218 Fear the Eclipse
218 Fear the Eclipse
I landed.
My boots touched the marble floor and in the same instant, I unfurled my Intangibility to its fullest extent, wrapping it around the space like a second skin. The air thickened, reality itself bending away from me.
Seven Monarchs surrounded me, each a monster in their own right, and each a dynasty of psychic supremacy condensed into flesh and will.
And yet, I wasn’t intimidated.
Through my Empathy, I felt their fear clearly, blooming and compounding, feeding on itself with every passing second. Worry layered over panic. Confidence rotting from the inside out.
The palace shook.
“What are you doing?!” Envy screamed, blue eyes blazing as she poured more power into her psychic output, slamming against my defenses again and again. It was pointless, like waves breaking against a cliff.
“Run!” Lust shouted. “Don’t touch the ground!”
He vaulted onto the round table as the marble beneath us began to sink.
Wrath was the first to feel it. One of his legs submerged into the floor as if the stone had turned to mud, then the rest of him followed, muscles straining as he tried to resist the pull.
Sloth was already airborne, crackling with electricity, his body stabilized by a delicate balance of electrokinesis and telekinesis. Pride rose next, telekinetic force lifting himself as he grabbed Wrath, Lust, and Greed, hauling them upward with a snarl of effort.
Above us, Gluttony clung to the ceiling, gravity reversed around his bulk, one massive arm anchoring Envy as debris rained upward.
“I knew it!” Greed cried, her voice sharp with realization as the ceiling began to descend toward the rising floor. “He’s sinking the palace! Wrath, make a path!”
The structure groaned, then screamed.
I reached outward with intent, tapping into their batteries. The maids, the guards, the staff, the hundreds of enslaved minds wired into Monarchy’s infrastructure. Their borrowed will poured into me, amplifying my mental output.
The palace didn’t just sink.
It plunged!
Wrath roared and was hurled upward, his strength magnified through telekinetic and telepathic reinforcement. His skin flushed red as he smashed into the ceiling, stone exploding outward as the Seven burst through the roof in a shower of rubble.
Below them, the palace vanished.
When the dust settled, there was nothing left but flattened ground and fractured foundations. It was reduced to an open scar in the earth.
The Seven Monarchs hovered above it, suspended by Pride’s telekinesis.
All except Sloth.
He appeared beside me in a crack of displaced air and unleashed a point-blank electrokinetic blast.
I met it head-on.
My own Electrokinesis flared, diverting the attack in a violent arc that scorched the ground behind me. The clash rattled my nerves.
“You shouldn’t be able to use intangibility anymore,” Sloth said, breathless but triumphant.
He was right.
The strain hit me all at once with power fatigue snapping shut like a vice. My Intangibility faltered and collapsed inward. I solidified the ground beneath my feet just in time to stay upright.
And then the batteries died.
One by one, the psychic signatures winked out. The maids, guards, and attendants were gone. Their lives burned out to fuel Monarchy’s desperation. The ambient psychic pressure weakened instantly, their intrusion crumbling without its scaffolding.
Wrath slammed down beside me.
He roared again, psychic power folding inward, converting into raw physicality. His body swelled monstrously three times taller and twice as wide, with muscle stacking on muscle until he resembled a living battering ram.
I moved.
His fist crashed down where I’d been a heartbeat earlier. I leapt, light and precise, and invoked Chronokinesis.
Wrath froze mid-motion.
I landed on his forearm, boots skidding against skin like iron, sprinted up the length of his frozen limb, and drove a tarot card crackling with Electrokinesis straight into his eye.
The card buried itself with a thunderous discharge.
For a split second, everything aligned exactly as I intended. I twisted my wrist, already committing to the follow-through, planning to rake the card sideways and take both of Wrath’s eyes in one clean motion.
However, Pride yanked Wrath back with brutal precision.
The timing was too perfect.
The card tore through flesh and light alike, blinding only one eye as Wrath howled, clutching his face while Pride dragged him out of reach. I clicked my tongue in irritation.
Greed landed beside me before I could reposition.
A chain unfurled from her palm. It was bizarre, geometric, and etched with psychic formulae. It snapped around my forearm. The links burned cold as they embedded themselves into my flesh, biting deeper with every second and suppressing my powers with surprising effectiveness.
Of course, I managed to distract her by sacrificing my Biokinesis.
“Interesting power, but I guess it’s time to take this more seriously…”
I crushed the telepathic lattice they were using.
With a sharp exertion of will, I severed the psychic links telepathically binding them together. Their shared battlefield awareness collapsed into noise and overlapping panic. They staggered midair, shouting over one another as their cohesion shattered.
