It got harder to breathe.

In that room, at that moment, it felt as if the entire vicinity's supply of oxygen had just been siphoned away all at once in a moment barely even worth a second of time.

Instead what I breathed in, and breathed out of aching, heavy lungs was the palpable tension that came as its replacement. I could feel its presence, so domineering, so petrifying… an invisible prominence whose influence swayed everything into an oppressive silence.

And it was all steeming, permeating off of one lone individual standing tall with her head held high.

I wasn't able to see her face… the back of Ash's head, her sword clutched tight in a single hand's grasp, there were the only things the angle I laid in had to offer me in terms of a proper view.

Could move on further still, haul myself forward with both arms into a better sight of her, a position where I could make contact with her eyes, but something kept me rooted to that spot apart from the blistering pain that encapsulated my entire being.

Jay's expression.

Though it was true that I couldn't see Ash herself properly, the view of Jay on the other hand, standing there, utterly dumbfounded, all the way across at the other end of the room, was as crystal-clear as it gets for my sullied vision.

The Magus had first-class seats to the entirety of Ash's front side - and clearly, from the expression on his face, he was dearly yearning for a refund. All the color had drained from his skin… his brief moment of incensed insanity was sobering up quick.

Magic snuffed, fingertips no longer glowing, he raised them slightly in surrender, treading slow steps backwards, and as he did, spoke out in a placating whisper.

"W-wait, wait, listen… I didn't mean to - "

He did not get to finish what he wanted to say. Ash refused, robbing him of the opportunity without so much as a word exchanged.

Whether it was due to my already faltering vision, or something else entirely, it wouldn't have changed the way it looked to my eyes. One moment, she was standing still, sword at a readied clutch, suddenly in the next, all that remained then was a violent swirl of white paper fluttering in the air from where she once stood.

She was a blur, even more so than she was already. It happened, and I only saw it happened way after it had already occurred. Ash flickered back into visibility - there, mere meters away from a stupefied Magus, already with her blade in mid-swing, inches away from cleaving at his neck.

But before contact was made, as the edge of her blade so closely grazed the skin of his neck - Jay dissipated in a violent explosion of grey mist, and her sword only managed to whiff across the smog.

The mist swayed, like a cloud of polluted air before her, and in a muffled echo, the cloud began to speak, somehow even in spite of how faint it sounded, I could still hear the unmistakable melody of desperation loud and clear.

"Look, listen! I didn't want to do that to you! I just - "

"You thought a miserable spell such as that would be enough to bind me still?! You are gravely, foolishly mistaken..."

Ash's eyes whirled right around to the formless voice, and as she did, I finally caught a proper sight of her - of the expression plastered across her face. Now, I've seen her enraged before, well-versed with the indignation coating her every word.

But something felt different. I didn't know what it was, try as I might, I couldn't quite place a finger on it. She was angry, furious - she had every right to be, the hatred burning in her emerald greens, the loathing flaring out from her nostrils - the overpowering emotion in every motion, it was all very well-founded.

I don't know… there was just something more than just anger lurking beyond her twisted expression. Something festering, something dark, I couldn't describe it… it was just something harboring beneath it all, like a darkness peeking through the smallest crevice.

It frightened me. It scared me more than anything ever did. I hated using the word, but it was the only term that suited it unnervingly well… it was simply vile.

And I wasn't the only that thought so. The gray smog drifted far, far away from her piercing gaze.

Yet the moment he started to assemble, the very second his form turned solid again - Jay was blown back, far back, colliding, and fracturing a considerable chunk of the wall behind him with the back of his head in another explosion of dust and debris.

Once more in a blur, blazing from a trail of scattered papers, Ash had closed the distance between them, appearing back into sight with one leg stretched out.

From the settling shroud of dust came a gasp and a wheeze, both of which conveyed great pain - but even then, Ash did not relent, she never was going to - marching great strides, her every stomp bringing her closer flushed with unbridled aggression.

Both hands clutching, both hands raised, Ash plummeted her blade in a blurring arc with enough momentum and force to cause a shockwave that blew away everything within the proximity, while also instantly dispersing the smog.

But once again, her blade only touched the empty air - and another grey cloud manifested itself a significant distance away from her.

"Stop! Eshwlyn please! Hear me out - just hear me out, I - !"

"ENOUGH!"

For a time, that's how it kept playing out. A cat-and-mouse chase of grand proportions. She'd swing, each time a near miss, meanwhile Jay cowered and shrank, never once going on the offensive, trying in vain to stave her wrath with pleads and excuses.

She wasn't hearing any of it - in fact, his voice just continued to aggravate her further and further, pushing past limits already surpassed. Her hoarse growl of frustration with her next strike that barely missed, I could feel myself cowering back too.

It wasn't like the time with Matriarch, she wasn't an empty vessel hellbent on destruction - now she was conscious, aware… that violence was hers, the destruction left in her wake, the scrapes in the walls, the cracks on the ground - it was all her… everything was her.

Then it all culminated - as her blade effortlessly burrowed through the concrete in a failed attempt to skewer, a thunderous roar, the baring of teeth, Ash spun around to the retreating gray cloud, her submerged sword hastily slipping from her grasp, and somehow, with her hands, manage to grasp the non-physical, her fingers curling, clutching the tail end of the drifting smog.

Jay, still formless, had somehow been snared by trembling hands that kept tightening and tightening. A panicked voice boomed again, but those words that sputtered, that echoed… the recipient to them was no longer Ash.

The pleads I heard, the tone of desperation that reached my ears, was directed solely at me.

"Tell her to stop!" It said. "Make her stop, please! If I die, she - !"

I didn't get to hear any more of it. The rest of his sentence was drowned out in another deafening yell. Ash raised both hands - the bodiless Jay along with it - and arched them in a stance that braced for a plummet.

A scream, a roar - one in fear, the other enraged - in a dissonant unison as Ash plunged the cloud of gray downwards in a swift, decisive second. The resulting impact shook the walls, the floors, like a miniature earthquake - with Ash being its source.

The cloud was no longer a cloud. Deep within a pile of broken rubble, Jay laid. Glasses askew, his entire face and body caked in dirt, dust, and the shimmer of blood afresh.

Ash loomed above, the glint and glow of her emerald eyes more prominent than ever before. The rage in her gaze had subsided, but now it looked as if nothing was left within them aside from a deep, burning loathing.

I've never that expression on her face before. The unnerving feeling settled in again, on top of that… those words I never got to hear, those words spoken out in a time of great panic.

It could have meant anything. Another deceit, another ploy… just another attempt trying to pull the wool over my eyes.

'If I die, she…'

She'll what? Ash will what? I think I knew. I think maybe that's what he wants me to think. So that I'll get her to stop. So that he didn't have to die. Another lie.

Ash was raising her foot - slowly - she hovered it over his head - slowly - that same stance again - slowly - braced for another impact.

The last impact.

I watched it, watched her… looked at his body, looked at his face.

If he dies, she…

"Disappears…" I finished his lie, his deceit. The unnerving feeling never dissipating.

His voice won't stop ringing, his words… so desperate, how it pleaded… then I remembered.

Jay was a terrible liar.

I looked forward again, and Ash plunged her leg.

"ASH, STOP!"