Rangers Endgame

Yakeru pivoted his back foot to lean off his center axis, a frost vestige's claws whistling past his ear. He brought his sword up and caught another pair just before they struck his neck, the shock jolting his arm.

Movement in his periphery.

He veered from the struggle just as burning scarlet shrieked past him, carrying with it a half-physical frost vestige and sending it careening into the wall.

The sheer force of its passage cleared the snow in front of him, and his opponent's torso partially manifested. Quickly taking advantage, he drove his blade into its still-forming heart before the crackling bone could fully form over its chest.

Nothing flashy. No wasted movements. Just trying to conserve as much of his limited stamina as possible.

In the distance, Fuyumi's silhouette flipped over the scorching scythe, devastating a home in her place.

She retaliated with a thrust that fired a concentrated beam towards its silhouette. It managed to tag the hound somewhere on its side. But the fact that it didn't react likely meant the wound was too shallow—assuming she wounded it at all.

The beast tilted its head, allowing a frost vestige to burst from the white screen, claws missing it by inches, to collide with Fuyumi's defense.

Yakeru swapped into her place, feinting high, then aimed for the hound's legs.

It didn't bother playing his game, waving its hand casually to summon forth a roaring tsunami of blood.

He’d seen this attack before.

Reflex guided radiance through his legs, and Blitz Step snatched him from its range.

The wave plunged into his afterimage, the force cracking earth and quaking his bones. A wall of snow slapped the side of his face, leaving his skin frigid hot. Its retaliation left an opening in the storm.

He flashed to its flank, preparing a counter, when red mist sprayed from its back. Muscles clenching painfully, he leapt back just as sharp glints raced through the particles before detonating into an inferno, displacing the blizzard.

It raised another hand, but Fuyumi and a materializing frost vestige intercepted. Blood coiled around the hound's forearm, seizing the frost vestige by the head and igniting it in furious scarlet. Fuyumi rushed past, daggers aimed at its abdomen. Flames wrapped around itself, condensed, and solidified in a blink. Her blades clashed harmlessly against its armor.

It reacted, writhing with lethal intent.

She pushed off, her body quivering from the strain. She didn’t get far, but she knew she didn’t have to.

Yakeru was already moving, Blitz Step carrying him until his momentum snatched her from the spears rocketing from the bloodhound’s armor, skewering the frigid air where she once was. As he set her down, hot blades tore through his lower half, his body threatening to ground him should he push himself beyond his approaching limit.

Frost vestiges harassed the hound while they gathered themselves.

He lay against a mound of rubble, giving his legs a chance to breathe.

“You won’t last,” Fuyumi warned, kneeling beside him.

Even as the words left her mouth, her breathing was heavy with growing fatigue.

“Neither will you.”

“I'm fine,” she denied.

Something blistered past them into a wall, detonating into an entanglement of powdered white and fiery scarlet. They ducked their head, heat rolling off their necks before the cold rushed to take its place again.

“These fodder aren’t helping,” Fuyumi claimed, peeking out towards the battle.

Yakeru did the same. “They are.”

A frost vestige managed to tag the hound’s shoulder plate of condensed blood.

It didn’t so much as flinch.

Blood roared into a furious inferno around its body, swallowing its assailants and reducing crumbling homes to nothing. The intense ignition left a searing crater behind, a heaving bloodhound on a knee at its center.

The racing winds filled the gap, and the deceased frost vestige's bodies wisped back into nothing.

“I'm positive that we're on the right track,” Yakeru confirmed.

“What are you talking about?” she inquired, daggers ready. “They’re getting pummeled.”

He gestured with his head toward the battle. “Have you considered why I wanted the frost vestiges here in the first place?”

A crackling boom interjected. Fuyumi jerked to the side as a frost vestige careened past her, vanishing into the white void.

Another wave dragged them back into the teeth of battle. Fuyumi rolled across the snow to avoid a swing meant for her chest, while Yakeru spun away from claws aimed at his neck.

The two met back-to-back, slipping into a seamless, impenetrable dome of defensive slashes. Sparks flew and steel flashed as they protected one another’s blind spots.

A powerful heatwave rolled past, devouring the frigid gales, frost vestiges twisting into solid form.

Fuyumi swept low behind her, catching a frost vestige’s leg.

Yakeru cleared it with a leap, decapitating two more at her flank with a whip of his blade.

Swapping sides, Fuyumi buried Bloodhound’s Fang into another’s neck while Yakeru cleaved one between the ribs. He forced the still-able creature toward her with a jerk of his shoulder. With quiet understanding, Armor Killer carved through its skull.

Neither spoke a word or shouted warnings. Silence was enough—the kind of rhythm born from a foundation of countless adventures together.

The wind caught up again.

A massive, churning mass of blood hurtled towards them, and they darted in opposite directions. The impact sent tremors through stone beneath Yakeru's legs, but he never wavered.

He dodged a frost vestige attempting to ambush him through the following snow cloud.

In the same instant, the bloodhound whipped a tired arm, clawing open screaming rifts that burned away an unseen assailant.

