Chapter 12: The Fall of Fate
By the time Alex had reached the Scarlet Devil Mansion he had drained the Misty Lake down to the very last drop. He figured, since the world was coming to the end, it would be a waste of resources if he left anything behind. He knew going forward that he'd need all the strength he could get.
He stopped down at the front gates. Unsurprised by the lack of Meiling, he reached his hands up and concentrated on the gate. He pulled it apart, contorting the whole thing into two twisted rods that let out a high-pitched wail. This would be his greeting to the vampire and her subordinates.
Just as well, he'd already expected that the moment he stepped through those front doors everyone of importance would be waiting for him at the foyer. If Hecatia kept up her end of the deal and managed to snag every Fairy in Gensokyo, then not even the maids would be around to pester him.
So as he dragged his feet across the ground he stepped up to the front doors and pressed his knuckles against the front. It slowly inched open with that gentle tap, allowing him to brush his body between the gap that formed and enter at last.
Without a word or a wisp of breath to tell him to do so, Alex looked straight ahead and saw his opposition gathered squarely in the foyer's center. Remilia led the charge in the front, naturally, and Sakuya and Meiling guarded her from her left and right respectively. Patchouli and Koakuma leviated a good ways behind the vampire, the little demon cuddled to her master's hip. The big surprise was the appearance of Alice Margatroid, who despite being on familiar terms with the librarian, looked out of place here.
Remilia wore her fangs with a lion's ferocity and floated high enough off the ground that she felt as imposing as an empress.
Alex swung his mighty sword up high alongside his shoulder and stared forward without blinking once. The vampire warmly smiled back and chuckled as the boy told her, "So this is your decision, Remilia?"
"Never been the running type!" She boldly declared, "If any fool throws themselves in my path, then rest assured...I shall knock 'em down!"
"You could've made a name for yourself if you'd chosen to fight Yukari. Humans and Youkai alike would sing your praises until the end of time for slaying that witch..." Alex remarked with a dull, tired sigh.
"Fufufu...! Humans cower in fear of my shadow! Youkai howl my praise throughout the endless night!" Remilia spread her arms and wings and pursed her lips until only her fangs shone through, "It shall be the world! Nay! The universe! That shall sing in appraisal of Remilia Scarlet, conqueror of the Phoenix of Destruction!"
Alex narrowed his eyes and held down his swords' seven triggers, and upon emerging from the golden flames wreathed in a coat of crimson fire he said daringly in a stoic voice, "Then come. Conquer me...REMILIA SCARLET!"
He leapt into battle without a second though, and so too did the vampire. She swooped down from her lofty perch and met his charge with the full force of her body put into her attack. She rammed head-first into his sword as he swung down, then dropped right to the ground in recoil.
She pushed her cap down in one hand and its shadow hid her smile before she flung herself at him once more at breakneck speeds.
She scraped her claws up his first shield then quickly dove and rose to batter him back into the door. Alex raised the blunt edge of his blade and covered it in permafrost, causing the back of her hands to stick to it when she dared to attack one more time.
She pulled her hands off, skin and all, and swung her right hand high towards the sky as she flew away. In a second she coalesced crimson, devilish light into a small spear and thrust it towards his head.
Alex shifted his body to the left and watched as the spear punctured the door. Taking the battered splinters and flinging them at Remilia's face to force her arms to protect it, Alex then charged straight at her and drew his sword to impale through both limbs and face in a single strike.
Meiling leapt straight in his way and wrestled his wrist in both her hands. Her surprise attack weakened his strength and allowed her to toss him back first onto the ground. She then quickly landed behind his head and swept her right leg up, creating a rainbow ring that carried Alex into the foyer's back wall.
His body cracked it and he fell to the ground on his feet, feeling but a tiny kink in his neck as he turned back around. He swung his hands together at his right and immediately had enough flames to consume the whole group in a single attack.
He set them loose in a mighty beam, and as the next in line to come to her friend's aid Patchouli dived in the front of the flames and raised her tome towards the center of it. With a snap of the fingers the flames shrunk to a funnel the size of her hand and were swallowed up in her tome, leaving only the hot winds to blow against her.
