Chapter XII
Kefka and Gabranth both come to a sudden halt, electricity crackling up and down their bodies as the ground beneath their feet glows with the same light as Mateus's other traps. Across the shrine, the golden creatures with Gabranth's form all halt, seeming confused. Mateus looks at Auron and Sephiroth. "Even if you don't believe everything I've told you, believe me when I say that I can only hold them for a few more moments and that you two cannot fight them as you are. Will you agree to a truce if I release the spell I put on your powers?"
"Powers?" Sephiroth asks.
Mateus glares, obviously having trouble maintaining his spell, but explains. "I didn't just remove your ability to use the dash. I also put a sap on your strength. I'm sure you've felt the effects by now. Enemies hit you harder, they stand up better to your attacks…" He grimaces. "It affected you more than your friend because of his unique nature. Now, are we agreed?"
"Yes!" Auron snaps. "Do it!"
Mateus snaps his fingers, and Sephiroth feels an invigorating rush of what he can only describe as pure power. He gasps when it hits him, the force of it is so intense. Had he been this affected and not even realized it? Mateus is far more dangerous than he'd originally estimated.
With a thought, he sends himself hurtling toward Gabranth, slicing out with the Masamune as he shoots through the air. "Take Kuja! I've got Gabranth!" he calls as his weapon slams into both of Gabranth's. "Mateus, help Terra!" He can almost feel the sorcerer's indignant stare, but a moment later he sees the man's golden form rush toward the Gabranth lookalikes, his staff glowing with power.
"Eyes on your opponent, boy!" he hears a moment before Gabranth disengages their weapons with a sudden push and follows up with a vicious thrust at Sephiroth's head. Without thinking, Sephiroth slides out of the way, slashing low at Gabranth's waist. The Masamune slams into Gabranth's armor, sending the warrior skidding back, and Sephiroth smirks as he puts more pressure on the blade. Even from six feet away, he can feel his sword cutting into the steel plate, driving inexorably closer to Gabranth's liver.
For his part, Gabranth takes Sephiroth's sudden increase of power in stride. With a twist of his smaller blade, he rips the Masamune out of his armor, then slams it to the ground, where he stomps his boot down on it. Sephiroth gives a tug, but the blade is stuck fast. Gabranth steps to the side, lashing out with his larger blade in a vicious sideswipe as he does. The impact wrenches the Masamune out of the stone, but Sephiroth anticipates the move. He puts the momentum into a twist that pulls him around in an arcing swing that closes in on Gabranth.
When Sephiroth comes to face his enemy again, however, Gabranth has closed the distance between them with a quick dash of his own and is thrusting his smaller sword straight at Sephiroth's face. Sephiroth ducks, but that takes him into the reverse pommel strike that Gabranth is aiming at his groin. He instinctively twists with the impact, turning the attack along his ribcage, which negates the brunt of the blow. Even so, Gabranth's strength is inhuman, pushing Sephiroth back. He retreats into a reverse roll that gives him distance, taking him out of range of the follow-up swipe that Gabranth aims at his throat. Now he has room to maneuver.
Sephiroth starts with a lightning bolt. It strikes Gabranth square in the chest; sparks fly from every joint in his armor, but the warrior only grunts as he rushes forward, twisting in a rotating strike with both his weapons. Sephiroth brings up the Masamune, but instead of blocking with it, he sets it at an angle against the attack, then pushes off the ground, using his sword as a fulcrum. He lands on the other side of Gabranth's strike, disrupting it and sending him into a stumble, then pulls back. Sighting in on the armor beneath Gabranth's right underarm, Sephiroth puts all his weight behind a thrust.
The Masamune shoots through the gap in the plate and pierces the mail as though it's not even there. It goes right through Gabranth's shoulder, sliding along the bone. When it erupts from beneath his skin, it slams into the inside of the pauldron over his shoulder and comes to a halt, blood streaming from the wound. Sephiroth allows himself a cold smile.
He feels the expression fade when Gabranth speaks. "Good," the warrior says, his voice echoing inside his helmet. "You are no amateur." He cocks his head to one side; Sephiroth can hear his neck pop. "I can use my full strength."
