Miro's song faltered and then stopped, the light of the armoursilk's runes slowly fading until it was completely dark. He had never felt such unbelievable strength; the nightshade squeezed at his body with a grip of iron, crushing his ribs and pulling his legs until Miro could almost feel them come out of their sockets.

Miro thought of his sister, and of Amber, both somewhere far from home. Ella had always told him he was too reckless.

Suddenly, Miro remembered.

"O-lunara-o-sumara. Na-tumara-kan," he choked the new sequence his sister had built into his armoursilk.

Miro's green armoursilk lit up with shimmering blue lines, sizzling with lightning. Even insulated as he was he felt the numbing jolt and his teeth smashed together, biting through his lip. The metallic taste of blood instantly suffused his mouth.

What the nightshade felt would be much, much worse.

The charge seared the bark of the nightshade's hands black. Smoke rose in a thick cloud and the nightshade screamed, a terrible sound that reverberated throughout the forest.

In an instant it let Miro go, dropping him to the earth.

Gasping, Miro checked his body for broken bones, but aside from the pain in his ribs and legs, he still seemed to be in one piece. He picked himself up and looked up at the nightshade, lurching from side to side in anguish.

Miro checked his armoursilk; using the lightning effect had taken much of its power. He looked around for his zenblade and found it a few paces away.

Miro was ready, and he now had a plan.

He commenced his song, ignoring the pain of his body, adding the core sequences to both his armoursilk and his zenblade. Again he leaped at the nightshade, climbing up its body, but this time keeping an eye out for the sweeping arms. When a limb came at him, he was ready, and Miro put his whole song into the zenblade, turning the blade blue, giving his weapon an incredible searing sharpness.

He swung at the arm with the same strength he had put into his blow at the nightshade's torso, and cut the hand off at the wrist.

As the creature tossed and turned with pain, Miro held on with all his strength. The other arm came at him, and this time he cut the other arm off at the elbow. He continued higher, clambering up the vines until he was high enough to see where the limbs branched at the trunk. Miro cut the nightshade's left arm off, and then the right, before letting go and dropping gracefully to the ground.

The nightshade raised a root-covered appendage to stamp on the bladesinger, but Miro cut again, leaving the nightshade unstable and filled with pain.

With a mighty crash, the nightshade fell to the earth.