Gabriel leaned back as he stood, ensnared in the violet flames that blazed around him.
He knew that if he touched the flames even once, his skin would shrivel under their might.
But it was not the flames he feared most... But the beast that stood beyond them, hunched over and almost looking as if crimson drool was dripping down its mouth.
But that wasn't right...
Although Michael might not have noticed it, Gabriel had not lost consciousness in the explosion, as he had summoned a shell of water to protect his body from the blast just seconds before it had happened.
So when his own trident had moved against his will... All of his anger had vanished...
And yet it had somehow flared up out of spite, when he had seen in the flash of a couple seconds... Seen with his own two eyes... As Azure had shared a clash with the beast that had descended upon them.
Perhaps it had been an illusion... But he had doubted even that, as Azure had saved both of their lives from annihilation... And at the speed of sound beyond all other facts.
Hence why the shack had exploded... Not because of the beast, nor the flames it had produced... But from the sheer speed that Azure had moved in those split seconds.
Gabriel's anger was amplified by the fact that this stranger who had claimed his trident as his own, had simply saved them against a monster they had no hope of actually surviving.
And now...
His dagger shook violently in his hand...
'What the hell are we supposed to against that... Without the help of the only one who can face it head on...' He grit his clattering teeth, lowering his body as the strange sensation of the flames grew closer to his body, warming his skin up in a feverish way.
Then...
He lunged... Shrouding his body in water as he shot towards the beast with a twitch of Axis energy...
He didn't even care about the pain that such energy consumption brought upon his catalyst... Nor the heat of the flames that threatened to lick the shell of water protecting him.
He had one simple thought on his mind now.
Outshine the might, that was Azure's...
Slash!
His dagger dragged across the skin of the beast's lower hip, as his body quickly darted past the beast, landed with two violent thuds and catching himself on his two feet after the second.
He froze...
Watching in horror as the beast ten meters away... Simply shrugged off the flowing blood that was dripping from its hip.
Then if he could have felt even more terror in that moment...
A purple glow began to consume the wound... And then its mangled flesh repaired itself like yarn being threaded back together.
"Don't stop moving, mate!" Azure yelled, grabbing Gabriel by the collar and yanking him away from...
An explosion...
The beast had moved before Gabriel's eyes had even caught sight of its motion.
A crater the size of a road paved the path between where the monster had once stood, and where Gabriel had also once stood only a second ago.
Gabriel's teeth grit even harder.
'Again damnit!?'
They landed easily, and Gabriel violently shook off the grip of Azure as he had already began moving towards the monster again.
But he froze...
This time not in fear... But in envy...
A blue glow covered the moon above...
The scythe of Everfrost glowing a faint icy blue as Michael grinned behind his armor made of ice.
His body floated in the air, shrouding the sky above in some sort of lunar eclipse... And then...
He descended in a crescendo of countless spins, as the monster looked up with all twelve of its eyes in confusion.
Michael had turned into a sawblade as he tore through every inch of the beast's mangled skin like a tornado of frost.
Then he landed with another spin and a backflip that placed his landing right in between an inspired Gabriel and proud looking Azure who was casually spinning Gabe's own trident in his hands like a toy.
"What the hell is that?!" Michael growled, in a lowered and battle ready position.
Then the beast simply turned its head a hundred and eighty degrees... Right at the three of them... But its vision was locked onto Michael, and its lips curled back as its body slowly cranked in degrees just after its head.
"I'm not entirely sure... I've seen many monsters... But that one... Kinda spooks me!" Azure laughed, ceasing his trident spinning and seemingly gritting his teeth behind his humid lips.
"We need to kill it..." Michael growled, his eyes glowing icy blue from the two sockets in the upper section of his knight helm made of his own affinity.
Then the hairs on Gabriel's arms stood up, and he needed to move... Now.
He dashed backwards, which might not have been the right move considering the previous attack the monster had launched on him...
However, unlike Gabriel, Michael had launched straight at the beast, reeling his scythe far to the right in order to launch a wide arc swing at the beast.
Which had backfired immediately, as the beast lowered its head and began to roll at super sonic speeds right at Michael.
Azure had yelled something in those split seconds, but even that had not been enough.
Gabriel's eyes widened as Michael's scythe shattered against the beast's rapidly turning body...
He stood in fear as Michael's body was destined to crash into the beast head on...
But Azure was faster...
A wall of water had risen between the monster and Michael, and a loud splash covered the vision of everyone in the vicinity, allowing Michael a faulty but sure retreat.
Gabriel readied his dagger again, taking a deep shaky breath as the water began to sink into the earth once again, and a large gash glowed with violet colors across the beast's gruesome face.
Azure stood next to a fallen Michael who lie against the burning remains of the shack...
His armor had been completely decimated, leaving only scattered fragmented plates of ice across his body.
His face was even worse for wear, as he looked completely shocked, as if Equan had just struck him with the biggest lightning blast in the history of lightning.
Blood was flowing from the crown of his head and a large gash below his eye, and Azure's expression was no longer that of a nonchalant jokester, but worried and probably unsure if he should have let these young adults battle such a beast.
"Bloody hell mate..." He sighed, Gabriel's trident swaying with gentle motions in his right hand, while being riddled with the beast's blood along the fork of its blades.
Gabriel dashed forward, planning out his movements a couple of seconds before his launch.
He began to sprint with axis in a circle around the beast, dancing and dashing between and underneath the purple projectiles of fire that cometed from its several hands.
Yet, even though he had predicted every attack, even if he had gotten close.
When the beast had moved... Gabriel had only been able to take one step... Before the beast took twenty...
"Sh- ACK!"
Blood spurted from his mouth as his back crashed against and straight through one of the trees near where the shack had been.
