Blood Rack, Barbed Wire

He hit the tree on top of the hill. It was leafless, and it looked like it would never bloom again, that it was dead. Unlike that guy, he saw him breathing, however shakily. That wasn't going to last long, though.

It would be taken care of. Later.

Now he hadn't done anything, of course. He hadn't had time to get close or hit that hard.

It was Luna who had thrown him, even if he hadn't seen even a glimmer of her magic going to work. She was good, maybe the girl wouldn't even need his help, really. She'd survived so far for a reason.

But that didn't diminish his anger either. Not in the slightest.

Shuji charged the ax with power, it began to vibrate, to be covered in ice that was slowly emerging from it. Then he swung it...

At the ground.

It cut nothing but grass. But cutting wasn't his intention.

From the point of impact, the ice quickly spread across the grass. An ice sculpture with spikes all over it, like a kind of shell. Its rapid advance forced the soldiers to scatter. Luna also managed to get out of the way in time. Well, not exactly.

What she did was cover herself with one of those protective barriers that had served so well against the armors in that dungeon.

So, instead of Shuji being forced to stop the ice there, it continued, simply growing around the barrier she had placed.

At some point, the ice stopped and began to grow upward.

Two wings of ice, feathers and all, and the shield in the middle like a kind of shell that Luna rested in. It was an impressive sight under the lights of his home burning to the ground.

If he spent the whole time like that, Shuji would burn out fast.

He needed to save energy. Not just to put an end to this fight, but to control the fire. But he couldn't think now.

He didn't want to, either.

No talking of holding back either.

-I'll kill you all! -Shuji was screaming and didn't even know what he was saying, or what he was saying it for. The message had been very clear without him having to open his mouth.

Lost in his fantasies of revenge and in his useless screams, he barely dodged a mace that was coming for his head.

He counterattacked by grabbing the enemy's arm and twisting as if it were made of rubber. He heard no screams from him, only the roar of the flames, the painful beating of his heart and the blood throbbing in his temples.

Shuji wasn't finished with him.

He grabbed him by the head and smashed it against one of the many spikes until he was reduced to a mere sack of flesh. Then he let go.

Fear. The same all-consuming fear he had felt in that cave. This was the first time he realized that he could instill that same fear in others. He wasn't sure it would make him happy, but it could be useful to him now.

One less. He made a move to go on the attack, but he couldn't do it.

He felt wind beneath his feet.

It took him a second to realize he was flying through the night sky, not having some sort of extreme dissociative episode. Flying and spinning around. Uncontrollable.

But he didn't get anywhere.

Something coiled around one of his ankles. A spectral, sparking chain. Not electricity, but the magical energy that formed it.

It wasn't Luna helping him, preventing a terrible fall.

It was one of the enemies, who wanted to bring him back to earth. Very quickly and sharply. He felt a few ribs break on landing.

Thank goodness that was all it was.

He didn't let go, afterwards, and the chain didn't break. There it remained and they used it to drag him along the ground with the same speed. Towards the enemy. Towards death. Did he think he was just going to sit there, waiting for the execution?

He broke the chain.

The fall hadn't broken it, but a single swing of the ax was enough to free him. The chain didn't disappear in particles of magical energy. It remained lying there, albeit broken.

Shuji grabbed what was left and used it to strangle the enemy who had done this to him.

It had only been an impulse, but he struggled against it instead of simply making the chain disappear, automatically freeing himself. So there were two possibilities. He couldn't do it.

Or he was simply too fucked up to think straight. Ha.

Two jumped at him. Exactly two. They came at him from behind, but he felt them without needing to turn around to be sure of the number.

One of them he kicked in the chest.

This one moved away from him of his own volition, staggering backwards, hands on his chest, struggling for breath.

The other he received by simply turning around. Of course, he also moved the guy he was strangling. So Shuji ended up using him as a human shield instead of strangling him. He wondered what would be more terrible, the strangulation or that the sword of one of his companions had been what took his life.

It was too late to change his mind, but he wondered anyway. He had an inquisitive mind.

He let him fall.

Him and the chain. Then, before the enemy could recover, Shuji sent him flying....

In pieces. In two unequal halves.

A giant, and by that he meant not a real giant but a guy who could perfectly well have been a basketball player, came at him, armed only with a shield.

Had he lost his real weapon in the midst of the snow blast, so to speak?

In any case, it wasn't getting in his way too much.

He was big and strong, he used that shield as a battering ram. Before Shuji knew it he was just defending himself. Couldn't afford to do anything else. But the best defense was a good offense, so naturally he couldn't keep that up forever. In the end his defense broke, his ax going down with his arm, and he was left defenseless.

Watching as the sharp edges of the shield came towards his head.

But it didn't crack his skull open like a hammer. The shield stopped a few millimeters from his forehead. It took him a few seconds to notice the energy around it, like a whip pulling it back.

Luna, just in time.

She cracked open the attacker's skull with his own shield. The same trick he had employed with one of the armors.

Shuji was too focused to even react when the blood splattered on him.

He asked no questions and the soldiers offered no excuses.

Shuji ran after the survivors.

He dodged the sword of one of them, leaping over the blow, and threw the ax right at his neck while he was in the air. It narrowly failed to decapitate the man.

It landed on the other, who was off to the side, knocking him to the ground with Shuji on top of him.

Slamming that animal to the ground. Again and again, punches straight to the head, that is, the helmet protecting it, no matter how much his knuckles hurt or his skin split open.

The helmet would be the one to give way first, anyway. It was already doing so. Sinking, twisting, from the force of the blows.

Shuji stood up. The soldier was unrecognizable, because underneath him... There was nothing. A bloody mess strewn across the grass. And his knuckles too.

Maybe he should feel like throwing up again, but he felt only quiet satisfaction. He had protected what mattered to him. He had succeeded.

Luna dropped the barrier, now that the fight was over.

Shuji ran to check if she was okay, but what he did was hug her against his chest. To feel her warmth. Reassurance that she wasn't going to disappear in the middle of the night.... like a leaf in the wind.

Over the waves of the sea or in the sea of flames.

He didn't care, he wanted her by his side.

She didn't say anything, didn't protest, though even he was vaguely aware that perhaps he was squeezing her a little too tightly. After a while he released her and perhaps all should have ended there.

But then he looked at Luna, looked at her very closely, perhaps for the first time.

The blood that stained her body and clothes.

The soot, here and there, on her forehead.

Her shining eyes.

And before he knew it he was kissing her, his hands on her cheeks.