56

Summoner by SomeoneYouWontRemember

Chapter 56

Summary:

Recap since I haven't uploaded in a while:

Last chapter, Nexus went to war with Cauldron. Bard was revealed to be alive, hiding within the Summon Core, for reasons known only to him. The portal to the conflict was opened, and Spirit of War crawled out of The Bay's waters, ready to witness the starting baby steps towards The War to End All Wars.

This chapter's only 11k words. Look at me, almost getting to reasonable chapter sizes!

Edit: Chapter formatting got a bit fucked, for some reason. Expect a couple weird points while i figure out what i need to fix.

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

The tinkertech cannon that almost killed her just yesterday blasted through the metal walls like they weren't even there, and slammed into her for the second time, intercepted by her shield, doing nothing but empowering her as she absorbed its light, its heat. 

Then it jerked to the side, trying to sweep through the walls, and likely, the people behind her.

She pushed her shield forward, a phantom, buzzing sensation rushing down her arm to push golden energy outwards from the thorax of her shield, extending in a half-dome to catch the swaying ray, a wall of golden energy rather than mere metal.

One moment, she was squinting at the row of metal walls that was being blasted through with Tinkertech guns and blaster powers. 

The next, a red, spiked blur the size of two school buses stacked on top of each other rushed through her shield's aura and slammed into the barrier, completely eviscerating the mixed wall with its charge, grenading the shrapnel towards the enemies on the other side, not reaching them, but perhaps momentarily blinding them. 

The gold ray stopped firing, vanishing in an instant.

A flash of portals, scrambling bodies, and all of a sudden, the firing line was another two hundred feet away from their starting position, leaving portals behind that winked out of existence the next moment.

Red tumbled, and clawed forward, a giant blur, a screeching bullet train.

However, he only crossed a few dozen feet of ground before he was immediately blasted back towards her in a cacophonous roar of blasts of every kind and type. Frost splashed against flame, ignited, steam exploded, lasers of every kind and colour mixed with stranger effects, blasts of light and bubbles, strange pink auras and spinning energy bolas, all impacting him with enough force to send him thrown back, as if from a bow. 

His figure went from a gigantic mound of spikes just ahead, to taking up her entire field of vision, about to slam into her, in a moment too short to be reasonable.

She caught a glimpse of his skull, charred to the spiked, cracked bone, a single half-melted eye reforming faster than it could boil. 

She poured all of the energy she'd absorbed from the cannon, pushed it into her shield, and empowered her physical and magical stature as much as she could. 

She lowered her center of gravity in a half-crouch, and launched herself forward with all her might, the floor cracking under her steel greaves, chestplate brushing against the ground. 

The moment her contact with the ground was lost, mid-dash, she Flashed up ten feet, then another ten right after, switching to the Rune of Inspiration to do so. 

Slamming into Red on the shoulder with her shield, barely dodging a spike through her eye by jerking her head to the side, she felt her shoulder jerk back as Red hit her, the shock punching through her every bone and organ. 

Logically, he should have slammed through her without even pausing. He was gigantic, and thrown by a monstrous amount of kinetic energy.

Instead, excess energy from Cauldron's own weapon empowered her and pushed against her back like an invisible hand, divine magic reinforcing her body to withstand the impact. 

With a blinding flash of gold, she felt his body crumple, crack and break against her, his body wrapping around her like a towel launched at a metal bar, bones and spikes longer than she was tall snapping like toothpicks as his momentum was destroyed, then reversed just as violently, in the next instant. 

As Red spun for fifty feet, a hundred feet, all through a wall of panicked projectiles, beams and powers hurtling towards her, she caught a glimpse of his body breaking through the barrage, bouncing off a seemingly endless expanse of sterile white tiles just once, then twisting midair to scrape his claws through the floor, abruptly changing direction to dodge a tide of blasts as he charged at the seemingly endless firing line Cauldron had set up a few hundred feet away on the flat expanse, not missing a beat despite missing two of his four arms and having almost half his muscle mass blown off.

Gravity immediately began dragging her to the floor, and she extended her shield wall again, phantom light curving over and around her in a wide radius, blocking blasts and bullets and lasers as she fell, the few shots that went past her being tanked by Lung's hulking body as he squeezed his shoulders through the portal, and threw a potshot of a fireball back at the firing line, mostly using the fire to give her cover. 

She could see the firing line getting longer, being shuffled and increased with flashing portals, but she could only catch a glimpse through the onslaught.

The recoil from her shield's aura threw her back several feet in the small time it took for her to actually meet the ground, and she barely managed to twist one of her feet backwards to catch herself from tumbling ass over head, her hip twisting painfully.

Spiderweb cracks spread out from her foot as she hit the ground, and she immediately used the support to duck into a crouch, dig her heels in, and push against the utterly all-consuming barrage, trying to take in the environment with squinting eyes.

The shield flared outwards like an exploding star, widening, solidifying, the contemptuous glare of the sun burning the eyes of all who stared at it.

The accuracy of the shots immediately turned from a relatively tight grouping, to a panicked mass of random effects, projectiles, and lasers.

If light had any effect on her retinas, she'd have been blinded a hundred times over. 

Another set of gruelling steps, feeling the sensation of a hundred charging minotaurs slamming into her shield with every second, her greaves digging deeper and deeper into the cracking ground as she lowered herself further, putting her entire might and weight against the onslaught, altering her weight with divine power just to stay grounded as her shoulder jostled and ached with every impact.

The scent of something burnt, frozen, and enclosed within its own tomb for several years, washed over her nostrils like a tide, thrown about by the blasts, paired by tinkling bits of ceramic dust from the breaking floor.

It felt like she was within a melting kaleidoscope that was trying explicitly to kill her.

Already, she could feel that infinitesimally light tightness in the bridge of her nose. The start of a mild headache.

Demigods were so draining it was frustrating. Not even twenty seconds had passed, and she'd done so little, yet she could feel the starting prickles of exertion already.

She wouldn't need Leona for much longer, hopefully. She just needed to make space for her people.

The firing line was intimidating to face, even for her. Dozens of armed soldiers, hundreds of ordinary capes, and countless monster capes, all armed with either simple guns, Tinkertech, or powers. Above, a few fliers carried blasters, and some who were blessed with both abilities strafed, throwing every effect, esoteric and not. 

Red had no issue with facing down said artillery, dodging and weaving towards the panicking firing line up ahead, his momentum only held back by a tide of fire so persistent she could barely see his upper body through the explosions and lasers. It was a miracle he was making any progress at all. Or surviving.

His dodging got better by the second, and his progress, slowly, became harder and harder to stop. Few of the enemy had good enough aim to follow him as he zig-zagged and strafed, despite his immense size, sacrificing a limb at a time to keep his head attached as he pushed like a rabid monster.

As the firing squad's left flank broke, their morale cowed by the seemingly immortal rage titan clawing its way towards them, they split and scattered back, retreating into the press of bodies behind, to be replaced by scrambling Brutes, set to face Red, while behind, they set up another firing line, re-organizing clumsily. The middle and right flank remained stoically planted in their positions.

