Rangers Endgame

Molten rock spittled across the whining snow, smothering senses with a horrid clash of charred earth and frigid ozone. The pale skies retreated, leaving behind a forsaken dullness looming over village ruins. The ground blackened beneath the bloodhound’s feet. Sparks snapped into existence midair, serrated lines of scarlet lightning threading through the blaze.

A fleshy, orange mass forced its way out of its chest, the outline of ribs giving to make room for it. Its harsh brilliance contrasted against the hound’s black silhouette.

Yakeru knew exactly what it was, even without having seen it before.

The once dormant organ squirmed. Veins pulsed, tissue throbbed. A low hum writhed from it, just loud enough to touch his ears over the chaotic furnace.

Coat fabric snapped as sheer force shoved into Yakeru and Fuyumi.

“We have an idea of what it does now,” he said optimistically, his mouth drying the moment it opened.

“This changes nothing,” she reminded, hands tightening around her daggers.

“I know.” He took a few more steps back as the heat pulsed, the kind that smeared across his bones. “But we have to do this right.”

“It’s a mutt on fire,” she said, squeezing her eyes shut when another pulse rolled through them. “We just have to douse the flames.”

The creature’s skull tilted. Stared. Hollow with the emptiness of involuntary forfeit of one’s own life. The hound—if it was still in there underneath all that torment—stepped toward them. They took another step back when the snow at their feet hissed.

Yakeru scanned the area, mind calculating the best way to put out a fire on this scale.

'This would be easier with Kenji here.’

His eyes caught on the cliffside behind them, where a heavy amount of white powder had built up at its peak.

“Lead it to the cliff,” he ordered.

She looked back, up at the piling snow, then back at the hound. “How?”

“If it still has any semblance of its original self, it'll give chase.”

The bloodhound put another foot forward. Then another. Until it staggered into a sprint, each step spilling more burning blood, the inferno building, compressing, feeding on itself.

They ran as one, boots tearing through ash and broken stone. The cliffside loomed ahead, jagged and sheer. Yakeru skidded to a halt at the edge, turning just as Fuyumi pivoted. As expected, the hound followed without thought, slicing her crescent projectile that sent a spray of kindling scarlet.

The monster lunged, jaws yawning open, claws outstretched.

They split at the last second. The cliff face blackened before the hound had even reached it. It crashed forward into its surface, fissures spider-webbing upward in a thunderous crackle. Rock sagged like wax, glowing before sloughing away.

“Move!” he shouted.

The avalanche bellowed down, a crushing wave of stone and snow swallowing the bloodhound whole, smothering the inferno in a choking collapse. The impact shook the ground, sent powdered white and ice exploding outward in a blinding surge.

Silence fell, heavy and stunned.

A fit of coughs burst from his lungs as he surveyed. Fuyumi stumbled out of the snow into the clearing. He joined her.

She dusted herself off, wincing when she touched her side wrong. “Did we—”

The rubble shifted in answer.

A pulse of red light bled through the rocks, and the mountain of white fluff vaporized around it, skipping the state of water entirely. The bloodhound rose from the wreckage, its silhouette jagged, more broken than before, but it ignored it. Blood boiled faster and brighter now, the organ’s hum intensifying as lightning snapped indiscriminately.

The heat doubled, forcing them to jog backwards.

Too late.

A pulse ripped out, incinerating matter as it travelled towards them. By the time Yakeru even thought to use Blitz Step, it was already on him.

Then, a blur of motion cut between them and the pulse. The heat slammed into something amber—a wall that blunted the violent surge. The earth trembled as the heat soared harmlessly around them. The golden wall flickered as if trying to catch its breath. When the last of the wave rolled past, that’s when they noticed who’d protected them.

Yuto.

He dismissed his radiance, sweat already trickling down his face. Not from the heat, from withstanding an attack meant to erase.

“Thank you,” Yakeru said, placing a grateful hand on his shoulder.

“I…” Yuto’s breath came out shaky. Setting the end of his steaming shield down to rest his now trembling arms, he tried again. “I can’t do that again…”

“Then don’t. You’ve done enough.”

Two more silhouettes took shape through the blizzard, and Risa and Takahiro rushed over.

Risa stopped beside Yakeru, her bandaged arm reaching into her purse-like satchel and pulling out a health elixir, likely from one of the other underground chambers. “Thank goodness you two are alright.”

Yakeru accepted while Fuyumi took one from Takahiro. He drank its contents, aches fading and wounds he didn't know he had mending, and Fuyumi downed hers.

