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Bloody Revelations     It seems the Seventh Legion is, as Tien Yu had grimly expected, well behind Juggernaut. It's nearly impossible for an army of that size, however severely reduced through the battle at Thorns, to keep up with such a giant over land. Hopefully, the city goddess has driven them hard enough that the main force will catch up in time to sway the battle, but Tien Yu herself has at least been able to return ahead of them. Lookshy is her sanctum and her place of spiritual origin, and gods have ways of hurrying home to protect their primary charges.

    Even then, looks as if Juggernaut may have its work cut out for it. At least, Juggernaut alone --the heavily armed citadel on its bowed back is still a relatively unknown quantity. Lookshy faces the sea on all sides but the east, which is an unbroken expanse of massive multi-layered blue stone walls and jade emplacements, absolutely loaded with static defenses of the highest reproducible calibre, and now staffed with thousands of troops marshaled on emergency notice from the message delivered to the city. The reserve legions are all made up of previous veterans of tours of duty, and rusty as they might be, there are as many of them put together as the entire rest of the Seventh Legion. The Manse at the multi-tiered city center is a gigantic pyramid of steel and white jade, of oddly stark and geometric design, but which is clearly loaded with tremendous cannons built into its design. All of this, concentrated along a narrow, heavily fortified easternly killbox makes it clear why the city has never been successfully breached.

    The western shore is currently packed to capacity with evacuees. All of the citizenry and non-essential staff that the city Manse doesn't have any more space for are left to climb aboard any ships Lookshy can sortie or call for and scramble as far out to sea as they can, wisely leaving the area before such a catastrophic battle begins, hoping there will be something left to return to after. Unfortunately, the evacuation is far from complete, and thousands of civilians are still packed at the docks, waiting for more boats to become available, even taking canoes and borderline rafts that are packed even at twelve people.

    Of course, Juggernaut is impossible to miss on the horizon. It's barely after dawn, but its silhouette stands out as a misty mountain on the move that resolves in further detail at a gradually more alarming rate. The smell of the sixty million ton corpse fortress is palpable even at such a distance, and closing fast. There hasn't been much time to prepare, but there has been enough. Lookshy has brought to bear all of its heaviest firepower it can arrange, and Tien Yu has given Elites unrestricted access to any and all vantages and resources they require to arrange their strongest alpha strikes as well, apparently planning to obliterate Juggernaut with sheer force before it can hit the city walls. No matter how strong they are, Juggernaut is large enough to simply step over them. The goddess of Lookshy herself is atop the central gate keep, already in full mecha mode, with troops hurrying at a frantic pace behind her, and gunners ready in tense, sweaty silence.
Bloody Revelations     "There is nothing I could wish for any more than to have you all at Lookshy's side at this hour. If there is anyone who has the capability to change fate, I believe it to be you." That isn't a general message to the army. Those words are reserved solely for the ears of Multiversals. "Before we join battle, I am supposed to give something to you. Someone insisted it was important. You're supposed to keep them on you." What is actually delivered to the Elites, likely by courier along the walls, are apparently unassuming. Black coins of minted jade, but with no denomination or date of press. One side is engraved in white, the other in red. The characters on each side translate simply to "hun" and "po".

    Prepared as well in advance as it actually can be, the men and women of Lookshy's emergency forces stand in unwavering quiet as the shapes of the aerial fleet start to resolve further away, rapidly catching up to Juggernaut as the small mercy that remains from the crippling strategic trap from last night. Distantly, the sound of thundering guns carries up to the walls, fully several seconds delayed from the muted flash of energy weapons descending from the sky and rippling across Juggernaut's back in carpets of explosions. The citadel fires back, and immediately sets a handful of ships ablaze with the first volley of its own mounted weapons, trading shot for shot in a moving gun battle that draws closer by the second.

    Those weapons enter the same range as Lookshy's at about the same time, largely due to drawing on similar First Age designs. Black and sickly green beams strike the walls first, blasting apart fortifications and carving down rows of men on the spot while wicked bolts and heavy explosives are still in the air, sailing across the intervening space to add to the destruction. Not waiting for those to land, Tien Yu immediately gives the order.

    "ALL MEN! FIRE AT WILL!"
Starbound Flotilla     The Atom Smasher has been in a constant state of rolling repair and blasting over the past few hours. Efforts to rejoin the Juggernaut and re-engage in the battle have resulted in a swath of destruction across the Underworld and the connecting Shadowlands, and clever maneuvering on the (technically) smaller mobile fortress' part has gotten it ahead of Juggernaut and along the walls of Lookshy. Albert examines his own coin, narrowing his eyes at it and letting it shift between his fingers as he takes a short break between sessions of welding the heavy toroid fortress's walls. As the Behemoth approaches in more and more undeniable visibility, he clambers back into the bridge and shifts back into the command chair.

    The Atom Smasher revs, whirls, and charges its massive particle-accelerating superstructure as it moves into engagement range. The plan Albert has needs far more weakness in the arms, and far more damage in the citadel. For now, he's going to have to work with the artillery options that the Atom Smasher has, firing concentrated and charged bursts of dangerous and exotic particles designed to pierce armor and blister flesh.

    He's concentrated the fire on the Citadel's forward long-range attack positions, trying to rain atomic hell on the enemy as the toroid structure continues its charge sequence, something it's sustained for hours since the last skirmish with Juggernaut. And it begins to approach, as wheels and treads spark to life. Oddly, in the time between their arrival and the arrival of Juggernaut... The Flotilla have crafted a strange slant in the terrain, lowering as it approaches the walls. What's the deal there? Hmmm.
Azure Armature The plan had gone something like this: Thanks to All-Seeing Eye's ("Warden") analysis of the necromantic titan battle-mountain 'Juggernaut', Blue had acquired a fairly detailed idea of the internal structure of the massive behemoth. Gawain, the Starbound Flotilla, and other assorted heavies were expected - nay, genuinely being trusted to - be a giant roadblock between Lookshy's armies, Lookshy, and the Mask of Winter's gigantic trump card.

There was no doubt in Azure Armature's mind that Juggernaut was just details, and disabling it was merely step one of any operation: cutting off the head of the Mask of Winters and disrupting the command structure was the only way to victory. Last Night it was made entirely clear that Juggernaut could not be meaningfully killed, only temporarily stopped. Thus, the operational plan was simple.

*Disable the titan Juggernaut by any means available externally and internally.
*Immediately collapse on the central fortress-citadel complex on Juggernaut's back.
*Kill, Re-Kill, or Overkill anything that stood in your way.
*Eliminate the HVT, Mask of Winters.

To that end, 'Blue' had gathered an internal team at All-Seeing Eye's request, consisting of Batou (and his friend, Extremely Tactical Murder Robot), Toriki Falling Rain (and her friend, EX Green Hand), and anyone else who would like to do the 'disruption from inside' half of the first bulletpoint of the plan.

"When I open the gate, you will have about ten seconds to get inside before my projection power gives out. Everything inside is hostile, so don't spare the firepower. Once you are inserted at the external citadel area, I will teleport into the heart chamber and attempt to disable that expediently. Should that work, I'll rejoin you. Should it not, I'll attempt to gate in reinforcements behind you. Don't stop until you get to the Mask and kill him. Momentum is our victory."

Her tone is grave. "You have twenty seconds for questions." She offers, before starting to adjust sliders on a holographic panel over her right wrist.
All-Seeing Eye      Eye turns the black coin over, rolling it across his fingers idly. Two words on the coin--very old ones. His brow furrows, and he murmurs his thoughts aloud. "The higher and lower mind?" The Exalt isn't aware of the connotation of each word, in Creation's cosmology. He briefly checks his surroundings, and pockets the coin only once he's sure no one's watching.

     A device very much like a cell phone is connected to the back of his skull via a long, thin cord. Holding it in his free hand, he shows the screen to Batou, Toriki, and 'Blue.' The screen shows footage taken by the Exalt himself, a cross-section of the Juggernaut's decaying body which reveals both the bull-sized maggots and the beast's heart, the latter of which is apparently the power source for (or at the very least, connected to) the immense citadel atop its no-doubt strained back.

     "No questions on my part," he says merrily. "Batou, equip and prepare for close-quarters, cramped combat, likely in low-light once Blue disables the power source. My people are highly accustomed to this manner of warfare, so don't be afraid to ask me for a little advice!~" This later statement is directed both at Batou and at Toriki.

     Eye waits patiently for Blue to get her portal going, and the minute it's up, he'll step through and immediately fill up whatever hallway he finds himself in with a bouncing curtain of ricocheting crossbow bolts. Expediency is key, after all.
Gawain This is a disaster, but Gawain has faith. Faith that they can continue to fight. On top of his boar, Miari's buff had boosted their ability and allowed them to get pretty far ahead...but it had started making them sick. In the sunlight, powered by the daytime, Gawain was able to resist through the burning and push it to the back of his mind. Lovell, just a simple boar, was having more trouble, so as soon as the two reached Lookshy's walls, Gawain moved to have Lovell brought to safety behind friendly lines, where he could recuperate during the battle and be brought back if necessary. Tien Yu's message brings a bright smile to Gawain's face, and destroys any doubt he'd have. Confidence and faith goes a long way. As the coin is brought to him, the knight, grabbing his satchel of potions from the boar and attaching it to his armor, takes the coin into his hand. "Thank you. Be safe, courier." The knight smiles reassuringly to someone who is probably worried deep inside their heart, so that they can continue their duty. The coin is held tightly, and then pocketed.

Juggernaut is coming. From the walls where everyone begins firing, Gawain takes a breath, and then leaps forward, moving to dash across the battlefield as fast as he can. He's not the fastest, but he's faster than a human by far, and his target is both big and coming his way. As the knight approacehs, he waits for just the right timing...and leaps up, trying to climb aboard the nearest part of Juggernaut that he can get a foothold on, drawing Excalibur Galatine and setting the holy blade aflame. Any chance it gets, it cuts through the Juggernaut's undead flesh, as Gawain is going to slowly but surely attempt to scale the mountain of a man. He turns on his radio, and Tien Yu is included if she has any sort of communication to do so. <"This is it! There is no turning back. Only together can we slay the Juggernaut and protect Lookshy. I'll attempt to scale the Juggernaut and reach its head, at which point I will attempt to use my Noble Phantasm to decapitate it! I'll signal at this time for any firepower assistance in doing so, as I'm not sure I could do so by myself. Let us bring victory, because together, we can do anything!">
Empty Tidings FALLING RAIN went at full tilt the moment they started their forced march and never slowed.

