Everywhere the fluid Soulsword went, Klarion's curses were undone and his lingering magic chased out. This manifested outside my body as red smoke rising out of my wounds while inwardly, the roads were paved for my magic to flow once more.
A brief flare of the fluid at my wrists and ankles released me at once. Spider-Sense began to blow up the back of my head. Thankfully, my magic-fueled telekinesis worked at the speed of thought, and very few minds were faster than mine with the candle flame.
An application of telekinesis backed by the full might of my magic flowed through my entire being using the Soulsword as a conduit. It took hold a split second before the dreaded paw of the enlarged cat arrived and smacked me across the clearing.
The wind whipped against my bare skin during my rough, unscheduled flight. I ate dirt a few times before finally managing to arrest my momentum and then fly upward, pain radiating from my side with the full force of a red alert siren.
Higher and higher I went, taking advantage of the means of flight I didn't know I had all this time.
"~Oh Teekl…" Klarion's singsong voice echoed unnaturally and the back of my head sent intense pulses to my entire body, urging me to MOVE.
My next instinct was to go higher because speed force or not, up here, the stupid cat would have no leverage. Lo and behold the feline's path toward me became a straight upward line as it zoomed through the air as though it were solid.
I braced myself for the attack, letting the Soulsword flow past my skin to form armor round me. The attack never came but I heard and felt a bang go off, quickly followed by a loud crack.
Intense yellow light flooded my vision when I reopened my eyes. Right in front of me, an ankh the size of a building stood embedded within the earth, a huge dent in the portion with me behind it sporting spiderwebbing cracks that were quickly mending.
Doctor Fate flew down to my side and I sagged, releasing a sigh of relief as an invisible weight slipped off my shoulders.
"Never thought I'd say this but… It's good to see you, Nabu."
"Are you well enough to fight?"
"I am now," I said after channeling a healing spell throughout my body. Something about using the Soulsword as a conduit for my magic made it flow smoother and quicker. It made me think of wands and focuses, but I had other things to worry about at the moment.
"Hey you stupid old fart!"
The remark and the entity that made it went ignored. Muttering under my breath, I infused my words with magic and communicated the reality of Klarion's new familiar to Nabu, adding a simple plan at the end; focus on Klarion, don't let him escape.
Eyes narrowed behind helmet slits as they moved from me to Klarion and then to the cat at his side. Without sparing me a glance, Nabu nodded to show he agreed before pulling his arm up.
Responding to his motions, the gigantic ankh tore out of the ground, rose upward, and then descended like a spear towards his fated foe.
Holding out both arms, Klarion poured out a beam of blood red magic out of his hands in a straight line towards the falling ankh. Both manifestations of magic clashed, producing bright and intense bursts of red and yellow as they pushed against each other.
I made myself scarce during this and coaxed the fluid Soulsword, forming a thin sheath of the miraculous energy over my entire body. A series of quick chants infused it with a number of invisibility and obfuscation spells, removing me from all manner of sight and detection entirely.
After enduring the relentless attacks of the Chaos Lord's familiar, my gear had been reduced to rags that only kept my dignity intact. Pieces of my suit and my weapons, if they were intact, were scattered all over the swamp.
My usefulness to this battle had been drastically reduced as a result, and I intended to change that. Klarion could not be allowed to get away. If before this had been a personal desire to end his reign of terror, now it had become an imperative drive.
That familiar of his posed a threat unlike anything ever seen. It ranked a few steps below Darkseid getting a hold of the anti-life equation, but not by much.
Because not only would it make the Lord of Chaos himself a bitch and half to banish, the cat itself could be disguised with magic and approach any number of heroes and superpowered beings…
Things didn't need to be explained further. They both had to go. Personally, Klarion alone would do it for me. Without him, the cat would be just that… a cat. A suped up cat perhaps, but it would no longer have the magical support of its master.
Which is why my plan to kill Klarion hadn't changed. It had just been… delayed.
Flying through the swamp, weaving through the trees and following the leads of the divination spell, I passed by and examined every piece of my suit and equipment, looking for any intact component I could use for the plan I had in mind.
