Fossor was in front of me. Just like that, he moved so fast, he was suddenly right there. I had just enough time for the flash of a thought about how many of his army here in the quarry he’d sacrificed for that speed before his hand smacked my staff away, sending it clattering along the ground before the same hand closed around my throat. It was an iron grip, ripping me off my feet and hoisting me in the air as I felt my windpipe constricting. Even with all the enhancements to my overall toughness, he was crushing my throat. Not playing, not taunting, he intended to snap my neck, crush it in his grip just like that.

In the same moment, his other hand was lashing out, fist slamming into the side of my mother’s face to send her flying away from me. He knew what he was doing. He would kill me now, then use my mother’s resulting horror and grief against her, blinding her with emotion in order to end her too. I was the weak link in this whole thing. He could kill me easily, then move on to her.

Well fuck that. Even as my throat started to collapse in on itself under the pressure of the man’s grip, I shifted my face and hair. Within a second, my head didn’t look like me anymore. I didn’t look like anyone I’d ever met before. I looked like someone Rahanvael had painstakingly described to me, helping me work out every detail of her face and hair over the past few weeks.

I looked like their mother, like Fossor’s mother, staring right back at him. It wouldn’t really fool the man, of course. That wasn’t the point. The point was to startle him briefly, and it accomplished that. For just a second, I saw the monster’s eyes widen slightly, saw his mouth part in the slightest gasp. More importantly, I felt his grip on my throat slacken just the tiniest bit.

Instantly, I boosted myself, feeling Tabbris adding whatever she could to the boost as well as my foot lashed out to slam into the man’s stomach. It was a bit like hitting a stone wall as a normal person. But in this case, the stone gave a little bit. Fossor took a single step back before catching himself, while his grip on my throat faded entirely. I dropped, staff summoned right back to my hand before I triggered the smallest kinetic boost from the end of it to send myself a couple feet sideways, out of range from Fossor’s flailing grasp.

My face was back to normal then as the man turned ever so slightly, reflexively coming after my ‘retreating’ form. Anger and hatred marred his features as he lashed out, a basketball-sized orb of green-blue fire erupting from his hand before it came flying at me. This was no ordinary fire, not something my own energy absorption could deal with. The flaming orb was filled with his Necromantic power.

At the same time, even as that magical death fire came flying at me, I reared back to hurl my staff at him, bladed end first. Just before it left my hand, I threw myself into the small wood part in the middle of my staff, vanishing right before his fireball would’ve hit me as the staff flew just to the side of it.

Fossor was ready for the staff coming at him, but before we got that far, I used my temporary pause power to freeze it in mid-air with me still inside. Fossor’s hand lashed out to grab where he thought the staff was going to be, only for it not to be there.

Only then did the man realize his mistake. He’d been focused on me. I had made him see his mother’s face. I’d put myself a bit to the side, making him turn my way. I threw the staff at him, making him brace to grab it.

All while my mother recovered herself. She was back on her feet, coming at the Necromancer from behind with one of her conjured energy blades while he was distracted.

He realized this at the last second, of course, pivoting back that way just in time to snap his hand up. A glowing fog-like substance surrounded that hand, apparently protecting it as he grabbed the incoming energy blade. Yet, I could see blood coming from his hand as well. It didn’t protect him perfectly.

Meanwhile, the instant he pivoted that way, I cut the five-second pause early. My staff resumed its flight at the man, just before I popped out of it. Landing in a sprint, I caught my staff, triggering another boost from it to drive the blade at the back of his head.

The blade hit the back of his head and cut straight into him, through his skull and brain. I felt the rush of having actually hit him, just before my staff was shoved out of his head as he passed the damage off to any of his remaining undead creatures still fighting above us.

Before I could recover from being off-balance when my staff was shoved out of his head, the man’s foot collided with my side. The air rushed out of me. But Mom was there, catching my arm as I stumbled and flinging me up and around in a kick of my own that slammed into the side of Fossor’s face. Between my strength and Mom’s as she swung me into him, the bastard’s nose was shattered, blood spraying off to the side.

Mom released me, letting me drop back to my feet as we took up positions together in front of him. His head was fine, as if I hadn’t just recently stabbed all the way through it. Yet, the broken nose and the cut on his hand, minor as it was, remained.

He couldn’t pass off everything we were doing, I realized. Finally, finally, after everything we’d done throughout this entire long battle, he was starting to run low on things he could pass damage off to. I had destroyed his connection to his own world, reducing him to what he had here on Earth. All those people, all our friends and allies (and some who weren’t either) were above, tearing through those same forces with a speed that Fossor himself couldn’t match with reinforcements. This was it. This was all he had. He’d been reduced to only protecting himself from lethal damage. The broken nose, the cut on his hand, he had to live with that. We had hurt him. We were able to hurt him.

