He completely forgot the enemy, lunged for Amy, and grabbed the knife.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm sorry, I can't stop. My... My hand won't move."

Desmond tried to open it for her.

To open her fingers, even one by one, and force her to drop the instrument with which the enemy intended to make her take her life.

The fist was too hard. Clenched tightly, the knuckles white. It trembled.

There was no consistency to this. What did its magic have to do with moving objects like daggers? No, not just that, with manipulating people? Something was wrong here, something didn't fit?

He didn't come up with an answer. If Desmond had come close to the answer, it disappeared from his mind when Amy punched him in the face. It wasn't just a knuckle punch, he corrected himself, it was also with the hilt of the sword, more by accident than intention.

Desmond went down hard.

"Do something, you sons of bitches!" he shouted through a mouthful of his own blood.

He was sick of them cowering in the corners, looking as if none of this had anything to do with them. At least one of them had had the balls to attack the intruder, but it had been a long time coming. Too long.

An eternity. Every second was important in a battle and it must have been more than a minute since the start of this one, surely.

So an eternity.

Amy didn't raise the dagger against herself again. Rather, unable to avoid it, still holding it with one hand, she launched into a discordant charge against... against... against...

Their teammate. Christina.

Under the sway of the enemy. She had no choice.

He did, and his choice could change everything, for better or worse. And that's exactly what happened.

Seeing that, instead of going to stop her, to stop that, what he did was to go after the enemy. To kill it, to even just break its concentration.

The pragmatic decision. But it turned out to be the worst one he could have made at the time and what caused the disaster.

Amy stabbed Christina in the chest.

Christina should have been able to avoid the attack with ease. To say she wasn't able to, however, would not be accurate. She didn't even try. She wasn't able to strike preemptively when the approaching enemy was her own friend.

What woke her up was the knife sliding into her. Christina opened her eyes wide, looked down at her open abdomen and the blood oozing from the wound.

"I'm sorry," Amy said. She began to tremble from head to toe, as if resisting the influence. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry. ...."

What was done was done, however.

Christina fell to her knees. Amy fell behind her, as if being dragged. On the floor, she stared into the eyes of the person she had stabbed, unable to look away. She was not at fault, but she couldn't.

Besides, it didn't matter if she wasn't at fault. Christina's blood stained her hands.

That was something the poor thing could never forget. Or forgive herself for. Regardless of the circumstances. At least, he wouldn't be able to.

Desmond roared from the back of his throat and lunged for the shadow.

He swung his sword. The enemy tried to avoid it as usual, splitting in two, but did it really believe him stupid enough to fall for the same trick over and over again, over and over again? He would stop it.

Desmond grabbed the two halves of its body and pushed them together. He didn't have any reason to think that would work.

In fact, he had not even thought, he had not had time to think, he had only acted. Carrying out the first impulse that crossed his mind.

However, that worked.

That way, he joined the halves of his enemy together. And left it open. Desmond plunged the sword into his enemy's chest. It was like a shadow. It had a humanoid shape, but only just enough. It didn't even have eyes, at least not ones that were visible, as he had established before.

Until now.

The area where its eyes should have been lit up. Like two fires of blinding white. Those were the eyes of death itself.

He thought his enemy had one last ace up his sleeve, at the very least, and that was the signal. He was wrong. When he withdrew the sword, the shadow collapsed as long as it was and lay there, its body limp.

In a few seconds, those fiery whites were extinguished as if they represented the last spark of its poisoned soul.

Desmond turned around in time to see the disaster.

Amy had removed the knife from where she had stuck it. She didn't use it against Christina again. However, neither did she drop it to the ground as she should have done now, with the shadow dead.

What she did was to slit her throat open. The girl fell, drowning in her own blood, under Christina's stupefied eyes.

So much blood, between the two of them. So much blood.

Two pools of blood that unrolled like red carpets. Desmond had killed countless people, but he was still able to be amazed at the amount of blood the human body contained.

"This can't be happening. "His voice echoed in the basement powerfully, even though it was so faint and shaky, as nothing else could be heard.

That was not true. Of course it wasn't.

There was the sound of Amy drowning in her own blood. Christina could be heard crawling toward Amy's fallen body, over the blood, splashing, moving it.

