"Haven't you notice already, Blood Deviant!" Cadell turned to me, like the energy that hit him was nothing more than a splash of water from my mist currently still going on. My eyes widened though in realization. "There it is."
"Hahaa." I laughed. "I should have seen it coming, soulfire eats away mana." He conjured soulfire inside of his body and ate away the foreign mana in his blood stream with it, quite impressive if I say so.
"Yes, you should have." Cadell grinned at me as there was no longer any of my water mana inside of him. "I know how your magic works, Lesser, but it seems you didn't know that."
I started to use Arthur's blood to heal him, putting out the fires, but I looked up at Sylvie. "Help him!"
Sylvie came flying down, picked up Arthur's body as he tried to fight against the fire, and as she did, Arthur shouted to me. "Get out of here! You can't take him alone. Sylv, help him, not me."
Sylvie gave me a glance, and nodded her head, knowing that I could buy us time against him. I sent her a nod as well and turned my head back to the Scythe. "So, what, I still have slight control over your core."
"But you know that, slight control, isn't enough." He did have a point; slight control was not enough to take him down. "Now, after I break you down, and take you back with me to Alacrya, your brother will be blaming himself for not being able to save you! Just like he did with Lady Sylvia!" I let the blood deform from the sword and it started to circle me, I was going to use it more as a defense now. "No back up anymore, just you and me."
"Perfect." I said, conjuring an ice sword in my right hand. "It's better this way, Dragon Slayer." I didn't have my illusion spell active anymore, I was going to activate it again, but I needed to wait a little.
"We'll see about that!" He appeared before me, swinging his long black sword, I deflected the attack, dodged a black spike that grew out of the ground, swung my sword at his face, the Scythe side stepped the attack, swung his blade at my neck, I ducked under it, and sent my ice blade towards his core area.
A giant black spike, aimed at my broken arm, grew and hit it. I ignored it and kept on going, puncturing his armor, but the Scythe swatted my sword away, and I spun, reinforced my blade with mana, and then shot the blood floating around me at his knees.
As I was spinning, my blade connected with his sword, the blood connected with his knees, causing him to bleed slightly. I landed, holding my sword against his, as I pushed water mana into the wounds, but soulfire quickly ate it up as the wound healed.
A sword made from soulfire appeared in his left hand, and it came down on me, I quickly disrupted his core, deforming the sword for him, spun away from his blade, and pulled the blood I shot back to me. I had it float around me like it was before, so I would be able to use it once again if I wanted.
His soulfire blade came down on me again, I deflected his blade, conjured an ice dagger in my broken arm, shot wind magic out of my back, and collided with the Scythe's chest, sliding the dagger with my broken arm into his sternum.
Cadell became intangible before I could do any damage, I don't think it mattered, it hurt like hell to even lift it up and push force onto the dagger with this damn arm. Cadell reformed in front of me, swung his black sword, I dodged, he swung his soulfire sword, I dodged again, wind came from behind me, it was his decay type style of wind, it brought me to him.
Soulfire erupted out of his body, it was about to enter my body, but I disrupted his core as it got close to me, so it vanished into thin air like it wasn't even there. I was now a yard away from the Scythe staring up at him as I sent my ice blade toward him.
"Pathetic." Cadell said, sending a kick toward me, making me stop my attack, I contorted my body so it didn't hit me, plunged my sword into the ground, jumped up into the air over his soulfire blade as he swung it at me, landed on the ground, pulled my blade out, and conjured a huge ball of blue fire and shot it at the Scythe's chest.
He went into his gas mode, or whatever he called it, I had no clue, and I watched as it went through him. As he was reforming, I shot up at him, and sent my sword into his shoulder blade.
"Stop holding back!" I told him as my blade entered into his armor and then into his skin. "Haha." I laughed as blood came out of his wound, and he swung his soulfire blade at my head. I quickly released my ice sword, and spun out of the way of the sword, formed another sword in my hand using the water from the mist I had going on.
I deflected another attack, and another, and another. "You want to see the power of the Vritra so badly; I'll show you Lesser." The Scythe turned into gas and floated into the air away from me, he was in the sky now, looking down at me in his gas or whatever form.
"I would clap my hands, but you broke my arm." I stayed on the ground, knowing he was going to come down to me again. "Bravo!" I said as black flames started to rise all around him, forming what looked like countless arrows, all aimed at me. I could also feel another spell building up inside of him, I didn't know what, but knowing him, it was probably the black spike spell.
"I can't kill you, but this is going to hurt a lot." Cadell smirked as he sent the flaming arrows at me.
"Hahahaa." I laughed as I shot wind magic out of my feet, made the blood flowing inside of me go even faster, and flew around the battlefield as fast as I could as the arrows of fire followed me, colliding with the ground causing a loud explosion each time.
