Solflare: The Painter's Secret-Chapter 79: Clash of Titans (2): The Birth of Death

"Over," Leon slurred, blood bubbling on his lips as something in him snapped. He slammed his free fist into the dirt of the crater wall. "...my dead body."

With a guttural roar that tore out from his throat, he pushed upward. The force caused Tiger’s grip on his hair to slip in surprise.

Leon’s heart pounded furiously against his ribs as he stood in the crater. He swayed, but kept a steady gaze at Tiger.

"That’s the energy I was looking for!" Tiger’s smile transformed into an unholy delight as he removed his right hand from his back.

He lunged in a simultaneous dual strike—a fist for Leon’s head and a chop for his bleeding side. But Leon sidestepped the head blow and caught the chop on his forearm.

The impact numbed his arm, but he pivoted on his leg and drove a savage kick into Tiger’s ribs.

CRACK.

Tiger grunted and stumbled a step back. He touched his side, looked at the faint smear of blood on his fingers, and laughed. Then wiped it on his lips.

"Do you still care about your dead father?" He spread his arms wide in an open invitation and continued in an eerie tone.

"Come on, then. Show me what you inherited from him." He smashed his arms together. "Come on!"

Leon charged, a wordless scream tearing from him as his foot slammed the ground hard. He threw a powerful right cross.

Tiger ducked under it, used Leon’s own momentum, grabbed his arm and hip, and then, with a terrifying efficiency, swung him up and threw him over his shoulder.

Leon crashed onto his back on the flat ground with a sound like a sack of wet grain hitting stone.

PAM.

The impact drove every molecule of air from Leon’s body. He lay there flat on his back on the hard-packed earth outside the crater.

He stared at the swirling purple and grey clouds that seemed to be gathering overhead. The world narrowed to the scream of his protesting muscles, the fiery agony in his wounded side, and the deafening ringing in his ear.

’Don’t let him use your weakness against you. Fight with a calm mind and hear.’ Mr. Lee’s lessons now felt like a cruel joke, looped uselessly in the darkening corners of his mind.

His vision began to fade as blackness crept in from the edges. He blinked, trying to push himself up with his elbows, but his arms trembled violently.

"NO!" A raw scream ripped out from Leon as he slammed both fists into the dirt beside him. The impact sent fresh jolts of pain through his wrists, yet he forced his body to roll.

He pushed one knee under himself, then another, and rose, swaying like a sapling in a storm.

"Come on," Tiger said, brushing his palm across his face as if wiping away sweat. He pointed a finger past Leon, toward the other side. "Look at your beloved Zoe. Sorry. You can’t help her."

Leon’s neck creaked as his head turned. At a distance, Zoe stood on her knee, and before her, Vera hovered several feet in the air, wreathed in crackling lattices of black energy and white-hot lightning.

The air around them hummed with a malevolent charge as Zoe’s head bowed. Her silver hair plastered to her neck with sweat, giving her the look of a fallen fighter.

A terrifying stillness settled in Leon’s chest, causing his heartbeat to stutter. Yet, somewhere within him, he felt his blood still moving in a sluggish tide in his veins.

He closed his eyes, clapped his hands together in a resonant clap that echoed oddly in the charged air. He inhaled in a slow but deep pull of air that filled his lungs despite the pain flowing through him.

From the stands, a wave of confusion rippled as heads turned slowly. Eyes widened, breathing paused.

Above the field, the clouds swirled and converged with an unnatural speed. The bruised purple and grey clouds darkened into a blood-red hue, like clotted blood.

The ground vibrated as a quick wave of shock rattled the metal fence posts.

Before anyone could process it, the sky cracked open with a sound that echoed like a continent shearing in two.

A grinding thunder roar shook the very foundations of the proctors’ building and all other buildings in the far distance.

A gust of wind exploded across the field and tore mature trees from their roots with a shrieking protest of wood.

It peeled metal roofs and sheets from distant sheds and sent them spinning like weightless leaves. There, a frenzied rain of tree branches, rocks, and twisted metals began to fall.

Fifty percent of the audience surged for the exits, screaming. But the remaining number sat in their seats, their faces etched with devastated shock, as if witnessing the unraveling of reality itself.

"Let’s end this wave!" Mr. Lee screamed in a strained, authoritative voice.

Lieutenant Hayes turned and gazed at Mr. Lee with a freezing stare. "NO!"

