Both of her hands wrenched the staff, and it rotated beneath her until its length ran horizontal, parallel to the wall of buildings ahead. Her back faced glass and concrete, her front to the beam.
Blue filled her vision. So close that she could see the beam's interior, strands of radiance spiraling within light, its leading edge two meters from her.
Medea's leg came up, crossing over the other, hands clasped along the staff's length. She reclined back into open air, buildings ahead, beam behind, nowhere left to go but—
Violet flared.
Two circles vortexed at her staff's ends, one at the tip, one at the butt, each spinning in opposite directions, flipping until they faced downward.
Both fired.
Thrust slammed upward through her body. Her spine grazed the building's face, glass cracking behind her, and she went vertical, tearing upward along its surface now, everything rushing past in a grinding trail of shattering windows and buckling steel frames.
"...Cutting it close, even for me."
Below her, the beam caught up.
It hit the space she'd occupied a heartbeat ago. Air detonated as that column of blue punched into the wall of buildings. Concrete dissolved, glass liquefied, steel frames warped and folded. Those sections of walls around that beam's path simply stopped existing, solid to powder in a breath.
The stingray's mouth swung upward. Its jaw stretched wider, cartilage cracking at sides, and that column of blue tilted with it, pivoting from horizontal to vertical, sweeping up through the faces of those buildings after her.
"You just don't give up, do you?"
Medea's circles screamed louder, both of them blazing violet, thrust doubling, tripling, air beneath her exploding in continuous bursts that hammered the building's surface inward.
Cracks raced outward from her, concrete splitting along rising lines, whole sections of facade peeling away and tumbling into the beam below, and it ate them in a radiant column, chunks of concrete, glass and steel framing, all dissolving into nothing.
From afar, the building's face was a wide, grey road.
A violet line dashed vertical from its base, then banked left, curving along concrete in a sharp arc, circles spinning, air ripping, the shape of a woman visible at the line's leading edge.
A blue line followed.
It rose from the building's base in that same spot that violet had, tracing its exact path, same straight, same arc. Where the violet line had destroyed, the blue one erased, a trench of ruin open behind it, widening with every meter it covered.
The violet line curved left. Blue followed. Right spiral. Left spiral. Two lines carved into that building in the shape of a vertical helix, one chasing the other.
Blue line climbed the helix's final arc, trailing violet by one second. Its leading edge brightened, flared, and then stuttered. Color bled from it, blue fading to green, green unwinding into grey.
That beam died a meter below Medea.
One frame it was there, a column of blue filling air beneath her hanging feet. The next frame it was gone, and the smell of powdered concrete and vaporized glass spread outward from where it had been.
Below, the stingray's mouth was empty, its throat dark, those belly spots along its underside flickering in weak pulses.
"Tired already?"
It reached the buildings.
Its frame slammed into lower floors, still carrying momentum from its horizontal charge, wings splaying against concrete. Both membranes pressed deep, edges gripping the building's face the way they'd gripped a rooftop before.
Body bent, muscles loaded, and its wings beat, one massive downward stroke that cratered everything ahead it.
Concrete buckled outward. Windows exploded. The stingray launched vertical, climbing straight after her, barbed tail whipping behind.
The building groaned. A sound from deep inside its structure, traveling up through ceilings and floors. Their helix had cut deeper than its surface, destroying several pillars and structural joints.
Wings beating, the stingray ascended faster. Two strokes per second. Three. Each one cratering weakened concrete and closing the gap.
Fifteen meters. Twelve. Its barbed tail swung behind it.
Ten meters.
Lower floors fragmented first. The helix's lowest loop separated completely, and five stories dropped two feet in a grinding descent that blew Medea's robe upward.
Above her was a rooftop, its edge lined with a concrete railing.
Belly spots flaring in desperate pulses, wings slamming downward, the stingray surged.
Medea's staff ascended the building's face, back leaving concrete. Open sky above her now, shimmering with stars from horizon to horizon. And from somewhere above, violet light threw a line on her hood, then vanished.