With a smile that'd make Remilia proud, Patchouli thrust her right pointer finger out and snapped once more. A broken flicker of red light emerged from the tome and then swiftly turned blue as she sent flames of a similar color hurtling back towards Alex.
There was no telling what a magician like her had up her sleeve, so Alex cut out the risks and hopped away from the flames. He landed and found himself accosted by a ring of knives pointed at his waist that he didn't know how he hadn't sensed.
Whether he ducked or flew the knives would scrape his next shield guaranteed. Making the decision to duck, Alex fell into Remilia's domain as the vampire charged in close and slashed her claws towards his neck, forcing his head back up.
His body wound up directly in the path of a dark sphere fired by Patchouli, which peeled his second AND third shields off in an instant. He widened his eyes and attempted to run straight at the magician before this could be repeated.
Yet at her diminuitive size, Remilia was easily able to use her monsterous strength to swing her claws at Alex's legs and trip him up, putting him in the prime position for Meiling to close the distance and punch him through the newly formed hole in the wall.
Alex dug his feet into the ground and looked at his surroundings. Ripping the acryllic paintings off with a thought he flung them one at a time towards Meiling to gauge her response. She chopped through the first painting with a grimace towards the property damage she caused, then smashed her fist through the center of the second one.
Right on cue Alex squeezed and turned his right fist around, twisting the metallic frame around Meiling's wrist so hard that he was able to turn the rest of her arm. She fought to the tooth and nail to resist his might, but this was not something that would be solved by her alone.
A few knives scraped Alex's fourth shield from behind and he glanced back, watching as Sakuya slipped silently into the shadows of the hall. He fell for her taunt by spinning back and firing a fireball wide enough to char the walls and ceiling of the hall, allowing Alice to slip a couple puppets down and use their tiny blades to cut Meiling's arm free of the twisted shackle.
Alex caught this happening from the corner of his eye and sent another fireball out to incinerate the puppets. But to counteract this move, Alice herself stepped in and whipped her puppet's strings into a whirlwind around her and Meiling with but a flick of the wirst. The wires were so fine and sharp that they cut the fireball down to its base embers.
But with his fourth shield still up Alex had little fear as he leapt towards the two and dragged the strings against the front of his body. Alice waved her hand out and summoned a doll three times as big as her behind them, using its lance to force Alex back a few feet.
He quickly overpowered the lance's push and grabbed its tip in one hand, ripping it free of the doll's grasp and hurtling it through the mansion walls to the outdoors. Alice winced and held her arms close together, commanding the giant doll to pick her and Meiling up and retreat.
"Not on my watch!" Alex yelled as he dove straight for the doll and threw a punch with all his strength. A barrier rose in his path, his collision sending a ripple throughout that nearly broke it apart. Alex then slowly eased back and saw that the way behind had been sealed off as well.
"They're just stalling for time..." It was so easy to deduce that it felt like an insult to his intelligence. He looked to the stairs on both sides and concentrated heavily on them to drain them of their elemental energy and break down his escape route.
But even in the face of his might, they didn't give up even a molecule of power to him. Alex raised his brows and muttered under his breath, "This shit again...?"
He closed his eyes and blasted open the way out with a large fireball and quickly flew through the smoke before Patchouli could contain him again. He rose above the others and stared straight for Patchouli, asking in a loud, blunt voice, "And what were you planning to do after you caged me? Huh?!"
The librarian laid her tome open before her waist and planted her right hand down on the center of the pages as they glowed with black and purple light. Her response was kept to a short muttering of "This", letting her actions resolve the remainder of the question.
"Darkness Sign 'Oblivion's Abyss'!"
The air surrounding Alex pressed downward with darkness mixed in it. As it felt like the fabric of reality was being squished and torn apart, Alex found himself grounded in a second as darkness rained down across his body, melting away his fifth shield.
Alex grit his teeth and dragged himself through the darkness, his body slowly but surely rising fully upright as he was about to take his first step out of the darkness. Patchouli swiped her hand off the book and the motion turned the pages towards somewhere near the end.
"Don't bother Patchy! I got this!" Remilia re-entered the battle after a mild absence by diving straight over her librarian's head and ramming Alex head-on. His sixth shield came to his rescue but couldn't stop the vampire from smashing him into the wall.