Behind me, the battle between the Lords had escalated tremendously. I could feel the pulses and flares of magic all the way here, deep in the swamp. Their fight was like nothing in the show.
It was more apocalyptic, and Nabu wasn't on the backfoot like most times. It was strange to see the kind of effect I'd had on him. That sight seemed right to some part of me—Nabu was a Lord of powerful magic, and this is the kind of output I expected of him.
However, it made me worried for Kent. His aged body could not handle such intense arcane channeling for long. Eventually, it'd give out and… I didn't want to think about what would happen next.
After numerous dead ends, the active divination spell directed me into the depths of a muddy pond and I obeyed without hesitation, diving into the muck. A normal person would be struggling to move and even breathe, but my Spider mutation and soul armor proved their combined worth.
Moving through the pond with the ease I would in air, I held open a hand and pushed pure magic out, using a flex of intent to turn it into visible light. I cranked things up a bit and soon gained the equivalent of a miniature, handheld floodlight.
It brightened things up considerably, allowing me to locate my quarry instantly. The alligators initially wondering what had breached their home dispersed instantly, massive tails swishing in their wake as they opened a path to my watch.
This thing was perhaps the most iterated gadget in my arsenal, infused with almost every tangible result from all my abilities. Memories of my short life here flashed before my eyes as I grabbed it, but I rejected them all and swam up.
I wasn't going to die today, so I'd rather not indulge in reminiscing.
Upon breaking the surface of the pond, my deployed magical senses and the Spider informed me of the abnormality immediately. The beefed up cat stood at the edge of the pond in its saber cat state, sniffing and only stopping when I rose up out of it.
Even though I remained invisible, its eyes locked on to my position in less than a second, tracking my slow movements. The answer as to how it located me came too easily. It was the damn torch.
Clutching the watch tight, I let the muddy water slide off it and the energy sheath around me, pondering how I was going to handle this. Arcs of red lightning began to coil over the cat and the back of my head throbbed even harder.
Without hesitation, I yanked myself down into the pond with a splash, hoping the change in environment would skew things in my favor. However, nothing happened upon my submersion.
There should have been something.
A ripple across the surface, a bright flare of electricity, something. The back of my head had also stopped protesting. Huh…
Carefully willing my whole body upward, I poked my head out of the pond slowly. The absence of the cat and the presence of more people became immediately apparent.
Two streaks—red and yellow—raced in and out of sight all over the swamp while the battle between Nabu and Klarion had entered a new stage with the inclusion of Grace, Arsenal, and Superboy.
The team was here.
"Hahahaha…" A laugh forced itself out of me upon my confident ascent from the pond. "You guys are so screwed now!"
Unable to control my laugh and overall elation, I flew up and moved further away from the battles. Though with the speedsters, you were never far enough away. As if to support my earlier statement, The Flash, Green Arrow, Batman and Zatara flew out of the Zephyr I and descended into the fray.
At this point, my smile had grown so wild it even surprised me.
With my eyes still directed upward, I spotted the Zephyr II high in the sky as well, the agents firing precise shots at Klarion and Teekl from an open hatch at opportune moments.
This scene, the presence of my agents and the heroes… I felt like relaxing and leaving things to them. My help was no longer needed. For the second time today, I knew what it was like to need saving and have it arrive exactly when you needed it.
And that feeling alone gave me more fuel to make this final push.
Shaking my head and entire body to fight off the creeping drape of fatigue and lethargy, I finally positioned myself out of everyone's crosshairs and focused on my watch. I channeled telekinetic magic into it, ignoring the long list of alerts and notifications.
Pulling it apart with the ease of the person responsible for making it, I quickly located its power core, a tiny black thing with the dimensions of a fingernail. I put the watch down and held the core tight, chanting two energy manipulation spells one after the other.
First, a draining spell suctioned the electricity into my body with wild abandon and the conversion spell turned it all into magical energy. Said energy responded to my will and flooded every inch of me by way of the Soulsword.
When the energy reached levels I deemed adequate, I paused the draw and began a long chant for the same spell I used to hide Klarion's old familiar from him.
