Chapter 47: Brick vs Ren!
Damon and the others faded into the distance of the labyrinth, disappearing as the path suddenly shifted, leaving the four of them alone. Standing in a corridor that smelled of dust and old stone, with the hourglass bleeding gold above with each second passing.
Brick didn't care about the hourglass.
Not right now. Not with the son of Susanoo standing twelve paces away, tapping the tip of his kanabo against the marble floor like a drummer counting in the beat to a song only he could hear.
The corridor they stood in belonged to no one. Not Greek. Not Japanese. Just grey stone and guttering torchlight. Brick could feel the difference in his bones — the Greek zone's warmth was gone, that familiar fire of his father's blood running easy through his veins. He was back to baseline. His own strength, his own rage, his own limits.
Good. That was the whole point. Brick needed to know if he was strong enough. He needed to know that his own strength mattered in this tournament. Or if he was weak and of no use, like in his fight against Vali.
Ren cracked his neck, rolling his head from one shoulder to the other, his muscles visible as the fibres flickered and popped at the movement. The storm-cloud tattoo writhing across his bare skin threw tiny arcs of electricity into the air. His dark blue hair lifted in a wind that had no source, alive and moving on its own.
"So," Ren said, his voice deep, like thunder. "Just us now."
Beside Brick, Thalios stood coiled and ready, electricity crawling across his bronze sword in white-gold threads. His eyes, though, weren't on Ren. They were on Akira. The son of Hachiman hadn't moved — that same impossible stillness, one hand resting on the lacquered scabbard of his katana, his dark eyes reading Thalios with intent.
"Pick your opponent, son of Zeus," Akira said. Quiet, measured, utterly without arrogance. "Or I will pick for you."
"You think you get to choose?" Thalios snapped.
"I think the storm-wielder wants the war god's son." Akira's gaze was steady. "And I would rather face someone who fights with his mind, not just his fists."
"I'll make you sorry you ever challenged the son of Zeus," Thalios said, pointing the tip of his sword toward Akira.
Akira's hand closed around the hilt of his katana. "We will see."
Ren let out a bark of laughter. "Good. It's settled then." He said while swinging his kanabo up onto his shoulder with one arm, locking his gaze onto Brick.
"I wouldn't have it any other way."
Brick hefted his war hammer. The leather wrapping was stained with his own blood from a dozen fights across the labyrinth, and the head of the weapon was notched and scarred from impacts that would have shattered ordinary steel. It wasn't a pretty weapon. It wasn't supposed to be. It was made for one purpose, and so was the man holding it.
War.
"I'm going to enjoy this," Ren said, never taking his eyes off of Brick.
"Well, what are we waiting for!" Brick yelled, sick of standing around as he charged towards Ren, leaving Akira and Thalios to their own battle.
No tactics. No subtlety. No calculation. Just the son of Ares launching himself across twelve paces of stone with every ounce of strength his body could produce, his war hammer drawn back behind his shoulder ready to unleash its power.
Ren didn't dodge. Didn't sidestep. He didn't even blink.
His mouth opened wide with the smile of a savage warrior, and he charged to meet Brick head-on.
They met in the middle like two avalanches colliding on the same mountainside.
Brick's Warhammer met Ren's kanabo with a sound that went beyond noise — concussive, physical, a shockwave that blew the torches flat and sent a web of cracks racing across the marble floor. Brick felt the impact travel through his arms, shoulders, spine, and teeth. Felt his boots skid backwards on the stone. Felt the raw, animal shock of hitting something that didn't give.
Ren's grin had become a snarl, his whole body braced behind the kanabo, the iron studs biting into Brick's hammer head and locking them together in a grinding deadlock. The storm-cloud tattoo across his bare shoulders churned with energy that danced between them in stinging arcs.
For a moment, neither moved. Two pillars of force pushing against each other with everything they had, the marble cracking beneath them both as their feet dug into the ground, refusing to be pushed back.
They broke apart, each taking but a second before they charged forward again.
Brick swung low, and Ren brought his kanabo down in a vicious overhead arc. Brick was forced to twist out of the descending blow, and felt it whistle past his ear and smash into the floor hard enough to blow a crater in the marble, chunks of stone spraying upward like shrapnel. He used the momentum to spin, bringing his hammer around in a horizontal sweep that caught Ren across the ribs, landing a clean blow.
The Japanese demigod took it. Didn't block it — took it. Absorbed it into his body the way a mountainside absorbs a thrown stone and staggered only one step. On anyone else, those ribs would have caved. On Ren, the impact drew a grunt and a fresh surge of that wild, hungry grin.
"There it is," Ren breathed. "That's what I wanted to feel!"
Then something shifted in the son of Susanoo's eyes. Not anger. Not calculation.
Curiosity.
Brick realised it with a flash of irritation — a hot spark behind his sternum that he recognised as the first ember of his father's gift.
The bastard was testing him.
