The creature roared in disgust as my clone landed on its back, and eyeballs grew along its flesh like plants sprouting after a rainstorm. A dozen pulses of green light tore at my clone, but I used a portal to drag it out of danger. My clone reappeared a few meters away.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a flash of ice appear, before it buried itself into the creature’s flesh in the distance. The moment the ice dug into the creature’s flesh, it sprouted, writhing and wriggling as it wormed its way into the creature’s body. I glanced around, and realized that while several of the mages had grouped up with Felix, several others had continued sticking to the creature’s side like glue. They weren’t accomplishing much - but they hadn’t given up.

I smiled. Anise and I weren’t fighting alone. 

The creature grew a mouth right beneath my clone’s feet, and tried to take a bite out of it. My clone wobbled out of the way, barely escaping death as misshapen teeth ripped through the air. The creature puffed in frustration at my clone’s actions, and ate a faceful of fire as Anise started blasting wave after wave of flames. Another nearby mage added his own wave of purple mist to Anise’s attack, which sank into the beast’s flesh with a sizzling sound before disappearing without a trace.

The beast ignored the attack, and sprouted two arms and an extra layer of eyes, before all of those eyes looked at me. For a moment, I felt like I had fallen into another world - similar to the dream world I had been pulled into during the hero trial. I froze in place, before I felt something grab me and shove me out of the way, followed by a bright spot of pain on my arm.

I blinked, as the image of a false dream-world faded away. I realized that Anise’s complexion had gone pale, and we were plummeting out of the sky. The feeling of being shoved to the side was the sensation of my umbrella nearly tearing itself out of my grasp as we hurtled towards the dirt of the sanctuary.

I shuddered, and pumped more essence into my umbrella. Our descent slowed, before I forced us to the left to dodge a wave of fleshy teeth that ripped their way through reality and nearly tore us to pieces. I glanced below us, and then blasted the creature that had nearly taken a chunk out of my neck with a blast of lightning. Then, before the other nearby creatures could retaliate, Anise and I soared back into the air, lifting us away from the cannon fodder and bringing us back towards the main threat. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Sallia charge into the place we had just vacated, giving the monsters something else to focus on we moved on.

I glanced at the leviathan, and saw that several more mages had joined the fight. They were like a swarm of bees trying to kill a dragon - every single attack was tiny, and most of their spells didn’t seem to accomplish very much. However, the leviathan was having a hard time landing a decisive hit against them as well - unlike the mages who had been fighting earlier, now only the fastest and most agile fliers were still harassing the leviathan. That meant that most of them could get out of the way of its attacks.

None of us was really accomplishing much, but we were certainly pissing it off and buying time. That was all we needed to do, so I was happy with that.

Anise pointed her hand at the leviathan, and I saw a wave of lenses crated entirely out of essence pop into existence right in front of Anise. Each one was formed of manifestation essence. When I saw the lenses, I couldn’t help but smile.

The council of the Sanctuary had gone all-out to develop a well-rounded toolkit once Anise had figured out the intricacies of the lost manifestation magic system. After we had finished our hero trials, the council had some playwrights and novelists develop a bunch of new stories based on the issues Anise had run into during the trial. I recognized the lenses that Anise had summoned - they were the lenses of empowerment. Any spell that passed through a lens would have its power amplified by a certain amount. The lenses would shatter after being used once. They were incredibly useful for amplifying a single attack.

The lenses quickly shifted as the monstrous eldritch leviathan tried and failed to swat at my clone, before it turned towards another group of nearby mages and tried to blast them down with a wave of ice shrapnel. As the creature constantly squirmed and struggled, Anise finished repositioning the lenses just above the creature’s body.

It’s set up, said Anise.

I burned all of the essence in my Essence core, as well as 80% of my alteration essence reserves, in order to make the biggest and most powerful extinguish I could. My clone followed suit a moment later, although it only spent fifty percent of its alteration essence reserves. Its very existence seemed to piss the monster off, so letting my clone die too easily would be a waste.

Two drops of water appeared in the air, before my extinguish fell through each of Anise’s floating lenses and crashed onto the leviathan. My clone’s hit a moment later.

A very small speck of its life force dissipated into nothingness.

