Rivale attacked. His blade came down in a wide arc, fast and precise, a strike that had ended countless lives. He expected her to block it with her glowing stick. That was what she had done every other time. Block, parry, dodge, repeat. The pattern was familiar, almost comfortable.
Subaru's glowing stick vanished.
The lightsaber dissolved into particles of light, returning to her mana, leaving her hands empty. Rivale's blade passed through empty air, encountering no resistance, nothing to stop its momentum. He was imbalanced for a split second, his body leaning forward, his weight shifting to compensate for a block that never came.
A split second. That was all she needed.
She conjured the lightsaber again. The blade's grip came with a hum, she did not slash or stab or cut. She pressed the hilt against his chest, right over his heart, and held it there.
"Checkmate," she said.
The blade turned on. The energy surged through the hilt, through the focusing crystal, through the air between her hand and his body. It carved a hole through him, clean and precise, the kind of wound that did not bleed because the flesh had been burned away before the blood could flow.
Rivale looked down at his chest. The hole was round, the edges blackened, the space where his heart should have been now filled with smoke and the faint smell of cooked meat. His expression shifted through several emotions. Surprise. Confusion. Then something else, something that looked almost like joy.
He kicked her.
The force of the blow lifted her off her feet and sent her flying across the clearing. Trees blurred past. The ground disappeared beneath her. She crashed into a boulder, the impact carving a Subaru shaped hole into the stone, her body wedged into the rock like a nail driven by a hammer.
She fell from the hole a moment later, landing on the ground in a heap. Her head spun. Her vision blurred. Blood ran down her face from a cut on her forehead, and she wiped it away with the back of her hand. The motion drew her attention to her head. Her turban was gone, torn away during the flight, lost somewhere in the trees or the dirt or the boulder that now had a permanent reminder of her existence.
Her horns were visible. Two curved points rising from her head impossible to miss. Not that it mattered now. Rivale already knew what she was. The soldiers, if any survived, would see her for what she was. A demon. A monster. Something to be killed on sight.
Rivale looked at the hole in his chest. He poked it with one finger, then another, as if checking to make sure it was real. His expression was not angry. It was not pained. It was something closer to delight.
"Huh," he said. "That is more like it."
He laughed. The sound echoed through the clearing, loud and genuine, the laugh of someone who had just received a gift they had not expected.
Subaru pushed herself to her knees. Her body screamed in protest. Every breath sent spikes of pain through her ribs. He had definitely broken a few bones, maybe more than a few. She spat blood onto the ground and looked up at him.
"Of all those who have fought me," Rivale said, his grin wider than ever, "there is nobody who did as much as damage as you. Come on! Certainly this is not the limit of your power! Show me whether Schlacht was right or wrong!"
"Shut up," Subaru gasped. The words came out weak, barely a whisper, but she put as much force behind them as she could manage. "I will kill you."
Rivale's eyes lit up. "Then do it!"
"But I need answers,"
"You have to impress me first."
"Damn." Subaru shook her head, wincing as the motion sent fresh waves of pain through her skull. "What a freak." She forced herself to her feet, swaying, almost falling, but staying upright through sheer stubbornness. "Fine. You asked for it."
She gathered what mana she had left. The reserves were low, lower than they had ever been. The lightsaber. The gun. The katana. All of those creations had cost her, and the cost added up with each desperate attempt to survive.
But information was important. She had learned so much already. His copying ability. His limitations. His personality. His love of battle. This chance would not come again. Rivale was offering to take a hit, to stand there and let her attack, because he wanted to see what she could do. It was stupid. It was reckless. It was exactly the kind of opening she needed.
She raised her hand. Mana gathered in her palm, shaping itself into something long, something dense, something that contained all the frustration and fear and rage of every death she had suffered.
Rivale saw the spear appear in her hands. It was menacing, crimson red, designed with an ominous and barbed aesthetic that made it look less like a weapon and more like a statement. The spearhead was serrated, notched in a way that reminded him of a bident, with multiple barbs that seemed designed to tear flesh rather than simply pierce it. The entire weapon evoked the image of lightning, sharp and fast and deadly.
He grinned. His own hand shot out, mana gathering, shaping itself into a red spear that looked almost identical to hers. The color was the same. The barbs were the same. The weight felt the same in his grip. He reinforced it with mana, pouring every ounce of strength he had into his arms, his shoulders, his back. The muscles bulged. The veins stood out on his neck. He pulled his arm back, ready to throw.
"Show me your power!" he shouted.
A blue light emerged from his spear. It gathered around the tip, glowing brighter and brighter, casting strange shadows across the clearing. The light was fast, very fast, moving toward Subaru before she had time to blink.
Subaru launched her attack at the same moment. Her arm came forward, the spear leaving her hand, flying through the air with a speed that matched his.
"Gáe Bulg," she whispered.
A red light emerged from her spear. It was different from his, deeper, darker, with a weight that seemed to press against the world. The two lights met in the center of the clearing, red and blue, crashing against each other like waves against a cliff.
Light engulfed the area.
There was no sound. There was no heat. There was just light, blinding and total, erasing everything it touched. Subaru closed her eyes, but it did not matter. The light passed through her eyelids, through her skull, through the darkness behind her vision. She felt herself floating, weightless, disconnected from her body.
