Down in the clearing, Hykee lunged forward to execute a follow up strike with his black lightning.
Dual slipped his trajectory effortlessly, catching him completely off guard as his momentum stumbled through the empty air before she delivered a crushing, localized kick straight into his sternum that sent him crashing helplessly into the mud.
Dual slid onto his chest to anchor him completely beneath her weight.
"How dare you hit me, peasant," Dual whispered, her narrow pupils catching the dimming light as her smile turned lethal.
She lifted her right hand, holding up four fingers as she gestured blindly toward the upper atmosphere where Idle was currently floating.
"Me and my brother aren't the strongest in our group," Dual mocked, leaning her weight down harder onto his fractured ribs. "Idle is only the fourth strongest."
Hykee gritted his teeth, his fingers clawing blindly into the wet earth beneath him as her weight threatened to crack his chest.
"I don't care about your numbers," Hykee spat, forcing his energy to ripple through the mud beneath them. "Koma will kill your brother anyway."
Dual's grin widened, her eyes narrowing into dangerous slits.
With that exact same hand, she lowered her fingers and pointed directly to the side of her own leather wrapped torso, tracking his gaze down to the dark, permanent number three stamped into her skin.
"And i'm the third," Dual whispered.
"You're third?" Hykee asked, his posture rigid under her weight as he stared directly at the dark marking.
"Get off him," Lokee said.
Her voice didn't shake.
She stood ten paces away, her hand still resting flat against the bark of the shattered oak where Kaola was laying.Dual didn't look up from her seat on Hykee's ribs.
"And if I don't?" Dual tilted her head. "What are you going to do, look at me until I die of boredom?"
"I don't want to fight you," Lokee repeated.
She took one step forward.
Her boots sank half an inch into the churned mud.
"Just get off my brother," Lokee growled. "Let him go."
"I'm just showing him," Dual whispered, finally dropping her hand to rest it casually on her knee.
She shifted her weight, deliberately pressing down harder on Hykee's fractured sternum.
A wet, choked wheeze tore out of his throat."
He should be grateful I didn't use both feet.
"Hykee gritted his teeth, his vision blurring slightly under the atmospheric pressure.
"Lokee... don't," Hykee spat. "Stay... stay back."
"Shut up, Hykee," Lokee snapped, her eyes narrowing as she fixed her gaze entirely on the thick steel shackles pinning Dual's wrists. "You never listen. Look at yourself."
"How can I look at myself?" Hykee muttered.
"Shut up and move your left hand now," Lokee commanded, her focus shifting as she prepared to close the gap.
Dual let out a sharp, mocking laugh.
"Oh, the quiet one has a plan," Dual scoffed, her voice sharp and entirely unbothered. "What's the left hand going to do, tickle my ankle?"
Hykee didn't answer. His left arm, still slick with the black tears of the weeping eye, twitched against the dirt. He forced his energy through the mud, fracturing the space directly beneath Dual's seating position.
A jagged spike of black lightning exploded upward from the dirt, aiming straight for her spine.
Dual didn't move her body. She parried the lightning with her wrist.
The thick steel shackle on her wrist caught the black lightning spike, absorbing the kinetic force and grinding it into harmless sparks against the metal.
But the distraction was exactly what Lokee calculated.
Lokee phantom stepped. She didn't use Koma's absolute speed, but her displacement was fast enough to bypass Dual's restricted field of vision.
She appeared right at Dual's flank, though her stance remained strangely loose, lacking the aggressive tension. Her hands were already shifting, the liquid Yan fluid coiling around her fingers and stretching out into a violent, high frequency water whip.
Before Hykee had ever received that eye, Lokee was the stronger twin.
Her fluid element whistled through the air as a thin watery line aiming for Dual's throat.
"Too slow," Dual muttered. She rolled off Hykee's chest, her bare feet slipping across the mud as she threw herself into a low, sweeping kick. Lokee casually vaulted over the leg, her water whip lashing downward to catch the fabric of Dual's shoulder.
Hykee rolled to his side, spitting a clot of dark blood. He didn't stand up. He stayed low to the earth, his fingers gripping the mud as he channeled his black lightning directly into the soil beneath Dual's feet.
"Lokee! Keep her moving!" Hykee roared.
