Crystal frowned. She could almost hear the dried sewer scum that clung to her hair crackling as she pressed her long mane to her chest. The strands had woven themselves into some intricate mess that Crystal estimated would take most of the rest of the night to brush out. It wouldn’t impress anyone with its smell, either. In the back of her mind, she calculated how much time and effort would be required to restore it to presentable condition. She didn’t like the way that line of thought was going.
Even so, that wasn’t the major contributing factor to her frown. As she hung upside down from the ceiling, hair tucked close to keep it from dangling, she watched the Rikti go about their business. Nothing about it gave her cause to smile. At the far end of the room, partly obscured by a large mound of earth, the machinery for a new inter-dimensional portal sat. The base was mostly complete, and work had begun on some of the frame for the portal itself. However, construction work had halted for the moment so the assembled aliens could gather to defend the room from what could only be her and her team. Four Heavy Assault Suits hovered at the peak of the dirt mound; Famine’s presence was obvious, given the crackling energy aura surrounding the suits, and Crystal assumed two of the other three Heavy Assault Suits were the same ones she tangled with earlier. Just as displeasing was the sight of twenty to thirty Rikti in close formation, plus the odd group standing here and there throughout the remainder of the room. Save for the mound of dirt, the unfinished portal, and a small platform just inside the room, there was no cover, no terrain feature, nothing that even the tiny Thunder Dragon could hide behind, much less Crystal.
She spent a few more moments scowling at the scene while she waited for some sign that things were going to get better. The Rikti did not oblige by surrendering, running away, erecting some durable structure for her to hide behind, or some other improbably beneficial act, so she sighed and silently drifted backwards along the ceiling while she kept a firm grip on her hair; no need to rush the inevitable by letting her hair dangle and wave and attract their attention. They would shoot at her soon enough.
Crystal hugged the arched ceiling until she arrived at the intersection where the rest of her team waited. She turned, drifted out of sight of the room’s opening, then landed softly, frowning all the while.
“You’re gonna get wrinkles doing that,” Jenny quipped.
“I’m not worried about wrinkles right now,” Crystal muttered as she pulled her hair back and secured it. “I’m worried about facing all four Riders and thirty or forty of their friends in a room with no cover.” She quickly described what she had seen while hovering up against the ceiling and finished with, “If we have to fight in there, I’m pretty sure that I won’t be able to keep all the attention on me. I don’t see how the rest of you are going to avoid taking damage.”
Harm assured Crystal, “We’re heroes. We can take it.”
Bellona cleared her throat. Harm ignored her.
“Baby, I’m the first to admit that I’m a bad [censored],” Supa Fly cautioned, “but even though I am a bad [censored], the less [censored] that gets thrown at me, the happier I am!”
“Let me think a moment…”
“Don’t hurt yourself,” Bellona spat.
Jenny’s ongoing feud with Bellona flared up again and, as they had so many times before, the two young women shrilled insults at each other. Crystal ignored them. She poked her head around the corner and took in the sight again. She glanced up at the arched ceiling and the buttresses of the oddly appealing alien architecture that lined the walls. At the end of the short tunnel, the opening into the final room showed only a small fraction of the horrors that awaited them inside.
A light bulb went on in her head.
Crystal turned back around the corner and faced her team again. “The only cover for us is right here,” she announced.
Jenny stopped arguing and smiled. Bellona stopped arguing with Jenny and challeneged Crystal instead. “What the [censored] is that supposed to mean?”
“We fight them in the hall. You wait here while I bring them out of the room. They won’t see you until it’s too late.”
Harm walked past, just far enough to get a look at the hallway for himself. When he turned back, he declared, “Choke points work both ways.”
“Not if I block the other end,” Crystal countered. “Then it’s a trap, not a choke point. Once I unplug the hall, things will get chaotic but, until that happens, we’ll control the fight.”
Harm nodded his approval. “Can you handle it?”
“For a time. It’ll be tricky judging when to stop. We don’t want too many of them in the trap, nor too few, and once I’m done blocking the opening, I’ll be at a disadvantage, just like the last time we fought the Riders.”
“Then we’ll just have to kick their [censored] [censored] really [censored] fast!” Supa Fly exclaimed.
“Especially Famine,” StarDust chimed in.
“Yeah, that [censored] gets it first.”
“Then let’s get ready. Charge us up,” Crystal commanded.
