Nedira finally forced herself to move as the forthcoming Gergasi flew closer, and she stepped in front of her betrothed, intending to shield him from their machinations. Of course, standing in front of him didn’t do all that much, given that he was much taller and wider than she was, but she still held her staff with the Multi-Purpose Arsenal on it as she faced down the incoming figures. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Frynth slowly making his way up the stairs, his movements stilted and hesitant, but he still managed to make it near Nedira before he stood his ground. She could hear movement and voices coming from down below as the others likely felt the incoming threat, but she didn’t let them distract her.

  Glancing at Frynth, she could see his teeth gritted against each other and a slight shake to his muscles, as if it was taking everything he had just to stay upright; she could understand it, though, because it was hard to keep herself steady as she faced the flying Gergasi. It wasn’t even a matter of the Fusion he had given them earlier, Flood of Domination, not working. She could tell that this wasn’t Dominion magic working against them, but the sheer power that these Gergasi naturally wielded emerging as a suppressive aura that was hard to fight against.

  Slowing down as they approached, Nedira was able to see the Gergasi clearly as they eventually came to a stop approximately 50 feet outside the border of the Calamity. In total, there appeared to be 6 women and 3 men, one more than she expected based on her original evaluation of the different sensations she received once they started their approach. Each of them was dressed and armed according to what she assumed was their specialty, with 4 of the 9 Gergasi apparently preferring casting spells, as they were wearing tight-fitting battle robes – though they were wielding wicked-looking melee weapons as well. The remaining Gergasi were armored in a variety of different materials, from a dark leather, which she was sure was nigh impenetrable, to a full ensemble of plate that covered up everything but the face of the individual floating easily in the air. There was even one woman who was wielding a golden bow that seemed to glow with an inner light, and Nedira immediately knew it wasn’t a Fusion creating that effect; instead, it was simply the materials that glowed like that, which made her wonder what monster the material came from.

  Regardless of what they were wearing, each and every Gergasi appeared ready for war.

  “That was much easier than I expected, Varlera,” the male Gergasi in the full plate armor said with a dismissive tone to his voice. He was looking over at one of the women, who was concentrating intensely on Larek; stressing her Magical Detection Skill, she could detect an intense and steady stream of Mana being used by Varlera, and it seemed to connect with Nedira’s betrothed.

  “What are you doing to him?!” she shouted, anger at the woman messing with Larek pushing through the suppressive effect that having so many Gergasi nearby was causing. If it hadn’t been for the danger that her betrothed was in, she had a feeling that she would probably have been crushed to the floor under the weight of their power, but at the moment she was too furious to let it do anything to her.

  Her words seemed to catch the attention of every Gergasi, which doubled the suppressive weight upon her, but her anger continued to buoy her up against it. “Ah, such strength of fortitude in this slave. I can’t wait to break her,” said one of the other women, one who was wielding a pair of bluish metal swords that were each as large as Nedira, but she was handling them like they were weightless.

  There were some chuckles from the others, but it seemed as if her defiance had caught the attention of Varlera. “Doing to him? I’m doing nothing to him. In fact, I’m helping his last moments of life be some of the best he’s ever experienced – or at least believe that he’s experienced.”

  “Wh-What do you mean?” She hated that her voice shook a little bit, but she firmed up her resistance even as she felt it faltering.

  “I’m just giving him what he wants so badly: His so-called slave family,” the woman answered, her pleasure at being able to describe her actions obvious. “Being the foremost Mentalist in the world, it was easy enough to form a connection between the real members of his slave family and him, especially with the blood relation aiding in establishing the connection. Right now, he’s likely experiencing being reunited with them and is in his own little world inside of his mind; it’s almost ironic that his family, who isn’t long for this world, will be experiencing the same thing – only to have it cut short when we kill him.” This was followed by the evilest cackle that Nedira had ever heard, and she would’ve thought it was deliberately made to sound as ridiculous as possible if it also didn’t sound so genuine.

  Oh, crap. He’s trapped inside of his mind with his family. Can I free him?

  Even as Nedira kept her eyes on the Gergasi, she reached back, trying to shake him out of his current state. Of course, it didn’t work, as he continued to stare straight ahead without even acknowledging that she was there.

  “That won’t work, little girl. The only way out of the mind trap he’s in is if he voluntarily decides to leave it, rejecting everything around him. Unfortunately for him, that’s not likely to happen, as he’s actually interacting with the minds of his family, so there’s no reason to distrust anything. If anything, they’re only reinforcing the belief that everything is fine,” Varlera gloated, before her expression turned stony. “Now, move away from him, and perhaps we’ll spare your life.”

