A shockwave erupted from their initial clash, honed and sharpened hooks and claws meeting each other with the force to stir the winds. Pushing against each other, the dance between them finally began.
Artorias felt the bones in his body begin to vibrate; that's the only way he can describe it. The lightning in his chest feels like a powerful surge, a million different thunderbolts striking at his every nerve, igniting them to make him move faster, to make him think quicker.
At the start of their deadly dance, all he can do is react.
The chimera swipes and he clashes with it, pushing the poised claw away and avoiding another. He ducks and rolls through its lashing tail, avoids the morning star through a step in the shadows.
All he can do is dodge.
All he can do is consume more Spirit Energy.
All he can do is survive, and that's not working anymore.
So, Artorias does the only thing he knows how to do best, he adapts.
His mind goes blank, useless thoughts vanishing in the frenzy of quick movements and powerful strikes. The rigid barriers, the specific calculations to get the most out of his enhanced senses, melt.
His sixth sense becomes one with his mind, his sight and hearing feel like their rolling, tumbling uselessly. It makes him unbalanced for only a moment, but in a fight like this, a moment was akin to an hour.
Artorias pays the price for it, feeling his left arm burn with a sharp cut that instantly begins to bleed. The smell of iron mixes with the ozone, and its familiar, almost too familiar.
He can feel the blood roll down his skin, and it threatens to overwhelm his mind with a specific memory, a memory he's relived multiple times.
But his sight and hearing finally clear, and he no longer feels like he's about to drown. Artorias can feel his pupils physically widen, and his sight is no longer constricted by fast speeds and narrow views.
It expands and broadens to the point he can see the horizon in the distance.
The chimera is no longer just a set of body parts he has seconds to react against, but instead an entire body he can see clearly. His sight lost its ability to see the finer details but exchanged it to allow him to see the entire image.
It's a loss, he thinks, moving to avoid the morning star before it can get too close to him. But then, his hearing shifts and he no longer notices the wind produced by the chimeras strikes, or its screeches and growls, but its muscles.
They sound like millions of twisting, constricting metal cables. But some are weaker than others, and once they finally snap, the chimera moves.
He avoids the coming slash from its arm, steps around the swing of its tail, vanishes through the shadows to avoid a blast of putrid fire and jumps back once it turns its body to face him with another claw.
Its a lot of information to process, but his mind was empty of anything that wasn't necessary, infused with a shard of lightning itself and thinking at superhuman speeds.
It gave him the edge he had been missing, finally allowing him the chance to stand on equal footing with the chimera.
Artorias pulled one of the hell hounds' horns from his pocket, sliding it into his left hand just in time to meet the chimera in another dance.
Except this time, he was no longer just moving around its attack, he wasn't dodging and avoided but fighting back.
Chitin bit against chitin, and with a surge of Spirit Energy, he pushed against its claw. The chimera, not one to be outdone, met his strength with its own, easily overpowering him.
He didn't stand a chance from the very beginning, but it was all part of his plan. Because the chimera wasn't just thinking with its mind anymore, but with its bruised pride.
He fell onto one knee, his arm shaking from exertion as the abomination began to steadily overpower him. It growled a single note, its pride pushing it to show Artorias how inferior he was to it.
The shadows beneath his body lengthened, pooling into a dark puddle he could step into it. The chimera noticed it with gleaming eye, a mocking screech leaving its beaked mouth.
It recognised what he was about to do even through the pride blinding it.
Raising its left arm, the powerful claws shifted, growing smaller to allow it to create a fist. Just as Artorias fell into the shadow, it swung, a powerful hook filled with so much force and forward momentum that its entire body twisted with the attack.
The chimera turned with the swing, using its powerful legs to keep itself upright and lashed out with a hook that split the air.
Where it should have struck Artorias, breaking every bone in his body, it hit nothing but the concrete beneath its feet, shattering it and creating a large blanket of dust.
The chimera realised its mistake almost immediately.
It knew that Artorias needed to see a shadow to teleport through it, but there was something it didn't know. With his sight enhanced to allow him a greater field of view, his eyes could see not just everything in front of him, but also slightly behind him.
