章 2472: 55
Chapter 55: Tyranny 6-9
Tyranny 6.9
I was moving before I could consider whether it was even a good idea or not.
"Install!" I shouted, more as a war cry than anything else.
"Apocrypha!" Alexandria called, trying to stop me.
But I ignored her, and her hand that had been sufficient to hold me back before slipped on the silky fabric of my cloak as I took on Medea's form, leaving her to grasp at only air as I shrunk, compacting down into a shorter, curvier body.
Fuck her. Fuck her and her plan of me sitting back to wait and heal. If she thought I was just going to stand by while this whole thing went to shit, she had another thing coming.
Medea was not the fastest of heroes around, and the likes of Cúchulainn would run circles around her handily, but it was still enough for me to outpace Noelle and place myself between her and the heroes she'd been about to swallow up. I lifted my hand and the staff, the wand, I held, and the incantation spilled forth almost before I could think of what I was doing.
"Μαρδοξ!"
The large pane of light that formed in front of me was paper thin, but at least as strong Eidolon's. No, of course, this was a mystery dating back to the time when the ancient gods still held sway, harnessing the concepts and authorities over which they'd held dominion; the idea that it would be weaker than a modern superpower was just stupid.
A power so young can't even compare.
Noelle, moving too fast to stop on a dime, collided head first with my barrier and bounced off, the mass of meat rippling. The pane of light didn't even shudder. She might as well have tried to sink the Titanic with a pebble.
I was already moving, already starting my next spell before she could even get her bearings.
Of course. This was why I had decided on Medea as my main caster, back then. Nimue, Nicolas, and all of the others, they certainly outdid her in their areas of specialty. No one was a better alchemist than Nicolas Flamel. No one could compete with Nimue's crafting abilities or her capacity for large scale magecraft. Each had one area in which they shone brightest.
But when it came to combat, none of them could hit as fast or as hard as Medea.
"Αερο!"
Blades of wind tore into flesh, and Noelle shrieked as they ripped up her lower half and sent that brackish bile splattering across the gravel. Severed tentacles and other random limbs went flying and flopped lifelessly to the ground.
Careful, I scolded myself. Careful. Amy and Lisa and a bunch of bystanders were still in there. I'd have to be incredibly cautious about what I hit Noelle with and how hard.
A laser streaked towards me, moving at speeds even I could barely keep up with, then bent and curved around my body and converged to strike at something behind me. A moment later, a body thudded as it fell to the ground.
Legend. Of course. He'd killed Reversal.
That didn't matter, right now. Unpack it later, Taylor.
I turned my attention back to Noelle, just in time to get splattered with bile shot from one of the intact heads. It smelled just as bad as it had before, and it quickly began to sink into my clothes.
"Gah!"
The incantation on the tip of my tongue was lost. Noelle, perhaps thinking to seize upon my moment of distraction, suddenly raced forward, trailing ichor as half-severed limbs flailed behind her like some grotesque cape.
Oh my. That confident, are we?
I flew higher, up and out of her reach, and prepared my next spell.
"Μάχηα —"
Then had to bite my tongue as Alexandria swooped down and into the line of fire, carrying a sheet of corrugated metal — the siding of a shipping container, it looked like. She pressed it up against Noelle and pushed, using it like a plow to force her back and further away from the heroes beneath me.
You…!
I bit my lip, to stop the sudden impulse to shout at her for interfering. Instead, I picked another spell and took aim, not at Noelle, but at the corrugated sheet of metal.
If you're going to offer me a conductor…
"Κεραινο!"
The arc of electricity lanced out, striking the sheet, then arced across the metal and grounded out into and through Noelle — and, unexpectedly, Alexandria, who spasmed and let go of the sheet, twitching as she hung in midair, stunned.
What? My brain stumbled over the sight. She was supposed to be invulnerable —
Noelle recovered quickly, quicker than I'd expected her to, shaking off the effects with visible effort and a furious growl, and my brain refocused as one of her tentacled limbs lashed out to grab Alexandria by the arm.
