Archmund panicked.

“SPHERE!” Mercy shouted. He raised his hand, and a sea-green bubble enveloped the both of them, just in time to stop the Monster from choking Archmund’s spoke.

“You shout your Skill names?”

“We have bigger problems right now,” Mercy said sourly. “Like this Seven-Fingered Starbeast.”

The Seven-Fingered Starbeast — a name that felt made up on the spot — wrapped its tendrils around their shield, trying to break in. The soldiers fell upon it. All four had drawn their swords, with blades of solid blue crystal that pulsed gently with magic. They hacked at the Starbeast’s tendrils, making slight gashes in the blackened rubbery flesh.

“Are they going to be okay? Being out there?”

“It’s what they’re there for,” Mercy said, though his eyes tracked all the soldiers carefully. He reached into his waistpouch, feeling each tinkling Gem, until he pulled out his Topaz.

The Seven-Finger Starbeast still stood strong. One tentacle fought each of the soldiers, while three slammed and slammed and slammed against Mercy’s protective sphere.

“I’m going to drop this on three,” Mercy said. “Get ready.”

Archmund was fucking terrified.

Mercy Stirpstredecim de Omnio had mastered the Diamond of Guard before ten years of age. The soldiers were clad in Gemstone armor that made them closer to heroes than men.

He had a heat gun.

“I’ll die!”

“Oh, right,” Mercy said with his back turned to Archmund. Archmund swore he could hear his eyes roll. “I’ll guard you myself and keep those tentacles from squeezing you in half.”

“Wonderful. Thanks a bunch.”

The Starbeast had grabbed two of the soldiers around the waist and was squeezing hard. The other two soldiers were too busy fending off their own tentacles to help. The Gemstone armor held strong, keeping them alive, but they were immobilized.

“One, two, three.”

The Protective Sphere dropped, slithering back into Mercy’s hand.

Mercy grabbed Archmund by the shirt collar and threw both of them to the floor, rolling. Three of the Starbeast’s tentacles smashed into the ground where they’d just stood.

Mercy’s Topaz floated independently in the air.

“Lightning Lance!” Mercy shouted.

Once more the air smelled of ozone. A bolt of lightning traced a path through the air, from the floating Topaz to core of the Starbeast. It spasmed, its limbs going wild. The two soldiers in its grasp cried in pain as its grip clenched, before breaking free as it relaxed.

But they barely had a second to rest. As Archmund watched, darkness pooled upon the skin of the Starbeast, swirling and pulsating until it took form. Its skin became tacky and nonreflective, thick and sticky and pliant. Its hide had become rubber.

“It’s mindless,” Mercy said. “Draws on its Gem to resist what hurts it hardest. Seen its ilk before! Men, strike!”

The four soldiers slashed at the now-rubber Starbeast with their Gemstone swords. Their cuts welted its skin; it bleated in pain, its cry between a sheep and a screaming child. And in response the darkness pooled further; its hide grew thicker and thicker layers of rubber. They kept cutting at it, and it kept regenerating. Mercifully, they were keeping it occupied enough for it not to lash out at them with its tentacles.

Were those tentacles getting smaller and weaker? And that implied…

“What about its Gem? Are we depleting it?”

“You have strange priorities, Granavale.”

Mercy’s breathing had steadied; this plan was working.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“It’s going to kill us if we don’t kill it first. If you wouldn’t mind helping…?”

“Get your men out of there.”

Mercy nodded, and the soldiers fell back to guard them.

He raised his own Ruby and fed it his magic. The impulse, though he had learned it just that morning, felt like reflex.

“Infrared Lance.”

The Seven-Fingered Starbeast thrashed — Mercy grabbed Archmund by the collar again and jerked him back, as the soldiers held the line as they hacked at the incoming flailing tentacles.

There was no flash of light, which would have been wasteful. There was a squeal, a sizzle, and the acrid smell of burning rubber. There was a pinpoint hole through the heart of the Starbeast where the Infrared Lance had pierced.

“Did I kill it?”

He knew he spoke too soon. As they watched, the hole knit back together, shadows clotting and congealing like tar. Then more shadows gathered over its body, the rubber distorting, transforming, transmuting —

“Ceramic,” Archmund said, recognizing the distinct dull albedo, like the pottery industry of Granavale County. “Ceramic armor plates.”

