brother's retry (the beginning after the end)

Darkness of the Night.

The black runes on Ashton's body pulsed as they took on a more complex design weaving the circuits across his body. His dark auburn hair seemed to absorb the light as it grew to reach his mid back and his azure eye paled to match his other moon-like silver eye.

Mana surged through Ashton's body and he zoomed forward at speeds no human was capable of. Fayden flinched back as Ashton came to a stop right in front of him. He could feel the mana getting sucked into his bandaged arm as it blurred out of his vision.

His body acted on reflex and he jumped back, but he could not fully evade the attack and it left a deep gash over his chest, tearing into his flesh. Fayden gasped in pain as blood began pouring out of his wound. His rune pulsed once, and greenish-black flames exploded over his chest, sealing up his wound in moments.

He watched Ashton warily, he had not moved from his position yet. Earth mana bent to his will and formed a thin layer over his body, while it wouldn't stop another hit like that, it would weaken it.

Mana flooded from Ashton's core taking on a spherical shape around him. The ambient mana funneled towards him, however, it wasn't absorbed by him. Rather, it floated within the bubble as it began to mix with the aether. Ice mana seemed to overpower the others, leaving behind a darker, more sinister version of it.

The dark ice mana flooded to his other arm, concentrated over his palm. A moment later, it exploded out in the form of tiny snowflakes that floated around the battlefield. Wherever it touched, an icicle of black ice would take its place. A shiver went down Faydens spine, he could feel the mana thinning in the area, sucked up by the ice.

I cannot let them touch me. The thought echoed in his mind as he flew up, fire mana coalesced over him, adding another layer over the earth mana, but much thicker and stronger than before. Out of curiosity, he threw a nacht sword into the snowflake cloud, watching it get encased in the black ice, fossilized inside it. He waved his arm over it, and a dome of earth covered up the ice.

"How long do you think you can keep containing them?" Ashton said rhetorically as he cast the spell once more.

"As long as I need to." Fayden retorted, and black flames spilled out of his hand, the nacht spell melting the nox ice, the two spells canceling each other out.

Ashton zig-zagged on the ground, each time leaving behind a dark afterimage made purely of nox fire, before disappearing into his shadow. The afterimages moved of their own will, each flying off towards Fayden.

Fayden Void Stepped away, and held his dominant arm out, using his left hand to stabilize it as a black mass of concentrated earth mana formed over his palm and began pulling on his clothes. He pumped as much mana into it as he could before letting it fly off and expand to form a black hole, sucking in the flame apparitions.

Unexpectedly, the flames didn't extinguish and began devouring the black hole from the inside, leaving behind a single afterimage at least ten times the size of him.

Anything but Nacht is useless against it, Fayden realized, in his acquire phase he did not have much nacht to use, and he was unwilling to enter his integrate phase until he was at his limit.

The apparition moved faster than it had any right to and extended its arm to grab Fayden. Ashton jumped out of Faydens shadow, standing on the blade of a rusty black sword and flew up behind him. Between his white shortsword and the flame apparition, Fayden was stuck in a pincer attack.

Fayden exhaled calmly, nacht pulsing over his body, and did nothing. Ashton's sword passed through his abdomen, and the black flames washed over him. Daybreak's passive skill activated, and absorbed the flames within seconds.