The leviathan blinked in surprise, before it glanced at the three of us, as if it were registering the fact that one of the ‘bees’ distracting it had actually stung it. I had inflicted almost no damage - but I had gotten its attention.

A moment later, a massive tail appeared out of the warped, distorted air around us, before sailing through the sky like the hammer of a god. I blinked in surprise as the tail tore through my clone like a knife through hot butter, killing it on the spot. I opened a portal, expanded it, and then dragged Anise and I out of the way right before we became meat sauce.

A moment later, I felt something ripple, as if the world itself was changing. I cackled.

We got it set up, said Sallia, from just outside of the zone where the fight was taking place. I glanced around us, and I could see several floating mirrors, several of them reinforced with magic items. Inside of the prison of floating mirrors, it didn’t look like anything had changed - but outside of the prison, it looked like time had sped up a few dozen times. Mages were whizzing in and out of my field of view as they surged towards Felix’s position, or set up other items just outside of the prison. I smiled.

This was one of the other preparations the council had made when creating new types of magic - a prison of time. It cost more and more essence to speed up or slow down time based on the area affected, the power of the creatures captured in time, and the degree to which time’s flow was altered - but it was now possible for manifestation Mages to set up a giant magic ritual and force powerful enemies to slow down while the rest of the sanctuaries set up.

The little swarm of Mages inside of the prison had managed to annoy the creature enough that it had stopped moving. With the artificial sun set up, nullifying worries about recovering essence before the next catastrophe, the council had gone all-out to make sure they could deal with the threat.

The creature seemed to realize something was wrong, but couldn’t seem to pinpoint quite what had changed. Its body rippled as dozens more eyes appeared on the surface of its skin, before I felt space distort and tear around us. It felt like the world itself was bending, enclosing us in a prison of flesh and teeth that hadn’t existed a moment ago. It was as if I had been teleported into the belly of the beast.

Teeth and tongues formed around us, and I realized that we were elsewhere. We hadn’t physically moved, we hadn’t actually changed our position - and yet, somehow, we were also in the belly of the beast. It was like two different realities were clashing in front of my eyes, each one screaming that it was the correct reality, while my senses and my brain tried to make sense of how the world had suddenly changed. If my clone had still been around, and I was still fully tapped into the eldritch side of things, I suspected the sight would have made far more sense - but right now, I couldn’t process what had happened or how to counteract it quickly enough.

I felt a burst of panic, but before Anise and I died, I felt a giant hand reach through both overlapping realities, grab us, and yank us out of the line of danger.

“Careful!” yelled one of the other mages, as a giant hand made of magic dematerialized. “This thing is dangerous! We’ve already got the time field set up, so you don’t need to take big risks anymore. Just play it safe and stall!”

Anise nodded, and a moment later, I snapped out of it and nodded as well.

From there, the fight slowed down. The leviathan had a harder and harder time launching effective attacks against the defenders of the Sanctuary, because the influence of the mirrors started to become more and more distinct. While the mirrors of time hit everyone trapped inside of them, the effect was not equal - as the mages outside got more and more efficient at distinguishing targets, the rest of us started to speed up relative to the leviathan. There were still a few close calls - at one point in time, I thought that one of the other Mages had died, only to realize that a flash of silver had cut through her arm. I barely managed to drop down and save her before she slammed against the ground and died, before depositing the unlucky mage near the edge of the field.

There were also a few cases where someone’s reflexes just weren’t fast enough, and they got taken out by a spell or attack before anyone could save them. However, on the whole, the group of several dozen mages harassed the leviathan, annoyed it, and stayed safe as the minutes ticked by. Outside of the prison of mirrors, the mages continued to work on whatever they were doing.

After nearly five minutes inside of the prison, and likely an hour or two outside of the prison, the walls of the mirror shattered. The leviathan leered at the mages that had spent the past five minutes dancing on the edge of death, and then at the Mages that had encircled the leviathan during the time we had bought.

Is everything ready? I asked.

We’re confident. Just be patient and bait it into launching one more attack, said Felix. The council made several changes to our original idea, but we’ll still fire the first shot. With any luck, this will bring that thing down.

I felt my shoulders loosen as I relaxed. It was time for the final phase of the fight.