Tuesday, September 12, 2023

Page 3399

The two great waves of water and lava collided, making the entire horizon come alive with steaming explosions. The ground quaked again, though Zeff couldn’t tell if it was being caused by the clash itself or by the same mysterious source from earlier.

He wasn’t able to stay on his feet. That was the downside of using icy platforms. But it hardly mattered, because the quaking broke his platform apart, anyway, and he had to quickly to catch himself with aerial materializations, curving himself back up into the air like a bobsled making a vertical U-turn.

Then a hovering platform did the trick, though even that wasn’t entirely stable. The lava wave was pushing through his water one, slowed but not stopped by the continuous steam eruptions.

Others were contributing, too. Melchor with gargantuan pillars of frozen mercury. Leo with powdery geysers of boron, creating huge gouts of green flame on contact with the lava.

Flashes of brilliant light punches holes through the lava--or attempted to, at least. Some broke through, only to be quickly filled back in, while others just seemed to be absorbed. All the water might’ve been playing a bit of havoc with that, too, but it was impossible to tell for sure amid the mayhem.

Even the guards were throwing everything they had at it. Material, explosions, liquids, countless freezing attacks.

Yet the lava neared, nonetheless.

It was clearly slowing, but would it stop before it reached the prison cells? It was already flowing over the outer walls, spilling forth like an angry orange landslide, smothering and devouring each building.

Zeff didn’t stop. More water. More.

He hadn’t hit his volume limit in a long time, but he hit it now. Not enough. He had to waste precious seconds dematerializing before he could make more tidal waves, each one feeling that much weaker than the last, since he was in such a rush and not able to ensure that he was dematerializing everything. When his materialized water was absorbed, it became significantly more difficult to find and remove.

The lava neared. And neared. And kept nearing, forcing the defenders at the front to retreat.

It reached Cell Block Y, reduced to a crawl but still not stopping. It gooped over the blown out ceiling and began to drip inside, setting the busted walls on fire and melting them down until they simply collapsed under the weight.

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