The hulking suit of armor that was Nia surged into the other Matria’s flag aura, swiping in an arc with a hand that suddenly contained a blade. The other Matria countered by raising her spear and summoning a lance of rock to block the oncoming strike, but Nia’s scale-blade cut clean through it without so much as slowing down.

The nameless other Matria kicked backwards while thrusting forward with her spear, five echoes of stone with white-hot scars appearing around the weapon before rapidly growing in size until it was as if Nia was being attacked by redwood trunks. Nia pulled her sword back for a split second to reposition, which was enough for the other Matria to zip through the spears in a blur of molten white to deliver a rapid series of blows to Nia’s chest that did minimal damage.

The echoes that appeared weren’t so weak. Massive lances of stone blew through Nia’s armor like pins through a cushion, then solidified into glassy black masses that kept her stationary. I readied myself to go down there and try to help, but the other Matria hadn’t lowered her guard in the slightest. She sensed that something was wrong.

“Percy–” She began, then the ground exploded.

I watched in awe as a massive centipede burst from the sand, all created from the same scales as Nia used, but glowing with so much power that I couldn’t fathom how deadly it was. But as I looked closer, it wasn’t quite a perfect match for any centipede I’d known. Its legs were extremely long, like a spider’s, and ended in a wicked point that gleamed orange. It also had far too many eyes, rapidly moving about all along the creature’s length to take in as much information as it could. And as more and more of it burst from the glass sand, I saw that it seemed to have nothing but gnashing teeth underneath it. Like the most terrifying street sweeper I could imagine.

The other Matria screamed in pain as the centipede-thing crunched down on her torso, and her scream brought a rain of destruction. The sky exploded in light before turning pitch-black, small meteors raining from the sky to pelt the centipede into submission. It didn’t back down in the slightest, still trying to bite the other Matria in half even through the holes that were blown in its armor.

Until the mother of all meteors crested the clouds. It was as if the sky was about to give birth to destruction itself, a smoking monstrosity of a rock that would end the centipede and everything else in a ten-mile radius. It grew unbearably hot as death grew ever closer, closing the sky and all light off as an unnatural night fell far too early.

“This is why I never trust your words.” Nia stated plainly, throwing aside one of the spears that had pierced her armor. “Your word has been, and will continue to be, worth less than nothing.”

The centipede threw the other Matria to the ground where a spike of scales appeared, impaling the woman through her chest and widening the wound until she slammed to the ground below. Her armor wouldn’t let that kill her, but she’d have to spend an excess of battery to keep herself alive for the rest of the battle. Which didn’t seem to be long, as the meteor was still slowly bearing down on us.

Nia gestured upwards, and the centipede followed. It kept coiling out of the ground for a dozen seconds, showing a monstrosity that had to be at least a half-mile long, then latched onto the meteor above. It began to glow orange along with Nia’s tree, circling its body around the meteor as well as it could, and squeezed.

The meteor exploded in a shower of black scales and thick orange liquid. The other Matria had managed to pull herself off the spike and had returned to a ready stance, but Nia was at her throat before she said a single word. One hand curled around the other Matria’s throat and lifted her off the ground as scales began sealing the woman in an impromptu coffin.

“You never truly knew war.” Nia said, then cocked her head to the side and shook it. “No, that isn’t quite right. You never saw war through the eyes of those who were suffering. It’s time that changed.”

An arm fell to the ground. The other Matria screamed bloody murder. Then fell the other. Then a leg. Then another. More screaming. No blood. No pleading. Only suffering.

Nia threw the other Matria to the ground, leaving the crippled woman without so much as another word. She returned to her tree and placed a hand on it, taking a deep breath that the world mirrored as if she was steadying herself. But she didn’t let her function fall. Instead, she turned around and summoned massive claws on each of her hands.

The other Matria’s flag-spear continued to spew smoke into the atmosphere. The molten cracks in the ground continued to shift and boil. Now it was Nia’s turn to wait for something.

I felt it in the air before I saw it. More meteors cresting through the clouds, each of which looked exactly like the lump of rock that Inopsy had emerged from. I cursed and drew my sword, keeping my eyes on the sky as I surged towards the closest molten scar. The meteors hammered down before I could make it, and unfortunately one of them landed directly between the scar and me.

“Of fucking course it did.” I hissed, activating both the Scorched Bloodcoral Concoction and my newly made pill-turned-ribbon as I ran directly at the rock. A notification startled me and almost made me lose my step, but I steeled myself and raised my shield between me and whoever was about to emerge from that rock.

//ENDLESS ACTIVATED: COPPER MARROWBLOOM PILL CONSUMED.

