dust bullets

Power glowed through my arm, gathered and shaped by my will. The Dust crystals that floated around me quivered and shifted, rotating like bullets in a revolver as I began to fire. I didn’t waste my ammo on a single blast or an overwhelming display of power, but instead unleashed a prolonged burst of a dozen varied effects, aiming for something else. To anyone else, it might have looked like I was firing at random, shooting whatever gun happened to be at hand, but needless to say, that wasn’t the case; I calculated the trajectory of each shot and decided which crystal to use when and how on a moment’s notice. And if Gilgamesh moved to dodge most of them, leaving them to hit the ground or burst in empty air…

Well. That was okay, too—every hit could help, but I was aware that he’d likely shrug off the worst of the effects of any particular shot; it might have been better that he didn’t get in my way.

The first shot struck the ground and discolored it, leaving a strange patch that began to slowly grow like moss. Another stopped in midair before bloating into a bubble that warped light oddly as it passed through it. Another bit of land was abruptly transmuted into liquid glass, nearly catching Gilgamesh as he moved through the air, while a different shot caused a carpet of unnatural flames to unfurl across the barren ground, flickering to brightly and fanning too hot. I directed another blast straight at Gilgamesh, allowing it to unfold into a well of consuming gravity even as I swept something like a spotlight across the area, causing the ground to simply unfold into dust even as the Grimm’s armor began to steam slightly. I flipped to the next round, causing a sudden pillar of ice to emerge and unfold, razor sharp icicles exploding from between the petals, and then knelt, striking the earth.

At once, the ground rippled—not because of a Shockwave, but simply because it had been turned abruptly fluid. I steadied myself in the space just above it as a matter of course, reaching back up to fire more blasts into the sky. One exploded outwards into the shape of a luminous disk, so hit that even far below it, things began to burn. Another shot reached slightly higher before bursting in a similar fashion, halting the disk before it could unfold any further and then coming down in a wide cylinder that caught me, Gilgamesh, and all the other shots I’d cast into the air, still waiting to explode.

With that, Gilgamesh stopped, eyeless face focusing on me as he realized I wasn’t really trying to hit him. If the cylinder of slowed time was affecting him at all, he hid it well and I followed suit, willing my Dimensional to shield me from its effects.

“You…” He said, something humming at his throat as he projected the sounds. “What are you planning now?”