The scythe lifted into the air, a crescent of polished darkness readying itself to sever Lyle's head. Lucid was already moving, his body a coiled spring of desperation. The heirloom sword shot forward in his hand, not with grace, but with a raw, focused will. His mind screamed a single, clear thought: 'This is it. The final confrontation.'
As he lunged toward Ivy, a memory, sharp and unbidden, pierced his focus, the first iteration. A miserable, fumbling failure where he had been too slow, too uncertain, and she had cut him down with contemptuous ease. That had been a failed attempt at disposing of her. Now, synchronized with Karmen's body and mind, he could wield Karmen's abilities, his honed skills, his physicality. But it was not perfection; it was a borrowed suit, ill-fitting and strained.
He ignored the screaming protest in his muscles. From the sword's edge, he manifested not light, but a concentrated darkness, a shadow that grew solid, its edges burning with a bright, violent purple. He slashed forward. A cleave of solidified shadow shot across the space, intercepting Ivy's long, protruding scythe in mid-air. The impact was a concussive 'clang' of opposing forces, effectively interrupting her, staggering her for a single, precious moment.
It was all the time he needed. Lucid closed the distance, grabbed Lyle by the shoulder, and threw him clear of the immediate danger. All of it happened in mere seconds. But the momentum from the throw threw Lucid himself off balance. He tried to steady himself, to brace for the inevitable counterattack. He was already too late. That one second of falter was all Ivy required.
A line of searing pain cut across the lower left side of his abdomen before he could fully deflect. The scythe's tip grazed him, slicing through fabric and skin. His mind, trained in analysis even amidst chaos, registered the weapon's nature.
'Think. This is not a normal sword. It is a scythe. The trajectory is wider, but the angles are limited. She can only effectively strike from the left or the right.'
A warm, green light, painfully familiar and nostalgically agonizing, welled up from within him. It glowed, granting him a subtle green aura that outlined the seams of his clothes and the edges of the torn fabric. Lucid did not question it. He did not have the mental space for wonder. He simply accepted the surge of vitality and moved with it, his parries becoming slightly faster, his blocks marginally stronger.
Ivy was strong. Terribly, deceptively strong. Every time their weapons clashed, the reverberation traveled up his arm, jolting his bones. Each impact chipped away at his defenses, leaving faint marks and scratches on the heirloom blade. It was a punishment he could withstand, but only just. Ivy was an Enlightened. Her exact rank was unknown. Though she specialized in healing, who knew what other capabilities she harbored?
Knocked back onto one knee, he looked up, gritted his teeth, and dashed forward again. This time, he spun in the air, his sword striking the purple grass and sending a spray of dirt and debris toward Ivy's face. A poor trick, something he remembered Karmen using as a child. It was not enough. Ivy merely tilted her head to the side, the filth missing her completely.
But Lucid was already behind her, both hands clenched on the hilt, the blade held ready for a finishing thrust. He drove it forward with all his might, and it cut through.
A faint whimper, a sharp exhalation of pain, escaped her. "Ah," Ivy's voice was weak, shaky. "You really did it. How clever." She smiled then, a strange, blood-flecked expression. "Are you sure you want to kill me?"
Before he could answer, one, two, three, ten tentacle-like limbs shot from the wound in her back. They were not flesh, but manifestations of pulsating violet energy, and they immediately wrapped around his left arm, twisting it with brutal force. A red-hot agony, both physical and psychic, exploded inside his skull.
'Shit. No.'
With his free right hand, still gripping the sword, he cut at the constricting limbs. They severed, immediately convulsing on the ground before dissolving into motes of foul light.
"What the—"
"Pretty, isn't it?" Her voice was different now. More pronounced, deadly, as if its volume had been doubled, ringing unpleasantly in the air. Her eyes, her smile, transformed into a deep, uncanny shape. Her pupils narrowed, becoming reptilian slits edged in violet and black. "Stop struggling, Karmen. You have no journey left to embark upon. Surrender yourself. This is the only way. Or die."