  Nedira immediately knew that there was absolutely no truth to that, as it was unlikely that the Gergasi would allow anyone connected to Larek leave alive.

  “No. I don’t think I will,” she stated in defiance, adjusting her stance to be more balanced.

  “Oh, what a shame,” Varlera said dramatically, but with a subtle smile on her face. “I’m pretty sure Nerin wanted to have some fun breaking you, but I guess you’ll just have to die along with the half-breed.”

  By an unspoken command, she saw the other Gergasi tense up at the woman’s words – and then chaos erupted all around her.

  Spells from the other 8 figures outside of the Calamity suddenly surged toward Nedira, Frynth, and Larek behind her, and she flinched as an array of elemental destruction crashed down on her. The wooden deck beneath her feet splintered and shook from the barrage, as while it wasn’t the target, its proximity to so many different deadly spells bombarding the three of them couldn’t be contained in a small area.

  Even as lightning bolts tried to deafen and blind her, and explosions washed over her form, along with massive shards of ice and stone attempting to crush her, she didn’t feel a lick of it. The effects of the spells, along with blades of wind 15 feet wide and dark, necrotic clouds of death, were stopped by a number of protections that they had in place. A little under half of the projectiles launched at them were absorbed by the Negation Sphere surrounding The Hopper, but it wasn’t strong enough to block them all; the rest that made it through were much more powerful, but they were blocked by a combination of the Negation and Void Effects of the Absolute Protective Fields Fusion that covered her, Larek, and Frynth.

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  In other words, the defenses that her betrothed had prepared had worked. Unfortunately, they hadn’t been effective against the mental spell that was still affecting him, as he had shown no sign of even noticing that they were being attacked.

  The barrage of spells lasted for another 10 seconds before they trailed off, and while the people standing on the top deck of The Hopper were perfectly fine, the actual deck was looking much worse for wear by the end of it. While it had been strengthened by one of Larek’s Fusions, it wasn’t designed to hold up against such a barrage of damaging spells. A quick look at the deck showed that it was missing pieces here and there, while the majority of the space around where they were standing was blackened and severely gouged by a multitude of elemental effects.

  They might be alright, but The Hopper wouldn’t survive for long if it was deliberately targeted for destruction.

  As if it had been a signal for them to stop hiding, the Volunteers and former SIC members emerged from below during the assault, taking position all along the deck, staves raised and ready to counterattack when they could. Unfortunately, until the Gergasi stopped their barrage of spells, they were unable to even see what they were supposed to be aiming at, as the air was so thick with magical destruction that they were blinded from seeing their targets.

  “What?! How are you pathetic slaves still alive—?” the plate-wearing Gergasi, Nerin, shouted in surprise once the attacks stopped. It was obvious that he was expecting them to be completely annihilated by the combination of spells that had rained down upon them, and he was unable to wrap his mind around how they had survived.

  It was at that point that Nedira and everyone else on the top deck of The Hopper retaliated, unleashing almost every Effect inside of the Arsenal Fusion in their hands. High-powered jets of acid mixed with barrages of icy spikes, which were then flung everywhere when boulders formed and then shattered into thousands of pieces. Multiple Gergasi were targeted by an Effect that caused the area around them to experience a drastic rise in their weight, while the explosive detonation of a Vacuum Blast buffeted others. The freezing and scorching blindness of Blinding Freeze and Blinding Heat hit a trio of Gergasi in tandem, with the two extremes being so potent that the very air around them was likely to grow tumultuous.

  Unfortunately, all of their attacks were severely diminished in power from what they should’ve been. Explosions were only a fraction of the detonation she knew they could be, and each projectile was cut down to only a small sliver of what they normally looked like. Even the heat and freezing caused by Blinding Heat and Blinding Freeze were only minor swings in temperature, which wouldn’t do much other than making them slightly uncomfortable.

  Nedira recognized the culprit almost immediately. When their Arsenal Effects passed through the Primal Essence barrier keeping them inside of the Calamity, the majority of the Mana behind them was sucked away, allowing only a small fraction of their power to pass through; the same couldn’t be said for the opposite direction, as the barrier didn’t seem to affect the spells that the Gergasi cast, as if it was only a one-way effect.

  Needless to say, their counterattack did very little to the opposition, especially as the Gergasi had reacted quickly and erected protective barriers of their own to prevent anything from passing through to hit them. If anything, they were more amused than threatened by the attacks.

