Ajax's neck attempts to twist back into its proper position and alignment. Simultaneously, his cratered ribcage slowly starts to close up completely under his remaining tattered shirt. Orin has no time to waste.
Orin wraps his right hand around the sword blade in his torso. It's still intact but it will disappear within several seconds since he cannot spare the mana to keep it solid. However, right now, it is what is stopping him from fatally bleeding out.
He stares at Ajax with madness and fury, seeing his opportunity. His enemy's enhanced speed came at a cost and he has lost most of it. He's about as fast as a normal human commoner right now and his body, though slowly regenerating, is still too damaged for him to get up off the ground and run away.
"You're slower… what you just did… Finally, you're slower."
Orin's exoskeleton keeps him upright. He uses his mental control over the construct in order to will his body forward. His exoskeleton legs force his body towards Ajax, slowly but inexorably. Every step the carapace takes, there is a hard thud on the ground.
The mana sword embedded in his torso is firmly clutched in Orin's right hand, which bleeds as a result. Though his body is effectively anesthetized, he can still hear his shattered ribs on his right side move even further out of their natural position as he steps forward.
Ajax is currently faced down, but he hears his opponent slowly walking towards him. He tries to use his broken arms to crawl away from the source of the thundering footsteps. Every frantic pull of his arms only prevents them from healing properly. He doesn't understand how the man with a single leg is walking so confidently, though somewhat slowly, directly towards him.
He's not going to take the time to look back when he could use that time to get away.
The fucking terrorist was been maimed thoroughly! A few more seconds. Just a few more for me to heal and… I can still win!
Orin's body is bruised all over because of how his blue fire had propelled him around in a clumsy imitation of true flight. His lung is punctured, though his breathing is no longer agony. He has lost two limbs, an arm and a leg.
He has one chance.
If he fails now, his opponent will heal back up, kill him and he will fail completely. His carapace supporting him will not be able to defend him from this truly superhuman adversary.
His Twin Moons men, his brothers and sisters, have been annihilated completely. He had asked them to buy him time and they had done their job perfectly. He doesn't want to reach the true heaven having failed them. He will die in glory but a glorious victory is far better than a glorious defeat.
Ajax tries to get on his feet, but cannot due to his body still in the middle of restoring itself. The moment he tries to pick his right leg up, his knee buckles and he falls forward once again. All the while, the steps continue after him.
He dares not look back, as his mind flashes to the parable of Lot's wife. The moment he looks back, he will have lost his chance to regain victory.
The sound of step after step behind him is getting slower as they get closer to him. It feels as if death itself is chasing him and has almost caught up.
Ajax crawls away, the only thing he can possibly do right now. He crawls and crawls and crawls. The more he crawls away, the more his body heals itself. The more he crawls, the less pain invades his mind.
Ajax absorbs more of the hallway's heat and his body starts to heal a bit faster. But, he's still not on his feet. Even with the energy flowing into his body, his body still–
"Haaaaahh!!"
Orin reaches Ajax and pulls out the broken mana sword from his front midsection, as if he were unsheathing it from its flesh scabbard. The moment he does so, a fountain of blood sprays out directly from his wound onto Ajax's body. Nevertheless, Orin feels his victory at hand.
Ajax feels the blood spill against his back and feels fear once more. Perhaps the purest terror he has ever felt in his entire life. He still dares not look back.
Orin slashes his sword at Ajax's head. His mana sword slices right below Ajax's left ear, diagonally downwards. The sword cuts through Ajax's jaw, then his neck. It cleaves through Ajax's jugular veins, carotid arteries, esophagus, trachea and spinal cord.
Orin decapitates Ajax.
***
Shaula heard it. The sound of screaming and someone tumbling through the hallway. There is no mistaking what accompanied the tumbling. Bones breaking over and over and over again. As the tumbling slows and the body comes to a halt, someone else lands with a thud on the ground.
She's near the ground floor of the apartment building where two people are still fighting, in the middle of running towards it. As she reaches the entrance, she hears someone speaking softly, but it isn't Ajax.
Shaula shoots herself through the door as if she were a torpedo. The door is destroyed instantly, glass, wood and metal thrown across the lobby floor. She can barely tell by the lack of heartbeats in the area directly ahead of her that nobody is standing in her path.
She pauses as she hears something above her that makes her mind go blank and her heart go cold.
A sound of slow but continuous footsteps, one person trying to reach another person. She hears the sound of one person crawling away, frantically, in great panic. The person crawling away is hurt however. She hears cries of pain and sadness. Regret.
That voice… It's Ajax…
Shaula feels an unfathomable dread as she continues moving through the lobby. She runs towards the stairwell entrance on the ground floor and breaks through it with a bright red fist. The wooden door splinters into hundreds of pieces. As she sprints up the stairs, her arm grabs the metal railing at various points. She leaves glowing handprints.
With the clarity of a beast set loose, she listens for her quarry as she sprints up. She sniffs and tastes the air. Smoke is wafting through the building. She hears the sound of something being pulled out of something else, like a knife being pulled out of someone's flesh.
The sound makes her feel sick.
What is happening… What is Ajax going through right now?
Shaula doesn't know what's about to happen but what she perceives doesn't bode well to her. She smells smoke from a couple of the floors she passes but there's no fire there. She keeps climbing in search of Ajax's voice.
He's ok. He's fine. Nothing's going to happen to him. Nothing. He's not going to be killed by these fucking terrorists. He's not. He's not. He's going to be alive. He's–
