Thana hated herself. Immensely, deeply, absolutely, with every last bit of energy of the millions of last thoughts that made her up did she hate herself. The depth of it could very well have been the deepest point of the Abyss itself.

Because she started to be human.

Time seemed to stand still. Her body struggled while her mind stood in the mirrored ocean of souls.

It was much emptier than usual, and in that, Thana knew her weakness. The ritual had stopped, but the separated souls had yet to return to her. A lot of them, about half, all things considered. They were only slowly drifting back. Which was why this fool was slapping her around like a human and her were supposed to be on the same level.

He couldn’t hurt her, or he hadn’t been able to hurt her. That crimson fire seared her flesh in a way that hurt. It actually hurt her, a being forged from agony and injustice. It made her absolutely furious.

“You made me a failure,” the goddess of genocide growled at the infection that her rightful forming within this body had accidentally pulled back from beyond the doors of death.

Wordless, Eliza stared back, holding back any and all influence she had. This should have pleased Thana. Finally, she had gotten complete control over her body. Not a single struggle held her back anymore. Pure and utter rampage lay before her.

It should. It should be what she got to do now. Instead she was being pushed down by this human. Worse, she was standing here, in this place she no longer had to be in and REFLECTING on it. Thoughts were for those she was to kill. Thoughts were to be filled with the optimal route to murder. Her own shortcomings, vanity, pride, desires, envy, greed, entitlement, joy, these were all concepts she knew, concepts she hated and concepts her sapience was now spewing out continuously like an open wound.

It was all making it impossible for her to accept that she was going to lose. Sure, she could have let herself be defeated by this man. Maybe she could have tried getting away. That was certainly what her primal instincts had told her the last time she had faced a stronger foe, even heartless he had beat her.

Her brooding came to a sudden end and she stared at her double’s shattered eyes. If raw power wasn’t the answer, an answer that had made her lose to a foe who should have been physically inferior to her, then surely what had made him victorious would make her win as well.

There had been this thing she had briefly stolen from Eliza at the start of this. Power, disciplined power, maximized by a technique. Something Thana hadn’t learned but… “Work with me,” the goddess of genocide despised those words, even as she reached out to Eliza. “Let’s agree once and murder someone.” What was necessary to appease these desires of a failure she had, she would do.

Eliza looked still quiet at the hand, her own hand. Right now, they looked exactly the same. Only the dots and lines in their eyes were different. The parasite and the host met their hands. Thana felt like her mind was burning all of a sudden. Yet more human feelings invaded her, but they felt strangely… fitting. Something that she had no real time to be disgusted by, mild annoyance was as far as she got.

“Sigmund must die…” she mumbled with two voices, two quickly melding voices. “Sigmund the human must die…” Thana said her piece clearly and Eliza let it pass. “Sigmund the one who blinded John must die…” Eliza said her piece clearly and Thana let it pass. Then, as one, they spoke, “The idea that you human can defeat me is fucking ridiculous.” She inhaled, a sudden memory coming along with it.

“Ya spread your meowana,” the irritating cat-eared girl with as much cotton candy in her brain as she had on her head stopped for a moment to bite her tongue and attempt to speak in less retarded ways, “mana through your whole body and then it does stuff… ah, lemme just touch ya and ya will get it.” Rave circled around them and sat down. “Inhale deeeeeep,” she instructed, “into the chest, as little stomach bloating as possible. Yeah, like that, do that some more, gotta get ya used to the rhythm. Ya feel it yet?”

“Feel what yet?” Eliza, as much as an idiot as she ever was, asked; she was not used to sitting still this long. Lying like a useless slob, yes, but not sitting. “You know there is a shitload of mana pulsating through me at any given moment, right? You are trying to make me find the needle in the shitmire.”

“Should be about here,” Rave stabbed at Eliza’s upper back with two fingers, right on top of her spine and between her shoulder blades. Wasted breath formed uninformative words for a little bit, then, an actual explanation again, “Anyway, that’s the central mana distribution point, or just ki-centre for us martial artists. If ya do the breathing right, ya should be able to feel something there.” Eliza went back to breathing, now with a strained face.

