Sell you a Bridge chapter 213 (Patreon)

April 15th 2016 Infinity Island 5:00 PM EDT

Zee,  Dreamer, Blue and my clone broke off from the others, flight giving us  the mobility to meet Adam in the air. The three of them had emerged from  different places, most likely too independent to agree to attack as a  group, but that played to our benefit. Teth-Adam was the closest, having  stepped flown directly at the group while Klarion and Circe had tried  to circle around, so we met up with him fairly quickly and without much  wait time.

He was just as terrifying as I remembered. Huge  and imposing and with an overhwelming aura of power and intimidation.  Black Adam wasn't just a man with the powers of a god. He was a man with  the powers of SEVEN gods. He was looking right at the other version of  me as he came out, and I knew that if this fight was going to last more  than a few minutes I needed some serious juice behind my first sucker  punch. I positioned myself behind him as he stopped midair, staring down  my clone and my girls, along with the armored kid who was playing tank  for us tonight.

I couldn't see his face from behind him,  but his voice was cold when he addressed them. "Leave this place. I do  not wish to destroy children. Flee, and return to your hiding places,  this battle is beyond you. I will allow your retreat, I can offer this  kindness. You have no place meddling in the affairs of your betters. A  little girl with magic powers, a baby goddess, a lost child in stolen  armor, and a little half breed monster. You're all out of your depth.  Just turn around and leave before I do something we will all regret."

As  he spoke I started casting a spell. I silently summoned Tartarus to act  as a focus and I started creating a construct. I based it on the aura  I'd seen from my gun, but it lacked the lethality, the life snuffing  coldness of death. This was just a structure for delivering a spiritual  attack, with none of that death flavor. It had taken me time to get to  the point where I could do this, where I would be able to make something  on this scale, even with the points for it. I had twenty thousand to  use for this fight, and I was going to need to make the first punch  count, so I was using half.

I reached into the void, into  the space between worlds, and I began to create. I used Abyssal Alloy  for the construct, forging it from dark and void and ectoplasm all  rolled into one, but I used ectoplasm as a base. The Alloy was conjured  in the incorporeal, inside the void itself, and I used the knowledge  from my void rituals and summoning to create the spell form outside of  the real world. Silent, invisible, undetectable, I slowly layered the  power into the shapes and concepts necessary as I made my weapon.

It  was a gun. Well, a barrel, a huge invisible intangible barrel with an  exit the size of a fucking beach ball. There was no pin, it didn't need  gunpowder or propellant, I didn't include any of that. It wasn't a  physical gun, it was the concept of a gun, the concept of a weapon of  conceptual destruction, flavored with void instead of death, my own  unique version of the gun I carried around.

I couldn't  have done this before I created Morana. Couldn't have made a construct  in the place where aura lay, created shapes based on ideas and  understanding with no physical form using the ghostly state to reach  beyond what lay in this dimension, but I did it now. It took the better  part of two minutes to make it, and I packed all ten thousand points  into it, a whopping ninety percent going to the bullet while only ten  was used to shape the structure itself. As I worked, my clone and the  girls responded to Adam, clearly trying to draw this out so I could line  up my shot.

It was strange seeing me mouth of to someone  else from another angle like this, but mouth off I did. "I have to  admit." Said the other me. "I didn't expect you to be here Teth-Adam. I  thought better of you. Khandaq is part of earth. Your people live here,  their children live here, children who are in danger from the partners  of the very people you're trying to protect. I knew you were a  supervillain, but I know plenty of those, I didn't know you were also a  monster. But I can't think of another word for anyone so callous as to  turn their back on their own people like that."

Despite  his usual stoicism Adam's aura flared with rage. I blinked, as did the  clone. We hadn't expected that to get a rise out of him. His voice was  tight as he responded, clearly trying to reign in his temper. "You know  not of what you speak child. I do this FOR Khandaq. You have no concept  of whom you face, of who pulls the strings upon which you dance even  now. You think I fear the insects? Fear their guns and ships? You are a  fool. Greater hands steer the ship boy, hands that wind themselves  around all of our necks even now."

That was...disturbing  to hear. Because Adam sounded afraid. Adam was pretty much the  definition of unflappable from all reports. The man was arrogant to a  nearly pathological level. He respected no one. Feared no one. And his  pride was sufficient that he would gladly face down anyone I could care  to name without blinking, because he really thought he was just that  good. Whether it was true or not was another matter entirely, but he  believed it, which made this cowed attitude deeply unsettling to see.

My  clone clearly agreed, because he tried to draw more of the information  the man was holding back out while he was feeling talkative. "Who would  possibly cause YOU fear. Who could be behind the scenes here that even  the great Teth-Adam doesn't believe he can defeat them?" The Reach was a  fucking universe spanning conquest civilization, if he wasn't scared of  them who the fuck was he afraid of?