No. I'm not going to let my fuckups screw anyone else over, tonight.
I pointed a single finger at the tentacle —
"Ερε Εκάτη!"
— and a beam of pink light shot out and severed it effortlessly.
I took aim now at Alexandria.
"Tροψα!"
An instant later, she was behind me, well out of Noelle's range.
I turned back to Noelle.
"Μάχηα Ἑκάτηκ Γραεα!"
Around me, spheres of pink light bloomed, and from them shot more sizzling beams, all aimed at her. She screamed as they hit, burning off flesh and searing away the meat of her lower body, carving her apart with light and heat one little bit at a time. The instant one beam finished, the sphere it had come from would fire again, and then again, striking her with rays of light that fell upon her like raindrops.
I was not hitting her as hard as I could with this. No, of course not. They would have ripped her — and everyone inside of her — to shreds at full power. Instead, I had throttled this spell so that it would only do surface damage, the way Legend had been, so that I could whittle away at the monster to the people beneath.
It was better for me, too. I could feel the vast ocean of energy available to me, to Medea, enough to sustain this bombardment at full power for decades, centuries, millennia. But I was also conscious of the fact that the more of that energy I used, the harder it would be on my own, real body. I needed to take care not to kill myself before I saved my friends.
Noelle, screaming under my barrage, lifted her hands to protect her human half's face and chest, and her monster half grabbed the sheet of metal with what limbs remained to hold it up like a shield, too.
It would work, for a moment, and only a moment. The constant blasts striking it would eat away at it within seconds —
Down below, from one of the heads protected by the sheet, a pair of bodies fell out, covered in rags and bile.
I stopped my attack, hesitating, and only after a second realized that they wasn't Amy or Lisa, but two of the homeless she must have absorbed while she had free reign over the Trainyard. More of her victims.
They'd barely been released before the mouth opened wider and spewed yet more bodies, all naked. It was a veritable deluge of flesh and brackish vomit, a torrent of misshapen limbs and thick, leathery skin, coated in the same thick fluid that still clung to my clothes and stung my nostrils. One, two, three… In total, fifteen landed on the gravel.
These new bodies were more clones, already climbing to their feet, and they were mostly generic, vague copies in various shapes and sizes, undoubtedly clones of the other homeless still stuck inside her, but two stood out.
The first was obviously another Miss Militia clone, and she was not as sturdy as the first had been. Paler. Sickly looking, almost, with bloodless, paper-white skin that seemed like it would tear if you touched it. Her physique was thin and bordered on emaciated, with the lean look of someone who hadn't eaten in properly in weeks. A stiff wind might have been enough to blow her over.
In contrast, the man beside her, who had to be a clone of Dauntless, was a tank. Tall, built solidly, with skin like granite and muscles that looked as though they'd been carved from marble. Bone-like protrusions jutted out and back over his elbows from his forearms like spears, pointed at the end and rounder throughout the rest. His face was grotesque, with a square, boxy nose, ridges that jutted up over his forehead from where his eyebrows should have been, and a crop of scraggly black hair that formed an uneven mohawk.
Immediately, I felt something try to take hold of me, a line that connected me to both the Dauntless clone and another person, far off into the distance. It was trying to force me through a kind of rift in space, to swap my position with the clone's, so that I could be absorbed, the way Miss Militia and Dauntless had been.
Trickster.
I took a brief second to turn narrowed eyes in the direction of origin, then reached out and took hold of him in much the way he'd been trying to take hold of me.
You're a thousand years too early to try that on me, boy.
"Tροψα."
The pressure trying to move me disappeared, and so did Trickster, teleported to the spot where the heroes had been planning this battle, only about fifteen feet in the air. The scream he let out as he landed and his leg broke was, I hated to admit, incredibly satisfying.
"KROUSE!" Noelle shouted. Her entire body vibrated with anger, every remaining head growling. "YOU BITCH!"
