Location: The Titan Pit, Sector 7.
Time: 15:05.
Dante reached into his belt pouch. His fingers brushed against the cold, heavy lead of the containment box. He pulled out the final half-bar of Enriched Uranium. It glowed with a sickly, malevolent green light in the twilight.
Valerius watched him, tilting his head like a curious bird. He didn't interrupt. He waited. "A last meal?"
"Dessert," Dante corrected.
He tossed the metal into his mouth.
CRUNCH.
The radiation hit his system like a defibrillator kick-started by a lightning bolt. The grey edges of his vision sharpened instantly into high-definition clarity. The static blurring his existence stabilized. His mana pool, dry a moment ago, flooded with toxic, green energy.
"Better," Dante exhaled, green steam venting from his nose like a dragon.
But it wasn't enough. His stomach was still torn open, held together only by a fragile patch of glass. He needed meat to knit the tear, and the only meat high-grade enough to match his altered physiology was Subject Alpha—the mountain of dead flesh standing directly behind Valerius.
Valerius flicked his crystal sword, shedding a drop of blue blood. "You are stalling."
He moved.
Valerius didn't run; he simply ceased to be at point A and appeared at point B. The red crystal blade slashed horizontally, aiming to decapitate Dante.
Dante didn't dodge backward. He dove forward.
He slid under the blade, the monofilament edge slicing a lock of his silver hair. He crashed into Valerius's legs, tackling the Sword-Saint.
It was like tackling a marble statue bolted to the floor. Valerius didn't budge. He looked down, surprised by the sheer lack of elegance.
"Crude," Valerius whispered. He raised his sword to impale Dante.
"Get off!" Dante roared.
He triggered the Gentleman's Ripper. A concussive blast of compressed air erupted from the exhaust port in his elbow, launching him out from under Valerius and propelling him backward... straight into the corpse of Subject Alpha.
Dante slammed into the Titan's wet flesh.
"Harvest."
He buried his left, organic hand—deep into the meat of the Titan's leg.
It was disgusting, but necessary.
The Titan's flesh liquefied at his touch, flowing like red wax into Dante's hand, up his arm, and swirling around his stomach wound. It wasn't healing; it was theft. The Titan's muscle fibers wove themselves into Dante's abdomen, stitching the wound shut with stolen biology. The glass patch shattered and fell away, replaced by thick, greyish-pink Titan hide.
Valerius watched, lowering his sword. He didn't attack. He looked... fascinated.
"You are a chimera," Valerius noted, his reptilian eyes narrowing. "But you build yourself. We were built by others."
"That's the difference, Valerius," Dante panted, standing up. He flexed his new abs; they felt hard as concrete and smelled of formaldehyde. "I own my scars."
"A noble sentiment," Valerius said, raising his blade into a high guard. "Let us see if you own your death."
They clashed.
It was a blur of silver and red. Valerius was faster—impossibly so. His sword was a paintbrush, creating arcs of lethal light, and Dante was the canvas.
Slash.
A cut opened on Dante's cheek.
CLANG.
The Gentleman's Ripper sparked, blocking a blow that would have cut a steam-tank in half. The impact rattled Dante's teeth.
Dante tried to stab with his Transmutation Dagger, but Valerius caught his wrist, twisted it with casual strength, and kicked Dante in the chest.
THUD.
Dante flew back, skidding in the sand, coughing up bile.
"You rely too much on tricks," Valerius said, walking forward slowly. "Alchemy is trade. Combat is art. You are trying to haggle with a painting."
"I'm not an artist," Dante gritted out, throwing a vial of magnesium flash-powder at the ground. "But I do like to criticize!"
BANG.
White light blinded the pit.
Dante lunged through the smoke, aiming a desperation punch at Valerius's throat.
Valerius didn't see it, but he felt the air pressure change. He stepped sideways, eyes closed. He caught Dante's mechanical fist in his bare hand.
CRACK.
The ground beneath them spiderwebbed from the impact absorption.
Valerius opened his eyes. They were slitted, glowing with genuine respect.
"Good," Valerius whispered. "You fight like a rat in a corner. It is... honest."
He twisted his hips and threw Dante.
Dante crashed into the side of The Psychopomp, denting the armored door inward. He slid to the ground, gasping.
Meanwhile
While the duel raged, the Black-Gardens were cleaning house.
The four-armed monstrosities hunted the remaining Iron Legion guards who had survived the retreat. Screams echoed from the dunes as the chitinous spiders dragged men under the sand.
"Open the door!" Silas screamed, hauling a terrified mercenary by his collar.
He shoved the man into the back of the hearse. Two more mercenaries scrambled in, bleeding and weeping.
A Black-Garden leaped onto the roof of the car, screeching and trying to pry the sunroof open.
Silas grabbed a sawed-off shotgun from the dash.