Patchouli dispersed the darkness and reached for the right part of her book. The pages glowed bright like the sun and flooded out enough power to raise Patchouli's hair around behind her.
Remilia battered Alex's body off the wall with the mightiest claw strikes she could muster, steadily deepening and widening the cracks throughout it. Alex got over the initial shock of being struck and drew his sword, cutting it straight down towards the vampire's head.
She flashed a smirk and broke apart into a swarm of bats that quickly flew behind Alex and reformed into their original state. Remilia came back swiping her claw down, but with a swift spin Alex was able to cut her hand clean off and send blood spewing from her arm.
From that blood she was able to easily reconstruct the hand in seconds and still have time to rapidly swing her claws across Alex's body. His sixth shield was still up and ready to be his aid, making him wonder what exactly the plan was here.
"Still need a little more time..." Alex heard being whispered from behind.
When he saw Patchouli hard at work on her spell book he quickly rammed the blunt edge of his sword in the path of Remilia's claws and blasted her with hot ashes. He spun around and started to dive towards the librarian, only to feel an intense bloodlust suddenly appear before his face.
Sakuya arrived and stabbed one knife towards his face, causing him to stop and raise his sword to block it. With her eyes glowing red Sakuya muttered, "You shall remain right here, as Lady Remilia has requested."
Remilia dove into Alex's back and disrupted the grip of his sword, forcing him to hold it against his chest. Sakuya scraped her knife against the side of his shielded face and let go as Alex swung his sword up to try and cut her arm off.
Remilia grabbed onto that knife and took swipes at Alex's wings, which were also protected. Sakuya surrounded herself with a ring of knives and spun them around, grinding up against Alex's shield at point-blank range.
Alex tried to punch her in the gut but she vanished and reappeared a few feet away in the blink of an eye without her knives. Remilia flipped over Alex as he spun around to cut her, then rammed her feet down into the top of his skull to knock him a few feet down.
"Remi! Now!" Patchouli declared, and right before her master's name had been full spoken Sakuya grabbed onto her and warped her down to the floor with a parasol in hand to shade her from the front.
Alex swung his sword out with all his might, striking Patchouli, Meiling and Alice with a large wave of fire and scarring the ground black at their feet. But then bright light collapsed upon him from above in the form of a miniature sun, pressing him against the bottom of its mighty gravitation pull and dragging him straight to the ground.
The sun's burst was contained within the space its circumference was, but now there was a large hole in the mansion's roof that let the grim moonlight shine through. Sakuya shook the embers off the parasol like it was a spot of rain and folded it up, letting Remilia stand tall and proud with a smirk crawling up the right of her face.
"Excellent work Patchy, Sakuya! Now, go on. Leave him to me!"
Sakuya nodded and disappeared completely in silence, while Meiling and Alice ran for the hole in the foyer. Patchouli remained behind for a moment to warn her friend, "Remember, once you get that last shield off-"
"Yeah yeah, I got a minute. That's more than enough time!" Remilia folded her arms and fluttered off the ground as her fiend parted from sight.
Alex rose from the solar flames sweating but unharmed. His wings dredged up the bright yellow embers and shook them to the sky as they rose high above his head. He stepped out onto the searing black floor, dragging his sword behind him on the ground so he could swing it right up towards Remilia's face and mutter, "Done playing games, vampire?"
"I got you all to myself now, Phoenix of Destruction. How misfortunate, for you." Remilia replied with a smirk.
"Fate's not on your side today. Only one person will be leaving this mansion alive today."
"Do you think I fear death?!" Remilia proclaimed triumphantly into the silent night as she grit her fangs and raised a bloody claw towards Alex, "But what about you?"
Alex squinted his eyes and gripped his sword tighter as he swung it down by his hip. After a moment of silence he raised a smirk and said, "You started off as first final boss of the series, and now you're the last of them alive. There's a bit of irony there, wouldn't you say?"
Remilia raised her brows and her smirk grew wider, "I don't know what the hell you're talking about, but Final Boss? That sounds like a title greatly befitting the Mistress of the Night!"
