Dimas Sebolt glanced at the dead. He'd never seen Melchor's power firsthand like this, but he'd heard Xuan speak about it at length. It was only supposed to be mercury transfiguration, but the man's mastery of pan-rozum completely changed the equation. In Dimas' mind, Diego's earlier confidence had been entirely unfounded. Being outnumbered meant virtually nothing to someone like Melchor Blackburn.
Fool that he was, however, Diego could still prove invaluable in this fight, Dimas knew. Diego himself had control of pan-forma, a kind of simpler hyper-state exclusive to transfiguration and materialization users only. It was much less versatile than pan-rozum, not breaking down the barriers between ability classes and instead affording three blanket enhancements to durability, regeneration, and connectivity.
Mercurial spikes erupted from Melchor's body, skewering Diego through the eye socket and finally throwing him off. Bloody and full of holes, Diego managed to catch himself on the bookshelf in the middle of the room, sliding across the top and freezing it with the residual liquid nitrogen still present in his arms. By the time his feet touched the floor again, his wounds had already healed, even the one that had undoubtedly pierced his brain.
Diego didn't have to dive back into the fight. Melchor came for him first, which Dimas found quite telling as to which opponent the Lord Blackburn was most concerned about. Surely, if Diego managed to freeze enough of Melchor's body at once, it would be problematic for the man, but even with Diego's soul-empowered liquid nitrogen, the freezing process would require more than just a few seconds. Melchor's passive soul defense was not something to be overlooked. Diego wasn't going to get that much time unless Dimas and Joana provided it for him.
Dimas pointed a single index finger at Melchor. Much as he would have liked to, he couldn't simply crush the man with overwhelming gravitational pressure. Melchor's passive soul resilience and field density were both too powerful for such a tactic. However, Dimas could still reverse the gravity around Melchor in order to disorient him. So he did.
In an instant, Melchor was flung toward the ceiling, splattering against it briefly before recovering and crawling around like some kind of hideous liquid spider.
Joana took the opportunity to launch a flurry of thick chromium spears, all barbed and razor sharp. They pelted Melchor, some bouncing off, some sticking in, and his body shuddered and morphed before it could expel the chromium back out again.
Dimas didn't let up either. With one hand, he kept intensifying the gravity around Melchor in order to slow him down, and with the other, he fired off a series of gravity bullets--invisible pockets of supercondensed pressure that carried enough speed to pierce steel at fifty meters.
Mercury splashed violently with each impact, but Melchor weathered that assault, too, though not quite so effortlessly as before. His liquid body contorted and swirled as he moved out of the way.
Diego, in the meantime, had been prepping three of his fingers. No doubt, he feared using any more than that in the presence of his allies. Dimas knew what he was crafting. He'd seen him do it before. Soul-strengthened nitroglycerin, it would be.
It was probably the most difficult compound that Diego could construct within a reasonable timeframe. All in all, it only required hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, but the structure of the hydrogen and oxygen molecules was no simple thing to achieve, needing to be organized into three hydroxyl groups and then merged with white fuming nitric acid. Certainly, it wasn't Dimas' area of expertise, but he at least had to give Diego credit for being able to pull something like that off in the middle of combat.
And of course, even after construction, nitroglycerin was wildly unstable. Mishandling was liable to get himself killed, so it was a testament to his confidence that he would do it now, when a mistake would mean harming Yangéra as well.
Dimas just tried to focus on pinning Melchor down while Diego worked. It was nearly impossible. The two remaining Redwaters tried to assist again, but a ceiling of spikes finally claimed them. And it would have claimed Dimas and Joana, too, if he hadn't slowed its descent with a gravitational wall.
As Melchor reared back for another attack, Diego lobbed his three severed fingers at him. One missed, but the other two were on target, making contact with the tattered suit that still clung to Melchor's vague form.
All three explosions went off at once. They were even stronger than Dimas anticipated. The chamber didn't just tremble; it spasmed, violent enough that Dimas nearly lost track of everyone despite the gravitational shield he'd placed over himself and the children. A wall of chromium stood before them as well, thanks to a crouched and cringing Joana, and Dimas could see Emiliana covering Marcos and Ramira with her own body.
The shock wave had smashed Diego against the rear wall, but the man was already picking himself up and healing so rapidly that, in a moment, he'd only have earned himself a bit of mussed hair and a few blood stains on his t-shirt.
An impressive hole now lay in the upper corner of the room, ushering smoke to the outside. The lamp that had been providing light was in pieces as well, leaving only the rainy gray sky for illumination. Diego ignited his fingertips in order to supplement that.
Dimas could see Melchor's form through the smoke and dust, still alive and churning. He made a fist and punched through the south wall again, knowing that the best possible use of this downtime was to ensure that the Elroys escape.
The mercury crumbled against the gravitic impact, but before Dimas could tell the children to flee, it filled right back in.
