The rumble rolled through the peaks, and all the beasts there felt it deep in their bones.
An angry red flared in the depths of the mist—flushing quickly to sunrise gold, then piercing white.
A roar billowed from the depths—the roar of an explosion, an eruption. But mingled in was the roar of a man.
Then the gold scorched to the surface, arching through the smoke, and at its head was Zane.
Ghol hardly had time to react before the fist made contact.
A nuclear bomb went off on the Monster's face.
The sound wiped out the sounds of bones shattering, but Zane still felt it. The force of it lifted even that great dense mass of a beast off the ground; Ghol howled, went head-over-heels, and crashed into a mountain a few peaks below.
And there stood Zane. Staring down at the Monster. Teeth bared, mouth bloody.
"Get up," said Zane. "I'm not done with you."
Ghol did, lumbering, setting its broken jaw back in place. Now the indifference was gone. A savagery was taking over its expression. It spat out a chunk of tooth.
𝔾ℍ𝕆𝕃! it howled.
And those deathly runes screamed back to life. Its body swelled back up, peaking again; that undead domain rushed back out, screaming over the land like the cries of lost souls.
Its hands clenched into meaty fists.
Zane leaped down to meet it.
Then they wrestled. Back and forth they went, shattering mountains all across the range, slamming each other through walls of stone. Their battle echoed through the peaks—BOOM-BOOM-BOOM! Plowing a furrow of destruction.
Eagles and vultures and goat-men and serpents all scurried out of the way as Zane and the Forbidden One made war.
Ghol's flesh had swelled to nearly double its original size; it loomed over Zane. A crazed intensity shivering in its pale eyes.
𝔾ℍ𝕆𝕃! it howled again, ramming Zane into yet another peak—but Zane slammed it right back, and fed it a few fists for good measure. The beast's nose broke—healed—broke again as he smashed it.
He managed to break it a third time before Ghol threw him off his feet.
A thought floated through the back of Zane's mind as he flew. It was a lucky thing there were so many peaks here. Already he'd lost count of how many they'd wasted.
Then he crashed through another few, and hundreds of tons of rock tumbled over his head.
He figured he could take out his chains or his hammers. But… he spat out a mouthful of blood and grinned.
He was having a pretty good time as it was.
And he had a feeling things would turn out just fine.
Ghol was steaming and heaving mightily now. He got the sense the Scourge Prince was running as hot as it could go. So much energy stuffed the beast it was nearly bursting.
Zane wanted to see how long it could last like this.
He shoved off an avalanche's worth of rock, stood, and threw himself into the fray.
Explosions rocked the world again.
Fists backed with nuclear force came one way. Fists stuffed with undead power came the other.
It was a mess of a brawl. Zane's head snapped back; he felt a cheekbone shatter—
𝕎𝕒𝕣𝕟𝕚𝕟𝕘!
ℍ𝕖𝕒𝕝𝕥𝕙 𝕦𝕟𝕕𝕖𝕣 𝟟𝟝%
It didn't slow him—hardly fazed him. He rammed in a fist, felt that golden explosion ripple out, and saw the force of it stumble his foe.
He could feel his body was still growing hotter.
Could feel that rune-river raging even faster, brightening to the color of fresh blood.
From the outside, at first glance, it'd seem quite a close contest. Two specimens of raw strength throwing themselves at each other.
But on closer observation a shift was starting to happen.
After every exchange, the Forbidden One started taking more and more steps back, and its great body seemed to weigh heavier and heavier. Each charge seemed to take a greater effort.
At the same time, Zane only came on stronger; bloodier; brighter with life in the Astral Plane—and slowly but surely, Ghol started ceding peak after peak.
Its body just couldn't swell any bigger. And after taking so many big smashes, even that fearsome regeneration had started to slow. Its runes had started to sputter, to flicker, like a great engine starting to lose steam.
𝔾ℍ𝕆𝕃! roared the beast. But it came out a little hoarse.
There was a brutal exchange, and man and Monster were forced apart—each stumbling several feet. Coming to a heavy halt.
On one side stood Ghol, its great chest rising and falling. It still looked whole, and as formidable as it'd been at the start of the fight. Its bones were working so much they were trembling.
On the other side stood Zane—a pyre of gold and blood. He was much more broken than Ghol was—spattered with his own blood. His nose had been shattered, and regenerated, and shattered again; his ribs were cracked, and he'd lost another tooth.
But that bloodied head stayed unbowed. And if you looked at the eyes, it was easy to see who was winning.
The Forbidden One's pupils quivered.
Zane's stayed hard and cold.
One glance, and you could tell he knew exactly what he wanted.
He was hell-bent on execution, and he would have it.
They stood apart a moment longer, breathing heavily, sizing each other up. All that smashing had taken quite a toll—even for creatures like them.
Ghol let out a low moan and staggered. Chains rattled down its arms; it wheezed, and a plume of ghostly mist flowed out of it. Trying to summon more—but every time it tried, more mist only leaked out of its body.
It'd run through the full arc of its being. From dormant, to full eruption, to weathered now. Fading.
Zane could sense it. Some instinct deep in him knew, a strong feeling.
This was his chance to finish things. He would not let it slip. He closed in, step by step.
