Return: Part 3
Flaxan troops continued to pour from the portal, only to be greeted by the sight of William, his body streaked with the blood of their comrades, his eyes alight with something savage. Rage boiled in their yellow eyes as they surrounded him, weapons drawn, snarling in their alien tongue.
William didn't flinch.
He lunged forward.
His fist sank deep into the gut of a Flaxan warrior, the force launching the creature backward with a shriek, straight through the portal it had just emerged from. Without missing a beat, William spun, his heel arcing through the air and connecting with another soldier's neck.
CRACK.
Bone shattered. The soldier twitched, paralyzed mid-scream.
But William wasn't finished.
With a grunt and a brutal stomp, he crushed the alien's skull into the concrete. Crimson paste sprayed his boots and the legs of nearby soldiers.
They hesitated, just for a second, but it was enough to see fear creep behind their fury.
Their swords rasped free in unison, glinting under the harsh battlefield lights as they closed in, aiming at every vital point they could see.
William looked at them... and laughed.
"HAHAHAHAHA!"
The sound echoed unnaturally, bouncing off ruined buildings and Flaxan tech like a war drum gone mad. Confused and infuriated, the soldiers lunged, only for William to vanish skyward in a blur.
Clouds swallowed him whole.
A tense beat passed.
Then...
WHOOSH... BOOM!
He crashed down between them like a meteor, the impact hurling soldiers away like broken dolls. Before one could even collide with a wall, William was already in motion again.
BOOM.
He landed feet-first on another Flaxan, driving it into the ground so hard that spiderweb cracks exploded beneath them.
SQUELCH.
Another tried to strike. William caught the arm mid-swing and ripped it clean off.
"Heh… thanks for the weapon," he muttered, yanking the sword from the severed hand with a wink.
WHOOSH.
With the weapon now in hand, he accelerated again, blurring forward until he was inches from a recovering soldier. The alien barely registered his arrival.
SHING.
The head rolled cleanly off its shoulders, expression frozen in horror.
The blood mist thickened in the air, catching the light like a red fog. William's eyes gleamed in it, almost glowing.
Then he moved again, faster than before, carving into Flaxan ranks like a living scythe. Each strike split walls, ruptured the earth, and sent waves of force pulsing outward.
And for a moment, just a moment, William looked up between strikes, his gaze piercing the smoke.
Not to see how many enemies remained...
But to remember why he was still fighting.
On the other side of the portal, the Flaxan general bellowed in fury, his voice echoing through the war chamber lined with glowing glyphs and humming machinery. His fists slammed against the command table as he watched another wave of his warriors be torn apart, live, through one of the viewing crystals.
"Enough!" he snarled in his native tongue, mandibles twitching with disgust. "This world will not break us. That thing will not stop us!"
But doubt gnawed at him.
The portal had become a meat grinder; each wave of troops reduced to gore within moments. And standing in the middle of it all was the monster in human skin, the green-clad death bringer, soaked in their blood, laughing through it.
The general clenched his jaw, vision flashing with memories of his predecessor, stripped, impaled bow to stern, displayed like some grotesque wind chime on the king's obsidian fortress.
He would not meet the same fate.
With trembling claws, he activated a rune at the side of the portal. "Deploy the Juggernauts. All of them."
A tremor of unease passed through the room.
"All of them, General?" an officer asked hesitantly.
"All! That creature dies today."
Back on Earth, William stood atop a cracked hill of rubble, the sword he'd stolen from the Flaxan now stained and chipped. Around him, the battlefield was eerily still, the air thick with heat, smoke, and silence.
He exhaled slowly, his grin beginning to fade.
Something was changing.
The portal shimmered and then bulged, like a balloon under pressure. Runes along its edge sparked violently as its inner glow darkened from silver to a deep, seething violet.
William's eyes narrowed. "That's new."
Then they came.
THOOM. THOOM. THOOM.
From the portal marched massive figures, Flaxans, but mutated, enhanced, engineered. Each was at least twelve feet tall, plated in heavy armor fused directly into their flesh, with whirring mechanical cores in their chests and massive dual-bladed weapons humming with plasma heat.
The Juggernauts.
The ground shook as the first one landed with a deafening thud, its eyes glowing orange behind a reinforced helmet. A low, synthetic growl escaped its throat.
