POV – Azra'il
Aatrox did not wait for an answer.
The Darkin blade descended with the force of a collapsing mountain, not aimed at either one of them, but at the space between the two. Intentional. Calculated. Forcing them to scatter to opposite sides to evade the impact.
The ground where they had stood a second before exploded. It didn't just crack; it detonated. Stone, earth, and shards of the road flew in a seven-metre radius. A crater yawned in the centre of the village like a hungry maw.
Kayle went right. Morgana went left.
[The tactic is consistent with advanced military intelligence. He was likely a Shuriman general before the corruption.]
Kayle counter-attacked first. She lunged low, wings propelling her body forward with a speed that blurred her contours, Mihira's sword tracing an upward arc aimed at the junction between the organic armour and the exposed flesh of Aatrox's left flank.
The celestial blade struck.
And I witnessed the most beautiful and most useless thing I have ever beheld in my lifetimes: the divine fire bit into the Darkin flesh, tore a crackle of light that illuminated the entire field for an instant, and opened a twenty-centimetre gash on his flank...
And he didn't even recoil.
He looked down at the cut like one inspecting a smudge on their clothes.
"Mmm." The voice was casual. Almost bored. "That one stung. Quite unlike mortal metal. Your blade has memory."
The left hand, larger than Kayle's torso, came down like a hammer. Kayle rolled to the side, wings folding against her body to reduce her profile. Aatrox's fist slammed into the spot where she had been, and the shockwave threw her three metres further anyway.
Morgana attacked the left flank whilst Aatrox was committed to the strike. Clever. The dark half of Mihira's sword cut diagonally, from bottom to top, aiming for the tendon behind the knee, the kind of blow that says "I have read anatomy and know exactly where to cut to bring down a giant."
The blade found flesh. Sunk in.
Aatrox pivoted his body with a speed that shouldn't exist in a creature of that magnitude; his knee rotated, and the blow Morgana had calculated to be incapacitating became superficial. The right hand, still clutching the colossal sword, swung in a low lateral arc that would have cleaved Morgana in two had she not leapt back with her wings.
The Darkin blade passed so close it severed three feathers from her wings. The feathers disintegrated, they didn't just fall, they burned. They turned to red ash in the air.
"Fast." Aatrox drew himself up. The cut on his flank was already knitting shut, the flesh visibly mending, fed by the blood of the soldiers he had slain earlier. "Faster than I expected from such... young heirs."
[Regeneration is being sustained by previously absorbed blood. As long as he possesses reserves, superficial wounds are irrelevant.]
[They must be deep enough. Or simultaneous. The regenerative system has limited processing capacity; if overwhelmed by multiple severe injuries at once, there will be a lag.]
[Theoretically.]
Kayle rose. Dust on her armour. A graze on her left shoulder where the shockwave had hurled her against the debris. Nothing severe. But I saw something on her face I knew from warriors: the re-calculation. The moment you realise the enemy is more than expected and that the original strategy must shift.
Morgana repositioned herself on the left flank. Wings unfurled, eyes measuring Aatrox with the precision of one cataloguing every detail, every joint between armour and flesh, every interval between movements, every pattern.
Without a word, they surged forward together.
And I saw something I hadn't expected: they knew how to fight as a pair.
Not in the clumsy manner of two warriors trying not to trip over each other. It was the fluid motion of those who had done this before, against lesser, less lethal creatures, but who had left the choreography etched into their muscle memory. Kayle attacked high, and Morgana attacked low. Kayle retreated, and Morgana advanced. Like breathing, inhale, exhale. Like the tide, ebb and flow.
Kayle came head-on. Mihira's sword in a descending arc, aiming for the shoulder joint, the kind of strike that, should it connect cleanly, would sever the sword-arm from the rest of the body. Aatrox parried with the Darkin blade; the impact produced a sound that wasn't metal against metal, but reality itself protesting. Sparks of celestial light and crimson energy exploded at the contact point.
And whilst Aatrox was locked in the parry, Morgana emerged from behind.
The dark blade of Mihira's sword pierced the exposed flesh between the armour plates on his back, sinking in fifteen centimetres. Purple energy pulsed around the entry point. Aatrox roared, not in pain, but irritation, and spun his entire body in a brutal movement, using the sword locked against Kayle's as an axis. His elbow caught Morgana in the chest.
The impact hurled her six metres back. Her wings flared to cushion the fall, her boots tearing through the earth, and she skidded to a halt, standing, but with a hand to her chest, struggling for breath.
"Almost," Aatrox said, wrenching Morgana's sword from his body with his left hand and tossing it to the ground like rubbish. "Almost is the distance between glory and the grave. You shall discover that soon enough."
Kayle gave him no time to finish his speech. She charged forward, fast, furious, Mihira's sword in an upward arc that forced Aatrox to block. The blades met in a crackle of light and red energy, and Kayle pushed, all her weight, all her wings, everything she had, keeping the Darkin occupied.
