Thanks, Tragedyluver! I'll explain as much as I can about the aspects of each series I use as their separate parts become more integral. =D


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His eyes widened. He jumped back without hesitation, surprise snarling past his lips as his dark magician took the attack for him and lunged between himself and the black-robed monster, the green staff already flashing aglow with counterattack.

The white magic unleashed from that sword was catastrophic; it tore out of the blade with an unearthly sound—a howling, screeching echo of power—and in the second that it loosed itself that sound frightened him. His steps felt sluggish and stumbled, boots scuffing against the stone as he tripped over himself in his sudden want to get backwards, to get out of reach of that terrifying white light that howled so violently at him from that blade.

That magic—what kind of monster can do that??

His eyes, which had over the past several months learned compassion and leniency from his host and his friends, turned cold with old-learned anger. He had felt this monster here far before it had probably even realized, had felt its strength (too foreign and wild to be his own) and had tracked it down without haste, some part of the back of his mind screaming out over and over that it was a threat, that it was going to hurt him—that it was indeed a monster, a force to be reckoned with and dealt with as fast as he could.

But even if his heart told him that, his eyes told him something different; his eyes saw in front of him a young man, not a monster.

The passageway shook, the second explosion shuddering through the walls and blasting through the air with heat and wild energy, tearing against the sand littering the stone at his feet and tearing through the ancient tombstone structuring the walls of the passage. The air in front of him burst against his eyes with blinding light, the white fury from the creature's attack and the jade and amethyst energy from his dark magician colliding mid-strike and exploding upon contact, blasting the air with scratches of power that felt like fire.

He braced his feet, determination coursing its adrenaline through his blood and hardening the edges of his gaze with his power. His millennium puzzle answered his beckons, flashing to life at his chest with the gold radiance of his strength. He flung his hand out, the white fury consuming the distance between it and himself with its screeching howl as his magic coiled between his fingers.

Dark energy. The young man smelled so strongly of it—like the smells of the other monsters in this labyrinth that encompassed his mind. Before he had thought that only his other self and Shaadi had access to this room, to this maze of staircases and endless pathways that symbolized his soul; before he had truly believed that monsters did not have access to his mind here, did not have the adequate strength to reach him and attack him in this place.

But this young man had breached his defenses; this young man had gotten in without fault.

His second hand reached forward to grip the wrist of his first, face and gaze hardened. The dark magician leaped back from the white inferno in front of him, his deep purple robes billowing in the blast and his dark staff spinning madly between his hands as he landed down harshly between the white attack and his master, prepared for the venture his master had in mind.

The puzzle spirit gritted his teeth, his frown tightening the facial muscles through his whole expression.

That young man couldn't be a monster; he had coherent thoughts like a human, had the ability to speak like a human and react emotionally like a human—the spirit felt these as though they were his own, he and the young man both inhabiting his soul room at the same time and thus sharing between them some semblance of emotion and thought. But why did he send off such a monstrous vibe? What was it about that young man that gave off that murderous intent? The animosity of it had been enough to draw the essence of his strongest monster out from the depths of his mental labyrinth, to call it to his aid without his active knowledge and to materialize it and grant him the presence of the dark magician.

His fingers trembled slightly around his wrist, the first feeling of uncertainty hitting him since his dark magician appeared.

What is it about him that my soul finds threatening enough to bring out my strongest creature to protect me?

"… Do it." His command was resolute, hardly out of his thoughts and his dark magician was already into it, amassing all his own dark energies into his staff as his master did the same behind him in the intent to unleash a combined assault of their power. The white fury split against the unified expulsion of energy, the dark magic blasting out from the tip of his magician's staff and his own magic augmenting the force as the enemy attack forked in front of them, exploding down either side of the passageway at his sides as his magic protected both his own body and his dark magician's from its burn.

And what is it about him that's strong enough to match my power at its purest form like this?

He wrenched his hands apart, forcefully scattering the build-up of energy amassing itself from that attack at the base of he and his dark magician's defense, scattering it in a destructive surge to either side of the passageway and blasting the stone there to pieces. The passageway rumbled and shook, its structure crumbling somewhere in the distance and shaking loose on the top of his head and the floor and walls beside him with dust and grit.

His breaths were labored; his chest panted with them, short inhalations and even shorter exhalations racking his small frame with their effort as he stared darkly into the cloud of dust spreading out in front of him. His dark magician slowly straightened up from the offensive stance he had been crouched in, his staff still brightly aglow but refusing to move from its outstretched, attack-ready hover as he and his master both stared, gazes cold and darkened, into the cloud.

Then his magician tensed.

The clash was too fast for him to follow; something flashed behind him, the wicked shine of steel catching the torchlight at his peripherals as he whirled without hesitation to meet it, the blade already swinging down and inches from the top of his head before his dark magician was at his side, the green staff swinging up perpendicular to the blade and catching it in the midst of his own desperate attempt to scramble out of its way.

