The sphere of crimson ether superheated the air as it shot across the sky, vaporizing raindrops along its path and leaving a thin veil of quickly dissipating steam in its wake. In his bid to retake Soran, to punish Singar for his alleged crimes - to engage in what most certainly might be a most-brutal interrogation session with the Stalker - the Herald and his clownfish companion failed to move themselves out of harm's way. Furthermore they didn't even seem to make an attempt at raising a defense of ANY kind to protect themselves from the destructive attack launched at them by the two of Soran's most notorious cousins.

Just before impact, another small aperture formed within the cloud, and a voice could be heard speaking in perfect synchronicity with the serpent's beam. To those who were psychically empowered, a stream of blue psionic energy could be seen fusing with the beam, merging with it and causing its bloody color to shift toward becoming a deep, magical purple.

Then it hit.

Sarach's ether-beam smashed into Megalodon, at first simply pushing the sharkborg back, but as it felt resistance from the Herald struggling against it. The beam split apart as a natural consequence of meeting the Herald head-on, branching out into multiple passing tendrils, going up, over, and around the amphibian monstrosity, only to merge back fuse back together into a single blast, trapping the beast inside. "If you must roar, then roar with vigor so that your vocal chords might tear, and so that I might [i]rip[/i] and pluck those noisy things from your gullet and hang you by them." Singar's psychic voice had merged with Sarach's attack, easily breaching the walls of the cyborg's mind as well as Amphriprioninae's. Within second's the clownfish's bowl suffered a fracture, not shattering it outright, but suffering more than enough damage to allow Amph to sense the pressure inside the glass go down by just a fraction of a pascal as streams of water slipped out through the cracks.

Megalodon suffered a far more direct and severe consequence. The metal composing its cybernetic arm superheated as the ether washed over it, the joints in its organic flesh suffering immediate burns that would inflict grievous nerve damage to the muscles he utilized to move his left shoulder. Worse was that as the beam traveled up and passed over his head, it seared his jawline, fused a small portion of his gills together, and burnt the insides of the shark's nostrils, screwing with its sense of smell. Tracking the location of the Stalker by scent would no longer be an easy task requiring minimal effort - certainly possible given the Sharkborg's tenacity and ravenous tendencies - but it would most assuredly be transformed into a mission of much greater difficulty.

Ultimately, by the time the ether-beam scattered and was absorbed into the Midnight Fog, Megalodon and Amph were left a steaming as a steaming-hot trio of fish, fish, and glowing red metal parts, that had shockingly only been cooked to medium rare. If through their lack of appropriate combat maneuvers, the aquatic pair continued taking reckless hits, it would no longer be just a small detriment to their success, they wouldn't even make through the Fog, the hole of which had been opened to accommodate Singar's telepathic message through now closing back, denying them so much as a glance at what had been transpiring on Liaita's surface.

"[i]Hurry up[/i], wretched Herald of your failing and pathetic race." Projected the Corruptor, his words incisive, and his tone a combination of disgust and genuine irritation. 

Capriciously, he added yet another scathing, spitting comment, as was utterly befitting of a bastard like Singar. "I am not worthy of seeing my time wasted on watching your ridiculously, exceptionally [i]stu[b]pendous[/b][/i] ineptitude and careless disregard for the other occupants of this world, whose rage you are not even competent enough to evade." 

He wondered how deep those words cut into the Val'garan, if he had laced his words with enough venom, or should he try to extrapolate Amphroprininae's inability to protect its partner from further humiliation by Agron and Sarach by insulting that aspect of its intelligence?

[i]Too much effort for a simple [u]clown[/u]fish...,[/i] he thought, observing the battle through the rocky duo's eyes as it passed Megalodon overhead, its spiked, ethereally charged tail came in low for a brutal, hooking that would pulverize and drag the Sharkborg across the foggy sky should it smash into him.

[b]The Lake of Flesh[/b]

Standing atop the massive, recently thawed-out boulder that was Cocytus, Singar looked up at the sky with his dark-indigo eyes, his arms crossed as he witnessed the first sign of a losing battle, a vague grin of knowing stretching across his pale face. For a moment he stared down at the lake of flesh which was a mosaic of ice mixed with strands of muscle fiber, undeveloped organs, and arthropod parts. Occasionally they drifted toward the rock, harmlessly bumping up against it, though more-often-than not the little islands bumped into each other instead, for there had been hardly any space between them as is. 

Behind him the Vesuvian Storm boomed as it always had, the clouds of assimilation churning with the ever expanding Midnight Fog which achieved greater mass and volume by the second, as Singar's hydrokinesis converted the rain water into more fog that continue to consume all the available air-space, and soon Liaita would be under full control of the Collector's will.

Beneath the floating islands, where the lake of flesh was still warm, a thought had been reborn, a hunter's hunger had been revived, and a monster's need to feed became active once again, but its desire to kill [b]still[/b] needed room to grow.

It didn't stop the islands from suddenly rising as if in reaction to the Herald's primitive growling, which seemed to elicit an insidious chuckle from deep within the cavernous rock that Singar was perched on.

"You'll thank me once you've fully recovered, Thane."