THEOS

Fuck. He thought, with mounting horror. His blade had sunk into her warm flesh near effortlessly. Easier than he thought it would, if he was being honest, but not entirely unexpected.

From slaying harpies, to killing giants, and even Warrior-tier Sky Serpents with way too many wings, and whether it was monsters and men, not once had the edge of his blade been unable to cut what he wanted it to.

It may have only been a Mortal-tier weapon at the moment, but it was still something that had once belonged to Bellerophon. A man struck down by the King of Gods himself at the last moments of his ascent towards divinity. Which, Luke suspected, wasn't a common occurrence.

Even as diminished as it was, his blade, Luke’s blade, would not fail to bite into flesh.

Unfortunately, that didn’t necessarily mean that it would cut where he wanted it to.

The Rebel had moved at the last second. Not even mentioning his eyes, she had moved quicker than even The First Truth of Death could perceive.

His golden sword pinned her shoulder to the mattress. Blood spilled from her wound and stained the sheets and her clothes red with her blood, and her single remaining eye fluttered open and looked at him with confusion.

Hastily, he cut off the Technique before it drained the last of his mana, and tamped down on his panic with ruthlessness that surprised even him. Being scared at that moment wasn’t an acceptable response. No, it was time to take action.

His heart thumped involuntarily in his chest and blood drained from his face, as her gaze hardened. An ominous pressure descended into the room and seemed to make his thoughts themself heavy.

Her gaze traveled languidly across his form. If Luke didn’t know better, he would think she didn’t care about the sword sticking out of her.

Come on Luke. Think. Think. Think.

“Let me get this for you, it looks uncomfortable.”

He began pulling his sword out of her.

“This really isn’t what it looks like.” Luke said, smiling genially at her, he rose higher into the air. Her gaze locked on to his blade.

Taking comfort in the fact that for the moment, at least, he was safe in his protective bubble. His jaw set in resolve, and he decided to milk that buffer as much as he could.

Reaching into his inventory, he gathered a bunch of pre-torn explosive talismans onto the bottom of his feet, and hoping she wouldn’t notice, let them drop out of his bubble and onto her mattress. All of them were Warrior-tier, the same ones Lukeus and Rex had given him when they killed Blinky’s mom. He could have included a Hero-tier talisman in the bunch, but discarded the thought almost immediately.

He didn’t want to pull his punches, but if he killed a bunch of forced conscripts in the process of killing her, it would haunt him for a long time to come. Especially if it was like Nel said, and she was keeping kids hostage in the castle. He refused to sink that low.

Not that he expected the damage from an explosive talisman, even one at the Hero-tier, to affect her anyhow.

Multiple times now, she had proven to be resistant to the damage caused by them. To the point that while both his swords were capable of drawing blood, the one Hero-tier explosion they had set off hadn’t even made her stumble, and even the Saint-tier one Cyzicus had hit her with hadn’t done more than char her skin.

The talismans were a good tool, but not one he would trust to finish the job.

The Rebel opened her mouth to say something. What it was, Luke wouldn’t know as blood spilled from her parted lips, and dribbled down the side of his mouth.

Not intending to let the moment of weakness slide, he immediately bright down his blade over her heart again.

Coughing, she twitched her arm, and backhanded him across the room. Stopping it’s path and almost knowing it out of his hands with the force of her blow.

Even injured, her strength was great enough to send him crashing through the wall. He frowned in disgust as his protective bubble crushed the corpse of the Skyclan member he had killed earlier.

Shaking his head, he tore his eyes away from it, and focused on the Rebel.

He watched with bated breath, as she straightened on her bed.

Come on. Come on. Come on. He repeated the mantra over and over in his head. Stay there for just a second longer…

An arrow bounced off his shield as members of Clan Skyscar came crowding around the corner and poked their head through the doorway.

He ripped another Hero-tier protective talisman, and stared intently at her. Ignoring them. They didn’t matter. Not yet.

The collective talismans he had left for her burst in an eruption of debris and light.

The warriors at the door flinched away.

Luke shot towards the Rebel, as she lazily used her single remaining hand to dust off her white robes.

For the first time he fully activated the First Truth of Death. A ghostly apparition of the Rebel appeared in his vision, transposed above her actual body, and his mana levels began plummeting. I

Their eyes met.

Her ghost slipped past her body, and warning bells rang in Luke’s head. Dodging before she even moved, he held his sword out past his protective bubble and into what would be her path.

His blade sliced clean through a rib as she wooshed past him. A spurt of blood hung in the air, as their eyes met again.

Holding out her hand, she frowned in confusion as her own sword failed to appear. Luke smirked, and shot towards her once again.

Once again her apparition betrayed her intentions, and once again Bellerophon’s Blade drew blood. This time biting into her elbow.

The Rebel didn’t even flinch.

I have to end this… and fast. Luke realized as his mana levels crept past the halfway mark. Adding the five points he had gained from killing the bald teen into his Constitution for a quick, if minor boost, to his capacity, he grit his teeth and shot towards her again.

