Ryougi vs Araya

Facing the mage, she closes her eyes and nods in understanding. “Now
I know,” she says sofly. “I don’t really want to kill you. It’s just that I can’
stand the thought of you existng.” Her last thoughts for Tomoe’s killer.
The scent of murder  is high  in  the air, and both Alaya and Shiki smel
it,  letng  it pass over their entrety  in one sweet  instant.  In the next, the
invisible signal for batle is given, and the duel begins.
A fash, then Shiki’s eyes open.
Alaya channels his mana into his outstretched hand, his motvatng force
n this fght not the confdence which infused him in previous conficts, but
nstead  the  rare, almost  foreign emoton  that gripped him  since he  saw
Shiki walking  the  lobby:  the emoton of dread. Which  is why he  feels he
must kill her here, now.
“SHUKU!”  he  roars  angrily,  clenching  his  hand  into  a  fst,  defning  a
space around Shiki that he would crush. The lag between the lorica and
he weaving of the spell is so small as to be nonexistent, and one castng of
t should be enough to dispose of the girl.
But Shiki is fast, antcipatng his spell. In a fash the sword is raised high
above her head, the speed blindingly fast. With the swifness with which
she raised her sword, she lets it fy downward in a vicious slash. The spell
manifests only for a moment, but Shiki kills it, just as surely as the ringing
sound of her blade cutng air seems to cancel out Alaya’s booming voice.
The mage  atempts  to  repeat  the  spell. He  need  only  open  his  palm
again, and  then  close  it. But  it  is  too  slow  for him  to  react properly. He
hasn’t even spoken, hasn’t even entered the spell’s weaving in his mind,
when Shiki displaces from her positon. She shifs the sword to her side at
waist level—a side stance that allows for wide swings—and sprints to her
arget. Before the fght, Alaya considered the loss of one ward to be accept-
able, thinking to take Shiki with the second. But now her blinding advance
eliminates  two of  the wards  in quick  succession;  two  steps  forward and
wo slashes swung gracefully from both fanks. And stll she advances. She
has just closed the previously six meter gap into zero. One more step, one
more breath, tmed with one more strike to end the game.
The sword comes from Alaya’s right fank, and he sees the blade fow in a
diagonal cut. Her speed almost seems to make tme fow in discrete events
ather than arbitrary measurements of seconds. The atack is similar to her
previous two blows, and its telegraphed nature allows Alaya to dodge it by
umping back deeper into the hallway, widening the distance between the
wo. A brief pause as the mage studies his opponent with a glance.
From Shiki’s lips, a single, straight line of fresh blood runs from mouth
o chin. But Alaya knows she has taken no blow yet. Then it must be yester-
day’s wound. The broken ribs, the internal organ damage. Stll in their frag-
le healing state, they must have been reopened, and even walking forces
blood from her throat. She is clearly injured, and yet she dances with such
single-mindedness. Alaya lets the right arm rest at his side.
That is, untl he realizes there is no more arm. From the top of his shoul-
der all the way to his right chest, the clear traces of a clean strike can be
seen, and on the foor lies his missing arm. His manipulaton of space made
the backstep he performed faster than any normal human, yet Shiki was
stll able to cut him with a strike so perfect that even the owner of the arm
never notced it untl afer the fact.
“What manner  of  creature—”  Alaya  leaves  the  queston  unfnished.
Unmindful of  the  injury, he  focuses on his enemy. The  strike could have
been  fatal.  If his  third ward had not been present,  the slash would have
dealt him a blow that would no doubt cut him in two. But it had instead
slowed down Shiki’s strike enough to save him. But Alaya is instead simul-
taneously fascinated by Shiki’s complete diference from the night of their
frst duel. Is it anger from what he did to Enjō? No, surely not. He narrows
his gaze at the girl in the white kimono.
Suddenly, she straightens herself and recovers a hand from the grip of
the sword, releasing her tensed stance, suddenly turning back into the girl
of last night. The recovered hand cups her mouth, and she coughs twice.
The hand drips regurgitated blood. If she did not have to fght such severe
wounds, Alaya ponders, she would give me no respite.
“You  change  with  the  weapon  you  hold,”  the  black-coated  mage
observes  in  astonishment.  It  is  the  reason  she  seems  so  diferent.  Her
extensive training in the dance of the sword changes her, forcing her into an
almost trance-like state. Her mind compartmentalizes much like, as Alaya
suspects, the past warriors did by training their mind to shape their bodies
as a weapon. The fght was killing and survival, outside  it was normalcy.
“Hmph. A form of autohypnosis, as mages do when working the Art,” he
muters, his voice struggling to hold back the pain from his right arm.