But it was even worse than that, for him. Belatedly, I realized why he wasn’t summoning more ghosts or zombies to fight us. Because he couldn’t afford to. The people above us had crested that metaphorical hill in the fight, the point where he needed all of his forces to be there. If he summoned more creatures here to attack us, he’d be taking them away from the fight above. And apparently, that fight had reached the point where taking away the amount it would require to deal with Mom and me would make the rest of his forces collapse entirely.

This was the moment. This was our chance. If Fossor didn’t kill us right now so he could escape, he’d run out of creatures entirely. And if that happened, if we could keep him here long enough for the others to kill the last of his undead army… then we could kill him.

Mom clearly realized the same thing. The two of us exchanged glances while Fossor glared at us. Our eyes met, and I felt… tranquil. This was right. This was exactly where I was supposed to be. I was with my mother. After everything that happened, all that this monster had put us through, we were facing him together. Nothing else was in our way. All of his tricks, all his power, all of his legions, and in the end, it came down to this. Mom and me, fighting him head-on. The two of us together, finishing this once and for all.

Simultaneously, my mother and I both nodded. Then our focus turned back to Fossor himself, even as the man summoned a new pair of fireballs. But these were much larger, each almost the size of my entire body. He may have been basically running on what was fumes for someone of his power. But even fumes in his case was enough to do a hell of a lot of damage.

One of those fireballs came flying our way, as Mom caught my arm and teleported us around behind Fossor. But he’d anticipated that and sent the other ball that way. It was about to hit us, before I used the power that allowed me to move objects around on my body to summon a small coin to my hand, and chucked it at the incoming flaming orb. Just before the tiny coin would’ve been entirely swallowed up by the flames, I focused on making it bigger. In an instant, the small bit of metal suddenly grew up to the size of a manhole cover. It took the brunt of the fireball, sending the blue-green flames to either side of where Mom and I stood, the terrible, magical heat scorching our skin and hair a bit.

Even before the flames had faded, I used a burst from my staff to launch myself into a kick at Fossor. Despite the cover of the fire, he still caught my ankle and thigh in an iron grip, spinning to hurl me as hard as he could into the wall of the pit. Through the rush of colliding violently with the dirt and stone, I half-sensed and half-saw my mother shove her energy blade through his stomach. Again, he passed off the damage, making the weapon slide out of him as what should have been a mortal wound healed instantly. At the same time, the man put his fist into my mother’s face with so much force, it would’ve shattered solid concrete.

That blow was enough to make Mom’s head snap back, and Fossor tried to follow up with another shot at her briefly exposed throat. But I had collected myself by then and focused on the man’s shirt. Using the ape-croc’s power, I forced the shirt to suddenly become much harder to move, requiring more force than the man was accustomed to. I’d been told (and found out through subsequent testing) that affecting things people were actively wearing wasn’t exactly easy, because of how connected the clothes were to living things (which I couldn’t affect at all with this power). Clothes that were actively being worn required a lot more focus than those that weren’t, and I wasn’t that great at affecting them on the fly.

In this case, however, I had a lot of motivation. In mid-swing, Fossor’s hand suddenly slowed as it became much harder to move his shirt sleeve. It didn’t stop entirely, but it did suddenly lose a lot of speed and power. Enough that Mom was able to recover, catching the incoming punch with one hand before delivering one of her own into his face that staggered him. Then she hit him again, even harder. Unfortunately, he jerked aside from the third punch and back-handed her so hard I heard the crack from where I was still scrambling back to my feet. She hit the ground, bleeding from the side of her head but still conscious.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

Fossor’s foot rose so he could stomp down on my mother. But I was there first, screaming as I lashed out with the blade of my staff to cut through his throat. Again, the killing blow was reduced to nothing. But it forced the Necromancer to stumble backward, cursing me in some other language. Probably his own.

He swung at me, a blade made of what looked like sharpened bone appearing in his hand. My staff spun around, catching and smacking the weapon to the side with the main body while the bladed end simultaneously cut across Fossor’s cheek in the same motion. Not a lethal blow. He didn’t bother to heal it. He couldn’t bother to heal it.

The fist that wasn’t holding that bone-blade came at me while my staff was busy deflecting that weapon. In mid-punch, a second blade, this one somehow attached to his wrist, snapped into place. I only saw it from the corner of my eye at the last second. If my reactions were any slower, the blade would have punched straight into my stomach. As it was, I barely managed to twist just enough that it cut partway through my side. It hurt like hell, and it was all I could do to drop into a roll carrying me under Fossor’s quick follow-up slash with his actual sword. Pain. Fuck, fuck, pain.

