all this effort

I knew from the beginning that most of what I had available wouldn’t work—and that what was left probably wouldn’t work well—but every hit I aimed at him had a purpose. The Magic Missile, even with their defense penetration, were unlikely to cause him any real damage, but they were cheap enough to produce in massive quantities even when I was normal; here, with Cathedral running, Sahasrara activated in full, and a dozen other things stacked in my favor? They filled the air such that it was difficult to tell where any one ended and another began. Mixed amongst them were Thunderbolts and Far Slayers, brief flashes of light sparking around semi-luminous arcs in the air, masked occasionally by the bursting of Flares. They were a minor addition, all told, but with their price as piddling as it now was…well, it was a cost-effective method, even if the most it did was cause scratched.

Above them came my other means of attack. Gungnir didn’t make as large of a showing as its lesser cousin, but still appeared by the dozens, the hundreds. Surya surrounded my twin and I even as our Aurora’s flared to encompass him, my very soul reaching out to claw at my enemy. I focused Atlas on him with a thought, crushing him beneath a massive, lingering weight even as I released flashes of plasma towards him, froze him with Deposition, slashed at him with Psychokinetic blades, and more, filling in almost every space left by the first layer of attacks.

And beneath that, of course, I hid the big guns. Longinus wasn’t easily distinguishable from a Magic Missile at first glance, and in the almost solid wave of attacks now flying towards Malkuth, it would have been a bit tricky even for me to pick out the lethal needle in the slightly less lethal haystack. The body Malkuth was using now—Gilgamesh’s body—had no conventional vulnerabilities; hell, even complete incineration at the heart of a miniature star hadn’t been enough to put him down for the count. Compared to that, stabbing him in his non-existent organs was fairly meaningless, though I aimed several sucker punches in that direction anyway, just in case he though they were safe. The rest followed Keter’s example, aiming towards the portal within him, already at least somewhat damaged by the first Longinus. If I could destroy that, I’d cut Gilgamesh off from the tap and he’d be easy pickings. Besides which, it would get Malkuth out of the picture, which was a good thing pretty much no matter how you sliced it.

One might think that, given the onslaught we were unleashing a single, man-sized target, the three of us might get in each other’s way—but we didn’t. For my twin and I, keeping out of each other’s way was almost simple, with our senses turned up to max and Pericognition accounting for all the details without need for conscious input. With the Mathematician’s Answer, angling our attacks such that they didn’t collide was just a matter of timing and forethought, and we slipped blows through the gaps in each other’s attacks that most wouldn’t have thought existed.

For Keter, things were a touch different, but the process was, if anything, even simpler. From his perspective, we must have been moving at a glacial pace and he could aim—or even approach—through the storm of attacks without difficulty. More than that, his quickened perceptions and Elemental nature gave him a variety of options that would have been impossible for most anyone else. Beams of light both massive and thin flashed across my vision impossibly, ducking under and passing through attacks as it approached Malkuth. The laser twisted, curved, and then flat out bent around anything in its path, evading every obstacle to burst upon his masked face.

The assault tore pieces out of them—sometimes nothing but tiny slivers, such as in the case of a lucky or well-aimed Magic Missile that just barely did a point of damage, and sometimes in much larger chunks as he was struck with the light or pierced through by Longinus.