Ivan didn't do stress anymore, or at least that's what he liked to tell himself. He'd lost track of how many years it had been since he'd stripped off his stars and abandoned the fight, abandoned a war that had nothing to reclaim what they'd lost, save to ruin what little they still had left.

It had all been so much easier once he'd stopped caring. Time had passed in a blur, centuries, millennia, after he'd retreated to the shattered ruins of his realm to lick his wounds in peace. Whoever had claimed that time heals all wounds was a fool, but given enough years, time was eventually sufficient to at least dull the pain. He wasn't quite sure when he'd started living again, the change so slow it had slipped past his notice. But as he raced through the dusty streets of Dūr-Adû, he knew the angry knot in his stomach had nothing to do with hunger. For the first time in centuries, he had something to lose, and that scared him more than he wanted to admit.

"You've grown slow, old man." He stiffened as Anna's teasing voice caught up to him, glancing over his shoulder with a frown.

"What are you doing here? You're supposed to be freeing the slaves along the docks."

"They can wait," she replied dismissively. "I'm not letting you face Erik on your own."

Her 'help' was exactly what he wanted to avoid. He didn't trust her, plain and simple, and the fact that she'd forced her way into their mission did nothing to ease his concerns. Perhaps she was telling the truth, and she truly wanted to put their old friend out of his supposed misery. Maybe. But Ivan didn't exactly believe those rumors, and he doubted she did either - and he knew for a fact she didn't give a damn about helping some elves. And now she's insisting on being there for the confrontation with Erik.

It didn't take a mastermind to put those pieces together and come to the conclusion that he was walking into a trap. As she ran past him, her long blonde hair bobbing behind her as she teased him, it was all he could do not to stretch out his hand and grab her by the neck. It would be much easier to just take her out now and not give Erik and Anna the chance to carry out whatever scheme they'd concocted, but he couldn't bring himself to do it. Not before she proved beyond a doubt that she was false.

Instead, he forced a smile on his face as, with a burst of speed, he shot past her. "Who are you calling old, slowpoke?" Ivan quipped, falling back on familiar banter with his friend for a few final minutes.

They took turns passing each other as they zoomed through the streets, cutting swathes through the panicked guards struggling to respond to the attacks on Dūr-Adû's outer wall.

The city was wholly unprepared for them, but that did little to ease his suspicion that Erik knew of their approach; it would be just like him to sacrifice a few pawns to better bait the trap.

Their laughter fell away as they reached the base of Erik's fort. The three concrete towers were as ugly as sin, looking like they'd been ripped straight out of some brutalist, Soviet-era wetdream. They were an eyesore on the landscape, an intentional middle finger to the gorgeous oasis that surrounded them, making their message all the more effective.

Strength. Cruelty. Uniformity.

The three watchtowers, each one massive enough to contain the entire population within its walls and taller than nearly anything else still standing in the rubble of the shattered Gemlirian realm, were designed to squelch any lingering hope of escape in the slaves sheltered beneath their shadow and to remind Dūr-Adû's citizens that the state saw all - was all. It was a lesson Erik had learned from him in the early days of the war.

Squashing the sick feeling in his stomach, he followed Anna inside. The intentional ugliness transformed into a more restrained austerity as they entered the forum of the central tower. The interior resembled a cathedral, if every scrap of decor and color had been stripped bare and replaced by grey, featureless concrete, though the vast, vaulted ceilings and pillars the size of redwoods were impressive on their own.

They tore through the handful of guards assembled there in a matter of seconds, adding a new color to the floors and walls, before pressing deeper into the complex. Certainty grew in his heart as Anna flawlessly navigated the bewildering maze of twisted hallways and vaulted chambers that followed, but he still stayed his hand. It had been a long time since Erik had holed himself up in his city, long enough for her to have visited for more innocent reasons.

But he wasn't fooled.

The pit in his stomach had grown to a churning vat of acid as they surged up the final flight of stairs and found the doors to the throne room propped open. Hot, acrid wind buffeted his face as he stepped onto the open-air pavilion, a thousand feet above the dusty plains.

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"You've returned, brother!"

Ivan was conscious of Anna circling around behind him, her hand cradling her undrawn sword, as Erik stood on his throne, hale and hearty as ever. He was a bear of a man, twelve feet tall if an inch, and corded with muscles as thick as an ox. A simple circlet of silver held back his long, black hair, though nothing could restrain the bushy beard.

He barely noticed these details, though, as he stared at the group gathered at the base of the throne with mounting horror. "What have you done?" he breathed out.

