Chapter 48 – The Berserker's Baptism
The battlefield was ash and ruin, trees split like kindling, smoke turning the night into a choking shroud. The others staggered back, bruised and bleeding, watching as Logan stepped forward alone.
SNIKT.
The sound cut through everything—storm, fire, screams. The promise of violence made steel.
Kierrok lowered its head, jaws yawning wide, smoke pouring out like furnace breath. Its voice rumbled like stone dragged across stone. "INSIGNIFICANT. YOU BLEED, YOU BREAK."
Logan spat blood into the dirt. "Yeah, yeah. But I don't stay down."
Then he charged.
The monster swung an arm the size of a tree trunk, claws flashing. Logan ducked under, sliding on mud, claws carving deep across Kierrok's shin. Black ichor spurted, sizzling against the ground. The beast howled and kicked. Logan took the hit—bones cracking, ribs snapping like twigs—as he flew through a tree. He hit, spat, and stood back up, grinning wild.
"Round two."
He was on it again before Kierrok's roar faded. Claws tore through muscle, through bone, through alien sinew that healed even as he cut. The monster smashed him down with a fist. Logan's body crumpled, blood painting the forest floor. He twitched, lay still—then rolled, snarling, driving his claws into Kierrok's wrist. Flesh ripped open.
"C'MON!" Logan's voice was hoarse, animal, blood bubbling in his throat. "HIT ME HARDER!"
And it did.
Kierrok smashed him into the dirt, again, again, like pounding a nail. Blood gushed, bones broke, flesh shredded. But Logan wouldn't die. He couldn't. Every time he should have stayed down, he dragged himself back up, eyes glowing feral in the stormlight.
The others watched in stunned silence. Cyclops whispered, half in awe, half in horror: "He's… he's not fighting to win. He's fighting to survive long enough to kill it."
Logan clung to Kierrok's chest, claws plunging deep, carving straight through ribs. The beast shrieked, backhanding him so hard his jaw nearly tore off. It dangled loose for a heartbeat—then clicked back into place as his healing surged.
"Nice try," he growled through torn lips.
Then Logan went wild. A flurry of claws, flesh tearing, gore spraying, the forest floor a slaughterhouse. He slashed through tendons, hacked into arteries, ripped into eyes, into throat, into guts. Kierrok screamed and thrashed, but the Wolverine was relentless, a storm of blood and steel.
Finally, with a roar that split the night, Logan buried all six claws straight through the monster's skull. The beast convulsed, shuddered, and fell silent, its body slumping into the dirt. Black blood fountained around Logan's arms, coating him head to toe.
He panted, standing atop the corpse, chest heaving, more beast than man. His eyes glowed with that berserker fire that never really went out.
"Stay… DEAD."
The ground trembled. Smoke began to curl again, wounds stitching, Kierrok's body twitching back to life.
Logan's lips peeled back in a snarl. "Figures."
Behind him, Xavier's voice rang out, weak but sharp: "ENOUGH. We end this another way."
And Charles Xavier pressed his mind against the abyss of Kierrok's thoughts.