Getting out of the Underworld was a task that involved going through a frightening amount of the dead. Her serenity and steadily-increasing capacity for violence helped clear the way, reducing the creatures between the worst of the wounded and the path they're taking out with terrifying efficiency. By the time they cleared the edge of the Shadowland, she was getting difficult to tell apart from the blood-soaked ghosts harrying them whenever they could.

So she stopped trying to stand apart.

Falling Rain went ahead. A ghastly figure joined the caravan of war ghosts, a woman gleaming with the un-light of the Underworld who once resembled a hero that stood against them. She took to the rear of the procession, but she never slowed down. An endless tide of violence is left in her wake, the tail-end of the undead force being torn to pieces whenever any of them slowed down. None of them ever reported an enemy combatant in their midst, either; they simply took it to be one of the Mask's agents, lighting a fire under their decomposing hindquarters by annihilating anything that slows its pace.

Which serves her just fine, all told.

By the time dawn arose and they'd reached Lookshy, Falling Rain had rejoined the force proper and linked up with Blue's insertion force. She looks gaunt and haggard, draped in rags that make her appear to be one of the many walking dead in the Mask's employ. A vivid red sash is draped over her shoulders, bearing the mark of the Seventh Legion to prevent friendly fire. Her right gauntlet is gone, replaced with bloody wrappings that disappear into her ragged coat.

The briefing is simple and to the point. She spent it using a wet cloth to get an unfortunate sort of grime out of her eyes and giving her gear an extremely brief once-over. She'll want a bath when this is all over. Right now, she's still possessed of that almost unnerving calm certainty and the sense of barely-restrained violence. The mortal troops have been giving her a wide berth.

Falling Rain casts a glance between Batou and Eye. She examines the map when it's presented, nods once, and says, "Watch one another's backs, be prepared for anything. No questions. I'll handle anything that significantly outweighs us."
Miari     Once Lovell was spent, Miari parted ways with Gawain, flying back to Lookshy with all due sorceress speed on a conjured tornado (perhaps with a few passengers?). She has since taken up a position on the tallest point of the frontmost walls of Lookshy, where her vantage point of the approaching Behemoth is decent. The Sorceress has used up plenty of energy bolstering Gawain and his mount earlier, but now that she is far from the Shadowland...

    "Ahahahaha... yes. This is SO much better!" Now, her power flows freely again. And flow, it certainly has.

    Since the very moment that terrible creature appeared on the Horizon, Miari has kept her palms facing each other in front of her chest, cradling a tiny shining singularity of emerald light. Her anima rages about freely, a sickening green-white mixture - the green invokes nausea, while the white is almost painfully pure and hot to look at. In normal circumstances, showing this power on Lookshy's ramparts would be suicidal.

    But here, she has turned this power towards the enemies of Creation. The rushing energies set her hair and shogunate-era attire fluttering quite spectacularly in a wind all her own, while motes of Essence are sorcerously torn from the surrounding aether by the willpower the Sorceress exerts, swirling and accreting at a steadily increasing pace towards the shining singularity in her grasp.

    "Can someone give me a nice and deep hole in that creature? If not, I'll initiate plan B!"

    There is absolutely NOTHING nice about whatever great and terrible ancient spell Miari's weaving here. Beyond the terrific scale of power being gathered, waves of hatred and malice roil out from the gathered Essence, almost palpable enough to choke on.
Staren     Staren fled the scene at Tien Yu's warning, heading for the nearest Shadowland and back to Lookshy. Creation is big, but most people there can't travel over twice the speed of sound when they're in a hurry. There's probably a very tense moment before he gets the chance to show video to someone in charge.

    In any case, actually calculating the Juggernaut's projected arrival time shows it will take until the following dawn. Staren could try to go get some more missiles, but there's little point -- the Juggernaut will almost certainly emerge into Creation right on top of the city, and just doing massive damage to it is pointless, as they saw the night before. Even if he HAS several cluster bombs stored away. No, he needs to do concentrated damage and disable it. The plan remains the same as last night.

    He does hurry home to put himself in a robot though, so that he won't need sleep. Just in case the Juggernaut arrives earlier than expected.

    As dawn approaches, the Star Hawk waits just behind the city walls. Wireless's repair drones have cleaned all the blood off, so that it gives the impression, hopefully, of a shiny defender of justice. Although the shiniest defender of justice is of course Gawain.

    Azure Armature's team will take the heart. Staren, hopefully, will take out the brain.

    As soon as the Juggernaut's presence in Creation is confirmed, Staren exits the walls, deploys his sniper railgun, and takes aim.

    There is a big dramatic charging sequence with cool HUDs and descriptions of ridiculous amounts of electricity being stored in capacitors from the reactor at the mecha's heart, and a big dramatic firing sequence that deploys stabilization thrusters and pylons, but we're not going to write it out today. Suffice to say, a metal shell filled with magical explosives is imbued with enhanced accuracy and damage by technology and magic alike, accelerated to several times the speed of sound, and, ideally, after using that kinetic energy to dig some distance into the juggernaut's head and do sizeable damage to all tissue near the impact, explodes as deep inside as it can -- although the actual explosive itself isn't especially powerful for a weapon of this size, Staren's hope is that the penetration makes it more effective.

    Staren tries to keep the aim ready, immediately beginning the charging sequence for a second shot. He doesn't expect it to be THAT easy, after all.
Batou Batou looks at the coin, and can only assume that is for protection. But, no reason not to ask.

"Hey, what's the coin for? Some sort of magical item?" he says, putting it in his chest pocket. He's cleaned up only slightly from the last encounter, but is slightly disheveled as he goes through the typical motions of getting ready for a battle, checking his combat knife, cocking his riot shotgun and submachine gun. The rocket launcher from earlier is being held (if slightly precariously) by Tachikoma as Baotu finishes up his routine.

The riot shotgun is at the ready as the portal is being summoned.

"Tachikoma, you hold on tight to that launcher, and only use it if MOST of us aren't gonna be hurt by it," Batou teases, letting a slight smile change his expression, which is quickly turned to a frown at Eye.

"Yeah, don't worry about me, Eye, this is my damn bread and butter back home.

He steps up onto Tachikoma as the portal opens and speeds in behind Eye, firing at anything that even /tries/ to be in the way. He isn't going down without a fight, and that's for DAMN sure.

Goddamn ghosts.
Tomoe Things have been getting bad she is aware the Juggernaut can not die until it's fated hour or when the Mask Goes down, which could be that fated hour anyway. She has been moving with the Lookshy forces as they withdraw back to their home to defend it. This was do or die time for them, with Tien Yu giving her access to what they need she's has some ideas she had access for access to explosives powerful ones, but light enough she can carry them in her personal inventory. She otherwise got a plan to try something with her magical abilities but she will need to get close to do it.

They got a hell of a fight to deal with here and she's going to have to push herself hard.

She replies to the Goddess for a moment.

"My fate was changed along with others due to outsiders from the multiverse. I am going to stand with your people today."

A god in creation on the front line with their worshipers? That has Tomoe's respect given she's seen the Divine city. She also pauses at the delivered coin she has an idea of who it might be from? Still she will pocket it, such a thing might be something they need in the final fight with he Mask and his Juggernaut today.

Her wings flare out now she knows the Mask may be somewhere in that thing and it needs to be taken out, also if she could reach the heart they could buy some time or maybe breach the fortress within and deal with that. Whatever she's going to do? She's going to have to get to it so she takes flighy from the Rampants as she takes flight for hte primary target, she chants as she goes sending a barrage of light ray spells at the huge thing as she moves to close in.
Carna     Healing is not all that Enark can do, even if he has frequently felt useless compared to those stronger than surround him.

    The Moon. Rivers and oceans. Blood. Paint. Time. Ice and snow. Rain.

    All aspects of the Element of Water.

    These factors act as force multipliers for Enark of the Blue Scholars. There might be no Moon, or if there is it's already fading in the sky, and it's doubtful he'll conveniently find himself attacking the Juggernaut from within Lookshy's art gallery during a time stop or something, and he doesn't think it's going to begin snowing any time soon, but Lookshy is surrounded on all sides but one by water. An ocean, in fact. A very large one.

    That's two down. And with the casualties already coming, he has no doubt that there will soon be blood.

    He is seated at the highest place he could reach or be placed safely by others, and has had the time to prepare. Runes of rivers, of the Styx, of Lethe, of Cocytus extend to the outermost edges of Lookshy. To make the dead unable to pass over water without a ferryman, to make assailants lose their way in forgetfulness, and motion to freeze in the chill of the grave. He can't stop those energy beams, but ghosts and zombies may find it very difficult to approach successfully.

    Glyphs representing knowledge, wisdom, unlocked doors closed, of the Silent Lord Tharmas, of clocks, and of the cycle of time, all line the interior of Lookshy wherever Enark could put them. Ritual circles in concentric arrays, separated into assemblies and divisions of power, all part of a larger pattern. He didn't have the opportunity to do as much as he would have liked doing it by himself, but it should provide insight, enhanced perception, clear-headedness, facilitate second-chances, and accelerate growth and change.

    Most important of all, however, is not these wards he has put into place to keep hostiles out and to protect those within, but something he has prepared for this moment.

    The Dead don't change. Not really. They can only alter themselves through loss. They can only gain by taking from others.
Carna     Enark was told that once. And he believed it for a long time. But more and more since being rescued in Escher, and meeting all of his friends from beyond and within Lumiere, Carna, Crow, Kord, Priscilla, Staren, Kushiko, Tomoe, Finna, Asterios, Leyanne, Wandering Dog, Tamamo, Touta, Nozomi, Dorian, Eryl, and... Frankly so many other faces he sometimes has a hard time keeping track of them.

    He has changed. He does not yet know if this is due to gain on its own, because he took something from others, or if he has obtained loss, but he has changed. And he is greater now than he has been in a long time.

    Even with this physical weakening he has suffered, the decrepitude of age assailing him due to his recent sacrifice, he feels more 'himself' than ever before, his magic more powerful for his experiences. And so, the Murmurs he has used all this time, the dead spells, reanimated into functionality by Lumiere so that they can be recast, have been eschewed, in favor of an entirely new magic incantation.

    "Blue of the middle, white and gray of the upper

    Green of the deeps, black of the crushing dark below

    Snow in winter, frost in fall mornings

    Thawing rivers of spring, and all of summer's rain

    Rain. Rain. Rain.

