“Hit him,” I whispered the words. “Swing this at him. Come on!”

Lung was drawing out fire, sending it toward Goddess’s crowd. She was atop one of the damaged apartments now, her people organizing into battle lines. A forcefield went up, as did something that looked more like an energy gate or portal than a forcefield or wall. Off to the side, a lopsided, top-heavy minion made of slime or mud drawing itself out of the ground.

Goddess interrupted the first wave of flame. The second, laced with purple fire, spilled over. The fire ignited the forcefield, the minion, and the gate. The gate fluctuated, drawing the fire toward its center, condensing it into a brilliant point, with the edges vibrating more intensely with every second.

The gate crumbled. Free energy lashed out, and two people died. The forcefield went out, and people were forced into a retreat.

I reached past the Wretch’s hands to touch the metal, gripping the lip of the beam in my burned hand. I pulled, straining to draw it back. The Wretch didn’t obey.

A moment later, I was flying into flames, so bright and chaotic after the darkness above that I couldn’t breathe or tell purple from orange. It was almost like slow motion, seeing Lung start to turn his snake-like neck around to look at me with one eye that glowed like a drop of molten metal. A distended face broken up into five sub-sections contracted together in an alien grimace.

The beam wouldn’t hit. I canceled the Wretch, and let it hit the ground a few feet from Lung.

I hit the beam, rather than Lung. One end remained mostly in place, the other coming around to strike Lung. The effect was nowhere near what I would have achieved had I been able to swing the beam like a bat. As it was, it knocked him back toward the area that burned. Purple flames were extinguished in the moment before Lung could roll through them, and he sprung to his feet. Before I’d recovered from the act of striking out, he was on his feet, hands moving, and the flames around me swelled.

Rain was still throwing out his crescents. Many were being intercepted by swells of purple fire. It likely didn’t help that I was close.

I flew to the beam, grabbing it and trusting the Wretch to grab it on pure reflex. It was a narrow shield and a deflection that kept the worst of the flames from knocking the Wretch back out of existence. It was my weapon, to keep Lung at bay, to try and knock him down. This time we swung.

He caught the beam with both arms, feet skidding in dirt.