At last, with a mixture of bemusement and faint amusement, Felzein remarked in a dry, sardonic tone, “You’ve not eaten, have you?”
“Weak,” he added quietly, shaking his head with deliberate slowness.
At that, the guard sprang backwards in a flawless somersault.
The moment his feet struck the ground, the force of the landing stirred a cloud of dust, and the walls groaned softly, as though registering the shift in tension now thickening the air.
“It appears... I truly did underestimate you,” he said, a grin playing across his lips as his expression turned grave.
“Very well,” he murmured, lowering himself into a ready stance. “This time, I shall fight with all my strength.”
His voice rose into a guttural cry, “HAAAHH! Take this!”
The guard surged towards Felzein with astonishing speed, his figure no more than a blur, a projectile loosed from the barrel of a gun.
His opening strike cleaved through the air with murderous intent, followed by a vicious low kick aimed directly at Felzein’s knee. Swift, practised, and unforgiving.
Yet Felzein merely inclined his torso, the blow whispering past his coat, close enough to stir the fabric but never the flesh.
The kick came sweeping in, but Felzein sprang back with effortless grace, turning aside mid-air as though this skirmish were little more than a warm-up.
A barrage of follow-up strikes descended. An uppercut, a backhand slash, a sweeping kick from below, all executed with precision, all utterly futile.
Felzein lifted his left arm, catching the brunt of the assault with a single hand, halting the guard’s momentum as one might stop a feather in flight.
“Glacial,” he murmured, his head tilting slightly in mild disapproval. “Are you certain this is your full strength?”
But before the final syllable had left his lips, the guard dipped low, pivoting sharply in an attempt to sweep Felzein from below.
Felzein floated upwards, landing nimbly atop the man’s forearm with one foot.
A poised figure in mid-air, as though he had taken to the stage rather than the battlefield.
“Are we fighting or performing?” he asked with a cool, amused glance from above.
“Silence!” the guard bellowed, fury overtaking form, as he launched a desperate strike towards the airborne intruder.
Felzein spun with the elegance of a falling leaf, alighting behind the guard as gently as morning mist.
Then gave his shoulder a soft, almost affectionate tap.
“Your turn is over. Now observe.”
The guard’s expression shifted, disbelief giving way to dread. For the first time, he felt truly hunted.
THUD!
With the subtlest flick of his right hand, Felzein tapped the man’s neck, a touch as light as breath.
But its effect was instantaneous.
The guard’s eyes widened, his limbs faltered. Balance abandoned him.
His complexion turned ashen, and before he could utter a sound, his frame crumpled, a marionette with its strings cut.
CRACK!
His skull struck the floor with brutal finality. Silence followed.
No defiance. No movement. As if the very essence of him had been swept away with that one, effortless blow.
Felzein remained poised, his silhouette tall and unyielding, as his gaze lingered upon the limp form sprawled before him.
The vanquished guard, felled without grace or glory.
“Weak,” he uttered with quiet contempt, shaking his head slowly, his eyes cold and unbothered.
A trace of amusement danced at the corner of his lips, the sort of smile that spoke not of joy, but of utter indifference.
A smile reserved for those who had failed to provide even a moment’s challenge.
He turned his attention to the three remaining guards, his eyes narrowing to a deadly glint.
“Well? Come at me,” he said, his voice low and composed, yet beneath the calm was a current of unmistakable command. “All of you, at once.”
The guards froze. Silent. Unsure.
They glanced at one another, their bravado crumbling beneath the weight of what they’d just witnessed.
The one who now lay unconscious had been their strongest, swift, brutal, and merciless in training.
Yet he'd been brought down in a mere heartbeat, by a gesture that looked almost casual.
“If he fell so easily… then what hope do we have?” The question hung heavy in each of their minds, unspoken yet paralysing.
At last, one of them, older, perhaps wiser, exhaled a long breath, and with trembling fingers, released his weapon.
It struck the floor with a cold, ringing finality.
“We surrender!” he declared, though the words were almost drowned by the hesitation that clung to them.
The other two followed suit, abandoning their arms as if they burned to the touch.