Fuck pain. Fuck everything that could distract me. Fuck everything aside from killing this piece of shit!

He was right behind me as I rolled to my knees, his bone-sword coming down toward my head. But I ignored the pain in my bleeding side, snapping the staff up to catch the incoming blade. At the same time, I sent a cloud of sand out and into his face with a click of the button. Sand that was heated to the point that his eyes immediately began to blister and pop, turning red as he staggered backward and actually screamed. It was just for a moment before he passed that damage off too, but the scream, brief as it was, was everything I needed right then. It was enough to make me shove my own pain of that already-healing cut off into its own little compartment, pushing myself up and spinning to face Fossor just as he stopped his own stumbling. His eyes were still bright red, clearly injured from the burning sand, but he’d summoned blood to catch the sand, weighing it down and throwing it to the side.

“I… am going to enjoy making your mother see your body torn to pieces,” he snapped at me. In one motion, he brought up the hand that wasn’t holding his sword. That bone-blade attached to his wrist suddenly became a projectile, shooting right at me. An instant later, it split apart into a dozen small, equally deadly pieces, all spread out so that some would hit me no matter where I moved. Alone, there was no way I could dodge, block, catch, or otherwise stop myself from being hit by at least some of them. Not in the time I had.

But once again, I wasn’t alone. The incoming shards of bone suddenly stopped in midair, frozen by my mother, whose hand was outstretched. A second later, they flew up into the ceiling.

Fossor, in turn, bellowed out his rage, stabbing his sword into the ground. As he did so, duplicate bone blades rose like spears throughout the pit, coming from the floor and walls. One stabbed partway through my foot while another clipped my shoulder. But those weren’t important. The one that was coming out of the wall nearby, directly for my back was important. And that was the one I stopped, spinning that way to lash out. My arm collided with the incoming bone spear with enough force to break the thing off and send it flying away right before it would have stabbed into my chest. Meanwhile, to one side, my mother suddenly appeared and shattered three more that were coming from that direction.

Fossor was there, stabbing his sword where she should have been in that instant. But Mom had already vanished, teleporting behind him. Her energy blade was shoved through his back and out the front of his chest. It healed, pushing the blade aside before he spun, catching my mother in a devastatingly powerful backhand once more that staggered her.

He tried to follow up, but I pushed off the wall, driving my own blade toward the back of his neck. He felt it coming, twisting to catch my weapon. Except that had been a feint. Even before the man had started to turn, I had already created a small portal in front of the blade. The other end came out right near his leg so that the blade of my staff cut into his calf.

Not a lethal blow. But damaging. Hard for him to justify healing, yet it would slow him down. He could heal it and waste what precious resources he still had, or deal with the pain.

Yeah, he wasn’t happy, to say the least. His hand caught the middle of my staff, nearly jerking it out of my grip as he yanked me closer and off balance to stab me with his sword. But Mom had recovered from that blow, her own blade snapping up with a hum of power to cut into his shoulder, giving me time to summon another silver knife back to my hand from its storage place before throwing it as hard as I could into his foot, the opposite one from the leg I’d damaged. It was, again, not that bad of an injury. Yet one that would slow him down. Pain. Bit by bit, we were wearing at him, even as the people above were wearing through his already much-diminished army.

Still, he kept his grip on my staff enough to yank me around, trying to make me collide with Mom. But she vanished, teleporting just a foot to the side, into the space I’d already been flung through. The instant she reappeared, Mom lashed out with another punch that collided with Fossor’s jaw. She hit him so hard that time, it left his chin looking strangely off-center and broke several teeth.

It was enough to make him let me go, and even as I stumbled, I forced myself to spin back that way with a violent slash of my staff that put the blade through the side of his throat. Again, an injury that he healed off like it was nothing.

No.

Wait.

Not like it was nothing. The injury healed somewhat. It stopped gushing blood, but the cut was still partially there. I could see it there, the mark where my blade cut through him. He made it better, but not perfect.

Even as I noticed that, Mom’s fist collided with his face again. Then again. Then again. She punched him so hard, his face looked disfigured. Each blow hard enough to pulverize stone. She broke through his skin, broke the bones in his head with each blow. Each punch drove him backward, making him stumble. She drove him right to the wall. She brought her energy blade up with her other hand, shoving it right toward his chest.

And then he twisted just enough that the blade barely missed anything vital, stabbing through his shoulder as the man bellowed in pain and anger. His hand caught her extended wrist, and he broke her arm with a hard snap that made my mother release her grip on the weapon.

I lunged, but he was already spinning back to me, already twisting Mom around and getting his arm around her throat. His other hand smacked something, some kind of enchanted stone or something, against her arm. It left behind some kind of glowing black and red rune.

