Shadow Monarch in DC

Arthur’s hand rose toward the great shadow bell, and this time they did not wait for the bell to even ring loud enough for everyone to hear.

A light touch was enough. And Beru and Galatea were already moving toward eachother the sound finished forming, twin blurs of motion converging on the center of the arena floor like two comets set on a collision course, and when they met, the impact cracked the stone beneath them into a spiderweb fifty feet wide, a shockwave rolling outward that flattened the nearest banners and sent shadow soldiers stumbling back from the arena walls.

Beru’s clawed forelimb met Galatea’s forearm, shadow chitin screeching against her Kryptonian clone strength, and for one suspended instant neither of them gave an inch, two immovable things straining against each other, close enough that their faces were inches apart, close enough that Beru’s mandibles clicked and hissed with barely restrained aggression.

"You always insist on going first," Galatea said, her voice cool, almost pleasant, as if they were discussing the weather rather than trying to break each other. "Eager to embarrass yourself early, ant?"

"I insist on going first," Beru snapped, shoving her back a full stride with a burst of raw strength, "because I refuse to watch you walk around this arena pretending you can impresses anyone, especially him." His arms spread wide, claws gleaming. "The Monarch does not need a torch. He needs a soldier who can actually fight."

Galatea’s eyes ignited twin points of furnace light kindling in her shadow irises. "Then let me illuminate something for you."

The beams lanced out, twin lines of searing heat cutting toward him with no warning, no telegraph, and Beru was already gone, his wings snapping open, his whole body wrenching sideways with an agility that seemed to mock his sheer bulk. The beams tore two smoking trenches across the arena floor where he’d stood a moment before.

"Missed," he crooned, circling her now, wings beating hard enough to kick up a storm of grit and shattered stone, his voice carrying contempt. "Again. And again. You keep swinging that around like it means something, but you can’t hit what you can’t catch."

"I don’t need to catch you," Galatea said, and fired again, and again, twin beams sweeping the arena floor in relentless arcs, forcing him into a dance of dodges and dips, each near-miss close enough to singe the edges of his carapace. "I only need you to make one mistake."

"I don’t make mistakes," Beru said. "You do."

He waited until the beams swept past him one more time, waited a half-second longer than instinct should have allowed, close enough that the heat scorched a line across his shoulder plating and in that half-second he closed the distance entirely, appearing directly in front of her, faster than her eyes could track, faster than her heat vision could follow.

His clawed foot came up in a vicious arc, aimed at her ribs.

Galatea caught it.

Bare-handed, without flinching, her fingers closing around his ankle like a vice, and for a moment the two of them simply stared at each other Beru’s leg locked in her grip, his balance a single moment from collapsing.

"You were saying?" she asked.

He answered by driving his claws down toward her face in a stabbing lunge and she caught that too, her free hand snapping up to seize his wrist, and then, almost casually, almost cruelly, she twisted.

One of his claws snapped.

Beru’s screech tore across the arena, a sound of pure fury more than pain, and Galatea released his ankle only to drive her palm into his chest, sending him skidding backward across the shattered stone, gouging a furrow with his heels as he fought to stay upright.

"You will pay for that," he hissed, clutching the broken claw to his chest, violet fire boiling in his eyes.

"Quiet, bug," Galatea said, and there was no venom in it.

That was what broke him.

Beru’s wings snapped fully open behind him, wide as sails, and the air around him seemed to thicken, gathering, until he moved and this time it was not fast, it was instantaneous, a streak of black chitin and violet light that closed the entire arena floor in the space between one blink and the next. He was on her before she could raise her hands, both remaining claws driving forward in a flurry too fast to count, a storm of strikes aimed at her throat, her ribs, her knees, each one a killing blow if it landed.

None of them landed clean. Galatea moved with him now, matching his speed stride for stride, her forearms a blur as she blocked, deflected, but the sheer volume of the assault was pushing her back, step by grinding step, cracks spreading across the arena floor beneath her heels.

