Stronger Together chapter 91 (Patreon)

Strength of the River in his Shoulders is a badass. A who knows how  old member of a race of magical titans with life force so powerful a  juvenile non magic one can play battery to a baby succubus for a year  and not even notice, and a magical genius to boot. He'd stood up to  fucking Drakul in the books with some help and despite not actually  winning that fight by any stretch of the imagination had demonstrated  his chops as one of the toughest bullies on the playground.

I  say this to emphasize how terrifying it was that if Kara hadn't managed  to intercept Shagnasty, River would have died in the first couple of  seconds of the fight. Kara had taken the stoneskin potion we made and  was glowing with her Divine Power, which while we didn't understand it  well we knew somewhat countered magic in some way. Those things combined  allowed her to tank the vanishing blur of the Skinwalker...barely.

Even  in my full lightning aspect I could barely track the yellow bastard as  he streaked across the chamber at the Sasquatch, but Kara was there just  as fast. SH staggered back at the hit, but managed to right herself  fairly quickly. She opened up with a blistering string of punches to put  the thing on its back foot but it warped and shifted into a golden  ferret managing to dodge her punches by literally just no longer  occupying the space she was striking at. Luckily he was so thrown off by  her speed and strength Cinder managed to get off a powerful wave of  soulfire infused maiden magic.

The  orange and white flames crashed down on the howling Skinwalker who  shifted immediately back to his humanoid form. And then came that oldest  of several against one fighting traditions, the dog pile. I conjured a  lightning shield in the shape of my hand and literally smote the bastard  like the fist of an angry god, with the extra power and control from  all my training I even managed to layer a force shield on top of it to  multiply the impact. I still had my lightning aspect running but I only  used three of my four possible magics like I promised River.

Ebenezar  hurled a whirling vortex of clashing chaotic power at the spot we last  saw the thing, Harry dropped the biggest firestorm he could call on it,  Liberty lashed out with chords of emerald light that warped the space  around them and  Joe and worked a complex spell to send a massive cloud  of stone spikes from either side scything into the bastard. Barb threw  out her strongest wind spell and Kara even added her heat vision to the  cataclysmic blast. It was a massive explosion the likes of which I've  never seen before. The magics seemed to merge and flow together  amplifying each other exponentially.

The  resulting mystical fallout should have killed us all. I mean like blown  the roof off the damn mountain and turned us all to ashen smears on the  broken rocks. I even saw River preparing a massively powerful defensive  spell. Making complicated gestures to try to redirect the confluence of  powerful energies. But it wasn't necessary at all. The blast never  actually burst. As the cloud cleared I saw something absolutely amazing.  A hand. A construct of power and terrifying glory where my own had  been. A shining multicolored simulacrum of my own fist smashed down on  top of the spot Shagnasty had been standing.

Somehow  the massive confluence of soulfire had fused the magic together  creating a powerful working I couldn't have begun to make on my own. I  literally felt like I had created the fist of a god. Even my own right  hand felt powerful, the link through the soulfire making it stronger as  the magic empower the construct. I felt fucking all powerful my arm  seeming to change even as I felt the magic merge with it. I couldn't see  the Skinwalker at all and I was about to celebrate when I felt my hand  being moved. As I watched the massive simulacrum was forced up out of  the crater it had made.

One  inch at a time I felt my hand physically forced back as the  representation of it forged from magic was shoved up by the very pissed  off looking Skinwalker. When it was standing it stopped, holding back  the force of my massive magical fist as it glared at me. "I've changed  my mind. You are not amusing. You've irritated me. This will be  agonizing for you all. I hope the small inconvenience you've caused me  gives you some comfort as I torture your loved ones to death in front of  you." It growled in the first thing approaching anger I'd seen so far, I  let the pressure up allowing it to stand completely and glare down at  us.

Then as  it turned to glare around at the others I pulled back my hand and bitch  slapped him with the giant magic palm. The Skinwalker squawked in  surprise as the titanic hand of swirling magic smashed into him and sent  him shooting across the chamber. He hissed a few words and threw out a  series of spells to slow or stop him as he flew and shifted himself into  some weird meat ball form that looked kind of like a jelly fish, but  between my force spells Harry's force spells Liberty's restraints,  Ebenezars chaos blast and the literal soulfire infused fucking Lava in  the construct from Joe's melted stone spikes the hit was so heavy and  powerful he punched through every spell and splattered on the wall.

Apparently  though, his meat wad form was supposed to do that because he managed to  pull himself back together and stagger to his feet snarling in rage. I  lashed out again with my lightning aspect enhanced speed and managed to  grab the bastard, squeezing him like a tube of toothpaste as I closed my  hand around him. I was going to pin him down for Kara to beat to death  or something, but that's when things started to go wrong. The shifting  energizing power in my arm started to get really painful.