Supa Fly did his thing. Bellona joined him in the team charge-up, but when it came time for Bellona to boost Crystal, she paused. “You know,” she said with a sadistic grin, “this trap plan of yours…”
Crystal just looked at her blankly.
“It’s pure evil!” Bellona laughed.
Crystal held her expressionless gaze long enough to receive the boost and then turned her back. She didn’t want Bellona to see the look of disgust on her face. Crystal didn’t like fighting. When it became necessary, however, she prefered to fight fair. This definitely wasn’t fighting fair. Still, her creativity had failed her: no other idea presented itself, and walking away wasn’t an option. The Rikti couldn’t be allowed to build another portal. The only way out was to see this through.
Before she iced up, Crystal issued one last instruction: “Stay here. I’ll go test the acoustics of the chamber.”
“Isn’t that MY job?” Harm asked.
“Not this time,” Jenny interjected. “You’re in for a treat. Just listen.”
Crystal layered on the ice and walked slowly towards the alien-infested chamber. This version of the ice armor was constructed a bit differently; there was a little extra room for her chest and abdomen, much more room for her jaw, and a large opening in the ice at the mouth. She hummed the opening verse of Amazing Grace as she prepared to take the opening salvo. Just before she reached the opening, she began to sing.
“T’was Grace that taught my heart to fear…”
The assembled Rikti started but didn’t move from where they stood. If the fight was to come, there was only one place it could happen, and they were ready.
“And Grace, my fears relieved!”
Crystal poured out the words. The volume quickly rose to fortissimo and beyond. The cavern rang with her strong lyric soprano voice.
“How precious did that Grace appear…”
She powered up her hands as she stepped out into the open, adding a dazzling light show to the solo vocal performance. War lunged forward, blazing away with its fusion blasters despite being out of range. A good portion of the infantry and drones followed it.
“…the hour I first believed!”
Some Rikti chased after War and its supporters, others stayed put, and some simply milled about in confusion; the Rikti battle plan had already failed, and the fighting was yet to come.
Crystal originally intended to absorb the whole mob’s firepower at once. Thanks to War’s hubris, however, the Rikti were now spread out, and in poor position to bring her down. The shots came in, far fewer than she was expecting to take; the worst effect they achieved was to force Crystal to stop singing. She stood her ground for a moment as she waited for an opportunity to encourage the aliens to follow her out of the room.
A Headman Gunman teleported right next to her and fired its plasma gun at point-blank range. Ice sizzled, but most of the shot’s energy was deflected off, and Crystal was merely singed. She turned on the alien, gave it a quick one-two punch, followed with a stronger one in the gut to stun it, and finished it off with an overcharged double-hand punch. Predictably, she felt the knuckles on both her hands fracture and grind, and she once again froze her fists solid so she could continue to punch, but the charade worked; after she felled one of the Rikti, the rest believed she was a serious threat, and were driven to avenge the loss.
Rikti swarmed over the platform and surrounded Crystal. Swords hacked and plasma bolts buzzed as they tried to kill her. She danced and dodged in the decreasing space, partly to avoid hits from the deadly Rikti swords, but also to ensure she affected as many of the aliens as possible with the bitter chill coming off her body. Armored joints froze and power systems failed in the intensely cold aura. The alien advance ground to a halt as they bunched up, forced to slow their attack by the cold.
War was unimpressed with Crystal’s crowd control skills. It soared over the heads of the lesser aliens and unleashed a devastating salvo of fusion blasts. Hit after hit smashed into her ice armor and pummeled her body, nearly knocking the breath from her lungs. She decided it was time to go, and turned and fled down the tunnel, narrowly avoiding a scything laser beam that carved a deep gash into the platform where she stood mere moments before.
Crystal scurried away, feigning panicked flight, but not moving so fast that she seemed impossible to chase and catch. The opening darkened as it filled with Rikti soldiers and drones, then was completely obscured as War shoved its way through the mass of infantry. A glance over her shoulder told Crystal that about a quarter of the Rikti inside that room had followed her. She stopped just past the branch where the rest of her team wait, pelted War with a snowball, then ducked around the corner and out of sight.
The supers tensed in anticipation. “Not yet,” Crystal whispered. “Wait ’till they come into view.”