The left side quickly turned like a mixed bunch, a few Blasters firing between groups of advancing Brutes. 

Red, mostly free from suppressive fire for the few seconds it took for the bodies to re-organize, left a broken trench in the ground as he blurred forward, three arms, one leg and a tail all scraping through foot-thick ceramics to close the gap, a cloud of debris following him as he gouged the ground, a jerking blur that seemed to defy physics.

As he was about to crash into the first few wide-eyed, terrified Brutes, who had already begun to backpedal, Alexandria dove on him like a hawk from above, feet first, first flattening him into the floor in a cloud of dust, then lifting him up and hammer tossing him back towards her from a couple hundred feet away all the way to a dozen feet to the left of the portal, resetting his progress. 

She frowned. 

Alexandria was a problem, as long as she let the illusion keep up, but where were the other two, goddamnit? Those were who she needed to focus on.

Red simply rolled to his chest before he was even done with his first spin, and clawed back up to speed towards the Case 53's, a jerky, off-key charge, like some kind of raging, crippled centipede, his lower body dragging limply behind him for a few seconds, slowing him. 

A moment later, with a grotesque snap, his broken spine jolted back into place, and his legs burst into motion after a couple disoriented flails, Red barely dodging some bits of the next volley as the Blasters stripped the skin off his flesh once again. 

It was hard to see him, or anything, through the tsunami of fire slamming into her shield.

At least he wasn't de-escalating like many of the Lung clones behind her no doubt were.

She tore her gaze away, gritting her teeth and pushing forward for another few steps, trying to take in the environment, a hostile, flat thing that felt utterly alien. 

Her eyes lingered on the curving, seemingly endless wall behind her, the white light without a seeming source, the endless, seamless ceiling, only barely visible through a batch of lasers as they flickered like a super-powered strobe light all over her shield's aura, each feeling like a bruising shove to the shoulder. 

She could guess this was Cauldron's main prison. Or something of that nature.

A few more slow, struggling steps, another sweep of her eyes, seeming more of the same.

The space they were in was more like a circular arena. Them, against the wall, while Cauldon was on the opposite end, most of their forces grouped around a gigantic pillar in the middle, something like a gigantic elevator of sorts, judging by the windows traced along it's length, the structure itself being ridged and covered in metalwork and wiring.

There was little else to note. It was just a stretch of empty space with white seamless tile flooring and walls, hundreds of feet tall and what looked like miles wide, a thing truly worthy of being called a modern megastructure, if not for the complete lack of anything in it, any soul or breakage from the vast plain. 

She could see why the initial strategy had been bombardment. There was nowhere to hide besides the pillar in the middle and whatever few fortifications had been set up around it. 

In the far distance, she could see the tide of bodies increasing, somehow. She was guessing portals. 

To not have to guess at all, she activated the runes on her main body, conjuring a pale, translucent mimic of an eye, and ordered it to fly high, the eye trained on the battlefield's sprawl, her vision expanding out of the darkness of her sockets.

She didn't get to see much through her little ward summon, before a stray shockwave decimated it. Just a chaotic sea of bodies, with some flickering portals all along the back of it, only some vague notion of order and teamwork barely present, enforced at gunpoint. 

The absolute flatness of it was so bizarre. Just a flat ground with some barriers around their elevator pillar. 

Why not set up high grounds? Fortifications? They had the home field advantage and the most they did with it was to set up a firing line? 

There was either a reason, or they were stupid. She was firmly inclined to believe the former. 

What was she missing? Why stay in such a flat environment?

Even above that, the thing that took her most by surprise, was the sheer number of people. In a flat plane like this, she could not see anything but a wall of bodies from where she entered. 

From just a few feet above however, she could see somewhere between one to two thousand people, reorienting and hastily putting up a battle line, grouping up in odd places, some led by their monstrous kin and most led by black-clothed agents in rough formations that felt… amateurish. Low effort, maybe.

The strategy, with this many people available, and little to no cover, was… attrition, probably. She was operating on the assumption Cauldron knew everything about her. It would make perfect sense to tire her out, then jump on her with their powerhouses when she couldn't bring much to bear.

It would also explain some of the simplicity of the environment. They wanted them low and exposed for assault from a different angle. Above, most likely.

How would they do that? 

Portals?

How many portals could Doormaker theoretically open at once? Alexandria hadn't mentioned a limit, but he had to have one. If not in his power, then in his mind. He probably couldn't track countless portals, but a 'probably' was not enough to base anything off of.

It was Doormaker who was the biggest threat here. She had very little connection to him, had never met nor seen him, so she couldn't teleport to him as easily as she had to Alexandria. It would be like trying to teleport to an idea. Too directionless and vast to be pinpointed to a fold in space.

She'd have Alexandria take them out, when there was a chance to command her. 

Regardless, attrition was not going to work against her, not here. She was staying out of this fight until absolutely necessary. All she was here for was to deal with Cauldron's trump cards when they finally showed up, whether that was the rest of the Triumvirate, or the favoured few of their agents and Case 53's. 

Maybe attrition would work against her people, though. It was not a strategy she could disregard entirely.

Another foot forward, another growl of exertion as another gigantic rocket combined with a dozen impact beams, slamming into the front of her shield, kicking up a wall of shattering tile and jerking her entire body back a couple inches. 

The stray bits of flying tile and dust were immediately replaced by more explosions, heat and frost rays and esoteric beams of all kinds and shapes. 

She continued to march, one foot at a time, slowly making enough room for everyone else to pour in as Lung slowly crept up behind her, the rest cautiously hiding behind him and his clones' bulk, all huddled together, ready as one could be for a fight this monumental. 

"PORTAL!" Someone's gruff voice screamed from behind her, and she almost cracked her neck to whip her head around, wide eyed. 

Over the heads of her people, she saw a wall of stone and crystal raise in an instant, presumably to block a portal, then shatter, the shrapnel tearing into everyone in the squishy, mostly human backline. 

After a second of shouts and scattering, the same gruff voice, one of her commanders, shouted, "CLEAR, MOVE! FOUR DOWN!", and she breathed a sigh of relief. 

Injuries would be plenty, but four casualties were nothing to pause over. She turned back around, and felt Lung's monstrous body crouch and coil behind her, ready.

She pushed mana from her main body outwards into the runes on her real body, using the spell components embedded into her spine to project her voice with sheer mana, injected with divine authority.

"Lung squad, go!" She spat out, rushed and sharp, carrying like the toll of a great bell, reverberating in one's very flesh for hundreds of feet in every direction.

Over the course of the next second, she became a mere pebble, only barely avoided by great, lumbering beasts as they flooded out past her, squeezing past her sides, jumping over her, or clambering over each other to run forward through the aura of her shield.

Her vision was full of nothing but flaming curves and long, roiling expanses of jerking scales, for a few seconds, a tunnel of silver-scaled fire and dusty embers, before distance cleared things enough for her to take it all in, the first wave rushing out ahead of her.

Lung charged out first, if she had to guess from the heat and size, almost thirty feet tall, slithering low to the ground in erratic patterns, a silver-scaled mix of a snake, a crocodile, and a slithering dragon, the heat emanating off of him in the brief moment he passed over her feeding Leona's soul like a river would a hose, overflowing. 

