Chapter 292: Megamind (Patreon)

My awareness expands, and all of a sudden, I have limbs again, and eyes, and a sense of smell.

Plus a terrible itch in an unmentionable location.

Thankfully, the sensations are muted, like phantom limbs and senses rather than real ones, but they’re there. More importantly, I can hear thoughts. Thoughts that aren’t mine.

Man, this is so weird, Alec thinks. I hope I can manage not to think about—

I cut him off right there, by sending my own thoughts to drive out his. Except mine don’t come in words, they come in images, and actions.

There’s a brief flicker of hesitation, of instinctual resistance to foreign thoughts from Alec, but then it passes, and we open our eyes.

The world looks different, colourful fields of energy overlapping with a stereoscopic view of Yog weaving him and Dave between Suri’s discs of Boreum and fragments from the pillar that’s now in the process of slowly crumbling and toppling over.

Loudmouth is hastily trying to get Jacob out of his Darksteel net as they float off to the side, out of the way. By the looks of it, they’ll be out of the fight for another dozen seconds at least.

Meanwhile, Suri and Longlegs are doing their utmost to hold Yog back with Boreum and bolts of lightning, but between his new strategy of firing Detoxifying Heat beams to evaporate her discs and using the rocks caught in his field of gravity to block them, she’s hard-pressed to keep him away from the Hydrum-spouting hole in the wall.

Our eyes fall on their chaotic mid-Aether struggle, and the large rocks being held aloft by Yog’s gravity, and somewhere in the space between our minds, a plan forms. Alec sends Electric Energy streaming through our limbs, at the same time that I cross the Lavi flows in our heart. Boost Reflexes activates at the same time as Boost Physical, the effects stacking and pushing our body to new limits.

Alec retracts our legs, and rather than challenging the action as he throws up a field of Negative Inertial Energy, I push out Cold, solidifying the Aether above our feet into Boreum for him to push off on.

It goes faster and more smoothly than we’ve ever managed together.

We can do this, we think, and it’s not clear where the thought starts or ends, but it feels like the truth.

Alec pushes off from the Boreum, and we shoot down, on course to collide with one of Yog’s rocks. He responds to our approach by having Dave fire a beam of Heat at us from his eyes, but I calmly reach out to the space around us and compress it, shrinking us down to a third of our size, and shifting us to the side to avoid the attack.

Moments later, we land on the rock and Alec kicks off to another.

When Yog shifts our target out of the way, I produce a quick Boreum platform for Alec to push off on and correct our course.

The pressure on my Spatial Boundary continues to increase as we get closer and closer to Dave with every bounce, but I manage to withstand it.

As we approach, Yog shifts more and more of his attention to us, seeming to grow irritated. He fires jets of Astreum, which I block with Boreum, he has Dave launch rocks with Momentum Manipulation, which we avoid or make use of.

Nothing they throw at us manages to stop us, because our coordination is on another level now. Finally, when we manage to land on a rock that’s too close for comfort, Yog attempts to blast us point-blank with a beam of Necrotising Radiation.

However, whether through coincidence or foresight, Suri manages to block it with one of her discs. The attack runs its course, the disc moves out of the way, and we launch ourselves forward.

Yog attempts to pull out of our path with his gravity, but our acceleration is so sudden and from so nearby, that there’s simply not enough time for him to avoid us.

Dave reacts to our approach with an impressively limber high kick. I recognise the wind-up for what it is, however, and adjust our position in space one last time, allowing us to swoop past before I release the spatial compression, making us pop back to a normal size.

Alec stretches his arm out even as he grows, perfectly timing it so he can catch Dave with a clothesline. Except at the last moment, I activate a Negative Inertial Field covering only us, turning what looked like an attack into a manoeuvre to sling around onto Dave’s back, as we intended.

As our legs and arm wind around his torso, Alec lets loose a torrent of Electric Energy, and I send out another batch of flame-wrapped tendrils at close range.

In an attempt to block them, Yog conjures a dome of gleaming black steel over his crystal. However, my Devouring Flames burn straight through it, as I’m not worried about holding back against an opponent at his level.

