Just Breathe

The Wraith, Tempest, and The Argent Adept had been fighting Akash'Bhuta for what seemed like days. What Akash'Bhuta was doing on Mars, nobody seemed to have an answer to, but that wasn't what concerned them at the moment. Tempest had been destroying her Limbs almost as soon as they grew, but two Primeval Eruptions at once made her grow to a truly daunting size, and she had wrapped her Brambles around him, so he wouldn't be doing that this time.

That second Eruption came from Disrupting the Field, which also punched a hole in the base's dome, creating a sizeable Oxygen Leak. Tempest offered to fix the leak, while his electrical powers were subdued, but both Wraith and Argent Adept quickly shouted no. They had a plan. An incredibly risky plan, but a plan, nonetheless. Wraith weakened the three limbs that looked like they might stay attached, while Argent Adept healed everyone as much as he could, and boosted his and Tempest's defenses.

The Oxygen Leak started to rip pieces off Akash'Bhuta, one limb at a time. All three Carapaces went first. Then the Ensaring Brambles, which Tempest had broken free from just in time to not be sucked out with them. Each piece of Akash'Bhuta that went out the hole tore the hole bigger, pulling more out the window quicker. Finally, her two sets of Phlanges were pulled off, but, rather than breaking the dome more, these plugged the hole.

In the last few seconds, Akash'Bhuta had gone from a formidable force nearly filling the combat area to a barely conscious pile of pebbles and moss. The base's life support began pumping air back into the room, but by that point it was too late for the avatar of destruction and renewal. The heroes, who had seen the leak coming and held on to anything they could find, breathed a sigh of relief, swept the pebbles that had been Akash'Bhuta into a ziplock baggy, and headed for the shuttle to go home. Those last moments of the fight had been both more and less pressure than they ever wanted to be under again.

(Mechanically what happened was that Oxygen Leak destroyed a limb, which milled a card off the Environment deck, making Oxygen Leak deal more damage, until the last limb made the trash get shuffled back into the deck, bringing Oxygen Leak's damage down to 1, that 1 being exactly how much HP Akash'Bhuta had after all her Limbs were destroyed. We'd planned for Oxygen Leak to kill her through limb destruction, but we didn't realize it was going to be that perfect.)