Tala often had a lot of moving parts to her fighting style.

She multitasked like few other Mages were capable of doing, even before factoring in Alat.

Yet, she had never bent her abilities more toward forming an attack than she did in that moment.

She formed an iron javelin, making sure it was properly balanced for her throw since she couldn’t use magic to propel it.

She had to keep it close to herself, forcing her aura through it more powerfully than usual in order to keep it coherent within the odd, seemingly Reality-based power in the air.

Even with barely any time to notice and react, Re-al did have some chance, yet she did nothing to stop Tala.

In fact, she seemed fascinated by Tala’s process even as she wove void-magic around the outside of the javelin.

With as little preamble as possible, Tala launched the weapon at Re-al, sending it flying less than a second after she began to form it.

Tala was used to attacking much more quickly than that, but she also didn’t usually have to weave so much complexity or fight against so much opposition in even the forming of her iron objects.

Regardless, the javelin covered the distance between them in a blink.

It slammed into Re-al’s chest, exploding into a cascade of highly compressed iron dust.

This woman is a total contradiction. She ignores magic like she’s bathed in Reality, but she’s still alive when without magic she should be dead.

Still, the attack hadn’t been a total waste.

The iron had enough mass and inertia to stagger Re-al, the flying particles temporarily blinding the Reality Mage as Tala sprang down the hill.

Tala tried to claim something, anything, of the iron within the woman, but it felt as useless as a staring contest with the sun.

Tala simply couldn’t penetrate whatever barrier of power covered Re-al at the level of her skin.

Re-al was still swiping iron from her eyes, cursing, and spitting particles from her mouth when Tala arrived.

Tala punched as hard as her considerable strength allowed.

As her right fist contacted the woman, three things occurred to Tala.

First, the woman was smiling, even if she was trying to hide it.

Second, punching Re-al required physical contact.

Third, physical contact meant that part of the woman would be inside of Tala’s void-magic barrier.

Tala couldn’t react before her armored knuckles cracked into Re-al’s face.

At the moment of contact, Tala’s right arm simply vanished.

Re-al was so anchored to Reality that even brief contact was enough to reassert non-magic reality on things.

Tala instinctively knew that her arm had vanished because—without magic—that arm would have been permanently lost during her first trip through the Leshkin forest.

Even so, Re-al was sent spinning with a broken cheekbone, much to the woman’s obvious surprise.

Tala was not still the same girl who had panicked at the loss of a limb, and so she hadn’t allowed the loss to interrupt her motion.

She’d maintained the form of her armor despite the vanishing limb. That had allowed the full inertia of a well-thrown punch to land on the woman, imparted through the now empty gauntlet.

Unfortunately, the odd Reality that had invaded Tala had utterly disrupted her magics in that arm. So she wasn’t getting it back, not any time soon.

That hardly seems fair… Leshkin are magical, and I wouldn’t have lost the arm without them existing, and they only exist because magic exists.

-It’s not like there is an external entity determining exactly what would and wouldn’t exist if Magic weren’t in the world. Likely her power can simply determine if something exists due to magic. If so, it can remove it.-

…that seems like cheating.

-This is exactly as it was advertised, Tala.-

Fine…

The loss of her arm was less than ideal, but not too great of a cause for alarm, not yet.

Still, this turn of events had made one thing incredibly clear: Tala couldn’t attack Re-al up close.

Her gravity magics would obviously be useless against the woman as well…

OH! I feel like an idiot.

Tala reached behind herself, letting her hand through her armor so that she could pull out a siege orb pair.

In all likelihood, those wouldn’t work either, but it was worth a try.

She flipped the target of their amplified gravity to Re-al, and they tore free of her hand.

The woman was still dazed, and Tala had to take advantage of that as she’d likely never get another chance like this.

The orbs cracked through the air, but before they got halfway to Re-al, the workings on them broke.

Then, even as they exploded, the previously compressed air seemed to vanish.

Because it was only there due to magic. She sighed.

It was yet another thing to add to the information already gained from their brief clashes. Together, Tala could see that she’d never survive a true fight with the woman.

All that Re-al would have to do is walk at her slowly, and Tala would be unable to do anything permanent to stop her.

She could probably figure out a way of looping tides of iron to throw at the woman, but it would be foolish to believe that that was sustainable.

Any fight would eventually come down to a direct physical clash, and that was a problem.

Tala’s entire body only existed because of magic, and if a simple, quick, violent touch had been enough to allow Re-al to obliterate a limb, Tala had little recourse.

Still, she had one more thing she could try as part of her final play.

It just might work.

The iron dust from her javelin was still in the air and on the ground around Tala, and she dragged it with her as she charged Re-al behind her now-departed siege orbs.

The woman was obviously dazed, but she still gave a grotesque grin at Tala’s actions.

