Steel rings against steel. Sparks burst across the battlefield as Gobuka staggers back, blood streaming from his severed arm. His breath comes in ragged, wet gasps, yet his eyes fix on the spectre before him.
Before him looms the Sword Ghost. Cloaked in tattered shadows, its blade moves with an eerie grace, each and every strike too precise, too fluid, as if death itself leads a dance. Soldiers who dare step close fall instantly, their throats cut before they even see the blade move. For Gobuka, the universe condenses into this single, implacable enemy.
He adjusts his grip on his sword, his one remaining hand tightening until the leather of the hilt groans. "Even with one hand…" he spits, blood flecking his lips. "I'll cut you down."
The featureless grey mask tilts. Then the Sword Ghost flows into motion, a blur that defies physics.
Gobuka instinctively blocks the first strike. But then the ghost's arm twists, lengthening, splitting into writhing tentacles. Steel whips from every angle. Gobuka counters desperately, parrying some, but not all. Failed defences carve into his armour, drawing fresh streams of blood.
Gobuka fights with desperate, grinding skill. Razor-tipped shadows slip past his guard, not just cutting, but unmaking his armour, reducing it to scrap metal and painting his body with deep, weeping gashes.
His vision swims, darkening at the edges. The Sword Ghost dissolves into a wisp of black smoke. Agony, cold and sharp, erupts from his back as a blade punches through his chest plate. Before the scream can leave his throat, a second sword flashes, and his other arm severs cleanly.
"AGHHHHH—!"
His cry cuts short as he collapses to his knees, a fountain of blood arcing from both shoulders. Yet, the fire in his eyes doesn't die. He clamps his jaw around the hilt of his fallen sword. Using it as a crutch, he forces his broken body to stand, swaying and staggering. He drags himself forward, gripping his blade with his teeth.
The Sword Ghost simply observes him, a warrior unbending even in the face of death.
With a final, muffled roar around the steel in his mouth, Gobuka charges. It is a pathetic, lurching stumble. The Sword Ghost doesn't even bother to properly dodge. It simply raises its blade for the final, contemptuous strike.
From afar, Julie's eyes widen in horror. She sprints, hurling daggers that whistle through the air. But the Sword Ghost ignores them, its sword already descending.
"GOBUKA! NO!"
Julie's scream is raw, torn from the deepest part of her soul.
The sound is wet and final. Gobuka's head topples from his shoulders, his body crumpling to the churned mud.
Julie collapses, her scream choking into silence. Grief swallows her, but beneath it, a darker flame rises. Hatred. The hunger to kill. Her heart pounds so violently that it shakes her body. Her eyes shut, and when they open again, she is no longer on the battlefield.
She floats in a void of perfect nothingness. No sound, no light, no feeling. This is the inside of her soul. And at its centre hovers a crimson sphere, pulsing faintly. Drawn by instinct, Julie drifts toward it. When her fingers brush the surface, golden energy surges out of her body, pouring into the sphere. It spins, glowing brighter, until its light becomes blinding.
Her eyes snap open. She is on her knees on the battlefield. She sees Gobuka's headless corpse, yet her chest feels… empty. 'Why? My mind tells me I should cry or feel something like anguish, rage, sorrow… but something is blocking it.'
Her gaze drops to her hand. A red haze coils around her fingers. 'What…is this?'
The answer comes not as a thought, but as a cataclysm. A seizure of pure agony drops her. Blood streams from her nose, her ears, the corners of her eyes. It feels as if her very DNA is being rewritten, her soul reforged in a crucible of pain. Her body rejects the divine power, then violently adapts to it. When the pain passes, she rises. Her mind is preternaturally clear, a glacier of focused intent. The knowledge is absolute.
'I am the master of the Godhood of Slaughter.'
She walks to Gobuka's body, her steps unnervingly precise. She kneels by his corpse. "Gobuka… your sacrifice will not be in vain. I swear it. The one who took you from us… will not exist any longer." Her voice is a flat, resonant monotone devoid of any emotion.
She pulls up her hood and ties a mask over her face, becoming an anonymous instrument of oblivion. She draws a dagger, and the crimson haze coils around it, enhancing the blade, making it a weapon fit for a master of slaughter.
She takes a single step and vanishes.
She reappears thirty paces away. In the path between her old and new position, a score of enemy soldiers stand frozen for a microsecond before their bodies slide apart into geometrically perfect sections. The red haze around her thickens, pulsing with newfound strength. 'Hmm…the more I kill, the stronger I become.'
She is no longer a simple mortal. She is a force of nature, a localised extinction event. Her form flickers across the battlefield, and with each reappearance, a pocket of Seb-ath's army ceases to exist.
She is searching for his killer. Through the chaos, she finally finds her target.
The Sword Ghost is calmly executing another squad. Julie ceases to be in one place and appears directly in front of him, her enhanced dagger meeting its sword.
Suddenly, the Sword Ghost splits into many ghosts, surrounding Julie from every direction. They all attack her at the same time.
Julie blurs, her dagger glowing red as her haze surges outward, carving through two of the phantoms. They dissolve into smoke, but three more slash at her back, shoulders, and sides. Sparks light the field as she counters, each strike tearing chunks of earth and spraying stone shrapnel across friend and foe alike. Soldiers nearby stop fighting, terrified of being caught between them.
