An Set lunged forward, his body splitting in half as an electric charge raced up Black Lotus’ sword. She whipped it down and to the right, a huff of exertion all it took to send the charge into the ground rather than her arm. The outstretched arm of the mad mythic crackled and sparked, talons of electricity reaching for Marta. Marta tilted her head back, letting the blow catch her in the chest. Her vision went white for a moment before her head whipped forward, her heart restarting as soon as it stopped. She raised her arm and brought her elbow down, a thunderous crash echoing out as her limb crashed through his.
Above, the serpent howled again, the Great Eel recoiling as a portion of it flickered and its body shrank. An Set reflected its howl with one of his own, staggering backwards as a tendril of electricity leaped from the stump of his arm and reformed into a limb. He snarled, bearing his teeth as Black Lotus darted in low, the scent of blossoms filling the air. She muttered under her breath as the pink coloration faded to an icy white-blue, a chill ripped through the air, and frost began to form on the edge of her weapon. She momentarily turned into a streak, her skin nearly turning red as the frost on her body turned into steam. The next instant she was past him, a trail of ice in her wake and his right side coated.
Without stopping for a moment, An Set pulled himself in half as the serpent in the clouds struggled and thrashed. Lightning became flesh and he threw his arms out wide, the air becoming charged. Marta and Black Lotus exchanged a look and darted away, getting some distance as an enormous bolt of lighting fell down from the sky. Marta glanced up at the serpent again, noting it had significantly reduced in size. She frowned and brought up her glowing fists, the metal gauntlets gleaming with an almost holy light. She’d finally noticed it, but she wasn’t about to question it. Whatever she’d done, whatever had changed, she was going to roll with it.
An Set lowered his arms, breathing hard, his body moving with strange jerks and slowdowns as if he was moving both fast and slow at the same time. His head was looking both back at Black Lotus and Marta at the same time. He’s powered up, again, but he’s running out of juice. There was only so much electricity in Las Vegas, no matter how you shake it. He has a limit.
She glanced again at Black Lotus and nodded at her. The other woman nodded as well and set herself into a stance, drawing her weapon up and over her head, parallel with the ground. Her hand outstretched, she let out a low breath and the chill that had surrounded her shifted to a summertime glow. The scent of blossoms filled the air again as Marta’s muscles coiled beneath her, ready for another burst of movement. The two moved as one, Black Lotus raced forward in a ray-like line, a pink flash of light and motion while Marta kicked off the ground into a blitz, traversing fifty meters in an instant with her fist already descending.
Her fist collided with An Set’s head while a sword erupted from his chest. His head turned nearly one hundred and eighty degrees. Marta felt the point of Black Lotus’ sword pierce her waist, the energy releasing out of her back but there was no pain. The heartbeat-length exchange felt like several seconds as Marta pivoted in the air and Black Lotus turned her sword to cut horizontally across his chest. There was a terrible sound of tearing and another howl of impotent fury from above as An Set was torn in half, his torso skipping across the ground away from her punch while his lower half dropped to the ground.
Marta pulled back and glanced down, his legs twitched and sparked.
“Retreat!” She shouted and kicked away just as they exploded with arcs of lethal electricity, scorching the ground and sending glass-like shards everywhere. A few darted past her face, leaving cuts in her skin that quickly healed. She turned towards the torso and readied herself as another bolt of lightning came down from above.
–
Chunhua whipped her weapon down, not that she needed to. The monster didn’t bleed. She glanced up at the sky with Handmaiden, the writhing serpent above had nearly vanished. It barely resembled a coiled bolt of lightning anymore. She looked down at the reforming body of An Set, his bare lower half twitching and spasming. All of his clothes were gone at this point, he couldn’t reform them with his powers. Her lip twitched as he sat up with a jerk, his appearance all the more bestial now. His teeth looked more like needles and sparks jumped off of them as he got to his feet.
She readied her weapon, prepared for the next exchange, when something struck An Set in the side of the head.
She blinked.
A single blue bolt of power splashed against his temple and dissipated. Then a rock hurtled in from the left. A black arrow from the right. Then a blade of wind screeched across the field and knocked him to the side. One of Pathfinders bullets caught him under the chin and sent him stumbling. Chunhua looked around, bewildered, as the heroes who had fought, bled, and nearly died against the gnolls positioned themselves around the circular battlefield and resumed their bombardment that had only been paused by the monster attack.