Which meant-
Artorias appeared like a wraith from its blind spot, using the fact it only had one eye to his advantage. The obsidian hook in his right hand pierced through scales, bone and flesh with little to no resistance, going directly into its side.
Using the momentum he had created, he pushed the hook in deeper, enforcing his shoulder and bashing into the chimera's side, making an even greater portion of the obsidian hook go in.
Black blood leaked from the wound, but he wasn't done.
With his body enhanced by the lightning in his chest, he gripped the curved hook that remained sticking out of the chimera's side, and with all his enforced strength, he pushed down.
It screeched in pain, whipping around in a panic induced haze and backhanding him away.
He heard something crack as he was sent flying with the bloodied hook in his hand. Landing with a roll, he pushed his healing factor to his face, feeling pain blood only a second later.
Looking up at the chimera, he tried to grin but could only grimace in pain.
It had definitely done some damage to him but so had he.
In the second he had to act, he had split the abominations side open like a snakeskin, making it part outwards before he was sent flying. His hooked claw had stayed buried deep inside of its body, so it had cut a little more before it was finally lodged out.
Now, the chimera was breathing heavily, its smaller arms uselessly gripping its loose skin together to try and attempt to slow the large streams of blood from leaking out.
They both knew it was a useless endeavour.
Artorias had cut through more than just its scales, he had pierced deeply, directly into its flesh before slashing and severing various arteries and veins on the way down.
With how much blood had initially sprayed out of its body from the first cut, and the amount which was steadily leaking out now, Artorias felt confident in saying that the chimera wouldn't have long to live.
Standing up from where he was kneeling, he rubbed his jaw, clicking it back into place with a pinch of pain, his healing factor resuming its work as he spoke.
"So? Was it worth it?" the chimera looked up from its wound, in its eye a ferociously burning hatred. "Tell me, are you finally starting to feel that regret?"
He met its single eye with a hatred of his own, Seirios' final moments flashing through his mind. He wanted it to feel its life slowly draining away like Seirios did, he wanted it in as much pain as it had caused Seirios.
There were multiple reasons for why he had wanted to fight this vile creature.
The most prominent of them all though, was his promise to Seirios.
Oh, he held his own special kind of hatred for this abomination, but his hatred had nothing to do with this battle. No, this battle was one entirely driven by revenge.
"You remember Seirios, don't you?" he asked, noting the malicious glee in its eye. "The one you broke with that tail of yours, the one you shattered with those twisted illusions of yours, you remember him, come on…answer me!"
The chimera growled at him, a hiss leaving its beak at his bellow.
It was all the acknowledgment he got.
"In his dying moments, he asked me to do something, he made a request…do you want to know what it was?"
The chimera stayed quiet, its arms tightening uselessly on its still bleeding wound. He could already see it pooling beneath its body, the smell of iron heavy.
"He asked me to kill you…his last moment on earth, and all he wanted was your death!" his voice shook as he screamed the last word out.
Because it made him boil inside with anger, it made him livid. Because his cousins final request shouldn't have been the murder of an abomination which had no right to exist.
It should have been something simple, like to water his garden or to look after his car, it should have been made when he was old, and he had lived his life surrounded by family.
The rage he felt threatened to consume him, but he held it back with all the mental strength he had, feeling tears beginning to pool in his eyes.
This was no longer an anger he was feeling at just Seirios' death, but also one he felt when he thought of Solthia, when he thought about the entire world in general.
He hated it.
But he couldn't allow it to consume him.
Not now.
"Any last words?"
The chimera stared at him in silence, its singular eye narrowed before it pushed its serpentine body up and looked at its open wound.
A familiar hiss and click came from its mouth, before the temperature suddenly spiked and a great breath of fire left its mouth, encasing the wound on its side along with its clawed hands and shaking body.
Artorias only had a moment to realise what it was doing.
'It's cauterizing itself!?'
He didn't hesitate to push off the ground, his body a streak of black as he jumped into the shadows, the horn and hook gleaming in the bright light created by the fire.