Chapter 35: Unstoppable evil

Breaking out of hell itself, dashing across the world despite being exhausted, finding the little girl you love in a pool of her own blood, finding your son dead. The result is anger, grief, hate, shame, the entire spectrum of negative emotions will haunt you, tear at you.

But when the man you thought killed your son and nearly killed the girl turns out to be your son you would be struck with the most primal of all emotions: horror.

Nagi's mind refused to cooperate. He stood frozen as his son approached. Had he been in a more clear-minded state he would have seen how similar the boy was to him. How the unruly hair was his exactly, how those brown eyes should have been like his mother's if they hadn't been so unnaturally ice-cold. He would have seen much, but now he couldn't even begin to comprehend these facts. His mind was in shambles and his soul was screaming in denial at the sight.

Asuna wasn't much better off. Her heart had shattered upon seeing that ring. She just couldn't comprehend that Negi was dead. It had been impossible for her to understand. How could anyone have killed him? She just hadn't been able to comprehend it.

And now these two people, both people who cared deeply for the young man, saw his in front of them… as the man that had tried to kill Asuna.

"Hello father…" Negi said; his voice even more terrible now that it was clear who had been wearing that mask all the time. It was so cold… so lifeless… like it wasn't a part of him but something crudely stitched on to him to give him some resemblance of humanity. "You look worn… ten years in hell. It's a testament to your will that you didn't die." Nagi couldn't move as the man in front of him, his son, came up to him and reached for his cheek.

In an almost gentle gesture the younger Springfield caressed it before his hand slowly slid down to his father's neck. The other hand lifted his father's and placed it against his own heart. In that position they remained for a while, to the casual observer it would have seemed like an affectionate scene. The only thing breaking it was the eyes. Nagi's: filled with despair and disbelief, showing how he fought against the shock to make his body move. Negi's: cold, dead, inhuman and monstrous.

"What's the matter, father?" Negi eventually asked, "Your hand is within my barrier, all you need to do is think to unleash a spell and I'll be instantly killed. One thought and you'll stop me. You hold victory in your hand… seize it." Nagi couldn't move; his thoughts were still in shambles.

"What are you waiting for?" Negi continued, "You are the Thousand Master… you've killed dozens of dark mages before. What are you waiting for...?" Nagi slowly regained some control of himself. His head started to slowly shake. He shook his head trying to desperately convey his disbelief and anguish.

"Very well…" Negi said as he let go of the hand and suddenly clenched the other hand as he begun to choke the life out of his father. "Your choice; but you better be prepared to deal with the consequences. They are death of all you love…" he continued as he forced his father down on his knees, "… that the world as you know it will be destroyed, and that it will all be your fault for not stopping me." The hand tightened around Nagi's throat and suddenly Asuna started to hear cracking noises from the man's neck. That was enough to snap her out of it.

"Negi!" She screamed. Nagi snapped back to reality too and regained the use of his limbs. He desperately grabbed his son's arms and tried to escape his grip, tried to get free.

"Too late…" Negi said, his eyes, supposed to be so similar to the sweet girl he had loved, were cold as death as he tightened the grip. "You refused to seize the opportunity. But don't worry, I'll send her after you. You will have ample company in the afterlife."

Nagi felt his vision start to get blurry. His arms lost strength and went limp. Negi's grip was like the reaper himself held onto his throat. His hand crushed him, the hand he never held, the boy he never showed the ways of the world. The first contact would be his last. The promises were falling, falling like leaves from a tree and his tree was bare, dying, coughing, barely holding onto life. He would die… choked to death by his own son. Before he had any chance to do what he had promised himself to do. Before he could tell him everything he wanted to tell him.

"Take this with you to the afterlife, Thousand Master." Negi said, "The world could have been saved, but you were too weak."

"I'm sorry Negi…" was Nagi's last thought before everything went black and he fell into the void.

