The Fight III

"Brother, where is his mark?" Abram asked, leaning over Nox with a dangerous gleam in his eyes. A smile crept onto his face, but it wasn't the smile Nox remembered from childhood. This one was unnaturally wide, twisted, laced with cold, calculated contempt.

"I need to find it... so I can taste the delicacy."

Nox struggled to rise from the ground, his body still aching from the earlier fight. Blood trickled from a cut above his brow, and both his hands trembled. Still, he clenched his jaw, and his voice, although it was strained, rang with steel:

"I will never tell you."

Abram shrugged, as if he'd heard something irrelevant and smiled. He moved toward the fallen Torven, who lay gasping, weaker by the second. His body looked limp, as if burned out from within. Abram ripped away the tattered fabric from Torven's back, exposing his broad shoulders. There, right between the blades, shimmered a blue mark shaped like a crescent moon, not fully complete but still very impressive.

"Is that all you took from him?" Abram laughed mockingly. "After all... You really are completely useless."

Without ceremony, he straddled Torven's back. He paused for a second and then began to absorb his energy. Torven shuddered, let out a soft groan, but was too weak to resist. Abram used his mental strength just as he once had on dozens of other slaves, bending them to his will like marionettes. The moon symbol on his own hand began to slowly fill.

Nox couldn't watch anymore. Something inside him cracked.

He leapt forward, ignoring the pain in his body. His heart pounded in his chest like it wanted to burst free. He threw himself at Abram with bare hands, screaming with rage and struck him in the side, trying to tear him away from Torven. 

Abram swayed but didn't stop the siphoning, he was too focused. Nox then used both hands to try and wrench his brother out of that vile symbiosis. 

"Leave him alone!" he shouted. His voice broke, but he kept pulling. "You have no right!"

Abram snorted, lifting his head.

"I have every right. I'm stronger. I always have been."

Torven's body trembled under the forced transfer. Sweat beaded on his forehead, his eyes were glazed as the moon energy continued to flow out of his body. Nox looked into them, and something shifted. There wasn't only pain there. There was more: trust. Tenderness. And maybe... love?

Instinctively, Nox linked with Torven, not through flesh, but through will. His energy slipped into Torven's core, fusing with him, wrapping around him protectively. He felt them becoming one.

It pushed Abram back a little, made him falter. But he refused to yield; it was like pulling an invisible rope, an attempt to reclaim dominance. You could almost feel the energy rippling around them.

Pain ripped through Nox.

He felt it deep, as if flames were licking up his spine, scorching through his veins. The fusion offered no shield, only exposure. His essence crackled.

Still, he held. He wrapped tighter, as their connection twisted and burned from within.

Then Torven, barely conscious, whispered:

"Not me..."

Nox froze.

He understood instantly.

It wasn't Torven he should be trying to control. 

It was Abram.

In a split second, he severed the link with Torven and hurled his full will toward his brother. Abram, still focused on Torven, hadn't expected an attack from that direction. Not from his disgustingly soft brother. His own mind was wide open, allowing Nox to forcefully slip inside and take hold of each and every sliver of energy coursing through him.

Abram stiffened. His spine jerked straight, mouth parting as if to say something, but nothing came out. For a heartbeat, he simply sat there, arms limp at his sides, eyes wide and unblinking. A marionette with its strings cut. Nox felt it, the terrifying stillness, that moment of exposed weakness. That was the moment, his only chance before the person he once thought of as a brother would take back the control.

Nox lunged. The first punch landed with a wet crack, bone giving under skin. Abram's nose shattered, blood spraying sideways like ink across Nox's clothes. The second shattered his cheekbone. The third sent his teeth skittering across the floor. Then another, and another, each one heavier, more violent, more desperate. Abram tried to defend himself, but he was too stunned, too exposed. Flesh split open under Nox's fists. Blood ran down Abram's neck in streams. His face became a ruin of what it had been, barely human.

But Nox didn't stop. His own fist started breaking from the impact and yet he continued on, not registering the pain as his own.

Each blow was more than a strike; it was a release. Years of watching his family suffer because of Abram. His father, both of his brothers. Himself, too, and Torven. This was vengeance, yes, but it was also grief. Grief for what he had lost, for what he had become. And the guilt he still carried.

The weight of everything, every horror, every loss it crashed down on him all at once. He had told himself he was powerless. That there was nothing he could do. But that was all a lie.

Nox looked down into his brother's eyes. There was no resistance left in them, only pain and something hollow, something broken. Maybe he had never been as strong as he claimed.

A memory surfaced, something Nox had buried for years.

Two small boys are playing in the garden. They'd found an injured bird. Abram had cradled it gently, saying: "We have to help him, look, he can barely breathe."

Nox remembered that. Remembered how long they prayed over the bird, how he brought it water, dreamed it would become their friend.

The next day, the bird was dead. Abram said a stone had fallen on it.

But Nox now understood.

Abram hadn't mourned. He'd watched the creature with fascination, not compassion. Cold curiosity burned in his eyes. And sometime that very same day, when Nox had fallen asleep under a tree, Abram must have held the stone himself.

Nox now saw what he hadn't back then.

Another memory. Abram, twelve at the time, is helping a young slave boy stand. The boy sobs in pain. Abram gives him water. But later, the same boy is whipped for accepting a gift from a stranger.

Every act of kindness was a tactic. Every gesture, a calculated investment.

Meanwhile, Torven slowly pushed himself up, bracing on trembling arms. His breath was shallow, but his resolve was visible. He sat beside them silently, watching Nox's hand tremble at Abram's throat.

Then Torven shifted, reaching out, not to stop him, not to interfere. Just to be there. He looked at Nox.

"Do you want to spare him?"

The silence that followed stretched endlessly.

Nox said nothing. Then slowly, he shook his head.

He closed his eyes. Focused his entire will.

He linked with Abram one last time, not to control him, but to strip him of power.

Minute by minute, drop by drop, Nox's light drained his brother's strength. As his crescent mark was slowly replenishing, Abram's was fainting. Abram thrashed, tried to fight, but he was too weak. Finally, his body slackened. His eyes turned glassy. He collapsed, lifeless.

The silence that followed was suffocating.

Nox sat motionless, staring at his brother's corpse. Then, as if something inside him shattered, tears streamed down his face.

There were tears of relief, but also of sorrow.

He had lost the last of his family.

But Nox's thoughts quickly shifted towards Torven,

"Torven? What about your wound?" he asked, worried as both warriors sat beside each other.

Torven tilted his head a little when a genuine smile appeared on his lips.

"What wound?" he replied.

Nox looked at him closely, then saw it.

The wound was gone. The fabric was torn, yes, but the skin beneath looked untouched.

"You're healing faster than I thought," Nox whispered in disbelief.

Torven looked at him, a tired smile playing on his lips.

"You make me better just by being here."

Nox froze. Then, without hesitation, he pulled him into an embrace and held him with all the strength he had left. He felt his heartbeat and heard his breath.

The world around them was still dangerous, still broken, but in that one moment, they were together.