And that, to his ears, were louder sounds than any other. They sounded like the end of the world.

He approached them.

Desmond knelt over the blood and grabbed Amy in his arms as she... while she....

Dying was the terrible word that came to mind. But she wasn't willing to give up. He saw her raise a hand, weak and trembling, to her neck.

Desmond grabbed her hand and helped her get there.

Immediately, Amy's hand was enveloped in a bluish glow like the symbol on the door. She was trying to heal herself, he realized, and experienced a brief flicker of hope. Which that one extinguished almost as quickly. Because it wasn't working.

Magic required not only power, but also concentration. And the wound was so deep... and it was bleeding so much....

Shit, shit, shit.

Desmond threw his head back. The shadow was still on the ground, not moving, not disappearing. Was it really dead then? And Amy had done what she'd done because... following his last order, perhaps?

Desmond shook his head.

If it wasn't dead yet, then he would kill it. But all in due time.

"Somebody do something! "He said, no, Desmond demanded, looking around at the crowd that was still frightened and silent. Like cattle. "One of you must be able to heal her."

Healing was not within his capabilities.

Not even the basic, affinity independent spell with which Amy had tried to heal her cut. But not for lack of intent. Before discovering he had a power that rendered that spell useless, he had tried it again and again, desperate to make it work.

But not once had he gotten it right.

Just as he had told Amy so, so long ago, he might have had a modicum of talent, but no more. And it hadn't been enough for that.

Christina wasn't capable of healing Amy either. He wasn't just saying that because if she was capable she would already be doing it.

It was also because he was sure she hadn't bothered to learn that healing spell. That, like most people, they saw affinity independent magic as nothing more than a way to practice the basics before doing "real magic."

But, in the crowd, there had to be someone, even if it was just one person, who could heal her.

He wasn't going to watch her die!

He couldn't allow that!

Desmond pointed to a boy in the crowd who seemed to be more full of doubt than the others, following his instincts, which had always led him in the right direction.

"You! You can do it, can't you?"

The boy hesitated for a few seconds, but in the end he heeded him, moving closer. He hoped it was because his instinct had hit the nail on the head and not because he had scared the boy enough that he couldn't disobey him.

Amy was breathing heavily. With each exhale, she was pouring blood out of the hole in her throat, out of her mouth.

Her eyes were getting milky. Like fogged glass.

She was slipping away from them. With each passing second, she was getting farther and farther away from them. Her struggle to survive was only killing her faster. He couldn't bear to look at her like that.

He couldn't bear to think about what was going to happen. But, still, he didn't look away.

This is my fault, he thought.

And the least he could do was not look away.

"I should be able to do that," the boy stammered. "But this, I... I've never seen anything like this. I don't know if..."

"Stop it. Get to work."

This idiot thought he was in a situation where he could afford to waste so much time and oxygen. What a piece of... For a moment, he thought that his efforts to hold back the shadow, to protect others and not just his teammates, had been such a waste in the same way.

Desmond took a deep breath.

"Come on," he clasped his hands in his own and placed them on top of the open wound on Amy's neck. Come on, damn it!

The boy gasped. You piece of shit, he thought with an intense urge to vomit. You're not a soldier. Fuck, you're not even a man.

"Cut me a little on the arm," the boy said. In a voice that shook as hard as the rest of him. He was fed up, but at least they were making progress.

Desmond didn't ask why.

He had no time to waste and he didn't care to know the details anyway. He just did it.

The boy, grimacing exaggeratedly, put two fingers over the cut he had just made and let his blood drip onto Amy's open wound.

Desmond felt, but did not see, the magical energy in the air. It was working.

Now the question was whether it would work fast enough.

The question was...

Laughter. Sure enough, he heard someone laughing. For a moment he thought he had imagined it. But the sound of laughter was very clear and he wasn't the only one who had reacted. The boy was looking at a point behind Desmond.

Even Christina, who had remained still and quiet, was looking at the same point.

Desmond turned around.

The shadow. The shadow was standing and laughing as if declaring its victory. His eyes, which had flared in what he had thought was the moment close to his death, now burned brighter than ever.

And to a greater extent. His eyes now covered a good part of his face.

