Alexandra moves like she finally tore off whatever mask she used to pretend she was normal. Gone is the small girl who spoke quietly to me back in the training room. Gone is the restraint. She's laughing shrill, manic and feral as she tears the throne room apart around me.
Bone erupts in every direction, shredding the stone tiles, pulverizing broken columns, turning the entire room into a field of jagged, murderous white thorns. She isn't aiming to scare me or end the test. She's aiming to butcher me.
Lucian and Brutus are nowhere in sight only a massive hole carved through the far wall. Stone dust still floats in the air. They must've gone straight through it, god damn psycos.
I don't have any hope that Lucian will win.
Lucian… survives through cleverness. Through manipulation. Through support and teamwork. His mark is the ultimate utility in a cohort but it doesn't give him the raw, brutal power he needs to outfight a monster like Brutus in close quarters.
He's probably being pulverized, I think grimly as I jerk my body sideways, barely dodging another spike of bone ripping up from the floor.
That is the last thought I spare him though.
Because Alexandra is trying to fucking kill me.
And Ala that silent, vicious, fluid bitch keeps phasing in and out of existence, slashing with her blade every time she becomes solid enough to strike. I feel the displacement of air before every hit. The shift of temperature. The faintest ripple in the air.
My senses and the use of Cains battle art Aether flow keeps me from being skewered outright but it's a losing battle.
The world around me is still white and black my Fearmonger mark tinting everything in stark contrasts but this time, flashes of random, violent color bleed through it. Bursts of red, gold, ugly green, as my bloodlust claws at the edges of my mind threatening my control.
My vision flickers. It's like the world can't decide how it wants to look.
I can't fucking keep up with the strain of the battle.
Left, the voices hiss.I twist but i'm not fast enough.
A bone spike scrapes across my arm, slicing skin open. Hot blood sprays.
Ala materializes to my right. I snap my arm out and redirect her dagger with a quick movement of my wrist Aether Flow guiding the angle exactly and then she's intangible again, slipping through my counter like mist.
I snarl in frustration.
Soft laughter blooms from nowhere as the blade phases back into reality and slashes across my ribs.
Pain blooms.
But she's gone again before I can retaliate.
Another spike erupts beside me. Alexandra's giggling fills the entire room high-pitched, broken, delighted.
"Come on, Ayatoooo," she calls mockingly "We've heard so much about you"
I don't bother responding. She can go fuck herself though.
I dodge another spike. And another. And another.
But it's getting worse. They're syncing, Ala timing her strikes between Alexandra's bone detonations. One drives me into the other. Every evasion drags me closer to a blow I can't fully avoid no matter if I see it coming.
One spike catches me in the shoulder.
I feel the bone tear through flesh, grind against the joint, scrape against bone.
I cry out in pain then grit my teeth as Ala materializes at the same moment, pivoting midair with inhuman grace. Her foot slams into my chest.
CRACK.
The world tilts.
I fly backwards, crashing into the empty throne. The chair doesn't just break it bursts. The stone fractures completely from the impact. It explodes around me as I hit the ground hard enough to see stars.
For a second, I can't breathe.
I stare at the ceiling, dazed, pissed off, too tired to even get up.
My shoulder throbs. My ribs feel crushed. My back screams in agony. The throne room is spinning.
Get up, the voices command.
I inhale through my teeth and then feel something shift inside my body. A slow, dragging pull. Knitted flesh. Grinding muscle realigning. Bone stitching itself back into place with the uncomfortable precision of Lucian's passive healing reaching me meaning he's alive and still fighting. The corner of my mouth twitches.
My head lolls to the side. Alexandra is approaching, twirling a long shard of bone between her fingers laughing still. Ala follows behind her.
The white-and-black world around me pulses again another sickening flash of color overwhelms my vision causing my head to pound.
My breath drags in and out, shaky, uneven. Not from fear.
From fury.
My fingers curl in the rubble.
I want to give up. Just lie here. Just stop. Just let it end.
But I can't.
Not out of pride, never out of something so useless and petty.
Out of realism.
Weakness is culled in the Academy. They don't punish it—they erase it. You quit, you die. You hesitate, you die. You fall, you die. I'm not allowed to stop. Even if I want to. Even if I'm tired. Even if I'm drowning in pain and frustration and exhaustion.
Anger rips through me raw and ugly. It fills my lungs like fire. Fills my veins like boiling metal. Fills my entire being with pressure so intense I think my head might fucking split.
The voices coil around the edges of my thoughts again hissing, slithering, wrapping like chains. No longer do we have merged wills, my weakness had allowed them to once again regain the upper hand around my mind.
No one should make you feel this way, one whispers. Why do you let them hurt you?Why do you let them stand above you? another asks
You are fear. You are death. You are their king their, god made flesh, another croons.
I shut my eyes.The world narrows.
"How many more…" I ask them "do I have to kill… to be free?"
Silence.
And then laughter.
Laughter that shakes my head from the inside. Laughter that vibrates through my teeth. Laughter that is and hungry and cruel.
A hundred, the voices answer gleefully.
A thousand, another hisses.
A million, one whispers like a lover.
A BILLION, they roar in unison, wrapping my mind in a suffocating blanket of hate.
What are they to your one?
I push myself up from the rubble. My back crackles as the last of the damage finishes healing. My shoulder throbs once more then steadies as torn muscle knit's shut. The room around me is all but gone.
Alexandra stops laughing as she sees me stand. Shock and bredruding respect flashing across her face. Ala also stops her eyes narrowing.
I laugh.
A low, quiet, cruel sound. Dust slides off my clothes. Blood covers my body from head to toe. My muscles burn. My bones ache. But still I stand.
The voices hiss in delight.
I meet Alexandra's manic red eyes and tilt my head.
"Well," I say, voice cracking into a dark, humorless hiss. "Round two, then?"
Her smile twitches. Ala tightens her grip on her blade.
But this time they are to slow. I don't even make motion.
I just stare into their eyes. And unleash my judgment.
The voices howl in triumph as my illusions find their targets.