Lucius screamed across what remained of the forest.
"Thena, you whore, those were my forty-eighth set of balls."
Broken trunks lay across craters and patches of dark glass. Ice covered one line of exposed roots. Pieces of Lucius occupied enough ground to make counting them useless, though Thena had placed the severed scrotums in roughly the same area.
His latest loss landed among them. He lost the time to leave, yet he knew he would not find the duo again, or alone again. He had learned his weaknesses, all the powers he had, yet he was simply a collector. It was easy to bully the humans, whether they were soldiers, agents or civilians. It was a whole different story when it came to clashing with an Eternal duo; he was still wet behind the ears. They were toying with him, and it was turning him furious by the second.
Gilgamesh stayed beside her. The Eternal's left arm ended above the elbow, and three fingers were missing from his remaining hand. Golden armour enclosed what he could still use.
Thena watched new flesh form between Lucius's thighs.
"It returns," she said.
"That does not make cutting it acceptable."
Her attention rose to his face. "Yet you keep standing."
Two flammards formed in her hands.
The pain had driven the weed from Lucius's thoughts during the first hour. It had not made the fight simple. Thena and Gilgamesh had turned the clearing into a lesson he continued paying for with parts of his body.
He vanished.
The disturbance behind Thena drew Gilgamesh's gaze. She did not turn. One sword reversed beneath her arm and caught the ice lance aimed at her spine. The other swept low.
Lucius phased before it reached his knee, became solid inside her guard, and drove an organic-steel fist toward her ribs.
Thena rolled around the blow. Her elbow struck his temple, her heel stamped behind his knee, and one flammard changed into a hooked edge around his throat.
Gilgamesh hit the force field protecting him.
The field held long enough to take the killing weight from the punch, then broke. Lucius crossed the clearing and hit a tree spine first.
Before he could fall, he teleported sixty feet above them.
Thena's hooked blade became a spear with a chain attached behind it. Lucius caught the first throw with telekinesis and saw the second a fraction too late. It passed through his abdomen. Gilgamesh seized the chain and dragged him down along it.
Distance had not helped. Every escape route ended inside the other's reach.
Lucius tore himself free and sent lightning through the spear. Thena dismissed it before the current reached Gilgamesh, who was already coming forward. His shoulder drove Lucius back while a round shield formed against Thena's forearm.
The shield caught Lucius's optic blast and scattered red force through the trees.
"You have made codependency violent."
Gilgamesh's mouth moved toward a smile. "It works."
Lucius opened both hands and pulled them apart with telekinesis.
Gilgamesh planted his feet. Thena used the fraction of movement he forced from Lucius's grip, crossed the distance, and took Lucius's right hand with a narrow sword. The return cut opened his throat.
Blood filled his mouth.
The soil beneath Thena became molten.
She launched from Gilgamesh's braced shoulder as heat folded the air. Lucius raised the molten earth after her, but Gilgamesh punched through its base. The wave broke apart. Thena crossed the falling fragments with a glaive in both hands and drove it through Lucius's chest.
Gilgamesh's fist met his face before the glaive stopped moving.
The first hour ended with Lucius beneath them again.
He remained still while bone and flesh restored themselves. Thena's weight rested on her forward foot. Gilgamesh stood to her left, close enough to stop a rush but far enough to deny Lucius one grip around both of them.
They had repeated the arrangement in different shapes. Thena created the attack. Gilgamesh removed the counter she did not cover from. Whenever Lucius forced one of them to adjust, the other already knew which space would open.
Repetition finally gave him something pain had not.
Lucius fired lightning at Thena. Her shield formed, and he bent the discharge toward Gilgamesh.
Gilgamesh raised his armoured forearm.
Lucius phased through Thena's sword and became solid beside him. One hand caught the Eternal's right leg. Molecular Manipulation passed through flesh and bone in a line no thicker than wire.
The leg separated above the knee.
Thena's blade entered Lucius beneath the shoulder and came out through his back. He accepted the wound, caught Gilgamesh before he hit the ground, and pressed his palm over the severed stump. Healing sealed the vessels and skin.
"I need you alive."
Gilgamesh struck him across the jaw with the armoured edge of his remaining hand.
Lucius's face broke sideways.
Thena attacked before it healed.
At close range, her weapons changed faster than he could force space between them. A sword shortened when he crossed inside its reach. A shield trapped his arm long enough for her knee to break his sternum, then vanished so her hand could take his wrist into the next cut. She gave no motion more time than it needed.
Lucius lost count of the fractures. The limbs followed.
Without Healing and regeneration, he would have died before recognising the first pattern. Without the weed, he might have recognised both Eternals before offering Gilgamesh his ankle. Smoking during a hunt had been stupid. Introducing himself to the quarry had been worse.
