Brockton Bay's Marvelous Mage - Chapter 144 (Patreon)

Leviathan squirmed and writhed inside the barriers, trying to grab at the ethereal forces crushing in on it. Thankfully, I had purposely made the barriers selectively permeable, meaning its hands and tail simply passed through them. Water poured off of it, then came back, slamming into his body but doing the same as his limbs, which is to say, nothing at all.

That did not mean it was easy, by any means. The fucker was monsterously strong, and even with the feedback lessened through the barrier and projector, I could still feel it trying to break free, bruising my hands, straining my muscles. 

But I still had it contained.

When I finally got the captured abomination in range of the waterfront, floating above the beach, the crowd below seemed to be too stunned to react, until Crow finally shouted into her arm band.

“What the fuck are you waiting for? Shoot it!” 

A moment later, the waterfront line lit up like the Fourth of July. The predominant color was purple, as wave after wave of almost a thousand lances of annihilation energy slammed into Leviathan. Different colors also flashed through the sea of purple, including bright whites, greens, yellows, and more. A massive mech, Dragons by the look of it, fired massive globs of burning green plasma, while dozens of other people fired a full rainbow of lasers or energy blasts. 

The wave slammed into the restrained monster, and for a moment, threatened to tear the Endbringer free from my grasp. I could feel the spike in energy pulling from the building, but thankfully it held, absorbing some of the extra energy coming from various explosions and reactions tearing across its skin. 

Its first layer of skin was blasted off in a blink, the powerful annihilation rifles disintegrating it easily. The second layer came after that, and then the third and fourth. Each layer burned away more slowly, the successively more durable layers resisting the damage from many of the parahuman attacks. Thankfully, while most of the cape attacks became less and less effective, the annihilation magic continued doing its job. Yes, it was annihilating slower and slower, carving out smaller and smaller chunks with each wave, but it was still working. 

The monster's original form was long gone, its misshapen features scoured from its frame, leaving a much more skeletal form. Its head was a lump, its tail burned off and fallen to the ground. Its legs were even more spindly than before, and yet he still thrashed, his strength not lessening, but increasing. With every layer gone, it fought harder against the barriers, my arms shaking from sympathetic feedback. I could feel his struggle in my bones, the impacts making my body ache.

Then Eidolon swooped in, pulling back just enough to stay out of the waves of annihilation magic. He raised his hands, and a mass of sparking black energy gathered between them. After a moment of charging, he thrust the energy out, firing it as a beam, a pitch-black line that carved into the Endbringer… then through it, slicing off one of his arms and a significant amount of his torso.

Like a switch being flicked, the Endbringer’s strength increased by a factor I could only guess at. In a split second, it slammed against the barriers harder than ever before, the feedback shattering half a dozen bones in my hands. The primary projection system at the top of the grand working half exploded, half-melted to slag as it was overwhelmed in a flash of increased force.

The wave of destructive energy cut off as the barrier failed, Leviathan dropping out of the sky and slamming into the beach, tumbling to his feet as waves of water sloughed off his body. Despite a massive amount of his body being vaporized and his arm cut off, the monster lunged forward, leaving behind dozens of water echoes that partially flooded the beach. 

His target? Me.

I spun and tapped a small teleportation spell crystal to activate it, tossing it back to Crow, who vanished in a flash. She would scream at me later, but she couldn't move nearly as fast as I could, and right now, I needed to move fast. I took off into the air fast enough that it kicked up a plume of dust and sand, as I tore down across the beach, away from the still retreating mass of capes and soldiers that had gathered to fire on Leviathan. I pushed my newly made flying harness to its max acceleration, and the massive monster still kept up with me.

But as long as it was following me, then it wasn’t attacking anyone else. 

I suddenly dipped as my senses shouted, a blade of water whipping by me, slamming into the boardwalk and carving a deep line through it. Dozens more followed, and I was forced to fly erratically, dipping and spinning to dodge the hurled attacks. As I continued to tear up into the sky, I managed to reach back and tap into a filled healing spell to fix my hands. Once I did, I changed tactics.

I spun and tried to fly over it, just barely dodging a water whip that had grown out of his tail. As I jerked up to dodge, I could see Legend coming up from behind the mini kaiju, firing a beam of green laser energy. Unfortunately, it never made it to its target, Leviathan throwing a wave of water off an echo to absorb the energy, which burst into steam. 

