“If there’s no point killing, then there’s no point fighting either.” I pointed out, readying the Floodforest’s Gift as I spoke. “Besides, if your Matria couldn’t kill mine, then why do you think your grunts could?”

Scrap shrugged. “Persephonia’s reserves ain’t endless, no matter what she tries to make everyone think. She’ll run dry soon enough.”

She hadn’t acknowledged my first sentence, which told me her opinion on the matter just as much as if she had. The two of them didn’t show any signs of attacking any time soon, though, which meant they were underestimating me. Or, if our levels and stats were far apart, maybe they were estimating me perfectly. That would change if I could get to that molten scar, but that was one big if.

In two swift movements, I activated my function and moved. My leg and chest armor unraveled into tendrils that pulled me down to the ground, eliciting a shout of surprise from Lavender and a grunt of effort from Scrap.

“Gods, you’re heavy.” Scrap ground out through what I assumed were clenched teeth, and I felt my body grow instantly lighter. Yet at the same time I felt it pressing upwards against the strain of my tendrils, which meant I’d made a mistake. And as I watched the plates around Scrap tremble and sag, I realized what it was.

I pushed off and went sailing into the air as a lavender blast erupted where I’d been standing a moment ago. It roared into the sky like a rising dragon, then curved around in a perfect half-circle arc and began plummeting down towards me. I ordered my tendrils to latch onto the closest piece of ground and pull me down, the lavender eruption following me as if it had a mind of its own as I slammed into the sand.

Lavender gestured at me with a glowing finger, the trail behind it tracing a smaller version of the same path that the eruption had taken. She placed her middle finger and thumb up against her glowing pointer finger and held them tightly there for a moment, then split them apart to show that the other two now carried the same glow. The lavender missile followed suit, shattering into three projectiles that were each two-thirds the size of the first.

The lightness I felt suddenly shifted into a massive pull towards Scrap. I planted my tendrils into the sand and held on for dear life as her magnetism tried to yank me towards her, which had the unfortunate side effect of two of the lavender missiles slamming directly into my shield. They didn’t so much as shove me back, streaming over my defences like water as a faint grape-like smell overtook me.

My interface flickered and fizzled, then everything became completely unreadable. My integrity was full one moment, empty the next, then back up to full a blink of an eye later. I couldn’t tell how much longer I had on my //ENDLESS effects, nor how full my battery was, and worst of all, I couldn’t see how much of my eelbone armor was filled with heat.

“Of course she’s a fucking glitcher.” I spat as I swung my sword in an arc, cutting the remaining missile in two. I didn’t know if it would do anything else now that I was glitched, but I wasn’t about to let it slam into me to find out. I turned and commanded my tendrils to carry me to the scar, fighting Scrap’s pull every step of the way, but for some reason neither of them ever came after me.

I grunted with effort and slammed my foot down into the molten scar, raised my shield so it was between me and the two attackers, and waited. The magnetism let up a dozen seconds later, the scrap around Scrap’s armor rising and shifting as she found a new outlet for her battery. Two wings sprouted from her back; each made of tattered leather stretched between four fingers of scrap that groaned and creaked with every move they made.

She launched herself into the air with startling speed, spiraling upwards in a not-so-graceful spin until she reached the apex of her jump and fully unfurled her wings. She shouted something to Lavender that didn’t reach my ears, alerting me to the fact that the other woman was in the process of weaving a complicated lattice of purple light. I knew that couldn’t be anything good.

I was proven right far sooner than I’d expected. My stats fell by a small amount as my chest grew strangely heavy, and most of my tendrils disappeared with them. I looked down to see a symbol splattered in lavender dripping down my chest, popping and crackling with the power of Lavender’s attack as it faded before my eyes. It wouldn’t last five minutes, but without my tendrils, there was a good chance I wouldn’t last five minutes either. Especially not when the same symbols appeared on both my upper arms and on one thigh, sealing the effects of the Floodforest’s Gift completely.

I silently thanked every divine being that I knew that Lavender had only targeted my Copperbound armor. I grit my teeth and raised my shield to block a flying kick from scrap, twisting myself to divert her momentum so that her heel slammed into the ground. I followed up with a slash through the material of one of her wings, my sword biting deeper than I expected, leaving a molten line through her armor that told me that I was still absorbing energy through the scar.

“Salt and rot!” Scrap yelled, whirling around and forcing me to duck under her wings to keep my head. “The sword! Disable his sword!”

“I’m trying, yes I am!” Lavender frantically called back. “It won’t work, no it won’t! Something’s wrong with it, there is!”