Alex stared her down and swung his sword up to send a wave of fire hurtling across the ground. Remilia zipped to the left of it than barreled after Alex, bouncing up and down across the ceiling and floor to mesmerize him into confusion.
Alex stabbed the ground and summoned a ring of lances to impale through to the ceiling, inadvertently impaling through Remilia's right arm as she tried to twist away. She ripped her arm free of the lance and slammed down to the ground,
She pulled her hand back and condensed red light into a spear three times as long as she was tall and threw it as though it was as light as a stick. She ran alongside it, waiting for Alex to take his sword and cut the spear in half to strike.
Alex was able to quickly cut through the spear and then lower his sword to block her uppercutting claw. Remilia grit her teeth and scraped her bare nails across the blunt edge of his sword, hoping to blind him with the sparks she raised.
Instead Alex refused to play along with her little game and increased the heat of the sparks to the point that they were as hot as flames, then dropped them right onto her face. Remilia made a hasty retreat and scraped her claws against the ground, summoning a glowing red glyph to her feet.
"Can you keep up?!" She cried out before launching herself straight at him faster than any known human-made jet.
Alex slashed his sword up and deflected her travel past his body, then spun around and met her when she jerked back around for a second strike. She kept coming at him from multiple angles but he could keep the pace as long as he stood completely still.
"She's no tengu..." Alex dully remarked before ending this farce of an attack with one quick, mighty swing to swat Remilia out of the air.
She spun around a couple times and shook her body like she'd just accidentally ran head first into a wall. If nothing else, Alex could compliment her tenacity.
"You should be paying more attention!" As Remilia boasted that fact without fear Alex looked down and saw that the glyph she summoned a moment ago had crawled under his feet.
"Shit..." He murmured as he snapped the lances surrounding him in half and leapt out of the glyph's range as it unleashed a towering scarlet cross. He turned his back to Remilia, an almost costly sleight of hand, for the vampire wouldn't hesitate to dive down and take a swing at her prey.
Alex swung his body back and rammed down onto the ground, narrowly avoiding her descent by the skin of his teeth. He took the broken lances and threw them in her path, impaling her through the stomach and right arm. Her endurance allowed her to rip them free and feel no worse for the wear, and in fact she weaponized the lances by coating them in energy and tossing them straight back towards their master.
Alex widened his eyes and stalled the spears halfway through, twirling them back around to go after Remilia. She spun her body around and slashed them in half by swiping her claws down in an "X", removing them from the battle for good.
She stared passed her cross arms with beady eyes and a blissful smile. The succor of the night's crimson hue gave her strength to persist regardless of everything could throw at her.
But he could not understand what drove her beyond that as he rose to his feet and swung his sword to repel her charge. She hadn't the strength of the onis, or the speed of a tengu. Meiling was no better in that regard. Patchouli and Alice's magic was strong, but nothing compared to the likes of Ran or even Sanae. And while Sakuya's loyalty was undying, she hadn't any tricks that'd surprise him for long.
The odds were entirely against the mansion folk's favor, and yet they still chose to fight him. Alex battered Remilia's claws as she kept swinging wildly at his body, trying to force his last shield into the open. He set his whole body ablaze and swung his sword down at the ground, knocking up a plume of fire that singed off a lot of Remilia's skin.
She just. Kept. Coming.
After diving at his body and failing to manifest the shield one more time, Remilia swooped over his head and struck him in the back with a kick. Alex summoned a wall of rock from the ground to meet her foot and give himself a second to run forward away from her.
He swung around and lashed up flames at the rock, turning it into a wall of magma that covered her foot and slowly burned it off. She swung her stiffened leg down and pulled her claws out alongside her face. She created a large spear and thrust it at Alex's face, which he promptly swerved away from and swung his sword up to summon a pillar of frost from the ground below her.
She flew away from its frosty thrall and dove down at Alex's feet, bouncing off the ground towards the left the moment it seemed she would attack. He stabbed his sword at the ground to stop her and immediately shifted his gaze to the left as she came curving in for an attack.
She rammed her whole body into the side of his face and forced the seventh shield up, with Alex frying her down to the skin with electricity in retaliation. But the damage had been done, and when Remilia pulled away and left her frayed skin to heal she wore the brightest smirk imaginable and declared, "Now lets see if God bleeds red!"
