Chapter 66: Burning Plains, Pt 9
You immediately leap into action and use your Telekinesis to stop the flow of superheated air back into the Ifrit. Or try to, anyway. Though you're straining with all your might, the best you can do is just slightly slow the particles down.
Help me out here! you yell through the Network. Please?!
I don't even know how you're doing that! Noir replies. But I'll try…
You sense her reach out, mimicking the way your own energy flows. And by doing that, she's able to also figure out how to manipulate particles to some degree, which helps slow the Ifrit's gathering flames. Thankfully, your absolute panic and need to survive helps her hone her newfound skill despite not having the hours of practice you have.
Still, it's a tough match - the both of you groan and strain and grit your teeth in an effort to stop the fiery creature.
It's still far stronger than the both of you combined - its very essence is built on its own Telekinetic abilities, and it is incomprehensibly more experienced than you. From what you can tell, it understands the very foundations of what the power is, and can use it as easily as you use your own body. It's practically a subconscious effort on its part.
You're certain that the Ifrit is equally as powerful as the Sweeper, at least in terms of Telekinetic abilities. Perhaps even more so.
Thankfully, because of how much damage you did to the Ifrit earlier with that blast, you're able to hold it at bay. Or just barely. It too is straining to pull itself together, though it is winning ever so slowly. Worse, all of you are aware of this fact, that it's only a matter of time before it can gather enough of itself to fight back with ease.
Your head throbs with pain as your energies sweep through you, as your psionic powers flare out with desperation. You sense slices of heat and fire shivering invisibly in the air, as the Ifrit struggles against you. As you and Noir wrestle against it for control of the atmosphere. As all three of you fight for your very lives.
Alternating waves of hot and cold air splash you across your face as you all vie for control.
You and Noir attempt to slow the air down and keep it cool, while it attempts to lighten it and speed it up. You even detect a hint of methane in the air, as though a spark is about to occur. But you're able to keep just enough control of the air around you to prevent such violent reactions.
After a second, you chide yourself on your foolishness thus far. You've already noted that the Ifrit isn't just activating powers and using them - no, it's layering them as part of itself, so that they better work in conjunction with each other.
It simply isn't just pulling itself together with its Telekinesis. That would be too simple an act. No, a quick Scan reveals that it's using all of its Disciplines to pull itself together. The Ifrit has activated its Temperance to reform itself, its ESP to come quicker to full consciousness, its Surge to speed the process metaphysically, its Telekinesis to speed the process physically.
The creature is even using its Third Eye and Foresight to determine which power to temporarily boost, and when.
Least importantly, it's using its Telepathy simply to scream out into the psionic void. It reminds you of screaming to let out frustrations, or of a kiai shout in martial arts. Somehow, by emitting Telepathic noise like this, it's able to better focus its other powers. Sharpen them, even. Almost like it is acting like a rocket's backblast.
More importantly, it's using a third power in Control - one which you have no idea what it does, not exactly. But you try to remember the way it's channeling its energies because once you're done with this thing, you need to learn it.
Regardless, on realizing that it's utilizing every bit of its powers in synchronicity with itself, then you must do the same as well. It's the only way you could possibly beat it.
In fact, you're sure you could beat the thing. Though it seems incredibly powerful with all three Disciplines, it doesn't seem to know that the powers have an inverse. If it did, it would have certainly used one by now, or at least would have attempted to overcome your Cloak.
Since you've got almost half a tank of gas left, you'd better use it wisely.
Hey, I'm gonna try something, alright? you tell Noir. Can you pick up Telekinesis by yourself for a bit?
What? No! I only just now figured out how to control all this air! No way can I take all of that on by myself! she replies frenziedly.
Just for a second. Maybe two. I'll rejoin you once I'm set.
Fine, fine! Don't blame me if I slip and we get roasted!
You grin as you activate your Foresight and step into a sliver of the future. As you've done before, you increase your Temperance and accelerate your senses for a flash of a moment. As a result, you hang in the moment between, stretching out time to an eternity inside of your Temporal Acceleration.
And in this long and drawn out slice of time, you activate a number of powers - each one with the intention of carving away at the Ifrit one bit at a time, from every possible angle and dimension.
First, you barrage its Telepathic ravings with slivers of Interrupts. Though they are simple 'stops', they're enough to pierce through the noise and jar its very thoughts. Even just the first few Interrupts cause parts of its psyche to shudder and shake, down to its psionic roots and foundations.
Doing so loosens the grip it has on its other powers, allowing you to further erode its very being.
Because you can't combat its powers of Cognition with their antithetic versions - you simply don't know what they are - you instead pour in extra power into your Devour. You use these to practically surround the Ifrit, covering it from every angle against its own incoming particles. At the same time, you channel as much Telekinetic energy as you can spare into Noir to give her as much of an edge as possible.