Any resemblance he might have had to a human being vanished at that moment. Those white burning eyes and his hollow laugh, full of perverse mirth.

His heart filled with terror.

He refused to see that abomination as a human being like him, even if it was giving him power.

But he had very human things in his hands.

In the left hand, a lighted match. And on the right, a red container.

How had he survived the stabbing? And where had he gotten those things, because not from the basement? It had to be an application of his magic. But it didn't fit. Even if an affinity granted someone several abilities, those abilities were clearly related.

If it didn't seem cohesive, then it was because you didn't understand the source of the magic well enough, like, for him at least, Christina who could manipulate shadows and on top of that feel emotions.

But this didn't fit. The transformation of his body, the manipulation of others and now.... What, had he created these objects out of thin air or had he brought them to him in a similar way to how Desmond could call his sword back into his hands wherever he was?

It didn't seem human.

Maybe... Maybe really the enemy this time wasn't even human.

It was laughing. Laughing. Laughing.

It was a demon that enjoyed the loss of human life. It reminded him of everything he had been through and everything he had done with these hands.

What was he saying? His enemy had never been human.

Desmond stood up.

With one hand, the shadow spread what was inside the red container. A liquid substance that reeked. The name escaped him. But of course, now his head was like a nest of angry wasps. He couldn't think of anything.

He couldn't hear anything except the wild pounding of his heart and the hot blood pulsing through his veins.

Hot.

The abomination dropped the lit match on the substance. A spark gave birth to flames that quickly spread along the path created by the substance, setting about devouring everything they touched. The word came to his mind smoothly this time.

Gasoline.

It had just done what Desmond thought it should have done, what it would have done if it had been smart. The flames were spreading fast, and everyone was trapped here.

Everyone except that abomination. It went up in smoke and escaped under the door.

Desmond ran after the thing to catch it without thinking, even jumped over the flames, but he didn't make it. He was this close to catching it, but... but it would have gotten away anyway. It wasn't something he could grab. It was nothing but smoke.

He pounded on the door as if with the intention of breaking it down.

"Come back here! "He screamed at the top of his lungs, sounding more like a rabid animal than a human being. "I'll kill you! I'll rip open your stomach and eat your entrails! And then I'll kill your whole fucking family, you hear me, your parents, your siblings, even your fucking cousins, I don't care how far away they are! I won't rest until I put your family name in the ground! Until there's no one to remember you! Do you hear me?"

It didn't come back, of course. Didn't obey.

But he hoped it had heard his threats, even when transformed into black smoke. Maybe it wouldn't take them seriously. But Desmond would. Desmond did, right down to the last word. And that was what mattered.

His scream mingled with other screams. But his was the only voice raised in anger.

The rest were simply frightened. They had been doomed to die engulfed by the flames. They were screaming and running around, looking for hope. But the director had sealed the door and unless they could break down the door, it would end here.

But Desmond wasn't afraid. Not because he was pretty sure he would rise from the ashes even if that were to happen.

Because, strangely enough, he didn't consider it a real possibility that things would end like this. He felt certain that they would come out. That idea penetrated the fog of his rage.

Maybe it was just a figment of his imagination. What he preferred to believe. But that was what he felt.

And he still had no reason to doubt his instinct.

It had never led him astray.

He stepped over the flames again. To do so he had to run along a wall, since they had spread too far, but even so he didn't entirely escape.

His pants made contact, igniting the fabric, and he had to extinguish it with several swipes.

It looked like the boy had tried to run away, but Christina, with the hand she didn't have pressed against her abdomen, had stopped him in his tracks.

Desmond reached over and put the sword to his neck. The boy glared back at him, wide eyed. Christina withdrew her hand. She was breathing heavily, even her head felt heavy. It dropped, looking at the ground....

"Let me make it clear," Desmond said, raising his voice to make himself heard over the roar of the flames. "If she dies, you die. And if you abandon her like this... to save your own skin... I'll make sure you suffer before you die."

He lowered his sword. Its point touched the ground. And the blood.

"Get to work."

Amy was better. Her cut was smaller, but that didn't mean she was out of danger yet.

By the gods he'd make sure he finished the job. Whatever it took.