Addy brushed the slimy red amber off her husband’s body. Residue flaked in her nails with a sting, but she didn’t care. Grief warred with her anger. Only the happiness of seeing her son again kept it in check.
Eli was back. She had known he was alive and would return, but she couldn’t believe he was here.
Rick wheezed as he coughed. She felt her enchantments of healing and restoration whisper inside of his veins. A scorching fever threatened to overtake him. Each of his muscles twitched with spasms.
Theo slumped in front of them where he cowered behind his mostly shattered barrier. Endless fissures spanned the crumbling structure full of pitted holes. He winced with every stray hit that blasted toward them.
“Help me Theo. Save him!” Addy called as she created a vine to snare and pull him toward them. His shield popped. Idle thoughts distracted her from the impending doom of her family fighting. She thought about how Floramancer’s Synthesis at evo-2 had transformed after she accepted Eli’s trade. Phytomancer’s Regency had integrated with Floramancer’s Synthesis to become Floramancer’s Reign at evo-0.
“I’ll do what I can, Mrs. Newton.” He didn’t meet her eyes as he crawled over to lay his hands on Rick’s shuddering chest.
“Good.” Addy stood. Ice consumed her as she gave in to Winter’s Wrath and let her Body of Frost transform her with a cold snap. Eli teleported around one of the greants with explosions of glowing mist and blasts of vibrant light. It was eerily similar to Herbert’s plasma and glaciers that tore at a greant a handful of feet away.
“I’m sorry,” Theo whispered again and again as he did his best to heal Rick.
You better be. Addy stepped forward with the unspoken words on her lips.
Her family was fighting for their lives in front of her again. Fighting for the town. She glowered at the greant that swung its roots into Eli’s chest like a colossal hammer. He tumbled backward. A radiant cloud of armor broke instead of him.
She let her powers guide her as she used Putramancer’s Blight to shoot out beams of disintegration. Grooves of bark and hard wood rotted before puffing out of existence. Three feet of branches dispersed into dust before it could strike Eli.
Ice crusted over her torn and bloodied sweatshirt and pants as she tapped deeper into Body of Frost. Enchantress’s Palate shifted as she enchanted the contents of her stomach. An intoxicating spice of power sluiced through her frozen veins.
Her powers whispered around her as she flew forward.
Branches thrust toward her son’s chest like spears.
Thorned vines grew out of thin air as she willed them to intercept the volley. Frozen fury thawed into them as she overrode the monster’s control.
Addy’s leap carried her to the peak of the greant’s trunk. Chlorphyl green eyes widened in recognition. Arctic fingers ripped at its bark as she caught herself. Winter blue sunflowers grew frozen as ice and snow rooted into the wood of its trunk. Putramancer’s Blight pulsed into the monster as she enchanted her stat infused flower with ice and death.
It thrashed as it roared in agony.
Needles exploded into her like a hail of bullets. She flipped backward from the volatile force as sheets of ice slushed off her.
“Mom!” Eli caught her with surprising ease despite her bone-crushing velocity. Shifting bands of ruby and emerald light seeped into her with soothing warmth as her wounds healed. Snowflakes vibrated across her skin as a heady strength wired itself through her icy muscles. What are you doing?”
Horror, relief, and more flickered through Eli’s blazing eyes as he stared at her with disbelief. Waves of red sap surged toward them as the greant twisted its roots to dive at them.
They both snapped out their own shields instinctively.
Addy shoved her glacial wall of winter into the sludge as she sidestepped automatically. Six spears of ice studded with thorns and poisoned berries appeared around her before they flashed into the greant’s bark.
Vast sections of bark armor rotted, then vanished as the enchantments in the berries exploded. Disintegration ripped into it.
She risked a glance at Eli, then stopped, stunned.
A cloudy double of him held back the torrent of sap while he teleported above the greant. Prismatic blades of light grew out of his armor as he plummeted into its canopy. Gouts of flame and light turned the greant’s trunk into a mess of woodchips and scorched bark.