Alex charged at her with his sword burning bright hot. He swung at her with broad strokes that set the whole foyer ablaze in seconds. Remilia evaded the strikes with agile bursts of speed, zipping between the flames and waiting her time out in bliss.
Alex stamped his right foot on the floor and made the ground rise at her feet, throwing the vampire smack dab into his face to keep the seventh shield going. He then impaled her through the chest with his sword and held her up at the rising flames.
She pushed her body further down the sword and grabbed hold of his face with both her claws, using all her strength in a single shove to slam him to the ground. She then pulled herself free and flipped back onto the ground. The flames were getting higher and causing parts of the roof to collapse upon her location, but even with the burn marks searing her nerves she never felt more alive.
"Eh, Sakuya can fix it up later..." She muttered with a shrug before throwing herself through the flames after Alex.
The time was ripe, and she slashed her claws down past his sword and cut him through his chest. Alex winced as blood sprayed from the wounds onto her face, satiating her vampiric hunger as she licked it off her lips and smiled.
Alex whipped his sword out and bashed Remilia straight through the flames into the hole in the wall. She landed with grace and bridged her fingers before her chest, grinning and raising her brows to entice the boy to follow. She then spun around and zipped into the darkness as Alex rocketed past the collapsing foyer in hot pursuit.
Not long after entering the winding halls Alex found himself having trouble navigating them. They were tight, and maze-like in structure. They were deceptively long for how the mansion looked on the outside, but that was easily chalked up to Sakuya working her magic on the inside.
But he was able to keep a bead on the speedy little vampire, for while she was more agile he remained the faster of the two and could correct any errors in the blink of an eye. He raised his hand down a particularly expansive hall and prepared a fireball to cover the whole way through. But as Remilia started behaving oddly by zipping up and down in a condensed space, Alex suspected there was a trap afoot.
The glow of his flames revealed a series of tightly woven together web of strings between the walls, each so sharp that even he would be diced into mincemeat if he got close. He stopped at the very edge of the closest string and watched as Remilia broke off into a room on the left.
As it just so happened, there was a door to the left of him as well. It was almost too perfect how well things lined up this way. Nevertheless, he smashed the door down with a quick and charged forth into the mansion's library, where there were thousands upon thousands of books stacked up on shelves arranged in a labryinth like manner.
"So this is where the others ran off too...Where are you all hiding?"
The books sprung to life from their confines and opened wide, assaulting Alex with multiple varied spells ranging from searing electricity to throwing chunks of orichalcum. He swung his arm up to deflect them only to be attacked from his left as well.
He rushed past the initial bookshelves only for more to take their place. The whole library was filled to the brim with magic. Even someone as magically inept as Alex could sense that. The purpose behind these pesky attacks became evident when he felt movement charging at him from behind, and Meiling managed to pool all her energy into a single crippling blow to his back.
Alex keeled over on his knees in a second and slammed his palms against the ground as his spine flared up in agony. He squeezed his fingers into a fist and smashed the ground to cause a brief earthquake, tripping Meiling up a little as he got up and turned around, throwing a punch square into her face.
Though he smashed her through the nearest bookshelf, his spine flared in pain even hotter than before and his arms quickly limped to his hips. Some knives cut through his legs and arms while he caught his breath, followed by more of the books coming to life to attack him with magic.
He spread his wings to cover himself from the magic and then charged on ahead after Meiling, who was barely getting up after that harrowing blow. With blood dripping down her face she assumed a stance and parried Alex's punch with the back of her right hand, followed by grabbing his wrist with the other and giving it a tight twist as she threw him over her head.
A wall of dolls had been formed where he was sent flying, each of them managing to prod into his back with their tiny lances. Their pokes, akin to the feeling of a cacti's needles, worsened the pain in his spine whenever they struck it. Alex spun back and beheaded most of the dolls with a kick, throwing the rest to the wayside with the flames he kicked up.
Then his extended leg was pierced through by a couple knives, leading him to grimace as he pulled it back in and sped away from the chaos. He dropped down next to Meiling and swung his right fist back towards her face, which she blocked with her arms crossed sturdier than the toughest of walls. But Alex then spun the rest of his body around and delivered a high-voltage punch to her gut, weakening her strength immensely and thus causing his blow to mangle most of her insides as she was sent hurtling back, bleeding from the mouth.
