"How is it not dead?!" Lila panted, throwing her gun aside after realizing she didn't have any magazines left. "Aren't we hitting it?"
"I don't know," Ivy grunted, backing away from the Harrow with an uneasy step.
The pair continued to battle the creature alongside Rena, scoring blow after blow on the Harrow with limited effect. It was only then did the girls realize how durable their opponent truly was. They, on the other hand, were growing weaker by the minute.
There could only be so many spectacular maneuvers and discoveries of great power before the luck began to run out. Sonera would have none of it, however, and dove right back in to fight the Harrow. She seemed unusually eager to use that new power of hers, which flickered back to life whenever she recklessly engaged the enemy.
Her wings, having spread apart and riven into small threads, were wriggling about like tendrils on her back. Such a development caused even Ivy to show concern. She was fine enough with Sonera having blood on her hands, but this was different.
"Any ideas?" Lila squeaked, stumbling backwards just as a Lunae jumped in front of her to block a feirce kick from the Harrow. "Surely Yrix had to have seen these things die before."
As if to undermine her point, the Harrow roared back to life, its deformed face glimmering with a sinister warmth as it began to run its hands along the air. Ivy recognized the attack and was swift enough to shoot her allies a warning with her mind. The message arrived just in time, as the swirling patterns of the Harrow's attack began to surface along the fringes of reality.
"Dodge!" Ivy's voice boomed within her allies' minds. "Anywhere!"
Lila blinked twice, zipping over towards Lunae and Rena to save them from the oncoming vortex of floral patterns. She could practically feel the frigid darkness lap against her skin as she slid under its torrential reach.
She caught them both.
Sonera, on the other hand, absorbed the attack directly, allowing her flesh to imbibe in the sweet nectar of darkness. It was only a theory in her mind that she would be able to use the Harrow's talents against it. Fortunately for the assassin, her instincts were correct.
"Die." She coughed, barely able to keep herself from exploding into a violent blast of resonant energy.
Sonera reached out her hand, and after using her wings to leap into the air, plunged her sword down onto the Harrow. The resulting blast appeared in a wave of rainbow light, more powerful than her last foray by a large margin. Her efforts came at a cost, however, as she felt her mind begin to slip.
"It's still alive!!!" Lila complained, collapsing onto the ground as she released her hold on Rena and Lunae's hands.
The girls barely had any time to react, gasping with audible horror as they watched Sonera's sacrifice fail to finish the deed. Ivy in particular groaned loudly as she picked herself off the ground, having narrowly avoided the attack herself. She knew the fight had to end soon.
"Another combined attack." The heiress thought to herself. "That has to finish this."
Having forced the girls away from its position, the Harrow dropped its fragmented staff and raised both hands in the air, as if making a desperate prayer towards heaven. A beacon of vibrant essence culminated in the space between its palms, taking the shape of a great eye before its visage became too blinding to observe. What happened then was unbearable for even Sonera, causing her and her allies to fall to their knees.
"Aah!" Lila screamed, her mind rattled with the same Psionic shriek that Imura had used, only this time far darker and more irresistible.
Ivy clutched her ears, trying her best to put up the same resistance she had shown her last foe. But she fell short, only managing to crawl over to Lunae in an attempt to offer her some support. As things stood, the situation seemed rather doomed.
Five Psions.
Close.
But not enough.
Out from the darkness, from a rift behind the Harrow, came a blackened fist, clenched firm and filled with vengeful anger. It was Alia who had arrived, using her unusual talents to project another assault upon the Harrow just in time to interrupt its spell. Lila watched as she fell to the ground out of exhaustion, barely managing to rise to her feet as the Harrow spun around to face her.
The ringing in her ears was gone.
Lila readied herself to make a move for the dancer, hoping to retrieve her from the Harrow's clutches so that she could join their side. But before she could take the first step, she felt a heavy weight on her shoulders. There wasn't enough time.
Not for her alone, at least.
"There!" Ivy snapped her fingers.
Sapping a bit of Lila's strength, the heiress replicated her Psionic talent, darting over to Alia before extracting her from where she stood in the blink of an eye. And so it was that the girls stood as a team. United by a common cause against the Harrow.
"Now!" Lila screamed. "The kitchen sink, dammit! Throw it!"
Lunae slammed her shepherd's crook against the floor, summoning a ring of empowering energy around the girls. Ivy followed suit by destroying her own staff, reforging its tiny fragments, and reprogramming its gravitational mace into a railgun for Lila. Now was the time to strike.
The girls gave it everything they had left. Sonera summoned a swarm of radiant blades, just as Alia called forth a swarm of Psionic bats to charge at the Harrow with their simulated bodies. Ivy called forth a formation of angular shapes around her enemy, using them to bounce both her baton and Sonera's knives off their surface to hasten their velocity and guarantee their rebound.
All in all, the six girls had put togethor a complete onslaught of Psionic weaponry. At a certain point, they couldn't even see the Harrow any longer, its body enveloped by the sheer destruction of their efforts. That didn't mean they had any intention of letting up, however.
"Keep going!" Lila coughed, struggling to contain the slow-firing recoil of Ivy's railgun. "Fucking kill it!"
Faced with a glimpse of eternal night, the girls chose in that moment.
To look within.
Nearly an entire minute passed before the group reached their limit, halting their assault out of sheer exhaustion. Not before Ivy and Sonera flew up into the air to hurl a conjoined ball of devastating Psionic energy, however. The ensuing explosion of cyan and orange fire brought a more official end to the girl's endeavor.
"Is...that it?" Ivy panted.
The heiress nearly fainted, her body caught by Lila's gentle embrace.
"I think so..." Lunae nodded, using her senses to probe for the Harrow.
Rena was the first to step foward, pushing through flame and fog to see if the job was done. What she found, placed delicately on the burn mark where the Harrow stood, was a small artifact from her past. She wanted to weep upon first glance, but all she had left to give was a faint smile.
A teddy bear.
A gift to her son.
A memory reclaimed.
"Holy shit." Lila gasped, looking up towards Rena.
What the other girls saw was a completely different story. There stood the Harrow, its body shriveled up and frozen in place as a series of vines protruded from its corpse, burrowing their way into both the ground and the air itself. A meneagerie of flowers bloomed from nearly every inch of the floral tendrils, glimmering in the light in an unusually beautiful display.
"Red, Yellow, Blue, Purple, Orange, Green..." Lunae took note of what she saw.
"The color wheel?" Lila shrugged. "Big whoop."
"My mother would be able to tell us more..."
Sonera shrugged even harder. "It's dead. That's all that matters. Good riddance."
The assassin barely even caught Lunae's mention of a mother.
Rena ignored their voices, kneeling down in front of the teddy bear before placing a finger on its nose. With the Harrow gone, she could think of her son with a sound mind.
"I promise," Rena whispered. "When all this is over. You'll have a mother who loves you. Who wants you?"
Alia smirked rather proudly, taking in the moment to both gawk at Rena and shoot Lila a flirtatious wink. By no means did the dancer miss the moment where the Earthling had saved her. And judging by the way she angled her hips, she wasn't going to let the opportunity go to waste.
It wasn't really up to Alia, however, as the war-torn arena began to fade the moment Rena touched the artifact. If left to their own devices, the girls would be stranded in the Psionic plane. Luckily, Yrix was watching.
"You can take us back now." Lunae pleaded, clasping her arms around Sonera. "We did it."
"So you did." Yrix boomed, her voice echoing across the plane. "So you did."