Empires | Arc 3 | Chapter 7 | Confessions

The temperature across the battlefield slowly normalizes. The intense, suffocating atmospheric pressure that had choked the air for the last twenty minutes finally lifts.

Taglia drops to the dirt, landing heavily on his ass. He rests his elbows on his raised knees, the heavy columns of steam finally ceasing to vent from his pores as his body returns to its normal size. The world around him is unrecognizable. A massive portion of the lush grasslands has been carved into a jagged canyon and scorched earth, looking as though a decade-long drought and a catastrophic wildfire had ravaged it simultaneously. It will take the earth years to recover, but the geological scars of what happened today are permanent.

Slowly, the nature exhales. Birds flutter out from the surviving tree line, hovering tentatively against the open sky. A soft, calming wind sweeps through the valley, carrying away the metallic scent of vaporized blood and replacing it with the quiet, crisp smell of nature.

The group mobilizes.

Friling rushes to collapsed Leon, dropping to his knees.

“Raphael’s Wings.”

A magnificent pair of silver wings erupts from Friling‘s back, their pristine feathers ruffling gently in the returning breeze. He sits by Leon’s left side, spreading his wings wide and aiming his palms at Leon’s numb, torn body. He closes his eyes. Half a dozen silver feathers detach, drifting softly over Leon’s bleeding torso. The moment they make contact, they dissolve into a glowing silver dust, slowly staunching the arterial flow.

But the lacerations do not close. Friling squints, straining his stamina. He forces twelve more feathers to detach, raining silver dust over the scorched, torn flesh. Each of Leon’s shredded limbs requires four to six feathers just to stabilize. It is the first time Friling has ever been forced to expend this much plumage on a single human being.

Leon remains half-conscious, his body too catastrophically drained to sit up or speak.

Jarrod steps forward. He does not sit. He casually and instinctually positions himself directly behind Leon. Even in the quiet aftermath, Jarrod secures Leon’s back.

Maven drops gently to Leon’s right side. She carefully lifts his bruised, bloody head, resting it against her chest to relieve the agonizing strain on his shattered core, and spine. Softly brushing the matted hair from his face. She angles his body perfectly so Friling has unobstructed access to the wounds.

A few meters away, Taglia sits in the dirt, huffing lightly. He looks around the ruined field with the twitchy impatience of a child waiting for dinner. There is absolutely no trace of the 6’2″, steel-cabled monster from three minutes ago. But the impatience is not innocence; it is a biological mask. He is twitching to burn off the massive, lingering adrenaline dump surging through his nervous system.

Makisa stands rigidly to his right. “What do you mean, miscalculated?”

She is genuinely unnerved. In all her years walking by his shadow, she has never seen him fumble a combat equation. She eyes the group cautiously, wondering if this specific group is the anomaly that compromised him.

Taglia stops twitching and looks up, genuinely perplexed by his own biology. “It’s hard to explain. It’s just that… I wanted to hold back, and part of me wanted to let go at the exact same time. It cost precious moments to slip by. It resulted in the escalation.”

Makisa stares at him.

Translated from the myth’s vocabulary into human reality, it means Taglia had fought on pure, conflicting instinct rather than cold calculation. For a man who usually operates with absolute, detached apathy, giving into the thrill of the brawl is a terrifying evolution.

She looks at the catastrophic crater and stops her train of thought. This was only fifty percent. At one hundred percent? She refuses to calculate it.

“How did you hold back, then?” Makisa asks, her eyes narrowing.

Taglia gives her an exasperated, innocent look. “What do you mean?”

“Don’t play with me,” Makisa snaps. “In that entire fight, you only went Mach once. And you didn’t even push beyond the fifty-percent Primal mode. If you had actually let go, you…”

She doesn’t need to finish the sentence.