    Rise up, crashing waves

    Tear down the edifices of man, and god

    Wear away at the roots of the world

    Consume, tear, and wash it all away

    Wash away the impure

    Drown in the depths, the descending dead

    In the flood, in the destruction

    Find renewal -- but only after purging corruption.

    When life and death were separated

    Find that moment, as the eye of a needle

    And thread them back together

    In the cataract of time's ocean.
"

    As he speaks, the ocean moves. The ocean moves all around them, more and more. Rising up, rising up. Tidal waves form, and part around Lookshy, twining together like the fingers of lovers, or of hands in prayer.

    There is an awful lot of water for Enark to work with right now.

    He'll use all of it if he has to.

    His chant isn't done.
Bloody Revelations     "I've no idea." Tien Yu admits to Batou just before the battle, in person rather than magically. "It arrived very recently, and nobody here has the skill to determine its origin or its powers. It looks to be some kind of protective charm at least, though I don't know against what."

    Juggernaut appears more clearly as the rolling battle continues. The damage to its wrist is partially regenerated already, which is impressive considering that means it fabricated hundreds of tons of flesh from nothing, however it is not wholly in one piece yet. There remains a cavity in its chest from A-39's fearless sabotage, but it is smaller than before, barely large enough to crawl inside at this point. One of its eyes has grown back since Tomoe struck them, but the other is still milky and blind. It doesn't really need any of those things. All it has to do is walk all over Lookshy. The wicked fortress atop its spine is doing all the work for it, going blow for blow with the Sky Guard, and now starting to split its fire with the fortifications of Lookshy.

    That damage rapidly skyrockets. Several times the artillery that had been employed at the siege of Thorns is fired all at once, and involving far larger guns than could be transported afield. The smallest minority is comprised of mundane weapons of war, with the majority being bus-sized Essence cannons, lightning ballistae, and bolts of fire as large as entire wagons. When the tip of the primary Manse of Lookshy lights up, drawing radiant energy from lines across the city into a pulsating glow up top, entire batteries of streaking lasers cut across the sky and rake across Juggernaut's flesh in precisely spaced rows, ripping meters deep into its hulking muscles and severing sinews and hamstrings. Hundreds, then thousands of rounds pummel into its frontal bulk, impossible to miss even for a blind cannoneer, riddling it with flaming potholes that rapidly chew through its mass. It's not enough to stop it before it reaches the walls on its own.

    It doesn't have to be. Not on its own at least. Striking well ahead of the primary barrage, Staren's magnum opus of weaponry races faster than any bolt or stone can hope to travel, spearing straight through Juggernaut's blind eye and rampaging hundreds of feet into its skull cavity, cauterizing the flesh with the pillaring flame of its passing. When it blows up, thousands of pounds of dying biomass are excavated in an instant, blown out in a fantastic shower of gore that exposes a quarter of its skull cavity, and the greying brains within, along with more than a few flash-fried maggots. Rays of magical light hail on the exposed organ, piercing deep and causing even the most titanic of behemoths to spasm slowly on its right side, briefly slowing its progress and causing the entire citadel to tilt on its back.

    Juggernaut's rotting hide is as butter to Excalibur Galatine. Even if Gawain were only to climb conservatively, he would leave great, smoking gouges everywhere he went. The giant groans in subsonic pain at the flashing stabs of holy fire into its necromantically charged being, trying to shake its shoulder to pry him free, but suffering a massive loss of coordination. Furthermore, while the fortress is shaken and unstable, all of its artillery flying wide at its newly offput angle, the Atom Smasher has a free shooting gallery to blast its most exposed weapons apart. Shot after shot tears into the soulsteel battlements, leaving the black metal cherry red and screaming as ghostly crews disappear on the spot, and Essence weapons are picked off one after the other.
Bloody Revelations     It's rumbling, slanted, unstead, loud, and scorching hot chaos for those who just outright teleport into the war zone. On top of Juggernaut's back, walking on any exposed flesh is a revolting experience beyond imagining, where its sheer airborne rot is like the searing presence of vomit in their lungs. There are no preparations for them, as there had never been any assumption that someone would be able, not to mention willing, to flash transport themselves up to this position, and straight out of the portal, an entire unit of war ghosts is set up and mowed down by surprise, slaughtered to the last by shotgun blasts, crossbow trickshots, and most likely brutal martial arts while still packed in close formation, decimating a leading guard and most of the ammo chain for a significant chunk of the outer weapon arrays.

    As the seas rise up, the airships close with their relentless barrage, Lookshy's war Manse charges for a second round of firing, and even further explosives are lined up for deployment and mass-destruction spells are charged, Juggernaut oddly falters in its assault. Not wholly due to the colossal damage to its frame, but as if on purpose. Its ravaged throat gurgles to life, spilling bloody froth from its titanic maw, and the rumbling boom of its voice can be heard for miles.

                                                                        
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|    /\  \|__||   ||   |          |__|  |__|  |__|  `.             .'  
|   |  \  \   '---''---'                              `''-...... -'    
'    \  \  \                                                          
'------'  '---'                                                        

                                                                    
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|                  ||  |   |  | | |     |  |          |  | .'     |
\    .-------------'|  |   |  | | |     ' .'          |  |'--.  .-'
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                     '--'   '--'                              `'-'  
All-Seeing Eye      Eye takes only a second or two to survey the handiwork of the infiltration team. "Batou," he says tersely, with none of his usual mirth. "Look for a terminal, see if you can access it, find a map. We need to find the command center. Maintain radio contact." In order to make things easier for his fellow Paladin, Eye begins methodically cleaning house. Using his mass-penetrating vision where he can, and his echolocation where he can't, the Exalt begins strafing through the hallways, eliminating hostiles as he sees them--with the exception of one.

     The chaos all around them coupled with their surprise entrance means that stealth is not nearly so useful as overwhelming force. The moment he finds a guard on his own, whether through patrol or simply the combined attack annihilating all but one, he lunges towards them, edges past, and drives a black metal spike into their body, corporeal or otherwise.

     Should his search for a lone guard prove successful, he'll use the spike to search their memories with frantic speed, looking to answer one simple question.

     Where is the Mask of Winters?
Batou "Shit!" is all that Batou could muster from the absolute carnage onboard the revolting creature. The stench is visible, with horrific melting flesh forcing Tachikoma to start walking with its legs instead of rolling on them.

"A-ahh! Mr. Batou, it talked it talked!" shouts Tachikoma, slipping forward.
"It sure as hell did, and ya know what? We're gonna give it just what it wants."

Eye asks Batou to find a terminal on this beast, which will make this suicide insertion much easier. "Roger that!" He responds, looking towards the buildings embedded within the flesh, Tachikoma and Batou leaping through the air.

Batou keeps his wits about him, planting shot after shot into the suprised ghosts that he may come into contact to. If he can find himself a terminal, he attempts hacking it, getting assistance from Tachikoma in this endeavor.

"Gotta find that map... I KNOW they need one for you, Juggernaut..."
Miari     The smell is absolutely terrible. Even from this distance, the GAG-INDUCING STENCH of all of those tons of rotting flesh being blown all across the battlefield is enough to make those of meager constitution keel over and empty their stomachs.

    Even Miari, a trained physician and one of the Infernal Exalted, at home with such ghastly events with her senses twisted towards such things, wrinkles her nose.

    Still she keeps her spell on course, gathering titanic storms of emerald light and compressing it into an infinitesimally tiny sphere.

    And now, the real assault begins.

    "I'll... do my best... to answer you, beast. Whatever you once were, whatever terrible things you might have wrought to humanity on your own... you do NOT deserve THIS!"

    Straining to contain all the power she gathered, Miari raises the sphere up above her head, draws her arm back... and PITCHES the tiny glint.

    As it travels, it gains speed, expanding out to softball sized and wreathed in a blazing emerald corona. It was expertly pitched though, seeking the biggest gash in Juggernaut's core body mass, the BIGGEST cavity exposed by all of the onslaughts so far.

    There it will embed itself. Shine one last time...

    Then, all is AWASH IN THE GREEN SUN'S LIGHT!

    The singularity expands outwards as a churning sphere of calamitous green flames that scorch and vaporize everything they touch. It grows, grows, and grows yet more. To the point of engulfing most houses. Most mansions. Small farming towns, perhaps... and yet still it grows! From the churning flames a deep and majestic laughter can be heard, perhaps the joys of some far off ancient god reveling in this destruction regardless of what it's turned towards.
Starbound Flotilla "Guuuuwwwwhhhhh... Loud behemoth..."
"This is the reality of life without balance. It is no life worth living."
"Yeah, guess I'll cancel my retirement backpacking a citadel."
"That's a prayer I'll see answered. Think we can pull this off, Petrov?"
"If the calculations are right. Start the Sequence. It won't interfere with the others assaulting its brain and spine. Take us to the launch."
"With pleasure."

    Albert's massive Atom Smasher roars as its energy output spikes dangerous. Rockets at its rear flare wide, and the central reactor gushes lightning into the sky. The rocket-boosted rush takes it towards the slanted terrain that the Flotilla left behind, up its length, and straight towards Juggernaut. The entire mobile fortress moves at speeds reserved for stunt drivers or even light aircraft by the time it reaches the top of the slant... The top of a ramp of sorts! They're going to jump off of this, straight towards the behemoth! If someone wanted to get aboard the outside, they'd better grab on fast!

    The huge particle-accelerator fortress launches clean off of the massive ramp, twists in mid-air, dislodges its central reactor into a dangling massive nuclear flail, and attempts to maneuver the entire toroid structure, with the gap in its center, entirely over the head of the massive beast, hopefully slamming down all the way to the shoulders, and then suddenly digging in with massive pile-bunker spikes driven directly into the flesh. The shining, gleaming light in it betrays the exotic particles accelerating within...

"Hopeful. I hope this will be less painful for the Behemoth..."
"It'll be lethal. That's what matters."
"Guillotine particle collision sequence underway. We must ensure the magnetic integrity holds fast against all attackers! Ensure nothing disrupts it!"
"Overclock every anti-air turret and upper-side artillery emplacement. Dump every drone. Take out every front artillery unit on the Citadel."
"Floran will kill! Biggessst prey!"
"Yeah let's just blow /every defense/ while we're literally in the face of the biggest enemy force. Fucking Christ, fine, clocking hard!"