Dave lets out a metallic roar. Vibration Energy courses through his body to counteract Alec’s lightning, as he tries to pry loose the arm and legs wrapped around him.

That’s not as easy as it might’ve been before we added Boost Physical into the mix, however.

More importantly, they both miss the real danger.

We shape our free hand into a claw and strike out for Dave’s forehead. Our fingers pass through the conjurations like they’re not there, as they don’t affect physical matter, and sink slightly into Dave’s flesh, closing around the white gem lodged therein.

Then we pull.

“How dare you!” Yog screams as we yank him loose. “Get your filthy flesh off me; I’ll not stand for this treatment!”

Guess we just broke a bit of a Peilor taboo. Oh well.

Utterly ignoring his protestations, we kick off from Dave, soaring horizontally away from the hole in the wall where Yog was trying to make his escape.

Behind us, Loudmouth leaps for Dave and grabs onto him. Kaitlynn wastes no time in pulling them both down to the Hydrum, to make their escape as planned.

Jacob and Longlegs, on the other hand, come flying our way, for this battle isn’t over yet.

Yog proves as much by burning away Alec’s hand in a flash of Necrotising Radiation, freeing himself. The pain is unbearable—it feels like boiling acid is poured onto our hand, melting our limb clean off—and even experiencing it second-hand through the mind-meld is nearly too much for me to handle.

Before we even get a chance to recover, Yog follows it up with a concentrated wave of Inverse Gravitational Energy that at last shatters my Spatial Boundary, and launches us at a nearby wall.

Alec smashes into the rock, saved only by my timely application of Negative Inertial Energy.

The pain and disorientation from the sudden assault and impact are, unfortunately, enough to disrupt our resonance. The mind-meld snaps, leaving me in a momentary daze as Alec bounces off the wall and falls limply towards the Hydrum.

Seconds later, we bellyflop into the lake. Despite my crystalline nature, the sudden contact with Hydrum is still enough to snap me out of it. Above us, I can sense the fight continue, with both parties clearly no longer pulling their punches.

<Alec,> I send. <Alec, come on, snap out of it!>

<Wazzaa?> he replies.

<We don’t have time for this, use Regeneration!>

<Oh, right...>

His Lavi quickly begins to move, reconstructing his hand and hopefully clearing up any other damage sustained. Regrowing limbs is not a fast process, however, so I consider ways to use my time productively...

“Did you really think taking away my host would make me easier to contain?” Yog sneers. “It was barely combat-ready! All you’ve done is removed the one thing I was willing to treat with care here, and it better still be in one piece when I’m done with you sorry lot!”

“You talk a big game for someone getting their ass handed to them,” Sudo chimes in her customary stage whisper, as Jacob twists his body to flip in between two rocks flung their way. “I feel like you’re going for trash-talking, but all I’m hearing is talking trash.”

“Sick burn,” Suri chimes happily, as she blocks Yog’s path forward with a wall of purple Boreum that he promptly burns through with a beam of Purifying Heat.

While they may be winning the war of words, Yog has a point. Even with Sudo and Suri each fighting back against his gravity in their own way, and respectively launching rocks with Kinetic Energy and throwing up Boreum barriers, they seem incapable of truly halting his steady progress towards the flow of Hydrum coming out of the wall.

“I’ll be taking my leave now,” he chimes haughtily as he just about reaches his intended exit. “But don’t worry; I’ll be back very soon.”

He swerves around one last projectile, burns through one last Boreum disc, and slips past them, the Hydrum parting in front of him.

Except for one particular bit of Hydrum, shaped like a thick tendril, that reaches out from the flow and smacks him away, partially splattering in the process, like a baseball bat made of jello hitting a rock.

And then my dodecapus fully emerges. Twelve long tentacles reach out from a massive bulk of Hydrum, before quickly starting to get clad in Boreum. Alec rises to the surface of the central mass just in time to step out onto the rapidly forming shell.

Seems like the combination of active combat and the muddling effect Hydrum has on Peilor’s energy senses was enough to keep Yog from noticing the growing mass of Hydrum swimming up the downward spiralling flow.

Just like I’d hoped.

