Little more than a husk remained of the woman, what with her Dreg Afflicted Trait's flammability and the strength of Daniela's own Traits. She absently glanced at her fingertips. The fight had lasted seconds, but they were already red-hot thanks to her Convection Flesh and Conduction Skeleton combination. The Corporeal Threshold for her Trait turned her even deadlier at close range, but that hadn't been necessary against the satyr.

"Danny?"

She turned to see Devon's concerned face close enough to touch. His tornado of wind was spinning faster, fed by the heat of her and dragonfire. Despite the force building there, she felt only a refreshing breeze. Unignited dragonfire dripped from her lips, and she barely kept herself together as she looked away from the death she'd inflicted. "She tried to get in my head."

"Okay. Then there's nothing to worry about anymore. Let's get these four situated and we can--" The elf tensed like a rabbit and started to turn toward the bar.

A bolt of icy darkness crashed right into Devon's shoulder and side, punching through his skin without much resistance and lodging an inch deep. A blood curdling scream immediately escaped his lips, the sound amplified by his elven Traits enough to leave Daniela's ears bleeding. Despite the true pang of concern in the brunette's heart for her boyfriend, she spun as fast as her Mobility allowed to spot the source of the attack.

It was all that saved her from a similar fate.

Dozens of dark bolts filled her vision and it was all she could do to manifest a new to swallow the strangely immaterial attacks. A few slipped past her first defense only to be eaten up by her when she pulled it tight. Purple-tinged vapors drifted off in the breeze Devon and her fires had generated in the speakeasy and time slowed to a crawl as she took in the new scene. The fact she'd been forced to use her dragonfire on Hath had thrown her off her game and she'd completely forgotten about the other chess piece on the board: Jefferson. The man had been incognito to the Implant in his slat hidey hole. Less than fifty feet away, it was a different, much more concerning, story.

Once more the Status highlighted the concerning part of the information, even if facing off against someone with a Torture Refinement wasn't something Daniela had had any desire to do. Not willing to take her eyes off the demon in front of her, she could only send the wisp she'd manifested earlier to cover protectively over Devon even as the elf continued to wail. A big flashing warning in the Party Status showed he'd been afflicted with . His Health was only down a tenth, but the debilitating aspect of the attack was a much bigger concern if it was able to take Devon out of commission.

"To say you three looked suspicious would have been an understatement," the demon said, casually retracting his gray palm back from where it had been releasing a stream of physical pain. His red eyes were a sharp contrast to the dazzlingly bright white of his fanged mouth. "But I didn't expect this."

"Maybe you shouldn't have been doing shady shit to other people," Daniela growled, her skin tingling as she thought through her options. She could likely lay down a cataclysm of fire, but if she ran out of juice before the man was dead then she'd be in a mess. That wasn't even to mention that with Devon unable to protect himself, her magic was just as liable to hurt him.

"This is a world controlled by the strong," the man said evenly. Purple light crawled up his horns as he spoke. Daniela couldn't say for sure, but it looked significantly close to a Gift and she wasn't ready to accept any of those. "Your presence here is futile. You upset a balance that was established years before your arrival."

"Oh, come off it! You can't be more than five years older than me. Don't pretend that you are oh so wise," the brunette spat. A particularly loud bass horn exploded from the band and Jefferson flinched. A bolt of darkness shot from his body, striking the man and silencing him completely. Daniela swallowed bile as she failed to relocate her wisp in time to catch the attack.

For the first time since they'd arrived, silence reigned in the disco as the other elves ran to their downed bandmate who'd joined Devon's discordant tune of torture.

"Much better. It will be hard to replace such... dedicated musicians, but there are plenty in this city looking for a way out."

"You are a sick monster," Daniela growled, hackles rising as she heard the stomping of feet. Ten Tendrils entered the main room, monochrome eyes widening at the battlefield before rushing to Jefferson's side.

"Perhaps to you. For me, I am just an entrepreneur. Who do you think helped guide those alien entities against the entrenched elders of this city? Your arrival made everyone very concerned and concerned people drink less. They are paranoid, unsure of their position, hesitant to partake in anything that might inhibit their judgment. You and your little friends are bad for business. Now, considering the noose is tightened around your neck, I would appreciate it if you laid down and paid the price of ruining my locale." The demon paused, glancing at the unconscious and dead VIPs. "And purging my very useful staff. Hard to find a Life magic user without scruples."

While the monologuing bad guy had provided a lot of key pieces of information... he wasn't wrong in his assessment. While the Tendrils that had joined him were nothing to sneeze at, Q3s and 4s that they were, they made a bad situation near impossible.

