Issue #53: X, Duel to The Death

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(General P.O.V)

Red and blue flashed across the torn landscape.

X had wasted no time in attacking, using the flame wisp closest to Ares, to displace himself and get near.

Crescent Moon slashed out with a thin flame on the edge of one of the blades.

Ares simply sidestepped the attack, but it was a ploy, as Spyra displaced X, who appeared behind Ares, a web shooting out towards Diana.

Before he could grab her from the God's grip, spider sense blared out at him.

Spyra sent him away and the position he was on was bombarded by spikes of blood formed from the rain falling around them.

Ares felt a tug on his heels. Looking down, there was a web stuck to his foot and holding the other end was X, now on the ground.

With a pull the Assassin dragged Ares out of the air, sending him crashing down.

The blood in the air coalesced into a massive hand below Ares, the palm folding around him and Diana.

Then with a twist of the palm, their positions changed and X was thrown into the air.

Letting the web go, X was covered in a sphere of flames that incinerated every blood construct assailing him while in the air.

Ares snorted, and under his will more of the blood gathered into clumps that formed hundreds of creatures.

There were Vultures, Harpies, Gryphons, Stymphalian birds, giant Cyclopes and various other mythical creatures.

The air filled with the sound of bestial roars and the horde of blood creatures swarmed X's position.

With wings of fire flapping behind him, The Assassin spread his hands outward, forming a whirlwind of blue flames that exploded in an expanding heatwave when he clapped his hands together.

The blood creatures were turned into ash that drifted down.

"Oh, he destroyed them all?"

Ares mused, now seated on a throne of blood that levitated in the air.

He snapped his fingers, and more blood rained down. With his Domain, there was no shortage of blood to acquire.

So he created more constructs and imbued them with the concept of [Shield] to increase their durability, [Sword] to sharpen their claws and teeth and [Arrow] to send them flying on a direct path towards X.

X was now so attuned to the warnings from Spider Sense that even before the blood creatures reached him, he already had Crescent Moon in his hand with a flame arrow surrounded by yellow streaks of bio-electricity pulled back.

The air shrieked with the rumble of the arrow as it left the divine bow, destroying everything in it's path.

"That can't be...?"

Ares couldn't help but wonder as his creations were decimated. He turned to face Diana.

"I wasn't expecting your little friend to be able to manipulate his lifeforce. But it still won't save him."

A shadow appeared above them, cast by the massive form of a creature with the head of a horned goat, a lion and a serpent for a tail.

The creature flapped it's great leather wings and shot at X, the lion's maw opening and a ball of orange fire swirling between it's jaws.

The fireball rocketed forth.

"No matter how many creatures he destroys I can just make more."

Ares chuckled, only for his laughter to cut short as X shot through the flame ball.

He dodged the serpentine tail, dragging Crescent Moon in it's bow form, string-first through the jaws of the Chimera, splitting it into two, horizontally.

And then he disappeared and appeared beside the two, a punch swirling with the most powerful venom blast he could manage.

That he landed with a resounding bang.

Only for his fist to hit a shield of blood that extended from the blood throne behind the God of War.

The impact produced pushed every drop of blood near them away. Ares controlled the blood under him to flow onto X's hand, only for the Assassin to flash burn it all before Spyra displaced him onto the ground.

'Damn. Spyra couldn't get close enough to teleport Diana away.'

X thought.

'The head on attack was a distraction. He's not after me, he's after Diana.'

Ares thought.

Despite their respective internal monologue, the God and Assassin watched each other silently. Ares in contemplation as he rubbed his cheek and found Ichor staining his fingers.

He did a double take. Completely in disbelief. The distraction failed but X made sure to leave something behind.

"It has been millenia since I last saw my blood."

The God of War muttered quietly.

The whole domain begun to shake with his anger.

"Repeatedly I have offered you a place under me."

Cold eyes watched X.

"And repeatedly you have spat on my face, you dirty animal. No more mercy."

The blood rain pouring down decreased in volume. A look up showed why.

A sea of blood covered the entire sky, casting the whole area under a dark red and ominous shadow.

Ares went a step further, wrenching Diana's head back, for her to stare at the sky. He seemed to have forgotten that his true form had burned her eyes away.

"This is how you use Lightning."

The sea of blood roiled around and rumbled violently, scarlet lightning flashing across it's entirety.

Using his divinity, more concepts were imbued into it.

[Sharpness], [Accuracy], [Speed], [Necrosis], [Terror], [Storm] and using an aspect of his divinity, even [Death] and lastly [Armament].

Tendrils of blood formed on it's underside, changing shape into various sharp and pointy weapons.

The attack was similar to the one before which Ares had used to kill his son, Phobos, the God of Fear. Only then there were hundreds of thousands of blood constructs.

