One more chapter and an epilogue after this. Posting as soon as they're written, sorry about any typos or lacking quality. Feel free to point them out <3

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Chapter 47 - Sloth

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The plan was set, their one chance slipping away with the seconds. 

All traces of nausea had vanished from Athira's body since her transformation, leaving her feeling steady and somewhat calm despite Karma's best efforts to unbalance her. She felt strong, even with the colour racing unchecked around her system and streaming off her body. 

The strangest thing was the tail, the fifth limb sprouting from the base of her spine. It seemed to have an instinctive mind of its own, flaring and settling at its own whims. Everything else seemed to be cosmetic or somewhat designed for inflicting pain--the spines, the horns, the hardened glinting skin she suspected could withstand blows that would usually shatter bones. 

Athira curled her fists in front of her, noting the extended surface over her knuckles. 

Rathe had made her, and she was going to make sure he regretted it, one way or another. 

"Sleepers are getting closer," said Shift behind her, chewing his lip. 

Athira felt bad about dropping the Spectrum thing on him, but she'd never had a good bedside manner. Facts were facts and no sugar coating was going to change the heart of the matter. 

Although, she admitted. I'm glad Shift is here to help me fight Rathe. I wouldn't want anyone else. 

She paused, expecting Talon to reply before she caught sight of him overhead, staring her down with a clear, black eye. 

A pang of something she couldn't identify--fear?-- hit her. She felt alone in the vast, dangerous landscape of her mind even though Shift and Zoe stood barely a metre away. Rathe was approaching the forefront, demanding attention as the fragment of his self that lived in her sensed Sloth's awakening. He was reaching for the small isle of refuge her consciousness resided on, grasping at the door that would let him into reality. 

Raph, colour formed a long red staff to his hands. "We'll hold them off while you three put Sloth down." 

"You won't hurt them," said Reader. "Only the Spectrum can--"

"We don't have to," said Raph. "We just have to distract them, slow them down long enough to buy you some time. They aren't immune to being knocked back."

"Anyone else notice how they all seem to be coming straight for us?" said Shift. 

With Rathe riled up in her mindscape, Athira already knew why. 

"They're coming for me," she said. "They're attracted to Rathe's presence. I'm like a tunnel, the link between Thols and wherever the poor planet that Rathe's trapped inside."

"And they're running for the entrance of that tunnel," said Raph. He gave his staff a few experimental twirls. "Makes our job easier if they're focused on you. Talia, Kione, let's go!" 

Kione ran after Raph, Talia soon after with one final glare in Athira's direction. 

"That's going to be a problem later," she heard Shift mutter. 

"Indeed," said Reader. "You're lucky I was able to damage control." He and Shift stared at each other, deadpan until Reader lifted his lips into a false smile. "You're welcome." 

"Are you going to help them, or are you just going to stand around and watch like purple colours usually do?" Shift asked him. 

Reader pursed his lips. "I'm far from your usual purple, Shift. I take great pride in honing my body as well as my mind. For Athira, I will assist the cause." 

With that, he turned and left, leaving Athira standing with Shift and Zoe on either side. 

The Wardens and Elites at the outskirts of the room were doing their best against the sleepers, but as Reader had predicted, their colour did little but buy slim fractions of time in delays. As Raph took control of their small group of defenders, Athira turned to face the crater.

"What's the plan?" asked Zoe. 

Athira lifted herself into the air. "We need to make sure we draw Sloth here, to the crater. The containment field should help a little, even if it won't hold Sloth in alone." 

"And then what?" asked Shift. "We hit it until it starts snoring?"

Athira gave him an apologetic shrug, wishing she had more of an answer. "We wing it. Stick together, combine our strength. It makes sense if you think about it--the Spectrum need all seven for Rathe, right?" They nodded. "So it figures they draw their strength from each other. That's what we're going to do."  

"My colour isn't shifting anything at the moment," Shift added. "Is that going to be a problem?"

"You're a green Spectrum for a reason, Shift," said Athira. "Remember what Reader said before? Something about needing to be unshifted to be useful?" 

Shift didn't look happy. "Why are we still trusting  that guy?" 

"Mainly because we don't have a choice," said Athira, lowering herself into the bowl of earth. 

The deeper crags in the disappeared dirt were starting to fill with a glowing violet Athira had trouble identifying. It wasn't solid, but neither was it a gas or a liquid, instead somewhere in a new state that was yet to be given a name. Where the sleepers were undeniably physical, this gathering violet seemed to exist between planes, a foot in both realms the Titans had trapped the Sins between. 