    Albert has learned a great deal from his efforts. He cannot, unfortunately, bring the Void out to this place. But cosmic-type energies, infused with the esoteric power of gravitational singularities, that must be something a little closer to the Void than most elemental energies could manage. And while that sort of Earth-analogous elemental energy is well within his range, scaling it up normally isn't. Unless, of course, you bring a particle accelerator of sufficient size.

    The Atom Smasher has attempted to convert itself to a behemoth-sized collar; its charging sequence is attempting to summon, through esoteric atom-smashing, a black hole in the neck of the creature. While it does this, its huge array of still-functional guns that survived the impact will try to blast away any effort to dislodge this huge fortress' toroidal shape. This is the Guillotine Sequence, though if it can truly slice through such a beast's entire neck depends entirely on how much damage the Citadel can lay down on the converted mobile fortress, and how much the flesh rebels against the attempts to crash particles deep within and craft the dangerous singularity.

    It may not be the howling, soul-rending Void. But if there's anything that a mad scientist could do, such an effort is as close as Albert could get.
Gawain As Gawain scales Juggernaut, it's not the easiest trip. The shaking Juggernaut forces the knight to plant the blade into the flesh mountain briefly so that he's not sent flying off, flipping off it to point the blade upwards and firing off a pair of thrusters on either side, which he uses to boost his next jump, trying to land on one of the shoulders. The knight slices through any maggots in his path, as he prepares his energy, and shouts up at the head. His voice is calm, almost soothing, especially after those booming words, which have put Gawain slightly off guard. He sighs, and smiles up at the beast. "You don't want this, do you? To be used as a factory for horrible science, not allowed to die. I am Sir Gawain, Warden of the Paladins, Knight of the Sun. You do not know me, Juggernaut, and I do not know you, but for one in so much pain, seeking relief, I will grant you mercy. I will grant you a swift death. Here is the power of my holy blade, granted to me by the Lady of the Lake!"

Gawain's footing changes, as he raises Excalibur Galatine to the sky. He looks up towards the sun, briefly, and then into the clear air, before channeling vast energy into the blade. His words are backed with power as he speaks, and those nearby with magical senses can detect a powerful wave of it coming from the knight.

"Feel the light of the sun! Excalibur... Galatine!"

Around Gawain's feet, a circle of magic, gold and yellow like the sun, begins to spin into formation, growing around him. Gawain throws his sword into the sky without even looking at it, the blade reaching the apex of the throw and suddenly forming a miniature sun around it, bright and hot. The heat does not affect the knight, as the blade does not come down, instead extending down into his hands as a massive blade of sunlight, like a powerful ray from the miniature sun. The sigils around his feet themselves form a 2D shape of one, as the blade rests in both of Gawain's hands, stretching atleast twenty feet high up to that sun, which forms into the tip of the blade. Gawain takes a breath, and then a step forward, and swings the blade of sunlight.

Besides the overwhelming heat and fire of the holy sunblade, striking into Juggernaut's neck and trying to blow straight through his entire head with the assistance of the others firing upon him. It creates a massive backwave that will, even after the blade's finished cutting, continue for quite some distance, fire dancing into the air. As Albert and the others fire their big attacks, Gawain might be in the aftermath, though...and he's certainly drained. He's probably going down with the beast, if it does indeed fall!
Tomoe Tomoe has to wonder how the thing regenerates like it does, then again? This is creation and well the laws of reality form her world don't apply at all. She does not rush in straight line, that would be foolish that would be asking to get shot down by this thing's weapon emplacement. She takes note of the fortress which may be a better target for her today but there are those planning to take it's head and how can she say no to helping them with that.

Damage is being done to it, it's just the most tanky thing Tomoe has seen in her life, it puts her to shame with the damage this lumbering thing can take without going down.

Staren moves expose the brain, which is infested with all manner of horrible things., Gawain's own attack does some serious damage but the thing has reaches some of the defenses of Lookshy and it's getting bad even as the barrages keep coming the thing does something she does not expect the monstrous thing speaks, and it begs for death., Gawain's own attack does some serious damage? Yet, the thing has reaches some of the defenses of Lookshy and it's getting bad even as the barrages keep coming the thing does something she does not expect the monstrous thing speaks, and it begs for death.

She does not know what it has done before it was enslaved she doe snot know what it desire are but it has been tortured abused to such a level she can't grasp it.

She has those explosives they have been armed sitting in her inventory since she was given them.

With Gawain's call for an combined effort? She is all in and she'll swoop in opening her inventory and letting the armed explosive fall going for the exposed areas of the thing's brain while the others set up, the fuses tick down and after a moment there's a chain of explosions as the things set in the greymatter of the hulking thing. She needs to get clear before the bigger guns do their thing against the Juggernaut. It's begging for death and she's intending to give it such.
Staren     (Earlier: Upon actually arriving at Lookshy, Staren finds the presence of a giant magitech pyramid reassuring. Clearly there is something about magic pyramids that the best cities get. He'll have to ask Miari if they can get one for the city she's building.)

    (Also earlier: Staren figures the coin is a ward against ghosts, or a way to stop Mask from using their own ghosts if they bite it here.)

    Once the shower of gore has fallen out of the air, he can see his handiwork.

    That it made it all the way to the brain in one shot and exploded a quarter of its skull is, honestly, more than even Staren could hope for, dealing with something of this size. This realization is a shining ray of hope. Could they actually stop the juggernaut before it reaches Lookshy?

    That this supposedly 'living' creature only lists to one side with /a quarter of its brain missing/ is concerning. What if he was wrong? What if they have to entirely remove the head to stop it? Staren considers this as the capacitors charge again, and Lookshy's /impressive/ armament tears away at the beast, including the pyramid itself firing lasers that can cut through the flesh of even a beast this size.

    Staren wonders if Lazlo's pyramid can do something like that. There's a lot of speculation amongst those concerned about the possibility of a second Coalition War, about what kinds of top-secret defenses Lazlo might be hiding. From opening gates to the hearts of stars to teleporting the entire city somewhere else or even into a pocket dimension.

    Staren's so absorbed in watching the barrage's effect, he could almost miss the SEA ITSELF RISING TO PROTECT LOOKSHY. Enark is some kind of super waterbender? Come to think of it, aside from the constructs, almost everything magical he's seen Enark do has been water-related. Huh!

    But the greatest surprise is that the behemoth can speak. Its roars of pain and its words vibrate even through his war machine. It... wants to die?! That it's intelligent is a revelation, but one without much effect on the future since it hopefully won't be alive for long. If anything, it's even hopeful -- if it WANTS to die, maybe it will try to make their job easier. An indicator on his HUD flashes.

                          [Anti-Wireless Railgun 100%]                          

    He pulls the trigger a second time. Another hypersonic magic shell, another pillar of fire.

    Let's grant its wish.
Empty Tidings The last touch Falling Rain makes before she goes inside with the insertion team is to tie a cloth around her face. Unlike some people, she still has a perfectly natural nose to offend.

Once they're inside, Rain stalks the halls. While Batou heads for any potential terminal (though Rain wonders if he'll find such a thing inside a monster like this), she stays in the general vicinity of Eye, intercepting the stealthier monstrosities that try to get in their way. She walks with purpose and fights with ferocity, favoring her left hand for finesse and her right for ungodly amounts of brute strength. One might get the mistaken impression she's been here before, with how she's picking her way across the creature's insides.

She hasn't. Falling Rain just has a sense of the dramatic, and is counting on Mask of Winters to setup his walking citadel in a fashion favoring his. If she can use that to figure out where he might be, it could give them another point of data to track him down.

That isn't all, though. She stops at an intersection, looking up and around as the bellowing voice rings in her ears. Her eyes water, and tears roll down her face, leaving wet trails and damp spots on the cloth over her nose. She seems to be fixated on the body of the Juggernaut, and something of it looks to be upsetting her.

What she's actually doing is giving it a very close look to see what's been done to bind it. It's something of a specialty of hers.
Carna     Enark almost falters when he hears that cry from the giant, but the spell is now more controlling him than the reverse. He can not stop even if he wanted to. And it seems that even their enemy wants him to keep going -- all of them to.

    "Road for the sea's travelers,

    Beginning and end of life

    It is the place where the dead return to

    The home of the soul forgotten

    The gift of a family reunited

    The peace of the tormented

    Finally at rest.

    By all the ages forgotten, and endings yet to come:


    HANDS OF THARMAS: SCALES OF ETERNITY AND CYCLES!"

    The two hands, swollen to a truly unreasonable size, separate from their prayer position that mimics Enark's own hands. They do this because Enark has separated his hands in turn. In one of the giant sea-water hands there is a giant hourglass made of liquid, in the other, a not-to-scale replica of the Moon.

    Enark hurls his hands forwards, and the oceanic ones fly towards their target. The hourglass acts as a shield for Lookshy, trying to absorb and redirect as much damage as possible from Juggernaut's weapons. The one holding the aqua moon closes with the target, a tidal wave of biblical proportions that threads itself around friendly forces in the way, engulfing them in tunnels of air within a newly-formed world of water, until it passes them by.

    It surges towards the enemy, the being that pleads for the mercy of death, the peace of the grave, and the hand delivers it, bringing down its lunar payload as a crushing sphere forged of the ocean's greatest depths, and then transported above to engulf its target in the pressure of a very different abyss than Creation's Underworld is accustomed to.

    Tangled together with railguns, grenades, two solar manifestations and a gravitational anomaly: the ocean in the form of a Moon joins the celestial assembly, though Enark is, at least, smart enough to specify a target for his magic in advance, and thus anything that is NOT his target, such as, say, allies, should remain unharmed.

    Even if rather wet.
Azure Armature The portal is... taxing on Azure Armature. Once the iris closes behind the last of All-Seeing Eye's team, the blue-haired operative drops to one knee, panting. Nobody else is near her, alone with the stench of death, and so she spends a personal moment to recover. Quiet moments didn't come often enough in battle such as these--

As Staren, Gawain, Enark, and the Starbound Flotilla unleash massive, earth-shattering attacks to remove the 'quiet' from Azure's 'quiet moment'.

But it was still a moment.

Drawing back up to her full height, Blue mentally consulted the analysis of Juggernaut's internals, cross-referencing the areas which had been attacked or even annihilated by friendly fire (friendly fire isn't, remember!) and picked her coordinates as close to Juggernaut's heart-core as she could, before blinking away.