The blade hit his shoulder as he stumbled back against the passage wall, the magician's robes filling his vision as he sprung between the enemy and his master; the magician's robed body pushed back against his own as the sword cut against the staff and sank into the his collarbone and stuck there, slicing through the arteries and veins and muscle and jarring into the bone as the screech of steel against metal slashed the air.

The spirit bit down against his yelp, teeth grinding together as his face flushed and twisted in his forced self-restraint as he grabbed his shoulder out of defensive instinct. His eyes glared upwards, up past the looming silhouette of his dark magician keeping the attacker's blade at bay with his staff and up at the attacker himself. The black robes, the style and the rustic appearance—they reminded him of the ancient dress styles in this country, the kind of outfits swordsmen used to wear here in Japan that he had read about in his other half's history books.

And the face—the face of a human teenager stared down angrily at him. His short orange hair still blew in the wind of his movement, and his eyes and face were twisted with the same kind of fierce determination that he himself felt—the determination not to lose, to come out on top no matter what. The brown eyes in that fierce gaze narrowed when the puzzle spirit met them with equal vehemence, the fingers holding that sword tightening and shoving down harder, gouging the blade more harshly into the spirit's shoulder and deriving another strangled, half-restrained yelp out of his throat.

The dark magician bristled in front of him, hands braced on either end of the staff as he pushed back with all his visible strength against the pressure of the other's sword, the friction of the two weapons scratching against the air. The spirit grimaced, his hand clutching the top of his shoulder just below the sword's edge and gripping as tight as he could as he glared up at the teenager.

Gods, it—it h-hurts. The air tore itself up from his lungs in harsh, irregular pants now, the wound tingling and itching with unfamiliar energy as his blood pooled around the blade's edge. He forced his eyes shut as tight as he could for a second, forcing himself to inhale slowly, steadily—forcing his heart to try and slow itself down, to stop beating as frantically as it now was from the dark energies scouring into his body from that wound.

His fingers on the other hand flexed taut with new magic, the puzzle around his neck flashing angered gold.

"Where's your mask?" the young man snarled down at him then, and completely threw his focus off his counterattack. The strain of the teenager's grip pushing against the dark magician's reverberated down through the length of the blade, jostling its wicked edge inside the spirit's collarbone and yanking a pained growl out past his lips.

His fingers shook against his shoulder, little more than affront lashing out in his words instead of the reason he usually made himself known for. "What mask?" he growled back, his words shaking from the strain of trying to keep them as level as he could. The blood flowed from the cut, trickling slowly down his chest and down his shoulder into the fabric of his leather vest.

The young man's face darkened. "Don't—" he started in a snarl, lifting one hand from the hilt to slam it down against the flat of the blade itself "—fuck with me, hollow." The edge of the blade sparked aflame with blue energy, and the pupil within those brown eyes flashed with a pulse of it as they narrowed at the sound of the spirit's snarled retaliation.

"I'm not!" the spirit snapped back, gripping his shoulder now so hard that the pain his fingers were inflicting were almost overpowering the agony throbbing out from the wound. The image connoted to the word slammed into his subconscious at the young man's snarled emphasis on it, flashing his mind through with images of more monsters like the ones he had encountered chasing the teenager down; monsters with beast-like bodies but no faces—only white masks.

His lips twisted in the presence of an almost silent snarl, teeth gritted beneath them. Is that what he thinks I am—one of these … these 'hollow'??

The sword's edge flashed silver in his eyes; he could see himself reflected in its blade, face flushed with exertion and pain from the wound; he could see his eyes reflected so close to the side of his face, sharpened and livid with stubbornness. He saw their narrowed edge widen as the sword bit down a little further into his body despite the dark magician's grunted protest, saw the pain that twisted through his face as he bit down as hard as he could on his tongue to keep the agony in.

And he saw the stricken realization—the absolute horror—that flashed through his face when the young man's hiss started again to whisper the name of that attack. "…Getsu—"

No—NO! With the blade this close to him, cutting into him—

The second staff swung out of nowhere, cracking into the side of the orange-haired boy's head—or at least, was only a second away from doing so before the teenager, who had suddenly seemed to sense its presence, jumped back with a snarl and vanished into that unfathomable speed again with a scratch of air. The gold-embroidered knob swung viciously through the air where he had just stood, sparking and crackling with dark energy though in tones far softer than those used by his dark magician.

Her boots landed down in front of him, gentle and pale blue designs to contrast the harsher, deeper purple hues of his other spellcaster. Her long hair burned a bright and colorful blonde in the dim passageway as she moved into perfect place next to his dark magician, her far shorter but no less mighty staff outstretched as she crouched low alongside her partner, the dark magicks collecting and sparking between them as they both lowered themselves into protective stances in front of him.

My dark magician girl—she's … she's come, too?


TBC.