Either way, Sloth was rising, waking up, but too slowly. At this rate, the sleepers would reach them before they ever saw Sloth, which wasn't good. Athira figured she could simply hover in the air and let the sleepers gather useless beneath her, but the idea of fighting Sloth and all its little minions at once didn't appeal to her in the least. 

Athira gave the violet mist a kick. How the hell do you antagonise a Sin? 

The mist swirled slightly, running over the bare part of her skin. A tremor ran through her as deep in her mindscape, Rathe's avatar responded to the direct contact. It gave Athira an idea. 

She coated her hands in colour and shoved them straight into the ground up to the elbow, hoping there was more of the mist just out of sight. 

The violet swirled, aggravated by her touch. Athira smiled and glanced back up to where Shift and Zoe stood, peering over the edge. 

"Back in a sec!" she called to them before slipping her entire body under the earth. 

As usual, it felt like she was swimming through some kind of jelly. Her movements were restrained and required slightly more effort, but the usual solitude met with the experience was gone. A presence was all around her, wrapping around her body, coiling and climbing with slow certainty as it tried to get past her colour and lull her into its arms. 

Sloth wasn't responding as it had with the bare skin contact. Athira let her thick coating of colour thin to a fine film, hoping it would help Sloth catch on to Rathe's residence within her. 

Frenzy overtook the presence. 

The slow certainty was gone as it swamped her, flooding the earth around her with itself. Athira thickened her colour coating and willed herself up, reaching for the surface against the lethargy clinging to her. She felt her fingers breach the earth but the presence had thickened around her legs, keeping her trapped. Her colour wasn't enough to overcome it and the progress her hands had made, freedom to her elbows was stolen as it tugged her back down. 

Her wrist was about to slide under when something above ground grabbed it and pulled. 

Athira clung to her rescuer, feeling Shift's familiar colour drift through her, shortly followed by a flash of Zoe's yellow light energy around it. It gave them ground--or more accurately, air-- for the briefest moment before Sloth's grip tightened again on her body and a little more of Athira sank back into the earth. 

I really didn't think this through, thought Athira. 

Athira felt Zoe's energy three more times in rapid succession. Shift managed to surface a few more centimetres of her arm, but overall, it wasn't doing much. In the pure silence of the ground, Athira's imagination took hold. 

Zoe had stopped firing. She'd realised it wasn't working and she was going to... to what? 

Reader? thought Athira, trying to figure it out. It gave her something to focus on, to fight the growing fatigue overtaking her. If Karma hadn't broken her runes earlier, the colour she was expending at the moment resisting Sloth certainly would have. 

Which would have made the crater and probably could have got me out of this mess. Athira groaned internally. Talon does more than hold my colour back, he holds back these stupid plans I come up with. 

Sloth pulled her a little further down. Shift only had her fingers at this point. Athira could feel his grip shaking. It wouldn't last much longer, not unless Zoe--

The pressure around Athira's body lifted at once, like someone had taken the clamps pressing in on her and pushed them aside. Her arm remained trapped in a piece of earth, leaving her legs free to dangle beneath her as it rocketed into the sky with Sloth's mist in close pursuit.

Shift's head poked over the side of the rock. He still had her fingers. 

"Catch me!" said Shift, right as the earth he was crouched on fractured around Athira's arm, releasing it. 

Athira caught his wrist and swung him up beside her in a smooth motion his body didn't have trouble adapting to.  

The crater was no longer empty, filled to the brim with the violet mist that spat geysers towards the air before raining back down. Slowly it twisted within itself, a shape began to rise, the mist forming nearly recognisable limbs that never quite finished forming and instead left parts dripping off in sheets of lustrous purple. 

"How'd you get me out?" asked Athira. 

Shift used his free hand to point back at the edge of the crater where Talia stood with hands raised, pulling at the earth with an ease unmatched by anything Athira had seen of her previously. 

"We couldn't," said Shift. "She did." 

Talia didn't seem to be affected by the Sloth mist coiling around her legs, standing resolute against it as she dropped several large rocks on top of it. Though she wasn't affected, her colour wasn't doing anything to stop the mist leaking through either. 

Athira frowned. "I thought I--"

"Took her colour?" said Shift, his disapproval clear. "You did. She can't use her blue any more. Guess her elemental powers don't count in that." 

Athira recoiled. "I didn't mean to, I just--"

"I know," sighed Shift. "The whole Rathe thing. Now isn't the time to deal with it. For now, just be glad she still has her earth control or we'd already be screwed." 

Athira accepted his words with silence and lowered them back to the ground. Talia didn't acknowledge her and Athira was happy to leave it that way. 