Appearing at her location, and potentially immediately accosted (by Maggots, Ghosts, or otherwise), Azure Armature already has her weapon selected and shot charged. Her hair is shocked through with bolts of pure white, and pale flames lick at her shoulders and hand. She knew the penetrative power and lingering damage by this buster weapon -- the perfect compliment to burning out the rot at its core.

She doens't have an attack name to shout, or a dramatic moment, being alone in the nonliteral bowels of a disgusting necrotic mountain, but she does have a Pyreflame Cannon, filling the area around her with ghost napalm.
Bloody Revelations     Aboard Juggernaut, the confusion continues to lend itself to the boarding team's advantage. The ground is unsteady, slanted, and often rocks crazily, but at least slowly, and at worst, they can change their orientation and use the walls as poorly angled floors. The soldiers they run across continue to be no match, as the most capable in hand to hand combat are either in the core keep or had been at the battle of Thorns. Surprise attacks from command-style Elites and one roided up on mass murder decimate their ranks, gradually lessening the threat to those on the walls, but not negating it. The lessened fire is a boon to those at the walls in other ways however, when the sea itself rises to defend them and impossible volumes of water soak up as much of the furious barrage as possible, granting Lookshy's defenders precious respite while they relentlessly strain themselves to load and fire as quickly as possible, and more importantly, to the reserve legions still waiting behind the walls, unable to participate in a fight at this range and scale just yet.

    As is his wont, All-Seeing Eye manages to capture a ghost 'alive', and jam his mind spike through its translucent head, immediately paralyzing it, where it barely manages to answer 'At the summit, in the Heart Room' before a completely 'other' and much more powerful presence drowns the ghost's thoughts out, lashing 'Eye in the head with quite physical, electric force. Batou eventually finds not quite a terminal, as that sort of magitech doesn't appear to be in use here, but at the very least a battle map, which details the important information regarding the citadel and its hard points for the crews that inevitably have to navigate it. This aids tremendously in navigating forward, ambushing and cutting down further crews, as well as giving them a side-on of the main tower and its plunge into Juggernaut's heart. It seems designed to draw on power from below.

    Toriki Falling Rain can confirm it with her own eyes. Up close, she can see Juggernaut's flesh slowly struggling to mend itself, just a fraction slower than it rots away, patches of somewhat whole skin and muscle reforming before they necrotize again in constant, shifting patterns. Underneath, thin cables of soulsteel spread throughout its body like veins, gathering into bundles that all lead back to the central tower, not unlike the dragon lines that feed into a Manse. The machinery itself does not seem to be responsible, however. The Mask of Winters has not crafted this monster by his hands, or resurrected a corpse by sheer fortune. Juggernaut, whatever its original name might have been, is a behemoth of the genuine article. A very old one. Possibly older than the First Age. What feat of magic had drained its life and broken it into forced servitude must be beyond imagining.

    As feats of magic are concerned, one of Miari's own streaks a viridian comet across the battlefield, too small and too fast to do anything about. It dives straight into the hole punched by A-39's foresight the previous night, and after disappearing from sight, Juggernaut's entire torso, where the skin and sinew is most eaten away, glows with eerie emerald light from within, visible in mottled patterns on its surface, giving some idea of the fire unleashed on its innards along with the thunderous sound of its cracking ribs and the chain of secondary explosions from destroyed machinery. Azure Armature arrives inside a thorough excavated cavern hundreds of meters across, replete with piles of charcoal maggot remains, and the overpowering reek of burnt, spoiled meat. The heart and lungs appear damaged, but trapped in rib-like cages of soulsteel which have blunted a large degree of the explosion, but do nothing to keep liquid from splashing right in, immediately covering the dying vital organs in furiously burning Underworld napalm that quickly begins dissolving the heart like acid.
Bloody Revelations     Juggernaut keels over on its elbows, but struggles to right itself, not so that it might continue to move, but so that it can expose its head, neck, and chest. For just a moment, it fights against its sorcerous bindings with all the power it can, opening its mile-wide arm span to accept the screaming death leveled at it from all sides. The holy doom of Excalibur Galatine in this position cleaves straight through the base of its skull, and splits down the central column of its spine, parting the rotting continent beneath Gawain's feet with a biblical, cloven double wave of blood gushing skyward and peeling away to either side, paralyzing the monster completely. Behind him, the citadel blossoms with theatrical explosions of fire and plasma as the Atom Smasher arcs up above him, shaking the fortress walls around the boarding team and incinerating the defenses that can actually fire back on the briefly airborne war machine.

    The Anti-Wireless Railgun slams straight into the underside of Juggernaut's jaw, snapping its head back like a limp doll on its cloven spine and bursting out the top dangerously close in front of Gawain, covering him in the bloody backwash. In that position, Tomoe's air dropped explosives rain into the open cavity, doubled in size now, and pulverize the soft matter within. Smoke and rancid flame pour from Juggernaut's eye sockets, boiling and bursting the one it has remaining, but it doesn't seem to care. Such pain is only a drop in the bucket compared to the decades of agony it has already suffered.

    The second stage of the Atom Smasher kicks in, and the result on the incredibly weakened skull, spine, and throat is no less than spectacular, causing the entire eight hundred foot tall head to crumple in on itself like a bloody tin can, and the next moment, a small lunar mass of magical water tackles into its main mass, knocking its lower body out from under it and crushing it under the fathomless depths, flattening the entire behemoth with just enough time for those aboard it to seek shelter under soulsteel or escape through their quickest means, before Juggernaut is laid low, destroyed from within and without through the most brutal possible combined might of Lookshy and the Multiverse, and finally laid to rest, at least for a while, by the total annihilation of the heart and brain that were only truly its own in its last moments.

    When Juggernaut falls, the earth spasms in violent fury from the weight crashing down on it, rattling the foundation of the walls and sending a few unfortunate men falling to their deaths, but the corpse mount does not stir from the three storey deep crater it leaves. The entire citadel groans with the stresses put on its construction from the massive fall, crumbling completely in places, creaking in others, but its predominantly soulsteel construction holds out. As the dust settles, the tiny city, still perched atop at least a hundred meters of prone corpse, renews its heavy barrage with every weapon it has left, pelting the walls with heavy beam and kinetic weapons fire, desperately blasting Lookshy's battle front with pots of pyre flame and flechettes of soulsteel alongside beams of necrotic energy.

    Lookshy itself of course returns fire. The citadel is now much lower to the ground, and Juggernaut's obscene height no longer shields it from most fire, which means not only the higher wall weapons, but the Manse itself begins pouring fire from every point of the city into the black fortress, bombarding it with even greater ferocity in a more focused space. It looks like a grueling but winnable war, especially with the damage already done by the Atom Smasher in the early battle, and extra especially if the twenty thousand troops still held in reserve, due to their irrelevance in a heavy gun battle, can charge the field and climb aboard, raiding the citadel itself. Sheer numbers ensure that the war host aboard Juggernaut would be slaughtered in short order.
Bloody Revelations     Sadly, that isn't what happens. No sooner have the troops charged valiantly into the field, where the minimum angle of the citadel's weapons actually make them hard to shoot at, does Juggernaut's endlessly dying flesh begin to writhe and pulsate. Uncountable grotesque boils appear on its surface, quivering and straining with pressure from beneath, and then the corpse giant /bursts/ as what must be almost half a million of the horse-sized man-eating maggots that had been only briefly witnessed before.

    A pulsing white tide of squealing, ravenous maws surges across the open ground, forming a solid, thrashing line that outnumbers the soldiers ten to one, while there is no artillery to spare from the frantic battle with the citadel. Diverting fire would only leave the Mask of Winters' fortress free to obliterate the fixed weapons with impunity, until there would be none left to make a difference to the beleaguered army of Lookshy's last stand, already clashing lines. Likely, he had intended to deploy such a secret army within the city walls, but even now, it serves as one last trump card --a secret weapon of spite.

    Even with the rank and file soldier being a match 1:1, and a fully equipped Dragon Blooded matching 100:1, they'll be completely devoured before they can dent even half the number of the monstrous maggot creatures, and then they'll be swarming into the city, where they'll seek the flesh of civilians next. Even Tien Yu looks as if she's about to panic, screaming orders as best she can to pull back the line to the walls, clutching the city wall and leaning over the edge in furious despair, knowing she has depleted almost all of her reserves of Essence.

    That battle is decided long before it begins. How it would have turned out in the end will only be a topic debated by historians. Someone far off on the western shore, humming musically to herself as she twirls an artifact around her finger by its orichalcum rings, sees to that.

    The spike of magical energy is so intense that it can be felt even by those who lack special senses for it. It blazes in the sky like a second sun, but rather than radiating outwards, it seems to sharply draw all ambient energy inwards, sparking a ferocious black hole of living Essence that hangs high in the air at the apex of a tremendous throw, from all the way across the city. Shots fly from the citadel towards it in an attempt to shoot it down, as at least the Mask's forces immediately recognize what it is, but the sector with the best line of sight has been wiped clean by the Elite operatives, and the effort is in vein. The flare lasts for approximately five seconds, as a tiny, tiny dot of shimmering gold and smokey blackness lets out a shrill, rising scream, and then abruptly shatters in a catastrophic implosion.

    The area for miles around Lookshy --out to sea, across the battlefield, over Juggernaut and the Mask's Citadel; everything-- plunges into total blackness, and then abruptly flares into blinding golden light, blotting out the sun with its sheer scorching brilliance, and casting tremendous, towering shadows from every solid object, each of which issue their own deafening songs from their cast surfaces. The coins taken by the Elites become white hot, and just as swiftly, bubbles of shimmering darkness, where the terrible light doesn't reach, spring up around them, writhing and boiling away in the sustained flash of horror, until they shatter and crumble to dust as the light disappears, leaving most people blind and deaf for several seconds afterwards, having been exposed to the world's largest flashbang.
Bloody Revelations     That is, most of the sole survivors.

    When people regain their senses, they will look out to a field of nothing but hundreds of thousands of lifeless bodies. The only blood that stains the ground is where the two fronts had briefly met and exchanged blades and teeth. The land is littered with the corpses of men and beasts like the dead leaves of autumn. Behind them, the airships in the sky glide along without direction, flying off into nowhere, or else angle down into the ground and do not pull up, crashing with distant, muffled explosions. Looking around, the walls are as just as still and lifeless, as men and women lay slumped at their stations, weapons still in hand, eyes wide and frozen in terrible pain. Looking further afield, the reserve legions still inside are collapsed dead in the streets. Even further than that, the docks are now little more than the dead piled ten high, sliding gradually into the water, where the closest boats now drift aimlessly with no captains to steer them and no oar men to propel them.