She charged, and in front of her, her clones charged, too, racing towards the line of heroes that stood behind and beneath me, with Noelle bringing up the rear. It was a mad dash, bereft of strategy and tactics. The flailing of a wounded beast.
Easy to deal with.
Legend was only a fraction of a moment ahead of me. Lasers lanced out from each of his fingertips, curving around and locking in on their targets. They blew smoking, smoldering holes in knees and shoulders, through feet and through hands. One, two, three clones fell down, stumbling, and were trampled underfoot by the rest. Another four were hit, staggered for a brief second, and then kept moving.
Now, it was my turn.
"Μάχηα Ἑκάτηκ Γραεα!"
Another barrage of beams rained down on them, striking heads and shoulders and sometimes missing entirely. I was not as accurate as Legend in my attack. This spell wasn't really built with tracking or homing functions in mind — or rather, it was an unnecessary effort to add that kind of aspect and a bit beside the point.
Throttled like it was before, it was still powerful enough that each beam was like having a pot of boiling water dumped on you, and the growling clones now screamed as they were blinded and burned. Those unfortunate enough to take multiple hits, especially to the face or the feet, collapsed to the ground, clutching at their wounds.
Easily healed, either by me or by Amy, once this whole thing was over.
At the back, Noelle did as I expected her to; she shrieked and doubled back, and the handful of mostly uninjured clones, maybe a third of those she'd spawned, retreated with her. I chased them back with my spell, nipping at their metaphorical — and also literal — heels.
Legend took his chance and fired off another sizzling laser, this one bigger and more powerful looking, more like the one he'd used to kill the Amy clone. It was easily big enough and powerful enough to kill any single one of the clones, and it shot off towards Noelle like a firework.
But even as the others scattered to get out of its way, the Dauntless clone stepped in front of it, planted his feet, and took it straight on.
And the laser disappeared. It splashed against him, a direct hit, and like a candle, it was snuffed out between one second and the next.
Lava-like spots danced under the clone's skin, and for the same, brief moment, his veins glowed a bright, molten orange, like hot steel. Aside the short lightshow, however, the Dauntless clone was completely unharmed.
My spell cut off and my brow furrowed.
What? He'd…absorbed it?
Alexandria flew in, now, cape whipping behind her, and she delivered an absolutely bone-shattering right hook that I felt even from where I was floating. The clone simply took it on the jaw, the same lava-like spots shining through his skin, and was utterly fine.
He was just accepting it. He wasn't trying to stop it or avoid it, he was just letting her hit him. Letting them hit him. Because he was invulnerable?
Noelle reached out to try and take Alexandria, but a few lasers from Legend severed the limbs she was using and forced her off as he started harrying her, again, and Alexandria herself grabbed the clone, lifting him off of his feet and off of the ground to start delivering more punishing punches. Each one carried him higher and higher and higher, each one was powerful enough to push him further into the sky, and each one would have been absolutely devastating to a normal human being.
And the clone just kept taking them. Each spot hit had a brief moment of that same glow, but it obviously wasn't rapid healing — it was way too fast. Even Lung hadn't healed so quickly that the wound was gone before his flesh even had time to deform from the impact. It likely wasn't simple invulnerability, either, or else why the lightshow?
Having realized that it wasn't working and that it had nothing to do with planting his feet, Alexandria flew above him, thrust her fist into the small of his back, and drove him down, instead, slamming him into the ground with enough force that even the railcars rattled.
But as she backed away, eyeing him cautiously, he slowly pulled himself to his feet, none the worse for wear.
Everything she'd hit him with, even being hit with one of Legend's lasers, he'd just absorbed it. Just taken it and accepted it without…
Wait.
"Alexandria!" I shouted.
I was too late. The Dauntless clone suddenly took off like a shot from a cannon, accelerating from zero to nearly supersonic in a single second. Alexandria, surprised, didn't react quite in time, and the haymaker he threw into her face sent her flying back towards the group of heroes like a ballistic missile.
"Μαρδοξ!"
My hastily incanted spell was only barely fast enough, and another pane of light formed in her path, just in time for her to crash into it like a cannonball. The barest of cracks slithered up from the point of impact.
