He knew how to win. That uppercut that shattered his jaw, beating up his teeth into the upper palate… It was a mistake. Lord Steward is a fool. He should’ve never let him survey the battlefield. In his arrogance, the usurper had forgotten how fast they could think.
A plan was already in motion, one of his many plans coursing through his mind, and all he needed now was the mass. He despised the outcome he had come for, but with the loss of the secondary brain, this battle turned into a race against time. He needed additional bodies capable of withstanding his greatness until the primary body stabilized itself.
The Chosen Prince rose from the crater left by his landing, pebbles the size of a human head turning to dust in the air before they could touch the ground. Pillars of light struck from the sky, burning and harming his body, and he used them to propagate the spread of his viruses. This was what his foes had failed to understand. His diseases didn’t come from this world. A plan to douse him in heat could never work.
The shroud unleashed in the air around him stole the heat from the pillars, thinning them and preserving his ravaged body. A mountain of flesh, a giant cadaverous body of Lord Steward landed to meet him, bringing down a hand to squash him. The Chosen Prince endured the monumental slam, hearing the crack of the earth opening a canyon beneath him. The force of the blow ripped through his organs, and the recoil from the impact drew an entire mountain up.
A burst of flesh-eating virus burrowed through the palm and opened a path for him to jump out. Immediately after, a second infection took hold. The pink flesh of his foe gave life to mushrooms, and they littered the full length of the arm to the shoulder, paralyzing it, breaking the bone, and cracking the skin. Blood spurted out of cracks, turning into more fungus, and he landed on a safer footing.
Some of his enemy’s crimson blood turned to mist, swirling around him, trying to form a bone cage to hold him. The Chosen Prince raced across the arm. Lord Steward leaned his changed face closer, opening the tentacles around a single mouth, a gaping, hellish maw filled with fangs the size of the Chosen Prince’s body. Dozens of tentacles tried to grab him and flung him in, and the ruler indulged in the silliness of this plan and kicked like a street urchin, flying into the maw. The gigantic wings of Lord Steward’s pink body jerked and went limp, unable to do even a single beat as his kick parted the bulbous head in two.
He faced little resistance; the unleashed potent viruses overcame the immune system of the larger body. His foe had certain limitations. The Chosen Prince remembered it now. The larger body meant a larger number of potentially weak spots. And the fangs turned to dust; his kick hit the upper palate, burning through it thanks to the same flesh-eating virus from before, and at last he reached the cranial cavity. Only to find it empty.
In his rage, he split the skull in two and heard a hush to his left, facing a rising crimson form, a humanoid shape of his size, devoid of any features. The entire mass of the slain monster flowed like water, hurrying into the crimson body, and the Chosen Prince had lost his footing, sinking to his knees. A swing to the jaw sent him flying and rocked his brain. All too late, he had understood the reason for using such a frail, useless, and slow body.
Lord Steward didn’t need to use his previous body for combat. He had used it to collect everything edible from the surrounding atmosphere, ground and even eating the parasitic fungi, further increasing his weight. And edible included his own viruses, now abundantly distributed throughout the larger body. He always knew about the unnatural source of the Chosen Prince’s power.
But so what? The victory was still his; his plan was furthering along with every ray of light striking from the sky and leaving burns on his body. The Chosen Prince didn’t simply use this external source of energy to spread the shroud of death around him; every act of destruction had to have a purpose. As the disease intensified, gorging itself thanks to its own form of photosynthesis, so too did the temperature of his own body, and the Chosen Prince welcomed this fever. Each second brought him closer to finalizing his ultimate weapon. A weapon capable of slaying both his opponents.
He landed on the slope of the still-rising mountain and opened his eyes in panic, remembering something else. A slit appeared in Lord Steward’s face, and an impossibly tiny thread left it. He knew it. This was the weapon that had brought him low, and the Chosen Prince darted to the left, evading the seemingly harmless line. It pierced the mountain and bisected it when the crimson head swayed to the side. The Chosen Prince crawled down, saving himself from this thread.
