The Conductor watched, his expression as unreadable as a frozen lake, as Wolfen Welfric decimated his choir of monsters. He observed the sonic annihilation of the final seven with neither surprise nor alarm, merely the detached interest of a scientist noting the failure of a flawed experiment. His purpose was not to feel, but to observe and adapt.
As Wolfen stood panting, bloody and triumphant, the Conductor finally moved. He didn't assume a fighting stance. He simply raised his hands, palms facing the sky. A low hum emanated from him, a frequency that made the air itself shimmer. On the ground, the nine corpses of the fallen creations began to tremble. Then, they dissolved. It was not a natural decay; it was a rapid, horrifying liquefaction, their monstrous forms collapsing into pools of shimmering, iridescent sludge that defied known physics.
These pools then began to flow, slithering across the blood-soaked earth like mercury serpents, converging on the Conductor. They climbed his legs, his torso, being absorbed into his skin. With each ounce of liquid consumed, his aura intensified, the air around him thickening with psionic potential. He was powering up, recycling the bio-mass and energy of his fallen comrades to fuel his own, final form.
Wolfen watched this for precisely two seconds. A lesser man would have been stunned, or waited to see what horror would emerge. Wolfen was not a lesser man. He was a pragmatist of violence.
He charged.
The Conductor, his eyes closed in concentration, never saw the blow coming. Wolfen's fist, sheathed in the same black, obsidian-like metal that had formed his blade, connected with the man's jaw. The impact was a thunderclap, snapping the Conductor's head back and staggering him, the absorption process faltering.
Wolfen gave him no quarter. He was a storm of relentless, close-quarters brutality. He did not use fire or sonic screams. This was personal, visceral. His metal-clad fists became pistons of destruction, driving into the Conductor's ribs, his stomach, his face. The sound was a sickening percussion of breaking bone and tearing flesh.
"Tell me where Prime 4 is," Wolfen growled, his voice a low rasp between impacts, "and I'll let you live."
The Conductor, his face a bloody mask, spat a glob of crimson onto the ground. He said nothing, his silence a final act of defiance.
Wolfen's eyes hardened. The offer was rescinded. He grabbed the man's head, his thumbs digging into the sockets. With a wet, popping sound, he ripped the Conductor's eyeballs from their roots. The man finally screamed, a raw, animal sound of pure agony.
"WHERE IS HE?" Wolfen roared, shaking the blinded, broken form.
Through ragged, gurgling breaths, the Conductor gasped, "Alaska… or Iceland… that's all I know… please… stop…"
Wolfen stilled his fist. "How do you know this?"
"I heard… Prime 6… say it… a contingency location…" the man whimpered, blind eyes weeping blood.
Wolfen held him there for a long moment, the information slotting into his mental map. Then, with a final, contemptuous twist, he broke the Conductor's neck. He let the body drop to the mud.
"Idiot," Wolfen muttered, wiping his bloodied hands on his pants. "Really thought I'd let him power up."
It was then that he sensed her. A pressure, a distortion in the fabric of the world, approaching from the mountain path. He turned.
Maya was walking towards him. But it was not the Maya he had seen in the white room, or even the one who had slaughtered the scientists. This was a further evolution. She was larger, her scales darker, her horns more pronounced, her very presence a weight on reality. And her eyes… they were different. The blank hunger was still there, but it was now directed with a chilling, singular purpose. At him.
His mind, a supercomputer of combat calculation, raced. Eva is not with her. The two who broke off to pursue the survivors are not returning. Conclusion: Eva is incapacitated or dead. The two creations are terminated. Maya's aggression is now primary, and I am the only significant threat left in her vicinity.
She didn't run. She simply closed the distance and pushed him.
It was not a shove. It was a tectonic event. Wolfen, who had stood firm against a charging Goliath, was lifted off his feet and sent flying backward as if launched from a cannon. He crashed through the remnants of a stone wall, tumbling through dust and debris before skidding to a halt.
He rose, coughing, his body screaming in protest. He had been ready for an attack, but not for this magnitude of power. The calculations in his head whirred, recalibrating. Strength multiplier: estimated seven-fold increase from baseline observations. Threat level: critical.
