[Malachi Novastia.]
We swung back and forth, our blades clashing with power strong enough to tear through space itself.
He brought his sword down in a burning arc, flames cascading toward me, and I leapt back as a wave of fire surged after.
Instantly, I weaved left and blasted forward, wrapping darkness around my blade.
He ducked and swung up, but not before I spun and dragged my weapon across his back.
He stumbled forward, and I conjured a spear of shadow and lunged, but he crushed it with a fiery palm, grabbed my arm, and slammed me down hard.
Before I could even react, a pillar of fire erupted, soaring toward the stars. I barely escaped in time.
Malachi rose into the air as the flames burned out. I brushed the ash from my armor and looked up as he raised his blade.
A wave of blood burst from his swing, reaching me before a heartbeat could pass.
I met it with my blade, countering just in time and deflecting the crimson force to the side.
Wanting to avoid harming any bystanders, I launched into the sky and swung at his flank.
He blocked, but the impact sent him flying into the distance, and in the next instant I was already above him, swinging down again.
He dodged left, and I crashed into the ground, just as he drove a kick into my back.
Looking up again, I saw it: a massive dragon of blood and flame coiling above his raised hand.
"Dark Dragon of Blood and Fire!" he roared as it moved.
I cursed. The beast tore through time and space to reach me, and I barely had time to raise my blade.
My body spiked with pain as the world itself trembled beneath my feet. This bastard, he didn't care if the world was destroyed?
Realizing I'd have to shift the fight elsewhere, I sighed. As the spell pushed me back, I sensed him swinging behind me.
Thinking fast, I spun and grabbed his neck, letting his own spell fly past and hit him.
At the same time, I shifted the entire world around us.
Sky, earth, space, air, and time itself bent and changed.
We now stood on a vast, infinite beach beneath a black ocean with crashing waves.
Above us, countless stars lit the sky, radiating a piercing blue light that pelted us with velocity far beyond comprehension.
Madikai looked around, seemingly unbothered by the shift. Of course he wasn't scared.
He didn't care about the stakes of this fight at all. His arrogance and calm irritated me.
When beings of our caliber clash, we're meant to contain the destruction within barriers of mana, but he didn't care about that either, nor the casualties of his fellow soldiers.
Madikai was a madman, and his aura proved it.
Waves of madness and wrath poured from him, and I only just managed to push out my own to shield the others from his presence.
But it was his eyes I hated most, eyes that shimmered with power so potent they made my skin crawl.
"This is your inner world?" he said, stepping forward. "Peaceful. Reflects your timid nature."
"Timid nature?" I chuckled, low and bitter. "Yeah. I guess you could call it that."
He shifted his gaze to the stars, as if reminiscing. "Hold your blade with might, little darkness. You're about to die."
His sword flickered, reflecting a blood-like light. I ducked, and the space between us shattered as his strike sent me tumbling across the ocean's surface.
I looked up and bent back just as his foot soared past my face.
Reaching out, I seized his ankle and slammed him deep into the water.
I jumped as he sank, then spun my fingers to create a swirling mass of darkness, spreading it across the ocean in an instant.
But to my surprise, his blade carved across my chest. My armor split. I flew backward. He caught me midair and hurled me skyward.
Hurtling through the air, I barely managed to halt his next attack. His blade lunged, and I parried, then kicked him away.
A barrage of blood orbs came next, followed by a fireball that slammed into me.
I pushed out a wave of darkness, resisting the blaze as I plummeted back down.
Above, a giant spear of flame and blood materialized. Madikai looked down with a smug grin, watching me struggle.
I hadn't wanted to use my Regalia so early, especially if he was still holding back, but I didn't have a choice.
The spear screamed through space and time, shaking the foundations of my inner world. Blood welled in my throat.
But through the agony, I reached outward, grasping at the raw truth of his desires, his wishes, hopes, and dreams.
And I stopped.
The spear drove straight through me… only for the world to ripple. No, his desire had been reversed. Now it was his chest that was pierced.
His eyes widened as he plummeted to the sand, crashing so hard it turned the shore to glass before shattering.
I descended after him and lowered my blade to his throat.
"You're just not strong enough," I said, calm but firm. "Train harder, and maybe you'll reach my feet someday."
He smirked. "Your power is… strange. I'll admit, you surprised me, little darkness."
He tried to move, but I raised my hand. Pillars of darkness lanced through his limbs, pinning him to the sand.
"I'd rather not kill you. Who knows when that power of yours might be needed," I murmured.
"But you're too dangerous. You'd bring ruin to everything if left unchecked."
I raised my blade. "For that, I have to erase you."
My sword fell, and rewriting my entire understanding of the world, the impossible happened.
It wasn't his neck that split open.
It was mine.
The wound sealed instantly, but he had vanished. In the next moment, pain tore through my back, a blade had pierced me again.
He pulled the blade out just as quickly and began to laugh.
I dropped to one knee, coughing blood, and turned to see him staring at me curiously.
"Strange. I thought that power of yours would work against mine," he said, calm and amused. "Oh well. I suppose you die now."
Stories of his Regalia are known across the world. The name of the power he boasts so boldly, so arrogantly.
He raised his sword and smiled. "I assume you've heard of my Regalia, Mad God: Sekhmet."
In ancient tales whispered through the veils of time, there was spoken of a creature so vast and terrible that no world could hold him.
To bind him and the other Great Old Ones, beings of endless chaos and cosmic horror, a realm was wrought beyond all measure.
Not a prison forged of stone or iron, but a place where space unravels and time folds upon itself, stretching into an infinite expanse without beginning or end.
A realm that exists beyond all realities, where the laws of existence twist and dissolve, crafted to shackle those whose power defies comprehension.
It is this terrible legend that his Regalia draws upon, a manifestation of the Mad God's relentless fury and boundless pain.
Madikai was a monster, through and through, every ounce of him steeped in darkness and cruelty.
He raised his blade slowly, deliberately, as if carving his presence into the very core of my soul.
Around us, the world I had forged with my own power, my sanctuary, began to unravel.
Flames licked through the edges, burning away the landscape and eroding my mind with equal ferocity.
A searing pain blossomed inside my skull, overwhelming and infinite.
It clawed at my sanity, threatening to tear my screams into the void, but I forced myself to hold steady.
And amidst that unbearable torment, his laugh echoed, cold, cruel, and unyielding.
Then his sword moved, slicing through the shattered remnants of my realm.
"Flogo's Insanity," he as cold as ice.
In an instant, the fragile boundaries of my world shattered.
We drifted suspended, weightless, caught between fractured shards of space and time.
In that vast, endless void, the space beyond all reality, his blade found me.
It pierced through flesh and spirit alike, and my eyes bled crimson as horrific visions of ancient monsters and maddened demons swirled in my mind, clawing at the edges of my sanity.
His hand rose slowly, tracing a chilling path across my face, his touch both intimate and terrifying.
"It will be alright, little darkness... You'll find peace soon enough," he murmured, voice dripping with false comfort.