With a surge of will, power burnt within and around me.
Fire burnt upon my brow without heat, and four invisible wings of burning shadow and crystal flame flared out unseen to naked eyes.
With an unfelt beat they closed around me like armor, even as I noticed that the horrible symphony was not of unearthly nature but rather something far to human.
Men and women both in and out of costume were down on their knees fingers digging into their face, screaming a chorus of pain, fear, rage, and insanity into the air.
Debris was everywhere, and yet more capes were fighting capes even as a gigantic woman with marble skin of pure white floated on thirteen wings orchestrating it under endless assault.
Beams, pulses, and more mundane projectiles all pelted against her, most intercepted by a seemingly endless tide of debris flowing about her like marionettes directed by an entire team of puppeteers.
Some slipped through. The faster attacks, some that could dodge the interception or power through the defense.
Hell, one blaster seemed to be actively shooting down the attempts to shoot down other attacks.
Good on them.
Naturally my first response was to charge right in.
This wasn't raw insanity. There were about half a dozen people currently getting into melee with her to varied effect. Some she parried by a wing, others were chastised with those same floating bits of debris. All made to look effortless.
And through her all her face was blank. It wasn't smug it was barely what could be classified as, serene, maybe even bored.
But that somehow made me want to punch it all the more.
Someone took a swing at me, and I rolled under the blow, grabbing the limb in an effortless judo throw across my back. I didn't add any of the half dozen finishers that immediately sprung to mind, mainly because while crazy now, they might be useful later, so leaving their arm attached properly, and neck and spine unbroken was in my best interest.
That was just simple efficiency.
Instead I kicked them away as they hit the ground, sending them flying a few feet as my leg caught them mid decent, immediately snapping back foreword as I ducked under a flying piece of glass and cement building side, rolling ahead and taking off at a dead sprint towards my nemesis.
The armband squawked, but I didn't have time to listen as I charged boldly head first into the meat grinder.
Suddenly one of the group trying to clear at her, twisted around grabbed another fighter and threw them clear as a piece of cement the size of a horse crushed them into the ground. The same block bounced up and came crashing in from my side, but again, I managed to easily evade by pushing on a burst of speed and rolling under the flow, as smaller bits of weaponized debris slashed against me.
Bits of glass cutting like knives against my skin, biting it but not cutting deep enough to matter. What did mater, was that I had managed to get close enough to enter melee.
The Simurgh was smallest of the Endbringers, standing at only fifteen feet in height, and covered with wings and made entirely of a material so hard it could bounce tank shells without effort and shewasputting in the effort.
Each flexing limb was a executioner's blade with the strength and hardness behind it. Each ablative layer of armor harder then the last. They had tried to nuke her eldest brother and all that had done is leave him radioactive. As a precognitive telekinetic with the skill and finesse to brainwash multiple people via unseen, mid combat, neuro surgery, such means were unlikely to work in this case either.
But I had an edge. The armor was armor but it was alive and, via the eldritch magic's flowing through my body, I had the means to turn a papercut into something that could actually sting.
All I needed was one good shot.
I jumped and hit her foot fingers grasping around a wing extended from her leg, to twist around and plant firmly on it with skill and grace that would leave an Olympic gymnast envious, planting my legs on the still moving limb that hadn't even seem to notice the mite yet clinging to it.
I kicked off the moment I had traction, throwing myself into the field of blades above, diving behind her arm, around to one of the back branching wings, a small respite found between the dervish of death as motes of titanic power flowed in adding grace and certainty to my already impossible skill.
A corona of hellish flame exploded around me as my anima banner unfurled, a serpentine dragon of impossibly bright green flames, four wings stretched out ready to hurl itself into the sky or crash down and sunder all before them.
They clapped down as my fist enveloped with that hellish force struck perfectly where her vertebra should join her neck.
Impossible flesh met impossible skill and both broke. My knuckles cracking hard as the Endbringer's living armor splintered from the impact, tiny fissures spreading out over the site of the impact.
And then flames of green hate exploded out from them as I set her very being alight with the manifested malice of the Yozi.
A scream roared out and this time it wasn't in the form of human voices. It was the air itself roaring in protest as a shockwave crashed back at me even as every wing in reach slid back to slice me to a dozen pieces.
But I was already dust, having fallen into my shadow and out of her reach.
As I burst out of another in the wake of the attack a feral grin crossed my face.
Then a tentacle suddenly latched around my arm hard enough to nearly wrench it out of place.