Taglia offers her a subtle, proud smile. She reads him perfectly. He turns his head away, looking toward Lesca, who is also sitting in the dirt, her head bowed as she desperately tries to catch her breath. Manifesting two hundred skeletons on an exhausted physiological body had nearly drained her life force.

“I don’t know,” Taglia murmurs, tilting his head lazily to the left. “Even though I was angry, I lost the will to kill somewhere during the brawl.”

Makisa looks at Lesca, then at the battered Leon. Taglia would never say the word aloud, but he had just categorized these anomalies as allies. “So you were feeling when you were fighting.”

Taglia’s eyes snap back to Makisa. A rare, vibrant glow flickers in his pupils. “Yeah… for the first time in a long time, I actually felt like keeping it going. Not ending it in the first ten seconds.” The glow fades back into his standard, bored apathy as he looks at Leon. “Well, up until he gave up on me.”

Makisa smirks. Leon had actually managed to make the god feel something. “Do not tell him that.”

“I won’t,” Taglia smiles.

Across the field, Maven looks at the silver dust settling over Leon’s arms. “Why is it taking so long?” she asks, her voice laced with heavy worry.

“My feathers heal physical injuries, not energy, stamina, or Heat,” Friling explains, his eyes squeezed shut in concentration. “Leon was about to self-detonate. His skin wasn’t ripped from a physical blow; his Heat was violently tearing out from inside his own body. His core needs time to stabilize. Until the Heat settles, the flesh won’t fully close.”

Maven bites her lip, a wave of uselessness washing over her. She is a warrior, not a healer. She has never hated her own lack of utility more than in this exact second.

“Maven, don’t agonize yourself,” Jarrod says, his voice absolute but anchoring. “Leon will heal, but he is going to need you to hold strong because he needs support in his current state. Don’t weaken yourself.”

Hearing the word needs, Leon lets out a stubborn, wet grunt against Maven’s chest. He tilts his head slightly to the left.

“I don’t need anyone,” Leon rasps, his voice utterly exhausted.

Maven bursts into a sudden, relieved chuckle, though her eyes remain glassy with unshed tears. Jarrod smirks down at the brawler. “Welcome back, Leon.”

Using his trembling, silver-dusted right arm, Leon forces himself into a sitting position. He glares up at Jarrod. “First you beat me to death, and now this guy does it.”

Leon turns his head toward the crater. Taglia is looking right back at him. Taglia offers a bright, completely innocent smile—the exact look two boys share on a playground after a fistfight. Leon freezes. It completely short-circuits his logic. Usually, the men he fights either leave the place or stay angry. This lack of hostility is profoundly foreign.

“Why?” Maven asks softly, breaking his trance. “Why kill yourself? Did you forget it was a duel, not a real fight?”

Leon slowly turns to look at his mentor. The feral pride drains from his eyes, replaced by genuine guilt. “Maybe I need some more Zen practice.”

It is the closest the brawler can come to an apology. Maven understands perfectly, offering him a warm, forgiving smile. “I think so, yes.”

Over fifty silver feathers have been expended. Friling’s stamina completely flatlines. Leon is stabilized—no visible open lacerations, no active bleeding—but the healer is spent. Friling unwillingly collapses backward, the majestic wings instantly vaporizing into the air rather than slowly fading.

Before his head can strike the dirt, a hand catches his shoulder. He looks up to his right. Lesca is looking down at him with a gentle smile. Friling returns it, then pushes himself up with the last of his strength.

“It’s your turn now, Maven,” Friling pants.

“I am perfectly fine, Friling. I didn’t fought. So no injuries,” Maven assures him. “You rest… please!”

Friling scans her body, confirming her structural integrity. Satisfied, he leans back on his palms, looks up at the open sky, and closes his eyes to breathe.

Lesca rises to her feet. She brushes the dirt from her clothes and begins walking deliberately toward the crater.

“Here she comes,” Makisa mutters.

Hearing that Taglia smiles—a completely involuntary, biological reflex triggered when a person’s favorite person approaches. Lesca stops directly in front of him, looking down to force absolute eye contact.

