Will

At Bogleg's feet, a thing of white-hot power rose out of the ground, a formless bulb that swelled and tapered and shifted until it had the shape of an anvil. The blacksmith's hammer blazed to life as it fell like a shooting star. It struck the fiery anvil's surface with the sound of a great bell ringing. A flare of light and heat and life shot out in spidery lines from the anvil's base, spreading out in a ten, twenty, thirty foot diameter around, splitting and spreading and flaming until Will and all the others were enclosed in a webbed cocoon of spun fire.

Brimstone faltered, arms and head dangling. Despite the trancelike state he was in, his uncertainty was obvious. Will and Captain exploited this opening to attack as one, sword and staff splitting air thick with billowing waves of bright yellow light.

Brimstone ducked, weaved, caught Captain's jabbing staff in the crook between thumb and forefinger and swept it aside. He raised his free hand to throw out an explosion, but the fire leaked from his palm and leached into the ambient energies of the semblance field, rendered harmless.

[A simple semblance slotted only with Spark and Enchant, Crucible of the Sun is an asymmetrical field-type that grants its user command over fire and the ability to direct its heat into inanimate objects.]

[However, a rule of the semblance states that the fire it generates cannot touch any living being. Anyone caught inside the semblance is immediately protected by a bubble of cool air that lasts until the field's cessation.]

[Both Will's and Captain's semblances conjure non-living summoned entities that would become targeted by Crucible of the Sun's effect. Therefore, Bogleg's semblance should be used separately to avoid collateral damage.]

Baffled again, Brimstone was left too off-balance to correct even with his Danger Sense to tip him off, and took a crushing fist to the chin from Captain with a barked-out, "Demolish!" that sent the armored devil reeling, pieces of his full-face helmet crumbling and falling away until the right half of his tortured face was exposed, one rheumy eye thrown wide while the other still glowed unnaturally from a rust-red socket.

The heat Brimstone generated was also sapped away at once when Bogleg activated his semblance, instead leaving Will feeling quite cool; almost cold, really. It was a surreal juxtaposition with the frantic blaze that pressed against him on all sides and billowed in endlessly complex patterns like silk spun by a god.

Though Will could barely catch a glimpse of Bogleg anymore due to the waves of light threads that limited his vision, he felt every blow of the blacksmith's hammer as a physical force. It reverberated through the web of power, sent each line thrumming to add to a sublime symphony as of stringed instruments.

Brimstone's Spark and Heat were useless in this place, even though it was semblance against semblance and Brimstone was by far the stronger of the two. Will had not known for a fact they would interact this way, but he had hoped.

Once slotted into a semblance, skills were not so easy to suppress, only really possible by challenging it with another semblance. However, Will had the suspicion that Brimstone's semblance was not slotted with Spark. If he was Brimstone, he would have slotted it with multiple instances of Amplify, making even his cantrips deadly and allowing him to stock up his large stores of AP for more ambitious attacks.

This would mean that Spark was not actually a protected ability in terms of his semblance, in turn meaning that Bogleg's semblance, which did have Spark slotted, undoubtedly received priority.

At the moment, it was looking like Will had guessed correctly. While inside Crucible of the Sun, Brimstone would not be able to properly wield his fire-based abilities. Will didn't think he had broadened his focus much beyond that. If all of his assumptions were true, that meant Brimstone was essentially down to hand-to-hand.

Will and Captain piled on the pressure, never giving their opponent a chance to rest. The major hurdle remaining was Brimstone's Danger Sense, which seemed to be extremely well-developed. It was an ability he had gained access to by branching into Laborer—a powerful ability, but one that pure Laborers hardly used. Danger Sense primarily scaled with Awareness, which Laborers did not have access to.

Cooks, however, did. Will imagined that Brimstone had probably heaped a good number of points into that attribute. He dodged anything Will and Captain threw at him, moving out of the way in the same instant that the attack was launched in some cases. Despite the bulkiness of his plated carapace, Brimstone was exceedingly slippery and nimble, partially due to the steam jets that allowed him to quickly accelerate or reverse his momentum on a dime.

The method for bypassing Danger Sense was simple. Apply so much pressure that even if Brimstone could sense every attack coming at him, he wouldn't have time or space to dodge them all. Will just hoped he could maintain his pace long enough to reach the desired effect. He was already breathing hard, and his bad leg threatened to buckle out from under him with every other step.

Brimstone adjusted quickly to fighting without his powers. He moved with the fluidity of a master martial artist. He didn't do much blocking at all, knowing that one good Demolish from Captain or one good swing from Anathema could put him in trouble. He was on the back foot, feet shuffling…

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He was sliding away from a sword thrust when he snapped around. Failing to pivot on one foot, he threw up an arm just in time to catch a big glob of something red-hot on his forearm. Melted iron, courtesy of Bogleg. The hunk of superheated slag got brighter and brighter as it sank in and fused with the dark, dull, stony material of Brimstone's gauntlet. The lord hopped over a quarterstaff sweep and aimed a hard chop at the spent projectile fused to his arm to dislodge it, but it was too late; his gauntlet cracking and coming off in chunks until, with a growl, he shook free of the fingers and a few stray pieces that clung to his freshly melted flesh.

Will aimed to capitalize on the exposed flesh by freeing him from his left forearm entirely, but fell short when he saw Brimstone's sheet. He had been Level 24 when Will had last gotten a peek—now he had no less than 27 AP crystals adorning his arm. About half were filled, along with his orange SP crystal.

