Flesh-warping against a tide of flesh-generation, neither with any apparent limits. And the only way I could interpret this was to assume that we ordinary people would lose out in the deal. This was flesh that didn’t look like it was decaying or disappearing rapid-speed like the extra flesh from Rachel’s dogs did. It would rot in real-time, and it would become a hazard on its own.

The creatures that emerged were bug-like, and bigger than cars, larger than trucks in many instances. Some unfurled wings. Others bristled rows of stingers on their backsides.

Spikes pushed through the most wounded parts of this carpet of flesh, and skewered some of the insects.

Work with me, Fragile One, I thought. Tell me what you got in this shitty trade-off.

I dove, and used my forcefield to punch through the crusty chitin exterior of the largest, spike-impaled insect I could see.

My strength didn’t feel any different. My forcefield still broke after a heavy strike.

I used my aura.

It did produce a reaction. They began struggling, fluttering furiously. Then they came after me.

There was no telling what the effect was. Agitation, attraction. Awe? Or was it something completely different, but filtered through the bugs’ senses to be something else entirely? Even with people, the same input could give a dozen different kinds of reaction.

There was a whole mass of them that looked like caterpillars crossed with wasps, the worst traits of each combined, so that the stubby little legs each ended in stingers. Five started making their way toward me, flying intermittently as their wings shook off moisture.

Can’t hit that hard, I thought, as I engaged the mass of them. If I took one good hit, or delivered one, I would be vulnerable.

With that in mind, I flew in, trying to keep my forcefield’s smaller frame in mind. I thought of sparring with family, and the gentleness required.

It was less like karate, more like judo. Not to punch, but to take hold.

I couldn’t focus on any one thing, but I could take in the whole.

One was closer to me than all the rest. My aura was on full force to disrupt and bother them as much as possible, while I put out one forcefield hand, trying to catch a stinger.

The point slid between my forcefield’s index and middle fingers. I pinched them closer together.

It stopped mid-air, forward velocity arrested, the stinger nearly tearing itself free of the thing’s abdomen, despite being rooted deep in the bulbous, long body.

Second—

I used my grip on the stinger to swing its hundred pound body to one side, putting it in the way of the next closest one, scraping it against two more on the way.

And then flew toward them, as they violently flapped their dark, wet wings to try to reorient.