"I'm trying," Lokee said, her voice completely flat as she parried a suppressed backhand from Dual.
The vibration of the heavy steel shackle hitting her sent a rattle through Lokee's wrists but she didn't drop her guard, nor did she flinch from the pain.
She simply adjusted her stance with an eerie indifference, using her fading stamina to redirect the next strike.
Dual danced between them, her bare feet leaving zero traces on the mud now.She was laughing, but the sound was getting shorter.
"Two against one?" Dual mocked, a dangerous pink flame flickering along the length of her forearm. "You Speedhardts really don't have any pride left?"
"Pride doesn't keep you alive," Hykee roared.
He slammed his palm flat against the mud.
The entire clearing erupted.
The black lightning didn't shoot up it coiled around Dual's ankles like a violent cage, anchoring her bare skin to the ground.
At the exact same microsecond, Lokee dropped her weight, snapping her pressurized water whip straight through the gap in Dual's restricted guard.
The sharp fluid tip ripped through the fabric right above her hip, leaving a clean, shallow gash. The split flesh didn't stay open.
Within a fraction of a millisecond, a pulse of hot pink energy sealed the wound, instantly healing the skin beneath as if the attack had never landed.
The clearing went completely freezing cold. The distant sound of the fight up where Idle was floating seemed to vanish entirely, swallowed by a sudden, suffocating silence.
Dual stopped moving.
She slowly brought her hands together, letting out a slow, terrifyingly crisp clap that echoed sharply through the quiet trees.
"You touched me," Dual whispered. Her dangerous pink flame completely died out, replaced by a cold, hollow void.
Her voice wasn't loud. It carried the exact same absolute weight Apex used when he pinned her to the stone floor.
Lokee leaped backward, her instincts finally screaming at her to flee, though her face remained strangely blank.
"Hykee, move!" Lokee shouted.
"It's too late for that," Dual said.
She raised her arms, staring at the thick steel cuffs bolted to her wrists.
"I told you I didn't want to get dirty," Dual whispered, her gaze sharpening into something deadly.
Dual raised her arms higher, staring down at Hykee with raw, untamed fury.
"You had one job, boy!" Dual yelled, her voice booming across the canyon floor, entirely shattering her previous calm. "Show me your power! You were supposed to keep me entertained!"
She locked her thumbs together.
With a sickening, metallic screech, the heavy shackles began to warp under the heat of her rage.
"Don't look away," Dual shouted over the rising gale as the iron caps split open, releasing a tidal wave of suppressed, catastrophic mass into the forest. "Now you will see the power of the third!"
High above the unsealed pressure flattening the woods, embedded deep within the churning gray stratosphere, the battle took on a completely different rhythm.
Koma drifted through the vapor, his posture rigid and electric with a terrifying, rapidly climbing presence.
Idle floated nearby with his eyes half closed, his head resting back against a cushion of condensed, refracted light.
He looked entirely detached, completely unbothered by the fact that the human in front of him was actively adapting to his tier.
"You're not even trying," Koma growled, the muscles in his jaw tightening as his energy flared into a blinding, oppressive shroud.
Idle let out a long, weary sigh, waving a limp hand through the freezing air.
"Too much effort," Idle said. "Why do you look so angry anyway? We're both going to be here for another few minutes. Just let the clock run out."
"I am the strongest being on this earth," Koma whispered, his voice slicing through the thunderous gale. "I don't wait for clocks."
Before Idle could even register the shift in the spatial grid, Koma vanished, his phantom step displacing the entire cloud layer in a fraction of a millisecond.
Down below, at the roots of the shattered tree, Kaola's fingers twitched against the wet soil.
She was fleetingly clinging to the edge of consciousness.
She couldn't move her body, but her mind clawed outward, forcing a desperate, telepathic thread straight up into the upper atmosphere.
"Koma," Kaola's voice echoed weakly inside his mind, fractured and slick with absolute terror. "The twins... they're losing. They're fighting the girl and they're not beating her."
High in the sky, mid stride, Koma didn't even pause.
His eyes remained completely fixed on Idle's slouched, unprotected chest as he drew back his fist, his Yen began coiling violently down his arm.
"I don't care," Koma answered her mentally, his thoughts cold and entirely devoid of empathy. "I'll be done with this guy in mere moments."
The sky shattered.