"Two minutes, Bear!" Kaelen yelled, his voice sounding like a bonfire crackling. "My heat is spiking! I need you back to anchor the pressure!"
Thane decimated a cluster of Sentinels, using his hammer to flatten one after another. He moved with terrifying efficiency, protecting the perimeter with his body.
But the shadows kept coming. They were coalescing into larger forms now, pooling together to create hulks of void-matter.
"Elias!" Thane bellowed, smashing a shadow-hound aside and rushing back to his spot. He clamped his hands onto the invisible weight of the ritual. "Switch!"
The gravity slammed back down on Aria. She slammed onto the Anvil with a thud, breathless but solid again.
Elias looked terrified. "I cannot break the pattern! If I let go, the lattice unravels!"
"If you don't kill those harpies," I snarled, nodding upward, "they're going to drop a ceiling tile on her head while she's open!"
Three void-harpies were diving, talons extended, aiming for Aria’s exposed throat.
Elias hesitated, then pulled his hands back.
The geometric cage around Aria vanished.
Her scream changed. It wasn't pain anymore; it was dissolution. Her skin bubbled, the shape of her losing cohesion without the blueprint to hold it. Her arm looked like it was melting into slag.
"Fast, Elias!" Hephaestus yelled, bringing the hammer down on her chest to shock the system.CLANG.
Elias spun around. He didn't use kinetic force. He clapped his hands.
Flash.
A pulse of turquoise light expanded from him, hitting the diving harpies. It wasn't an attack; it was a rewrite. He reversed their personal gravity.
The harpies screeched as they were violently yanked upward, smashing into the ceiling with fatal force.
Elias whirled back, barely a ten-second gap, and grabbed the pattern again.
"Got it," he gasped, blood running from his nose. "I have it. She is stabilizing."
"She is not stabilizing!" Hephaestus argued, hitting her leg. "The left side is hardening too fast! The heart is fusing! I need more heat, Dragon!"
"I am giving you everything!" Kaelen roared. The white fire around him was so intense his clothes were smoking.
"It's not enough!" The Smith God yelled. "The void is cooling the room! The shadows are sucking the thermal energy!"
He was right. The encroachment of the void-creatures was dropping the temperature. Frost was forming on the iron floor where the oil spilled.
"Kaelen, you have to clear the room!" I realized. "You're the only one with enough area of attack to push the cold back!"
"If I leave, the fire dies!" Kaelen argued, looking at Aria with desperation.
"I'll hold the heat!" Thane? No,Ishouted that. "I can run friction! I can make her burn with speed!"
Kaelen looked at me. "Do not let her freeze, Wolf."
"Go!"
Kaelen broke the seal.
The white fire vanished. Aria convulsed, her skin turning an ashy gray instantly as the warmth fled.
I focused. I didn't have dragon fire, but I had friction. I pushed the motion aspect to its limit. I vibrated her molecules. I made her blood run so fast it generated its own fever.
