Devastation

--Belle's Perspective--

With my fingers still missing and my body still too cold to use, I looked up, watching Boo fall to the ground... and Illya stand, yet again.

This time around, her left arm was missing, and her chest was caved in. That's right! Eo's strike made it so she couldn't regenerate her ribcage... and with a hit like that, she had to have taken some damage.

She got up, with blood pouring out of her mouth, and her right arm twitching.

And then, last but not least, Mitra came ahead to look at her.

"I believe this is the part where I kill you. You've taken everything from me, absolutely everything." Mitra said with tears in his eyes.

I felt the ground shake.

"No... I can't die... no matter how weak I am here, I still have another body, another chance. You're lucky... Sky is fighting..." Illya said, heavily panting.

"I guess so. I'm going to kill you, and force you to leave this world now." Mitra said. He stepped over the fallen rock with tears hitting the ground lightly and looked over at Illya. She still stood, perked up, and with a saber ready.

"You're the last one, Mitra. After your friends nobly sacrificed their livelihood to stop me, here you are, perfectly unscathed. A real man you are, aren't you?" Illya asked him.

Something was happening with her body that I wasn't liking. Her arms... they were bending, they were flexed, and she was concentrating.

"Don't bother," Mitra said, pointing the tip of his saber at the ground.

"I'm using my SIM to watch you hide your strands underground. You'll come up and try to pierce me with one of them and take my strands away from me. In fact, that's what you've been doing this whole time, haven't you?" Mitra asked Illya.

The battlefield went completely silent. Not even the dust moving in the crater that Boo made was moving anymore. No tears, no blood drops, nothing.

Mitra pointed up and smiled at Illya.

"You're taking them from Sky, aren't you? Up there, far up there... it's almost invisible. You know why he started to fight you?" Mitra asked Illya again. The wicked look on Illya's face, with widened eyes and furrowed eyebrows, made me smile a little.

"The 'real man' you were referring to was helping his friends out. I was getting Sky out of your reach and giving him the opportunity to push against you. I don't know what your body is doing in The Real World, but I do know you're finished here." Mitra said with his arms crossed.

"How valiant. That won't last." Illya said.

"How do I charge in to fight you when you're this sluggish? This almost seems too easy." Mitra said. He uncrossed his arms and ran at Illya.

Illya followed his saber with hers and traced the tip, countering Mitra's swing as he jumped past her body and ended up on her backside.

Illya turned her body and continued to block his attacks like it was nothing. I was impressed with it... but I knew Mitra could win this.

Mitra came in again with another attack and Illya took it right to her arm, kicked out Mitra's ankles, and plunged his sword deep into her chest.

The clothing on his chest vanished into nothing and soon his body followed. It must've been an illusion, but how could it have struck Illya with a saber if it wasn't real?

I see!

It must be a part of his SIM. Making a clone of yourself seems easy with illusion abilities, but giving them powers is a whole different story. Not bad!

Blowing off the smoke of the dispersed illusion, Illya stood upright, pushing her shirt down her body as another wind came from beneath her.

Her wounds were no longer healing. We were getting close!

With blood seeping out of the wound on her left arm, she closed her hand and threw some of it in front of her. She opened her eyes again when it coated an invisible figure and threw her saber dead ahead.

It cut Mitra's cheek and pulled his face to the ground, fully flipping his body and causing his own blade to drop and disappear.

Illya's face glinted with red coloring and marks started to slowly spread up to her left eye from the base of her left hand. And with a slight frown on her face, she was struck by a rock in Mitra's hand, dead in the center of her head.

And the world around us flickered.

I thought I had maybe lost consciousness, but I didn't just imagine. It was like somebody flipped the light switch off around us... and I had the perfect opportunity for another idea.

It's very clear to me now how to escape The First Trial... all I have to do is 'Open The Bridge', as Eo explained to us.

When the rock fell from Illya's head, Mitra grabbed her by her throat. Then, as if she activated something sinister, her eyes focused dead on Mitra's hand and it exploded like a bomb.

"Get your filthy hands off me." She said, cutting his chest open like it was nothing with a sway of her hand.

She swung her body down and her foot came up with a kick that rattled the battlefield again. Mitra was sent into the wall with a dent in his chest in the shape of Illya's foot.

Mitra coughed up blood and Illya put her hand over the top of his head, crouched down, and peered into his eyes.

"I don't like pathetic, filthy people." She said.

I watched in horror as some sort of weird, curved spike grew from her shoulder in both an upward and downward direction.

Claws shot out of her knuckles and she stuck her hand into Mitra's chest, claws and all, and pulled downward.

He put his hand on her wrist and pulled up while shrieking in pain. It looked painful... and it wasn't just cutting him, it was boiling him alive!

I still can't move... dammit!

"Before I knew it, I had been accused of being a demon. I killed my husband, even when the world hated him, and I turned out to be the demon. These people... these lowly humans, they only care about themselves and hate somebody specific! So, I became that demon. Everything they feared from demons, I became. I am a demon, through and through, even in my blood I'm destined to kill and destroy. You will be no exception." Illya said.

Illya sharpened her claws on a nearby rock from the slant of the crater Boo created and put them straight through Mitra's head, dragging brain matter and flesh all around before spreading it and flicking it off her claws.

I felt myself freeze while staring at her.