Moss and roots squirmed from the devastation as the greant regenerated.
Regrew.
Movement blurred out of the corner of her eye as one of the other three greants ignored their attackers. A trio of ballista bolts cracked into her. Addy found herself on her side with her arm pinned beneath her.
Pain seared her lungs. One bolt lodged in her side trembled with every breath. Another had shattered on her back while the other demolished her right leg. Sheared it right at the knee.
Spots flickered across her vision. New frost crept over the red ruin of her body. Agony shuddered through her.
Motion flashed in front of her as the mulched devastation of their foe regrew. A single-minded army of newly grown greants threw itself at her. She struggled to push herself upright.
Eli lashed out with blasts of vibrant light. He appeared in their midst to cut them down. Ash scattered over the broken earth.
Addy created and hauled herself upright with a walking stick with Floramancer’s Reign. Frost scabbed down the grain of the wood as it transformed. She leaned all her weight against it as she wobbled forward.
She hadn’t let Lana or Lyra fight for her. She wouldn’t allow her son to either.
A prosthetic of gnarled wood and howling, wintry winds braced the twisted stump of her knee. Her non-existent foot shoved off the ravaged ground.
Something inside of her loosened.
Her body fuzzed as wooden plates slid over her icy skin. Winter wailed in her wake as sheets of snow shed off her with her every movement. Winter throbbed through her wooden armor and her walking stick. No, her staff.
Each of the greants rose renewed. Mounds of ash clumped and solidified. Wood chips and sawdust rattled as shoots of green rooted them together. New growth lashed together as the giant greant snapped back to its former size.
Long spindly fingers the size of a boat’s mast snapped shut around Eli. A torrent of clouds puffed through its wooden grip as each finger impaled her son. Rage thudded in the crook of her throat.
Sleet nipped across the greant’s bark. It screeched in pain as its wood darkened. Addy seemed to stretch into snowflakes and screeching winds until she stood on top of the greant’s arm. Ice crusted over his bark where she stood. Addy gripped the pale white wood of her staff as hard as she could. Wooden ice creaked.
She stabbed it into the greant’s wrist with a roar of wind. Frozen gusts flayed into the greant with a brittle snap. Disintegration coursed through its fingers until its severed hand dropped with a crash.
Eli wasn’t there in the wreckage. Fear and anger thawed in her wintry gut. An avalanche of emotion loosed from her as she stretched once again. Her staff quivered from where she had planted her staff in the greant’s eye. Sap splattered up the length of her staff before it froze.
Green needles spat into her Body of Frost where they withered with a cold crunch. Addy yanked the staff out with a twist. Sap and sunlight froze in a geyser as she kicked herself off the greant. Wind howled around her as she pointed the snapped in half end of her staff at its wounded face.
Glacial blue and gray flowers grew from the ruined hollow of its eye. Sheets of ice snapped wood as its roots spread. Her hands trembled as her powers bucked against her will.
Winter gales and fingers of frost warmed into flesh as she dropped out of the air with all her power spent. Rick caught her in a rush of scattered glowing clouds. Healing light flowed into her even as her thoughts slowed. A heaviness tugged at her.
Unconsciousness snared her.
***
Eli carried his mother as he walked over platforms of Aurora Stardust. Nails of exhaustion wedged into his eyes every time he blinked. Electricity tugged at his nerves as he did his best to heal her.
Behind him was a desolate wasteland as each of their battles drifted farther apart.
He had warped with Nimbus Sentinel after the greant grabbed him, but Mom had killed it almost instantly. She became a blizzard personified as frozen plants burrowed into the greant and encased it in toxic ice.
It felt strange, wrong, to hold Mom in his arms so easily.
All his life she had been a looming presence of authority and support until distance and fear tarnished his relationship with her. With the rest of his family.
Powers had only exaggerated all of that.
