It had been nearly a month since the four Fiends had moved to the Drazah estate. In that time, Kada and Xard had been through rigorous training day after day with no chance of reprieve, at least not until their trial was complete. It was late in the morning and they were in the middle of their daily routine of working on their personal project. This project entailed moving an entire mountain from the west border of the compound to the north side, entirely by hand.
In the past month, they had moved just under half of the mountain. It had started off as just a small mound of dirt and rocks on the first day, leaving the two feeling completely hopeless. However, the landscape was well into forming a proper mountain now. Though, calling it a regular mountain would be a bit of a misnomer. To ease the tediousness of the project, they had turned it into an artistic piece of sorts. It definitely was a mountain in base shape, but it was littered with various structures and other decorative features.
Xard had a habit of building towers and lookout posts, ranging from basic designs to ones that looked like they belonged on a castle wall. He was taking the idea of turning it into a defensible position a bit literally. Kada, on the other hand, was a bit more free spirited about it and would just make whatever she felt like at the time.
There were several Pox formations, a nice resting spot and picnic area with benches and tables a ways up the mountain, and she had plans to create a running water feature as they got further along. As the mountain began to get more developed, they had worked together to build an intricate staircase that ascended the full length to make their lives easier as the project progressed.
Their efforts had begun to pay off. The original goal was to make it so that it wouldn’t get dark as fast when the sun went down. With half of the mountain moved now, they got about another half-hour of light each day. The two of them were currently on the old mountain, taking turns with a pickaxe to break apart the ground into carryable chunks. Over time as their strength grew, those chunks gradually grew in comparable size.
Xard was ready for a break from swinging and wiped the sweat from his forehead after handing the pickaxe over to Kada, with the entire rest of us his upper body also glistening from the pouring perspiration. After the first few days of hard labor, and realizing how dingy his clothes became, he had decided to forgo his embarrassment and work without a shirt. Like the man, Kada also worked without one, but still wore a bikini top to maintain at least some form of decency.
The physical labor clearly had an effect on the redhead’s physique. He was much more toned and muscular then before, especially his arms. Though still not even close to Drim’s level, compared to his previous state, it was quite a leap. As predicted by Phon, Kada’s appearance hadn’t changed too much. She had slimmed down a little more, and everything got a bit more taut and defined, but mostly she remained the same. Her actual strength had grown proportionally to Xard’s, however.
With each strike of the pickaxe, the ground beneath them trembled. Their training had increased their power significantly, and now each blow made several cracks appear and ripple along the ground. Intense noise accompanied the act, making loud booms similar to thunder each time. To the citizens in the town, it probably sounded like they were trying to blow up the mountain. Drim had put up a ‘We’re Sorry for the Noise’ sign outside the gate, not that anyone had come to complain.
The relocation project wasn’t the only source of disturbance they had caused. Basically every hour of the day, trucks were rolling in and out of the compound to deliver construction materials. They were all unloaded at the east side of the grounds. Over the past weeks, vast amounts had been delivered and were now stacked up in giant piles. It was clear that the Drazahs had big plans, but they had yet to even break ground on any of them. The siblings would brush it off, saying that they weren’t ready yet whenever asked. Kada seemed to pout the first few times deliveries were made, as if she could see the vast fortune the two had accumulated rapidly draining away.
There was another major disturbance that happened somewhat infrequently, and it appeared to be occurring right at that moment. Both Kada and Xard turned their heads towards the direction of the new noise. “Looks like they’re at it again,” the man remarked.
“Sure sounds like it,” the woman took a break from swinging. She set the head of the pickaxe down on the ground, placed both hands on the bottom of the handle, and then used them to rest her chin. “Guess Drim must have woken up early today.”
“Wanna go watch?” Xard asked her, already knowing what her response would be.
“Well duh…” Kada answered immediately. Even if it wasn’t for something interesting, the girl didn’t need a reason to shirk work and take a proper break. The two of them headed over towards the compound, having been working on the far side of the mountain in relation to it, which just went to show how noisy the Drazahs were being. They got to the other edge and stared down at the event unfolding before them. Drim and Phon were in the middle of a fierce skirmish against each other. They would spar—closer to an all-out brawl—on occasion when they both had free time, which had been rare over the past month.
Kada placed her hands into the rock at their feet and then pulled them up, the newly made liquid following them. She then resolidified it, forming new rock stools for them to rest their weary bodies. However, the reforming process hadn’t gone as well as one would hope. The stools were still just circular lumps of rock with jagged edges that were resting on thinner support posts.
