Discorporation, the sensation of having one's body changed into light and moved across the earth, is an odd and novel feeling to Ferro. He reaches out, grabbing at Jess, unsure if he stretches forth with his hand or merely his mind. It doesn't much matter; she lets go almost as quickly as she grabs onto him.

Then, it is falling. He tumbles away, the sensation of the air lashing at his skin and clothes coming back to him as he plummets from the air. He wheels his arms, turning in the air, finding down and pointing his feet that way just in time to crush an abandoned booth left out in the market square. Timber boards scatter as he collides, the brick of the square groaning as they grind against their fellows, but he keeps his feet, kneeling amid the destruction as the splinters begin to settle. He lifts his gaze in time to see the woman fall from the air a distance away from him, her bare feet skidding along the sloped rooftop of an adjacent building, scattering clay shingles as she slides to a stop at the roof's edge. The sound of the shingles breaking against the stones of the road sounds like rocks plopping into moving water, a strange staccato to the chaos of the city.

Ferro looks around the market square, registering the terrified faces of people who stare back from their hiding places. His hand grips the hilt of the sword he has made, the blade buzzing and jumping where it touches the ground, sparks of magic and lightning stopping it from sitting idle.

"You beat me," he says, looking up to the woman kneeling on the roof above.

Hesitant, Jess stands, a fresh wave of clay rectangles clattering to the ground below. "Why are you attacking the city?" she asks.

"Why?" The point of his sword digs a line through the stone as he draws it to the side. "I was told to, I suppose. Sigrid has plans. The master has plans. They need something for it, something the Duke has. I owe them for it, so I carry out my part." He looks out, staring toward the tree that towers over the city, the palace district far in the distance now. "It will take me forever to get back there now."

"If you need something from the Duke, you should take it from him!" Jess spits. "There is no need to burn the city, to kill so many people!"

Ferro shrugs. "I don't make the plans. Why would you care anyway? These are mostly just humans, so why would it matter to you?"

Jess sniffs. "Life is life."

"Life is life," Ferro mutters, nodding, scratching his neck. "I guess that it is." The grinding of his blade against the stone slows to a stop, the scratching sound echoing through the square for a moment longer. He stares at the cut across the stone, thinking, considering. When next he looks up, he sees it again, that field of silvery magic surrounding the woman. "How can you do that?"

She squints at him in response.

"How do you stop my swords? You aren't strong enough, you shouldn't be able to."

"Blades are my domain," Jess sneers. "You will never reach me with one." Reflexively, she reaches for her hip, remembering then that her chakram lies broken and forgotten far away on the battlefield they just left. Never breaking eye contact with the man, she waves her hand, a burning brazier shattering the roof next to her as it ascends to her level before stopping in the air next to her, hovering there. The hilts of eight, bladed weapons emerge from the fire, the metal of their makeup burning orange with the heat of the flames.

There is something in the woman's words, something in her confidence that irritates him. It doesn't take him long to discover the reason. Since meeting the master, since being reborn by him, he has had one thing, one thing in his life that gave him surety inside the turbulent sea of despair that was his life. Blades belong to him, no one else. He could pull them from nothing; he could change objects and even people into them. This woman was false, absolutely and utterly false. She would have to die.

Before Jess can reach into the brazier to pull free a new weapon, Ferro moves, an abandoned horse carriage snapping like a twig as he runs through it rather than around it. The man cowering behind the carriage only has time to paint a look of shock and horror on his face before Ferro has him by the neck, lifting him into the air until his feet dangle, kicking for the ground.

"Life is life," he says, looking up at Jess. Before she can move, his mouth opens unnaturally wide before his teeth crash down onto the flailing man's neck, his spine snapping from the force of it. The man hangs limp, his eyes growing glassy as a chunk of flesh is ripped away. An ephemeral trail follows the spray of blood, clinging to Ferro and sinking into him as he tosses the body away to twitch and bleed in the street, heart still pumping, slowing as it discovers that it is already dead.

The sight of it, the brutality of the monster turning to leer up at her, its chin and chest covered in a new splash of crimson, freezes Jess in place. There is a wailing, not something that she senses with her ears, but something her soul–spread out around her as it is–picks up on as the final pieces of the nameless man sink into the skin of Ferro. The monster's body shifts, healthy color returning to his face, the redness and bruises standing out against his skin receding. The torn flesh of the wrist she nearly severed begins to knit itself back together, healing in an instant.