He’d seen his father shot and wounded because of Sandra. Fought alongside his mother to protect the town from spawn. Now he carried her as easily as his parents must have held him when he was a toddler.
“Eli! Oh my god, I can’t believe you’re back with Roman!” Theo called out as he dropped his eroded barrier. Dad was sprawled out beside Theo whose hand rested on Dad’s forehead. Flows of crusted flesh scabbed with amber and blood sloughed off Dad. “Is that your mom? Is she okay?”
“I think so.” Eli crouched down to set her down next to Dad. “I think she’s just exhausted.”
Theo nodded while he tried to equip Astral Starspace again. He’d prefer to tuck his parents away into his sanctum.
It hadn’t even been an hour yet.
“Where were you guys? Were you really in the same dimension that Les and Herbert came from?” Theo asked as he moved his hand closer to Mom. To heal her? Hurt her? Or change her into another one of his monstrosities?
“Leave her be.” Eli stood as he turned toward the other three greants to get his bearings.
Romulus’s armor brightened as lines of power glowed through veins of light into his massive bow. Its string sang constantly as he nocked, drew, and loosed a storm of arrows. Arrow after arrow pierced the greant with a shattering impact.
Meanwhile, Roman hacked at the spawn with a rabid fury. He cleaved with hidden knives and swords. Fired bullets. Unleashed bolts of electricity that arced from bullet to arrow shrapnel until rivulets of molten metal dripped like candle wax.
Reality turned elastic as the trio fought.
Further ahead, Herbert fought alone.
Herbert never stopped moving. Blows from an axe shifted to a block with a shield. A swing with a hammer or a stab with a lance. Icicles tapered to wicked points pelted into his opponent greant. Every strike flashed with burning cuts or freezing plasma.
Roots and branches whipped and lashed at Herbert, breaking off chips of glacial armor. Each fragment grew into a new icicle he launched with a gust of wind.
He fought like a man possessed. Every devastating hit the greant landed did little to deter him even as it dimpled the battlefield with craters.
Maeve fought even further back.
She was a monochromatic blur as she flickered in and out of planar space. Lightning spears and thunderous crystals battered her own combatant, leaving scars that healed over instantly. He couldn’t even see what she did, only flashes and explosions left in her wake.
A tornado of verdant needles fluttered around her. Each needle tore out caves and billowing clouds of dust and dirt whenever it missed. Torrential red sap rained from the greant turning whatever it touched into steaming vapor.
That’s the real one. Vigilant Revelation whispered to him as it parsed their battle. Eli wondered if she used her Class Power yet or if she already was. He wanted to help, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to keep up. She’d have to protect him.
Nimbus Sentinel bubbled around him like a glitchy cloud. His vision doubled as he overextended his recently created power. This was too much. Dimensional travel had wiped him out, and it really hadn’t been that long since he cleared the Devil’s Forge dungeon.
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Now he was fighting again.
Eli could barely stand up straight even with Stellar Body and Aurora Stardust filling him with constant energy and power. Could barely think despite Vigilant Revelation splitting to direct and guide his thoughts and actions.
He had to help, but how?
All four greants were actually one. If he hopped in to help Herbert or Romulus and Roman, he risked distracting them and upsetting their flow. But why was the greant even bothering with this?
Couldn’t it stay as one singular entity and stomp them?
He watched as Herbert lopped through several of its branches with one swing. Tongues of plasma seared into the wood with a flash of fire. Seared blackened wood crackled with new growth.
In another battle, a branch cracked into Maeve’s chest with a swell of speed and strength. Thunderclouds boomed around her as she pivoted from the blow to punch the greant.
Herbert twisted his axe with a brutal backhand straight into its trunk. Instead of tearing through the greant like paper, it caught it in its bark. Branches rose like hoisted clubs.
Roman swung his fist with a flare of propulsive jets. Bark caved in the left side of its trunk with a shower of sap.
The greant struck Herbert hard enough his armor snapped from his raised arms down to his calves with a mist of shattered ice. Dirt buried him up to his ankles.
