The ground under me turned to liquid.
Wrath wasn't a warrior any more. He was a tectonic event with legs. The magma veins across his colossal body burst open and threw geysers of molten rock into the vacuum, building a thin atmosphere of vaporised stone around him. His aura swelled into a sphere of burning influence that turned the grey plain into a boiling sea of glass. He was charging his core for one last suicidal release, a supernova of miasma and rage.
I had seconds. Maybe less.
I couldn't get close. The heat alone would have stripped the shields off a battleship. The miasmic pressure was a wall that shoved me back and ground against my grey. Any physical attack would only set him off sooner.
'I have to cut him,' I thought, the clarity of it cold and very calm. I'd put my exhaustion in a box and shut the lid. 'Not his body. That's just rock and fire. Cutting the bomb won't stop the blast. I have to cut the reaction.'
'Tell me you have a plan,' Valeria said.
