“I should’ve been faster,” Seeyela spat, looking from the two grayed out names in the Raid Interface to Hiral. In front of her, the man stood with his eight, spectral arms basically a blur of movement, even to her. For a hundred feet in every direction—including up—complex runic equations beyond anything she’d seen before stretched. Glowed. Made the damn air practically vibrate. She didn’t know what he was doing, but it still made her bones rattle with the power of it.

  “You were already faster than I expected you to be,” Hiral said. “Good work.”

  “If I was back sooner, I could’ve…” she started.

  “You couldn’t, and we both know it,” Hiral said. “Even we can’t be everywhere at once. Speaking of which, I need a few more minutes here still. You should…”

  “Was it worth it?” Seeyela said, eyes glancing down to what she’d had to go fetch for him.

  “It will be,” Hiral said, not even needing to look at what she meant thanks to his sensory domain. He’d joked how terrifying it was she could pass through his domain without him even noticing.

  She hadn’t told him how terrifying it was how hard she had to work to do that.

  “I hope so,” Seeyela said, finally turning from him. Guilt still ate at her gut. Yully. The woman had babysat all of them. Helped raise them. Losing her was hard. Despite what Hiral said—and what her own brain told her—her heart swore if she’d gotten back sooner, she would’ve been able to make a difference. Would’ve been able to save her.

  But, she’d had to physically run a lot of the way, since she couldn’t use S-Rank abilities—including her teleports—too close to the portal, or risk destabilizing it.

  “Go,” Hiral said. “Keep as many safe as you can, until I can join you.”

  Seeyela raised a single hand in a casual wave, before a Bamf dropped her in the middle of a hellscape. Solar energy and abilities tore through the air, smashing into crystal bodies, while some kind of flaming undead things Seeyela had never seen before washed over the Endless in waves. Regardless of the numbers, the Endless were coming out on top, though there was something about those flaming bastards, like they were getting stronger with every one of their kind falling.

  They weren’t her concern, though, and her eight-eyed helm scanned her surroundings, granting her a near-two-forty-degree field of vision. Where would she make the most…

  Bamf, she appeared beside Loan, then lunged to wrap her arms around his thick waist. Bamf, she was gone again—taking the big Shaper with her—just as a huge fist cratered the ground right where he’d stood.

  “… what?” the man asked, arms up like he’d planned to block the punch. One look at who held him, and he understood. “Ah. Back in!”

  Seeyela didn’t question—she’d planned it anyway—Bamfing to deposit Loan on the leaning shoulder of the huge Raze. With black energy circling his fists—gravity power there—the monster of a man threw his own punch. He didn’t have the same sort of pizazz Right did when he punched, but there was something solid about it. This guy knew how to throw his weight and strength around.

  Too bad she couldn’t stick around to watch the blow land.

  Bamf, she landed, ducked a swiping claw from an Endless, Bamf’d through a second, then cartwheeled up into the air by putting her hands on Finotol’s shoulders. With the Bonder in her True-Bonded Weapon form, a mix of woman and hunting cat, thick, corded muscles met Seeyela’s touch. They also vanished with her in her next Bamf, the vertical pair disappearing just before two Endless came crashing in from opposite sides to smash face-first into each other.

  Not giving them a second to recover, Finotol dropped down from straight above where Seeyela had deposited her. Claws tore into crystal backs in a vicious flurry, but Seeyela was already gone again. Next, it was Sera whose eyes widened when Seeyela appeared right in front of her.

  Fangs of the Lady in each hand, Seeyela parried aside an Endless fist on one side, then spun to stab her other blade straight between the knuckles of the fist coming from the opposite angle. With her weapon style bolstered by her advanced class, she didn’t get thrown back by the power of the blow, and her dagger buried itself up to her hilt thanks to the Endless’s own strength.

  Green venom spread deadly tendrils through the crystal, though Seeyela barely looked at it. Her other dagger had gone back into its sheath—a barrier from Sera blocking a third blow in the meantime—then she touched Hiral’s mother on the shoulder. Bamf, they blinked away just as a stomping Raze foot came crashing down right where they’d been.

  “That Raze is the one who killed Yully and Dole,” Sera said, immediately taking in her surroundings and the vantage the roof of the tall building offered. “The others are being contained, but it’s running amok. We need to do something about it.”

  “It’s a little out of my league,” Seeyela said.

  “Maybe out of yours,” Sera said. “But you have a tank who could match it.”

  “I’ll see about a pep talk,” Seeyela said. “Where do you want to go?”

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  “I’ll stay here,” Sera said. “If I can see my target, I can buff them. And, thank you.”

  “Nobody else is getting stepped on,” Seeyela said, stepping into another Bamf in the direction of her tank. Along the way, she repositioned Drahn and Igwanda—giving them better shots at their target—saved Laseen from seven large Endless looming behind her with what could only be called a look of hunger in their eyes, then snagged Devison from where he pointlessly fought the Endless.

  By the… red stain on the ground, part of her understood why he hadn’t moved away from the area.

  “You can’t help them anymore,” Seeyela said. “Focus on helping the others.”

  “No, it’s my fault they…”

  SLAP.

  Seeyela’s hand stung from how hard she’d hit him, and he staggered to the side, clearly stunned by the sudden violence.

  “You and me,” Seeyela said, and she knew the eight eyes of her helm were glowing with her emotions right there. “We can play the blame game with ourselves after we get out of here. Later. Now? Now you get out there and fight for the people who are still alive. Believe me, you’ll have plenty of grief later.”