They didn’t have long to wait; the first of the Rikti, a Drone, appeared around the corner mere seconds later, only to be immediately blasted into scrap. “Go!” Crystal ordered. She charged back around the corner and launched herself through the air, high above the heads of the aliens. Distracted by Crystal’s reappearance, they didn’t notice the rest of the supers until it was too late. The hallway filled with explosions and flame as they reaped a bloody harvest.
Up along the ceiling, Crystal passed overhead of most of the Rikti, safe out of reach from their deadly gunblades. This might have been a fine place to hover and continue to distract them, but their ranged attacks would eventually erode her protection, and War did not have to close to melee to bring its most potent attacks to bear, so Crystal had to press on with her plan. She squeezed herself through the small gap between War’s hull and the ceiling, shot behind it, and crashed down in the opening between hallway and cavern. One Rikti infantry who had not been paying close enough attention to events was knocked to the floor by the force of Crystal’s landing. She stood over his prone form and glanced quickly in front and behind her. The Rikti already in the hallway were turning to engage her. The Rikti in the room were still advancing. Crystal gave the prone Rikti an agonized look. “I’m sorry about this,” she quietly said. The sound of her voice cut off as she layered on her maximum ice thickness. A mountain of ice filled the opening, completely sealing it. Nothing could get in or out as long as the ice held. The extra ice also buried the prone Rikti soldier, leaving only its head exposed; through the ice, Crystal felt its struggles, and watched its head thrash around as it tried desperately to escape its icy imprisonment. A recurring nightmarish memory clawed its way down Crystal’s spine and, despite her powers, she felt a chill seep into her bones. Her heart raced. The protective ice felt like a prison. The breath she was holding, more than enough to keep her conscious, now felt as if it had already gone, and her panic threatened to overwhelm her.
The head of the Rikti soldier vanished in a flash of red lightning. The rest of the body vanished a moment later, spirited away by the Rikti medical teleport network. Crystal rolled her eyes up from the spot where the alien once lay to witness Thunder Dragon’s tiny claws reaching out for the ice. She heard the hiss clearly as the electricity surrounding them melted the ice at his touch, and saw his hands slowly burrow into her protection. His lips skinned back, revealing his mouth full of sharp teeth. “Move!” he commanded.
Crystal glanced up. The hallway was empty of Rikti, including War, and the her team was waiting to finish the job they’d begun. Crystal shattered the ice and stepped aside. Thunder Dragon rocketed into the room. The rest, not quite as sure of their invincibility, wait for Crystal to lead their charge. “All on Famine!” she barked at them. “I’ll try to keep the rest busy while you deal with him!” They barreled past Crystal, and she turned to watch as she re-applied her ice armor.
Harm dove into a crowd of Rikti. One ear-splitting screech later, he stood nearly alone, joined on his feet by only the most powerful of the Rikti, and they were only barely able to stand after that devastating attack. Unbidden, Bellona hit one of the Rikti with her energy-transferring power, and Harm’s energy stores were filled as fast as they had emptied. He flashed Bellona a thumbs-up, started another raucous heavy metal song, and lit into the surviving Rikti to finish them off. Famine started glowing a sickly yellow thanks to Supa Fly’s powers, and the fire blasts from Jenny, StarDust, and Bellona found his hull a soft target. Supa Fly lashed out with his mental attacks at whatever targets caught his interest. This in turn made the Rikti more interested in him, and the aliens switched targets to concentrate their fire in his direction. The Blasters split off from Famine and intercepted the Rikti, shooting them down as fast as they could, but drawing more fire in turn. The fight dissolved into one-on-few engagements that could only favor the Rikti and their superior numbers.
Crystal finished icing up and dashed forward. Whatever hatred she had inspired in the Rikti earlier was rekindled by the mere sight of her, and they resumed their efforts to kill her, forgetting all about the others on her team. Now that the team was protected, at the expense of herself, Crystal could start directing the pace of the battle again. She yelled, “Go get Famine! Our protection from his energy field won’t last long! Let me deal with the rest of them.” Everyone ceased their individual actions and once again bent themselves to the task of removing Famine from the fight.
Now that the battle seemed back under control, Crystal turned her attention to the remaining two Heavy Assault Suits. She couldn’t tell the difference between them, but the one she’d fought earlier had proven to be extremely dangerous, and whatever the new Rider could do, it certainly wasn’t going to be pleasant to find out.
Well, delaying this isn’t going to make it hurt less…
She charged. Once Crystal got between the two Heavy Assault Suits, she dropped the temperature well below freezing, sapping their power and making their armored hulls frost over. Both suits turned on her, as did their infantry and drone support. “Remember me?” she quipped.
