As I closed him, I saw his head turn, noting me. He veered to one side, crashing through the skeleton of a building that was only beams and girders dusted with snow and covered in sheets of ice. As pieces toppled, I was forced to back off.

We were getting bogged down. The blaster had been doing something strategic in lobbing that fire and spreading that acid. The ground had been broken, and one mass had sprouted, less of a tongue and more like a woman stretched out to ten feet in length, hairless and skinny, and wrapped up in a layered straightjacket of her own flesh and translucent, veiny flesh. Her toothless mouth yawned open as she jerked one way and the other, her attention on Candy.

Escape routes were lost to mist and Nursery’s power. The enemy’s soldiers that were still in the fight were putting up a good fight. One had a Foil bolt through the barrel of his gun, but was holding the gun by the barrel with the bolt used as a spear.

I changed direction, swooping in to go after the problem elements. Broken legs would have to do.

As I veered off, so did Lord of Loss. One could have seen it as us flying in formation, but it was the opposite. I made a sharp right turn, Lord of Loss made a sharp left.

I knew what he’d do—there were only so many destinations for him. I was faster, but he could hit harder and bigger.

He’d flown through the construction sites that littered Love Lost’s neighborhood. I did the same.

Come on, Wretch. Don’t fuck with me. If you go from grabbing shit to refusing to grab anything here, I’m going to be pissed.

The first attempt failed, as I skimmed past a stack of what looked like solar glass panels, rigged up with chains so the crane could lift them up. The Wretch didn’t touch any of it.

On the second attempt, I veered too close to the mist. The tarp I grabbed with both my real hands and the Wretch broke away. Nursery’s power had turned some of it to curtain or some shit like that, and the connection between the two halves wasn’t strong.

I could see something writhing beneath the curtain that fell aside now that the tarp was no longer attached.

My teeth grit, I circled around. The others were winning their fights but losing the war. Candy wasn’t using her power, Aroa wasn’t a gamechanger, Chastity had a tightrope to walk, and Foil was doing a damn good job considering she was preoccupied with the injured Parian, but she was still running out of ammunition.

And then there was Precipice. Rain. I looked at him, and he turned from looking at Lord of Loss, who was tracing a loose U-turn, to look up at me.