Moonlight strobed above in a piercing column reaching for the heavens. Whirling crimson strands extended in a horizontal stream between Roman and Ethel, held in place by Eli’s unrelenting grasp on gravity. Vibrations heaved the earth clamped around his broken ankles.

Ethel turned her head away from Roman, pierced by three… four… seven stone spikes, to glare at Eli. Her eyes blazed with hate. One wrinkled hand rose to point her crooked fingers at him.

“Do not interfere, interloper.”

“You hurt my friend.” Eli tightened his grip on gravity and pulled, keeping Roman’s blood away from her. Miniature chasms split the earth between her and him.

No matter how hard he tried, he could not rip the blood away from her.

“You hurt the earth. I hear it crying out against you, Stonebreaker,” Ethel snarled.

“Shut the fuck up.” Eli lashed out, hammering her with a geyser of condensed water. Ethel stumbled back half a step, her skin parted under the intense hose. Yet, she did not bleed.

Gusts of wind boomed. Alfred rocketed forward with his spear aimed for Eli’s throat. Violet echoes caught the spear inches away from his face. Space flickered, denied to Eli still.

“Disrespect my wife again and I will have your tongue, worm.” Alfred shoved his spear deeper into the purple shield. Motes of Dream fuzzed out of existence.

“Touch my friend and I’ll take your life,” Roman said, voice echoing to infinity. Indigo apparitions with golden eyes peeled off of him. Spikes bristled from their backs just the same as him.

“How dare you speak to the sky like that? Disgusting, foul ingrate.” Ethel curled her hand into a fist and hauled on Roman’s blood. Crimson drops drew nearer, sizzling the closer they got to her.

Bolts of crystal moonlight rained on the blood to no effect. Steria whizzed past them, pursued by lumbering earth and flying air elementals. Silver luminance streaked into them, picking them off for more to come.

“Eyes on me, boy, I will be the last thing you see,” Alfred smirked, showing off his metal dentures.

“No, you won’t be.” Roman giggled at the old man, shook his head, then closed his eyes. Apparitions tore out of Roman, forming a legion around him. “My dreams are larger than even the sky’s petty concerns. They are—“

Alfred yanked his spear out of the dreamshield in front of Eli, spun, and hurled the projectile at Roman. Wind thundered back from the throw, rattling Eli’s bones. Roman’s apparitions reached out to block it. Phantom hands ripped apart as easily as gossamer spiderwebs.

“—a grand machine.” Roman caught the spear. Dreams buzzed around his hand, reinforcing his body past its limits. “A machine greater than you or anyone else could imagine. Why would I let—“

“Quiet, worm.” Alfred flew in the wake of his spear. Muscles bulged beneath his graying skin. He snatched his weapon out of Roman’s grip, turning the metal an incandescent orange, and swung it into Roman’s face.

“—Stop. I already caught that.” Roman glanced at the halted steel tip an inch away from his cheek.

“What? How?” Alfred tugged and pushed to no avail. Clouds burst out of his back, rippling past the tattered seams of his leather jacket.

“Where was I?” Neon blood gushed from Roman’s nose, eyes, and ears. All his shed blood from Ethel’s spikes took on the same abstract quality all the way down to the droplets locked by her and Eli’s will.

Ethel gaped at the display creeping toward her outstretched hand. Dirt snaked up her legs to coat her body with its grit. Friction mounted between them as Ethel pulled harder on the blood.

Eli’s grip loosened. No. Stellar Body surged, driving him deeper into his assumption of a planet. Eli sank into the stone, far heavier than he had been moments ago. Pressure ground his broken ankles together. He shoved back.

Violet strobed with metallic clangs that shook the sky and earth. Moonlight splintered enemies. Voices screamed. All Eli knew, was that his whole world shook with how hard he held onto Roman’s blood.

Aspects of the planet settled over him. Water and spent stardust swirled around the stream of blood he held in check. Spiraled in a bunched drill, compressed over and around the blood with everything he had.

