In the center of the arena, the demon king ripped his sword free from the sheath under his cape and charged. Resent jumped straight over an oncoming slash, punching Misery in a blur. It was a normal punch, yet due to the gauntlets, it had enough force that it almost knocked the king off his feet.

Misery backed away slightly, reaching up to touch the small lacerations the jab had opened along his chin. Looking at the blood on his own gauntlet while still keeping his sword at the ready, he smiled. “Now, there is the Resent I trained. Not that whimpering mess too engrossed in denying his actions to focus.”

“I no longer see merit in debating the issue. Even if you saw reason now, your offenses are far too grave for me to continue tolerating your existence.”

As Resent moved to close the distance, Rodrigo’s attention fell on one of two clear gemstones embedded in the cross-guard of Misery’s sword. It was lighting up a bright red. “Watch out!”

Resent reacted too late as fire burst from the black great sword. The prince screamed in anguish as scarlet flames engulfed his body, burning him from head to toe, and dropping him to the ground. He swatted at the flames with the nebulae as the skin on his face blistered, and the armor began to warp. But Misery wouldn’t give him time to recover. With his entire blade combusting, he strode forward.

Rodrigo took over, using the nebulae to replicate the curved sword he had for all of a day. With his right hand on the hilt and his left on the back of the blade, he scarcely blocked a slash aimed at Resent’s head. On a single knee, the weight behind Misery’s swing was almost too much to bear. He felt like his arms would snap underneath the sheer power, but with him constantly streaming energy into his sword, the more immediate concern was exhausting himself, and the nebulae dissipating. He bit down on his tongue to contain a wail as the pain washed over him, and pieces of burned flesh and hair fell from his still smoking body.

“Foolish boy,” Misery said, like Rodrigo was nothing more than a rebellious pupil acting out. “Man’s reign is over. Whether by my hand or their own, humanity’s downfall is a foregone conclusion. All your victory here would achieve is damning the earth alongside them.”

Rodrigo laughed weakly, or maybe cried. The pain was so severe, his mind seemed to focus harder than ever before out of desperation to stay conscious. And in that newfound lucidity, something dawned on him. “You don’t even realize.”

Misery’s blade froze in his hands, easing the strain Rodrigo was under. “What?”

“By launching this attack, you’ve given humans the one thing we needed to keep our world from turning into yours. An enemy to hate more than we do each other.” On the edge of death, Rodrigo grinned up at the king through charred lips. “After all, why wipe each other out...when we could destroy you instead?”

Misery’s white eyes were alight with fury as he redoubled his efforts to turn Rodrigo’s bones into paste. “Ah, I hope you enjoyed this brief freedom, Wrath. Because when I kill you, and place your soul in a demon body of my choosing, you will undergo far more rigorous testing before I cut you loose to hunt down your kith and kin. One. By. One.”

“My name is Rodrigo Beltran,” he growled, generating a chain from the crescent moon pommel of his sword, and willing it to coil around Misery’s throat. “And I remember making you a promise, you piece of shit!”

He knew that wouldn’t be enough, so he didn’t waste energy applying much pressure. With Misery removing a hand from his grip, assuming he was preventing the nebulae from strangling him, Rodrigo got the desired effect. Lightening the load just enough, he shifted his body as much as possible before Misery could catch on. Rodrigo pried his left hand from the back of the blade, placing it lower, then teleported the hilt of the sword to it from his right hand. In the same instant, Misery’s great sword struck his undefended torso, severing his right arm from his shoulder, and Rodrigo thrust his blade through the left side of the demon’s chest. Misery stumbled backward as the nebulae dissipated, blood spilling down his breastplate from the stab wound.

Though he had mentally prepared himself for the loss, Rodrigo gaped at his armored arm laying on the ground a few feet away from him as if it was a prop in a horror movie. He could hardly think as he gripped what couldn’t even be called a stump, and shrieked.

“What have you done?” Resent asked softly.

“To send Misery to his grave...it was worth it. Besides, it’ll regenerate.”

Resent took over, winding the nebulae around the wound to keep the blood from pouring out, then stretched out for the arm. But it was gone.

“The poor child was fighting under the assumption that diavoliks have the same anatomy as humans,” Misery said, Rodrigo’s arm skewered on the tip of his sword. As Resent reached for it with the nebulae, Misery’s sword flared up, reducing the nethntine-covered arm to a puddle of molten metal. “Had the boy been better informed on our evolution, he might have actually killed me. Such frightening potential...potential I intend to nourish.”

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

Although Resent’s desperation to retrieve the arm indicated a bleak reality, Rodrigo asked, “It will regenerate, right?”

“In this body, I am unsure. Even if it did, it would cost us time we can ill afford. You’ve crippled us for a nonlethal strike.”

“And whose fault is that? Seriously, since day one you’ve been keeping secrets, like our survival doesn’t depend on each other! I had to learn what Hell actually is from our worst enemy!”

