John had no time to react to Smlere or even be worried. All he saw was a flash, a dark eye burning with the empty happiness of using powers as Sigmund saw fit. Then the sound of metal clashing again. The scene that started this whole fight repeated at a different place at a not so different time, but now Aclysia had a sword that could match his.

“You feel much weaker than your first strike,” she stated, standing her ground as the two giant blades locked. However, it was clear that Sigmund still had the upper hand here. Not only was he slowly pushing back Aclysia, while wielding his blade with just one hand, his blade was steady while Aclysia’s new cleaver was quivering – a typical sign of someone holding something that was just too heavy for them.

“It’s because Erihana here can only increase my strength so often,” Sigmund answered with his steady, passionate grin.

“Sig, Sig, you are not supposed to just tell people I exist!” green energy glowed from a pendant hidden in the neck piece of the black armour. A very familiar green energy, accompanied by a wave of chattering. The tell-tale signs of an air elemental. “I mean, Sammy doesn’t like it when you are that careless, we are supposed to keep secrets and stuff. I don’t think telling your enemy everything about how you wear your elementals as equipment counts there! Like how Tem-Tem is your earth elemental armour, or B-L is your water shirt or how I am a necklace or how your cape is a shadow elemental called Sting or...”

A red ooze poured out between the cracks. It formed the upper half of a female body, without any exterior features aside from liquid hair and breasts but with a black skeleton clearly visible on the inside. It looked like somebody had liquified an attractive woman and only left the bones. Wordlessly, that elemental grabbed Erihana and thus stopped her from spilling any more of the can of beans she had access to.

“Well, there go my secrets,” Sigmund grinned, “not that I like Sammy’s insistence.” He jumped back as a half-molten rock was thrown his way. Erihana and B-L (a name John was 100% certain wasn’t the real one) assumed their item forms again. “It seems you still have some stuff in store?”

‘Do I?’ John thought desperately: he was out of mana and his Combination had less than half their time remaining. As far as he was concerned, he was pretty much backed into a corner here. Meanwhile Sigmund had sustained some injuries, a scrape at the blind side of his face, probably some bruises under that armour, but nothing that could be called a danger. As the sound of tossing waters reached his ears, he realized what Sigmund meant.

Sinflut, while everyone was distracted, had slithered into the part of the barrier that copied the Hudson River. Now she was Unleashed and all of that water rose into a giant wave under her control. However, there was no way such a large amount of water would hit only what she wanted, it was like trying to kill a fly with a flamethrower.

Which is why John screamed at her. “DON’T! You will wreck everything here!”

“Oh,” that was Sigmund again, who looked around, just realizing where he was, “right, I should pay some respect to the old man. SAMMY!”

“Yes, Sig?” Seminaris suddenly popped out of a portal and landed right where they were. A weary eye on the sky, always ready for Metra to catch up to her at any given second, she added, “What do you want?”

“Can you get us somewhere else?”

“The only barrier in reach is to the north of us. I don’t advise it; I can’t pinpoint our exit point or…” the First of Patience started, but Sigmund’s stare caused her to waver. “As you wish, Sig.” She whirled her staff above her head and suddenly all of them fell. John needed exactly one second to realize where they were, falling by a skyscraper that was overlooking a large dockyard.

This was Thorne’s headquarters and they were currently falling from over fifty metres high down the very top of that skyscraper. ‘SINFLUT, NOW!’ John thought, as Sigmund and Aclysia engaged in a very one-sided mid-air clash. A mere moment later, water poured through the portal like through a drain.

John was immediately caught by the flow, as were Aclysia and Smlere. The volcano elemental was in pain during the process, but this carried their group away from Sigmund. The idea was to get them to the top of the headquarters while causing him to fall all the way to the ground, disoriented in the water.

If the fall wouldn’t stop him (which John was sure it wouldn’t), then John could at least go hide inside the skyscraper. There was absolutely no way to win this battle, this much he was convinced of. Better to hide and wait until Seminaris went away, as she was the one who kept him from leaving the barrier with her superior magic.

They hit the top of the building and had their momentum slowed by the wave carrying them petering over the roof. John was pretty sure that he was causing immense confusion and some water related injuries in the streets below, but he had his own problems right now.