None could bring themselves to meet Felzein’s eyes, as though his gaze alone might undo them.
“That will suffice,” Felzein said, his tone clipped, imperious. “Go. Fetch Jonas. Now.”
“Y-yes, sir!” came their hurried reply, voices overlapping in their haste to obey.
They turned to flee, only to be halted once more by Felzein’s voice, now sharp as a drawn sword.
“And take him with you,” he added, tilting his head slightly towards the unconscious body behind him.
The guards stopped at once, as if turned to stone.
Then, without a word, they doubled back gathering their fallen comrade in awkward silence, and vanished down the corridor, burdened not just by his weight, but by the weight of humiliation.
Felzein stooped with a measured grace to retrieve his golden card, which had slipped from his grasp during the earlier commotion.
For a fleeting moment, he examined it between his fingers as though it were an artefact of some trivial memory, before sliding it back into his wallet with an indolent flick of the wrist.
“One minute,” came Cherlyn’s voice from the far side of the chamber, calm and clipped.
She remained poised against the wall, a picture of composed elegance, her eyes idly scanning the face of her wristwatch.
Felzein responded with a relaxed smile, not quite arrogance but certainly laced with detachment.
“Far too sluggish,” he said, almost with a sigh.
Cherlyn allowed herself a faint smile, “You ought to have dealt with those five ruffians the way you handled him,” she remarked, inclining her head towards the unconscious guard sprawled inelegantly on the floor.
“Which five?” Felzein inquired, one eyebrow arching in mock perplexity.
Her lips tightened, “Must you always be so forgetful? The five who wreaked havoc at my apothecary!”
“Ah, them,” he murmured with a small laugh, the sort one might reserve for a long-forgotten anecdote. “Thought you meant someone of consequence.”
“You incorrigible fool,” she muttered, half-amused, half-exasperated.
“They weren’t worth remembering,” he replied with a shrug, as one might speak of dust on one’s coat.
Just then, the heavy tread of boots echoed along the shadowed corridor beyond, urgent and unrelenting.
From the gloom emerged a voice. Deep, steady, and steeped in authority, “Agent Lyn… and the young man. What is his name?”
Out of the half-light stepped Jonas, the commander of this regional enclave, a man whose very presence seemed to compress the air around him.
One of the flustered guards gave a hasty salute, still visibly shaken, “That is correct, Commander Jonas!” he said, breath ragged. “We don’t yet know the lad’s name, but he is exceptional. Calm, poised, and striking in appearance. His combat technique… it’s monstrous, sir. Koko, our finest, was felled by a mere flick to the neck.”
Jonas came to a halt. His gaze narrowed, voice dropping to a near whisper.
“A single flick…?” he repeated, the words tasting foreign on his tongue.
The guard nodded fervently, as if still caught in the spell of what he had witnessed.
“We saw it. All of us. And then he just stood there. Mocking us.”
A heavy silence fell. The tension in the air was almost tactile.
Jonas resumed walking, each step punctuated by the echo of leather soles on cold steel flooring.
“Interesting…” he murmured. A trace of a smile touched his lips, though his eyes had grown colder like winter sun on glass.
“Lead me to them,” he ordered, briskly. There was no room for refusal in his tone.
He strode forward now, not with idle interest, but with purpose, a man seized by a sudden and potent curiosity.
Before long, Jonas and his uneasy entourage arrived at the central hall where Cherlyn and Felzein awaited.
“Agent Lyn!” Jonas exclaimed, his expression brightening with unmistakable warmth.
“You might’ve sent word of your arrival,” he added with a chuckle, genuine though tinged with formality.
Cherlyn met his gaze with steely eyes, arms crossed with restrained irritation, “Your men were abysmal. I arrive with one guest, and suddenly your security behaves as though I’m smuggling in the Supreme Chancellor of Earth.”
Jonas laughed again, with just the right shade of self-deprecation, “Forgive them, Agent Lyn. Overzealousness in defence of protocol.”
His gaze then shifted to Felzein, lingering a second longer than was strictly polite.
His eyes were sharp, assessing, searching beneath the surface for answers he had not yet been given.
And then...