Mama Mathers had the ability to screw up our senses if we saw her. It had to extend to more than sight, because she was amped up.

The Simurgh wasn’t here. Hadn’t been here even when I’d entered the room. Many of the victims weren’t even present.

I noted Imp. Still gone. Chastity. Cassie.

I spat.

People were patching up wounds. Sveta approached me, to hold a bandage to my shoulder.

“Is she already…”

“She skipped ahead. We thought we had a bit longer,” Tattletale said. “She jumped to going after Fortuna ten minutes early. We didn’t do enough for your plan.”

“No.”

I looked.

Dinah had spoken. Now she pointed, one hand held to her head, grimacing.

I looked, and I saw the syringe, empty.

I grabbed it.

There was only one valid target.

The thin Mathers Giant turned to look at me, eyes wide and vacant.

I went blind. Deaf. My skin sloughed off, multiplied, liquefied again. I was an ocean.

As an ocean, I flew.

This time I hit the plunger.

The veil fell yet again. This time for real.

The screaming picked up, faint at first, and then a roar. It was all an illusion. All a mind-fuck.

She was here, perched. Fucking with us all the while.

Still on schedule.

Last chance.

Go!

Last 20.6

I had no idea what was real, anymore. I couldn’t trust anything.

Red and gold lines spiderwebbing across my vision made me think something in my mind had broken, even more than those fundamental parts of me had been lost or irrevocably damaged.

I dove in, prepared to make myself more of an immediate threat. Part of the reason she seemed to have stalled was that she had accumulated a fair bit of damage. That damage was my target.

I couldn’t be sure of anything, but I was reasonably confident that she did need to recover if she was hurt. No way would the Endbringers have operated like they had for as long as they had if they didn’t. No way would the Endbringers slowed their aggression against Scion in the middle phases of the fighting, falling back to change up how they came at him, if they didn’t need rests, in a sense.

This was how I had to interpret the situation and the fight. Grounding every thought. Anticipate, be flexible, find the weaknesses.

She barely seemed to notice me as I flew in, driving my forcefield into the criss-cross patchwork at her shoulder, where her body was revealed to be hollow, a criss-cross latticework of feathers forming the shape of a thin, sculpted shoulder. Some of that lattice was broken, and I dug in, tearing it open wider.

I felt telekinesis roll over me, grabbing at parts of my sleeve that stuck out, a prong at my shoulder where the decorations attached, my hood.