See a Spider
They hit the ground… and went straight through it. Instantly, their downward momentum was slowed to a crawl, as if they had landed in a deep body of water. Fate opened his eyes, finding rock surrounding him from all sides, like a stony cage.
He couldn't see anything except stone, but he could feel the tight grips of Cait and Garrett, and he knew they were safe at once. His plan had worked.
The good news was that, since they were underground, Ythmun's Divine couldn't touch them through the stone. That made it easy for Fait to lift himself and the others with his Divine Reach, hovering the three of them in the air as he turned them tangible once more.
He dropped them lightly to the ground, landing on his feet and releasing his grip on Cait and Garrett. Cait gave him a nod of appreciation, and Garrett was too shell-shocked to speak, working his mouth up and down as he gazed fearfully into the sky.
When he managed to regain his calm, he said "I've been through hundreds of wars. I've seen starving men eat their own children, rabid monsters tear entire cities apart, leaving nothing but guts and smears of blood, and that was still the most terrifying thing I've ever experienced."
"Fear is relative," Fate told him. "I've known people that could cut open a baby in front of the parents with not even a twinge of guilt, but squeal like a pig when they see a damn spider."
"Either way, I'm not doing that again," Garrett said adamantly. "I've heard about these things called 'heart attacks' from the mortals, and I'm positive I just had one."
"You may not get a chance to," Cait interrupted, pointing at the rubble of the palace. "Ythmun is on his way."
They followed Cait's finger to see seven black boulders flying their way, one of which carried Ythmun. The man was overwhelmed by fury, his face red and veins protruding from his arms as he clenched his fists. He threw one of the boulders their way when he was in range.
As it whooshed through the air, the trio reached out with their Divine Reach, Cait's Manifest Power amplifying the strength of their TK to double the base. Unfortunately, that still put them about twenty thousand pounds short, an amount that not even Fate's Divine Energy-eating aura could breach.
Reacting with the speed of trained professionals, they all jumped out of the way as soon as their first tactic failed. The boulder flew between them and continued on, smashing into one of the village's houses behind them. A scream pierced the air; someone had been in the house.
They proceeded to dodge the other five boulders Ythmun sent their way, using their Divine Reach to give gentle nudges to prevent them from smashing into more houses. It was all they could accomplish under Ythmun's oppressive might.
As Fate dodged the last one, Ythmun having aimed it at him, his spine tingled and he looked back. He grunted as he dropped to his stomach, one of the previous boulders sailing over him.
He jumped to his feet in time to dodge it on its way back, whereupon it crushed a villager into paste. 'We can't just sit here on the defensive the whole time if we gonna this guy. Maybe Garrett can catch him in a time loop.'
He caught Garrett's gaze as the latter finished avoiding another rock. Fate gestured to Ythmun with his eyes, and the older man immediately understood, breaking into a sprint toward the man on the floating boulder.
"Cover me!" he yelled, Cait obliging by steering a boulder away from him with her desire domain.
It missed him by a hairsbreadth, heading toward Fate instead. Fate used his Manifest Power to shift through it, coating himself in his Divine Reach to eat away at the Divine Energy from Ythmun, which would have otherwise affected him regardless.
'Why have I been dodging if I can do that?' Fate admonished himself. 'Instincts, probably? I've only had this intangibility for like, a year if I don't count the thirty I spent in the Dilation Chamber, which I don't because I never used—WOAH!" He jumped to the side as another rock sailed past him.
'Yep, instincts. Gonna have to train for this later.'
He ran after Garrett, Cait following, and all three charged toward Ythmun. Ythmun sneered, the redness of his face alleviating and the veins receding as he relaxed, raising his hands so the palms pointed toward the approaching group.
"Fools," he said haughtily. "You've played right into my hand."
A powerful sucking force latched onto the three, pulling at what, Fate didn't know, but he could feel the significance and vitalness of it. Ythmun was tugging at something integral to Fate's life.
He blocked the flow of Ythmun's Divine Energy with his own, eroding the connection until there was nothing left. He could feel that he had been hurt somehow, and hurt grievously. He felt pale and weak, but the cannibalized Divine Energy Ythmun had so graciously given him healed him back to almost peak health soon after.
Cait had likewise circumvented the attack, changing the desires of the Divine Energy itself and making it docile. Now it didn't want to hurt her, only to float around and disseminate into the air. A small amount made its way into her, but after a short struggle, she managed to remove it.
Garrett, however, lacked any way to protect himself. He tried using his Manifest Power to rewind time on himself, but the higher-quality energy Ythmun had access to was relentless, latching onto the elderly man every time he reappeared. Ythmun's powers were strange, doing damage to Garrett that couldn't be fixed with a simple reset of his body's state.
The damage was more spiritual in nature, something that Garrett's power evidently could not fix. As Fate watched, he grew thinner and thinner, until his bones were visible through his skin and his eyes were dust. Garrett collapsed, his corpse exploding into a cloud of dust.