(I know this one's short...I'll release the proceeding chapter in a few days!)

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Gravitas

Pulse, pulse, pulse.

Hammer strikes in the darkness, as though his heart had transformed into an instrument of torture. With each new beat, the flowing blood reawakened every nerve ending in his body. There was only the pounding throb of pain to his being.

Pulse, pulse, pulse.

Yet it was the exhaustion's influence that overwhelmed the hurt. Compared to the fatigue saturating into his very bone marrow, the pain was nothing; the pain was acting to ground him in reluctant consciousness. Were it not for the throbbing agony, his mind would have allowed him to sink into a paradise of nothingness.

But instead of passing out, and with an unthinkable force of willpower, Gravitas opened his eyes. Through his swollen eyelids, he peered into deep blue skies scattered with clouds. How long had he been dazed? Where was he? Where was Vengelis Epsilon? He blinked many times, and slowly turned his head to examine the sleek glass of a few nearby skyscrapers as they ascended stoic and impassive into the blue of the sky.

With a mournful sigh, Gravitas thought back to what felt like a lifetime ago when he had awoken with Kristen that morning, her fragrant hair wet from the shower and a pale morning sunlight across her smile as she lay next to him. The thought of her was painful to consider, and he nearly retched in misery as he quickly shook the sentiments from his mind and gathered his bearings. He was tangled up in the crumpled heap of a car. His upper torso had split through the roof, and the back of his head was resting at a strange angle against the tan leather of a backseat. Gravitas easily dislodged his shoulder from the malleable steel and sat up. There was a frenzied flood of people stampeding northward up the avenue, as if the car on which he had landed was afloat in a river of rioters. He could hear them bumping up against the car and scratching the doors as they passed.

Gravitas lifted a hand to place against his face and assess the damage, but he stopped before his fingers reached his cheek. The pain splitting across his face was beyond words, but his condition did not matter. He was conscious; the fight would continue. Without a second thought, Gravitas abruptly lifted himself out of the remains of the car and accelerated into the air. He was insensate and drunk with fatigue, and he veered to the side, inadvertently grazing into the side of a skyscraper. His shoulder cleaved a broad gash into a dozen stories of sparkling windows. Gravitas dazedly cursed his indiscretion and continued to rise more carefully, halting above the tall buildings to survey the streets below and locate Vengelis Epsilon.

A tearing noise rose against the sounds of the city, and Gravitas turned to watch the building his own body had maimed begin to tremble. The supports were yielding, and he watched with a pleading expression as the broad tower began to pitch to the side for a moment. Gravitas reluctantly drew his gaze away from the teetering Midtown skyscraper, as it looked like it would hold for the time being. He focused on finding Vengelis, and his efforts did not take long. As he peered down into the city, he watched one of the lower floors of the Marriott Marquis burst outward and expel thick rubble across the square. Penetrating out of the dusty upheaval, he saw the glint of Imperial First Class armor. Gravitas discerned the Epsilon accelerate down the avenue and toward the fallen body of the Royal Guard Darien. Gravitas's swollen eyelids narrowed as he noticed the apprehension, perhaps even panic, in Vengelis's excessive speed. Vengelis veered down Seventh Avenue as if his life were on the line, and came to a landing beside the gigantic corpse of the Royal Guard.

Without hesitation Gravitas erupted downward, the sound of his approach drowned out in the welter of the streets. Vengelis's vulnerable side was facing an open intersection, and Gravitas descended with a swooping approach to mercilessly blindside him. It appeared as though Vengelis was preoccupied, or perhaps he had considered Gravitas defeated; either way he had left himself completely undefended as he stood by his fallen soldier. Gravitas barreled downward and pulled up at the last second, coming level to the street and sprinting as hard as he possibly could toward the emperor. His vision blurry, Gravitas watched Vengelis lift his arm out to someone, leaving his fragile midsection wide open for an ambush. Thundering up the street with all of the force his beaten body would allow, Gravitas lowered his shoulder and thrust himself forward with every drop of his remaining strength, plunging his flexed shoulder straight into Vengelis's ribcage.

The impact was ferocious. Gravitas could hear a number of Vengelis's ribs crack from the impact. Together the two bodies—Gravitas on top of Vengelis—reeled across the street and crashed through a plate-glass window into a deserted five-star restaurant. Weakened by his injuries, Gravitas simply pushed forward, pumping his legs one after the other. He drove Vengelis backward, his shoulder buried into the tender space below Vengelis's armpit.