He let out a breath of flame that was taller than himself and dozens of times longer, with a roar like tumbling boulders, blocking out the entire right side of the battlefield from her lesser senses. 

Distant screaming filtered into her ears, scared and shocked, but through the blinding light, she could only see a horde of monstrous capes retreating in terror, rather than being cooked. 

It just didn't reach that far. His breath was more of a smokescreen for cover, yet they cowed immediately and ran just because it was fifty feet tall and traveled a couple hundred feet. 

She couldn't help but think that something about their enemies was just… off. They were too haphazard, too spread, too chaotic and cowardly. 

How the hell did they train these guys? They were greener than her non-powered soldiers. Alexandria had barely written anything about the Case 53's in that binder. They were seen more as a byproduct of their actual mission to make another Triumvirate member.

She didn't know what to expect from them, but it wasn't this.

Lung's breath petered out, only singing the coattails of the fleeing firing line as he charged through his own roiling flames, his wings blowing gales at the rest of them as he rushed in, trying to close the gap with the right enemy flank.

Thirteen shot out through the top of their triangular portal, the sharp point, a blur that kicked her hair up from the slipstream he left behind, and immediately shot a white ball at one of the blasters carried by a flyer high above them, still pelting her shield's aura with red lasers.

The plasma ball practically teleported onto its target, it was so fast, and the result was a violent eruption of electric white-blue waves of energy, something strange between liquid and gas instantly making the duo vanish in the bright flash, followed by an utterly vicious shockwave that either flattened the other nearby fliers to the walls, or rattled them enough for them to scatter like confused flies, screaming and shouting. 

Some hit the wall, and flailed, barely managing not to splatter on the ground in time, probably concussed. 

Most regrouped very quickly.

A couple seconds later, the shockwave washed over her like a hurried breeze, ruffling her hair.

Thirteen took a tight right turn before the splattering plasma had even finished chasing the fliers, out of her line of sight, a faint whistling sound of cut air following him as he flew along the top rim of the circle, near the ceiling.

Another blast from Thirteen shot directly into the wall to their right, in the corner of her vision, eviscerating a large section near the ceiling, likely trying to get out of this enclosed area so he could properly use his power to snipe down their enemies.

To their left, the wall exploded at the exact same time the right side did, blown inwards by an outside force. 

To her right, Thirteen rushed through the hole he made before the dust could even clear-

Then appeared through the dust and debris on her left, his flight stuttering in utter confusion for a fraction of a second before he sped away in an erratic zig-zag, dodging shots. 

Her eyes widened as she stared into the hole in the wall, only seeing a mirrored ceiling on the other side, instead of a sky. 

This whole place was in a space distortion? 

This wasn't a mere arena, this was a cage then. 

She tore her eyes away, and focused back forward.

The projectiles hitting her shield had lessened enough to where she could actually advance with some general ease, and so, she did, barely having to dig her feet in as the Lung clones soaked up most of the fire. 

Her entire field of vision was once again cut off, this time by a tide of rushing Komodo duplicates, the feline lizards stampeding towards the center of the firing line like a swarm, blocking the few remaining blasts, explosions and bullets with their bodies. 

She rose, straight, and pulled her shield aside, the golden aura, half-solid by look alone, fading in an instant like a snuffed candle, turning her head to see what was going on behind her. 

Pyro hitched a ride on one of the Komodo duplicates left behind, condensed balls of flame roiling and bucking in the palm of his hand, eyes narrowed to the horizon as his transport zipped past her, among the last, hanging on with a knife he'd embedded into the duplicate's back.

She turned her head again, to the tide of Komodos that had gone past her already, splitting into groups of fifteen or so, to rush at the center and right flank as fast as they could before they de-escalated, the original somewhere between Lung's trunk-like legs, using him and his fire breaths as cover, simply trying to get into a melee fight.

One of the Lung clones that escalated only in the form of speed and reflexes hid amongst the tide of Komodos rushing for the center, zipping and swimming through the crowd to stay out of sight, riding the cover to bide his time, giant machetes gleaming in his hands. Likely aiming to take someone in particular out. A good strategy. More of a mobile assassin than a brute fighter. Smart of him. Very unlike Kenta. 

I hope most of you make it, she bitterly thought, and kept looking, trying to gauge what action was necessary and what wasn't.

Turning back to the people behind her, she regarded the remaining ten or so Komodo clones tagging along their respective teams, and then eyed Lung's forcefield variant in particular as he broke off from the back to step up to her.

A wall of steel swords rose around her, a temporary barrier to protect from what few stray bullets and blasts were still coming their way, and aside from a quick glance, she ignored them.

Forcefield Lung's entire body was steaming from the heat of being around a dozen fighting Lung clones a minute prior, jaw grit in pain as he did his duty, throwing out two of his arms, and forming a half-dome made of scale-shaped forcefields, a glimmering forcefield like see-through platinum, almost… half-liquid glass. 

The shields moved with him as he stepped up beside her, fixed at a distance from his body, his ballistic mask steaming as his hawkish eyes surveyed the area around them.

The lightning themed Lung clone followed behind him, the last one to exit, and he began on a slow, long gallop, lightning arcing from wing to wing, from tail to wingtip, from jaws to arms. He stepped around her to the right, then back in front of her, preparing to charge into the middle of the enemy line with Komodo's clones.

Forcefield Lung allowed some of the human-sized forcefields making up their dome dissipate, then some more, enough for Lightning Lung to pass through, and closed the dome back up with just a few bored flicks of his fingers. 

She could see the barriers getting smaller by the second, forcing him to shuffle all of them and make more to fill the gaps. 

He de-escalated fast. 

His barriers got stronger by getting hit, absorbing energy, and breaking, so it made sense now that the fire had all but cut out. He had to block stuff to be useful.

As if to spite her, a group of black dots rose above the rest of the rabble across from their position and began immediately firing down at their dome, a team of fliers and Blasters, regrouped from their earlier tumble from Thirteen.

The rest of her capes filled in behind her, assessing the field like her, gaining their bearings.

A sound like a thunderstorm muffled by clinking metal drew her attention back, below the skywards pests.

Lightning Lung, only a hundred or so feet away, gathered lightning in his throat, his profile facing her as he twisted his body towards the left flank firing line, and kicked up on his hind legs, wings spread out behind him to balance himself straight, spread like the sails of a monstrous ship.

Bullets ricochet off his scales in every direction as he squared his shoulders, taking a deep, deep breath. 

His chest expanded, almost grotesquely, a searing light building up in his sternum, before violently decompressing as he curled his abdomen, half-curling forward, knuckles a foot from the ground, wings flaring upwards like a kite, a display of dominance.

As if the focal points of a welding arc, thick jolts of lighting shot from the tip of each limb, from wing to claws and up, to join the monstrous eruption of thunder that materialized almost instantaneously out of his short, bulky throat, joining in a bolt that sounded like it could crack the sky in two. 

