Read The Bridge

He took a step forward and she levitated herself closer. They repeated the action again, and again, and again. At two meters apart, their respective energy glows died away entirely. At one meter apart and at each other’s eye level, they stopped and froze in place. Aria started to reach towards Monster X’s face, causing him to narrow his eyes a bit and take a step back with a clenched fist.

There was a glint in the crater behind Aria when Bagan’s energy transfer had gone through. Monster X instantly tensed up and he lurched forward.

“ARIA LOOK OUT!”

She tried to see what he was reacting to as he tried to shove her out of the way, but both were too slow. Within a fraction of a second a mass of tendrils burst out of the ground and ensnared Aria around her torso and wings. Enjin’s glowing core had revived and was reeling in the siren. Fiery, magma hued tentacles wrapped around her and siphoned away more and more of her energy, tearing it off her body and carrying it to the dilating core. Having enough slack and fighting every step of the way, Aria roared whilst whipping around and expelling bursts of gravitons and plasma. She fired at the tendrils and core, but just as the core survived her original onslaught, it’s tendrils were enduring the energy blasts. Monster X caught back up to them quickly, grabbing Aria around her midsection and yanking in the opposite direction. His efforts however, born of both brute strength and his own power, failed to do much more than slow down the rate the siren was being pulled in. Aria was making no small effort to free herself either, rapidly flapping her unbound wing whilst swiping at the growing number of tendrils that were attempting to wrap around her throat and limbs. While she was able to cut a few with a combination of force and her newfound claws, there were simply too many.

They were only about three meters from the epicenter now, Enjin’s revived core now easily the size of a large car. Eviscerating itself down the middle from top to bottom, the tendrils began to uproot themselves from the ground and pull Aria towards the innards. Horrific realization washed over the siren, despite her raging survival instincts going ballistic. She grabbed onto her siren heart and tried to turn herself around some.

“X!”

She shouted, the kaiju in question having stubbornly refused to let go despite the futility. By now his feet had dug trenches into the snow and gravel, flashes of golden light shooting past Aria as Monster X fired around Aria to hit Enjin with several explosive barrages of graviton flares. Aria grabbed him by his jaw before he could fire again, using all her strength to twist herself around to partially face him. Despite all the strain and stress, the transformed siren’s face was nearly flat and unreadable. It was her eyes that bore the most expression, and that stopped Monster X in his tracks. Wincing from the effort, she slipped her necklace off herself and put it on the kaiju’s neck. Still holding onto his head as she hovered close, Aria muttered only two words.

“Don’t lose.”

She spoke with a quiet tone, before grunting through her teeth and throwing the kaiju off her. With no one holding her back and her own efforts stopped, Aria was quickly drawn into Enjin’s core. The two partially opened halves snapped shut after she and the tendrils were drawn in. The glowing oval’s brightness rapidly grew and it levitated further and further off the ground. A few moments of sparking was the only warning sign before a massive blast wave of energy shot out of Enjin. Trees all around were bowled over or snapped at the trunk, with tons of gravel, dirt, and snow being thrown in all directions away from the epicenter. Lacking a firm footing, Monster X was hurled backwards into the lake behind him hard enough break through the thin ice. Earthen mana was torn free from the ground and converted into dozens of tons of dark magic, solid shadow forming up around the core that was compounding by the moment…