Blades of vicious crystal emerged from the ground like the brass sawblades from Tomorrow’s traps. Spikes of the same material rose in lines looking to impale anything that didn’t move fast enough. Whips, unnaturally malleable, shot into the air, then came slapping down in long lines, or stabbed and twisted, ever seeking their prey.

  All in all, it made every inch between earth and sky a crystal deathtrap. A deathtrap each of the party members dealt with differently.

  For Nivian, the crystal was only mildly dangerous, his powerful Aspect deflecting most of the strikes with scratches and the occasional tear. Nothing he couldn’t handle. Anything he viewed as genuinely dangerous, he used his shield.

  Left, the other big target, had a different tactic, allowing the attacks to pass harmlessly through his giant, cloud body. He had to be moving his real body around inside the giant cloud—much like Mr. Beard had done in his water-form in the Tower of Dynamic Trials—but the work paid off, keeping him safe as he counterattacked.

  Right and Yanily both had much more simplistic approaches. The purple-enshrouded double punched anything that got close, turning the crystal to dust with every impact. Yan, on the other hand, simply stalked forward. Slow and steady, Tempest Roar spinning around him to parry, deflect, or guide every attack past him, the spearman was a force of nature closing in on the Raze. Like a storm coming over the mountains, there was no stopping. There were only two choices: try to endure the fury, or run away.

  Since the Raze wasn’t running, it better hope it could do the other. The look in Yanily’s eyes gave it fifty-fifty odds, in the best of situations.

  Seeyela, having returned from her place in the sky, flitted around the battlefield with Bamfs, or helped reposition others as needed with her portals. Not that playing the roll of transportation was all her portals were good for, with them devouring more than their fair share of the crystal bursting from the ground. From the feel of things, she’d also even taken a moment to move the rest of the raid party to a safer distance from the battle. The Raze’s crystal growths were indiscriminate in their targets, after all.

  As for her sister, Seena floated imperiously in the air, with Li’l Ur still glowing golden on her shoulder. Heat radiated off her in physical waves, turning any crystal that came in her direction into slush. Around her, fireballs formed, condensed to plasma, and then condensed one step further into pure light, before spearing out to cut through more crystal, or directly attack the Raze even from the distance.

  Wule, back in his intangible Aspect handled the crystal protuberances similarly to Left. He let them pass through him with barely a worry. Well, that wasn’t entirely true, as he did go out of his way to avoid some attacks seemingly coated in a strange kind of energy. About one out of every ten or so crystals had the unusual signature, but they weren’t focused enough to be a threat—yet—to Wule, who continued around the field, throwing out heals at regular intervals.

  Finally, there was Hiral, his extreme speed bouncing him around the full three dimensions of the terrain. From crystal tentacles, to broken earth, to planes of Rejection in the sky, Hiral never stopped moving. Never stopped slashing. In his hands, the Seeker’s Unmaking made short work of every piece of crystal that came within reach. Around him, the three Twinned-Blade copies put in their own work, and occasionally swapped places with him.

  More clones leapt off him, sprinting and dashing between the incessant barrage of attacks, only to explode into clouds of solar energy when they reached their destinations. Clouds that immediately formed into sequences of complicated runic equations, birthing hanging circles, through which death-beams joined the fun.

  Within the bounds of the Domain of the Sun—other domains having been activated to empower it further—the battle devolved into chaos. The injured and enraged Raze stood at the center of it all, waves of its solar energy unceasing as it called on all the buried crystal in the area. Not just that, with the broken stone transforming into crystal before Hiral’s eyes to rise and attack.

  Lightning fell from the sky to intercept many of the growths, while flaming lilies sprouted from any dirt not occupied by the Raze’s power. Fireballs and bully-vines targeted anything ‘crystal’ nearby, while shields of blue-flame circled the party members to deflect any attacks that got too close for comfort.

  Every party member other than Yanily, who continued his unhurried approach to the Raze. In his Heaven’s Spear class, his face was calm and calculating. His every movement perfectly positioned and controlled. Not an ounce of excess solar energy leaked from his body. Tempest Roar acted as an extension of his body, cutting a path through everything that rose to slow him.

  Nothing could. It’d been fifteen seconds, and his casual walk had covered three-quarters of the distance to the Raze. A row of broken and shattered crystal traced Yanily’s path, and nervous glances had even started gracing the Raze’s face. Why couldn’t it crush this one, small man? Everybody else, it could understand. They were heavily armored, fast, or had some kind of ability that made a decent counter, for the time being.

