“Well, if you insist so--” Ril cut off as he charged Siorraid. Siorraid reacted instantly, the element of surprise not affecting the frustrating man one bit. Shadows exploded out of him, tendrils twisted hungrily as they reached for Ril’s charging form.

But Ril wasn’t done. At the same moment as his charge, Ril cast Remote Casting coupled with Mana Prison, focusing his entire will on crushing Siorraid’s mana pool. The man’s mana was a powerful ocean compared to Ril’s meager supply, and unlike his core, Siorraid’s mana had an oily quality to it that resembled the shadows that he wielded so casually.

With almost delicate precision Ril clamped down on Siorraid’s mana.

Siorraid’s eyes opened wide as he let out a little ‘oof'. He doubled over, stumbling backwards, as Ril’s will descended upon him. The shadows that he summoned dispersed, falling to the floor and losing all their integrity in a fraction of a second as the mana controlling them dissipated.

Ril’s clone crashed into Siorraid, both of them falling backwards. Right into the pool of bubbling chromate. Ril’s face twisted into a chilling rictus as a look of pure shock ran across Siorraid’s face. A moment later, his vision was blocked as they both submerged.

Pure agony radiated from his connection with the clone. It seemed as if every part of his skin was on fire. The corrosive liquid literally ate away at him as he struggled with Siorraid, but he persevered through the pain and refused to summon the clone back to his side.

Falling into the liquid wasn’t lethal. The tanner had basically said so when they had spoken earlier in the day. Of course, that assumed that you weren’t an idiot about it, and didn’t say for example, drink the stuff.

So Ril forced his clone to close its eyes, and hold its breath as it grappled with the man. Forcing both of them under the roiling liquid. Fire rushed up his nose causing tears to appear in his eyes, as his skin began to redden and peel away.

Throughout the grapple and the pain, Ril maintained his iron will upon the man, imprisoning both Siorraid’s body and mana underneath the toxic liquid. Siorraid fought back. Roughly punching and scratching at Ril’s clone. He was much stronger than Ril, but the combination of surprise and the fact that he hadn’t sucked in a breath of air prior to submersion caused Ril to be able to contain the much stronger man.

His mana also struggled wildly against the barrier that Ril had placed around his core. It’s black body formed a thousand blades that clawed and tore at Ril’s will. Unlike the physical battle that Ril was winning only through trickery, this battle Ril was winning handily. Keen Mind coupled with over twenty intelligence made it so that Ril’s will reigned supreme.

Ril watched the battle raging in the pool from his vantage point in the tanners shop with morbid fascination. Then he spotted something strange. A couple motes of pure white light rising from the thrashing violet waters. They were so small that Ril almost missed them, but the moment he saw them he paled, remembering what had happened last time he had seen those lights.

How, was all he managed to think before a wall of destructive wind magic annihilated everything in the back corner of the room.

Ril flew backwards. Stopping gradually as his momentum was absorbed by a series of leather drying racks. They snapped like kindling under his weight, and wrapped him in a protective blanket rawhide. He almost lost consciousness as he finally stopped rolling.

Blearily he blinked his eyes, trying to focus them enough to understand what he was seeing.

Directly in front of him, someone lay limply on the floor. The skin was red and peeling with no hair remained on its head. Deep gashes were visible all across the man’s face, each dribbling out a thin stream of silver blood. Several of the gashes had cut all the way through the man's head, revealing parts of his skull and brain to the sulphurous air. So not someone. A body.

The deep gashes continued down the torso, shredding a shirt that was blackened by the acid. Below that the man wore...

Ril blinked, realizing that it wasn’t a complete body, but rather, just the upper half of one. Everything below the belly button was gone, disconnected by some incredibly sharp blade. Or an over powered blast of sharpened wind.

Vaguely, Ril noticed that he felt nothing from his clone. Not the vague pressure that manifested itself when Ril forcibly suppressed his clone, nor the comfortable dual perspective that he had become familiar with. It was as if he had regressed back to the time before he had awakened the ability. As if, somehow, someway, his clone was gone.

A deep sense of unease and longing settled over him.

Ril blinked again. His vision resolved the other side of the room, to reveal a frightening sight.