She shudders. So quickly, all of their work is undone.

"I don't know why it is blood for me that does it," Ferro says, smiling at her with red teeth. "I'm just special in that way, I suppose." His eyes slide to the side, gaze locking onto a teenage girl hiding behind a rain barrel.

Before he can move toward another victim, he needs to raise his sword. A cacophonous explosion of force blows the debris of the destroyed carriage away as Ferro meets Jess' burning estoc with his sword. There is a tugging sensation, like the cloud of magic surrounding the woman is made of a million hands. The magic snatches his blade, throwing it wide as the woman lands, squaring her feet before dashing forward with a thrust. He has just enough time to turn the stab aimed for his heart into a cut that tears his shoulder in half, kicking a stone on the street up toward her face as he leaps back and away.

Jess cuts the projectile from the air, taking a fencer's position, the point of her long sword aimed toward his face. "You will not hurt anyone else," she says. "I swear it."

An explosion in the distance, dust and debris pluming up into the air in a geyser, startles me to alertness. I continue to drift, my body turning toward the destruction as I continue to drift to the side. Fire burns in my hands, my muscles tensing, preparing for something to leap out at me from red shadow, but all I see are the secondary concussions of broken stone clattering down, trailing smoke and ash as they tumble from the sky to break upon rooftops.

The fire in my hands dies as I watch the smoke fade on the wind, idling wondering what had just happened. The wind is not so scorching anymore, drifting as I am in the shadow of the tree, the feeling of actual night spreading out around me. Though I want to investigate, though I feel that I must see what that was, I turn away, moving toward a scream.

In a park set out like a festival ground, I find three people hiding inside a wooden ship propped up on struts. My brain works, thoughts sluggish, memory finally recalling the look of the carnival ride below me. The three in the ship, two men and a woman, beat at monsters with decorative oars painted blue.

I can't help but pause for a moment, staring down at the strange dog-like creatures with the tails of stinging insects, wondering if this is not some dream, another nightmare. I stopped the monsters from getting into the city, hadn't I? Had Athemia fallen? Were we mere moments away from being overrun? Then I notice another man, one dressed in the guard colors of the Mari family, charging the creatures with a sword held high and shield raised. From the way he runs, I can easily see that he is just a man, no power or magic to him, a hired laborer to enforce the duke's will in the capital. He must have a strong heart not to lose his mind to the madness pervading the city.

Before I can move to aid him, I feel something rip through the back of my dress, the scorch of a burning lash slashing across my skin. A squishy mass hits me the next moment, knocking me several feet down to almost collide with one of the trees in the park before I can recover. Spinning in the air, staff appearing in my hand, I find the assailant. There is almost a nostalgic feeling, seeing the flying, demon eyeball with a tentacle extending from the pupil.

It was one of these creatures that Priscilla summoned. How things might have been different if I had just held my tongue in that moment, if I had never fought with her.

The demon eye darts forward. I move to the side, my aura flaring, but strangely it follows me with a speed I didn't know it possessed. The lash of its tendril shoots forward, cutting a hole right through the stomach of my dress. I feel the pricking sensation of the stinger thrust against my stomach, but the sharp tip does not sink into the skin. Despite the speed and ferocity of its stab, the stinger is completely incapable of puncturing my reinforced skin, of reaching the mana inside my body that it seeks.

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My staff descends, the head gathering incredibly mana in a bead of orange light. Dragonfire explodes over the eye as the blow lands, the force of the eruption blasting the demon into the ground below where it splatters into a gory mess. In the next moment, I fall from the sky, crushing one of the dog-like demons beneath my feet, my staff spinning to fire a belch of dragonfire over another.

The last of what I assume to be demons pauses in its attack against the lone guardsman, its head turning in my direction. The guard capitalizes on the opportunity, stepping forward, his blade thrusting into the neck of the demon. It yowls as it is born to the ground by the man, its stinging tail lashing wildly, scratching against the raised shield of the guardsman. He struggles with it a moment longer before the creature finally lies still, its blood leaking into the grass. There is quiet, even the echoing wail of Danfalla seeming to fade for a moment as the guardsman pants, picking himself up out of the grass.

