Lethe weaved her way around the flying debris and bodies.  She’d do them more injury if she were to try to halt their movements then let them get blown away.  A wave of Sin rushed past her, eliciting a shudder of disgust.  She hadn’t been prepared for that at all.  A quick<span style="font-style: italic">Prayer</span>cleansed the creeping sensation from her skin, just in time for her to dash past the dark simulacrum, scoring a strike through the entity’s side.  The wound fizzled with miasma and then started repairing itself.  In fact, all of the damage that Gil’s squad was slowly repairing itself, even the half disconnected arm.<br/><br/>She couldn’t give it time to regenerate.  The white haired Knight dashed forward to fight the Sin entity again, recalling her shooting swords to assist her.  As expected, the manifestation blocked her overhead strike with its good arm/sword.  However, Lethe had six other swords for a reason.  They slid around her body and swung upwards in an arc, each blade striking the injured arm.  By the time the last blade cut its way through, the arm had fully detached and fell to the ground.  A succession of thuds, drowned out by the entity’s roar of rage, marked each sword impaling the limb and dispersing it into miasma.<br/><br/><span style="color: red"> “Pests!”</span>It screamed, stumbling back.  Its balance seemed off by its sudden loss of an arm.  Good.  Her blades rearranged themselves, now parallel to the ground, and shot forward.  Simultaneously, she charged again to trap the entity between her and her swords.  Instead of obliging, it dashed to the side and out of the way.  Without her wings to redirect her motion, Lethe couldn’t pivot in time to follow and her swords all rushed past her.  She grimaced at the sensation of one of her swords passing through her but was otherwise unharmed from the encounter.  Instead, the blades returned to her back in their normal “wings” formation.<br/><br/>From the corner of her eye, she saw a gleam of black.  The entity was mirroring her dash forward, an orb of dark light forming by the entity’s head, no doubt intended for her.  She pushed off the ground, wings angling to direct her on a collision path with the manifestation.  A pitch black sword met her<span style="font-style: italic">Banish</span>empowered strike, its wielder deflecting her attack with disgusting ease given how injured it should be.  Her face stared back at her with hatred, malicious red eyes staring into her own blue ones.  It was a horrifying mix of her mother and her own nightmares.  The light of the sun was suddenly blocked by something, the hairs of her neck rising with apprehension.  Lethe immediately kicked off her opponent to get out of the way.  The orb of darkness she had seen earlier crashed down where she used to be.  She turned her head to shelter her eyes from explosion and then something slammed into her stomach, punting her out of the dust cloud.  Her keys clattered behind her, magic faltering in the wake of such a blow.<br/><br/>“Captain!”  A blend of familiar voices shouted out as she was grabbed out of the air.  Her savior slammed into the ground in a crouch, an armored knee digging into the wounds in her back.  She coughed for air, the combination of blows having knocked her breath out of her.  “<span style="font-style: italic">Healing</span>” a deep voice intoned above her, chasing away the bruises and cuts she’d accumulated throughout the fight.<br/><br/><span style="color: silver"> “Valiar. Deimos.”</span>Lethe gasped out, struggling out of Deimos’s embrace and to her feet.  She turned to face the fight, only to see blue armor and pink hair flying about.<span style="color: Silver"> “And Adair.. and Seraphim..”</span>She deadpanned, asking curtly,<span style="color: Silver"> “Am I going to turn around and find the others as well?”</span><br/><br/>“Only me, Captain.”  A sheepish voice spoke up.  Leon was rubbing a hand against the back of his head in embarrassment.  She sighed in disbelief.  She had ordered her team to go home and<span style="font-style: italic">rest</span>.  Although truthfully, their presence here was beneficial as she wasn’t sure she could take on the Sin manifestation herself, especially not with the way it kept reminding her of— She firmly cut off that thought.  Now wasn’t the time.  Gil and his squad were out of the fight, their last barrage seemingly have taken up all their reserves.<br/><br/><span style="color: Silver"> “Deimos, you, I, Seraphim, and Adair will be rotating.  I don’t want anyone too close to that taint.  First though, bring Gil’s squad here for healing.  Valiar, conserve your strength.”</span>The Seraph leveled a hard stare on her oldest Knight.<span style="color: Silver">“All of Gil’s squad is weakened, as is Gil himself.  You’re the only cleric I can rely on.  Leon, keep Valiar safe.  No matter what.”</span><br/><br/>Looking over the battle, she whistled sharply to let Adair and Seraphim know she was engaging.  