“Really, after all of our training, that’s the best you can do?” Xard criticized, clearly unimpressed.
“Hey, it’s really hard to change something’s shape like this and make it stick, alright? I’ve been working my butt off. It’s way better than I used to be able to do. And exactly how is your training going Mr. Buzz Buzz?” Kada snapped back at him.
“Well it’s… forget it, just hit me please.” Lately, the man would make such a jarring request rather often. To other humans, it’d probably seem extremely odd and would possibly warrant psychiatric help, but the other Fiends had come to accept it as another regular thing. Kada did as he asked and punched him in the chest as hard as she could. Her hand stopped dead, as usual, once it made contact with his skin. Xard then swiftly ran his pointer finger horizontally along each of the rock stools. Energy shot out as he slashed across, cutting the big chunks in half. He pushed off the top halves which clunked to the ground, leaving behind smooth surfaces for their butts.
◆◆◆
Down below, their peaceful land looked more like a battlefield. The ground was scarred ,and the entire area was covered in black thorns. At the center of the spontaneous giant bramble was Drim, still in his pajamas. Like everything else he owned, they were mostly black with green trim and stitching. Even the top had a hood on it. Since he was clearly fresh out of bed, it most likely meant this had been an unplanned incident and a sibling had initiated a surprise attack on the other. Since Drim was wearing his bracers, it meant he was probably the instigator this time.
The battles acted as training for the both of them. Fighting against another Fiend provided valuable experience they couldn’t get anywhere else. Kada and Xard hadn’t reached such a high level of training, and for good reason; neither Drim or Phon ever pulled any punches. They may have the self-restraint to hold off from dealing a killing blow, but to those who got to watch the spectacle, it genuinely looked like they were trying to kill each other.
As the two spectators sat down on their less-than-comfortable perches, Phon teleported behind Drim and swung her yo-yo at him. The unmistakable whirring of the buzzsaw blades rang out as the brutal toy transformed mid-flight. Her brother reacted just in time to move one of his arms back and block with a retracted blade. Sparks flew as the tough pieces of metal scraped together. Some of the vines on the ground around the ambusher tried to close in on and grab her, but they were too late as usual.
A few limitations had been put into play over the course of these bouts. Drim would not use his ‘Thorned Tyrant’ form as the public had come to call it, which had allowed him to obliterate the soldiers in Constead. Using those techniques required way more mental energy than he would want to spend. It meant that if he didn’t finish off an enemy with it, he was liable to leave himself vulnerable. The Slayer didn’t want to have to rely on using them anymore and would rather develop his core skills instead.
Phon’s limitation was that she was not allowed to teleport her brother. The primary reason was that the match would be over instantly if she moved him away. Also, in the majority of scenarios where she wanted to avoid or end conflict immediately, she could simply teleport her adversary elsewhere and be done with it, but that wasn’t conducive to growing her fighting ability. This training allowed her to focus on her own skill set when this wasn’t a viable option. And as a final reason, Drim had found a way to effectively neutralize her Curse with his own.
During their first fight, he had quite literally rooted himself to the ground using his Curse. The roots that flowed from him dug into almost the entire compound. Since he never cut them off from his body, they remained a part of him and would have to be teleported alongside him. According to Phon as she was explaining it later, the tactic essentially made him completely immovable, both in reality and his accompanying piece in Phonscience’s mindscape.
Their conditions for winning weren’t completely straightforward either. Similar to the roots, they found that if Phon was impaled with a thorned vine while it was still connected to Drim, she would become unable to teleport without bringing him with her. The woman would get one chance to cut away the vine before it was considered Drim’s win, since he could do all sorts of damage to her body and organs given any longer amount of time.
The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.
Phon’s win condition was a bit simpler. She simply had to make her brother bleed. Any slash with her yo-yo that was accurate and tactical enough to even land a hit on Drim, who was a master of defense, could almost certainly be a kill-shot if she wanted it to be. Since the brother was generally stronger than his sister, if she managed to somehow pin him, they would likely consider that a win as well. However, the girl had not even come close to achieving such a thing in all of their matches. They both could also win by making the other person yield.
So far the score was 7-6 in Drim’s favor. Neither of them had ever been up by more than one win, so a lot was riding on their current fight. The Vixen, especially, seemed to be in a tizzy, not wanting to lose and fall behind. There were a few more clashes similar to the first. Phon would teleport somewhere to try to get an advantage, but her brother would always manage to block her and then counter with his plants. She would then teleport again before they could grab or impale her.