Thena removed his left arm at the shoulder.
Pain sharpened what remained. She covered Gilgamesh's exposed side before her own and used his fixed position as the centre of every turn. The heavy hitter had become a monster. Even on the ground, he knew when to obstruct Lucius and when to give her a line.
Alone, Gilgamesh would have been easier. His strength and armoured fist faced one direction at a time. Thena made every attempt to reach him pass through her.
Lucius should have approached invisibly, bound Gilgamesh, and begun the conversation after establishing control.
Instead, he had introduced himself.
Thena cut off his restored hand.
Lucius rushed her with fury across his face and lightning gathering around both arms. She stepped away from Gilgamesh, crossed her blades, and cut him through the chest.
The body came apart as light.
His illusion dissolved around her weapons.
The real Lucius appeared beside Gilgamesh. A force field closed over the Eternal's torso and pinned him to the ground. Two passes of Molecular Manipulation removed the remaining arm and leg. Lucius sealed all three fresh stumps before Gilgamesh could bleed out.
Alive, angry, and limbless, Gilgamesh could no longer close Thena's openings.
She reached Lucius the moment he finished.
Her spear struck his force field, widened into a hammer, and broke through. Lucius caught her wrist with telekinesis. Thena dismissed the weapon, rolled before the pressure crushed her bones, and formed a blade in her other hand.
The point opened him from hip to ribs.
Lucius held back every attack that would enter her skull, throat, or heart. Killing her would waste the abilities he had crossed a continent to obtain. The restraint cost him. Thena needed one clean success; he needed to survive every failure while keeping both targets alive.
Her golden constructs changed around every defence. A platform beneath one foot carried her over molten ground. A shield became a short blade as soon as the threat passed. When Lucius froze and shattered her right arm, she struck him with the severed shoulder, caught his jaw with her heel, and removed his head with a curved sword.
His hands caught the head before it touched the ground. He had not tried his regeneration against beheadings yet and was not eager to find out.
Fingers held it in place while Healing joined the neck.
"That was excessive."
Thena formed another sword.
Lucius withdrew the criticism.
Without Gilgamesh, the partnership disappeared. So did every reason Thena had shown for protecting one side of the field. She came at Lucius without the rhythm he had spent hours and limbs learning.
He became invisible.
Thena cut through the space he had occupied, dismissed the weapon when it met nothing, and formed a shorter blade during the turn. It found the organic steel over his ribs when he came behind her.
Lucius caught her remaining wrist. She drove her forehead into his nose, stepped onto his knee, and climbed high enough to lock both legs around his neck. Golden light hooked behind his shoulder before he could phase, preserving her leverage as she turned him through the air.
His back struck the ground.
Thena landed on one foot and drove a spear through his eye.
Lucius released a telekinetic blast in every direction with a painful scream. Branches tore free, and Thena crossed the clearing. She formed a curved shield beneath herself before landing, using it to slide instead of taking the impact through her remaining arm.
He reversed the debris.
Timber, stone, and cooling earth closed from four directions. Thena's shield widened, then divided into angled blades that carved an exit through the converging mass.
She emerged into a force field.
A second struck from behind. Lucius compressed the space between them, but Thena braced one foot against the transparent surface and drove a spear through the other. Its point reached his abdomen.
"You are becoming way too annoying."
Lucius collapsed the field, phased along the spear, and became solid inside her reach. One hand trapped her wrist. The other crossed her left thigh.
Molecular Manipulation separated the leg below the hip. He sealed the stump before releasing her.
Thena caught herself on a round shield and changed it into a golden lash. The strike wrapped around Lucius's forearm and tore it apart. The second opened his face to the teeth.
From the ground, she kept attacking.
Magnetism did nothing against the Cosmic Energy constructs. Lucius paid for the experiment with another cut across his chest, then seized the weapon properly with telekinesis. Three force fields closed around her arm, torso, and remaining leg.
Thena broke the first by widening the captured lash into a shield. The second held long enough for Lucius to reach her. Her heel broke the third.
His palm closed over her face.
Cold spread through the golden weapon. Lightning followed, locking every muscle in Thena's body until the construct dissolved. Lucius drove her into the ground and maintained the current while his ruined body and face restored themselves.
Fibrous strips tore from a fallen trunk. He transmuted them into adamantium ropes and bound her chest, waist, wrist, and ankle. She strained once. The force fields held around the rope.
Gilgamesh had dragged himself several feet through the dirt during the fight.
"You two have made simple procurement unnecessarily difficult."
Thena kept her eyes on him.
Lucius pulled Gilgamesh farther away, conjured a spear, and drove it through his abdomen to pin him in place. The ground beneath them turned into dark glass.
When Lucius raised one hand, runes began to etch around the limbless Eternal.