“Nothing Resists: My Poisons!” one of them bragged.
“If that were true, I wouldn’t still be here.”
Clearly, the remark stung; the Rider unleashed its full arsenal at Crystal. Fusion blasts and laser beams joined with poison gas as the alien tried to pulverize her ice armor. The other Rider fired its own energy weapons, as well as letting lose with a creepy, stilted laugh: “Ha: Ha: Ha: Ha!”
The laugh was disturbing. As this new Rider got closer, it did something even more disturbing: it summoned a cloud of inky darkness around itself. As the darkness enveloped Crystal, she felt it clawing and scratching at her, as if it had a hungry, malevolent life of its own. More powers of darkness burst forth from this unusual Rikti. It cast spells that stole pieces of Crystal’s life and added them to its own, and issued haunting whispers of dread that threatened to wipe away her resolve. “I Bring: Only Death!” it uttered in a voice from beyond the grave.
Crystal wanted to scream. She also wanted to warn her team about this fearsome newcomer. She could do neither; while the poison gas cloud surrounded her, she dared not waste her breath. Keeping silent and her emotions bottled up increased the pressure on her. As when she had the Rikti trapped, she felt a sense of panic rise, a fear that threatened to leave her paralyzed and defenseless, even in the face of mortal danger.
Over the ear-splitting heavy metal song, Harm called out, “Hey, SC! This is your song!” Crystal had done her best to ignore Harm’s soundtrack throughout the mission, but somehow his call to her pulled the remnants of her attention away from her current precarious situation and towards the lyrics of the song. They weren’t difficult to make out given the painfully loud volume Harm was playing them at.
“Freezing, can’t move at all!
“Screaming, can’t hear my call!
“I… am dying to live!
“Cry out!
“I’m trapped under ice!”
It was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. The words combined with the terror-inducing attacks of the new Rider and the fresh memory of the Rikti pinned under her ice to drag Crystal’s awareness back to the distant, unpleasant memory of the time she received her powers. She relived the moment all over again, every sensation crowding out her current awareness; she saw the attacking Rikti as a far-away, unrelated experience, something that was happening to someone else, as if it was merely on the TV, glimpsed in passing from another room. It held no more relevance for her. The memory overwhelmed her consciousness.
She saw the Crey Industries representative, there at her school for Career Day, turn on the flash-freezer. The machine, still active though it was supposed to have finished its cycle, froze the man’s hand as he opened the door. He howled in pain, and set his other hand on the device to try and pull himself free, only to have it freeze as well, locking him in place. It took less than a second for the freezing reaction to spread through his body, preserving his final, agonized death scream in ice.
And still the ice spread.
Panic set into the class. Some fled; not all made it to the doors before the ice did, and those who were too far away or not fast enough to get clear fell victim to the same fate as the Crey Industries rep, their terrified screams building in pitch as their bodies froze solid, then abruptly falling silent.
Some could not make their bodies move. They died in their seats, unable to muster the will to flee, only able to give one last instinctive cry of terror and pain before they, too, were frozen in death.
The rest, unable to escape, crowded in the ever-diminishing space of safety, scrambling over desks, chairs, and even each other in a terrified bid to purchase one more second of life. Crystal watched all over again as the ice relentlessly spread, covering everything in its path. She felt the bodies of her classmates pressed behind her. She heard their screaming, pleading, and crying. Then she felt the ice grip her feet. It didn’t feel cold. It felt more like fire burning its way through the soles of her shoes. She tried to break free, to no avail. The burning cold grabbed more than her flesh; it held fast onto the bones themselves. It crawled up her legs, past her knees, then took root in her waist and spread out and up from there. The pain was excruciating but, somehow, she still wasn’t truly terrified until it froze her lungs and locked her ribs. Shards of ice lanced through her heart moments before it stopped beating. She gasped one last prayer for deliverance before the ice covered her mouth. Her eyes twitched around, almost of their own accord, still seeking a way to escape, then they, too, froze, and locked her gaze onto the aftermath of the ice’s inexorable advance. Frozen solid, unable to move, speak, or hear, she somehow was still able to sense the vibrations of her remaining classmates as they desperately sought freedom and safety. Soon, that sensation also ceased.