William rolled his shoulders, cracking his neck. "Alright," he muttered, tossing the stolen sword aside.
"I guess it's my turn to get serious."
With a blur of motion, he shot forward, not flying this time, but running, his feet shattering concrete with every step.
The first Juggernaut roared and brought its blade down—
CLANG!
William caught it with his bare hands.
Energy crackled between them as the force of the strike drove him knee-deep into the ground.
William slid backward on one knee, his momentum gouging a trench through the battlefield like a blade through flesh. Sparks lit up beneath him, dancing in the air as the force of the Juggernaut's blow pushed him back. And yet, he smiled.
Not a grin of defiance.
Not a smirk of confidence.
A twisted, feral thing, the grin of a man who was falling in love with war.
His eyes burned with the kind of madness that didn't come from rage, but from pure thrill. The chaos, the carnage, the pain, it was becoming his symphony.
Then, without hesitation or defense, William allowed the Juggernaut's blade to carve into his shoulder. It sank through muscle and sinew with a wet, grating SHUNK.
He didn't flinch.
Instead, he drove his own battered, bloodstained sword, chipped and jagged, straight into the beast's eye.
SKLKCH.
The Juggernaut gurgled in shock, its monstrous frame convulsing as the blade punctured deep into its brain. Its eye bulged, crossed, and then dimmed. It collapsed backward like a felled monument, crashing into the dirt with a seismic BOOM.
William exhaled slowly.
Then, with the same demonic grin still carved onto his blood-slicked face, he reached up and yanked the enemy's massive blade from his own shoulder.
KRNK.
The sword, now stained with a mixture of Flaxan and human blood, fell from his hand and slammed into the asphalt, carving a smoking crater at his feet. His body pulsed once, and before the watching eyes of the enemy, his wound sealed itself, sinew weaving back together, skin smoothing over torn muscle until only a clean, scarless shoulder remained.
The remaining Juggernauts didn't pause. Unmoved by the death of their kin, they trampled over the fallen, their titanic boots grinding bone and skull beneath them with sickening cracks as they advanced.
SWOOSH... WHOOM.
Two blades swung in tandem, cleaving through the air toward William's arms, hoping to end the threat before it could grow any more monstrous.
But William was faster.
He darted between them like smoke, and with a single, brutal counter-kick, he launched the Juggernaut on his right across the field. The giant crashed into a ruined tank with enough force to flip the armored vehicle over.
Before the second could react, William spun, his sword flashing like lightning.
SHRAANG!
Steel collided with steel. The mutated Flaxan caught the strike with its own blade, the impact blasting shockwaves through the ground and hurling both warriors in opposite directions. They hit, rolled, and then charged again.
CLANG!
CLANG!
CLANG!
CLANG!
Sparks ignited with each collision, their duel a blur of speed and fury, tearing up the terrain around them. Buildings buckled under the force of their footwork. Pavement cracked beneath each impact.
William's eyes never left his opponent, but that was the mistake.
From behind, a shadow rose.
SQUELCH.
A massive blade punched through William's back, its bloodied tip erupting from his chest.
The Juggernaut behind him roared in triumph, lifting him off the ground like a banner on a pike, expecting screams of agony or a cry of defeat.
But what they got…
It was a laugh.
Blood ran down William's chest in rivers, and still, his head tilted slowly back, eyes glowing, that awful grin carved across his face like war paint.
No pain. No fear.
Only joy.
And just before the Juggernaut could react...
William spoke through bloodied lips.
"My turn."
SHUNK!
With a sickening crack, William slammed both feet into the chest of the Juggernaut that had impaled him. The blade tore out of his torso as the creature stumbled backward, but William didn't fall, he flipped mid-air, landed in a crouch, and exploded forward with a roar that shook the air itself.
BOOM!
He barreled into the wounded Juggernaut with such force that the alien's chest imploded, ribs shattering inward, organs liquefying under the pressure. William didn't stop moving. His fists blurred into arcs of destruction, striking faster than the eye could follow, his body a storm of violence in human shape.
Blood sprayed like a fountain across the battlefield. One of the Juggernauts roared and swung, unfortunately for him far too slowly.
CRACK!
William ducked beneath the cleave and slammed his forehead into the Flaxan's chin. The jaw snapped upward with a grotesque POP, dislocating instantly. William grabbed the creature by its tusks and ripped its head sideways, the sound of tearing muscle and cracking vertebrae echoing like wet firewood snapping in a bonfire.