“What are you trying to pull? Running away?” Sigmund’s voice echoed from above. All of them looked upwards to find him and Seminaris standing atop a giant black stingray, flying through the air. The long tail of the beast whipped as the oddly shaped fins of that species flapped. “Not cool, John!”

“I just like to live, sorry,” the Gamer shouted back, mind racing for what to do next. Smlere threw rocks at the flying enemy; in a slowly approaching circle, the stingray dodged them. ‘I need some kind of distraction,’ he thought when he had made a desperate plan. It was the only plan he could think of.

Aclysia joined the range attacks by slicing the air with Eclys, Sinflut did the same. It had little effect, only causing the ceaseless approach of the shadowy ray to be slowed.

Then John got his distraction. A last person dived out of the still open portal above and threw her halberd at the stingray from behind. Seminaris dodged the attack at the last moment. ‘Stop attacking!’ John commanded everyone as Metra tore out of reality next to her weapon. If just one stray attack would connect with Seminaris, the First of Wrath would lose her massive Stat boosts, and John really couldn’t use that right now as he was given the window he needed.

He ran for the edge of the roof and jumped over the railing. Sinflut and Smlere were right behind him, then it was all six of his elementals. Combination had finally met the end of its duration and now it was thirty minutes downtime. If it hadn’t ran out right there, John would have asked them to separate anyway.

After all, who he needed right now were Sylph and Salamander, aside from whom everyone went immaterial (or assumed their Item Form, in Undine’s case). The two flying elementals grabbed him and carried him towards the ground as quickly as they could. They were more falling in a controlled fashion than actually flying.

They sailed past the giant version of Thorne’s symbol, a wreath made from a thorny branch winding around a red cable, the insulation stripped at the ends to show individual wires, and overlapping at the bottom. The moment they hit the pavement, John started running. A moment later, Aclysia appeared at his side, using up her teleport to get down from the skyscraper. So far, so well, now John just had to get to the docks.

“You really ARE running!” Sigmund’s voice rang with disappointment as he suddenly landed behind them. “Fine, a chase is a challenge all on its own!”

‘Crap baskets!’ John thought, immediately reprimanding himself because Rave would laugh at him if she caught him actually saying something out of that Dragonball Abridged series she kept showing him. They were watching that now that they had finished the whole original series. It was good, but that was really not the thing he should have been thinking about right now.

John turned a corner just in time for a massive gust of wind to cut through everything, air, the nearby buildings, the concrete floor, everything. Only Aclysia managed to block with her new sword but was still thrown back by the attack, crashing into a window. It had been another one of those empowered strikes, if John had the luxury of figuring out how that raid boss mechanic worked, he would have been a happy man. For the moment he could just assume that every next strike would have such a devastating effect.

Sigmund had his sight set on John. On the one hand, that was lucky for them. Because he could have easily finished up Aclysia now that she had no reinforcements in the shape of combined elementals, on the other, John was massively fucked.

Running with whatever his legs gave him, which was quite good with Purgatory’s buff maxed out and his shoes set to the wind enhancement, he weaved through the buildings. His lifeline was that fire and air attacks from his elementals, aimed only to harass, cut Sigmund’s line of sight often enough that he sometimes lost John.

However, eventually John broke out of the buildings and into the open docks again. People had already scrambled away, hearing and seeing the commotion and being wise enough to stay far away from that. In the first place, this part of the barrier seemed largely forsaken. Without a doubt that had to do with the massive, serpentine creature that was treating one of the large piers, usually reserved for freighters, as his personal home.

“See there, see there! John, how nice of you to visit,” Tilgun said as John quickly approached. “See, I recently figured out that you would be my brother-in-law should you succeed in mating with my sister. I know, I know, a creature of my intellect should figure something out way sooner, but I have to say that my blood sugar was running quite low. My blood souls, actually... you seem you are in a real hurry.”

“Tilgun… I…” John gasped for air, “really strong person… chasing me…!”