The realization of it hit him like a cold water bucket, made him come to a swaying halt. Level 27. If he was technically asleep due to Rest, then did that mean he could automatically assign his level-up rewards as soon as he got them?

Where he had gotten the levels from was obvious. Will cursed himself for not thinking of it sooner. He'd evidently gotten his rocks off by 'cooking' his own wife—why not the whole city? And this was one hell of an endurance race he was running, so he had to be getting something out of it on the Laborer side too.

If they didn't stop him here, what was holding him back from continuing his rampage until he hit Level 30? Who could possibly stop him then? Certainly not someone like Big Deal Buck. Lady Winter, maybe, but then—

Will took a fist to the face that sent him reeling, then an elbow to the back of the head that dropped him to his knees. Captain moved in to defend, putting himself between Will and Brimstone. The armored demon broke off instantly and loped off in an entirely different direction entirely.

By the time Captain realized what he was going for, Brimstone already had a decent head start. He sprinted at Bogleg, who hurled another lump of molten iron to ward off the enemy. Brimstone didn't even try to dodge, just letting the projectile hit him in the chest and begin growing brightly as it absorbed more heat and bit into his armor. He didn't slow for a second, though.

Will got his good leg under him, but when he tried to stand his bad one sagged, and he fell back down. "Fuck," he growled, and fumbled around the back of his belt for a throwing knife, but found that his fingers wouldn't close around it properly.

Eyes wide with panic, Bogleg put a new piece of raw piping on his anvil to hammer it into another molten projectile. But Brimstone was leaping on top of him, a shrill howl escaping his throat.

Captain was right behind. He extended his quarterstaff into the ground as an expression of his Scaffolding skill to launch himself forward, overtaking Brimstone and grasping the back of his helmet as he swung around to the enemy's front, pulling them both to the ground. Brimstone was almost limp as he let himself get rolled, but twisted out of Captain's stubborn grip as he allowed the remains of his helmet to fall away. He was back on his feet before the firefighter, took another chunk of red-hot iron to the chest, ignored it, lumbered over to Bogleg and swatted aside the hammer he brought to bear with scornful ease. Brimstone grasped the blacksmith by his thinning hair, pulled his head back, then slammed it down into the flaming anvil with screaming force.

Both shattered. Dark blood and bright fire mingled as it scattered from the point of impact. Brimstone let out a delighted laugh, and smashed Bogleg's sagging face down one, two, three more times before he had to discard the corpse and dodge away from a lunging Captain.

By then, the sublime weave of liquid gold that surrounded them was already failing, threads snapping off, pieces falling away into nothing.

[Crucible of the Sun ends.]

Brimstone laughed. Captain charged at him, and he sent the Builder tumbling twenty feet with a roaring explosion that at once wiped away most of what drifting fragments remained of Bogleg's semblance, erasing its influence to nothing.

Brimstone came after him down the slope, cackling with laughter, wreathed in flame. He did not seem to notice the fire licking at his own head, making the flesh sizzle and darken.

Will wasn't sure that monster felt pain at all anymore. He might have burnt all his nerves away long ago.

He waited for Brimstone to get close to Captain, who was scrabbling on his belly in the smoking grass, before intervening. Fighting his way to his feet, Will snarled: "Amp (Eight): Cancel."

Brimstone's flames were snuffed out, and the vapor expelled through the gaps in his armor lessened from the loud hiss of a steam engine to the sad whine of a broken kettle. The running football kick he had aimed at Captain still connected with the man's jaw, but didn't hit as hard as it might have without the extra jet-powered follow-through. Captain's head snapped back, but he managed to wrap his big arms around Brimstone's leg, and pulled the both of them down into a furious grappling match.

The Cancel effect would hopefully have ended his Rest as well, negating his AP regeneration and sensory abilities.

Will sagged with skill fatigue, an added weight of exhaustion that threatened to push him right back to his knees. He pulled through, teeth gritted, and began limping the thirty feet to where the other two men wrestled furiously like stray dogs fighting for dominance. He sent his two remaining throwing knives spinning at Brimstone's back, hoping to catch a gap between the plates. Brimstone twitched, recognizing the threat, but opted not to evade, letting the finger-length blades plink harmlessly off his armor.

Captain tried to get his momentum back, but while Brimstone had a smaller frame he was by far the stronger, getting the firefighter on his back and pummeling him with blows. Captain got his hands up to block most of them, but those blows would start to take their toll quickly.

Will crossed the last bit of distance with a sweeping Dash, his sword cutting a silver arc through the air. Brimstone rolled away, quickly finding his feet. Will followed up with a combination of thrusts, none of which got close to finding their mark, but it bought enough time for Captain to scramble back up; panting, arms swelling badly from abuse.

"Now?" Captain croaked, the two of them standing side by side.

"Not yet," Will replied without taking his eye off the enemy. "Not while my Cancel is still up. I'll let you know when it runs out."

"Got it."

Brimstone ambled toward them, his breastplate cracked and compromised from the two balls of iron slag that were still lodged in it, metal faded from red-hot to a dull gray. He smiled a terrible smile, lips wasted away to reveal too many teeth so it more resembled a death's head with skin badly stretched over the skull.

"Dieeeeee…" he exhaled in a dry rasp.

"Sure," Will replied, leveling his sword in a horizontal guard, tip quivering with his weakness. "Right after you."

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