Every strike. Every grin. Every time Ren leaned into a blow instead of dodging it. He wasn't fighting a battle. He was ringing a bell and waiting to see what answered.
High above the labyrinth, the gods watched.
Ares was leaning forward, his hands gripping the armrests of his throne. The god of war hadn't blinked since the first blow landed. His jaw was tight, his eyes burning with an intense fire as he watched the battle unfold.
"The boy hits like he means it," Ares muttered. It was the closest thing to a compliment he'd ever given his son. The fact that he said it to no one in particular made it almost honest.
"Your son hits hard," Poseidon acknowledged, leaning his chin on his fist. "But the Japanese boy took it as if it were nothing."
Across the chamber, in the section that had reshaped itself into polished dark wood and paper screens, Susanoo was already on his feet. The god of storms hadn't sat down since the fight began, his wild hair crackling with static, miniature bolts of lightning dancing through his beard.
"That's my blood!" He barked, slamming his fist against the wooden railing hard enough to make several nearby deities flinch. "Look at him! He doesn't even guard — he doesn't need to! Ha!"
"He's reckless," Hachiman said quietly from beside him. The Japanese god of war sat in full armour, his disciplined stillness a sharp contrast to Susanoo's chaos. His dark eyes weren't observing the fight. "Your son absorbs punishment for sport. Not a very tactical warrior." However, the Japanese god of war was more concerned about his own son's fight to be. Watching as he stood face to face with the son of Zeus.
Susanoo's grin only widened. "Then let's hope your boy fares better than mine."
Hachiman said nothing. He simply watched.
"He's being tested," Athena observed from beside her brother, Ares, her grey eyes sharp. "The son of Susanoo is measuring him. Provoking him deliberately to gauge his strength."
"I know what he's doing," Ares growled, not needing Athena to explain it for him.
"Then you also know what happens if Brick takes the bait."
Ares was quiet for a moment. Then the god of war sat back, a dangerous grin spreading across his scarred face.
"He won't take the bait," Ares said. "He'll swallow it whole, and then he'll bite the hand that fed it to him."
Ares turned his head, seeming to catch the wild smirk of Susanoo, each god watching from their own realm.
"I guess it will be fun to see what your children have to offer," Ares said, matching Susanoo's smirk.
Sparks seemed to dance around Susanoo's beard with more intensity as his eyes locked onto Ares'.
Speaking in an ancient form of Japanese, long since forgotten. "My boy is going to destroy more than your son's body. He will devour your son's spirit. Just you wait and see."
Below the realm of the gods, both Ren and Brick continued their battle.
Ren came forward swinging fiercely. The kanabo moved with speed that defied its weight, each arc trailing sparks where the iron studs scraped the walls. Brick blocked, parried, and was able to catch one blow on the handle, feeling the wood groan from the force. Ren was relentless — no pauses, no feints, just devastating strikes delivered with joyful abandon that turned combat into expression.
Brick planted his feet and answered a downward strike with an uppercut that should have ripped the kanabo out of Ren's grip. Instead, the son of Susanoo absorbed the deflection, pivoted, and brought the kanabo around in a horizontal arc aimed low at Brick's left knee.
The iron studs connected with a wet, grinding crunch, and pain detonated up Brick's leg like a bolt of lightning.
He staggered, catching himself on his hammer, the weapon becoming a crutch for one horrible second. His knee screamed — not broken, but close, the joint grinding in a way that sent white sparks across his vision.
Ren didn't stop there.
The next swing came straight for that leg again, Ren having seen he hit a sweet spot. Brick was forced to throw himself sideways, hitting the marble wall with his shoulder, and felt the kanabo whistle past his damaged knee with an inch to spare. The impact cratered the wall where his leg had been.
"Come on," Ren said. Not a taunt — an invitation. He rolled his shoulders, the storm-cloud tattoo writhing across his chest. "You're holding back. I can feel it."
Brick's teeth clenched. His knee throbbed with every heartbeat, and a part of him — a part that had been curled up in a cold, tight ball since Vali had caught his hammer with one hand and looked at him like he was nothing — wanted to believe Ren was right.
Brick shook it off, charging in with a roar.
The knee screamed in protest, but something deeper than pain answered — something ancient and hot that lived in the marrow of a war god's son, a birthright of blood. He compensated without thinking, shifting his weight to the right leg, turning the limp into a lunging stance that put everything behind his hammer.
Ren met the charge head-on. Their weapons collided once, twice, three times in rapid succession — the corridor shaking with each impact, marble dust sifting from the ceiling like grey snow. Brick drove Ren backward step by step, pouring every ounce of Ares' gift into his strikes.
Ren didn't buckle. Didn't retreat. He gave ground like a tide pulling back — controlled, deliberate, waiting.
Then Ren smiled as he opened the sky.
"Is that really all you have!" He yelled.
The storm-cloud tattoo on his shoulders expanded, crawling across his chest, up his neck, down his arms — living ink spreading like a thunderhead consuming clear sky. The air pressure plummeted. Brick's ears popped. The torches guttered and died, and the darkness shattered with lightning — raw, screaming bolts that erupted from Ren's body and crawled across the walls in branching, blinding forks.