Shiki shrugs. “Whatever you wanna call it, I guess.”
Alaya curses his own dismissal of her sudden shif in demeanor. When
she opened her eyes; that’s when it must have occurred. To think the Ryōgi
dynasty would  stll  teach  such vulgar disciplines. He knew too that Shiki
bridging the space between them in what almost seemed like one step
was no coincidence. Her movement, the sway of her sword, her atenton,
all focused and refned to make her a deadly  living weapon, and she was
the only one who knew about it. He had thought her tools to be only the
Arcane Eyes of Death Percepton and her knife, but in truth, her skill with
the sword is far greater.
“You have fooled me, Shiki Ryōgi. I had thought you had revealed all you
could about your skill  in combat when you danced with Fujino Asagami.
But I see you have this one last trick.” Shiki shakes her head slowly in reply.
Whether it is an afrmatve or a disparaging negatve, Alaya can’t say. “And
so we meet properly at last,” he shouts as he pressed down on the gaping
wound of his former right arm.
The girl in the white kimono reveals a smile, the frst truly gentle smile
she has performed; a smile that signals the end. Returning to her original
hard posture, she runs toward Alaya like a loosed arrow. He knows that
Shiki can read him now, knows what to expect, and so he won’t be able to
dodge this next strike. But he won’t allow her to press the advantage so
easily, not here in his sanctum. He gambles his chances on meetng Shiki’s
advance. He steps forward, and shouts.
“DakatsU!”  In tme with this, Alaya raises his  lef arm  in an atempt
to block  Shiki’s  atack. He hopes  that  the  sarira—the  sacred  remains of
devout masters—embedded within, will ward away most of  the damage
the  slash will  infict.  Even  she will not  easily be  able  to  see  the  lines of
entropy. Shiki’s sword impacts his arm, and in an instant, Alaya can see that
the blow has been checked.
As  soon  as  he  realizes  this,  he wastes  no  tme  in  his  next move. He
animates his severed arm with an improvised working of the Art, making
the arm move toward Shiki with unnatural speed. It slithers along the foor
untl, when it nears Shiki, it springs up and grabs her by the throat, pressing
hard and choking her.
Shiki drops her  guard  at  the move  she  couldn’t  antcipate,  and Alaya
presses the advantage he has momentarily gained. He retreats one step to
pull back the lef arm that warded of Shiki’s previous atack, and extends
it again with open palm right in front of Shiki.
“Shuku!” He clenches his fst, and tghtens space yet again. Shiki feels
her  body  crumpling with  a  compelling  force  seeming  to  come  from  all
places at once, and an audible grunt of pain fnally escapes her  lips. The
leather jacket is torn away, and she is forced away from where she stood,
Alaya having manipulated the space to compress to a size far smaller than
it appeared to be.
At frst, Shiki actually  looks  like she will  fall hard to the foor  from the
atack, but she catches her footng just in tme. Quickly, she redoubles her
atack, the corridor funneling her into a singular path directly toward Alaya
again and again. For a moment, she seems to disappear from Alaya’s sight,
but she has only bent low and run fast toward him, getng under his guard
more quickly than he can react. The sword moves in a blur, and it instantly
strikes Alaya right in his center of mass.
The mage can feel his accumulated life ebbing away for only a feetng
instant. “Fool!” shouts Alaya as he atempts to deliver a kick towards Shiki’s
midsecton to ward her away. It’s an move easy to see, and so Shiki handily
dodges it by jumping widely to the side, but the blade slides out of its shal-
low cut as she moves.
Alaya now understands. If I want to stop her, the structure will have to
go with it! The mage opens his lef hand to crush space for the third tme.
Having  gained  some  distance  from  the  jump,  Shiki  easily  sees  the  spell
coming. A quick but violent slash prevents it from manifestng any further
around her. But afer the slash, she stands stock stll.
Alaya has completely vanished, black greatcoat and all.
Nothing I can do about whatever magic he uses to move around, thinks
Shiki. If he wants to run, I’ll let him run. She runs to the edge of the hallway,
with the view of the outside, and puts a hand on the railing as she casts her
eyes below to fnd her target.
But he’s not gonna get away this tme. Without hesitaton, Shiki  leaps
over the edge.
Away  from  Shiki,  Alaya  begins  to  crush  the  building  itself.  It  might
damage Shiki’s body, the same body he planned on using, but as long as
he can stll restore it to some semblance of a human functon, then let its
shape be damned. Even if the skull is shatered and the gray mater scat-
tered, it can be replaced. What maters to him is that the body not expire
completely untl he works upon it, so that he can tap the soul connected to
the spiral of origin.
