It happened all too fast.

Kavlina looks at the scene before her, utterly in shock. Nasition’s magic is gone, his crystals reduced literally to dust. Corpses of soldiers lay all around them, those brave foolish souls who dared to challenge a monster none can comprehend. Her blade is locked against Avalel’s eight blades, unable to free her entire arm from his grasp. And he now turns, staring at her with those terrifying, soulless pitch-black eyes.

“Now, dear Maiden, shall we begin the last dance?”

He swings his blade-arm at her. Awkwardly, she makes a parry with her knife, deflecting it just enough to brush it off her hair. A gap is opened, her waist now completely defenseless. Desperately, she kicks the blades enough to loosen their grip on her blade. As Avalel returns for his second strike, she leaps away, barely avoiding Avalel’s blade-arm as he shallowly cuts her protective clothing.

She tumbles on the ground, evading the blades, each of them stabbing into the floor like heavenly nails. Just as she gains her footing, Avalel brings his blade-arm down at her neck. She blocks, chipping her own blade, pivoting as she swings her leg at his knees. He takes two light steps away, efficiently dodging her attack, but that’s already enough for Kavlina. Utilizing the momentum from her swing, she distances herself from him, dragging her blade to bring herself to a stop.

“It’s interesting how you manage to regain composure so quickly,” Avalel comments, the blades returned to his side. “Aren’t you afraid?”

“I am,” Kavlina responds, taking deep breaths to steady her pulse. “For you.”

She cannot bring herself to look at his face, the face she once found so much safety and comfort in. That kind, innocent face, now twisted into malice and arrogance. Didn’t he used to reject the Anapadeia’s horrifying powers? Yet here he is, completely absorbing it, becoming unified with it, all the while smiling proudly at the state he’s in, the state his younger self would’ve loathed to see.

He has changed far too much these past five years. Even if his face is still that same face Kavlina holds in her memories.

“I don’t need sentiments from a mortal on her last breaths,” Avalel says coldly. He charges, his blades racing ahead, taking erratic paths as they clash against Kavlina’s blades. She twists her arm, parrying one, only for a second to pierce her leg.

“AGH—”

Her scream is cut short as Avalel rams against her body, slamming her against a wall. She drops her knife in shock, coughing violently as the air is knocked out of her lungs. Another blade stabs her prosthetic arm, cutting all nervous responses to the limb. Before she can react, Avalel grabs her neck, pinning her in place.

“You’re not putting up much of a fight,” he remarks in disappointment. “I already held back. This isn’t particularly entertaining.”

He begins to squeeze her neck. Kavlina instinctively grabs his wrist, thrashing about with her legs. Her strength is dwindling. Her vision is fading. She gags, but no air comes in or out. Her core is fading, her energy wasted as they are waiting to be released.

“Fight harder,” Avalel demands. “Do you not want to kill me now? Your magic. Your energy. Where is it?”

Her consciousness is slipping away. Her kicks are weak, not enough to even budge him. Her energy is all pent up, waiting to burst, but with no outlet to properly release them, they are just stuck, trickling away with her pointless struggling.

“I know. You simply just gave up. After all this time, you gave up and resorted to admitting defeat.” His blades encroach closer to Kavlina’s head, each pointed to an organ on her face. By this time, she is beginning to slip away, her body going limp as her mind begins to shut down.

“Weak.”

Weak. This isn’t like her at all. All those murders in anger, all her efforts to enact her revenge, all this time she has kept herself alive for a single reason… And she is throwing it all away? Avalel is right before her eyes. This so-called “revenge” will mean nothing if she just gives up at the final step, failing because she has succumbed to his idea of invincibility. She has already decided to die, but it is simply humiliating to die in such a manner.

She has always been stronger than him. Yet now, because of him falling to the temptations of power, he has the audacity to claim his supremacy over all, including her. He cannot even defeat himself, nevermind claiming to “protect the world” with this twisted logic of his. And now she’s called “weak” by a man who lacks his own soul?