But now, there were tens of millions hanging overhead. The number was so great that Spider Sense became useless once more.

X couldn't use the ability to tell where an attack would land.

'Spyra, how much fire do you have left?'

X asked the Spider Totem. And while Spyra could feel that this version of her Master was different than usual, she still gave an answer.

An answer that made X briefly smile, even as the constructs started falling down on him.

Crescent Moon was raised and with a blue swirl, an arrow was created. A single arrow against millions of projectiles.

Due to the speeds they were falling at, X knew he was going to have to either be fast enough to dodge every single one, or fast enough to react.

With Spider Sense out of commission due to being overwhelmed by the scale of the attacks, that left the second option- increasing his reaction speeds to match the barrage.

Over the few days Kane had travelled with Rhadamanthus and Steve, he had been working on a new move.

X grabbed the Bio-energy he could always feel below his skin, just waiting to be used.

Normally he would use it as an attack due to it's volatile destructive power. But his control had been getting better.

It wasn't the best, or even at the level of Spyra's instictual manipulation of blue fire but it was close.

Just close enough that he pull this off.

Streaks of golden lightning clad his form, intensifying and making his eyes glow as he spread out the Bio-energy across his entire nervous system.

There was a jolt across his spine, as the energy reached his brain, increasing the speed of the electric signals shooting through his neural network.

Time seemed to slow down as X's perception was enhanced to such a degree the supersonic attacks seemed to be moving through layers of mud.

He swept a gaze across the sky, tracking each and every weapon construct with his eyes, and then released the arrow.

A few meters above him, the arrow unravelled into a wall of flames that swept through the constructs burning almost a half of the initial barrage.

The fire spread outwards, extending across the skies, dying it purple as Red clashed with blue.

-0-

(Circe)

The biggest difference between mortals and Gods lay in one single immutable word,

POWER.

GODS WERE POWER INCARNATE.

They possessed an innate connection with a facet of reality. And that connection went deeper than skin deep. It went deeper than the soul deep.

For a God's soul was not simply the core of one's existence but the pure expression of their divinity.

And shedding their mortal coil, or physical vessel, served to express that divinity into reality through the formation of a domain.

A domain was an absolute artificial space cut off from reality that the God had complete and utter control of.

And Circe knew this. So when the skies turned red and it started raining blood, she obviously didn't stick around to wait for her death.

Using the fastest speed her mystical carpet could manage, she flew to the edge of Ares' domain, a shimmering dome of red energy, and begun hurling the strongest destructive spells she could think of at it.

Potent magical energy moved at her command.

Firestorms, Draconic lightning, spatial severing hexes, physical bombardment with massive boulders lifted through telekinesis...

She did it all but nothing seemed to work.

So she decided to up the ante, weaving a spell that turned magical energy into a pure beam of destruction.

The spell formed into a sphere of purple that made the space around it twist.

Just as she was about to release it, Circe's magic senses detected something that instantly made her cancel the spell, and without a moment's hesitation she dove towards the ground.

Just in time to as a large explosion bloomed in the sky. The heatwave reached her in seconds, blowing past her protective shields, burning her back and destroying her magical carpet.

Circe used all her magic reserves to pull of an emergency teleportation spell.

Normally one could end up appearing somewhere unfavorable when a teleportation spell was activated in such an unstable space and without preparation.

Her body disappeared from the air, and she popped out underground, her foot snapping at the shin as it manifested inside rubble from the ceiling.

Circe grit her teeth, enduring the pain from the burns across her entire body and her broken limb.

But she was alive and her relief knew no bounds.

With the relief came anger. She could have died! And it was all due to Ares.

She still had the helm with her though and if there was one thing Circe was knowledgeable at, it was curses.

She cast a spell to stop her injuries from worsening, not having enough power to heal herself.

With that done, she created a ball of flame for light, a sigh escaping her as she found herself in the cell that Diana had occupied.

How ironic.

Her hands begun to meticulously move around the helm.

Whilst doing so, she couldn't help but think of the rumbles coming from the outside, as well as that blue fire.

The same blue fire Kane had been using. Could the princess and Kane be fighting Ares? Alone, neither of them could stand up to him.

But together, those two were resourceful. There was a very small chance they could hold him back that she could finish the curses she was weaving into the helm.

Of course Circe had no idea that Diana had already been taken out of the fight. And the only thing standing between her and death was...

X.

-0-

The first few attacks did nothing against the sea of blood. More constructs just took the place of what he destroyed.

X kept on releasing flame arrows through Crescent Moon while Spyra teleported him across the sky and ground, all around Ares, who was covered by a shifting wall of red shields that flew independently.