She was quite immune to the troubles of the mortal flesh while in this ascended form, but even so, she could sympathise when she saw everyone flinch and jump, behind her, in front of her, across the field, in many cases surprised even through the ear protection they'd been provided. 

The shockwave of the blast's sound washed away the faint sea of smoke clinging around her waist, sent tinkling bits of tile tumbling back around her feet, yanked at her hair like a gauntlet trying to rip it out by force, making her rock back an inch in surprise.

The lightning bolt, half as thick as a redwood tree, slammed into one of the kinetic blasters who was keeping Red away from them by seemingly reversing his momentum every few seconds, three hundred and some change feet away, before going straight through him as if he wasn't there, and branching off to another group of Case 53's beside them, the vast majority of them erupting into a bloody rest mist, muscle liquifying off bone, hair flash-charing into embers, viscous, bubbling flesh pooling on the ground as blood turned to a thin, superheated cloud of pink steam, small fizzles and arcs flickering throughout the steam as the energy dissipated wherever it could.

A small section of the firing line and a good section of their Brutes had just been turned into a vague shape of charred floor, bloody, electrified mist, flash-boiled human sludge, and thick, choking smoke, from well over two hundred feet away.

The left flank broke, with that utterly overwhelming show of force, immediately breaking out into a retreat, first a few turning to run, then all of them. The middle flank shifted to cover them, while the right flank was unaffected, not even noticing the shift, mired in their own fight.

Morale was not nearly high enough to deal with a tide of miniature Endbringers, it seemed. 

The moment the firing line turned to run, Red's progress soared, simply charging in without an obstacle in sight. The Brutes would be mere toys for him if he could get his hands on them. 

The only thing keeping Red from charging into the fray and going wild, was some gigantic sludge monster that tumbled with him, Red trying to tear it apart faster than it could slide back together and envelop him. 

It reminded her of Zac, frankly, just uglier and more aggressive.

The next moment, Red decided to ignore his opponent to focus on the easier targets. 

He slammed into whatever few Brutes were feeling heroic like a sentient blender made of meathooks. Someone's torso was pulped in his fist, organs and viscera squeezing out between monstrous fingers as he painted the floor with their insides, smearing them on the floor while stomping forward with his knuckles, while another person was grabbed between two hands and pulled apart like a toy, intestines stretching between the two pulped pieces that Red threw aside carelessly. She caught something furry being slammed into the ground over and over by Red's fourth arm, leaving chunks of fur and flesh behind with each impact, his charge not pausing in the slightest for any of it. 

The slime Case 53 barely hung on, only mildly restricting Red's charge while the Blasters ran away, screaming something unintelligible up at the sky, presumably at Alexandria as she zipped up, down, and repeat, trying to pick off Komodo copies before they hit their frontline, successfully drawing her attention. 

Doormaker's portals flashed in existence before the Blasters of the left flank, a seeming wall of them, right in front of the retreating line, and everyone she could see vanished into them. They flickered out a moment later, and the firing line was scrambling to set up another two hundred feet back, trying to regroup, the strategy remaining the same, seemingly, simply trying to shoot Red down.

It seemed the notion of friendly fire was thrown out of the window, because whatever few Brutes were trying to tangle with Red were killed in the ensuing volley, sentient sludge man aside.

The firing 'line' of Cauldron was more of a chevron shape by now. The left flank had retreated and was struggling to survive, and the right flank could barely fire through the monstrous, but largely ineffective fireballs that Lung spewed their way as he charged on. 

Only the center was holding in their original place, gunning down Komodo's clones one by one. 

She reckoned that Lung's lightning sibling could break the middle section pretty quick. 

Alexandria alternated between killing Komodo clones before they could crash into the shaky right side of their firing line, tearing Lung's wings off to slow him, and zipping across the entire battlefield to drive Red into the wall, tear a limb or two off, then punt him back towards her, to varying degrees of success.

That would become a problem if he escalated enough to lose his senses, but he wasn't that far gone yet.

She wasn't sure if this was some kind of bait on Cauldron's end, or if they were trying to get rid of their weakest capes first. Those options both made more sense than then not training any of their capes, which was what it seemed like. 

Lung's lightning kin lumbered forward towards the center line, slower than most of his brethren, but much tougher, shrugging off rockets and blasts with metal scales, head tucked down with his shoulders so his bulky, silver scales and bony-like metal growths could tank the projectiles, advancing in a slowly building charge that shook the ground with every step, wings spread out like a fan, covering most of the center firing line from her sight.

She hadn't seen him take flight at all, actually. He didn't even attempt to flap them, like Lung did, when he felt optimistic. 

He was likely too heavy and well-armoured. His wings were probably meant to be shields, then, rather than instruments of mobility. 

There was something ironic about a grounded dragon. 

Said irony fled from her mind as she saw him glow again, then pop up on his hind legs, sending a second blast of lightning right into the center line. 

Some manner of organization seemed to have prevailed, because this one was met by at least a dozen stacking barriers of varying shapes and sizes, only the last of which survived. 

Even so, the shockwave floored a couple dozen of the Brutes rushing out to meet their own charge, tossing them around like ragdolls, thrown with enough force to spin and tumble across the tiles. 

The sound of shattering glass echoed through the gargantuan chamber, vibrating her ears uncomfortably.

A tiny flash of a guttering laser, cutting upwards to the ceiling at the edge of her vision, distracted her, and after a moment of jerking her head around, trying to find where it came from, she found the culprit. 

A small squadron of fliers, half a dozen of them against Thirteen, locked in a stalemate of frenzied twirls and explosions that made the ceiling creak every couple seconds, way up above, blasts meeting overwhelming force with simple quantity, and evening out.

Lung's last, weakest clone zipped past her with a strangely graceful charge for a draconic half-man, pulling her attention back down, his sleeker form slipping between stray blaster volleys and his bulkier brethren's cover, in the middle.

Kaiser's clones slid into place behind her next, each step raising thick metal plates, rows of spiked defences, crystal shields just big enough to hide a couple men, all in the course of a few seconds.

Hundreds of feet of ground turned into a makeshift fort, sprawling out far past Forcefield Lung's capabilities, layering over and over each other. 

High grounds, walls and ramps and ramparts, firing holes, shields and overhangs, walls and channels, lowgrounds, all formed, piece by piece, a twisting Escher painting of a fort made of spikes and swords and spears and stalagmites, uneven and hostile beyond compare to the eye.

Lines of thick, large metal spears formed anti-charge defences that could be shot through, crystals wrapped around stone and metal on the outside for reinforcement, and a sea of swords stabbed up from the ground, only for Magnet to rip them out of the ground, then repeat, Kaiser feeding him more and more ammunition, until Magnet was floating on a platform of broken swords fifty feet above her, surrounded by a tornado of sharp, whistling metal, hands steepled behind his back, no doubt the strongest of his strain. 

She could see bullets slam to a halt with whistling noises, two or so hundred feet away, before leisurely floating over to join the tornado of metal around Magnet. 

In little more than a few seconds, her position went from an open field, to a layered fort of steel that no mere conventional firearm could even hope to scratch.