Time passed. Be it by miracle or curse, she remained conscious, though she could only stare unblinking at the horror. At some point, she didn’t know when, others came into the room. Firefighters, police, and some others she didn’t recognize slowly entered into her sight. They picked at her dead classmates as they tried to release them from the grip of the ice. They used chisels, hot water, salt, and heating guns to free them without shattering their bodies, gently laid them one by one onto rolling gurneys, covered them up, and then carted them from the room. She felt, rather than heard, the anguished sobbing and wailing from the hallway, and knew that her parents would be there. She didn’t want them to see her like this. She wanted to leave, to get up and walk away, to speak some words of comfort to them, to let them know she was, miraculously, still alive. As her turn finally came, she tried to scream at the rescuers to stop, to not subject her parents to this; her screams were silent and unheeded. They picked and thawed, oblivious to her conscious state. They deposited her on the gurney, still screaming silently. She looked closely at their faces, scribed with horror, creased with despair, tracked with tears yet, though they also looked closely at her, they saw no sign of life. A fresh wave of panic took hold of her as she saw them reach for a blanket. As before, with the ice, she was powerless to prevent the advance of the blanket, unable to escape or shrug it off as it spread, covering her body, reaching up to envelop her head. Finally, there was nothing else left. She was trapped and alone, dead and yet not, with nothing but her and the ice in her shrouded world.
The whole scene took less than a second to parade itself though Crystal’s mind. It continued and repeated from there, only slightly less intense, and mixed with the thrashing of the panicked Rikti soldier. She could not see the Heavy Assault Suits blasting away. She did not notice the foot soldiers surrounding her. She was only aware that she was, once again, covered in ice, and merely stood in place and cowered against the haunting memories of her own death. “No…” she whimpered piteously.
“Shut it off!” Jenny barked.
“What?” asked Harm.
“Just do it!” she shrieked. Jenny charged the armored Blaster, ears pinned back, teeth bared, flames burning bright and hot. Like Crystal, she was lost in the moment, comsumed with the need to shut off the music. She powered up as she sprinted at him, looking like nothing less than a wrathful spirit loosed from the pits of Hell.
Alarmed, Harm cut the music off. Now only the sound of battle filled the cavernous room. Jenny skidded to a halt and drew in a breath to chew him out.
A Chief Soldier closed with Crystal. He wound up with his gunblade like a baseball player on home plate and swung. Paralyzed with fear, Crystal took no defensive action other than to feebly hold up her arms to ward off the blow. With a loud crack, the blade connected with her head. Crystal’s modification to the ice to allow her voice to carry farther also left the ice weaker. Chunks of ice, stained red with blood, flew away from her, and she toppled to the ground.
The sound got everyone’s attention. Supa Fly, fresh from finishing off Famine, whirled around and swore, “[censored]! She down again!”
Jenny pivoted on the spot and lunged for the two Riders with the same ferocity as when she lunged for Harm. She leapt through the air, landed where Crystal so recently stood and, fueled with the need to protect her friend, fired off her most powerful attack. The blast encompassed and annihilated all the lesser Rikti, leaving only the two Riders intact. Still incensed, she fought through the post-nuke fatigue, reignited her flaming hands, and attacked the new Rider at point-blank range. Her first shot melted a shallow fissure in its armored hull. Jenny could not follow up with a second; as she wound up, the aura of darkness overwhelmed her. Rents appeared in her flesh and clothes. Her mind was likewise assaulted, and she checked her fire and staggered back, holding up her hands to ward off the horrors that had seized control of her thoughts.
“Struggles: Cease,” the fearsome new Rider intoned. “Death Easier: By Far.” The two Heavy Assault Suits turned on Jenny as one.
Moments before they fired on the defenseless Blaster, a grimly determined wall of ice moved into the path of their fire. Blood frozen to her face, Crystal stood in the aliens’ line of sight and silently took the hits meant for her friend. The new Rider enveloped her in its deathly aura once again. The attack failed to affect Crystal; no longer surprised, and driven by the need to protect her dear friend and companion, she had broken free from the nightmarish visions of death and steeled herself for whatever would come. The whispers of dread were as the buzzing of a gnat. Shots after shot shattered and vaporized her icy armor and burned away her flesh and clothes, but Crystal did not cry out, nor did she move from her place.
