Claws like silvered lightning, tearing holes through ionized air and the storm.
Ahti's final weaponry descended upon Pyry, who lifted his hands - clad in black armor - to defend.
Metal met metal, black met white, and for one horrible moment, the rules of the world were starting to be bent. Magic, the imagination made real, an affront of World Logic, was pushed to the surface with such a violence that there was no denying it.
Clash of sparks and metallic screeches.
A cacophony of multitudes of sounds.
A blinding light.
And then---!
The white lion found himself wounded - against all that his nature had taught to him.
The claws cut through and they cut deep, drawing arcs of crimson that mixed in the rain.
The immovable object had finally learned what the unstoppable force truly meant. As while the golden lion may have had his impenetrable armor, the white lion had claws that could not be stopped - not by metal, not by stone, not even by bone.
"--------!"
Still reeling from his bleeding wounds, Pyry slammed his armored hands downwards, trying to catch Ahti with a hammer-slam of a punch that would have sent him barreling underground. But the latter was ready. Like quicksilver, he dodged the attack and returned the favor, slashing across Pyry's face and drawing more of that vermillion ire. Golden eyes flashed with fury and the sunrise beast spun around, delivering a massive kick that sent his opponent careening sideways, almost having been crushed with that single attack.
But Ahti did not stop. No, his magic was flaring up like a wildfire now. He pressed on, taking this advantage to it's logical conclusion.
He shot forward, like a lizard against the ground, and pulled up with his claws like a rising, cresting wave. And Pyry returned it in kind.
--- Once again, armor and weaponry met.
And the screeching sound was almost enough to make the ears bleed.
Force against force - power against power. And when that power has nowhere to go, it reflects back. A massive, concussive blast of kinetic energy was sent back into the two animals, thrown backwards by their own power. They shot like out of a cannon, each backwards, creating a great, grand divide between themselves. The ground where they had clashed broke and crashed, splitting open and sending durt and mud raining up towards the skies.
At the same time, the two lions recovered mid-flight. Like as one, like they were guided by the same instincts, they spun around in the air and landed - vertically - to the surface of the tree they were about to hit.
Pyry was the one to act first.
He wrapped his arms around the massive pine tree, and with a great, wrenching groan of an ancient wood dying, lifted the tree from its roots.
Then, landing to the ground, he set that tree like a javelin and --- sent it hurtling forwards!
Accompanied by a punch of a black armor that shattered it into hundreds of spears!
"----------!"
Ahti's growl was guttural thunder. His hair stood up due to the lightning coursing through him. He gazed upon the rain of death heading his way, his eyes focused on the only thing that mattered.
The golden lion on the other side of the spears.
And that was why---!
He sang body electric.
For a split second, Ahti Jalopeura turned into a hurtling bolt of lightning, streaming across the battlefield even though his body was battered and skewered by the wooden spears.
He reduced the distance between the two brothers to zero in an instant and slammed into Pyry, burying the claws of his right hand deep into his chest.
But as he raised his left hand to take his head...!
"RHAAAAAA---!"
The black gauntled was ready.
It descended like a hammer of a judge, about to split the white lion in half.
Almost.
It had almost ended there.
Either by the hand of Ahti, or by the hand of Pyry. Both had been in a position take each other's lives. And both had shown no hesitation. Their grievances, their blame, their regrets, their wishes, their desperation... it had all but evaporated now. There was nothing else remaining but two raging beasts, guided by the instincts that had been built into them by a place that treated humans as nothing more than weapons. They, two hunters made to hunt each other, had been acting as their nature told them to.
They had been ready to kill. Yet they did not.
Why?
Both Hisa and Prushka, watching within the rain, knew. They both felt it. Hisa through her connection. Prushka through her senses.
--- Even in the midst of their insanity, the two brothers did not wish for the other to die, no matter what they said.
Thus, as the armored hand fell down and the claws surged forth, both had used their self-preservation instincts to protect each other. Ahti jumped backwards, pulling his claws from Pyry's chest - while Pyry moved to shield himself from the incoming attack, retracting the armored hand that had been about to crush his brother.
Lightning roared straight above. The storm seemed to laugh at their pain.
And the two lions...
"RAAAAAAAAARRGGHHH---!!!"
Who was yelling at this point?
It was impossible to tell at this point.
But what they both stepped forward, hands ready, weapons ready, and unloaded a barrage of strikes and attack on each other.
It was a dance of death that a human eye could not fully follow.
