Except the lights had gone out. They’d all felt that impact too. The fighting had stopped for one moment, as everyone found their equilibrium, and the only lights that remained were from silver fire that kept burning in patches, or glowing constructions that still hung in the air. Minions that hadn’t disappeared when their masters lost their focus.

ONE…

I almost fired on one, but the ellipses stopped me. Again, my finger shook.

Skadi appeared near me. I was anticipating her, and let myself fall, to buy myself seconds. She was a skyscraper filled with fury and violence, dropping in next to me with no warning, tipping my way.

So instead of merely dropping, I flew down, adjusting the speed of my descent, so the blade cleaved the air above me.

Fury and violence.

What happens when we obliterate the library where they store all their memories of violence and ruin?

GO

Still falling, I pulled the trigger, and I went from seeing gold letters against a black and red backdrop to seeing the stygian blue aftermath of those letters, and the golden beam.

The initial impact elicited that same shudder as before, though it felt like it came from a different direction. The bulk of Skadi beside me reacted. She hit the edge of the crevice, found her equilibrium, and slashed for me again. This time I slowed my fall, best I could. It hardly mattered, because she crashed through the crack. I did my best to steer upward and break the fall while still aiming on target. For two or so seconds, I was off-target, hitting the ground five to ten feet near the blast zone. I found my target for two more seconds.

The laser punched through. It was like pressing my hand flat against a wall, pushing, and feeling the hand go all the way through. Except the feeling of being breached reached through me, was me. My fragile agent. My power.

The strength went out of me, in a very different way than it had when I’d been flying into the region below. That had been like I’d been swimming through muddy water, getting thicker as I went down.

This was more like I was swimming and finding my arms and legs just didn’t have the strength. I hurried to get closer to terra firma, feeling that strength bleeding out.

In the distance, the wall of flesh collapsed, breaking under its own weight. Oberon was enmeshed in hand-to-hand combat with the other flesh-creature, and collapsed as it did. Ophion tipped over. A figure in the background, black as night from head to toe, with something like TV static buried deep within itself, dropped, and landed with enough force that shoulder sheared from torso. Skadi, who had appeared too late, was gone.

I aimed for it, firing. The beam lanced out, bright against the darkness, and sheared off part of its head.

No strength, no durability.