To bleed is to show weakness. To show weakness is the most intolerable of sin. That has been the way of the Multiverse since time immemorial.

Unnamed grave.

**

It had been a long while since Brock had been knocked off the roof of his firm by that magpie, but it seemed that two old friends had finally met again. Fate was a funny bitch.

A deathly silence befell the area as the wounded human stared into those beady eyes the behemoth bird possessed. Sparks of recognition flew in both of their gazes. The wind carried sand through the air, the warmth unpleasant against his skin. For a second, nothing happened. The monstrous magpie didn’t move and neither did Brock.

“BROCK! RUN!!”

Then, as if Harry’s desperate scream was the signal, the bird responded with a screech and charged forward on its two scaled feet. Oh fuck.

Cursing, Brock summoned and rolled, another harpoon launcher slamming into the ground as the Tyrant’s beak struck down. Sand exploded in all directions, and the tell-tale grinding of metal resounded as it was crushed in the beast’s maws. A bang echoed and blew more sand atop Brock, and he watched as its payload shot off to the side.

The jagged harpoon impacted the sands several meters away, ineffective and useless.

Without both an arm and a leg, there wasn’t all that much Brock could do as the bird crunched the contraption in its beak and let the two halves fall to the side of it. Four beady eyes locked onto him once again, and Brock gritted his teeth, deciding to lob a fireball at it in an attempt to blind the creature.

Before it even managed to travel a meter, the familiar presence of an Augment permeated the air, and the blazing projectile was snuffed out by a sharp spike of wind. Crimson wisps dissipated to the air and the spike continued into the earth only a few meters from Brock. More sand showered him.

That… we’re so fucked, holy shit. He was certain that the Augment was superior to his own, even if only by a single threshold. Despite that, Brock had literally zero confidence in overpowering it. What the hell am I meant to do now?

He gulped as its power surged and a raging storm of air spread out to envelope the entirety of the area like South had once done with the presence of its own Augment. In seconds, a maelstrom of dust was kicked up and it rendered the usefulness of the man’s vision obsolete. He didn’t even have to test to know his Augment was also now restricted.

Desperately, he scrambled back in the sand, rapidly summoning out a spear from his spatial ring, and hoping its exceptional range would assist him in defending himself. The very next second, a savage blade of solidified air carved through the place he had been prior to the creation of the obfuscating storm. A cold sweat ran down Brock’s forehead as sand sprayed over him.

Well… I’m royally fucked.

Brock didn’t dare flare his own Augment in response, lest the terrifying creature pinpoint him and slice him in two. He wasn’t left with many options except to hope. Another series of air blades exploded through the area, relocating swathes of the earth and increasing the stress on Brock’s already taxed mind.

Just when the dust began to disperse, the enraged cry of a human echoed out in the distance, and Brock’s face fell. It seemed Harry was stupidly moving to join the fray. Any weapons he had had would have been lost in the madness of rolling down the slope, and his armour was previously rendered inert by the caustic stomach acid of the Brood-Mother. The boy was a sitting duck out there.

Yet he was still trying to protect Brock.

Gritting his teeth as a piercing shriek resounded to his left, Brock summoned out another harpoon and slammed down the activation button before it even landed on the sand. The explosion reignited the bleeding of his eardrums, and Brock cracked a small triumphant smile as he felt the trembling vibrations of the magpie’s pained squawk a second later. Pre-emptively, he rolled several meters out of the way, leaving his spear behind, and the sand was torn asunder by a furious assault of air blades.

He heard Harry shout out again, albeit barely, and the storm was abruptly blown away as the enraged Tyrant batted its wing, cancelling the effect of its Augment and washing away the aftermath of it with merely the air pressure the movement created. Brock watched on as Harry shot off to the side limply. He noticed a small item gleaming in the sunlight, dug into the feathered fold of the beast’s wing.

Harry had managed to stab it with a sword, however he had gotten one, and had hopefully injected the beast with his venom. Promptly, the creature moved its head over and tore out the blade with its beak. It didn’t matter though. The poison should already be at work. Brock squinted his eyes, but couldn’t see the harpoon that he had landed, nor the chain that connected to it.

Immediately, the magpie disregarded Harry and turned to the newly revealed Brock, dust no longer masking his position.

Swearing, Brock rushed to attack the monster with a blast of his freed Augment, but it quickly took to the sky and avoided it. He dashed backward as it loosed a slew of steel-tipped feather slicing toward him. Luckily, they missed. With no other option left in the brief respite he was granted, the man took out yet another of James’ specially made harpoon launchers and tried to guide it in the direction of the beast as the hunk of scrap fell.

Time to press the button wasn’t a liberty he was given as the bird flashed out from the air and appeared above him, its talons screeching through the air. Barely, they missed Brock. However, they carved into the massive metal contraption and sent it skimming off to the side, far out of his reach.

Another series of air blades arrived at his position, and Brock desperately tried to stave them off with another concentrated blast of his Augment of Sparks. The disparity in thresholds showed, however, and while his flames definitely weakened the attack, he was still met with several deep gashes across the entirety of his body, showering the surrounding sand with his blood.