  “Pitiful. Even without the Primal Essence field we’ve engineered inside of the Calamity’s border, I highly doubt anything you could produce would threaten us,” Nerin scoffed, clearly recovered from the Gergasi’s own failure to kill Larek and the others. “Still, your insolence in actually attacking us – as futile as it was – shouldn’t be left unpunished. Let’s just see what happens when you no longer have something to stand your ground upon, shall we?”

  Oh, no. We need to move!

  It had become clear to Nedira that the Gergasi were hesitant or unwilling to enter the Calamity, which meant that they could escape by moving The Hopper. Unfortunately for them, the only one at the moment who had the authority to move it was Larek, as he had been connected with the Fusion when Varlera’s mental attack started to affect him. As a result, there was no way to move them, especially as the Buoyant Sphere Fusion was working with the Buoyant-Thruster Fusion to keep them steady in place.

  Even as she saw the Gergasi visibly switch their gazes from Larek to the vessel they were standing upon, Nedira frantically searched for a solution, stepping back involuntarily as she braced for what was to come. She nearly stumbled as her foot came down on something, and in that split-second, she remembered the Mass Energy Absorption Fusion that Larek had been intending to use against the Primal Essence barrier preventing their escape.

  She was acutely aware that she didn’t have the time to reach down, pick up the stone, and then launch it at the barrier before the incoming attacks hit The Hopper, likely destroying it within seconds; it also might not have done anything effective, as they couldn’t flee through the barrier with Larek still in control of The Hopper.

  But what she could do was activate it right where it was. She was familiar enough with her betrothed’s Fusions that she knew how to activate this one, so she only hesitated a fraction of a second before she did. It was the only thing she could think to do, and while it might end up leading to their deaths despite her actions, she was just hoping that the absorption field might be large enough to absorb at least the initial barrage of spells.

  At the moment of activation, it felt like the world stood still for a fraction of a second, before all of the energy around her abruptly disappeared. While it didn’t pull the Mana from the Arsenal Fusion she was holding in her hands, she felt its functions shut down, as if something was completely suppressing its effects. The ones inside of her body, or in direct contact with her skin, were thankfully unaffected, but she immediately knew that if she tried to do something with them outside of her body, they would fail.

  Her staff wasn’t the only thing that stopped working, though. She felt the effect of the Mass Energy Absorption Fusion expand dramatically in a fraction of a second, which completely enveloped The Hopper and everyone aboard. It did so just in time to stop the leading edge of the spells coming from the Gergasi, absorbing and dispersing their deadly intent upon contact with the edge of the Effect. As it absorbed the energy from the spells, it only grew larger, until it started greedily gobbling up the fringes of the Primal Essence barrier around the edge of the Calamity’s border.

  This all happened in the span of a second, which was more than enough time for the Fusions keeping The Hopper afloat to shut down. With everything associated with forcing the vessel to near-weightlessness and the thrusts of air keeping it aloft not working, the wooden vessel began to drop. The top deck began to break apart even further as the Strengthen Effect was suppressed, and a trio of Volunteers began to drop through these gaps, unhurt but shocked at the sudden turn of events.

  Looking up, she could sense with her Magical Detection Skill that the Mass Energy Absorption field had stayed where it had originally activated instead of falling with them, and Nedira felt her feet lift off the top deck as they plummeted, the entire vessel beginning to list to one side as its weight adjusted to the new norm.

  Thankfully, before she could drift too far away as the wind blasted past her, a strong hand caught her arm and held her down. Shocked, she looked toward the owner of the hand and saw Larek staring at her and the situation around them with confusion in his gaze. “What—?” she heard him say, before his eyes seemed to clear.

  A moment later, he had obviously reestablished his connection with The Hopper’s Fusions, as the vessel stabilized and caught everyone who had been drifting away, gradually slowing down until they came to a stop. Nedira looked up at her betrothed, and the beginning of a question regarding whether he was alright died on her lips when she saw that his attention was elsewhere.

  Larek was looking up at the Gergasi outside of the Calamity’s border, and the expression of rage on his face was unlike anything she’d seen before. It physically frightened her, a reaction to the man she loved she wasn’t aware she could feel, but she kept herself from shaking in fear.

  After all, his gaze wasn’t focused on her… but she almost pitied the ones that had drawn his ire.

  She didn’t know it then, but they were about to find out what happened when they crossed a Divine Fusionist with a grudge.