Alex

My spell works as intended, but the mana conversion I did to cast the spell sapped away half of my remaining stamina.

The sun shined upon that forest fight for the first time.

As Jace was finally easy to see and less mobile due to his signiature spell shadow shift having been sealed, I pushed the goggles I got from North onto my forehead with my right hand—the same hand I used to wield my wand—and dashed towards Jace.

With my stamina almost completely spent, I knew that I had to try to deal as much damage to Jace's weaponry or (if I got lucky) the man himself in a short skirmish before retreating and retrieving Hazel.

Starting with a stab from my left I aim to slot my knife between Jace's ribs. Throwing a small, fast, and almost imperceptible dagger from his left hand, Jace knocks my kukri off course. Taking advantage of the opening he has created, Jace attempts to stab my left arm with a hidden blade in his right sleeve. However, although I did not know at the time (and, evidently, neiter did Jace), when Jace had lost his cloak, he must have forgotten to add hidden blades in the sleeves of his current cloak. With Jace's stab having turned out to be nothing more than a blunder, I was able to recover my stance and go back on the offensive.

Because of Jace's undeniable melee prowess, I decided to change up my approach. Feigning another stab, I slash up from my right to my left. As Jace attempted to alter the path of my blade in the same way he countered my first stab, his dagger ended up going straight into my right forearm as my body turned to provide more force to my slash. At the time, I had been led to believe that my life was worthless if I could not even manage to hinder Jace in some significant way.

I was not entirely in control of myself, but I was not aware of that fact at the time.

This time, I left a shallow wound across Jace's chest. That blow would have proved fatal if Jace had not stepped back at the last possible moment, causing the wound to end up as nothing more than a light wound.

Seeing the blood on my kukri, although I did not realize at the time, I lost the little control I had over my actions and thoughts.

Unwittingly, an eerie grin spreads across my face and my hands began to move on their own. I released a series of strikes which I would have normally not been capable of and began to faintly smell the scent of rot. Since I felt rejuvinated and had oddly regained most of my stamina, I was too focused on the fight I was "fighting" to reach an obvious conclusion that could have changed history.

Blow after blow, I forced Jace towards the center of his campsite. Glancing behind himself for but a moment, Jace realized that I was attempting to drive him into his sleeping ditch for an eternal rest.

When it became clear that I was, against all odds, going to beat Jace in this prolonged duel, Jace jumped back to the right (attempting to escape around the ditch) and threw a metallic cylinder at the ground as I went to follow him. The second the cylinder hit the ground, it began to make a hissing noise as smoke began to spew out of both ends of the cylinder.

Going for a simple horizontal slash from my left to my right despite the lack of visibility, I attempted to slice Jace in twain with my kukri. Against all of my expectations, Jace did not even attempt to dodge my slash. Once the mist dispersed, I saw that Jace was cleanly bisected and watched as his torso slid off of his legs, falling onto the ground with a wet thud and entrails spilling out. Shortly after, Jace's legs fell in a similar fasion—without the entrails, of course.

Considering the fact that I just saw Jace die, it is understandable that I would be confused when I received a heavy-handed blow to the back of my head.