The memories came back. Two combatants locked in a deadly struggle, the energy beams unleashed from his mechanical gauntlets and the insectoid body flying in and out, dodging them. His head was a pyre of green flame, and the diseases unleashed by it slowly worked their way through his opponent’s body, and incoming attacks made the Chosen Prince spit blood. And then it happened. A single strike, a single unblockable attack, a biological sword capable of piercing anything.
It won’t happen again. He refuses! The storm of sickness drew nearer, dissolving the falling mountaintop and the deadly thread along with it. He jumped off the stone and grasped hands with Lord Steward. The Chosen Prince shattered the elbow of his opponent, but all bones inside the wounded limb turned to elastic muscles, and even trapped fingers of the crimson form slipped out of his hold, and the back of Lord Steward exploded. An inverted ribcage emerged, its many ends biting into the Chosen Prince’s body, hooking between his ribs, scratching at the skin, and trying to reach his ligaments. The bastard knew of his weakness.
So be it. The Chosen Prince exploded a cloud of acid infection, weakening the bones holding him. They splintered as he turned on, bringing his rage at Lord Steward, who twisted his head and limbs around as if his own body was a shifting fluid. They faced each other in a brawl, so unworthy of beings of their rank. The Chosen Prince pushed his opponent into the mountain, and Lord Steward’s body scratched it as they fell, two godlike creatures locked in a childish fistfight.
Their blows produced shockwaves capable of rupturing the ears and popping the eyes of normal humans. Even large slabs of stone, beaten out of the larger structure by their combat, trembled and exploded in the air. This wasn’t it. Every second stretched into hours. They planned and calculated, one unleashing maladies deadly enough to depower a country, the other evolving in the midst of the fight, dissipating cruel blows around his rubbery skin and overwhelming the diseases. And through this exchange, the Chosen Prince grew hotter, and his blood started bubbling.
A tail, or rather a sack of flesh, rose above Lord Steward’s shoulder, a pulsating appendage more disgusting than any cancerous growth created by the Chosen Prince’s power. At its end, it had a sort of crumbled skin, but rather than unleashing a stinger, it spat out fire, dousing the Chosen Prince in heat that blackened some of his skin and made him shout in pain as he tried to steal this heat and survive. The flame hit the ground below, and it disappeared, opening a wide tunnel into the darkness. Unable to handle the heat any longer, he dissolved the tail using a cloud of flesh-eating virus, but as soon as it touched Lord Steward’s crimson head, the virus died. His opponent had already improved his body.
Their legs touched the ground, and the Chosen Prince pushed through the forest of bones, grabbing his foe by the head. He saw it now: a sack of flesh shifting underneath Lord Steward’s flesh, a sack of flesh containing brains. How he wanted to rip at the chest cavity and absorb them to offload at least a minuscule workload of processing ever-changing information and improve his thought process. But it was a trap. His enemy revealed the captured prey to lure him.
He slammed the fool into the ground, using both poison and physical might to hurt him. In making his body elastic and rubbery, Lord Steward had to sacrifice something. It is why he relied on bladed weaponry and flame. Foolishness. Twice, he raised the featureless head as it slowly melted like wax. And twice he slammed Lord Steward, opening chasms in the ground and assaulting his body with deadly infections. At the third slam, the head disconnected from the neck, and the main body slithered through his legs, akin to a slug. And as he turned around, a body spun in the air, trying to land two wide kicks.
The first kick landed against his jaw, almost twisting his head. He let it go, grabbing the blade that Lord Steward had turned his leg into, a thin bone blade capable of slicing through his neck. The kick was aimed at his eyes, a masterstroke of sorts to blind him and destroy the brain, winning this bout of theirs. He caught it between his fingers, dissolving the bone, and retreated from a sweep as his opponent pushed a new limb in place of the lost one.
This was your last chance, fool.