Inwardly he was cursing. Ceramic could be very heat resistant — it was the reason NASA used it for plating Space Shuttles, to protect against the immense friction heat upon reentering from outer space.

(Outer space, Starbeast — in another context, in another time, these thoughts would have inspired him. But now, he regretfully was focused on staying alive.)

“Like clay?” Mercy said.

He threw his Topaz into the air, and when it reached the apex of its climb, it released a lightning bolt at the Starbeast. Its tentacles spasmed, but its core remained steady.

Then, ceramic armor plates calcified upon the Starbeast’s tentacles as well. They would hit harder, would resist the lightning, but unless Archmund’s eyes were playing tricks on them they seemed to move slower.

Still far faster than him, though.

“Shit,” Mercy said.

He pulled Archmund out of the way of an erstwhile tentacle. Archmund rubbed his neck. It was starting to hurt from all the whiplash.

Mercy took notice, and gestured at the soldiers. The four soldiers returned to a defensive stance, like a turtle’s shell guarding Mercy and Archmund. They parried the tentacles as they lashed, far more effectively than before.

“Why didn’t we start with that?”

“Because I wanted clear shots at it. Maybe if you tried to burn off its arms…”

Never mind that those clear shots would’ve gotten Archmund killed. But then again, he supposed that if they’d killed the damn thing they wouldn’t have to keep dodging.

“How real is it?” Archmund asked.

“What kind of question is that supposed to be?”

He wasn’t asking if this was real life as opposed to a dream or a simulation, but he wasn’t sure how to word it in a way that didn’t make him sound completely insane. “Does a Monster’s body obey physical laws” seemed like a straightforward question, but it bore millennia of assumptions. On Earth, ancient Greek philosophers like Aristotle understood that there must have been some rules that governed the physical world, but Sir Isaac Newton only formalized the Laws of Motion two millennia later. This world had magic rocks that let ten year olds shoot invisible lasers and lightning bolts, which possibly led to problems in developing an internally-consistent understanding of physics.

“I’m waiting!” Mercy shouted, as the soldiers let out a battlecry as they beat away another barrage from the tentacles. Every other second or so a spare tentacle would burst free from the mass, and the soldiers would reflexively fall upon it.

“Doesthemonster’sbodyobeyphysicallaws,” he spat out hurriedly as the soldiers staggered back.

“Yes! Of course it does!” shouted Mercy, his Topaz levitating just above his shoulder. It gleamed with unearthly magical light. “How else would it move?”

He resisted the urge to retort “by phasing through space in a way that it thought made sense.”

That was just his assumption; he’d sound crazy if he said it.

“What do you want me to say, Granavale? If you set a Monster on fire, it burns. If you cut it, it bleeds. If you break it, it shatters. What more could you want? They’re creatures of instinct and memory. They act like the world they remember.”

That was good enough for him.

All living things needed water to live. Water filled every cell in a body.

A Monster that mimicked the living would mimic its water. If the dead sought to live, they would drink, and store the water.

That water could be boiled. Crudely, by his Infrared Laser.

But what if he drew his power back even further?

Stretched the wavelength even farther than infrared?

What might that do?

In his past life, a ubiquitous invention in kitchens the world over was the microwave oven. This had many knock-on effects on society, like reduced labor in the kitchen, worsened diet from highly processed foods, and the infantilization of generations from the presence of a magic box that could produce hot food at will.

Had he been a misanthrope in his prior life?

More applicable to the current moment, a microwave oven emitted “microwaves” — electromagnetic radiation that vibrated at an even longer wavelength than infrared rays. Infrared light had wavelengths less than the head of a pin; microwaves, despite their name, had wavelengths the size of his fist.

Microwaves were just the right size to vibrate water molecules directly. They dumped energy into water molecules extremely effectively. With enough microwave radiation, water could get so hot it would boil.

And it was lower energy than infrared.

He knew how magic flowed through his Ruby; he knew the snap as the flux was interrupted, the bulbing of his magic into a parcel, and the flow of the energy let loose when he cast his Infrared Lance.

He threw his Ruby into the air and fired off a quick shot. It did nothing, barely warming the Starbeast’s ceramic armor plating.

That wasn’t the point. He focused on how his power flowed through the spinning Ruby, how it flowed into the channels that converted magic to light, how it slowed down from visible light to infrared, and then how it was twisted to fire in a single laser.

He knew what to do to slow it down even further.

And he fired a burst of microwave energy.