Blessed by Night

Aisha immediately recognized what was happening, and she began trying to put out a fire before it could spread. "Mal, that\'s not-"

"Mom...?"

She was a woman with beautiful brown skin and a head of dark curly hair with blonde ends. Just like Aubrey, she had kind yet mischievous amber eyes and an inviting smile. She wore dark black jeans and her favorite shirt that Malachi hated due to the cringey words written on the front. \'Mom. Boss. Forever.\' It was a shirt that he never expected to see again.

Because she had been wearing it on the day she died. "My little man is all grown up... I can\'t tell you how happy that makes me. I wish that your father and I had gotten to see you grow with our own eyes."

When her tender and southern voice played in his ears, Malachi reflexively took a step back as his eyes began to water. "Mal, listen to me! I know what you\'re thinking but that is not auntie! You have to see that!" Aisha argued. She was beginning to get emotional as well, but she had to maintain a composed line of thought or else things were going to go very wrong very fast.

By now Bianca had gotten the gist of what was going on, but she wasn\'t quite sure of what was the right thing to do.

"Aisha, how can you say that?  You don\'t recognize the woman you peed on when you were two?" Mal\'s \'mother\' said.

"I-It\'s a trick! Don\'t listen to anything that she\'s saying!" Aisha yelled with a red face. But Malachi could hardly even hear. His entire world hadn\'t stopped spinning ever since his \'mother\' showed up, and now he felt like he was stuck in some kind of twisted dream. "You\'ve become so successful... and yet you still remain in school. I\'m glad you haven\'t forgotten about the promise you made to me...That\'s all your dad and I ever wanted for you."

She slowly began to walk forward, while maintaining a calm and nonviolent demeanor. "I\'m sorry that your father and I left you behind... but I need you to trust me now so that we can all be together again..."

Mal shakily took another involuntary step backwards as he tried to control his rapidly beating heart rate. "W-what do you..." A warm yet eerie smile spread across the lips of Mal\'s mother, making Mal\'s heart drop to the bottom of his boots. "I need you to die for me, okay?" Whoosh!

Faster than the eyes could see, Mal\'s mother moved directly in front of him and pierced through his chest with long, dagger like fingers. "Mal!" "Noo!"

Once Mal went down, Aisha and Bianca lunged forward to get his attacker away from him. Mal\'s mother easily avoided a kick to the stomach from Aisha and a superheated punch from Bianca, and smiled madly as she  grabbed the both of them by their necks and held them up into the air. "My son has such cute girls around him... I thank you for taking care of him all this time but he needs to come back to me now."

The appearance of the creature had become truly monstrous, with the sclera of her eyes becoming black and her teeth becoming pointed like that of a shark.

""He\'s not your son!!"" Boom! Slice!

Finally Bianca landed another strong right hook on the jaw of the creature while Aisha removed another weapon from her inventory. A large one handed axe easily cut through the arms of the doppelgänger, allowing both girls to fall harmlessly to the ground. "Why are you girls trying to harm me?! Don\'t you know how much my family has suffered already?!" The creature regrew it\'s arms at an astounding rate, and it immediately kicked Aisha to the side before proceeding to sit on top of Bianca and strangled her mercilessly. "You\'re not good enough for my son! Even if you try to fool him with this whorish new appearance it will do you no good! You will always be that same ugly bitch that even your own mother didn\'t want!"

Bianca wasn\'t sure what hurt more, the feeling of her windpipe being crushed or the scathing words of this woman she\'d never even met before. \'Shut up... shut up!\'

As tears filled Bianca\'s eyes, she became desperate to make this creature go away, no matter what it took.

For a moment, she lost control of her powers and the two of them were engulfed in a smoldering red flame. Unfortunately, the creature seemed to be impervious to Bianca\'s flame, and instead smiled eerily as if it were submerged in a warm bath. "How invigorating!"

Crack!

Before Bianca even realized what happened, the doppelgänger brutally head butted her into unconsciousness. The flames surrounding the two of them were extinguished in the blink of an eye, and now the boss seemed to be making some sort of disappointed expression. "Darn.. I\'m all chilly again.."

"Get off of her!"