Asuna's eyes were filled with tears as Negi loosened his grip on Nagi and threw him through the air. His father fell limply to the ground, unmoving. The man Negi had spoken of in reverent tones lay still, blue marks appearing on his throat. She dashed towards him, stumbling as she moved, and reached him. Her mind was in shambles, she was once again a little girl. She was too devastated to do anything else but revert to childhood, to the little girl who had journied with him.

"Nagi?" she whispered, her body frozen, falling to her knees so his worn cloak could comfort her, "Nagi…" She pulled at the cloak to wake him. "Nagi!" Her voice rose a little higher, her body shivered, giving off the warning for the tears, when the brain would realise what she was seeing and fearing was true. "Nag.." She started to cry, her haggard breath, like a magic spell, made her unable to form anything resembling words.

"What a pitiful ending…" Negi turned to face his father's lifeless body and the girl beside it as he started to walk against Asuna, his arm yet again shaping into a black blade. "He was no hero, he failed. Now;" the sword glittered as black drops of tainted blood ran down it, coating it in a sheet of vileness "perhaps we can continue where we left off." He raised the arm as he closed the distance between them, every step beating against the ground. She sought out his eyes and found nothing. He was nothing, merely a piece of the void, a pawn of a vindictive uncaring power that had taken the Negi she knew and left the shell.

"Why?!" Asuna screamed, giving voice to all of her grief, all of her confusion and despair. "Why?!"

"It's vengeance." He said, "Vengeance for what he did." Suddenly his arm stabbed forward and pierced trough her shoulder. Asuna screamed in pain as the filthy creation lifted her off the knees and nailed her to the tree behind her. "But know this, I'm not a monster, nor do I fear to explain my actions." The black blade separated from his arm, and he pulled it back creating a new one. "Ask for it, and I'll kill you." He stabbed forwards again, this time piercing the other shoulder. "But if you don't, I'll tell you."

"Who do you think sent those demons after me?" He asked as his arm reformed yet again. "I'll tell you, they weren't sent by any enemy of his, they weren't out to kill me." Negi's fingers elongated, forming those long black spikes. The cold-eyed young man reached out and stroked her belly with the spikes. Asuna stared into his eyes, not even noticing as the razor sharp blades cut her open effortlessly. She could only stare at him but then he drove the spikes into her spine, making her legs loose all feel and going limp under her, the pain in the shoulders only intensified as she now was held up by them only. Asuna finally looked down.

She saw blood rushing out… her gut was open… all that blood… no, not just blood, her intestines… Why was she seeing her intestines! Pain exploded through her and the tears were now equal parts pain and grief. She looked at him through clouded eyes, trying to find something in them. She didn't even search for Negi anymore, just something, pity, contempt, hate, anything other than that cold void.

"They were sent by him." Negi said as he grabbed her head, the words shouldn't have mattered; she was supposed to be delirious with pain. But she registered every word he said, as if the entire world echoed from his words. Her scalp started to bleed as the spikes pushed through the skin, running alongside the cranium, back towards the tree behind her. The blood gushed down her head, into her eyes, blinding her. Eventually they burst through the skin and pierced the tree too, nailing her skull to the tree. Another scream echoed through the chamber.

The twin samurai dashed through the halls, both of them on full alert. They had been wandering Mahora, looking for any available traces of the dark mage, when they had both felt an immense surge of energy from below; the ground had started to shake and, for a moment, panic had nearly erupted at the festival. Fortunately it had never gotten that far, the teachers had managed to calm them down and the revelries could continue. But the two samurai were certain of one thing, where the surge had taken place, the dark mage would be.

Motoko and Katsu both had their hands on their swords as they reached the end of the chamber; their experience with these things allowed them to immediately pick up the clinging feeling in the air, evidence of dark magic.

"Damn it stinks here!" Katsu hissed as they both hid behind a tree. The stench was worse than anything he had ever felt before. Worse than even that time in Aokigahara when he had lost nearly all of his men to a horde of tainted ogres. He didn't even feel the exhilaration of imminent battle here; only the grim determination that imminent death gave him, just like that time.

"Whomever we're dealing with is not just a fool who wanted to be powerful." Motoko said as she took out a charm, "If anything we can assume he already knows we're after him."