I had an implant that replicated the effect; however the moment I attacked him, got savaged by his cat, and then got poked and prodded with his magic, its effectiveness had been rendered moot and the implant itself confiscated.
This would have to do for what I had in mind.
Words of a forgotten language rolled off my lips while my right hand alternated between hand signs at specific moments. Little by little, the imaginary progress bar of the spell filled up.
Due to the intense focus afforded by the candle flame, splitting my focus on the ongoings of the battle and the spell's intricacies posed no problem. This allowed me to perceive Klarion giving his cat the order to attack me.
I had long given up trying to understand how he located me every time. I chalked it up to his status as a Lord of magic and the sheer amount of energy I had generated with my spell.
Trying to hide such a thing from the likes of him was like a kid telling their parents they'd lost their report card unaware of how utterly guilty they looked.
Thanks to the two Flashes, I didn't need to tangle with the bloodthirsty cat again. The two of them did a good job of playing defense for anyone it targeted. Even its attempts to take to the air were thwarted by Kid Flash, his dedication to mastering the grav boots proving its worth.
When the final stage of the long ass spell rolled by, a wide pulse of magic with me as the epicenter rolled over the entire swamp. For the mundane participants of the battle—those with no magic prowess whatsoever—they fought as hard as ever.
Batman, Robin, Green Arrow and my agents piled on the hurt, damaging Klarion's rapidly regenerating vessel with endless but precise waves of anti-magic projectiles. However, Zatana, Doctor Fate and Klarion noticed the abnormality like it slapped them in the face.
Their reactions to it were widely different. Fate and Zatara paused their attacks for a moment and resumed. Klarion, did no such thing.
"TEEKL!" he yelled and the cat manifested at his side like a bolt of red lightning.
Completely removed from the Lord of Chaos' physical and magical senses, I dug my feet into the ground, channeled a portion of the remaining converted magic energy into the telekines spell and blasted off in Klarion's direction.
It should've been a straight shot, however, Klarion's cat had morphed into a band of red lighting around its master, forming an impenetrable barrier of rapidly spinning wind and electricity, a combination that turned red and menacing when its master infused it with his magic.
Undeterred, I flew straight up, leaving a boom in my wake. At the peak of my ascent, I turned upside down and fed more of the magic energy into the Soulsword itself, manifesting a spinning drill in front of my outstretched arms.
Klarion had of course sealed the top of the cyclone with his magic. It didn't stop me from blasting off and tearing through it, the spin and anti-magic nature of the drill practically ushering me into his temporary reprieve.
And temporary it was, because the Lord of Chaos had a portal waiting while he infused more magic into the vortex, likely hoping to sustain it for just a bit so he could escape with his cat.
As if.
"NO!"
He noticed my intrusion instantly and reacted, pointing both hands in my direction. Unlike his clash with Nabu, the drill and my entire body tore through his attack like a ship parted the seas.
We clashed in a blast of red and blue, my attack unravelling the powerful obfuscation spell. Here was no need to fret though. It's work had been done.
Kicking off the ground and practically launching myself at him with telekinesis, I formed claws out of the portion of the Soulsword around my hand and stabbed them into Klarion's face.
Like a plug fitting neatly in a socket, Faust's most potent soul destruction spell sunk its hooks into the Lord of Chaos and began to tear him apart.
"NO! STOP! STOP IT! NO! NO! NO!"
With the gaping hole still in his chest from the drill attack, Klarion blasted me with magic repeatedly. He didn't so much as scratch the Soulsword nor the armor I'd formed of it. However, man, it felt like the Hulk himself was hitting me.
I didn't stop though. If anything, it pushed me to go harder, and harder I did. The purple light of the spell crept over the Klarion's child-like form inch by inch, his red losing ground rapidly.
"AHHHHH!" Klarion screamed, the act empowered by pure magic. My eardrums burst, forcing me to read his lips to understand what he said next. He began to cackle when he realised he had no way out. "Fine! I'm taking you with me! All of you!"
The back of my head began its familiar throb and I flinched at the intense lightshow Klarion turned into. My world became red, purple, pain and then black.
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