Waking an indeterminate amount of time later, she found Ahron and Danielle pooled on either side of her. As she awoke they both lifted back up into their human forms, and sat down cross-legged next to her. Finally she spoke.

“How are you feeling Ahron? I’m sorry for using you as a shield, I just didn’t know what to do.”

He grimaced back at her. “I’m not going to say it was pleasant, but no harm done.”

Danielle interjected “I’m just glad I finally got a piece of him. I’ll have to go sharper next time so I can get through those dense bones of his.” She laughed in a slightly deranged fashion, and Danica smiled gratefully at her.

Danica leaned back against the wall of the library, and as she did, her friends cuddled up to her and pooled against her until she looked as though she bore a mantle of smoke. She patted them gratefully as they embraced her, and she tried to relax her tempestuous emotions. Her heart felt like an overused muscle, sore in all the wrong places, and she wished she could curl up with her companions forever. Still, there were things she needed to do if she wanted to get her life back, and she had to get moving.

Pushing herself up to a standing position, her shades un-pooled, and stood with her as she straightened herself out.

“I’m going to visit Zed, are you guys ok with joining me?”

“I’ll follow you anywhere love.” Danielle said with a wink.

Ahron sighed. “I suppose I should, but I don’t like being around him. He drains all my energy.”

Ahron shivered, but still wound around her wrist, forming a bracelet opposite to Danielle’s.

Danica slipped into a wall, and found Zed peering into the normal world from his own perch in the shadow passages. As she stepped into his space he stared at her startled.

“How is this possible? You shouldn’t be able to reach this place.”

“I read your books. I spent my time in your world learning magic.”

“But those books are blank. Only I should be able to read them”

She stared at him confused. “How can you say that? Those books are full of knowledge. I could read them just fine.”

He swore and shook his head. “I was chosen to look after the realm when it’s true ruler left on sabbatical millenia ago. He bestowed some of his power on me so I might watch over it, and disappeared. I have never seen him again, but I am the only one who should have access to those books.”

She shrugged. “Well anyway, I wanted to let you know you were right. Jon has gone mad. He tried to use a device to remove all my memories of what he did. He even attacked me!”

Zed was visibly troubled by this. “How did you get away?”

“I fought him off.”

Zed scoffed. “You could not fight off a titan like him. Even I could not.”

Irritated by his dismissive tone, Danica shifted Ahron into a saber, and pressed it against zed’s chest. The tip smoked slightly as if burning zed, and she noticed that the details of the saber were different than Danielle’s saber form. Personal flavor, she guessed.

Zed’s eyes were wide, as Danica’s gaze bore into him. She felt simultaneously calm and fierce, like a goddess smiting those who vexed her, and she smiled grimly at him.

“I’m not in a good mood right now, so tell me your plan to stop Jon.”

Zed blinked at her, glanced down at the sword, then collected himself.

“I was actually about to contact my source if you would care to join me?”

She nodded, and returned Ahron to his place as a bracelet. As she watched, he stepped out, walking through the window he had been observing. She followed him, stepping out into an office which housed a giant of a man.

“Brother, I have come to check on our project.”

Heff jumped, banging his knee on the edge of his desk, which looked comically small in comparison to him. He swore at Zed, while rubbing his sore knee.

“Can’t you at least come out from the front of the room?”

Zed’s eyes glinted merrily as he said “Sorry Heff, all the shadows are on this side of the room. None of those” he pointed at the other side of the room “are big enough to pass through.”

Heff grumbled as he pulled a bottle of mystery liquid out of his desk drawer.

“I take it that’s her?”

Zed nodded as Heff handed the bottle over. Heff eyed Danica up and down before saying, “a young thing like you shouldn’t be treated the way he treated you. For what it’s worth I hope you get the bastard.”

Danica nodded, and looked away to cover the sudden surge of tears threatening to force their way past her defenses.

Meanwhile, Heff had turned to Zed.

“You can aerosolize it, or try to get him to drink it, though I wouldn’t want to be the fool who tried to force anything down his throat. If his skin wasn’t tough as iron I would say you could inject it too, but not sure how you’d manage that. A little bit will go a long way, so don’t worry too much about not getting the whole thing in. You can even dilute it with water and be just fine. Also it’s harmless for anyone else, so don’t worry about that.”

Zed nodded, as he slipped the bottle into his coat.

“And watch after the little miss here, she doesn’t deserve any of this.”

Zed nodded again, before beckoning Danica into the shadows. As they both vanished into the pathways, Heff shook his head.

“Poor thing.”

With that he turned back to his work.

……………………………………………….

Danica and Zed peered into Jon’s house. Where normally he kept it in a relatively orderly state, it looked as though it had been ransacked. They stepped out, each carrying a spray bottle filled with anti-Jon as Danica had decided to call it. Unfortunately, he didn’t seem to be home, and the state of the living room did not bode well for what was to come. They found a badly burned letter sitting on his living room table that read,

Dear Jon,

I would like to invite you to visit me for a final showdown between the two of us. I have taken the liberty of invading your territory in order to make sure you have the proper incentive when you arrive. Though after the show you gave at our last rendezvous I imagine it was not necessary. Please come to 131 wilkshire street, and meet your fate.

-The Prophet

They looked at each other, and nodded, shifting into the shadows, and reemerging in front of the address that had been given. The location was deep in the woods, and the house had burning wounds in multiple locations along it’s structure. They heard the sound of fighting, and ran towards it. In her hands Danica had shifted her shades into a sword and shield as before, while the spray bottle was fastened to one of her belt loops. Despite her experiences she was out of shape, and her lungs began to burn as she sprinted towards the house. She wished she had exercised more when she had the chance.