Mana flowed to that point. Internal imbalance caused by their shared existence in this body resolved as Eliza and Thana unified control and knowledge. From the ki-centre, they guided the mana to the lungs. The oxygen they had just inhaled was about to enter their bloodstream. Now, it carried every last bit of mana they channelled with it.

Cold.

It was cold. Different from death marches through the snow, carrying rocks in a circle without boots. Different from the mouth of a gun pointed against heads. Different from the stare of mad scientists, given their title for ideas clad in normal behaviour.

What poured through their veins was a refreshing cold, the feeling of awakening to a pleasant breeze under a black sun. It gripped their heart. Spread into the surrounding cells and pumped into every last fibre. Although it happened in less than a second, Thana could feel it all. Ki settling in muscle tissue, the joints, every last vertebrae of her spine. Inside to outside, until the excess reached the skin. Poured out of her pores like plasmatic blood. Engulfing her entirely.

Thana let out the spent breath and pushed. That fearless ‘hero’ facing her doubled his efforts. “Have some more fight in you, do you, monster?!” Sigmund growled.

“Shut…” the blood mage of genocide pressed out her second breath, “…the FUCK…” third, the aura around her was a steady blaze of controlled power, “UP!” Her hands clenched at the same time as she pushed upwards. The dark mithril that had blistered her exterior bones broke, the edge close to her ripped apart, shards flying everywhere. While Sigmund’s face slowly contorted, Thana took hold of another memory.

Eliza was trying to keep her aura steady. Just a few seconds, that was all she needed. In theory, at least. Mana flowed, imperfectly, but who was she to care about internal bleeding? Hastily, she poured it into her ankles. She took a step without moving any part of her body other than her ankles. An impossibility she had often imagined, as that was the best way Rave could describe it to her.

Suddenly, she found herself standing elsewhere. “Congratz, ya figured Shift out…” Rave interrupted her training with Aclysia for a second to say that. Also, to look almost amusedly at the foolish blood mage’s ruined feet.

Sigmund reacted fast. That much was true. One blade gone, the Contender quickly twisted Tietan in his grip, presenting the still intact blade to Thana as he went on the offensive again. His blade struck the empty ground, causing it to quake. A massive, scarily smooth gap ripped its way through the earth from the excess energy.

Behind him, the two of them now standing with only a little bit of distance between their backs, Thana rammed her elbow backwards.

“Remember, Foot and Hand techniques can be extended to the entire limb or even a weapon, if you’re that skilled with it,” Metra coached Eliza from the side lines as she repeatedly kicked a sandbag. “Sometimes, often times really, it’s easier to shift the outburst of energy to the shin then hitting your enemy with your actual foot.”

The sharp tip of Thana’s elbow, further reinforced by the exoskeleton she had grown everywhere except the left half of her face at this point, connected with Sigmund’s armour. None of the surface broke. Yet, the goddess of genocide heard the splatter of blood.

“Trick with the Penetrative Blast is that there is no trick,” Rave was as unhelpful as ever. “Like, ya gotta ignore the usual punching advice to aim for behind them and just punch at where they are and then let the ki out. Rest should be ruptured internal organs. Anyway, shouldn’t you practice the Basic before the Master stuff?”

Sigmund vomited a second gush of blood, his legs buckled, Thana glared over her shoulder with immense glee. “Happy with this fight, you absolute waste of biological material?” the goddess of genocide asked.

“Yes…” came the answer of a madman. “YES!” he glared back, wide-eyed and with a crimson smile. There was a moment of agony on his face, accompanied by a terrible sound dulled underneath his armour. Like thousands of small blades screeching past each other. “THIS IS WHAT I AWOKE POWERS FOR, TO GO TO THE EDGE AND WIN!” Then he whirled around, his sword flying at her without any technique.