The Slayer managed to catch one of her teleports early, allowing him to wrap a few vines around her appendages. He knew that she still had trouble teleporting while outside factors were affecting her body, though she had gotten much better in recent weeks. So instead of attempting to use that moment to inject a vine into her, he reeled her towards him since it would likely throw her off. Once she was close enough, he took a heavy swing at her with his left blade, but she vanished before it could hit.
Huh, where’d she go? The man anxiously focused on the area all around him. He hadn’t told anyone this yet, but he had replaced all of the grass on the compound with his own. This allowed him to know the whereabouts of someone at all times. He couldn’t be sure who was standing on it, but the gardener would always know the specific spot whenever someone was touching the ground.
In the past weeks, Drim had gotten better at telling the difference between the three by the amount of grass they displaced based on their foot size and weight. He had also begun work on the nearby mountains, but it was slow going. The process was simple enough to absorb and replace the grass quickly, but when he did too much in a small window, he’d feel nauseous from having the energy recycled through him.
The present issue was that there was no one currently standing on any grass besides himself. Kada and Xard were up in the mountain. He could see the two of them staring down at him, meaning he would have to scold them later for slacking off. It took a moment to realize that his left wrist felt heavier than usual, likely due to his supernatural strength that it took so long for him to notice. By the time he perceived the pair of boots carefully balanced on his blade, Phon had already put her plan into motion.
She grabbed the hood of his pajamas and leapt over his head, then down onto the ground while pulling hard. Drim felt his entire body rise up, the air scraping against him as he was flung into the sky. His sister had managed to send him up a few stories, clearly having put in a decent effort building her strength. He tumbled through the air, trying to reorient himself, but in the middle of a rotation, while his head was pointed towards the ground and his feet were flat towards the heavens, Phon appeared above him.
She had teleported onto the soles of his feet and was fully crouched down. Her brother was immediately more impressed than concerned for his own well-being. The timing and precision of moving her piece onto his in the split second that it would be a standable surface was an insane feat, one he likely wouldn’t be able to pull off. Also, since she was able to precisely make her piece stand on his feet and blade, this meant that the pieces must be incredibly detailed compared to how she normally had them. His sister was starting to use her Curse in ways he wouldn’t have been able to come up with.
The Vixen kicked down with all her might, sending herself up high and Drim careening towards the ground with immense force. He crashed into it hard, groaning as he laid on his back in the small crater he’d just unwillingly created. That was a dumb thing you just did, was the boy’s next thought after confirming he wasn’t dead. Kada will never let you live it down that you copied one of her moves.
Though he had the energy to mentally tease his sister, The Slayer was in a lot of pain but didn’t really have time to rest. His adversary was diving down at him from the sky, ready to inflict even more torment. So in response, Drim slammed his hand against the ground.
Phon clearly wasn’t prepared for what happened next. The man had sprouted a bamboo stalk with a sharpened point and sent it growing straight up towards her at an insane speed. He had been aiming for her stomach, but his sister had barely been able to roll out of the way in time, the sharpened point slicing her arm. As purple blood rained down on the nature defying botanist, he grew several more stalks, making it impossible for her to land without puncturing herself. The Vixen teleported out of the way before they could reach, reappearing a good distance across the compound, rolling across the ground as she carried her momentum.
Drim grabbed onto one of the stalks as it grew, hoisting himself up into the air. He made sure there was no spot on his body that his sister could easily teleport onto as he rode the plant until he was almost as high up as the other Fiends. The Slayer raised his free hand towards the sun and several small green portals littered the sky across the entire compound. He had been working on creating plants farther away from him, and this was the result. It was still hard to make an initial portal too far away, but when one was made, he could make many more easily along the same plane.
White leaves began to pour rapidly from all of them. They were known as gami leaves. By any other standards, they were just normal foliage, excluding their strange color. However, when the leaves were in motion, they became rigid, making them more dense with sharp edges. Normally, they only grew on trees in the northernmost regions and were commonly used for sharpening metal and polishing. However, it was known by the locals in areas they grew to stay far away once autumn came. If someone was caught under the trees when the leaves fell, it could often be fatal.
Drim had never seen these leaves in person, but rather read about them recently in an article. Using his Curse, he was able to recreate them and had been working out how to use them in combat. His original idea was to use them as throwing projectiles but found them far too imprecise. They wouldn’t go very far before they lost speed and would slowly flutter towards the ground. Accuracy was also an issue. For now, he had landed on this method of using gravity to amplify their deadliness.
