The tip of my sword that was imbued in a slightly pale golden aura stopped right before dipping into his chainmail as it started to glow and several shields compounded upon one another, taking the brunt of the attack before breaking layer by layer like shards of glass.

His eyes were wide, and his smile grew wild. "You are something else." He mumbled in a moment of pure stillness.

And then time resumed once again.

My thoughts doubled over as his feet suddenly tangled with each other and before I could even process it, he was behind me.

Nightcrackle made contact with my unprotected back and a searing jolt of pain went down my spine and then into my legs, making them go numb for a moment that felt like a decade.

Twisting my body and backflipping, I avoided a stab aimed at my heart and landed on top of his shoulder. Grabbing his curved horns and pulling them back, I kicked the back of his head before summoning another sword.

The searing sensation of Nightcrackle cutting still persisted and it felt like a parasite had taken birth inside me, slowly eating away at the festering wound. It wasn't something natural.

A laboured breath escaped me as I plunged the sword into the chainmail. This time the mechanism didn't activate and it cut through the dense metal. I felt the sword make contact with flesh, renting it apart and then hit his bone.

Letting out a roar, he swung his sword at his own head.

Kicking the lodged sword and widening his wound, I created some distance between us.

He stumbled forward, and then fell to one knee. Quickly removing the sword from his shoulder, he looked back at me.

Gone was the look of superiority and was replaced by a simmering rage ready to boil over.

"As I said, you talk a lot." A plethora of swords appeared beside me, their tips pointing at him. "A dying man should not waste his breath on empty words."

Instead of replying, he shot upwards. The wispy black aura around Ed flared as he dove, expanding behind him like enormous wings. Red aura manifested as an extension of his sword.

It was only after I squinted my eyes was when I realised the wispy black thing was not his aura. It was a manifestation, or rather application of his Arcane Art.

They were flames. Dark and shadowy flames.

It made a bit of sense now. When I had fired the beam of Arcanum at him, his sword slash had almost removed everything from existence. Or that is what I had speculated.

The second occurrence was when he broke my sword just by touching it.

Through a simple process of elimination, it became quite clear that…

"It's decay-based, isn't it? Your Arcane Art?" I uttered with a lopsided frown.

His features hardened mid-flight and his speed increased. Flying towards me like a fighter jet, he suddenly accelerated and the cacophony of sound barrier breaking made my senses go into high alert. My sword was only midway when it shattered to bits and the invisible strike blew me away.

Planting my feet firmly into the ground, I killed the momentum.

My arms were screaming in protest.

I was no match for Ed in a pure physical aspect. If it was a contest of pure strength, I would've been defeated.

And he was almost as fast as me.

My teeth gnashed against each other. The situation was progressively getting worse. My Arcanum reserves were still supporting me; however, Michael was dwindling down.

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The amount of people swarming him were endless.

And he is forced to not use his Arcane Arts. Even if he does, he and I both might die as well. It's a high risk, low reward, last ditch approach.

Ed had flown into the air once again, and was looking down at me like a vulture gawking at its prey.

I needed to either kill Ed—which was most likely impossible—or run away with Michael. Although his maniacal laughter was providing an eerie backdrop and some support in this whole despairing scenario, he would soon hit his limit. The small cuts and bruises all over his body will soon catch up to him.

The sword in my hand and the numerous others around me glowed in a golden aura as I infused my legs in Arcanum.

Remember all the lessons, I reminded myself.

Even if my memory isn't there, my body can remember it. The pain and suffering it had been subjected to. The pain that had shattered my soul and left this empty, purposeless husk- I tried to embrace it.

The image of my mother—Lady Sif, flashed in front of my eyes.

'This is what you want, don't you!'

I cursed, both at my powerlessness and the fact that I was going to do what she had always asked me to.

To not run away from who I was. But to accept it. Embrace it. Become one with it.

Something burned against my back.

It was the slash Ed had delivered.

It would make sense. His flames are imbued with a decaying property.

And I can't heal it myself. Not something like this. I need Astrid.

Only she's able to do it…

The thoughts of self-preservation and my well-being started to fade ploddingly, but gradually into oblivion.

The edges of my consciousness started to darken and something dark and primal awoke within me.

As I felt Ed's muscles tense and getting ready to dip and attack me, time slowed down. Or rather my perception increased.

At first the presence felt like a foreign entity, however, it felt something much more personal. Like an intrinsic urge. However, it still was so- so alien that I could not believe the sensation as my own.

The pale glow of my eyes illuminated the sword in my hand and I felt the entire world blur out of existence, save for one person. Ed.

My body felt like lead, and a feather at the same time.

As if acting on pure instinct, I hurled myself into the air as the ground beneath me exploded and Ed fell from the sky like a bolt of murky dark lightning.

My hand burned as a huge ball of Arcanum condensed into my palm.

A wave of the same corrosive fire broiled out from his hand.

I blasted my own sphere of pure Arcanum before slashing at his throat with my dull blade. However, his body dissipated like smoke, vanishing into the flames still filling the sky like a giant fish net.

I stabbed into the small opening towards my exposed back and the sword made contact with Nightcrackle. The corrosive flame stuck to my blade and then hungrily ate away like termites infesting wood. The only difference being it was much faster.

And then he was gone again.

Before the flames could stick to my hand, I got rid of it and a spear landed in my hands.

I had done basic spars with all weapons. However, the spear was something that never sat well with me.

But this wasn't the time to complain. Ed had fired off another net of acidic flames from within the nebula of smoke rising from the devastation of "The Keep" beneath and the corrosive flames hanging like a curtain in the air.

My arms blurred like a helicopter's blade as I slashed around me, dispersing the flames like dandelion seeds against the seasonal warm gusts.

He reappeared; however, only this time it was right in front of me. His hand, girded in the flames, plunged into my side, melting flesh and bone alike before curling around my ribs.

The pain slowly took a free-fall into a cold well as more and more of the surroundings started to blur.

The spear in my hand cratered and I held him by his throat with one hand and dipped my ring and middle finger into the shoulder wound that I had given him a while ago.

"Gruh!" He grunted and the ribs in his hold shattered, sending a tremor of hot pain throughout my chest.

Blood seeped out of the corner of my lips and I kicked him back. With a roar of frustration, I threw the dropped spear after him that hissed through the burning air like a javelin before immediately dissolving upon touching the corrosive aura that stuck to Ed's body.

My survival instincts continued to fell into abstraction, battle-thirst taking over my senses and pushing rationality to a far, far back corner of consciousness.

The thought of my mother being responsible for this state of mine made my entire body shudder.

Fear was something I had never experienced. After all, being on the top of the food chain—even being the apex of humanity was something that disallowed me to ever feel it.

However, that woman… this gnawing feeling of the fact that my every action is manipulated by her makes me… fearful.

My body sagged down as I realised that my pants have grown heavy from the amount of blood continuously seeping and soaking into them from the gash into my back and the side of my ribcage.

Ed's feet doubled over and my senses went into a frenzy. It was the same sequence of footwork as before.

Once again… something much more primal and purer struggled to flicker to life and my rationality morphed into something akin to a candle trying to stay alive in the midst of a rainstorm.

A pair of ethereal, pale and cold hands seemed to hug me from behind and pull me in.

And then I felt myself fall into a black hole, losing my consciousness.

Was that footwork a skill all along?