Rin withstood the kinetic blast Ulyetrix let off easily enough by absorbing most of the energy and charged the alien while I struggled to gather myself.
His skin was practically bursting with light. His hammer came down in a titanic roar, power amplified by the runes powering the weapon. Ulyetrix's green and black eyes glowed again as more tentacles burst out of his side, twisting into tree trunk-sized braids covered in a black protective film.
The ground underneath him disintegrated, thousands of micro-fractures spreading across the surface of Ulyetrix's shield.
"Another energy thief," Ulyetrix crooned. "I can't wait to add your hunger to my own."
Two Tentacles spurted out of his knees. I had my hand outstretched, ready to pull Rin back with the aid of my Gravity affinity, but Pietro arrived before me, whizzing the youngest member of our team out of the tentacle's reach. He casually passed a charge of electricity he'd been building up to Rin, replacing the batch he lost in the exchange.
"Don't worry," Pietro said, referring to the longstanding mental link we'd established. I'll keep planting bombs and running interference."
"Be careful," I sent back. "All it takes is—"
"A tap, I know, and I'm dead."
In his eyes, he must've found my obsessive worry a bit condescending, but I was not about to face the scarlet witch after mistakenly getting her brother killed. Besides, we needed him more for the fight to come.
Our exchange happened in under a second, which was an eternity in this fight. Lumos shot forward, nearly too fast for me to track. I had to switch to my Density Cloak again to keep up visually.
He shot past Ulyetrix but looped back only to be greeted by a dervish of red-spiked back tentacles flailing in a calculated fury. Each swipe let off a kinetic burst upon impact that shook the air, and I shot forward. Burst wrapped around each leg, activating Density Shift for a speed boost and flexing my affinity even more to ratchet up the speed. The boost was even more dramatic. It easily doubled, letting me close the distance quicker than before.
Halfway there, Moment of the Sage triggered, and I threw myself backward with a Burst, avoiding a twisted knotted tentacle that aimed straight at my chest. It reoriented before I even touched the ground and tried again, but my superior technique allowed me to pivot again, throwing me hard into the ground. I summoned my new Uchigatana to join Severance as the tentacle suddenly blossomed, sending dozens of tentacles raining down.
My Uchigatana was filled with spatial energy, and Severance with Gravity energy. I channeled Gravity's shift into it as I swayed and moved, leveraging my new epic combat skill, symphony of death, to guide my movement.
My still-waning speed boost from Moment of the Sage quickly renewed and was chained into one of my favorite techniques, Demon Evade, for an extra 2.7x damage boost.
I parried attacks with both weapons, quickly racking up Feral flow. I became faster and more dangerous with every movement and attack, slowing down Ulyetrix and pumping him full of angel energy.
Fifty hits came and went before Ulyetrix could even realize it, and he paid for that mistake nearly instantly. Rin unleashed a powerful wave of focused kinetic energy that shattered the Black film coating his mid-section.
Lumos sent five super-condensed spears that eviscerated his mid-section.
And just as Ulyetrix's red and white eyes glowed, preparing to unleash what I was sure was a devastating attack, I triggered Smite with a wind-infused cut that took out the tentacles that had been assaulting me.
His body froze and suddenly sprouted with dozens of slashes that jerked him in several directions. A chunk of flesh went missing with each new slash.
The suddenness gave us some pause, but not so much that we delayed his ass-whooping longer than necessary.
Lumos brought his spear down, telegraphing the earlier attack he'd used, bringing down a ray of light that disintegrated everything in sight.
Not to be outdone, I raised Rebellion, filling it with as much Nether fire and Wind Energy as I could manage. The mingling happened almost instantly, as if on instinct. My armor glowed purple as I activated all my offensive runes and lowered my blade with a final swing.
The result was explosive.
Another massive rent appeared in the already barren landscape of our fight. The power level on display was frankly more than I ever imagined wielding. Yet, here I was, dishing it out casually. Painfully, frustratingly, it was not enough.