She dropped Leona, and switched to Syndra, floating forward, magenta eyes peeled wide, her aura feeling at the space around her, spheres buzzing, ready to obliterate anything and everything that so much as tried to forcefully enter their sanctum. 

As if caution itself summoned trouble, a palm-sized portal opened, right above the Oni Lee clones as they rushed through the triangular portal she'd made fifty feet back, and she felt a shape zip through it, faster than the eye could track. 

Her mind was ready regardless, and an unyielding purple bubble formed around it in an instant, with a simple, tiny twitch of her finger. 

She felt the projectile hit the bottom of the sphere and explode, metal shrapnel uselessly slamming into the inner walls of her construct.

After a mute, tense second of expecting something more, the Oni Lee clones resumed their jog, unbothered, and the rest of the clones piled into the makeshift base, following them. 

She dissipated the sphere, the smoking shrapnel of Doormaker's probing attack hitting the floor unceremoniously, before Magnet took them into his storm above, floating imperiously like an Emperor observing his field, blocking stray blasts with ten feet of solid steel at the drop of a hat. 

Just to have a better view, she floated a little higher, squinting at the chaos. 

To her surprise, she caught the first casualty of the day, one of the weaker Lung clones, now a relatively small, icy, draconic sculpture scattered on the ground in red, frosted pieces like red rubies. She switched to the Rune of Precision to locate who was responsible for that. 

Whether he was a weak Lung clone or not, he was still a Lung clone. That took a lot more Blaster force than what their enemy had been showing so far. Most of the actual force had been from normal weapons like rockets. Their blasters only had volume, not power.

She caught the culprit after a few moments of scanning. A blurry figure that was zipping around like a bullet, just above the heads of the rest of the Case 53's, almost weaving between them rather than over them, weaving oddly dim lasers through their own ranks, lasers splitting between focusing down Komodo clones, and driving Red into the walls until Alexandria got back to him. All the while, flying low to not draw too much attention, not stand out more than needed.

Legend himself, no doubt. She'd never seen lasers behave like that other than his.

The problem was that she couldn't tell what the hell was up with his form. 

It felt like her eyes couldn't focus on him, slid off like his form was smooth ice and the rest of the world was made of sandpaper. There was some kind of distortion on him that made her eyes hurt looking at it. 

He zipped again, and she lost him for a moment, before finding him on the complete opposite side of the field, his twisting helixes of lasers boring into a Komodo clone like a drill, grinding it into the floor until it scattered, leaving a charred imprint on the floor. 

Another zip. 

She lost him again.

She should not be losing him, not so easily. Whatever the effect on him was, it likely made it harder to notice or keep paying attention to him, and god it was annoying.

She found him near the ceiling a moment later, intercepting one of Thirteen's plasma shots, detonating it during its travel, half-hidden behind the middle pillar, on Cauldron's side of the field. Three other fliers zipped about, trying to box Thirteen in like a crowd of hawks to their prey.

She caught Legend's form for a moment, and cast 'Ignite'.

Or, tried to. 

Her eyes couldn't fucking focus on him. Couldn't lock on. 

A very smart precaution on Cauldron's end, because she should be able to Ignite him, she had the ability, but whatever that squirming blur was, she simply could not. 

That Stranger effect might have been why it took her so long to notice Legend, and why Thirteen hadn't started annihilating the enemy ranks the moment he came out. 

She squinted, and caught Thirteen's twisting, flickering form as it bent like a spring, curling around a straight beam, then barely managing to dodge by flicking his head downwards and throwing a small plasma blast that forced Legend to redirect his fire on defending the Case 53's below, to detonate the blast early.

Thirteen dodged the other Blaster's shots by switching out of his dragon form, letting them whizz by him by mere feet, an overwhelmingly dangerous trick, then switching back to blur away in the moment of surprise he inflicted.

Thirteen's Changer form was charred and bent at strange angles like his scales had melted and scrunched up together, entire chunks missing out of his back and revealing the back of his ribs, bleeding slowly. 

He wasn't just flying about, he was running for his life.

And Legend, was, for some reason, holding back. 

Even so, Thirteen was going to die at this rate. 

With how unique and powerful of a Blaster he was, she couldn't afford that. She had plans for him in particular. 

She turned, and activated her authority runes, facing the teams, a mish-mash of clones that fit together decently. 

A particular team stood out to her. The best and most powerful versions of Purity. Four of them. Faster, better, stronger, more consistent. Their strongest Blasters, aside from Pyro and Thirteen.

"Purity clones, top team! Pick up Lung's forcefield clone, fly him up to Thirteen! Support him. Thirteen cannot die. Die for him if you have to!" She rushed out, and the four women with the Purity emblem on their chest immediately split off to do as tasked, two grabbing Forcefield Lung out from right beside her, grabbing him under his armpits, then joining the other two as they rushed upwards and opened fire on Legend, turning into specs against the white ceiling over the course of a second.

That was the last order she had to yell for the foreseeable future, because the next moment, all the teams burst into action. 

Riding on Komodo's de-escalating clones that the man had left behind, were a mixture of Oni Lee clones, half of the Kaiser clones she'd brought, and a couple Purity clones each, flying alongside them for suppressing fire. 

It was a clever split. Kaiser's clones would be half-hanging off Komodo, dragging a foot on the ground to make moving cover for them all until they could get close enough to wreak havoc in melee. Oni Lee's clones shone in close range, and when facing so many enemies, Kaiser's clones practically couldn't miss. Each spike and sword would pierce and kill. The Purity clones could keep the enemies focused on hiding behind their barriers and ducking behind their Brutes, lessening the strain on the Komodo copies.

The last line shot off, Komodo's final few duplicates charging out with their human cargo.

A moving wall of steel and stone followed the clones, blocking shots and sight as they ate through the distance. 

Alexandria was now fully preoccupied with holding back Red, who had grown a fifth, jagged… lobster-like claw arm on his back, and was fast enough to actually resist her, to some extent. Not win, but squirm and buck quickly enough to prevent her from dismantling him with every pass.

All it would take was one command for Alexandria to switch teams, but she had to take her time and use that element of surprise when it was most impactful.

She felt Noelle move through space behind her, scuttling in close, Crusader's ghosts in a protective cordon around her. Already, she was twelve feet tall and sixteen wide. 

Bit by bit, the remaining Kaisers added more fortifications around them, identifying holes and closing them, eyes peeled for portals, ready to jam a wall of steel before them at a moment's notice, hyperfocused on their protective task. 

Crusader settled in behind her, brows set in a grim line as his ghosts switched priorities and escorted him and the second most important people into the inner circle. 

Lisa, and Coil. 

They quickly walked up behind her, very visibly unsure about being a part of such a dangerous conflict, and were quickly joined by the entirety of the Empire. Behind them, Bakuda bounced in, humming some song to herself as she half-danced to a beat of her own, holding onto and jostling an uncaring Oni Lee as he stalked in alongside her.

She glanced at Lee. 

"How powerful are the grenades she gave you?" She asked, quickly. 

"Her best." Oni Lee replied calmly, barely audible over the cacophony of a war behind her.

