Furcate’s clones reached for one another, the soles of one Furcate’s feet pressing against the soles of another. They both kicked, separating violently from one another. One aimed right for the cluster of three individuals. Sveta, too, reached out, but without something to anchor herself in the air, she couldn’t really pull, so much as she and the two people she was pulling—Riveting and the Harbinger—were brought to a middle point between them.

Armiger’s shield appeared between the Titan and the group. The Titan hooked one axe-hand over the top edge of it, and swung her entire mass over.

Scribe, of all of them, was the most able to do something. Her staff flew out, and it caught the three people, driving them back and away.

“Fuck!” Tristan called out. His red lights were already drawn out. “Pull them back!”

Scribe tried, but pulling was another maneuver entirely from pushing, and she lacked grace, especially after the recent alteration to powers.

It wasn’t enough.

Moonsong could see how and where that constellation was drawn. With her teammates in the way.

“Tell By to change!” Tristan shouted.

Tristan released his power. The building manifested in the air. Tristan blurred.

“Change back!” Moonsong screamed, Sveta’s voice joining hers.

Byron looked at her, bewildered.

The head injury. Slower reflexes, slower on the uptake. The building had become mist, and the mist billowed out by the second. The mist expanded out to touch Tribute’s arm, and a touch was all it needed. His arm froze, when he was already twisting, trying to quickly maneuver in the air, gripping Scribe’s staff.

The frozen arm broke off at the shoulder, collarbone and lung exposed. Blood sprayed.

She howled. Tribute was silent, wide-eyed.

She saw the look in Byron’s eyes, haunted, as he realized what he’d been supposed to do. Byron retreated, becoming Tristan again, the look not leaving his face until he was no longer Byron.

The Titan swiped at Riveting, who the Harbinger maneuvered out of the way, in a similar way to how Furcate had hurled herself through the gravity-less cloud. The strike severed Sveta’s tendrils.

The follow-up strike backhanded Riveting with the same hand, catching Furcate. Both died.

It was the kind of sight that would provoke a scream or howl, or a cry of rage, had she had the ability, but she was already screaming.

Instead, the sound froze in her throat.

With Tristan’s appearance, the mist had become a fresh outcropping of building, and Moonsong could see what Capricorn had been trying to do. A faster change would have created a thin jet of mist that bypassed the group.

As it was, it created the solid mass of building that hung in the air, for as long as it worked at emerging. Had it formed before, it would have been a shield.

Tribute died.

Capricorn looked up at her, lost and bewildered. The same as he’d appeared in the moments before he had released Byron from pseudo-death.

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