The air around him explodes into a glowing display of power, shimmering and warping as though from intense heat. Sephiroth narrows his eyes, flash-blinded for a brief instant. In that interval, Gabranth spins into a tornado of slashing blades, too fast for Sephiroth's blurry vision to follow. The Masamune is ripped from his hand, and he takes several cuts to the chest that immediately begin to ooze blood. He leaps back, blinks away the spots in his eyes, and tries another lightning bolt, but this one is even less effective than before. Gabranth literally bats it away with a casual flick of his smaller sword before slicing his larger one through the air in front of him. Energy flickers along its edge, and an enormous blue shockwave rushes at Sephiroth, lifting him off his feet and into an arc that terminates with him crashing into one of the stone statues adjacent to the ramp at the far end of the shrine. The statue explodes into dozens of large stone chunks; Sephiroth lies there for a moment, his head pounding, his vision swimming.
He forces himself to his feet. Gabranth strides toward him, wordlessly extricating the Masamune from his shoulder as he does. Behind him, Auron is locked in combat with Kuja, while Mateus and Terra bombard the squad of faux-Gabranths with bright bursts of energy. Suddenly, Sephiroth seems to be the only one having difficulty holding his own.
"Do not let your courage wane so easily," Gabranth says as he walks toward Sephiroth, the blood still gushing from his shoulder staining his passage red. "Within our hierarchy, above me there is only Garland, Lord Chaos's personal guard. You do not fare poorly when one considers the difference in our strengths."
"That's very kind of you to say," Sephiroth says, wiping a trickle of blood out of his right eye. "But I've had enough."
"Oh? Should I instead loudly denigrate you, as many of my allies so enjoy doing in a battle?"
"No," Sephiroth replies. "I'm tired of being thrown around, electrocuted, crushed, tossed into explosions, stabbed, all of it. Auron's been doing all the hard work around here so far, and I'm sick of feeling like a tagalong." He shakes the dust from himself, raises his fists in an en-garde pose. "So I'm going to beat you, and I'll do it without the Masamune."
He can picture Gabranth's raised eyebrow. "Are you, now? When I was not exerting myself to the utmost, we were evenly matched – or perhaps you even had a slight advantage. Now, however, I have inflicted extensive bodily harm upon you while myself sustaining what is, in the end –" the aura surrounding him flickers wildly and the blood suddenly stops gushing from his shoulder – "a negligible wound. How will forgoing your sword improve your chances?"
"Extensive bodily harm?" Sephiroth asks. "My teachers used to wake me up with beatings worse than this. And as far as my sword goes, the Masamune has great reach, but the longer a sword's reach, the larger its blind spots. Compared to mine, your swords are quite small, so you've been able to exploit my openings and keep me off-balance – barely." He smirks. "Compared to my fists, however…"
"A sound analysis, but you seem to be ignoring the incontrovertible fact that I am armored from head to foot. How do you intend to pierce my plate with your bare hands?"
Sephiroth just grins and channels the energy of his Materia into his hands, wreathing them in writhing tendrils of lightning.
Gabranth barely has time to raise his swords before Sephiroth is on him. He lands four solid punches on Gabranth's breastplate before the warrior even knows what's happening, electricity crawling along the armor. Gabranth staggers back with each strike, and Sephiroth hears him grunt in pain when the fourth one lands.
He retaliates with an attack at Sephiroth's neck – he slices from the right with his left-hand sword and vice versa, the two blades passing over one another in a tilted cross. Sephiroth jerks his head back, the very tips of Gabranth's blades slicing shallow furrows in his skin. In the same motion, he brings his right boot up in a crescent kick that takes Gabranth's helmet beneath the visor, sending it flying off his head. He then drops low into a sweeping kick, but Gabranth reacts with astonishing speed, leaping over the attack as though he wears no armor. He takes the opportunity to deliver a swift kick of his own to Sephiroth's chin with the toe of his armored greave. Sephiroth feels all his teeth click together, but he ignores the pain, retaliating with an explosive uppercut that sends Gabranth flying back. All the hair on the warrior's head stands up from the electricity arcing between Sephiroth's fingers. He lands with a loud clank several feet away, sinking to one knee.