Brock hissed in pain and turned his sight to the sky for the beast, locating it as it shot through the air in his direction. Put on the metaphorical back foot, Brock tried a new approach and took his Augment to the ground, ravaging the area ahead of him in an explosion of flames and kicking up smoke and dust from the shockwave.

The beast’s talons missed him by only a few inches, but it was enough that Brock could sigh in relief at the brief second of respite it afforded h-

Without warning, the magpie spun in the air and its scaled feet slammed into him, forcing him to spew up a waterfall of blood and making his eyes bulge from the inherent power behind it. The oppressive majesty of the monster loomed above him, and Brock felt himself being smothered by the beast’s powerful aura. Slowly, he felt his chest begin to cave in under its weight.

It was a slow and sickening process as the bones of his ribcage began to bend and crack, brushing up against his organs and ceaselessly reminding him that he had mere moments until his entire body collapsed in upon himself and killed him. The magpie gazed down at him with its big beady eyes, a surge of rushing energies congregating in its beak.

Idly, Brock noted the orange blood oozing from the beast’s side, the large metal spike that had been missing earlier hidden by its plump feathers, the chain having been cleanly sheared off by an unseen blade.

Crimson blood bubbled out of Brock’s mouth, and he could only watch on listlessly as a raging orb of slashing air began to formulate at the tip of its beak, threatening to tear him asunder just by looking at it. A deafening boom resounded to his right.

The next second, a nauseating crunch echoed through the area and the beast was forced off of him as a jagged harpoon impacted directly into its side, shattering through the bones of its own ribcage and ravaging the organs within. Brock gasped in relief as the strain on his chest was alleviated and the bird screamed in rage, shaking the very surroundings with its raw fury.

Coughing up blood as air once again rushed into his lungs and provided him with sustenance, Brock followed his eyes along the chain connected to the harpoon, meeting the sight of a wobbling Harry as he stood beside the sundered form of his priorly discarded launcher. The kid noticed his gaze and gave him a shaky thumbs-up as he fell to his knees.

Vomiting out another surge of bloody bile, Brock seized on the opportunity and another hulking metal contraption flickered into existence beside him. This time, Brock placed his hand on the shaft of the ugly thing and forced his Augment into it. The item resisted its influence, but soon it couldn’t withstand the furious flow and begrudgingly accepted the power.

The harpoon launcher glowed molten as his Augment ran rampant within it, and Brock instantly removed his hand and slammed it down onto the big red button, satisfied as a faint click resounded.

A remarkably more powerful explosion rocked the device and blew it into chunks of molten slag, sending Brock flying backward covered in burns and a red-hot harpoon flying forward, the disembodied chain trailing limply behind it.

It blurred through the distance as the Sky Bandit dispelled its forming wind attack and reformulated it into a storm of blades that carved through the chain of the harpoon currently nestled in its organs. It didn’t even have time to realise what had occurred until it was too late.

The searing spike tore through the underside of the beast in a spray of sizzling gore, ripping through the monster’s bones and innards before the tip finally blew out the top of it and stopped dead. The Tyrant’s eyes portrayed intense shock as sunset blood bubbled out from the sides of its beak. The chain hung out the wound listlessly, the end only half a dozen meters away from the injured knife warrior.

Desperately, Brock crawled toward it as the Tyrant of the Sky once again centred its fury upon him. The pressure he felt from its aura rapidly climbed in intensity, making his bones groan in protest and his already wounded ribcage begin to splinter. Brock screamed through clenched teeth at the mounting agony but forced himself to continue onward.

The beast seemed hesitant to move itself since it not only had one, nor two, but three harpoons embedded in the interior of its fleshy insides. One wrong movement could cause either or all of them to slash and dismember the organs around them, furthering the injuries the beast had to suffer through.

Those few seconds of instinctual hesitance was all Brock needed to cross the remaining distance with his superhuman strength, and he grasped onto the ending of the chain tightly with his remaining hand. He met the eyes of the beast, and within he saw furious resolve flare.

Little Shit screeched out loud enough to make Brock lose consciousness for a split second before it beat its wings powerfully and took to the sky. Refusing to back down, Brock clasped onto the chain yet tighter and followed it behind, trailing through the air. As he spared a glance for the ground, he gulped.

Up, down, left, right; the Sky Bandit exploded through the air in a myriad of directions, threatening to make Brock lose his grip on the chain and plummet back down to the Earth where he’d meet his demise. Higher and higher they rose, and he slowly began to regret his stubborn decision as he once more gazed down at the barely discernible expanse awaiting him below.

The bird’s Augment settled over them both, tearing into the atmosphere and creating a natural slipstream around the monster’s form, accelerating it to even faster heights. Slowly, Brock’s grip began to slip under the immense g force.

Gritting his teeth while he soared into the sky like a spectre of speed, Brock raised his free stump and took aim at the nearest of the beast’s beating wings. Already, a pounding headache was beginning to take root in his skull, but he paid it no mind as the fiery energies of his Augment exploded through his damaged pathways.

