Desmond shook his head, as if he could get rid of the thoughts that plagued it.

Well, thoughts wasn't the right word. It was more like a whirlwind of confused images and emotions, triggered by looking into her eyes. Seeing the same thing he had seen when he looked in the mirror.

And what that meant, or could mean.

In any case, he couldn't get rid of his.... inner conflict. But he could push it to the side, where it wouldn't get in the way.

He had work to do.

Desmond stepped back a few paces, twirling the knife in his hand, sending blood flying, splattering here and there.

Truth be told, this woman had almost done him a favor. He now had a weapon bathed in his own blood, the blood of a mage, which would make the blade strong. It would make it a perfect weapon against all kinds of magic.

But that woman's affinity had to be to change skin. The discarded skin, which was scattered on the ground in clumps, was disintegrating, covering the enemy in a smokescreen like a ghost in the fog.

Such an ability could be useful, but she had nowhere to hide anymore, he would catch her no matter how hard she ran.

Besides, everything pointed to the fact that she had no intention of running.

No. She would want to fight him.

She believed, for some reason, that she could do this alone. She was wrong. She must not have received the information about his capabilities. If so, she was not the only one.

Many of the soldiers she had killed had been surprised by what he was capable of.

By what he was able to endure without suffering a scratch.

He wasn't like he was before he started, of course. Straining himself to the max, fighting non-stop, he had been wearing down his magical energy and defenses at breakneck speed. To the point that a simple knife, with nothing special, had been able to penetrate his skin.

But he still had stamina, he could still go on. And whatever trick this woman had at her disposal, apart from that of changing her skin, he could cut it with this knife.

He had every chance of winning.

Fuck, yes, he did.

"I don't know who you are," he answered at last, "and I don't give a shit. I just know you're going to die like everyone else."

"So that stuff about you settling for me was a lie." She had an easy, relaxed smile, completely inappropriate for the situation. As if she was making fun of him. "I thought so."

Desmond took several steps back. Slow, careful, not taking his eyes off her for a second. Literally. He didn't even allow himself to blink.

She took them forward, chasing him, matching his pace, but not his attitude.

It gave the impression, as a result, that this had nothing to do with her. It was irritating. And, though he didn't want to admit it, it was unsettling too.

"You're saying that..."

"Bingo. You know me as Avery. That's not my real face or my real name either. But we have a history. Which, unfortunately for you, isn't going to end here. Desmond."

"Where is she? The real Avery?"

"Dead. Her corpse rotting somewhere dark, cold and remote, out of the hands of the gods. Unlike you, I had no reason to keep her alive. Quite the contrary. She would have ruined everything just by letting herself be seen once."

So Avery had been kidnapped, murdered and discarded like garbage. And, worse, replaced.

The thought of it, that the same thing could happen to him, made it impossible for him to suppress a shiver.

The smoke had dissipated, no trace of the molted skin remained.

But that woman seemed more inhuman than before, in his eyes.

And surely to anyone's eyes. Because of the nature of her magic, which fit so well with her personality, or at least with the only side of her personality that allowed him to see, since he was her enemy.

She seemed empty. A container that could be filled with anything, in any way.

There was no light in her eyes.

There was nothing.

The form she had taken now was most certainly her true form, but it looked as fake as the molted skin she had seen lying around. Melting. Smoking.

Without dropping the knife, he opened fire on the woman.

He had no name to refer to her by.

He wasn't going to dishonor Avery's memory by referring to the person who had murdered her by her name.

Even with one hand he could aim well, handling the recoil with no problem. But he failed to kill the bitch. She crawled behind some boxes, the bullets flew millimeters away from her, but did not penetrate her skin.

The enemy had no special defense, apart from the physical reinforcement that was a spell that all mages could use, but none on the same level as him.

None that didn't fear what they might do to themselves more than what a volley of bullets would do to their bodies.

He didn't even need to get close and use the knife, why take such a risk? This would be an easy fight to finish, even though he had been defeated by her twice already. As long as no one intervened, complicating matters.

He felt confident that they would not shoot to kill, but not so confident that he would stand by to see what they would do. It just wasn't worth the risk.

Besides, it's not like they had to blow his head off to get him out of the way.