She had to believe she held the overall advantage.

She was right.

Tala had only one card left to play, and she could use it along with her attempt at killing the woman.

Honestly, Tala didn’t even consider that to be an issue. If she could kill Re-al, she would.

But, in order to try one more lethal method, she needed a momentary distraction. If timed right, that might allow her to finish off the Reality Mage.

As far as distractions went, she had the perfect one.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

Re-al’s original name was erased unless an Archon existed within the Archive itself.

Tala’s mind did, along with Alat.

The Archon would also have to be defended against Re-al’s power on the superficial, in order to keep the name intact once it left the Archive.

Tala was as protected against the strength of Reality as any living Mage that she knew of.

That was why she had the answer.

As Re-al raised a hand for some working of Reality, Tala shouted a simple phrase. “Your name is Reiki Stulls-kin.”

The woman’s eyes widened, and her features seemed to distort momentarily, even as she gaped in surprise at the name she’d thought to never hear again.

Her mouth hung wide just as Tala shoved nearly half a cubic foot of iron dust down the Reality Mage’s throat.

Re-al’s body and power disrupted Tala’s more magical connection to her iron, but it didn’t break her soulbond, or pull it out of her aura. So it didn’t really matter.

No one can breathe with a mouth and throat filled with anything, and iron dust is particularly pernicious in filling the crevices and any bits of air that might otherwise have snuck through a coarser substance.

Tala staggered, barely slowing herself to a stop in front of the struggling Reiki, her balance off because of her missing limb.

Did she look… older for a moment, there?

-Is that really what you want to focus on right now?-

Right.

The woman was on the ground, clawing at her nose and mouth to no avail, trying to spit or retch out the dark substance that just wouldn’t move as she wanted it.

Tala was marginally horrified by this method of death. Even so, she had enough presence of mind to pull herself together and say, “Choke on this reality.”

Alat burst out laughing within Tala’s head. -What the rust was that? Did you just try to deliver a one-liner?-

Hush, you. It was awesome.

-But it doesn’t even make sense. Something like that only works if it’s a play on her words to you, and she didn’t say anything like that.-

I said hush, Alat. I’m killing someone here, and it’s unpleasant enough without listening to you critique my word-choice. I was trying to lighten my own mood with the statement.

-Alright, Tala. If you say so. I will say that that was rather self-reflective of you, so good job.- That didn’t prevent the alternate interface from continuing to chuckle as Tala watched Re-al keep struggling.

Tala kept all the woman’s airways as filled with iron dust as possible, moving her iron in close and dumping it through the negating power that tried to keep it from moving magically.

Tala also covered Reiki’s eyes as much as possible, too, just to make sure she couldn’t work out some crazy reality alteration at the last minute.

Today, a Reality Mage dies, and Kit gets to feed. Tala felt an incredible sense of satisfaction with that way of thinking. She was protecting humanity from this monster, and her dimensional storage would get another treat.

Re-al’s body was still spasming, but she’d stopped pulling at the iron dust.

Panic had passed, it seemed, and the woman was likely planning something.

Tala began walking backward, keeping her threefold sight and her mundane eyes on the woman as well as her own surroundings.

I need a weapon that has the void-magic within it, rather than just surrounding it. She could have anything mounting as a final attempt to survive, and I just don’t understand her abilities well enough to tell.

She grit her teeth.

If she tries to close on me, I’ll have to use Flow, but that shouldn’t be necessary…

Still, she could make preparations.

She’d rather be accused of paranoia than be laid to rest.

She formed and drove iron spikes into the ground, expanding and reinforcing her aura.

She was encountering more resistance than usual, but far less than expected.

It was only then that something struck her, metaphorically speaking.

Auras weren’t inherently magical.

They were a medium through which magic could act; they could be reinforced with magic; and humans only really developed one outside of their bodies once they were Bound, but even gateless humans without a spark of magic had auras.

They were weak, and they ended at the person’s skin, but they were still there.

There was only one thing that made sense, with that in mind.

Auras were an expression of authority, sovereignty, and self.

Tala had been wrong. Even if Tala couldn’t easily detect it, Re-al wasn’t lacking an aura.

Tala was standing within it.

The Reality Mage had made the cell, itself, a physical manifestation of her aura.

Tala hadn’t known that was possible, but somehow, for some reason, it struck her in that moment that that is what had to have happened.

Only then did she recognize Re-al’s spasms for what they were: Entirely muffled laughter.

Tala’s eyes widened, and she slammed her aura—expanded and amplified by dozens of iron spikes—into the iron within Re-al.

Tala claimed every scrap of iron within the woman, and then tore it all free against the woman’s powerful resistance.

The body collapsed in a ragged heap, yellowish—almost clear—blood draining from every pore on her body.

