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No more invisible helium attacks. This time, a quite visible wave of solid blades was the strategy.

When it came to materializable elements, helium was a bit of a problem child. Vanderberk had struggled with it fruitlessly for many, many years, thinking that he could use it the way so many other materializers used their elements. Even after learning pan-rozum, that old struggle had been renewed in some ways.

Helium was a noble gas. Inert. It did not react to other elements. He therefore couldn't use the transfiguration aspect of pan-rozum in order to combine his materialized helium with the elements in his own body to create explosions. A common trick for pan-rozum users, but unavailable to him.

Helium also did not freeze easily. Even at absolute zero, it would stubbornly remain a liquid unless one also applied an incredible degree of pressure to it.

Which was why these blades of solid helium were so difficult to make. And why he tended to go overboard when doing so. He'd trained too hard for them to be useless.

A tidal wave of helium blades filled his vision, shredding the quaint wooden viewing platform he'd been standing on into millions of flying splinters as they swarmed Croll.

He hovered in the air, helium legs keeping him aloft while fragments of wood were swept away by the river's current below. And he watched the utter mayhem of his attack unfold. The chunk of forest behind Croll had all but exploded, shredded trees toppling over each other or simply bursting apart on impact. In the chaos of it, Vanderberk nearly lost track of Croll's soul signature.

When the dust and splinters began to settle, Vanderberk saw Croll more clearly again. The man had been skewered near a hundred times but was still standing. Barely.

"Enough of this game," said Vanderberk. "The real Thaddeus Croll would have survived that with nary a scratch." Well, maybe that was an exaggeration. Tough to say without testing the Killer more extensively. But this imposter wouldn't know any of that. "Who are you?"

Croll merely remained standing there, so disfigured by the blades that he seemed perhaps unable to respond--or do anything else for that matter.

Shit. Vanderberk hoped he hadn't accidentally killed whoever this was already. He still wanted answers. And a lot of them.

Hmm. Trying to stall for time? They'd stopped him from calling the prison again, so he supposed if they were still alive, they would be forced to stop him from returning there, too.