Takahiro surveyed the area. “If recollection serves me right, there should be frost vestiges afoot, no?”

“They won’t be coming back,” Fuyumi confirmed, eyeing the bloodhound.

The storm around it wasn't displaced, it was torn open as if the blaze itself bullied the elements into moving around it.

The hum grew deeper. Louder. The organ throbbed like a heart running a marathon. Lightning thrashed, blinking stone out of existence while barely leaving ashen ghosts behind.

The others noticed it, too. The heavy foreboding pressure that etched concern onto their faces.

The hum wasn’t just building, it was peaking.

“Is it supposed to be doing that?” Yuto backed up with the group, still remaining in front.

“Doesn’t matter,” Fuyumi answered, readjusting her daggers, eyes narrowing on the exposed organ.

Yakeru’s eyes trailed down, past his snow-covered boots.

The safehouses.

The villagers. And he didn’t know what the destructive force of the blast would look like. The others followed his gaze, faces paling at the realization.

Through the shadow of twisted village gates lay a stretch of field—or at least he assumed. It was the same gate they’d crossed when first arriving in Marrow.

“We draw it away,” Yakeru concluded, sheathing his sword. “It'll come after Fuyumi and I.”

Risa paled further. “Are you crazy?” She blurted, but he didn't deny it. “Even if you do manage to draw its attention, you don't know how large the radius would be. If it detonates with you thinking you're outside it…”

“I concur,” Takahiro agreed. The fact that he no longer referred to himself as “yours truly” told him he knew how dire the situation was. “Perhaps there is another way?”

“No time for debate,” Fuyumi snapped, now looking at Yakeru. “Let’s go.”

He shot her a nod as he improvised. “Takahiro, anything that’s sent our way, deal with it. Yuto, whatever Takahiro can’t protect us from, you take care of it. Risa, make sure it can’t follow us once we turn back.”

Fuyumi was already gone, sprinting through the ruins. Yakeru went after her while the others followed. The bloodhound watched for a moment, grin still plastered as if it knew they couldn’t escape it.

Then a step. Snow evaporated.

Another step. Toppled vendors reduced to molten.

Then it lurched into a broken sprint on all fours.

It swiped and clawed at the air at intervals, scarlet rifts excavating trenches towards them. Takahiro twirled and thrust with his infused rapier, punching holes into the pursuing rifts until they dissolved. The ones he couldn’t stop flew past, but Yuto had already moved, angling his shield. The rifts slammed against the alloy so hard he went airborne for a couple of seconds, even when redirecting the blast into the distance.

The beast convulsed, orange veins burrowing throughout its silhouette. Then it drove its claws into raw ground, fissures racing towards them. Geysers erupted from the earth, lightning flashing skyward, entangling with the clouds and stinging his retinas.

The electrified air shrieked in every direction, but they kept moving, recalculating their route as they weaved through the geysers. Jagged light glanced Yakeru’s shoulder plate, heat bleeding through his armor to singe his skin. If his armor came from anything other than a behemoth, his arm would’ve been gone.

They pushed through the geysers, the ground stretching empty ahead of them. No cover. No shelter.

The bloodhound gained on them, but the ruined village had already vanished into the white void behind them. The hound’s relentless form unravelled as it chased, flaming blood tearing loose in wild arcs. The air screamed with pressure.

Heat licked the back of his neck. Then pressed hard against it until flesh complained. If he could, he’d lead the beast farther away.

This would have to do.

The hound leapt after them.

“Split!” he roared.

There was no time to call out in which direction. Everyone just peeled off separately.

Snow melted before it crashed into stone beneath it.

Risa was already weaving together a spell, flowers sprouting around the scalding crater to cover their escape. She panted, her limited reserves sagging her shoulders.

“Done…!” she called.

Takahiro slung her arm around his shoulder and moved. Yakeru was about to leave with Yuto but stopped when Fuyumi stayed put.

“Hey—”

“If it’s going to die, it’ll be by my hands,” she said without looking back.

He gritted. Deep down, shoved into the corner of his mind, he knew letting the bloodhound—the one responsible for her mother's death—end itself wasn't enough. It had to be her. The repressed anger in her eyes commanded it so.

Yet he didn't argue. Not because her flat tone left no room for it. Because he was bound by a promise.

Yakeru looked at Yuto, hand extended. “Shield.”

The young man looked at his hand, then back up. He handed it over, the weight pushing Yakeru's arm down a foot.

'He's been lugging this thing around this whole time?’

