Unity felt the coiling entropy before he saw it, moving along his hand with the inhuman gesticulations of an insect. It seemed enough to blanch Timi, her eyes widening at the sight, mind doubtless filling with the memory of how it had ended Unity’s last fight.
Her hesitation was his victory, keeping her eyes on his hands as an elbow struck solidly against her chin. Unity was already turning before she hit the ground, lunging for Sia just as the boy raised a glowing hand once more.
Both of them went down amid a stream of curses and grunts, rolling along the floor as they pulled and clawed at one another. Unity was stronger by half, quickly gaining the edge as he brought a fist down hard on the boy’s temple. The fight left his enemy instantly, replaced by a greater opportunity than he could resist.
The other moved behind him even as he built the magic for his entropic touch, but he dismissed the knowledge.
Focusing only on the task at hand. Unity thought of ripping his enemy apart, as he had Bim. Punishing them for the ache in his wrist and the blood in his mouth. The thought of Crow stayed him. Curious, that.
Timi reached him as he discharged the magic, rending Sia’s breastplate apart and leaving it a spray of gilded shrapnel. He enjoyed his victory for only a moment before being wrenched backwards.
They fought even as the boy was translocated from the stage, grappling and striking clumsily in their desperation. Strength evenly matched, leaving only skill as the separator between them.
Exhaustion tipped the scales, and Unity found himself ceding ground before long. He grit his teeth, glaring at the girl from behind his guard as if hatred might stay the path of her blows.
Biding his time and waiting through a clenched jaw. The chance came sooner than he’d expected.
***
“Gem, are you there?”
Deka’s voice nearly made her leap from her skin, so suddenly did it come. Amid the storm of tortured stone and screaming air, it was sickeningly normal. At odds with everything around it and snatching her attention by merit of contrast alone.
She hesitated before answering, finding herself suddenly sick.
“I am.” She breathed. “I’m okay, just had an encounter with the enemy. It’s over now. I won.”
Eying the deepest point in the malformed terrain around her, a spot that had been filled just moments before by the body of Simona, she felt a sudden relief.
I did win. She told herself, thought elating.
Her stupor was broken as Deka spoke again.
“Right, well Crow and Astra are currently being swatted around like children. If you’re free to travel, then get ready for your next set of directions.”
Gem solidified her thoughts just as they came, committing each to memory, then repeating the sequence all over again for certainty.
She took flight, the wind soon challenging her thoughts in its volume. Within moments she was as fast as the corridors would allow, charging ahead with a mission once more.
Still unable to shake the feeling of joy from crushing her enemy so thoroughly. Nor the guilt it brought with it.
***
Astra pinwheeled through the air as a pillar of sand crunched into her side, stopping only as she hit a wall and rebounding from it with a sickening, wet thud. Crow had to fight to keep his eyes on the enemy rather than his sister, switching to a defensive strategy the moment she was cast from the fight.
His Glimpses alone kept Rajah’s attack from overwhelming him, numerical disadvantage turning the boy serious and unrelenting in his assault.
The limbs of sand worked with a flawless cooperation, each guided by a separate hand and moving as fast as Crow himself. Faster, perhaps.
They coiled around one another, each obfuscating the other’s movement with its own body. Twisting and whirling unexpectedly, building momentum before lashing like a whip to strike out with impossible force and velocity. Setting traps and pushing him into them, tripping and tricking, chasing and harassing.
In only moments they’d cornered him, moving in with a grace that belied their crushing power while Crow searched vainly for an escape.
The appearance of a Gate at his back came with barely time to spare, and he leapt through without a moment’s hesitation. Crow fell yards from the battle, rolling to his feet frantically. He turned to see Astra leaping through a gate of her own, fleeing the limbs as they turned on her in place of Crow.
Another appeared beside him, and his sister stepped out amid heavy, panting breaths. He eyed her as she tried to speak, listening intently while both of them backed further from the approaching Rajah.
“Deka was just in my head.” Astra gasped. “Backup coming soon.”
Sand leapt up before she could continue, driving them apart as they jumped from its path. Crow saw his sister lunge straight into another mass, driven into a trap just as he’d been.
Before he could even cry out it engulfed her, raising her high and bringing her down hard enough to send the girl bouncing like rubber against the stone. He felt anger bubble in place of fear, barely thinking to flatten himself down and avoid the return stroke of the first tendril.
Rolling, standing, jumping, Crow was on the retreat once more. His Glimpses and physicality proved no more fearsome an obstacle, and in mere moments he was ensnared.