Absurd, just absurd.

She must deny him victory. Even if she is playing into the hands of “Fate”, giving Avalel the entertainment he so desires.

She must.

Her Gate bursts apart. Her core explodes. There is no turning back.

Fate has decided the vessel needs one final obstacle.

Her prosthetic arm abruptly regenerates, becoming a chaotic mess of wires and metal, coalescing into one ugly, incomprehensible weapon. Her chest opens up, a dark metal spear springing forth to stab Avalel’s eye. Stunned, he releases his grip on Kavlina, tumbling backwards from the sheer force.

A black liquid oozes out from Kavlina’s wound, wrapping itself around her. With every beat of her heart, spikes rise up from the surface before it submerges again, her entire body a pulsing mass of pure darkness. Seven rigid tentacles protrude from her back, becoming thin, spindly legs as they stab into the ground, before forming into a soft mush, slithering like snakes. Her limbs have become free-flowing, organic strings, intertwining with each other to form an apparition of their original appearance. Only her mask and face is the same, yet now rejuvenated with a sense of… liberty.

She feels free. Her mind is a jumbled mess, but at the same time it is not confined. She sees everything, but not as rigid shapes and reflections of light, instead as a disarray of “things”, incoherent with the limited world she is used to. Except for Avalel, whose limbs are controlled by pale white strings.

A new dimension. A new perspective. A new existence. The strings of Fate do not bind her. She is cut free, emancipated from her destiny, released from her conflicting desires to kill and love Avalel as her mind is reduced to entropy.

And who has decided to free her? Fate itself.

In the beginning there was chaos, formless and empty. But such was also complete freedom and liberty, before Fate created and made the world in its image.

And she is now Chaos.

“The antithesis of Fate,” Avalel mutters to himself. “Liberty. Otherwise known as Chaos.”

Such is his last test. The definition of Liberty, brought into being through a vessel, just as he is the vessel of Fate. Both have already lost their original identities, being only known with their former names for convention and convenience. Just as he has submitted himself to Fate, the Black Maiden has somehow gained complete freedom of herself, and hence, alien to the world. Just as Fate is beyond basic comprehension, so is Liberty. Their vessels are only a material representation of such concepts. Even when he is completely under the will of Fate, Avalel is still a mortal vessel. Mortals naturally desire freedom. But mortals cannot comprehend freedom.

Only a surrender to Fate will allow for true freedom and liberty… when Fate desires.

What a paradox.

“What an interesting turn.” He is blessed by Fate. She is cursed by it. It is only natural he eventually succumbs to his destiny while she resists it to the bitter end. But it’s funny, isn’t it? Only Fate can decide to completely release its subjects from its grasp, hardening their hearts in hatred. In a way, everything the Maiden has gone through is all orchestrated by Fate. In a long roundabout way, she is still within Fate’s control.

And that is enough to give Avalel the confidence to pass his test.

“Now, monster, give me the entertainment I so desire.”

His eight blades, formerly pitch black, become radiant lances of light. All physical blackness in his body is purged, his eyes quite literally shining with brilliance. His entire body is dressed in a blinding, pure light, his physical form undergoes metamorphosis, becoming a completed, nearly formless being of power. A sword appears in his hand, but it’s no longer the Anapadeia. It holds no physical form, only being a blade of pure energy. He feels, he sees the strings of destiny attached to his body, waving him around as a puppet. And opposite him, the Maiden has no strings attached to herself.

Transfiguration. Such is Avalel now, elevated to enlightenment as the vessel of Fate.

The Maiden utters an unintelligible, devilish screech.

They charge towards each other, one brighter than the Elyfesta, the other darker than the abyss. Without a solid, rigid form, they intertwine, light and dark swirling around each other, order and chaos clashing with unexplainable fervor, order and anarchy wrestling for an imagined throne. As the Maiden’s tentacles come into contact with Avalel’s blades, they disintegrate into ashes, only to reform immediately without any sign of weakening.

Two higher forms of existence, one subordinate to the other, engage in war.

