She used the chunk of Machine Army tech she’d brought with her. Flung it out with telekinesis, so fast I thought it would be dashed to pieces. The size of a washing machine, it flew straight at one of the pieces of antigravity tech, was pushed away, and between the velocity and the pushback, came to a stop, a foot or two from the glowing panel.

It latched on.

I aimed, leveraging my forcefield to bring the gun around, ready to shoot the thing off of her. She was already taking evasive action, trying to shake it off, the pulses rippling out with more violence than before.

Couldn’t take the shot without risking I’d do more damage. If she was backing off like this… she had to trust it.

The information that was coming through the tech at my eye went dark. No outlines, no labels.

The world was dark, cold, and filled with an endless scream.

The Simurgh was wading through everything and everyone, her wings acting as shields, her telekinesis deflecting incoming projectiles. Caryatid blocked one. I could hear Damsel using her power.

Chevalier, nowhere nearby, fired his cannon again. The Simurgh flew back, her shoulder torn open, the interior revealed to be hollow, the edges of the wound frayed and lace-like.

I’d seen injuries like that in the re-enactments and recreations too.

It slowed her down, and bought our side time. Chris had the giants he hadn’t sent to deal with Titans in reserve, and two of those giants joined the fight now. The Goddess Giant and the Mother Giant. A tide of flesh, narrowly missing our back line here, forming into a loose hand shape as it reached for the Simurgh, and gripped telekinetically frozen air instead.

The Simurgh lifted a length of metal that might have been part of a crane, once. A second later, it was slapped down to the ground. The Goddess Giant, countering her.

We had time to regroup, to figure out what we were doing. Two giants fought the Simurgh, who remained where she was, wings in a loose ball-shape around her, air telekinetically held where it was to serve as a shield just past where the wings were, and a crowd of capes retreated, finding steadier ground that wasn’t in the literal shadow of the Simurgh and her wings.

I offered a hand to Byron. Sveta helped Rain. Cryptid moved closer to his giants, wearing a form wreathed in folds of too-thick skin, brutish and broad-shouldered, with a kilt-like wreath of cloth around his hips. He shouted out incoherent orders, hand indicating directions.

Damsel of Distress was launched into the air by someone’s power, and descended onto the bubble of hardened air, blasting through it with her blasts of twisted darkness, plunging at the Simurgh herself.

This is too easy. What’s the catch?

Wait—