She saw Marta shift and reach for her ear and couldn’t help herself.
“Marta!” The man called Amos said over the line. “Mana levels dropping and fast!”
Marta sagged a little, “What-”
“The Dungeon’s gone!” Amos shouted excitedly.
Roars and shouts rang out all around them as everyone threw all they had left in their reserves at An Set. The serpent above shrieked and writhed in agony while Chunhua internalized what Amos had said. Gone? It was cleared? But-
BZZRRTTTZZTTTT-
TICK … TICK … TICK … TICK … TICK
The ticking of a clock.
A hum in the air.
A chill up her spine.
An eye appeared before her, opening wide.
Chunhua froze, taking a step back but it simply followed her. It hovered there, two dimensional, transparent, it looked almost digital. It glitched and flickered, blinking once as it observed her with its eerie pink glow. Then she noticed that it was utterly silent. She glanced towards Handmaiden with a similar eye in her face. Then at An Set who was confusedly swatting at the one observing him. Eyes everywhere. Eyes in front of every hero. Eyes floating in the air looking at the battlefield from all directions. An all encompassing gaze.
Then as quickly as they had appeared, they vanished, all closing at once.
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“What was-” She felt something descend upon her, pressure, will, an absolute presence that washed over everything she was and reached down to her soul and gripped it in an iron clasp. She felt her knees buckle as light erupted overhead. She looked up, fighting against the terror that was trying to worm its way artificially into her heart. The serpent was gone but dark clouds remained. In its place was an eye as big as the battlefield, a fuschia gaze of some otherworldly thing whom they’d drawn the attention of.
“Leader-” BZZZTTTT
Euclidia tried to chime in but the radio immediately fizzled out.
An Set tried to pull himself off the ground only to abruptly trip and fall, it looked like an invisible force was literally pushing down on him, crushing him with ruthless strength. Chunhua forced herself to breathe, drew on every ounce of training she had and will collected through her ability to stay on her feet and squeeze down on the handle of her sword, even as her fingers went numb. She looked back up at the eye and saw the inner part of the eye grow more solid, a ring of hard light that opened up into a space she couldn’t quite make out.
From it, she descended in a column of light.
All white, her hair flowing out to either side like feathered wings, her arms spread out. Her helmet, dark and cruel with two slits of pink light burning from within, malice boiling off of her in nearly visible waves. She seemed to stand in mid air as she descended, her feet firmly planted on what looked like nothing at all as the eye loomed above her. Panels of light formed in the air around her before spreading out over the field, slamming down in a ring around the area, blocking the view of the heroes around them. The self-proclaimed first supervillain, a supposed goddess made flesh, the absolute enemy of every hero on the planet.
“Ishtar,” Chunhua breathed even as her mind reeled and connected dots. Her lips formed a thin line. She tilted her head forward and leveled a defiant glare on the woman. In the corner of her eye even Handmaiden assumed a defensive pose, shifting back a bit and readying for yet another fight in this tireless onslaught.
“I AM ISHTAR.” The voice was bloodcurdling, cold, a rasp that could likely be heard across the city. “THAT FALSE HERO, A DESECRATION OF THE TITLE, IS STILL USEFUL TO ME.”
Chunhua jolted, No!
She turned her focus back on An Set and darted towards him, sword drawn. She was going to take him, she wasn’t sure why, but she was not going to let that happen before she got her answers. Even if that meant killing him. She had a duty. “PRIMROSE DANCE OF ONE THOUSAND-” She roared, her weapon vibrating as she turned herself into a rocket of motion only for her blade to come crashing into a panel of white light.
“I’M AFRAID I CAN’T LET YOU DO THAT, HERO,” Ishtar’s booming voice declared.
Chunhua darted around the barrier just in time to see a pool of blackness spread out beneath the broken man, violet needles sticking out of his neck and foam coming out of his mouth. He sank into it as if it were water before the puddle simply dried up and vanished as if it had never been there. One moment the monster known as An Set had been on the verge of death and at her fingertips, the next he was simply whisked away with nothing to show for it. Her teeth nearly cracked as she whipped her head up towards the woman hovering above her.
