It was a tamer version of Dimensional Cut. I was trying to teach her a lesson, not kill her. The attack also lacked my wind affinity for obvious reasons and wrapped around each spectral blade before flying at Storm.
Storm streaked across the sky in a flash of red, matching—and slightly exceeding—my maximum speed with all of my runes active. She dodged the blades with ease. I chased after her with a flap of my wings, flexing my time affinity and Moment of Sage skill.
Something stretched inside me as I pushed the skill harder than ever before.
SNAP.
It finally happened. The skill broke, sputtering for a moment before rapidly changing—adapting to suit my needs.
Moment of Sage has evolved to Time Warp (Legendary) Adept.
Increase and decrease the flow of your personal time.
Current limit: 5x time increase and decrease.
Cost: 100 AE per second. Cost doubles for every layer of dilation added.
Warning: Skill will not automatically activate at the first sign of danger.
My jaw dropped a fraction before clamping shut. Losing my automatic warning system stung, but the tradeoff was more than worth it. This made my speed boost from Angel Ascension look like a joke. I wondered if the bonus was exponential rather than cumulative.
Only one way to find out.
My wings turned green, and the world ground to a glacial pace. Only Storm and I remained in motion, continuing our frantic dance. I pursued her, launching more shurikens, while she fed the storm raging around us—lightning, sharpened hail, frost, and cyclones all cascading down in an elemental onslaught.
They kept the affinity-sharpened shurikens at bay and periodically lashed out at me, but I was faster. And I was done playing defense.
Anathema fire swept out in careful bursts, parrying lightning strikes, unraveling cyclones, and incinerating the sea tentacles that had somehow joined the fray. Storm was leaving no stone unturned, and neither was I.
Teleportation brought me right up to her, and she reacted instantly—an overwhelming discharge erupted in all directions. I spun through it, slicing a path clear, and lashed out with a kick. She parried with her trident, flipping the weapon to go for a stab while a bolt of lightning tried to pincer me from behind.
A bolt of Anathema fire erased that distraction as I flexed my dimensional affinity harder.
Without even swinging, hundreds of shurikens manifested around me, tracking her movements and bouncing off solid planes of air and demonic energy she conjured at an impossible speed.
Her hand shot into the sky, and the storm orbiting us turned. The clouds converged around our speeding forms, discharging hundreds of bolts. The whipping wind shredded through my clothes and skin, forcing me to shift focus back to defense.
I leaned deeper into my dimensional affinities, drawing inspiration from one of my earliest skills—Angel Evade—allowing me to exist in two places at once. It blunted the force of the attacks and gave me a slight ethereal aura. I focused on Aquila, my blade, forging an even deeper connection. Swinging outward, I created a rotating wall of dimensionally charged blades that shredded through the attacks barreling toward me.
Fifty blades. Each perfectly spaced.
Maintaining it all was giving me a headache, and some attacks still slipped through, but it was better than relying solely on Time Warp and my enhanced perception to carry me through the fight.
At the back of my mind, I kept an eye on my dwindling Angel Energy reserves and my even smaller Demon Energy pool. Fighting with a core had spoiled me; my regeneration struggled to keep up with the mental and physical burden this fight was putting on me.
Storm didn't look any better. Even after my skill evolution, she remained my match. Some desperate part of me wondered if using Anathema fire freely would be so bad.
Her cloak would survive it. Her body certainly would. But Anathema fire was reality-wiping.
She'd never truly heal from whatever wounds I inflicted with it. And I didn't trust my control—not yet.
I had one more card to play before it came to that. A move Storm would never see coming.
I initiated melee again, loosening my painstakingly set-up shield of rotating blades, tanking several bolts to the body. Aquila warped into Rebellion as I stabbed at a surprised Storm, the blade coated in dimensional affinity. She blocked with haft of her trident, but Rebellion sank in just a fraction of an inch.
It was enough.
Space.
Gravity inverted. Air fled my lungs. The cosmos stretched around us, endless and infinite. Just above us, a giant blue ball hung in the void.
Earth.
My health dipped instantly, but regeneration kicked in. Without the constant assault of attacks, my body could finally heal. I dispersed my dimensional cloak but kept the floating shurikens.
Storm pulled back, her movements sluggish.
I grinned. My hunch had been right.
Her speed wasn't the only thing that had dipped—so had her energy levels. Her impossibly deep reserves had been doing only half the work. The elements had been feeding her, keeping her at peak condition.
Now? She was running on fumes, but I wasn't that far off myself.
Her face turned red. Frost began coating her features. She wasn't airborne anymore, and that was just the cherry on top.
I had her on the ropes. Hopefully, she wouldn't drag this out any longer than necessary.
"You know, the pictures don't do this place justice," I quipped, forcing a mental link open between us.
She cringed at the sound of my voice.
"Get out of my head, abomination," she hissed.
"I'll try not to take that personally. Ten years of indoctrination can do a number on anyone's mood," I said.
Her grip tightened around her trident. "You think transporting me off-planet will stop us? I've already unleashed the horrors of my dimensional space on Kamar-Taj. Earth's defenses will be weaker than ever. If I fall here, Corvus and Belasco will finish my work."
"I'm not worried about Yao," I replied. "I'm far more concerned about your blind loyalty to Corvus. The man who tortured you, experimented on you, and somehow convinced you to join his crusade—to do the same to the rest of the world."
"The humans will do worse to my kind if they have the means and power to."