A testament to just how hard she'd been hit. A normal human's head would have been pulped, along with most of the upper torso.
"He gets stronger —"
"I know," she cut me off, none the worse for wear.
I clenched my teeth against a biting retort and let her float away. Unlike before, she approached the Dauntless clone cautiously, eyeing him from a distance, rather than engaging directly. She didn't want to keep making him stronger.
That was how his power must have worked, after all. All of that energy was going somewhere. From what I remembered, the original Dauntless could imbue his gear with "charges," making them steadily stronger day by day. There was a fairly big following online who thought he was one day going to match the Triumvirate, as long as he had enough time to build up.
His clone was similar, only much faster. Rather than having a set number of "charges" to imbue into his equipment, his body absorbed incoming attacks and redistributed the power behind them into his muscles and organs, making him stronger, faster, hardier. The harder he got hit, the faster he would grow.
As for whether he needed to be standing still or if it always worked, I had no idea. If there was an upper limit to what he could take, a cap on how strong he could get… There was no way to tell without making him even more dangerous and risking turning him into something too strong for anyone here to fight.
The Dauntless clone approached her slowly, as well, staring unblinkingly at her from under his misshapen brow. What that meant…
I considered trying to hit him with another spell, but dismissed the idea. If Legend's lasers were completely ineffective, then it was likely any of my offensive abilities would be, too. Besides —
I turned my attention further out and back to Noelle and Legend, who were still dancing around each other. The faint outlines of several clones lied, motionless, on the ground nearby.
— there were still other enemies to…
Wait.
Where was the other Miss Militia clone?
A scream rent the air, and I spun around in time to see Grace's arm sever itself from her body, just above the elbow. The missing Miss Militia clone, having apparently snuck up behind her, retreated backwards, leaving Grace to collapse to the gravel, screaming.
Battery, standing right next to Grace, whipped around and lashed out at the clone, the lines of circuits patterned across her costume glowing. The clone swayed out of the way, then whipped out her arm and delivered an open-palmed slap to Battery's cheek.
The crack as her neck snapped and her head spun nearly a hundred and eighty degrees around seemed deafening. My heart leapt into my throat.
"No!" shouted a man in red. Assault. He was already moving as Battery fell limply to the ground, like a marionette with cut strings.
A broken neck. Fatal, almost invariably. It depended on how badly the spine was damaged, but even if your heart and lungs kept working, the shock alone could kill you just as easily.
Seconds, seconds, I only had seconds. Grace would bleed out, Battery would die, I had less than a minute.
"Ερε Εκάτη!"
I shouted my spell, maybe a little louder than I needed, but that didn't matter, right then. A bright beam of pink light lashed out from my fingertip and lanced towards the clone, who dodged back and out of the way, even as the other heroes started to give her a broad birth.
"Don't move her!" someone shouted, I assumed at Assault. I couldn't take the time to look.
Another beam of precision light shot out again, and again, as I pushed the clone back and back, forcing her away from her victims. Each second felt like an eternity, and my heart thudded anxiously in my chest as the specter of doom hovered, as though waiting for me to fail and let those two heroes die.
Come on, come on…
Finally, I'd made enough distance and incanted my next spell.
"Ατλας!"
And just like that, the air around her condensed and the clone froze in place. She was trapped.
Barely a second later, a laser raced past me, carved a path through the thick, soupy air, and like the Panacea clone before, blew her head right off.
I traced the line of the shot back, all the way back to Legend, who floated with his hand outstretched. He'd delivered the killshot.
And left himself open, in exchange. Behind him, Noelle was rearing up, and she leapt off the ground with speed and grace that belied her enormous mass, like some demented jumping spider that could clear a hundred times its own body length in one go. For an instant, I only watched, torn between rescuing him and saving Battery and Grace.
But there was no choice. If even Legend was captured and cloned, if we had to stare across the battlefield at the twisted form of the most powerful Blaster in the world, at two or three or more of them, then it was likely we would have already lost.