Bang!

Aisha had finally recovered and attacked the doppelgänger with a large black hammer that was almost the same size as her. However, she never expected for the boss to catch it with one hand and give her another eerily warm smile. "Aisha honey, you have to be a dear and wait a moment, okay? This girl will be dead in a second and then I can play with you all you want."

Not only was Bianca bleeding from her forehead, but the doppelgänger still maintained a tight grip on her throat with one hand.

If Aisha didn\'t do anything soon, her friend was going to die and there wasn\'t going to be anything they could do about it.

"Take off my aunts\' face you fucking freak! You\'re not her!"

"Freak..? How dare you say that to me when you\'re the disgusting one! I treated you like family all of your life and as soon as I died you laid your hands on my only daughter! You\'re revolting!"

Even though Aisha knew that these words weren\'t coming from the real Mrs. Saint, it still knocked the wind out of her sails to hear such harmful words. In that brief moment of hesitation, the doppelgänger finally released Bianca and dove at Aisha.

The boss held the young woman on her shoulder and drove her straight into a nearby wall, nearly planting her inside of it.

BOOOOM!

The cavern walls shook violently, and Aisha let out a heartwrenching scream as her abdomen was pierced by the claws of her monstrous enemy. "My, my! You always made fun of my Mal for being a crybaby as kids but now it seems like you\'re the one who\'s always whining. Marianne and Trevor must be so ashamed." n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

The mention of her parents caused Aisha to see red and before she knew it she was lashing out, uncaring of the pain coursing through her abdomen. "Never say their names!!"

Boom!

Aisha punched the face of her aunt with all of her strength, but only succeeded in knocking out a single tooth. "Not cute, Aisha... not cute at all.."

With whirlwind speed, the doppelgänger struck Aisha in the face with it\'s own version of a right hook, and the difference in strength between the two was apparent to all.

BOOM!

The doppelgängers punch had nearly knocked Aisha unconscious, but someone who can hold multiple blessings is certainly more durable than most. Evidently the boss did not seem to like that it\'s attack did not immediately crush it\'s opponent\'s head. "So stubborn... why won\'t you just die so that my family can be happy!? We don\'t need you, we don\'t need you, WE DON\'T NEED YOU!!!"

BOOM! BOOM!

BOOM!

The doppelgänger continued to unleash a storm of blows onto Aisha\'s beautiful face with the goal of disfiguring her. With every blow that struck Aisha\'s face, the cavern would tremble horribly as if it was all going to come down at any second. Bit by bit, large violet mana stones began to fall from the ceiling. The doppelgänger remained blissfully unaware that such a thing was going on, as it\'s sole focus was on brutalizing the human girl in front of it. As soon as the egg made contact with Malachi\'s blood, it\'s descent came to a complete stop and it began to float in the air on it\'s own. 11:34

However, it forgot all about a key item that it was supposed to be protecting. The beast egg that was so firmly lodged into the ceiling before, was now not as secure and the continuous trembling of the cavern was causing it to lose more and more stability. BOOM!

Finally, with one last shake, the egg became dislodged and was in a free fall. Malachi was still lying on the ground, right where his \'mother\' had left him. Her attack pierced through his lungs and even injured his spinal cord, so he was in no condition to fight even if he was of sound mind

For the past seven minutes, he had been lying in a concerningly large pool of his own blood.

His eyes fluttered open just in time to see a spherical black object facing from the sky. As soon as the egg made contact with Malachi\'s blood, it\'s descent came to a complete stop and it began to float in the air on it\'s own. Finally, the doppelgänger sensed that something was wrong, and turned around to see the treasured item that she was supposed to be protecting in the vicinity of one of these humans. "The treasured! NOOOOOOOO!!!"

Despite the protests of the creature, the beast egg became a small white light that made a beeline directly for Malachi.

It entered the space directly between his eyes, and soon a small black tattoo in the shape of a diamond appeared on his forehead. "UNFORGIVEABLE!! UNFORGIVEABLEEEE!!!!"

I hope you guys like this chapter, I tried to make it as emotional as possible while also ensuring that it remained a difficult fight. I hope I did you all proud!

AnathaShesha