BloodStar

Ramses and Zara stood waiting on the large plaza before the BloodStar Castle. They wore white flowing robes with red accents characteristic of their heritage and fighting style. The robes blew softly in the gentle breeze as they stood next to one another patiently waiting until finally they heard the thud of heavy footsteps.

They both looked across the plaza to see a war-torn Nero approaching. His skin was charred from shelling, he had open wounds dripping blood, and he wore a motivated yet menacing expression as he approached.

“Nero! The mighty Gladiator Champion turned BloodStar Immortal. You are a living legend amongst us.” Ramses called out to him to start a conversation; however, Nero continued his pace towards them both without responding.

Zara smiled and called out to him next, “You serve the wrong purpose, Nero. You are a BloodStar Immortal. A servant of the empire. Not of a fallen and disgraced heir.”

Zara’s words elicited a grimace from Nero as if the words pained him, and he grunted back, “And what would you know of a BloodStar Immortal?”

Nero stopped twenty feet across from Ramses and Zara, and the two parties stared one another down. One party in clean, fresh, and refined robes. The other beaten down and torn by battle.

“We know you, Nero.” Zara spoke gently, “We know you are the last of your clan. The last of a once very powerful clan that protected our empire at all costs. Surely you know, don’t you? It was her. It was Xenia.”

Nero smirked back at Zara, “Of course I know. I know the truth. It wasn’t Xenia.” He then resumed his serious expression, “I am at peace with my past. I have resolve. And right now, I am resolved to give my life fighting you both. Can you say the same?”

Ramses grit his teeth, “Don’t waste your talent serving her. Stand with us, Nero.”

Nero assumed a battle stance and powered up the ki around his body to lethal levels as he stared the king and queen down. The ground beneath their feet began to tremble, and the air swirled with violence as Nero’s power continued to increase.

“So you really won’t join us then?” Ramses shook his head in disappointment.

Zara shook her head as well, “So be it.”

“Your war path ends here, Nero!” Ramses and Zara then raised their ki tremendously with utmost grace and calm.

Nero’s violent ki swirled around him as he yelled back, “My war path begins here!”

Nero then lunged at Ramses; however, he was met with a volley of smaller of ki blasts from Zara. The volley hardly injured him given the weak power of each individual blast; however, they served their purpose to block his vision allowing Ramses to evade.

Ramses appeared twenty feet behind Nero and formed a dragon with his ki. The dragon extended upwards from his body roaring into the sky before crashing back down on Nero holding him within the confines of its jaws.

Nero struggled against the ki-formed dragon slowly inching its jaws open; however, as he struggled Zara jumped forward slicing at his chest with a curvilinear crescent energy-blade of ki. The attack left Nero with a large slash across the front of his chest, and the tinge of pain allowed the ki dragon to clench down once again upon his body.

Zara readied for another run at Nero using the same tactic; however, this time, before she could release her attack, Nero shot a powerful beam from his mouth. Zara dodged it by a hair as her momentum led her to a hard fall as she tumbled along the ground. Nero then swung the beam towards Ramses forcing him to cut off his attack, freeing Nero.

Nero’s battle spirit had come alive, and he raced after Ramses. Zara once again fired a volley of small blasts at Nero; however, Nero hardly felt them as his singular focus to catch Ramses fueled him.

Ramses didn’t shy away as he formed a blade of ki encompassing his arm extending from his elbow down to his hand, “Come Nero, block this!”

Ramses swung the ki blade down at Nero as he approached, but to Ramses honest surprise, Nero took the attack head on catching it with his bare hand.

The ki blade cut Nero’s palm deeply as he stopped it mid-swing. Nero then grimaced and yelled as he extinguished the blade of ki by absorbing its energy by further allowing injury to himself.

With a loud boom, Nero extinguished the ki on Ramses’s arm and began to build a layer of his own along his hand.

Nero’s iron grip encompassed Ramses’s forearm completely, and he clenched down hard. The sound of squelching flesh followed by the sound of grinding bones could be heard as Nero’s grip pulverized his opponent’s forearm entirely.

Nero had all but clenched his fist down fully, and when he let up on his grip, a sad tributary of flesh connected the elbow to the dangling, maimed hand of Ramses.

Zara yelled, “Noooo!!!” She rushed forward firing off numerous curvilinear strikes of ki which Nero took like a tank as he stood still accumulating surface cuts along his side and back from the attacks.

He grimaced as he watched Ramses and Zara recoup. Ramses knelt to the ground and whispered to Zara, “His physical strength is truly unmatched. But we outmatch him in ki technique and overall power. Let’s keep our distance.”

Zara nodded with a renewed vigor having seen Ramses injured so seriously, “He fights with only a fraction of BloodStar ki compared to us. He is already weakened by battle thankfully.”

“Thankfully, yes. His strength is immense.” Ramses stood, “Let’s wear him down until we can finish him off.”

“Shield and sword technique?” Zara and Ramses nodded at one another.

Zara then formed a swirling circle of ki with a diameter of 10 feet around Nero with Ramses and Zara standing on the outside.

As the circle swirled around Nero, he eyed the movements of both Zara and Ramses around the swirl of ki until he saw Ramses calling down a powerful column of ki from above Nero.