"Tροψα!"
Before she could take him, he vanished and reappeared next to me, safe and free.
"Vista!" Armsmaster growled out from below me. "Clockblocker! Now!"
Noelle landed, seemed to realize that she'd missed, and looked over in our direction, and even from this distance, in the dark, I could faintly make out the rictus of fury that carved itself into her face.
"You —"
Then, space twisted, condensing the distance between us and her, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw a familiar white-costumed hero reach out through it to quickly tap her on the only part of her that it seemed didn't absorb people: her human upper half. Mid-word, she froze, suspended in time.
No, no, forget about that.
I whirled back around and swooped back to the ground, next to Battery and Grace. Some smart hero had wrapped a tourniquet around Grace's stump, while someone else held Battery's head steady to try and minimize the damage. In my peripheral vision, I saw Velocity holding back Assault, who looked as though his world was falling apart and he was teetering over the edge.
"Bring her over here," I told the person attending Grace as I set down next to Battery. My voice was calmer than I felt, just then. Raymancer, the same boy who had given me that piece of gravel. "Her arm, too."
He looked at me dubiously, then glanced around at the Protectorate heroes for guidance.
"Quickly, fool!" I snapped, patience evaporating.
I don't have the resources to manage true resurrection!
"Do it," Armsmaster rumbled.
Raymancer still seemed uncertain, but he did as ordered and helped Grace over to me. He only hesitated a moment to pick up her severed arm, which he held at a distance as though it carried some terrible disease.
"Lie her down. Set her arm in place."
I gave the orders swiftly and without fanfare, and Raymancer helped Grace lie down — far, far too slowly and gently. My fingers itched to curse him for wasting the precious little time Battery had left, but I held myself back and gritted my teeth.
At least twenty seconds had already passed, by the time Grace was finally lying down. Battery was not breathing, and her heart had likely already stopped, too, but the cutoff point for permanent brain damage was something like four minutes, if I remembered my health class right.
If she hadn't already died from the shock.
I swallowed around the lump in my throat, then knelt down and held my hands out over both wounds.
"Ἀσκληπιός Ὑγιεία Χρόνος."
It was like watching an old VHS on rewind. Different, and yet the same as the spell I'd used on Vista, the injured flesh pulled itself together, sealing closed as though it had never happened. The cut that had severed Grace's arm shrank and vanished, leaving behind only clear, unblemished skin, and the bruised, swollen flesh of Battery's neck returned to a normal, healthy size and tone as the shattered vertebrae cracked and wove back together.
And as Grace let out a surprised shriek and leapt to her feet and Battery gulped down a sudden breath, I let myself lean back on my haunches, relieved, and released the tension inside of me with a long, deep sigh.
I'd made it in time.
"Look out!"
I whirled around as the other heroes scattered, scrambling to my feet, just in time to see the Dauntless clone, who had broken away from his fight with Alexandria, racing towards me.
Fast. He was too fast. I didn't have the time or the breath to incant a spell, and without that, no way to fight him with Medea —
I pushed her out of me and away, steeling myself for a fight — and then collapsed, unable to stand, as the sudden fatigue that hit me stole the strength from my legs. The Dauntless clone continued, heedless of my exhaustion, barreling through the lasers being shot at his back as though they were nothing.
In an instant, he closed the distance and was barely five feet from me, and there was no way I was going to get back up in time, not to fight him, not when I hadn't felt this tired since that first night after using Siegfried to fight Lung.
But he jerked to a sudden halt, less than a yard from me, as Alexandria appeared behind him and locked him in a stranglehold. She squeezed down on his neck, and this close, I could see his veins popping under his skin, the lava-like spots that danced under her grip, the straining of the muscles in his neck and in his arms as he scrambled for purchase to try and pull her away.
I could hear him gasping for breath as he struggled.
However strong he'd gotten, however much power he'd gained from taking hits from her and Legend, it wasn't enough. Alexandria had him locked, with the crook of her elbow pressed against his windpipe as she used her other arm like a lever to tighten her hold.
