Shrapnel clattered everywhere, following the earth-shattering stomp of Roman's mech. Sandra stumbled away from the blow as crescent blades swished towards her. Roman's blades carved out thick grooves in a spray of sparks through her chest plate. Her gun lifted, firing a pulse that ripped through Roman's mech with a squeal of rupturing metal and tech as he went spinning through the mist.
Eli appeared behind her in a storm of radiant voidspace blades. Light streamed from his spatial bubbles full of old lumengust and lumencloud light that drained into and through him into her. Metal bubbled as his light hit it, then vanished into his rifts, where it reformed into white-hot blades that then shattered against her armor. She fired her gun, but he popped out an inverted spatial bubble that he enlarged. All the projectiles and momentum sank into his voidspace before he teleported the payload into her back.
Only slivers of her Domain remained to impede him.
Sandra crashed flat on her face with a crunching splat of tortured metal and brittle bones. Blood jetted out in a fine mist across the ruined gray stone. Space shifted as the honeycombed horizon swept closer. Wherever it passed, the devastated landscape healed as it shifted closer.
Rage strobed his pounding heart into a prismatic kaleidoscope with each heartbeat.
Her Domain crusted over her healing body as the strange space drew closer.
Eli teleported onto her so he straddled her with his hands clasped together held above his head. Light gathered into his fists until everywhere else in his body dimmed to mortal flesh. Vibrancy bloomed as gray stone sparkled, then shone from the brightness of his fists. Her armor beaded, then dribbled as what remained melted. Restoration pounded up into his arms as tumors grew, then vanished from his wrists down, the vacant space snapping back to rights before they regrew like popped kernels.
Space swept over them.
His senses split in two. Doubled with where they were in this decrepit wasteland between space and another place entirely. A world brimming with lush forests sprawling over mountains overlooking a verdant city chiseled out of stone and tree. His spatial field overlapped between both places. Then it tripled as he became aware of the beach where his family still searched hopelessly for them.
Sandra's body didn't just heal, it changed beneath him. He felt her muscles swell as if she'd spent a lifetime climbing these mountains, decades honed hunting the behemoths that dwelled here with the gold and silver rifle that appeared in the wasteland in her hand. Her armor changed to a blend of green leather wrapped metal.
New strength flooded her body as she thrashed beneath him, nearly bucking him off.
Only a moment had passed as the shifting space ebbed back to the horizon. His senses of the other spaces faded as it went. He struck.
Eli's hands were no longer flesh and blood brimming with light or even transformed radiance. They had become celestial, a star packed with light, heat, and mass. Air boiled into steam as his hands descended and plunged through her vaporizing back. Nothing resisted him except for the natural limits of his shoulders.
He released all the pent up light into her.
Stone heaved, shrapnel melted, then sublimated into vapor. His photon shot burrowed through her into the crust of stone. Rumbling hacked through the ground as it bucked up. Fractals fragmented the earth as magma geysered through the cracks. A shockwave resounded from the impact, blasting Eli up and back as he flipped through the vibrating air.
Eli's brain and internal organs sloshed like they turned into gelatin as his bones snapped from the chaotic forces. Restoration fused everything back together before he tumbled across the shuddering ground. Everything froze as the world whirled around him. Vibrations rattled his bones as he slowed to a stop.
Agony cooled to numbed torment as his body stabilized itself. Restoration fixed his skeletal and muscular systems with a series of squelching pops and grating cracks. Eli struggled to push himself up to his knees with his mangled, charred stumps of arms. He gave up and teleported himself to his feet. Misaligned tendons creaked into place as his toes and ankles righted themselves.
Notifications flowed across his vision, but he ignored them in favor of sweeping his spatial field across the rolling mists over the churning gray plains. Inverted spatial bubbles slotted into real-space to extend his influence until he felt the cooling crater he'd left behind. He found Roman limping away from a wreckage of his arachnid mech that slowly fizzled out of reality.
Eli teleported over to him so he could loop Roman's arm around his shoulder. Restoration cycled through both of them with each breath as they stood wobbling. Eli's crispy blackened wrist stumps healed far faster than it had a few hours ago.
Space shuddered as the honeycombed horizon thrashed.
"Did we get her?" Roman asked as he glanced at his notifications. "I don't see anything."