"Yes," Katsu agreed. He liked this about the young girl; she never hesitated to act when it was necessary. "You go high, I go low, charm goes in the middle. The center is about fifty meters in."

"Go!" The two samurai disappeared, Motoko dashed sideways into the sky, furiously chanting. and, when the last word was spoken, sending the talisman towards the area. It transformed to a swarm of paper swallows that darted towards their destination with immense speed. When she reached the peak of her ascent she spun around and used a mid-air shundo to launch herself towards the same area, sword at the ready. Katsu waited half a second before he too exploded into motion, he used a rapid succession of shundos to get around the tree and dash towards the area, all the time he went in low, his head only two feet from the ground. The Tiger-Dragon move was one they had had great use for several times. This way Katsu attacked low and from the left while Motoko went in high from the right. With the added paper swallows to confuse the victim it was a move that few escaped.

"Evil-Cutting-Blade!"

"Beast-Fang-Cut!"

The two voices cried out in perfect unison as they attacked the dark mage. At the speeds they were going it was hard to perceive any details but they both clearly saw that the figure leapt away from them with incredible speed. They both missed him with a hair's breadth and the figure leaped up on a branch. It was then that Kastu and Motoko saw the scene in front of them. A few feet away a body lay, blue marks on the throat making the cause of death evident, but it was what was resting against the tree behind the body that made them both gasp.

Against the tree, fixed in place by black spikes, the body of Asuna Kagurazaka hung. Her body was pierced by spikes of the same type that had been used to kill the janitor, only that here there was dozens of then, the young girl's body had been turned to a pincushion.

Her arms were sticking up from her body, fixed in place by spikes through the palms and blood seeping down them, colouring the white shirt crimson red. Her legs hung limply, the spikes jutting out from her open gut having pierced her spine. The intestines were dangling from the open hole in her stomach and the heart was exposed. Her head, which should have been hanging limply, had several needles sticking out from the skin, obviously having gone through the skin and pierced into the tree. This had made the face stretch back and making it a twisted grimace.

"Sweet Kami-sama…" Motoko whispered. The sight was horrifying; the look on the young girl's face was enough to tell them both that she must have suffered beyond belief. But the horror they both felt upon seeing that sight couldn't compare to that which came when they both noticed that her chest was still heaving slightly. She was still breathing! She was still alive! She had been alive during all that! Katsu moved on instinct as he pulled out a talisman and put it on her. Chanting furiously he sent her into a magic sleep trying to spare her any more of the pain.

"She's strong…" A soft but cold voice said behind them as they both spun around. Upon one of the branches high above them they both saw the unmistakeable face of Negi Springfield. The young man was looking down on them with dead eyes. "Despite all that I did to her she did not ask for death. Despite being kept alive so long she did not give up."

The young mage walked off the branch and dropped to the ground, falling through the sky. Right before he landed the robe he was dressed in grew and elongated as it formed a spiral under him, letting him land unharmed. "And she fought well, very well." The dark mage looked at them both, neither of them recognizing anything of the boy they knew. "I recognized the Zanbatou technique. Was she my replacement, Takahashi-sensei? Did you see the same thing in her as my father did? No matter… she's beyond being useful now."

Katsu loved Negi. Even if the gruff man never said it he considered the boy the closest thing he had to a son. The endless willpower and the passion of the young Welshman had impressed him from day one and he had actually been sad to let him go.

However the man who wore the nickname of "Black Thunder" hadn't survived his entire life in Aokigahara through being sappy. He was realistic enough to realize what had happened here. Still holding the charm against the young girl's mutilated body he let go of it and closed her eyes with his hand. Asuna's shallow, quick, breaths slowed down and the slight tremors that had been going through her maimed body ceased. He took one last look at her body and before Negi had time to speak one more word his old teacher's blades were only a few inches from his skull and Motoko right behind him.