Mr. Lee’s jaw tightened so hard that the muscles stood out like cables. He looked from Hayes to the calamity on the field, gave a helpless nod, and folded his arms on his chest.

On the field, Vera’s playful malice vanished as the black energy around her intensified. The lightning arching from her fingertips thickened, casting jumping shadows.

"Say your last prayer!" she shrieked and pointed a finger at Zoe’s forehead as she levitated higher like a featherless bird.

On the ground, Zoe slowly tilted her gaze and stared at Leon across the distance. She smiled when their eyes met, then turned her face back to Vera, offered a defiant grin, and closed her eyes.

"Haha! That’s all you’ll say? Then, so be it!" Vera screamed and spread her arms wide. From each hand, a torrent of lightning, as thick as tree trunks, screamed downward toward the kneeling girl.

The stones around Zoe lifted and hovered in the polarized air. The lightning froze and suspended a foot above Zoe’s head.

Vera’s face turned pale. She snarled, gestured violently, and sent another bolt, then another. Each one lanced down and then stopped dead in the same impossible stillness.

Meanwhile, the wind around Leon turned into a living, shrieking tsunami, circling him in a furious vortex.

Tiger’s predatory confidence cracked as he crossed his arms over his face, shielding himself as he stumbled back.

In a blink, the suspended lightning above Zoe moved sideways. All of it tore free from Vera’s control and shot across the field like radiant javelins, and vanished into the churning wall of vortex around Leon.

The thunderous roar intensified as the crack in the sky widened. From the dark hole now taking shape, ghosts of iridescent darkness and cold light descended.

They streamed downward in the direction of Leon’s heart.

Jade’s composure broke loose as a flicker of genuine disturbance crossed his face when he glanced at the descending spectral forms.

"That’s... bad," he said and moved with desperate speed. He disengaged from the proctor in blue, flashed across the field, and yanked Tiger back from the edge of the vortex. 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝒆𝒘𝙚𝓫𝙣𝙤𝒗𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

He deposited him farther away and leaped into the hasty air, grabbed the stunned Vera, and shoved her beside Tiger.

Then, he darted back toward the proctors’ platform. "We have to unite and destroy that," he shouted as he pointed at the growing, light-devouring tornado, "before it destroys everything!"

Without waiting for confirmation, he turned back and stood at the front of Vera and Tiger. He inhaled sharply and swung his right arm in a wide arc above his head.

In an instant, the air rippled, warped, and compressed, and converged into a sword of red light. The seven-foot-long sword hung in the air for a bit, then fell into his waiting grip.

The air around him wavered with heat as he shot forward with the speed of light, the red sword stretched at the haste storm.

Inside the storm, the stolen lightning and the ghostly energies from the sky collapsed into a single, boiling sphere of gold light that hovered behind Leon’s floating form.

A deep, groaning roar came from below as the earth cracked open, revealing a hellish, glowing glimpse of the molten sections below.

Screams tore from the remaining spectators as they fled from their seats, scrambling over each other.

When Jade met the expanding golden energy, he vaporized and turned into motes of glittering dust. But when it reached Zoe, the light washed over her kneeling form, but vaporized a rock at her front.

"RUN!" Tiger screamed when he felt the heat of the expanding golden energy. He turned and gestured for Vera to flee, but froze when the light touched him, dissolving him into shimmering particles.

Vera’s eyes widened with profound disbelief as she raised her hands as if to ward it off, but also turned into motes of nothingness.

The wave rolled forward, washing over the B-ranked proctor, over the other officials. They vanished one after another, erased from existence without a sound.

Just as the wave reached Lieutenant Hayes and Mr. Lee, they vanished just a split second before contact.

As suddenly as it erupted, the beam of light winked out, causing the roaring to cease. The vortex dissipated and released a sighing gust of wind.

The bloody sky paled out while the cracks sealed themselves.

From the height at which he was suspended, Leon’s body went limp. He fell and hit the churned, steaming earth with a heavy thud.

BAM.

The green and heavenly field now was a wasteland of scorched earth, molten rock, and drifting, settling dust.

Leon tried to lift his head, but a wrenching cough seized him, each one bringing up a coppery taste.

The pale sky above him doubled and tripled as his vision swam. He fought the darkness that kept pulling at the edges of his eye sockets.

His fingers twitched in the dirt as his eyes rolled back. Before the world faded into absolute darkness, he saw a figure walking sluggishly toward him.