Then nothing.
When Subaru woke up, she saw a burning clearing. The trees were crisp, their branches reduced to charcoal, their leaves turned to ash. The ground was black, cracked, covered in a layer of soot that rose in clouds with every movement of the wind. Everything had been disintegrated, the grass, the bushes, the smaller creatures that had been hiding in the undergrowth. The clearing had become a scar on the forest, a wound that would take years to heal.
She sat up. Her body ached in places she did not know she had. Her head pounded. Her vision swam. She looked around, trying to understand what had happened, trying to piece together the fragments of memory that floated through her mind.
"What happened..." she said. Her voice came out hoarse, barely a whisper.
She saw Rivale. He was sitting on a boulder at the edge of the clearing, his posture slumped, his head hanging low. Half his body was gone. The left side, from his shoulder to his hip, had simply ceased to exist. The edges where his flesh ended were blackened, burned, sealed by the heat of the explosion. He looked like a statue that had been cracked in half, still standing but barely.
The bastard was still alive.
Subaru pushed herself to her feet. Her legs wobbled. Her knees threatened to give out. She walked toward him, limping, each step a small victory over the pain that screamed through her body. She barely had enough mana to stay conscious. Her reserves were empty, drained by the spear, by the explosion, by the simple act of remaining alive.
But he had to die. She could not let him recover. She could not let him stand up and fight again. She had come too far, died too many times, to let this chance slip away.
She summoned a small knife. It was nothing special, just a blade and a handle, the simplest weapon she could create with the last dregs of her power. She walked toward him, her steps uneven, her breath coming in short gasps.
She tripped twice. The first time, she caught herself on a tree stump, the rough bark scraping her palms. The second time, she fell to her knees, the impact sending shocks through her already broken body. She crawled the rest of the way, dragging herself across the blackened ground, the knife clutched in one hand.
Rivale looked at her. His eyes were still bright, still sharp, even as the rest of him faded. He did not try to run. He did not try to fight. He simply watched her approach, his expression calm, almost peaceful.
"You did well," he said. His voice was weaker than before, but still steady. "I am impressed."
Subaru stopped in front of him. She knelt on the ground, her chest heaving, her lungs burning. She looked up at his face, at the scar across his eye, at the grin that had not quite faded even now.
"I have some questions," she said. "Who is Linie to you?"
Rivale was quiet for a moment. He seemed to be thinking, searching for the right words. "How should I put it," he said finally. "I taught Linie how to fight."
Subaru blinked. "So you are her teacher?"
He nodded (Subaru assumed), a small movement, barely noticeable. "That is what humans call it, I think." His eyes focused on her face, studying her with a curiosity that had not dimmed despite his wounds. "I see. You are a human. How odd."
Subaru did not confirm him. There was no point. He was dying. Soon he would be gone, and the distinction between human and demon would not matter.
"And Aura?" she asked. "What about her?"
Rivale's gaze drifted upward, toward the sky, toward the clouds that were beginning to gather. "I had to attend a place to kill someone, so I left Linie with Aura on the way. She was supposed to learn from her, to grow stronger. I suppose you know what happened after that."
Subaru's mind raced. There were more names, more connections, more pieces of a puzzle she did not fully understand. "And who are these people? Solitär, Macht, Schlacht? How are they related to Linie?"
Rivale's grin returned, weak but present. "Heh. That is something you need to find out yourself."
"Hey." Subaru's voice hardened. "You said you would answer all my questions. You promised. Bastard."
Rivale laughed, a soft sound, barely a breath. "Now, I am already dying. Finish me."
Subaru clenched her fist. The knife felt heavy in her hand, heavier than it should have. She looked at his face, at the scar, at the eyes that had killed her so many times. She thought about the loops, the deaths, the pain. She thought about the soldiers who had died, the demons she had killed, the blood that stained her hands.
She ran the blade across his chest.
Rivale fell. His body tilted sideways, sliding off the boulder, landing on the blackened ground with a soft thud. He began to fade, his edges turning translucent, his form dissolving into particles of dark ether that rose into the air like smoke.
"Hehe," he said, his voice fading with his body. "Is this what humans call bliss?" His eyes looked past her, toward the sky, toward something she could not see. "The sky is surely starry today."
Subaru watched as he faded. The last thing to disappear was his grin, floating in the air for a moment before dissolving into nothing.
She sat there for a moment, alone in the burned clearing, surrounded by ash and silence. Then she heard the sound of humans coming. Voices. Footsteps. The tramp of soldiers moving through the forest.
She looked around and spotted her turban. It was dirty, covered in soot and ash, but somehow still usable. She picked it up, wrapped it around her head, tucked her horns beneath the cloth. The motion was automatic now, practiced, something she did without thinking.
The soldiers came rushing into the clearing. They saw the fading form of a tall demon, the last traces of his body disappearing into the air. They saw Subaru sitting nearby, her clothes torn, her face bloody, her eyes hollow.
"Miss Subaru!" one of them shouted. The others gathered around her, their weapons raised, their eyes wide.
Subaru looked up at them. A smile crossed her face, weak and exhausted, but genuine.
"Yo, brothers," she said.