Once I reached the hiding place for the fraternity and everyone who was trying to stop the Moon Mirror Order, I found two decapitated heads on top of a table. Goshalk and Umbra, their eyes serenely closed.
“I… failed again…!”, the mission had been frustrated. We did not stop whatever plans the Order had for the Great Games, and now my two best friends were dead. At the end, I couldn’t find a place anywhere, not even in a job. But I wouldn’t simply stay there and cry. Mari and the others were nowhere to be seen, which meant they could be still alive… And I wanted revenge. “TANKA!!”, I shouted so loud, the walls around me shook, and dust fell from the ceiling.
I immediately started to head for the tallest tower of vertebrae of the Bear Mountain, as that was the Council Member’s bedroom.
I moved like a tornado past confused apprentices and nervous teachers and other Bear Mountain frequenters and visitors from foreign lands, uncaring if I hurled someone away, or broke the school’s furniture. Then I reached the doors to the vertebrae tower, and found them locked. That area seemed to be off-limits for visitors.
“Kurgh!”, I kicked the two bone doors open, and stomped with determination towards the stairs.
There, I found some company.
“Not so fast, Coyote!”, the man with a nice smile that was attacking Spruce many months ago stepped down the first step of the stairs. He was followed by his old gang, and they all seemed to be enhanced by the same brutal hooks that The Broken and Lola had through their flesh.
And those guys weren’t alone: “It seems the tables turned around, hu?” Hook, the man who tormented Ike laughed from a few steps upward, accompanied by his old goons from the lacrosse game, all of the with enchanted items pierced through their flesh.
“We will get revenge for our leader!”, Twelve-Ax, came down from even upper in the stairs, and all the surviving Deathbeads too.
More and more people seemed to be scattered all up the tower, and every single one of them was using at least one magical item.
“…I don’t have time to deal with you all”, I said, walking towards the stairs and Tanka’s bedroom.
“Do you think you have a choice, you cocky motherfucker?!”, the leader of brutes who once attacked my friend Spruce jumped over me with a second level fire spell enveloping his wrist, the magic taking a visible tool on the man who immediately started to bleed from his nose and eyes.
I moved faster than the attacker could even perceive, however, grabbed his face, and crushed it into a red mist with one hand.
Before the corpse had even hit the ground, I conjured: “First Death”, and from the blood and gore of the cadaver, a ball of self-consuming snakes was formed and floated to my left side.
Immediately, ninety percent of the enemies fell down, their eyes rolling inside their skulls, and their hearts stopped beating.
Some, however, survived, though shaken.
“Wh-What?! Instant death?! But-But that would mean you are…!”, Twelve-Ax fell to his good knee and ax, and had his eyes going wide while staring at me.
But I wasn’t impressed simply because he didn’t die… yet.
“…Second death”, I said, and on my right side, a ball of white fire burst into existence, encircled by a myriad of large stone rings made out of petroglyphs.
And then twelve-Ax fell dead like the others, and I made my way up the stairs.
As I moved upwards, corpses kept falling down the stairs from when new enemies entered my reach, dozens, hundreds of them, many of whom I recognized from the lowest ranks of the Moon Mirror Order which I helped capture with the fraternity.
Once I was getting closer to Tanka’s bedroom, however, I unmade my instant death spells in case Mari and the others were there, and I opened the huge two bone doors with my hands.
Blood splashes were everywhere, and Umbra and Goshalk’s bodies were scattered all around the room. But one pile of cushions was kept clean, and lying relaxed on top of it was a man with silver hair and a big smile on his face.
“And our main guest finally shows up!”
“Shut up. Where are the fraternity members?”, I asked, feeling the veins in my head pulsing so intensely, I felt almost as if they were about to burst.
“Why the hurry! Come on, this is our so-awaited reunion!”, Tanka got up from his cushions and stepped closer with wide arms. “Let us enjoy this moment together, right?”, resting his hands on my shoulders, he tilted his head to the side innocently.
“Are they still alive?”, I asked, closing my fists so tightly my nails pierced my palm, and blood started dripping from the wound. My hands shook, as I could barely contain the wish to punch that man to death.
“Yes, they are a-”
I didn’t wait for Tanka to waste my time even more after confirming the fraternity members safe, that man couldn’t live for another second: “Second death”, I conjured, and the bloody snakes showed up to my left, and the fiery white sphere to my right. Instantly, everything in that room died, even the Manitou inside the objects, even the flies depositing their larvae in the corpses of the Council Members, nothing escaped.
Tanka’s eye rolled up his eye sockets, he stumbled a few steps away from me, and finally… He stopped.
“Hu?”, I stuttered, confused.
“Ooh, that almost sent me back to my home!”, Tanka’s eyes rolled back to their right place, and he tightened the grip on my shoulders. With an even bigger smile on his face, he continued: “I knew you’d be fun to fight with… God of Death!”