When you step out of your Temporal Acceleration, everything seems to hit the Ifrit at once, and it becomes very momentarily stunned. It's especially affected by your Interrupts, which pierce into its mind with unrelenting energy. Though the bombardment does little to actually damage the Ifrit, it does something even better.
The Telepathic backblast becomes irregular and dissonant, which causes the Ifrit's other powers to stutter and waver significantly. You can feel the energies in them twist and turn in ways they shouldn't, causing their patterns to go awry.
At this point you open up with everything you've got into your Devour, completely negating the Ifrit's numerous inwards Surges. By stopping it from drawing on its psyche further, you're able to cause a spectacular chain reaction, where one stumble and slip leads the Ifrit further down the proverbial hole.
Your Devours combined with Noir's Telekinetic resistance easily halts the Ifrit's attempt to rebuild itself, though you can sense its sheer anger and frustration and deep desire to survive lash outward in powerful waves.
Finally, you intertwine your Foresight and some of your Telepathy to find slivers of the future that reveal the Ifrit's demise. You then project those slivers and weave them into the Ifrit's own Foresight in an attempt to completely demoralize its will to win. As in the past, you fling countless copies of a falsified future at its energies and fool it into believing that its future is bleak and pointless.
Though it hardly gives up on seeing your Omen in full force all around it, or by the barrage you're assailing on its psyche, or Noir's constant ripping and tearing of its physical form. It struggles as hard as it can against the both of you with everything it has, to the point where all three of you strain greatly to maintain control of the situation.
Despite the pulsing pain in your head, all your powers weave through the Ifrit's dramatically waning energies, and rip it apart from its metaphysical core with one concerted, violent pull. You and Noir then shred it completely, even despite its agonizing and vengeful wail.
But once you separate its physical and psionic parts far enough from each other, the whole thing simply… ebbs away. There's no violent thrashing, no dramatic explosion, no rising from the dead. The Ifrit simply ceases to exist beyond a waning psionic echo. Its life force and energies peter out into nothingness in parallel.
Once its presence is completely gone, you note that the temperature around you is significantly cooler. It's certainly still oppressive considering it's daytime, but certainly nothing like before. Or perhaps, certainly more similar to the temperature back East.
You look outwards, past the charred farmland around you and watch as the flames in the middle distance seem to lower and weaken. Many flicker and fade, even as you try to recover from all that effort. It takes a few minutes, but they eventually die out completely. Maybe one or two small fires are out there, trying desperately to stay lit, but that's about all that's out there.
There's still a constant warping haze in the air due to the sheer heat wafting up through the air, but it's no longer as agitated as before.
You sigh deeply as you let go almost all of your held energies and power everything down to a minimum.
You can't help but think about the Ifrit itself as you recover, specifically where it has come from - it hardly seems like many of the other alien creatures that have appeared. It's certainly nothing like the Crags or other animals you've come across.
Then again, what would you know? If alien beings are invading the earth, who knows what they could do or what they're composed of. You can't help but think about the origin of all these alien creatures, but you can do little more than theorize.
More critically perhaps, it makes sense to you that Ifrit itself was causing all the fires out here. Its attempts to 'free' itself must have been raising the outside temperature to such a degree that all these fires have spread, resulting in all this damage.
Since its very existence was enough to melt corrugated steel, it would no doubt have caused even more damage had it gone free. Plenty of lives would have been lost to it, simply due to it traveling.
It seems to you that it was almost drawing on the energy of the sun itself, as though it was acting as a kind of beacon. A bit like shining rays through a magnifying glass. But instead of directing it, it's drawn into a point instead.
You also wonder how that's even remotely possible, how something so small could affect something so large and so far…
Just as you sigh that it's dead and you no longer have to worry about it, it occurs to you that it can't possibly be the only one. There must be more of these out there in the world, right? Terrible things never come singularly. After all, life is a diaspora filled with infinite pathways, each of them terminating in endless blessings and horrors alike.
You make a few notes and sketches in your Journal to try to collect all of your thoughts about the Ifrit. But you end up with too many other questions which seem to pluck at your curiosity with ease.
"We'd better get out of here fast," you say after you finish up your entry.
What, you don't think we killed that thing? That Ifrit, you called it? Noir replies. She licks her paw as though to mend some hurt in it.
"Oh we beat that thing, I'm certain. Problem is other things."
You Scan outward in every direction, for as far as you can reach. Almost all of what you can sense is dead - the fire damage is vast and beyond your full sight. Though you certainly don't sense any more Ifritii, it doesn't mean they aren't out there.
"For one thing, that Ifrit might have friends or family," you reply. "They're not gonna like one of their own getting offed. If there aren't, there's going to be some rather curious things headed in our direction. Probably dangerous, hungry things. Best we avoid meeting any of them and get the hell outta here."
~~~
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