Hyperion Evergrowing

There were several ways one might react to having the connection to their family threatened. Shock was expected, anger understandable, fear reasonable. Since his rebirth, Leif had experienced all three, but the mental smothering on his emotional state due to his inhuman physiology had largely kept him in check.

From what snippets of his past life Leif could recall, his younger, human self had been tutored in a manner that would tame emotional outbursts. Of course, that hadn’t stopped that version of himself from being banished from his family due to an emotional decision, a decision that had left three young men dead on the ground of the house Vin estate.

Leif had already decided that none of the men and women who had pursued him into the forest north of Luriem would be leaving alive. The choice to cut down the threat hounding him had not been made lightly, but he had made his peace with the idea of delivering death onto the deserving. Was it self defence if you orchestrated the scenario in which you were attacked. No. Was the killing of another living, thinking being a moral and sustainable solution to problems? No.

But they lived in a violent world.

Over the past month he had guided, and partially tutored another in how to navigate their reality. Training, protecting, discussing the unfortunate ways of the world. On the blood-strewn beach near the imperial city of Kartinth, Leif had told Lucia that killing shouldn’t be the first course of action one considered. He still stood by what he said, if given the opportunity, ending another's life should be a last resort. The girl was far away now. Safe, hopefully. A history with Fracture she might have, this wasn’t her fight. This was war, and it was no place for a child.

It was interesting how a sudden flash of intense, primal anger could sharpen the thoughts in one’s head. How clarity could dawn as all background distractions vanished over the cognitive horizon. Leif didn’t speak as a condensed sphere of gilded wood appeared in his hand, didn’t hesitate as he stepped forward, blurring upwards in a streak of gold, the sheer weight of the object he was carrying sending a sharp pang of pain through his soul. He appeared atop the cliff, among the still reacting humans that had chosen to come after him. The sphere slipped from his hand as he released it, already sending a [Might] enhanced punch right for the nearest man’s face.

Cartilage broke, the skull fractured, the brain was instantly pulverised, and a life blinked out, snuffed like a candle. But what had once animated the body, sustained the mind and intermingled with the soul to allow for existence was drained away, syphoned in through wooden knuckles, washing down each finger and into the palm, then flooding down past the wrist, forearm, bicep, shoulder. Down into the chest, settling into the vague location that all cultivated energy dwelled.

Ideally this would have been the end of somebody Leif had a personal grievance with. Unfortunately he could only teleport back to the spot he had been standing, and he hadn’t intended to take this fight. If he had, he would have spent a handful of seconds placing more anchors along the edge of the cliff.

Then the bomb exploded, stone shattered, the air screamed, wood ripping outwards in every direction in an expansion of force as violent as it was devastating. Men died, some impaled, others dying from blunt trauma. Others still were sent flying, crashing into nearby tree’s or plummeting down off the cliff to have their bodies land broken on the ground below.