Another arrow sank into Romulus and Roman’s greant while Maeve shoved her fist into hers up to her elbow.
Eli’s eyes widened.
Maybe this greant could beat them all without being split up, but it’d be large. Cumbersome. It’d also likely take heavy damage from each of them. So it’s split itself up. Divided them into a battle of attrition so it could redirect its strength and weaknesses.
His stellar fingers dug into his palm. A nugget of a plan slowly revealed itself to him.
Without even looking at his status, he knew that he had already maxed out Nimbus Sentinel in the course of the battle. Each of its components was something he was intimately familiar with.
Light, space, and clouds had already been his allies and tools for a bit over a week to months now. Only the double of himself was truly new, even if it was limited.
He wouldn’t let himself be outdone by a tree.
After all, space was relative, so why couldn’t he be in four different places at once?
Eli felt at the void inside of Celestial Embodiment. It was a tiny personal galaxy with a tired sun at the center. Two small stars churned with nothing but the empty vacuum of space between them. Dust and stellar debris floated in nebulous swirls of cosmic paint.
They’d clogged up his galaxy ever since he mutilated his constellations of stars to power his nova form in the Devil’s Forge dungeon.
His base power was Celestial Embodiment, not Stellar Embodiment. He was this entire personal galaxy, even if it was little more than a pocket dimension bound to him like his sanctum. All this time, he’d used it with little control.
It was all or nothing.
He focused on the red sun at the center of his galaxy of self, and he embodied it.
Vast potential narrowed down as he felt tighter limits of his power sharpen. Stellar light tinted red through his skin. His peak for density and gravity control shifted. Increased.
Any shots he fired would consume his sun for power.
But he didn’t need to diminish any of his stars.
Eli tugged on the nebulas surrounding the graveyard of his burnt out stars. Gravity and density dropped to near nothing, but he felt how Stellar Body’s output skyrocketed. Wisps of vapor and stardust drifted from his skin while he smiled.
Aurora Stardust revved as dregs of exhaustion gradually cleared from his body. Cosmic pinks and blue deepened to a rich crimson cast by violet as the two powers synchronized.
Then he siphoned Stellar Body into Nimbus Sentinel as he willed his duplicate to appear in triplicate. Hooks tore at him as his power struggled to create three of him in a limited source out of radiant clouds.
Until he tied it to the loop of Aurora Stardust and Stellar Body.
He closed his eyes while he held the fragile evo-0 power together under the staggering might of his superior powers.
***
It was time to stop holding back. He nestled deeper into Unvanquished Mind.
Countless lacerations and fractures that blazed for his attention faded. Emotions and bodily concerns froze.
Pain was a distant, detached thing now.
Herbert let Body of Water seethe into an explosion of steam. All his frozen armor and weapons, his personal tempest all combusted. Steam drenched the towering greant in front of him until moisture beaded over every inch of exposed bark and wood.
Branches clawed through his steam ineffectively. Needles sagged under the onslaught of his vapor. Roots guzzled what it could collect.
He wasn’t just water or ice.
Herbert was the unflinching stillness of winter. The storms and blizzards laden with snow and cold winds. His weapons and armor were arctic.
He spread his vaporous body into every droplet of water he could access.
And he marshaled all his powers into one act.
Freeze.
Winter descended in a furious tempest.
Everything turned white as snow and ice piled up in a tall mound. Inert plasma suffused the trapped greant before he turned it subzero.
Herbert’s reach and power rose precipitously. He felt the greant quiver in his glacial grasp. A branch twitched, then snapped in its feeble attempt to free itself.
Normally, he used Arctic Armory to create weapons like swords or axes to wield, or to craft suits of armor to protect himself with. Now he used it to wield his own personal winter.
Snow knifed around them as the trembling mound of arctic snow levitated. A near ton of ice and snow compressed.
Needles and wooden spears slipped harmlessly through his storm.
