Death's Assurance

Seiji pulled at his body to respond to him. He fought with his arm to move. Anything needed to move. It didn’t matter what it was. A sign was all that he needed. Something to show that he was still in control. He couldn’t stand knowing that his body was dead to him. He could do nothing to change things. That he was just the helpless doll to this insane man.

‘Come on! Damn body, do what I’m telling you!’ He struggled to find anything. Everything was so numb. He didn’t feel like he was in his own body anymore. It just felt like he was watching through someone’s eyes, but still felt the pain. ‘Are you going to just let him carve you up? Move damn it!’

A faint glow warmed between the layers of papers around his arm. It pulsed softly.

Grinning like a maniac, Cosmas removed another finger to show Seiji. The renewed screaming only made his expression all the more twisted. He drank up the pain with devilish delight.

The resistance from his body made Seiji sweat more. Watching Cosmas degrade further and further from something that resembled human actually made him feel something he didn’t expect. It was a foreign feeling for him. ‘He’s actually going to slowly cut me up until I die!’ Seiji’s eyes widened further until his pupils became only dots. The feeling washed over him. It made him familiar with it. It wanted him to be comfortable. It was heavy. It was sickening. Seiji hated it, but couldn’t help it.

Fear. Absolute. Pure. Consuming.

Chapter 234 – Death’s Assurance

There were times Seiji might have felt it in the past, but it was only a little bit. It wasn’t enough to keep him from wanting to fight back. But this was so powerful it felt like it was over his entire body. Everything froze. His mind started to come to terms with reality. ‘I can’t…’

His arm pulsed a little stronger.

Cosmas took interest. “What’s this? I don’t remember you having this before.” He stripped away a couple of the talismans wrapped around his hand. It took a little effort, but he reached skin. A thin scar started between where the pinkie and ring finger would have been and ran underneath the bandaging.

His eyes lit up a little. “I remember now. This was the wound I gave you.” Cosmas peeled back a few more to find the second scar. He checked further up on his arm needing to remove a significant amount to reach the skin. “So you managed to bind it back together and heal yourself. I recall you did something like that at the end now. You were getting less interesting at that point, so I don’t remember the small details very well.”

Seiji wanted his arm back. He wanted his body back. He wanted free of this insane man’s control. It had to end. “Give…me…back…” Even his mouth had trouble obeying him. He fought just to get the words out.

Closing in a little, Cosmas playful drew a line down Seiji’s cheek with his finger. “Oh? You want something?” He grinned at him. “Do tell me.”

The glow shined off his skin through the exposed parts as it pulsed.

A little surprised by the brightness, Cosmas pulled back a bit. His confusion at Seiji’s arm twisted his forehead. “Something new you’re trying? You’re still under my paralysis. You can’t escape me!” He started laughing at Seiji's futile attempts. “Struggle all you want. You’re mine!”

Another pulse came out, but it moved down his arm rather than all at once. The tips of his fingers started to glow a little.

“Give me…”

“Come on. Tell me what you want.”

“Give…”

Several waves pulsed through Seiji’s arm.

“What is it you want?” Cosmas leaned forward up close to Seiji’s face. He grabbed on to the back of his head. The sight of his futility pleased him. Toying with him was almost too easy.

Suddenly, the talismans on his arm rippled. The outer layer loosened up and flapped around. The light pulsing through his arm became a constant stream. “Give me back my damn ARM!” Seiji shouted, finally able to speak again. All of the talismans threw off his arm spinning around at different speeds. The light that contained within before shined brightly. It blinded the entire damn Field.

Once the light faded enough to see, Seiji was no longer in sight. It was his white glowing arm that signaled his position, as it was hard to miss. He rested outside of Cosmas’ Field. The talismans stopped moving. Hundreds of papers floated at different distances away from his arm.

Cosmas lowered his eyes a little from the brightness. A new turn of events he didn’t expect appeared before him. “What do you have hidden in the arm?”

The shitty pain through his body had subsided significantly. His hand still hurt like hell, but nothing like it was before. ‘I can move again.’ Seiji flipped his eyes up towards Cosmas, noticing his position. ‘It must be because I’m outside of his damn effects.’ Lifting up his scarred arm, Seiji stared at the light coming off it. ‘What’s happening to me? I thought I already knew what power Yuki gave me. This isn’t the same sort of thing.’

Seiji grabbed one of the talismans out of the air. It immediately straightened out in his fingers. “Huh? This looks like…” He never gave it much thought on his arm. When it happened during the fight, he was merely grateful for an arm to fight with again. After it was over, he just accepted it as fact. He never looked at it closely. But it was familiar. Damn sickeningly familiar.

The more he thought about it the more he realized about it. ‘These showed up that time when the shrine was under attack by the undead.’ The light from his arm calmed down. Most of the paper talismans returned to his arm, but a few attached themselves to his body. He couldn’t remove them no matter how much he tried. ‘They’re always appearing to help me. Is this your way of getting back at me?!’

He would have preferred to ignore such help, but it was a part of him. It couldn’t be removed. Acceptance was his only option, reluctant or otherwise. Seiji looked down at his maimed hand, bandaged back up. The two fingers he missed were sealed up.

Seiji looked back at Cosmas with his awkward fist raised. His body felt a little different now. He wasn’t sure what the talismans did to him, but he at least had the poison purged. “Alright. Time to return the favor in kind.” Seiji began to walk back towards the sword Field.

Grinning, Cosmas watched with anticipation of Seiji’s return. “You were safe outside my Field. My poison couldn’t affect you. But you walk back in here. It’ll make you succumb again.” Swords lifted up into the air around where Seiji would enter. “You truly are an idiot!”