They immediately changed their attacks, trying to force their enemy to leave an opening for her to exploit.  Deimos dropped out of sight, no doubt to fulfill his orders.<br/><br/>“<span style="font-style: italic">Deus Corona. Deus Eques. Vernier</span>” Valiar chanted, bestowing the augmented buffs on Lethe.  They took a lot of power and couldn’t be used often, which is why only the Captain got the special treatment.  Her glare told him she both appreciated the buffs and disliked him wasting his magic like that after what she’d just said.  However, she pushed off to join the battle once more without comment.<br/><br/>Seraphim was relying on punches—hands glowing with the light of<span style="font-style: italic">Prayer</span>—to keep the entity distracted while Adair focused on deflecting the sword with his shield.  Their bulky armor kept her smaller form from visibility and she streaked towards the fighting trio, gathering<span style="font-style: italic">Banish</span>in her sword.  She had been working with Adair and Seraphim for so long, she fully trusted them to anticipate her movements.  As expected, they drew apart in time for her to thrust forward.  Like with Gil, her sword met the resistance of a barrier.  Her<span style="font-style: italic">Deus Corona</span>powered strength let her penetrate the barrier but not enough to actually stab its caster.  Her opponent had no such issues and brought its sword down on the Seraph’s exposed back.  Adair was suddenly there once more to knock aside the blade, the strength of his blow sending it spinning out of the entity’s hand.<br/><br/><span style="color: Silver"> “Banish!”</span>Lethe forced the strongest spell she could muster in such a short cast time through her sword, hoping the impenetrable barrier would become the entity’s own coffin.  The holy light warred its way against the wall of Sin before the two spells exploded violently.  Both Lethe and her Sinned version were sent flying back, but Adair snagged her form as it flew by, hiding the two of them behind his suddenly enlarged shield.  His sword and shield weren’t the standard Pristine Knight fare; Roland had forged the weapons and Grisia had blessed them both.  Lesus had enchanted the weapons to grow with the use of holy magic.  By the time the dust had settled once more, everything had been pushed back to form a level playing field.<br/><br/><span style="color: red">“Well, I’ll admit you’re amusing.  But this ends here.”</span>The entity spat, gathering magic around its pitch black sword.  Apparently after almost being stabbed so many times by glowing swords, it had decided to try its hand at a glowing sword itself.<br/><br/>“Yeah, I’d have to say it does.”  Despite her orders, Seraphim and Leon were both on the ground, each standing about fifteen feet away.  Her squad had formed a triangle formation with the entity at its center.  “We don’t take kindly to your impersonating our Captain.”  The other female Knight in her squad spat, sword naked in her hand.  Adair got to his feet beside her, hefting the now normal sized shield back on his arm.  As for Lethe, her sword lay in a mangled mass of metal near the origin of the explosion.  She flexed her hands instead, getting a sense of where her magical blades were and gathering magic.  Leon stayed silent for once but had his sword blade leveled on the imposter.<br/><br/>All five combatants suddenly sprang into motion.  The manifestation dashed towards Leon, seemingly recognizing he was the weakest, and almost earned itself a fully powered<span style="font-style: italic">Banish</span>to the face. It dodged out of the way only to be slammed by Seraphim’s double-handed strike.  Despite her appearance, there was a very good reason why the woman was one of her team’s front liners and every bit of the reason hit the entity in that one strike.  The entity was spent sprawling into an empty space but was then punted back by the sudden appearance of the last offensive member of Lethe’s squad.  The image of Deimos, foot still raised from his kick, wavered and then vanished as its originator had already moved to another position.  Chains of<span style="font-style: italic">Penace</span>erupted from the ground to restrain the entity as circles of white light appeared around it like a dome.  The tip of a blade emerged and then shot forward to strike the imprisoned figure.  It was a testament to the entity of Sin’s strength that it was able to totter out of the way even with<span style="font-style: italic">Penance</span>dragging it down.  Another of Lethe’s blades emerged, this from a different circle, and then all of six of them were flying in a flurry of death as the Knight herself danced, eyes and hands glowing with magic in her signature<span style="font-style: italic">Heaven’s Judgment</span>move.  An unearthly scream came from the dome before with a final explosion of miasma, the Sin crystal fell to the ground, broken and utterly spent.