Fight

“So how are we going to find him?” Tina looks around fearfully as the darkness retreats from us as we enter… but closes in behind, leaving us only able to see at all due to magic.

Not that there's anything to see. The darkness has reduced everything to dust, and is working on the very ground beneath us (we're not standing on it, we're flying). All that exists is the darkness and shaved dirt. It's pretty eerie. “I've seen him. He's obviously a full caster, so his Will save will be good, but there's a couple spells I can copy that don't offer a save…” I duplicate Circle Dance via mythic ‘I Wish’, which has me dancing briefly but facing a new direction… and he's alive and unharmed, deeper in the darkness. I make an illusion of an arrow pointing, “This way…”

We travel for a few miles, stopping to confirm the direction regularly, and soon enough… we see him. He's walking, cursing repeatedly about magic and his car as he goes. The same muscle-headed doofus that… that…

I only realize I've locked up when Alice puts a hand on my shoulder, “It's okay. We got this. You equipped us well. This next step isn't your job.”

I nod dumbly, and take a deep breath… my face is wet? I'm shaking? I suppose I really need to see a counselor…. I hear Alice whisper to Tina as I just float and stare: “Keep him safe.”

I then watch as the two detectives… assuming they still have the job when the city they serve is just gone… approach and start laying down arrows… which he dodges, the magically created arrows plunking meaninglessly into the ground. How is he…?

I have my answer when I read his stats. Apparently he didn't top at twenty. His actual build is a multiclass martial nightmare of stat stacking, the magic that nuked the city is a side effect of his build grabbing other things that he actually wanted. They don't stand a chance… and I'm frozen in terror.

I need to move. I can't. I'm immune to fear… but this isn't external. It's me. I'm broken.

I float there, doing nothing, as Adam and Alice repeatedly go after the mass murdering bastard… arrows until they figure out that doesn't work, then they charge in… and the bastard hits Alice. She goes flying, limbs flailing like a rag doll.

Rage beats fear.

My Mythic works. My magic works. There's an ability I grabbed from the Spheres of Power Mythic: Ravaging Time. It's a Mythic powered Time Stop. So I stop time.

I don't have long… just thirty-six seconds of everyone and everything else frozen at a cost of eighteen points of my unlimited Mythic power… but that's enough, because Ravaging Time allows me to violate a limitation in the base Time Stop spell: I can spend more Mythic to affect those not in the Time Stop… which lets me apply a Coup de Grace action to the bastard - he's helplessly stuck in real time, and a CdG doesn't care about armor class - using an Energy Strike from Destruction with Maximize and Twin spell to get the save DC to ‘nope’ from sheer damage. And then I do so again for good measure, making sure to use a different method for the base damage. And again. And again. And again.

I'm still pounding on the now-unrecognizable corpse when I can't hold back the hands of the clock anymore.

“Whoa, whoa, easy, easy,” for a brief moment I think it's Alice… but the hands in front of me have scales, so it's Adam… her voice, though.

“He… he…” I'm shaking… my vision is blurring… good thing I don't really need my eyes to see thanks to spells….

“He was a mass murdering sicko **** bastard who needed to die and deserves every ounce of Hell's fury,” Adam interrupts, “I ain't even slightly concerned about how what you're doing will affect him. You need to stop for you.”

“He killed Alice!” I object as I bury my face in Adam's soft tits, crying.

“Do you really think he could oppose your power?” Adam's voice… no, his chest isn't vibrating with it…

“Alice?” I look up.

She's busy putting her limbs back in order: Straightening broken bones and dislocated joints as she replies, “I'm fine. I'd say this should hurt more, but by all rights I should be dead and not feeling a thing. What did you do?”

Ah, right… without magic he was limited to simple injury… “Magic. You can't die from injury,” the Delay **** spell, pity that Starmantle doesn't stop fists, “won't feel pain,” the Delay Pain spell, “and can keep going, if slowly, when your injuries would otherwise render you ****…” due to the Overstimulate spell. I blink back the tears, “...you're OK?”

Alice pops a knee into place, “Apparently I will be in a little bit. Umm…” she gazes into the void around us, “...what do we do about this thing?”

I don't know… “Leave it, maybe? Sucks that so many people died, but it should work as an infinite garbage disposal.”

“It won't run out?” Adam raises an eyebrow as I start pulling myself together emotionally.

“No,” I take a breath, “it'll last until someone gets rid of it. It's Permanent.”

“What will it do to the weather?” Adam cringes, “Rainfall and such?”

“Nothing good,” I consider, "I could make a minion that could get rid of it? It would need to be done from outside, though. The antimagic wards we carry would prevent her from doing the job, and it's a bad idea to turn them off in here.”

“Okay. Let's go home, then…” Alice finishes up putting her limbs back in the right places as the fast healing from a Celestial Healing spell does the work of mending the injuries.

We all start flying out of the darkness….