//THE USER’S BONES BECOME RESERVOIRS FOR ENERGY.

//WARNING: NO CURRENT CORE OR ARMOR FUNCTION CAN VENT ENERGY.

//SYNERGY: FIRESTORM-DEVOURER.

//EXCESS FIRE AND ELECTRICITY BECOMES STORED IN THE USER’S BONES.

It was a good thing that it only gave me these notifications when I consumed something for the first time, or else I’d never risk using //ENDLESS in the middle of combat. I winced at the idea of my bones becoming filled with fire, but pushed that idea out of my mind as the person-shaped rock began to crack.

I slammed my shield into the person-rock’s back and slashed my sword along its length, cutting a jagged gash into whoever the hell was under me without hesitation. A gurgling scream was cut short as I pressed my shield into the wound, widening the cut and hopefully taking the meteoric invader out of the fight. I didn’t want to kill them if I could avoid it, but if they even showed the first sign of getting up, my sword would find their throat.

Yet something still bothered me about all of this. The End had said that Addia chose people like Inopsy, which I’d taken to mean those who were a few sandwiches short of a picnic, and I didn’t get that vibe from Nia’s fight with the other Matria. If anything, the other Matria had seemed reluctant to fight Nia. As if she knew what Nia could do, and was only pushed forward by the fact that whatever she had to return to would be far worse.

Not like Inopsy jumping up after I’d stabbed him in the face, then deciding that he’d let me go. Then not reporting what I’d done to the other Matria and filling up my reservoirs slightly. It wouldn’t surprise me if he was somewhere over the horizon right now, pulling himself up from the crater he’d made and laughing to himself about just how strong Nia was.

But that was a worry for after I knew Nia wasn’t going to be swarmed by these meteor-spawns. I lunged for the molten scar and drove my sword deep into it, then watched as the small indicator began to grow in size and intensity. It was extremely slow at first, at only half of a percent every couple of seconds, and it never sped up. Instead, once I hit twenty-five percent, it stopped completely. The scar had dimmed from molten white to a very dull red that was so close to black that it looked completely void of warmth.

“What the fuck?” I muttered, pulling my sword out of the ground with far more effort than it had taken to plunge it in. “There’s no way that’s all.”

A shuddering sigh of relief from behind me and a glance to follow the scar told me that it wasn’t, in fact, all. There was another parasite draining the scar’s heat, and it wasn’t the one that I’d just incapacitated.

“What the fuck?!” I repeated in exasperation as two meteor-spawn rose to their full heights next to their fallen comrade. “You shouldn’t be that quiet!”

One of them laughed; a short and low grunt that held very little amusement. Their armor looked like interlocking plates of scrap metal, complete with strange welds and rivets that didn’t follow any logical placement. “Thank your Matria for that, seedling.”

The other one nodded, brushing coal dust from their arm to reveal dark grey armor with lavender accents. “She’s a right monster, she is. Don’t need to hurry to have my turn to fight her, no I don’t.”

Seeing that the meteor-spawn could have armor that wasn’t black or red struck me as strange for some reason, and I swiveled around as quickly as I could to get a sense of how everything was shaking out. Nia still stood strong, fighting the combined forces of more than a dozen meteor-spawn at once as the other Matria writhed on the ground in her prison of scales and agony. I could have sworn I saw a watermelon close to the town, but when I looked again it was gone. There weren’t any watermelons in this world, but for some reason it was fresh-ish in my mind.

Before I could delve into why that was, I was suddenly far too light. It felt like I was going to float away at any moment, and raising my sword and shield felt like I wouldn’t be able to put much power behind them.

“It’s bad manners to ignore someone, yes it is.” Lavender tutted as they waggled a finger at me; a trail of lavender following it along its path. “Especially when that someone is going to try and kill you, yes she is.”

“Oh abyss no we ain’t.” Scrap grunted and grabbed Lavender’s finger. “Don’t listen to her, seedling. We know we’d be feeding the mushrooms together if we kill you and our side loses. But I don’t have to tell you that, since you held back on killing our friend there.”

I winced; their friend wasn’t going to be doing much except writhe in agonizing pain for a good long while while their suit patched them up. Unless they were a freak like Inopsy, of course, which I already knew they weren’t.

I shifted my focus to the next-closest scar of molten glass-sand. Unless Scrap had a furnace under her makeshift-looking armor, my corrupted gear was going to be a hindrance against these two. I assumed Lavender had gravity or weight manipulation, one of which was beatable while the other was an instant loss, even for me from my old life. But I knew that both of them chugged battery like nothing else.

All I had to do was somehow outlast Lavender while fighting Scrap. And that was the best case scenario.