18 hours earlier -

Lluks led from the front into battle with the type of killing efficiency that made it seem as if his fellows had only come for show and that was no slight. After all, he was an *Archai and as such led the greatest of Ephangis warriors into battle. Others who had been seen in distinction and with awe fought at his command without waver or respite and Lluks himself was everything warriors of such esteem could hope to be. 

All around the stage of battle was in a flurry of action as the engagement approached its climax. Lluks had finally tracked down the enemy commander and one way or the other, today it ended. The warlord crushed a nampu’s head with his elbow while parrying a strike from another only to smash his face with the hilt of the fabled blade “Callarazo”. Two more aggressors came from behind him yet before either could even attack they had both been cleaved in half and half and half again by the power of the razor wire blade he wielded. The chunks of what remained of them sloshed onto the floor with wet thuds. Lluks took no time to notice.

‘Be calm Razo’ the warlord thought, the imprint of his dreams and feelings connected to the mythic weapon as if it was an extension of himself. It heeded his word like a loyal companion, but shuttered in desire to exclaim its point. As he fought it had called for blood, but Lluks restrained it, unwilling to over satiate its desires with the life fluid of his people, enemies or not. Instead he drove the spikes of his shoulder guard into the chest of another opp, her sternum folding inwards like cardboard before being torn back out as Lluks launched her body into her xeno ally before shattering its inverted knee and tearing its throat from its long thin neck as the being fell to the floor. 

Lluks now had eyes on his main target in the back of the corridor. He was a man roughly the same size as Lluks and he was also a Vasz, having used Kaiju Tsu to maximize his manifested traits consisting of an insectoid exoskeleton in combination with a creature like a bird of prey. His best guard was a thin female who manipulated the ability of the cold. Capable as they were, they had avoided direct combat with the Eripme for a reason knowing they would be no match for legionnaires if it came to it. 

Unfortunately, they could not hide or run forever and now their worst nightmare was before them. Soon they would pay for their betrayal of their Ephangian kin. As Lluks prepared to move towards the commander, a large ogre of a humanoid thing stepped into the path between the two and after netting Lluks gaze charged forth. The xeno brute was at least a half a man taller than Lluks with extra small arms jabbing from its torso, his feet stomping into the floor beneath as if to shake the foundation of the ground itself. 

Lluks stopped to face the man beast by standing upright and allowing his arms to fall passively to his sides. All around him violence unfurled as his legionnaires cut their opponents down with blades made of flame and liquid or split their bones with stone and talons. As the ogre approached it even tossed its own aside to get to its target. Though clumsy, it’s raw strength and reckless abandon was dangerous. A legionnaire turned to be grabbed and hurled with ferocity across the room directly into another Lluks’s warriors. The monstrosity knew it was bigger and leaned into its brutish power as it always had assuming it would be enough.

With a massive cry of anger the ogre swung its giant battle hammer at its masked foe hoping to smash him with a single strike. It hoped in vain. In one smooth motion Lluks twisted and ducked under the ogres swing, his torso tight as he bunched up like a professional boxer, weaving the strikes of the smaller arms that jabbed at home from the chest. An aura glowed around him as he planted his foot, enochi building up with every instance of motion as he channeled the energy into the explosion that was his fist. 

In the moment directly before his strike was unleashed, the colors of the area around him went negative as if reality itself warped from his power. The spiked knuckles on the custom gauntlet of his left hand were in this sense decorative as Lluks didn’t need them to inflict damage since he never even truly made physical contact with the brute. 

Simply put the raw and potent nature of the *enochi channeled into the eruption of this strike was so strong it had decimated the ogre before Lluks could actually touch it. What was a hulk of a being exploded in a brilliant flash of light and gore blinding and shocking the entire structure as well as the rebels within. However, the legionnaires only used this to their advantage having seen their opponents unmade time and again by their *archai. 

They decimated those others caught in the shock of the moment as the majority of the blood and organs from the body seemed to have disintegrated into a teal mist like particle before even having the chance to splatter down to the floor. Lluks stood upright once more and began moving forward, the effortlessness of the feat oozing the potential of the dark intent. 

At that moment Jazai had a choice to make. He could continue to fight to the last, and indeed they would go down to the last, their stories all coming to a close here. Or, he could accept that there was nothing to do now but surrender and hope some would be spared a tragic death. 

‘They will not take you master!’ 

‘Zaikera, no!’ 

Ill-fated, Jazai’s apprentice did not yet share his wisdom and in her haste to protect her master she attacked Lluks, her arms outstretched in an attempt to cast a freezing wave of death over him. She screamed as a wave of cold washed over Lluks and blasted outward across the inside of the structure. Those touched by the cold began to freeze instantly and shatter, the legionnaires special armor providing only a slight buffer against the blast of unheat. A powerful casting, however… 

As the wave washed over Lluks he moved forward unimpeded, the look of his Opmem that of the snarling face of death. It was but a moment later in which the same scream of power unleashed became terror felt as the young seer looked down to see both of her arms severed just below the elbow. She collapsed and fell into the arms of her mentor as he yelled, ‘Zaikera!’ 

‘Those cuts are clean. If she freezes her arms, she should live and be able to make use of them again. That is if I allow you to leave here.’

Jazai looked at his opp, and even with his mask still on anger and sadness painted him bluer than Lluks true complexion. He clenched his fist and anger and struck the frosty ground. He could do nothing. He simply nodded and began wrapping his apprentice's arms in a cloth that would assist in their preservation for the moment. The battle was over and as Jazai tilted his head back, he opened his mind to sight.