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She regretted that her first time using the choker had so immediately become a raw fight for survival. This was the power denied to her as a Witch without a transformation, and it was the most addicting sensation she'd ever experienced.
She knew that she had been a thrill-seeker in her own life, a trait she suspected she shared with Nariko Kelly. She'd done things just to prove that she could do them, just because they were dangerous, just because others had said it couldn't be done. She had been daring, reckless, bold and flamboyant.
The more dangerous and impossible something was supposed to be, the more it reached out to her with a siren's call she couldn't resist if she wanted to.
But this? This was pure lightning in her veins. No jump, no shootout, no daring escape could compare to this. She wanted to savor it, explore it, push it to its limits. She wanted to sprint across rooftops and leap across the city. She wanted to find a cop with a radar and see how hard she could break it.
Instead, she was re-enacting her first night in this life, trying to avoid getting sliced to pieces by an angry knight's black sword.
Dakunaito was as incoherent as he was relentless. There was none of the toying slashes he'd once used while waiting for her to transform, only flashes of darkness as he incessantly pursued her with attacks empowered by magic the likes of which she'd never seen from him. The whole time, he screamed as if half of him was in a murderous rage and the other half was being carved apart by ravens.
Behind him, at the edge of the bridge, stood the Arbiter, a man of indiscriminate age and unquestionable power. He'd effortlessly disabled both of them, then just as easily taken over the most willful demon she'd ever met. His former rage was gone, and he just watched them with a serenity that pissed her off even more.
Dakunaito kept hounding her. Every time she came to a stop, she'd swing her own blade to try to parry his attacks away, but that dark energy made his swings heavier than they should have been even coming from him, and she'd have to break away again to avoid it.
She slid backwards to a stop from their latest clash and immediately ducked under a horizontal swing as he appeared in front of her again, then spun to the side to avoid the follow-up kick. Even as she came around to what had been his side, she was already swinging her golden blade down because he'd turned on his heel and chased her with a diagonal slash.
Golden light flashed and dark fire burned as the blades impacted, but as with every time before, hers was sent recoiling back further, leaving her more open and more hurried to counter the next one. He took the opening to spin all of the way around for a momentum-backed horizontal swing from the other direction, and this time, she jumped away.
Sword Witch landed thirty feet back and was already gathering luminous energy around her free hand. Unlike the other Witches, she didn't need to do a full chant and dance to cast the spells she'd copied, meaning she was able to get it off even as he was charging at her.
"SHINING LANCE!"
Perhaps if Dakunaito were in his right mind, he could have countered or dodged it, but under the control of the Arbiter, his only thought was of turning her into a Witch fillet. Instead of avoiding it, he ran headlong at her as he had been doing the entire time, and even he couldn't avoid a laser once it was already in flight.
The beam crashed over him, and to surprise she hadn't expected, he staggered, clutching his face as his split screams became a little less half and half and leaned a little more toward the pain side.
Dakunaito was weak to light magic. It made sense, in a rock paper scissors sort of way, but was it really that easy?
No, it wasn't. She got her answer as he reached his offhand toward her even though he was clearly still blinded from the spell, and a great pressure enveloped her. This, then, was the telekinesis that he had used to throw Haru before.
The Arbiter's field had felt like a colossal increase in gravity, but this was a barrier that surrounded her from all angles, a mighty, all-enveloping fist that bound her limbs against her body. Dakunaito held her there as he regathered his wits, but she was sure that as soon as he could see straight, he'd be running her through, maybe even pull her right onto his sword.
She had to break free of it before that happened, but she couldn't so much as lift her arm. She had to overwhelm it, but without being able to move, there was only one thing she could think of that could do the trick.
With the choker, her magic flowed, not necessarily more potently, but much more quickly, as if its energies running through whatever composed her magical veins already supercharged them, and she pushed her magic as fast as she could into the only other spell she knew.
The fireball erupted around her and she collapsed to one knee, heaving as the explosion took all of the air out of the space, including her lungs, for a flash of a moment. Her costume, not enhanced like her body, was seriously burnt, but even her body hurt. It was a nasty reminder that she may have had Natsumi's spell, but that didn't mean she had her fire resistance.
She could say without a doubt now that Dakunaito hadn't been overestimating his abilities. Fighting him like this was wearing her down fast. She'd yet to do anything meaningful to him, and she'd been on the back foot the entire time. There was no telling how much longer she could keep up the level of output necessary to keep her head attached to her shoulders.
The Arbiter seemed to be of a different opinion. His smug serenity had dented as he twisted his face into another frown.
"Damnable demon," he shouted over at them. "Under my control, and still you resist my commands?! No amount of dawdling will save either of you! Stop toying with her and obey my will!"
Sword Witch didn't like the idea that this had been Dakunaito still pulling punches, mostly because she had the firm impression that was about to stop.