“Do it!” he bellowed at me, face almost unrecognizable through the blood and bruises. Not to mention the broken jaw, broken nose, burned eye sockets, and more. Between Mom and me, we had literally rearranged his face for him. “Move! Move again, and she dies, she dies! Believe me, little girl, she won’t teleport away. No more teleporting for awhile, not with that little spell.”

The thing he’d hit her with, that glowing red and black rune on Mom’s shoulder. It was stopping her from teleporting, trapping her right there with him.

“You think I don’t have any more allies?” the monster was ranting at me. “What if I turn your mother into one, you insignificant child?! What if I turn her into a true ally? It wouldn’t be hard.” He was panting, snarling his words while keeping Mom held tight, his arm twisting her neck almost to the snapping point.

“Will you consider it a win?” he snarled at me, almost animalistically. “Will you cheer my death if it costs your mother her life? Do you have what it takes to make that sacrifice, hmmm? You can kill me, little girl. You can do what no one else could ever manage. You could end this now, once and for all. All you have to do is let your mother die. Can you do that? Can you sacrifice your dear, precious mother just to finish me? Think of everyone I’ve killed. Think of everyone else I will kill if you don’t end this now. Do it. Kill me. Kill your mother. Make that sacrifice.”

For a moment, I stood there, frozen. Terror, the certainty that I was about to lose my mom after just getting her back, left me half-blinded by tears. Fossor. I couldn’t let him get away. We had him. Millennia of his atrocities, billions of people dead because of him. I couldn’t let that go. I couldn’t–I wouldn’t be able to live with myself.

But my mom. My mother. It wasn’t fair.

It just wasn’t fair. She deserved to live. After everything she’d been through, after everything our entire family had been through…

Everything our family had been through…

“You still don’t get it,” I finally spoke, my own voice shaking so much it was almost impossible to understand. “Chambers… Atherbys… Heretics… we all have something in common.” As I spoke, my eyes met my mother’s. She couldn’t nod, not in that position. But I saw the understanding in her eyes. She knew. She was ready.

“What?” Fossor demanded, not quite there yet.

“We can survive a hell of a lot,” I said flatly, before dropping to the floor. In mid-motion, I released my staff. A thought left it frozen for a moment. It hovered there at an upward diagonal angle while I hurled myself forward, straight at them.

Then Fossor understood. The man started to react, but Mom’s own hands snapped up, grabbing hold of his arms to keep him there with her, and stop him from breaking her neck.

That might not have been enough, weakened as she was against the strength that Fossor had given himself. But my lunge carried me close enough for my grasping fingers to find her arm, and the moment I did, I was inside. I was possessing my mother.

Instantly, I boosted her with everything I had, throwing every last bit of strength I could manage into the boost. Tabbris was doing the same, both of us shoving everything we had into boosting my mother.

Even that might not have been enough. But we had one more edge, one more thing to tip the scales. Because Rahanvael was there too. She appeared behind Fossor, turning solid just long enough to catch hold of her brother’s arms from behind. Between Tabbris and me boosting Mom, and Rahanvael holding the bastard from behind, he was trapped. We stopped him from escaping.

And then? Then my mother used all that strength, hers and ours, to lunge forward, dragging Fossor with her. She hurled herself and her tormenter toward my still-frozen staff, impaling herself through the stomach on it. I felt the shock of pain as the staff went through her body. But the angle it was at meant that while the staff went through Mom’s stomach and mid-back, it went through Fossor’s chest, and out his upper back.

In the next heart-beat, I stopped possessing my mother, shoving myself out of her before pivoting that way, spinning on my heel. Every nanosecond was an eternity, my vision of the world slowed to a crawl.

The man was limp. His arms fell to his sides as Mom and Rahanvael’s grips released him. The blade of the staff hadn’t just cut through his back, it had severed his spinal cord. Mom had perfectly angled her lunge to literally paralyze the man who had been holding her from behind.

My pivot carried me the rest of the way around to face them as the staff disappeared from where it was, reappearing back in my hand. Its absence left Fossor and my mother to fall to the ground, the latter managing to weakly push herself out from under him.

“Can’t… ca-ca… can’t… die…” Blood poured from Fossor’s mouth with each choked word as he lay face-down in the dirt, head turned to the side. He was completely helpless. His body was paralyzed from the neck down. He’d run out of minions to sacrifice. He’d run out of tricks. He’d run out of everything. “Ca… can’t…”

“Yes,” I informed him while driving the blade of my staff down into the back of that fucker’s head, “you can.”

And with that, I welcomed a rush of pleasure that eclipsed my entire reality.