“Is that so?” the Maw of Souls asked as Sigmund came out of the labyrinth of buildings himself, with a giant shockwave that ripped apart the last few buildings and sent rubble flying everywhere. Tilgun caught a particular large piece of concrete heading for his head but ignored the rest. John just got lucky enough that only small pebbles rained down on him. “Mhm, I can see that.”

“Wow, there is a dragon here and Thorne didn’t tell me about it?” Sigmund asked, just walking at a normal speed now, sword resting on his shoulder. “You going to help the poor guy out?”

“I don’t exactly see why. My sister left him behind so he could be tested, so me intervening would go against her wishes,” Tilgun stated and thus shattered the very base of John’s plan. “Also that I am a higher dragon, I demand the respect in that regard.”

“Are you now? I haven’t slain one of your kind yet,” Sigmund stated and raised his blade to the sky. “Let me show you all the respect I have!” His closed eye suddenly opened, creating a wave of multi-coloured light.

‘Oh, goodie, yet more powers he has…’ John caught himself complaining about something that he really had no right to complain about.

Elemental energies started to gather, caught in a insane vortex of colours. Earthy brown, whimsical green, fiery red, clear blue and deep purple – only the gold of a light elemental was missing. It was all heading for the raised hand and from there was absorbed by the sword. It was a ludicrous amount of power, elementals concentrated into a single space in desire to burst out. Sigmund opened his mouth to start to say something, start a chant perhaps, when something slammed into the ground right next to him for a change.

“Sammy?” he asked in a worried tone, the attack dissipating.

“I am fine… just forgot how great she is at brute-forcing her way through situations like that,” Seminaris answered in obvious reference to the full plate wearing Metra approaching from above.

How or why she was even attacking in such an obvious way, John had no idea about. The whole fight between the two portal users had gone completely over his head. A quick look at Metra revealed that she was now out of mana though.

Which was why she was without recourse against the portal Seminaris now opened in her path, causing her to drop into the water next to the pier. “I wanted to send her all the way out to the edge of the barrier… she has given me more trouble than I thought,” the First of Patience grumbled. “Typical of that aggressive… I shan’t curse when unnecessary.”

“Oh, Seminaris, how nice to see you,” Tilgun seemed to immediately recognize the Metracana. If this was either because Seminaris had something closely resembling a previous appearance or because of her attitude, John didn’t know. “Recent times are just full of surprises.”

“You know him?” Sigmund asked.

“Yes, and I am not particularly fond of him; you can kill him if you want to,” Seminaris dismissively stated.

“How heartless, am I no-“

“Terrible mother chaos…” everyone fell silent at the wrathful chant. John recognized this, not by the language, Metra was speaking some ancient language (probably some old Semitic one, given her origin), but by the fact that he understood the words anyway, for they were not words but power given sound.

“Can you not use that here?!” Tilgun screamed out in panic, slithering away from Metra, standing on the water. She normally wasn’t able to do that, so the spell must have already started to go into effect.

“Fallen, broken, gone you are, but I still carry all your wrath,”

“Sig, we are going, now!” Seminaris declared, sharing her terrorized expression with the higher dragon. “It seems I have pushed Metra too far.”

“What? This looks like it’s about to be fun!” the black swordsman gripped his weapon tighter.

“Trust me, you are not yet ready for that challenge!” Seminaris told him. The look on her contractors face clearly showed his unwillingness to go. “Sigmund, when was my council ever misplaced?”

“To your nature I deliver,”

“Fine, teleport us away…” Sigmund put his sword away, just as his stingray flew down to become his summoner’s cape again. By the time Seminaris erected her teleportation circle, the air had started to grow dark. The barrier began to crack all over, unable to contain what otherworldly power Metra was now exuding. A moment later, Seminaris and Sigmund were gone.

“All of these sinners,”

Metra didn’t seem to notice, so John took it to his own to move. Even if his legs buckled right now, whatever had Tilgun and Seminaris this frightened was having an effect on John as well. “Metra, they fled! Stop!”

“And… Is that so?” Metra stopped as she heard. “Fucking typical, always running away that little bitch… one of you will have to carry me.” With that she, rather suddenly, lost her ability to stand on the water and plunged right in.

Not the way John had thought this fight would end, but it worked.