The monster came for him.

Desmond braced himself. He would not let things end the way they had before.

This monster was the only thing standing between him and salvation. Abigail's, Amy's. Christina's.

Failure was not an option.

He would absolutely crush it and erase it from this world!

With the black smoke almost upon him, Desmond swung the sword, cleaving him in half.

But it's not like that was a wound that was going to reflect on his real body, so it didn't even slow him down. It kept coming at him and this time in two directions at once.

It was going to get him. But Abigail stopped it.

The blasts spat out by the cannons filled the black smoke with holes and drove it back with their force.

That wouldn't have done anything to it either, of course.

They hadn't tried it before, but Desmond was sure. As long as it remained in smoke form, they couldn't do anything to it. At most slow it down.

There was no reason to assume otherwise. And he had never been an optimistic person, in any case.

...Or maybe it had.

Maybe it had really done something to him.

Because instead of coming back for him, it retreated, slipping through the trees, into the darkness that engulfed the forest.

Desmond didn't hesitate.

He ran after it.

Possibly this was only to separate him from Abigail and the machine, but it didn't matter.

Desmond couldn't afford to let it run away.

If they lost sight of him, perhaps they would never find the creature again.

It would spend all its time in hiding, in the form of black smoke, waiting for this to end as it was destined to end without their intervention.

That is, in a massacre.

He couldn't let it out of his sight.

He ran faster than he had ever run in his life, verging on the limits of physical reinforcement.

The black smoke didn't keep running indefinitely.

They reached a clearing in the middle of the forest, divided by a lake. Moonlight reflected on its crystal clear waters.

The monster returned to its original form on the other side of the lake, and Desmond stood on the opposite side, holding his sword in both hands. The edge of his sword touched the ground, brushed the grass, moved it.

"I told you," Desmond said, "I swore I would finish you. That I would not rest until I did. I am a man who keeps his promises."

The shadow laughed.

"And how do you intend to keep this one? Nothing has changed. What makes you think it's going to end any differently?"

The thing wasn't wrong.

However...

"Let me prove it to you."

Desmond launched himself toward the enemy.

He didn't go around the lake. He dove at the enemy, flying like a cannonball.

He ran through the water.

Desmond ran so fast that, instead of sinking into the water, he moved across its surface as if it were more dirt and grass.

On the other side awaited him the enemy he was to defeat.

It was still in human form. The creature smiled as if he was no threat at all to it.

His enemy didn't feel the need to transform because it could do so very quickly. Because it was confident that it could do so in less than a second, before his sword would cleave it in two.

He could stake everything on this.

Reinforce his arms, his legs, his whole body, to the limit.

He had been prepared to kill himself with his own sword to prevent it from possessing him.

Breaking his body to kill the enemy, in comparison, was nothing.

But it would be gambling it all away for real.

If it didn't go Desmond's way, if he didn't deliver the coup de grace, then he would be at the mercy of his enemy.

So he hesitated.

At the last moment, his will faltered and he wasn't quick enough. The enemy turned back into smoke and flew to the other side of the lake.

Their positions had been exchanged. He felt it had done so to taunt him.

It was something more effective than simply laughing. Desmond felt humiliated, but the feeling of humiliation was mostly the fault of his own heart.

Why had he hesitated?

If he hadn't hesitated at the last moment, maybe this would have been resolved by now.

"I told you," the shadow rejoiced, "You're like a little boy trying to fight his father. There's nothing you can do about it.

Desmond turned around slowly. He fixed his eyes on the shadow across the lake.

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"You've figured out what's going on here, I guess because a little bird sang before facing your torture. But you face an impossible challenge. You can't touch me. And I don't even need to kill you, just play with you."

The shadow laughed as if it couldn't help it.

A demon. This thing was a real demon.

Even though it was capable of using magic, it wasn't a human being like him. No, maybe what it used wasn't magic in the first place, but something else.

It had shown too many abilities.

Transforming into smoke, splitting its body as if it were made of jelly, possessing people and even using their affinities as naturally as if they were its own.

Plus, the barrier that was keeping reinforcements away.

It didn't make sense. It hadn't made sense from the beginning.

"That's right. I don't have to waste time. I just have to run circles around you. Waste your time. The scales are tipped in our favor. You're here because you don't see any other way out of this other than running away. So, while I'm still alive, sooner or later you'll be squashed like cockroaches."

It was right.

Every one of those words was correct.

Desmond was fighting an enemy he had to defeat no matter what. But the same did not apply to his enemy.

What the shadow's eyes saw was not an enemy, but an obstacle around which it had to maneuver.

Desmond planted his feet on the ground.

His posture changed, lowering his center of gravity. He looked like a wolf crouched in the dark of night.

He broke into a run.

"The same thing again? Are you completely incapable of learning from your mistakes?"

As the creature had just said, exactly the same thing happened as before.

Desmond reached the other side and swung the sword as hard and fast as he could without destroying his body in the process.

Which wasn't enough before and certainly wasn't enough this time.

The shadow turned to smoke and flew to the other side.

Desmond took a deep breath.

Smoke flew over the lake. Its shadow was cast on its surface and it truly looked like a large fish swimming through its waters. About the time it reached the halfway point....

Desmond steadied his stance, gathering strength in his legs.

He waited for the right moment. Or at least what he hoped was the right moment, as he had calculated. Then he jumped. The explosive force of his leap had him covering ten meters in an instant.

It went as planned.

Desmond landed on the other side of the lake, just behind the black smoke, a second before it transformed into human form.

He brandished the sword with both hands.

It hadn't seen it coming. He had counted on it.