The strung lanterns about the park cast the man in a nicer glow, a warm and vibrant light. Despite the heaving of his chest and the sag of one of his shoulders, he smiles at me, relief evident on his face. The man is so much younger than I thought from the air, younger than me even. Then his eyes stray down, the flush of his cheeks growing even brighter as he turns aside.

I look down at myself, finding the front of my dress entirely torn open by the eye demon. It feels like it takes a conscious effort to remember how to feel embarrassed by my undress. I turn aside as well, retrieving a spidersilk blouse from my vault and slipping it over my head. How bizarre I must look now, the torn remnants of my once fine dress pooling around my waist, held there by the spare belt I keep my mageblade clasped to.

"Thank you for the…"

The rest of the guardsman's words are lost as I shoot back into the air. I hover, a hundred feet above the ground, turning as I look for the spot where I noticed the explosion earlier. Something nags at me, some voice that I heard momentarily on the wind. The commotion at the palace grounds is audible now, a clash of steel and flesh, but I ignore it, every instinct I have pulling me in another direction. With all the speed I can muster, I flash through the air. Something dark starts to creep into the back of my mind, the haunting laughter of one of those evil three mocking me from a half-remembered nightmare. I have to hurry.

The exchange is like lightning. As Jess stabs, her feet snapping, a dance of dust and debris stirring up behind her, her frustration grows. The monster, the demon in the form of a man, the creature leering at her with a bloody smile, moves faster and faster along with her. Her blade stabs, the heat roiling off of it burning the air, the stink of ozone filling the market square as the two hurl their bodies and weapons against one another.

Her estoc snaps out, three strikes too fast for the eye to follow, punching holes in the air. Ferro meets her, the flat of his blade taking the blow as he steps in to escape the second. He moves to stop the third when Jess' aura lashes forward, grabbing onto his sword and turning it sideways. Ferro's grin never falters, not even when the point of Jess' blade cuts another line across his stomach, but skin burning and sizzling as the white hot sword thrusts forward.

Jess rotates her soul presence, the trapped blade swinging about, but Ferro refuses to release his grasp. She hurls both the weapon and the monster away from herself, watching as Ferro's bloodied body bounces off one of the few intact stalls still left standing, falling out of sight. The ground breaks as she runs forward, not allowing the Ferro even a second out of her sight. As she predicted, he is up and running before she clears the stall, heading toward the huddled group of people cowering on one side of the market square. The bricks break beneath her feet as she plants her foot, her arm arching back and swinging forward, her sword flying across the square like a spear.

It catches Ferro in the back, stabbing through him and protruding from his ribcage on the right side. He stumbles, spinning, the flat of his blade in motion to knock Jess' head off her shoulders. Two scimitars pulled from the brazier that follows her like a puppy, she meets the swing with her own crossed blades, and even with the full weight of her soul presence pushing forward, the monster's strength is too much. Lightning splits across the square, ripping apart the ground and tearing into the supports of the closest building. The flat of the blade hits Jess' aura and her crossed swords together, hurling her away as the structure collapses.

She bounces on her back, her sword cutting down to stick in the brick as she flips herself to her feet, sparks flying from the ground. He is on her again before she can regain her balance. The flash of their swords becomes a blinding maelstrom of light, raw power seeking to overwhelm disciplined grace. Rubble and dirt falls around the two, peppering the square as Jess is batted backward, Ferro abandoning the edge of his weapon to swing with the flat of his enchanted blade, bullying Jess' aura as she tries to deflect with her domain.

The swords she wields become dull instruments, the magic that birthed the weapons no match for whatever material Ferro fashioned his own from. As one snaps, wrenching her wrist to the side in a sprain, she releases the other toward the monster, the full might of her aura pressing behind it. It sinks into his gut, stopping him in his pursuit long enough for her to gain some distance before the point of the sword ricochets off the hardened bone inside the monster and slices out of him.

