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Mercurial spikes erupted from Melchor’s body, skewering Diego through the eye socket and finally throwing him off. Bloody and full of holes, Diego managed to catch himself on the bookshelf in the middle of the room, sliding across the top and freezing it with the residual liquid nitrogen still present in his arms. By the time his feet touched the floor again, his wounds had already healed, even the one that had undoubtedly pierced his brain.

Diego didn’t have to dive back into the fight. Melchor came for him first, which Dimas found quite telling as to which opponent the Lord Blackburn was most concerned about. Surely, if Diego managed to freeze enough of Melchor’s body at once, it would be problematic for the man, but even with Diego’s soul-empowered liquid nitrogen, the freezing process would require more than just a few seconds. Melchor’s passive soul defense was not something to be overlooked. Diego wasn’t going to get that much time unless Dimas and Joana provided it for him.

Dimas pointed a single index finger at Melchor. Much as he would have liked to, he couldn’t simply crush the man with overwhelming gravitational pressure. Melchor’s passive soul resilience and field density were both too powerful for such a tactic. However, Dimas could still reverse the gravity around Melchor in order to disorient him. So he did.

In an instant, Melchor was flung toward the ceiling, splattering against it briefly before recovering and crawling around like some kind of hideous liquid spider.

Joana took the opportunity to launch a flurry of thick chromium spears, all barbed and razor sharp. They pelted Melchor, some bouncing off, some sticking in, and his body shuddered and morphed before it could expel the chromium back out again.

Dimas didn’t let up either. With one hand, he kept intensifying the gravity around Melchor in order to slow him down, and with the other, he fired off a series of gravity bullets--invisible pockets of supercondensed pressure that carried enough speed to pierce steel at fifty meters.

Mercury splashed violently with each impact, but Melchor weathered that assault, too, though not quite so effortlessly as before. His liquid body contorted and swirled as he moved out of the way.

Diego, in the meantime, had been prepping three of his fingers. No doubt, he feared using any more than that in the presence of his allies. Dimas knew what he was crafting. He’d seen him do it before. Soul-strengthened nitroglycerin, it would be.

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Melchor was not long delayed. The Redwaters all pounced on him at once, their mixture of powers accumulating into a confused frenzy of attacks. Their varied crystals and metals and gases all combined and ignited, engulfing the man’s liquid body in flames while simultaneously bombarding him from every conceivable direction.

And Melchor ignored them. He pressed through their combination attack as if it were nothing more than smoke. He went for Diego again.

Diego was ready for him, though. Emiliana knew his power as well: nitrogen transfiguration. A surge of mercury came for his head, but Diego ducked right under it and gripped Melchor’s amorphous body with both arms, going for a ride as Melchor kept leaping across the room like a wild bull. Emiliana could see him attempting to slow Melchor down with a bath of liquid nitrogen as he flailed, struggling to hang on.

Dimas took the opportunity to rear back from across the room and punch a hole into the south wall. Emiliana saw the air visibly distort as the impact shattered Melchor’s frozen mercury. “Go!” the man yelled.

Emiliana turned to run, only to find Joana already pulling her and Marcos along. But it made no difference. Before they could reach the hole in the wall, the mercury filled back in, leaving them still trapped in the room with everyone else.

The group of Redwaters moved to attack again, but two broad pillars of mercury converged on them, one down from the ceiling and the other up from the floor, meeting each other like the teeth of a giant’s jaw. Emiliana could hear their bones crunch and see their blood go flying as the frozen mercury claimed five servants at once.


Chapter Ninety-Two: ‘The weight of the rain...’
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Dimas Sebolt glanced at the dead. He’d never seen Melchor’s power firsthand like this, but he’d heard Xuan speak about it at length. It was only supposed to be mercury transfiguration, but the man’s mastery of pan-rozum completely changed the equation. In Dimas’ mind, Diego’s earlier confidence had been entirely unfounded. Being outnumbered meant virtually nothing to someone like Melchor Blackburn.

Fool that he was, however, Diego could still prove invaluable in this fight, Dimas knew. Diego himself had control of pan-forma, a kind of simpler hyper-state exclusive to transfiguration and materialization users only. It was much less versatile than pan-rozum, not breaking down the barriers between ability classes and instead affording three blanket enhancements to durability, regeneration, and connectivity.

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Emiliana moved to do what Chergoa said, but Marcos was closer and reached Ramira first. With a bit of help from Shenado, the boy lifted his little sister off her feet. Ramira didn’t seem to appreciate being carried, but Emiliana was too distracted by the adults in the room to keep watching.

“Why are you doing this?” Diego asked, all sense of leisure gone from his voice now. He’d taken a wider stance, half-crouched with his arms hanging loosely in front of him.

“Duty,” said Melchor and his reaper. “We will not harm the children. We simply need them to come with us.”

“But why?” said Joana.

“Old mistakes,” was all Melchor offered.

“That’s not good enough,” said Diego. “This is your last chance, Melchor. Either explain yourself or leave peacefully.”

The Lord Blackburn did not move.

The ensuing silence was perhaps the heaviest thing Emiliana had ever experienced. Everyone remained perfectly still, even Marcos and Ramira. Emiliana counted seven Redwaters standing behind Melchor. Not a single one of them looked pleased to be there. Emiliana flexed her one clawed hand unconsciously.

‘Get ready to run,’ came Chergoa’s echoing voice.

‘There’s nowhere TO run.’ So long as the chamber remained covered in Melchor’s soul-empowered mercury, even the reapers wouldn’t be able to leave, Emiliana knew.

‘That’s why you need to be ready when there is,’ said Chergoa. ‘And don’t resist. If Diego and the others lose, just surrender.’

‘I can fight.’

‘You can’t fight THAT.’

Melchor’s mercurial eyes had not changed, but his skin flashed intermittently between pale normalcy and waves of shining metal. Flesh one moment, metal the next, and then back to flesh again. If the man meant the display as some kind of warning, it didn’t seem to be working.

And then, everyone moved at once.

Diego’s reaper Yangéra vanished into his body as well, which caused Melchor to lunge for him. But Melchor’s movement wasn’t anything human. Instead, the man’s whole body turned to liquid mercury and surged forward as if expelled from a fire hose. His suit still stuck vaguely to him, giving an uncertain sense of where his body might be in the middle of that lustrous glob.

Diego didn’t need to protect himself, however. Dimas did that for him, putting both hands forward and shoving Melchor’s liquid mass entirely off course from across the room.

Emiliana had heard about Dimas’ fearsome alteration ability: gravitation.