"Stop."
Elena’s voice ca across the clearing.
One word, loud but not a shout.
Just that one word was placed into the air of the clearing with the particular quality of soone who had never needed to raise their voice to be listened to.
Wrath stopped.
Mid-stride.
His foot ca down and stayed there, the ground cracking under it, his body still at full size and full color, the red of his skin vivid in the night air, his chest rising and falling with deep controlled breaths.
His eyes found Elena.
Then they found Liam.
Then they went forward to neutral and he stood there and waited.
Liam looked at Elena from where he was kneeling.
Then he looked back at Wrath.
"I’m not done," he said.
Elena looked at him from the log. "You can barely move."
"I’m resting," Liam said. "I’m resting and waiting for him to get close and then I’m attacking."
Elena exhaled through her nose slowly.
The exhale of soone who had already decided that whatever she said next was probably not going to change anything but was going to say it anyway because it needed to be said.
"You should be proud of yourself," she said. Her voice was even but there was sothing genuine sitting underneath it. "Very few people have ever made Wrath that angry. You faced him at that level and you’re still conscious and breathing. That’s not a small thing."
"I’m not done," Liam said again.
"Liam."
"I could make him even angrier." He had found the edge of sothing while she was talking, so last reserve of whatever was left in him, and he was using it to pull himself upward, one knee coming up, his hand pressing hard into the grass, his whole body shaking slightly from the effort of asking it to do one more thing after everything it had already done. "I just need to stand up."
He got his foot under him.
He got to sothing approximately resembling standing, his legs unsteady, his breathing harder than he wanted it to be, one hand still hovering near the ground in case he needed it again.
Elena looked at him standing there like that.
Then she looked at Wrath.
"Punch him one more ti," she said to him. "Do not kill him, just punch him enough to knock him out."
Wrath looked at her.
Then at Liam barely holding himself upright in the middle of the clearing.
He nodded once.
He moved toward Liam slowly this ti.
Not the ground-cracking sprint from before, just walking, his massive fra crossing the grass with a deliberateness that was sohow more unsettling than the running had been.
He stopped in front of Liam and looked at him for a mont, taking in the state of him.
Wrath raised one arm to the side.
Liam looked at the arm. At the size of it. At the arc it was about to travel.
Wrath swung.
His arm cut through the air where Liam was standing and passed through nothing. Not slowed. Not deflected. Just nothing there. The swing completed its full arc and Wrath’s hand ca out the other side of empty space and he stood there looking at it for a mont, his red eyes moving across the space where Liam had been a fraction of a second ago.
He turned his head.
Liam was behind him.
Standing completely still, slightly crouched, breathing hard, one hand hovering near the ground.
’I had to break my limit,’ He thought ca from sowhere below conscious decision, sowhere deeper than that, the place where the real reasons lived. ’Because I don’t want to be weak. Because there are people I need to protect. I also want to be strong enough so i can conquer all the world beauties.’
He moved.
Not with what he had left.
With what was past what he had left, the place beyond the limit where the body stops making agreents and just does the thing because it has been told to.
Silent Stride carrying him sideways in a movent faster than anything he had produced in the entire fight, faster than the kick that had sent Wrath through the trees, faster than he had known he could go.
He had one thing left. One strike, one direction, everything remaining in one place.
He felt the ground under his foot, felt the last of what Pulse Bound Might could give him, and he released all of it into a turning kick that connected with the center of Wrath’s back.
*BOOM!!!*
The sound of it went through the clearing and the treeline and across the open space beyond and out over the water.
Wrath left the ground.
He cleared the treeline at the far edge of the clearing, his body moving through the night air, and ca down on the surface of the lake.
Not sinking imdiately because he was skipping through it like a stone thrown at the right angle, his massive body bouncing across the water’s surface once, twice, three tis, each contact sending a wave outward in every direction, the sound of each impact reaching the clearing in succession before the last bounce carried him further out and the water finally accepted him and closed over where he had been.
The lake was still.
Ripples moved outward from the point of entry, reaching the bank in slow even rings.
Liam stood at the edge of the clearing for approximately one second.
Then he fell backward onto the grass, his body deciding independently that it was done, his back hitting the ground and his eyes finding the sky directly above him through the gap in the tree canopy, stars visible in scattered clusters between the branches.
He closed his eyes.
"I won"
---
Sothing soft was under his head when he opened them again.
He looked up.
And saw a big nice boob right on top of his face.
’Am I dead,’ he thought. ’Is this what that is. Did I actually die out there and this is the arrangent on the other side.’
He reached up and grabbed her boobs.
"I’m glad to see you still have the strength for that," Elena said. Her voice was calm and even, like a person remarking on the weather. "Subtle as always."
Liam beca aware that he was lying with his head in her lap on the couch in the lake house. He looked up at her from that position.
"Can you bla ," he said.
She looked down at him. The corner of her mouth moved. "How do you feel."
He thought about it honestly. "Less pain than before. Not zero pain. Less."
’The system,’ he thought. ’It must be doing sothing. There’s no way I feel this functional after what just happened to out there.’
"Good," she said. She moved one hand and pushed his hair back from his forehead once, a small automatic gesture.
Liam sat up fast.
His face caught her chest on the way up, his nose connecting with the fabric of her top, her boobs absorbing the impact of his rising head.
He pulled himself upright and looked around the lake house, then out at the lake visible through the glass sliding door.
"Your driver," he said. "He’s still in the water."
"He’s fine," Elena said.
Liam looked at her. "He’s fine."
"Yes."
"He went into a lake at speed."
"I know." She folded her hands in her lap. "Your attack was powerful enough that I genuinely wasn’t sure what the outco was going to be. I stood here and watched and counted." She paused. "Ten minutes later he walked out of the water. Then he helped carry you here."
Liam looked at the lake for a mont.
Then back at his own hands.
He turned them over once and looked at them with the expression of a man reassessing several things simultaneously.
"He’s sothing else," he said quietly.
"Yes," Elena said.
"I’m glad he’s okay." He said it simply and ant it completely. "I got too into it. I just wanted to win. I wasn’t thinking about—" He stopped. "I’m really glad he’s okay."
Elena looked at him with sothing in her expression that was warm and asured at the sa ti. "He wanted to tell you sothing."
Liam looked at her.
"He said he had a great ti." She said it with the slight quality of soone delivering a ssage they found both surprising and genuine. "Short as it was. He said it was fun and you made him feel sothing close to real pain for the first ti in years."
Liam sat with that for a mont.
Then he smiled. Slow and real. "Good," he said. "I’m glad."
Elena looked at him sitting there on the grass in the state he was in and sothing moved across her face that she didn’t fully manage before it showed.
"I’m glad you’re walking," she said. Then, after a pause, "When you grabbed earlier. When you first woke up." She looked at him directly. "That made wet."
Liam turned and looked at her.
She looked back at him with complete composure and said nothing further, letting it sit exactly where she had put it.
"Really," he said.
"Yes," she said. "Really." She tilted her head slightly. "I let you do what you want most of the ti. It’s my turn."
Liam looked at her as she was grinning.
He sighed.
"Okay," he said.
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