Herbert hefted the greant contained in his iceberg as high as he could. Ice and snow strained with all his bodily might. Polar Revenant shifted as he nestled deeper into Unvanquished Mind.
Yes. This was the answer.
Ice crashed with a detonation of wood and snow.
Frozen dirt, snow, and greant debris plumed in a billowing cloud.
Someone screamed, but he dismissed it as unimportant. He would not be so easily deterred this close to completing his task.
Herbert hurled the blizzard and its contents into the ground again. He felt the sheer weight of his power crater the earth. After all, anything frozen in the wake of his winter was his to wield.
A lost fragment ached as he pushed himself. Still.
Ice and winter was his to command.
Fragments of wood skittered through packed snow as sprigs of green bloomed veins. Tendrils knotted themselves together rapidly as a tree grew.
He squeezed it in his frozen body as he lifted all the ice and snow. It was so obvious.
Adelaide understood, but he had taken so long to realize himself. Winter was the natural threat and bane to these greants.
Herbert rammed it all down. Crushed any wood and greenery he sensed. Ground it. Shredded it with knives of snow and ice.
Unvanquished Mind slipped with his duty finished.
He grew out of ice and snow completely numb as he stared out at the sprawling avalanche. A headache pounded at his temples. Scraped down the vertebrae of his spine.
Off to his left in the distance was a familiar horizon of black and white. A smudged mountain swayed. Black lightning strobed blindingly fast. White pillars of crystal rose in its wake before shattering.
Maeve was here and fully activated her Class Power.
Herbert blinked in disbelief. He had only accepted the upgrade for Unvanquished Mind this morning. It had been a relatively normal day until the spawn attacked in droves.
Now his sister battled a mountain?
He shook his head as more of the numb fog lifted. That had to be one of the greant clones. Why was it so large?
Herbert turned.
To his right was the nearly still armored figures of Les and Roman. Pools of red sap clung to them as it hardened into amber. A greant towered over them twice as large. Branches tipped with needles already wet with blood scythed downward.
Herbert stumbled as he tried to do something before he realized he was already there. Wasn’t he?
Four humanoid ionized clouds of prismatic plasma billowed around the greant. Beams of plasma drilled and lanced into and through bark armor with rattling booms. Each cloud vanished then reappeared again and again.
Fists of vapor pummeled, grabbed, and tore at the greant.
Icicles of alarm spiked through the daze of his thoughts.
That wasn’t him.
It was Eli.
***
Vigilant Revelation dialed his thoughts up. Faster.
Herbert fucked up his plan, but he could still do this.
Stellar Body flexed as he shoved regular space aside to teleport out of the way of a volley of verdant needles. Air screamed in their wake and the earth rumbled as each needle kicked up a fountain of snow.
Eli dodged four times.
Nimbus One dropped and twisted out of the air to avoid an overhead swing of verdant spiked branches. Nimbus Two sank his fist into the aurora scarred trunk before shoving out with gravity and nimbus to shoot back out of the way. Nimbus Three leaped off the frozen ground to avoid the writhing mass of roots to streak toward the crown of needles on its head.
Vigilant Revelation helped him line up his nimbuses right in front of its eyes. Predictive shadows of the greant’s future motion flickered in his vision as the greant stooped to bash its branches into Roman and Romulus.
Eli teleported in front of its face. Nimbus Sentinel warped space as he yanked each of his nimbus reflections back into himself. Radiant clouds vibrated all around him as he lifted his nebulous hands and punched.
Aurora Stardust sparked through his nebula into his nimbus. Stellar Body compressed as he gathered, charged, then fired.
A spike of aurora railed straight between its eyes.
Armored ridges of bark across its face buckled. Wood powdered into sawdust as the shockwave shuddered outward. Chips of wood scattered as sap flooded in the widening gap.
Radiance widened as the aurora expanded in a flash.