Shooting him in the leg would be enough to knock him out, and if they took proper and quick care of him, he didn't have to bleed out and die from that.

Maybe even that would be seen as taking too much of a risk, but yeah, it wasn't worth acting like that was true.

"Of course, that's what you are! That's all you've ever been and ever will be! A dirty rat, a traitor who spits on everything that's good and right in the world! A life like yours... I will not forgive it. I cannot allow you to continue to exist."

By now, if any of the soldiers wanted to catch up with him, they would have already done so.

He was still running at a much faster speed than a normal person, even though his defenses had fallen to the point where the woman had been able to plunge a knife into his back. But there were many of them, and they were everywhere.

Even with blinding speed, he shouldn't have been able to avoid shots from all directions for ten seconds.

The woman couldn't have moved from her hiding place. Not without him seeing her, unless she had short"range teleportation magic or something.

But she had already shown herself capable of too many things. Darken her face, change her face, her entire body, a high regeneration ability, mute sound. And now something else that had nothing to do with it, even superficially?

No, affinities didn't work like that.

So that's where he was headed. Her hiding place.

And the woman, of course, was waiting for him. She threw a bottle at his head, which exploded into a thousand pieces on impact. As he reacted to the blow, as he recovered, she grabbed his shotgun with both hands, without the slightest trace of fear even though pulling the trigger could extinguish her life, send her chest flying across the room in chunks.

She pushed the gun up, above her head, so he couldn't hit her.

Desmond pulled the trigger, but a little too late. The shot only went off to the side.

Shit. If he'd found her a little sooner, he was weakened... but still, how was she winning this contest of strength? A little more and he' d snatch the gun from her.

He pushed the shotgun down.

He was just short of getting it in position to blow a good chunk of her head off when she pulled the trigger.

He had essentially lost the gun, now.

He couldn't reload. Not like this.

And, seconds later, he literally lost the gun. The woman snatched it from him, ripping it in two as if it were made of paper.

"Son of a bitch."

The wear and tear from the bullets, from all the damage suffered to get this far, had taken its toll on his speed, as well as his strength. He didn't think enough to lose.

But he hadn't expected her to prove capable of breaking a shotgun with her bare hands, when the last time they'd met she'd barely been able to beat him even under the effects of the gas, halfway to unconsciousness.

Nor did he expect her to kick him in the chest, sending him flying into the wall.

The impact knocked the air from his lungs.

He coughed loudly, feeling as if he had something stuck in his throat.

Feeling like he was going to throw up.

She approached him slowly, moving in a fluid, graceful way. The image of a mountain lion running through the undergrowth came to his mind, closing in on its prey. Ready to pounce.

She reached out her hands toward him, and Desmond thrust the knife into and through one of her hands.

The only reaction she allowed herself to the pain was to grit her teeth.

And her free hand on his neck.

Desmond's eyes widened like saucers. But the fear passed from him, giving way to fury. He scowled, gritting his teeth, roaring like a caged animal.

He pulled the knife out of the hole in the hand. In this position, he couldn't plunge it into her neck, he couldn't reach it.

He couldn't even make a cut.

He stuck it in, instead, as he had not long ago. That is, in a leg. Again and again. Blood splattered on both of them. He felt it on his lips, tasted it in his mouth.

The enemy's leg trembled, but did not buckle. It didn't fall, coming within reach.

Shit. Shit.

The situation had gotten out of hand again. No, it's too soon to give up! Too fucking soon! This couldn't end like this again.

Even if his consciousness was already fading, even if black spots had appeared in his vision, this couldn't end like this. And he still had a chance. He did.

He fought on.

He saw his savior appear behind the enemy, and that made his strength redouble.

"Desmond," she said. "Listen to me."

She didn't have to ask him to. Every word out of her mouth was more important to him than anything else. More important than his own life that was in danger, more important than his own life that was in danger, more important than his own life that was in danger, easily.

"All is not yet lost. You think she has you beaten. That the only thing you have to defend yourself with is that knife, so you're practically unarmed. But you're not." His savior approached him, knelt down beside him, staring at him. The truth is that no one can disarm you.

At those words, he felt as if he had received an electric shock.

