I blitz Thraevirula.

  She cleaves horizontally with her blade.

  I flip over her strike, wings splaying out to slow me above her head. My arm extends. Lightning flows.

  She tries undoing it—tries turning the sparks into more rats for her wings.

  But Hypna’s spectral hand reaches past my head and closes into a fist.

  The lightning still flows. Thrae’s face contorts.

  My smile widens.

  In the next instant, Thrae is struck down through the cloud by five small bolts of lightning, each shooting from my fingertips. Shrieks of thunder follow. I fold my wings and dive to pursue. The smell of burning flesh is glory.

  The Witch of Plagues steadies her fall above the cottage, her wings cracking out in the air and her anger sizzling forth like the steam that lingers from my strikes.

  Her crimson gaze snaps up. She rises to meet me, sword outstretched once more. This time, it's set for a diagonal slash.

  “You have your own weapons. Use them,” Hypna whispers. I immediately understand what she means, despite the vagaries of her suggestion. Our souls are intermingled. We are united in purpose.

  So instead of summoning some temporary blade of lightning, I reach my hand out and think of the weapon that I’ve yearned for.

  It obliges.

  Meteorfang feels heavy in my hand. Its ball-end is smooth metal and the kunai-end clinks nicely with the chain attached. I let lightning flow through the runic metal and snap my wings out. They abruptly jerk my fall to a stop, pulling me back horizontally.

  I throw the kunai with a lightning-cranked arm. Hypna infuses Aether to blast the chain down. It travels so fast with our enhancements, that I can’t even see it.

  Yet, somehow, Thraevirula slashes with Meteorblade and there comes a sharp TING! As the sword parries the kunai.

  But I know how the mechanics of a whip work.

  So when her sword clangs against the chain and strikes it up, making the kunai-end lose all momentum, it hangs in the air for a moment, like a coiled cobra, before wrapping down against Thrae’s arm. She stiffens. Hypna pulls the end to the chain with lines of connected Aether—like a master puppeteer working from my back. Thrae cuts the lines, but the work is done. Her arm is wrapped tight by the chainlinks.

  I pull.

  The Witch of Plagues tilts right as her arm is yanked up. She strikes madly at the chain with her blade, however, Hypna enhances it with blue Aether. Thrae tries spouting some curses and spells. Eldritch Incanta, I assume. It sounds grating on the ears.

  “Faireeel Cotar Masco Lima Parenti Nos Vail da Remo CARANAILI.”

  “What is she doing?” I yell, still pulling Thrae up to me via the chain.

  “She knows I’m undoing her dream magicks, so she’s going the old-fashioned route—using magicks she knows in the real world rather than conjuring imagined ones in this plane. Harder to undo. Just—let me focus!” Hypna spouts.

  Then, she starts whispering back in softer Incanta. Trying to undo whatever Thrae is doing, I assume.

  It doesn’t seem to work.

  Because in the next moment, Thrae’s trapped arm turns raw pink. Hairless. Her fingers scrunch up, collapse into the wrist, and turn inside out. A drill of teeth now forms from the hole in her arm, a small head peaking out like something straight from the hells.

  A bloodworm.

  Heavens help me if she can do this in the mortal plane.

  The worm starts throwing its inner head up and out, a slimy process that looks like a snake giving birth from its maw or shedding its old skin.

  What are you doing, dumbass? The chain is metal.

  I run a storm’s worth of lightning through my kusarigama. The crimson chains through the metal with a sound like fire on ice, yet, Thraevirula uses the wet skin of her worm arm to twist out of Meteorfang before the lightning can truly hit.

  Sparks of it scorch her black, making the worm arm scream out.

  Yet, before I can make another move, the head of the bloodworm pulses up to me, inner maw open, black pincers stretching wide.

  They pinch onto my leg.

  And Thrae throttles me ‘round, taking my body for a spin while laughing. The world becomes a passing blur. Pain blinds. The worm has some poisonous goo that sizzles on my leg. And through its inner teeth, I can feel something worse embed itself in my body.

  Blood runs out my nose, my eyes, my ears.

  This thing is carrying some disease, I register vaguely.

  The worm pulls my leg into its mouth, the redness of its outer skin bulging grotesquely as it tries chewing on my foot—like a python after swallowing an alligator. It makes scant progress for the inner teeth are too small, yet, the acid of its excrement helps the creature start breaking my foot down into digestible bits.

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  I shove lightning into the worm’s gullet. It shrieks and its chewing slows for a moment, but it doesn’t stop.

  Someone whispers something behind me.

  A blue light runs to my foot. The inner head of the worm warbles, gyrates, then, explodes from the inside out—Hypna’s doing, probably. She must’ve concentrated Aether at my leg and pushed it out all once.

  Unfortunately, that also means my foot is gone. Exploded.

  And I’m still bleeding.

  Falling.

  My vision is a distorted mess of green and yellow haze. Some vile pus begins forming around my eyes. This disease or venom from the blood worm—it works fast.

  I think I’m screaming. Can’t tell.

  Before I hit the ground, the wings start acting of their own accord, flapping me up and away.

  A half-spectral form comes in front of me. Gold, black, white hair. Purple eyes.