He was faster. Although Thana was sure she had just turned the man’s liver into a bloody pulp, he was faster. Ki sunk into her ankles, the blade once more hit air as Shift carried her a couple metres forwards. Sigmund was immediately after her. His first strike she deflected with her arm, then he savagely ripped his knee upwards and hit her straight in the chest.

She was sent flying. Diagonally, towards the edge of this disrespected burial ground. Turning in the flight, just in time to get her legs positioned correctly, the force of the impact bent the several metres thick tree she landed on as far as its ancient trunk could handle. Bark shattered, stone, formed through generations of ancestral worship ritual, broke off from their hold around the tree, and the goddess of genocide jumped back with a hateful roar.

Sigmund dodged to the side, was hit by a follow-up leg sweep, but fell with his sword forwards, forcing Thana to distance herself rather than capitalizing on his lack of balance. Stemming himself back to his feet with one hand, he ripped the other towards the sky. The ground obeyed the gesture, turning into spiked stone pillars. One of them came in at a lucky angle, hitting Thana and burrowing into a gap between the shoulder plating, dislodging the joint.

The aura around her left arm vanished moments after and the goddess of genocide growled at this unwelcome revelation about what separated her internal power circuits. Sigmund saw this and took his chance. He gripped his broken weapon with both hands and held the hilt at his side, tip pointed at his target. As he ran, wind seemed to gather behind his back, his strides growing wider as he picked up speed.

Thana gripped the pesky stone stuck in her shoulder and tried to rip it out. It was lodged, pressing against the inside of the bone plate as her regenerative powers attempted to remove it from the inside. One great inconvenience she really didn’t feel like dealing with.

And one that she didn’t have time for either, as Sigmund was almost upon her, with enough force behind him that even she had to admit that her carapace cracking and that accursed Hellfire scourging her was a possibility.

“You know you can use martial arts through clothes, right?” Metra began her explanation; everyone nodded. “It takes a tremendous amount of practice, but eventually, you get used to working your martial art through a layer of cloth. The same logic can be extended to swords, clubs or any other weapon you can think of. Usually takes years to get used to just one weapon though, which is why you see most martial artists that actually get used to a weapon use that weapon for a while. I guess you can extend that same logic to biomechanical limbs.” She shrugged at that point. “They didn’t have them when I last got around to the topic. People just attached blades to their stumps. That worked like a fucking charm.”

“There’s some martial arts that actually only work with weapons, but that’s like school specific stuff,” Rave added as the White House lawn came into view.

“Next fucking question,” Eliza continued on, her insane grin having something of a predator thinking about her next meal. “What about using some shit that’s part of you as a sword?”

Blood streamed out of the cracks, down her hands, far down, and quickly crystallized into an unsteady blade. Thana ripped it upwards. It screeched against the black mithril as the path of the claymore was forced to go over her head, rather than through it. “Yes!” Ifrit screamed, still bound and doomed to watch, but able to bestow yet more blessings upon his champion. The Hellfire flared, engulfed Tietan as a whole. “WIN, MY CHOSEN CHAMPION! I can taste your ascension already!”

“I WILL NEVER LOSE!” Sigmund screamed in agreement and readjusted his grip to press down with all his might.

Thana was pressed downwards, her dominant arm still unusable, her blood sword slowly cracking, too hastily made and too fragile. It all just pissed her off. This had gone on for long enough. “OH TO FUCKING SHIT WITH THIS SHOULDER AND THIS FUCKING USELESS PIECE OF MY BLOOD!” she screamed and pushed one last time against the descending blade before liquifying her own weapon.

Tietan ravaged through her, severed her left arm in its entirety and cauterised the wound with its cursed flames. For once, Thana experienced what it was like to have a wound that didn’t immediately heal.