He had lost much. With the loss of the additional brains, he could no longer offload the strain of creation on them. Rot threatened to overtake his body; his organs suffered failure one after another, and through his concentration, he made himself walk and fight. He lost the ability to create new body parts or regenerate, and cruel wounds left his skin hanging like pieces of cloth, flapping in the wind as he moved. Loss of an eye, a ruptured eardrum, or damage to his brain could lead to sensory deprivation or a loss of motor functions, which in turn meant death.
And that was fine. A king shrinks from no challenge; a king suffers no threat to his authority. With the loss of the foreign thoughts bringing desires yet unknown, the Chosen Prince gained clarity. One often evolves in times of turmoil, and memories of his defeat flood back in his head, not restoring all the missing links, but bringing just enough information for the finalization of his plan.
The first to complete a plan was his enemy. The featureless, headless, and crimson body moved away on all four limbs, and he saw threads coming out of him. Several threads went into the sky. They were connected to small, hovering biological lumps of flesh, flying thanks to the gas unleashed from special breeding chambers. Biological satellites to survey the battlefield and give Lord Steward a complete vision.
But a thick cord pierced the ground, and it shook. A stream of biological material was sucked in from minerals, absorbed from his own poisoned cloud, and assembled by devouring the wildlife populating the underground levels. It came out in foam, grafting itself on Lord Steward, tons upon tons of biological material. The Chosen Prince understood that his enemy turned the situation around, stealing a third chance to win from fate.
There weren’t any cocoons or cracks accompanying the change. Lord Steward was beyond such theatrics. His body and the mass around it first overlapped, and then transformed silently, and the ground rose beneath a massive weight.
Lord Steward rose. He had used the brief respite to complete his transformation, and an eight-limbed body met the Chosen Prince. Hundreds of brown chitin plates covered every inch of this body, and each arm ended up with five clawed fingers capable of injecting toxins to blind, suffocate, cause a stroke, or paralyze an opponent. Both legs had reverse joints, and the two claws at the ends of each leg were curled, built to hook and tear rather than kick and pierce. Many-windowed eyes, an entire visor of them, reflected a laser beam, and the green clouds and two membrane wings gave out a first buzz as the beam scorched part of the Chosen Prince’s skin.
The warshape. Lord Steward’s ultimate weapon, a perfect lifeform to withstand all known diseases and endure the unknown ones. A simple yet absolute design.
His punch spread the afterimage. Lord Steward circled around him, not only on his wings but also propelled by the release of air coming out of an opening on his chitin plate. Biological boosters. The Chosen Prince elbowed back, and the hit dissipated along the plate. Its kinetic energy traversed across the muscle fibers and got returned with a backhanded blow that sent him scratching the ground with his face.
A kick pulled him upright, slashes opened rivers of blood around his body, and he tried to shield himself by blocking and releasing a cloud of sickness. In vain. The cloud rolled over Lord Steward, failing to harm even the membrane of his wings, and the hooks buried themselves in the Chosen Prince’s abdomen, lifting him high. A second kick launched him into the sky, sending him through the searing laser beam. The heat stopped, and Lord Steward was already near, crossing the distance so fast that even he couldn’t see him move.
A bladed sphere closed around him, a flicker of the past returning to the present. Only back then he had his mechanical suit to weather this storm, and now its fury was upon him. He was hewn and clawed. In the span of a single breath, he had endured thousands upon thousands of variations of deadly assaults. His ribs cracked and were pried out. He raised his arms to shield his brain, curling like an infant in a womb, and his left hand disappeared at its wrist. An eye leaked out. Guts entangled his own legs. At last, the torture ended, and a kick sent him face down, straight into the ruins of the crater he had raised at the start of this bout.
It looked different now; a canyon cut it in half, and the remains of a mountain, no larger than a mound, covered the place in darkness. And when he looked up, he saw a figure, its buzzing wings banishing the poisonous cloud and basking in the light. The light of his kingdom. The usurper still drew breath; his foul presence still denied the Chosen Prince his rightful place, and that rage helped him stand and ignore the faint voice at the back of his mind.
