The Titan shook its head, mane of gold flipping left, then right. It drew closer. Rubble crunched beneath its feet.

This next move was all on her.

It lunged.

She released the gravity wells she’d been holding. Where rubble filled cracks, suspended weightless over a hole in reality, it now dropped away with a rolling sound of cracks, scrapes and crunches.

The Titan found no ground beneath it. It reached for the nearest handhold, and Armiger was ready. The forcefield shield blocked the claw.

Momentum carried the Titan further than she had expected. It slammed into a ‘v’ of cracked reality, which caught it around the middle. Claws scraped at rubble and road, pushing rubble back to try to get purchase on more road.

The relief of no longer having to maintain the gravity well was dizzying, but short lived.

It was climbing out. It hadn’t fallen cleanly through.

She hit it with more gravity, a spike as big as she could make in short order, pressing it down. She couldn’t get a grip on the Titan itself, but it was caked in other things. The ground it tried to dig its claws into compressed and fell away more easily, dropping into the chasm.

Slowly, surely, it began to win out.

Then she saw the red lights.

Red lights and lines, with a course she could imagine.

It meant she had to shift the gravity well, stop it—letting the Titan rise up a bit more, so she could position it far enough back. If she didn’t, then Tristan’s power would just shoot straight into the ground, not even touching the Titan.

She extended Tristan a bit of trust, in this, and she hated doing it.

Lights and lines became a building, thrusting itself up and forward, and falling to pieces in the process. A battering ram, to the Titan’s chest, followed by another. It slipped.

The third strike caught it in the face. The Titan fell back, and his claws went out sideways, one to his left, one to his right, gripping the edges there.

Building became mist. Brianna turned to see Tristan becoming Byron.

The mist became ice. The ice-coated Titan’s claws slipped on the fresh ice.

Without much of a noise, it fell into the void. A long drop, and there were no places Moonsong was aware of that the place below the cracks was close enough to a handhold he could use to climb up.

“Last I heard from Tristan, there are still people down there,” Byron said, walking up to her side, looking at where the Titan had gone. “Capes. My team.”

“Are they close?” she asked.

He shook his head.

“It has to be better, taking him out of the picture.”

Byron nodded.

“I didn’t do this recklessly. We got permission. My dad’s one of the people down there, I think.”