It erupted. A triangular jutting of flesh, stabbing up from the ground, barring Seir’s path.

Amy turned her head, reaching to her belt. She held what looked like a vial of chemicals.

“Lab Rat’s,” Tattletale reported.

“Going to lift her up, break the thread!” Moonsong called.

“Don’t!” Tattletale called.

Sveta lunged forward. At the same time, another growth of flesh speared up out of the earth. I couldn’t see the side that faced her, but I saw it yawn open, like it had a mouth.

To take in the vial.

Sveta grabbed the outgrowth, and her arm unspooled to form tendrils.

She snatched it out of the closing mouth, a few tendrils getting caught in the process, severed. Black blood flowed. Sveta tumbled to the ground.

Amy backed up, and more growths stabbed skyward. Building sized. Skyscraper growths.

She’d tapped into the Nursery. I could only imagine what she would have been able to do if this growth of a thing had drank Lab Rat’s chemical and mutated.

It took the entire hero team to defend themselves. Rain’s silver blades. Moonsong pressed growths flat. Golem created giant hands that reached up and gripped them.

But they were like fingers, claws, tentacles. Reaching skyward, preparing to come down.

“Moon!” Tristan called out. “Rising star!”

He was already creating his orange motes. Moonsong had only a second to decide. She decided to cooperate.

She used her power, reversed gravity on the motes, sending them skyward, dropping a few. Tristan created a few more motes at more distant locations.

A finger came down toward their group. The orange motes solidified into rock, a spike. The finger was impaled.

The spike turned to a piercing stream of water. The water gushed into the internals of the finger and toward the base of the mass. It ripped at the metaphorical seams. Exploded.

Others came for Sveta, separating her from Amy. Defensive. A building blocked her exit on one side. Limbs came down on two more sides. Leaving her only forward—and soon that was blocked off.

She wasn’t as agile with her new body, all considered. Not that she’d been adroit in her prosthetic one. I felt so fucking helpless, watching as the fingers closed in, shrank the space available to her. Amy, at the same time, backed up. My sister cornering my best friend, leaving her nowhere to go, while a spike-tipped claw loomed above, ready to drop like a scorpion’s tail.

It plunged. Broke right past an outcropping of Capricorn’s rock. I had Sveta’s view as she was trying to get to her feet, still trying and still looking skyward as the spike came down.

A blur of black. Darkness.

I paged through to other views, to confirm what I didn’t want to see.