The sand threw him against the wall just as it had Astra, stars dancing in his eyes and breath fleeing from his lungs. Before he could even fall, they struck again. Granules blasting apart against his hastily formed guard, scraping the flesh raw on his arms and threatening to break them like twigs.
He held fast, knowing even amid the confused daze of his throbbing head that the Jyptian’s target was his armour. Breaking it would take him from the task, leave Astra alone and bring points and credits to his enemy through victory.
Crow’s arms were nowhere so vital as that.
***
Gem saw Crow begin to lift upwards as the sand struck him like a river, supplanting gravity with its force and volume, pinning him in place even as it ruined his body. Amid Cutaris, she almost failed to heed Karma’s eternal advice before charging in.
Information is your greatest weapon, sharpen it whenever possible.
She studied the attack, slowing her speed to keep from drawing attention as she did. Saw how one limb of sand had formed the rushing tide, the other acting as its source. Sweeping the ground, picking up stray grains and depositing them back in the offensive stream. An efficient way of pinning an enemy even as it destroyed them.
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But not one to be used against multiple opponents. Gem smiled, the deduction bringing another surge to her regenerating pride.
She accelerated once more, flying head-first for Rajah himself. The boy began to turn only when she was within a half dozen paces of him, his response too slow by far to stop the collision.
She practically bounced on impact, spinning away and rolling as she cut the flow of her magic. Rajah himself was thrown back, hitting the ground just as Gem did, rolling almost as far.
Groaning and caressing his side where he lay, not having had the benefit of striking shoulder first as she had.
Both realised at once their race to stand.
Gem scrambled to her knees, prying magic through her body and concentrating it into her palms. She was barely half done by the time Rajah gestured, gathering sand at his feet and raising it upwards to a waist-high wall.
At his silent command, strips peeled away from the mass and arced towards her like horizontal rainfall. Gem stumbled to one side, feeling the air of the first projectile’s passing, then slapped a second before it could strike her forehead. Pain assailed her hand as sand erupted into a cloud, stunning her just as the third and fourth struck her torso.
Gold popped open like the shell of a crab as she was thrown back, fighting just to remain standing. Gem glanced at Rajah to see another volley loosed by his splayed hands, one she was ready for.
Magic finally finished building, she raised a hand. They fired at once, his bladed silica sharing airspace with her otherworldly energy. The two attacks collided mid-flight, leaving a blinding flash and spray of molten globules to punish the battlefield more.
Gem was already on her feet while Rajah still rubbed his eyes in the light’s wake.
She let magic build again, loosing another blast only to curse as the curtain of sand absorbed it. The mass shifted, launching a volley of desert arrows even as two great arms reached out for her, clearing the space with a frightening speed.
Gem dodged perhaps one in three of the projectiles, feeling her armour give yet more as the others broke against it. She’d barely half-finished her next blast when the massive arms closed in.
One struck from beside, the other above. Gem’s feet left the ground as she sailed high, spinning and coughing for the breath that had abandoned her on impact.
She rebound from the ground, then left it again as another arm grabbed her before her impact could even settle. Gem’s stomach lurched, a limb of sand throwing her with a flick and sending her to hit the far wall. She felt her limbs splay apart against it, then was driven back into the stone as the second followed.
Her guard was all that kept the strike from shattering the plate, and even still she fell limp to her knees in its wake. Stared up at the remaining limb even while the first reformed, knowing her head was too clouded and body too racked to have any hope of mustering a defence.
The air tore apart into a wall of red just as it lunged for her, and Gem recognised the sight of Astra Tempora’s Gate instantly.
She grinned, turning back to see the girl once more on her feet, arms outstretched and face contorted with concentration as she held a second opening tight about the end of the limb. Pinning it in place just as she had so many other enemies.
The chance wasn’t lost on Gem.
Crow saw the Gemini charging at Rajah, movement spurring him into action. He reached the boy first, lashing out at him from behind and almost letting himself hope that surprise would gift him a clean hit. Sand writhed between them, handfuls raising to slow his blow as the boy twisted from its path.
***
A fist folded Crow over before he could think to move again, then Rajah turned as Gem fell upon him. The two of them fought for seconds, Jyptian ceding ground to Jaean before stopping her assault dead in its tracks. Moments later it was Gem who retreated, barely managing a defence against the boy’s answering strikes.
Groaning with pain and strangling the objecting cries of his body, Crow stood. Deformed armour plates grinding against one another with the movement, bile rising in his throat with the exertion, Cutaris sublimating his pain with the animalistic need for retaliation. He pounced.
