excerpt

The wind whistled through the clearing as the dust finally settled. He took a step towards his final opponent, driving his heel through the skull of the writhing body at his feet. A sharp yell barely escaped, then silence. Much blood had been shed already, but this fight was different. Ryu was fighting for revenge, his normal morals falling to the wayside, shifting into gray at best. The murder of his love J.R., and the self-sacrifice of his sister Misty, had driven him over the edge. His sanity was not in question, despite how insane he may have appeared to all around him. The sheer heartbreak and loss was too great for one man to bear on his own. His soul became cold and dead, leading him to become a hollow shell, a mere shadow of the man he used to be. But with this deadened Ryu came forth a new power: he became a warrior with nothing to lose, but nothing to gain either. Every man he fought and killed brought him no nearer the closure that he so desired. Instead, his heart only gathered more pain and suffering with every slain warrior.

And the man standing in front of him right now was no different. He didn't want to fight anymore; the battle was over, his side was clearly defeated; his spirit was broken. The lone warrior was no match for Ryu, and both sides were well aware of this fact. Ryu took more steps towards his opponent, bloodlust building up inside his body. The samurai threw his sword to Ryu's feet. "You know you have won; I concede defeat." Red fury was visible in Ryu's eyes, slowly stalking his unarmed opponent. No words came from his lips; no thoughts came from his mind; no emotions from his body. "Look at yourself!" the defeated samurai pleaded. "Do you even remember what you once stood for? So self-righteous, a defender of the weak, not a slayer of them! You have your victory. Let me go to be free from service and return to my family, my children. Just think what your beloved would do..."

Suddenly Ryu's fingers were grasped around the neck, lifting the body into the air, cold black eyes staring blankly at the suffocating face. "How...dare...you speak...of her!" Ryu seethed. "You serve him, he who had her killed in my very presence! Her blood strewn purposefully all over my body! You may as well have done it yourself...Paul." The name struck discordantly like the maniacal grin on Ryu's face. Shock flew through the body. "Oh yes, I know everything about you Paul McCanns." His fingers continued to tighten and close on the throat as he listed of age, weight, place of birth, enlistment records, and distinctions. "And the odd thing is...you were never married...nor do you have any children." With that, Ryu put his whole force into choking. The eyes bulged, blood began to trickle from the face, starting at the nose, then from the ears and corners of the mouth. The mounted pressure made the neck creak and snap until it finally shattered. But Ryu took no notice that he was holding a corpse. The splintered bones broke through the skin, piercing his hand. Yet he continued to squeeze still, until he finished his decapitation, the head and body falling separately with dull thuds onto the blood soaked earth.

The raging fury slowly gave way to the pure pain in Ryu's hands. He stared down, his fingers and palms drenched in blood, pierced with the shattered vertebrae, possibly mixed in with his own broken bones. Deep down, he knew this was not the source of his great pain. And as the voided hole within his body grew even larger, he knew there was no chance of salvation for himself. His soul had been condemned long ago, something he had already accepted, becoming a lifeless pawn of the feigned righteousness in the world. The sun began to set on the horizon, Ryu dragging his bloody self towards it, one step closer to ending the war, but one step further from retribution.