The first thing I did was throw my dagger at Annette’s feet, morph it into a shield, and summon a sphere of petal-scales large enough to cover her and the chunk of crystal she was working on. The second thing I did was panic.

Keratily’s family had to be a lot more powerful than any of the riffraff that Endra had mind controlled into doing her bidding. She’d alluded to some ancestors that went against her, so those probably weren’t coming after us, but I was terrified at whoever she’d decided to keep around. Or controlled into keeping around.

{Seb? What’s going on?} Annette asked worriedly.

{Attackers. More of Keratily’s family that were after you before you teleported.} I gestured for my hydra to defend the shield of petal-scales. {Finish up as quick as you can, but don’t half-ass it.}

{Okay.}

I balled my hands into fists and stared up at the sky as the shapes grew bigger and bigger. For a split second I wondered if they were falling in meteors like Inopsy had the first time I’d met him, but as I saw more of them, I realized I was only slightly wrong. Instead of meteors, they were crystal exoskeletons that coated them in what looked like a few inches of protection.

“Just imitation. Nothing to worry about.” I muttered.

The falling Keratilys–three in total–shrieked through the air like incoming missiles. I tried to summon more petal-scales to my hand, to use them without my weapon to defend myself, but something stopped me. Not competence, battery, or anything else at all. Just the image of gargoyle coated in stone and my own inexperience at fighting without a weapon.

With a prick of thought, I consumed gargoyle’s core. “I’m sorry. I’ll remember you forever.”

Sensations unlike almost anything else I’d ever experienced coursed through me. Only consuming Nia’s core had felt anything like this–and like her core, I had a feeling I could do more with this one. Thoughts and desires rippled against the whirlpool of my core, then hardened. The fluidity of the whirl paused for a heartbeat, then two, and finally cracked apart to begin flowing again.

//CONSUMPTION ACTIVATED.

//FUNCTION EXTRACTED: GIFT OF PEBBLES

//CORE MASTERY REQUIREMENT: 30.

//STATIC FUNCTION: FIVE BY FIVE SQUARE.

//ALLOWS THE USER TO MANIPULATE ANY ROCKS SMALLER THAN X INCHES NEAR THEM.

//THE USER CAN BREAK DOWN ANY ROCKS NOT UNDER THE CONTROL OF ANY OTHER FUNCTION BY EXPENDING BATTERY.

Not the most powerful function, but by how gargoyle had used it, the description did not match how well it could be used. I closed my eyes and bowed at it, then swiped over and attempted to corrupt it along with my petal-scales. A prompt warned me that I couldn’t undo the corruption, but that wasn’t a problem. Overgorge asked me if I wanted to pour more potential into the creation of this partially new function.

I accepted it immediately and watched my core get to work. The Keratilys were dangerously close now, and if one of them decided they wanted to fire off something from way up there, I’d just have to hope they weren’t used to aerial combat.

//CORRUPTION COMPLETE.

//FLOODPETAL-SCALES HAS GAINED THE FOLLOWING EFFECTS:

//PETAL-SCALES CAN NOW BE CREATED BY DESTROYING ANY NON-LIVING MATTER NOT CURRENTLY AFFECTED BY ANOTHER’S FUNCTION.

//GREATLY INCREASES THE MANIPULATIVE ABILITY OF ALL PETAL-SCALES.

Now that was an upgrade. I glanced over at the wall and pointed my function at it. Within my oil-powered helmet I saw a small semi-circle bore about five feet deep into the wall, then flash twice and stop. Either that was my distance limit or my scale capacity, and considering I was also keeping my hydra and a sphere of scales active, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was capacity.

“Let’s see how this works.”

With a clench of my fist I mentally commanded the stone to transform. Battery left me in a much smaller stream than I’d expected, meandering over to the wall at a not-so-strenuous pace. It gently splattered against the wall like a child smearing jelly on the table, then spread until it had completely saturated the stone.

It all flowed away in a deluge of transformation. Rock became petal-scales all at one, sloughing off the wall in a giant mass that settled on the ground and started to pulsate slowly. I stared blankly at them, unsure what to do with the mass now that I had it, but that was quickly rectified by the first shattering impact just off to my right.

