Erina gritted her teeth and struggled against her restraints. The swords clanked against each other but did not budge. All she had to show for it were fresh cuts in her clothes and her skin.

  "Your determination is not unfamiliar to me," said Eve, "but it is also misplaced. You are capable of so much more." She extended her hand, offering it to the girl who physically could not reach out and take it if she tried. "Give that body to me. Remain in this void in my place, so that 'I' may take 'your' place in the reality beyond the gate. You will find no absolution in defying this, Emisane Erina."

  The wind settled to a quiet murmur. The battlefield was in shambles. Deep blackened scorch marks, pools of hardened metal, and yawning fissures littered the barren earth. The rings of the armillary sphere swiveled around them, massive and silent as the stars beyond. Erina lowered her head.

  "I'm tired," she mumbled. "Fighting is so tiring."

  Eve twitched her hand, imploring her.

  "I never wanted to fight anybody," said Erina. "I hate hurting people. I've realized… going along with you… and your talk of the greater good…" Green eyes peered out through the curtain of black hair, low and glaring. "…are exactly the sort of thing I can't stand."

  A flashing seal and the earth upheaved. Emerald branches split and uprooted the land, swords of light thrown skyward. Bright green light blazed to life through the crumbling dirt and pale blades—

  Eve caught the accelerated beam inches shy of her heart, heels skidding several feet back as the bolt in her grip screamed between her fingers. She quashed it out of existence, the compressed orb shattering into its constituents and fading away.

  Another seal and Erina was onto her. Steel rang as their blades clashed off each other, the wind rising to a cold snarl as transient emerald slashes filled the air around Eve to match Erina's flurry.

  "You are too passive!" Eve struck with the force of a hurricane, blowing Erina away. "Radiance!" The blades of light followed in hot pursuit, smashing themselves to pieces as they fired down around the dodging girl and pulverized themselves on sudden rising tangles of emerald. "Didn't you want to know the truth? This is the truth, in all its terrible glory! Will you turn a blind eye and live a pathetic life of meagerness, Emisane Erina?!"

  "I won't hear it from you!" she shot back.

  Dozens of interlaid seals covered the arena floor, centered at their caster's feet, and then Erina's impromptu cover exploded to shards as a colossal emerald blade of light crashed through—fired not by Eve, but from the other side, directly at Eve. Erina imposed her memory of Eve's own blade into this half-reality.

  Eve caught the point of the massive sword, her feet carving twin trenches into the torn earth as its tremendous momentum pushed her further and further back.

  "Grow!" Thick roots burst from the earth at Eve's side, entangled the blade, and wrenched to bring the sword crashing past her in a new ravine.

  "I am myself!" declared Erina. "I will live my life as I see fit—not yours!"

  Eve motioned and an immense spike hewn from massive roots shattered Erina's sword. "Shine!" She slammed one foot down and the ground shook, an increasingly large series of emerald shelfs bursting from the earth in a rapid wave.

  Space distorted and the ledge that should've kicked Erina uncontrollably into the air instead rose at a snail's pace. She leapt off the rising floor as Eve negated her spell, a wall of green erupting at Erina's back as one orb in her palm became an intricate web of beautiful fractal designs flooding the battlefield.

  "I know I'll make mistakes," said Erina. "I'll do things I can't take back. But if this world is wrong, and everything I've experienced is wrong… I will live with the regret of choosing wrong!"

  "Grow! Melt!" Eve flourished. Thick roots burst from the barren earth around Erina. The largest shelf of emerald flooded with a hellish glow, transmuting itself to a tidal wave of molten lava—

  Fragarach struck in an omnidirectional burst of slashes, repelling the barrage of lasers. Erina's fractals were composed of innumerable tiny particles, and every last one of them was capable of turning itself into a laser. The earth around Eve shifted and rose, tall walls of dirt and rock shielding her from the near-constant bombardment of beams.

  Those same beams shot down around Erina, ripping apart the roots meant for her and clearing the way. The lava crashed down on nothing but the wasteland as Erina rocketed forward through her accelerator, spear forming in the nick of time to strike.

  Eve's bunker exploded, fragments of earth blackening and crumbling as the forest of lightning erupted around her. A wild thrill ran through Erina as she saw the shining branches rip at her enemy, tearing the veneer of skin away everywhere it grazed her and exposing the immaterial light underneath.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  The spear vanished before its own branches did, reconstructed into the katana that Erina drew without hesitation. Their blades rang out as they met and then Erina launched into a reckless offense, one strike after another against the legendary sword. The blades of wind couldn't touch her—not without leaving their caster exposed to the nigh-endless laser fire raining down from all directions.

  "I know I can't be perfect," said Erina, "but I absolutely refuse to believe I should hand myself over to you!"

  "Listen to yourself!" snapped Eve. "Howl!"

  An emerald tornado howled into being around her, forcing Erina away and washing the beams off its funnel. Walls of earth rose on either side and faded to hard metal, leaving Erina in a long corridor. As fast as the vortex formed, it vanished, Eve advancing to return the favor with an offense Erina couldn't possibly keep up with.