He spun, gripped a fallen sword too large for any normal man to wield, and heaved it into the air.
WHHRRMMM... SHLK!
The weapon bisected another Juggernaut trying to flank him, cleaving from shoulder to hip in a geyser of steaming blood and bone.
And still, he laughed.
William's green suit was nearly black now, soaked through with layers of gore. His emerald eyes burned with the light of a wildfire, his breath coming in ragged gasps, but not from fatigue.
From hunger.
Then, a quake.
The ground rumbled.
William turned toward the portal.
Reinforcements.
More Juggernauts.
Dozens, towering, howling monsters stomped out of the gateway, their armor darker, their blades thicker, some dragging weapons that sparked with Flaxan plasma tech.
At their center marched a behemoth even larger than the rest, at least three stories tall, with golden armor and a molten-red eye that never blinked.
To anyone else, it might've looked like the end.
But to William?
It was a gift.
His lips curled into something inhuman. His fingers twitched around his stolen weapon. His muscles tensed with manic anticipation.
He cracked his neck once to the left. Once to the right.
"YES..." he whispered.
"COME ON! BRING ME MORE!"
With a mad howl, William charged, not away, not to regroup, but directly into the incoming flood. The ground cratered behind him with every step.
The first Juggernaut met his blade.
It never even saw it coming.
SHRAKKK!
A clean decapitation at full sprint.
The second?
William shoulder-checked it with enough force to send its entire ribcage caving in like a tin can. Its weapon skittered across the pavement.
He snatched it mid-run and hurled it through the air like a javelin.
THUNK.
It impaled the third right through the chest, and pinned it to a building.
He was a force now. Not a man. A myth. A nightmare made real.
And as the massive golden Juggernaut approached, looming like a titan, William's eyes met his.
The battlefield slowed.
The carnage around him blurred.
And William grinned wider than ever before.
"Let's see what color you bleed."
THOOOM.
The ground shook with such violence that even the surviving Juggernauts staggered.
A new presence was coming.
Not from the side, not from the sky, but through the heart of the portal, where reality itself trembled as if trying to resist what was stepping through.
The glow shifted, no longer just swirling blue energy, but now streaked with molten gold, pulsing like a dying sun.
Then it emerged.
Tall as a building, clad in armor that looked forged from liquid gold, was the Golden Juggernaut.
But this was no ordinary behemoth. No twisted pile of mutated flesh like the others.
This one was elegance carved into brutality.
Its body was sleek but colossal, every movement refined with deadly purpose. The gold plating wasn't decoration, it pulsed with raw energy, veins of crackling orange plasma flowing beneath it like magma beneath skin.
Its helm was smooth, featureless, save for a glowing vertical slit across where its eyes should be, and from its back sprouted a cape made of living flame, flickering in unnatural patterns, whispering in a tongue no human ear could comprehend.
In its hands, it carried a glaive unlike anything William had ever seen, taller than he was, blade curved backward like a crescent moon, humming with a sound that ate other sounds.
Everything went quiet.
Even the other Juggernauts stepped back.
The Golden Juggernaut didn't roar.
It simply looked at William.
And William… smiled wider than ever before.
"Oh… you're beautiful."
The Golden Juggernaut moved.
Not with the clumsy stomp of the others, but with grace. Speed. Precision.
In a blink, it was in front of him.
CLANG!!!
The glaive struck.
William blocked, but barely. The force sent him flying hundreds of feet, slamming through crumbled buildings, metal, glass, and rebar, tearing at his suit and skin.
But when he stopped, when he rose from the crater, bones snapping back into place, he was laughing.
Blood poured from his mouth, his eyes shone, and he whispered:
"I've never wanted to kill something so badly."
With a war cry that tore through the smoke like a lance, William launched himself back, green streaks of light trailing behind him as his cracked blade met the golden glaive once more.
SHRIEK!
The air sang with their clash.
Every strike fractured the landscape.
Every dodge tore the sound barrier.
And all around them, Flaxans, Juggernaut, and soldiers alike, watched gods in mortal skin wage war.
The Golden Juggernaut spoke only once, its voice a vibrating echo inside every skull on the field:
"You are… unworthy."
And William, bleeding, broken, grinning like a devil reborn, roared back, "Then let me prove you wrong."