His arms were swung out, vulnerable to the ensnaring grasp of Alice's many, many strings. She dug the strings in deep and drew some blood before Alex burned them off and swung back to face her. She swiped her arms around and guided her dolls to ambush him from the sides.
They gracefully danced in the air around his body and took potshots at his limbs while Patchouli's boobytrapped books kept on attacking. Alex swung his arms out and set loose a ring of fire to start burning down the bookshelves, but like an automated sprinkler system a storm of rain dropped from the ceiling to put those flames out.
Alex summoned his sword and stabbed it into the ground, the amber blade consumed with lightning that spread out through the rain in an instant. Yet in that instant, Patchouli was able to have a countermeasure prepared to contain the lightning within Alex's space.
"Cut it out!" He yelled before slashing his sword twice violently to the right, slicing the bookshelves down with compressed air. As the shelves slid down Patchouli hovered in place with the pages of her tome constantly turning.
Alex swung his left hand out and pulled Alice in close with a vacuum of air, blasting her with a point-blank fireball while having his full attention on the librarian. He flew straight at her and she summoned a series of basketball sized suns to detonate in his path. His skin, blistering red from the heat, wasn't a big enough detriment to halt his advance.
But Remilia? She was another story.
She came swooping down from out of nowhere and dragged Alex to the floor, digging her claws into his shoulders until his arms dripped red with blood. Then she jerked back around and threw him through a couple bookshelves. A relatively minor cost, even from Patchouli's perspective.
Patchouli took aim with a glyph poised perfectly towards Alex's position and fired a series of dark spheres. Alex spun around and around, slicing them down with his sword while building up the heat to send a crescent wave of fire her way.
Remilia clawed the flames down and swung her right hand up. Now she wasn't going to create any old spear. This one was bigger, dwarving most suburban houses from the Outside World. It was nastier, enough to make Elder Gods tremble in fear. It was brighter, its scarlet hue able to overpower the rising sun. Many have heard its name cry out in the storms of yore. A similar weapon was wielded by the All-Father, Odin, in his hayday. Its name?
"Go...GUNGNIR!" Remilia cried out in pride as the massive spear was tossed out a second later.
But not only did Alex not bow to its might, he attacked it head on with a blade no bigger than half of him. He grinded its impenetrable amber against its scarlet tip and felt the energy pierce his skin from all-around as he broke it down bit by bit. He flared his body up to full strength, burning the air with immense heat.
Patchouli started coughing as the heat got to her weakened lungs, but tried to hold on for her friend's sake. Alex started cutting into the spear, slicing through inches and then entire feet at a time until he suddenly slashed the mighty Gungnir in twine and felt as its halves puncture through the walls of the mansion. He gasped and sweated while Remilia dove at him still full of vigor.
He swung his blade up and clashed with her claws a couple times while she managed to slip past his defenses and cut into his tendered up limbs. Alex angrily roared and exploded with fire, launching Remilia higher up and allowing him to speed forward at Patchouli.
The librarian scrambled to create a barrier but Alex punched through it and hit her square in the head, knocking her far, far down to the floor. Remilia tackled him in the back before he could deliver the killing strike and dragged him opposite of where the librarian had fallen. Along the way they passed by Sakuya in the shadows, who gripped her pocketwatch before her wrist while counting down the seconds in a whisper.
"Ten...nine...eight..."
Alex forced Remilia off his stomach and elbowed her into a wall. She let out a brief gasp but then defiantly swiped at his face.
"Seven...six...five..."
The vampire sprang at him but Alex punched her back to the ground on her rear. He then flicked his left fingers up and caused giant sawblades to rise from the ground and slice Remilia's arms clean off from the shoulders. He then pressed the dull edges against her bleeding sockets while coldly remarking, "You can't regenerate if there's no room for your body parts to regrow."
"Four...three...two..." Sakuya's hand wound tightly around the watch, causing it to shake.