They crashed into the house, and found the two combatants clashing like mad gods. Jon wore his mantle of energy, rage crackling out as a tangible force with every movement. The prophet, meanwhile seemed gleeful as he absorbed the force of everything Jon brought to bear against him. He had even wounded Jon in several places, and Jon limped slightly when he walked. The two did not notice Zed or Danica as they fought, and even if they had there was little that the two shadow-warriors could do but wait for the battle to be over. Soon the Prophet began leaching energy from Jon, sparks of it flying into him. If Jon noticed he didn’t give any sign, too lost in his fury to care.As the battle wore on, the look on the prophets face became concerned. Finally he screamed.

“Too much! No it’s too much!”

As he did so, he let out a blinding flash, and disappeared, leaving only Jon, standing amid the ruins looking heavily worse for wear. Jon’s mantle flared out, expanding until Zed and Danica leaped back into a shadow to avoid it’s onslaught. Observing from the paths, they watched as his rage left a crater a hundred yards wide where before a house and trees had been. It carried up into the sky as though watching a god smite the ground on rewind. When all was done, they stepped out of the shadows, and danica had to make her shades into boots to keep the stinging heat still lingering in the ground from burning into her flesh. As she did this the burnt corpses of several birds fell from the sky, to land with a dull crash amidst what was now a large glass crater. At the center, Jon stood naked, looking up into the sky as if beseeching the gods. A single tear fell from his eyes, as he turned.

“Danica?” He asked, surprised, before saying “You have to go. He could still be here.”

She shook her head.

“Jon you have to stop. Look around you. The Prophet didn’t leave a massive crater in the ground because his feelings were hurt. You did.”

Jon hung his head, before looking back up and shaking his head.

“No you need me, the world needs me. I need to protect people. They need me to save them from people like him.”

She said quietly, “and when the world is a crater, who will be left to protect?”

He shook his head. “That’s not what I want. That’s not going to happen.”

His answer infuriated her. “You mean like you didn’t rape me? Didn’t impregnate me? Didn’t get angry and blow a hole in the world because someone annoyed you? What’s wrong with you? How can someone as smart as you be so dumb about something that’s right in front of your face?”

His eyes blazed with red energy.

“Who are you to question me? I’ve given everything to this world, and for what? All my power, all my good deeds, and I couldn’t even save my own wife! I will not let you besmirch my sacrifice just because you won’t let me fix what I broke!”

She laughed bitterly. “Oh you didn’t break me. You bent my soul in half, and I came back with magic powers, so you can go fuck yourself acting like I’m some toy you smashed. I’m a fucking person, and you will respect me accordingly.”

His eyes glared bright red as he began pacing forward. His mantle flowed around him, crackling and snapping at the glass, and then it grew, as if alive, until it encased his entire body. He seemed clad in a suit of hellish armor, complete with helmet. Inspired, she grew out her shades to match. With one shade acting the role of armor the other formed into a sword. She wasn’t even particularly sure which was which at this point, drawn into a rage equal to Jon’s own. They stalked towards each other; Danica wielding her sword two-handed, and when they finally clashed sparks flew from his armor. Though her weapon and armor were powerful, her rage great, Danica knew little about fighting, and had little stamina; where Jon seemed as though he could go on forever. Eventually, rather than move her muscles directly, she moved the shadow armor, using her own limbs like puppets on a string. Her breathing evened out then, and she fell into a rhythm of combat.

He shot a beam of energy at her, and as she dodged this, swept her legs from under her. Unfortunately for him, she was no longer relying on physics for her movements. She rotated her armor in the air to lightly land on her feet, and took advantage of the opening his sweep made to stab downwards at his midsection. Her sword sparked against his armor, but she noticed it seemed to dim for a moment as she did. It must require quite a lot of power to maintain, and she was willing to bet even Jon’s power wasn’t infinite. He continued to press her, and for every blow she took, she dealt one of her own. Though his blows were mighty, her armor was magical, and thus not constrained by the laws of physics. Ultimately his science-based powers were ineffective against magical might that transcended the laws of science. Eventually, she landed a blow on his shoulder which pierced his armor, biting deeply into the flesh, and brought out a spray of blood. She heard a sizzling sound, and realized the power of his mantle was cauterizing the wound she had made. Even so, that arm was a bit slower, and as she dodged under a blow, she sliced into the skin between two of his ribs. It wasn’t particularly deep, but it seemed to stagger him slightly, and she took the advantage. She swung her gauntleted fist up into his jaw, and his helmet shattered. He staggered back, dazed, as she swung her shadow-empowered fist directly into his gut, and the entire mantle began to fragment. He fell to his knees, retching, and she brought her foot down into the side of his head, knocking him out cold.

Seeing her victory, she let her shades slide back into bracelets, as she dragged his body into the shadow paths. Zed could only shake his head.

“I can’t believe what I just saw. How did he fall so easily?”

She smiled tiredly as she sat down next to where she had left Jon’s unconscious form.

“The Prophet probably drained him more than I did. Then there was the giant explosion earlier; plus he was wounded. He was probably running on empty by the time I got to him”

Zed gave her an appraising look, before nodding mutely. He knelt, and sprayed Jon with his spray-bottle before saying “I hope this works.”

They watched as Jon spluttered awake. He stared at them defiantly for a moment, then screamed as he seemed to shrivel before their eyes. His muscles deflated like balloons, while patches of hair fell from his head. Before they knew it they were looking at a slightly balding middle-aged man quivering in pain as he vomited into the floor. They picked him up, and dragged him into the passages. He could only shake feebly as his body continued to adjust to it’s new state of being. Once they arrived at their destination they locked him into a specially prepared cage, and walked away. Even his most pitiable groans did not draw their attention as they vanished into the gloom. He curled into a ball in his cell and shivered.