The prana infused fist didn't hurt as much as the emotion Reinhardt had packed into it.
"If you knew... If you..." Reinhardt's words were stuck in his throat like molasses.
Truly, any word that might have come out of Reinhardt's mouth right then and there would be insufficient to put into words what he felt deep inside his heart.
"...Elaborate." Reinhardt muttered with a coarse voice.
"I'll be blunt. Ever since I was born, I could 'talk' to the world. It would give me answers to the trivial questions I had, but never any answer I wasn't able to handle. It took me a couple of years to realize that what I was talking to was actually the prana around us. Even outside the tower, I could live the history of an object or the history of a place. That's all you need to know for what I'm going to say to make sense." Enkidu explained, his voice increasing in pitch at times, whenever he wasn't sure of what Reinhardt would think...
Reinhardt was watching Enkidu through the gaps of his fingers as he brought his hands up to his face, as if to support his heavy mind with them.
"I could tell something was wrong the moment we entered the Tower." Enkidu followed up.
Reina's eyes widened as she kept following him with her eyes as he paced around the living room.
"When we faced that proto-angel, at that time, that being was the strongest enemy I could sense. There was... something in the distance and it kept bothering me which lead to me pretending to be hit by the rebound of the Binding Vow."
"That farce of a fight..." Reinhardt said, his voice squeezed out of all emotion.
"Right. I had you follow me around as we got closer to that thing at the end and did my best to lure you all into using most of your powers. I thought... I thought we could beat it together. It certainly didn't seem that even Luca and Luna's combined prana pool were any higher than what I felt from that thing... and yet... you know what--."
"Get to the point." Reinhardt demanded, his patience wearing thinner and thinner by the second.
"Well, when I was unconscious, this large presence... you could even call it a colossal bundle of prana that took the life of what it referred to as the 'source of my power' said so as well. The tower adjusts the difficulty of it's floors to the power of those that pass through those doors. Their future potential as well... That's why we haven't seen anyone else, even though hundreds of us were to go inside at the same time and keep a tight line of communication between us... according to--."
"Father. Did he..." Reinhardt said, his glance stuck to the floor, supporting his head with his knuckles as his elbows rested on his legs.
Enkidu's gaze ran around the room as if he was trying to find any way through which he could escape.
"Do you... truly want to know?" Enkidu said as he did everything in his power to avert his gaze from Reinhardt's crestfallen face.
"Alright. I see... are we in a safe spot right now?"
"I can't be sure... this is an infinitely repeating space. The way to ascend to the next floor is either to find the odd area that might lead to the end or to find a boss-type creature like on the last floor, and defeat it..."
"It's always like this with you, isn't it? From the very beginning you were an unknown element. A disturbance in the force. All you do and all you have done is bring uncertainty within our lives... if it wasn't for you... if it wasn't for you..."
Reinhardt grabbed the blade-less hilt attached to his belt as if his life depended on it, all of the muscle fibers in his arm contracting due to the pressure he applied to his weapon, his veins becoming prominent all the way up to his shoulder.
Golden energy erupted from it, forming a long blade made of golden light in what felt like less than a second. The prana it radiated was dense and of the highest quality possible. It was as if they were looking at an artisan's work.
"I only have one question. What did you talk to Reina about?" Reinhardt said as he pointed his weapon at Enkidu, his head slowly rising to reveal a portrait of rage and pain, twisted as it was.
Before Enkidu could answer, Reina stepped forward, not even a hint of hesitation on her face.
"I wanted to walk with him in order to find out what happened and how he really felt. I am sure all of us had the faintest idea in the back of our minds, that thought that Enkidu might have been the reason they all died." Reina's face didn't betray an ounce of emotion.
"They? They?! Reina! They were people that we personally groomed to become the great fighters they became... How can you refer to them as that?!" Reinhardt shouted, expressing all of his rage and pain in his voice.
Reinhardt's lip quivered and it almost seemed like he was about to burst into a fit of tears.