Eli dragged the rope of filament wrapped blood closer to him. Away from Ethel. His power and control via Stellar Body dwarfed hers for one glorious second.

“Heretic!” Ethel screeched, stomping her feet. Quakes boomed deep into the earth. Vibrations tore the planet beneath their feet apart. Her will snapped its jaws around Eli’s planetary Stellar Body, teeth of absolute authority chomping his power down to the quick. Eli lost his grip on Earth with Stellar Body entirely.

He let go.

Blood splashed onto Ethel’s fingertips, showering her in red droplets. Foul light shone rusty and wicked from the coagulating well of Roman’s bodily essence, overriding the neon glow of his Dream.

Violent, guttural howls ripped out of his friend. Roman’s grip on Alfred’s spear faltered. Barbed metal punched into Roman’s chest. Blood and bone squelched.

Eli watched. Powerless. As if he were in the past when Tom laid into Scott and Roman while the bully’s friends held Eli back. There was nothing he could do—

Oblivion tore the false, symbolic planet Stellar Body latched onto into nothing. With all his powers denied to him from Land and Sky, Eli clung to the only thing left to him.

The Void.

Eli vanished.

*****

Steria bounced off beam after beam of moonlight across the clearing. Crystal shards buried themselves into the earth and sky elementals clustered around them all. Lunar Body waxed drip by drip, tantalizingly close to Full.

Roman screamed.

Light curved over her spine, arresting her sideways fall. Steria twisted toward the center of the crater.

Sky leaned on his spear impaled through Roman’s chest. Corrupted blood flowed in reverse into his wounds. Needles of stone jutted all over his body as if Roman were a strange parody of a pincushion.

Tidal Polarization.

Steria twisted the power on its axis, changing down from behind her to right in front of her. She fell.

Lunar Body flickered, transforming her form into radiant gemstones brimming with moonlight. Jagged knives spouted out of her shoulder in a folded crescent sword instead of an arm. Moonglow Purification washed over each manifold edge with silver light.

Eli’s horrified, pale face caught her gaze. Space and gravity hooked her the same way it did every time he used his powers around her. She ignored him.

Sky raised his leg, knee bent to kick Roman off his spear. Steria drew closer, swordarm aligned with Sky’s neck. Oracular Eclipse sheathed her blade in a corona of twilight night. Steria swung—

Eli appeared in-between Sky and Roman. Wind vanished into him with a wail. Moonlight arched into an offset rainbow, bent around his silhouette. Steria blinked, then lost all sight of him, except for what Lunar Body, Tidal Polarization, and Oracular Eclipse provided her.

Nothing stood where she knew he was.

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“You hurt my friend.” Discordant symphonies of absent space spoke in a suggestion of human speech.

Eli, or the abomination she had suspected he was when she first attacked, lifted his hand, then chopped it down on Sky’s elbow. Gravity and mass sheared past the joint as if it were paper. The dismembered arm and spear shrank as they vanished into his depths.

Sky’s mouth opened in a silent scream. He curled in around his halved arm. All his muscles bulged in his attempt to not vanish inside of Eli.

Physics demanded Steria fall toward him. In fact, it took all she had to push with her astronomical powers to resist. System alerts blipped in front of her eyes. Only Roman stood unaffected by Eli’s gravity before he fainted. He drooped, cradled by gravity, until he laid on the pulverized ground.

“Alfred!” Land yelled. Twin shelves of rock burst out of the rubble to slam into Eli on either side. Both slabs crumbled into waves of broken gravel. Eli disappeared, allowing Sky to fall.

Eli appeared in a vivid white flash in front of Ethel. His arm rose like a guillotine. He paused, then looked up.

Pillars of flame reverberated in a flashy explosion. Clouds of sweltering ash whirled in an expanding firestorm. Shadows fluttered.

Fuck, it’s the couple. Steria grimaced with distaste at the misfortune of having them show up as reinforcements.