The Arbiter threw his hand toward the dark knight. "Release your seal, demon, and hesitate no longer!" The dark energy redoubled as Dakunaito bent over himself, gripping as much of his body as he could get his arms around. "Destroy this sinner with all of your full power!"
The knight's screams reached new decibels as he threw his head back and, like an explosion of pitch-black flame, a dome of shadow energy swelled out of him with such speed that, even as Sword Witch jumped away, the field caught up and flung her down the street.
When the energy faded, Dakunaito stood up straight again. He was no longer screaming. He was no longer making any sounds at all. Nor was he wildly attacking as if driven by madness.
And as he turned to face her, the horns of his helmet were more pronounced and ornate, his body was so large that there were gaps between the sections of his armor, and a metal face guard covered the void within so that only the burning coals of his eyes stared out.
But what struck her most of all were the wings. Great feathered limbs, each as long as he formerly was tall when fully outstretched, as they were now. They were glossy like oil and black as pitch, and they struck a deep, indescribable chord in her.
... No, it wasn't quite indescribable, because she'd felt it once before. When she'd first laid eyes on Reina. Did that mean that this, too, was a sight she'd seen in the last moments before finding herself in Nariko's body?
She couldn't imagine it. Nothing like that existed in her world. Demons and witches didn't exist. Gods and monsters didn't exist. Magic swords and sorcery didn't exist. There was no way this was something she'd ever laid eyes on.
So why did she know she had?
"DARKNESS CRUSHER!!!"
She wasn't permitted the time to ponder all of the implications. With that declaration, the reformed Dakunaito's sword ignited in blacklight flame and he charged to bring it down on her.
With no way of knowing what it would do, she jumped away, but when the blow struck the ground instead, the concrete exploded in every direction. A great crater remained, six feet long and three wide, deep enough that the edges of the concrete were tumbling down into the visible maintenance tunnel system below.
With ice in her stomach, she recalled her boast of the strength of bone to concrete, and how the demonic swordsman could barely damage the latter.
No, focus! Self-doubt was literally death. She had to focus!
What were her options? She couldn't keep running. She understood now that was just a slow path to exhaustion. What was her specialty? Observation. She had to figure out what she was working with.
When Dakunaito swung again, she deliberately stood her ground, intercepting the attack with both hands on her sword.
The demon's blow forced her to her knee in an instant as a shockwave of force spread out underneath her. Even with her absorbing so much of the blow, the concrete beneath her caved and splintered.
She didn't dare think about what that would have done to her without the collar.
Like the cursed armor before, leverage was by far on his side, and his black flames seemed determined to force her into the ground, as if it couldn't actually exhaust the force of its strike. Rather than turning into a contest of their own limbs, his blade seemed locked within the initial blow, continuing through magic to hammer her with the impact.
She forced her will into the edge of her own blade, sought that unshakable determinism that Shield Witch possessed as she demanded her own sword not yield even as her own arms began to protest.
The strongest a given quantity of force could be was when it was focused on the smallest point possible. That was the reason for a blade's cutting edge. A sword cut instead of smashed because it directed the force of the swing to so narrow a point that it split the mass it struck apart from itself.
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But right now, she didn't care about the whole edge. There was only one point along the entirety of the sword that she cared about - the point of contact. With both edges colliding, that precious surface area was a fraction of a hair's width, and she bent all of her will to commanding it to hold.
No, not just to hold. To cut.
The blue fuller of the blade grew brighter and brighter, but in her mind, she directed that gathering energy to the point of contact, struggling in her simplistic understanding of the principles involved to force both her power and her blade to obey her.
Dakunaito's darkness grew greater as well, pushing back as if he understood what she was attempting and sought to counter her.
Then it clicked. Aside from the intensity, this power felt exactly the same as what he'd been using before the Arbiter transformed him. This dark weight that made his blows heavier and more undeniable. He'd been using it all along. Why, then, did he say the name after he transformed? Why didn't he just keep doing what he'd done all along?
That was when she realized he had yet to speak again since the initial casting. He was maintaining it without any chants. Aside from the one time, he'd been casting it without incantation all along.
With the sole exception of the telekinesis, this had been the only technique he'd displayed for the entire fight. Why? Surely, he must have more. And he knew that she copied spells. Now that she knew this was one, if he kept using it, he had to figure it was only a matter of time before--
Her eyes widened, and for a fraction of a heartbeat, the struggle between them faded from her awareness.
Now that she knew ... he had to figure ... he kept using it ...
Damn that clever bastard ... Did he really give the name just so she'd realize it was a spell? How much of him was really still in there, fighting the Arbiter tooth and nail?
No, that didn't matter. What did she know about darkness magic? If Dakunaito's darkness element was anything like Reina's, it was commanding, authoritative.
How did Reina describe it? She told her magic what to do, and it obeyed.
