The master villain knows I have a wicked and evil temper. That once I lose my shit, so does everything in a five block radius. He used this to his advantage and tricked me into fighting his fire elemental behemoth in full ifrit mode.
After all, you’re not supposed to fight fire with fire, amirite?
The construct towered over high rise apartments. It tried to clap me between its near molten hands to crush me. How do you crush smoke? I slipped into lava veins and explored the entirety of the beast. I could hear the master villain laughing as another defender of the City tried in vain to break control of the behemoth.
I found the seed that fueled the mechanism. Instead of hiding it deep in the torso of the thing, where it would be protected by dozens of layers of superheated metal and stone, the master villain had placed it as a type of pituitary gland in the behemoth’s head. To his credit, he did fortify the “skull” of the thing, with layers that would be hard to pierce from without.
But I was within.
The seed pulled upon flame to feed it. So the greater the conflagration surrounding it, the stronger it, and the behemoth, was. And that’s why the master villain needed my anger in full bloom. I would not be able to destroy the seed as an ifrit.
I burst from the forehead of the behemoth with ease. All the protective layers did nothing to prevent damage from within. The pituitary gland was exposed to a targeted strike, but nothing incendiary or heat producing could be used.
Good thing I know bitchcraft.
I flew away then arced around the behemoth widely, increasing my flames as I went. The master villain thought I was about to make the key mistake he had been waiting for and commanded the behemoth to track my position but not to defend itself.
With a burst of flame I rose high into the sky, tucked my wings in, and power dived towards the wound. My flames left a trail of superheated destruction that reminded me of tephra. (Dear self, that sounds like an awesome superpower move. Tephra Strike! Anyways…) Once I was committed to the strike and I could not change my trajectory, I changed the nature of my power.
“Skadhi, Cold-hearted and Brutal, Remorseless and Imperial, grant to me your boon of ice, that I may strike my foe as your arrows strike your prey!”
My flames ceased at once. No longer an ifrit, Weaver Ravenwinged’s power manifested as a runeblade in my left hand. The blade crackled with Isa’s power.
I heard the master villain’s laughter choke into an informed silence quickly punctuated with what I presume was a blow to his jaw by my fellow defender. The behemoth stood limply and without direction.
The ice sword fit neatly down the path I had opened when escaping the skull. The supernatural heat was more than I could stand as Weaver Ravenwinged, but I knew I would recover from any burns I incurred. I had to follow through.
The behemoth fell back as it lost the ability to move. The skull cracked open and all the soft parts used to create its mind spilled out on the heat-sagged asphalt behind it. The pituitary gland had been cracked by the Isa strike, but it was not completely broken. If the gland was recovered, the behemoth could be remade.
I looked up to the strangely darkening sky and saw above me a whirlwind of ravens. The sky spoke to me. «Say it.» I knew what the unvoice referred to and recalled the words of power that had been whispered in my ear when I had lost my own head some time before.
The bolt of power that descended from the midst of the ravens struck the ice hilt of the runeblade. It added no heat but boosted the blade’s own nature. The pituitary gland broke in two pieces. But that word of power requires a followup motion, a command to be spoken in the stillness that follows. I already knew how to end this.
“Unmade.”
As I picked up the fading runeblade, the constructed pituitary gland began to decay. By the time I had stood up, the formerly watermelon sized seed had degenerated into crumbling wires and engraved plates. Layers upon layers of careful construction undid themselves, each layer oxidizing or decaying into basic elements that carried no energy of what they had formerly been assembled into.
My arms and hands were charred and bleeding. The tips of my feathers were singed. Not since the Boneyard had I been this harmed by fire. I took it as a reminder that my anger is something to keep under control at all times.
I found my fellow defender of the City tying up the formerly master villain. “He’s pissed at you, you know. You weren’t supposed to be able to control your temper like that. And calling ice up? Slick move, there. How did you know he was baiting you into flame?”
“It was too easy. Baiting me into confronting the behemoth in an abandoned neighborhood gave me the excuse to not worry about collateral damage. Having an external skin on the thing that does suffer heat damage gave me the excuse to flame up into the hottest thing I know, an ifrit. It was too easy to indulge in uncontrollable flame. I had to find out why. His construct feeds on flame. If I lost myself, you would have to fight me first before you could fight it, otherwise, I would keep it going.”
“The other factions are raiding his lair right now. I’m taking him in. Want to help?”
Out of our visual sight, but within range of my personal senses, I could feel the Envoy stepping in. He does not make his entrance without cause, and even this microsecond of awareness spoke paragraphs of monologue.
“No. I think I’ve done enough, already. I almost became the very thing I was supposed to prevent. I’m going home. I need some sleep.”
The Envoy’s imperceptible nod and smile approved my disengagement of the dream.
I turned around, and exited before I had even taken a step.