Strike against strike, claw against claw, fang against fang, eye against eye.
Two beasts of same origins crashed together, ripping each other apart in a whirlwind melee that turned the ground around them into a barren wasteland, ripped away the roots, tore away the wind, burnt away the grass and flung away the rocks. Earth was scattered and disintegrated in the wake of the mana that was overflowing out of the two, clouds of gasoline-like mirage existence that burned away in a manner of wildfire, without nowhere to go.
And after exchanging countless strike, after drawing blood from each other far too many times...
It all ended in a massive explosion of force as the brothers struck a head against head, forehead against a forehead, trying to crush the skull of each other.
Where did the man end and the animal begin?
Was there a difference in the first place? Perhaps not anymore.
But as the rain of destruction around the two lions fell, as the smoke and dust and debris formed a tornado and flung itself around the combatants, shielding them from view...
--- That's when Hisa felt it.
It all came together.
For the whole week, she had been searching, analyzing and categorizing the feelings, emotions, thoughts and heart of Pyry Leijonamieli. She had become so intrinsically familiar with the boy's inner world that she might as well have called it her own. No, not just this week... through that link, she had been able to fill the missing pieces with the young man she had known last week as well. And thus, it was like a second body to her, in a way. These emotions, though they definitely were his, were so familiar that she could have called them her own.
That was why she immediately recognized it.
That foreign venom.
That code branded into the soul of the golden lion.
Instincts not of his own making - the ones that were driving him to kill his brother now.
This was an alien entity within him.
Hateful. Conceited. Arrogant.
The brainwashing of the ones who had created him, who still, to this day, enslaved and chained his heart.
And at the crescendo of this fight, now that their hearts lay the barest and the rawest...
She had finally caught this snake by its tail.
And now she could follow to it's source and root it out... yank the sickness into the daylight and burn it, disintegrate it, destroy it for good...!
She had her target.
And ironically enough, through that connection... she realized that Pyry wasn't the only one she was feeling. No, the overflowing emotions of the golden lion mixed with that of the white, and they become almost a single entity. A singular entity through which the same poison flowed - a river of commands and brainwashing that was the same in them each. She saw that same river start from Ahti Jalopeura, and meander down into the soul, where it combined with Pyry's path and dove deep, deep, deeper into the depths - into the source.
That's where the origin of both of their agony was - behind that locked door. She could destroy the source of both of their suffering...
As long as someone busted down that door of pure, swirling, malignant emotion in her way.
In that moment, Prushka sensed it.
The center of that violence, something had finally formed. As she had put it, the chain that was holding Ahti had finally been pulled taunt - almost to the breaking point. The beast that was leashed on it was raging to the point of making those chains creak, and the sounds it made allowed her to pinpoint exactly where it was. There, at the center of them both. It wasn't mere mana that was surging out of them, in that whirlwind of destruction. It was their own, physical emotions, spreading out like a conflagration of feelings.
They were making their pain, sorrow, hope and dreams visible for the two girls, in hopes that they could save them.
And she sensed it - it was like a beacon of light in pure darkness.
A lighthouse.
Only, it was locked behind something dreadful and dark. A door of malignant emotions and poison, whispered words of hypnotism and brainwashing that had seeped into them both. Yes, at this point, she wasn't merely sensing the soul of Ahti - it was being reflected by Pyry's and the two of them resonated as one. Thus, she saw the great, grand door depicting a copper-rooted mountain and it's nine locks. That was the enemy. Through that door was the source of the poison tearing down them both.
It was the final gate, the dam of truth, that held back everything they really wanted to feel and express.
And hidden there, on the other side, was the snake and its venom, one that had caused this all to begin with.
However, Prushka knew - she could tear down that door like wet paper. They might have been good at subjugating those they lorded over in their arrogance, but they paled in power over emotions when it came to her.
And if she tore that door down, someone only needed to strike forth, surge forth, and grasp that snake from within the darkness.
--- And wring its neck.
Naturally, there was one last problem.
One last obstacle.
As the two girls sensed their final enemy, the battle had reached its crescendo. Emotions and souls had started taking a physical form, and that took its toll.
The two boys were no longer in control of themselves. No, they were being guided by pure instinct.
And at the moment, they were locked in a struggle - hands grasping each other, trying to bring the other to the ground. An almost barbaric, beast-like test of strength for two humans.
Except, the two boys...
--- Were no longer human.
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Originally Posted by Anna