  "That vanity and selfishness lie at the furthest end from virtue!" Eve hammered mercilessly on Erina's hexagram barrier. One shield after another shattered, fragments like fleeting glass flying past Erina as she stumbled away, throwing up barrier after barrier. "Your power is not your own. Your life and soul are not your own! Return them to me!"

  "This life is mine now!" Erina off-handed her spear and loosed the forest of lightning in this cramped melee with nowhere to move.

  Eve replied with the crimson spear of her own, both trees colliding and exploding straight up to bloom overhead in a fused tangle of green and red.

  "You went astray and lost your life!" Erina pointed wildly from her side of the tree. "A ghost of the past doesn't get to decide my future!"

  "You dare spout such hypocrisy? Forge!"

  Eve clenched her fist and Erina's vision went black with an earsplitting clang. The metal walls morphed, enclosing Erina and casting themselves into the shape of a tall bell in moments.

  "You did not come to stand here by your own making! Grow!"

  Coiled thick vines sprouted at Eve's feet and rushed out, snaring the top of the bell and flinging it through the air to smash down with a resounding gong.

  "Who do you think intervened in your battle against Goukei? Did you consider your premonition a lucky fluke?!"

  Eve thrust her hand out and the tree of joined spears turned blood red. The branches burst outwards, growing every which way and slashing to rip Erina's fractal field to tatters. The vines flexed and the bell crashed down again, back and forth like a horrific metronome, every collision punctuated with a terrible clang.

  "You are truly human," seethed Eve. "A foolish, ignorant ingrate who reaps the fruits of my efforts only to spit upon them in your quest for your own destruction! Shatter!"

  Metal turned to glass and the bell exploded to pieces on the final swing, Erina's limp battered figure tumbling across the earth amidst the broken shards. Eve slashed her arm and the tree twisted, pruning the last of Erina's field before withering away itself.

  The battlefield returned to barren and empty, but the wind's ghoulish moan carried on. Eve sheathed Fragarach, her expression a dark storm as she looked down on the girl that was always intended to be little more than her vessel. Glimmers of light trailed from the gashes in Eve's skin until they closed up, making her whole once more.

  "," said Eve coldly. "You have no hope of defeating me. You knew as much from the beginning. It is time you put these ambitions to rest. Offer your place and find peace in the void, Emisane Erina."

  Ether and blood dripped to the earth. Erina urged her arms to bear her weight, every muscle burning up. Barely up on all fours, her battered body begged to give out and drop to the comforting soil. She refused and instead forced her feet to hold fast.

  "You're right." Erina's words were rushed and breathless. Struggling, she fought until she was finally standing on her two feet even as her legs threatened to fold at any second. "This power used to be yours. I do owe you this life."

  "Then yield."

  "I owe you my life… but I cannot condone the way you would use it."

  A cold wind tugged at the hem of Eve's dress. "What?"

  "This is the power you sought," panted Erina, "but not the one you wielded. Before you completed the Four Harbingers to achieve reiteration, you mastered a different magic—no, you mastered every magic."

  "Correct." Eve had no reason to contest the truth. Every classical element and all branches of magic that any mage could apply themselves to—over the course of her long life, Eve had researched and perfected all of them.

  Erina wavered and caught herself before she could fall. "But you didn't master ours."

  "Do you presume to know something I do not?"

  "Mistakes," said Erina. "Regrets. Wrong paths. You want to wipe them all away."

  Spark of light raced at the edge of the torn battlefield. Eve watched it in the corner of her eye as they circled the arena in vast shimmering rings, runes forming in the gap.

  "This power isn't meant to tear down and rebuild from the dust," said Erina. "It's meant to reflect and accept what has happened. To use that knowledge to find a better path with what we already have."

  Eve's fingers twitched. She could tear this to pieces before it had a chance to begin. She could cut Erina down where she stood… but that was not the meaning of this conflict. So long as Erina clung to hope and refused to relinquish the vessel, it was Eve who was at the disadvantage.

  So Eve allowed it. Erina was granted all the time she needed to discover and inscribe her greatest effort. Only when it manifested could Eve crush it, and Erina's will with it.

  "This power is one with which to reflect on the past," said Erina, "and build the future upon it. Not from its remains!"

  "Meaningless drivel," murmured Eve.

  The colossal spell circle completed and burst with a blinding flash. Recoil tore through Erina's core, a strangled choke escaping her.

  For a moment, the world flooded with shining emerald light. It coalesced, taking on incredible texture. Roaring flame and living plants, a rain of sharpened spears and searing lava, a hail of icicles and towering fractal spirals, the tall funnel of a fearsome vortex and glittering blades the size of buildings.

  Erina's body convulsed of its own volition, blood staining her lips and splattering the dirt at her feet—but this time, she did not fall.

  The spell was complete. She turned the hands of time. Every moment of this battle's past returned to its present, a nigh-endless array of weaponry suspended in a single instant.

  And then, they moved.