Noxious arrows peppered elementals, Land and Sky, as well as Eli and Roman. Steria deflected the ones that flew at Roman with a shower of moonstone. Sparks bloomed beside Steria, resolving into Celi’s shape.

“You called?”

“Help me get him out of here!” Steria snapped, crouching to drag Roman to safety.

*****

Darkness shuttered the moonlit clearing every time he shadestepped closer to the personified pit of nothingness. Great, a fucking absence elemental.

Land stumbled away from the encroaching Absence, greedily devouring everything in its path. Stone, rubble, glass, even Land and Sky’s followers and abominations. Absence glitched forward, carving into Land’s stomach, spilling grains of bleeding sand into itself.

It swelled larger, looming over seven feet tall.

Scott came to a stop, wide-eyed. How the hell do you kill nothing? Well, when in doubt, poison often did the trick. He tugged at his shadow, condensing it and his natural toxins together.

Land dropped into the ground, phasing through asphalt rubble and stone. Absence twitched. She reappeared with a silent scream; her left arm held in its grasp.

“Children of the Earth, save me from this sinner!” Land screeched, not with her vocal cords, but with quakes that rumbled from the stones. Droves of elementals tore themselves upward.

Absence squeezed visibly vanishing layers of Land’s skin. Scott watched it happen through the elemental’s non-existent fingers. Idle wisps of nothing swept into the earth elementals, disintegrating them.

Venomshade dripped over Scott’s hand from the roiling sphere of toxic gloom he held.

What should I do?

Land and Sky were a plague on Anhedonia Prime. Their fanaticism had killed a lot of people over the past year. However, they also destroyed or converted a lot of the abominations near the Jumbles. Plus, they kept quiet as long as no one broke Land’s rules in their territory.

Absence had to be worse, right?

Land’s flesh disintegrated into glittering beads of yellow-red dust. Strands of trembling muscle fiber pulled taut beneath Absence’s grip. It drew its hands back with all the casual horror of a child ripping wings off fireflies.

Rough hands of stone, rubble, and sand slapped out of the ground into Land and Absence. Tremors rippled outward from the displaced stone. Absence stumbled away from the blow, freeing Land from its grasp. Marks from Land’s attack smeared its body with visible patches.

It was a humanoid elemental.

Horror and greed knifed Scott in the gut. Scott fell to his knees. That’s what he had to fight to help Celi save moongirl? Actual personified elementals, true sapient individuals, were far more lethal than the simply aware kind.

Land flew, sliding over shattered stones until she came to a gentle stop. Coagulated blood spilled from her stomach and mangled arm. Rocks crumbled apart into fine sand that swirled over her, packing into her wounds.

Righteous wrath blazed from her oppressive aura.

Sheer power constricted Scott’s lungs just from his proximity to their fight. Breath failed him. He felt as if he were buried under a moving mountain that had decided it was pissed.

Inert venomshade splashed out of his control onto the dirt. None of his other powers responded, except for Gloom Body. His only stat power strained under the abuse.

Mud inched up his and Absence’s legs. Absence keened a high note of despair. Stains of Land’s power, her authority, seeped into the elemental. Too much something would rob it of its natural nothingness state.

Scott stretched into his Gloom Body. Crisscross ridges formed over his darkening skin, turning into umbrascales full of pooled shadow and absorbed light. He pulsed the pools of darkness along his legs, blasting Land’s mud off of them.

Gray sludge splattered in a wide radius around him, leeched of all colors. Scott glanced behind him. Celi and Moongirl held the only other man that had been there at the start of the battle. He realized that he must have been the guy Moongirl needed help to save. Guilt threatened to prick at him for attacking him, too. He dismissed the emotion.

Sky was nowhere to be seen, nor were his followers. They were safe now. That was what mattered.

Question is, what do I do about Land and Absence?