Sand leapt from the ground, flinging Gem backwards as Crow’s shin cracked against the Jyptian’s armour. He eyed the indentation left, satisfied for a second’s whisper before his enemy turned. Crow weathered the assault just as Gem had, driven backwards and left awed by the speed.
Awed, but not helpless.
Crow felt a heavy blow land against his jaw, biting down and holding his head as still as he could in spite of the impact. Rajah’s eyes widened with shock for a moment before Crow’s forehead thundered against his face, sending the boy reeling.
Another Glimpse took Crow’s senses as he moved to close in, and he barely sidestepped the second tendril of sand in time to keep himself from being flattened once more. Gem came from Rajah’s back just as Crow did from his front, their steps matched and intent aligned as they reached him.
Potency and experience were Rajah’s advantage, yet the boy was far from a specialist in close quarters. Gem and Crow weaved around him as one, creating one another’s openings and holding nothing from their blows as they struck him.
Sand contorted at Rajah’s feet, parrying alongside its controller, proving yet another obstacle between them and their enemy. Two tendrils moving at once, the other clearly freed from Astra’s prison. Both proving too little still to save Rajah in such a tight confrontation.
Footfalls signalled Astra’s arrival the moment before her kick was caught by one of Rajah’s coiling pillars, freeing up an opening for Crow. His elbows grated against gold with a sickening screech, like nails against a chalkboard. Impact driving the Jyptian away, only for Gem to send him stumbling back with a flash of magic from behind.
Rajah was a bear, every inch of him quivering with terrible, individual power. Fighting with an uncontested might and unwavering confidence.
But Crow was only one wolf among a pack, and they knew just how to put their numbers to work.
Two struck while one was flung back, blows landing constantly in spite of Rajah’s defences. The boy found a barrage encaging him from all sides, inescapable in its entirety and irresistible in its ceaseless fury.
Cracks appeared on the previously unscarred face of his armour, deepening with every moment that passed. Still the Jyptian fought, undaunted by the degrading state of his armour, unfazed by the fear which would surely have left Crow witless and sluggish.
There was barely time to be amazed by his conviction, his discipline, but Crow managed it all the same. Every parried strike or flesh-torturing hit leaving his admiration renewed.
Rajah kept a tight grip on what time remained to him, filling it with the scrapings and failings of metal not his own. Racing his enemies to the gates of defeat as they, too, found their breastplates battered nearer and nearer to the point of unusability.
It’s a battle of time. Crow thought, grunting as a whip of sand almost struck him flat.
True to his guess, the temporal grains fell slow in their hourglass. Seconds passed, minutes even. Battle and magic left things impossible to gauge with any exactness. Crow measured time only by the blood being drawn from his veins and the kinetic throbbing of his every joint. Adrenaline and Cutaris leaving even those sensations distant and fogged.
He watched every scrap of fatigue, pain and wear as it appeared on Rajah with the eyes of a hawk. Taking note of each crack in his composure, finding an animal spike to his will at every pained screech of armour. Fighting heedless of his own weary muscles.
Gold fell from the melee in chips, flakes and scraps. Torn and ground from the fighters with every successful hit, each one bringing the stage one moment closer to an end.
Still the deadlock held, neither side bearing the will or strength to tip things in their own favour. Neither succumbing enough to exhaustion to find themselves driven into disadvantage.
Then something shifted overhead, a shadow running along the ground and crimson lightning crackling in the corner of Crow’s eye.
“He’s here.” Came Deka’s voice, filling him with a final, primal strength just as Unity landed at Rajah’s back.
Whether by Deka’s word or simply their own eyes, all of Crow’s teammates seemed ready for his arrival. All moved in wordlessly to attack Rajah as one, foregoing any defensive measures entirely. Doubtless thinking the same thing as him; that they’d create an opening for the artificial to end things.
Rajah fought harder to match them. His efforts were as magnificent as they were useless, failing like a candle in stormy winds. In moments his sand was bypassed, physical guard shortly later. A single kick fell hard upon his knee from Gem, buckling the limb beneath him and staggering the boy just long enough for Unity to lunge in close and seize his breastplate with both hands.
A heartbeat filled the air with silence before giving way to a gut-squirming screech as inertial forces encased the metal, then tore it asunder. The noise cut through Crow like a blade, making him shudder as he stepped back. Destruction itself given volume.
The gilded armour fell, dropping as dozens of jagged, scattered segments too incohesive to cling to their wearer any longer.
Crow felt himself seized by the Sieve’s magic before the first had even landed.