  With the endless solar energy the Raze had, it would get through eventually, and it would only take one success to end the fight.

  Except for the lone individual walking straight at it. For it.

  The only thing the Raze seemed able to do was hurl more crystal obstructions in Yanily’s direction. Not that any of them worked. Spikes, whips, and blades, he parried aside with a flick of his spear. A thrust removed walls that sprung up to slow him, while a sweep cleared a field of hundreds of grasping vines like chaff before the scythe.

  Blasts from its remaining cannons did no better, each of them getting gobbled up by the S-Rank spear. Bracing the weapons it held—that it occasionally used to swipe at Hiral and the others when they got close enough—it did the only thing it could, and prepared for melee combat with the spearman.

  All those tens-of-thousands of years entombed in the crystal and connected to the Heart of the City must’ve given the Raze this particular power to control crystal. But, was it in exchange for any other abilities they had? The ability is dangerous, sure, but not something we can’t handle in the short term.

  Hiral’s musings came in bursts as he dodged between the crystals attacking him, and his final note quickly grew to be more and more true. With each passing second, more of the crystals emerged with that strange energy. Already, it had increased to one-in-five, and those growths were significantly more resistant to his greatsword and death-beams. Likewise, at the center of the battlefield, the Raze itself was starting to shrug off blows that had earlier staggered it.

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  The damn thing was still growing in power.

  Yanily didn’t seem to care.

  He stomped right to the Raze—five seconds left on Hiral’s internal timer until the end of the world—and stared defiant eyes up at the god-killing Raze. Blows fell on him from the seven remaining arms. Swords, a hammer, two clubs, and even a repurposed shoulder cannon.

  Yanily’s feet didn’t move, though his spear became a blur of motion, expertly guiding each and every attack to his side. Around him, the earth churned like thousands of blades tore at it, while deflected energy bolts exploded in a wide circle. One, two, three seconds it proceeded like this, Yanily doing nothing but defend.

  It wasn’t because he was overwhelmed, though. No, Yan wanted to prove a point. As strong as the Raze was—or as strong as it would get—the spearman would stand in their way. The days of the Raze conquering unimpeded were over.

  Oh, and he had one more thing.

  Two seconds.

  “This is for Yully, Dole, and Ilrolik,” Yan said, slapping aside one final strike to point Tempest Roar in the Raze’s direction.

  Something about the gesture sent warning bells ringing through Hiral’s head. Sent the hair on the back of his rising in alarm, and ran shivers down his spine.

  “Roar,” Yanily said.

  One second.

  Since Yanily had gotten his Splinter of the Storm, even before it had transformed into Tempest Roar, it had been devouring energy left, right, and center. Hiral had—mistakenly—assumed that was part of its evolutionary process. He’d been at least partly wrong, as the weapon released an absolute deluge of stored-up energy.

  Bursting from the tip of the spear, with Yanily standing tall and proud—holding it in one extended arm—the weapon did exactly as he commanded it. It roared, the sound shaking Terminus to its core, while a lance of unstoppable energy ten-feet wide passed through the Raze without slowing or stopping.

  Straight into the distant clouds—which parted in a wide circle—the beam continued unhindered and unweakened deep into the empty space around the time-stopped world. As for the Raze, a second three-quarters-of-a-circle hole now existed on the other side of its chest, to match the one Seeyela had given it earlier.

  Wild energy undulated around the Raze as it stared in disbelief at the spearman and the wound he’d given it almost effortlessly. The injury was a terrible one, though it wasn’t enough to defeat the immortal enemy, and it might have counterattacked.

  If the timer didn’t tick down to zero.

  Suddenly, all across Terminus, the previously-unthinkable happened; time started to move forward again.

  Though the world sat within the last second before utter oblivion, to everybody present on the world, that second would stretch for what felt like several long seconds until reality reasserted itself. Several long seconds the party knew to take advantage of, with black portals appearing immediately under their feet.

  In an instant, the battlefield around the Raze emptied of all combatants but the crystal giant left roaring at their disappearance.

  Back in the second, hidden cave where most of the raid party rested, Hiral and the others dropped out of their portals. While he immediately went to the PIMP construct, Seeyela went to her sister and threw her arms around Seena.