The ground beneath us exploded as a massive, building-length tentacle shattered and restructured the earth, lunging at us. My hand immediately reached out, jerking Rin in my direction, but not before a tentacle snapped him up.
"No!"
I heard a manic cackle in my head before a head-splitting mental storm assaulted me. I was suddenly whisked away, transported to a world on fire.
Thousands of charred bodies dotted the streets between empty half-erect sky-scrapers. The only thing alive in the hellscape was a man covered in black scales with a Blood-red 'S' emblazoned on his chest. He was floating in the air, nearly half a mile away.
His crimson eyes snapped to me, and for the briefest moment I swear he could see me.
The sky exploded as the monster shattered the sound barrier racing towards me.
My eyes snapped shut, and when they opened, I was in a barren world plagued by eternal night. The moon was red, marked with concentric circles with nine magatamas. A strange tree stretched into the sky, from which branches of hundreds of men and women hung, wrapped in painful bliss.
"You should've faced me alone," the voice boomed. "Your God warned you. Now watch as I lay waste to your world."
With a roar and a shove, I marshaled my mental strength and pushed him out. I was mid-air, falling, when I came to, blood leaking out of my armor silts, my body still somehow empowered by Devil Trigger.
Regeneration fixed what the alien's magic broke in my brain instantly, and when it did, I reached out with my affinity, confirming where everybody was.
Surprisingly, I was held aloft by Lumos's magic, who was a few hundred feet down.
Pietro was down there with him, his mind shielded by the Chaos magic of his sister, and Rin was somewhere in between, getting dragged this way and that as his consciousness rapidly faded.
"Ulyetrix was draining him."
Shit!
I moved, my body transforming into a blur as I called on my Mind and Density affinities, flexing them hard as I pushed downward into the darkness.
The low light didn't affect my eyes, and I cut loose with a beam of Gravity Magic and Demonic fire. Ulyetrix was taller and faster than ever, and Rin was unexpectedly missing as his mental presence had vanished. It took a moment to recognize that it was buried within Ulyetrix's.
The alien swayed to the left, transforming into a blur, and reappeared somewhere behind me, sending a bramble of tentacles to rip me from the air. It didn't work before, and it didn't again. I ping-ponged in the air with gusts and Burst, rapidly switching directions until I landed. Pietro threw a bolt of lightning. All the while, Ulyetrix attacked me. His eyes shone red, and his body twisted as he casually avoided the assault.
The same happened for the dozens of attacks that followed from Lumos.
"I cannot hold back against him," Lumos sent as I dodged. "I regret the loss of the Ascendant, but---"
"No!" I cut him off. "We have to save him. I think you underestimate just how powerful Rin's absorption ability is. If the alien somehow manages to steal it from him…he won't need touch to steal energy. This little domain won't be able to hold him."
"All the more reason why we should end this before it gets out of hand," Lumos insisted.
"Easier said than done," I sent. "We need to give Rin time."
"To do what? Weaken an Eldritch monster who is orders of magnitude beyond him?"
"He won't win," I admitted. "But he can drain him, or at the very least distract him."
Lumos's expression softened some. "One minute," he finally sent. "That is all the time you get."
I let out a steadying breath. That was an eternity in high-speed conflict, but I ultimately feared it would be a waste. Rin was already at his limit with the energy he had packed earlier, and I feared that any more might genuinely push him over the edge. Yet, he's survived dying before. I only hoped it wouldn't come to that this time around.
"What's the new play?" Pietro asked through a connection his sister opened up for him. I could feel her mind lingering in the back, quietly judging and weighing.
"Largely the same. We pin him down, rain down pain so that he doesn't slip away this time, and let the Wakandans finish him off. Hopefully, we'll be able to pull everyone out before the bombs hit," I sent.
"Should I plant the bombs?" he asked. "No," I answered. "Hand them over. He'll be expecting you to try that a third time. Stick to Lightning throws."
---