What separated the two samurai from the Thousand Master was their experience with the taint. Katsu had spent almost his entire life in a forest filled with tainted beings; from the day he could walk his life had been a struggle against them. Motoko, even if she couldn't claim that sort of experience had several times been in a situation where beings infected by the taint had nearly taken everything from her. The blade she carried was originally a tainted sword before she had managed to seal it; it had nearly caused the deaths of the people that mattered most to her.

Their lives had given them the experience and the resolve to see what had to be done. The man they both fought wasn't Negi. It was a horrid travesty of him, what you got if you removed every last vestige of humanity and filled the void with the soulless evil of the inhabitants of the ninth hell. It was an insult. Both to the hard-working young boy Katsu had taught and to the noble young man who had sought Motoko's aid in sealing the taint. They had both seen the soul of a great man when they met him and now it had been twisted to darkness.

This was why they both fought so hard. Katsu roared as he unleashed a swarm of powerful strikes against Negi, each of the swings leaving trails glowing with energy. The dark mage leaped backwards and upwards and when Katsu followed, his swords still in a blur of motion the young mage grabbed the hem of the left sleeve on his robe with the right hand and pulled. The sleeve elongated and he swirled it before him, the motions almost similar to how his student Makie used her ribbon.

The cuts all fell upon the grey cloth, effortlessly ripping through the fabric but it immediately reformed and allowed its wearer to escape unharmed. Right when Katsu finished swinging the blades against him Negi moved immediately, seemingly knowing exactly when the assault would end, and stabbed his arm against the old samurai, the hand having changed into a crescent blade. Katsu immediately bent backwards but the arm was too fast.

The hand stopped only a few inches from Katsu's throat. Motoko had taken this moment to grab their opponent's neck with her legs. The female samurai made two fast spins and sent Negi into the ground which shattered from the power of the impact. Motoko was still airborne as she focused and sent a powerful bolt of lightning from her sword towards the crater, a fireball unleashed from Katsu's blades accompanied the attack.

The two samurai's eyes suddenly widened when they had unleashed the attacks. Before they could react they were both struck from behind with a powerful punch that sent them flying towards the ground. They both managed to land on their feet but when they looked upwards Negi was already chanting.

"Rhactul Mactor Machites," Even his activation key had been twisted, "Let the ground be stained red with the blood of the innocent. Fall, crimson downpour, and herald the end of all things. Let all that is pure be forever marked and corrupted. Rain of tainted blood." Negi took a deep breath and blew out a giant cloud of oily smoke that quickly spread to cover most of the room. Katsu's eyes widened.

"Shit…" was all he had time to say before the blood started to fall, a red deluge corrupting and tainting all in its path.

Above the giant clouds that now spat out a rain of tainted blood towards the ground Negi hovered with his eyes closed and his hands held together. It would have seemed like he was praying had not an aura of black magic stood around him. Nothing tangible but still obvious to anyone. The very air seemed rotten around him. Like reality itself became infected by him.

This was in incredibly sharp contrast to his face. The young man had always had a face that had, from an early age, earned him many looks from the female half of humanity. But as it were he was flawless. His appearance couldn't be described in any language other than that it was too beautiful to be natural. These opposites, his unnatural beauty and the air of vileness around him, cried out his inhumanity to the world.

The dark mage suddenly opened his eyes and threw out his arms to the sides, dispersing the clouds below him. Below him the ground had been twisted into a nightmare by the spell. The once clear water was now a murky, reddish-brown colour and seemed to have clotted to become a greasy substance more reminiscent of oil than anything else. The tall, healthy trees were now blackened and dead, the leaves having wasted away. The white sand was darkened to become black as night itself and seemingly melted into razor-sharp shards of glass-like material.

It was then that two giant beams of light crashed into him and knocked him out of the air. Negi fell from the sky and had only just recovered when he was struck again. Blast after blast struck him and even if he managed to parry them with his robes he was too distracted to notice the person behind him before it was too late.

"Blazing heat in the sky!" Negi turned around just in time to be engulfed by a titanic blast of fire. The grey cloak didn't even have time to protect its owner before the flames reached and swallowed it.