  “I love you,” Seeyela said, keeping it short, and then vanishing with a Bamf before Seena could respond.

  “See… Seeyela?” Seena said, left holding nothing but purple flames where her sister had just been. “Hiral? What the hell?”

  “There was a risk to this plan,” Hiral said, kneeling in front of the PIMP as he did the final corrections on his equations. “To her original plan. She could get us—and Genesis—home, but she wasn’t sure she would make it.”

  “WHAT?!” Seena said. “And you didn’t tell me?”

  “No, because I fixed it,” Hiral said. “The Black Gate up there—GG, she calls it—is going to use her…” Hiral trailed off, feeling truly massive amounts of solar energy emanating from the three Black Gates holding Genesis in place. They were well and truly awake now. Which meant the dungeon was about to come down, and a second world was about to emerge where Terminus was. That generally wouldn’t be good for either planet, unless…

  There.

  Another surge of solar energy from high, high, high above.

  “Correction,” Hiral said. “It’s already started. GG is going to open the tunnel through time and space for us to pass. But, it doesn’t know where or when Genesis is supposed to be. It’s going to use her, and her advanced class, as a kind of tracer. And, unfortunately, as an exit.”

  “It’s going to shove a whole world through her?” Yanily said.

  “Which is exactly why she was worried,” Hiral said.

  “How did you fix it?” Seena said, voice part angry and part hopeful.

  I shouldn’t have hidden this from her.

  “The PIMP has a connection with all of us, and with both worlds,” Hiral explained, applying his finishing touch to the construct. “This little guy will stay here, on Terminus, to maintain the link. Using the connection it has, which I’ve reinforced with the Edicts, it will help GG build the bridge to where Genesis needs to go. That’ll ease a lot of burden of pulling that information out of Seeyela.”

  “What about the part of moving a whole world through her?” Yanily prodded.

  In answer to the question, Hiral pulled one very particular object out of his Shared Storage. One very particular artifact.

  The Urn of Ur’Thul.

  “Aaaah,” Ur’Thul said, nodding. “Brilliant. As expected of my would-be-apprentice.”

  “How about explaining for the rest of the class?” Laseen said, even as something about the room started to change. To stretch.

  As denizens of Genesis, they were starting to get pulled to—and through—the gateway along with the world. Being that they were smaller and lighter they would arrive before the world did, but they still had a few seconds.

  “The Urn of Ur’Thul specializes in allowing things to pass through it. Individuals and souls, mainly. But, something Ur said while we were creating the Eidolons stuck with me. He said the Urn could consume Terminus—temporarily—if we let it. So, we will. Sort of. We’ll let it eat Genesis instead. Then, Seeyela will take the Urn—much smaller than a world—into her Insatiable ability to pass through GG. Normally, it would only last an instant, but with Insatiable, it will be just long enough for Seeyela to pass through without harming her.”

  “And you can do that?” Seena asked, disbelief still in her voice.

  “Yes,” Hiral said. “The success with the Eidolons was a proof-of-concept this would work, even if I didn’t know it at the time.”

  “Ur, can your urn really do that?” Seena said, even as all their bodies looked to be twenty-feet tall and extraordinarily thin. It wouldn’t be long—heartbeats—before they entered the tunnel home.

  They’d really succeeded. This was it.

  “It’s possible,” Li’l Ur said. “My Urn is an artifact of utmost power, and seeing the preparation my would-be-apprentice has constructed with his runic-equation while the rest of us protected him, I believe it’s possible. He altered the rules here—and of the PIMP—just enough to make it possible.”

  “That’s not all I did,” Hiral started.

  “I only have one question,” Li’l Ur said, interrupting Hiral as the first of the party—Drahn and Igwanda—vanished with a pop.

  “What’s that?” Hiral said, purposely holding himself, Seena, and Li’l Ur on Terminus while the others popped one after the other.

  “The Urn, while an immensely powerful, magical artifact—one capable of what you’re asking of it—is flawed,” Li’l Ur said. “Every use has a cost, and this one will be large.”

  “… what cost?” Hiral said, a lump forming in his throat. He’d planned everything so well. Covered every base. Hadn’t he? What had he missed?

  “The same thing the Urn specializes in,” Li’l Ur said, Seena vanishing underneath him. “A soul. One that will not be allowed to leave again once it enters.”

  “Oh fuuuuu…” Hiral started, before he too got sucked up into the gateway between worlds.

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