Rain poured down from the bruised sky in relentless, heavy sheets, washing through the mud of the valley.
Thunder rolled across the sky, and jagged flashes of white lightning illuminated the broken battlefield below.
Tez lay on his back in the freezing mud, his body battered, covered in dark bruises, and bleeding from a dozen cuts.
Every breath felt like a hot knife in his lungs.
A short distance away, Sha and Rihasa were pinned against a broken stone wall, completely cornered as Frera’s heavy automated cannons hummed to life, locking their targeting lasers directly onto the two boys.
How did this happen?
Tez thought, his vision blurring as he struggled to keep his eyes open.
How did everything fall apart so fast?
Three hours earlier…
The moment Mika landed in the crater, he hadn’t uttered a single word.
He didn’t introduce himself, nor did he give the children a chance to adopt a battle stance.
In a terrifying blur of explosive speed, Mika lunged across the distance, his massive gray hand shooting out like a iron clamp and snatching Rihasa directly by the throat.
“RIHASA!” Tez and Sha screamed in horror.
Rihasa kicked his legs helplessly in the air, gasping for breath as Mika’s grip tightened.
Mika let out a low, guttural sneer, tossed the struggling boy over his massive shoulder like a sack of grain, and leapt high into the forest canopy, vanishing into the trees.
“BRING HIM BACK!” Tez yelled, his face burning with rage as he sprinted after him.
SLAAASH!
A razor-sharp arc of blue energy cut through the dirt inches in front of Tez’s boots, blasting a deep trench across the path and halting him in his tracks.
Gaya stepped out slowly from behind a massive pine tree, his longsword unsheathed and resting casually over his shoulder.
Beside him stepped Suri, stretching her long, tone legs with a dark, mocking smirk.
“Hold your horses, little boy,” Suri purred, flipping her hair as she stepped directly into Tez’s line of sight.
“Mika gets to choose his opponent. And I’m choosing you, Tez. What’s the matter? Don’t you want to fight a gorgeous girl?”
Tez looked right past her, peering desperately into the dark forest where Mika had disappeared.
“Where is the gorgeous girl? I want to fight her!”
Suri’s playful smirk instantly vanished.
A thick blue vein pulsed angrily on her temple.
“Hahaha! Don’t mess with me, you arrogant little punk!”
Suri whipped her leg around in a vicious, high-speed arc kick aimed directly at Tez’s head, forcing him to duck low, while Gaya lunged forward with a lethal thrust targeted at Sha’s chest.
CLANG!
Sha reacted on instinct, catching Gaya’s longsword in the center prongs of his trident.
The force of the impact drove Sha’s boots two inches into the dirt.
Gaya frowned in genuine surprise.
“So basic moves don’t work on you anymore,” Gaya muttered, leaning his weight into the blade.
“Let me get serious then.”
Gaya gripped his hilt with both hands and unleashed a flurry of rapid strikes.
Sha matched his pace, his trident ringing out like a iron bell as he parried three consecutive blows, ducked under a lethal horizontal slice, and swung his shaft around to strike Gaya’s ribs.
Gaya was forced to jump backward three full paces.
“Okay! It’s a weapon fight now!” Sha yelled, spinning his trident into a defensive guard.
“Hahaha! Now you’re getting me open!” Gaya laughed, his eyes turning cold and predatory.
“Now you’re really starting to irritate me.”
Suddenly, a dark, suffocating purple wave of energy erupted from the steel of Gaya’s sword.
A physical wall of atmospheric pressure radiated outward, crushing the grass and shaking the surrounding trees.
Sha’s knees buckled under the sudden, immense weight.
His arms began to tremble uncontrollably.
“What?! What’s happening to my body? It’s… it’s shaking on its own!”
“Oh, you poor little punk,” Gaya sneered, stepping forward without any effort.
“You don’t even know what Aura is. Aura is the presence of raw power. It reveals how powerful a warrior truly is, and weapons can be infused with Aura as well.”
“So he uses some kind of extraordinary power,” Sha gasped, fighting to keep his feet firmly planted.
FLASH!
Gaya vanished from sight and reappeared directly in front of Sha, bringing his Aura-infused sword down in a blinding overhead strike.
Sha raised his trident barely in time to block, but the sheer, crushing weight of the impact shattered the ground beneath him and slammed him onto his back.
“What was that?!” Sha shouted in sheer frustration, spitting dirt out of his mouth.
“That’s totally cheating! Fight me normally! I don’t even know how to use powers yet!”
Gaya raised his sword high, the dark Aura flaring around the blade.
“Then today is your death day!”
On the other side of the clearing, Suri was unleashing a devastating barrage of rapid-fire kicks.
Tez blocked every single strike with his forearms, the impacts vibrating through his bones like hammer strikes.
“Why do you keep blocking my legs with your hands?” Suri taunted, spinning mid-air to land another heavy heel drop.
“Why don’t you take out your dagger? Do you love my legs that much?”
“I just don’t want my dagger dirty with your chicken legs!” Tez snapped back, wiping sweat from his forehead.
Suri froze mid-step.
Her expression transformed into pure malice.
She flared her energy, releasing a dense, crackling Aura that shattered the stones around her boots.
Tez observed her intently, stepping back.
It’s her energy…
I can feel it pulsing through the air…
but it’s too low.
The monk taught us that to use Aura, I need to find my own nature and my power type…
But I don’t even know how to tap into my power.
How am I supposed to fight someone like her?
Suri launched an immense, Aura-boosted sidekick that completely detonated the ground beneath Tez, blasting dirt and rock fifty feet into the air.
Tez tumbled through the debris, coughing, and reached for the hilt of his dagger.
Suddenly, a wave of pressure so immense, so pitch-black, and so utterly suffocating descended over the valley that everything came to a complete halt.
Tez’s fingers slipped from his dagger.
His lungs locked up, and he collapsed to his knees, gasping for oxygen as the sheer weight of the atmosphere pressed him into the mud.
A heavy armored transport chopper descended slowly through the dark rain clouds.
Radiating from the aircraft was an aura of absolute death.
FRERA HAS ARRIVED.
Across the ruined clearing, Sha collapsed onto his side under the exact same crushing weight, unable to move a muscle.
In the distance at the forest edge, Mika stepped out from between the trees, holding a bloodied, unconscious Rihasa by his ankle before casually tossing him into the dirt like trash.
“Rihasa…” Tez gritted his teeth, tears of sheer powerlessness mixing with the rain on his face.
Driven by pure, unadulterated rage, Tez forced his trembling legs to push himself up.
He drew his dagger and charged toward the landing chopper with everything he had left.
Before Tez could even take three steps, Mika appeared out of thin air, delivering a brutal, bone-crushing strike directly into Tez’s chest.
CRACK!
Tez was launched backward through the air, crashing violently through a stone wall and landing in the freezing mud, coughing up blood.
Frera stepped out of the chopper, looking down at the broken boys with absolute coldness.
“Shoot both children.”
The heavy cannons hummed, locked, and prepared to fire.
Lightning flashed brightly overhead.
The rain poured endlessly.
The three young Legends were completely trapped in a nightmare.
To be continued
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