Maybe Lavender hadn’t been targeting those specific armor pieces after all. I charged at Scrap’s moment of frustration and slashed horizontally across her stomach, a wall of scrap metal appearing to meet my blow, but my sword cut through it like it was nothing. Scrap stumbled back in surprise, her hands grabbing at a thin line that had barely scratched her armor as if it were a mortal wound. I followed through with a tackle that threw her off balance, sending her tumbling with a burst of glass sand, and placed an arm over her neck.

In retrospect, I should have used my sword. “Stand down or die.”

Scrap struggled under my weight for a handful of seconds before grinding out a reply. “Gods, what kind of seedling are you?”

I pressed harder. “I won’t repeat myself.”

“I can’t make anything else fizzle, I can’t!” Lavender cried. “Please don’t die!”

“Salt and rot.” Scrap cursed, then her wings crumbled beneath her. “We–”

Metal slammed into my stomach. I retched and slammed down onto my back, the breath knocked out of me as my vision blurred. I rolled and raised my shield as soon as I possibly could, a long blade of scrap burying itself where my stomach had been just a split second ago as Scrap retaliated. I felt my armor drawn to the blade-tail as her magnetic function activated once more, and I lowered my shield to block where I thought it would be coming from.

I guessed right, and my prize was pain. Her tail slammed into my shield which slammed into my body, sending me skidding along the sand until her magnetism pulled me back once more. She bashed my shield with a heavily armored fist, then her tail, then another fist, then her first fist once more. My shield strained under the relentless assault and my arms ached from trying to hold it back, but the ache somehow didn’t grow worse. In fact, each blow seemed to be a little weaker than the last.

My bones began to simmer. As if my skeleton had been injected with water not quite hot enough to burn. I risked a look down at my feet, and a molten scar stared back at me. We were just barely in the range of the other Matria’s spear-flag, which explained how Scrap had suddenly gotten a boost in power and why this scar didn’t seem anywhere close to running dry. Lavender’s footsteps echoed over the sand, and the constant shrieking of Scrap’s onslaught. I needed to act before she was empowered by the flag.

I waited for the next tail strike, then pushed forward. My shield crushed Scrap’s tail up against her torso, grinding it against the rest of her armor as I raised my sword and pinned it to her. She gasped and looked down at her chest in confusion, fingers gingerly probing at the blade impaling her as if it was something fragile. Her helmet locked with mine, then turned to look over my shoulder. I grimaced and pulled my sword down, splitting Scrap from ribs to hips, and let her not-quite-corpse fall to the ground.

Lavender cried out for her fallen comrade, a choking sob that barely escaped her lips before she dove past me and crouched at Scrap’s side. She took Scrap’s hand between hers and purple light began dancing between the two women. Between them, I put a sword.

The hot bone bit into Lavender’s neck. Not enough to kill, but more than enough to send a message. “Undo these fizzlings and I’ll let you two be.”

“It doesn’t work like that!” Lavender sobbed. “They stay there for thirty minutes, they do!”

That wasn’t what I wanted to hear. If I was going to go help Nia, I couldn’t be out four pieces of armor. But I also didn’t want to kill someone who was obviously done fighting me. “Give me all the potions you have that you don’t need to keep her alive. And promise me that neither of you will come after me if she miraculously recovers in a few minutes.”

Lavender went to nod, but whimpered as my sword pressed into her neck. She let one of her hands leave Scrap’s, then dropped three glass spheres that had three differently coloured liquids in them. “Please let us live. We won’t fight in this fight, we won’t.”

I gathered the potions, then frowned at the unreadable mess of text I got when I tried to identify them. “If any of these hurt me, I’m killing both of you.”

“They won’t, they won’t.” Lavender said shakily, moving her hand back to Scrap’s. “I swear on the life-giving rains, they won’t. I’ll read out their descriptions to you, yes I will.”

I nudged the back of her head with my shield, but pulled my sword away slightly so she could breathe a little easier. She took a deep breath, and while still pumping Scrap full of purple, recited a small list of potions and their effects to me.

“Power blessing: increases power by 20 for thirty minutes. Resilience blessing: increases resilience by 20 for thirty minutes. Speed blessing: increases speed by 20 for thirty minutes.” She rattled off, then froze. “But the amount of blessings you can use is based on your unaltered resilience, yes it is. Please don’t hurt us for that.”

That was yet another part of the system that hadn’t existed in my last life. I knew that //ENDLESS’ ribbons didn’t have that same limit, but I hadn’t tried taking two potions at a time without both of them being from my function. The three spheres clinked against each other in my palm, a small line separating two halves that were kept in place by a hinge and a clasp made of white metal. I needed to pick the one that would help me the most.