Then gravity slammed into me.
Gluttony’s field hit like a mountain dropped on my spine. My knees buckled and cracked against the stone as the weight multiplied again and again, pinning me in place.
“I’ve finished the calculation,” Greed said tightly, blood already trickling from one nostril. “He needs thirty seconds. That’s how long before his intangibility comes back.”
Thirty seconds.
I could feel it too, my power cycling, and crawling its way back into place like a resetting circuit.
Their fear spiked.
They moved all at once.
Lust landed on my back, his limbs locking around me as Gluttony released the gravity field just long enough for him to act. The moment the weight lifted, Gluttony’s hand clamped onto my shoulder, increasing my mass again just enough to keep me grounded, not enough to crush Lust in the process.
Lust pressed his palm against the back of my head.
“I’ll remake you,” he whispered, ecstasy bleeding into his voice. “Into Monarchy’s greatest weapon.”
“Get away from him!” Envy screamed.
“Support me!” Lust snapped back. “Help me take him over!”
Power flooded into him.
I felt raw psychic force pouring from the others, converging into Lust as he forced his way into my mind. His presence clawed at my thoughts, invasive and suffocating, trying to overwrite me with a copy of himself.
“I learned this from the Witch,” he crowed. “A perfected imprint. I’ll strip you of your power and become a king!”
By Witch, he probably meant Missive’s mother. Tarot cards bloomed across his skin, phasing halfway into existence as I tried to deter him. I found myself unable to exert more psychic force as the chain in my arm continued to dig on my flesh.
Lust laughed through the pain of the cards sticking out from his body.
Sloth shouted, “Let him do it! Let him finish! You better not fail, Lust, or we will die!”
“No,” Pride barked, fury cutting through the chaos. “If he takes Eclipse, Monarchy will have to answer to him.”
Gluttony tightened his grip on my shoulder, forcing me down harder.
I exhaled slowly.
“You only have twenty five seconds left,” I said softly. “Make it count.”
Greed cried out as blood poured freely from her nose. “What is taking you so long?!”
“I can’t break through!” Lust snarled. “This bastard’s trained in the art of mental defense… his defenses are layered, recursive—!”
Envy turned on Pride. “End this! Kill him now!”
“I’m suppressing everything I can,” Greed said, voice shaking. “But he has other powers… I can’t hold them all!”
Pride raised his hand, telekinesis condensing around his fist.
“I’ll crush his head,” he growled.
He clenched.
And then he choked.
Blood sprayed from Pride’s mouth as his telekinesis collapsed. He dropped from the air like a puppet with cut strings. Envy caught him just in time, guiding them both to the ground with a panicked gasp. “Pride! What… what did you do?!”
Sloth hovered back, eyes wide. “What’s happening?”
I didn’t answer.
The tarot card I had planted earlier, phased into Pride’s clothes, hidden between layers of fabric and force, responded to my call. It punctured inward, clean and final, straight through his heart.
I willed it free.
The card burst from Pride’s chest in a spray of blood and light, streaking toward Envy… and it passed straight through her.
Ah.
Interesting.
I felt it then, unmistakably.
That ‘intangibility’ wasn’t exactly mine, but I could tell it was my power she used.
“Out of the way,” Wrath growled as he lumbered toward us, his massive frame blotting out what little light remained. “I’ll finish him myself.”
“Hurry!” Greed cried, her voice cracking. “I can’t hold him back anymore!”
“Fuck,” Lust spat.
Wrath didn’t wait.
He swung.
I didn’t dodge. I didn’t block.
His fist phased straight through me and kept going downward, sinking into the stone beneath my feet as if reality itself had given up on stopping him.
Greed screamed. “That’s impossible! There should be ten seconds left!”
I smiled behind the porcelain mask.
“Of course I lied,” I said calmly.
It had never been that simple.
While she’d been boasting about calculations, I had been listening and feeling around her power. Empathy and telepathy mapped the structure of her chain in exquisite detail. It wasn’t just restraint. It was an advanced precog–empathy–telepathy construct, feeding her real-time insight into the state of my powers.
So I let her see fatigue.
I let her believe intangibility was still down.
And while she watched, I used Chronokinesis to accelerate recovery. I forced the cooldown forward, cheating the clock she trusted so dearly.
Wrath continued to phase.
His arm vanished up to the shoulder, then his torso followed, gravity claiming him as he sank helplessly into the ground.
“Two down,” I murmured.