His vision now wore countless black spots that clearly hinted at fainting... Yet, if he fainted... That would leave his fate in Azure's hands...
And Gabriel didn't dare to something as catastrophic as that...
Unless.
Azure let out a casual chuckle, returning to the spinning of the trident in his hand...
Even as he moved forward slowly...
The gracefulness in every micromovement in his fingers... Led Gabriel to believe that he was no man.
No man could bare the sight of that beast with such respect and casualness.
So... How was Azure maintaining an unwavering sight in face of something like that?
And why was he approaching so slowly...
Gabriel felt blood begin to fill his lungs, but he paid it no attention as the only thing he could witness in that moment... Was the reverence of Azure...
Each step felt full of something unmistakable...
Something irreversible...
Something...
Undeniable...
The beast turned slowly... Looking back at Azure with what could have been its own form of respect...
As it took four steps forward... Then Four more...
Azure matched its movements... In what looked like slow after images...
'Is he... Walking with axis?' Gabriel pondered in confusion, as Azure matched the beast's movements perfectly.
To the tee, Azure met his match with an undeniable power radiating off of his form as the trident spun in rapid circles completely against the movement of every other part of his body, completely denying any laws of human cordination.
Then Azure's body begun to sway left to right, and it was only then... That Gabriel seen the massive grin on Azure's face.
The beast was also grinning somehow... As if the mangled face of the beast had healed itself in a way to resemble the grin of its opponent.
"Come on then, mate!" Azure yelled, then Gabriel's head rose...
Michael seemed to deem the same response from a few meters away...
And both of their eyes widened as a boom big enough to shake every tree in the forest radiated outward.
Azure clashed with the beast, rocking its entire mangled body backward from the force of the trident that wasn't even his.
Azure pushed the beast back probably thirty meters before he spun his trident upwards, ripping through the flesh of the beast as the water around him lifted him into the air and back away from the beast.
Then he reeled the trident back, and his body shot downward like a meteor at the beast.
Gabriel expected nothing different than Michael's attempt on the beast... But this man was no man at all.
As his body moved along with his trident as if it was an extension of his body.
As the trident grew closer to the beast in that single second... Gabriel noticed that Azure had begun to spin his body... Like a drill.
And the ivory haired man simply flew straight through the chest of the beast... Landing behind it as the only thing left in his wake... Was a gaping hole in the center of the monster's chest.
Azure turned with the lazy lean of his head as his eyes stared the beast down out of the top left corners of his eye sockets.
The beast tried to repair itself... While at the same time turning towards Azure and launching an attack on its own as it pounced onto the spot where Azure stood... Or once stood.
The beast looked down at its clawed hands in confusion as Azure's corpse did not lie within them.
But it was he... Azure: Who stood on the shoulder of the giant, having pierced one of its several collarbones with the trident and leaned against it like a walking stick.
"Now tell me ya bloody fiend... How does one actually kill you?" Azure asked with the curling of his lip, before ducking underneath one of the monster's arms with a quick swoosh.
"Ah bugger off!" Azure yelled as he began to launch himself around the unmoving trident with loose hands.
He had turned the trident into a dancer's pole, dodging and evading the torrent of attacks from the beast onto its own body.
Then he stopped in a single motion, pressing the bottom of his sandal against the trident and the other sandal against the beast, and then he pulled with such ease that he sliced the entire arm off of the beast like a knife through butter.
"Bloody hell, mate! Score some points on durability will ya! AHAHA!" Azure laughed at his own joke as he spun like a torpedo through the five arms that outstretched to grab him, threading the needle as if he had already predicted every single movement within this fight.
He landed with one hard thud, then used the momentum to launch back into the air, already spinning again as he defied physics and launched himself back at the beast...
This time the beast had seemed to get a decent read on his movements, launching its arms at him in a barrage of attacks... Its limbs shifting and changing into terribly ragged blades...
Azure's face lit up in excitement as he deflected the first arm.
"One!" He yelled, changing the direction of his spin from clockwise to counterclockwise as he changed his course, his body narrowly twisting around another blade as his trident had already prepared for the next attack.
He chuckled, knocking the third blade upward with a vertical deflection with the trident.
then a sonic boom shot out from behind him, trembling several trees that stood behind his comet of a figure.
The next blade missed completely, gripping into the ground and sticking between the soil, probably too stuck to actually be pulled fast enough to count as a weapon for this next exchange.
The last blade shot at Azure with a frenzy of piercing strikes.
Azure made no attempt at dodging, letting his trident spin and twirl as his body followed quickly behind...
CLING!
CLING!
CRACK!
CLANG!
CLATTER!
CLANG!
SLASH!
"AHAHAHA! THAT'S ALL FIVE, MATE!" Azure boomed with laughter as his body twirled horizontally, his left arm exactly six feet above the torn up soil below.
The beast recoiled in horror, calling back all of its arms out of the pure instinct of survival.
However...
As Azure's body hung with air time, unmoving in the face of danger... His eyes glowed a terrifying azure blue, and his right arm must have moved on its own, following the natural physics of his body's movements...
As his body turned in a flash, his arm followed with a snap...
The trident became a missile... Piercing straight through the mangled skull of the beast and taking its entire head with it.
The movements of the beast continued for about a second... And the clatter of its blade-shifted limbs echoed through the forest just seconds away from meeting Azure. Who casually landed with the soft touching of the front of his right sandal to ground.
He nodded casually, turning his gaze towards Gabriel and Michael as if remembering that he had actually been accompanying people.
His hands clasped together, as a torrent of water brought the trident right hand, returning to the now: Outstretched arm of Azure, who reclaimed the bloodied trident with grace.