Reina controlled her magic in a way the other Witches didn't. She ruled it. Like a slave, it heeded her desires regardless of its own nature. Like a tyrant, her greatest desire was destruction. The destruction of her enemies. The destruction of curses. The destruction of obstacles.
What was the nature of the destruction Dakunaito desired with this spell? Her own destruction was not a sufficient explanation. What was it destroying in order to accomplish destroying her?
The physical destruction of matter, yes, but that, too, was not answer enough. Really, it was only repeating the first answer in a different way.
She focused her perception on the feelings she got from the attack. Oppressive weight. Unyielding force.
Reina was a Ruler, but Dakunaito was a Conqueror.
The desire that his magic was answering to was to crush his opposition beneath his boot and grind their remains under his heel.
Yes, she could feel the pieces coming together in her mind, the combination to the safe that held what he had called Darkness Crusher. But she restrained it and relaxed that mental muscle.
She had no interest in testing her own desire to Conquer against his. It couldn't change anything meaningful, and as the true user of the technique, he would certainly overwhelm her own amateur usage of it.
She would never expect Fireball to be meaningfully effective against Natsumi. The same logic applied here.
Instead, if his previous reaction was anything to judge by, he could be directly countered by Light-element magic.
She focused on the sensations behind Shining Lance. It was more than spectacle, more than flair and a desire to pull attention away from others. There was a deeper undercurrent behind that.
The brunette had seen Haru heal wounds, pull away curses, and dazzle her foes. She'd even seen her jump into direct combat.
... Even if that last one was only a spectacular display for how bad the blonde was at it. And yet Haru knew she was bad at it, and did it anyway.
Behind every action Haru ever took was a desire to preserve something. Because she cared about that thing. Because she loved that thing. She didn't just want to protect it from injury, as Ran did. She wanted to protect it from harm. To preserve its happiness, its purity.
Could the brunette bring herself to a mindset where she could feel that way toward Dakunaito?
Haru could. She didn't doubt that for a minute. If there was a reason to save Dakunaito, Haru could find it within herself to do so in an instant, even if there was no chance doing so would change the dark warrior in any way.
Because it was necessary. Because it was what he needed.
But Haru wasn't here. It was just Sword Witch. And yet Dakunaito needed it all the same. And she needed it. And all of the other Witches needed it, and Yoshi needed it, and Cho needed it, and Anna needed it. Because if she didn't do it, all of them would suffer for it.
She tried to encapsulate all of that into a single feeling, a single emotion. A desperate desire to protect. And instead of projecting it into a beam, she pushed that desire into her sword, into that singular point of contact.
It was the nature both of thought and of combat that all of this passed in a handful of moments, and still she knelt under Dakunaito's sword as her body struggled to push it away from her.
But the glow of the weapon increased again, and again, that glow filled the atomic gap between their blades. Again, Dakunaito's own darkness surged to counteract it. This was no longer a clash of blades, but a contest of wills.
The light within the gap continued to gather as the brunette focused her mind, not on the blade above her head, not the one in her hands, but on everyone and everything at stake if she failed to act, how it would make them feel, and how knowing they felt that way would make her feel.
And through that focus, she drove every drop of her mana.
The radiance of the light spilled out until it was too bright to see. All details of their surroundings faded into obscurity until only she and Dakunaito remained. And then only their swords. And, finally, only the light.
Yoshi would be lonely, never knowing what happened to his sister. Anna would know, and that would be so much worse.
Marcus and Saki would spend all of their remaining days questioning what took their daughter from them. In the absence of answers, they would tell themselves she might still live, somewhere else. A fairy tale they know in their hearts to be a lie.
Miss Sada would feel personally responsible, like she'd led a child of her own to her death. And twice over, too, since they'd yet to find an answer about Nariko. It would be better if the fifth-dimensional being blamed Sword Witch, but she wouldn't. All of Sarasa's blame would be for her own shoulders.
Reina would have survivor's guilt, and a heavy blow to her confidence in herself as a leader. This was, after all, meant to be her death.
Ran would fret over all of the ways it might have gone differently if they had all been there together instead of Sword Witch being singled out.
Natsumi would be furious. At her, at Dakunaito, and especially at the Arbiter. How dare Sword Witch die to some pansy loser like him, how dare Dakunaito let himself be puppeted by him. She'd go berserk if the others didn't stop her, which was really just cover for her own pain of loss she couldn't admit.
Haru, poor Haru, would be devastated. Losing her best friend all over again, the one person in all the world that understood what she went through. She could picture the blonde, sitting in her chair in the club room, slumped like Marione with its strings cut with crystal clarity.
Dakunaito, too. She knew exactly how he would feel if she failed here.
She opened her eyes against the all-encompassing light and focused on where his face should be. She could almost see its outline through the pulsing rays.