He shooed him off, Yuto hesitating before running after his party.

Yakeru joined Fuyumi’s side, waiting with her.

The bloodhound didn’t pry itself from the earth, it staggered out, heat melting a crude path. It didn’t give chase to Risa and the others, just kept its hollow gaze on the two before it. Nothing else mattered.

Even when its foot met a petal of a conjured flower. Even as a chain reaction engulfed it in a violent eruption of amber entangled with scarlet. Even when the cloud cleared, it was unfazed, eyes still locked on Yakeru and Fuyumi.

A bloodhound’s pettiness truly knew no bounds.

The shield rattled as Yakeru raised it in front of Fuyumi. He didn't know if it was going to work. And his reserves…

But there was no backing down now.

“The organ,” was all he said.

She knew immediately, dropping low against his back.

A golden hue bloomed free from his body. Dark hair suspended into brilliant blonde strands. Radiance continued down the length of his body, layering firmly over his skin and reinforcing his bones. It channeled through the shield, metal igniting into amber. He couldn’t make a wall like Yuto, but it was enough.

Muscles, tendons, bones—all of them screamed at once. But he didn’t release it. He couldn’t. Doing so meant backlash would prevent him from entering this state again.

He took an agonizing step, leg creaking under the strain. Then another. He was careful not to flash forward. Not yet.

Fuyumi followed closely. Sweltering air billowed around them, promising death should his radiance fail. The ends of his coat caught on the heat, snapping orange. The golden layer pressed inward, holding but strained.

Fuyumi noticed. “Yakeru—”

“Keep going,” he choked. “I’ll give you an opening.”

He kept the same pace, waiting.

The bloodhound dropped on all fours, back arched. Then it pounced.

There.

Yakeru took another step, this one without restraint. The moment his foot left the ground, his very existence became suggestion as he flickered forward. The world stretched, tearing at the edges, as the air in his path ignited, fortified innards slamming against bone. Fortunately, pain couldn't register faster than raw speed.

The shield combined with his unhinged power carved a tunnel through the inferno.

He met the bloodhound halfway, shield crashing hard into it. Something in his arm gave, but he ignored it. The flaming blood around it ripped out behind it from the sheer, jolting force.

Fuyumi raced through the hole in the air, the heat collapsing inward behind her.

The hound's claws wrapped over the shield, alloy melting, sizzling against his radiance. It forced the ruined metal down, jaws unlocking wider than he thought possible. Ensnaring flames rushed back in, trapping him with rapidly approaching teeth.

Fuyumi dashed through, Bloodhound’s Fang infused. The hound flinched for half a second, but it was already too late. Her blade plunged deep into the organ with a squelching whine as the dagger siphoned its essence. The beast unleashed a sickening howl, its flames faltering, reverting to liquid at the edges.

The hum stalled, but didn’t die.

The hound recovered with a vengeance that matched her own, half-lidded gaze clashing with a culminating fury built over the course of years.

Heat peaked again. Fuyumi didn’t back down, answering with an unbridled surge of power ripping out of her blade. The beast roared agonizingly as brilliant light flooded its blood-red veins and tore out of its mouth and eyes. The wrathful flames guttered, snapped, and vanished as their connection to the organ was severed, the bloodhound sinking to its knees. And with one last twist of her blade, buckling the creature’s form, the organ ruptured in a blinding flash of red and gold. A crystalline shriek burst into the returning frigid air.

Then the light dissipated, silence rushing in to fill the space.

Yakeru released his radiance, back crashing hard onto the stone. Darkness pressed in from the edges of his vision—not quite reaching the center, but close enough to threaten consciousness—and breathing was a bargain with his own body. Fuyumi dropped to her knees, daggers clattering, hair falling across her back as she gazed up into nothing, waiting for her body to catch up.

For a long moment, neither of them moved. Just waited for the worst of exhaustion to pass. He glanced down, past his singed boots, to the bloodhound, now lying still in a heap of its own viscera.

They sat in the quiet air for several minutes, the blizzard surprisingly not as dense there, as if the mountain itself rewarded them.

“Next time,” he said hoarsely, the words sending a spike of pain through his lungs, “we run first.”

She dragged her daggers from the ground and slid them back into their sheaths. “...There won’t be a next time.”

He wasn’t sure if it was the blood pounding in his ears or the world nearly fading to black, but her voice…

Years of pent-up anger smothered by a cold blanket she’d knitted herself… it wasn’t there anymore.

Only the emptiness she hid behind a tired smile.