SWNOVELXO Chapter 356: Are You Legend?
Thorn staggered forward, blood dripping from a dozen shallow cuts. His legs trembled, but he kept moving.
He had to.
Giving up now would be an insult to the effort Ren had taken to keep him alive to this point. Giving up now would be a spit in the face of their entire journey to the Eighth Peak to give him power.
As much as he wanted to stop, he had to keep moving.
His breath wheezed in and out of his lungs, shallow and raw. The run through the rings had drained him. The mountain air was thin. The cold seeped into his fingers.
But more than any of that, the Fury didn't let him breathe.
She circled him, blindfold swaying with every fluid step. Her claws gleamed in the moonlight, untouched by blood, as if even that refused to stain her.
Thorn raised his bone arm again. His fingers ached. His muscles screamed.
She tilted her head.
"You know this is pointless." She said, her voice calm. "You're not your friend. You're not her. You're the weakest link."
Thorn gritted his teeth and charged anyway.
She sidestepped.
Claws slashed.
He cried out as pain lanced through his shoulder. He hit the ground hard, face first, snow biting into his skin.
He pushed himself up. Just barely.
"You'll never be anything more than what you are." She whispered as she approached. "Support. Background noise. A footnote in someone else's legend."
Her foot crashed into his ribs, sending him tumbling.
He groaned, curling in on himself. His head throbbed. His side burned. The world spun.
He heard her steps in the snow, slow and deliberate.
"You're weak. And worse than that, you're scared."
He tried to stand. She slashed his thigh, and he crumpled back down.
'Get up!' He thought. 'Just get up again!'
But nothing moved.
His arms wouldn't respond.
His knees refused to straighten.
The Fury stopped before him.
Thorn knelt in the snow, breath fogging, hands shaking.
He looked up at her. Her face was unreadable beneath the blindfold, but he could feel her disdain.
"You could have run," she said. "You could have hidden. But you wanted to prove something."
Thorn smiled faintly, bloody teeth showing. "Guess I failed."
He sighed. "But I don't mind."
The Fury paused.
"I don't mind being the support. I don't care if I'm merely background noise." He chuckled. "Because if I were the legend, my story would've ended long ago."
"I'm not fit to be a legend, woman." He smiled. "All I need is someone who can give me direction. And for that, I'd be grateful to Ren."
"I see." The woman stared at him, disdain written on her face. "You were even more pathetic than I thought. I'll be doing the world a service by removing you from it."
She raised her arm, claws glowing faintly now, curved for the kill.
Thorn's smile faded. He bowed his head.
Snow drifted gently around him.
He closed his eyes.
And waited for the end.
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Snow whirled through the air like blades.
Ren moved, Vine Armor protecting his body, the layers of living muscle hardened with explosive power.
Every step he took cracked the ice beneath his boots as his Push resonance pulsed around him, adding speed, strength, and raw pressure to every movement.
Across from him, Morgan stood still as a statue.
Her blindfold shifted lightly in the wind, but she never missed a step. With a flick of her hand, the snow swirled unnaturally, twisting in jagged arcs through the air.
"You're fast." She said, voice calm. "But speed means little when the storm itself obeys me."
Ren didn't respond.
He leapt.
A flash of movement. He crossed the distance between them in a blink, a Push blast beneath his feet sending him forward like a cannonball. His fist reeled back, coated in vines as dense as steel.
Morgan raised her hand, and the snow between them solidified into a wall of razor-sharp flakes.
Ren crashed through it, slamming his fist toward her ribs, only to hit nothing.
She'd sidestepped before his attack had even started.
She knew.
Her claws flashed, slicing toward his back. He twisted, planting a foot and unleashing a counter Push that cracked the ground, blasting her backward.
Morgan flipped in midair, landing lightly as the snow rose to cushion her fall.
"You're powerful, but like every opponent I've faced, utterly predictable." She grinned, gliding forward again.
Ren grunted, forming a shield of vines from his arm just in time to block another flurry of clawed strikes. Each blow cracked against his Vine Armor, sending dull shocks through his body.
He retaliated with a low kick enhanced by Push, sweeping toward her legs.
She leapt, twisting in midair, snow carrying her like a wave.
A downward slash tore through the air. Ren caught it on his bracer, his own vine wrapped fist lashing upward in response.
She leaned just enough to avoid it, her blindfold fluttering.
"Still chasing strength like it'll solve everything." She said.
"Says the woman hiding behind prophecies and predictions like they give her purpose." Ren shot back.
The snow thickened between them, spinning into daggers. Morgan thrust a hand forward and the flurry attacked.
Ren raised his hands, forcing a full body Push outward. The snow exploded around him in a shockwave.
He shot forward in the same breath, fists a blur, weaving with devastating speed. A flurry of punches and knees drove Morgan backward, but never landed clean.
Every time he aimed, she shifted, ducked, deflected.
Every time she struck, his armor held.
And still, neither yielded ground.
Morgan danced back, kicking a mound of snow into the air. It hardened mid-flight into spears and surged toward Ren like a wave.
He ducked and rolled, letting his Push guide the spears over his head before erupting vines beneath her feet.
She jumped again, mid-spin. Her claws curved toward his neck.
He blocked one. The other raked across his shoulder, tearing a strip from his armor. Blood sprayed across the snow.
Ren lunged.
He managed to grab her wrist. Her breath caught. For one second, she looked almost surprised.
Then, something caught his eye.
Ren's head snapped to the side.
Across the battlefield, Thorn was kneeling, slumped. The second Fury stood above him, claws glowing, raised high above her head.
Time froze.
"No!" Ren shouted.
Morgan's claws plunged through his back.
Pain seared through him as the force of her strike burst through armor, muscle, and bone, tearing open his shoulder blade and down across his ribs.
But Ren didn't stop.
He couldn't.
He blasted backward, wrenching himself from her grip and leaving behind a spray of blood as he launched across the field with a desperate Push.
"Thorn!"
And the second Fury's claws descended.