With a wide smile, Magnus continued, “You might think you can avoid submitting to , but are you willing to allow your friends and family to die for your freedom? If I were to strike the first Rocket with my power, you’d cease to exist.”
Then he began to laugh. “So what is it hero? Give the ability to trust you or risk your very existence? Not to ntion making kill your grandfather.”
He smiled again. “Or you grandmother. It truly doesn’t matter which. What’s important is the end result.”
He frowned, glancing outward.
He couldn’t see her. Neither could I, but knowing her reputation, she’d already have stabbed or shot him if she could get through the force field.
Waving his arm as a magician might when performing a trick, he opened portals to a few of the worlds contained within this place. Alien forms stepped out, so of which I rembered from my own trip to the stars, many of which I’d never seen before.
A cascade of fur, feathers, chitinous shells, and more that I didn’t have ti to examine appeared. Along with them were the grey, five limbed forms of the Abominators.
“You can surrender yourself to or they can all die.”
Magnus waved his fingers and the creatures stepped forward. “You see, I have control. You don’t stand a chance and neither do your friends. I know that they’ve arrived.”
In that mont, I noticed that the telepathic connection to Daniel had reestablished itself. He thought, Don’t. We’ll be fine, to .
I felt the underlying nervousness that went along with it, but that may have been mine.
His grandfather’s voice said, You know what you need to do.
I did. I should be taking a page out of my grandmother’s book. I fired off a burst of killbots.
They shot across the gap between Magnus and I. They didn’t hit him. A force field like the one around the throne appeared between us and the bots shattered against it.
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Even as they exploded, I was already onto plan b, better known as the real plan. Using the sword that I’d ford and could now keep in existence with a minimum of effort, I stabbed the throne.
I’d already noticed that he hadn’t put any effort into shielding it physically or any other way despite its importance as a tool for controlling the device. To be fair, it was a giant chunk of solid stuff he’d created with the power of the Galaxy Core Device.
Still, that ant stabbing it stood a good chance of being disruptive.
While I’ve dropped lithium into water (not recomnded, it can explode), I’ve never wanted to be the piece of lithium or even nearby when it blew up. This was closer than I’d want to be to achieving either non-goal.
Magnus yelped, holding his head in his hands, and even better, the portals closed. The room around us was far from empty. Creatures were jumping, running, crawling, and flying across the room and both versions of the League were fighting them.
Lightning, both red and yellowish-white flashed, the guns of both Captains Commando fired into the crowds, streaks of purple smashed more creatures by the second and more beings fell to less obvious causes, so of them invisible.
The throne itself shook.
Magnus had to keep it in existence or he’d lose control of everything he’d connected to it and have to create another. The problem was that he also had to keep himself protected, which ant keeping up the force field.
Even better, the way he’d done it kept Ray and Colette on the other side with him. That would be useful even if Ray had no plan to stab Magnus at all.
For Magnus, though, it had to be a conundrum even if it was one that he’d figure out soon enough.
Despite that, I had ti to do what I wanted, and right then, I wanted to cause enough damage that Magnus had problems, but felt that repairing the throne was possible while not doing so much that he gave up and recreated it. That would give a second to figure out what I needed to do next.
Pulling out my sword, I stepped back and stabbed straight into the middle, making a point to wiggle the blade around.
Magnus grimaced and shouted at Ray and Colette, but I couldn’t hear the words through the shield.
Through Artificer senses, I could see the energies the throne organized growing less so. For lack of a better way to say it, there were “hot spots” in the throne where energy pooled.
Even though part of wanted to know what would happen if I stabbed one of those spots, I didn’t and maybe I should have. Magnus had figured out what to do about .
He’d opened up the force field behind and a group of Abominators, five of them stepped inside.
They looked like every picture I’d ever seen in the papers—five limbed, constantly shapeshifting, loosely humanoid, but without eyes or faces on their heads until they needed them.
When they stepped inside, their heads grew mouths with a host of sharp teeth while their limbs grew claws. As they ran towards , they shouted gibberish.
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