Nero raised one arm over his head to block the attack, and he pointed his other arm in the direction of Ramses. He fired a massive blast at Ramses; however, once the ki blast made contact with the swirling circle of Zara’s ki, the circle collapsed all its the ki to the point of Nero’s attack blocking it.

Once the ki blast’s energy had been dissipated, the circle expanded again swirling and waiting for the next attack to block.

Nero tried to bloodbend his opponents; however, they were much too formidable in defending against such novice bloodbending given their intimate life experiences with bloodbending at both the hands of Victoria and Xenia.

Ramses threw another column of powerful ki down from the sky which Nero once again blocked with a single outstretched arm, and Nero once again responded by firing a ki blast at the swirling barrier of ki separating him from Ramses and Zara.

The shield barrier once again collapsed to a singular point to block Nero’s blast. Frustrated, he shot an even more powerful beam adjacent to his previously blocked ki blast hoping to circumvent the barrier while it struggled with his previous attack. However, Ramses recalled his attack in order to form a shield barrier of his own, blocking Nero’s second attack.

After cancelling out both of his attacks, Zara resumed her shield barrier, and Ramses recalled his. They looked to one another, and Zara said, “I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised. He is Xenia’s right-hand man. She would find the strongest freak in our entire empire.”

Ramses bit his lower lip, “Even so, this is insane. Let’s keep wearing him down.”

Suddenly, a shadowy silhouette of a hulking figure appeared within the swirling barrier. Ramses and Zara looked on with utter disbelief as Nero walked through an active ki barrier which would otherwise disintegrate a lesser human.

However, Nero calmly appeared on the outer aspect of the barrier. His skin was fried all over, his hair singed, and the residual heat from the barrier resulted in abundant steam rising from his cooked flesh underlying his skin.

Zara and Ramses both tried to dodge; however, their utter disbelief caused a moment of hesitation. Zara wasn’t fast enough as Nero grabbed her out of the air by her two legs.

He moved both hands to her right upper thigh and clamped down on both sides shattering her femur in an instant. He then dropped her from his grasp and punted her flailing body with a powerful kick to her abdomen crushing her internal organs.

Ramses rushed over to Zara helping her up to stand on one foot knowing that any immobility whatsoever meant certain death in this battle.

Nero’s power had fallen below 50% from defending attack after attack while also expending ki with his own attacks which were inevitably blocked. Additionally, he had willingly walked through the shield barrier to catch his opponents off guard while also proving their tricks were no match for his raw might.

However, even he knew his dwindling power meant he needed to end things sooner rather than later. He decided to put a large portion of his remaining power into a singular attack before he was whittled down entirely.

He powered up gathering as much energy as he could. The building attack’s strength was not lost on Ramses and Zara as Nero’s power reached an action potential threshold with his ki skyrocketing exponentially around him until even Nero could no longer contain it or control it.

The energy exploded outwards in all direction rampantly and violently consuming all in its path. Ramses and Zara hugged one another tightly and swirled their combined ki into a defensive sphere around the two of them.

As Nero’s explosion pounded against their combined protective sphere, it began to push and break against their sphere until his explosive attack finally began to splinter and crack the defensive sphere of dual ki around Ramses and Zara.

Ramses and Zara looked on from within at the surface of their defensive shell as it began to crack. Knowing it wouldn’t last much longer, they each raised a layer of ki around their bodies.

Nero’s attack then finally broke through annihilating the remainder of the sphere as it then crashed against Ramses and Zara inside hurling them violently to the ground. However, the brunt of the force had been absorbed by the defensive sphere sparing Ramses and Zara from the full might of the attack.

As Nero’s energy fell to critically low levels, he briefly fell to one knee and his attack dissipated. He breathed heavily waiting for the smoke to clear, and as it did, he saw both Ramses and Zara strewn along the ground with multiple injuries.

Nonetheless, both were still able-bodied and stood to their feet albeit shakily as Zara balanced on one leg leaning against Ramses. Ramses eyed Nero with a look of anger knowing he had nearly finished them both off with his last attack, “We gave you your chance! Now die!”

Nero rose to his feet and prepared to fight once more unphased by his significantly depleted ki reserves. The persistence of Ramses and Zara annoyed him yet also created a respect for them both which he hadn’t previously had. He scoffed to himself as he thought, “I suppose all BloodStars are naturally gifted. Even the lesser ones.”

Zara and Ramses both yelled, “Dancing Dragons!”

The ki-formed bodies of two dragons arose from both Zara and Ramses as the dragons began to encircle Nero who suddenly realized Ramses and Zara weren’t quite as weakened as he expected them to be.

He looked down at the Blood Ring on his left index finger knowing he could call on a bottomless pit of Xenia’s ki at any moment to finish this fight, but he thought to himself, “NO! I will defeat them myself! With my own power!”

As the red dragons with bodies formed of ki swirled aggressively around him, Nero felt his battle spirit surging to new heights.

He felt a rush of power flowing from within as he dug deeper and deeper. The resurgence of strength went unnoticed by both Ramses and Zara as they readied their combined attack.

Nero looked to the threatening dragons and furrowed his brow as he yelled, “Come! Rush to your deaths!”

Ramses and Zara shot side glances towards one another and nodded, “And so we write the death of the empire’s greatest gladiator warrior in modern history. Farewell, Nero!”