Remilia bit her teeth down in fury for the first time but still wrenched her body up, trying to squeeze her way out. Alex shackled her legs to the ground with spiked cuffs, then stabbed his sword into her chest for good measure. She widened her eyes as Alex twisted the blade in deeper while staring emotionlessly into her eyes.
"Had your fun, Scarlet Devil?"
"One..." Sakuya released her grip on the pocketwatch as her master let out a smile as bright as moonlight.
"Oh, we are just getting started."
"THE WORLD."
Time froze to a complete halt around Alex, the colors of his surroundings becoming inverted as he stood up and shook his head around.
"Sakuya..." He muttered before being surrounded by a sphere of knives.
"In the domain of My World, milady shall experience no further harm..." In the most talkative mood she's been in since he first encountered her, Sakuya wandered into view in front of Alex and stabbed one knife forward, causing the rest she summoned to collapse upon him.
Alex forced the knives back with a burst of lightning expulsed from his body while roaring, "Your gimmick's useless against me! I've stopped time more than I can count!"
"You are but a learner. Allow me to show you how elegantly a master controls time..." Sakuya swung her right arm out and the knives Alex dispersed vanished into a misty distortion of time.
She then spun around and warped across the room to get in front of Alex, slicing cleanly towards his neck. Alex backed off and spun his leg up to kick her in the gut, which she responded to by gracefully flipping back and landing upon her feet.
A few knives appeared from nowhere before the boy's face and he ducked as the flew by overhead. He charged along the ground, dragging up flames until he was right under her feet, where he uppercutted towards her jaw.
Sakuya swung her pocket watch out and disappeared. Alex grabbed for the Gaia Temporis and activated it a mere millisecond later. Time stopped further, and the inverted atmosphere started to distort around them.
Waves of knives came flying at him from the front and then the back, forcing him to leap and spin between them. Sakuya reappeared before his body and sliced twice at his body. A shield came to protect him, but there was something...off about how it was summoned.
"A human's brain fires impulses in one thousandth of one seconds, also known as a millisecond." Sakuya stoically remarked before pulling back and swinging her pocketwatch before her face, vanishing before Alex's retaliating fireball hit her.
He kept his hand deep in his pocket and stopped time again. This time the atmosphere was incredibly blurry, making it hard to see anything but the fireball Alex had just sent out, which was frozen in place.
Sakuya leapt at him with knives between all her fingers and slashed them down all at once. The shield came to Alex's aid, but again something was bizarre about it. The tips of her knives had come dangerously close to cutting into his chest.
"In on trillionth of one second, light travels exactly 0.3 millimeters. You call this a picosecond." Sakuya stepped back a couple inches and cross her knives down by her waist a rain of many, many more bombarded Alex from above. He stood his ground and threw the knives off with electricity, and in the blink of an eye Sakuya was once again gone.
He activated the Gaia Temporis once more and watched as color faded from the world entirely, leaving nothing but the ultraviolet rays of pure concentrated light in his surroundings. Sakuya zipped up to him and cut along his right hip. This time the knife's tip drew a single drop of blood before the shield blocked her off entirely.
A second Sakuya attacked from the opposite side in a similar manner, but raised her knife just a single inch higher. Then it vanished, almost like it was but a phantom of time. Sakuya turned around and remained stoic to the grimacing shock on Alex's face as she swung her pocket watch out and declared, "One quadrillionth of one second is where ultraviolet light exists. Humans call this a femtosecond."
She vanished and Alex gave chase further into the frozen time. Now the world was pure white, devoid of light and color. A knife wound up impaled into his back, then was spat out by his shield reforming a couple seconds later. Alex turned around and watched as Sakuya called forth dozens of knives to her aid, flinging them into his shielded body one-by-one while teleporting behind him and raising one knife to the back of his neck.
He couldn't believe it. His body was sweating and cold just from the touch of her blade, even if it didn't reach the skin. Sakuya narrowed her reddened eyes and whispered, "One septillionth of a second. Where motion ceases to be, even for a God. Yet humans arrogantly doctrine this as a yoctosecond."
Alex spun around to punch her but she had already become a whisper in the wind. One more time, Alex used the Gaia Temporis to give pursuit. In an inconceivable manifestation of space time, Alex felt a sharp pain puncture the center of his chest as a knife drove itself in deep. Then he noticed he was surrounded by hundreds of knives, all of which had to have been set up seconds in advance.