He fell on one knee; his ankle gave in when the bone cracked after the rot atrophied the muscles, turning them into parchment. The brutal beating has rendered him weak. And yet the many eyes of his foe had failed to spot his encroaching demise.
“Breaking apart already?” Lord Steward tilted his head, and something screamed inside him. A servant of sorts, begging the Chosen Prince to fight on. The name eluded his memory. “Unsurprising. You’ve never fought against an opponent equal to yourself, warmonger. And I’ve defeated several over the course of my life, you including.”
“Fool,” he replied, pushing words through his dry lips. “Defeated? You have caused me a setback and nothing more. As long as I live, as long as I can still stand up and fight, I am undefeated. It matters not who holds sway in an individual moment of history. The end result is all. And only death marks a defeat.”
“Now, now, settle down, sicko. Who is the fool here?” Lord Steward examined his arm, his words filled with contempt. “You have already died once. All your tricks and all your weaknesses are known to me.”
“All is weak, thief.” His remaining eye flashed. “And I control all weakness… even yours.”
This is it. His blood boiled, and he rose his hands up, as if pleading for mercy. Some diseases cause physical changes. They could turn the body into a plant, reduce bones to brittle glass, or change personalities to instill a certain behavior pattern. He went further. The ruined skin of his arms and face was overheated, and blood was leaving him in crimson streaks. He turned his own body into an alchemical cauldron, dedicated to a single goal.
And the upper layer of his skin erupted, taking away his remaining good hand and unleashing a single burst of energy racing at a speed greater than anything — greater than the speed of sunlight leaving the sun’s surface. His enemy wasn’t caught unaware. The insectoid body moved upon spotting bubbles about to erupt on the Chosen Prince’s body, and it still wasn’t enough to preserve him. The beam licked away a quarter of Lord Steward’s, taking away three of his arms along with his head. He collapsed on his knees, illuminated by the light of an artificial sunrise. The hellish heat burned both his wings and satellites, and part of his remaining windowed eyes darkened.
“As if a surprise attack will ever do me in,” the insectoid head spat, and he put his hands on the ground, cautious and wary. The exposed side of his head moved, the brain, bones, and chitin fused, and new organs appeared on a fly, helping Lord Steward think and giving him reactions far superior to those of his opponent.
The Chosen Prince had suffered as well. His eye could barely see, the remaining hand disappeared, and both arms now ended at the elbow. The heat vaporized his guts, and most of the front of his body vanished, consumed by the apocalyptic weapon he had unleashed. The intense heat threatened to reduce the rest of his organs to ash, but he persevered and prepared to fire the second shot. He moved his arms and shifted his body.
“Boasting. Talking. This is your first weakness,” the Chosen Prince focused his vision on Lord Steward, buying himself the precious seconds. “Relying on regeneration. It is your second weakness. And as for the third… Tell me, where am I aiming?”
“You wouldn’t dare,” Lord Steward whispered, and his back spat out another biological satellite. It flew up, and a large arm pushed out of the wounded side. “No! Didn’t you want this city?! The people…”
Their battle had led to this. The Chosen Prince had hoped to put an end to the fight in a single attack, downing both his foes. He deduced the location of the hidden foe by tracing the trajectory of the lasers. But his hope got nullified the moment Lord Steward assumed the warshape. Too fast, too nimble, capable of moving around with the most grievous injuries, and immune to sickness. Even if a single piece of Lord Steward remains, he can restore his body.
There was a way to make him be in the exact spot he needed.
“A true king knows when to sacrifice a dying kingdom to claim a better one. I can do it. Can you?” Lord Steward broke away from the place, reshaping his body into something hardened, black, almost crystallized. In losing the warshape form, he had also sacrificed his speed and placed himself in the line of fire, foolishly trying to stop the inevitable. “Not a king, just a thief,” the Chosen Prince said.
Purple light shone from above, no doubt announcing the destruction of the secondary foe. He paid it no mind and let the eruption happen, sending out another beam.