Building up enough mass to make a difference took me a minute—the swift flow didn’t help—but the advantage of that is that by now, Alec is once more ready for combat.

Of course, this particular shape is not about to stay unnoticed by the Peilor who faced it once before, and lost his precious, psychotic host DJ Dumbass to it.

“You...” Yog chimes, disbelief colouring his voice. “You’re back?!”

“You’re damn right I am,” I say, in my own voice for once. Frankly, with Dave out of the picture, there’s not much point in keeping up the ruse. What it all comes down to now, is whether or not we can beat him into submission. “And you’re going nowhere,” I add.

I punctuate that statement with a wave of Hydrum tentacles, and one of flame-wreathed tendrils of Devouring Energy, both of which rapidly close in on him.

He manages to keep away the Hydrum tentacles with his inverted gravity, but my tendrils once more push through the Realm’s laws and attach to him.

“Well, Mara will be very pleased to hear that,” he chimes, but his voice comes out strained as I once more start draining and burning his Espir. “She’s been most interested in your—wait, how can you possibly be this strong? And... you took over the body of a Peilor?! But... but you’re a fleshbag!”

At that last statement, he sounds particularly horrified.

“Quite something, isn’t it?” Suri chimes, closing in from the side as she starts weaving a fine-mazed web of Boreum around the area we’re fighting in. “Turns out we may not be so different after all.”

“Is that... Suri?” he chimes, baffled. “You took control over her?”

“I’m actually helping her of my own accord now,” Suri chimes. “Not that you’ll believe me...”

Yog laughs, but it’s clearly a sound borne of desperation, of panic at the realisation of the situation he’s in. “Okay, that’s it; I’m out of here.”

A burst of Inverted Gravitational Energy erupts right next to him, and he uses it both to fend off Jacob’s attempt to grab the Peilor, and shoot off at unprecedented speed, straight for the edge of Suri’s thickening Boreum enclosure.

Yog fires a beam of Detoxifying Heat at it, but Suri’s already fortifying the section he’s headed for, and it seems to hold. Still, the speed he’s achieved by the time he’s reached it is quite great, and there’s nothing in this Realm with higher Toughness than crystal...

As he’s about to burst through, however, Alec deploys a field of Negative Inertial Energy, in the nick of time.

He’s gotten really good with those.

Yog smashes into the Boreum shell at incredible speed, but thanks to Alec’s efforts, the result is only a high ringing noise as he’s brought to a stop.

I pour my own Cold into Suri’s barrier as well, helping to grow the Boreum thicker all around as my dodecapus comes flying over.

“No, you’re not capturing me, damnit!” Yog practically screams, right before he conjures a swarm of birds with what look like notes attached to their legs.

Trying to call for help is honestly a smart move, but his attempt is too clumsy. A gout of Devouring Flames erases all for them before they can properly disperse, then spreads out to form a sound-dampening barrier around the inside of the Boreum shell, that also burns any Espir but my own that tries to pass through.

What follows is a cat-and-mouse game, with Yog trying to ram his way out, while Suri and I slowly grow our barriers inward, as I try to grab him with my dodecapus.

Yog gets close to escaping a few times, but it’s six on one, and there’s always someone to block him, to cover the breach in one way or another. He tries more spiritual attacks, but Sudo and Suri are strong enough to withstand them, and the shields covering our hosts hold out.

Finally, the arena shrinks to the point where there’s simply nowhere left to run, and I manage to close my Boreum-covered Hydrum tentacles around him, their grip held back only by a barrier of Inverse Gravitation Energy.

Caught in this trap for the second time—counting the final battle of our season—Yog screams and rages, but doesn’t do the one thing I fear.

He doesn’t commit suicide. Clearly, he cares more about his own little life than whatever damage we might inflict on others within his society with his help.

Therefore, at long last, I manage to whittle his Espir Pool down to the point that I can forcibly pull his spiritform from his crystal—a small sphere which produces such bright light it almost looks like a miniature star—and, kicking and screaming, drag him into the Realm of Imagination.

Author's note:

Ladies and gentlemen... we got him. ^^

Thanks for reading!