They came down atop the beast, as if it had no regard for its own well being. The thing’s hide was tough enough that the wood-like tentacles didn’t hurt anything, but where she had cracked and destroyed, the impacts broke things further.

It struck again, tentacles scraping, and she vaulted herself into the air with another shot. The thing lurched—no longer under her, and she used another shot to reorient. She crashed in the ragged, ruined section of neck.

Here, she had footing. Here, she could blast without worrying about sliding off.

She blasted. Again and again, condensing, destroying, thinning out. She tore apart a mountain one shot at a time. Tentacles reached overhead, and swept over the exterior, but only one reached into the crevice. She blasted at it until it was no longer there.

The material around her creaked, wood that was so stone-like it might have been petrified, and she saw the cracks widen as the thing’s own weight worked against it.

Tentacles stopped reaching for her. She heard water splash.

Slowly but steadily, the damage she’d done began to fill in. The thing was healing moment by moment.

She could have escaped, gone up, gotten out and then down.

She threw herself further down with a furious, intense despair, suffocated with emotion that didn’t feel like it was hers.

The way out closed up above her.

She carved her way deeper into the monster, giving chase to a heart that wasn’t there. There was only structure.

One. One remained, she told herself.

At her peak she had forty-seven or forty-eight. Now… one.

Again, material creaked and cracked. The structural damage spread to the area around her, to the front and back chest walls of the giant, and then, with a deafening sound, it soared skyward, up to the giant’s shoulder, where she had made her entrance. What had healed wasn’t as strong as the rest, and a certain amount of strength was needed to hold it all together.

There was something deeply wrong with her. She knew that.

But she couldn’t go to the heroes. Not now, even if she’d allowed herself to consider it for a moment.

The giant split, stumbling, and the crack in the wall became a gap.

She hurled herself out in the opposite way the giant was falling. It crashed into buildings by the water and into the water itself, the water it had been drinking to reinforce its own body. She—

She soared through the air. She fell, bloodied arms out to either side, her hair flew around her, her dress was partially in tatters because the use of her powers had caught the bottom edge a few too many times.

One. One last person in her group.

Herself.

She’d needed to reaffirm that faith. To leave some impact.

A use of her power interrupted and slowed her downward velocity, but saw her spin through the air, blasting once, then twice, in an attempt to correct her angle and cancel out her velocity.