'This woman. She is essentially telling Karmen to surrender and die later, or die now.'
He took a deep breath, focusing past the pain. If he died here, it did not matter in the grand scheme of things. His brother was safe. The iteration would reset. The penalty for matching Karmen's original fate would not be enacted as long as one other family member survived. But the thought shook him in a profoundly wrong way. A reset meant another cycle, deeper synchronization. He would become more like Karmen.
And Lucid hated the thought of becoming someone like him.
That was not all. A reset would almost guarantee ultimate failure, for the original Karmen would act the same way, leading to the same fatal conclusion, finally enacting the penalty. He could not die. As much as a part of him yearned for an end to the pain, he feared this might be the final iteration before his identity was erased for good.
"Breathe in," he whispered to himself.
A memory resurfaced from within Karmen's psyche.
"The Tempest Shadow Stance. First Form."
Muscle memory, Karmen's memory, immediately guided his body. His feet shifted. The sword rose above his head, his shoulder pointed toward Ivy, his elbow bent as if ready to stab at any moment. Lucid was a complete beginner with the sword, both here and in his life on Earth. This was something completely new, a borrowed instinct.
From Ivy's form, a single tentacle of energy shot out. Then it divided in mid-air, becoming multiple, striking from all directions at once.
He moved, a tempest of desperate motion. He sliced, cut, parried. Time seemed to slow as a central purple beam and four other tentacles shot toward him from every angle. In that split second, he saw Lyle rushing forward, his face a mask of protective fear.
"I am here," Lyle called out, trying to help.
'You idiot! Run! What are you doing, trying to get yourself killed?' Lucid's thought was a silent scream.
But it was Karmen's instinct that acted. Karmen's hand shot forward. A familiar, brilliant blue light erupted, forming a spherical perimeter around Lyle. A sound like a single, resonant note from a painfully familiar instrument filled the air, and Lyle vanished, teleported away to somewhere safer. Because Karmen, at his core, could not bear to see his brother in danger.
The distraction cost him. An attack he failed to fully deflect grazed his shoulder, and he began to bleed. He ran, not away, but helplessly toward Ivy as she launched the main beam. Lucid, drowning in Karmen's instincts, used the Awakened power, Tempest Shadow, to deflect the beam. He then used another, Unbound Sound, the teleportation thread, to close the distance in a flash of dissonant notes.
In that moment, the division shattered. Lucid's battle intuition, honed by countless expeditions in rifts on Earth, fused with Karmen's trained body and innate magical gifts. They became one, an unparalleled Awakened Swordsman who could conjure fate's essence and fuse magic with physical prowess.
Ivy's form seemed to blur, her aura leaking a gravitational pressure. "I admired you, you know," she said, her voice carrying a strange, formal pity that broke into something more personal. "You inspired me with your struggle. And the worst is that I cannot have you. The Empress's ceremony admits no exceptions. It is a pity you will face execution."
Her power visibly swelled. Tentacles lashed from left and right. A plasma beam fired from her hand. Invisible cleaves of wind sliced down from above. He deflected, twisted, and spun. Using Unbound Sound, he formed a small, resonant perimeter around Ivy and forced a short-range teleport, making her appear behind him. He turned and thrust, the sword cutting deep into her stomach.
But before he could react, she was gone. He looked up. She was above him, falling from the air like a vengeful star. He yelled, "Tempest Slash!" The green light enveloping him flared into an incandescent corona from an unfamiliar source. Five, six slashes of pure energy rained upward in horizontal white lines, cutting through her regenerating tentacles and shredding her clothes.
It was not enough. She landed before him, with a ground shaking impact knocking him of balance and he saw in her eyes that the game was over.
Immediately two tentacles shot up from the ground wrapping him from head to toe.
It tightened.
'This is how it ends,' he thought inside the suffocating dark.