More on disrupting Simurgh

My first instinct on seeing every cape present make their moves was that I'd played a pivotal role in the Simurgh's master stroke. It was too much, all together, with too many people in the line of fire. All on my signal.

Solarstare's power gushed into the open lattice and filled the hollow of the Simurgh's body, right on target, until Chevalier's second shot hit and jolted her, sending her flying back a good fifteen feet. Excess liquid splashed dangerously close to where Tattletale and the capes she'd gathered around herself were hunkered down.

Three tinkers were using their tech together in what I could only assume was a 'cross the beams' maneuver, but they missed in the initial moments, raking the already damaged ceiling – ceiling I'd damaged in earlier fighting, and brought chunks down near the primary group of Wardens.

But this battlefield wasn't just about those capes. Vista warped the residual 'splash' of molten gold and the cascade of falling rock. Hookline and Disjoint were at the ready, Hookline grabbing Damsel and pulling her out of the way of the spikes, while Disjoint reached out with dismembered limbs and shoved capes out of the way.

Solarstare's power erupted into superhot flame. Much of it was within the Simurgh herself, and there were spots, especially where she was wounded, where the glow of heat within her made her silver body glow orange and yellow.

Byron's motes detonated into mist, sweeping over the Simurgh. Vista controlled the mist's path, concentrating it. Dust and smoke particles froze into frost-like lattices, and her exterior was super-chilled, at the same time she burned from within.

She folded wings around her, and they snapped and cracked with the movement as they drew around her body, frozen on the outside, with her body glowing red-hot from within. A single crack at the lattice at one shoulder widened, inching down toward one nipple-less breast. Just from the stresses.

There was no scream in my head. For the moment, for this final batch of attacks, she wasn't fighting, she was barely trying to defend herself, and she was taking a lot of punishment. To see it, I could imagine the Simurgh had vacated the shell of her body, and this was a Simurgh-shaped statue we were so focused on taking down.

Solarstare's flames began to glow brighter, shedding motes of light not too different from Byron's. The motes began to glow brighter, brighter-

Until Grue covered them up, shrouding the Simurgh in darkness.

She chose that moment to move, throwing herself back and away, closer to Sveta, Dinah and I. Closer to the hole.

Dragon, still poised partially in the part of the hole that extended to upper floors, lunged down, driving the full weight of a quadruped mech the size of a house into the Simurgh. The motes of light spilled out, almost rolling as they danced along the floor into the darkness.

*****

"Sveta," I said. "What can I do?"

"Nothing," she told me. "Except maybe don't use the aura like that again. I almost hurt someone."

*****

She supposedly screamed to gather data, and she used the data to inform her precognition. We momentarily had the edge because everything about our movements flowed from Dinah and Dinah being a blind spot. But the environment… she'd already worked out those calculations, already gathered the data and knew the ins and outs of cause and effect here.

The entire facility around her was putty in her hands.

- Last 20.7