Authoritative Domain Ev. 3/Lv. 11 Self Mastery Ev. 1/Lv. 8 Stats: Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on. Will of Space (Dimensional Swap)> "Wait, it only says incapacitated?" Eli blinked as he read over the notification again with widening eyes. "She's still alive?" Sandra stepped out of the honeycombed horizon from the hexagon with the familiar landscape of forested mountains. Her face was a grinning, bloody mess. Burnt hair straightened itself back to its previous state. Gashes and burns pockmarked the ruinous state of her armor from his and Roman's attacks. Understanding dawned on him as he glanced back to where he'd struck with his overcharged light. Her original stat power had been Dimensional Swap. Every other time she'd used her power, she had almost seemed to fuse with the other versions of herself as she changed her equipment each time. But the last time had been a true swap. "That would've been nasty," Sandra commented with a tilt of her head toward the fuming crater. Patterns of green dappled her armor as she lifted her massive gold and green rifle, but instead of aiming at them, her gun pointed towards the horizon full of the images of their family scattered around the menagerie of footprints from where they'd vanished. Mom and Dad cradled each other while they sobbed. Lana paced while silverlight glowed off her skin like sunlight reflecting off glacial sheets of ice. Theo stared vacantly at the spot where Roman had flown straight into Sandra. Gold and silver flowed through the sides of the stock like a river where they gathered in the rifle's chamber. Light glinted in the gun's barrel as the power reached an equilibrium a moment later. She fired. Eli threw his spatial field forward as he snagged at the bullet, then howled as his mind burned. Streaks of lustrous silver and gold marred his vision. Power ripped through his voidspace before it sank into the horizon and flashed out in a trail of silver and gold before it cracked through Dad's chest in a puff of vapor. He fell back, wide-eyed. Metal streamed toward the chamber. Another bullet cleaved through his stomach. Mom guided him into her lap with a silent wail. Snow filled her palm as she shoved it into Dad's mouth. He swallowed. Gushing blood slowed to a trickle. Eli found himself flat on the ground at Sandra's feet, her boot ground into his chest as metal glowed in the chamber. His vision swam as he blinked up at Sandra. She fired twice. Roman screamed. Anger pried its way out of his still regenerating hands as his fingers clawed into existence. His hands knotted around her armored leg as hardened voidspace crusted over his hands. Gold light shone from the armor where he squeezed. Silver flashed as the resistance shattered and her leg bloomed in his awareness as he severed her leg in a teleport. Sandra wobbled one-legged. He teleported up to his feet as he jabbed his fist out. Voidspace flared around him as violet spatial light glared from all the empty space inside of him to gather along his knuckles. Armor clanged as he drove his fist into her sternum. Green patterns sparked gold. He flexed his ankle as he twisted his hip and pushed. Silver twinkled weakly as his voidspace shrouded hand phased through to the Domain and dimensional protection of her chest. Eli unfurled his folded, condensed voidspace ridged along his knuckles with a snap. Sandra hurtled away with a limp crack. He teleported behind her as he held one violet voidspace radiant arm-blade outstretched. Impaling her up to his elbow as he expanded it to stop her from sliding further. He slashed out with his other arm severing her in half at the waist as the honeycombed horizon foamed in its tempestuous thrashing. "Roman!" Eli teleported over to his friend who laid heaving on his side. "Are you okay?" "Yeah." Roman struggled to sit up as Restoration pulsed into him. "I'm fine." Eli glanced up at the horizon showing the beach and watched with horror as Theo knelt beside both Lana and Mom as he healed both of them. Twin puddles of blood pooled beneath Lana, who sat in a limp hunch while Mom was flat on her back. Dad tore open his bullet wounds as he crawled over to Mom and Lana. He pushed his spatial field forward, so it crashed up against the boundary of the horizon, but no matter how hard he tried, it didn't pass through. They were out of his reach. Eli ignored the notifications that flashed, demanding his attention as he tugged at the now freed Lumencloud Invigoration. Light refilled his internal stores, now stained purple as every point of empty voidspace in his body radiated its own light. He siphoned the flows of power together as he rammed his will into the boundary. Once with a blast of expanding force that shredded the flat stone plain. Thin cracks hung in the air in fractals centered on the spot next to his family. Twice and the cracks widened as the wind cycled out into the void before it howled its way back. Dad turned toward him. As if he could see him. Thrice— "Fuck you. Fuck all of you!" Sandra roared hoarsely as one of the hexagons on the other horizon flooded toward them. "Enjoy your last—" Roman summoned and fired a revolver that fell into his hand in one movement. Her head snapped back in an explosion of bone and brain. Space from another world washed over them in a tide. His senses spanned across three dimensional spaces as he felt the bullets in each of his family members’ bodies, except for Lyra, pulsate inside of them. It hammered against his voidspace as he attempted to gently teleport it out. Eli tilted back and away as the other world's space hooked onto him. The beach and his family faded away. Blades of voidspace winked into real-space before disappearing with holes carved out around each of the bullets one after the other. Darkness swamped Eli's vision as he hurtled through planes of space. Eli fell from above a different cityscape than any he'd ever seen. Tall, sprawling skyscrapers that shimmered with thousands of lights. Strange car-like vehicles flew through lanes in the air alongside other lanes of traffic, where some people flew under their own power. He homed in on a multi-block campus full of courtyards and impressive, towering buildings full of ceiling to floor glass windows. He hurtled through the roof of a squat building. A blink later and he bolted upright in a narrow twin sized bed in the middle of the night. Light glowed off his raised hand as he studied posters of unfamiliar athletes swimming. Trophies glittered on a shelf above a desk full of textbooks next to a still open laptop model he'd never seen before in his life. "What the fuck!" shouted a familiar voice as someone bolted upright on the other side of the room. Eli's beam turned to reveal a similar set up room full of gear in various stages alongside folders of loose schematics and diagrams scattered everywhere. Roman stared back at him before he glanced off to the side. "Holy shit, check your status!" [Stats: Body: Light (Photon Shot) Mind: None Will: None ] [Equipped Power List: Slot One -- Voidspace Mastery Ev. 1/Lv. 8 Slot Two -- Lumencloud Invigoration Ev. 0/Lv. 5 (Maxed) Slot Three -- Restoration Ev. 2/Lv. 2 ] [Unequipped Powers: Imbue Ev. 0/Lv.5 (Maxed) Augumentative Elemental Absorption Ev. 0/Lv. 5 (Maxed) Spatial Dominion Ev. 0/Lv. 0 ]