Buying time.
Morgana stood up from the crater. Her chest ached; I could see it by the way she breathed, shallow, controlled, the kind of breath taken by someone with at least one cracked rib who refuses to admit it. She dragged herself to the sword embedded in the earth. Every step cost more than the last.
Her fingers closed around the hilt. I saw the tremor as she pulled the blade from the dirt, not from fear, but from impact. That elbow strike had been like being hit by a lorry for a mortal human. But she straightened her back. Breathed. Adjusted her stance.
And she returned.
Aatrox responded with a downward blow that Kayle blocked with her sword, and the impact drove her into the ground. Literally. Her boots buried ten centimetres into the earth under the weight. Her arms trembled. Her wings arched back from the exertion.
"I feel your mother's flame in this blade." Aatrox's voice came from above, pressing down. His monstrous face was inches from Kayle's. "But it is a candle where Mihira was a sun. You clothe yourself in light, little fairy, but your justice is merely the tyranny of one who fears the dark."
The pressure intensified. Kayle's sword descended another centimetre. Then two.
"Look at me!" The ember-eyes burned. "I was what you aspire to be. I carried the starlight before you were born. I was hero. Protector. Justice incarnate." The voice dropped to something between a whisper and thunder. "And look where the sky's radiance left me."
Morgana attacked from behind. The blade cut deep into Aatrox's right shoulder, and this time, he felt it. He bellowed. He released the pressure on Kayle for an instant.
An instant was enough.
Kayle disengaged and spun, the celestial blade cutting in a horizontal arc that ripped Aatrox's abdomen open from left to right. Divine fire exploded within the gash, cauterising Darkin flesh with a hiss that sounded like water boiling on hot metal.
Aatrox staggered back three paces. For the second time.
"Ah." The sound was one of surprise. Of something he hadn't felt in far too long. "That... that I felt."
He looked down. At the open cut on his abdomen. The flesh attempted to knit, but the celestial fire resisted, fighting against the regeneration like two opposing forces disputing the same territory.
"Targon's fire." There was something in his voice that wasn't anger. It was nostalgia. Distorted and poisoned, but nostalgia nonetheless. "It has been years since I felt that burn. Last time, it was your mother who applied it."
He raised the Darkin sword with both hands.
"She was better at it."
And he attacked.
Not with the casualness of before. No longer playing. The first real blow: the sword descending in an arc that sliced the air with a ripping sound, the red energy at the blade's core pulsing with hunger. The strike hit the ground between the two sisters, and the blast of the impact separated them again, hurling them both backward, creating a cloud of debris and dust.
Aatrox surged through the cloud toward Morgana.
[Or he is testing which of them provokes the more intense reaction in the other.]
The Darkin sword came in a lateral sweep that would have cleaved Morgana in two. But she blocked, the dark half of Mihira's sword meeting the Darkin blade at an angle that diverted the force downward instead of absorbing it. Perfect technique. She chose to deflect, not resist. Using the opponent's strength against him.
But the mass behind the blow was too much. The deflection worked, the Darkin blade passed beneath her, but the shockwave knocked Morgana sideways. She spun in the air, wings flaring to stabilise...
Aatrox was already there.
His speed was wrong. Something that size shouldn't be able to change direction so fast. He was before her before her wings could finish stabilising, and his left hand closed around Morgana's ankle.
He yanked.
Morgana was ripped from the air and slammed into the ground with a brutality that made the earth shudder. The crater that opened was the shape of her body. The purple and gold armour buckled at the point of impact; the left shoulder plate shattered like ceramic.
"You fight as one," Aatrox said, hoisting Morgana by her ankle, upside down, as if examining a curious animal. "But you bleed as two."
The Darkin sword moved. Quick. The tip of the blade traced a diagonal line across Morgana's left arm, from shoulder to elbow. Not deep enough to incapacitate. Precise. Surgical. Deliberate.
And the blood that spilled... It was golden.
Not red. Not the colour that flows from human bodies, the colour of soldiers, merchants, and neighbours. Golden. Luminous. Shining against the purple armour like liquid sunlight upon a dark canvas. Every drop that hit the ground shimmered for an instant before extinguishing, like stars being born and dying in the span of a second.
Aatrox saw it too.
"Oh." The sound was laden with something I could only call delight. "Gold-blood. Celestial blood. The blood of Justice." His tongue swiped his lips. "Aeons since I tasted such a thing."
The Darkin sword moved toward the cut, and I saw the dark metal drink the drops of golden blood that had fallen upon the blade. Absorbing. The crimson energy at the sword's core pulsed stronger for an instant.
"Yes." Aatrox's voice changed. It grew deeper. Hungrier. "More. More of this."
Kayle struck Aatrox from behind like a furious comet.