  “I…”

  “Devison,” Seeyela said, her mom-voice mixing with her big-sister voice, despite the man in front of her being decades her senior.

  “What… what if I lose a foot?” he said, and something about the absurdity of the question threatened to break her heart.

  “Then don’t, Devison,” Seeyela said. “Prove you don’t need her looking out for you anymore. That she doesn’t need to worry about you anymore.”

  “I don’t know if I…” his mouth snapped shut and he winced backward at Seeyela raising her hand again. He gulped. Then his jaw tightened. His eyes hardened. “I’ll do it.”

  “I know you will,” Seeyela said, hand going to his shoulder, where she squeezed gently. “Go, give them hell.”

  “Yes, Ma’am,” Devison said, images across his body shifting like he was moving at high speed, but couldn’t decide which way to go. Then, suddenly, one of the images leapt for the side of the building, and Devison followed.

  That hadn’t been the pep talk she’d expected to give, but it was just as needed.

  Bamf, she was gone again, this time appearing above a brutal melee below.

  In one hand, Romin—in his Onslaught form—held one of the Endless by an ankle, and spun in a circle, smashing other Endless with the crystal body of their ally as he went. Broken bodies practically piled around him, until the impromptu flail he was using finally broke down.

  Crystal shattered from the abuse, leaving Romin with just a pair of legs, which he threw at the closest Endless, before turning and charging in the opposite direction. Horn laced with Impact, he impaled another Endless through the chest, then just kept going.

  Crystal constructs tried to get in his way to stop him. To slow him down. To land a claw or punch. They managed some of the third option, but that was it, until Romin crashed into the side of a crystal-covered building with half-a-dozen Endless piled up on his charge. The whole building shook from the collision, and the group of constructs didn’t do much better.

  That single Endless that’d been smart and sidestepped the charge, though, it was leaping at Romin’s back.

  Seeyela appeared on its back with a Bamf, her daggers driving into its shoulders, right beside its neck, before she and it Bamf’d away again. Appearing thousands of feet straight up in the air, Seeyela twisted her Fangs, letting out another dose of Ghost-Web Venom, then released her weapons. Both hands went to her back, grabbing a pair of TRAPs, which she slapped onto the Endless’s head.

  “Enjoy,” Seeyela said, then Bamf’d back down to where she’d come from, her Greater Entwined Destinies Fangs depositing in her sheaths as she appeared. “Got a job for you, big guy.”

  “Glad… you’re… back,” Romin said between smashing headbutts into the face of an Endless he held by the throat. “What do you need?”

  “There’s a Raze on the loose,” Seeyela said. “The one that killed Yully and Dole. Somebody needs to keep its attention.”

  “And you think I can manage that?” Romin said, dropping the twitching construct to the ground.

  Seeyela laughed. “No, I don’t think you can do it,” she said, the big Bonder flinching at the words he thought confirmed his own self-doubt. “I know you can do it.”

  “I’m not Nivian,” Romin said quietly.

  “Good,” Seeyela said. “Two of him—with his twin—is more than enough. Jokes aside, you know me, Romin. I wouldn’t be here asking you if I didn’t know you were up for this. I don’t like wasting time.”

  Romin finally looked up at the huge Raze making its way in Nivian’s direction. With two of the giants attacking the Death Knight, even he would struggle. “It’s pretty big…”

  “So, get bigger.”

  “I need Hiral to…”

  “No, you don’t,” Seeyela said. “You know what he told me? He said his runes were all for show, because you needed the excuse to live up to your own potential. He was going to tell you after this is all over.”

  “Really?” Romin asked, then shuddered as he looked at her eight eyes staring at him. Despite being more than three times her size, his shoulders wilted like a child before their mother. “Sorry,” he said. “I even put it in my notebook not to ask you that question. Like you just said, you don’t like to waste time.”

  “Good, you’re learning,” Seeyela said, before softening her voice. “Romin, we asked you to join our party because we saw you had potential. We wanted you to stay, because you lived up to it. Keep doing that. Nivian needs help, and you’re the only one who can do it.”

  “I…” Romin started, then slammed his fists together in front of himself. A small shockwave from the impact forced Seeyela to take a small step back, but she smiled under her mask. That look on Romin’s face, yeah, that was what he needed.

  “You can do it,” she said again, so quietly, there was no way he could hear her over the ongoing battle.

  “Here I go,” Romin said, solar energy pooling in the center of his chest as he readied the ability that would take him from twenty to two-hundred-feet tall. “HERE. I. GO!” he bellowed, striding in the direction the Raze was going, his speed picking up with each pace, and his size doing the same thing.

  Twenty feet became thirty, then fifty, seventy-five, a hundred and fifteen, a hundred and eighty…

  “C’mon, one more,” Seeyela quietly cheered.

  “RAAAAAAAAH!” Romin bellowed, one last surge of energy taking him up to two-hundred-and-twenty-feet tall, followed by a Blink Charge that smashed into the back of the sneaking Raze. Unlike the Endless, the horn wasn’t enough to penetrate the crystal this time, but the force was more than enough to lift the thing from its feet to carry it into—and through—a crystal covered building. Then a second, a third, and a fourth, before the pair of them went to the ground in a tumble that shook the city like an earthquake.

  Seeyela didn’t even have a chance to worry about the Bonder, his fists already rising and falling on the Raze that had to be trapped beneath him.

  “Knew you could do it,” Seeyela said, silently thanking anybody who would listen that her lie about what Hiral had ‘said’ had worked. She’d… probably better let him know about that later, so he didn’t out her.

  Maybe she should get a notebook too.

  Bamf, after she saved Loan again.

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