"Get off my paint job!"
BOOM.
He blew the creature off the roof. He slammed the door and locked it, his hands shaking so hard he dropped the keys. He looked through the reinforced glass at Dante.
"He's losing," Silas whispered, terror in his voice. "That white knight is toying with him."
Dante tried to stand. His mechanical arm was seizing up, the servos whining in protest. The Uranium high was fading, replaced by the crushing weight of reality.
Valerius stood ten paces away, unblemished. He wasn't even breathing hard.
"It is over, Silver Face," Valerius said softly. "You have fought well. I will make it quick. I will not let Gorm experiment on you. I will give you a soldier's death."
It was an offer of mercy. A warrior's grace.
Dante looked at the Titan corpses—Subject Alpha, Beta, and Gamma. Mountains of high-grade biological material. Massive batteries of flesh.
He looked at Valerius.
He couldn't win this fight. Not like this. He needed metaphysics.
He needed the Librarian.
Dante took a deep breath. He closed his eyes. When he opened them, the whites were gone. They were pitch black voids.
"PRIME!" Dante screamed, his voice cracking the air, sounding like two stones grinding together. "OPEN THE GATES TO THE FIRST AXIOM!"
The battlefield went silent. The wind died.
The mercenaries in the car stopped crying. Silas groaned and covered his eyes with his hands.
"Oh god," Silas moaned. "He's doing the thing. It's so embarrassing. I can't watch."
Valerius paused. He tilted his head, looking at Dante with genuine pity.
"Insanity?" Valerius murmured. "A side effect of the decay? What a pity."
"Query received," the cold, logical voice of Prime echoed from the sky. It was audible only to Dante... at first. Then, the air pressure dropped so low people's ears popped.
"WHAT IS THE OFFER?" Prime's voice boomed, vibrating the teeth of everyone in the sector. It wasn't a sound; it was a command to the atmosphere.
Valerius's eyes widened. The voice didn't come from Dante. It came from everywhere.
Dante pointed a shaking finger at the mountains of dead flesh.
"THE TWO TITANS THERE!" Dante roared. "SUBJECT ALPHA! SUBJECT BETA! TAKE THEM!"
Valerius looked around, his composure cracking. "Who are you talking to?"
Suddenly, gravity doubled.
Then tripled.
The Black-Gardens stopped screeching and were pressed flat into the sand, their limbs splaying out. The mercenaries in the car gasped as the suspension of The Psychopomp collapsed, the chassis hitting the sand.
Valerius's knees buckled. He slammed his sword into the ground, using it as a cane to stay upright. His chitin armor groaned under the invisible weight.
"What... is this?" Valerius gasped, blood trickling from his nose. "Gravity... magic?"
"No," Dante grinned, blood staining his silver teeth. "Something way better."
The air behind Dante ripped open.
It wasn't a portal. It was a geometric impossibility. A giant, rotating Tesseract made of hard light manifested in reality. It was the First Axiom. The Ivory Archive at the End of the World.
The smell of old paper, ozone, and infinite dust flooded the battlefield, overpowering the stench of rot. The sheer presence of the object warped the light around it, bending the horizon.
Valerius stared at it. For the first time, the Sword-Saint knew fear. Not fear of death, but fear of insignificance. He was looking at a higher dimension.
"Beautiful," Valerius whispered, tears leaking from his reptilian eyes.
Enormous chains made of blue mana shot out of the Gate. They didn't grab the Titans. They impaled them. The massive corpses of Alpha and Beta were dragged instantly into the void, vanishing into the Axiom to be dissected by Prime.
"PAYMENT ACCEPTED," the voice boomed.
Two more chains shot out.
One wrapped around Dante's waist.
The other wrapped around Valerius.
"Wait," Dante said, blinking. "I didn't say take Him!"
"THE SUBJECT 'VALERIUS' HAS BEEN FLAGGED FOR ANALYSIS," Prime stated coldly. "UNIQUE PHYSIOLOGY DETECTED. COLLECTING SAMPLES."
"No!" Valerius roared. He tried to cut the chain with his crystal sword.
SHATTER.
The sword—grown from dragon marrow, harder than diamond—shattered on impact with the Axiom chain.
The chains retracted.
Dante and Valerius were yanked off their feet. They flew backward, screaming and cursing, straight into the blinding light of the Tesseract.
SNAP.
The Gate vanished.
The pressure lifted instantly.
Silence returned to the Titan Pit. The wind began to blow again.
Silas slowly lowered his hands from his eyes. He looked through the windshield.
The Titans were gone.
Valerius was gone.
Dante was gone.
Only the dead body of Grist and the wreckage of the battle remained.
Silas looked at the terrified mercenaries in the back seat.
"So," Silas said, his voice trembling as he picked up the keys from the floor mat. "Who wants to explain this to the Baron?"