Titan Oberon was there, not far from me, dealing with four flying capes. One used a laser beam that seemed to pull, hauling the Titan off-balance, while another stabbed strategically at Oberon with needle arms that had to be thirty feet long.

They repeated the process, and this time Oberon flicked a foot, kicking at the ground to throw himself forward.

My phone buzzed. I would have picked it up, but… more immediate concerns.

Titan Oberon hit three capes in two swings, and would have hit a fourth if a cape hadn’t created a forcefield in the air. Not Aunt Sarah—this field acted like a net, coating Oberon’s fist.

My immediate concern was Skadi, attacking other capes who were playing defense for Legend. She did much like Oberon did, still crackling with traces of Oberon’s energy, that made her faster, quicker to shift position, and more slippery.

One of the swings was aimed at someone else, but came right at me by what might have been accident. I floated to one side, then went after her arm, forcefield out, tearing at the damage to armor there.

A shout from behind got my attention.

I was transfixed between two alarmingly large things that were demanding my immediate attention. Just beside me, Titan Skadi was teleporting, the parts of her in the light seeming to disappear before the parts of her in deep shadow. A short distance away, Oberon was on the attack, attacking another cluster of capes who were close enough to one another that the swing of one titanic arm could catch them. Us. Me included.

My forcefield protected me from the impact. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was that it sent me flying toward the ground, at a speed my actual flight couldn’t touch, a massive shockwave promising to pulverize me if the impact with the rubble below didn’t.

I flew hard left, while trying to slow my descent, on the half-formed thought that moving at a diagonal might buy me an instant more time before impact than moving almost straight down.

I turned over, belly toward the sky, looking for any help that others might be able to provide. A forcefield, a reaching hand. I just saw the green-tinted air that carried that pressurized air. Oberon’s ‘shockwave’.

I turned over again, facing the ground, and it filled my vision.

Cracked ground.

Aiming myself, contorting my body, I plunged into the crack. The side of my body skimmed the edge of the crack, and my costume tore.

I plunged into the oblivion where the damage to reality was heavy enough there was only this, a dark red landscape I’d seen in someone else’s dream.

Here, where my flight was weaker, my aura not even a spark in my chest, and where my forcefield struggled to get back up.

Like my power was underwater, floundering, but I wasn’t.