Entertain me more, Maiden!

One of the Maiden’s limbs wrap around Avalel’s sword. He flings the blade, shaking her off, allowing a second limb to cling onto his body. He purges the corrupted light, the energy shattering the limb in a series of explosions. A tentacle clutches his arm. Without hesitation, he slices it off with his sword, the arm growing back immediately from its stump.

“Liberty,” he mutters. “What a dangerous poison.”

The eight blades split into hundreds of smaller blades, puncturing the Black Maiden’s chaotic body in one wave. She explodes, black matter splattering in all directions. The next moment, she has reformed herself. There is no space for breaks.

The world is warped, their perception of time and space completely irrelevant as they continue their seemingly endless clash. Both of them are repeatedly destroyed and reformed, light absorbed into darkness at the same rate darkness is purged by light. Beyond mortal comprehension and existence, the battle is no longer of the material. There is order in chaos, chaos in order. Light in darkness, darkness in light. Organization in unpredictability, unpredictability in organization. In a way, such can be described as chaos, but is also fully within the control of Fate. Completely chaotic, yet completely controlled.

To the material realm, the battle lasts but an instant. To them, it is neither eternity nor instantaneous. It just is.

Yet gradually, Avalel notices the formation of a physical form in the Maiden. With every destruction, the recreation becomes slower, whatever that means on the strange timescale of their battle. The mask has always been there, but she seems to be reverting to her mortal self, ironically breaking free from freedom itself.

Such is the folly of Liberty. In the end, Fate is the only natural, all-powerful one.

Sadly, the fun is coming to an end. As the Maiden wretches, convulses, and screams, he thrusts his sword forward, aiming at her chest.

This isn’t right.

Kavlina grasps at emptiness as she returns to her consciousness. She has become some sort of being, birthed only from her desire to take revenge. She apparently chose for this to happen, to break free from so-called Fate before engaging Avalel in this battle.

But she isn’t in control. What seems to be her is just fighting blindly, corrupted beyond recognition, alien to everything in this world. She just happened to suddenly receive that power from something. It isn’t something she knew she always had. It’s not supposed to happen. She isn’t capable of such things. She doesn’t even recognize herself, her “body” just moving on its own at its volition, forming a dissonance with her recovering, organized mind.

To be frank, it is disgusting.

This endless duel is just feeding Avalel’s desire for “entertainment”. She is not some sort of jester to be toyed around. In the process of resisting him, she has lost herself. She is no longer Kavlina, just as Avalel is no longer Avalel. She’s just a mindless vessel, the same as him.

What freedom? What liberty? In the end, it’s all just an illusion, playing to the whims of Fate.

She looks above. Pale white strings are attached to every facet of her body, just as it is attached to Avalel.

It’s all just a farce.

She is supposed to fall, to be defeated anyway. There is no such thing as “killing” Avalel when his victory is already decided. There’s no point in taking revenge for Tarak when that dream can’t even be remotely accomplished. Her purpose all this time is nothing but a fabricated will to eventually let her face Avalel… and die as Tarak did.

But there is still one act of resistance.

A clean stab. Avalel’s sword travels through the Maiden’s torso and out her back. The chaotic being freezes. Darkness and light split apart. Fate hovers in the balance. Everything comes to a standstill.

The dark mass begins to disintegrate, fading into ash, blown away at the slightest whiff of wind. Standing before him is just the mortal Black Maiden, her body of flesh and bone exactly as it was before… except for his sword now lodged firmly in her chest.

In the end, Fate always wins.

The Maiden’s mask begins to crack, fissures appearing all over the worn-down covering. Eventually, it shatters, and Avalel finds himself staring at a face all too familiar for him. A face he hasn’t seen in five years, battered from years of war and strife. A face reminding him of more innocent days, when he tried to protect the world with that weak body of his. A face he thought belonged to someone long dead.

It all happened so fast.

Kavlina smiles smugly at him, blood flowing from her lips.

“Weak.”