all this effort

My twin and I looked at one another and, by unspoken agreement, Fluctuated together and activated Tachyon, halting time. Malkuth stopped immediately but Keter didn’t—whether because of some aspect of relativity or because of his nature as a Light Elemental, I wasn’t sure, but seeing as stopping time didn’t blind me or plunge me into unbelievably cold temperatures, I figured there was something at work there. The moment his attack splashed harmlessly over Malkuth, Keter began to withdraw, approaching us. Perhaps because of our differing methods, it was a lot harder for me to hurt people within a time stop than it apparently had been for CInder and his attacks hadn’t seemed to be working regardless; better to regroup, then, and prepare.

As he did, we all kept our eyes focused on Malkuth, hoping he wouldn’t abruptly move—or rather, that he wouldn’t be able to come up with a way around stopped time within stopped time, at least not on short notice. If it was the real Malkuth, that probably would have been a pipedream, but within Gilgamesh’s body, he was limited too that body.

Once Keter was outside of Malkuth’s sphere of influence, however, my twin and I began to use Tachyon for what it was best at—buying time. Though the technique itself was outrageously expensive, it still provided an opportunity to react or prepare without needing to worry about outside influence; if, for instance, I didn’t have most of my best skills running at all times anyway, I could have used it to apply them all at once. That wasn’t an issue for me, of course, but I still had a few ways to use it that tended to come in handy.

Like setting up a sucker punch.

As time returned to normal, I fired another full batch of Lux Aeternas into Keter’s back, providing him with a sudden and massive ‘charge.’ At once, his body began to waver, appearance spiking oddly and shifting—but he held himself in place even as my twin released his gathered power within the bounds of Malkuth’s luminous sphere.

Or rather, his barrier, for that’s what it apparently counted as to Trespasser, a fact that I became certain of the precise moment it worked. But it did work, and that’s what matters.

Keter fired a blast of energy into Malkuth’s chest with enough force to wipe cities off the map. Malkuth released a hiss of breathe as it hit home, the light pushing him half way to the edge of Sanctuary, and it rose into a near scream as the light passed fully through him. This time, the light acted as though his body were a prism and trails of differently colored light streaming out from his skin as he bore the assault—trails that scattered randomly, hitting the edges of the Sanctuary and passing cleanly through. In a moment, the near empty space within my barrier was covered in a network of lasers that were more than intense enough to chew through anything in their path, such as, you know, me. Significantly more hit Malkuth, but they simply scattered again and again, adding fuel to the fire and doing little to help matters.

In a moment, however, I felt my other self Fluctuate into the same space as me and Keter moved, wings unfolding to surround us. Each laser that struck him was absorbed cleanly and he channeled the power anew into another blast at Malkuth, holding it one him with brutal power.

This time, however, Malkuth was prepared and raised a hand in front of him just before Keter fired. When the massive column of light came within centimeters of his hand, it abruptly bent upwards, passing over Malkuth at an angle and slipping through Sanctuary’s walls, crossing the space behind us, then behind Malkuth, and then elsewhere, instantly filling the areas with bars of searing Light the consumed Malkuth in an instant while Keter kept me safe from harm.

Then something hit us that wasn’t light and Malkuth—who’d let the blast push him through Sanctuary’s walls, I realized—grabbed Keter, holding onto the shaped light of his body as easily as flesh. With his other hand, he grabbed me, pulling me up through one of Keter’s wings by the throat.