The vat itself was just gone, a crater taking its place. The far side of the room was completely destroyed. The smooth stone floor was chipped and cracked, Deep furrows cut into it from the blast of enraged wind magic that had emanated from the man. Small pools of violet chromate covered everything within the blast zone, smoking slightly as they ate the unprotected materials of the house.

In the exact center of the crater Siorraid stood doubled over, heaving in breaths and spitting out globules of violet colored saliva. Smoke rose from his singed clothes. Around his feet lay the remains of some of his weapons, whose belts had failed under the attack of the chromate. More than half of his daggers lay on the floor, their once rusted blades shining brightly. Those whose handles were made of less durable materials were flaking.

Conspicuously, the large sheath on his back was empty, its blade completely gone.

Slowly, Siorraid straightened, opening his burned eyelids to look with bloodshot eyes at Ril.

He looked mad.

“You...,” Siorraid started, then he chuckled softly, which turned into a hacking cough. Shadows collected at his feet and from his back six scythe like black blades formed of pure shadows came to life. “I think...that I underestimated you.”

Ril glanced down at the upper body at his feet, spotting the legs of the dead body not too far from it but in some sense much too far for comfort..

That’s...me., Ril thought in shock. He tried to resummon his clone, but failed. Panic gripped him, and he pushed harder, investing more and more mana into it until the clone materialized at his side. A light sigh of relief escaped him as the familiarity of dual perspectives settled back onto him.

Then he shook himself and rolled to his feet, disentangling himself from the rawhide which he noticed had protected him from more than just the fall. More than half of the hides had nearly been cut through by the wind blades.

“I see.” Siorraid said hoarsely, eyes narrowing as he looked between the dead clones body and the healthy new one.

Before anything else could be said or done, Ril ran. Sprinting out of the destroyed workshop like a bat out of hell. He was thoroughly spooked by both his own dead body and the man who had managed to take his best and survive. Now more resembling a devil than a man, with his red weeping skin and black smoking clothes.

Ril burst out through a ruined wall and into the main street feeling a slight twinge of regret for ruining the tanner’s shop. Outside the people had scattered, forming a rough wall of onlookers around the destroyed house. Surprisingly, they looked more curious than scared.

Standing alone in the center of the street was another black cloaked figure. Similar to Siorraid, her cloak was shredded, but that was where the similarities ended. Siorraid tended to cover himself with his cloak, as if trying to use the garment to hide himself from the light, while the woman did the opposite. Her cloak was pushed back so that it hung loosely from her back and revealed her smooth shoulders.

She was tall and thin wearing skin tight leather pants. A far too revealing black blouse barely covered her impressive assets, while her thrown back cloak did little to hide her curvaceous figure. A loose hood covered her hair, but the locks that lay artfully on her shoulders were dyed a deep burgundy.

Her hood was pushed back far enough so as not to obscure her features. Red eyes overlooking a long thin nose peered curiously at Ril’s disheveled appearance. She smiled, a glint in her eye as she slowly ran her gaze over Ril’s various injuries.

In either hand she loosely held a pair of many-tailed, vicious-looking whips. Both were covered in a thin layer of glistening red blood, which dripped slowly to the ground.

“My, oh, my. We’ve made quite a mess, haven’t we.” She cooed. Ril took in her appearance and concluded that whoever she was, she was not worth his time right now. Either she worked with Siorraid and in that case she was the enemy, or she worked in the guard which almost made it worse.

Regardless of who she was, Ril chose to ignore her, choosing a random direction and sprinting away from the tanner’s ruined shop.

“Uh, uh, uh,” the lady said, tapping her gloved finger on her lips in a thoughtful manner. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” Contrary to the words she was saying a heavy smile spread slowly across her red painted lips and her eyes flashed, urging Ril to run ever faster.

Ril ignored her, continuing to run as fast as his legs would take him. Behind him Siorraid emerged, burned and bleeding from the destroyed tanner's workshop.

“Oh! Sio my dear, you’re hurt!” she gasped, putting both hands dramatically over her lips. “How wonderful!”

Siorraid nodded at the woman before running laboriously after Ril. As he pulled shadows together to speed his movement Ril set aside a portion of his concentration to reimprison his mana, and force him to run like normal.

“No need for that, dear Sio.” the woman said, still standing suggestively in the center of the street, “I set up a circle, he won’t be able to escape. But I do look forward to his attempt.”