The blizzard slashed open around Yakeru in the process, and he immediately drove his blade into the frost vestige’s back before it could manifest. Its muscles coiled around steel and bones layered on top in response to the exposed air.

As it took shape around his sword, he forced radiance into the blade, then wrenched it skyward, carving a valley through its torso.

Sharp fatigue lanced through his channels like liquid lightning. Teeth gritted, gums aching, he willed himself to stay on his feet. Rest meant being overrun.

Across the fray, the bloodhound twisted its claws, conjuring a wolven shape that struggled to form. The lower half of its otherwise menacing jaw was an incomplete mess of scarlet, its dissolving legs left awkward scorch marks in the snow.

The manifestation launched itself at a vestige but hissed into embers before it could hit its mark. Seizing the opening, the frost vestige plunged sharpened bone into the hound’s calf.

It flinched. Faint, but enough to tell even through the blizzard.

A surge of flaming blood ripped out of the bloodhound again, a form of retaliation born from something teetering on desperation. The explosive force dispersed the storm and consumed the materializing frost vestige.

The hound grabbed hold of its charred remains, lifting them to its parched maw. However, before it could drink, its hand collapsed onto air as the returning storm robbed it, the body wisping away.

It didn’t have time to process. It outstretched a hand towards a pack aiming for its flank and slammed its fist shut. Blood followed its command, wrapping around the creatures in a flaming dome before the hound sent it hurtling into a stone structure with a resounding crash.

The force of the maneuver tunneled through the storm, displacing the snow and exposing four more frost vestiges bounding forward. Opening its palm, walls of scarlet twisted around the oncoming threats. Jagged lines exploded within the confines, ensnaring the creatures inside a web of lightning that scorched bone.

Desperate, the hound plunged its withered tendrils into their corpses to extract their essence. But the storm was faster, washing away any trace that their bodies even existed.

Fuyumi took advantage of the frustrated groan that followed, cutting cleanly across its calf. Its knee drove hard into the snow, and she readied for a double plunge into its back.

The blood seeping from its wound twisted around her, crackling as a deterrent. She slashed it apart, but the hound had already spun around, jaws unlocked around her.

Reflex launched her back, and its razor-like teeth slammed shut around empty space. When it was distracted, bone claws struck its back.

Through gnashed teeth, it ignited itself again, melting the blizzard within range and charring its assailant. When it turned around to sink its teeth into its corpse to replenish, the body had already dissolved into incorporeality.

The bloodhound roared, the apathetic winds muffling its helplessness.

Yakeru's plan was working. The hound had nothing to work with.

He burst forward with Fuyumi, and the hound raised a hand. Blood crackled and popped, hauling itself together, but ultimately collapsed before it could take shape. The armor it’d conjured to protect itself hissed away.

Without any defense, their blades carved a whirlwind of silver lines through its flesh in their passing. For the first time during this battle, the bloodhound unleashed a pained howl.

They looked over their shoulders. The hound had sunk to both hands and knees. It rotated, sliding a foot under itself but couldn’t quite will itself to stand. Barely any blood leaked from its wounds. Not because they were shallow, but because it'd exhausted its reserves.

Its face wrinkled with fierce concentration. The blood bubbled in response. Then flickered, burned away. Rage twisted its scarred features. The kind that refused to acknowledge reality.

It tried again.

A crackle.

Then a hiss of embers.

Blue eyes gathered around once again, but Fuyumi wouldn't let them have the luxury of finishing it.

She marched forward, tattered coat billowing, silver hair whipping. The howling winds seemed to carry her ancient resentment that poured into her steady gait. Her grip tightened around her daggers.

The hound snarled. Then… it stopped. Something flickered across its face, but Yakeru couldn't tell what—courtesy of the blizzard.

Fuyumi stopped in her tracks when the bowels of its chest began to glow an ominous red. Its snarl turned to confused grunts as if it had no conscious control over what was happening.

The wind itself seemed to pause and watch.

The hound groaned, clutching its chest, as light bled through in serrated lines that snapped at the ground. Snow melted, and debris sizzled, heat blooming across white stone until it shifted to a blinding orange.

She backpedaled as scorching heat pushed against the frigid air. Yakeru shielded his eyes, sweltering temperatures pressing against his skin. The thunderous crackles of wrathful lightning and the roar of unbridled flames quickly displaced the rush of winter air.

Frost vestiges scurried, disappearing back into the storm's embrace.

The hound lifted, not by its own strength. Something else. Dormant.

Ethereal scarlet latched onto its elongating fur, giving it an otherworldly sway. Flesh tightened, clinging far too close to bone. Raging flames masked the raw agony in its sunken eyes, only the sheer black silhouette of its skull remaining.

Fuyumi backed up next to Yakeru, her eyes mirroring his disbelief, as their gazes remained fixed on the furnace.

They could only stare for several seconds as the blazing inferno infused with lightning engulfed the sky.

Then he let out a breath he didn't know he was holding.

“Wonderful…”