Grimhild's body was battered, her arm torn from its socket, black blood staining her clothes as she tried to regenerate from the devastating attack, but thanks to chaos effects, her regeneration was postponed.
Merlin hovered high above, wreathed in chaos, her magic circles revolving like planetary orbits around her frame.
The disciple had become an executioner.
"You are nothing to me!" Merlin's voice was wrathful as she yelled. "Agnes freed me from your morals and ideology. You merely trained me to protect this world and nothing more! I was only a tool to you."
Grimhild glared at her former student with pity.
"You mistake freedom for indulgence. You mistake chaos for truth. You are a child clutching fire, thinking it warmth—never realizing it burns away all you love."
"Spare me your philosophy!" Merlin shouted. "The world doesn't need your Destruction! It needs chaos! That's the only thing freed from law and order. That's the only thing that gives us freedom! And I discovered that enlightenment from Agnes."
Dozens more circles unfolded behind her. A symphony of Chaos, rewritten by Arcanium, blazed to life.
"Burn to ash! Vargantel!"
A cascade of lances, black-violet, launched toward Grimhild like falling stars.
She raised her sole arm, forcing words through a ragged breath.
"...Gilvastora!"
A titanic black shield erupted, forged of pure Destruction; with the capabilities of blocking all metaphysical attacks and converting it into power, it failed.
The lances collided—shattering the shield like glass.
The sky itself ruptured as thunderous sounds reverberated through Mesnil while shockwaves ripped apart clouds, tossing buildings below into collapse.
The Witch of Destruction was hurled back again—her body colliding down below with the coliseum's outer ring.
Cracks webbed across stone and steel.
Merlin pressed her assault, not giving her Master even a moment's reprieve.
"Zephyrga!"
Winds sharper than razors shredded through the battlefield.
Grimhild braced herself, raising another circle.
"...Xyldurma!"
A sphere of utter nullity flared before her, devouring the cutting winds, and stripping them of existence.
Merlin's eyes widened—but only for a second.
"You're losing focus." Grimhild said. "Arcanum can only be used if you put your all into this fight."
Arcanium did its thing again, rewriting the spell Grimhild nullified.
"Be quiet!!"
A second volley emerged, this time bypassing the nullity entirely, curving as though reality itself bent to her will.
The blades tore across Grimhild's body, ripping through flesh and scattering blood into the violent storm.
She was missing an entire leg now, luckily blocking the other attacks in enough time to prevent total decapitation.
Merlin hovered above, her chest heaving, sweat and tears mixing upon her face.
Her voice even broke as she screamed.
"Fall, Master! Let the new age rise!!"
Grimhild looked up at her, silent.
Her body was broken, yet her eyes—those unyielding crimson eyes—never wavered.
"...If you believe I'll give up just because I lost an arm and a leg, then you're solely mistaken."
She raised her remaining hand.
Merlin frowned at her comment and honed her focus again.
"What futile persistence!"
A powerful, deadly aura flared around the Witch of Destruction's body, black and purple in its color.
Merlin widened her eyes as the entire planet—no—the entire world shook from her power. All of Midgard was trembling under her weight.
"Outside of your Destruction, you have the power to destroy entire realms with normal magic. How truly fearsome." Merlin grinned. "But it won't be enough to defeat me."
"Gariaz Dolta Gogma."
Casting the strongest lightning magic in Yggdrasil, a bolt of lightning launched from her magic circle, but Merlin did the same before Grimhild could even pull it off.
"Gariaz Dolta Gogma!"
Raining down at the Witch of Destruction was a faster lightning bolt that slammed into her body at blinding speeds, sending a thunderous boom across the arena. With the ability to slow down one's perception of time, and their movements, Grimhild was bound by its effects thanks to Arcanium's spell modification.
"And now, to end this!" Merlin lifted her hand, forming another magic circle.
"Dulgariaz." Grimhild, creating another clone, sent her mind, soul, and nucleus inside of it, separating from her former body.
The clone may have missed an arm and a leg, but the effects of Gariaz Dolta Gogma was no more.
"Rozen Almadius!"
Grimhild wasted no time performing the strongest water magic; creating a horizontal tornado of water and sending it upward to Merlin, it had the ability to drill through one's toughness and nullify their spells in the process.
But Merlin merely laughed and did the same with her other free hand before Grimhild.
"Rozen Almadius! What a futile attempt- wha?!"
All of a sudden, Merlin staggered back and forth, feeling lightheaded.
"What's... happening?" Her copied spell aimed for Grimhild, but the witch dodged it in enough time, due to Merlin's wavering focus.
Grimhild merely looked at her in the sky, furrowing her brows.
"My body... it's... ghnn... Aaaagghhhhhhh!!!"
"Infinite-layered spells." Said Grimhild, impassive as ever.
"Gaaaaahhhhhhhhh!!" Merlin screamed even louder now as lightning surged from her body from some sort of mana strain.
"Arcanium allows you to copy any spell that you see and modify it instantly, returning it back to the caster even faster than them. But I found a weakness."
Merlin spasmed in the sky until her spell, Flonta, was disabled, sending her plummeting into the terrain below.
