Children of a Lesser God

Laz had no intention of using his full abilities even though Aaron was clearly a late stage foundation realm. This wasn't due to him being arrogant but because he didn't want to do something he might regret. If it was a small and narrow use of his black flame energy, Laz felt that he had perfect control over it. If he didn't he would have never had been able to help out Sarah or Abraham. But once you unleash the beast in an attack, it was hard to take it back.

Unfortunately for Laz, trying to use physical abilities to deal with Aaron was impossible. It was like trying to catch a shadow with your bare hands.

It couldn't happen.

But luckily for Laz, he wasn't out of options.

Laz had used his black flame that was a part of his foundation in many different ways, causing him to wonder even more about what exactly it was. It seemed like a gift granted to him when he awakened, but it was far stranger than any other ability he had seen. More importantly, he noticed that it had another purpose when he was facing those shadow blades sent out by Aaron.

The shadow blades couldn't pierce the flame.

Originally, Laz wasn't in a tight spot since the blades posed only a slight danger to his strengthen body. But that didn't mean that being cut over and over again was a good feeling. And since he couldn't move fast enough to avoid them, he thought he would try intercepting them instead.

At first, he tried using his normal energy to block them. But the blades seemed to cut through it like a hot knife through butter. With that, Laz understood that these blades were far stronger than he thought. But once he added on the black flame to his energy, the blades couldn't even touch it and disappeared the moment they came into contact, like burning away gas. All of this happened as Laz was still moving to dodge attacks so it didn't alert Aaron or anyone else to what he had discovered.

With the overall change in Laz's energy, allowing the black flame to engulf him, Laz's eyes also turned their signature blood red color, only a bit darker than before and not as bright. With this, Laz's perception was at an all time high and even without the use of his spiritual sense, Laz could locate Aaron's body hidden in the shadows.

Before anyone could understand what was going on, Laz charged forward, slamming into and dissipating the few shadow blades that still remained.

Just as Aaron was looking to dodge and reposition himself, Laz reached a hand out and grabbed Aaron's wrist, taking him totally off guard. With a slight squat and a whole lot of strength, Laz yanked Aaron out of the shadow and threw him into one of the concrete support pillars, causing the entire floor above them to shake.

Aaron, pulling himself off of the pillar, turned around and saw Laz still looking at him, waiting.

Without hesitation, Aaron's body seemed to suck in the surrounding shadows and plastered it to himself like an armor before rushing at Laz.

Seeing this, Laz smiled and rushed forward.

The two men, one young and one middle aged, met in the middle of the room and started to exchange blows. Punches, kicks, heels, elbows, palms, and knees flew in quick succession.

Despite Laz's training, both in the past and with Julia's help, his flow was constantly blocked by Aaron who had trained for many years more than Laz.

But even though Aaron landed many direct blows to Laz, Laz never once stopped swinging back. Being lucky more times than not, Laz landed several hits on to Aaron, causing him the fall back.

To the amazement of the crowd, it seemed like the smaller and less bulky Laz was actually stronger than Aaron.

Aaron with his shadow armor and Laz with his flame armor took a moment to stand facing each other. Both men seemed to grin at the same time when they made eye contact, causing everyone in the room watching to feel a cold breeze go down their spines.

Laz and Aaron both slammed a foot against the rock solid floor before once again charging forward.

Just as they were about to make contact though, they heard a loud boom that echoed across the room, causing the observers to cover their ears in pain..

"GOD DAMN THAT HURTS," Dwayne yelled out since he was right next to the cause of the noise.

Madam Cal stood up, having knocked her walking stick against the floor to cause the noise. If one looked closely, they would see the spider web of cracks spreading out from where the cane touched the floor.

"That be enough of that boys. This just be a friendly spar so no reason to take it too far."

"Ha. Fine. The wife's word is law,"

"Whipped, aren't yah?" Laz shot back in a joking manner.

"Oh? So you telling me you don't take nothing from no females in your life?" Aaron shot back. His frosty and condescending appearance from before was long gone.

"Of course not.... You know what? Forget I said anything. I feel that I will get myself in trouble for even thinking it." Laz said, stopping himself from responding in a way that would cause him to be struck by lightning.

"Good kid. Smart. Life will be a lot easier that way." Aaron grinned back and watched his wife come back to stand in front of them.

"Well. Turns out we are pretty evenly matched, eh?" Aaron said with a grin, addressing the fact that his wife said that Laz was stronger than him.