I felt the ground under me start to move, and that's when countless spikes grew up at the same time the soulfire arrows came for me. I dug into Scythe Cadell's core, and disrupted the flow of mana, and as the last spike was going up, I shot myself up into the air to where he was standing.
"Not today, brat." A sword came down on my shoulder, sending me flying to the ground, causing blood to rush down my side.
I laid there on the ground, looking up as he flew down toward me. "Hahaha." I laughed as I healed myself. "Nice one." I admitted, rolling to my stomach and pushing myself up to my feet, ignoring all the pain I was feeling.
"You are a dumb, Lesser." Cadell told me as he landed on the ground across from me.
"What do you mean?" I asked him, curious on why he called me dumb when I didn't even say anything wrong.
"You've been trying to disrupt my core this whole fight and haven't even recognized that when you did do it, and I was in the sky, I didn't fall." Cadell told me, and I then realized he was right.
"Oh yeah." I said, shrugging. "So what?"
"You are too weak to stop me from flying even when I have minimal mana usage." Cadell snarled at me, and that's when I felt Arthur and Sylvie coming back. They were hiding out in the forest, while Arthur regained his strength from the soulfire, Sylvie's aether arts, and my blood healing, helped him out probably, because even from here, I was still trying to heal him.
"Is that supposed to hurt my feelings or something?" I asked him, my plan was almost ready, I just needed to play everything perfectly, or it would fail, and I would become some test subject. "Because it didn't, Cadell Vritra." I said his name with a snarky tone. "All it did was intrigue me." Why didn't he stop flying? I was only able to influence some parts of his mana, not the ability for him to fly with mana? Who knows? Not like it matters at this moment.
Spikes started to grow rapidly out of the ground at me once again, dodging and weaving through them, I appeared before Cadell on the ground, swinging my sword at his head. I feinted my attack on the right, and came for him on the left, sending my sword into his rib cage, the Scythe brought his soulfire sword down on me, but it was met by a shield of blood protecting me.
My blade managed to cut the Scythe as he was now tangible in front of me for some reason, maybe he didn't think I would just charge him like this, I don't know, but I drew more blood down his chest plate.
"Damned, brat!" The Scythe gritted his teeth, and soulfire blew up out of him like a bomb, giving me no time to react, it passed through me, burning all things of mana, even the sword I was holding, but not the mist spell I had still going.
The fire tried to get inside of me, but I managed to block it off using the blood inside of my body. Noticing this, the Scythe inside of the black fire threw a fist at my face, no longer holding a soulfire blade in his left hand. He wasn't supposed to kill me, so he probably just wanted to knock me unconscious, however, if he wanted to do that, he had to try a little harder.
I moved my head to the side, watching his fist go by me. "I thought you were faster, Scythe." I brought my ice blade up into his chest area, Cadell grew a spike up that shattered my blade to pieces, then brought his elbow to the side of my head.
Right before it collided with me, a beam of energy dispersed the soulfire we were standing in and knocked Cadell backwards away from me. It was Sylvie, and as the soulfire disappeared, Arthur landed next to me, I could see that he was tired, probably from fighting the soulfire inside of him.
"You good?" I asked him, worried about his health, knowing though, that he was going to be okay if we got out of this.
"Somewhat." He asnwered, and kept on going. "I think it's best if we retreat, Veer, if we can make it out of here like this, we can call it a win." He was right, but there was no way that Cadell was going to just let us leave, he wanted to capture me.
"I hate to retreat, but you may be right." I spun the ice sword in my only good arm, looking at the Scythe staring at us both.
"There will be no retreating." Cadell said with an authoritative tone. "If you think that's possible, you're even dumber than I thought."
I nodded my head, knowing that may be the truth, we can't escape from this unless we do it properly. "Arthur, want to meet back at the floating castle?"
"We are leaving together." Arthur said. "You are not staying here again, by yourself."
I pointed my sword at the Scythe, and conjured countless illusions of myself all around him, forming a circle, where each one pointed their sword at the Scythe. "I know." There was no way he was going to go back to the castle without me.
"This trick doesn't work, you know that." Cadell hissed at me, looking directly through the illusions at Arthur and me.
"I know." I smirked at the Scythe. "It shouldn't bother you then, if it doesn't work." I flung my arm holding my sword up, telling the illusions to charge the Scythe. "Arthur, attack with me if you can."
"Do you have something planned?" He asked, and I nodded my head. "Okay, I'm good to go, but if we have to Sylvie will create some time for us to retreat."
"That's what I'm about to do." I answered, shooting myself at the Scythe as fast as I could, pushing my blood movement to its limit. I felt Arthur dash behind me, following my lead, not as fast as me though, even when he used static void, I was able to keep up with him.
I swung my sword at the Scythe as my illusions ran through him, swinging their blades at him, but the Scythe didn't care about them, he knew where I was, and where Arthur was, that's all that mattered to him.