"Probably," I admitted. "But don't you think genocide and the enslavement of billions is a touch too far? You want freedom and protection from humans? Fine. You and the rest of the Omega-level mutants are probably strong enough to get it. Might makes right and all that. But why does your solution involve Demon Hitler and his horde of ungodly creations?"
Storm's face twisted in thought before settling into a practiced confidence. "The humans will fear us too much for peace to last between us. They will weaponize our weaknesses and come after us."
"Not going to happen," I said. "I've removed the source of the mutant suppression devices, and even if they manage to collar a few of you, the X-Men are immune thanks to my intervention. There's going to be a real fight—a fight you'd all easily win."
I spread my hands. "Look. All I'm saying is you're at the top of the food chain now. You can change the course of mutant history, set them on the right path, stand a real chance to forge lasting peace. If you hand this planet to Corvus, all that disappears.
Half of the mutants will resist you at every turn, and a quarter of the world's population would probably die in the war that followed—a lot of them potential mutant parents. If you're going to condemn the planet, don't pretend like you're doing it for the mutants."
Storm's eyes bored into mine, her expression more pensive. "I underestimated you, Dante," she said. "You are a lot more evolved than the Demons paint you to be. This is more than revenge for your parents. You genuinely care for the humans and the mutants."
"My girlfriend is a mutant. It kind of comes with the territory."
She gave me a flat look before speaking. "The humans do not deserve your loyalty or the restraint you've shown by not dominating their kind. Your words come too late, Nephilim. This invasion is decades in the making. My presence will make no difference."
"If it's all the same to you then, why don't you surrender and let's head back home?"
"No," she said sharply, raising her Trident and leveling it at me. Her aura exploded—not quite reaching its former heights, but it was still formidable. "I have come too far and worked too hard to let you or anyone else change my mind. You'll have to kill me if you want me to stop."
"I was afraid you were going to say that."
The ground exploded as several-meter-tall earth spears shot out. I closed the distance with a Teleport, coming down swinging with Rebellion. She parried the hit and, with a twist of her spear, swung at my neck. Rebellion reappeared in my free hand, lashing out and sending her trident wide. With a mental shove, I sent the floating shurikens at her. Lighting speared through them all before striking at me. I parried with my blade just as the blow hit, returning the bolt.
Storm absorbed the lightning but wasn't ready for Angel Energy and Time Warp's accelerated uppercut that dug into her chest, sending her flying. Spectral shurikens chased after her by the hundreds.
Without air to help her fly and natural lightning to shield her, she had to get creative. Stone raced up from the surface, intercepting the strikes she could manage. Her lightning took care of the rest.
Tired of being airborne, she summoned floating stone bands around her, yanking herself toward the moon's surface to regain solid footing. But I wasn't about to let that happen.
I teleported a chunk of stone in front of her—slower than I could otherwise manage—to soak up the lightning bolt she had ready before grabbing her by the knee and teleporting her further into space. The Earth had shrunk, the moon was thousands of miles away, and she'd lost access to half of her remaining elements. I could still fly.
Her reaction was immediate and predictable—sending waves of lightning at me. I dodged and teleported, keeping my distance while peppering her with enhanced spectral blades.
Our dance lasted nearly three minutes before she weakened enough for me to close the distance and end the fight with my fists.
Blows rained down on her, each one hitting hard and fast enough to create a sonic boom. Stray bolts arced out. Stone chunks smashed into me, only to be teleported away, giving me uninterrupted access. I slipped Dimensional Affinity into my blows at some point to eat through her cloak faster and nearly took a trident to the gut for my trouble. I teleported the weapon into my personal dimension and continued the onslaught, blasting through her armor, rupturing flesh, and drawing blood. There was so much of it—from both of us—that it clung, frozen, to my upper body like a second hide. I was sure I'd inadvertently swallowed some of it even.
I dislocated one of her hands at some point and snapped the other. That had finally been enough to deactivate her cloak.
"STOP," she mentally yelled. "No more!"
My instincts told me to continue, but I argued for restraint, even if it wasn't ideal for my skills. Promethean Body was on the precipice after prolonged exposure in space, and my demonic and angelic affinities were inches away from another upgrade after my display.
"Finally willing to listen to reason?"
"No," she said with a bloody grin, stretching her dislocated hand. The frozen blood coating me suddenly turned liquid, and an explosion went off inside of me, sending stabs of pain up and down my spine. The pain spread quickly.
My eyes went wide as saucers as my muscles seized and twisted, ripping as blood vessels ruptured and my body betrayed me. I choked, releasing the last of the air I'd been holding onto as both of my energy sources sputtered. Angel Ascension dropped, as did all of my cloaks.
"Did you know how hard it was holding an incantation for nearly three minutes while some oaf manhandled you?" she seethed. "I suppose I should thank you for swallowing my blood. Saved me the trouble of getting it into your body."
Telepathy cut out as well.
Shit.
I tried teleporting, but reaching for my energy felt like crawling through tar. With both hands stretched out in ruthless concentration, Storm was killing me—one burst organ at a time.
Fuck. Not this again. It was becoming a bad habit, and the bleeding heart I didn't even know I had was about to do me in.
I'm sure there's a lesson in here somewhere about making promises you can't keep.
The things I do to keep my girlfriend happy. At the very least, I won't fall for this during my fight with Corvus.
Might as well make the best of this.
I never stopped fighting her, reaching for my energy, even as she pulled my hands free and ripped my heart from my chest.
I reached my Angel and Demon energies just before she screwed my head off, sending her a final fuck you in preparation for round two—thousands of copies of my body burning in Anathema flame.
Her screams were the last thing I heard.