Wind hit him next. A gale that howled through the corridor hard enough to send loose stones skittering. Rain followed — not drops but sheets, driven sideways, cold and hard and stinging. In three seconds, Ren had turned a dry marble corridor into the inside of a typhoon.
Ren came through the storm like a god walking through his own creation. The kanabo was wreathed in lightning now, each iron stud blazing with electricity. The wind was behind him, accelerating his swing; the kanabo came around in a horizontal arc aimed at Brick's chest.
Brick lifted his hammer to meet the incoming strike.
Barely.
The impact drove him backwards — boots carving twin furrows through wet stone, the lightning arcing from Ren's kanabo through the hammer handle into his hands. Sharp. White. Electric pain lancing through his forearms and up into his shoulders, his jaw locking so hard he could taste copper.
And his knee.
Gods, his knee.
Every step backwards sent a fresh bolt of agony through the damaged joint. The rain blinded him. The wind pushed him off balance. The floor was a skating rink beneath his feet, and Ren pressed forward, swinging again and again, each blow amplified by the storm — harder, faster than his natural strength alone could produce.
A sweeping strike caught Brick's hammer at the wrong angle and tore it sideways. His grip slipped. The hammer spun from his fingers, clattering across the flooded stone, leaving him without his weapon.
The world went quiet in Brick's head.
His warhammer was ten feet away now, and Ren was already moving again.
The kanabo rose, wreathed in a crown of captured lightning — enough voltage to stop a heart. Enough force to crack a skull. Ren's grin was incandescent, and in his eyes was the simple, terrible joy of a storm.
Brick had exactly one heartbeat to stop himself from losing.
He didn't think. Thinking was too slow for this. Something older than thought — older than training, older than strategy, something that lived deep inside of him took over. Something that told him not to give up.
That this was not the end.
He must fight.
Fight until the last breath.
Or die...
In the golden halls of Asgard, Thor drained his horn of mead in a single, cavernous swallow and slammed it down on the armrest hard enough to almost crack the wood. Foam clung to his beard that he didn't bother wiping.
"The Greek boy's finished," he declared, leaning forward with the kind of grin that came from watching someone else's son take a beating. "My money's on Jap-boy. Look at that — he almost hits like a younger me." Thor said, seeming impressed by Ren's kanabo clad in lightning.
Heimdall said nothing. His golden eyes tracked the fight with the patience of someone who'd been watching everything, everywhere, since before the first sunrise. He'd learned long ago that correcting Thor mid-drink was like shouting into a gale.
In the divine halls of the Japanese pantheon, Susanoo watched his son fight, and the storm inside him answered.
Lightning crackled across the ceiling. Rain misted from nowhere, dampening the polished floors. The other gods shifted in their seats — even among their own kind, Susanoo's moods had a way of becoming everyone's problem.
He stood at the edge of the viewing pool, one bare foot braced on the rim, his wild hair lifting in a wind that existed only around him. His eyes — dark, electric, utterly feral — hadn't blinked since the first blow landed.
"There it is," he breathed, watching Ren channel a storm into the iron studs of his kanabo. A grin split his face, sharp and savage.
"Break him, boy. Show them what thunder sounds like!" Not quieting his words so the other gods could hear him.
On Mount Olympus, the Greek gods watched from their thrones in silence.
Zeus sat with one hand resting on his knee, the other stroking his beard. Static popped between his fingers. His expression gave nothing away, but his eyes moved constantly, tracking every shift in the fight.
Hermes tilted his head, his winged sandals fidgeting against the marble floor. "Well," he said, glancing sideways at Ares, "I hope you said something nice to him while you had the chance. A few encouraging words, perhaps? 'Try not to die' — something fatherly like that."
A few gods smothered reactions. Hermes had a gift for saying what everyone thought but what no one dared voice.
Poseidon leaned back, his trident propped against his throne, arms crossed over his broad chest. "It doesn't look good for him," he said plainly, his sea-green eyes following the arc of Ren's kanabo as it cratered the marble floor. "The Japanese boy has raw power indeed."
The words were directed at Ares.
Ares didn't respond.
He sat perfectly still on his throne — a stillness that looked wrong on the god of war, like seeing a bonfire hold its breath. His scarred hands were folded in front of his face, fingertips pressed together, dark eyes fixed on the fight with an intensity that made the air around his throne taste like iron.
The other gods noticed the silence. They'd seen Ares scream, rage, laugh, and break thrones in half over less. This quiet was something else. Something that made Hermes's smile falter, just slightly.
"This fight is far from over," Ares said.
His voice was low. Not loud, not booming — the voice of a god who had watched more battles than every other deity in this hall combined and understood what he was seeing in a way they never could.
He leaned back into his throne, and a slow, knowing smirk carved itself across the scars on his face.
"The boy's just getting warmed up."