In response to her glare, the panel beneath Ishtar vanished and she landed where An Set had been only moments before.
“Apologies for the steal, hero, I do feel bad about taking your glory,” Ishtar rasped, her voice down at a normal volume. There was a bit of amusement in it, “Like I said, I have a use for him.”
Chunhua snarled and marched towards the supervillain, her blade at her side. She didn’t stop until she was right in the villain’s face, looking at her own eyes in the reflective surface of the helmet. “You,” She growled, “Are you Sonya Chernovna?”
The villain tilted her head as a low hum filled the air and Chunhua’s earpiece crackled to life. A low rasp hissed into her eardrum; “Yes.”
Chunhua blinked, she had expected anything but that. Mocking would have been more expected, more reasonable. She held her ground, glaring at the woman behind the mask, trying to wrap her head around it all. The things that Handmaiden had said. That she was trying to stop things like this from happening. Yet she had been nearby when An Set had apparently lost his mind. Did she have something to do with it? What was her angle? She’d said it through her earpiece, was that a clue? An admission? Why? Just, fucking why? None of it made any sense to her. She’s lying, trying to discredit Chernovna. Somehow she was in the dungeon with her. It just doesn’t click otherwise.
“I want answers.”
“If you survive, certainly,” The Supervillain said.
Chunhua blinked only for every instinct in her body to scream at her to move. She leaped to the side just as a ray of light erupted from Ishtar’s fingertip. If she had moved a second too late it would have created a finger sized hole in her heart. Chunhua slid to a stop and readied her weapon, she raised it and opened her mouth to speak, “If I-”
Handmaiden didn’t need to be cajoled as much as Chunhua. She let out a roar and charged at the supervillain who took a dancing step back and swirled her hand once, a barrier of light appearing between her and Handmaiden’s fist. The glass-like material shuddered and cracked, but held. Ishtar seemed to vanish into another panel of light and Chunhua’s instincts were the only thing that saved her yet again, she dove low as a combat knife made of light swiped across the space where her throat had just been.
Fine! She snarled and pivoted, bringing her weapon out with a snap-draw. Ishtar pirouetted out of the way and snapped out a kick, the force of it making Chunhua’s eyes water as she pulled her head back and out of the way. Before Chunhua could recover a fist drove up and into her gut, sending her heaving and staggering back. I need to recapture momentum! She screamed at herself, dodging another knife blow aimed with surgical precision. She snapped her leg out to kick Ishtar’s foot out from under her while sweeping her blade out towards the woman’s helmet.
“More,” Ishtar growled and a barrier formed right next to her head.
Chunhua pulled the weapon back, picking up speed and released a series of rapid speed jabs, One-Hundred Eighty Petals!
Ishtar stepped back and swayed, moving with each motion like a blade of grass. Her head tossing lazily left and right. Chunhua snarled and followed up with the next step in the form, going from one-hundred eighty petals to Ninety-ton Flowering Branch! She felt her internal energy rushing through her muscles, her power screaming to life as she brought the weapon in, up and down in a cataclysm of force. Ishtar caught the attack at the base of the blade with her knife, pivoting past Chunhua’s left side and driving a kick into her. Chunhua let out a gasp of pain and tumbled, hitting the ground and scrambling to her feet.
Handmaiden had moved in place of her, her fists raging as she threw her full wrath at Ishtar. Ishtar danced and dodged, delivering light but carefully targeted blows to the woman’s body. She moved into a backflip and even landed on one of Handmaiden’s hands, snapping down into a split kick that caught the hero in the back of the head with her boot. Chunhua looked down at her sword and up at Ishtar, breathing hard, She had already used a lot fighting An Set, even still, that move.
She knows my fighting style?
Handmaiden staggered back from the blow. It wasn’t one intended to injure but to stun her. She was immune to killing blows but staggering ones were effective. She moved like water, no, like a faerie, dancing on the air and even hopping on panels of light to get distance before immediately responding with vicious and lethal force. Chunhua collected herself and shook off the pressure that the supervillain was putting on them somehow. She took a new pose.
“ISHTAR!” She shouted.
The Supervillain landed a few meters away from Handmaiden and raised her hands in welcome, “Come, Hero! Show me everything!”