The loss of his arm and the stab on his chest are nothing compared to the
ultmate goal, the ars magna to which he has struggled toward these many
years. As long as he reaches the spiral of origin, where everything begins
and ends, all is well. What he must do remains the same, only delayed now.
This seems to be the only opton now to prevent a stalemate between us,
Alaya thinks. Had I only killed her outright, it would not have come to this.
Stll, it has come, and I must close this chapter of her life.
Weaving  the Art  and  relocatng  him  through  space, Alaya  has  placed
himself in the garden outside the building, which as far as he is concerned,
feels like stepping out of his own body. He sees the greenery that surrounds
the building ofen, but it has been so long since he has set foot in it. Though
a  part  of  the  grounds,  the  dominatng will  of  his  subjectve  reality  that
strengthened him  so much  inside has  litle  efect here. Afer he emerg-
es  from his  relocaton, he wastes no tme. He  looks up  and  extends his
remaining arm skyward to point to the very top of the cylindrical structure,
opening his palm.
The next thing he knows, a vicious cut goes straight down and through
his lef shoulder.
The next thing he knew, a vicious cut went straight down and through
his lef shoulder.
“Shiki…Ryōgi,” he manages to gurgle out with difculty as he  looks up
at  the night sky. “You damned…fool of a woman.” He coughs, and blood
emerges red and blooming from his mouth. Not given a chance to land on
either himself or Shiki, the droplets of blood are carried away on the wind
only a  few  feet away, but now a distance he can no  longer  traverse. “All
this…impossible.”
Alaya had emerged in the grounds outside the building, looked up at
the structure to work his spell, only to meet the feetng sight of Shiki Ryōgi
falling rapidly from the tenth foor. Which means there was  litle  interval
between the mage’s weaving of his relocaton spell, and the girl’s thought-
less  descent  from  the  highest  foor  of  the  building.  What  confdence
possessed her at that moment, he will never know. He suspects he would
never be able to know. How could Shiki have known that he would appear
in the grounds outside? And even given this, who would even think to jump
of and think they would land safely? To aim and hit a lone man from that
height  at  that  nearly  uncontrolled  fall  is  an  act  that  has  gone well  past
recklessness and  into the realm of some miraculous foresight. As  if she’d
known.
And yet she did it. Without Alaya not having even completed the spell,
having not even manifested in the garden yet, she jumped and did it. And
at almost  the exact  same tme as he appeared, he was  struck by Shiki’s
blow.  The  arm  that  he  had  extended  upward  very  quickly  became  an
improvised  shield, but  it was not enough  to  stop  the  slash  from  landing
in his lef shoulder, reaching all the way to his abdomen. Even the arcane
shield that the sarira in his arm had aforded him was not enough to stop
the sheer force of it.
As  for  Shiki,  she  is unconscious  and  stll,  standing but  leaning on  the
blade inside Alaya’s body. Ironically, for all the defenses Alaya put up—his
arm, the protecton of the sarira, and the last ward that he had managed to
erect at the last moment—Shiki broke through all of them and they served
only to cushion her  fall. Without them, the  fall would have been  fatal at
worst, or aggravated her internal damage and killed her eventually at best.
Another miracle.
Her grip on  the sword  is tght as  rigor morts. Alaya’s brow clouds his
already anguished face as he looks upon the unconscious Shiki. “You were
prepared to risk it all on one gamble to kill me. No, if not through this, than
through another way, surely. You could kill me. Perhaps it was no risk at all.
It is a poor sight to see Sōren Alaya defeated by a neophyte such as you.”
His words this tme fnally ring without his previous posturing.
Alaya’s  lef  arm  is  virtually  severed,  and  the  right  is  long  gone.  The
mage, stll standing, kicks  the unconscious Shiki away, striking her chest.
Her body fies away from him and a few feet deeper into the grounds. But
Shiki contnues to cling tghtly to the sword hilt, even as  it  is stll embed-
ded in the mage’s body. So the blade, having also been weakened by the
impact of the fall, is now forced into two: one half remaining embedded in
Alaya’s body, and the other half  in Shiki’s possession.   And with that, the
four hundred years of its history come to an end.
Shiki, now collapsed on the garden soil, remains unmoving. Looking at
her with displeasure, he muters. “You lie there fnally wearing the look of
a girl your age.” The mage, too, is unmoving as his face grows dark. The last
bit of his energy has been expended in kicking Shiki away, and now he can’t
do anything. For he feels that the slash has struck more than just the body:
one of his lines of death must have been cut. “Through that appearance, I
know we will never do batle again.”
The mage dispels the ward that  is already fading fast, and whispers to
himself  in a  sort of prayer.  “My origin  is  known  to me.  It  is quiescence.
Those whose origin is awakened returns soon to the spiral.”