“So, you were holding back during our fight?”

Taglia opens his mouth. He pauses. The grand excuses die in his throat. He averts his gaze for a heavy, suffocating second, staring at the scarred earth before finally locking his eyes back onto hers.

“I was… mesmerized.” His tone strips away all irony, leaving only genuine, predatory curiosity. “I wanted to see what more you could do. What your absolute apex is… and where it takes us both.”

Lesca freezes. It feels as though he is looking straight through her whole facade, studying her bone, blood, and flesh with absolute fascination. A deep, pinkish-red blush rushes across her cheeks. For the second time, he has completely dismantled her offense by refusing to play the game of deflections. She expects men to cower or lie; he just hits her with terrifying, unfiltered reality.

She desperately gathers her composure, adopting a full-cheeked, girlish tone just to maintain her footing. “You didn’t answer.”

Taglia reads her face instantly. He knows she already has the answer, but the Goddess of Death requires the final word. He decides to give her an out.

“I had never met a blood witch and a necromancer at the same time,” Taglia says casually, though a flicker of excitement laces his words. “I couldn’t formulate a plan. So, I wasn’t technically holding back.”

They both know it is a manufactured excuse, but to Lesca, it is deeply endearing. The terrifying urban legend is sitting in the dirt, making up tactical excuses just to avoid angering her, like a husband placating his wife.

Before the tension can escalate, a heavy, dragging footstep breaks the bubble.

Leon, operating on pure, spiteful adrenaline, has staggered to his feet. Refusing to rest, he marches directly toward Taglia, Makisa, and Lesca.

“Balls on this guy,” Makisa smirks, deeply impressed.

Taglia tears his gaze away from Lesca, turning to watch battered Leon approach. Lesca doesn’t even turn around; she simply lets out a long sigh, knowing the intimate window has violently slammed shut.

Leon stops a few feet away. He is swaying slightly, leaning heavily to his right to favor the pulverized ribs on his left side. His face is set in feral determination.

“It’s a tie,” Leon declares. “And if you don’t like it… then I won.”

Before Taglia can even process the sheer audacity, Makisa scoffs.

“Last thing I saw,” Makisa says, pointing at Taglia, “he was huffing. And you were near-unconscious… and only not dead thanks to your girlfriend.”

Leon opens his mouth to fire back a quip, but the word girlfriend hits his brain. His face instantly flushes a violent, burning red. The sudden rush of blood into his heavily bruised cheeks causes a sharp spike of physical agony. Leon physically winces, gritting his teeth as the embarrassment actively hurts his face. Knowing he cannot successfully defend himself while wincing, he violently looks away.

“She is not my girlfriend, okay?!” Leon stammers, pointing an accusatory finger at Taglia. “Hell, I didn’t even realize all this shit until this asshole spoke of it!”

Taglia simply smiles. He looks past flustered Leon directly at Maven, who has just finished helping Friling to his feet.

“She is a strong and honorable woman,” Taglia says softly. “A warrior in the truest sense.”

Leon glances back over his shoulder at Maven. The manic energy leaves him, replaced by quiet reverence. “She is.”

Jarrod finally steps into the circle, his tactical mind already pivoting from the blood on the grass to the pieces on the political board.

“Your fighting idea turned into a disaster,” Jarrod says, staring down at Taglia. “What is going to be next?”

Taglia jumps up from the dirt, landing on his feet with flawless balance. He dusts off his ruined trousers.

“I am bored. Let’s decide it tomorrow.”

Without waiting for a response or a counter-offer, the myth turns his back on the group and begins walking lazily toward the distant silhouette of the Royal City. Jarrod stands perfectly still, watching him walk away. Slowly, Jarrod falls into step behind him, followed closely by Makisa and a quietly smirking Lesca. And the rest of them a step behind. At this point all of them more or less have adapted to Taglia’s whims.