“Be strong brother! I am at your side! Sen’s words pierced through Josh’s reeling mind at forty-plus seconds of waiting for the sadist’s next move.

  With nothing but sincerity and reality left, Josh forced himself to reply in the timelessness of their Bond. He said the one thing that still mattered. ~Thanks, brother! Get to Sophie anyway you can!~ Then one last thought came to Josh, so he went with it, starting by staring straight into Utu’s grinning face and careless eyes, “You’re so ugly your proctologist puts his fingers in your mouth–”

  The joy dropped from Utu’s face and his narrowed eyes were all business as he launched into a spin that sent the length of his saw around in another slice.

  Josh only saw a solid wheel of steel spinning at him as two more inches on each leg were added to the growing pile under his suspended form. Fresh screams of agony punctuated the damp air as a malicious curve took hold of Utu’s lips.

  The Sumarian cupped his ear in Josh’s direction and tilted his head toward the man puffing out breaths like a woman delivering her first baby. “What? Is that all you have? No more snappy repartee from you human—”

  “No uhhhuhhhuuhh, I dont think so” Josh puffed out words through the pain. “All I have to say is…uhhhuhhhuuhhh, If you and your sisters were any more inbred, huhhuhhuh, the four of you’d be a ham sandwich!” Josh finished with a steel grin that stared death right back at his grim reaper.

  Gaffaws erupted from the line of three Sumerians behind Utu and he whirled halfway around with a death glare of his own that immediately silenced the underlings.

  Sen, who had been struggling silently against his bonds without any success burst out in an unexpected laughed as well. He then answered Josh’s last request of him, ~Never doubt that I will find her, brother. Sophie is my progeny as well. I will upend Transcendence itself to get to her. ~

  Things were happening much faster than they ever had. Even Josh’s compartmentalized mind was failing him in keeping up with what was going on and its efforts to simultaneously formulate some plan to get out from under Utu’s blade. Even these feeble efforts were ended when all of his divided consciousness couldn’t help but follow the tip of Utu’s saw get pulled back for a head-level swing that would certainly decapitate him.

  Time slowed as one overwhelming thought dominated every one of his segmented thought processes like concurrent network coverage of the rolling destruction of an onrushing super nova: Is this it? Am I really going to die here? NOW?? LIKE THIS–

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  An all to familiar depreciateing voice mentally interrupted Josh, ~You are all at once hopelessly sentimental, pathetically irreverent, and needlessly dramatic. Be aware that Mother’s blessing is building to the point of severing the Sumerian storm hold on you. And personally, if I had the time, I would compliment you both on the showing of absolute incompetence which has brought you to this point. But all I do have the time to tell you is: DUCK!~ The unexpected voice of Cronos somehow spoke to them in what was no longer just their Bond speak.

  ~What?!? How!?!~ Both of their startled minds replied synchronously.

  Then everything happened all at once…

  Utu’s blade came around like a pinwheel in a hurricane, aimed directly at Josh’s neck in an oblong fashion. The freight train of sawtoothed death seemed to be flashing near the speed of light and somehow in slow motion all at the same time. Intended or not, that swing would also definitely catch Sen’s vital parts on Josh’s left.

  Silver light, started shining from they both like morning rays promising life after a night full of terrors and loss. The quicksilver light of Gaia’s Blessing of the Stars burst into full luminenscenc about them. Josh was never able to fully explain how being bathed again in Gaia’s unexpected blessing had somehow fully restored his fading hope in mind and heart. But for that moment it was enough to say that the force of it broke the hold that the Sumarian Storm-god, Elil, had on them.

  Given enough time, the star’s gravity immediate pull would spare Josh and Sen from the arc of Utu’s slashing blade. But in reality it was more than clear that this would never be enough. They hadn’t even dropped a quarter of an inch when even Josh was able to tell that their free fall wasn’t going to be nearly fast enough to save them. So, As not to have the top four of his head decapitated, Josh fully enhanced his body, slammed his chin to his chest, shrunk his shoulders down, and thoughts thoughts of being very small. From the corner of his eye he saw Sen’s acrobatic body pivot on some invisible, impossible axis that only he seemed to have access to. The short monk went completely horizontal to a place a complete foot lower than any reduced height Josh could hope to achieve in the same time. A lot can be said for developing your fast twitch muscle fibers… was the thought that went though the seeming randomly functioning compartmentalization of Josh’s consciousness. ‘Yeah.’ He would have thought in reply to himself, but the rest of him didn’t have the time.

  In the next fraction of an instant, the unstoppable force of sawtoothed death Utu was weilding flashed over them. Somehow it moved simultaneously in slow motion and also near the speed of light. A sharp wet pain spreading over most of Josh’s caput told him that he hadn’t gotten out completely unscathed. Terrific, now I look like a fransciscan monk from the dark ages. All in all a fair trade I guess–

  “ALALA ALALA!!” the sky was filled with a battle cry of pure rage and the ground in the entire area exploded from the impact of a massive muscular human, twenty five feet tall streaking silver light as it burned through the concealing fog, meteored over their heads, and crashed into the ground between Utu and his three scrambling Sumarian teammates.

  The surrounding opaque fog of war was blown away in a circle for more than one-hundred yards in all directions as the shockwave that ensued from Cronos’ crash perpetuated.

  Very shortly behind this, the air once again darkened with a rushing cloud of pulverized dust, dirt, and rocks that choked out all light. Neither Joshua’s uneven stumps or Sen’s perpendicular body had fallen more than an inch before the roiling air of Cronos’ impact blew them both away like leaves in a tempest of rushing sand and dirt.

  Throug the dark haze, Discharges of Illuminated Aura continued to cast opaque shadows of Cronos’ massive form swiping down to wreak havoc on diminutive figures less than half his size who had no hope of dealing with he force far beyond them. The brief instant Josh caught of it before they were thrown too deep into the fog of war to see anything else, left the impression of preschool children being none-too-gently slapped around by Dwayne The Rock Johnson.

  Still Cronos said one last thing to them both in their now, somehow shared, Karmic Bond .

  ~Run and don’t stop!!!~