For the first time during their conversation, a hint of hesitation appeared on her face.
"They... they were like family. A... distant family. Look, Rein, you must also realize that it was a mistake to bring them with us."
Reinhardt's mouth was agape, listening to his dear sister's harsh words.
"No matter what they did and how much we trained them, they could have never reached the level we are at right now. Even if Enkidu wasn't here with us, at some point..."
Reinhardt's tear ducts were force open as his sister's words stung his heart deeply.
"They would have died?" How can you be so sure of that...?" Reinhardt said as he stifled sobs.
❖═══════⛰ Heir of the Heights ⛰═══════❖
That pain and rage and weakness that Reinhardt wore on his face all melted into a pot of pure malevolence, one devoid of sympathy, one that knows no bounds.
"That's right! I forgot! How could I have forgotten that you are a battle obsessed maniac. Ever since we were little... you... you were different. You weren't like us. Even after we exhausted all our prana and all our stamina, you always kept training, you always kept pushing your body, you did so much each time we had to train with you, we had to witness you breaking your body. Techniques that required too much prana, or too much power... or both! You kept pressing on like that!" Reinhardt's blade trembled in his hand as it slowly moved towards Reina. "Did you think I wasn't paying attention? That you and that scumbag over there are peas of the same pod? You both are sick motherfuckers! For all I know you could have gone along with him with the intention to..."
"To make him my lover?" She said with a rage in her voice that neither Enkidu nor her family ever witnessed before. "Maybe! I don't fucking know! Emotions aren't like equations with precise answers. Still... the reason I went along with him is because I saw how tormented he was by what happened to th--"
"Don't call them that..." Reinhardt said as his voice cracked with every word he uttered.
"No. What you must understand is that we all knew what we were in for the moment we asked our father for permission to join this expedition, that this was a one way trip and a literal ride or die sort of situation. It was you who insisted on bringing them with us!" Her voice was strong and coarse, continually rising in tone and volume. "I understand that you are in pain right now... but that doesn't give you the right to disrespect and betray me like you just did. You know, hell even those two that are giving you a mean look know that I would go to hell and back with you. No matter what. But this time... this time you're wrong, Rein."
Reinhardt paused to look at the two children sitting next to him, giving him a similar sort of look as Reina did.
"You two also think I'm wrong?" Reinhardt said with a hoarse voice, devoid of all emotion.
"I don't know." Luna said. "What we do know is that Uncle En is not a bad person. You can tell with one look. Do you really think Uncle En came here to get us all killed?" Luca said.
What hurt Reinhardt worse, hard to tell. Maybe it was the fact that Reina and the two were right, that his own inadequacies and sense of inferiority brought him to where they got. That maybe all of his rage and negative emotion that he felt towards Enkidu were actually things he felt about himself.
"No one is ever on my side..." Reinhardt's words were like ashes in the wind. "Even back home. I understand. I see." Reinhardt said as he pointed his blade towards Enkidu, his killing intent dripping off of his blade like oil. "You can go hook up with him for all I care." His voice was devoid of emotion while his face was twisted in a one minded maelstrom of anger.
The sensation of flesh expanding was nothing compared to his seething rage. A small horn made of pure abyssal-looking scales, pulsating with prana through all of the micro cracks present. His eyes became even more in-human then before, starting to actually resemble the eyes of a dragon.
The prana in that space all at the same time began to vibrate, incited by the continuous stream of immensely dense prana coming out of Enkidu. It had started to vibrate so vigorously, the prana inside Reinhardt's body also began to vibrate, bringing him a quiet but white-hot pain.
"This is between you and me, bitch." Enkidu said, mixed within his rage villed voice the echoes of an ancient life form. His voice started to sound in-human. "I'll beat my feelings into you until you are half dead, maybe then you'll understand what Reina is trying to say to you."
"Don't call her by her name...!" Reinhardt said as his power reached a boiling point where he was also able to inflict pain like that upon others, forcing it all on Enkidu, resulting in what will later be named a 'clash of domains'.