Rise of the Godking - Chapter 25

In a perfect world, Daneel would have directly crossed the length of the room and reached his target. He would have closed his hands around her neck and squeezed the life out of her, which was nothing new to him despite the fact that he was just supposed to be a 15-year-old. He had been introduced to death at a very, very early age, and since then, he had inflicted it multiple times on quite a few victims.

Yet, sadly, his anger made him forget everything else, and his vision even zoomed in, making him think that he was much closer to his target than it appeared. The result was that he had to run, awkwardly, in the woman's direction while she had ample time to get up and mount a defense.

Sebastian was just as surprised by his appearance as her. He moved to the side, and immediately, Daneel dismissed him.

The fact that it was taking time to accomplish what he wanted did nothing to quell his fury. Instead, it only grew, so when he finally reached her, he snarled again and jumped.

Only… she was ready. She moved away quickly, making him fall painfully on the stone bed she had been sitting on. His knee scraped against the rough edge, opening a small gash, but he didn't feel the pain, at all.

It was as if a red film had been placed over his eyes, making him hunger for blood. His thoughts kept flashing between the horrors he had seen, and the two who were responsible for them all.

"I see you've come to play… I've been killing since before you started sucking on your mother's teat's, boy! Tell me… where is Xander? What did you do with him? Tell me!"



With a snarl of her own, she lunged and raked at him before he recovered. Her nails dug five long gouges on his back, making him flinch and suck in a breath abruptly, but just like the gash on his knee, he ignored it and tried to close his hands around her neck, again.

He didn't even know why there was so much anger coursing throughout his body. He just knew that he needed to kill her, and this thought was so all-consuming that he forgot his training, his strength, and even the system.

His almost primitive move was easy to understand, and even easier to dodge. She ducked and calmly moved to her right, and finding Sebastien there, she threw him in his direction and shouted, "Speak, stupid boy! Where is he? I doubt that you're strong enough to do anything to him, so it must have been Reese and the others… so where did you hide him?"

Her words faded into the background as Daneel's eyes met Sebastien's. He saw fear and regret, but in the heat of the situation, he just let a punch fly that connected squarely with the man's jaw.

He crumpled into a heap on the side, and as Daneel turned again, he found the woman smirking right in front of his face. Her hands were drawn back, and with a shout, she brought them together… right on the two sides of his face.

Everything went… blank. His head began to ring, and his vision swam. He moved left, then right drunkenly, and as the realization that something was very wrong began to dawn on him, a smug voice reached his ears.

"Xander learned to do that from the very taskmaster who taught you. He doesn't teach such… dishonorable things to his students, but you gotta admit that it's effective."

Daneel fell on his ass, his head throbbing so much that it felt as if she had used a hammer instead of just her hands. Slowly, the anger began to leak away, and with the pain arrived awareness.

A large part of the fury still remained, but it was under control now. In front of his eyes, the woman appeared, again, and apparently, she wasn't done.

In a practiced movement, she wrenched his right arm behind his back and made him gasp with pain. If she used just a little bit more force, it would dislocate, and she took it right till the edge, making him wince and let out sharp, hurried breaths.

"Answer me! Answer me, damn you! Where is he! Speak, or you can say goodbye to this hand!"

'She's really gonna do it… how the hell did I get so angry that I forgot everything I was taught?'

He berated himself, knowing that the fight would have gone very, very differently if he had just retained full control of his mind. Despite the difference in their age, it was a fact that he had been officially trained while she was merely using a few tricks she had picked up second-hand.

POP!

"AAAAHHHHHH!"

He screamed as he felt a storm of pain erupt at his shoulder. Tears came to his eyes, and his face turned red as the woman cackled.

"That sound… Oh, I love it. Did you know it was unique? Breaking a certain part of one's body makes them scream in a certain way. I've heard one of your screams. I wonder how the other sound?"

She let go of his arm and it dangled at his side uselessly. He couldn't use it no matter how much he tried, and the pain was so bad that he came close to passing out.

She targeted his right leg, next, pushing him on to the ground on his stomach and wrenching it up, up, up until it hurt almost as much as the hand had before it had been dislocated without mercy.

A hand was one thing, but a leg was completely another. Without his feet at his disposal, he would be completely useless, so he saw that he needed to do something.

Quickly, he evaluated his options. The first one that came to him was that he could use the system, but to his side, he saw Sebastian slowly getting up.

'What if I lose all control of my body from exhaustion like the last time? I would be at his mercy… and I don't trust him to not stab me when he has the chance.'

He began to speak in his mind to ask the system whether it was possible for it to fight without making him useless afterward, but before he could finish, a stab of pain from his leg made him hiss and stop everything he was doing.

He knew what was going to come next, so he decided to rely on himself. Quickly, he opened his mouth and said, "Alright, alright! I'll tell you! Just… stop!"

She let go of his leg, and for a moment, he sighed with relief. But after that… she turned him roughly onto his back and closed her fingers around his neck.

This exact pose that he had wanted to take, reversed, caught him so off guard that he began to panic.

Only… when she began to speak with a detestable smile, the panic began to fade and be replaced by something else.

"You know… I don't even care what happens to him. I just need to know whether he's alive or dead. If he's dead, it would be something I was waiting for for a long time… he's the one who always kept mooching off of my ideas. I was the one who saw that children could be exploited in this way! I was the one who convinced the enforcers that taking a cut and keeping their eyes closed was best for them! He only had brawn, while I had the brains to make all this happen! And what did he do? He just put me behind him and paraded around as if he was the master! Damn him!"

Anger of a different sort began to fill his mind, first as a stream, then as a torrent that swept away everything else. It burned, but it was also cold, allowing Daneel to think as clearly as if he had absorbed energy.

Anger had comer over the woman, too, as she squeezed even though she hadn't gotten an answer. It looked like she was taking out all the pent up frustration she felt on him, and soon, he knew that he would no air to breathe.

He had to act, and act now. The best weapon he could use was his left hand, left untouched by the woman's rampage. He swung it, but it flew in the air weakly. Even as it began to near its target, Daneel knew that it would do nothing, and he had no time to do anything else.

Desperate, he looked for something he could do. He was on the verge of giving up…when his thoughts alighted on something he had forgotten until now.

Driven by instinct, he breathed in, and the large crystal near his crotch crumbled into dust. Suddenly, it felt as if he possessed all the power in the world, and he directed it all into his hand, hoping against hope that it would be enough.

With a jolt, his hand accelerated. It turned into a blur, and before the woman could see that something was wrong…it reached her.

At the moment of contact, he realized the grave miscalculation he had done, but it was too late.

His fist met her head…and made it explode into a million pieces, showering him and Sebastien with gore while both of them stared at his hand, horrified.