The Man Comes Around

Shango burst free of the prison constricting him with a mighty roar. The black flame ravaged across his body, but he had more pressing matters to attend to. He pushed one hand into the air below him and flipped off it as if it were ground, standing on his head as if on a solid surface. The meteors on either side of him were stopped by his feet, and the meteor above was struck one-handed with his spear, the blade sinking into the flaming rock. His last free limb, his off hand, fired a blinding electrical beam from his palm that slowed Shelle's magic missile to a standstill.

John took a pause from shooting enemy snipers to exploit Shango's current position. When I was shooting him in the head before, he didn't even flinch. I have to do better. John swung his rifle to a different peeping hole to get a better angle then took the shot, spending a couple grit points on Armor Piercer.

The bullet found its mark in Shango's eye, and the champion growled in pain as it bled. The meteors above him sank a few inches lower, and he had to bend his knees to avoid getting crushed.

Shelle was unrelenting, adding more magic missiles to their beam struggle with one hand while trying to squeeze the meteors together and crush his body with the other.

Boathane's wooden infection had thoroughly overtaken the enemy fleet. She hopped across the treetops of the forest she raised from the ocean, avoiding their fire as she raised up more and more trees.

Once the enemy fleet was fully surrounded by her circular grove, the elf made her move. Her feet sank into the trunk of the tree she stood atop, and she commanded the forest and the enemy's wooden ships both. The wooden ships tore apart at the seams, and she used parts of the ships to scoop up each crewmate. Trees from the forest flowed into the shifting mass of wood she was creating and it grew bigger and bigger, even more so than the meteors Shango contended with.

An enormous wooden hand reached out of the swirling mass and picked up the two ironside battleships she couldn't use. The ships joined all the crewmates inside as the wood finally took the shape of a massive, reinforced coffin that barely managed to float on the surface.

"Shelle, the wave'll be in position in a few seconds," Lance said, speeding ahead of it and flying back onto the ship with familiar feathered white wings. He lost them when he touched down on the deck, and put a hand on the front mast as he breathed heavily, near exhaustion. His features distorted and his hair receded and recolored as he shifted into another form. He had noticeably more muscle, and he took his staff back inside of himself, his skin taking on the same adamantine sheen. He produced a teal baseball-sized crystal from his hand before absorbing it too, redistributing it across the surface of his skin for another layer of protection. His injuries had disappeared and he stood tall, without a trace of his previous fatigue.

His injuries aren't shared between his forms? John thought, a little horrified by the thought of how many different forms Lance had idly chatted about and displayed. Creating forests at a whim, calling meteors from the sky, and being a thousand people at once. Some people in the Abyss are godlike without any divine power. I wonder if they could take Isabelle.

Shelle kept her focus on Shango, but floated toward his fleet. John tilted his sight away from the electric champion to see a massive tidal wave looming above the wooden coffin Boathane had created.

A clone floated out of Shelle toward the tidal wave, and Shango followed it with his eyes while still struggling against the original's onslaught. "What're you doing? I'm your opponent!"

"Glacies aetas." A blue light emanated from the wind clone's hands onto the tidal wave below as it engulfed the massive coffin. In an instant the ocean all around them as far as the eye could see froze. John felt a chill as the spell passed over him, though he took no actual damage.

"No!" The swirling storm clouds overhead erupted. A pillar of lightning engulfed Shango, and his muscles bulged as he took in more of his god's power. His injured eye glowed with electricity, and an arc zapped from it into his spear. The meteor above him was annihilated, and the beam repelling Shelle's magic missiles obliterated them completely.

Shango bobbed up and down surrounded by wispy clouds and arcs of electricity as he got used to free flight. He floated upward freely and grasped each meteor in a hand.

Shelle let out a gasp as the meteors were wrenched from her control, then flew back down to the ship. "I need all of you to buy me some time. Now that we've seen what is hopefully the extent of his abilities, I have a new plan, but I’m going to need a minute,"

"A minute meaning a single minute or a minute colloquially meaning a brief period of time? Because there's a big difference here," Lance replied, eyes widening as he saw two meteors hurling toward them. He got bigger and buffer but slower as he ran to the front of the ship, jumping into a haymaker that shattered the first meteor. The recoil bounced him back onto the deck and he jumped forward again, this time kicking the other flaming rock back at Shango.

The spearman sliced clean through it then flew into Lance, driving his spear into the shifter's heart. A crack spiderwebbed across his body, but he was able to reshape it and fix it as he caught Shango's next attack between his crystalline hands.

Shango unleashed a relentless ****, and in this stronger, more durable form, Lance was little but a training dummy. He withstood attack after attack, sliding back as he did his best to block the onslaught.

A wispy white aura surrounded Lance as he pivoted from side to side faster. With her haste spell cast on him, Shelle retreated below deck to prepare. Lance began to cleanly dodge the champion's attacks, though he could hardly get a hit in himself. "Boathane, a little help?"

'Working on it," Boathane replied, balancing on the treetops of what little of her forest remained. All but the last tree were melded together before separating into two enormous elven spears. Both sunk low before thrusting up at the electromage at an angle that wouldn't damage their ship.

With one eye on the wooden weapons rocketing toward him, Shango gained a burst of speed and unleashed a barrage of slashes on Lance's reinforced chest. Lance could barely block every other slash, and those that he did carved deep grooves in his arms.

Shango reared back to thrust into his chest, and Lance brought his arms up to guard. The spearman feinted and instead stabbed the deck, launching himself off his spear and kicking Lance in the face. The shifter was knocked through the wall behind him and into the captain's quarters.

Boathane's spears were as fast as bullets yet they still couldn't match Shango's speed. When they thrust at him at the same time, he slashed them to pieces and leapt off their boat, reducing the pieces to ash with a giant wave of electricity. He raised his hands to the sky, and lightning began to fall like rain on the elf.

John knelt over to a different sniper hole to keep watching the action, and he switched his sniper for his pistols since Shango was still so close. He read through his skill list to see if there was any way he could help, but it felt hopeless.

Boathane's eyes widened as the first few strikes fell around her. She slid down the tree to the ice below, forming the tree into a wooden greatshield above her to protect from the barrage of thunder, but it quickly started to give under the power of a fully realized champion. She fired a barrage of arrows at Shango and sank into the shadows, but she was too slow.

Shango took aim, readying his spear to throw. John rapid fired Magic Rope nets on Shango from Ebony. It bought Boathane an instant as Shango discharged a wave of electricity around himself that vaporized his net and her arrows.

Not enough time, as Shango got back into a steady stance and launched his spear at the retreating elf. It covered the space between them faster than she was disappearing, and was on a direct course for her chest.

A great blur knocked Shango aside and left cracks in the ice as it raced toward Boathane even faster than the spear. It pulled her up out of the shadow and carried her back onto the ship before racing out onto the ice again. It ran past the horizon away from them but came back faster than before. It used the distance to gain more speed and struck Shango in the face with all the built up power and momentum.

When the dust settled, Lance stood across from Shango, shifting from his agile form to a replica of the champion across from him without the clouds and lightning. He glowed with haste, and his skin became metallic then crystalline.

"Hope you didn't think you’d seen the last of me," Lance said, swinging an identical mechanical spear at the champion of thunder.