    Even the citadel of the Mask of Winters has fallen completely silent. The captured ghost is blasted out of existence right in All-Seeing Eye's hands. Others are wiped clean like so many ghastly stains all around his fellow intruders. No exchange fire punctuates the deathly silence. Not one bolt is loosed. Even the ghosts of the Deathlord's personal fortress have been flayed out of existence, wiping the field clean save for the Elites, Tien Yu herself, doubled over in near-comatose, shivering agony, unable to do anything but clutch at herself and make whimpering attempts at screams, and then, against all odds, the Mask of Winters himself, seen at last, for the very first time, striding step by step down the broken neck of Juggernaut, walking out to the field on his own two feet without a hint of worry.

    "Ahahaha! HAHAHAHA! Marvelous! Absolutely marvelous! What resolve! What /ruthlessness/! What worship to the cold arithmetic of war! Lookshy itself, as a sacrificial pawn! Even I would never have expected such! Brilliant! Bravo!"

    "Even if such paltry power is a small price to pay for an attempt at defeating /me/, I applaud your willingness to throw it away! Far beyond my expectations! I am truly impressed by the vicious determination of the living to continue to survive, clawing and devouring one another so that they might continue to draw breath! Ahhh, I haven't felt so alive in centuries! Well, done, you have more than deserved the opportunity to cross blades with myself /personally/! Be proud that such /songs/ will be sung of your tragic defeat in the ending days of Creation!"
He's applauding. The Mask of Winters is actually bringing his hands together in a slow, thundering clap as he descends to the field for real.
Bloody Revelations     Eye and Seven Despairs had been a freak for certain, unpleasant to look at in the extreme, and unnerving and jarring to behold in motion. The Mask of Winters is by contrast, exactly what one would expect in a Deathlord in more. He towers even taller than Tien Yu had in her divine armour. Each footfall is a stroke of thunder. He wears what must be hundreds of pounds of articulated plate wrought entirely in soulsteel, so thickly layered that there are no weaknesses in any of its joints. His armour is covered in wicked blades, where they aren't obscured by the swirling cloak of shadows that follows in his wake, partially phased through the twelve foot long and two foot broad cleaving sword across his back, covered in a sheen of black frost, and edged with sickening silver runes.

    He wears no helm, but his face is hidden completely --obscured behind his eponymous mask, or rather, masks. At the front, he wears a face of such sublime, icy beauty that it is almost mesmerizing to look at --hypnotic, even. As her adjusts it however, he turns to bring a second mask to the fore, and it is a visage of such grotesque, medieval horror and fury that somehow the very lines and contours of its shape inspire deep, gut feelings of revulsion and instinctive directive to flee. Where he walks, the ground oozes blood around him, pooling in his massive footprints as if Creation itself were wounded by his presence.

    "Well then! Come to me! All those who are brave enough even to gaze upon my glory, let us do battle! Even without the bountiful harvest of death to be had, I am more than your match!" At this distance from most, the Mask of Winters stops out in the open. One hand roils with acrid grey smog, and the other crackles with splinters of blackness. After several seconds of building power, he sweeps the former wide over the field of corpses around him, where slivers of soul-stuff flit across the ground like flies and find every intact body for hundreds of feet, pulling them from the ground as groaning, shambling corpses on the spot. The other hand he thrusts skywards, loosing a thin pillar of darkness into the havens, which then splits into an arcing fountain, and then after a few more seconds, rains down across the entire area indiscriminately as countless thousands of pitch black arrows, completely indiscriminate, but without need to be; the arrows seem to have little to no effect on the zombies now fanning out around him.


+---------------<<Blackstorm Coffle>>---------------+
        TARGETS: Everyone
        TYPE: Piercing/Necrotic
        HIT: Very Likely
        THREAT: Low-Moderate
        EFFECT: None
+---------------<<Blackstorm Coffle>>---------------+



+-----------------<<Arisen Legion>>-----------------+
        TARGETS: Melee
        TYPE: Hand to Hand Weaponry
        HIT: Unlikely
        THREAT: Low
        EFFECT: Mobbing
+-----------------<<Arisen Legion>>-----------------+
Carna     Enark is completely out of magical energy. The spell he cast was new, and thus not proven and perfected over the ages like Murmurs. Its cost to him would have been enormous even under normal circumstances, and split between alliles like the rain in Ariamis. But he paid the full cost himself, and his ritual was far from the most efficient. The circles all around Lookshy helped to circulate power, to renew and restore, but they can only do so much.

    Enark is, while it's difficult to remember sometimes, essentially a ghost himself. Not like a haunting entity, but a departed soul who actually went where he was supposed to after death.

    Even so, the strength of his will and his spirit are a major component of being stronger than a normal ghost. Even without the magical exhaustion that now afflicts him, compounded by physical exhaustion, the blow to his mind and senses by the succession of dramatic and disastrous events following their combined assault is too much for him. It is not a sleep that he falls into, but a sort of coma, like one he has experienced before. He is easy prey to the bombardment. Only his precarious perch at the highest available point will offer him any protection from zombies, for however long that lasts.

    But as he drifts away from consciousness, it is to the sights and sounds of mass destruction, death, and the groans of the wretched undead, just like when the Unlit invaded.

    After all this time, all he has done, all he has been through, he is right back where he started.

    It seems the dead don't change after all.
Starbound Flotilla     Seft has been reduced to incoherent tears. Glitchy noises like sobbing can be heard over constantly-shifting broadcast frequencies. George looks devastated, keeping together only because he's focused on keeping Seft together. Moonfin has emerged from one of the wrecked hatches on the Atom Smasher, staring out over the horizon at the corpses. Biteblade and Pavo seem to be trying to hold on to each other's hands, quivering a little from the sheer overwhelming psychological weight of this event.

    Only Albert makes it to his Starstrider, slamming the hangar open. Albert has crafted a tremendous militarized walking tank, with thick limbs, treads at its feet, and large, fat arms that float at its side bearing five different artillery projectile weapons each, though it maintains a shiny white gleaming smooth aesthetic; it punches open the damaged hangar, leaps out in all fifteen feet of glory, and slams onto the field. "Admire us or don't. We took the only path forward that there was to take. We won't take one step back. Glory is for legends. Scalpels are for cancer. And someone put their palms in the back of the knife drawer." All ten heavy artillery guns lock into place. Huge electrical coils surge in and out of the mecha. The armor surges with white light and gushes waves of energy as Albert throws fuel lines wide open. In the cockpit, he examines the duust left behind by his own coin like it's a signature of mortality itself. He lets it sift away through his fingers and plants both hands on the controls. "This is a price for cutting your cancer out of the world. Nothing is given without payment. There's no price, no ethics, no morality that's more important than stopping what was started in Thorns, and making sure it never happens again."

    "There is nothing worth more in this world than killing men like you. Starbound One on-station. Engaging hostile."

    His mecha advances, both arms up, blasting huge volumes of raygun fire from ten barrels over and over, dumping damage as hard as he can directly into the man. Black hell rains from the sky and shears straight through armor, evoking waves of sparks like gushes of blood, but Albert keeps forcing through it. He stomps his way through the Arisen Legion ruthlessly, letting them bash against the ankles and knees of his machine all they like, crumpling armor but mostly leaving the systems functional.

    Albert is in emotional turmoil. But not moral outrage. The sea of corpses are no small burden on his mind, but at this stage it's clear that he's as close as anyone here would ever get to accepting what Bloody Revelations did, and it's likely as anything he'd have pulled that trigger himself if that had been the need.

    He is still here to do what he came here to do: Purge the seed of the dystopian cancer before it can take root. He moves to close in on mask with sustained blasts, before swinging at Mask with a roar and a heavy overhead hammer strike.
Staren     It goes down, after an insane combined attack that would take too long t6o write detailed reactions to. If Staren weren't a robot, this would be a moment where he lets out a breath he doesn't realize he was holding.

    The Citadel is in range now. As it opens fire, Staren hurries to hop back behind the walls while he plans he next move, the sniper railgun folding back up into its shoulder pack. He had no idea how this fight was going to go, so he didn't really have a /plan/ for this. When the reserve forces rush out, though, he joins them.

    The swarm of giant maggots... He /doesn't have/ the crazy AoE weapons he started the last fight with. All he can do is sweep railgun and laser fire through the horde, and step on any that get near him. But it's barely making a dent.

    His sensors detect a magic surge that he can /feel/, somehow. The Citadel is shooting at it, so it must be from an ally.

    Staren doesn't realize which ally, because he doesn't realize what it is.

    Until it goes off, and the coins activate.

    Looking around after the flash confirms it. He briefly wonders why all this death didn't create a shadowland, but then realizes that of course, this isn't 'death' as Creation's physics know it.

    Those souls didn't go to the underworld and drag a piece of Creation with it. They were simply obliterated.

    <"You MONSTER! You could have aimed it so Lookshy was outside!">

    So, that's it then. There's no way to save all those people... but at least that weapon will have destroyed Mask of Winters too. The Neverborn can save him from death, but they can't do anything against total destruction.

    Staren tries to... to pick up the mental pieces and start planning how to take down Bloody Revelations, when THAT VOICE echoes across the field.

    It didn't even destroy him?! This was all for naught?! There's no way they're going to be able to lure him to the center of Cold House and chuck him over the balcony.

    But an attack is coming now, and his allies are all intent on fighting Mask of Winters here.

    And now she's claiming that it will become a shadowland anyway, that the people here still became ghosts. That... if that's true, then the orb doesn't do what she claimed it does. Who knows what else she's lied about? Maybe the deathlords CAN be killed without such measures.

    Right now, though, there are arrows and zombies.

    Staren raises his shield over his head to block the arrows. The zombies aren't much of a threat. For now, Staren opens fire on the deathlord with a giant laser rifle while trying to think of a better plan.
All-Seeing Eye      Batou and Toriki will note that Eye's body suddenly seizes up, from his feet all the way to the topmost portion of his long raven hair. When the behemoth is knocked onto its side, Eye himself is thrown to the floor, his back hitting the uneven ground of the citadel with a hard, uncompromising thump. Juggernaut's rocking sees his mindspike briefly roll away, before being snatched up almost possessively by the prone Exalt.