The Sword Ghost's whisper echoes from all directions. "You cannot kill what has no body. Your rage and effort are meaningless."
Julie grits her teeth, her haze thickening until it writhes around her like living tendrils. She spins, crimson arcs splitting the ground into trenches that swallow enemy troops. "Then I'll kill you a thousand times until you stay dead!"
The phantom blades converge. Julie vanishes, reappearing above, her dagger descending like a scarlet comet. Her strike rips through the field, an explosion of haze and fire splitting the soil for dozens of meters. Dozens of Seb-ath's soldiers are obliterated in the blast.
When the dust clears, the Sword Ghost still stands. No longer cloaked in rags, its body twists; blades sprout like skeletal wings, its arms stretch into writhing tentacles of steel. Its form wavers between solid and smoke, its presence pressing down on the battlefield like the weight of death itself.
Julie's chest heaves. Her hands tremble not from fear, but fury. Gobuka's rolling head flashes in her memory.
She inhales sharply, her haze flaring brighter. The red mist spreads across the ground like wildfire, feeding on the blood-soaked soil. Every corpse, every wound nearby bleeds into her power, thickening the haze until it coils around her arms and dagger like living serpents.
The Sword Ghost strikes. A dozen blade-tentacles crash down at once, cutting trenches, uprooting trees, tearing boulders into dust. The battlefield becomes unrecognisable, with smoke, ashes, and shattered stone. Julie darts between them, vanishing and reappearing in flashes of red. Each time, her dagger clashes with its blades, sparks igniting like stars.
She lunges, her dagger glowing like a burning sun. It catches her blow with crossed swords, the impact blasting a shockwave that hurls soldiers hundreds of feet back. Both combatants slide across the ruined field, carving trenches with their feet.
For the first time, the Sword Ghost staggers. Its shadow-body flickers, unstable. Julie's haze coils tighter, sharper, hungrier.
Her eyes gleam crimson as she whispers, her voice cold as steel. "Gobuka… this is for you."
Then she vanishes, reappears within the ghost's guard, and her blade descends with all the rage, sorrow, and slaughter the battlefield has fed her.
The Sword Ghost staggers, then dissolves into smoke, into nothing. All that remains are its two swords and its cleaved mask, clattering to the ground.
Julie stands amidst the carnage, the haze around her now a visible, swirling shroud of condensed vengeance. She inhales, the act feeling like a forgotten custom.
"Gobuka… your vengeance is complete."
---
In the centre of the battlefield,
The air crackles with power. Amazel stands her ground, staff raised high. Across from her, Seb-ath looms, a giant monster in green, scaled armour.
Amazel attacks first.
"Glacial Lance!" she shouts. A spear of solid ice shoots from her staff, flying straight for Seb-ath's chest. It hits with a loud CRACK and shatters into a thousand pieces. The ice does nothing. His scales are too hard.
Seb-ath roars and charges. He is surprisingly fast for his size. His giant claws swipe at her, aiming to cut her in half. But just before he reaches her, Amazel vanishes. She reappears twenty feet away.
"Lightning Strike!" she yells. A bolt of white electricity slams down from the sky onto Seb-ath's back. It makes him stumble, and smoke rises from his armour, but he shakes it off and turns toward her again. But again Amazel disappears and appears twenty feet away.
Every time he gets close, about to crush her with his strength, she disappears and reappears somewhere else, already casting another spell.
Seb-ath grows angrier. He is powerful, but he cannot catch her. She is quick, but she cannot hurt him.
It is a total standstill. A frustrating loop of attack and defence. She cannot break his armour, and he cannot land a hit.
They are stuck.
But just before he reaches her, Amazel vanishes.
She reappears twenty feet away, her staff already glowing. "Firestorm!" she yells. A wave of fire rolls across the ground, engulfing Seb-ath in flames. He roars, not in pain, but in annoyance. He stomps through the fire, his scales glowing red-hot but completely unburned.
He is fast, but her magic is faster. He charges again, and again she disappears. This time, she appears behind him.
"Earth Spike!" Sharp pillars of rock erupt from the ground beneath him, trying to impale him. He leaps into the air with incredible power, avoiding the spikes and landing with a ground-shaking thud.
He is getting smarter. Instead of charging blindly, he swipes his massive tail. It sweeps the area in a wide arc, too fast for her to dodge on foot. She has to teleport again, appearing high in the air.
"Gale Force!" she screams, pointing her staff down. A tornado of wind slams into Seb-ath, pressing him down. He digs his claws into the earth, fighting against the powerful gust, but he is pinned for a moment.
It is her chance. She gathers all her energy. "Lightning Strike!" A massive bolt of pure white lightning shoots from the clear sky, hitting him directly on the head.
The explosion of light and sound is deafening. For a second, Seb-ath is hidden by smoke.
Amazel lands, breathing heavily. The smoke clears.
Seb-ath is still standing. A black scorch mark mars his head scales, and he shakes his head as if dizzy. But his eyes glow with pure, furious rage. He is hurt, but not beaten.
He lets out a ground-shaking roar that promises violence. The real fight is just beginning.