He still held Diana within his palm and levitated imperiously in the air, eyes tracking each move X made, and the attacks released the God of War's way.

Seeing the effect of single arrows were less effective, X begun to release ones packed with twice the energy, the projectiles doubling, then tripling and coming from almost every direction.

Ares watched the hail storm headed his way unworried.

The blood sea above them produced his own hail of arrows and weapons that accurately tagged every single one of X's.

The series of explosions as blue constructs clashed with red ones, produced a mist of red.

Spider Sense went silent as the barrage from above stopped without warning.

"You possess a God's blessing. Your skill with a bow is past what a mortal can achieve."

Ares commented, flying down to approach X who was standing on the ground.

"For the last time, join me and I shall give you a blessing worth of Legends like Perseus."

Ares offered, his hand held out, but received no response.

X simply kept his keen gaze on Diana.

The God of War frowned, looking in between Diana and X.

Then almost contemptuously, he released her body, letting her fall.

Before she could slam on the ground, X had jumped and grabbed her body, cradling her form to him.

"...Kane..."

The princess called out in a croaky voice, as if sensing it was him.

Her lips trembled.

"I'm sorry. I t-tried to stop him...I really..."

"Shh."

X whispered.

'Get her out of here. Take her to Circe.'

He ordered Spyra, having sensed the flame created through magic coming from the ground.

Gentle flames poured down his form and around her, before Diana's body disappeared.

"It doesn't matter where you hide her, there is no escaping my domain."

Ares revealed.

"The only reason I allowed you to take her was because she was proving to be a distraction. Now that she is no longer here, you can fight me at your most powerful."

He wanted to see him at his full power?

X stood up. The image in his eyes was of Diana's face twisted in pain. Her eyes were simply gone. The skin around the sockets cracked and blackened.

Ares was going to die. Now.

First, he had to create an opening. And that was not happening with the blood raining down.

Ares could just form more weapons from it. And while X doubted that was the only ability the domain gave him, it was the most troublesome.

Crescent Moon snapped into it's bow form.

X raised it and took aim, flames swirling in between the string and the bow.

At first Ares thought the Assassin was aiming at him, but X had other ideas.

As soon as the arrow formed, compressed with as much fire as Spyra could comfortably create, he released the arrow toward the sky.

Ares raised a brow.

"And what did that serve to accomplish?"

An explosion from above answered him. Ares looked up and saw the sea of flames spreading across the sky, burning away all the clouds and by extension the sea of blood.

But it wasn't simply that X was burning the blood away, instead he was displacing it, sending it the only place he could think of, Thanatos' realm.

"I see. I understand now, but even without the blood, I am more than powerful-"

Ares turned to regard X, only to find a flame arrow coming his way.

'Another useless attack', The God of War thought.

Maybe he was wrong about the Assassin's potential.

The latter should already be aware that regular elemental attacks wouldn't work. And so Ares allowed the arrow to land.

Which was a big mistake.

The arrow made a dull sound as it stuck through the God of War's forehead.

Instantly, Ares knew something was wrong.

The flames around the arrow disappeared, leaving only a small wisp at the fletching, revealing the arrow to be the Godkiller arrow, the one Rhadamanthus had given Kane, to kill Ares with.

The Assassin had disguised it as a flame arrow.

Ares fell backwards on the throne of blood which begun to destabilize and drip to the ground.

"I had a talk with Thanatos before leaving the underworld..."

A cold voice reached his ears as the arrow on his head disappeared and appeared in X's hand.

The Assassin notched it, pulled back the string and released the arrow once more.

This time, it tore off a chunk of Ares' shoulder.

The God, thoughts fuzzy with the bleeding hole on his head, turned his head to his shoulder, a trembling hand reaching out towards the arrow.

"And I asked him, how do you kill a God?"

The arrow disappeared before he could grab it and appeared in X's hands.

"Without a divine weapon or power akin to the divine, he said it was impossible."

The Assassin pulled the string back, adding bio-energy to Crescent Moon, making it glow.

Without a word he released the arrow once more. This time it was faster, and left a trail of blue and yellow before bursting through Ares' torso and the throne behind him.

Ares lost control of the blood making up the throne and fell to the ground, creating a crater with his body.

X appeared next to him, the godkiller arrow already notched.

"But, he added, if you can get a God to reveal their true form...then you only need to kill them inside their domain."

Ares couldn't believe it. The tables had turned so quickly! His arrogance had led to this.

Let alone believe it, the God of War couldn't think. The arrow held the essence of [End].

All he knew was that the shadow of Death was creeping up on him. So he did the only thing he could do.

"MOTHER!!! FATHER!!! SAVE M- Urghk!"

His voice was cut off as the arrow punctured through his throat.