“I’m fine with that,” replied Seiji, marching into the shitty Field. The moment he stepped in a flicker came off the talismans attached to his body. “Things won’t play out the same way a second time.”

“Did you forget I have complete control within my Field?”

Punching his foot down into the Field, chunks of the damn earth jumped up knocking away many of the swords lined up for him. His left hand grabbed a free sword and swiped away the rest in a single motion. “Did you forget this is the second time I’ve fought you?”

“So you found a way to protect yourself from my poison. I can just strengthen it.”

“You really think that’ll work?” Seiji kept walking forward. He had his badass confidence back. Everything was under his control. His body felt great. “All you can do is work within your pre-defined limits you’ve placed upon yourself. Strengthening won’t do anything to affect me. You’ll have to change it to actually have a chance against me now.” He smirked a little at the thought. “And you can’t risk that. The moment your damn Field is off you’re mine. You have to work with what you’re given.”

Cosmas grinned along with Seiji. It pleased him. It was enjoyable, but also boring before. The feeling he had now was more satisfying. “This is the way it should be. This is far more interesting. It’d be so boring just cutting you up when you can’t move.” Suddenly two swords appeared in his hands and grew immediately to unwieldy sizes of five meters. “But don’t think I’m out of moves. No, we’re just getting started now. So I expect you to keep making things interesting for me until I remove that head of yours!”

The length of the swords actually impressed Seiji a bit. They seemed like they stretched out to stab at him, even though he remained at a safe distance. He rubbed his left hand over his right hand subconsciously. There was no pain.

He could feel the intensity of the atmosphere. The deadliness pointed straight at him. His emotions calmed for the moment. ‘I have to end this before I lose myself once more. This man brings out the worst in me. Inside I know he deserves worse than what my heart wants to give, but I can’t let it take me over. Not again! I need to fight my way, not on his terms!’

Seiji charged in for Cosmas. He watched the massive blades slowly moving up. ‘They’re too big for him. Though he seems unaffected by their size, I can’t imagine he actually can swing them very easily.’ The slow movement made them very easy to dodge. It almost seemed like Cosmas allowed himself to get caught up in the sense of a fight to allow such a weakness. However, it was too early to judge.

The earth roared and leapt the moment the crappy blades crashed into the ground. Massive waves of debris shot off the impact zone. It didn’t matter if Seiji dodged the blades, their effect would still reach him. They carved up the earth with ease.

After only two attacks, Seiji fell off his course. He stumbled around on his feet trying to make up for the loss. However, in this delay, Cosmas had a follow-up already planned. Seiji caught it in time. The left sword was already back in the air and turned flat with the blade pointed at him. It moved significantly faster than before. The slow movement was just a deception.

Seiji leapt up in the air just in time to land on the blade as it crashed into the other sword. Sparks flew up from the scrapping metal. The blades rang loudly over the battlefield. ‘Damn…’ He looked down at the close call. ‘That was close, he’s still playing around.’ Seiji jumped back to get off the sword.

The next attack was already beginning. Seiji had to dodge the varied speeds of the swords. Neither seemed to move at the same speed. It made it difficult for him to dodge. He already experienced the sharpness of the smaller blades. He didn’t want to take one directly on at such a size.

Dodging was all he could do for the moment. Cosmas was on a heavy offensive. “Don’t get boring on me again! I’ll cut you up if you do!” He smirked at him.

Grunting a little as he made an awkward backward dodge, Seiji hated being defensive. But the new tactics weren’t something he was used to against Cosmas. “You’re already wanting to kill me. I don’t think that’s much of a reason right now.” He had another close dodge. Each move seemed to be getting harder to avoid than the last.

Some laughter came from Cosmas. “Getting a bit of a mouth on you for retorts, huh?”

“Damn, I’m starting to sound like Yuki.” He leapt up on the shitty ass swords as another dodge came. The size made it very easy to run up the length as his only catch for a counter. “I need to keep to my own character.” Blades jumped up from the surface of the sword halting his progress. The surprise attack left him with a small knick, but it felt like his entire limb had been severed. He bit through the pain, jumping away, his route closed.

“I wondered how long it’d take you to accept the invitation.”

Seiji ripped off a talisman from his arm and put it on the thin wound. It worked well closing up the wound. ‘Damn, they aren’t normal ass swords…’ He looked back at the bastard Cosmas approaching. A reminder of the situation had to go through Seiji’s head. It was easy to fall into the assumption of what he saw was what reality was, but they subverted reality.

“You shouldn’t relax just because you think you’re safe!” The swords suddenly grew in length to reach out to Seiji. Safe distance no longer meant the same thing. The swords moved at an even faster speed than before leaving Seiji with little openings.

Seiji gasped for a moment as he felt the blade slice through his entire body at the waist. It seemed like everything wasn’t real for a moment. He couldn’t feel anything. Then he looked down. He managed to escape, but not without taking a shallow wound in his waist as the extending blades caught a taste of him in mid-swing. Sweat poured down his face from the experience. ‘What just happened?’

Cosmas lifted the left sword up to rest on his shoulder. “Surprised? I told you before, didn't I? I’m not out of moves. Things are only getting started.” The sword shrank down to a normal size. “That was merely a taste of things to come. That blade creates illusions, increasing the severity of any wound you receive.”

The right sword, still massive, shined a strange light blue. A cold wind blew from it until the air froze. Ice expanded over the blade and stretched out catching Seiji unaware. He couldn’t move in time for the ice to grab his legs. “How will you get out of this?” Cosmas tossed the smaller sword into the air letting it grow back to gigantic proportions. It spun down at him threatening to cut him down the middle.