[Mirror's POV]
Mirror knew...
She knew how slim her chances of beating Brandon were. During her hellish journey in the never-ending staircase, she recieved numerous visions of her fighting the infected giant. In all of them, she saw herself taking different approaches to beat Stranger's son, she saw herself do things she thought impossible.
In all of them, she died.
Brandon was that fearsome of an opponent. In front of him, Two Mouths were ants.
He was strong enough to kill Mirror in one hit, faster than her by a large margin, and Mirror's short sword did little to no damage to him. Even the spells she threw back in her visions (spells Mirror had no idea how to do, by the way) were simply shrugged of by the giant.
To summarize, he was impossible to beat for her.
A normal person would have been scared, and backed down. But Mirror wasn't like that.
She would never give up, even when the situation seemed hopeless.
"Farewell, little girl."
Brandon attacked.
Brandon was fast, very fast. Despite him actually holding back as much as he could, the abomination within him had way to much control over his body.
He kicked with his right leg. A kick so fast avoiding it was almost impossible.
But Mirror had seen this move so many damn time...
She started moving before Brandon's leg was in motion. Thanks to her sorcery, her speed was way faster than what it should have been, even if she was far from matching Brandon's speed.
Mirror barely avoided the kick, which was powerful enough to knock down a grown man, and attacked the foot of the giant.
The blade of her sword became sharper than ever before, sharper than when she used it against the Two Mouths.
Plus, Mirror's own strenght was severly increased by her sorcery.
Her attack should have cut Brandon's foot. After all, even the Two Mouths tough skin was cut like it was paper by this attack.
But that's not what happened.
Instead, her rusty sword broke into thousand of pieces against Brandon's bare foot, without even making a single scratch.
Mirror eyes widened. She did not expect to do a lot of damage, but this... it was even worse than her expectation.
Could ot be that Stranger's son was even stronger than in her visions of their fight ?
Did she had even the slimiest of chances against such an opponent ? Especially now that she jist lost her sword ?
No... she shouldn't ask herself those questions. The only question Mirror should ask herself was... How can I win ?
Brandon laughed. He seemed... surprised that Mirror avoided the kick, and even managed to counter-attack.
"How impressive ! You're one of my most durable opponent so far, Mirror. Soul selling is truly a fearsome thing..."
More durable opponent ? After avoiding ONE hit ? What kind of monster was this guy ? Or was Isa's curse the thing that made him so strong ?
"I don't like calling this soul selling. Sorcery is a cooler name."
"It is. By the way, isn't sorcery very painful to the user ?"
"I don't want to talk about that."
Brandon paused for a moment. Neither he nor Mirror was moving, as though both were somehow frozen.
Brandon sighed, breaking the silence.
"Wow... It seems like our friend is not happy. At all. He want your blood."
Brandon's infected arm suddenly changed.
From a shape similar to that of a human arm, to something more akin to a giant mace. With spikes made of a dreadful flora.
Apparently, the strange being controlling most of Brandon's body was angry. In all of her vision of the fight, Mirror never saw what just happened. She begun to feel nervous.
The mace-like arm flew in Mirror's direction at a stagerring speed. It was way too fast for Mirror to even hope to avoid it.
So she didn't try to avoid it.
Instead, she tried to block it.
Sorcery... wasn't something that required an insane amount of knowledge, or intricate understanding of weird concepts.
Sorcery... was all about instinct, willpower, and soul.
Thanks to her copy of the Name Seer, Mirror possessed an insanly good instinct. She had enough willpower to withstand the pain provoked by the use of spells, she knew it from her fight against the twenty two Two Mouths. Lastly, her soul, like Alice's soul, was large. Really large.
Mirror knew it from her visions.
She was a once-in-a-decade-genius.
But... will that be enough ? Just like Mirror was way more than a defensless little girl, Brandon was way more than the son of a Lightbringer.
Mirror did not know. Therefore, she just trusted her instinct, and acted.
A blue barrier appeared all around her. A magic barrier.
Mirror just used the Magic Shield spell.
For a second, it seemed like the Magic Shield she made blocked the mace-like arm of Stranger's son...
"What ?"
...And, the next second, the Magic Shield collapsed under Brandon's insane strenght.
Then, Mirror was hit. Her whole world became blurry.
Was this... death ?
So soon ?
No... It couldn't be !
"Mirror !" screamed Alice.
"As expected." sighed Brandon. "Today isn't the day for me."
"Fine."
Brandon and Alice both looked towards Mirror's voice, barely believing their eyes.
Here, Mirror was akwardly standing up.
She looked like she just got ran over by a car. Her face was bloody, she was in pain, and her left arm looked broken.
But all of that didn't matter.
She was alive.
She should have died, but she was alive. The microsecond before getting hit, she activated her Body Strenghtening, reducing most of the damage. Besides, the Magic Shield slowed the mace-like arm by a lot.
Still, it wasn't like Mirror was unscathed. Even standing was painful at this point.
"I'm fine." repeated Mirror.
She almost expected Alice to scream "Liar !" but she seemed too scared to say that.
"What are you ?" asked Brandon, baffled that Mirror survived.
Mirror smiled weakly. This is a question she asked herslef over and over. Her own existence was strange, after all. If she knew exactly how the mirror back in the Forest of Glass worked, it would have been so much simpler...
But, one day, when she was talking with Alice back in that cursed stairacse, she found an answer.
To Brandon, she said that answer.
"I am... human. And... our fight. It start now."