  “Hold still Raiten, this is going to hurt,” Hypna says. Her hand passes into me, glowing blue.

  I don’t understand Aether. Never have. I just know that people consider it the base of magicks—the foundation of all movements. Sorina once told me that it's akin to the “piano of music”. If you learn to play the notes of a piano, you can probably learn any other instrument. However, this gave me the impression that Aether was an… inferior sort of magicks. Force blasts seemed crude. Even the way Zyla used Aether reinforced that thought. Yet, when Hypna employs Aether, it's like watching a master musician at work. Her control of the element is so precise, so detailed. She shapes it to her liking. Weaves it into strings of energy that flow through my body and attack the very machinations of this disease. All of its maleficent structures are eradicated in precise ways—sometimes, the Aether wraps around the disease-heads, tightening them till they crack. Other times, the Aether just rends holes through them, hailing them like a volley of arrows.

  My pores stop bleeding. I wipe the red and yellow from my eyes and blink the world back into view.

  Anger and adrenaline rush through me.

  I pop another amulet.

  Lightning clears my head.

  Thraevirula seemed too busy healing her own wounded arm, turning it back into a regular hand. She still lingers a few clouds away. Her eyes are setting on me now though.

  “Thank you Hypna,” I say.

  “Five seconds Raiten. Just give me five seconds of contact.”

  “I know. I know.”

  Thraevirula charges.

  I reciprocate.

  Thus, our battle begins once more. There’s a certain rhythm to it. I expel lightning, whip with Meteorfang, blast with Aether. She employs new vectors of disease: rats, locusts, tics. She harries forth with her blade, swinging it to and fro through the night.

  Seconds pass. Minutes. Bloody hours.

  Fatigue seems foreign to her. Either that, or she has a very good poker face. Not me though. This is the longest I’ve ever fought. Yet, whenever I’m about to make a tired, stupid mistake, Hypna covers for me.

  Our battle takes us away from the cottage, to the farmlands and rivers, to the distant mountains. One of our clashes causes an avalanche—another brings down an entire cliff-face. Finally, we reach the voided edges of this particular memory. We leave nothing but destruction in our wake.

  Now, we are simply three entities warring in a void of black, far beyond the confines of this memory, killing each other over nothing.

  There is no sound but our labored breathing.

  No smell but death and disease.

  No feeling but pain.

  No touch but misery.

  No taste but the coppery tang of blood.

  I stand, blood dripping from my forehead to create a crimson sheet over my eyes. My leg has reformed, but she took my left arm. I took hers as well sometime in the battle, however, she replaced it with a limb of dead rodents. For once, I can see how the battle wears on her. Her breathing is slow. Her eyes are determined, yet wavering.

  This is the first pause we’ve taken in a while. Just staring at each other, waiting for someone to make the next move.

  Thraevirula breaks first, yelling as she clasps her hands together, pointing the sword my way. All of the rodents on her wings deform into live, running rats. From her mouth comes hundreds of locus. From the folds of the void come thousands of bugs. Her black worms. All for me.

  She wants to finish this. So do I.

  I spin the ball-end of Meteorfang and whip it out around me, creating a ring of lightning to keep her army at bay.

  They die screaming and squealing, but they keep coming.

  As do I.

  I push forward, taking slow steps towards her. A rat, picked up by many locusts, jumps over my lighting ring, aiming for my face. Hypna catches it with Aether and squeezes the rodent to a bloody, oozing death. More follow. The Witch of Dreams covers me as best as she can.

  Something knocks Meteorfang out of my hand. I kill it with lightning and continue pushing forward, striking with Iron Winter. A punch of lightning. A roundhouse kick of scarlet. The animals start breaking through Hypna’s defense, biting at my legs. She chants something in Incanta and belays them for a bit. I feel a disease twist in my heart.

  I push.

  Kick through a haze of locusts and run lightning along their number till they die a fiery, scorching death.

  I see Thrae through the black mass of her creatures.

  I charge at her, yelling to will my body forward. She backs away, sword still outstretched, hands wobbling.

  Hypna gives me another arm. This one of Aether.

  I use it to punch through a horde of black worms. A sea of rats kicks my leg out from under me, trying to drag me away. I don’t care. I scream lightning at them and run feral on all fours, like the days when I used to imitate the creatures of the Tower.

  The Witch of Plagues expels one final blast of creatures.

  I imbue angel dust into my limbs and push off the ground, flipping into the air.

  Then, I concentrate lightning into my legs. Hypna catches on quick, doing the same with her Aether. As the creatures come, all screaming, all chittering with death, I crunch my thighs into my chest, and kick them out midair.

  From my feet comes an ear-shattering blast of lightning and Aether—a pillar of blue and red.

  Thraevirula’s army is eviscerated.

  She dodges the blast, but I’m upon her in an instant, feet touching the ground once more—

  Her blade pierces through my chest, halting my momentum.

  “It’s over—” she begins.

  Never finishes.

  I just pull the blade in and grab her shoulders hard.

  And I burn all I have left into her.

  Thraevirula screams as lightning brings her low—to her knees.

  She tries reaching her hand out to my face. As if to grasp it and squeeze.

  But five seconds are up.

  And the world shifts away.