Source Origin(32)

He didn't know where they came from, but either way, there were golden flames shooting at him, circling and concentrating onto the middle, further enhancing their already great destructive force that the was expecting to hit his body at any moment now, eating away at his mana and life that he had tried so hard to preserve.

But not in the matter of killing him, no, he was in control of this place, that was truly the only advantage he had aside from magic, which was closely related to the surroundings anyways, and as such he knew already that he should be able to block the flames, that didn't scare him, he had never really been scared of fire, more so fascinated by it, that was one of the things that he knew already, even during his time where he saw the charred body of his parents, mauled, ripped apart, or at least that's what he remembered, hiding the truth, full of pain.

And just as he thought that, feeling a strange fascination with the flames, the very same thing that took the lives of one of his parents, though he didn't have the presence of mind, nor the will, to call for the knowledge of which one it was, he called for his well-known shield, a shield that was just as big and tall as before, taking the form of what he wished for right now, a wall to separate him from this being, made of bricks in this case, and it was quickly put in front of his face, catching the powerful flames that spread all around, further starting to devour and dissolve his mana, though his wall was not destroyed this time, instead standing tall and seemingly indestructible, one of his most priced skills when it came to magic now that he thought about it.

But suddenly, within the flames, burning brightly, though it may not be seen easily, there was a figure, powerful and resembling the posture of a berserk woman, a woman he knew far too well, and before he could even evade, before he could try and warp, the wall was kicked down, already weakened by the short span of time it had been attacked by the flames that had not been there to destroy as it seemed, but simply to allow their mistress to destroy in their stead.

And so she did, his wall fractured and he was thrown away, taking a few steps away, almost falling down as the woman was still luging at him, more than ready to take him down, cut his head off, stab his heart, puncture his lungs, break his bones, rip his skin, all things he did not desire in any way, shape, or form, all things he could not escape from when it came to this woman, all things he could not stop, the only thing he could do, the only thing he had the mind to think off right now was to cut her, to slice her, to do to her what happened to him.

Cades barely had the presence of mind, not his real mind, but his subconsciousness to think of warping himself away further, towards the right, but not before he remembered to slice into this unstoppable monster that reminded him of the creature he had faced on that flying island, before that endlessly big wall, the creature that had killed the only other person he had ever met in the realm of... well.. nowhere, as far as he knew, but not before he managed to do something his consciousness, burning and full of panic he could not stop, told him to do something else, told his body to react as she was doing, as the woman was fighting, to cut her with his blade that was still within his left hand, held in only one, weakening him further than he should be able to cut with, a small habit he had probably picked up on due to losing one of his arms.

Before he was pulled away by what little sense of normalcy and strategy he had left, deep within his subconsciousness, he cut the woman with his sword, barely, he did not even have the sense to realize it, but he cut her belly, separating some of the cloth into two, parting it but quickly having it reassemble, the flesh just as the cloth, though Cades was unable to see the skin reform, taking longer to regenerate than the cloth by a wide margin, a margin Cades only came to realize upon a bit later.

No, perhaps he wouldn't realize it at all, perhaps he would realize it only when she was about to kill him and end his life in which he had strived for nothing more than to survive, in this short life where he had never even felt how the air outside this mysterious place, this place which was most likely deep within the original, or perhaps the other Cades, or perhaps even an amalgamation of both, he didn't really know, and he didn't really care either.

His mind was in shambles, perhaps a trick of the beast, perhaps a show of his own weakness after experiencing real pain, the feeling of being stabbed, for the first time, perhaps a sign of being surrounded by those incomprehensible monsters his mind and even his eyes refused to acknowledge right now, perhaps just a confused state, but none of that mattered right now.

Standing a good few dozen feet away he turned around, ready to face the woman but instead witnessing her as she stood still, not running anymore, moving slowly towards him, heaving her hand up, causing him to expect her to shoot the accursed, unknown, golden tendril once more and try to penetrate his body with it.

What happened next was something he knew only too well, something he knew very well from most fights he had been in, a stream of lightning that shot towards him, powerful and thick, one that he knew should be met with either his sword, as he had absolved the other him's lightning, or his very own lightning.

The first one was out of the question, it had only worked because his and the other him's mana were similar in nature, something that he felt would change after he passed the trials in any way, so he could only meet the attack with his own lightning.