Darkness came in waves, gnawing at my flaming walls as I weaved through his relentless barrage of stray beams.
Each strike of Dalinar's sword sent ripples of shadow crawling across the battlefield.
It could erode my defenses and gnaw at the edges of my vision, like black tendrils reaching into my mind itself.
He surged forward in a fury, unleashing a spray of thrusts.
I deflected each one with precise arcs of fire, scattering sparks and heat, pushing him back with a blast that turned the plains beneath us into molten glass.
Dalinar moved like a storm, his black blade coated in roiling darkness that slithered through the air like liquid nightmare.
My magicae was bleeding away, devoured by the shadows that consumed everything I called mine.
Every parry, every clash leached at my flames, stripping away the very essence of my power.
Channeling from my logicae or animae directly was dangerous; it would tear at my body and soul, leaving me brittle, exposed.
I knew what I had to do. I had to summon my Mythical Beast.
Parallel to Earth existed the Spirit World, a realm of pure animae.
Time and space did not exist there; dualities collapsed, discarded and meaningless.
Summoning a Mythical Beast drew from that place, a creature only as powerful as its summoner, carved from the marrow of my own soul.
It did not consume magicae, but it devoured a piece of me that would never return the same.
I hesitated for the briefest moment.
My soul could regenerate, but even a scratch would leave me vulnerable to spiritual attacks capable of erasing me entirely.
Yet Dalinar's darkness held no soul, it was a void, unfeeling, devoid of hunger, malice, or hate.
My flames, however, roared with conviction, fury, and glory.
Gratell might have lamented this, might have warned me in ways beyond mortal understanding, but it was time.
My other self had to rise.
Dalinar charged again, shadows snapping behind him like living whips.
Something deep within me stirred, a force chained and whispered to only in nightmares.
A roar tore itself from my chest, tearing through the battlefield, as a giant bear erupted from the depths of my being.
Its fur was flame incarnate, bright and consuming, each strand flickering like screaming embers.
Its eyes were deep as oceans, holding ancient, eternal stillness. Claws black as obsidian, jaws wide enough to swallow mountains.
The earth trembled beneath its arrival, the plains shuddering as if in fear itself.
This was my Mythical Beast, the Giving Bear.
Most summoners left their beasts unnamed, seeing only reflections of themselves.
I gave him a name, though he could never acknowledge it.
The bear lunged. Dalinar twisted and rolled, dodging with uncanny precision.
Darkness coiled around his blade like liquid smoke, intercepting the beast's strikes with the hiss of charring shadow.
Sparks flew as fire met darkness, sending tremors through the plains.
Dalinar moved with elegance that belied brutality.
He spun his blade through wide arcs, forcing the bear to leap back, striking with a flurry of shadowy jabs.
Each thrust precise, aimed to cripple.
My flames surged, flowing like molten rivers in tandem with the bear, pushing him step by step.
The beast was powerful, less bound by the world's restraints, yet Dalinar pressed forward, countering each advance with bursts of darkness that hungrily licked at the flames.
I had to weave, dodge, redirect, every strike a battle of endurance, every moment a tug at my waning power.
I leapt into the air, twin pillars of bronze fire erupting from my hands, encasing my blade.
Dalinar met me midair, his black sword slicing a swath of darkness through the inferno.
We collided with a shockwave that hurled soldiers across the plains.
The Giving Bear roared, smashing a paw into the earth and sending a fissure of fire raced across the scorched earth toward Dalinar.
He vanished into the shadows and reappeared beneath me.
Darkness lanced through my foot with white-hot blinding agony that seared through bone and marrow.
Pain screamed through me, yet the bear did not falter.
Its claws closed around him, crushing with unimaginable weight, trapping him in an embrace that promised unending torment.
I forced a concept into him: slavery, domination.
The simplest binding, yet infinitely cruel.
I could have forced more. I felt the pathways open, the infinite variations of command that would hollow Dalinar out and leave nothing but obedience.
It would have been efficient. Final.
But annihilation was not victory, and domination was not proof of strength.
To erase him entirely would teach nothing, least of all to me.
I wanted him to remember this moment. To flee with it.
To carry the knowledge that something had seen him fully and still chosen not to end him.
Fear fades. Survival instructs. That distinction mattered more to me than the ease of total control.
Complex commands would drain too much anyway; this one chain, one notion, was enough to break a will.
I fell to the ground and raised a spatial barrier around us, pushing all observers away.
Mortals could not glimpse it; to do so would be to lose their minds entirely.
Dalinar thrashed, his struggles feeding into the bear's crushing grip, while I bit into my arm, tasting copper and iron as blood spilled freely.
Something monstrous stirred inside me, a force older than the world, darker than death.
A choking cold crept through the barrier, snuffing warmth, suffocating breath, twisting the very air into despair.
It was not mere cold, it was a predator of the soul, gnawing at hope, devouring courage.
And then Gratell emerged.
Not beast, not man, not anything the mind could name.
A distortion of reality itself, a horror that made the stars bleed and the earth shiver.
Its form writhed like a serpent with impossible, living bones, a body that should not exist yet hungered all the same.
Limbs extended in grotesque mimicry of humanity, coated in fur that writhed like swarming, sentient worms.
Its head, or the closest thing to one, pressed against Dalinar.
His eyes bled instantly, darkness erupting from them like molten shadow, searing and consuming, purging agony in waves that I felt in my bones.
I coughed blood, and each breath was a blade in my chest, shared agony coursing through the bond of summoning.
Gratell was not mercy. He was hunger.
He was the creeping inevitability of death, the gnawing void behind existence.
A presence that warped reality, gnawed at the soul, and whispered lies that made the skin crawl as though alive.
The battlefield shivered. The plains bent and twisted as if recoiling in terror.
The air itself grew sentient, tasting fear, growing hungrier, coiling around me, Dalinar, the bear, and the flames, devouring sanity.
Dalinar screamed, a raw, ragged sound, as his shadow unfurled across the Ultimate Prison.
It was no longer just darkness, it was a plague of nothing, erasing all things within reach, twisting them into meaningless stories destined to be forgotten.
This nothing was the barrier between the story of all worlds, and the concept which held it, Set Time.
The shadow stretched endlessly, consuming the infinite isolation of the prison, threatening to snuff me from existence entirely.
And yet, in that perfect, maddening instant, when his shadow reached its apex, attempting to consume the Ultimate Prison itself, I struck.
Every shred of my soul flared with fire, every ounce of my being poured into a single act of defiance.
I shattered the grip of his fiction-warping darkness.
For a split second, impossible and agonizing, his shadow faltered.
It could not encompass the gravity of the world; it trembled against the weight of reality itself.
Its completeness, broke. And in that fracture, I tore free.
I flipped across the scorched grass as flames erupted around me, searing, violent, alive, shrinking the reach of his shadow, reducing its fiction-warping power.
When the fires dimmed, all that remained was the lingering impossibility of him, the echoing, unspeakable blackness that should not exist.
Dalinar's army was gone, retreating, scattered, broken.
The silence that followed was unnatural, heavy, pressing against the soul.
I watched the remnants of his presence fade, a smirk curling across my face despite the horror that lingered.
"So you ran from me," I said. "I do hope our next meeting will be a grand one."