A few dozen meters from him a girl hovered with her hands reaching out against him. She held her breath as she looked against the firestorm she just had unleashed. Had she done it? Did she get him?! For a few seconds the girl dared to hope; for the first time in her life she truly hoped. Then she suddenly felt a terrifying presence behind her.

Negi Springfield had somehow gotten in behind her. The dark make hovered behind her back, his robes out to the sides, making him appear like a black cloud of death. The girl's heart froze to ice, before she had any time to react Negi stabbed a single finger into her spine, the appendage shaped into a long needle. She froze as her entire body was paralyzed. Negi leaned forwards and put his mouth only a few inches from her ear.

"So that was your secret…" His voice terrified her more than anything else. It was really that demon's voice; nothing was left of the man she had hoped was in there. His smooth, unblemished hand clutched around her neck. "Perhaps I should have paid more attention to you… No matter, now you die too." With impossible strength he threw her like a rag doll towards the ground. The girl couldn't move a finger as she fell towards the ground. It couldn't be… after all this… She had failed… Everyone who had died for this had died in vain... She had failed!

Flashback:

She screamed as the boy she loved more than anything fell apart in front of her eyes. She was about to try to reach him but stopped right before her hands touched the field separating them. The dark mage pulled his hand out of the young man's body and as he did this his victim collapsed into dust immediately.

"I am impressed…" The smooth voice of the dark mage said; his voice totally devoid of emotions, "You all put up much more of a fight than I expected… No matter, now you die too." He raised his hand and fired a beam of blood red light against her; the girl instinctively raised her arms to protect herself.

End flashback:

She had been just as powerless as then. She hadn't been able to do anything.

Suddenly she felt a sharp yank as she was caught by a pair of strong hands. Her eyes opened wide and she saw a pair of giant wings, the needle in her spine still petrified her so she couldn't turn around to see who it was that held her but she realized who it was.

"S-setsuna-san…" She whispered.

The one thing that had stopped Negi from slaying the girl and her saviour was the fact that the barrage had resumed. He realised that he was a sitting duck and with a mid-air shundo he reached the ground in a second. Flipping around, he landed on his feet effortlessly and looked around. As he expected several figures charged him immediately. The first figure, a bearded man in a black suit and with sunglasses raised his hands and rapidly snapped his fingers, each snap sending an arc of destructive wind magic against him.

Negi's eyes got a distant look in them as he effortlessly moved between the arcs, not one of them even grazing him. When the bearded man came close Negi reached out and, with one flick of his wrist, sent a swarm of needles through his chest.

The second man, a dark skinned one wielding a gun and a knife, charged and sent a swarm of cuts and bullets against the mage, his complex moves almost like a dance. However his moves quickly came to a halt as Negi stabbed him through the throat.

The third attacker turned out to be a blonde woman with a giant sword in her hands. She pulled it backwards and, with a fierce battle cry, unleashed a powerful blast of ki from it. Negi sidestepped and it missed him as he broke her neck with one clean hit.

All of the three attackers fell limply to the ground, Negi moved between their falling bodies with an unnatural grace and as his attackers thumped against the ground he looked up into the face of his childhood hero. Takahata Takamichi stood only a few meters from him with his feet slightly spread and his hands in his pockets. To the normal onlooker he would look relaxed, laidback, but the way the pockets were bulging, clearly showing that his hands were clenched into fists, and his tense cheek-muscles, revealing his distress, coupled with the fact that this precise stance was the stance of his personal fighting style showed that he was everything but this.

Beside the trembling man Negi saw another man he recognized well, his old teacher Albiero Imma. The androgynous man wasn't trembling but his face was set in stone. His posture was rigid and the way the hood drooped to cover his eyes showed his anger just as well. Behind the two men Negi could see how Shizuna was tending to Asuna, the healer gently extracting the spikes from the young girl's body, and around the chamber he spotted other mages too.