That building's upper half tilted forward, toward the stingray.
Its wings beat again, nose reaching the rooftop's edge.
Concrete and steel pivoted, collapsed onto the stingray before it could rise higher. One slab crushed onto its membrane, another tearing into its joints, barbed tail thrashing once before a column fell on it, dragging it down.
Dust billowed outward, that building's upper half burying its lower half in a grinding cascade of rubble that was still continuing when a blur exploded from it.
A wing tore free, half-crushed, joints dislocating and snapping back into place. A second wing followed, throwing aside a slab of falling concrete. The stingray's body wrenched itself up through the plunging debris, trailing dust and pulverized glass, belly spots flickering in uneven bursts.
Medea hovered above.
She stood on her staff now, both feet planted, a stray gale blowing her hair sideways. Her right hand was pointed toward the creature, fingers spread apart, already closing.
Violet light detonated around the stingray. A ring of magic circles snapped into existence on every side of it, above, below, right, each one spinning while facing inward. They rotated around the creature in a sphere, gaps of open air still existing between them.
The stingray lunged for those exact gaps.
A second layer ignited.
Larger circles materialized outside the first sphere, wider and rotating in the opposite direction. Aligned with gaps in the inner sphere, sealing it. Violet light covered violet light, those openings shrinking from gaps to slits.
Hammering the first layer with its wings, the creature lashed. Membrane flattened, joints popping, skull ramming against violet rings that wouldn't budge. Its tail beat sideways, struck a magic circle, bounced off. Twisted, lunged, and struck again. Nothing changed.
Another layer ignited. Wider circles, two times larger in size, pressed against each other in a formation.
A third sphere sealed the second the way it had sealed the first.
Medea's hand closed into a fist.
All three contracted. Sphere crushing sphere, and from every circle on every layer, hundreds of shafts erupted inward, filling its interior from every angle with a lattice of intersecting light.
The stingray was drowned under violet.
Silence hung for a moment, only her own breath audible.
Then a crack. A single fracture split her third sphere. Then a dozen, radiating outward from a single point.
The stingray punched through.
All three layers shattering behind it, violet shards spraying outward, dissolving on contact with air. Its front half tore free, wings spread, mouth open, and its rear half was gone. From midsection backward, flesh dissolved into glittering smoke, tail, membrane and barbed tip unraveling into particles that spread behind it.
Its mouth was open, throat blazing blue, fully charged.
Point-blank.
Medea's eyes went wide, fist still closed.
Half a meter of distance between them. Less. Lesser.
The creature had its mouth gaping, throat locked, blue beam exploding from between jaws.
Medea's eyes settled. The panic in her expression drained, like it was never there.
Her lips broke into a smirk, small and crooked on one side.
Wind moved above. A gust pressed sideways and caught the clouds overhead, pulling them apart. Their boundaries widened, edges curling backward.
Violet light fell through that gap. It hit Medea's hair first, then shoulders, then the staff beneath her feet, casting her shadow straight down onto the stingray. Its blue throat-beam darkening under it.
Above parted clouds, an enormous magic circle hung in the upper atmosphere. Its diameter spanned one-third of Fuyuki's skyline. Dozens of concentric rings and inscriptions pulsing in rhythmic cycles, one final segment remaining open, a gap in its outermost ring.
It snapped into place.
Click.
The circle locked. Every light source within its radius bleeding to violet.
"Took you long enough to look up."
Her palm turned up, unhurried, like there'd never been any doubt.
"You can be on your way."
A pillar of violet punched down.
It swallowed the stingray mid-cry and drove straight down.
Impaling it to the earth of Fuyuki.
...
..
.
***
[200 Power Stones = 1 Bonus Chapter]
[15 chapters ahead on P@tr3on = [email protected]/Not_Aaryan]
...
[Authors Thoughts]
Nothing to say today. Just have fun and maybe enough rest too. Take care.