"There it is," Beru snarled between strikes, his voice ragged with effort and satisfaction both. "There’s the fear."

"That’s not fear," Galatea said through gritted teeth, catching his next strike on her forearm with a crack like thunder. "That’s me being polite."

She stopped blocking.

Her free hand shot out and closed around his throat, and in the same motion her knee drove up into his abdomen with enough force to fold his exoskeleton inward, and then she simply threw him not backward, but straight down, slamming him into the arena floor hard enough to crater it, hard enough that the shockwave rippled outward and cracked the nearest support pillar from base to crown.

Beru lay in the wreckage for half a second, wings twitching and then he laughed. A low, rasping, delighted sound.

"Now that," he said, dragging himself upright, "is more like it."

High above, on the platform overlooking the arena, Didi’s eyes had not left the two combatants since the bell rang. There was something in the way she watched them now not the idle amusement of before, but a slow, dawning understanding.

"I understand their issue with each other now," she said quietly.

Arthur, who had been watching in silence, exhaled through his nose. "Took you long enough."

"They’re not fighting over the title at all, are they." It wasn’t really a question. "They’re fighting over you."

"They worship the ground I stand on," Arthur said, his eyes never leaving the battle below, where Beru had launched himself skyward again, wings a blur, circling Galatea like a hawk looking for an opening. "Both of them. Beru builds statues because he cannot express it any other way. Galatea perfects herself endlessly because she believes strength is the only language I truly value. Neither of them wants the title of Grand Marshal for the power it grants. They want to be the one I’m proudest of."

Below, Beru had grazed Galatea’s shoulder, a shallow claw-mark, more insult than injury, already knitting back.

Didi tilted her head, watching the wound seal almost as quickly as it had opened. "You’ve limited their regeneration, I see. To some extent, they are also feeling pain."

"Only a fatal blow will actually destroy them," Arthur said. "Anything short of that, they heal. If either of them is destroyed once, that’s the end of the match and that counts as defeat, and yes, they do feel pain now and even fatigue, only for this event, I have to make it fair for all of them."

"I understand this, otherwise," Didi murmured, understanding blooming fully now, "this would never end."

"Precisely." A faint, humorless smile touched Arthur’s mouth. "They would tear this arena down to the shadows bedrock and keep going for eternity.."

Below, the battle had not paused for their conversation.

Galatea came at Beru with a ferocity that hadn’t been there before as if the graze had insulted her more than the broken claw had insulted him. She closed the distance, fists driving forward in a rhythm too fast for the watching shadows to fully follow, each blow landing with a crack that echoed off the arena walls. Beru met her strike for strike, his remaining claws weaving between her fists, redirecting, countering, his wings buzzing at impossible speed to grant him bursts of movement that let him vanish and reappear at angles that should have been physically impossible.

"You fight like you’re trying to prove something little bug," Galatea said, catching one of his strikes on her arms and answering with an elbow that clipped his jaw.

"I am proving something," Beru shot back, spitting venom, wings flaring wide as he spun away from her follow-up, using the motion to launch himself into the air, circling her at a speed that turned him into a smear of black and violet against the twilight sky. "That when this battle ends, it will be my name the Monarch remembers first."

"He remembers strength," Galatea said, planting her feet, gathering herself. "Not bug noise."

Beru dove.

Galatea did not dodge. She met him head-on, both fists driving upward in a single, perfectly timed strike that connected with his descending mass at full force and the resulting shockwave tore a crater into the arena floor forty feet wide, sent dust and shattered stone raining across the front rows of watching shadows, and for a long moment neither combatant moved, locked together at the center of the impact, each refusing to be the one who yielded first.

Then, slowly, Beru began to laugh again, wheezing, "Good," he rasped. "Good. Finally, a fight worth remembering."

Galatea straightened, her eyes still burning faint red with restrained heat. For the first time since the bell had rung, something that might have been respect flickered across her expression. "Then stop holding back, bug." she said. "Let us end this."

Beru’s wings spread to their full, terrible span, violet fire kindling along every edge.

"With pleasure."

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