Melchor's dual-voice rose through the chamber. "No one leaves," he said. "Not without our guidance."
Dimas and Diego both inched closer, not wanting to give the man enough time to recover but also not wanting to walk into a trap. Dimas could see a few thick puddles of mercury that had been severed from the rest of Melchor's body.
"The three of you will become great pillars of the Rainlords one day," said Melchor. "We do not wish to kill you here and now."
"You don't say?" said Diego, also bearing a second voice with Yangéra. "Then let's all just relax and talk this out over a nice game of hopscotch."
Melchor did not seem amused by the suggestion. He was the first to begin moving again.
Dimas and Joana tried to slow him down as Diego moved to freeze the severed puddles of mercury. It would be a long process of whittling away at Melchor's body, but Dimas didn't see another way of defeating the man when they didn't have the power to simply overwhelm him. Dimas could try smothering him with hypergravity, but that would be dangerous for everyone else, and the idea was to protect the reapers and children, not turn them all into meaty spaghetti.
More spikes came for him, this time too many to simply dodge. So he didn't. Dimas inhaled deeply as he focused for the increase that he wanted. The gravitational bubble appeared around him and stopped the spikes dead, cracking and shattering them before they could reach him. Their broken pieces flew away from him and dug into the walls, letting a bit more light peer through fresh holes before Melchor covered them back up again.
It had grown dark, the only physical light source being that of Diego's ignited fingers, but Dimas didn't strictly require it. He could see the vague outline of souls. While they were still attached to people, souls were a kind of faint fog spread thinly through the body and only really noticeable in the darkness. A dim glow, essentially.
And then, in a fleeting moment when he wasn't being attacked, he noticed something horrific.
There were too many souls. There was a second Melchor in the room.
Melchor's liquid mass had split, and now both parts were moving independently of one another. The chaos and low visibility of the fight had been concealing it from Dimas.
Perhaps the split had only just occurred, because Shenado chose that moment to warn them. 'There are three of him now! Be very careful!'
Three?
A surge of mercury blindsided him, throwing him off his feet while still clinging on to him, quickly consuming his whole body, no doubt wanting to crush him and prevent regeneration.
Every single one of his muscles flexed at once, and the gravity stopped him in mid-air. An invisible bubble exploded outward and tore the mercury off of him as he floated there.
Indeed, he could see all three hulking blobs looming in the darkness now. The one that had attacked him was already moving toward Joana and the children.
Dimas fired off a round of gravity bullets as he propelled himself closer. Joana pierced the liquid beast with a giant chromium spear, adding spiked branches to it and shredding mercury with each new growth. The clone writhed and squirmed away from her, only to immediately circle back around and try for her again. Dimas gathered enough force into his fist and barreled through the clone, expelling increased gravity upon the moment of impact.
Globs of mercury splattered everywhere but didn't settle. Instead, they scuttled away like ants, retreating back into a pool nearer the other two clones. Dimas reversed gravity beneath them, wanting to keep every droplet suspended in the air and isolated from one another, but it didn't matter. They didn't need the floor. They could move under their own power, no doubt due to Melchor's additional mastery of materialization's velocity states.
A muffled explosion shook the chamber, pulling everyone's attention back to Diego. While they'd been busy with a single clone, Diego had been dealing with two. And it was not going well, Dimas saw. He rushed to assist the man, but the mercury was already smothering him, and after another moment, Dimas heard the crunch. That wouldn't be enough to truly stop Diego, of course, but Melchor also ripped Yangéra free of the man's body, using the mercury as a physical filter through which to separate the two. And even while Melchor endured a storm of gravity bullets and chromium spikes, the liquid coffin tightened another time, ensuring that Diego remained dead.
Dimas expected to see Melchor kill Yangéra as well, but the man did no such thing, instead choosing to hold her out in front of him as a shield. Dimas and Joana both had to stop attacking.
"It is over," said Melchor. "Diego was your only hope of escaping this room, and now that I have Yangéra, you cannot even attack me freely. Please cease this pointless struggling and surrender."
Dimas couldn't see Joana's face in the darkness, so he looked to her reaper and then to Shenado. Indeed, this battle was undoubtedly lost now. Close-quarters combat didn't suit him, and without Iziol present, Dimas had an observational disadvantage. There was nothing for it.
'We've lost,' thought Dimas. 'Self-destructing now.'
'Understood,' came Iziol's voice. By now, he must have been a quarter of the way to Rheinhal.
And as Dimas prepared both hands with gravitic orbs, he took a deep breath so that he could raise his voice for all to hear. "...I will return for you all very soon."
By now, Melchor had no doubt realized what he was doing, and Dimas could see the soul-empowered mercury rushing to stop him.
Dimas placed his head in his hands and let the force smash his skull to pieces.