Imbalance 4.2
Seeing Behemoth for the first time was an experience much like that I had last summer. My whole life, I had been told that life wasn't fair, that people die, that sin was in the world. But it had taken years of bullying for me to realize what they were saying, to understand the horrors of the small evils people do, and the cruelty that comes from them, to feel the pain they wrought.
In much the same way, I had been told that Endbringers existed. Told that cities fell at their might, that islands had been sunk, countries torn apart. But telling someone that was a far cry from preparing someone for the grim reality of it all.
Monster was too kind, too personal, too low to apply. The First, Behemoth, Prathama; these names inspired fear, but they were somehow inadequate to fully inspire the image he projected. He was more like an unstoppable, unbreakable volcano, a walking Vesuvius. A Titan, a primal force.
His skin like gray granite, his claws chunks of obsidian. His head a mockery of the crown of thorns, his cyclopean face glowing red. He was easily over two stories tall, dwarfing the capes - the heroes - that dared face him. Behind him, a cone of destruction, a literal hellscape of fire and broken lives.
I watched from afar as he lashed out with stomps that shattered buildings, gouts of fire as large as a car. I saw him send out a crackling thunderbolt, blindingly brilliant, and blinked away tears of anger as the afterimage of it taking a man in the chest was seared into my vision.
Behemoth was a blight on the world. Not a monster, not an 'Endbringer'. He wasn't some mythological destroyer, waiting in the wings. He was here, right now, and I would do everything I could to stop him, and probably be little more than a minor inconvenience to him.
The worst part? I was okay with dying for a cause. I was okay with dying, and it worried me. I put it aside for now, though.
I landed once more, now on the other side of the wall.
The First gave no quarter, killed without passion. A figure in blue and grey screamed as flames surrounded her, and nobody made it to her before she succumbed to them. A flying cape flew around a globule of lava, only to be struck by another blinding bolt, trailing smoke from the sky. I wanted to help, thought of how I might have saved them, even as I knew that I needed to stick to my plan.
I closed my eyes, took in a breath, and turned my limited focus towards the elements. The air sang with the thunder, the earth rocked with his footsteps, the heat thrummed as it drove the humidity away. The twang of the symphony implied a storm, probably an hour or two away, even though the skies were clear save the massive plume of smoke.
Behemoth stepped into my range. The land beneath him crunched under his massive frame, the barren volcanic landscape mirroring his appearance. He was close, now, barely a quarter mile away. His fires burned on when they landed, despite the lack of fuel. He showed no sign of worry at the sudden shift in terrain; still killing and maiming in a fairly regular pattern.
Alexandria dove in, grappling with the arm of the monster, holding it back long enough for a barrage of attacks to strike his shoulder, a rainbow of effects striking the area, but doing so very little. He flung her off with a swing of his arm, likely redirecting a bit of energy into her.
Eidolon teleported between a series of hovering balls of light, firing beams that seemed to eat the heat and light around them, like glowing, red-hot lances that made everything dim around them. They did little to their target, however.
Legend let loose an array of thin, blindingly bright silver lasers, which struck the fires that stood across the battlefield, freezing them solid like some kind of cartoon. He dived, intercepting a bolt of lightning, and came out of it unscathed, but barely spared a nod for the one it was intended for.
Nothing was stopping Behemoth, nothing was hurting him.
It was time for me to try.
It wasn't like there was a distinct moment that I went from watching the fight to being in the fight; people were already spread throughout my terrain, and Behemoth was, at his core, an opponent best fought at range. There was a distinct moment that I began to help, though, and that was when Behemoth scooped up a chunk of earth and threw it.
I dismissed the wall of metal; in the end, it had served little purpose, and now it stood in the way of our goal. As it sank into the ground, I turned on the antigrav in my staff; I was going to need the maneuverability it afforded me. I leapt, soaring far above the craggy wasteland, aiming for the area the rock would land. Behemoth had superheated the rock, and it was beginning to separate into blobs of red-hot magma.
I considered a blast of air, but dismissed it as too slow. I needed to funnel the heat away, and I only had seconds before I wouldn't be able to stop it from hitting the group. No time, something else.
I landed a few yards away, immediately raising a massive spike of granite to meet the blob. It splattered, and I barely raised a second wall in time to cover myself and the group of capes. The blobs of lava burned into the granite around us.
The man clad in violet and white said something in a foreign language, then followed it with a "Thank you," to which I gave a short nod before taking off again.
I landed again, killing a fireball before it immolated a woman; took off, used a blast of air to deflect a rock; landed, and felt the ground tremor with some redirected energy. I had to stay back, even though I knew I could save more by getting closer to the monster, could stop the tremors and kill the fireballs and counter the roars, because I knew he had things I couldn't stop, and if I went down now the plan would fail.
Behemoth rushed forward, combusting another two unlucky capes; Spinster and Re-he-something. It closed the distance; he was almost in the center of my range now. I took a moment to raise a hollow around myself, typing out another message to Alexandria, letting her know to give the evacuation order. She relayed the message throughout the network, and I went to leave my spot.
A feeling came over me through my power, and I instinctively dove back into cover. Moments later, all I knew was coursing pain, disorienting sound and light, and immense amounts of energy flowing through me. A lightning strike. I'd just dodged a bolt of lightning. I lay there, trying to blink away the spots in my vision, unable to hear anything but an all-consuming ringing, sore all over. Worse, I was having to put all my willpower towards not diving deep into my power, because I knew that while I could ignore the pain if I did, I wouldn't survive another strike if I didn't focus.
