and leaped back, pulling her hand off Blight’s saber and using the opportunity to heal it. The flesh was blackened from cell death, a result of Blight’s malicious power. It would take time to heal.

Despite the injury he had received, Blight charged at her without any loss of tenacity. His spine had been destroyed and he had lost his inner-ear coordination, but he still set loose a feral barrage of slashes and stabs. Fenrir had been the same way, able to control his body even after his head was severed. It became a duel of speed, the two of them swinging their weapons as fast as they could and blocking each other time and time again.

The air was filled with sparks from both metal and spirit energies colliding countless times every second. In this exchange, Blight held the advantage. While he had a shorter range, he was faster. Shahti could control her urumi with telepathy if she needed to, but now that the element of surprise was gone, she couldn’t be sure that trick would work twice, so it was better to keep him at an optimal range.

Both of their wounds healed at the same time, with Shahti immediately launching an energy blade and Blight leaping into the air to dodge. She fired a second and Blight countered with a dark blast. The two attacks struck in midair and exploded, and out of the smoke, a third blade shot up and clipped Blight across the waist, slicing him in half.

‘That attack, she had to have launched it from her sword. She’s good at hiding her trump cards.’

Tendrils of darkness reached between the two severed halves and pulled him back together before he hit the ground. Shahti was about to lash out, but she was stopped, both she and Blight alarmed by a loud rumbling, almost like an erupting volcano, and their attention was drawn to the floating fortress.

The shockwaves were all blurring together, becoming a continuous drone that sounded like a minigun firing. Eric and Adam were facing each other and hurling punches as fast as physically possible, their arms moving beyond what the normal human eye could catch. They weren’t bothering to block each other, simply deal as much damage as they could. Any power not going to offense was going to defense and healing, trying to strengthen their bodies as much as possible. Adam was taller, so his punches were coming from a much higher angle, but that gave Eric the advantage in footing, and he was able to properly brace himself. Every punch that Eric used was an Argata strike, slowly destabilizing Adam’s energy, but Adam was stronger, so Eric was taking more physical damage.

“Ora!” Eric grunted as delivered a devastating uppercut.

Adam was knocked through the air but stuck the landing and charged with his every step breaking the stone ground under his feet. He jumped up and made a wide wing with his leg, though the intended kick was several feet short of actually reaching Eric. Instead, he was hit with a pressure wave from the movement of the air and momentarily stunned. That was just enough time for Adam to touch back down, spin a full rotation, and deliver a real kick to Eric’s chest. He blocked with his crossed arms, but the blow still sent him skipping back like a stone on water.

Adam pounced on him, leaping through the air like a mantis and aiming to drill his knee right into Eric’s gut. Eric managed to stop himself and roll to the side to dodge the blow, with Adam’s knee opening up a crater in the ground and threatening to shatter the wall underneath them. Eric got to his feet and threw a punch aimed for the side of Adam’s head. He caught his fist and flung him up and over his head, then slammed him down onto the ground. Eric lessened the impact with his arm and then swept Adam’s feet. As he fell back, Eric grabbed hold of Adam’s hand and got him into an armbar lock with his legs pressing down on his chest and throat. With all of his strength, he broke Adam’s arm.

Ignoring the injury, Adam swung his other arm and punched Eric in the knee, dislocating it. The two of them separated, but since Adam could still move on his feet, he had the advantage. Eric was still on the ground and narrowly caught the stomp aimed for his skull. He then twisted Adam’s foot and again pulled him down, then got him into a leg lock. Adam didn’t even hesitate. He twisted around with almost inhuman flexibility and gave Eric a solid punch to the face, hard enough to break free of the lock. He got to his feet, grabbed Eric’s ankle and then spun around and threw him to the side. Eric flew off the wall and into the city behind it, but his knee had healed and he stuck the landing.

Before he could catch his breath, Adam appeared above him and dropped a guillotine kick. Eric caught the attack and the power was transferred into the street below, causing the road to rip open into the form of a crater and the surrounding buildings to be ripped off their foundations. Eric’s arms were almost completely numb from the block, but he used what little sensation he had to give Adam a taste of his own medicine. He grabbed his ankle, spun around, and sent him crashing through a row of buildings, with endless walls breaking against his back like they were made of cardboard.

Adam eventually came to a stop and Eric came flying through the path of destruction and delivered a kick to the center of his chest, sending him smashing through another row of buildings. Eric tried to disengage, but Adam swung his leg up and slammed Eric in the back with his knee. He gagged in pain, knowing his vertebrae had been broken. He could still feel his legs and heal the injury, but he wouldn’t be able to walk until it was done.

Adam grabbed him and threw him at the ground with bone-breaking force, then attempted to stomp on him like before. Eric again caught his foot, but only with one arm. The other had been dislocated when he hit the ground. What power he wasn’t using to strengthen himself, he was directing to accelerating his healing. Even with the energy given by the Nexus Strain, he was barely holding his own against Adam.

As soon as he was all healed up, he used his free hand to deliver several Argata strikes to Adam’s leg. Adam staggered back, his leg going numb, and Eric jumped to his feet and threw a punch. Adam deflected and kicked. Eric ducked and kicked. Adam blocked and punched. Eric received the blow and kicked again.

They began exchanging blowing even faster than before, but this time, they were using actual technique and doing their best to avoid receiving damage. Their skills in martial arts were being fully utilized, with all of their movements fluid and perfect. They had refined their fight because they could both feel their stamina beginning to deplete. The power injected into Adam through the Argata strikes was like a toxin, while Eric’s body was starting to reach its limits. Despite the power of the Nexus Strain flowing through him, he was still only a normal human, while Adam had been created as the perfect human, and surpassed him in all fields. Without the Nexus Strain, it’s unlikely he’d be able to hurt Adam at all.