Eli felt the sap scab over the gaping cavity as it beaded like blood. Felt the analogue sinew, bone, and muscle of the wood flare with agony as it squeezed out every iota of life it could. Seeds threatened to spread before another power shoved Eli out.
Ozone tickled his sinuses as he let the beam of aurora burn.
Flames split the greant’s bark and seared trails across its trunk. Devoured its branches in an all consuming inferno. Sap splattered with boiling pops.
Eli grinned as he jerked his beam downward to carve the greant in half with stellar aurora fire. Vigilant Revelation and Nimbus Sentinel sh—
Roots speared out of the permafrost crusted ground to wrap around his leg from his foot to his knee. Wind whistled in his ears. Eli whipped into a snowbank with a bounce as his head crashed into the frozen ground underneath. Starlight flashed across his eyes as he blinked through the nebulous fog drifting off his skin.
Snow and ice cut into his palms as he thrashed to free himself. Pressure grated along his leg as the root constricted. Nimbus Sentinel streamed through the gaps of the wooden knots, bracing his leg.
Eli tried to teleport away with a gust as the snowbank collapsed around him. He couldn’t escape. The root anchored him even as he felt it leech something from him.
Stellar blood misted from the stinging cuts along his hands and face from the snow. It tugged him out of the snowbank as sutures of his luminescence sewed the greant’s wound together.
Roots squeezed. Nimbus Sentinel popped around his leg with a spike of agony. His shin and knee crunched.
His trail of radiance darkened into mortal crimson blood.
Eli blinked through scarlet tears as Aurora Stardust flickered around him. Bones shifted back together in fits and starts before the power washed into the greant. Aurora Stardust compressed into a pale knife poised over the root.
He willed it down.
Vibrations and sparks grated with barely more than a scratch.
Desperation quickened his heartbeat as the root lifted him into the air. Burnt scars lightened across its trunk. Eyes grew out of bark as a twisted gash cracked open for a mouth.
Before it could speak, Eli jerked the aurora knife through the thigh of his trapped leg. He spun as he dropped into the snow. Notifications flickered across his eyes as Vigilant Revelation urged him to slot it now that it was maxed out or Nimbus Sentinel.
He declined.
Eli was done letting fear be his motivation for advancing his powers or slotting a stat.
Body of Light had been chosen so he could counter Dave and maybe fix his arm. Vigilant Revelation wasn’t going into his Mind stat until it was merged with Nimbus Sentinel and Aurora Stardust.
Stellar vapor gushed around him as gravity loosened its hold on him until he jerked to a stop. Blood dripped from his hands and splattered out of his dismembered leg. Cold carved up his veins as he wobbled. Blood loss and exhaustion threatened to shut his eyes.
He floated in the center of his nebula as something clicked together. Aurora Stardust crackled around him as he opened himself up to it fully.
Every step of the way, his lumencloud had always been a radiant cloud or a nimbus. He thought he had lost it along with the joy of Hydrokinesis when he had corrupted it into Aurora Transfiguration. But wasn’t a nebula just an interstellar cloud lit by the stars radiance?
He hadn’t corrupted Lumencloud Transfiguration so much as he had fully realized its potential. Clouds of stardust bubbled around him with an audible hiss.
Roots and branches lurched toward him.
Eli twisted and warped space with Stellar Body, Aurora Stardust, and Nimbus Sentinel. A spurt of blood dribbled out of his nose.
He drifted backward as stardust swirled under him.
Nostalgia guided him as he cycled torrents of stardust into a condensed sphere in his palm. Light gathered with a rumble of thunder. Radiance screeched from the charging orb of incandescence as he aimed it at the greant.
Ionized stardust burst as he released it with a stellar flare. It parted through the greant’s trunk with a blinding corona of fire. Spokes of prismatic aurora churned in charring rays. Bands of radiant maroon, incandescent emerald, and deep cerulean ignited the greant’s body.
Arctic ice all around the greant melted from the blaze.