The shockwave was powerful enough to swing Brock on his chain as a searing blast of rampant heat tore through the air in several random directions, just managing to impact the wing he was aiming for and instantaneously combusting the limb, leaving it as nothing more than a gruesome mess of charred feathers, revealed bone, and smouldering flesh.

Abruptly, the monster’s rapid flight through the sky halted and the chain was ripped from Brock’s grasp as the two of them plummeted toward the Earth, wind lapping at their bodies as though it was mocking them. Little Shit was managing to stall its momentum somewhat with its singularly remaining wing.

As an almost idle afterthought, Brock realised the magpie was the same bird that he had seen take the exceptionally large Treant back in the city as well as probably the beast that killed the other bird at the place he had found the Treasure.

Though, right now, that really didn’t matter. Brock forced the connection out of his mind and focused his attention on the chain dangling wildly through the air.

It took a few blasts of his Augment of Sparks, and a sharp increase to the pain within his head, but he managed to propel himself over and desperately snatch onto interlocking metal rings, joining himself in his descent with that of his opponent. The ground was approaching rapidly.

The bird was barely managing to keep itself beyond terminal velocity by virtue of the flapping of its remaining wing. Brock himself had no time to stall his speed as the sandy earth rose up to meet them and with the split-second he had left, he let go of the chain and drew on all the radiance of the flame orbiting his Ascendancy.

Within him, the fireball dimmed and became a smouldering core of ash, its power of flame robbed.

Then, as that power pooled in the pathways of his one good arm, he let it g-

His vision was obscured by an all-encompassing white light and his eardrums were rendered entirely inert as an overpoweringly powerful explosion originated from his open palm, tearing through the earth beneath them and forcing all of his momentum to stall by the mere counterforce it created.

Painfully, Brock felt his shoulder dislocate and the muscles tear themselves to shreds. Inwardly, his organs sloshed from the abrupt stop, and his stomach bulged as they crashed against it and ruptured. Blood streamed from his nose and mouth, and he felt the sensation of smooth glass beneath. It was immensely hot, silently scalding his flesh as he thudded down onto it.

Brock looked over to his side weakly at the smouldering form of the Sky Bandit as it attempted to peel itself off the ground and into an upright position. Orange blood was spurting freely from its mouth and ruptured body alike, and he knew the beast was in no better a condition than he was. Yet, it still had the resilience of a beast roughly 60 levels above his own.

It stood slowly, wobbling in place as it tried to use its wing to stabilise itself. Brock coughed up another gargle of his own blood and watched it drag itself over to him, unadulterated fury prevalent within its beady eyes. It was going to kill him even it was the last thing it ever did.

Brock was out of ideas by now and all he could do was witness the monster loom over him menacingly, its Augment mobilising itself to finally put an end to his journey. Gazing up to the sky, he let it happen. He no longer had the strength to move, nor the desire to power through the pain and do so. He’d had a good run, killed a lot of shit, experienced great power, had fun. Met a great kid. But now, it was time for him to rest.

“BROCK!”

A single voice pierced through the smog coating his mind, and the man in question glanced over at the wounded boy standing atop the edge of the glass crater, overlooking his predicament with horror.

…Just run kid...

The Sky Bandit ceased gazing at its prey, and instead looked over to the teenager as he shakily wielded the sword he had used earlier, meeting the beast’s eyes with boundless defiance. It was but an act, however. It could sense his abundant fear.

What it couldn’t sense was his bravery.

Brock’s eyes widened as the beast revved up the formulation of its final attack and aimed it toward Harry, deeming him the larger threat as of the moment. The hatred the bird felt for Brock was genuine and immense, that much was easy for him to tell, but bestial survival instincts took precedence over anything else.

It could kill the half-dead human before it now or finish off the only other enemy that had the fight left to wound it. Brock wasn’t going to go anywhere after all. Not in his current state.

The written-off man gritted his teeth and growled in fury as he desperately racked his brain for any idea to help his companion in this critical juncture. Idly, he remembered a certain weapon he had found among the others in his spatial ring, and immediately he took it out and activated Ethereal Shackles a second later.

The shadow of the monster bulged as a swarm of spectral chains rose up and latched onto its body, the passive corrosion filling the area with the scent of burnt keratin. Unfortunately, a blast of raw energy from the Tyrant was enough to shatter the bindings and boost its own dying ego. But, still, restriction wasn’t Brock’s goal.

Gaining its attention was.

A crossbow the size of a small car now rested on his chest, looking more akin to a ballista than anything else with the weapon’s sheer size. While James’ harpoon launchers were too heavy and unwieldy to be used as such, an oversized crossbow would do just fine.

Veins bulged along his only arm as he forced the shredded muscles to move with sheer willpower alone and he pressed down on the trigger. The Tyrant wasn’t even able to react as the powerful pre-loaded bolt blew through the small forming maelstrom of its Augment and continued on into its brain, exploding out the top of its skull and killing it instantly. A confused squawk populated the silence of the area.

For a second, nothing happened.

Then the Augment exploded outward, ravaging the area and tearing his body apart.

Everything became black.