But even as he said  it, it clicked into place. "Darkseid. The Anti-God, God of Evil, God of  Tyranny, Father of the Dark Gods of Apokolips. He comes for this world,  allowing the insects their flight of fancy as amusement, and to soften  up this planet for his rule. He sends one of his furies to aid them. I  do not wish to bow, but even I know when I am bested. I am not his  match, and this is the only way I can protect my people. I am sorry,  child, but what I do now, I do in the name of the greater good."

His  aura shifted, clearly readying to attack, but it didn't matter. I'd had  enough time, and my big shot was ready. So I took my swing. A  conceptual bullet of a mixture of ghostly, demonic, and void energies  smashed into Teth-Adam's spiritual self, and collided with...something.  Something old and scary and electric, something much more powerful than I  had been expecting, and there was a fucking explosion of force and  power across the spiritual spectrum as my void bullet tried to EAT the  force inside him, and didn't really manage.

It DID manage  to consume some of the power though, and I saw Adam waver in the air,  aura flickering with shock and distress as he felt himself diminish. Not  entirely, not nearly, whatever was fueling him was way fucking stronger  than I was, but it got his attention. He spun on me, eyes blazing as he  searched for my invisible form, and unfortunately the "Wisdom of  Zehuti" told him exactly where I was. He was on my in seconds, flashing  across the intervening space faster than I could think.

Luckily  he was NOT faster than I could react. Accelerated reaction time had  kept up with all those stacking dexterity boosts and I was able to react  even faster than I could form the thought to do so. I vanished into a  corridor of darkness and appeared behind Blue, who was barely able to  prepare before Adam was on him, smashing fists empowered by some kind of  golden lightning into armored flash at speeds that broke the damn sound  barrier.

Zee and Dreamer reacted, Zee beginning to chant  spells, layering them onto him one at a time. He shrugged off the first,  and the tenth, but by the time she got to fifty I saw the combined  weight of the magic begin to drag on him just a bit. Dreamer cast  nightmares and visions into his mind, trying to chip away at hid sense  of self, but sadly the "Courage of Mehen" made her attacks mostly  ineffective. It didn't however, allow him to pay attention to everything  at once, and he slowed even more as he began to lose focus.

Blue  piled on, attacking nonstop with blasts of energy as he tanked Adam's  hits. The villain wasn't even thinking right now, I'd injured him in  some way he didn't know how to  deal with and he was furious. Too angry  to think or plan, he was just coming at me as hard as he could manage  and trying to crush what was in the way. It was terrifying, seeing him  lash out like a wounded animal, knowing how fucking powerful he was. His  aura seemed smaller true, but not THAT much smaller.

I  started casting again, conjuring a set of Abyssal Alloy knives to float  around me, then projecting them forward at absurd speeds to attack Adam  from behind. Even obsessed with killing me and tied up with magic and  psychic attacks and fighting Blue, he managed to dodge every single  blow. I sent them back in, the blades dipping through the air dizzily as  he danced between them. It was like watching a piece of fabric dodge a  fucking sewing machine.

I needed him to sit still, needed  to give them time to work. I considered my options, and came to a  conclusion that may or may not have been incredibly fucking stupid. I  stepped into the darkness, and emerged behind Adam. Before he could even  register my presence I reached out and snagged him in a full nelson. I  used the adaptability of my half ghost body to stretch my limbs around  him and locked my hands together tight behind his neck. I clamped down  on him tightly doing my best to hold him still as I poured demonic magic  into my body to reinforce and strengthen it.

It wouldn't  have lasted long, not with this consumption. I had about ten seconds of  hold time tops in me, but I didn't need more. I could sit him still long  enough for Zee or Dreamer or even Blue to wind up a big punch, and they  could take him down long enough for me to drop him in the prison.  Honestly I didn't even care if he went nuts going through the darkness,  but I was a bit worried he might get loose halfway and fuck something  up, so I was waiting for him to be down before I dragged him through. I  was sure he would be fine.

Unfortunately I didn't HAVE ten  seconds. With a bellow like a wounded buffalo Adama began to rage and  thrash, desperate to get away and hurt me. I wouldn't let him go, and  with my enhanced strength and superior leverage I barely managed to hang  on. Then he went still as a statue, and I had a very bad feeling.  Adam's aura surged with hate and anger and he throw back his head. I  realized what was coming before it happened, just barely in time to  shift into void form and hope it would be enough as the enraged  supervillain howled. "SHAZAAM!" And the whole world was filled with  lightning.