My forcefield whirled around me in a tight spin, far less effective than it had been as ‘the Wretch’. It was a problem when I was diving into the midst of a sea of ash, trying to part that sea.

The Ashen Titan walked between buildings, and she didn’t go on the offensive. Her ash did collect around her, with buildings in her range being consumed by her power, turned to dense and heavy powder, and collapsing to form dunes and waves that shifted and swirled in a loose circle around her.

When she moved on, it reconstituted as best as it could. Buildings were rebuilt, kind of. That which was lost to the cracks was gone and didn’t reconstitute, and because it tended to be material from the same areas, the reconstituted matter tended to be from one floor or one wall of a building. Buildings fell or were rebuilt on their sides. Where she herself was quieter than silent, muting and nullifying sounds in her vicinity with a constant background noise of powder brushing against powder, that silence didn’t extend to the crumbling buildings in her wake.

There was a big danger in how those dunes and waves masked the cracks in reality. For people on the ground, it was easy to step into a valley between dunes, only to fall through, pulled beneath. Even where there were fliers or teleporters ready to catch anyone in a pinch, the ashen powder would block their view of the victim. There one second, gone the next.

The other, bigger danger was that the powder was combustible. Selectively combustible. She barely seemed to care about me carving a furrow into her circle of powder, up until Colt flew past her, raking her with the blade hand.

The ‘ash’ rose up, and ignited, chasing behind Colt, not directly on a course for me, but damn well close enough.

I scattered the ash I could as I took flight. The idea was to give myself leeway, but in practice, I just got ash on the forcefield. When the ash ignited, she was highlighted in reds and oranges.

What the heck changed, besides your size?

The heat mostly dissipated before the forcefield broke from the intensity of it. The shift from cold air to hot air made my skin prickle and itch.

The Titans weren’t moving in a way that seemed very focused, but the way they were moving and the fact we had so fucking many of them, each with a tendency to cover or complicate a whole tract of land, it made the area feel crowded. By flying away from the Ashen Titan, I flew closer to the Ophion Titan. The sea of flesh that he was stabbing with needles.

Ophion at ten o’clock, Cinereal at one o’clock, Nemean two minutes away at my three. The mutated Gibborim Knight was fighting the Impaler Titan and Flowing Titan three minutes away, at my six.