Both were juking it out in an escalating display of why people should leave freaks and abominations like those two alone. Destruction spread after every action or movement they made, leveling buildings into expanding heaps of rubble. Dust and grit hung heavy in the air, obscuring the sun.

It would be suicide to fight either of them.

Scott popped a scale on the sole of his right foot. Night swaddled him, split apart, launching him at both of his enemies. Greed loomed in his gut, in his Draconian Vitality open to him once more.

Imagine what powers I’ll get if I can kill these two.

Venomshade Cataclysm activated, synergizing with every patchwork scale of gloom on his body. Filled the shadows at his reach with poison. He molded some of that toxic darkness into an extravagantly long sword, guided by his [Armory] and [Alter] perks on Venomshade.

Bitter shadow swept forward, aimed at Land and Absence both. Neither of them noticed.

They were far too consumed with killing each other.

Scott grinned, determined and exultant at the thought of ridding Anhedonia Prime of these problems. Of ripping them apart with gloom and poison. Their powers would serve him well in keeping Celi safe.

Two more scales burst under his feet, shadestepping him closer to the couple, so enamored in killing each other. Far too distracted to notice his paltry power use and suppressed aura. Right before impact, he used his other two equipped powers.

Hydra Transfiguration sank into the sword, hardening it, and each of the umbrascales coating the blade. Edges and tips bristled out of it, extending his weapon sevenfold until he wielded an amalgamation of eight swords attached together. Hydra venom dripped from each of the hollow tips and edges.

Draconian Nightfire blazed into the sword, strengthening it further. Black flames erupted from its scales, fierce and necrotic.

He swung.

Land twisted, forewarned somehow, four out of seven swords enveloping her. Stone skin cracked under the onslaught of whipping blades. Sand puffed, melted, then transformed into showers of glass needles. Four swords shrank, spiraling inside her wounds in search of her bodily darkness.

She screamed in a voice like thunder.

Scott continued his swing with four more swords.

Absence glanced at him with eyes of doom capable of turning him into a smear of broken atoms. Except… it ignored him. Drove its lack of a fist into Land’s chest with all the mass and force of a meteor shattering the Earth’s crust.

Down reoriented to align with Land’s fall trajectory.

Four swords lashed into the void of Absence’s body, pumping draconian hydra venomshade into… nothing.

Scott felt himself drift toward Absence and its cornered victim. He flailed, grabbing hold of whatever darkness he could find. Slowed his descent while he watched Absence brutalize Land. Certainty that Absence had to die filled him.

Absence dove to stomp on Land, flattening the stone wall raised over her. Quakes thrashed the ground apart. Radiant white light flashed with every impact. Cracks turned into widening chasms. Suggestions of empty space in the shape of a foot rose. Fell.

Flash.

Rose, fell, flash.

Again.

And again.

Over and over again.

Scott’s hold on the darkness strained at resisting Absence’s pull. It was as if gravity itself yearned to be devoured by the elemental. Every one of his powers strained to the breaking point as if it was not bend or break, but bend or cease to exist.

Error messages scraped his pupils with the System’s false light.

What the fuck? There are System Administrators? Scott had time to think before he crashed into the ground. Bones in his legs pancaked, shifted, then ripped out of his muscles and skin shredding his pants from all the serrated stones under Land’s control that erupted.

Scott blacked out.

Hydra Transfiguration snapped him right back into wakefulness. Agony railed on his nervous system like a fast-paced metal solo, with the volume turned all the way up.

Absence towered in front of him, visible now. Veins of blinding white light or something like it strung out through its not-body. Glowing clouds of red, yellow, and green swirled inside of it. Two stars flared where its eyes would be.

Oh no, it killed Land, and it has her powers!

It turned toward him, lifted its palm up to smite him down. Wagged it left and right to intimidate him before it vanished.

“What? No! Don’t do that!” Scott shrieked with a plague of system alerts that flooded his mind until it caved under the pressure. Before everything went dark, for real this time, the last thing he noticed was that Land had also disappeared.