The impact of her entire body, wings, armour, speed, celestial fire, slammed into Aatrox between the shoulder blades and made him drop Morgana. The Darkin was shoved several paces forward, and Kayle didn't stop. Her sword descended, rose, and fell again, three strikes in two seconds, each opening gashes that spat that substance between blood and energy.
"DO NOT TOUCH HER!" Kayle's voice was not that of the Protector. It was not that of the court. It was something older, more visceral, more personal, the voice of one who saw her sister bleeding and forgot every rule she held regarding control.
Aatrox spun and blocked the fourth strike, the blades meeting with a crack that made the air vibrate. And he laughed.
"Ah, now this. This is familiar." The ember-eyes met Kayle's through the crossing of blades. "That sound in your voice. That fury. I have heard it a thousand times in a thousand wars. You aren't fighting for justice, little fairy. You are fighting for her."
Kayle pushed. Aatrox pushed back.
"That heat in your chest isn't duty. It is blood crying out for blood. Admit it, you love her in a way your 'justice' cannot explain, and it terrifies you."
The pressure on the blades mounted. The ground beneath Kayle's feet splintered.
"Because the day you admit what you feel for your counterpart..." Aatrox leaned in. Close. "...is the day all this golden armour becomes scrap."
"Shut your mouth."
Kayle's sword exploded in light. Not the usual glow, but something more. Fed by rage, by the fear that he was right, by the fury of having been read by a creature that shouldn't be able to see anything beyond blood and destruction. The pulse of energy shoved Aatrox back two paces and opened space.
[And she knows it. Which makes it worse.]
Morgana stood up from the crater.
The armour on her left shoulder was destroyed. Her arm was bleeding, golden blood trickling slowly down her forearm, shining against the darkened gauntlet. And she was staring at it.
Staring at her own blood.
The expression on her face was something I hadn't expected. It wasn't pain. It wasn't surprise at the wound. It was something deeper. Older. The look of someone who had just discovered something about themselves they knew, yet had never seen.
She raised her bloodied hand. Opened her fingers. The gold flowed between them like liquid ore, shining with a light of its own. The blood fell to the ground, and each drop left a luminous mark before fading.
She rotated her hand slowly. Observing. Studying. As if seeing her hand for the first time.
"Golden," she whispered. To herself. To no one.
I saw what passed behind her eyes. I saw the girl who would cut her finger on the thorns of her father's garden and see red, common, human, mortal red. The girl who grazed her knee while playing and the blood was like any other child's on the street. And now, standing in the middle of a battlefield with her arm sliced open by a Darkin blade, she saw gold.
The proof, trickling between her fingers, that she was no longer what she had been. That something had changed irreversibly the day the wings appeared. That however much she healed the sick and walked among the people and insisted on being part of them... the blood did not lie.
She was something else now.
And the gold on her hands was beautiful and terrible at the same time.
"Redeemer," Aatrox called from across the field, shoving Kayle away with a horizontal sweep she blocked while stumbling. "Do you admire your own blood? I understand. It is addictive, is it not? The beauty of what we become when mortals are left behind."
Morgana clenched her hand. The gold squeezed between her fingers.
"You pretend you are still one of them," Aatrox continued, advancing against Kayle with heavy blows that forced her back step by step. "That you heal the sick and console the weak because you belong to them. But your blood disagrees. Your blood says you are made of the same material as your mother. As me." The Darkin sword descended, and Kayle dodged by inches. "Power made to destroy, wrapped in the skin of mercy. How much longer before you stop lying to yourself?"
"I am not you." Morgana's voice was low. Controlled. But I heard the fracture beneath, the fracture of someone who was looking at her own golden blood and wondering exactly the same thing the monster was saying out loud.
"No? Then why does your blood shimmer just like mine?"
Morgana surged forward.
Not with the calculated technique from before. With rage. The sword cutting in a wide arc aiming for the neck, reckless, open, emotionally charged. The kind of blow a master-at-arms would fail and a Darkin would adore.
Aatrox dodged with ease. His left hand grabbed Morgana's wrist and twisted. The sword fell from her hand. He hoisted her by the wrist, her feet a foot off the ground, her entire weight hanging from the arm he held.
"Rage." Aatrox studied her face with curiosity. "Good. Rage is honest. Far more honest than this fantasy of redemption you wear as armour."
The hand squeezed. Morgana grit her teeth, the bones in her wrist creaking under the pressure.
"Let. My. Sister. Go!"
Kayle charged from behind with a visceral scream. Mihira's sword sliced into Aatrox's forearm at the exact point where he held Morgana. Celestial fire bit deep, and this time the cut was real. Profound. Aatrox's arm split open, the flesh parting, and Morgana fell.
Aatrox roared. The first genuine sound of pain I had heard from him. The arm hung limp, not entirely severed, but almost, the dark flesh-tendons stretched and snapping.