A single person’s clapping sounded from Tala’s left, even as her threefold sight perceived Re-al reform seemingly out of nowhere.

Tala pointed at her. “That’s magic.”

“Not at all. The fact that you don’t understand is adorable, though.” The woman had a rather vicious grin on her face. “You were rather… aggressive. I can’t say I’ve had someone try to suffocate me in a long time.”

“Well, you didn’t leave me with many options.”

“Now you have far fewer. Did you honestly think that someone who had survived for millennia without outside sources of food and water would be able to suffocate?”

Tala shrugged. “Honestly, I had no idea, but it was worth a try.”

“Indeed, but before I send you on to your fated torment, I must know: How did you say my name?”

“You mean Reiki Stulls-kin?”

The woman hissed, and Tala felt pressure on her aura from every direction. “Stop saying that name.”

“Because you don’t like it, or because it weakens you somehow?”

“Because you should not know it. No one should.”

“But I do.” Tala looked around, smiling. “In fact, everyone in this corner of existence knows it. You are Reiki, even if you don’t like it.”

“I cast off that name, and became who I was always meant to be.”

“Re-al.”

“Precisely,” Reiki stated matter of factly. Then, she jerked as if slapped.

Tala sighed. “That’s a re-al clever name you chose there, Reiki.”

Reiki’s face twitched again, and she paled.

And that was the final piece that Tala needed. “But regardless, I think I finally understand. Reiki died years and years ago. You aren’t still alive, are you? That’s one of the reasons that Reality hates you. You are using your powers of Reality to create a minor ripple. You call yourself Re-al, and that is to make yourself real, but you are Reiki, and you died. You’ve been dead for ages.”

Reiki’s skin had seemed to take on a sunken look, weathered and old looking. Her eyes were black marbles, and she snarled. “I am Re-al, and you will die!”

Tala solidified her aura against the sudden assault of powers that she still didn’t fully understand. Regardless, her dome of authority still managed to cover the cell’s exit. “You are Reiki Stulls-kin. Reiki Stulls-kin is dead. You, Reiki Stulls-kin, are dead.”

Reiki screeched, and Tala found her aura driven back, her very iron spikes digging furrows in the ground as they were pushed inward along with Tala’s aura.

Tala had what she needed. She was breaking the woman’s power, but it wasn’t enough.

Then, she understood. Reiki was destroying her words at the edge of Tala’s aura, obliterating them from the air with ease because they were being created by magic.

So, Tala dissolved her helmet, exposing her head and face to the interior of the cell.

She let her braid fall free as she glared down at the shell of a woman.

At that moment, Reiki assaulted Tala in a new way, a foreign power trying to invade her mind.

But Tala had expected the assault.

Her skin was still coated with iron, and she had her mind forcibly linked with the Archive, focused on the name of this Reality Mage.

“Rest in peace, Reiki. Your passing will be remembered.” Tala stated the normally comforting words as a proclamation of execution.

The Reality Mage’s working shattered, and existence itself froze.

Reiki’s carefully built enforcement of the exception to Reality had been broken, and the fate of Reiki Stulls-kin came crashing down upon the body that had been calling itself Re-al.

There was no soul left to pass on, it had been maimed long ago.

Existence did not like that.

The death of a sapient should mean the passing of a soul.

Instead, there was a momentary inversion of everything within the cell.

Reality was replaced with void-magic, void with reality-magic, and magic with a void in reality.

Only in that moment of full inversion did the abomination that Reiki’s gate had become find its place.

Then, existence righted itself, dragging Reiki’s soul back into being.

There, before Tala floated what was clearly a human soul, completely whole once more.

Behind it, a small portal opened, a gate without the need of a broken soul.

Then, Tala was hit with the overpowering feeling of rejection.

She almost thought that the next world had rejected Reiki’s soul, but that wasn’t so.

Even still, the purity of the next world beckoned. It was Reiki’s soul that—of its own free will—utterly refused the invitation.

Finally, along with a sense of unmitigated sadness and regret, the gate closed.

As it closed, it was as if Reiki’s soul dimmed.

It simply winked out of existence entirely along with the closing of the way forward.

Only then did Tala realize that her mundane eyes had been seeing literally nothing, everything was coming to her through her threefold sight, and the memories were being recorded directly into the Archive, bypassing her physical mind for that one moment.

Time within the cell was utterly frozen, and that included her body.

Then, the frozen moment ended, and those collected memories—those of what had happened to Reiki’s soul—came crashing into Tala’s physical mind.

The colossal influx caused Tala to stagger, falling to her knees.

Alat?

-I saw… Did we just witness the true end of a soul?-

I… I think so.

Down at the bottom of the hill, a meaningless physical form was already turning to dust and drifting away on non-existent winds.