She nodded, then frowned, eyeing the desperate fight beyond as Komodo's clones finally crashed into the middle line, a tide of monsters tumbling and meeting their charge, Cauldron's Brutes. All bizarre mixes of differing biologies, inanimate objects, and distorted mixes of both.

Disorganised, still. Undisciplined, untrained. With that hesitance and fear she knew ever so well. 

It shouldn't take much to make them… desert. 

It would also probably save their lives. It was not them she wanted to eradicate, it was Cauldron. They were not at fault here.

"Don't go in yet, Lee." 

He stared, then slowly nodded, breaking off from Bakuda. 

"Soooo boss lady~," Bakuda began, shouldering her grenade launcher, eyes no doubt dilated into black orbs behind her mask. "When can I kill them? I want to fucking blow them up. God, I WANNA BLOW SOME SHIT UP!" Bakuda screamed, her voice synthesizer peaking as she hopped in place, her free fist thumping on her chest while a manic cackle squeezed out through the tiny modulator. "SO MUCH MEAT, CLUMPED TOGETHER!" Bakuda yelled with glee, before breaking out into happy, giddy hops pointing past her like an impatient toddler, seemingly ready to just sprint across on her own two feet. 

She turned to eye the battlefield behind her, switching to the Rune of Inspiration, eyes sweeping through the Case 53's. 

Hundreds of people's most valuable, sensitive strings of destiny filled her mind, and she frowned. 

Most of them would die here. 

Pretty much none of them wanted to be here, however. They weren't trained, they weren't loyal, they were just fighting with the equivalent of a gun barrel jammed against the back of their head, hoping to somehow survive this. Some were promised vague things in return for victory, things like more freedom, companionship, whatever might drive them, and were for whatever reason loyal, but they were rather few.

Cauldron didn't even bother Mastering any of them? Why? What's with the stupid, pointless cruelty? What the fuck? 

She knew full well they were no angels, neither was she, but there was a point where cruelty through negligence just crossed into evil. Why not Master them, give them a death with dignity and purpose, some grit, some pride? Her men might die, but they'd die fighting with everything they had, fervently loyal and pleased that their death had a purpose, with no regrets. The best a man, or woman, could ask for, when it came to something as grim as dying in a war. 

Cauldron's experiments were just meat for the grinder, and they knew it, seemingly.

She didn't want to just slaughter them as Cauldron intended… and she could offer them an alternative, couldn't she? 

"...I'm going to try something soon. I need their morale to break more first." She declared, then turned to Bakuda, who was visibly vibrating, splitting her attention between the space around her, and the manic bomber. "Afterwards, you can start firing at will." 

Bakuda's grin was almost visible in her eyes, through the visor, adjusting her gleaming new automatic grenade launcher with jittery, twitching hands.

Another series of flashing lights above made her crane her neck up.

Her lips pursed. 

Despite the reinforcements, the Purity team and Thirteen were still barely staying alive, from the looks of it. 

Legend was just too goddamn powerful. 

The only thing keeping Thirteen alive seemed to have been his monstrous speed seemingly being faster than Legend's eyes, and his forcefield's equivalent assistance in blocking stray, bending lasers.

But nobody else in the team had that advantage, and the forcefields from Lung's clone could only reach so far in a fight where everyone spread like flies. The Purity clones were hassling Legend, but the most they managed to do was force him to not fire by forcing him into his Breaker form, darting around to stay alive rather than decimating them. It was a fight on a hair trigger. One good opportunity, and Legend could probably kill them all. 

She glanced around her, and frowned. 

"Keep an eye out for portals! Do not shoot blindly into it, they might open a portal to allies, expecting you to shoot instantly! Just defend! If anything serious happens, use Bakuda's sonic bombs, I'll hear it anywhere!" She barked out, and she was met by a sea of bobbing heads around her, and a shout of confirmation from the soldiers rushing in through the portal to take up cover and set up sniping positions, guns held ready.

With that, she flew up, to not only try and deal with Legend, but save her minions.

Yesterday, he was born, his mind full of a life not his own. 

Yesterday, he was given his name. Thirteen. A number associated with a lack of fortune. The 'unlucky' number.

Today, he would likely die. 

Something about the irony of it all royally pissed him the fuck off. 

He curved and twisted around another laser, making sure to stay close to Legend so he couldn't properly hit him without risking hitting himself, sticking to his back so he couldn't see him, spinning with him in erratic, jerky patterns. 

That only worked for half a second before the man practically teleported away, making space that Thirteen couldn't possibly cross in time, and a stream of splitting lasers erupted out of the man's hands, bright like a star, washing away the world. 

He fled, naturally, keeping an eye turned to watch behind him.

The beams arched in every direction, outwards, stretching out far like a net, then curving inwards, forming a tunnel around him, with endless range and crossing beams. 

His eyes widened as his mind froze, seeing no way out. 

He was stuck in a flytrap, squeezing so rapidly he had no time to think.

Could he squeeze through the gaps? Could Legend-

"Thirteen!" Someone's familiar voice roared from below, and he jerked his head sideways, right eye pointed down, spine twisting painfully.

He couldn't see much past the beams, a mere two dozen feet away and curling inwards to char him to the bone, but just as he resolved to try and dash between the small gaps between them, a strange shape like a pinecone made of forcefields broke through with startling speed. 

The lasers, nothing but photons, seemingly, hit the forcefields and refracted away as if they met a mirror, below and everywhere, and in the far distance, he could see them charring and carving lines through some of the metal defences Summoner had set up as well as a couple of her men who didn't dive away quickly enough. 

His right eye caught a dozen or so monster capes being cut through as though with a laser cutter, on their enemies' side, ankles and heads tumbling, creatures tumbling into pieces, torched black from heat.

The laser beams below him vanished, cutting the refractions off, and the ones above him curled down, moving even faster in a linear sweep, like a flyswatter, trying to finish him off.

He twisted, and took a sharp turn downwards, rushing towards the ball of force fields, pushing his flight past the limit, something inside him straining painfully.

The top of the cone, just off the center, opened, a hole just wide enough for him to jump in through.

He twisted his head to shoot a plasma ball back at the lasers, a move made of desperation more than anything, to buy enough time for him to get into the spherical fort below. Despite trying every trick he had to stay alive, he could not simply outrun light itself, and now he had nowhere else to dodge.

The fireball met the laser, and exploded, the shockwave further propelling him downwards like a bullet, actually diluting the light, bending it in a strange, crumpled cone shape.

He turned his head back around, feeling forcefields brush past and ruffle his mane as he put his head through, then his shoulders, then his waist.

In that instant, the laser above swept through the top of the moving fortress, and he felt pure agony shoot through him, an unfathomable burn going down to the middle of his spine as he entered, caught a glimpse of two shining women carrying one of his brethren, before he had to turn to the side, so that he could slam into the barriers with his shoulder instead of his head.

He felt his arm and shoulder joint crunch and turn to paste a moment before the impact forced his head to slam into the barrier sideways, diluted, but still a powerful blow. 

The world blacked out for a moment, swimming shadows and a piercing ringing moving through his burst eardrum to drill into his brain. 