     The dried blood from the rain during the siege of Thorns now mingles with a solitary stream of his own, artificial lifeblood, slowly trickling down from his nose. Wiping it away with a gloved hand (which itself is also caked in the aforementioned dried blood), he gets back to his feet.

     The space he occupies is suddenly full of the sounds of the many-toothed horrors bursting free of their decaying, fleshy enclosures. As the maggots make their advance, he makes a brief, terse rounds through his immediate surroundings, checking to make sure none of his comrades have been too injured by Juggernaut's fall. He opens his mouth to say something,. Perhaps it's to share what information he may have found through his search of the ghost's mind, or perhaps it's to give some order based on those findings. His attempt at forming words ends in a hiss of pain as the black coin burns into his leg. The coin is dug out of his pocket, a reproachful, demanding gaze leveled at it, as if to interrogate. As the darkness envelops him, one word escapes his lips. "Denandsor."

     The ghost he'd interrogated is simply gone--and the silence all around them, though initially the result of his own deafness, soon tells all he needs to know. The field is completely silent... except for that all-too familiar laughter. "He /was/ in the Heart Chamber," says the Exalt coolly. "Now, it sounds as though he's outside." A single wave of one gloved hand is made to his allies. "Come."

     Eye makes a series of graceful vaults and flips, navigating the downward slope of Juggernaut's lifeless (and now, motionless) form, until his feet land upon solid earth. This is, unfortunately, at the precise moment when myriad arrows begin to strike the earth. The frown of suspicion sours into a scowl of determination. Two whips crack repeatedly overhead, each snap accompanied by a crack of purple lightning. Twirling the weapons overhead, Eye makes each into a magnetic disc, using this to repel the arrows and in fact redirect them towards the Mask. They aren't affecting the zombies--but will they affect their master?

     As he makes this counterattack, the odd arrow still manages to slip through the cracks, inevitably causing damage to the Exalt himself. He can't keep this up forever. Hopefully, he won't need to.
Gawain As Juggernaut is sliced through and the railgun snaps its head, Gawain leaps back, and is doused entirely in blood. He wipes it off his face, as the sunlight blade fades away and Juggernaut collapses. He's going to need a moment to rest before he continues...when it happens. As the maggot swarm comes down, Gawain starts moving, but he's not fast enough. The coin starts to burn, and the darkness springs around him, blinding and deafeaning him. The knight blinks as his senses come back, and he stares at the corpses. It only takes him a few moments to figure out who fired them.

The result is that his expression warps. Gawain's calm smile becomes disgusting rage, as he moves to stare up at the sky, and then at the Mask of Winters. Over the radio, he shouts at Bloody Revelations, demanding her to present herself. He's going to kill her. He's going to end her life for what she's done, in penance for failing Lookshy, in revenge for-

And then Azure Armature calls in the favor Gawain gave her. Focus on the mission, which is to kill the Mask of Winters. Gawain freezes. And as he does so, as it all races through his mind, he considers Lovell, left behind at the front lines. Did his faithful boar survive? Is Lovell dead? Gawain wants to go back. He briefly turns, as if he's going to leap off the massive corpse and head that way. But he made an oath. He cannot break his oath. It chafes against him, and as Gawain turns back to the Mask of Winters, he starts moving in a way he hasn't in years. His movement across the battlefield, as he runs, is one of fury. He shouts out to the Mask of Winters, his voice snarling.

"Mask of Winters! I give you until I reach you the chance to surrender! If you do not, I will cut you down!"

As Gawain rushes across the battlefield, the black arrows impact into his flesh and armor, drawing blood and tearing into the already weak knight, who's pushing himself beyond what he should because there's no time for retreat here. As Gawain finally reaches the Mask of Winters, assuming he doesn't surrender, he roars an outraged battlecry, setting his blade alight and moving to strike it into the Mask of Winters and slice into his flesh, slamming through any zombies in the way to do so and taking all of their blows head-on. He can handle it. He has to be able to handle it.
Batou The death of this gargantuan creature means nothing now. After being nearly thrown by the collapse of the behemoth, Batou's coin /explodes/ in his chest pocket, damaging him a hell of a lot less than the others without such protection, but still making even him be stunned for several moments.

By the time his eyes restart, Tachikoma is already over Batou, shaking him.

"Hey! Mr. Batou! Are you still alive?! Please answer!" Tachikoma shouts in genuine worry. Batou slowly raises up from the ground, looking out over the expansive death, not even able to fully take in the sheer amount of death that occured in an instant. Batou is stunned to silence in those intervening moments.

Missles. Nukes. Chemical. Biological. He'd seen it all in its terror, and the deaths therein. This... this was raw. Silence with no bloodshed. Just pain and silence.
He lets loose a pained shout, punching into the rotten flesh hard enough to pulverize it under his fist. Tachikoma quietly records the Mask of Winters joyous reaction to the total death, and silently uploads it for record keeping of the war-crimes-in-action.

"Bloody Revelations. You. You will be the one I savor when your death comes."

Batou stands, leaping onto Tachikoma as he takes out his shotgun once again, loading it up. "At the very least," he says, methodically reloading and readying himself. "I can see this brute to his finality first. Mask of Winters, you will pay for this. You'd best be ready."

And with that, both Tachikoma and Batou start their attack.
Tomoe Perhaps it would have been better that Tomoe did not get the coin and perished in the hellish weapon that was let lose. She however survives it and is witness to. She's numb, she knew there would be be a breaking point with Bloody Revelations, it has come, oh god it has come. There is something that must be tended too first the Mask of Winters, a people have been betrayed and exterminated, A goddess too, and Tomoe feels sick that she is to blame in part for this, the Mask's words just only vaguely register, she's numb and filled with a rage she's not felt in a very long time,

She would break down herself at carnage like this but there are others still on the field the vain hope of a few of lookshy's forces still live.

She ignores Bloody Revelations at this point on the comm and focuses on the Mask of Winter,s the price for this has been too high, she tries to not think about it.

She gets even more concerned about Albert but there's nothing she can do right now but fight.

She used to think the fate of being cubicle bait was a terrible one? The more she thinks it would have been a far kinder fate to her.

She flies for the mask of winters, nothing is said there are no words, she takes some damage from the Blackstorm but she keeps going, she is out of melee range for the moment of the risen legion. She will slam into the ground and have Caliborn in hand she's chanting golden runes dance about her now. She looks right at him with her purple eyes there's nothing to say, but the look is clear on one thing, only her and her allies are walking away. Or the Mask of Winters is. This ends today, one way or another but after a moment she starts to speak she's chanting something runes dance about her, rapidly and something builds up she's channeling both light magic and her swords innate holy properties. Then comes a massive burst of light a powerful one it's taxing to tomoe with how much she's putting into this but a massive part of the ground. Which contains her and hopefully the Mask will flood with holy fire oddly it's in the shape of a cross.

"HOOOOOLY CROSS!!!!"
Azure Armature The burning-out of the heart, and the massive crash after aren't watched by Azure Armature from within the beast - that would require her to sit there in something she expected to detonate, filled with dangerous creatures and magic super doom napalm. Asking to die.

Having that fate granted to it with extreme prejudice.

From a "safe" distance, Armature watches the beast fall, braced behind a little hard-light bunker she had created after popping back into existance. Precautions and plans. The coins and currency of operational success.

It is not until the Soulbreaker Orb - something she was not aware of - throws expectations entirely into whack. The protective coin shimmers into protective darkness, even as her little bunker is blown away around her. She raises a hand over her eyes, palm-out, as the giant soul-rending flashbang subsides. And all that's left is...

Well, the cost is quite high. The wails of gods ring through the air, and the crumbling of a doomed city rattles in the distance. Single voices cry out for support, for assistance, for anyone, dotted around the area. She can hear them, with her enhanced hearing. She can pinpoint them on a map. She could even coordinate the recovery operation, were there any recovery elements to call on.

But there aren't any.
There's just an objective left to tick off before the day is out.

Jogging at an augmented clip back towards ground zero to conserve charge, Azure Armature leaps over broken terrain and flooded trenches, past smouldering unmanned weapons, when she gets an idea. Everything in the area is unmanned - and the Lookshy forces used advanced essence-powered craft.

Plotting out the various aircraft still floating around listless in the air, Armature closes to engagement distance, making a few arcane gestures with her left hand as a blue aura began to surge around her.

"In a battle of attrition, first cut off the enemy's supply lines. Then, when logstics are threatened, attack relentlessly to create pressure. Finally, deliver the decisive strike. I wonder if you'll need to be tossed into a reality sinkhole to make sure you die as well?" She half-mantras, half asks, charging a blast of Pyreflame before lobbing a dripping napalm shot downrange at the Mask, holding a hardlight shield above her with her left hand to bunker up against the rain of necrotic arrows.
Empty Tidings Falling Rain sees the monster knitting itself back together, and she wonders how old and mighty it must be to accomplish that when under so much fire. An original behemoth, brought to heel and used as a battery for all manner of necromantic experimentation. No wonder the Mask of Winters has such grotesqueries at his disposal.

She fights her way inward. It's too late, though. Falling Rain is about to address Eye when she feels the surge of power. She looks straight up, eyes widening. The coin in her possession burns with energy.

In a flash of terrible brilliance, everything dies.

The Dragon-Blooded adjunct stumbles. She braces herself on an interior wall of the citadel for the span of a second, but doesn't wait for her senses to come back. Despite her deafness and the numbness she feels, her eyes work perfectly well (for no readily apparent reason), though sooty black tears continue to flow freely. She makes her way out, following instinct and curving passages until she's on the surface of the behemoth.

The sheer scale of what has been perpetrated strikes her. For a moment, her legs feel weak and her head swims. She starts to hyperventilate -- and then reins it in, breath catching, forced out with a sharp inhalation and slowly drawn in. She sinks back into that chilly calm tinged with unrestrained joy, but finds the latter half of the emotional mix difficult to grasp. It makes her functional, at least. As long as she doesn't think about it.

Falling Rain bounds off of the titanic bulk, but does not immediately charge for Mask of Winters. She speeds past crumpled bodies, some mangled by warfare, others that look like they just passed out on the spot. They are beyond counting. She sweeps up a massive tower shield in each hand as she passes down a line of infantry, feet pounding across the neatly-arranged fields surrounding Lookshy itself. What used to be Lookshy.

Panic begins to creep back into her heart. Icy cold washes it away. Deep breaths.