"I don't have all day. I won't offer a painless death again. Inflicting it is very much one of my pastimes. So--" A gust of wind shoved Daniela to the side just in time to miss the passage of a wrist-thick bolt of lightning. Her eyes whipped back to see Devon propped on his good arm even if his face was contorted with pain. Snot and tears dripped down his face but it didn't change the fact that another bolt of lightning was building in the center of his chest.

"Argh!" A snarl drew Daniela's eyes back to the Aberrant's lackeys and she knew it was time to act. One of Jefferson's arms was smoking, swirls of purple mana combating against the twitching that had taken over the limb. The Q3 Water Tendril that had been standing on that side of the demon was dead, tracks of lightning having carved through most of its chest. "Get her!"

Daniela breathed deep, her nose wrinkling at the stench of death that wasn't kept at bay by her boyfriend any longer. When she released, she willingly unleashed the full power of her Traits. It was a risk to burn her trump card right at the beginning, but there wasn't going to be a ‘best’ time. The demon had likely seen her handywork, but the others were distracted. As the dragonfire built in her throat, myriad bits of magic flew her way. Jagged bolts of ice, rippling disks of stone, three different shades of fireball and a swirl of caustic black acid covered her vision. They weren't enough.

When the Torch opened her maw, death poured out. She didn't limit herself to the propulsion her muscles could produce as the reformed itself into a funnel for the napalm-like substance. Awaiting at the end was an more than eager to be augmented by its master's flame. Of course, the process of imparting her inner fire onto her Skills left her open enough for the disks of stone to land two clear hits on her thigh and breast. The latter almost forced her to swallow back some of her dragonfire, but she persevered. At least the ice blades melted and the fire attacks just bowed out in the face of her superior flame.

Daniela dropped to a knee, feeling both cold as ice and burning. Her mana was just over half full, but her body was mostly spent. A forking bolt of lightning struck another three stone disks aimed to decapitate her and she sent Devon a silent thank you. Her focus returned and she reshaped her around her to obscure her profile behind a haze of heat. Then she started flanking.

The development of her Trait-imparted wisp had come about from seeing Ron mess around with Blobby for so long. The slime saddle had been the last puzzle piece she'd needed to figure out how to think of her Skill as a fuel-based, energy-channeling flying cannon. And so, her Skill was deadlier than ever. While the plain old had been taken to new heights with her mastery of her Offensive Freeform, it thrived when fed the essence of a dragon. Its plain old orb shape was replaced with a trailing comet tail that lit anything it touched aflame and a burning aura courtesy of its deadly payload.

"-Dragon Style," Daniela mumbled, focusing on dodging the hail of projectiles coming her way. Most of the base element ones she'd be willing to take, but she spotted more than one bolt of darkness hidden in their shadow. Old Jeff wasn't going to leave things to chance. Devon assisted as he could, diverting projectiles or nudging Danny out of the way when an attack got to close. Seconds ticked by like hours as she closed the distance and then used her own to propel into the sky. "Gotcha."

Three targeted ripples escaped the wisp that had been circling overhead. The dragonfire properties instantly vanished, but it was as if three smaller comets had been birthed in exchange. The first landed in the midst of the Tendrils and their leader. The two Earth Tendrils in their group hadn't been idle, turning pillars of stone into vertical fortifications that cut down Devon's attempts to spark them to death. Similarly, when the three Water Tendrils weren't lobbing sword-sharp icicles in their direction they were working fervently to stabilize the temperature in their immediate vicinity.

The first volley took care of that, outright killing one of the Water Tendrils, splashing a second with third-degree burns and forcing the last to scamper for cover. The Earth Tendrils erected a barrier that protected themselves and Jefferson from the rain even as it forced them to stop attacking. Similarly, the three Fire Tendrils and the lone Death Tendril in their ranks had to contend with the final dragonfire . With the last of Danny's tenuous connection to the magic, she detonated it early for maximum spread even if it was less concentrated. In an impressive display of magical cooperation, the three once-orcs managed to burn up her dragonfire before it reached them.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

What they didn't manage to stop was its creator.

As much as she wanted Ron to make her new weapons, she couldn't argue that her body was quickly turning into a deadly one by its lonesome. Fingers held in claws, she roared with enough force to flare her Fire Gills. Her hands grew red, orange and then a bright yellow as her Convection Flesh and Conduction Skeleton gave her the closest thing to solid fire. Then she went and lit that on fire with . Flesh parted with ease despite the innate heat resistance that came with the elemental Attunement of the Tendrils. One managed to blast her in the face enough for her to lose sight in an eye as it swelled shut, but it only made her hands burn hotter. Trails of light followed her hands as she drew a macabre painting with the Tendrils.