No rest nor reprieve came, as immediately, the movement of the pinecone switched directions with blazing speed, moving down. His body stayed in the air for a moment, before the top of the force field ball slammed into him from above as it rushed downwards, the force fields sliding along each with the sound of glass grinding on glass, to layer over each other, and turn into a more compact ball, from a hundred feet diameter into thirty.

His vision swam like the world was liquid, rippling and wavy, stuck to the ceiling as the sphere continued to rush downwards faster than gravity could.

"SWITCH OUT OF IT!" His kin roared, and he did as asked, too dazed and injured to even attempt to make sense of why. 

His mighty, majestic form vanished, replaced by his meagre one, four limbed and scaleless and useless, just as another tight turn was taken. 

The dome rushed towards him like a wall of concrete, ready to pulp him. He saw a flash of a red, screaming beam, punching a hole through the forcefields' edge, clean through one side of the sphere and out the next, barriers flicking out of existence as they shattered.

Their direction reversed, mere feet away from smearing him on the force fields.

For a moment, the abrupt twitches and switches in direction forced him to flail about in the middle of the sphere, always mere feet away from being knocked unconscious by a wall of glass-like barriers shaped like scales. 

The red beam moved with them, trying to cut through the middle, where his kin was, waving his arms frantically to replace the barriers, almost colliding with the central pillar as they swerved around it, the lasers simply carving through it effortlessly and scattering debris below.

The sphere jerked to the side as the Purity clones switched direction again, and the angle of the laser changed, its movements turning more organic, as if a giant icepick trying to gouge out the insides, held by an unseen hand.

The red beam zipped towards his face, to his left, mere feet above. 

Or perhaps, below. He couldn't tell what was up or down anymore.

That was all he managed to catch before a tsunami of sensation washed away all thought, the injuries registering before the searing heat did. 

He felt his face tightening and squirming as skin burned to nothing, his left eye popping like a grape as the fluids inside flash-boiled, his cheek liquifying with the scent of cooked meat as the ballistic mask fused to his skin, melting, his glove turning to embers in an instant, his hand erupting like an overripe fruit in a microwave. 

The sensations dug into his mind like spikes, scooping out his thoughts and composure. He bucked with shock as he tried to jerk his body away in a panic, the laser's heat deforming his skin through his armour as it cut even closer for a millisecond. 

The entire sphere bucked, the heat and the laser vanishing to be replaced by the sight of the force fields blurring towards him, filling his sight faster than the human senses could cope with.

I'm about to die.

The world slowed. 

He thought of switching.

Before the thought could travel through his neurons, confirm and activate, an arm wrapped around his abdomen, and jerked him back.

He bent around it from the abrupt switch in momentum, the front of his abdomen flattening against his spine, and he felt his organs pulp and tear and pop inside him, a spray of blood and vomit violently spraying out of his throat and nose as his hair brushed against the barriers.

His forehead tapped the barriers, gently, instead of splattering against them. 

They felt like glass.

Then they became smaller, leaning away from him, and he felt himself be yanked back before abruptly stopping, a body pressed against him, holding him, as his spine strained and his ribcage popped, his blood trying to escape through his skin from the sheer speed. 

His right eye caught a glimpse of his kin next to him. A woman's arm around him, the other off to his kin who moved his arms like an orchestral master with none of the fluidity or expertise. 

He tried to scream through the acid and blood in his throat, his remaining eye bulging out of his socket, feeling like it was about to pop out, burst, from the sheer agony. 

He switched, unable to take it. 

He forced them a few feet to the side with his draconic width, startling them, and himself, as his perspective abruptly shifted again, ten feet above where his eyeline used to be.

The barrier blurred towards him.

He was fast enough to move with their movements in this form, so he did, only for their direction to change again on a dime, and he almost splattered against the barriers again. 

"JUST PUT ME ON HIM!" His kin roared, and the white, shining duo blurred towards him, the barriers moving with them, or more likely, with the person they carried. 

Before he could react, a gloved hand grasped one of his whiskers painfully, and another buried itself in the red mane around the crown of his head, legs digging into the side of his neck as his kin latched onto him. 

"GET OUT OR STICK TO HIM!" His kin roared to the women, opening a hole at the bottom with a sweep of his arm, and the women both blurred out of it.

He caught a strange red color where his tail was supposed to be, dangling strings, and curled his head more and more towards his chest, eyes widening, agony spiking as his brain realized the extent of his injuries, all the parts of him that couldn't respond to his brain's commands.

His innards hung in the open air, charred black ropes of intestine. Everything until just below his lungs was gone. Over two thirds of his body were gone, seared off like a laser cutter gone through paper. 

His right shoulder and arm was pulped flesh, barely clinging on. 

Every breath shifted his irrevocably shattered ribs, sharp spikes of pain shooting through him.

His shock was cut short by the barriers all taking the tint of blinding blood red, Legend's laser slamming into the center. 

Over the sound of shattering barriers, he jerked downwards, from zero to a thousand in an instant.

Some of his hair tore out, barely registering. 

What did register was the barrier blurring towards him.

He realized his kin had lost grip on his mane, and swerved in a complete one eighty to rush to his flailing form.

His left arm was functional, but three clawed fingers on an appendage only meant to be used to claw and help crawl was hardly going to be enough. 

He opened his jaws, and clamped them shut around his kin's midriff as gently as he could manage in such a rush, immediately doing another one eighty to dash down, low, and lower, diving towards the enemy lines.

The only thing Legend seemed to care about was friendly fire. So he would try and force him to stop shooting at them, even if the alternative was to face well over a thousand hostile capes in melee range. Maybe his kin could block them, because he could not block Legend's lasers. He doubted anything could.

The barriers in front of him stopped him from seeing where or what he was going into, however. It distorted sight into wavy lines of colour, when layered so many times over itself.

His kin realized it a moment after he did, and shifted the hundreds of barriers around, focusing them behind them in a giant pile that swerved and jerked around where stray, swerving rays of light tried to hit them, from behind, from the sides, split into swerving groups trying to catch every probing angle of attack.

Then, suddenly, the lasers cut out, and he turned his head to see why. 

His eye caught a dark shape, tumbling through the air, limp, everything above the collarbones completely gone. A corpse. 

The Purity emblem on its back confirmed his suspicion.

Three more Purity clones were zipping around Legend like mosquitos, an utter barrage of helix blasts, thin beams of light, and tracking missiles, numerous and bright enough to blot out the entire aerial section of the battlefield. 

Utter pandemonium. He couldn't process a single thing about it. It was like trying to stare into a dozen strobe lights, all flashing in different rhythms and speeds.

A prick of pain shot into his neck, and he jerked his head back around, faced with a gigantic rifle, smoking, manned by a human, merely two hundred feet below. A nuisance that his scales could shrug off, but it made him see what he was heading into.

The numbers were overwhelming, this far in the backline of the enemy. 

There were hundreds of them. Maybe a thousand, maybe three.

This was, all of a sudden, a very suicidal idea. He couldn't even shoot back, his mouth was full.

He jerked around, a ninety degree switch, and ignored his kin gagging and squirming in agony, speeding back towards their side of the field, flying even lower, only a hundred feet above ground.

