Chapter 4

Amil's thoughts began to swirl along with the air around him. 'I'll cut off his arm and remove the sword.' Amil reached for the hilt of the short sword with his left hand and raised it above his head while the air around him began to gather into a small transparent ball at the end of the blade.

The Demon hovering behind Brenner began to laugh and excitedly proclaimed "Your body will be mine!!" Even though the demon could not talk and Amil could only hear him in his mind, the expression on its face was making Amil sick to his stomach. As the concentration of Alm around the ball of air began to stabilize, a small tornado began to form within the small bubble. A barely visible torrent of Alm was swirling at the tip of the sword and along his right hand a small but sharp manifestation of Alm began to run down his arm and fingers, forming a needle point blade of wind. Brenner took a defensive pose with the shark blade and held it in front of him ready to absorb the incoming attack, but Amil had other plans. He dashed forward and held his sword like it was a lance, with the tip of it exerting tempestuous air currents in all directions. The demon assumed that it was a long-range attack and did not think he was going to charge with it, so he forced Brenner to lower his defensive stance and prepared to swing. As soon as Amil saw this, a small grin appeared on his face and with a triumphant voice he said, "Even Demons can be fooled."

Amil stopped and with his sword already pointing forward, he released a massive air torrent that sucked up all the surrounding rocks and turned them into dust. As he released his attack, his arm was jerked back in an unnatural way and dislocated his shoulder. Amil withstood the pain but his grip gave out and blood spurt from the wound he got earlier along with his sword being blown towards the sky. Even with all the pain he felt from his arm, he coated his body with Alm and used the force of his own attack to sneakily rush forward with the smokescreen his attack created. Unable to react, the demon forced Brenner to swing the shark blade downwards in order to cut the torrent and avoid getting hit directly by the torrential attack. As Brenner swung his sword downwards, Amil had already closed the distance between them and emerged on Brenner's right side and aimed for his shoulder. With the needle point blade he formed along his fingers, he swung down with his hand tried to cut off Brenner's arm, "Very close, but still not good enough." Unaware that this was the last time he was going to hear the demon's voice; he continued his attack.

As Amil was about to reach his brother's shoulder, he noticed an unusual shift in the Alm, a sudden surge of energy that began to shake their surroundings. The demon's silhouette disappeared along with the surge of energy, and then Amil suddenly felt a burst of energy from his side. The shark blade's hilt suddenly expanded large razor-sharp teeth-like blades spread randomly in front of Brenner and blocked the attack. Amil was unable to change trajectory and was impaled by two of the spikes, one piercing the right side of his stomach, and the other fully cutting his right arm from the elbow down. Before the pain set in from being pierced, a massive shockwave from the attack hitting the spikes pushed Brenner back and dragged Amil by the stomach.

The spike was pushed deeper into Amil's stomach as he was dragged, but his taut muscles were able to prevent it from fully chopping him in half or cutting off an entire piece of his torso. With dust spiraling all around him, he was unable to see Brenner's face. But he could see his silhouette behind the dust and the demonic shadow was nowhere to be found. Even though he felt relieved that it was not there anymore, the sudden change of energy from earlier left him with an unsettling feeling. As if having his gut pierced was not enough to leave him in tatters, his gut feeling only tore his mind and heart apart. "Look what you made me do, now I have this useless body." With a familiar tone, he heard the demon talk with his brother's voice.

"Gaah!" Amil coughed as blood covered the ground. With a ghastly look on his face he stared ominously at Brenner. Only to see a smiling face with yellow eyes staring back at him.