There it was; that suppressed power, unleashed, like the force of a thousand suns exploding outwards. Drexel and Felicity were each but a hazy blur to him through the sickly mixture of cyan and crimson auras as ice and fire battled for supremacy in front of the Whitevale entrance. Suddenly, that familiar, lightheaded feeling came over Shinsou again, the one that he had felt from the Citadel the first time he had seen Felicity in this form.

Shit, I’d forgotten about the sickness. Better get back.

As he felt the girl’s untamed power throbbing through his body, making him dizzy, the Telgradian retreated back through the iron gates for respite. The further he got away, the less Felicity’s ability affected him, or at least he had found, but he needed to be within touching distance of Drexel for his next plan to work. He looked back, watching through his spirit sense as Rhyolite’s radiation and her barrage of rage-fuelled attacks began to chew a hole through Drexel’s barrier. It was so enormous, so corrosive that the Telgradian found it disquieting to behold, and he nearly slipped through distraction as he scaled the ladder of the gate’s guard tower to the right of the town’s entrance, to the floor currently occupied by Durandel and Loren.

Loren flashed a look at him as he entered the tower, as Durandel nocked another arrow.

“What the hell is going on, boss?” She demanded to know as the twang of a bowstring accompanied Durandel’s latest failed attempt to pierce the barrier.

“Stop shooting at it; save your arrows. There’s a barrier,” Shinsou commanded, pointing towards Rhyolite, “Her energy is eating through it like acid right now. I’ve got a plan, but I need to focus.”

The Telgradian closed his eyes. He knew that the hole Felicity was making was just wide enough for what he had planned, but he needed to be as accurate as possible to avoid killing her along with the dragon. There was little margin for error.

He could see the opening in the barrier, just shy of Drexel’s throat. The incantation he needed to access Danzetsu repeated itself in the darkness within the confines of his head, until all that remained was a single bright flame, dancing gracefully in the midst of a voidal calm. The carefully contained transformation had yet to come easily to him, even after many months of training, but with some effort the the familiar black whorls of arcane energy began to envelop him entirely as his body changed. Loren and Durandel had never seen Shinsou’s final form before, and were stunned by the difference. The metamorphosis gave him sculpted musculature, with black sclera and waist length dark hair. It felt as if the pressure of the power emanating from him was forcing itself on them, making them feel as if they were succumbing to a g-force that would otherwise be impossible to experience for a normal human with no technological or magical assistance.

“Get back.” He commanded his peers, who obliged without hesitation.

He raised his hand up, outstretching two fingers on his right hand. At the tips, an orb of marbled black and dark green the size of a fist formed, churning and rotating on its axis like a planet knocked off its axis. The Oscuras was a thin, powerful particle beam of dark matter, slender enough to fit between Felicity’s body and the frayed edges of the disintegrating barrier but powerful enough to pierce Drexel’s throat and prevent it from regenerating the ice field. With an electrical snap, the orb shattered and stretched into a pencil thin black beam, ripping through the air at terrifying speed. A scent of heavy metals filled the air as beam tore past Felicity and pierced Drexel’s throat, causing the beast to madly thrash. The frighteningly powerful dragon tried to gulp for air, partially successfully, but liquid nitrogen spewed forth from the wound in torrents. As the fluid touched the ground, it instantly smothered the soil with harsh ice crystals, accompanied by an audible hiss.

I got the throat, but not cleanly, Shinsou lamented as he watched Felicity try to dodge the wildly flailing tail of the dragon, That won’t kill him. Maybe it’ll stop the barrier, though.

With no further hesitation, Shinsou leapt from the tower onto the wall below, and then back down onto the frost encrusted floor. He knew the radiation sickness would affect him here, but he had one more idea.

“Felicity,” He yelled over the ruckus of Drexel’s howls of pain, “Get your sword in that wound and pull down as hard as you can! Cut his throat! Your heat should protect you from the liquid nitrogen!”