“You, March. Your identity, every inch of you that wants to talk, your personality, your understanding of English, every other language you could speak. You.”

March swished her sword a few times.

Foil’s head shook with the intensity of what she was saying and feeling. There was no swish to her sword.

“I’d rather become the kind of monster who can do that or who can hire people who do that than I’d go to this hell you describe.”

March looked over her shoulder at Tori.

“Guess you get what you wanted, Tor’.”

Foil lunged. Before Tori could do anything, the pair were out of sight.

Tori focused on her hand. She tried to drag her finger along the nail to the end, but the spike threaded through the bone. The bone reached the flared head of the nail, and it stopped.

She pulled, one half of her hand at the tip of the finger, the other half on the other end of the finger, split between the two sides of the nail. She hauled, screaming. Wood creaked but didn’t release the nail, and her flesh squeezed between the head of the nail and the bone until it separated out in every direction. The bone threatened to break, by the sheer pain of it.

“Whoops.”

Tori felt the pain at her throat, then the flood of blood washing down her front and onto her lap. Her one hand wasn’t enough to staunch the entire flow, and immediately, her thoughts began to go dark and fuzzy, like all of the buoyancy and light had just dropped out of her brain, leaving it dark and heavy.

She’d experienced this before, with the cluster. Bianca had done it to her. So had their ‘red priest’. It didn’t surprise her in the least that this was how she met her end. She almost, not quite, but almost found her peace with the realization.

She saw a glimpse of an arm.

“Marrrrr—” was her gurgling scream.

“Tori!” was the response. “Dang it!”

Tori saw the arm in shadows. Her second thoughts and resentments fell away like the blood from her slit throat. She did love May. She would—

She reached out, and she used her power. Only a pulse, whatever her power drew on physiologically, it needed oxygen and blood supply in the brain and she didn’t have enough.

But it caused a delay. The figure had just revealed herself, holding a bloody knife, a girl in a gray demon mask. Imp.

March stuck her rapier through Imp’s ribcage. Heart-on.

Foil’s headlong rush tried to capitalize on the distraction. Without turning around, March stuck the now-gleaming rapier beneath her armpit and backward. The explosion marked the conflict of the powers, and helped to push Foil’s rapier far enough away that she could put the weapon through Foil’s chest as well.