He felt explosions, heard and saw flashes of light follow them through the corner of his eyes, but with strangely masterful precision, his kin blocked every projectile, a patched-together half-dome of shields trailing behind them.

Red light, at the edge of his sight.

His kin couldn't see it.

He jerked, twisting, ending up upside down, and tilting his neck to the side, so his kin would be forced to see it. 

A wave of their arm, and every barrier they had flashed out of existence, then back into the laser's line of fire as it swerved towards them, stacked in thick layers.

He flew faster, heart punching into his ribs with every beat, wondering when the barriers would break, watching with his left eye as they shattered like glass sheets, one after another, dozens of them every moment, the light only growing brighter and brighter as more barriers broke, only to be replaced by some more even larger, even thicker ones, with frantic twitches and jerks of his kin's arms. 

The light drowned out every other hue, a second later. 

The world was red as blood, and nothing else, scattering and bleeding into everything through the barriers it destroyed. 

His kin held the laser back for a mind-boggling two whole seconds and some change, before it reached the final layer.

He twisted, putting his lower body in the direction of the laser, a meagre physical barrier, twisting his head downwards. 

Something shattered, audibly, barely heard over the chaos of war below and above. 

A fresh, all-consuming agony, then the world began to spin, rapid, uncontrolled, everything a blur.

He tried to fly, but couldn't. 

He tried to clench his jaw, but couldn't, his kin slipping out of his jaws, flailing through the air, yelling, somehow unharmed, relatively. 

He saw a flash of gore, bits of bone and scales and organs, filling the sky above like smoking raindrops.

His vision filled with black viscous blobs of inky darkness, as the realization crawled into the shock-ridden white matter of his mind, that that was his own viscera. 

He watched the stump of his long, scaled neck curl into the bottom of his vision, a slave to momentum as they kept tumbling, near horizontally from the sheer speed, towards Nexus's outer defences.

He was nothing but a decapitated, spinning head. 

Everything went black, the world faded.

Peace, for an instant. All-consuming, quiet, calm.

The next moment, everything flashed into existence again, and he flailed his four puny limbs, the spinning world around him somehow getting closer with every blurry turn, blood roaring, agony stabbing through every inch of him. 

Mere moments before he splattered on the ground, he suddenly slowed over the course of a few dozen feet, his brain flattening inside the top of his skull with an eye-rolling sensation of garbled nonsense, before the momentum faded, and he was left upside down, floating, surrounded by a purple-black aura, choking on his blood and stomach acid, dying. 

Far above, one of Summoner's seemingly infinite forms floated in place, her hand glowing the same aura as the one around him, her eyes trained on the fight above between Legend and the Purity trio.

He turned his head, feeling blood leak out of his mouth to crawl towards his eyes. 

His forcefield kin floated in place as well, locked into a protective ball of his own barriers. 

Summoner glanced at him out of the corner of her eye from far above behind a sheen of his own blood, and with a burst of flaring green that he was quite familiar with, he felt his organs mostly reform, stomach inflating again, liquids rushing back in place, his choking reflex abruptly returning as he choked and coughed blood, flailing his arms, trying to turn upright to get the damn blood out of his eyes.

He fell, suddenly, and before he could panic, his back met cold, smooth steel with a wheezy thump. He stayed still as the ground under him rushed back, to their lines, lowered to the floor with barriers popping up ahead of him.

It took him a moment to realise he was being carried back by Magnet on a metal sheet, and that through the frothy blood in his throat, he was gasping and chittering in broken groans of agony.

He blinked at the ceiling, rasping, spitting blood, coming to terms with how close he came to death, how close to it he still was. 

He watched out of the corner of his single eye, as his forcefield making kin stumbled off his own platform, spun in place, and stumbled back on his ass, likely dizzy beyond belief. 

Two uniformed teams of human grunts rushed out to them, and dragged them back into the fold by their uniforms' straps, guns firing on full auto over their heads into the horizon, barely audible over the ringing squeal in his eardrums.

He watched bullets from the enemy crawl to a stop then swirl towards Magnet's personal tornado of metal, saw rockets abruptly change directions away from them to fly off towards the wall, green, yellow, pink and blue blasts of all types and kinds and shapes being blocked by walls of metal spears and sheets, the shrapnel whizzing past his head by inches.

Far beyond, a wall of raging serpents drowned in a tide of monsters, with more Purity clones zipping above them to match the fire by the enemy.

He heard something about being sent straight back out of the portal, to Othala, in what felt like the blink of an eye, through the ringing in his ears.

He was probably heavily concussed. 

As he crossed the portal again, from searing light into oppressive darkness, he tried to find where Summoner had gone, but could not find her, chin glued to his collarbone as he stared down, trying to find them.

He could only see that the Blaster fight had ceased, since the ceiling wasn't hidden by a million tendrils of powers. 

He hoped that was a good thing. 

His loss stung just as much as his injuries.

He remembered this… helpless feeling quite well. Back when he fought Leviathan, and lost. Or his predecessor did, at least.

The comparison boiled his blood more, because Legend was so much lesser. 

And yet, he was still no match for him in any way aside from raw firepower, only after several minutes of firing. And maybe range. 

Control, speed, mobility, versatility, nothing. 

He made a vow, right then and there, that he knew he could never fulfil, borne out of the fury of inadequacy. 

He'd kill an Endbringer, one day, or die trying. He would defeat the storm, smother the wildfire, still the earthquake, or be scattered by them into a million pieces.

Lung acknowledged his limits, did not bother with what was out of his control. 

Thirteen was not Lung. 

The battle raged on without him as the darkness swallowed his form.

Notes:

So, I haven't been writing too much lately. Gotten into DIY stuff, relaxing with writing Mom Militia and the like, holidays, pets, etc but fuck me, I've put way too much into this story to let it sit here unfinished, and the gas pedal needs to be floored again, so expect a slightly faster second update. Those of you who wanted more War, you shall get a bit more of him soon. :)

Let me know what you think. I love comments, whether it's praise, criticism (be chill about it, I got a heart too my dudes), or just questions and personal musings, I love reading them. It's like 60% of the joy of writing. :) So leave comments if you can spare the effort.

Comment begging aside, I hope you'll enjoy the final Cauldron showdown before the story enters its next arc. If you're dissapointed that Taylor is planning to sit this one out mostly, don't be. :)

Cya all soon, thx for all the love my guys.

Write! Read! Enjoy the free effort of strangers! It's half the joy of life!

PS: I'm making a compendium of sorts for Summoner. Mostly to provide readers a small encyclopedia of sorts, of which characters are here, who is who, what name is what person, and how people look, as well as various notes about the Runes ETC. Because let's face it, you guys probably can't keep all this stuff straight if it takes the story ages to finish. People forget, read other stories, etc! I wanna make it easy to hop back in the saddle with Summoner, so, COMPENDIUM.

It might also allow me to rewrite one of the earlier chapters that I and many others found unwanted, if I do this. So, expect this soon, or now, depends when I get around to it! It's almost new years after all. Oh right, happy holidays. :)