Yue

 12th January

00:11 GMT +1

Raquel's eyes widen. "Hu-?"

My first mage slayer hits its left hand, causing a slight shift in its flesh before its fiery breath obscures it. That.. means that the effect is ongoing rather than transitional. If we shut the spell down they should turn back completely, rather than being stuck as what they are. Optimism, that's the tick-.

A rune-encrusted sword spikes through the kinetic barrier, a slight electrical discharge from my armour's internals and Raquel dropping out of the air as her belt gets fried demonstrating the ineffectiveness of our technological solution. I sigh, transition her behind Kaldur and myself and then back up, forming a fusion gun.

"Got a backup-" The large mutant barrels forwards, the smaller ones following in its wake. "-weapon?"

I form defensive construct shields around the glowing fusion gun, point it at the mutant's left shoulder and fire as Kaldur sweeps his right water-bearer forward. Some damage to the shoulder and the smaller ones are knocked-

I jerk myself back in the air as the claymore swings at me.

-back. Kaldur alters his aim and fires a torrent of near-freezing water into the large mutant's mouth. Agh.

"They're immune-" The mutant turns its head aside, spluttering and choking. "-to cold but that works."

Raquel hesitantly raises a pistol… Ah, a low lethality terminan sidearm. Some sort of low-grade neural pattern disruptor if I remember correctly. Nothing like as flexible as her kinetic belt, but it might affect th-.

Karfang collapses out of the air to our right, just about managing to turn it into a run as she bashes a furrow in the ground. Leonid takes the opportunity to push her jaws open and free himself while Robert is sent flying, just about stabilising himself as she lumber-flaps herself back into the air.

Two more shots from my railgun as those smaller mutants who dodged the worst of Kaldur's attack surge forward again. Three fall as my shots strike home at the same time as Raquel pulls her trigger. Another giant mutant surges out of the tunnel only to be staggered by a blast of red light from Leonid. Minor burns now cover its face, so… With his energy output… I shoot it in the neck with my fusion gun, the brilliant white beam burning through the outer scales and causing it to collapse, choking and clutching at its neck.

"Aqualad to Robin." Another giant mutant-. This one has an enchanted shield. Let's test that. I fire mage slayers, which.. don’t appear to reach the surface of the shield as its wielder barrels forward. "We are holding." A shot from Raquel causes it to lose its footing for a moment, but it barely stumbles before righting itself. "Have you found them?"

Leonid shoots after Karfang, accelerating-. Ah. He hits her right where I imagine her genital slit is, both fists striking the thin scales. She clearly feels the impact, but doesn't appear any more injured by that than by anything else we've done. He's forced to roll aside as she sends a sheet of flame along her underside, then she turns in the air to head back towards us.

At least Altdorf is safe.

"Yes, but we've got a problem."

Kon checks on Robert, who brushes him off before flying to intercept Karfang as she flaps back in our direction. I jog forward, a construct exoskeleton appearing around me as I slam into the shield-carrying mutant. It blocks my counter-charge with its shield and shoves me back, breathing fire over me and trying to claw me with its right hand! In return I take x-ionised knives out from subspace, form solid protective constructs around them to shield them from the fire and stab them around the shield!

"They're fighting each other."

Raquel backs away, taking shots as she goes. Another large mutant comes up on my right only to get another face full of water, which turns to ice a moment later.

"Why?"

Two of the knives are turned aside by its armour, but four others find flesh and slip easily through the scales.

"Grawgh!"

Its own attack lightly cracks my construct armour, forcing me to bend my legs slightly to absorb the force. I slide the knives sideways, the pressure against me falling off slightly as the blood pools on the ground beneath us. I press off from my legs, shoving it back as I pull my knives free.

"There's a big crystal-."

"Cornwall to Aqualad."

I glance up. Robert is.. doing something to make Karfang's fire flow around him rather than frying him.

"Go ahead."

And the next mutant is wearing full magic plate. If we survive then handing that stuff over to Sephtian could prove to be a major boon-. And… Do I have to show it to Venturia as well? We slam together, a claw construct from me… Fuck, failing to get any purchase on the armour of its sword arm. The blade comes down, cleaving through my construct armour and into my-.

"No."

Glowing violet armour? The new armour holds, and the mutant struggles to pull its sword free as I stab it in the eye socket with my x-ionised knives.

"It's a lich."

"Explain."

It doesn't fall back. Instead, it pulls its sword free and slams it back down. I sidestep, and the sword bites into the rocky ground.

"It's using a spell granddad told me about."

I jab knives into the joints in its gauntlets, but the protective magics turn them away. Okay, mage slayer-.

A club hits me in the side as another large mutant makes its way past my current opponent and hits me.

"They put their soul into an object. It means their body doesn't interact right-"

I'm knocked over for a moment, yanking myself back with my ring to prevent the follow up strike hitting me.

"-with the world. We can't hurt her without-"

And back on my feet-

"-destroying it-"

-and shooting a mageslayer at the hand holding the club to weaken the protective spells and stabbing into the gauntlet.

"-or undoing the spell."

"AAAAagh!"

It doesn't quite lose its grip, but as it strikes me the pain combined with the force of the blow jars the weapon from its hand. As a result the strike is far weaker than it should have been. My armour is damaged, but not in a disabling way.

"Robin, describe the crystal."

"It's about twelve feet by four by four. Pale pink. It's glowing, and Canis-"

Railgun from behind, shoot the armour in the middle of the back, stab-. No, didn't work.

"-is defending it."

"Why?"

Shoot the off-hand, stab until it can't hold-. Stab the mouth as it tries to breath fire. It coughs, uncontrolled fire bubbling from its mouth and nose. Good.

"He says it's beautiful."

"Kaldur, if we have her phylactery-."

"She may be willing to negotiate. Cornwall Boy, speak to her."

"Oi! Dragon!"