Indeed, Ril did notice that there was an odd looking line of red blood droplets that separated him from the crowd of people. Whatever it did, it couldn’t be worse than being killed by the crazed psychopath chasing him. Hopefully if he could make it past the line he would be able to lose Siorraid in the crowd, or the damnable man would give up and try another day. Ril was practically out of ideas.

Ril spared a glance behind him, and noticed that Siorraid had ignored the woman’s suggestion, continuing his laborious charge despite his injuries. Luckily, Ril noticed a puff of white particles escaping Siorraids cloak and instinctively jumped to the side, as a blast of wind tore a chunk out of the street where he had just stood.

Before he even landed, another blade of wind ripped into his right leg, only stopping when it dissipated halfway into the bone. Letting out a cry, Ril swapped with his clone and resummoned the damaged body. Then with a burst of strength he didn’t know he had he leapt across the line of blood.

Silver blood fountained out of every pore in his body. The only reason he knew this was because his perception suddenly snapped back to his clone's body as a wave of pain nearly caused him to black out. Unlike last time where his clone died, he was very much aware that whatever the blood circle did, it hadn’t killed him.

It seemed intentional. Waves of pain radiated across his limbs, but were oddly absent around his critical organs like his heart and brain. Mostly it felt like his blood had been forcably shoved out of his body through his skin, and since his skin was meant to keep said fluid inside his body, it had been shredded in the process.

Luckily the circle of blood seemed to only activate once, leaving his main body unharmed as it tumbled across the line.

Ril collapsed into the pool of silver blood. Both of his bodies spasming from the pain. Almost instinctively, he pushed the last dregs of his mana into his clone, forcing it to take on his image. He noted vaguely in the back of his mind that once more that Mirror Form was sucking up more mana than it normally did.

“Oh! His blood is silver! How lovely!”

The pain subsided a moment later, but the memory of the pain remained. Trembling, Ril got to his feet only to notice a wave of darkness engulf him. Pressure unlike any that he had ever felt, engulfed Ril as the darkness pressed in. Vaguely he felt himself rising into the air, and his body rotated around to face Siorraid and the Whip lady.

Scrambling, trying to focus through the pressure and remembered pain, Ril reached out to crush the shadows with Mana Prison but stopped when a sharp point of pain on his throat made itself known.

“Don’t even think about it.” Siorraid’s hoarse voice said from somewhere in front of him, but due to the darkness Ril couldn’t see a thing.

“They survived my Ritual!” the whip lady said, sounding completely baffled. “And they're not even harmed!”

Siorraid sighed, “Are you surprised Saddie? Look what he did to me.”

“Oh, I know! He did some absolutely spectacular damage to you. Does it hurt? I bet it hurts. I don’t think I've seen you this burnt, since Ella died. It’s just so magnificent that he survived. I bet the pain was exquisite! Does it still hurt or does it go away when you heal?” Saddie asked, seeming to be completely oblivious to the current situation.

Ril flinched, or tried to, but the shadows prevented either of his bodies from even moving an inch. The pain of the ‘Ritual’ had not been ‘exquisite’, as she put it, definitely not.

Siorraid sighed again, sounding more tired than Old Man Joe did after telling a long tale. “Let’s just take him to headquarters.” Ril felt himself moving through the air, but without the sense of sight the feeling was strange. Like riding in a carriage with eyes closed.

“Oh! How wonderful. Do you think I could test out my Ritual on him later once he joins up? Or I could test out my Hemorrhage on him! No one survives that to tell me how much it hurts. Oh! Do you think he could survive the Shredder? Well? Do you?”

Ril shuddered as Saddie kept emphasizing words that he could only imagine as nightmarish torture devices that she seemed downright excited to use on him. Whoever he had been caught by were dangerous. Very, very dangerous.

Ril closed all four of his eyes, letting out a deep breath, and settling into the shadowy embrace. They were oddly warm, and after the long chase, relaxing. There was not much he could do, moving was not an option and his only recourse of trying to use Mana Prison on Sioraid was prevented by the dagger that pricked his throat. Ril doubted that the shadows would dissipate before Siorraid cut his throat.

Nothing he had done had stopped Siorraid for long. The man was truly a monster. His trap hadn’t worked, his mana was exhausted, and his mind felt like mush.

How was he going to get out of this one?