I forced myself to get up, relying more on my powers to navigate than anything, feeling the terrain I was projecting, the heat of the air. My hollow was gone, blown apart on the left side, turned to a rough gravel. I stumbled forward, reaching for the staff as I caught a glimpse of it past the blurs in my vision, huffing out a voiceless groan at the body-wide feeling of tight, hot skin and sore muscle as I leaned for it.
Where was Behemoth? Were the other capes evacuated? I glanced to my wristband, rubbing my right eye out of reflex, and found it dead, my panels flickering. Shit, I needed to make contact, and fast. I ran forward, ignoring the pain, and flicked open my glider. At least the staff was working.
Flying while partially blinded was quite the experience. Navigating through glowy-blobbo-vision and air currents, with only faint sound cues, meant I had to take a minute to get my bearings. I managed to pick out the fight, and headed for Legend, who wasn't currently directly fighting, still stopping fires and stuff. He must have spotted me, because he stopped firing and flew my way.
He pulled up next to me, but I couldn't hear him over the wind and the ringing in my ears. I pointed to the ground, at one of the crags of golden metalloid, and dove. He landed before me, which put him in the perfect position to help catch me when I fudged the landing. My vision was clearing up, but with that plus sore, likely burned legs, landing was hard.
Legend looked worried, from what I could tell. "Mandala, I'm glad to see you're not dead. What happened? Are you okay?" I motioned Behemoth's way, pointed at my wristband, shook my head. I wasn't great, but there was no time for a trip to the medical tent. He nodded. "Your wristband shorted out?" I nodded. "I'll let them know, see if I can fetch you another. Everyone should be evacuated shortly, just stay back for now." I nodded again, and he took off. I followed him into the air, but stayed low, dodging through the spires and outcroppings, moving towards the periphery of the fight once more.
I spent a minute or two flying, trying to ignore the pain, the remaining ringing in my ears, the bodies, the useless information my power fed me; distracting. I almost died because I couldn't focus, didn't think of a better response than a simple dive for cover. I could have made more cover, could have tried channeling the energy I'd felt, could have even boosted myself away with a blast of air! But I wasn't thinking right with all these stupid distractions, and I needed my power right now, so it was just empty frustration.
I wanted to hit something, and the only thing worth hitting might incinerate me long before I could.
Legend flew up to me, casually flying backward as he switched my wristband. "We're almost ready!" he yelled over the wind, "Listen for the signal, then do your thing!" He flew off, heading back for the fight. I banked, and headed that way myself.
My area was over a mile across, a massive expanse that I was aware of, and Behemoth was in the center. Around him flew a cloud of flying capes, but now absent were ground forces, and it definitely showed. He was moving quickly, gaining ground, and I had no doubt that he would have completely decimated the buildings in the area, had I not removed them from the equation.
My new wristband beeped, then said, "Mandala, the area is clear." I nodded, more for myself than anything, and turned my focus back to my worlds. I reached for a suitable world, and pushed.
The craggy, desolate wasteland around me began to melt, like an old film melting in a projector. Giant holes full of stars formed, while other areas clumped together into small spheres, some of which floated upward like a lava lamp, while others floated downward. Each had local gravity, but once you got away from them, an overall gravity pulled you towards the center of the massive field of mini-planets.
I made sure Behemoth didn't get one.
He dropped into the void, falling a half mile until he was suspended at the edge of my power. Trapped in an ever-deepening bowl, with nothing solid to push off of, no way to climb free.
The blasters began raining artillery on the distant target, until he was barely visible past the explosions and lightshows. The few Alexandria-esque capes flew down, doing what damage they could to keep him down, tanking fireballs and trying to pry open wounds. I could see Eidolon charging some sort of energy, see another cape let a ball of blinding green light loose, felt the blowback from what had to be a wind attack. Behemoth retaliated with bolts of lightning, striking down some of the artillery capes, but overall? We seemed to be hurting him.
Well, they did, anyway. I couldn't hurt him, unless he was weak to ice, and that seemed like a long shot. He could counter my fire, shrug off air and earth alike, probably didn't need to breathe; I had an idea on how to generate electricity, having felt it firsthand, but that would probably just tickle him, even if I did pull it off. Previous attempts to mess with my fire and its energy had proved explosive, after all.
I did the one thing I figured might help; I flew to the upper edge of my range, well above even the skyscrapers of the city, landed on the soft, mossy surface that coated the top of a large planetoid, and dove deep into my power. Best to just make the pit larger, keep him trapped.
Information poured in, telling me about all the things this world had to offer. I saw all 2,763,193,374 planetoids, ranging in size from beach ball to mountain, each with its own unique features. Here a collection of spheres of ice and water, there one coated in an array of tiny crystals, one near the center of the cloud with an exact 1:1 ratio of iron to tin atoms, mixed throughout the orb.
I didn't even notice what hit me. All I knew was that one second, I was studying a particularly interesting planetoid's crystalline core, and the next second, I was plummeting toward a city, in a whole lot of pain, unable to move in time to stop myself, and oh god I was going way too fast, there was no way I could stop in time-
I had the strangest sense of déjà vu, as I felt my consciousness slip away… and I knew no more.