Shards of pink gemstone sprayed off the Keratily who’d just landed like a frag grenade going off. They shook themselves once and staggered away from the tiny crater they’d made, then fell motionless against the wall. I raised my hand and called the pile of petal-scales to me with a thought, ready for them to perk up and charge me at any second.

They didn’t. I waited another few seconds, and the next impact was even louder than the first. That Keratily didn’t even stumble–they just collapsed in a boneless heap with what sounded like a scream being cut off by empty lungs.

“Whaaat the fuck.” I whispered and backed away from the second Keratily towards the one against the wall. “Is she sending suicide bombers? Or… just suiciders, since they didn’t explode?”

Yet, my mind reminded me as I glanced up at the one who hadn’t fallen yet. They were falling much slower, almost like they had a parachute while the others had jumped without one. I slowly made my way to the one against the wall and prodded them with my foot.

“Grngh.” They mindlessly half-groaned, half-slurred. “Imbeschrubblenogrenn.”

That was not a word. And this was not a suicide bomber. It was someone who’d either jumped–or had been teleported–without any of the necessary safety precautions to ensure a landing. Keratily was not that fucking stupid, which had to mean there was another reason for this. Maybe she was using them as teleportation anchors. Or the first two were decoys, and the third was some kind of super-monster who just needed to channel their attack for two minutes before they launched it.

Either way, letting this one move around after they recovered was a dumb idea. I pulled petal-scales out of the mass at my feet and coated my hand in them, then drove it down through the person’s back. They let out a muffled cry of pain as I withdrew my hand, but left the petal-scales inside of them. That would keep their armor from bringing them back into the fight for a while.

“Now…” I trailed off and turned to look at the one on the ground. “Do I actually have to worry about you?”

Honestly, I wasn’t even sure that one had survived the fall. A quick check showed that they technically hadn’t, and their armor was working overtime to reverse that fact. They were probably more paste than Staura inside of it. Just in case, I did the same thing I had to the other one and refocused solely on the one descending on me.

Their impact was a whole lot more graceful. Crystal shattered all at once like safety glass, revealing a suit of armor that was so beautiful I couldn’t believe someone would fight in it. Pink-tinted marble shifted and moved like rocky flesh, clothed in an additional suit of gleaming platinum armor that wouldn't have been out of place in a spartan movie.

“Why’s your armor have armor?”

The Keratily stared blankly at me. “Excuse me?”

“Your armor.” I gestured with a hand coated in petal-scales and blood at them. “It’s wearing armor. You know, marble as one thing and platinum as the other. What’s the deal with that?”

“This is what my armor looks like.” They said flatly and seriously. “Now who–or what–are you? We lost contact with the Matria for so long, then she suddenly reappears, and now we’re fighting a war with a city we used to be friendly with. Where is Okeria? We need to speak with him.”

“Depends. Have you kept up with the news?” I said sarcastically. “Because you’re looking for Scalovera now.”

“Scalovera? The sniveling little whelp Okeria thoroughly demolished and humiliated? That one?” The Keratily shook their head in disbelief. “What has the Matria gotten herself into?”

I swirled my petal-scales around me and wrapped them right. “War.”

The Keratily nodded and raised one hand, palm-up. A thick pink liquid emerged from her wrist and swirled into a tight, dangerous orb that floated just above her palm.

“That much is obvious.”

This one didn’t seem as brainwashed as the others. Maybe I could finally get a chance to flex my severely underused diplomatic muscles.

I held up my hands, but didn’t let any of my functions drop. “Just letting you know, Keratily’s been harvesting this place’s experience for centuries. And she’s been forcibly rewriting her descendant’s minds so they don’t even remember that they’re Keratilys.”

“Yes. And?”

Okay, maybe not.

“Looks like a fistfight’s the best outcome here.”

The Keratily laughed haughtily. “Is it a fistfight if your fists cannot so much as touch me? I think not.”

They crushed the liquid orb in their hand, and the stuff flowed down their armor like a gooey waterfall. It got into every nook and cranny of their marble-like armor, giving them a veiny look that was just as disturbing as it was unsettling. Even their platinum armor-armor took on a pinkish hue, along with a crest in the very center that had to be the Keratily clan’s.

They raised their fingers in a ‘come hither’ motion. “You will pay for destroying the Matria’s work.”