"Spells disguised inside other spells." Said Grimhild, hovering toward Merlin. "The spell, Rozen Almadius, that you copied, was layered by infinite other spells that I created throughout our battle to take you down."
Merlin grit her teeth, looking up at Grimhild with wide eyes.
"Y-You created infinite spells in our fight??"
"And all of them are curses, specifically meant for you."
Merlin continued to spasm in pain.
"I-Impossible... that's something only the Yorgana System can do!"
"I've already told you, the Yorgana System isn't the source of my strength, child."
Merlin clenched her teeth hard enough until one chipped off.
"No... I can't... be defeated like this!"
"There are many weaknesses to the Arcanium. Even if you could modify and copy those infinite spells of mine, I would've found another way to defeat you. It was only a matter of time."
"Curse you... curse you, Master!"
"I'm not the one who's cursed." Said Grimhild, mocking the endless curses placed on Merlin's body.
"What will happen to me?" Asked Merlin, visibly terrified.
"The curses I placed on you are anti-magical barriers embedded deep into your soul. Each one is more potent than the last. If you manage to untangle and destroy one of the curses, the next one will be even more complex and deeper than the last, indefinitely."
Merlin widened her eyes.
"N-No!"
"You'll never be able to use magic again."
"Y-You can't do this to me... you can't!!"
"You'll become even worse than a Kaizamei." Muttered Grimhild, gazing at Merlin. "You'll have nothing. No mana, no Antimana, only your pathetic will."
Merlin, still spasming in pain from the sealing of her mana, grit her teeth until a painful grin crossed her face.
"If I can't have my magic... then you can't have your freedom!"
Agnes, now hovering in the sky, stared at their battle from afar as she became smug.
"How sad, Merlin's plan failed... but Plan B seems to be initiated." Inhaling from her pipe, the Witch of Chaos chuckled. "This should be interesting."
"Now!" A spirit with a golden halo and clothing fit for a goddess descended from a portal in the sky.
"It's time for sweet revenge!" Another spirit came from the sky, wearing Greek clothing with flaming hair.
"It's time for Plan B." Another spirit; an androgynous boy with feminine clothes surrounded by frost also came from above.
It was Illumina, Blaze, and Frost.
All of them under Merlin's orders.
Grimhild widened her eyes, glancing at them from above.
"...So this is your contingency, Merlin."
Merlin lay broken on the cracked floor, spasming as the curses bound deeper into her soul.
Yet a twisted grin crawled across her bloodied face.
"You... can't kill me, Master... I've planned for this situation!"
Illumina raised her hand. Blaze's flames roared skyward like a sun reborn. Frost's frigid aura crystallized the very air into frozen shards.
"Triune Convergence—" Said Illumina
"Of Dominion and Seal!" Finished Blaze.
Frost whispered the final invocation.
"Apex Oikioma."
At once, their powers aligned.
Three Magic Circles ignited in the sky, each a symbol etched in light, fire, and frost.
Slowly, they joined together into a vast sigil that appeared as a massive triangle drawn across the sky.
But then, unlike mere geometry, the triangle did not close. Instead, each point folded reality inward, bending distance itself until space within was no longer space, but a prison.
A second layer spun over it, then a third.
Triangular planes overlapped endlessly, each layer reinforcing the last until what hovered above the battlefield was no longer a figure of lines, but a Paradox Prism.
Grimhild felt its weight immediately.
"Eguhalvor." Attempting to eradicate it did nothing.
Her power was no match.
The black flames she conjured fizzled against the translucent walls, their essence trapped, folding back on themselves and annihilating themselves into stillness.
"This is..." Grimhild muttered as her brows furrowed. "A dimensional closure... no, worse."
Illumina's voice came from above the Prism, solemn and cold.
"The Paradox Prism. A technique created by Merlin and Agnes, with the power to banish all things into the Oneireic!"
Grimhild's impassive expression wavered, albeit for a moment.
"Into the Oneireic? The End of all Dreams?"
Beyond the Hortus and the Atamon plane was the Oneireic; the subconscious of the Great Silence where all of its dreams vanish into nothingness.
Nothing could survive it.
"Agnes…" Grimhild turned to the sky to face her sister up above, watching with a smug look on her face. "If you believe this will hold me, then you know nothing of what I truly am."
"You're simply another Atamon, like me." Said Agnes.
"I'm more than what meets the eye." Responded Grimhild.
Agnes' smug smile deepened, though her pipe trembled slightly in her hand.
"Bold words, when you're about to be banished into the Oneireic."
And so the seal wrapped around Grimhild, seizing her completely.
Grimhild's final words echoed, though no lips moved.
"Let it be known, that this isn't my end. When I return, I will find you, sister."
And then—she was gone.
The Prism shattered into light as a gaping wound was left in spacetime, slowly closing in on itself.
Merlin smiled weakly as the spirits hovered around her, triumphant but weary.
The battlefield was scarred, bloodied, and broken.
Agnes exhaled a long stream of smoke, gazing at the empty space where her sister had been.
"At last, the Witch of Destruction is banished. The script can now continue without an eraser. You fought well, sister."