The idea was to cover as much area as possible as fast as possible. He had also been working on reabsorbing his own plants from farther away, and was able to do so as soon as the leaves hit the ground. Reusing his own plants didn’t have the same vomit-inducing effect that sucking up new plants did, allowing him to rain them down endlessly since no energy was being wasted. Since he wasn’t trying to aim they required extremely little mental energy to use, allowing him to create an unyielding downpour.
Phon would have to constantly teleport to avoid the leaves, but even though she’d only appear for a split-second, she still wasn’t safe, often getting minor cuts that built up quickly. Drim had actually defeated her this way before by cutting off the ribbon covering her eyes with a lucky shot. Before she could react to that and teleport away with her hands, his vines had grabbed her. The Vixen was far more careful this time, keeping her face looking down so the front and sides of her ribbon were more protected by the brim of her hat.
After a few dozen small cuts all over her body, Phon finally managed to teleport to the base of the bamboo. She slashed at them with her yo-yo, cutting all the stalks in a single swipe. They began to topple over as Drim continued to cling to them. This had made him lose focus, causing his portals to close and ending the torrential rain of gami leaves.
The Vixen had previously been unable to teleport anywhere useful on the bamboo since the tops were completely spiked. However, now that they were falling, they were at a decent enough angle that she could move herself onto the sides. She started teleporting from stalk to stalk as she worked her way up to her brother. But the girl was unable to stay on one for too long since her added weight changed the speed and trajectory at which they were falling.
Drim had clambered up onto his own stalk to meet her with blades at the ready. He hadn’t noticed, however, that she had spun the ring on her finger. When he went to parry her attack like usual, instead of the expected sparks flying in the air, there was an electrical current that was now arcing to his blade from her yo-yo. The current ran up his metal weapon and into his arm, surging it with pain. As soon as the pain stopped, it felt numb, and the shock had made The Slayer tumble from his bamboo perch.
As he was just about to hit the ground for a second time, he managed to use his undamaged arm to aim the wounded one just enough so that the blade attached to it sunk deep into the dirt upon impact. Phon behaved like he expected, and had jumped down after him, poised to pummel him with a drop kick, assuming him to be down for the count but wanted to inflict a final blow to be certain.
When she was just a foot away, her brother pushed off the ground with his good arm, using his buried blade as leverage to swing his body. He wrapped his working appendage around his sister as he followed through with the swing and buried his other blade into the ground as well, pinning Phon to the ground with his weight.
She didn’t try to teleport away. He had already driven a thorned vine into her leg as soon as they made contact. They laid there for a few moments, both panting wildly and dripping with sweat as their adrenaline began to subside. Eventually, Phon, who was clearly frustrated, sputtered out between heavy breaths, “Cosdammit... I lost again… Help me up, would ya?” In response, Drim retracted his blades and clambered off of her, then offered his hand and pulled her up once she grabbed it.
As soon as she got to her feet, she stumbled and collapsed onto Drim’s chest. He caught her in his arms like a good brother, but couldn’t stop himself from judging her intentions, “Really, you can’t stand on your own?”
“Sorry about this…” Phon almost slight hint of shyness for a moment before returning to her usual demeanor. “But it’s your fault too since you’re the one who injured me. It seems that someone was extra passionate today. You stuck it in me deep and really pinned me down.”
“Must you word it so sexu- Do you have to say it like that?” the brother adjusted his words mid complaint.
“Huh, like what?” his sister rebutted, clearly confused.
Drim was about to yell at her some more but then came to a sudden realization. It’s quite possible that she genuinely has no idea that the way she phrases things is sometimes weird. Phon had never received any form of sexual education since they’d never received proper schooling since their early childhood. The boy hadn’t either, but he had filled in the gaps from books and conversations he had overheard.
Phon wasn’t nearly as much of the literary type as he was, and she was somehow even less sociable than he who had barely talked in twelve years. So it wasn’t out of the realm of reason that she had no inclination that what she was saying could be misconstrued in such a scandalous manner. Now he was just glad no one was in earshot so he wouldn’t have to explain this discovery to any of them.
Maybe I’ll ask Kada to have a sit down with her later to go over the basics. Before they separated from each other, he managed to catch out of the corner of his eye a mischievous smirk Phon flashed at the two up on the mountain. I knew her injury wasn’t that bad. She just wanted to taunt the others.
Discord, , and Amazon Release (Pending), can be found on the Fiends For Hire .
Who do you think would win in an all-out life or death match?