Jess heaves, choking down air, her uninjured hand dipping into the brazier to grasp a new weapon, a simple shortsword made of molten earth. Ferro stakes a stumbling step forward, his left hand falling away from his weapon to cup the wound cut across his stomach. He sputters, looking down, really seeing for the first time the state of his body. The estoc still sticks from him, smoke rising from the cooling point that stabs out the side of his ribcage. He wonders if she knows how useless his right arm is, how the impalement limits his motion, how he can barely see any longer through the liquid swimming in his vision. His breath hitches as he straightens, turning his weapon on the shimmering steel light that stands out in his cloudy vision. He can feel the end coming; this will be it.

Jess pants, every breath a labor, every attempt to control her exhales met with an undeniable need for more air. Her fingers won't close around the hilt of the sword, the injury in her wrist far more than a sprain, it would seem. As she glares at the monster, she finds it staring back at her, its manic smile turned almost sad. She wonders how it knew, how it figured out that her style and abilities devoted to parrying wouldn't work if it used the flat of its weapon to attack with. Behind her, she can hear them, even over the pounding of her heart in her head, the whimpering of the people she defends from this monster. Her bones complain as she pulls herself straight, holding aloft the sword that cooks the air itself, the finest weapon her brazier can assemble. She feels the end of the battle nearing, just one more clash.

As if they had decided on it long before, a stone tumbling from the air to clatter on the street spurs each into movement. They come together as one, their weapons whirring, aiming at putting down the other.

Ferro's sword meets with Jess' aura as she pushes all of her strength into expressing her soul. The cloud of magic strains and ripples as the monster's strength meets it head-on. Even with all of her will sunk into her presence, she cannot overcome the titanic weight behind Ferro's strike, but she never intended to.

An ear-splitting screech of metal pierces through the air as Ferro's blade is turned just the slightest bit, a distance less than a hand's width, the edge meeting Jess' molten sword already in motion. The shortsword shatters in the meeting, Ferro's weapon knocked off-mark just the smallest fraction, but even the smallest fraction is enough to qualify.

Distorted time seizes Jess. Like a wave, all the pain, all the injuries she has endured, hit her body like an avalanche, but she ignores it. Her injured hand dips back as she circles Ferro at a speed defying anything she has pushed herself into before, grabbing for and pulling free the final weapon from the brazier, a simple dagger. She sees him, sees his eyes follow her as she moves within her flow of time to make it behind him, and knows that he can't follow in time; the pull of his massive weapon is too heavy. He will be dragged by the weight, refusing to let go, and she will have him.

Time begins to move in proper order once more as she steps close, her dagger lifting, slicing into the flesh over his heart as he turns to meet her. There is the sound of ripping flesh, the two gasping together as the square falls still. He is there, facing her, their eyes meeting as Ferro's blade, flung away, clatters loudly among the rubble.

He feels it, a dull ache in his chest, blood leaking over the front of him. The blood is hot, hotter than the air given off by the fires of Danfalla. A dribble of crimson falls from his mouth as he stares down, seeing the hilt of the dagger sticking from his chest. There is a pulse, a beating of a heart slowing, grinding to a stop. Ferro looks up at her, seeing the pain writ on her face as she tries to move. He feels the warmth of her blood spreading down his arm, the beat of her heart in his hand, the hand stabbed into her chest.

"Thank you," he says, the words barely able to croak from his throat.

They fall together, their knees hitting the cobbles. Jess tries to speak, tries to move, but finds her body unwilling. She feels it, feels the monster's hand inside her chest, feels the fingers grabbing hold of her heart and squeezing. Weakly, her arms push against him.

Ferro wraps her in an embrace, holding her to him as they bleed together, their blood forming a single pool among the bricks.

Darkness starts to press in, her last sight the blurry vision of Ferro's mouth stretching wide, her last sensation his teeth biting into the flesh of her neck.

As he pulls from her, as he bites into her soul and pulls it to himself, Ferro feels more complete than ever before. She feels like the other half he never knew that he lacked. Tears well and fall from his eyes as he pulls the soul of the woman into himself, learning only then her name, learning only then her desires and dreams, learning only then how inadequate he had been.

The blow is like the sweeping of the wind. Ferro is lifted from his knees and tossed across the market square by the staff's strike before the explosive sound registers, before the air itself seems to rend apart in the face of unrelenting fury. In the moment just before he crashes through the building, he catches a final sight, a red angel catching Jess' body, flame roiling about her. Then he hits the wall, breaks through it, and falls into darkness.

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