Tanka put even more pressure on my shoulders, and the bone ground below me started to crack. Finally, the floor gave in, and we both fell through the ground; I unmade my Second Death spell to avoid any unnecessary deaths, and meanwhile, Tanka used me as a shield to break through each floor of the tower.

Then we broke straight through the ceiling of the entrance hall and right over hundreds of visitors, teachers, and apprentices.

“So, so! Show it to me, God of Death, what you’re capable of! Give me the best fight!”, Tanka laughed during the one hundred meters free fall. We hit the ground and tore the fluff fur apart, digging a deep crater into the dirt below. Confused passersby started to run all around, terrified; some had been unfortunate enough to be caught in my fall and their bodies had become a single amalgamation of blood and flesh below me. “Or are you still too scared to be who you really are?”

“You have no idea who’re you talking to!”, I replied, pointing both my palms toward the face of my enemy, and conjured a beam of burning light so intense it burned the air around it and exploded the hole we were in, sending even more people flying away with burns, or with their internal organs completely liquified by the shock wave; the light beam didn’t stop until it pierced through the leather ceiling of the Bear Mountain, and beyond.

Once the second world spell was over, and my eyes re-adapted themselves to the diminished light, I saw Tanka with both arms covering his face, vapor coming from burned forearm hair, but no further signal of damage.

“YES! That’s what I’m talking about!”, delighted, Tanka gripped me from the neck, and hurled me away from the hole.

I passed by and shocked myself at high speeds against the fleeing crowd, and saw the Council Member come right after me with his fists pulled back. I dug my feet into the ground, plucking the bear fur carpet and creating trenches into the dirt, and answered the enemy’s punch with one of my own, their air booming around my fist as it was too slow to move away from it in time.

Once our attacks touched one another, it was like I was punching a wall neither one of us moved one centimeter, only everyone around us ended up hurled away by the attacks. And then we started to use magic: lightning and fire engulfed both of us, sharp metal spikes pocked the smiling silver-haired man, and the molten rock poured over me, but none of the attacks had any effect, even though I was using second level spells.

“You said I don’t know who I am talking to?”, Tanka asked. Griping my fist and starting to spin me all around, showering lava over the screaming innocent bystanders. “But I know everything about you, God of Death!”, he hurled me upward, and once I caught a glimpse of my opponent, while still spinning in the air, I conjured a spear of light, and threw it against him with all my might, and the weapon flew even faster than my punch before, and when it impacted against it its target, it expanded in a sphere, then into a mushroom-shaped explosion, disintegrating everyone around it in fifty meters. “Where do the Gods have gone after they vanished?”, Tanka walked away from the smoke with his shirt torn apart, showing his bare chest covered in scars. “The answer is: they are still here! And YOU are one of them! And I know exactly why you did this… Because you love war just as much as I do”, he said, and then his hands and legs stretched, his body became covered in fur, and his teeth grew into huge fangs; he became an enormous wolf, and conjured leather clothes with many pockets around his entire body. “Woof!”, he howled, and the sound caused a wave of red, as everyone that heard it had their heads tripling in size in unnatural ways, and then exploding in geysers of blood. Including me.

In a second, I was spinning in the air, in the other, I was on the ground, my shoulders and neck covered in blood, and with one less chain link tattoo.

And new memories come back to me.

But this time, no images but darkness came to my vision, only an excruciating pain worse than everything I had ever felt before, so bad I became unable to form thoughts, that I forgot about the present, that I felt as if my very soul was being slowly torn apart by billions of ants. I tried to scream, but the pain drowned the sound, I tried to peel my skin off, but that wasn’t even a distraction from the maddening pain I felt, and it went on for so, so, long, days, years, decades of pure excruciating pain.

Then, I was back to the present.

“AAAH!”, I sat up, drenched in sweat, still shocked from the years of memories that inundated my mind, and from the sudden defeat I suffered by the wolf I was fighting against.

I turned back to Tanka, and saw him smiling at me. Then it opened its mouth, and shot a flaming spinning blade straight against me, and I quickly conjured a metal barrier to stop it. But the projectile easily split my shield in half, and melted it away, then hit me straight in the waist, and I was separated in two.

As my internal organs were spilled away from my spinning flying torso, I died once more, and yet another chain link was broken, bringing me another entire age of darkness and suffering, bringing me misery that seemed to last longer than my entire waking life.

“Aargh…!”, I pushed myself up from the blood-drenched ground below me with my hands and newly regenerated knees. “What…?!”, I had conjured a second world metal barrier to stop that projectile! What kind of spell could have so easily destroyed it? “Could it be…?”

“So you finally noticed? Yes… you’re not the only one who’s not from this world, God of Death. I am spirit, and I can conjure third level spells!”