His Asura state raged nearly at its peak. Nearly three times the power output he'd shown at the fight's start. It was a rare thing a Monster could bring something close to his full potential out of him.
In a way he was grateful to this Ghol fellow. He would give it a worthy death, he decided.
His hands clenched to fists.
But the Scourge Prince saw him coming and let out a ragged howl. Its whole body began to tremble; clink-clink-clink went the chains. A crazed flash passed over its eyes.
𝔾ℍ𝕆𝕃!!
It reached behind its body, joints contorting at odd angles, a look of utter concentration on that horrible face.
At first Zane wasn't sure what it was doing.
Then it grabbed the spear going through its back with both hands. The thing was the size of a Roman pillar.
There was a horrible squelch as Ghol ripped it out.
No blood. Just a gaping emptiness at the heart of its being.
The moment Ghol did it, its life fluctuated violently in the Astral Plane, like it was on the verge of winking out.
And Zane knew it'd just ensured its own demise. It'd just removed some core part of it.
It'd only be a matter of time now.
But when it wheeled on Zane again, the rest of its powers had gone berserk, were cruising electric through its body—and he realized it'd just removed the last restriction on its power.
𝔾𝕙𝕠𝕝…
There was only one thought in that simple hateful mind now, and it was trained squarely on Zane.
𝔾ℍ𝕆𝕃! It roared. The raw aura shot to the skies—the domain rushed out so powerfully it wrestled Zane's to a clean standstill. It knocked a few peaks out of orbit.
Its body swelled even further—two times—three times its size... its shadow seemed to swallow the landscape.
He braced himself.
Then a storm of fists descended.
Rained down on him—BANG-BANG-BANG—stones dropping into the pond of reality, so fast, so furiously reality itself couldn't keep up; the blasts rippled into each other, breaking up the surface of the world, ripping strange arching voids everywhere.
Zane felt bones shattering in his arm, and gritted his teeth.
But by then he was past the point of pain.
That feeling in his heart began to soar.
He gave an answering roar and it was as though an army of Rhinos roared with him.
His pupils went blood-red.
𝕃𝕖𝕧𝕖𝕝 𝕦𝕡!
𝔸𝕤𝕦𝕣𝕒 𝕋𝕚𝕥𝕒𝕟'𝕤 𝔹𝕠𝕕𝕪, 𝔽𝕚𝕣𝕤𝕥 𝔽𝕠𝕣𝕞 𝕍𝕀𝕀𝕀 -> 𝕀𝕏
In that moment Zane entered the peak of his powers. It was his physical prime.
Ghol slammed him in the chest, rupturing ribs—CRACK! But he hardly registered it. He returned fire right over the top and hammered its belly. Felt half a skeleton's worth of bones disintegrate under his fist.
But the Forbidden One seemed immune to such mortal things as pain.
The Monster cracked him on the chin with a blow that would've put near any Minor God's lights out.
It put stars in Zane's head—his eyes rolled halfway back. But he bit down hard, ate it—whirled—and carried that momentum into a haymaker.
It blasted Ghol's jaw clean off.
It was as though the Dragon's Teeth Peaks had become a great boxing ring—and they stood in the center of it, going blow for blow. Neither man nor Monster backed down. Neither would stop until one of them dropped.
A fist smashed right into Zane's liver, and blood poured out of his mouth.
𝕎𝕒𝕣𝕟𝕚𝕟𝕘!
ℍ𝕖𝕒𝕝𝕥𝕙 𝕦𝕟𝕕𝕖𝕣 𝟚𝟝%
Still Zane gritted his teeth and refused to go to a knee.
He sensed the moment had come, pressed one more time—and felt the blow that broke his enemy.
It was a straight. Clean straight right, planted in the middle of Ghol's face. Zane had wound back, put his whole body behind it. Clean. Brutal.
He felt the detonation reverberate, felt it tearing through weakened blackened flesh, crushing through all it found beneath.
𝔾ℍ𝕆𝕃! It howled, unwilling.
Zane's next punch blew the doors off.
It staggered back, face hardly recognizable now, flailing as mad rivers of ghostly light screamed out of it.
One more fist, and the Forbidden One fell for good.
Its body seemed to take a long time to fall, as all very ponderous things do. It withered and blackened as it did, and when it struck the ground it split the mountain in two.
Whatever undead power it'd wielded had broken the moment he'd broken the Scourge Prince. And the only man left standing in a hundreds-mile-long wasteland was Zane.
𝕃𝕖𝕧𝕖𝕝 𝕦𝕡!
𝔼𝕤𝕤𝕖𝕟𝕔𝕖 𝕃𝕖𝕧𝕖𝕝 𝟜𝟠𝟛 -> 𝟜𝟠𝟜
"Good fight," said Zane.
Then he wiped the blood off his mouth, turned, and walked away.
***
Not too far off, a herd of Titan Rhinos were gathered around the bonfire. Shaman Guri had broadcast a fire-show, and they were all sat there munching curds. Seeing Zane go to work.
For a few tense minutes there were only the sounds of curd-crunching—not unlike the sounds of popcorn.
Then the Barbarian Sage let out a roar of triumph, and there was many a tail-swish. A happy rumbling spread over the herd.
It'd been a good day.