Germaine Pov

I was weak. I knew it. He knew it. And yet…

My blade stayed strong. I had no chance to approach, his greater reach and speed let him force me back step by step. Even as the light of the moon warped around me, making me appear slightly off from where I was. It only gave me a slight reprieve, a moment before his blade adjusted into a new course that would pass through my true body.

A moment had to be enough for me to deflect the blow as my body dodged. I couldn’t take a blow head on. I could not even deflect it and remain standing. Every blow that even came close would knock me over, or send me sliding away, unable to handle the forces involved. But I succeeded in deflecting it time after time. I knocked the blade coming to slice me in half upwards, the wind from it blowing my hair back as I bent backwards. Once it was above me it twisted and fell down, a guillotine to cut me in half.

Bent backwards Moonlight swung up and against the side of his blade, pushing me away from the blade falling too heavily for me to deflect. I hit the ground and rolled to my feet; a beam of fiery light flew by me. Right through the head of the moonlight mirage that I had projected. His blade however was coming directly towards me in a stab, and I leapt. Not away, but over it, my foot came down upon the spine of his blade, and the wards flared, consuming my magic with every moment I stayed in contact. Two steps, two moments of my power being dragged from my body when I needed every drop.

Then I reached him, my blade lashed out, two attacks into which I poured moonlight and power. A deep V was cut into his chest armor. But his grin never faltered, and I knew from the feel of the blade in my hand that I had not reached his flesh. He opened his mouth and hellfire erupted, but I was already retreating, space twisted and I was suddenly outside his sword reach and to the side of his fires. By the time his breath stilled, and I could see him again, the cuts in his armor were already recovering.

I grimaced. This fight had already taken too long. To a human watching, perhaps a minute or so had passed. For us it had been tens. I shook my blade arm, trying to recover some feeling after so many blows. Moonlight pushed some of the power it had been absorbing from the moon into my arm, soothing the fatigue, but it was losing effectiveness by this point. It was problematic, nothing I did lasted. The blow that I had just dealt would have been enough to slice through a house in a single strike, space itself splitting apart before it. But a demon did not work on normal rules, their very existence more “real” than reality.

In simple terms, they were harder to affect with magic, or really just about anything. It was becoming, INCREDIBLY, annoying. With a slow exhale I glared at the demon while it chuckled at me.

“Good blow, good blow, perhaps you could actually kill this vessel if I stood still and let you hit me?” The demon said bemusedly.

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I ignored him. My body was already slightly cooked by the proximity to the demon during the battle. The wards on the sword were stripping my protective magics from me every time we clashed. I carefully ran my magic through my flesh, checking if I could do what I had planned next.

“Or perhaps you would simply tire yourself to death? Swinging a sword, endlessly for no purpose, tell me saint, do you find fulfillment in your role? Have you found purpose in being a tool of God” The demon continued speaking.

Really pointless things it was talking about. I was pretty sure I could do what I needed to. Relatively certain. It had a non-zero chance of being possible. Which was better than some odds. I was pretty sure I had figured out the key to how you could kill a demon. The only issue was, I was a little bit wounded, a little bit tired and a tiny bit late to come to this conclusion. The only good news was I was almost in the spot I needed to be for this to work, right near the edge of the cliff.

A sword swung for my neck as the demon spoke. “Ignoring someone speaking to you is rude, saint.”

I swayed, and my sword arm came up. I poured magic into my blade, and moved it, bracing myself for the blow that was coming. It was not enough. But I succeeded. The ground beneath me shattered where I stood upon the cliffs. I felt the muscles in my arms tear, my bones ached, I was certain that my right wrist was broken, and the demon's wrist was severed by his own strength running into my blade too fast for him to retract his blow.

I moved my sword into a block now with it in my left hand, magic pouring into the blade to shield me, as the demon roared. The soundwave was like a punch, literally lifting me off my feet and throwing me to the very brink of the cliff, pain blossomed through my body as the demon blurred and appeared over me. His remaining hand plunging for my heart. It would have been certain death, if I hadn’t already prepared for it.

The world was already frozen, but in that moment, the demon joined it. The pain vanished from my body, after all, I had no body to feel it. No nerves, no flesh, no brain. My body was one with Moonlight, both my blade and light falling upon me from above. The points in space I had selected pulsed, and pulled me to them, my body slid through the demon's armor, his flesh that was not flesh, the roiling mass of magic and chaos and probability that made up his insides, was sliced through. And then I was behind him.

Moonlight was in my hand, the blade glowing with a pale light that made the blade appear pale white in my hand. My wounds were gone, my body had been remade from the moonlight that for a brief moment I had become. The cliff edge behind me slid downwards, sliced off by one of my movements. The Moonlight Dance was one of my riskier spells, transforming me into another state of being. A beam of moonlight reflected off a sword, I bounced between the places I had marked with my magic and sliced apart anything in between them.

The spell was powerful, but energy consuming, and I essentially had no control when I was…not myself. I turned around as the demon’s magic erupted into a pillar as it roared, wings erupting from its back as it turned to face me, legless as I had cut him in half.

With a cruel smile I raised my sword upwards, blade facing downwards as I finally responded to the demon’s earlier words. “I am not a saint.”

I drove the sword downwards, the motion triggering another spell. A massive blade of moonlight appeared to descend from the moon, falling upon the demon. Driving it down into the lake. The fiery form of its vessel causing a gout of steam to erupt, easily extending past the cliff and into the sky. For a moment I felt the demon try to pull its form together. Try to burn away the water around him even with his body cut into three pieces. If circumstances had been different maybe, he could have. But I did not just cut him apart. The magical energy I had cut him with lingered, every drop drawn in and attached to his flesh, binding it, corroding it.

Even with his ability to regenerate, it would take him some time to clear that from his system. Now, there was only one thing left to do. I contemplated very carefully, and then decided to get it over with. I toppled, face forward upon the bare ground in a cloud of ash. I hoped, as the world went dark around me, that someone bothered to recover me before a nightbeast realized I was helpless. At least my last meal was good if they do! I passed out with a smile.

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