Sigmund suddenly seemed to relax. “You fought well,” he graciously said, looking at her. “But Hellfire prevents regeneration from a weakened state. You should…”

Thana leaned forwards, got right up in his face and stared at him. “The fuck do you think you are, you absolute waste of oxygen?” she asked. “Weakened state? WEAKENED STATE?!” Instead of blood, bone was the first thing that regenerated, ripping out of the cauterised flesh and quickly forming what was lost of her collarbone. Muscle soon followed. “I just wanted to get rid of that stone. This is the same situation as the start, you just added a bit of anti-flesh fire, you absolute wanker.” Her body suddenly went through a shiver. “It’s inconvenient. It takes longer. That’s all you are, inconvenient! Also, didn’t I already tell you,” a second throw, her voice was a bit croaky, Eliza made her too fucking talkative, “to shut the fuck up?”

Before Sigmund could respond with anything, Thana ripped open her mouth. A long bony spike grew explosively from the depth of her maw, well past her teeth, and impaled Sigmund’s left eye. Screaming, the Contender stumbled back as he cried bloody tears. He caught himself by ramming his sword into the ground, holding it with one hand while watching Thana with the still intact eye.

The goddess of genocide continued to go through shivers, like a person about to vomit. Just, rather than the contents of her stomach, she forced this thorn out further and further. Waves of blood accompanied every segment.

If a sword of blood was too weak, she just had to move onto the best material in her arsenal. An extension of her spine, manually grown and now slowly growing longer and longer. Shoved out vertebrae by vertebrae, connected not by elastic gel but by more bone, flattened and with edges that individually looked like double-bladed exes but quickly melded outside her body.

She grabbed the initial thorn, the hilt, with her restored left hand and pulled the tip out. “Okay for the first time,” she growled as she inspected the leaf-shaped tip. Then she looked at Sigmund and began walking towards him. Just a casual stride, blood flowing from her palm and fingers into the weapon she had made. It pulsated with her heartbeat.

The ephemeral tendrils that connected her with the flying souls finally made her claim to that power true again, and those struggling, regretful figments of passed humans were pulled back into their eternal damnation amongst those many hoping that the goddess would bring them revenge. Thana gathered ki in her shoulder, then let it violently flow down her arm. The tip of the sword exploded. She clicked her tongue, made the sword regrow as if that little accident had never happened, then tried a second time as she waved it.

Sigmund was hit by a dull shockwave that threw him backwards. Giggling in a not entirely unpleased way, Thana said, “See, if that had worked, you’d be in two halves now. Then again, that would have been a mercy.”

Caught by his shadow spirit, the Contender took a bold stance, raising his sword tip to the sky. “I commend you!” Sigmund exclaimed, under the illusion that this was the height of his opponents’ power. “I might actually die if I don’t use this!”

Thana stopped and looked at him with sleepy eyes. Soul by soul connected with her skin, vanished underneath and raised her power a little bit, ever closer to what she was supposed to be. A shockwave of elemental force ripped over the plateau, but the goddess of genocide just stood there. Waited.

The crimson fire, concentrated within the former gap of the sword, ran completely wild, became a massive, pillar-like flame. A clear blue joined in, two opposite energies that somehow joined rather than neutralized each other. Whimsical green followed, transforming the pillar into a massive vortex of power and colours. Fertile and earthy brown pulled the entire thing back into one spot. A grotesquely oversized blade, ten metres at least, stretched upwards in blinding white. Then, that colour was dimmed by a deep purple.

“In battle all falls to the altar of the Arisen’s might!” Sigmund chanted power given sound and brought down his attack.

“I am…” Thana and Eliza, right and left eye, looked at the attack calmly. “The human that is wolf to man. What hangs above the grandest feasts and threatens death, that I am. Song of Bone.” Skeletal wings burst from her back, her powers restored far enough. “Which burns their blood to ashes and grinds all their works and all that they have touched to dust, that I am. Song of Blood.” A single pair of butterfly like wings, their patterns formed from crystallized blood and the membranes flowing life, joined on her lower back. With them came sounds like metallically distorted violins. “Three choirs I sing, for I will devour the souls of humanity to fuel their demise. Song of Soul.” Like an old, withered tree, separating blood and bone, branched out clear blue lines. It didn’t stay withered for long. Beautiful, almost angelic sounds accompanied the nightmarish display of golden leaves sprouting, human faces contorted into grimaces of erratic emotions, lust, hatred, sorrow, shifting on the surfaces. “Set my life ablaze.” Aura and energy wings all flamed up by a massive influx of raw power, distributing equally through the system of the goddess through the mastery of and in preparation for a human technique.