If the battle became that of attrition, he would lose. Unlike Heracles, he only had enough protective talismans to last him roughly half an hour, which would be enough to let him escape. Unfortunately though, he only had enough mana to be a threat to her for a few more seconds at best.

Her ghost split from her body again. Moving a lot slower and more cautiously than it had previously and even swayed as she lost control of her mana. Betraying how poor her condition was, in spite of her up till now nonchalant expression.

Just a little more.

Jaw clenched in determination, Luke positioned himself so that she would run into his blade. Only this time, the apparition flickered away and reappeared a foot away.

What the–

Before Luke could make sense of the situation, another volley of explosions went off underneath his bubble, and launched him away from her.

Dropping out of the Technique, he activated another talisman. Raking his eyes across the room as he assessed the situation.

A handful of Clan Skyscar members had emerged into the room, and Luke watched incredulously as one after another they unleashed rows and rows of arrows into the Rebel’s chambers. On each arrow was affixed an explosive talisman.

Maybe a third of them reached him, while the rest missed him entirely, and he grinned as he realized what was going on.

They couldn’t attack Tyrisa themselves, but they could, and evidently would, attack Luke as poorly as they could.

Even if he was surrounded by a protective talisman and most of the damage intended for him was absorbed by their leader.

Loyalty, it seemed, couldn’t be forced.

Ignoring the bright pulses of flashing light, he scanned through the smoke and degree. Then floating into the air, he once again charged the would-be Empress.

This time not even bothering with his Technique.

It was true that it was the only real chance he had at taking her down, but almost embarrassingly, he remembered something Heracles told him hours ago.

It was a waste of mana to use the Technique unless he was confident that he could actually kill her, and he had lost that confidence.

Her speed, and higher rank made it so that despite being able to see her movement and feel her rather limited intentions through her body language– due to moving almost entirely by her mana, and hence leaving very little physical clues, he couldn’t land a clean, fatal, attack.

That in mind, he resolved to drag this out as much as possible.

A decision he came to regret, as in the next moment, she blurred and so did his vision.

Desperately clinging to the space around him with his mana, he still crashed through at least four stone walls before he was able to kill his momentum. Just barely managing to stay within the golden barrier surrounding the stronghold.

The sounds of battle ceased almost instantly, as all those who were firing at Heracles turned their attention towards him.

“Luke, come out!” The Son of Zeus yelled, as he resumed wailing on the barrier with his club. Each swing sent countless ripples to dance across its surface. “It’s too dangerous, we’ll find a way to break it, and attack together.

He glanced at him briefly before turning his attention back to the Rebel. The top of the castle blew off the walls as a handful of Clan Skyscar members came crashing through after him.

The very ones that had used the chaos of his attack to land potshots on the would-be Empress.

Unlike Luke, they didn’t fare nearly as well.

Gritting his teeth in determination, he shook his head.

“Not yet. She’s already getting weaker!” He yelled back at him. Staring nervously as the near limbless form of the Rebel flew out of the castle, he activated another protective talisman.

“Who are you?” She asked, tilting her head to the side. The empty sleeves of her white robes flapping in violently in the wind, and blood dripping from the wounds he had managed to inflict on her.

“Nobody important.” He replied cautiously as she slowly inched her way through the air towards him.

“Why do you go to such lengths to see me dead? Did I do something to you? Kill your family perhaps?”

“Are you really asking me that?”

She blinked at him expectantly, not saying a word.

“Let me put it this way, did Cyzicus ever do anything to you?”

She shrugged her shoulders, and disappeared, only to appear behind him a moment later.

“He hasn’t.” Luke heard her whisper. Something pushed against his barrier. The grip he had on the air shattered, and before he knew it, he was digging a deep trench into the earth.

Think. Think. Think. He repeated over and over to himself.

His thoughts churned in his mind, as he tried to find a solution.

Anything that could help him– not only to get out of this alive, but to succeed in his quest as well.

He couldn’t think of a single thing.

His best chance would have been while she was still unconscious, but he still had no counter to her monstrous speed.

I have enough mana for two, maybe three, more seconds of the First Truth of Death before I run out of mana, and about twenty five minutes of Hero-tier protective talismans left.

His eyes raked across the sky, and darted from Heracles desperately bashing into the barrier with his club, to the bald warriors looking at him with thinly veiled hope.

Hope, that he increasingly felt, he wouldn’t be able to live up to.

The Rebel flew towards him, and into the trench he had dug into the ground. Grinning, she raked her perfectly manicured nails across the surface of the bubble. It rippled and strained under her strength, and sank even deeper under the ground.

Preemptively, he activated another talisman.

“Are you scared? Your friend can strike that barrier for days, and it won’t break. Those are days I have to wait until you run out of your little toys… and when you do,” she grinned widely, “I’m going to rip you apart one tiny piece at a time. Slices so thin it will–”

Luke blinked rapidly and looked past her head to the sky above them. A shadow covered the castle.

Is that… He grinned as a monster, made entirely out of hair like tendrils and with more eyes than he could count spread itself across the barrier. Its teeth clacked incessantly as its dreadful glare bore into every one of the dome's inhabitants. Above which, the form of the Argo could just barely be seen through the gaps of its bodies.