In exchange for her life, the Death Tendril fodder managed to douse the flames in Daniela's left arm with a few gallon's worth of acid. Her right found her throat soon after, but she was forced to fall into a side tumble to avoid the Earth Tendrils that had finally freed themselves from their own prisons. Before the closest could reach her, a gust of wind that might as well have been a physical hammer blow dropped one of them into the muddle of acid the Death Tendril had made.

A roar of fury sent a chill crawling up Daniela's spine. A pulse of purple light flared, expanding a dozen feet in a second before a second pulse pushed it out far enough to encompass the Bunkerite. She was only vaguely aware of the screams of pains coming from the others that had been injured in her opening salvo because hers drowned out any thought that tried to take root. Her bruised face felt swollen, the agony sending flashes of pain that locked her jaw and left her neck twitching. Her left arm was useless as the pain of it being doused in acid lit every one of her nerves with enough ferocity that it became her whole world.

"You don't even understand what you have set in motion!" Jefferson yelled, walking forward even as he held his still-smoking arm. "Death is all that awaits those that don't bend the knee!"

Daniela fought with everything she had to muster her mana into , but even if she still had the third of her mana pool requirements for an unadjusted version her thoughts weren't cohesive enough to summon the spell chain. The demon's eyes glowed a purple so bright it could have passed for Ronan's prized hunk of amethyst back in the Bunker. Ha! So close to death and all I can think about is that rock brain. Hell, he would have told me not to bite off more than I could chew but here we are.

While things looked dire, Daniela wasn't going to lie down and take it. ALready her brain was doing its thing, shutting down the connections to the sources of pain just to keep her sane. The injury to her face was less affected by that change, but she could work with a little focus. At the very least, she could blow up her mana pool in as spectacular a display of her flame-bearing mana as she could. Jefferson was feet away, the remaining Earth and Water Tendrils protecting him from Devon's desperate attempts to save his girlfriend.

"Normally I ask for final words," Jefferson ground out, clearly in pain himself from the effects of his strange magical domain even if it paled to what everyone around him was enduring. "It's a nice keepsake from those I kill. But you, I think I'll just kill you."

His hand was reaching for Daniela's face, his higher Quotient mana roiled over his palm like a tossed sea as Daniela used to supplant her spell chains onto the world. She cried out as the thing that linked her Hemispheres to her body was used to shield her from the magic touch of Death. She'd expected to release as much heat as she could with the gambit, but had instead ended up in a deadly version of Gift Wrestling while entirely on the backfoot. Her spell chains were much more like Gifts than they had been when the Entities had bestowed them on her and her friends, but they weren't flexible enough to react to foreign mana without her control. Thankfully, Daniela had pulled a Samuel and thought ahead.

A squeaking grind that left ears ringing forced Jefferson to step back and search out the source. That was the only thing that saved his life as a concentrated stream of fire roared over the scattered remains of the Earth Tendril's defense. At first blush, the unknown flamethrower missed entirely, but a gust of wind forced it to curve at the perfect angle to charbroil a pesky demon. While the attack only managed to singe the already damaged arm Jefferson sacrificed to protect himself, it was all the opening Daniela needed when the pain domain winked out.

"" The remainder of her mana pool blazed and the only thing the Torch did was direct it in a wedge towards her enemies. Yard long plumes of gas and fire exploded from the ground with enough force to knock Jefferson back and take out the Tendrils that had been downed and tortured but not killed.

The uninjured Water Tendril attempted to create a safe haven for himself with a wave of dirty slush only to get sent flying towards Devon thanks to an ant head the same size as its body. Anthony didn't even hesitate as his mandibles clamped onto the Earth Tendril that remained and shook it like a puppy with a new toy. To content physically with the beasts on the surface when they got to the Quotient Anthony had was really an exercise in foolishness. Something Ronan was liable to do, but foolish for most people.

"Get him, Anthony!' Daniela shouted, her voice cracking as she pointed at the demon that had turned tail. The fine suit he'd been wearing was nothing more than a collection of smoldering rags and he was dragging a leg behind him as he made for the door into the bar kitchen.

The large Fire Ant tossed the Earth Tendril over its back and zoomed in the direction of the demon. The pain domain reappeared and Daniela watched unfocused blasts of Jefferson's pain attacks glance off the Fire Ant's carapace. They did manage to slow him down when they struck his legs, but the Ant was on a mission. Just as the ant was getting ready to grab a hold of him, a whip of purple energy cracked against one of Anthony's eyes. Whatever effect the whip had in combination with the pain domain forced the ant back. Back far enough that he made it through the door.

