Before me lay an army of baying blood elves. The guard had been helpless against the thousands of them. Most of Galahad’s men lay dead or dying. At the thought of Galahad’s murder, I let out an almighty roar, allowing my air magic to carry the noise across the sea of the blood elves, who fell silent in an instant.
I walked with methodical purpose toward the steps at the rear of the palace. A hundred feet lay between me and my enemy. At the rear of the ranks of blood elves floated Helios, smiling, hoisting aloft the sword he’d murdered my friend with. There were murmurs of laughter.
I screamed a cry of vengeance, feeling my throat burn from the noise, and I looked up as the wraith towered above me, copying my scream of rage and hate, its shadowy ropes billowing around me as its bony hands pointed at the blood elves.
Some blood elves turned, but there was nowhere to go. I walked toward them, feeling my pain and hate grow as I poured magic into my hands, into the spheres that I began spinning. Spheres of fire and air, of lightning, of shadow and matter magic. I reached the bottom of the stairs, and no one had moved.
“Kill him,” Helios commanded.
“Come try!” I shouted, and unleashed hell upon those standing between me and Helios.
I plunged the spheres into the closest blood elves, and the magic tore them to pieces, ripping apart those unlucky enough to be close by as if they were made of paper. As the chaos subsided, I poured fire out of my hands, incinerating anything that came within twenty feet of me, while spreading out my shadow magic, snatching blood elves and dragging them down to use as fuel for my rage and hate.
Within a minute I’d killed a hundred blood elves, and at that point they broke, turning and trying to flee from the flames that destroyed everything, leaving me standing on cinders. The fire took hold of the forest, and trees burned to ash in seconds until I stopped it, but the damage was already done, and the fire quickly spread out of control. I didn’t notice or care and slaughtered blood elves unlucky enough to get close to me. A whip of fire trailed from each hand, cleaving blood elves in half with every flick.
Lightning leapt from my fingers, and the screams of blood elves filled my ears, but still I continued, stepping over the smoking bodies to get to Helios, who stood his ground, a wicked smile on his lips.
When I was close enough, he roared flame at me, and I wrapped myself in air, allowing the superheated fire to roll over me. His smile vanished when he saw me untouched, and a moment later I was on him, driving a sphere of lightning into his chest, unleashing it and watching him driven back toward the tree line. I hadn’t used too much power in the sphere; I wanted Helios to suffer.
He came at me with his talons, so I stepped aside and drove a blade of lightning into one of his wings, destroying the membrane. He dropped to his knees as blood poured from the wound. I stepped around him, took hold of his wing, and used a blade of fire to sever it, tossing the entire wing aside as he screamed in pain.
“You can’t fly on one wing,” I said, picking up a blood-elf sword, killing the elf who made a noise signaling he wasn’t quite dead, and tossing the sword over to Helios. “Pick it up.”
Helios stared at the weapon for several seconds.
“Pick it up,” I said more forcefully.
Still, he hesitated.
“Pick up the fucking sword!” I screamed.
Helios did as I commanded, holding the sword in a sturdy grip before getting to his feet. I walked toward him, and he attacked with strength and precision, but I parried it, driving my blade into his second wing, severing it at the shoulder.
Helios cried out in pain and dropped back to his knees.
“Get up,” I told him.
Helios sprung from the ground, charging toward me, but he was too slow and I easily avoided the attack, pushing his sword away and head-butting him. He staggered back, and I dashed forward, slashing up across his face, taking one of his ears.
He staggered back, and I maintained the offensive, taking his other ear and cutting off his sword-wielding hand. The sword fell to the ground and was soon covered in Helios’s blood as it freely pumped from the stump where his hand used to be.
“Get up,” I told him again.
“Just kill me,” he said.
I walked toward him and kicked him in the face. “Kill you?” I asked. “Not for a long time. You took my friend, my brother. I’m going to take every single fucking piece of you until I feel like you’ve paid.” I stabbed the sword into his side, just under the ribs, and twisted it before pulling it out.
“Please finish it,” Helios pleaded.
I cut his handless arm off at the elbow. “Fuck. You.”
“Enough, Nate,” Erebus said from behind me as time froze.
“It is not enough,” I snapped. “How dare you stop me from extracting vengeance.”
“Is this who you want to be? Killing an unarmed man in the middle of a battlefield? A man you’ve beaten? You’re better than him, and you know it. You could have killed him a hundred times over, but you keep him alive for what, pain? You’re not doing this for Galahad; you’re doing it for yourself.”
I spun on Erebus, feeling the anger inside begin to bubble over. “He took my friend.” I felt tears sting my cheeks. “He took the best of us. He took my brother. He killed Galahad in the way of a coward. Why did Galahad push me out of the way? Why did he sacrifice himself for me? I could have saved myself. I could have used my magic.”
“Galahad created a shield to stop you both being hurt, and it kept you alive. He made his choice; he chose to save your life.”
“And Helios chose to finish his and not mine. Because they want me alive. They continue to taunt me, to try and break me, and I’m done with it. I’m done with it.”
“Finish Helios. Clean and quick. Then go after Abaddon. But don’t be this torturer. Don’t be the monster the Fates said you’d become. You’re better than that. You went down this road once before, and it took a lot of effort to bring you back. Are you sure you want to do it again? I don’t think your friends will be able to bring you back this time, and we both know it.”
Time went back to normal, and I looked down at a begging Helios. I removed his head with magical lightning wrapped around the sword that I’d taken from Galahad. Erebus was right: I was not that man anymore. A long time had passed since I’d behaved that way, and I would not rewalk the same path I had after Mary’s murder. Galahad’s murder would not be avenged until Abaddon and all she worked with were removed as a threat.
I sprinted into the forest away from the burning trees and, with my magic fueling me, reached the entrance to the ruins nearly an hour later. There were no blood elves or guards there, nothing to consider a threat. I walked into the ruins and followed the same path I had when I’d found Lee. Ares charged into me and punched me in the side of the head so hard I saw stars. He picked me up and flung me across the ruins as if I were nothing. I collided with the furthest wall and dropped to the floor with a thud in time to see Ares approach, anger etched on his face.
“He humiliated my son,” Ares said, pointing to me. “You’ll regret that.”