First off, sorry for the delay, had some personal matters to sort out.

Gray Shadow: Well, thanks for asking. For the record, in japanese, Kukyo meant "emptiness" and Sainan meant "catastrophe," though I might have made some errors in translation.

hiallofyou: We'll see, won't we?

Chapter 14

For the Nightmare, things had taken a turn to the absolute worst. That infuriated him to no end, especially because of how tantalizingly close he had come.

Everything was perfect. He had succeeded in retrieving his powers back from the book and trapped the nuisances inside nigh unbreakable illusions. All that he had left was to shed this cumbersome human body for his natural one; he was nearly there, too, when his fake bursted out of the darkness and set the maid free.

He scowled again as he desperately batted away the knives aimed at him with the pitiful cards that this body was restricted to using. He needed to stay calm. Stay calm. Regardless of the hindrance now before him, it was still only a matter of time before he consolidated control and regain his true form. After that, it would only be a trifling matter to wipe any traces of the fake off of his mind and put the maid in another illusion. All he needed was time.

As such, he focused and materialized dozens of cards around him and proceeded to spin them at high speeds, creating a barrier which deflected the knives aimed at him. He laughed as he looked down at Sakuya.

"Well?" he said, "Your knife tricks won't matter now; you can't reach me in here." he laughed again, though he failed to contain the hint of nervousness in his voice.

Sakuya looked at him, unimpressed. "...Is that it?" she asked.

"What?"

"Is that all you're going to do, now that your illusions are gone?" she asked again with a serious tone.

Again, he laughed nervously. "What do you mean? This is all I need to do! You can't touch me anymore. All I need to do is wait," he said, his voice shaking.

Sakuya shook her head derisively. "After all your talk, is that all you're going to do?" she said with a cold tone. "Pathetic."

He blinked, bewildered, before laughing again, more nervous than before. "Call me that all you want, you still won't get past my cards. Soon enough that pest in my mind will be gone, and then I'll let you taste death once more."

"If that's what you think, then you're sorely overestimating your abilities," she said, taking out a knife and spinning it in her hands. "Getting past something like this is child's play for me."

He was about to rebuke her when he felt something warm trickling down his left cheek and noticed the edge of her knife was now red. He lifted his hand and winced when his gloved fingers touched the fresh wound on his cheek.

Sakuya continued to spin the bloodied knife with an indifferent expression. "See?"

Kukyo desperately dodged around as the black surface under him continued to erupt, always trying to keep one step ahead of the onslaught. It was a taxing endeavor; even though he could not get tired physically, his concentration was still stretched to the limit as he always found himself unable to do anything else but jump and create small platforms on which to land with his cards, platforms that were instantly obliterated by the black spears from below.

He jumped again, only to find his landing spot already filled with spears pointed up at the sky, ready to impale him. He gritted his teeth and somersaulted in mid-air, throwing his cards at the spears, diffusing them just long enough for him to create another platform to land on. Before he had time to catch his breath though, the platform shifted, throwing him off balance just as he saw another onslaught coming his way. Unable to dodge, he materialized a cloud of cards that managed to deflect most of the spears, though several managed to graze his arms and thigh.

As he was bracing himself for the next wave, the black surface shuddered unexpectedly, and the attacks stopped. He stood there, confused, when he felt the warm trickle from his cheek and felt the wound that had appeared on it. For a moment, he was baffled; he couldn't remember any of the attacks coming close to his face. As he worried about it, the surface shook even harder, and this time he felt a stabbing pain in his left shoulder as a trail of blood started to run down his sleeve. For a moment, he thought it was the nightmare's doing. But as he looked around, he realized that the entire space was shuddering as if in pain as well. It took him a moment to connect the dots and he chuckled to himself. At least he knew for certain now that Sakuya's doing alright on her end.

He refocused as the black spears began to shoot out again, more erratic than before. The nightmare was getting desperate. Sakuya was definitely more than enough to deal with it. All he needs to do now is to continue to buy time on this end.

