LIGHTNOVELONLINE Chapter 46.1
Taking stock of the situation, Kara saw that even without the demons, the overview wasn’t getting much better. There were just too many people to evacuate and, although most of those that had been closest to the portal were now safely away, the fight was affecting too large an area.
Worse, Klarion, who was laughing like a maniac as he fought off Wonder Woman, still had time to harass the other heroes. Kara’s drones were constantly scanning for his cat so she could end the fight, but the creature seemed to have vanished.
From the corner of her eyes, she saw the current Flash, Barry, arriving in a blur of red, but even he wasn’t fast enough to save everyone. They had to finish this, fast. How much longer until her weapon was ready?
Rao, despite everything that was happening it hadn’t even been five minutes!
Looking up, Kara decided that the best she could do was help delay the eldritch interloper. Attacking the being was a constructive way of releasing some of her anger and with its tentacles quickly increasing in number Kara was afraid that even her weapon wouldn’t be enough to fully push it back if things continued for much longer.
Flying up, she surveyed the airspace in search of her android friend, the actual reason she had gotten directly involved in this. She eventually saw Dani, who was still fighting, and noticed the hole in her side made when she was hit with something.
Her friend seemed to have already been repaired, but the very fact she had been hurt so much… Kara growled in anger, but she didn’t lose her mind again. Instead, she grit her teeth and forced herself to focus on Dani’s safety above her own rage.
Dani was in a very precarious position; she still didn’t have enough control to fly with her wind core and, as a result, was forced to act more like artillery from atop a shield where her lack of mobility was making her an easy target.
The android was doing her best to send blasts of fire towards the eldritch abomination, burning entire tentacles with blue flame only for new ones to take their place, several of which started gathering towards her.
Seeing the attack coming, Kara knew she didn’t have time to hesitate. With a glance, she released a twin-eyed blast at an approaching tentacle, cutting it off to fall on top of another skyscraper and lay at its side, probably blocking the view from quite a few windows.
Her eyes widened in surprise and one of her hands flew up to her face, sneaking under her cracked mask to touch the newly healed eye… since when? Remembering the effect of Wrath’s magic on her clothes, she could only hope that accelerating her regeneration hadn’t caused any unforeseen side-effects.
Shaking her head, she put it out of her mind and again refocused on the fight, there would be time for wondering later.
One of the tentacles whipped down, cracking the air and forcing Dani to jump down as it obliterated her foot hold. The android used her fire and wind to fling herself away from another strike, but her mobility was really limited and she couldn’t keep herself in the air.
Just as a feeler started to wrap itself around her, Kara arrived, destroying the limb and flying away with the woman in her arms just as three other tentacles passed through where she had been.
“Dani, I thought you were just meeting with friends,” Kara quipped irately, her voice still a growl even as she did her best to calm herself.
“Well, you know how those meetings go,” Dani shrugged, smiling at her. “If it wasn’t for all the death and destruction, I’d even say we were having fun.”
Dodging another reaching tentacle and blasting it with heat vision, Kara snorted before fully focusing on the fight, there was just so much going on that it was hard to keep track.
On the ground, civilians had stopped fighting each other, but seemed to be just… staring up at the sky, entranced like she had been when first seeing the eldritch creature. Stupid cognitohazards.
A fair number of them weren’t entranced but were still restrained by her drones, both tired and still angry from being under Wrath’s influence.
Checking her drones, Kara cursed when they still couldn’t report the location of Klarion’s cat. It seems like she wasn’t going to be able to get rid of him the easy way. Looking at Dani’s wound, she asked. “Are you alright?”
“Yeah, at this point it’s mostly cosmetic already,” the android dismissed her concerns, throwing a blast of fire at another target and causing it to explode. “Damn, I don’t think we’re winning.”
Suddenly, with a deafening explosion, another piece of the atmosphere seemed to crack, a large pillar of flesh the size of a skyscraper breaking through the walls of reality and descending upon the city. The world seemed to be trying to close the new rift back up, but the appendage was blocking any efforts.
Suddenly, a presence descended in the area, causing Kara to feel a pressure on her shoulders as an aura of awe radiating from the enormous limb, a sense of oppression that demanded she submit. Focusing, Kara managed to shake it off.
“That… doesn’t look good,” she cursed, watching as thousands of eyes opened across every inch of the pillar.
Her mind was suddenly assaulted again and she stumbled, but she actually leaned into her rage and training with Kal to fight off the psychic assault, shaking her head and refocusing faster than ever. This stupid thing constantly trying to mess with her head was really starting to tick her off.
Down below, the civilians who’d been entranced started mutating, their bodies changing into monsters or exploding into random displays of power as the eldritch eyes looked at them.
“Burn it! Burn it now!” Kara yelled, snapping Dani out of her own daze. “Close those damn eyes!”