"This is getting ridiculous…" Negi said, "I chose this place since it was secluded. Are the entire mage population of Mahora here?" The magic ring that appeared around him and shut him into a cage of energy answered the question. "I see…"

"Negi Springfield!" The hoarse voice of the dean echoed, "You are hereby under arrest for violating the sacred rules that forbids the use of dark magic." The old man came out between Albiero and Takamichi, his wrinkled features grim and hard, "By order of the Supernatural Enclaves Security Federation you are hereby sentenced to death by annihilation. Rest in peace."

"Not today…" was all Negi said before the barrier around him flared and exploded. The other mages was thrown back by the energy pulse and Negi seemed to be ablaze with thick, black, fire, fire that seemed almost like tentacles the way the flames reached and twisted. Some of the more inexperienced mages present felt their stomachs lurch and vomited from the vile energies that permeated the air

"I still have things to do," He said, "if you want to kill me you'll need someone like my father and you don't have any. Until later…." He said before the cloak twisted around him and clenched until he disappeared in a swirl of cloth.

For a few seconds the chamber was silent as the mages tried to recover from the wicked blast that had gone through the chamber, none of them had been ready for that raw display on wickedness that the young man had displayed. The first to get to his feet was Takamichi, the man's eyes wide as he stared on the spot where Negi had been standing before whirling around and roaring.

"What the hell were you doing Seruhiko?!" He roared at the young man who was currently getting up from the ground. Before Seruhiko could answer he had been lifted to his feet by Takamichi who was grabbing his clothes. "What were you thinking of, dropping the anti-teleportation field like that?!"

"I-I didn't know that…" Seruhiko didn't have time to say more before Takamichi shook him.

"You didn't what?!" Takamichi was furious, no, raging. The grizzled man hadn't taken the discoveries of what lay in the chamber well; the discovery of what had happened to little Asuna had made him angry beyond words. "You dropped the field and let him escape! How could you…" Albiero appeared beside them and placed his hands on their chests to push them apart.

"Pull yourself together Takamichi-kun!" The androgynous mage yelled. "How could we know Negi would break the barrier like that? And even if we had known, it was all Seruhiko could do to put his all into it."

"Enough!" the headmaster roared, his old and hoarse voice echoing through the chamber. The old man had gotten to his feet and was ablaze with energy. "Take care of the wounded and try to save them! Inform the SESF about Negi and lock down Mahora! I won't let him get away."

"T…too late…" A weak voice said behind them, the headmaster looked back to see Setsuna, the girl had her giant wings out and was supporting another girl; one of her classmates, said girl was none other than Chao Lingshen. "H-he's too powerful…" the girl whispered, "You'll need an army… you-you have to get the entire SESF here… two days… the world will end!" She was rapidly getting more and more unclear. She somehow managed to move on her own and stumbled forward. Takamichi, always placing the girls first, hurried to her side.

"Chao-kun…" He said, noticing her terrified eyes, "What did he do to you?!" He caught her and supported her. The girl looked up at her former teacher with empty eyes before she reached into her clothes and took out a small disc.

"Now is as good time as any…" She said and tossed it to the ground, the disc sparkled and bright light shot up from it, creating a pillar of light about six feet high that slowly shaped into a human form. Within a second the image of an old, wizened woman appeared in front of them. She was beyond old, she was ancient. She stood only five feet high and had hair pure white, the countless wrinkles in her face and her tired eyes showing a weary woman, someone who had lived beyond her time. A few of the present mages' eyes widened when they saw the woman. Her looks was eerily familiar, the way she stood, the shape of her face, and, most obviously of all…

Her eyes, one was green and the other was blue.

"This thing on?" the aged woman in front of them said, "Good," She continued after a while, "I didn't expect this crazy plan to work but it seems it did. If this is shown in the right place some of you will probably recognize me. You are not wrong. I really am Asuna Kagurazaka." Suddenly an explosion could be heard in the distance, the gathered mages looked around but noticed that the old woman did as well, wherever the explosion came from it was in the recording "There's not much time left…" the woman said, "Everybody listen to me now!" She regained her composure. "If you want to stop him you better listen well. Whatever preparations you have planned won't work," the aged woman shook her head, "not by a long shot."