"I got nothing," I said as the minutes ticked by. "Maybe we should portal out while we still have the chance."

Alira seemed to want to say something but then turned her gaze to the first golem I had disabled. "Didn't you say power sources like to explode? I saw you peek into the golem. It had to have a power source, right?"

Crystals aren't known for their explosions, yet I was thinking with old misconceptions. "There was a crystal in its chest, however there's no guarantee it will do anything."

"We may never get another chance to stop this. I'll keep the golem busy..." She held up a hand to gesture for my silence. "Yes, I'm hurt, but I can still stall it for a short time. Go get the crystal."

Giving her a nod, I turned and ran to the golem. Reaching it, I hesitated for a second, thinking it might have some fail-safe. Fortunately, the blue crystal came out without issues. It was warm to the touch and had a texture just like glass.

The number one way to blow a battery is to crack it; number two is to overload or short-circuit it. As I was about to move, the golem appeared. It moved to intercept me, which might mean I was on the right track.

Alira got between us and attacked. As I started moving toward one of the sections with the pipes, I saw their fight in my peripheral vision. This time, she seemed to have more success as it was still focused on me, trying to reach me and almost ignoring her. However, her slices to its feet managed to slow it down considerably, forcing it to shift its attention to her since it wasn't making great progress toward me.

Reaching the wall where several pipes emerged, I wedged the crystal between them and started hitting it with Lightning Bolts. It didn't crack since the bolts had a physical component. Just my luck, it was a tough little bugger.

I started to fear it wasn't having an effect or maybe too little to matter, but after a dozen or so bolts, its color began switching to a teal, maybe even green. There was no way of knowing the range of this explosion, so I took a few steps back before firing again. By the time it reached a red color, it was starting to pulse. I had to be close; pulsing power sources are never a good thing.

Taking a few more steps back, I shouted "Take cover" and after a few seconds fired another Lightning Bolt.

The explosion ripped the whole wall away and threw me across the room. Dazed but alive, I glanced around to see if Alira was okay.

Amidst the smoke and debris, I could see the golem, injured on its side, struggling to move as some debris were covering him. Alira had managed to get to the ground after my warning and was slowly getting to her feet, yet her movements indicated she had been shaken even with the early warning.

Turning my gaze to the center of the room, I saw the beam wildly waving and pulsing. The once white light had transformed into a myriad of rainbow colors, shifting and flickering every second, casting an eerie, kaleidoscopic glow across the shattered remains of the chamber.

Again, I was running out of time. The golem was healing before my eyes, its injuries knitting together at an alarming rate, while Alira, seeming a little wobbly, struggled to stay on her feet. It was doubtful she could keep the golem at bay any longer.

Using the opportunity, I repeated my trick with the quicksand, making the golem fall again through the floor just as he was about to be free of the debris.

This gave me time to take a better look at the effects of the explosion.

The power source seemed to be getting dangerously close to something, but I was expecting more. The light show was impressive, sure, with colors shifting and dancing all over the place, yet it didn't increase in intensity or show any signs of imminent collapse.

For now, it was still stable, but maybe—just maybe—it was now within my power to tip the balance.

There was only one spell that might have an impact, though it was beyond risky.

I rushed to Alira, and she looked at me with a distraught look, "My ankle took a hit, I can't fight the golem anymore"

"Then you won't really object to this" with a circling motion of my hand I opened a portal to a place we camped before we entered the valley.

"I have a spell that will hopefully destabilize the power source, but it's very unpredictable, so portal-ing you out after that won't be possible"

Her look changed from fearful to determined, "No, we stay together" she said.

"Please, trust me," I implored. What I was about to do had little chance of going my way, so she had to be safe first.

She started to argue back "I know that look, you are pretty much gambling at this point, there is no way..."

I closed the distance and kissed her, interrupting her argument.

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

I always thought it as cheesy when the hero kisses the girl when there is imminent danger, though I realized that if I were to die, a few seconds won't make much of a difference and honestly, if spell work had any confidence part baked into it, my chances just increased ten-fold.

With one last look at me, she seems to accept the idea and stepped through the portal.

I immediately felt weakness wash over me, but I squeezed my fists tight to fight it off. Closing the portal with another wave of my hand, I started walking toward the center of the room.

As I closed to the power source, I could feel the heat and probably radiation coming from it, hopefully the Mana Shield would protect me enough for what I had to do.

There were only three beams left emerging from the core, or were they going into it? One of the three was weaker than the others, maybe because of our normal sabotage. Picking up some rubble from the floor, I threw it into the middle of the vortex.

As I suspected it passed right through it, this thing was pure energy or magical energy or maybe some combination. Which meant I needed energy, and lots of it.