Sakuya floated a fair distance away with her back turned and her arms crossed before her chest, "Finally there is the measurement of Planck time...The single most briefest span of time to physically matter...And it is in this irrelevant speck of time that you shall fall to your knees, Phoenix of Destruction, and die."
Alex grabbed onto the knife and tried to pull it out, but it was stuck in a completely faster moment of time. No matter how hard he pulled, it wouldn't budge until a second of time had passed.
"You are unused to fighting those who would pervert your domain over time. You failed to understand that you are the only one who is affected by this frozen time. The further and further you delve, the harder and harder it becomes for your shields to protect you."
"But for milady, I cannot afford to make a mistake, not even for a yoctosecond," Sakuya closed her eyes and snapped her fingers, "Now let us dance...Until the end of this life."
The knives collapsed all at once into and through Alex's body, ripping him to bloody shreds as time resumed completely. He couldn't even scream, as a knife was shoved straight into his throat. He collapsed to his knees a human pincushion, and Sakuya turned towards her master and bowed her head with the lip of her skirt drawn out.
"Was that to your liking, milady?" She spoke softly.
"Heh, great work Sakuya! Now...mind getting me out of here?" Remilia said, practically laughing off her grievous injuries.
Sakuya nodded and took one step forward, only to be frozen stiff by an intense anger welling up behind her. Alex loomed behind her drenched in blood and a bitter scowl on his face. He grabbed her face as she turned around and smashed her into the ground.
"Sakuya!" Remilia screamed in shock.
Alex squeezed her head against the floor as his body swallowed up the knives in his wounds, breaking them down to their base elements to patch up each and every scar he gained.
"You almost had me! Maybe in your next life, you'll remember to aim for the heart and the head!" Alex roared before he pressed down with all his might, smashing the maid's fragile skull like a grape.
Remilia widened her eyes and let out a gasp as Alex rose up, his hand covered in the grey matter of her most loyal servant. He squeezed the pulpy matter into his fist and crawled on over to Remilia, gasping in a tired, frustrated voice, "Now...where were we?"
A footstep, a single footstep, broke his concentration and caused him to jerk his head back and grumble, "What now?!"
But what surprised both him and Remilia was that the person wandering about...was none other than Flandre. She coddled her teddy bear up against her chest and stared blankly towards the two of them.
"F-Flandre...?" Alex whispered, his agitation quickly turning into a smile of joy as he turned away from Remilia and extended his hands out towards her.
"T-This is perfect! With your power, Yukari doesn't stand a chance in hell!" He was giggling ecstatically the whole time he spoke, for this was the first bright spot in what felt like an long, long time.
"...Sister?" Flandre tilted her head and stared at Remilia's disgraceful state as the vampire cried out, "Flandre get out of here! Don't get involved!"
Alex slowly walked towards Flandre and grinned, "You and I are kindred spirits Flandre. Together, there's no evil we couldn't defeat. Come on Flandre...I could really, really use your help."
Remilia squirmed, trying to break free, and the longer this struggle prolong the tighter Flandre gripped her teddy bear.
"...S-Sister?" Flandre lowered her head, bit her teeth, and shivered.
Alex stopped in place as the teddy bear's head popped off. He slowly lowered one hand and tried to speak calmly to the vampire, "Easy Flandre...This isn't what it looks like, ok?"
Before he could even blink, Flandre swung her right hand up and squeezed it tightly towards his chest. Alex widened his eyes and gasped before a massive, shattering explosion went off around his body. His eighth soul shield shattered to pieces and wound up being metaphysically impaled through his body as he thrown through a bookshelf and wound up buried under a mound of books upon hitting a wall.
"W-What the hell...?" He gasped.
Flandre rose off the ground and slowly flapped her wings. Raising her hands and clutching her fingers in a haphazard manner, her grin twitched and she let out a slightly unhinged chuckle.
"I-I don't know what's happening..." She raised her head up high and decreed with a tearful face of madness, "But something's telling me...THAT I HAVE TO DESTROY YOU!"
Next Time: Scarlet Furor