Noble tried to create some space between herself and the Other as she rounded the corner. She signaled to her group to confirm her identity by tapping the helmet on her head.
Her cohort needed no more encouragement. They unleashed a devastating attack on the Other.
Roan called lightning from the sky. Aether brought down spears of deadly starlight. Avoiding her arrow that was charging, Helie shot a dozen other projectiles into the night sky.
And Syrce, weak as she was, still managed to partially transform and throw one of her energy balls at the creature from the Mirror Realm.
Although Noble had tried to put some distance between her and her evil twin, it wasn't quite enough. She, too, had to dodge the charged air and streams of light. The arrows whizzed by, but Helie was too careful to let any of them strike her companion.
The Other Noble was not so lucky. The arrows pelted her in the chest and legs, some of them exploding on impact. The lightning snaked around her middle before arcing to the ground. The starlight stabbed at her cape, soaking into the cloth to rip it to shreds from the inside out.
The Other Noble felt the attacks even as the cloak repelled them. The cloth was incredibly resilient, but Noble could feel the other lady's pain. Internal damage had been done. The floating monster faltered.
The last attack to come would have normally been first. Syrce's orbs of energy could outrun even lightning on a good day, but the sluggishness of the Saint was reflected in her balls of light.
As the monster reeled from the concentrated assault, her flight faltered.
She dropped in the air just in time for Syrce's ball to graze her cheek.
"Be gone!" The Saint cried at the Other. "You are Nothing! You have no power here!"
Noble was about to tell Syrce she had already tried that when the Other whimpered. The feelings inside her flickered, but refused to go out.
"You will see," the Other whispered. "And you will be grateful…"
Noble could feel her counterpart's hunger to be seen and known. She was desperate. The Other had made that clear enough by her desire to replace Noble.
But with desperation came desire, and that desire was a distraction.
Distraction was deadly.
'Die already!' Syrce tried to hurl another ball, but her essence would no longer cooperate.
'We need her dead, but we need the mirror more,' Noble told the Saint. 'Tell the rest to get ready...'
In the mayhem, Noble flew into the sky. While she wouldn't get lost among the stars like she would in the sunlight, it forced the reflection to choose who she watched. And right now, the bulk of the danger was being hurled from those below.
Dodging Helie's arrows, Noble released her float and let gravity take over. She accelerated toward the ground.
The Other looked up and raised her sword to meet the human bullet. Noble narrowed her gaze. She struck with her Zenith, putting her entire weight behind the hit. At the same time, she used the Hummingbird's Wings to enhance her speed, landing the hit a moment before the Other anticipated it.
Noble almost slipped past the monster's guard, nearly stabbing the creature in one of her polychromatic eyes. But the Other tilted her head. She pushed Noble back into the open sky with a second swing of the relic.
The shockwave that accompanied the move temporarily deafened both women, but Noble did not need to hear.
She had other ways to communicate.
'Now!' her voice echoed through the shared Memory.
A blink later, an arrow flew through the air. The moment it reached The Other's right hand, it wrapped around it, taking the form of a grappling hook. A rope extended to the ground, and Aether and Helie pulled on the cord.
The Other's hand jerked away from her body, but she refused to release the mirror. Her joints cracked, but she did not budge, fighting off Noble while clutching the looking glass with all her might.
The monster began to lift the Masters from the ground, but Noble resisted. Where the Other lifted her friends, she kept them firmly anchored to the ground. A strange tug of war took place, the mirror hanging in stasis like it was frozen in time.
Then Roan intervened.
Bringing his hands together, the man in the blue scarf called down a streak of blue lightning. Noble realized it was somehow laced with starlight. The combination was beautiful and oddly powerful.
The Other pulled her body to one side to avoid the hit, but she had not been the target to begin with. The light hit the mirror, but instead of reflecting it, the metallic relic absorbed the beam.
It turned incandescently hot, burning red in the Other's hand. She screamed, and her hand convulsively released the hot iron that was the handle.
Divine metal might have been nearly indestructible, but that only made it able to hold more heat.
"NO!" The Other dared not grab it again, and to use her levitation power, she would need to release the two Masters from her hold. She did, and they experienced a moment of heaviness before Noble released them as well.
The change in force allowed them to pull harder than they could on their own, and the momentum swung in their favor. The Other was pulled to one side, unable to lock on the relic as it fell through the air.
The monster swung her blade at the cord that bound her, but it disappeared in a rain of sparks before she could sever the tie. The mistimed hit sent her reeling.
Noble brought down her Zenith on the back of the woman's head, but she barely managed to graze the scalp before the Other recovered her flight. The poisoned blade drew blood as blonde hair went flying.
The Other continued to dive, her eyes searching for the mirror as it fell from the sky. She saw it, and her eyes swirled. She locked onto it, her heart beating faster as she slowed the relic's descent. The three Masters on the ground and the one in the air all converged on the spot where the mirror would land.
The red-hot mirror came to a stop less than a meter above the ground before beginning to reverse its trajectory.
Noble struggled against the Other with her levitation. However, the Other Noble seemed to have an affinity for Mirage's relic, and it answered the monster's call more easily than the original.
Noble felt her hold slipping. She was not going to make it fast enough.
"No!"
A flourish of mossy hair obscured the view of the mirror as Syrce spread out her tunic. She wrapped it around the mirror, speaking words that Noble didn't understand as the mirror was trapped in the bloody, tattered cloth.
An orb of protection surrounded the cloth and the mirror inside it, cutting it off from both Noble and the Other's influence.
"I got it!" the Saint cried jubilantly. Syrce stepped unsteadily to secure her prize.
Safe in her arms, the protective cover pulsed. The world seemed to lose a bit of its color.
Syrce's smile faded. Her energy had finally run out. She crumpled to the ground, unconscious.
At that same moment, the battle between the dragons was abruptly coming to an end. A victor emerged.