Vengelis let his own body fall underneath Gravitas and flipped him over with a heave. Gravitas's momentum carried him booming through a hostess table with a discharge of splintered wood. He rolled across the restaurant in a calamity of tablecloths, shattering plates and silverware.

"You don't quit, even when you're beaten!" Vengelis screamed hoarsely. He rose to his feet on the mahogany floor, wincing from his ribs.

Gravitas grunted and ripped a white tablecloth from his body. He ran straight at Vengelis, swinging out with a right fist. Dodging his head out of reach, Vengelis sent his knuckles up into Gravitas's stomach. The blow sent him straight through the ceiling, and Vengelis ascended after him. They interlocked arms and began to wrestle through the walls and ceilings of the building. Floors and walls crumpled and disintegrated around them, the structures yielding to their bodies without the slightest resistance. Gravitas reached down and grabbed Vengelis behind the knee, pulling Vengelis's left leg into his grasp and pushing his shoulder into his stomach. Vengelis fell backward; their two bodies smashed through drywall and mortar and out into the daylight of the city.

Vengelis swung his fist and caught Gravitas behind the ear. The blow forced Gravitas to relinquish his hold on Vengelis's leg, and sent him careening through the air and into a billboard. Back and forth across the open street they fought, even Gravitas now disregarding the massive damage he was inflicting to the buildings around them. Concrete and steel broke against them like porcelain. There was not a trace of defenses now between the two of them. Every swing from either one of the Sejero warriors struck its mark as they exchanged blows like wild animals. Gravitas could barely see, and his limbs felt like they were filling with hot lead. He was beginning to even forget whom he was fighting or why.

With an obvious last-ditch effort, Vengelis buried a fist into Gravitas's stomach with gathered strength. Gravitas hunched over, but at the same time came up with a wild uppercut.

It hit home.

His fist caught Vengelis square in the jaw. Vengelis fell back, and his body crashed into a window behind him where it did not move. His legs were left dangling out the broken window, but his upper torso was inside the building. Vengelis lay stunned for a moment before pushing himself up onto his elbows.

"Do you give up?" Gravitas blurted.

Vengelis spit to the side and stood up shakily in the thirteenth-story window frame, his head lolling. He murmured something that sounded like "Kristen," though Gravitas thought he might be delirious himself and hearing things.

"Fel—" Vengelis coughed up blood. "We . . . Felix."

Gravitas could not do anything but pant for breath. His spinning vision was filled with stars. He was too spent to think anything at all. The two of them stood before each other, each neither defeated nor victorious.

KRRRRRCH!

A strident tearing sound echoed suddenly across the rooftops of the city, drowning out the clamor of the anarchy below. Gravitas drew his blurred vision away from Vengelis. He strained to look up the long crowded avenue. High over the heads of the clogging masses migrating northward, the wounded monolith of a skyscraper shuddered and screamed in tenors of yielding iron and failing steel down into the streets of Midtown. Gravitas felt a terrible desperation as he turned his gaze from the massive skyscraper to the droves of people bottlenecked in the congested intersections below. The collapse would swallow them whole. Thousands were about to die an unspeakable death. The fight was over; Gravitas doubted either of them now had the power remaining to perform a coup de grâce on the other.

KRRRRRCH!

The sound filled the city: another support failing. Gravitas shut his eyes, his upper body rising and falling with heaves for breath.

"You . . . deserve . . . death . . . " Gravitas said to Vengelis through his split lips.

"I . . . know," Vengelis murmured and stumbled to a wall for support. "Brought . . . Felix. N-never could have known . . . "

A new kind of sound carried down to them from atop the tilting building. It was the sound of floors collapsing. Gravitas turned to the skyscraper and watched as the roof and the top floor caved inward. The base of the building gave way, and the bottom floors began disintegrating into rubble. He moaned in wearisome desperation and turned away from Vengelis Epsilon with determined finality.

"Don't you dare. It . . . it is hopeless," Vengelis murmured, his jaw hanging open by his shoulder as he regarded the falling tower with a muddled gaze. "Don't even think about leaving."

"We're finished," Gravitas whispered.

"Nerol! No!"

Without another word Gravitas rushed up the avenue toward the falling superstructure, weaving unsteadily through the air with his final scrap of strength and leaving Vengelis astonished and alone in the lofty recess of the empty window.