Not to be outdone, Alexandria came flying down a cleared street and slammed into the abomination's flank. Her fists left craters in his side, but his water tail swirled around her and yanked her out of the air, slamming her into the ground. She impacted the beach with a plume of sand and cracked rock, then was spun around and slammed into the concrete-and-stone barrier that ran along the beach's edge. His tail kept her pinned into the crumbled concrete, forcing her out of the fight, but also tying the green bastard down. Between that and Legend's barrage, I was given a small reprieve from the hundreds of water blades being thrown at me.

And I used the time well. 

I reached back along my belt and touched one of the more powerful spell storage crystals I had, colored purple from the annihilation energy inside it. As I tapped into the storage crystal and pulled out my staff, a spell that would have normally taken a forty-five-second chant to cast, fired from my staff in an instant. A beam of purple as thick as a beach ball fired out and carved a deep trench into the Endbringer's hips, carving down towards his legs. I held it, conjuring a platform for me to stand on, focusing the beam as the monster shifted.

I was making progress in cutting off its legs when its tail whipped around, still carrying Alexandria. With the sound of a cracking whip, it hurled the heroine at me. I cut my spell off before it could cut her in half and canceled the platform under my feet, flipping back just in time to dodge the impromptu human projectile, though it was close, her cape slapping against my face hard enough to sting my durable skin.

As I recovered from my dodge, Leviathan let out a shockwave of liquid, using his echoes to explode a bomb of water blades in all directions. I just managed to quick-cast a barrier in time, catching the impact in full and launching me backward. In a flash, I hurtled into the ruined remains of the closest parts of the boardwalk. 

I slammed through walls, windows, and chairs, ending up in the half-totaled kitchen of some random restaurant. There, as I slowly stood, shaking of plaster and glass, I had a moment of stillness, my arm band calling out the names of people caught in the explosion of water, when the ground shook. In seconds, Leviathan was on me, tearing through the collapsed building to wrap the carved out remains of his claws around me, my body refusing to move fast enough to dodge. It yanked me free of the broken building by my legs, squeezing me hard as it did 

The sounds of snapping filled the air as I felt my legs shattered under his monstrous strength, defying his previous limitations. If my body hadn't been as incredibly reinforced as it was, I would have likely been squeezed into roughly squashed chunks. Instead, I just screamed, the pain breaking through the dulling enchantment I wove into one of my new armor pieces. Immediately, my injury-reactive spells started trying to fix them, but they failed as Leviathan held onto me tightly.

For a movement, I thought I was as good as dead, only for Alexandria to flash in from nowhere, slamming into his arm, leaving two fist-sized craters in his impossibly dense flesh. The impact tore me from his grip and slammed me into the ground, the pain whiting out my vision for a moment, locking up my body as my reactive spells got to work. They were too slow, though, and I couldn’t move fast enough, as a clawed fist came hurtling down towards me.

Just before I was slammed through the boardwalk into the drained ocean bed beneath it, Crow slammed into me from the side, her costume flapping like wings to thrust her forward. We skidded to the side, Leviathan's fist punching through the ground where I had just been. Before it could react, we were gone in a flash, along with a spread of rubble we landed on, teleported back towards the center of the waterfront.

I was still only half aware of the pain in my legs before a wave of golden healing magic washed into me. I groaned as my legs snapped back into place, Crow helping me to my feet the moment I could stand.

“When this is over, I am slapping the shit out of you for that,” she said with a growl, before giving me a serious nod. "Now, go kick its ass."

“Will do,” I said with a smirk, before mirroring her earlier move and leaning forward, kissing her quickly before pulling back. “Stay safe.” 

She nodded, and in a beat, I was gone, tearing up into the air, quickly orienting myself towards the ocean and speeding away. I followed the warnings from Dragon as the kaiju bastard tore deeper into the city, clearly looking for me. I arrived just in time to watch it decimate a building and leap over the collapsed rubble. The second it spotted me it completely refocused, sending blades of water hurtling at me. I peeled out and to the side, juking and flying almost entirely by my danger sense. 

As I moved, I could see the soldiers firing at the abomination as we passed, stationed in and on various buildings, firing out of windows and along the streets. A few dozen squads of the magic-equipped soldiers followed behind us, keeping up a sustained fire that was still chewing through his impossibly tough body. By now, his frame was pockmarked with dents and craters, proof that we were wearing it down. 

