The Hill That Split in Two

At last, the silence that had been strained like a bowstring broke. The sharp shriek of steel against steel exploded in its place. Instead of a strategy or a plan, the war was sparked by the reckless, exploding violence of survival instinct.

Katrina was a ghost carved out of the dusk. She was already moving, a liquid blur against the fading light as Lucas and his men charged toward her. Her first target was one of the troops on the flank, and she moved with the lethal grace of a panther. As if they were slivers of trapped lightning, her twin tantos flashed. She was already gone, diving under the blow as the man's hefty broadsword flew in a sloppy arc.

She slipped past his defense, her sword point precisely locating the weak spot between his armor and gorget. The noise drowned out a gurgled wail. "Get her!" Katrina had already disengaged, a tornado of deadly motion whirling toward her next target, but Lucas yelled, his voice heavy with rage. Her battle was a storm transformed into a human; she was never stationary for longer than a heartbeat, and her blinding speed made the mercenaries' numerical advantage useless. Instead of being a cohesive group, they were now a group of amateur hunters frantically trying to corner an incomprehensible ghost.

The battle became more vicious and intimate on the other side of the tumultuous hilltop. Once comrades navigating a harsh world, Nicolas and Hector suddenly found themselves in a deadly, desperate standoff. Hector's moves were all the result of years of refined skill and merciless efficiency. He had taken the hefty hunting knife from his belt and set his bow aside. His steps were measured and economical, and his stance was grounded.

"Hector, you don't have to do this!" As he stumbled backward and narrowly avoided Hector's blade's first savage cut, Nicolas screamed, the words ripped from his throat.

Hector's response was as icy and piercing as the blade he was holding. "The professor is our only way out of here," he said, his voice completely devoid of sorrow or rage, only the unwavering weight of conviction.

Hector was the better fighter by any standard metric. Each pivot, stab, and feint had a single, deadly function. However, Nicolas had an edge that could not be purchased with experience. Nicolas's mind would bloom with a ghostly, shimmering echo of the attack the moment Hector adjusted his weight to strike. He could feel the phantom hit just before it could land, and he could see the exact path of the blade before it moved. It gave him an apparently flawless defense, but at a terrible cost, exhausting his body and mind at an alarming rate.

They turned their conflict into a brutal, high-stakes game of chess. Every shrewd, skillful move Hector made was greeted by Nicolas's unfathomable, superhuman intuition. Nicolas was leaping back when Hector lunged low, aiming at his legs. Hector appeared to discern Nicolas' plan and easily sidestepped the strike when he retaliated with a sloppy swing of a fallen tree branch he had grabbed. They were only able to weary one another, not defeat one another. Their lactic acid fire burned hotter in their muscles, and their breaths became more ragged with each second that went by.

It was now a pocket of hell on the summit. Katrina was gradually surrounded by a circle of mercenaries, their initial disorder giving way to a somber, well-coordinated effort. The borders of Nicolas's precognitive visions were starting to blur as they cracked under the weight of his extreme exhaustion. The moment had come—a climax of looming catastrophes. Finally spotting a gap, one of Lucas's men lifted his blade to hit a distracted Katrina in the back. At the same time, Hector tensed up, ready to take advantage of a brief weakness in Nicolas' faltering defense. The ground itself started to scream at that point.

It began as a deep, underground rumble, a vibration that was more audible to the bones than to the ears. Then there was a strong convulsion of the ground beneath their feet. Every fighter paused for one startled heartbeat. Then, like the maw of some giant beast, the hill's peak broke apart with a thunderous howl.

The landslide was a tsunami on land. Whole trees were pulled from the ground, their roots screamed out of the ground. Carriage-sized boulders were knocked loose and tumbled into the confusion. The battleground became an ever-evolving, crumbling, and merciless death trap. The world itself had a raw, indiscriminate power that made the balance of the struggle moot. The ground fell way beneath Lucas and his men, and their shouts of fear were drowned out by the apocalyptic thunder as they were flung down the hill's northern face. Hector was left hanging perilously at the edge of a freshly created chasm after he made a frantic lunge and managed to seize hold of a strong, exposed tree root.

Katrina and Nicolas were engulfed in the same pandemonium. They were swept away from their enemies, sliding down the opposite slope of the crumbling hill, stranded on another, shearing slab of earth. The world vanished into a stifling, blinding cloud of dust and debris as massive rocks flew past them like cannonballs.

The descent stopped just as suddenly as it had started. It left a ringing, deafening quiet, a deep, gaping wound in the earth, and a broken landscape. Their adversaries were nowhere to be seen.

With a cough and a single, cohesive agony across his body, Nicolas forced himself to stand up. Despite his numerous cuts and bruises, he was still alive. He looked around at the destruction, his brain reeling from the shock of what had happened. He noticed a lone shape moving quietly toward them through the haze as the dense cloud of dust started to settle.

It was instinct. He prepared for a final battle by forcing his protesting muscles into a defensive position. However, Katrina stopped him by putting a hard hand on his shoulder.

Her voice was clear but strained with fatigue as she said, "It's okay." She stared at the approaching figure, holding her breath. "We've been searching for him."

Nicolas realized when the person came entirely out of the thinned dust. He had never seen a Zinox with eyes like the man's. They glistened with something more profound, a radiance that seemed to be woven from the system's fundamental source code; they weren't just a blend of violet and amber. Despite his easy stance, he exuded an air of unquestionable, absolute power and control.

When Katrina spoke the name in a whisper, there was a gleam of optimism in her voice for the first time. "The Zinox's strongest member. Suge."