She put a hand on one of his, the one holding the knife, to be exact, and kissed it.

He didn't feel her lips on his skin. He didn't feel her heat.

Because it wasn't really there, it's just that he could see her. But there was... there was something.

"You feel it, don't you? Inside you. No one can disarm you. Concentrate and your weapon will come back to you."

She didn't specify which weapon she was referring to. But Desmond didn't need to ask. It was the sword. Somehow he knew. Even though it was broken into a thousand pieces, and far away from him, it was the sword.

The gift she had left next to his unconscious body before she left.

The physical representation of the bond between them, so to speak.

It couldn't refer to anything other than that.

He could use the magic of physical reinforcement, he handled himself well, moreover, with firearms. But the sword was truly his and no one else's.

The only question was whether he would be able to do it.

But he should not have hesitated. The sword went to his other hand, and he drove it through the enemy's chest before the enemy realized that things had changed.

It had seemed so threatening to him until recently.

But now, looking at her as her mouth filled with blood that inevitably spilled out, she simply looked stupid. So stupid that he couldn't help it.

Bursting out laughing.

Pushing the sword deeper into her, even though he had already pierced her, since he intended to do so until only the pommel of the sword was visible from her side.

He would make her suffer and then cut her in half.

Ah, how he would enjoy it.

But he was unable to do either one. Someone shot him, reducing his left hand to a bloody mess barely reminiscent of its original form.

Desmond didn't scream. He gasped as if instead of having his hand blown off he had been punched in the chest.

She was still there, a silent observer, invisible.

He couldn't lose. Not with her eyes on him. As long as his heart beat, he would never give up!

The enemy grabbed the pommel of the sword with both hands and yanked the blade away, dropping it to the ground.

Desmond rose slowly, with a great effort, leaning first on the wall and then on the railing with the only hand that could function as such.

As the assassin crawled away from him, crawling along the ground like a worm.

Only the trail she left behind was of blood.

She overcame her fear of him as she realized that he was, of course, going for the sword first, not her. She dropped to her knees, holding her intact, right hand over the chest wound that was smoking.

Regenerating, but not fast enough to make her strong enough to get this.

She put her hands on the pommel of the sword, above his.

This... half hour, perhaps, was proving tremendously surreal.

Full of things she had never seen in her life. And of repetitions, like a circle closing. A moment ago they were fighting over the shotgun. Now they were fighting for this sword, while the others watched.

Both on the verge of unconsciousness, both with a ruined hand.

And with hatred burning deep in their hearts.

The emptiness in the woman's eyes had been replaced by just that. Hatred. She had continually stood in the way of his plans, tearing them apart, but the same applied in reverse.

Nothing had gone the way his enemy had wanted it to, tonight.

On the verge of revealing her true identity, Desmond had forced her to act. To improvise. And these had been the natural consequences.

Her death would be one of those consequences.

It was beginning to look possible that she would take the sword from him, even with a gaping hole in her chest. Desmond slashed at her neck with the knife.

Weakening her grip.

He dropped the knife and, holding the sword with both hands, slammed the enemy against the wall. He had completely forgotten that there were other people present. There was only this woman, his savior and himself.

He grabbed the woman by the head and slammed her against the wall several times.

He heard a crack.

He had broken her nose, causing it to bleed.

He let her fall to the floor, languid. I won! The thought ran through his body, from head to toe, like an electric current. I won!

His smile showed all his teeth, which were splattered with blood.

He raised his sword to finish her off.

But he couldn't bring it down. Not quite. Desmond staggered backwards twice, barely managing to keep his balance, more by luck than conscious effort. He lowered his head, dumbfounded, and saw the cause of his sudden weakness.

Someone had shot him in the chest, opening a hole even larger than the one he had made in the enemy's chest.

But it was close enough. His smile widened and he laughed at himself.

His savior was still there.

It was a shame that she had to witness this, but he couldn't take it anymore. Not a moment longer. He didn't have the strength to move the sword, not even to take a few steps forward and smash that cursed woman's head in, making sure she didn't recover from her wounds.

Looking at the face of his savior, Desmond fell into a deep sleep, just like when he was a child.

He fell literally and figuratively. He felt his body hit the ground before he completely lost consciousness.