Amarena skidded to a stop inside the crater where Halie lay, her form demonized almost beyond recognition.
She was in war form, and while she knew it wasn’t the best thing for her endurance, she wasn’t about to underestimate her teacher. Not while she doubted that she would last long enough for the others to make it from the lake.
"Halie, stop!" Amarena barked as her teacher stood.
Halie assud a top-heavy, forward stoop, her left arm growing to match her outsized right.
"Mrrrnaah..." she panted heavily, a long, thick, whip-like tail covered in cruel, slashing scutes arcing behind her.
Their eyes t.
Halie’s eyes were still hers, nestled amidst now-black sclera. But they were filled with a fire Amarena knew all too well.
Wrath. It seed to fill the air with its oppressive demand that she confront it. Fight it. Acknowledge it.
That she make it the core of her world and her expression in this mont.
Sothing felt... wrong. Familiar, and wrong.
Rena froze in shock as the realization struck her. Her teacher’s form was becoming like her mother’s. What she felt was the sa wrath, but also the sa aura of command her mother had exuded.
"Fight . Fight with . Or run away. But the day you run, you are no longer my daughter..."
The words echoed up from the past and made her doubt. She rembered a field in Hell, her mother standing across from her. Challenging her like she had so many, many tis before. Trying to see if what was weak could beco strong...
Halie’s fist struck Amarena at that mont, sending her flying back until she righted herself enough to rake her reinforced claws into the ground and scrape to a stop.
She barely caught sight of the flash of a closing portal before she leaped away, Halie’s next punch cratering the ground where she had been.
Her teacher landed heavily in front of her, punching and slashing, any trace of refined combat discarded for pure, demonic fury.
Swearing, Rena dodged a series of attacks that pushed her closer to a group of demons in reserve, who seed too confused to pick a side as they ran to get out of the way.
Above her, Kir and Satanos did battle with forces far beyond any Amarena understood, carving lines in the clouds and land alike. One such line almost hit her as she rolled away from a portal-delivered punch, only to have to burst away with her mavenry a half-second later.
Every mont was filled with strikes and blocks and dodges. Amarena called out to Halie whenever she could, but the spark of recognition, even of her own na, never grew. Not in the face of unrelenting wrath. Her own frustration grew so much that she found herself shouting "I thought you were better than this!"
Halie did not miss the chance to strike as she pulled Amarena by the tail through a portal before whipping her in the direction of a cluster of soldiers.
Their bodies broke Amarena’s fall, and she grabbed up a shield - arm and all - to block the follow-on strikes that Halie sent after her.
As soon as she had her feet under her, Halie closed the distance.
"Don’t make destroy you!"
Those words seed to get through to her.
Halie paused, glaring down at Amarena.
"Fghhhh... mhhh..."
Is she trying to speak?
"Fghhhh... mhhhhh..."
"We don’t have to fight!" Amarena cast down the shield, but she sensed it. The gaze of her teacher, on her swords. The mont she reached across herself, touching their handles, she knew what Halie wanted.
This was a fight to the death. Only absolute victory would present even a chance for rcy.
That was why Valrians trained so hard to fight, not just to redeem the once-empire that was destroyed. Not just to find strength in the high-ideals that Valria had failed to live up to, and in so doing inviting destruction from Kainur Satanos’ son, Crulae. But so that they could survive to do the right thing, for rcy was given forth only from the power to do otherwise.
Halie drew Patience and Ti. They had never felt heavier in her hands than in that mont, but once she set herself to the fight, she took the breath she needed to steel herself.
"I am Knight Justiciam Amarena... Wrath Daughter. Demon. Your student, and your friend." Amarena pushed her mana into her body, beyond the defensive limits she’d held until that point. "Let the duel comnce."
This ti, it was Amarena who closed with her teacher. A dual-handed claw strike ca at her from both sides, and she blocked Halie’s palms with the edges of her blades, forcing her back as she split her hands down the palms.
The mont she withdrew her palms, Halie’s wounds sealed, her hands growing a layer of tough, thick scales.
But Amarena didn’t give her teacher any more ti to recover. She stepped within her reach, slashing, carving. Doing what she could to avoid fatal blows as she sliced for tendons, muscle - any bit of soft-looking flesh beca a target.
And yet, everywhere she struck, the flesh would nd. The tendons would string themselves together. And in their place, Halie’s features would grow more demonic. Her skin hardened and split into scales. Her fingers regrew with longer, sharper claws. Her face was the only thing about her that seed original, even if her teeth were sharp and her forehead was dominated by the red, pulsing horn of crystal that was Amarena’s birthright.
It’s like I’m carving her away, bit by bit...
It hurt. Demon Lord, it hurt to kill soone she cared for like a second mother.
"Strength is the result of pain. Justice is a result of strength. Therefore, to be just is a relationship to pain. Giving it. Experiencing it." Halie’s words echoed in her head. "Grow too distant from pain, and you will soften. Grow too close to it, and you will harden. Just as overtraining in one way will rip your body apart, undertraining will leave you vulnerable."
"I know this already," Amarena had replied then. "What’s the point of saying it over and over again?"
"I will say it until you understand that just as you have given your wrath a place, so to you must give pain, weakness, and strength places of their own. You wish to dance your blades, no? Would you do it with one hand tied down by a weight while the other is enspelled against gravity?"
"Of course not. That would be unbalanced."
"Sotis imbalance is necessary."
"But you just implied-"
Halie had smiled then. Like a big, clever bearfox. "You’ll figure it out. We have ti..."
How long ago had that been?
It felt like so little ti, looking back.
And now she was here, killing her teacher to save people who didn’t care about her; who had been forced to tolerate her in deference to Halie’s power.
And now, there was no ti.
It was enough to make a frustrated scream surge out of Rena’s throat as she flung her body into the cascading steps of a dance that was not a dance, but a desperate cyclone of wrath, thrown in the face of impending loss.
Shut cut back Halie’s hands as they reached through portals. Slashed at a chest armored in demon scales. Flowed into tendon-rending strikes that staggered her teacher. And when she ca to rest before the hulking form of the woman who had tempered her wrath into justice, holding both swords against her throat...
"I can’t..." She couldn’t end her life. It was too much. Too cruel. She’d lost one mother to the Heavenswar, and now she’d put herself to the task of killing another? Where was the justice in that? The strength?
Her wrath fled her.
Halie stood, looming over Amarena. The backlash from using her abilities too much had already drained what little color remained in Amarena’s hair, leaving it a stark white. She let her warform drop, and her swords the mont after.
Her teacher wrapped both hands around her body, lifting her off the ground as all resistance fled from Amarena’s thoughts.
"Mrrrnnnnaah..." the Demon Breaker growled.
If this was what it ant to be strong... why had she ever tried?
A wrath unlike any Amarena had ever felt suffused her. Sothing cold at its core but burning at its edges, a tenuous wrath like a string wound too taught. The very core of her being, weakened by its own strength. And in a last, frustrated cry, Amarena let it all out.
Her arms were pinned, but Halie had brought her close.
"Halie you fucking hypocrite!" she shouted, slamming forward in a headbutt that brought their skulls slamming together.
And the heartstone that had pierced Halie’s forehead pierced Amarena’s too, annihilating the world in a white flash of pain.
And inside that pain, Amarena found herself once more on the plains of the Wrathlands, the distant volcanoes of Hell disgorging their heat in the distance.
But in front of her was the back of a woman she’d longed to truly talk to for years.
Leviathan, Duke of Wrath.
Her mother.
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