Jenny staggered free of the new Rider as Crystal’s sacrifice allowed her a moment to recover. During that moment, a bolt of lightning slammed into the poisonous Rider. Electrical arcs coruscated over its surface as Thunder Dragon, the source of the lightning bolt, swooped into the fray. He posed dramatically, wings spread, electricity coursing over his body and, though he was but a third of the size of the Heavy Assault Suits, his arrival pulled their attention away from Crystal.
“Why Resist: Death, Oblivion?” the deathly Rider mocked.
“I am the immortal Thunder Dragon!” he roared. “I CANNOT die!” With that, he ripped into the Rider. His energized claws carved great gashes into the armor; each hit was accompanied by a blinding flash and a peal of thunder. Smaller bolts of lightning arced off his body continuously, shocking and damaging both Riders at once. The poisonous Rider shot him in the back, but the deadly fusion blasts only seemed to make him stronger, and his claw and electrical attacks increased in power.
Not one to let anyone get shot, Crystal floated off the ground and positioned herself between Thunder Dragon and the other Rider, blocking its fire. The Rider attempted to fly around the obstacle, but the bitter chilling aura slowed its movement, and Crystal easily kept her body in between the two combatants. She punched and threw ice to try and divert its attention, but it was only by physically interposing herself that Thunder Dragon ceased to be targeted by the other Rider.
The odds swung quickly in favor of Crystal and her team as the rest joined the fight against the two remaining Riders. Supa Fly saturated the poisonous Rider with debilitating radiation. Bellona mixed fire attacks with her more unusual powers to damage and weaken the Rider simultaneously. The Blasters, including Jenny, once she had enough time to recover, concentrated their fire on the Rider marked by Supa Fly’s radioactive powers and forced it to retreat in seconds. The other Rider took even less time to defeat once the full might of the team was applied.
Thunder Dragon took a moment to look around before he landed and spoke. “An interesting fight. Are there more nearby? I would like this to continue.”
Crystal shattered her ice armor but did not reply.
Jenny walked close and examined her. Blood was still frozen to her face, and there were tracks of ice where her flesh had been burned and shredded, but nothing particularly injurious stood out. “What’s wrong?”
Crystal pantomimed a punch to the jaw, then ground the front of her fists together.
Jenny’s ears drooped. “Oh, no, not again!”
Crystal nodded stiffly, bending at her chest instead of her neck.
“Can you text, at least?”
Crystal held up her still frozen fists and waved them around.
“What’s wrong?” echoed Harm.
Jenny turned around to face everyone. “Her jaw’s broken, and so are her fingers. She can’t speak or text.”
Bellona burst out laughing. “I’ve been praying for something to shut her up, and I finally got my wish!” she howled.
“Yeah, well, it took four Heavy Assault Suits to do it, so don’t celebrate too hard!” Jenny retorted. Bellona just kept laughing.
“We done here?” Supa Fly asked. “I need to change my threads real bad.”
“No,” StarDust quietly replied. “We must destroy the portal.”
“I’ll do it,” said Harm. “Go on to the exit. I’ll catch up once I’ve finished.”
The rest of the supers vacated the room and left him behind. Once he was alone in the room, Harm powered up and attacked the partially constructed interdimensional portal. Every inch of the structure was pulverized by energized punches and sonic blasts until nothing more than slivers of scrap metal remained. Not yet satisfied, Harm ignited his boot jets, flew up to the apex of the ceiling, and fired blast after blast into the rock until the ceiling quivred and flakes of rock floated down to the floor. Then he screamed. The massive sonic attack ripped a huge hole in the ceiling and started a chain reaction throughout the cavern. With the last of his power, Harm rocketed for the exit. He flew neatly through the hole, flipped his legs forward to arrest his movement, then landed next to his companions and joined them in watching the show. Chunks of rock cascaded down, small at first, then growing in size until huge boulders fell like rain. The rumble was deafening. As the cavern collapsed in on itself, the dust cloud rose, filling the room and spilling out into the hallway. The lights went out as the rocks crushed and buried everything in the room. The cave-in continued for some time after the darkness fell, burying the portal for all time, and even causing a partial collapse of the short hallway; the supers retreated for safety.
Silence once again returned to the Rikti tunnels. Clearly impressed, Supa Fly breathed, “[censored]!”
Harm jabbed a thumb at himself. “When it absolutely, positively, has to be destroyed, don’t settle for less than the best.”
Crystal heaved a sigh of relief through her nose. Thank Heaven that’s over!