I  felt him start to force the hand open but the pain became so  overwhelming past that I didn't even notice myself letting go or falling  to the ground as I gripped my arm. Every cell was on fire, the giant  construct dissipated and all that magic poured into my skin and flesh  and blood. My arm was fucking glowing like a sun and it felt like I'd  dipped it on one, but I forced my attention off whatever the hell was  going on with my limb to what was happening around me. My lapse had  surprised everyone, even the Skinwalker, so Kara tried to get the jump  on it again.

Unfortunately  this time it didn't bother dodging, the thing met her charge with a  charge of its own, shifting it's shape to a kind of weird armored beetle  knight thing with turtle shell reinforcements over weak spots. It  smashed into the Kryptonian girl with massive force and between it's  shape, the power from her blood and it's incredibly long life it started  taking her apart. beating Kara down with its not reinforced fists until  she was barely standing. Blow after blow landed, so fast that even at  lightning speed it was a blur. I recognized at the back of my head that I  should be exhausted from using my aspect this long but I didn't feel  tired at all.

River  threw out a whirling blob of water magic similar to what Ramirez used  and when the Skinwalker turned to counter it Kara blasted him in the  fucking throat with her heat vision at max intensity. The bastard  snarled and whirled back on her to try to finish the beating he'd  started but River's spell enveloped him like some kind of creeping  jello, crawling over him and slowing him down inside to a crawl. His  glaring eyes were seething with hatred as Joe and River stumbled over to  Kara who had collapsed to the ground unconscious. River growled out  "Hurry and heal her, it won't hold for long and we can't win this  without her."

Joe  nodded and started working on a series of spells whirls of blue and  green and red and white swirling into a cocoon of rioting colors as he  spun several smaller spells together into some cascading powered up  super spell to heal her. Each new spell seemed to super charge the one  before and after it feeding into each other in a massive glow of power. I  could tell he wasn't strong enough to do this with raw power he'd set  conflicting energies against each other in a strange set up to try to  amplify their power. The cocoon was absorbed into her skin and she  started to stir.

Her  eyes fluttered open and she groaned as she came back to the land of the  living and my elation was so great I managed to push the pain away for a  second. I realized Ebenezar's split mind set trick was a huge help so I  did it, splitting my body and mind into two separate thought spaces so  the pain was barely registering. It still hurt of course, but I didn't  actually care that much. I smiled as I regained control of myself, a bit  surprised the magic in my arm was so dense my Aura seemed inexaustible  like I could cast anything I wanted for hours.

That  pleasant surprise was cut short unfortunately as the Skinwalker broke  free. It roared a challenge as it lashed out at the prone Kara, bowling  River out of the way as it lunged at her. I poured some of the massive  store of magic from my arm into my lightning aspect and my whole  perception of time slowed so much even the Kryptonian enhanced monster  was moving at a crawl. I stared in horror at the unstoppable beast  lunging for my friend and roommate ready to tear her apart. I couldn't  do anything to stop it, I wasn't strong enough. Even if I made myself  stronger I wouldn't be fast enough.

But  then I considered it. I was in a split head space. Two minds means two  of me, so why not two aspects. And it wasn't like power was a problem,  my arm was a fucking nuclear reactor. I shoved a massive surge of power  into a force spell infusing my body with the force aspect as my mental  head space hosted the lightning. I stood up, the world crawling around  me. This level of power drain was starting to chip away at even the  inexhaustible energy explosion in my hand so I had to hurry.

I  strolled over to the monster drifting slowly through the air, moving  like a drop of cold syrup down a barely inclined surface. I took up a  stance from Klurkor, one of the forms focused on drawing power from the  earth to throw the hardest possible punch. I imbued my Aura with the  most force magic it could withstand, multiplying the force of my next  strike exponentially, and I hauled back and with everything in me I  punched the fucking Skinwalker with the weird glowing power reactor that  was now my right fist, right in the fucking chest.

I  considered going for the head but honestly I wasn't sure it needed one,  so I focused center mass. All the power of all the spells and my  fastest speed and most powerful strength boost was amplified by the  biggest force amplification Aura I could manage and all of it smashed  into the chest of the thing in a powerful martial arts blow. The turtle  shell and beetle chitin burst and unlike the meat wad this one wasn't  mean to, it was taking actual damage and I was moving too fast for it to  counter with shapeshifting. The resulting explosion of meat snapped me  out my aspects and dropped me where I stood.

I  fell to the ground, staring at the bloody chunks of evil primordial  being as they started to twitch, and i was terrified it had gotten back  up until they started glowing with the same golden light as Kara. That  had been enough, the Flamebird was taking the Skinwalkers divinity. It  was finally dead. My hand was out of power and it fucking hurt and my  body was weak and exhausted, my Aura was tapped out to dangerous levels.  As I passed out from exhaustion I glanced down at the shining liquid  silver of my hand now looking like it was made of some celestial metal.  Well that was going to be a bitch to cover up.