As his shoulder continued to throb, though, he couldn't help but grin as he imagined what sort of hell the nightmare must be going through right now.

The nightmare screamed, clutching the knife embedded to his shoulder, staggering mid-air. Sakuya looked at him through his spinning barrier of cards with her usual steely gaze, twirling another knife in her hand.

"No way," he gasped, "How? I added more cards... How could you have possibly..."

"That's a silly question." she answered, flicking her hand, sending another knife past his barrier to graze his arm, causing him to exclaim again in pain. "I can stop time at will. To me, those cards might as well not be there."

He scowled, sending a desperate volley at Sakuya's direction, only to have her disappear. "No fair!" he yelled. "How am I supposed to fight against something like that?"

"Fair? Whoever said it is fair? If you wanted a fair fight, you should have challenged me to a spellcard battle instead," Sakuya said, appearing again as several cut wounds appeared all over his body, causing him to scream with pain again. "Without your illusions, you have no chance to beat me. The only reason you're still breathing right now is because the real Mr. Sainan still needs that body."

"The... real... Mr. Sainan?" The nightmare said. "I told you, I'm the real Kukyo. He's the fake!"

Sakuya laughed derisively. "Even if that's true, you don't hold a candle compared to him," she said.

"You're wrong! I'm a nightmare! A ruler of dreams! He's just a stupid boy believing himself to be human!" He yelled, his voice growing louder and louder. He threw his cards at her in a more erratic fashion.

"And what's wrong with being human?" Sakuya said, dodging the cards with ease. "In the month he's been here, he always tried his hardest, and he never complained. Seeing someone like you twist his face into such an expression makes me sick."

"It's my face! I can do whatever I want with it!" the nightmare practically screamed now, blindly throwing his attacks, not even attempting to hit Sakuya now.

"You're just like a child throwing a tantrum now," Sakuya said contemptedly. "Why don't you stop wasting all of our time and return that body back to Mr. Sainan."

"Shut up!" the Nightmare roared, throwing more and more cards to the air in a frenzy. His yells only grew louder and louder as Sakuya continued to effortlessly dodge his increasingly desperate attacks.

Kukyo was close to his limit. The strain of constantly having to dodge, coupled with the injuries he 'received' from Sakuya's attacks from the outside, had taken its toll. Not only that, he also found that the space he could dodge to had also started to gradually decrease as the darkness seemed to be swallowing up more and more of the space. Even the air seemed to gradually grow darker and darker, as if the nightmare was gradually taking more and more control of his mind. Soon, everything would turn pitch black, and he would again be assaulted by that heaviness, and the Nightmare would finally have his way.

That thought, perhaps, was even worse than the pain.

So, as the space around him continued to grow smaller and smaller, he took a deep breath and let himself fall into the darkness once again. He ignored the pain, and simply concentrated.

"A drop, Kukyo, that's all you need," he remembered his mentor say. "Use it as a catalyst."

Despite what he was about to do, he smiled, knowing that this time, he would be using more than just a drop.

"Fool's Sign..." he breathed, focusing all of his remaining energy, all of his being, into this one last spell. "...'Metamorphosis.'"

It started as a single card which left his hand. As it touched the darkness, more and more cards manifested. In a short time, the darkness around him were all turned to cards, and for a moment, he let himself float there, until he was sure that everything had turned into cards.

Finally, he snapped his fingers.

The Nightmare stopped.

Sakuya paused, the knives she was about to throw still in her hand, cautiously eyeing him. Until just a moment ago, the Nightmare had been yelling and frantically throwing his cards everywhere. But now, he simply floated there, his expression blank, as if shocked.

"No way... that... fool...he really..." he said, his voice barely more than a strangled whisper. He reached out weakly. "I...don't... want to..."

His body then went limp, and he dropped from the air.

He did not get back up.