"YES!" His roar was ecstasy and agony fused. "YES! That is the fire I wanted! That is the fire your mother used!"
The arm reconstituted itself. Before everyone's eyes. The flesh rewinding like a ribbon, tendons reconnecting, muscle remaking itself, dark skin knitting over the cut. In five seconds, the arm was whole.
[The absorption of Morgana's celestial blood significantly accelerated the regenerative capacity. Divine blood is superior fuel.]
[Considerably.]
[In the current state, yes.]
Aatrox flexed the restored arm. Testing. Satisfied.
"Your sister's blood is delicious, Kayle. Sweet as celestial honey. I understand why you protect her with such... fervour." The smile was obscene. "I wonder if yours is equally savoury."
Kayle charged again. Her sword in a descending arc aimed at his head, and Aatrox blocked it with one hand. One hand. He caught Mihira's blade with his palm. The celestial fire scorched the flesh of his fingers, and he didn't care.
"Listen to how her heart quickens when the Fallen is harmed." The other hand grabbed Kayle's wrist, pinning her in place. "Each beat a war drum. You dress in gold, but you reek of fear, Kayle. Fear that if you let your guard down for an instant, your duty will crumble and leave only what you feel for her."
"I told you to shut your mouth."
"And I told you the truth does not obey orders."
Aatrox's headbutt struck Kayle in the face. The horns of the bone crown sliced her forehead, a golden line. Golden blood ran down Kayle's face, entering her left eye, blurring her vision.
Kayle staggered back. Hand to her face. Golden blood between her fingers.
Aatrox licked the palm where he had caught the sword. Where Kayle's blood had splashed.
"Mmm. Different from the sister. Hers is sweet. Yours..." He tilted his head. "...it burns. Like celestial vodka. It is the taste of repression, you know? From someone who compresses so much inside that even the blood turns acidic."
"ENOUGH."
Morgana.
She was standing. Her sword recovered. Her left arm bleeding gold. Her face, that face that healed and consoled and smiled at children, was transformed into something I had never seen in her. Not rage. Not despair. Icy determination. The face of someone who had just decided the rules had changed.
She surged forward alongside Kayle.
Not the technical coordination of before, good, efficient, practised. This was something beyond. Something happening at the level of the wings and the blood and the connection both of them denied having. Kayle attacked high, a diagonal descent aiming for the shoulder, and Morgana attacked low, a horizontal thrust aimed at the thigh, both at once. Not through planning. Through instinct.
Aatrox blocked Kayle's with his sword. He could not block Morgana's. The blade sunk into his thigh, and the shadow-fire of Mihira's heritage burned within.
He roared and counter-attacked, his sword in a circular sweep meant to hit them both. Kayle leaped over it with her wings. Morgana slid underneath, dark wings flattening against her body, her entire frame passing inches from the ground whilst the Darkin blade sliced the air above her.
And the instant she rose on the other side, both attacked again. Simultaneously. From opposite flanks. Cutting deep.
Aatrox received both blows. Left arm and right ribs. The flesh split open. Red energy spat out. And this time, the regeneration wavered. Two deep cuts at once. The system trying to close both simultaneously and failing to prioritise.
"Together." Aatrox looked from one to the other. The smile widened, but now there was something beneath the smile that wasn't amusement. It was recognition. "Two halves of a shattered concept. But together..." He raised the Darkin sword with both hands. "Together, you almost comprise something."
I saw Aatrox shift his stance. I saw the playfulness leave his body like discarded clothing. His shoulders broadened. His flesh-wings unfurled, they were larger than before, fed by the blood he had absorbed. The ember-eyes burned more intensely. The Darkin sword pulsed with an audible hunger.
"No more courtesy," he said. And the voice had lost its poetry. "Now, you give me a war."
Aatrox surged forward.
And the world turned red.
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💬Author's Note
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Chapter 100… and I thought it would be a good idea to celebrate it by throwing Kayle and Morgana against Aatrox.
Which, to be fair, says a lot about me as a writer.
Now let's talk about Aatrox. 😈
I really wanted him to feel like more than just a powerful enemy. He's brutal, yes, but also perceptive. He doesn't only attack the body, he presses on doubts, insecurities, identity, and everything both sisters are trying very hard not to face. That was the most interesting part of writing him in this scene.
The moment with Morgana seeing her own golden blood was also one of the emotional cores of the chapter for me. Because sometimes the most unsettling revelations aren't told to us by other people, they're the ones we see with our own eyes and can no longer deny.
And Kayle… well. Let's just say Aatrox may have noticed a few things she would very much prefer remained unspoken.
So now I want to ask:
What did you think of Aatrox in this chapter? Did you like the way I wrote him?
And how did you feel about Kayle and Morgana's dynamic during the fight?
I'd really love to hear your thoughts.