This is where the portal spell came in. My plan was to simply open a portal inside the power source vortex. That shouldn't explode anything as the portal didn't drain you of power while it was opened, the teleporting part did though, so I suspected mass had to be turned into energy and then transported. And as the most famous equation would tell us, that was a lot of energy to be dumped inside the core.

I hesitated as there were two choices, I could throw rubble into the portal, but it would have to be multitudes of smaller pieces that would maybe give time for fail-safes to protect it or... I could jump in myself.

The first choice still implied an explosion would basically happen atop me, so I had zero chance of surviving, my Mana Shield was amazing but not that amazing.

Or I could jump into the portal, which I guess had some chance of survival. I couldn't really say what that "some" translated in real numbers, though it was bigger than zero.

Obviously, there was a chance the portal would do nothing at all, yet my gut told me I wouldn't have to worry about that.

Noises behind me pulled me out of my thoughts. The golem was back, and I was weaker now. The more I fought it, the weaker I would get, reducing the chances my plan would work. I realized I had no time to throw rocks through the portal, so plan B it was.

The golem was closing the distance, but I calmly turned my back to it and opened a portal inside the vortex with a circular motion of my wrist.

"Stop," its voice boomed throughout the hall. It seemed he was back to talking mode as the golem entered idle mode, its arms retreating to its sides.

I took one step toward the portal, gauging his reaction.

"By stepping through the portal, yes, you will destroy this building, yet you must know you will die as well."

He paused, then continued, "Didn't you say you were pragmatic? There has to be something we can agree on."

I did say I wasn't an idealist, which would technically make me pragmatic, I guess. "There is nothing you can give me," I said eventually.

"How about the truth?" His semi-immaterial sphere-like apparition changed to that of an old man with white hair, even holding a staff. I guess he thought his new appearance would make me more amenable, which he might have been right about. The old man looked really innocent, like any grandpa, his eyes even had a shine to them, as if on the verge of tears. Damn, he was bringing out the big guns.

"As I suspect you already know, the balance that has held the gods to only watch and never interfere directly is almost gone."

I paused, clearly confused by his words. "I may be new here, but don't the gods give boons and powers to the most devout worshipers for like hundreds if not thousands of years?"

He laughed. "As you said, we are indeed powerful though not gods. What we offered was already in the fabric of this universe. We just shared some tidbits of knowledge here and there to gain some bragging rights against other gods."

He breathed out as if tired and searched for a piece of rubble to sit upon. He was really selling the whole frail human act.

"I'm a relatively weak god in the grand scheme of things, and it might surprise you that I'm from the losing side. I fought to keep the lower dimensions free from our kind's interference. And this," he gestured to the golem near us, "is my plan to maybe stave off the coming destruction when my side loses completely and the creations of the powerful gods are unleashed into this world."

"You mean like the golems are already doing?" I added.

"You may think me callous, yet a few ursine lives are nothing compared to the millions that would die once those monsters get here."

"Look, even if you're telling the truth and genuinely want to help, you're not offering solutions—only prolonged suffering. Do you think the war between your golems and whatever creatures they summon will bring anything but destruction and ruin to this planet?"

"And what solutions do you have to offer?" Oh great, why did I have to open my big mouth?

"It's a war; people are going to die, but you have a chance at the end to emerge victorious." Thank heavens he brushed off the previous comment.

"I thought you races were all about freedom and all that." Here his frail old man persona failed; he was still too much of a superior asshole to even put himself in our shoes.

Time to throw suspicion off completely, "The gods cannot be killed, so it would be endless suffering in wars without end. We would be better off conquered under the powerful faction."

"Do you speak for all sentient life? Would all of them so readily accept the yoke of slavery?" He had me there, but there was no time to enter a philosophical debate. The more I waited, the more he could think of something to incapacitate me.

"Obviously not, though your way is just suffering now for the sentients you destroy to make room for your war machine, and suffering later as you want to take revenge for your lost war."

He was getting angry now. "At least I have a plan. You are just willing to die to take away any chance we have against the coming darkness."

"You think you are the first god with a plan? We actually reached this place by running away from orcs that are led by one from another dimension that was brought by another god and gave him tidbits of knowledge to unite all the clans"

That seemed to shut him up, guess him realizing he's not a special snowflake got to hurt his ego.

Anyway the time for talking was over, maybe I was imagining it but jumping into the portal didn't look suicidal anymore and talking to a god trying to justify future genocides was getting old fast.

He must have sensed my indecision lifting as the golem attacked me and pinned me to the ground. Big golems were also rushing towards me as they must have repaired or constructed some ramp.

The golem still had a foot on the ground and I caught his foot into a quicksand and manage to get free by activating some mini black holes which caused both of us to falter.

He went to grab me, however I activated my slow time and managed to evade his grabs and turned around and just as it was wearing off I managed to jump into the portal.