"So we got Sloth's attention," said Zoe. She backed up a step, firing a lazer at a tendril of mist reaching for them. It scattered and recoiled a few paces. "What now?" 

Athira's tail flared, the seven parts that composed it brushing against her legs. 

"Now," she said, drawing black colour to her hands. "We fight." 

"Behind you!" cried Zoe, another lazer at her hands. 

Athira turned around to find a sleeper barely five metres away, twice the size of any she'd seen previously and approaching in perfect silence. Zoe's lazer left her hands, another building when Talia jumped in front of her, an earthen wall rising from the floor like the tiles weren't runed against colour. 

"I got this guy, you guys get Sloth!" said Talia, scraping the sleeper's mass of goo away with the earth. 

She summoned a platform of earth below her feet, about to zip after the sleeper when she paused, examining the Sloth pit. 

The platform lowered and Talia steadied herself. 

"Since Zoe and Shift can't fly," she said, slamming her foot into the ground. 

Vibrations shook around Athira as Talia pushed her hands out and away, grabbing unseen earth from below the floor to create narrow bridges criss-crossing over the top of the crater. Platforms, their tops within jumping distance of each other sprouted from the ground next with Talia's gesture. 

"That should help you keep away," said Talia. She glared at Athira, who blinked in return. "Take something away and something else will replace it, Athira. You didn't do anything but make me stronger." The earthen platform lifted her once more and she turned around. "Now, if you'll excuse me--Hey, ugly!" 

"That's our cue," said Shift. "Attack!" 

Shift and Zoe spread out, taking the high roads Talia had just created as Athira shot into the air, rising high above the centre point in the hopes of luring Sloth's attention while the Spectrum did their thing. 

Athira reached out with her colour, intending to try and grab at Sloth, see if it couldn't be damaged the same way as its physical spawn. Her colour found nothing to grab. Some of it wrapped around molecules of air but she quickly released them, continuing her search for anything physical of Sloth. 

Athira swore as her colour passed through air once more. He's still too far in the ethereal. 

Though she couldn't touch it, Sloth knew exactly where she was. 

Tendrils of smokey violet were reaching for her, rising through the air, forcing her to continuously move. They couldn't catch her, sure, but the sheer number of them was eventually going to overwhelm her, catch her, cut her off. Talon dove at the tendrils, nipping them, cutting them off as best he could. They just kept growing back and pursuing her once again. 

But they aren't going for Shift or Zoe, thought Athira as she moved to the side once more, catching sight of them through the coloured smog of Sloth. 

Sloth's shape wasn't quite there when you looked closely. Its almost humanoid outline was suggested by darker shades of purple at the edges, marking the places where its form  dissolved into the aura of mist around it. 

It had flaws, a malformed character that looked like an artist had taken liberties on a portrait of their favourite person to hate. Rolls of fat, dripping flesh, web like structures hung between limbs, eyelids permanently drooped and covering the one eye Sloth seemed to have. Like Rathe's avatar in her mind, it wasn't perfectly human, but it was close. 

Like me. 

Athira unleashed another blast of colour at Sloth's heart, only to have it travel until it hit nothing but earth yet again. Zoe and Shift were moving around, flashes of yellow light ricocheting around the cavern's walls. Rathe stirred within her, still reaching for her mindscape, demanding to be let out and tear Sloth to pieces, the Sin that would dare challenge its might. 

It spurred Athira on. "Rathe will consume you, Sloth!" she yelled without the slightest idea if it could hear her and put it down to therapeutic purposes. "You had one continent, but you were subdued once. This time will be no different--you will sleep again, Rathe will ensure it!" 

That kicked life into the tendrils. The one near Athira's left foot gained a sudden burst of speed, rushing towards her. She ducked back to avoid it, straight into three that had joined into a filled out wave of violet Sloth energy.

Athira hesitated, seeking a gap in the growing violet cage. 

Talon screeched. He swooped through the wave structure, severing it down the middle with a swipe of his beak. "Go!"

Athira took the chance, shooting through it before Sloth healed the tear. She turned, watching the gap close. "Thanks Tal."

"I got you, Thira," said Talon. He flapped his wings, hovering beside her. "What's giving you trouble?"

"I can't hit it with my colour," said Athira, proving her point with a swipe. "There's nothing physical for it to latch on to."

"Isn't a problem for me," said Talon. He squawked. "Doesn't taste very nice, though."

Athira looked to him, inspiration striking. "You're part-way in the ethereal realm like that, aren't you?" 

"Always am," said Talon. "It's only when I'm out here that I come into the physical. I'm like a ghost!"

"Feel like teaming up?" asked Athira. 

"I thought you'd never ask." 