“This is not the time for one of your tantrums. Stay out of—”

A bolt of green electricity came at Resent. In the nick of time, he defended himself with the nebulae and went skidding back along the ground. He came to a halt, with his back mere inches from the arena’s spiked wall. The area where the arm had been amputated was mending shut. There were no signs of it growing back. Lengthening and remolding the nebulae already serving as a bandage, Resent formed a makeshift arm that connected to the shoulder. While it was out of proportion, both longer and more beefy than Rodrigo’s left, it was better than nothing.

“Are you ready to end this?” Misery asked as Resent stopped a short way away from him.

“I suppose.”

“Good. It is long past time.” Misery scraped the point of his blade along the ground and a line of electricity appeared. It darted around in a circle, behind a wary Resent, and then reconnected to the starting point. In a split-second, the electricity rose, surrounding them both in a dome-shaped cage.

Misery came hurtling at him. Resent glanced up, gauging the space between his head and the electric ceiling. Smashing the nebulae into the ground, he soared up, giving himself a couple of feet of space to avoid electrocution. On his left hand, Resent generated five small orbs on each nail. Before he could put them to use, Misery pointed his sword up in the air, launching an immense ball of fire at him. Unfazed, Resent bashed the fireball hard enough with his right to split it into two equal parts that blew past him, and fizzled out when they hit the cage.

As he landed, Resent let loose the orbs one at a time, aimed at Misery’s face as he drew closer to him. Misery wasn’t fast enough to dodge them at point-blank range, but they weren’t doing much more than opening up gashes. Backed into a corner now, Resent was like a wild animal relying on nothing other than instinct. He sailed over Misery’s flaming blade and, in a lunge, managed to wrap his left forearm around the king’s throat. As he reeled back his fist, preparing to ram it into Misery’s skull, the arm born from nebulae became unstable, fluttering.

Plunging his sword into the ground, as its unwieldy size was now to his detriment, Misery grabbed Resent by the scruff of his neck with both hands, and lifted him over his head, slamming him into the dirt. Rodrigo could hear multiple bones shatter upon impact.

Misery pinned the prince’s chest under his boot, bearing down on him with hundreds of pounds of muscle and metal, as he reached for his sword. “Capitalizing on the loss of the boy’s arm to craft one that imitates your original body. Clever. Yet once again, your penchant for the dramatic proved to be your downfall. Farewell, Resent.”

Before the blade ran him through, nebulae shot out of the palm Resent had flat against the ground, sending his torso jerking upward, and throwing Misery off balance. Resent rolled out from under Misery’s raised foot, and scattered the nebulae that made up his right arm into a fog. Other than the traces of purple, everything was pitch-black. Resent must have backed away as far as possible, because the subtle buzz of the electric cage was now deafening, though even it couldn’t illuminate the darkness.

Keeping low, Resent raised his left arm, pointing his index finger and pinky out in front of him. New nebulae not part of the fog manifested and began scurrying around him noiselessly. Rodrigo recognized the buildup of the 666, the high-risk, high-reward technique Resent had used to kill Xanthos. But without knowing where Misery was, the odds of Resent missing, and exhausting himself, or even being cut down first, were overwhelming.

“Are you sure you want to do that? If you miss—” Rodrigo said.

“Silence!”

When the cracks started to form along the ground from the nebulae accumulating at Resent’s hand, the faint clang of Misery’s armor could be heard. The king was aware of what was coming, and was moving in the opposite direction. The pair of small, shimmering nebulae that hovered less than an inch from Resent’s fingertips, visible through the darkness, didn’t help.

Resent dispersed the fog as the nebulae erupted into twin beams that came nowhere near hitting Misery. The king was to Resent’s right, looming over him with a smirk as he drew his sword back. Discarded pieces of armor trailed behind him, starting with his boots, flung farther and farther away to deceive their ears into thinking he had been retreating. Rodrigo was about to force a takeover and pray to higher powers he no longer had any faith in, when Resent stretched his fingers farther apart. In the blink of an eye, the beams swung, revolving opposite from each other a single time.

Misery was cleaved at the waist, dark blood gushing from the halves of his body as they fell. The gold band that held his ponytail had snapped, and loose strands of long green hair splayed out about his head. The electric cage around them began to disintegrate, creating small sparks that crackled throughout the air in its wake.

Beyond that, the arena walls themselves had been sliced through. The entire structure was slanting and threatening to collapse. Some demons were evacuating, though most were too exhilarated to care as they burst into applause and chants. Other than a few, those unhappy with the outcome were wise enough not to boo.

“Resent,” Misery murmured, choking on his own blood in a way that brought Rodrigo a twisted satisfaction. “Resent.”

The prince knelt beside him. “If this is another scheme—”

“No, nothing of that nature. I simply have...some last words.”