But it was too slow.

The Triumvirate chased after it as well, attacking and hammering into it as I worked to keep it distracted. Soon, the damage slowed down even more, and we were struggling to even scratch its body. Only Eidolon’s attack was doing any damage, and after he took the bastard's arm, Leviathan was working much harder to dodge the beam of energy. 

More than once, I saw the attack slice through a building or even hit another cape.

At some point, Alexandria, who had slipped into a harassing role once it was clear her attacks weren’t doing anything, flew alongside me. 

“We don’t know what's wrong, it would have usually retreated by now!” She called out. “His fixation on you goes far beyond anything we have ever seen!”

Before I could respond, Dragon’s voice cut through our armbands.

“Emergency Report!” She shouted, the volume much louder than you would have guessed the armband could go. “A thinker has identified a potential weakness. The more layers that have been removed, the more defensive it has become of its chest! It's protecting the central portion of its upper chest!” 

Alexandria swooped to block a blast of water, shielding me for a moment. I shared a quick look with the heroine before a reckless plan popped into my head. With a wince, I spoke up, almost certain I would regret my idea.

“I need thirty seconds,” I said. “I have something that might punch through, but it's going to be a small target. I need time to focus and aim!” 

She nodded, peeling off and slamming into Leviathan, who had started scaling a building to try and leap at me. Behind it was a sizable path of destruction, buildings and roads torn to pieces. 

In a massive push, capes and soldiers worked together, hammering the creature, somehow managing to pin it down. I rose up and conjured a platform, reaching back to my belt and yanking the purple storage crystal free. I knew it still held a dozen blasts of the same spell I had fired at it before. Alone, none of them would be enough, but I was going to try something crazy. 

I tapped into the crystal, but instead of pulling out and firing off the spell, I contained it, leaning heavily into the fact that, despite my choosing to treat it as such quite a bit, magic was not a science. I pushed spells one after the other into my staff, the incredibly potent magical object heating up and vibrating in my hand as I dumped an incredible amount of magic into it. I was flying by the seat of my pants, dumping the spells into each other but holding them back, basically casting everything the crystal had to offer at once. It was only my understanding of crystal thaumaturgy that let me even attempt this, and even then, I winced at every shift and pulse of energy. Finally, the gem was drained, going dormant.

I dropped the crystal and gripped my staff with both hands, holding it tightly and pushing it as far away from me as I could, choking up on the shaft to hold it just below the massive diamond head. I could feel the magically infused wood creaking under my fingers, and the tinkling crack of a gemstone starting to fail.

“Dragon! Get everyone back!” I screamed. “I can’t hold this much longer!”

The following warning was loud enough that I could hear it from where I was, floating above the city, coming from the armbands of the heroes below. Finally, I couldn't hold it back anymore, and I thrust my staff forward, firing off the spell. 

Two things happened in rapid succession. First, in a flash of purple energy, the end of my staff was consumed in a ball of annihilation magic that grew until it swallowed my right hand, then my left, erasing everything up to my elbows. Then, just a split second later, the energy fired off towards the Endbringer, not as a wave, not as a massive beam, but as a golfball-sized torrent of energy that made the air scream as it tore through it. It hit the Endbringer in the chest and chewed into it, punching deeper than any of our attacks had before.

Then the massive monster shifted slightly, and the beam scoured a curve along its torso, no longer centered on its chest. It had pulled itself out of the way just enough that the beam wasn't cutting where I had aimed. I had missed, and the spell was completely out of my control.

Out of nowhere, Alexandria and Glory Girl both slammed into the abomination from the side, shoving it just a few feet back to the right. The spell amalgamation continued to fire, digging into its crystalline flesh until it was centered exactly on target. A second later, it punched through the other side of its upper torso, and the city-sinking monster went still.

The water it had been using to support itself sloshed and collapsed, and a moment later, it tilted forward, locked as still as a statue. Meanwhile, the beam of energy tore into the building behind it, drilling a hole all the way through it, then into and through the next, repeating several times before it eventually vanished into the ground. 

Leviathan, still locked in its final pose, slammed into the asphalt as it fell forward. The city went still, and I slumped to my knees on the conjured platform, hovering just above the city.