It wasn't long before he started to weaken. His kicking legs kicked less often and with less ferocity. His tugging arms lost strength and were barely able to reach for his neck. His eyes rolled up into his head as his face turned a sickening shade of purple.
At last, he fell limp, arms and legs dangling lifelessly as his head drooped. He was utterly and completely motionless. After a few more seconds, Alexandria let him go — only long enough to reach up and twist his head around with a deafening CRACK.
In the background, one of the other heroes threw up noisily, and it only served to worsen the nauseous feeling churning in my own stomach.
And Alexandria just let him drop with a heavy, meaty thud to the ground.
Like it was nothing. Like she hadn't just killed a man — clone or no clone — right in front of me and every other hero here.
Then, with that same uncaringness, she turned to one of the heroes in the crowd.
"Eidolon," said Alexandria, "have you taken the necessary power?"
I startled and looked over in that direction, and there, sitting apart from everyone else in something resembling a meditative pose, was Eidolon himself.
"Yes," he answered shortly.
"Good. Then when I say so, use it. Make sure you get all of her, leave nothing behind."
Noelle. They were talking about Noelle.
My heart leapt into my throat. Nothing left behind…? If he did that, then —
I surged to my feet and barely managed to stay there without falling back over. "You can't do that!"
Alexandria turned to me, expression — what I could see of it — grim and determined. "Apocrypha. This isn't the time."
"She still has my friends!" I shouted. "Lisa and Amy! Panacea's still in there! Miss Militia and Dauntless! You can't just kill them, too! We have to save them!"
It was why we were here, it was what I was fighting for. If they died here, now, after all of this, then what was even the fucking point?
But if my words meant anything to her or not, if they were anything more to her than empty air, I couldn't tell. She was unmoved.
"It's tragic, but neither the lives of two teenage girls nor those of two heroes can be measured against the whole city, let alone the whole world," she said. "And we cannot allow Echidna to continue to rampage."
Furious anger, white hot and yet frigid cold, burned through my veins. You callous fucking bitch —
"I'm not going to trade my best friends' lives away just because you're not willing to find another way —"
"Do you?" she cut in, bringing me up short. "Do you have another way? If you have a better idea, I'm willing to hear it. If you have a power that can stop Echidna and save your friends, you have only to say so."
I opened my mouth, but my tongue flopped uselessly.
Of course I had a hero who could do that. No, I'd had one from the beginning. Someone who could have stopped this whole thing before it even got started, back at Coil's base.
But I couldn't use her. No, anyone but her. Anyone at all. She was the one hero I absolutely couldn't use, no matter what.
She took my silence for an answer.
"I see," said Alexandria. She turned away towards Eidolon. "Eidolon, are you ready?"
"Yes," he replied. "She won't be able to escape."
"Then we'll wait until she unfreezes," she said. "The moment she does, hit her with your most powerful attack."
The bottom of my stomach dropped out. They were really going to do it. They were going to kill Noelle and everyone inside of her, without a care for who that might be. Even Panacea wasn't going to get any special consideration.
"Wait," I tried again. "Please, wait. You can't. You have to find another way. They're my friends."
The only ones I've got.
She turned to me, stoic, uncaring.
"Heroes have to make sacrifices, Apocrypha," she told me coldly. "There are always people you won't be able to save. If you don't understand that, if you can't deal with it, then you should stay back here, where you can't get in anyone's way, and let the real heroes work."
You're wrong, I wanted to shout at her. You're wrong! Didn't you see me save Battery and Grace? Didn't you just watch me pull off the miracle you're saying is impossible, now?
But I couldn't, because there was a woman, now a corpse, who had already died tonight, because of me. There were clones that had lost their lives because I hadn't had an answer for how to stop them, if their powers were too dangerous.
I turned to Legend, hoping against hope that he would be the voice of reason, that he would be the hero needed to speak out against this callousness and cruelty. Surely, I thought, surely, Legend will…
But he turned from me, looking away, face twisted in shame.