"Oh? Yous thinks that yous are evenly matched with a young man below the age of twenty and an entire realm lower is something to be strutting for eh? Well love, tell me, you be using your shadow blades to attack em, but did he once response in kind? Did he send that black flame of his to roast yous? Had he been doing that, how would you be standing ere right now?"

"Uh...?"

'The boy held back my block of wood for brains love. But me be thinking you didn't hold back as much, eh? Tried to end it quickly instead of taking your time to figure em out? Yah?"

Aaron didn't have a rebuttal for his wife's words. She was right of course. At least she saved him some face by saying that he didn't go all out either when both of them knew that he had very few moves left that would have made a difference.

Besides that, Aaron had more of an appreciation for Laz now, seeing that he was not only strong in his abilities, but that he hadn't hesitated to train his body and learn how to fight. He might not have been Aaron's match in terms of skill, but that was simply due to Aaron's age and the length of time he had been fighting.

If it was someone his own age, Aaron couldn't imagine someone being better than him. Of course, he wouldn't tell Laz that. After all, in the fights that were sure to come, it was better to be more cautious and less arrogant since there was no concept of fair when it came to fighting.

"Well, when you say it like that..." Aaron didn't feel a hint of shame. He held respect for strength and this boy, young as he was, proved that he was on the same level as him.

In Aaron's book, this was as good as one could get.

"So are you willing to listen to the offer then?" Laz asked, not having forgotten about the reason why he was here.

Things had gotten side tracked, but he still hoped to be able to rope the Vodun into exploring the door with him.

"The offer... right. You want our help, eh?"

"You sure this is the place to talk?" Laz said, eyeing the students still listening in.

"It's fine. They are all aduŀts now anyway. A few of them are about to break into the foundation realm anyway. Who knows, maybe this battle even inspired them? Either way, I trust each of them, otherwise they wouldn't be here," Aaron said proudly about his students.

"All of you, gather around and sit."

The twenty plus people all got up, walked over and sat around in order, facing Laz and Aaron. The only one who stood off by himself was Dwayne, seemingly unconcerned with what was going on.

"I'll skip the useless stuff. In a few days, there will be a door opening. This door will lead to another realm and in it, there will be many things that we've never seen and never experience. Of course, it could also be a deathtrap. I'm not looking for help with a problem, I looking for people to come with me to explore it."

"That sounds fun."

"A new world? Like an actual world?"

"Damn..."

"Hold up. Hold up. Something sounds a bit fishy." Dwayne spoke up, thinking about what Laz said.

Laz wasn't trying to mislead people, he just wanted to get them interested before he explain exactly how dangerous the entire thing would be.

"Yeah?"

"What's the rest of it?" Dwayne asked.

"The rest of it? Well, the door is located in the center of a chosen held complex in which the have the local governments help. And more than that, to open the door ahead of schedule, they have basically killed thousands of regular people and other infected like us."

"FUCK."

"Is that where everyone who went missing went?" The strong girl that Laz noticed earlier, the one that looked the most calm was the one to ask this question.

"Most likely. In the same sense, the ones arrested and put on tv were probably also brought there to open the door," Laz said, sharing his thoughts.

"And do you know, like actually know, what we would be walking into?" The girl asked.

"I honestly have no idea."

"Then why the hell would you want to drag people to walk into a door that was fed using the blood of our brothers and sisters?" The girl seemed to be angry, but at what, Laz had no idea.

"I was told to go..."

"Why the hell should we care?"

"It's a chance..."

"For what? To be a meat shield for you?"

"Ok... Nevermind then. You're not invited," Laz didn't have answers that she wanted, causing her to be upset which was in turn pissing him off since he wanted to know these things as well.

"Excuse me?"

Laz stepped closer to the girl who was sitting down and kneeled down a bit so that he was eye level with her.

"You want answers I don't have. I'm literally being forced to go into this place and I really am not in the mood to answer your questions or deal with your attitude about it. All I know is, it's a place to train. That's it. Now I'm about to go into it with various people who I only sort of know, hoping to not only figure out the secret behind it, but also what the fuck I am suppose to find in it. Of the people going into the door, I trust maybe four of them. Ok. Fine. If some of your people want in, cool. Just more people who I don't trust. But at least everyone understands the dangers of it. Saying that, the last thing I would need is someone constantly making things harder on everyone by constantly asking questions and making everyone doubt themselves. So.. you're not invited." Laz was letting his emotions out about this whole thing, probably a bit unfairly.

But then again, life isn't fair.

"As for the rest of you, I will say this. Either you're in or you're out. I won't give a damn either way. But if we go in, you will fucking listen to me or I will kick you out myself."