“Fuck!” Lust screamed as he lost his grip, and then he phased too, slipping through me and plunging beneath the surface like a stone through water.
“Three down.”
Gluttony leapt back just in time, narrowly avoiding my reaching hand.
Greed staggered, eyes wide and bloodshot. “I’ll take it,” she snarled. “I’ll take your power!”
She pulled.
Intangibility tore free from me and flooded into her and I let it happen for half a second. The power was far too much. Her body rebelled immediately, blood streaming from her eyes, nose, and ears as her nervous system overloaded.
It was a mistake for her to think she could handle my power.
I acted before she could even scream.
Possession snapped into place through the chain, my consciousness slamming into her body and shoving hers aside. Her mind shrieked inside my skull, clawing, begging me to give it back. I ignored her and glanced down at the chain still wrapped around my arm.
“It’s an incredible power, but I’m not interested,” I said, and snapped her neck with her own hands.
Her body crumpled to the ground as I stepped free, alone once more.
“Four down.”
Envy turned desperately to Sloth. “Can we still escape?!”
Sloth’s voice was cold. “Every man for themselves.”
“I’m a woman!” Envy shouted.
No one cared.
Gluttony fled left, gravity folding around him as he launched himself away at impossible speed. Sloth vanished in a flash of teleportation and crackling electricity.
Envy chose the ground as she phased downward, trying to outrun me through stone and earth. I tracked her effortlessly, psychic senses locking onto her mind like a beacon. Her power unraveled itself before me. It was copy-based. I reached out and interfered with her intangibility.
A copied version of my power answered my call.
Deep underground, Envy’s body solidified at the wrong moment.
Her mind winked out as rock crushed flesh from all sides.
Shortly after, Gluttony reappeared a moment later, skidding to a halt in confusion. “H-How? What’s happening?”
I raised a hand and froze him mid-step with Chronokinesis, locking him in place like an insect in amber. “Let me enlighten you then. My psychic abilities are superior to yours.”
Among the Seven Monarchs, Gluttony had always been the weakest where it mattered.
Raw power, yes. Mass, gravity, and force… It was impressive on paper. But when it came to mind battles, to perception, orientation, and resistance to subtle intrusion, he was hopelessly outclassed.
That weakness was why I was standing behind him.
He was still frozen in Chronokinesis, eyes wide, body locked mid-motion, his thoughts sluggish and disoriented. I nudged his sense of direction with a whisper of telepathy just enough to make him believe I was still in front of him.
I tapped his shoulder.
He never saw the ground coming.
I phased him downward, severed his connection to gravity, and let the planet do the rest. His body vanished into the stone, and a moment later, his mind winked out like a snuffed candle.
Dead.
That was the sixth down for the count.
Finally, Monarchy’s soldiers and capes arrived, flooding into the ruined grounds of what had once been their palace. Sirens screamed in the distance. Boots pounded against broken stone. Psychic signatures flared in panic and disbelief.
I checked the time.
Roughly two minutes.
That was all it took to dismantle Monarchy’s leadership, an organization that had ruled a huge part of the underworld for centuries through bloodlines, supremacy, and fear.
Sadly, Sloth had escaped.
I clicked my tongue softly behind the mask. I’d put a bounty on his head once I was done here. Still, it wasn’t entirely a loss. Letting him live meant letting the story live. Terror spread faster when it had a mouth to speak through.
Gunfire erupted.
Bullets screamed through the air, passing harmlessly through my body as if I were a mirage. Capes joined in, unleashing firestorms, ice lances, kinetic blasts, and warped gravity.
All of it phased through me.
I tilted my head, mildly disappointed.
“Hm,” I muttered. “I suppose I should make up for letting Sloth go.”
I raised my hand.
The tarot cards slid free from my suit, one by one, floating into the air around me like a halo of judgment. Telekinesis gripped them, sharpened them, and guided them.
“I’ll make this simple,” I announced, my voice carrying effortlessly across the battlefield. “You’re free to run if you want to live. Do as Sloth did.”
Some hesitated.
Others charged.
The cards moved.
They cut through ranks with surgical indifference with throats opened, spines severed, and hearts punctured with terrifying precision. Soldiers fell before they could scream. Capes tried to shield themselves, tried to counter, tried to flee too late.
I walked forward as bodies dropped around me.
“Flee,” I said again, my tone almost conversational. “Live. Spread the word.”
Those who listened ran.
Those who didn’t died.
“The Monarchy is finished,” I declared, standing amid the carnage as the last resistance broke.
“And Eclipse has triumphed.”
Fear did the rest.