The fight began in earnest. It was not the elegant, brutal dance of his earlier battle. This was a raw, primal clash of titans. Maya was a force of nature, all instinct and overwhelming power. Her blows shattered the ground where he had been standing. Her talons tore gouges in the earth. Wolfen was a scalpel to her sledgehammer, relying on speed, precision, and a lifetime of combat experience to survive. He landed blows that would have pulverized steel, but they only seemed to enrage her further. He used his ash-blades, his controlled fire, but her regenerative abilities and dense scales shrugged off the damage.
He was fighting a holding action, a desperate, losing battle against an enemy whose power seemed to have no ceiling.
Then, from his peripheral vision, he saw them. Derek, Leo, and Jordan, moving with the frantic, terrified speed of men carrying something precious and broken. They emerged from behind a rock outcrop, dragging a limp form towards the cave higher up the mountain.
It was Eva.
Even from this distance, his enhanced sight captured the horrific details. The unnatural angle of her limbs. The bloody ruin of her face. The trail of crimson she left in the snow. She was a broken doll, her life bleeding out onto the stone.
And something in Wolfen Welfric shattered.
It was not a crack; it was an explosion. A rage, cold and absolute, more profound than any he had ever felt, erupted from a place deep within him he didn't know existed. This was not the calculated anger of a warrior. This was a primal, protective fury. His asset. His translator. The one who held his pact, the key to finding his sister. She was his. And Maya had broken her.
The air around him began to warp. The temperature plummeted, then skyrocketed. A raging nimbus of fire, not orange but a searing, incandescent white, erupted around his body, so bright it was difficult to look upon. The ground at his feet turned to glass. His eyes, those pale, calculating orbs, underwent a terrifying inversion. The sclera turned a void-like black, while the irises ignited into a hellish, glowing red.
He didn't understand what was happening. Was it the desperation to save a crucial tool? The need to honor his deal to find Alina? The ghost of a memory of Stacy, another person he had failed to protect? He didn't know. He didn't care. The reasons were irrelevant. The power was all that mattered.
It was a transformation. A final, locked door within his genetics, forged by the mysterious Prime 5, swinging open under the force of his absolute rage. His hair, from root to tip, flashed a brilliant, bloody crimson.
He felt it then—a torrent of energy so vast it threatened to unmoor him from reality itself. It was not just more power; it was a different kind of power. It was raw creation and destruction fused into one.
He charged.
This time, he did not evade. He met Maya's next world-shattering punch with his own. The collision was silent for a split second, before the shockwave radiated outwards, flattening everything in a fifty-yard radius. Stone pulverized. The remaining structures of the raider camp vaporized.
He was her equal. No, in this state, he was her superior.
He fought with a ferocity that dwarfed his earlier efforts. His white-fire seared her scales, causing her to roar in pain for the first time. His black-metal fists, now wreathed in flame, struck with the force of meteor impacts, cracking her armor-like hide. He was a demigod of vengeance, and Maya was the blasphemy he had been sent to scourge.
He did not kill her. The cold, calculating part of his mind, even now, knew she was an asset, a weapon of unimaginable potential. But he would break her. He targeted her limbs, her joints, focusing his overwhelming force with surgical precision. He drove her to her knees, then onto her stomach, pinning her with a knee to her spine, his hands gripping her horns, forcing her head down.
A final, surge of power from him, a pulse of pure psionic force, overloaded her system. The monstrous form began to recede, the scales retreating, the horns shrinking back. The immense power that had fueled her evaporated, leaving behind a small, broken figure. She lay on the ground, unconscious, returned to her human form, pale and vulnerable amidst the epic destruction.
Wolfen stood over her, his own transformation beginning to waver. The crimson faded from his hair, returning to its normal hue. The red and black of his eyes reverted. The nimbus of fire died out. The exhaustion hit him like a physical wall, every cell in his body screaming in protest from the energy he had expended. He stumbled, catching himself on a shattered piece of wall.
His gaze swept the area. He found a discarded raider's pack, pulling out a coarse, woolen blanket. He walked back to Maya's unconscious form and draped it over her, covering her. His movements were slow, heavy with a fatigue that was more than physical.
He then turned his eyes towards the cave, towards where they had taken Eva. He had to get up there. He had to see if she could be saved. He took a step. Then another. His vision swam. The world tilted. The colossal output of power, the final unlocking of his potential, had demanded a price his body was only now beginning to comprehend.
He collapsed onto the scorched and shattered earth, unconscious, the bringer of balance finally brought low, not by an enemy, but by the very depth of his own, terrifying power. The mountain fell silent once more, a tomb for the dead and a bed for the broken.