Alexandria turned away, too, apparently finished with me, and Eidolon moved to take his position, too, lifting gently into the air and making his way in front of the group. All I could see was their retreating backs as they got farther away from me — out of my reach, both physically and verbally. They had already made up their minds, so nothing I said would cross that gap.
They were going to kill Noelle — kill my friends — and nothing would turn them from that course.
"No!" I screamed. "Stop! Stop!"
It fell on deaf ears. I might as well have been screaming at a brick wall.
Hovering some twenty feet above the ground, Eidolon continued to stare out at the grotesque statue of Noelle, frozen in time. The air around him, reaching even here, where I stood, filled with something heavy and oppressive. Like it was thickening and turning solid.
"Stop!"
I could make them, I knew. I could force them to stop, force Noelle to let my friends go, force this entire fight to a screeching halt. Everyone could be saved, here and now, right in front of me.
I just had to use her.
No, no, there had to be someone else.
Medea? I could do like I'd done to those mercenaries in Coil's base, put them all to sleep.
But no, that wouldn't work. Alexandria would probably be unaffected, Eidolon would probably have a power that stopped it, and Noelle… No, putting her to sleep was a bad idea. I didn't know how, but I knew that with utter certainty.
Aífe, Atalanta, Gawain… I wracked my brain for each and every hero I knew, each one I'd researched during those three months between learning martial arts and experimenting with the limits of magic.
None of them would work.
I couldn't bind them. Eidolon would just use a power to get them all free, and anything that held Noelle would make her an easy target for him, would leave her wide open. I'd be back where I started, with new problems.
I couldn't fight them. My heroes were incredible, but trying to fight the Triumvirate on one side and Noelle on the other, sandwiched between the two, would be a challenge for even the greatest of them — especially having to pull my punches all the while.
Couldn't fight, couldn't bind, couldn't just put them all to sleep… What could I do? What could I even do? What was left? Who was left? Who could I use to save my friends without having to kill anyone? Who could save everyone here? Who could do it all without pushing me over that edge and into the abyss I knew awaited? Who? Who?
Me.
I gasped, flinching away. The hero offering herself up said no words, but the strength of her connection gave weight to her presence. It was like a hand being held out in front of my face — she would help, she wanted to help, and all I had to do was accept it.
No, no, anyone else, anyone, please!
But my power offered no one else. No one else who fit all of the criteria, who could save everyone here, who could stop everyone from fighting, who could force Noelle to let the people she'd absorbed go. No one else who wouldn't make me a murderer in the process. There was only one hero with the power to do all of that.
Please, no. Anyone but her.
"Eidolon!" barked Alexandria.
"Almost ready!" he answered.
"Stop," I whispered desperately. My arms wound around my chest, as though to protect me from what was happening in front of me.
Please. Please. Don't make me use her.
"You'll only have one shot. Make it count."
"I will."
"Stop!"
They're my friends. My only friends. I can't lose them. Don't make me —
"— bitch!"
The mass of meat unfroze. Noelle staggered, jerking, aborting whatever she'd been about to do as she realized that everyone had moved out of place and no one was where they had been before.
"Eidolon!"
No, no, they're my friends, but I can't use her, I can't, don't make me choose, don't make me have to choose, I can't —
"Now!"
I couldn't. I couldn't. But there was only one option, only one hero who could do it all. I didn't have anyone else, and if I didn't do anything, Lisa and Amy…
Please —
"STOP!"
I reached out and through myself.
And I took the hand of the hero whose power would let me save my friends.
— o.0.O.O.0.o —
Sorry it took so long to get these out. I did kinda forget about you guys, again, but stuff got busy several times, especially around the holidays.
But, silver linings, you just got three new chapters to read, and a fourth on the way tomorrow. Rejoice!
If you want to support me as a writer so I can pay my bills, I hav treon (p a treon . com (slash) James_D_Fawkes), and if P a treon is too long term, you could buy me a ko-fi (ko-fi . com (slash) jamesdfawkes).
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