Sephiroth exploits the opening, picturing the man's face. He feels himself rush forward, propelled by the strange forces of the dash, and he leads with a left cross that breaks Gabranth's nose and snaps the man's head back. This time the warrior actually roars with pain, the sound hitching as his body spasms.
Even so, he is not out. As Sephiroth's crushing strike lands, he brings his smaller sword around, gleaming with the same blue energy from the first shockwave, in a swipe that cuts cleanly across Sephiroth's abdomen. Sephiroth feels the magical force ripple through his gut before he is sent skidding across the stone surface of the shrine. He manages to keep his feet, coming to a halt some twenty feet away. When he draws a deep breath to replenish the air that was pushed from his lungs, he feels his chest seize and he coughs up a sizable quantity of blood. The strike must have caused internal bleeding.
Gabranth sends two more shockwaves his way, so he forces himself to stop coughing. Sephiroth rolls out of the way of the shockwaves; as he comes back up, he sees Gabranth dashing toward him, energy coalescing around him in a large sphere. Without hesitation, he remembers what Mateus said about the dash – that he could push himself away from someone if he so chose. He looks at Gabranth's face, but instead of focusing on getting closer, he thinks about getting away.
As though there were a rope around his waist, Sephiroth feels himself pull away from Gabranth. He halts his dash just before it takes him off the edge of the shrine; as he watches, the energy Gabranth was gathering goes up in a blinding explosion that would have consumed him if he hadn't moved. Deciding to counterattack before his enemy can recover, Sephiroth reverses his dash again, rocketing toward the center of the sphere, fists clenched and blazing with electricity.
He forces himself down on his back, letting his momentum slide him in close. An instant later, his caution is rewarded as Gabranth's wild swings arc through the empty air in front of him. Sephiroth springs to his feet, boxes the other man's ears, ignores the feeling of satisfaction at the look of pain on Gabranth's face. He instead grabs hold of Gabranth's right wrist, ducks under his arm while twisting it around his back, and then gives a sharp pull. Gabranth's arm doesn't break, but his fingers do go numb, the sword slipping out of them. Sephiroth dances back, avoiding the reverse stab Gabranth attempts straight through his black cape, then rushes forward again in a roll over the dropped sword. He comes up with it gripped in both hands. Gabranth, still trying to extricate his remaining weapon from his cape, is left wide open to the chop that Sephiroth makes at his head.
In a moment, the aura of power around Gabranth flares to blinding levels. Sephiroth feels his strike reflect off a hard surface; he staggers back, having put so much strength into the attack only to have it blocked. The aura fades, guttering down to nothing. Sephiroth supposes that must have taken the last of Gabranth's reserves to use it as a physical shield, so he instantly recovers from the stagger to charge forward again, aiming a flurry of crushing blows at Gabranth's torso, knowing the man will be expecting another strike at his head. The claymore, coupled with Sephiroth's immense strength, smashes large dents in Gabranth's plate, but the armor holds. Sephiroth dodges another thrust, goes all-out in a slash at Gabranth's weapon hand that connects with a thundering crash and sends the smaller sword flying from his enemy's grip.
"Surrender," Sephiroth gets out between pants, leveling Gabranth's own sword at him.
Gabranth wipes at his face with the back of his hand, the gauntlet coming away covered in blood, before resetting his nose with a sickening snap. "You are a formidable opponent," he says. "I acknowledge it from the bottom of my heart. However, I believe your previous analysis of this battle still holds true."
Sephiroth blinks. "What?"
By way of reply, Gabranth comes at him in a dash, moving so fast he seems to accelerate into a grey blur. With his left hand, he smacks Sephiroth's weapon out of the way. Gabranth anticipates Sephiroth's automatic dodge; with his right hand he punches him square in the face.
The impact slams Sephiroth onto his back, cracking his skull against the floor of the shrine; the impact spiderwebs the stone with cracks. All he can see is the swirling, purple void of the sky, and that begins to darken. Fool. How could you fall for that? Get up. Get up or you'll never live it down.
He sees Gabranth pick up his sword. It is the last thing he remembers.
