Down below, pedestrians, police officers and supernatural forces of good alike could only marvel at the spectacle above, a spectacle many may describe as a mass of tentacles going apeshit.

Things hadn’t been too bad at first. Sure, Antenora, as he was, had tried to cream Sikrat into the curb at first, but once he caught the fast guy that’d helped them, he seemed to calm down quite a lot. When it caught yet another guy, this feeling was amplified even further. The previously looming and dangerous creature seemed to turn passive and thoughtless.

But something had changed. Somehow, someone, somewhere, had done something. The creature stirred, no, it heaved, and violently so. Tentacles raged rampantly, crushing even more buildings, killing off the few that had yet to escape. But even in its rampage, the two people on its person remained mostly unaffected.

Bro was not crushed, and the Teach-Tiftos alliance had not lost his footing and fallen. They both stood as fast as before. For now, that is.

It was a stupid plan, Teach knew that. Stupid and dumb and idealistic and the only thing they had. If this failed, nothing could save them. Not the people below, not some rando up in the skies, not the rando inside him, no, not anybody. But he had to try.

He was never much good at this, but he had to try.

Down in the cocoon of hands, Bro tried very hard to tell the right hand apart from the left. In the end, he chose to just go with the closest one and hope for the best. If Antenora’s fingers hadn’t had just the slightest spaces separating them, Bro might not have been able to see at all, making the task even more impossible. Once he settled on one, he leaned into it, and mumbled a few words, a chant. If he’d known any better, he would have realized the irony of it all.

Up on his chateau of palm, Teach successfully ignored all the terrible shit Antenora was up to. He had only one interest right now, and that was the palm itself. This would be a damn strange way of it, something Tiftos would never even have considered, but… it was all they can do. So, he leaned down, hands planting themselves onto the dry, flaky surface. Antenora himself didn’t seem to notice.

He was looking for clouds. Gods only knew what he’d find in there, but he was prepared to do it.

He was prepared to Heal Antenora.

Magick pumped out of his cerritulus, flowing through his radixes, into his right arms, through his fingertips, and into Antenora. Well inside the humongous body, he could barely control it by himself. But he knew his mission, what he had to do. His element was blood, but not a certain kind. As it entered Antenora’s body, instead of rejecting the acidic liquid that was Antenora’s blood, it instead merged with it, gaining its properties and hue.

Bro’s element wasn’t quite so lucky. Smoke filled parts of Antenora’s body, ripping through his flesh and pushing away blood and the like with force and vigour. Luckily, Bro easily had enough quality and quantity to do this, something Teach would not have been able to do.

Magick flowed into his body. Overwhelmed the systems, triggering instincts long in the making. Like a starved shark smelling blood for the first time in weeks, he pounced. The Magick, meant to seek out wrongs and make them right, were absorbed and ingested before anyone could even as much as blink.

Antenora was not the kind of creature that could survive on the Magick of only two humans, no, considering how much he usually lived on, this was more of a snack than anything. But to the starved God, it was almost too much.

The two donors, having their Magick forcefully ripped out of them and absorbed, immediately fell unconscious, their mergings reverting, Bro becoming Chad and Teach-Tiftos becoming simply Teach.

Everything stilled. His rampage ended as quickly as it had begun. Frozen in space and time, he simply stood, his three eyes staring at some far-off something.

And then, he was gone.

The two former magical beings, Teach and Chad, both fell, bereft of their ground.

Thankfully, before they hit the ground, they were both saved. Teach by Helios, Chad by Sikrat.

But Antenora was gone. Much like the last time.

Gone, but not forever.