Wednesday, September 6, 2023

Page 3396

It did the trick. Raga Marda lost his footing, not enough to make him fall over, but enough for Zeff to fall down upon him with a one-handed, ice-fisted slam.

The floor cratered below the two of them as Raga Marda--still invisible--took the attack, and the nearby prison cells cracked open or even burst apart. The force was more than enough to shatter Zeff’s hand and most of his arm, but pan-forma would render that a non-issue.

The Demon’s Tiger, however, hardly budged.

Zeff had been aiming for the head, but the invisibility had made such precision all but impossible. It seemed to have caught him on the shoulder.

Marda twisted to counterattack, but Zeff was already following up with his other hand, this one bearing the same water drill that he’d attempted before.

Now it landed, though not without trading. Marda’s hand or claw or whatever it was--it tore through Zeff’s torso and sent him flying back amid a flurry of blood.

Marda didn’t escape unscathed, either, though. A hole ripped through the Invisibility, along with Marda’s chest, and the rest of the man became slowly visible again as the presumed aberration item’s power melted off of him.

Zeff needed a moment to recover, but he could sense that the others were seizing the opportunity to swarm him. Diego, Dimas, Salvador, and a half-dozen others pelted him with explosions and gunfire, and when Marda tried to push through it all like smoke, Salvador was there to shoulder check him through the far wall, opening up yet another hole in Cell Block Y.

Not bad.

Zeff reassessed. Marda was obviously not down yet, but was anyone else struggling? He sensed a couple Rainlords near the exit, trying to carry reapers to safety. A materialized barricade of ice gave them some extra cover before the guard on their tail could reach them.

After a second, the guards barreled through the barricade, so Zeff made another one, this time with spikes launching out of it.

That worked much better.

Another tremor arrived, causing the battleground to pause again, this time with even more uncertainty, because the entire chamber was starting to crumble now.

Where was that coming from? Zeff searched for the source, but he wasn’t sensing it. The storm from before was still trying to regather after he’d washed it away, so he doubted that was related.

Then, he didn’t sense it, but he saw it.

Through the vacant ceiling, the night sky in the distance came alive with a red-orange glow.

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