Dark Skies for Darkseid

[Tearen Wover]

The god-mind was growing impatient with the situation. It seemed that trying to win this battle through attrition was far from efficient. All the effort they had expended thus far was simply wasted on the sheer numbers of enemies that they had to fight their way through, and there was no end in sight for the quartet of heroes. Nealaphh looked again to the gap in the crevasse where the Soot Stalkers were marching through. That had to be their only salvation from the current endless tide. The gap was distant, though, and about seventy Soot Stalkers stood between the shadow and its goal. With Harry Dresden preoccupied with the defense of his mind, and the other two anomalies losing their stamina, the situation appeared to be at a point of stagnation. The god-mind, however, was more than adept at creative problem solving, and as such, found a way to communicate with the only other person present who could possibly cause a volcanic rockslide. Reaching out to Vibe's mind, Nealaphh spoke to the sidekick with soft mental words as the man took his rest on the out cropping. The dark haired man glanced at the shadow before calling out to the wizard.

"Yo! Wizard dude! This guy Nealaphh wants you to know that if you can somehow focus explosive power on the top right corner of that gap in the rocks, and I sent a shockwave out there, he can amplify it by a magnitude large enough to plug up that hole." Vibe shouted, pointing to the same place that Nealaphh had gestured to a few minutes ago. In the meantime, Nealaphh contented itself with picking up the shells of defeated Soot Stalkers and flinging them through the crowding masses, as it seemed to be the most effective method of dispatching the terrapins. Nealaphh's head still ached, and when it touched the left side of its head where the hammer had struck, it could feel a large webbing of cracks and fissures spidering their way through its stoney skin and body. Still, there was a job to be done, and Nealaphh had to think of a way that it could keep the four of them out of harms way while they focused their efforts on collapsing the rock face.

Time manipulation was Nealaphh's latest trick that it had been able to regain, and as such, using the technique in any fashion was taxing on the god-mind. Optimistically, however, if its plan worked, there would be sufficient time to recover any expended energy from the abundant heat that coursed all through the Ashen Steppes. Nealaphh focused its mind on The Flash, and did its best to stretch the fabric of time outwards from the Crimson Kinetic. As it did so, Barry would find himself moving at relativistic speeds almost three times as fast as he could usually go. The time dilation would last for only a few moments, however, so the other three would have to act quickly. As The Flash circled their small group as a red blur, bashing Soot Stalkers faster than the eye could follow, the god-mind turned its attention to the rocky outcrop. Vibe perked up again as more instructions were relayed to him.

"Alright, this is where we have to make it happen! On three, toss the most badass power you got at that spot right there." Vibe shouted over the loud whirring sound that now accompanied the Flash wherever he went. Whether or not Dresden would be able to assist in this task was entirely his prerogative, but Nealaphh was counting on his power to carry out this plan.

"One...two..." Vibe said, his hands beginning to vibrate with a build up of pressure...

"THREE!" he shouted, unleashing a screaming blast of pressure waves towards the rock face. Nealaphh whipped around and began to contract the space around the point of impact, and as Vibe's energy reached its target, it got compressed into a nearly microscopic point of energy by being sucked in to the spatial distortion. Nealaphh did its best to hold the spatial tension, but it could not suspend the detonation indefinitely...