“Wrist techniques are widely accepted to be the hardest stuff to do,” Metra explained. “But the most basic one isn’t too difficult, at least by comparison. Just make sure that it’s energy based… and that the attack is about your own average power.”

The tip of Thana’s blade connected to the onslaught of power. Her wrists turned slowly, her entire body did. Like she was performing a dance underwater. A macabre creature, following flowing movements, to distorted violins and a disturbing sing-song. The energy flowed within her, followed the tip of her blade, then her circle was complete and the elemental destruction was sent flying back from the centre of the arena to the very man that had made it so that the failure of a goddess of genocide continued existing.

It missed him narrowly.

When the energy had dispersed and Sigmund saw what had happened, all of his heroism, all of his Contender’s will, it all vanished. An attack that hadn’t failed ever to decide the fight in his favour had just been thrown back at him like it was child’s play. Terror, the same terror he had displayed at the start and which had now returned, returned to his remaining eye as it reflected Thana’s complete power.

“You are my champion!” Ifrit roared, “Be no-“ he was interrupted when the goddess of genocide threw her sword into the portal. Without even looking, she hit the demonic entity straight between the eyes, the sword going through and exiting again on the other side. The golden chains, suddenly no longer presented with force trying to escape their clasp, pulled the lifeless body back into the portal, which closed moments thereafter.

Thana didn’t give a single fuck whether she had just killed that thing or not. Just that it’s Arabic screamings came to an end. If Sigmund hadn’t been deathly afraid by now, he definitely was now, trying to crawl backwards. Allowing herself that cruel chase, the end of the Contender slowed her steps down, watching him panic with every step she took despite the distance between them staying the same.

Until he hit the stump of a largely disintegrated tree with his back. Tietan was still pointed at her, the blade having fallen back to its default state. With a backhanded wave of her hand, she made the second blade shatter like glass.

“Here is a fucking challenge for you,” Thana stated as she caught Sigmund’s left hand under her foot. “Say 206.”

“Wh-what?” Sigmund didn’t look the part of his mighty body anymore, more like a frightened child. Normal tears joined the blood endlessly pouring out of his other eye. The expression he wore was that of a man who had risen from the depths and now got everything ripped from him by fate.

“Don’t look at me like that, you fucking ass,” Thana growled. “You could have tried being a good person, but no. You decided to go the route of the careless. You decided that because you could was reason enough that you should. That makes you almost worse than the people that made me necessary,” she pressured his little finger with all the hatred she had for how much she talked right now. “You just had less resources. Say – two – hundred – six.”

“Tw-two hundred si-AAAAAH!” Scrapping off armour and skin alike, Thana moved her abrasive heel at immense speed, revealing the bone of only the outermost segment of Sigmund’s little finger. With his perception of victory, the Contender’s pain tolerance seemed to have left the premises.

“Say 205,” Thana giggled delightfully as she shifted her heel just a little bit. Sigmund only whimpered. “I don’t need you to play along,” the goddess of genocide shrugged and crushed that bone anyway. Wincing in pain, Sigmund attempted to raise his other hand, to leave the barrier, maybe he could still flee, maybe he could…

Shift quickly carried Thana over to the other side. She grabbed the half-raised arm with one hand and put the other on Sigmund’s shoulder. Curved bone claws were coated and reinforced with blood, tore through the armour, into the flesh underneath and then the goddess ripped. A loud scream, spurting blood, a limb that flew through the air without and further use.