Despite the injury -- Daniela could instantly tell it was bad as his right compound eye leaked purple ooze that hurt just to look at-- the Fire Ant wasn't going to let him get away scott free. Without a care for a potential follow up attack, Anthony crammed as much of his head as he could through the doorway. The frame split, sending ominously large cracks up and through the ceiling closest to the wall. When his thorax would go no further, the ant unleashed a gout of flame that would have given Danny's dragonfire a run for its money. While not as hot as the brunette's Trait-product, the ant had gaster to spare. The walls quickly went from a plain brown to a dull red from the heat he was outputting into the room.

Of course, all good things came to an end and eventually Anthony was spent. Daniela wasn't sure how she could read insect moods as well as she could, but Anthony was beyond furious. Maybe it was the thrashing and headbutting solid stone that tipped her off. The cracks in the ceiling widened, and for the first time since the battle started Daniela gave the structural integrity of their arena a second look. Who would have thought that stone didn't take rapid heating and cooling, followed by brute force attacks, well.

Daniela was cold. Colder than she could really remember being in a long while, but she wobbled to her feet and in the direction of Devon. The lingering heat of her revitalized her a bit, but she was still half blind and aching in a metaphysical way she didn't know how to interpret. Her mana pool didn't seem to be regenerating like usual and she turned to her Status in the hope of finding an answer. She did, but it really only left her confused.

Subject: Daniela Vega

Health: 47% (Soul Burn, Hematoma, Chemical Burn)

Mana: 6%

It wasn't the mana or the low Health that gave her pause, but the Affliction was definitely a new one. I don't think Sammy's got a cure for this one ready to go. She'd only intended to scope out the scene, not take down the speakeasy and its brass, so she hadn't brought her daggers or some of Sam's sip heals. Thankfully, Devon had been a bit more prepared. Two finger thin vials laid empty from where he'd pulled them on his thigh. A third was cracked and the fourth he was holding out to Daniela when she reached him.

The woman contemplated arguing so that he'd take another, but her whole body clenched in anticipation of some healing and she relented. The potion was nowhere enough to restore her Health to a reasonable level, but at least the hematoma on her brow eased enough that she could see out of both eyes and her hand didn't feel like it was hanging on by a few tendons.

"Thanks, Devon," the brunette sighed, eyeing the still glowing stone wall as Anthony managed to extract himself while forcing more of it to crumble. "Sorry but I think we need to get out of here."

"Your wish... is my command," the elf mustered, gasping for breath like he'd been since the battle ended. She didn't know his exact mana pool or individual magic costs, but she'd wager he'd overdrawn himself to make it through the last part of the fight. Even with the prodigious Refinement Attributes of elves, she knew the fight had gone long. Long enough for them to at least rout Jefferson, so not a total victory, but they were alive and she wasn't going to complain.

Anthony joined them before long and Daniela pressed her forehead onto the ant's without caring about the new goop that had joined the mess that were her clothes. The ant tapped at her body with his antenna, likely picking up the last few remains of the perfume she'd worn. Probably not much remained, considering how many gasses they'd been soaking in within the enclosed speakeasy.

The Fire Ant helped the weakened pair up and out of the ramp, keeping its good eye on the kitchen just in case the demon tried to follow up when their backs were turned. He didn't. Daniela was greeted by the confused crowds of party goers and residents that had been subject to the battle underground. Questions started coming fast and hard, but she hardly had answers to her own. Thankfully, an unlikely trio came to their rescue.

"Open up some space you gawkers!" The deep gravel tones of one of the elven musicians reached them from behind. A spell chain swirled around his neck as he continued, the unconscious body of his buddy draped between him and the third player. The man continued to harrang the crowd until they'd backed away enough that Daniela didn't feel the need to herself some space. She met the eyes of the gravel-toned elves, receiving a nod of thanks in return, before they jumped on the nearest healer for the sake of their friend.

Three teams of Cloth Muscles arrived at the scene some ten minutes later. One sparky Zebelo in particular appeared the moment after their identities as part of the Allied Towns were verified.

"I'm not going to like this either, am I?" Ponzio asked as he gazed between Daniela, Devon and the Fire Ant getting antenna scritches like the good bug he was. When the ground quaked and heaved down for a good two hundred feet behind the trio all the young scout could do was sigh. When the crate-looking building started a slow tipping motion until it fell into the divot created by its collapsed basement all the Zebelos could do was hold his head in his hands. "Go home. I'll... do something with this."

"Better you than me," Daniela said, grinning weakly as she rose to her feet. She helped Devon onto Anthony's thorax and the elf helped her up. She held onto his back as they made their way towards the Embassy in as direct a line as they could. Having a friend that could climb vertical obstacles with little issue had its benefits. Ronan is going to have a hard time believing the mess going on in the town when he gets back.