(Execution Livestream Continuation, ’The Pit’)
Helmuth closed the distance in a heartbeat, the inferno around him compressing into a tight, violent sheath that allowed his battle axe to come down with the kind of flurry that made mortals flinch even when they were safely behind shields.
"ARGHHH!"
He roared, as the livestream arrays struggled to keep his movement coherent, frames stuttering as though the cameras themselves could not agree on where he was.
However, despite his barbaric charge, Soron did not retreat.
He simply shifted one foot, as though stepping aside for a passerby, while his shoulders rotated a fraction late and a fraction early at the same time, as he allowed the axe to descend into stone that cracked only after the blade had already passed through it, the sound arriving half a beat delayed as if reality needed an extra moment to accept what had been done to it.
*CRACK*
The first blow should have ended it.
That was what the crowd thought, as they watched Helmuth’s weapon carve straight down through the execution platform with a clean, brutal line, while Soron’s figure seemed to dissolve into the air beside it, and for an instant it looked like the Cult God had been split and erased.
Yet the next instant rewrote that perception.
Soron was standing a step to the side, both daggers already drawn, their edges held low and quiet, as though he had never moved at all, while Helmuth’s axe bit so deep into the platform that the haft vibrated, and heat bled into the cracks like liquid fire.
*THRUMM*
*FSHHHH*
No one could explain it.
The mortals in the outer rings could not even track the transition, as their eyes simply jumped from "Soron is there" to "Soron is not there" to "Soron is there again," while Monarch-tier Commanders grimaced in confusion because they could see the movement, yet their minds refused to accept the order in which it happened.
"Hahaha, Good One!"
Mauriss laughed under his breath, not because it was funny, but because it was satisfying, as he watched Helmuth tear the axe free with a single violent pull and swing it again without resetting his stance, the weapon reversing direction in the middle of its own follow-through, as momentum bent unnaturally as if the axe had decided to follow its own path.
*SWOOSH*
Soron stepped inside that second swing.
Not toward Helmuth’s body, but rather toward the gap created by Helmuth’s choice to attack.
*Stab* *Slash*
His daggers rose in a mirrored motion that looked simple, almost clean, as the left blade angled toward Helmuth’s ribs and the right blade angled toward the exposed line of his throat, while the berserker God snarled and twisted, his shoulder rolling forward and his neck dipping just enough to close those angles.
*SWOOSH*
*SWOOSH*
The blades did not land.
They could not.
Instead, they skimmed close enough that the air screamed, as edges passed through heat, aura and a thin layer of divine resistance that felt like striking invisible glass, while Soron used that resistance like a foothold, letting it redirect his motion into something sharper.
To the crowd, it looked like he had slipped through Helmuth.
While to the Gods, it looked like Soron had threaded a needle that did not exist.
"ARGHHH!"
Helmuth screamed as he spun, heat exploding outward in a thick wave meant to shove Soron away and force distance, as he refused to let a dagger-user live inside his blind zone.
However, in his attempt to shove Soron away, he instinctively tried to step into the fourth dimension, his aura pushing against the boundaries of the three dimensional world, as the Chakravyuh formation instantly reverberated in response.
*THRUUSSHHHH!*
Despite the strong pressure, the Chakravyuh refused to break, the Fourth Dimensional Lock remaining intact, as the flow of time remained linear.
However, since it did not break, the aura concentration within the inner circle only became that much more intense as it ensured that every ounce of killing intent had nowhere to escape, except into pressure, into impact and into the thin layer of reality forced to hold four Gods inside a fixed frame.
Yet, despite Helmuth’s best attempts, Soron did not get shoved back under his pressure, as the Cult God glided through his defence instead.
*Step* *Step* *Step*
He moved the way a shadow would move if it decided to become sharp, as he rotated around Helmuth’s flank and made three small steps that should have been ordinary, except each step occurred in a place his body should not have reached without crossing the space between, while Helmuth’s axe continued swinging, tracing brutal arcs designed to cut away any path Soron might take, only to find nothing there.
*SWOOSH* *SWOOSH* *SWOOSH*
The arcs overlapped.
They covered every escape route.
And still Soron remained uncut.
Not because he was faster.
Because he was choosing where the fight existed.
Clarence felt his scalp tighten as he watched the fight unfold, because although the Chakravyuh had pinned them to three dimensions, Soron and Helmuth seemed to be fighting as if they were arguing with the definition of "three" itself, while Terrence’s posture stiffened subtly, his eyes narrowing as he tried to track angles that refused to remain angles.
Kaelith’s gaze stayed steady.
He did not react outwardly, yet the slightest tension gathered in his eyes, as if he were measuring Soron’s decay against Soron’s control and finding the comparison unpleasantly complicated.
’He doesn’t look like he’s slowed down a beat.
He’s not as sharp as he used to be back when father used to spar against us everyday. Yet, he’s not terribly slow either.
I expected him to be moving a lot worse than he is right now, however, it seems like I overestimated the level of decay his body has suffered.
If he can move this way, then he has more than a fight left in him for sure.’
Kaelith concluded, as he continued to watch the fight unfold with bated breaths, while also wondering whether or not he should interfere and deliver a critical blow in the middle of it all?