Plumes of ash and steam twisted in a pillar as the greant’s trunk crumpled in on itself as it stumbled back. Embers twinkled as cinders rained off it. On the black and white horizon where Maeve fought, he saw a tremendous flash of light. He gripped the biological structures he sensed with Aurora Stardust and lashed them with auroras.
He blasted out a pulse of stardust that swept over the frozen wasteland of hills and ruined fields surrounding the highway back toward Farbrook.
Impressions of bodies flickered.
Roman and Romulus who were propped up on their armored elbows while they watched Eli. Herbert sat in between them with a strange glowing scalpel in his hand that he used to trace over wounds. Cuts and burns, bruises and contusions, and all other surface level injuries smoothed out as the light faded from the knife.
Lana and Lyra who held the first line of defense. Besieged by metallic insects, the last few remaining trolls, and a forest of greants.
Stardust rolled out further as it thinned.
He felt the reduced numbers of the town hemmed in a desperate fight with fodder spawn. Eli’s stardust dampened, then extinguished most of the town’s people’s powers, including the weak spawn.
Kady fought beside her mom.
Tom held cover behind a barricade with others as his flames guttered out. He lifted his rifle to fire out into the crowd of spawn.
Space and clouds twisted, and he sensed inside some of the buildings.
Ava stood guard in the basement where all the children and their closest guardians waited. Cyrus slept in the corner. Eli supposed none of the children would be allowed to fight whether or not they had Initialized.
Ranks of elderly men and women protected town hall with their higher evolved powers from the Initialization. Their powers felt different. Like tools to be used, not extensions of who they were. Stronger than the rest of the town’s powers, but still weak.
Unfitting.
Deep in the sewers a man fought with a sword sheathed in red light. He hacked and slashed his way through any spawn that came close to him. Motes of static rushed into him after every kill.
Resistance drew taut as he hit the limits of his range. Stellar Body helped expand and eliminate vast amounts of empty space where nothing was. Clouds swept further.
Eli gritted his teeth.
Tension thrummed his stardust as friction grated. Sparks of electricity crackled mundane at first before they charged into starlightning along the edges of his control. He redirected it harmlessly into the sky the best he could.
People faded from his awareness as he focused on the spawn. Greants stalked through streets. Metallic ants, beetles, and wasps or hornets buzzed and droned through sewers and over homes and businesses. Only trolls he sensed were the ones Lana and Lyra battled.
He tugged, then pulled with Aurora Stardust.
Spawn with evo-0 powers crumpled instantly. Dead. Smaller greants and insects burst into ash or puddles of molten metal.
Energy flooded into him as stardust around Eli deepened Turned more substantial with vibrant hues of color. Clouds boiled out of his dismembered leg.
Those with greater powers thrashed. Pressure clamped on them. Crushed them flat into the ground. Their powers resisted his own until he strobed aurora flares into each one. Spawn lit like torches while cages of stardust kept them from fleeing.
Eli shattered their resistance like eggshells. Wounds that had gushed blood sealed shut. He flexed his toes and rolled his ankle, ensuring it worked fine.
It was perfect.
Static buzzed in his ears as a migraine drilled into his head. All his powers and nerves ached. They felt like they were a moment away from catastrophe. He wanted to stop, but he had one more thing to do.
Before he dispersed Aurora Stardust, he switched his focus from the spawn to the people. Fatigue. Countless injured. Many had life threatening or crippling wounds. He healed what he could.
Aurora Stardust maintained the wells of power that it had through each of its iterations of Lumencloud and back to its origin of Dynamic Vitality.
Clouds of stardust faded from the town like fog in daybreak. He coasted toward the downed trio.
“What the fuck man?” Roman asked open mouthed.
“I took care of it.” Eli smirked with a shrug as he landed on his previously amputated foot. He let go of each of his powers.
Nausea scrambled his thoughts. Vomit climbed up his throat hammering into his mouth. He stumbled as the world stuttered on its axis.
Oh.
Eli passed out flat on his face.