Athira swooped around, Talon at her back. Her colour flickered, wild and unrestrained in a halo of darkness around her, rising to join with Talon's form above her. Her colour infused him as the tendrils rose for them both, rising to claim and destroy the other Sin that dared invade its planet, its people. 

Athira held her colour until she could hold it no longer. Legs in front to stop her, arms crossed over her chest with her cloak billowing around her, she threw back her head. 

"Talon, with me!" 

Talon shot through her body, through the surge of colour she'd accumulated. It fused with his body, pulling into his form as it grew in size and he dove beak-first straight into Sloth's heart.

There was a flash of light that knocked Athira out of the air, barely able to stop herself from breaking her neck as she hit the ground rolling. 

Her arms felt warm over her face, the strange fifth limb limp along the ground and cloak feeling like it was covering more ground than her splayed out behind. 

Athira felt drained, spent. The explosion of Sloth had permeated her body, seeped fatigue into her limbs and riled Rathe up to a point of unrivaled fury. 

A thump beside her lifted her head. Zoe was on her hands and knees, chest heaving beside her, gaze directed towards the crater, towards Sloth. She didn't say anything as Shift ran into view and knelt down, placing his hand on Athira's side.

"You okay?" he asked. 

"Please tell me it's dead," whispered Athira. 

Shift swallowed a grimace. "Uh, well it depends what you class as 'dead'," he said, glancing in the same direction as Zoe. "I'm sure someone would class it as dead, but I can't say I share their opinion."

Athira looked. Sloth was still there, and no longer was it murky. Its figure had a new clarity about it, but when Athira reached for it with what remained of her colour it still passed through as if nothing were there. 

Maybe it's not, thought Athira. Maybe we'll all just get lucky and this is just some hallucination.

"Nothing we're doing is hurting it," said Zoe, gasping for breath. "It recoils but comes straight back or passes through and I can't keep this up, Thira." 

Athira sat up, covering her face with her hands for a moment and finding a sliver of solace in the darkness. Inside her, Rathe scraped her sanity, shaking her being and the thin veil of control she maintained over him. 

Mine, he growled, words more impressions than anything. My planet, my energy, my world!

Not your anything, buddy, said Athira, staring Sloth down. Not if I can help it. 

I will destroy Sloth, I will decimate its claim, I will--

Shut the hell up if you know what's good for you, Rathe! Athira screamed at it. You might be an all powerful demon entity world-crossing Sin but you're in my mindscape and you're not getting out unless I let you out, understand?

Rathe didn't, but it made her feel slightly better about the situation. 

Across the crater, half of Indigo still fought to keep the sleepers back. 

Raph's arsenal of weapons didn't do much lasting damage against the sleepers, but as he'd said before, they didn't need to damage them. They just had to delay, and delay he was doing. The sleepers stopped as they were forced to regenerate under the flurry of attacks, enhanced by different gadgets Kione had wired to do things ranging from slice to explode. 

Talia was having the most success of the three, having constructed a maze of earthen obstacles around the sleepers. If they didn't go around the earth, she'd move the piece of earth they were trying to walk through backwards, putting them several metres behind in progress. One seemed to take up her entire concentration, and it was the sheer number of sleepers that would win the determination war. 

And Reader... Athira glanced around, looking for the obnoxious purple colour. Reader was nowhere to be seen. 

She became vaguely aware of Shift and Zoe looking to her, wanting a plan, answers. Talon was spread-eagled beside her on the ground, barely the size of her hand. 

"Two Spectrum aren't enough," said Athira, forcing herself to admit it. "Sloth is awake, and nothing we're doing is stopping it, if anything, we're speeding it up."

"You're good at inspiration speeches, you know that?" said Shift blandly. 

Zoe glared at him. "She has a point, I'm sure." 

Athira nodded. "We need to fight fire with fire--a Sin with a Sin."

Shift's eyes went wide. "You're not suggesting what I think you're suggesting, are you?" 

"What do you think I'm suggesting, Shift?" asked Athira. "That we teleport to another planet, find another Sin we don't know about and get them on our side?"

"We can't--"

Zoe cut him off, squeezing her eyes shut. "We don't have many options at this point. We've already seen what happens when Sloth wins," she said, looking to Shift. "A dead continent. What are you suggesting, Athira?" 

"I'm suggesting," Athira said slowly. "That we see how much of a cooperative mood Rathe's in at the moment." 

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A/N - As note above said, one more chapter and an epilogue after this. This one is just getting too long. Posting as soon as they're written, sorry about typos or confusingness, I have less than a day to finish it. <3 

I love you all, you hit 200 votes last chapter. Can you do it again? Inspiration and all that for me?