And it didn't have time to react. The sword cut off one of its arms. The monster, which suddenly didn't seem so monstrous anymore, brought a hand to the stump of its arm.

The blood dripping from the wound was, like the other time, as red as his own.

The shadow staggered backward against a tree trunk.

The blood kept falling.

His enemy had no face. It was a shadow with burning white eyes.

But somehow he saw a hint of vulnerability there.

Of pain and fear. Mostly fear.

Which was quickly buried beneath the rage. The creature's eyes burned more intensely than ever and it rose quickly to its feet, though he could tell it was unsteady, that he had hit it where it hurt.

"Damned...!"

In more ways than one.

The enemy wasted time cursing him.

He didn't. Desmond didn't waste a millisecond, tried to plunge the sword into its chest. But the shadow slipped away from the attack as it always did. No, not like it always did.

The last time he had thought he had it trapped, Desmond had plunged a knife into its chest, right through the heart, and apparently it had done nothing to him.

And it had gotten away, and that's why they were in this situation now.

But now he had proof that it could be done to him. That he could do it. It had lost an arm, and it wouldn't get it back.

Or so Desmond hoped.

He glanced around. Darkness was seeping out of the severed arm, it was like a snake shedding its skin.

That confirmed that it was real damage, that the shadow couldn't just regenerate that arm as if nothing had happened. He had cut off its arm.

Next would be its fucking neck.

The black smoke came for him.

The monster had accused him of being incapable of learning from his mistakes. Despite that, the enemy always did the same thing. Though Desmond supposed it had no reason to try anything else.

Because if he succeeded once it would be enough.

The same applied to Desmond.

The next time he could reach it with his sword, he would be sure to inflict a killing blow. Next time he would not miss.

Desmond jumped backward to avoid the smoke.

The smoke followed him through the water and descended upon him like the rubble of a collapsed fortress wall.

Pushing him against the water. Below the water.

Desmond, prepared to skewer himself on his own sword, was about to do so. But then he realized that the shadow had no intention of possessing him this time.

Now it was trying to drown him.

Perhaps because last time it had resisted, had made it too difficult for him, given it too much trouble, and it wanted to make sure he didn't succeed again. It couldn't take him out, but it could at least immobilize him for hours, if Abigail didn't come.

Son of a bitch.

Desmond hadn't expected this, but he really should have. He brandished the sword around him with one hand. Slashing the waters, cutting through the smoke.

With his free hand, he grabbed the smoke and tried to rip it away.

Abigail would set off to meet him as soon as the war machine's leg regenerated.

But he couldn't depend on her coming at the last moment to save him.

It was a sweet way of thinking, but not at all realistic.

If he failed to stop the monster from drowning him, Abigail wouldn't get there soon enough to help him. Desmond knew this in his gut. As he always said, his instincts never failed.

He managed to get his head out. For a few seconds.

Then Desmond was immediately pushed below the surface again. But he' d had enough time on the surface to at least take a breath of air. Buy some time.

His vision was dimming.

Life was slowly but surely slipping away from him. For every second he spent underwater, his whole body was suffering.

Darkness was gathering behind his eyelids.

He was losing strength in his arms.

Shit.

He had begun his new life among the flames. Among screams that were like those of damned souls. He supposed that was why he had always thought that burning was the worst way to die by far.

But now he was uselessly thinking that he had changed his mind.

Drowning was a thousand times worse.

This feeling of coldness and numbness spread throughout his body.

The sensation of his lungs filling with water.

It was all so cold and inhuman. Burning in flames stoked all your sensations, while it killed you, it clung you to life. Not to mention that at least it was fast.

But drowning was different.

It meant a slow, agonizing death that took away everything human.

The heat, the pain, even the feel of your own body. Everything was disappearing. Like bubbles bursting. It was unbearable.

It was unbearable.

Desmond refused to disappear here.

Gathering all the strength he had left in his body, instead of fighting the smoke, to shake it off, what he did was crawl to the side. Left or right, he wasn't sure, in his state.

It didn't matter either.

The lake was deep enough to drown him, but, at the same time, shallow enough for him to touch the bottom.

Scratching the bottom of the lake, he crawled to escape the water. To escape the darkness that threatened to engulf him.

And he succeeded, albeit barely. When it seemed that his consciousness was about to fade, he came to the surface. He dragged half his body out of the water.

Desmond had escaped drowning. But that didn't mean, by any means, that he wasn't in trouble.

There was hardly any strength left in his body and the black smoke was still hovering over him as if trying to crush him... no, as if trying to drown him even now that he had managed to get out of the water.

It was laughable, almost.

The idea that, after putting all his effort and endeavor into avoiding drowning, he would die the same way.

Damn it.

But only almost.

He had time. And he could still move, however much it cost him.

Desmond still had at least enough strength to put a hand behind his back.

To grasp the hilt there and pull the knife out of the sheath.

He plunged the knife into the smoke.

That forced it back into his human form. It was still on top of him, but along with the smoke, that horrible pressure all over his body as if he was being crushed under the rubble of a building disappeared.

He shook it off, turning it over with one hand, firmly clutching the hilt of the knife with the other.

Desmond stood up, breathing greedily.

He left the knife where it lay. Of course.

"Why are you smiling? "The shadow asked. "We've been in a situation like this before. It wasn't that long ago, so I don't think I need to remind you how it ended. Or do I?"

No. It had ended badly for everyone. Desmond knew something he didn't, though.

"Not so long ago, you thought you wouldn't end up this way again. And that's not the only thing that's changed. Like I said, I'll prove it to you. Right here, right now."

With both hands, Desmond raised the sword above his head.