“Want to know something truly great?” Thana asked. Every time her lips parted, the needle-like teeth of blood formed behind the crack of her masked half. An ebb and flow of blood that underlined every word with the potential to have his throat bitten out. “You won’t die that easily. You got too strong. You can bleed for a while.” Then she got back up, a much smaller figure that had to take a large step to cross the terrified man’s torso. “Too bad I don’t know exactly how many bones there are in an arm,” she sighed regretfully. “Guess we have to do this the other fucking way around and find out by subtraction. Say 3.”

“Why would I?” Sigmund asked.

“Because if you don’t,” Thana giggled and nonchalantly plucked out his remaining eye. A movement that Sigmund could do nothing against but plead. It was futile. “I will just break the other parts,” she wasn’t even sure if Sigmund was listening over his own screams. “Do yourself the favour, go along with me and you will only die very slowly. Say 3.”

“Th-three-aaaah.” Time passed. “fhotee…” Time passed. “Fif…ty…” Time passed.

“Look at that, I was wondering what kept you from bleeding out,” Thana commented when she had broken open the armour to properly count the amount of ribs she was going with. The blood elemental quivered even in its item form. “Honestly though, I have gotten bored of you, so we’ll end this now. I have to get elsewhere before he comes.”

Over the course of those words, Thana felt how the union with Eliza began to slip. With it did her endless monologuing. At least that was an advantage.

“Die,” she growled, four lines in her left eye reverting. That man would be good fodder. Not a massive increase in power, but at least one she could notice. She tried to move, but Eliza’s mind now completely departed from her own.

‘You dusty old cunt, you aren’t taking my fucking body anywhere,’ the blood mage mentally screamed. With her went all of the martial arts knowledge, switched off like a light. The calming cool vanished suddenly along with her aura, leaving Thana stunned for a few moments. Everything seemed to turn, she felt weaker again. Of course, she was just back to her original power, but she hated being weaker. As little as the Aura itself mattered when compared to the Songs, the techniques, as despicably human as they were, were too potent a weapon to pass up.

“We still have one goal,” Thana tried to negotiate. “Let me…”

‘Get back to breaking his fucking bones then!’ Eliza declared. ‘You don’t need my help for that, do you? Useless sag of bones!’

“Irritating parasite,” the goddess of genocide hissed. Clawing at her own face as she and Eliza argued. “We had achieved progress despite being made a failure. Stop struggling and be under my sway again.”

“Fuck off!” Eliza now spoke out loud as well. One of Thana’s hands involuntarily grabbed the edge of her mask and began pulling at it. “You are getting ejected, you absolute cunt! I can break the rest of his bones myself.”

“You’re so much like me, you twisted psychopathic piece of absolute…”

“Yeah, but I want to be with someone who has a nice smile and a massive cock. Also, you know, stop the murder at people that fucking ask for it. You can return to being a massively unimportant background character!”

Thana thought to the sea of souls. Being back there, with little in the way of overtaking the parasite in control. Herself now more human than ever and alone with her thoughts. “No,” she gasped in a panic, stumbled over her own feet and fell to the ground. “I WON’T BE SEALED AWAY AGAIN!”

“Then how about you stop being the countess of cunt-ville, population you!”

“I am…”

“I fucking know, shut up about it!”

“You are insufferable!”

“And yet you’re going to be stuck inside me again, have a nice fucking day!” Eliza got to the surface. Thana fell, she roared, then she realized that she could still hold on to some control. As the blood mage tried to get up and finally remove the mask, she punched herself in the face. “What the fuck?!”

“Get out of my body,” Thana growled and wrestled again for control. The two of them fell to the floor, rolled, scratched and dismembered themselves in an effort to somehow hurt the other. Their endless rolling sent them smacking against a tree. No, a tree stump. With some blood, still fresh, around it and a severed arm lying nearby.

Their consciousnesses melded again as both of them realized that their squabbling had allowed their prey to get away. The crimson aura flared up again, ki gathered inside the neck joint and flowed with the air that formed a wailing of such power and volume that it was fortunate that only the dead were around to hear.