"I promise," she swore to him through the strain in her muscles and the concentration it took to hold her mind in such a frame, "I won't disappoint you."
And the light truly encompassed all there was to see.
* * *
As the glare finally faded enough for the Arbiter to lower his arm, a blur of darkness was the first thing he registered before a black sword crashed into the street mere feet from where he stood. A second, golden blur shot into the sky an instant later.
Against the light of the setting sun, eyes limited by this plane of existence couldn't clearly make out the details, but that quickly proved a non-issue.
"DARKNESS CRUSHER!!!"
Thunder-- No, Sword Witch's voice screamed from the air above him as black flames engulfed her golden blade, and as if its weight pulled her down, she plummeted toward him at a terrifying velocity.
He parried her attack with a sword of his own, summoned from nothing, with a triangular blade three feet long. Whatever she thought to accomplish by attacking him, it would be in vain. The laws that bound her concept of reality didn't apply to him. Her failure was as certain as if she sought to strike a god.
She didn't seem to care. If anything, the way she immediately drew back to cut from another angle the moment after the impact rang out suggested she expected it. With reckless abandon, she rained blows empowered by dark magic down on him in rapid succession. One after another, she continued her assault even as he intercepted them.
He wasn't forced to take a step back until a second sword joined hers. Dakunaito, his form reverted, held his retrieved blade and assaulted him with the same black technique.
A distraction. It was all to trick him into dropping his concentration on the demon. Even as his steps moved him back toward the bridge, he burned with indignity in the knowledge that he had fallen for the guile of lesser lifeforms. It didn't matter, but that didn't make it any less insulting.
They were sinners, true, but he had to admire the constant awareness they had of the location of the other and the coordination with which they launched their attacks. This couldn't have been planned in any way, yet they never once moved their blades in a way to interfere with the other.
Such potential, thrown away in blind arrogance. The things they could have done if they hadn't been so determined to repeat their same transgressions over and over again.
He had indulged them long enough, and he could feel the pressures outside of existence growing. The time he could waste on them was nearly gone.
He drew his sword arm back and thrust his other hand forward, rewriting the law of gravity through an act of will until it slammed both of them to the asphalt in front of him once more.
The Arbiter let the sword return to the atomic mass around him again, as well, as he exhaled a sigh.
"Very well," he declared, his gaze down upon them as stern as the divine judgment he represented. "You have refused to accept the penalty for your sins. Know that the mercy of a quick punishment will not be offered again."
He pointed his finger down upon their crumpled forms. "What comes next, know that it is all the consequences of your actions here today, and bear that guilt upon your soul, you so-called Sword Witch, until I come for you again."
* * *
"There they are!"
The intense pressure beating down on her body vanished with the sensation of the seal, and she pushed herself up with a groan as she looked back to see the other Witches.
She had hardly gotten herself to her feet before Flare Witch slammed into her, blubbering all the while.
"Riko! I was so worried! Reina saw your call and we all rushed over here, but we couldn't get in! No matter what we tried! We thought we were going to have to call Sarasa!"
The blonde blinked, recognizing something was off, squeezed Sword Witch's middle again and realized they were still vertical. She leaned back to look in confirmation, and finally gave an embarrassed smile. "Eheh, hey, Riko, have you been working out? You didn't even topple ..."
The brunette frowned down at the transformed witch. "So you admit you were trying to knock me over?"
The girl's smile turned into a humiliated grin as she tried to come up with an excuse.
Sacred Witch saved her from having to reply as she stepped toward the witch and the demon. "You two don't look like you were fighting each other when the seal went down. What happened in there?"
The brunette looked to Dakunaito, but he seemed to ignore the question, simply sheathing his blade again. That was when she realized they were all behaving very calmly for being out in the open, but a quick look around showed that they were still alone.
"Are we in another seal?"
Reina nodded. "That's right. There were two. The first one, we entered without issue, but the second repelled our every attempt."
The first one must have been Dakunaito's, then, while the second would have been the Arbiter's. A seal within a seal. She didn't even know that was possible, but quickly decided there was no reason it wouldn't be.
"We were both attacked by somebody calling himself the Arbiter," she answered finally, "a judgment figure from demon mythology. I wouldn't say we drove him off, exactly, but we were able to make ourselves enough of a nuisance for him to find something else to do."
"This Arbiter guy was that powerful?" The question came from Flame Witch, who looked like she'd be wanting a fight if she didn't find the claim so unbelievable.
"It doesn't matter." When Dakunaito finally spoke, it was with an absolute tone of declaration. "I hold no belief that I stood against a god today, whatever his claims. When I find out the truth of the matter, I will kill him for his hubris."
"I might have a lead on that."
The brunette's words captured everyone's attention, even the demon lord's.
"But first, we need to speak with Sada." Sword Witch focused her gaze directly on Dakunaito. "And you should be there."