Lifting both hands, Dani released a stream of orange fire towards the limb. At first, it seemed small but, in less than a second, the fire had enveloped a quarter of the skyscraper's sized flesh limb.
Noticing her effort, Red Tornado also recovered and flew closer, using his wind manipulation to feed the flames further. The fire caused the eyes to pop like pustules, releasing a shower of burning blood down on the city, but Dani’s fire only increased in power, the temperature growing until it overcame the limb’s regeneration and started consuming it.
“None of that now! Stop ruining my fun!” Klarion growled, finally turning away from Wonder Woman and Fate to focus on the both of them, his burning eyes exploding in power as he released a blast of magic large enough to fully envelop them.
Kara wasn’t fast enough to dodge it, but she managed to release Dani on top of a new shield and use her Nth metal gloves to block the attack again, the ray of power parting as she braced herself against it.
The attack seemed to go on forever, a never ending stream of magic that burned her costume, destroyed chunks of her nano-robots, burned her skin where it became exposed and slowly drove her back despite Kara putting everything she had towards the fight to overcome it. With a scream, she used her heat vision, hoping the counterattack would help.
Suddenly, all sound vanished, the entire world seeming to freeze as the weapon she had left behind at the start of the fight finally activated. Klarion’s spell fizzled out and even Jay, Barry and Kal, the fastest beings in the fight, seemed to be moving in slow motion.
In the blink of an eye, a pillar of bright white light covered her vision, burning a patch through all the tentacles and hitting the green portal from which they came. The entire sky around the impact point seemed to fracture as the very fabric of reality buckled under the force of the assault.
Then the shockwave hit, the energy drawn from Hell itself hitting the atmosphere and sending all fighters flying in random directions regardless of their strength. The houses closest to the impact point were obliterated but, thankfully, they had long since been empty of people.
Kara felt herself break the sound barrier as she tumbled through the air, her eyes bleeding from the bright flash of light. A terrifying screech of pain seemed to fill the world and shake its very foundations.
Finally managing to stabilize herself, she looked up to see hellfire burning the openings of the breach, the flame consuming the tentacles and seeming to burn even the edges of the portal.
Hah! She knew those pieces of Vortigar’s heart would prove useful! She may have defeated Etrigan’s sibling fairly easily, but he WAS incredibly powerful.
On Krypton, magic had been extremely rare, far more so than on Earth, but it hadn’t been completely unheard of. And as any respectable technological civilization might do, Kryptonians had several devices capable of interacting with the exotic source of energy.
Kara herself hadn’t had the chance to mess with anything magical while in Krypton —the general field of study having fallen out of favor centuries before her time— and she still hadn’t found a way of channeling Vortigar’s power for anything more useful but, if there was one thing she was good at, it was causing explosive failures.
For a few seconds, everyone just seemed to stare at the result of her weapon. Several burning tentacles falling down on top of buildings, having been severed by the explosion, even Klarion couldn’t help but clap excitedly at the devastation.
Looking around, Kara saw Dani pushing herself out of a hole in the ground, the impact having only slightly dented her armor despite the height she had fallen from.
“Cool!” the Lord of Chaos yelled and then started looking for the source of the attack. “There you are! Mine now!”
In a burst of magic, he flew towards the weapon and Kara’s armor, his hands extended as greed filled his eyes. Unfortunately for him, he had let his guard down and Wonder Woman attacked.
Intercepting the abomination, Wonder Woman used her lasso to envelop Klarion’s neck, stopping him in the air before kicking his body away and decapitating him.
Grabbing the head, she started wrapping it with her lasso, trying to see if the artifact could contain his magic if she fully enveloped him. Unfortunately, she had chosen the wrong target, Klarion’s head just smiled and whispered. “Boom.”
The decapitated head exploded in a blast of chaotic magic, sending Wonder Woman flying back and burning her arms and chest with magical fire, causing her to cry out in pain.
Seeing as Wonder Woman was already intercepting the Lord of Chaos, Kara checked on Dani and Kal one last time. Once she saw they were both alive and well, she refocused on the eldritch god above.
The hellfire had destroyed most of the green portal and eliminated the tentacles, allowing Fate to approach and start to close the main breach, but the flesh pillar was still mostly intact and, without Dani’s fire, the eyes had started to regenerate.
Gathering herself, Kara sent the strongest blast of heat vision she could at the base of what she now realized was a single finger. The attack burned through the flesh, but not nearly as fast or deep as she would have wished.
Before the damage could heal, she smashed into the very tip as fast as she could, actually breaking the finger and sending a shower of blood down upon the city. Digging into the flesh, she screamed and strained her body, ripping the entire thing off, the skyscraper sized phalange weighing heavily on her back.
There was another deafening roar of pain as the owner of the amputated appendage retreated, the dimensional tear healing as soon as it was no longer being forced to remain open.
One less thing to worry about, now what was she gonna do with this finger?