He descended on the remaining fleeing men.
His fists impacted with the force of tectonic plates, shattering matte-black plating into obsidian shards and liquefying the organs beneath.
The air filled with the metallic spray of ionized blood and the high-pitched scream of failing tech as he tore through the final survivors.
His hands glowed with a heat so intense it turned their tactical gear to ash before their bodies even hit the frost.
Moments later, silence fell as the last assailant breathed his last.
‘Salkia!’ he growled. ‘Ko’Sawa?’
‘I’m OK, honey,’ Sheba called out.
‘You can come out now,’ he commanded, his timbred grunt cutting through the mountain silence.
She emerged from behind the tree she’d been crouched, her pupils dilated with shock and awe against the honeyed luster of her face.
Her gaze raked over his frame, over the gore coating him, and the viscous remnants of the Reaper and his soldiers.
‘Clean up on one god warrior, please, so I can kiss him,’ she murmured.
Idan huffed, then willed the gold sigils on his body to ignite.
An incandescent radiance swirled around him, scouring the filth from his body in a wave of cleansing motes until he stood purified.
She ran to him, and he hauled her into his chest, his mouth crashing into hers with a grounding hunger.
‘I might not look it, but I’m afokkin’ mess,’ he groaned against her lips. ‘I loathe the stench of war and need your kiss to cleanse my soul.’
They melded into each other, her hands sinking into his thick hair as he glided his touch over her.
Just as he was about to sink her into the grass and take her, his senses lit up with a pre-warning.
‘Thefokk?’ Idan cursed as he tore his mouth from his woman and once more placed Sheba to his rear, bracing for battle afresh as yet another vortex appeared before them.
Ty Si’Rhix stepped from the roiling energy void, encased in an armored suit of midnight alloy.
‘If it’s not the cosplaying piss of gagshit himself,’ Idan snarled. ‘I eviscerated your attack dog, so you being here means you’re a sucker for punishment.’
‘The hunter was only a prelude,’ Ty gloated, but Idan caught the rage on his face at having lost his lead spear in his war on Idan.
He held a glowing silver cylinder in the shape of a cigar, engraved with otherworldly symbols, his digit hovering over a button.
‘I’m upping the ante with a new toy some Sacran rogue merchant sold to me,’ the magnate sneered on. ‘It’s called theGod-Eater, and I plan to have it extract your divine essence until you’re a husk of ashen flesh.’
He depressed the button with his thumb, and a wild, electric field expanded from the device.
It hit Idan like a storm, delivering a crushing anguish, transforming his blood to lead and his inner organs to shards of glass.
The agony was so massive, he let out a gasped groan as the harrowing pressure forced his knees into the ground.
Every circuit in his celestial biology shorted under the strain of the revocation beam.
‘Stop!’ Sheba cried out, rushing toward her man.
‘Nada, woman, you come close, and we both get eviscerated,’ Idan growled, reaching out a hand in agony to stay her.
She skidded to a halt, chest heaving, eyes glaring at Ty.