More than twenty elven women, their bellies distended in various stages of pregnancy, cowered in fear as Erik marched down the steps of the throne, his arms extended wide as if he expected Ivan to greet him with a hug. "What have I done? I've followed your example, brother. For so long, I waited for your return, to finish what we started, to make. those. bastards. pay." His face contorted with anger as he raised a fist against the Celestial Twins above.

"And then I heard the news. Meḫawwû was back. I'd thought you'd lost your mind at first when I learned about that elven woman of yours. I couldn't imagine what would possess you to let one of them even touch you," his nose wrinkled in disgust, "until I figured it out. You always were one for symmetry, brother. What better way to make them pay for the death of our kin than to make them bear their kind's replacements? So I followed your example," he gestured to the women flinching away from him with a smug grin. "Together, we shall raise a new people, a new army, to take back what is ours."

"Are you done?" Ivan asked flatly, doing his best to squash down the disgust he felt at the scene in front of him.

"Why, brother, surely you're not mad?" the man chuckled grimly, his eyes smoldering with unhinged rage as he stepped off the base of the throne. "I only followed your example - unless," he paused dramatically, "unless, you actually care for that elven whore of yours. But surely, no one could fall so far as to actually desire the touch of one of these vermin," he growled the word, as he grabbed one of the woman and hoisted her in the air by her hair.

"Really, Anna?" Ivan turned and caught her eye. "This is who you want to side with."

"Hey," she shrugged, "The blame's on you. I could have looked away from your little elven lover - hell, I might have even been persuaded to join in on the fun," she winked at him. "But when you start planning to kill one of our own for the sake of them," she didn't speak the word with the same vitriol Erik did, but her face still wrinkled with distaste. "You picked your side, Ivan, you already did. There's still time, though," her eyes darted over to Erik's with an almost pleading expression. "Go home, and we can forget about all this," she begged.

Ivan was slow to respond. "You know I never wanted to kill you, Erik. But this," he gestured at the abused women in front of him, at the city of slaves a thousand feet below them, "this won't bring our people back. Aren't you tired of the fighting, of the anger, of the hate?"

Ivan searched his eyes for any sign he was getting through, but the man's face was as unreadable as a stone as he continued. "Let the elves go - I'll pay whatever weregild you require; I'll take care of these ladies, and make sure you never have to see them go. Just let them go, and I'll walk out those doors," he promised. "We've both done so much crap, but there's still time to make things right. We can find a way to make a future for what remains of our people, instead of wallowing in the deaths we can never undo. Please, just-"

"It would have been better if you had never returned, brother," Erik cut him off with a sneer. "If the others knew what you'd become, your memory would become a curse and a byword…but fear not, I shall give the great Meḫawwû a death worthy of his name."

"Erik, wait-" Anna stepped between them pleadingly, but the brute silenced her with a glance. "Whose side are you on, blondie? Ours? Or theirs," he spat, pointing at the huddled woman.

She hesitated only a moment longer before moving out of the way. "I'm sorry, Ivan…I didn't want to do this."

"Neither did I," he replied grimly, "but as you've left me no choice-"

The clear skies above Dūr-Adû darkened as storm clouds gathered and thunder rumbled in the heavens as Ivan burst into action.

Unfortunately, the trap Erik had sprung was as effective as he'd feared. His best hope at winning the fight easily was to take Anna out quickly; her powers took a little time to ramp up, but she was easy enough to crush in the first few seconds. But Ivan couldn't afford to target her, as Erik swept the massive axe of his back and aimed toward the women cowering at his feet.

Ivan was faster, his body more lightning than flesh, as he flashed into place in front of them, deflecting the blow and powering his mana into a portal that opened up directly beneath the women. Their screams fell away as it swallowed them up, carting them off to the portal he'd left Aphora to guard, but that moment of distraction had given Anna time to strike.

The world turned dark as a swarm of glass shards, ripped from every window and rooftop in the city, swallowed him whole, gnashing and shredding his skin as it dragged him out of Erik's grasp and off the roof's edge. But the glass mage lost her hold on him as his body transformed into pure lightning, a torrent so hot and fierce that the shards began to melt. The heavens roared as Imḫullu leapt to the roof - and Erik roared back, as the rooftop melted beneath his powers into a defiant fist that snapped shut around him.

"Don't you remember those old games, brother?" Erik's voice wafted through the thick shell of cement surrounding him. "Ground always beats the storm," the brute chuckled.

And perhaps, in the old days, Ivan would have been trapped - but he was no longer Meḫawwû. He was the storm, and the storm was more than lightning. A torrent of water gushed out of him, filling every inch of space left within the shell, and every crack and crevice his lighting had carved out - and when there was no more space left, the shell exploded.

Imḫullu landed on his feet, dodging the wave of cement and water that knocked Erik on his ass, and laughed grimly. "Last I checked, little brother, water beats ground."

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