Puppets

Hava was shaking, both in rage and in actual fear. For before him were two of his greatest comrades, or rather, former comrades, as well as his greatest images that he had ever strived to become. However, facing him weren’t the comrades he used to know. Both Kana and Duna had already perished from this world, and were only moving thanks to the sickening control that Renji had placed on them. A form of reanimation, but not restricting their minds — their minds never came back in the first place.

Instead, it was merely their bodies, held together by mere water constantly raining from the sky. It was the ultimate string for these kinds of puppets — it could never break, so long as Renji was still in control. But the catch, of course, was that Renji had to be constantly looking at them to actually command them around. That was the reason why despite saying that he’d leave Hava to fight the corpses on his own, he had never actually tried to leave or separated his battlefield with Arja.

There was a chance for Hava to strike. He readied his round blades, prepared for a dash. Those aren’t them, he thought. They’re already gone. That fiend has desecrated their corpses. This is just.

The wings on his back were already too wet to take off, but it didn’t mean that he was out of options. Conjuring gusts of winds down his legs, Hava took a forward stance. The reanimated corpses didn’t notice — of course they couldn’t.

“I’m sorry, Kana, Master… It ends now!”

A blast of wind erupted from Hava’s legs, propelling the man forward at a blistering speed. But the move served more than just the single purpose — the wind pressure had turned the air behind him into a full-blown twin tornado, perfectly positioned to block any interference, and more importantly, any vision from his strike.

Meaning that Renji wouldn’t be able to see where the attack was coming from.

The strike was quick and bloodless. Hava aimed his blades directly at the stitched spots on both Kana and Duna’s necks, perfectly severing their heads from their bodies once more without spilling any more blood.

“It’s my respect towards you two, my friends…” muttered Hava as the heads touched the ground. “I won’t let your dead bodies be used in any more nefarious ways.”

However, the warrior didn’t get to rest. A flash of metal gleamed towards his face, forcing him to immediately react with an upper strike. To his horror, even when headless, the corpses still moved — it was Kana’s corpse, now holding her famed vajra, that attempted to strike him down.

On the other end of the battle, Renji — seemingly having the advantage in his own fight as he easily overpowered Arja’s dragon head once more with his twin swords — reached out to Hava’s side and mocked:

“If you know that I have to look to control those things, then shouldn’t you already know that these are just puppets? The heads are just decorations, stupid!”

“You shut your mouth!” It was Arja that screamed those words of agony as the man in red desperately pushed forth. However, his attempt was only in vain — the current Renji was just a cut above him, even in terms of physicality. Another strike of his sword and Arja was already forced to back down, clutching his stomach in pain. His armor might have protected his gut from being spilled out, but the impact was still enough to break some bones had it hit his torso instead.

But the assault didn’t stop there. Renji was quick to act — stitching his swords into a bow again, the young man-turned-god unleashed another flurry of water arrows, each one finding its target with ease. And it wasn’t even Arja; half of the arrows did hit him, but the remaining half circled behind the prince and crashed their way into Hava like a surging tide, blasting the man in green away a horse’s length.

The dangerous thing about fighting Renji wasn’t that his power was greater than others, or that he was physically stronger. It was something far simpler — of all the powers he could have, Renji possessed authority over water. And one of water’s properties was to be able to fit in any nooks and cranny, no matter how small.

The impact from the shot had left both Arja’s and Hava’s armors with chinks. They were small, but noticeable. Arja had already seen this, and immediately pointed his dragon head towards himself. With a blast of fire, the dragon head blew him back a few steps, but it had healed any damage his armor had taken — though the young prince still suffered the pain from being hit by his own move.

Hava, however, was a different story.

The man had failed to notice the cracks in his armor. And just like that, he had lost.

“What… is happening…” The man winced in pain.

As the first drops of rain entered his armor, Hava felt a churning sensation like none before. It was as if his entire body had been pricked with thousands of needles, both from inside and out. His muscles seemed to twitch in every way but the way he intended them to, and his blood felt as if it was flowing backwards. He tried to move, but everything felt heavy — even as he put all of his strength into stepping forward, it was as if his entire body was tied to a mountain of solid steel.

And in the end, even the toughest bodies would have to yield.

A snap could be heard even from afar. Hava’s mask had hidden his expression, but almost anyone could already imagine the unbearable pain that he had to suffer through. His arms moved — but even an amateur could see that it was unnatural. It shook and shivered every moment of the movement, as if it was torn between two forces — one pushing it forward, and one restraining it back. The same was true with his legs. With each step he took, it was clunky and painful, almost, or rather, certainly that he was no longer the sole person in charge.

But it wasn’t like the case of Kana or Duna. Hava was still fully conscious. He was still fighting for his life. But it wasn’t enough.

Slowly but surely, he was moving forward. And there was nothing that he could do.

“Your… Highness…” Hava uttered. Even talking word by word was already a monumental task for him right now — if he lost focus for only a second, his body would be ripped in half. “Get… away… from me…”

Arja stood in silence. The young prince slowly turned towards his adversary.

“What? Oh, that?” Asked Renji, pointing towards a struggling Hava. “Cool, right? Look at him; he’s fighting back! I knew he had it in him! A bit lacking in strength, though, but that’s an indomitable will if I ever see one!”

“Are we just toys to you, fiend?” Arja screamed, his rage pushed to the limits — so much that water was already vaporizing upon touching his armor.

“Toys? I don’t do this for fun, you know,” Renji tilted his head, almost confused by the accusation. “I said before, right? All I wanted to see was the potential of humanity. If you guys fall to only this much of a challenge then it’d be boring as hell.”

Unlike the others, Renji’s current form wasn’t entirely armor, but rather, it was more like his own body had transformed to something that looked like armor. And so, he didn’t have a mask to hide away his emotions. Anyone present on the battlefield could see the face he was making, even if reading it was different from a regular human’s expression.

But both Arja and Hava could see very well. An almost maddening grin of satisfaction and boundless, deadly curiosity.