"If I can't take them both at once, then I'll do it one at a time." I said it calmly, but my pulse thrummed with eager anticipation.
I moved first. Not because I wanted to be flashy—because speed would decide it.
I launched myself forward like a bullet. The air screamed past my ears. Ikaris was hunched, snarling, already mid-strike at the broken skyline when my fist connected with his ribs. The impact was bone-shattering and sudden; the shock traveled up my arm and into the earth. The force sent him spinning like a rag doll. He slammed into a ruined tower, peeled away concrete and rebar, and tumbled end over end before vanishing behind a curtain of falling masonry.
Good. That bought me time.
Zombified Captain Marvel pivoted immediately, cosmic energy flaring around her in a sick, pulsing halo. She dove toward the wreckage where Ikaris had hit, eyes fixed on me with that hollow hunger. Her speed was terrifying even now. If she reached Ikaris and he recovered—two at once would be a nightmare in close quarters.
I didn't want that. I did not plan to split my focus.
So I used what little magic I permitted myself. Not an attack. Not something that harmed. I cast a single 8th-tier spell I'd kept purely for contingencies—[Lockdown].
[Lockdown] was not built to maim; it was a disciplining lattice. When it hit, the spell's effect unfurled like a crystalline web. Light-strands spun outward and snapped into place around Captain Marvel, clinging to air and flesh alike. They didn't burn or sap her; they bound. They pinned limbs and energy like a contractor's harness. Her flight stuttered. Her glow flickered. The strands tightened, forcing her posture rigid and slowing the wild arc of her movement until she was a statue attempting to move through honey.
It was temporary, but long enough. That had been the intention. The quest forbade killing with magic, but using a restriction to isolate one opponent and then finishing the other by natural means—physically—shouldn't be a problem.
While Captain Marvel thrashed and strained against the Lockdown, Irocketed toward the place Ikaris had been flung. He was up—blood and rot presenting like torn cloth—spitting energy that sizzled the air. He looked madder, more animal now, as if the part of him that once understood strategy had long since worn away. That left a raw, powerful machine of a target: fast, brutal, predictable in the places that mattered.
We closed the distance in a heartbeat. Ikaris fired off a beam from his eyes—raw, concentrated force—and I darted through the corridor of light, feeling the heat carve air around me. The beam slashed into the ground where my head had been a second before; bits of scorched asphalt and stone sputtered into the sky.
No time for finesse. This fight had to be clean.
I used the momentum of his next lunge to my advantage. He came in low, aiming a sweeping strike with a forearm that could have cleared streets. I ducked, grabbed his wrist, and twisted. His joint buckled with an ugly crack. Pain made his features contort; rage took over. He tore free with a roar and swung again, this time bringing a foot up to sweep me. I jumped, turned in the air, and drove my shoulder into his sternum. He flew back, but not far enough.
He charged like a bull. I met him head-on.
Fighting Ikaris wasn't elegant. It was pure physics applied through the body. I absorbed blows, turned their vector into counters. When he compressed to strike, I exploded into him with a shoulder and then latched onto his collarbone to clamp him down. I felt cracked carbon and bone under my palms. The stench of burned circuitry and rot filled my nose.
He had strength, but he lacked subtlety now. After a clinch that felt like grappling a mountain, I found an opening. I shoved off his chest and hooked my knee behind his, swinging my hips to throw him. He crashed through a half-collapsed office block; glass and office furniture cascaded down with the building. He was rising—only just—when I struck again.
This time I went inside his guard. I grabbed his head with both hands and slammed my forehead into his face. The collision echoed like a pistol. He staggered, dazed. I punched the base of his skull with an upward arc that sent him airborne, spinning. Then, with a clean, surgical motion, I leapt and delivered a brutal downward blow to his neck and upper spine—aimed to disable permanently. The impact snapped like a branch. He convulsed once, twice, then his body folded in on itself and went still.
No theatrics. No magic. Just bone, motion, and intent.
He lay there. The storm hissed around the wreckage. Dust drifted through the air, glittering in the sick light. I stepped back, chest heaving with the exertion, palms still tingling from the hits. The quiet after a kill was different here—less hollow than in the simulation, heavier, filled with a reality that did not wink out when the console turned off. I could feel the world settling around the absence of force.
I glanced up at the locked figure of Captain Marvel, struggling against the crystalline strands. The Lockdown held, for now. She burned and strained, but the spell hadn't harmed her—only denied movement.
"One down," I said, voice low and steady, feeling the wool of fatigue in my limbs but the taste of satisfaction on my tongue. "One more to go."
Shalltear's soft laugh floated behind me. She hovered at the edge of the ruin, parasol closed, eyes alight with the peculiar pleasure she always took in violence well-executed.
I walked closer to the bound Captain Marvel.
"Brace yourself," I murmured, more to the world than to her.
~~~
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