The arrows come down, and she reaches her target just as they do. Falling Rain leaps into the air, twisting, intercepting the widespread arrow-storm with the shields she's pilfered. She's like a briefly-hovering screen, keeping the rain of feathered death off the ground... and off of Tien Yu's prone form, whom she bee-lined for the moment she got out of the Juggernaut.

Rain lands. She tosses aside the shields, too perforated to be useful now. "Tien Yu!" She's nearly comatose, she thinks. Falling Rain reaches into her rags and withdraws a slender box. She opens it, drawing out a silver-handled brush and a clean strip of paper. She makes swift, precise strokes, composing a swift but elegant prayer to the agonized goddess at her feet, calling her to rise again.

Her own Essence flows into the prayer strip. She strikes a spark off a bare blade with a sweep of her right hand, setting the paper alight, and then clasps her hands together as it goes up like an Essence-fueled flare.
Miari     It's very fortunate that Miari kept one of those coins! But she never expected what it would protect against!

    All hell breaks loose upon Juggernaut, and then the battlefield... the developments proceed roughly as could be calculated. She'd been expecting a difficult fight, but then--

    Then a feeling of absolute dread washes over her from twists in the dragon lines, and she answers it by reaching deep into her Exaltation. A defense is arrected as five petal-like wings emerging from her back and shielding around her as all the world turns insideout--

    Then, the bodies hit the floor.

    She picks herself back up from the ramparts, the battlefield strangely quiet...

    And her mind, channeling the brilliant power of She Who Lives In her Name, immediately deduces the cause from the effect.

    "Soul... soulbreaker...!!" A gasp of pure horror escapes her, she claps both hands to her mouth. For the first time in a great long time... tears come to her eyes.

    "What... what have you done... WHAT HAVE YOU DONE, BLOODY REVELATIONS?!"

    Shrieking defiantly at the heavens accomplishes absolutely nothing though. She instead grips the merlon she was using for cover, heaving for a breath and adjusting her Essence respiration to the disrtupted flows.

    At last, green flames of fury shimmer in her eyes when she does regain her breath. The Mask of Winters' proclomations are almost secondary now, to the fury she has building up for that one Deathknight.

    But the fury grows cold in a hurry. Miari steps up into the crenel and kicks off the wall, sailing far from the walls.

    But she doesn't reach the ground. Her form shimmers the moment she speaks an unutterable syllable. Shimmers and... comes apart at the seams. Once more a terrific force tears and claws at the fabric of Creation, but rather than one of death, rot, and stagnation...

    This time, a sensation of crystalline perfection, an order that chimes like perfectly tuned bell choir, and a white flame ripples through the battlefield. Miari's form explodes in a pyre of white flame in every direction... and then all that spread energy rebounds, gathering back together as a twenty-foot wireframe titan of solid light, filled with the purest white flame. Reality ripples, and five enormous spheres form in the air around her in orbit. Each of those has five smaller spheres, each of which sport yet five smaller ones.

    The battlefield is full of corpses of mortals and dragonblooded alike. But as Miari sweeps her gaze across the biggest concentration of fallen Terrestrial Exalted... the corpses budge oddly. Weapons clutched in death grips are torn free and hoisted high into the sky.

    "Very well." She exclaims simply, deciding that it's better to speak with actions than words in a case like this.

    Which is why a bombardment of every single magical weapon on the battlefield that's currently going unused begins against the Mask of Winters. A steady stream of Daiklaves, Dire Lances, Grand Goremauls, and other weapons made of the magical materials fly at him from different angles whenever there's an opening. It's an incredibly efficient assault meant to stress his defenses to the limits and wear him down!
Bloody Revelations     "Haha! One with guts! One with /spine/! Excellent! Those with the determination to see through what they started are those fit to stand against me! Those who look back and falter are beneath one such as I, so come!" the Mask of Winters booms, absolutely enjoying the utter devastation all around him as the dramatic trick of a clever enemy, without at all realizing who exactly has betrayed him. He seems to enjoy Albert's hardened ferocity, Gawain's righteous indignation, and perhaps even he attributes the Soulbreaker attack to Azure Armature rather than its true source. He stands between them with his arms wide, as if taking a standing ovation before an audience.

    Of course, his enemies come from all sides, not simply the front row. Swathes of his own necromantic arrows are send whistling right at his exposed back, but their intrinsic potency is not enough. The temporary arrows rattle and shatter on his superheavy plate, eliciting not tinny bashes of metal, but the awful, tortured screams of terrified children, before the shafts disperse into oily smoke. Even just hitting him drives home the incalculable evil behind someone who would choose to wear something like that.

    More substantial projectiles rain down on him from above, not unlike those arrows moments earlier. They rip an extensive line through the ranks of zombies surrounding him, and then myriad weapons of jade fall upon him directly. The Mask of Winters raises his hand upwards like the conductor of an orchestra commanding its fortissimo, and towering palisades of bladed bone rush upwards from the earth to intercept, crumbling away under each artifact strike, sending them spinning away with each busted bone. The spikes continue to rise, rushing forward directly towards Miari at breakneck speed, sprouting through the ground to skewer her from below, then continue straight on through until they spring up under all three remaining robotic targets.


+---------------<<Ivory Razor Forest>>---------------+
        TARGETS: Miari, Batou/Tachikoma, Staren, Albert
        TYPE: Piercing/Slashing
        HIT: 50/50
        THREAT: Medium
        EFFECT: None
+---------------<<Ivory Razor Forest>>---------------+
Bloody Revelations     "Sloppy! Uncoordinated! Is this how heroes of foreign worlds fight? Surely you can do better than this!" the Deathlord booms, reaching up to his back with his other hand, and grandly unsheathing his massive daiklave with a flutter of his shadowy cape. The gratuitously oversized weapon is shrouded in black, and seems to start to vibrate in his hand, and when the barrage of beam fire from both mecha comes in, the giant sword twirls and slices through the air as if it weighs nothing to intercept each beam in turn. Watching, it seems as if it is only half the Mask actually wielding his sword, and half the sword doing it all by itself. One ray does slip past and strike him directly in the chest, but he digs in his heels and does not lose his balance, letting the energy split over his screaming and wailing breastplate as it heats to a glowing red.

    He has it out just at the right moment to face Gawain. The furious Knight of the Round Table is absolutely unchallenged by the undead. Though they pile around him in number, they barely so much as slow him down as his divine blade of legend scythes them down by the dozen. He turns about slowly for the sake of drama, but just in time to clash blades with Galatine, wherein even his daiklave begins to howl, and that black frost begins to creep down its length, causing the Mask of Winters only to smirk.

    When it meets Galatine's fire though, the frost melts instantly, evaporating into ashen steam, leaving the sword immune to conducting whatever horrible power lies in the Deathlord's weapon. The Mask snarls, thrusting forward with sufficient might to throw Gawain back, and without warning, a skeleton serpent of lightless onyx springs forth from his body, hitting Gawain with fangs like a whip crack, no doubt lethally venomous if not for his armour.


+-------------<<Striking Spectral Lash>>-------------+
        TARGETS: Gawain
        TYPE: Piercing
        HIT: 50/50
        THREAT: High
        EFFECT: !Poison
+-------------<<Striking Spectral Lash>>-------------+
Bloody Revelations     Deep violent semi-liquid smoke gathers around one gauntlet, which he thrusts out at the incoming Alchemical Exalted. The sudden motion corresponds to an eruption of sickly purple tendrils of energy that strike with the speed of arrows, ghostly and intangible, but leaving horrific burns where they strike, and remaining out and thrashing wildly to strike them repeatedly should they press the offensive, so that he can keep them at bay with one hand. A glob of pyre flame flies through the whirlwind, and is struck and splattered to pieces, but then those globules only strike the Mask of Winters' armour and leave sizzling superheated pools of Underworld napalm all up and down him, at which he hisses furiously. Even if his armour can take it, surely he can feel that heat through it as well as the death rays.


+---------------<<Crypt Bolt Attack>>---------------+
        TARGETS: Azure Armature, All-Seeing Eye
        TYPE: Necrotic
        HIT: Likely
        THREAT: Medium-High
        EFFECT: None
+---------------<<Crypt Bolt Attack>>---------------+



    Finally, Tomoe closes in a glowing, traumatized fury, lit up with the incandescent glow of a fully charged max-level sword art. The Mask of Winters spins around to intercept it with an elegant flourish, clashing blades with Tomoe in a contest of strength that she cannot hope to win against, with his absurd supernatural might. He begins to laugh as the spectral serpent rounds to bite her shoulder in the next instant, but then the ground beneath him explodes in holy fire, erasing the bloodstain under his feet and shrouding him in destructive light and a furious snarl of hatred. His free hand snaps to his lower back less sedately, whipping free, of all things hidden under his cloak, a plain and unassuming black hatchet. When he slams it into Tomoe's side however, the damage is less profound than a daiklave, but she is assaulted much more severely by a sudden rushing torrent of images in her head: horrific, hyperdetailed visions of her violent and painful death, so strong that they blur with reality.


+-------------<<Dark Torment>>-------------+
        TARGETS: Tomoe
        TYPE: Slashing
        HIT: Almost Guaranteed
        THREAT: Medium
        EFFECT: Debilitating Visions
+-------------<<Dark Torment>>-------------+
Gawain Gawain hasn't felt this way in a bit. He's felt rage recently, again because of Bloody Revelations, but this sheer murderous determination and hatred seething through him is different. It's far more intense, and if he thought about it, would remind him of the way he was at Camlann all those years ago. He's letting loose in a way he hates, a way he'll regret deeply, and right now, he honestly doesn't care. The Mask of Winters refuses his surrender, and so that means Gawain will kill him. Even in this state, had the Mask of Winters surrendered, Gawain may have spared him. But no one will know.

Blade clashes against blade, as Gawain spits out vitriol. "You black-hearted blight! Wearing armor of souls and wanting to kill everyone! Do you really want this? Will it really satisfy you, to follow the whims of your dark masters? Is there no humanity left inside you?!" As the Mask throws Gawain back, the skeleton serpent comes piercing for Gawain, impacting into the corner of his chest. Gawain howls in pain, poison coursing through his system. He can feel the burning, and can get an idea of what impacted him. The knight luckily has fast reflexes, as one hand moves off his blade to grab a vial from his bag, smashing it against the wound and allowing the liquid inside to seep in, treating the poison despite the burning and Gawain's ragged breathing. The wound is, very slowly, starting to patch up from his healing, as Gawain darts forward.

Both hands move back to Galatine, as Gawain moves to try and strike the Mask of Winters with a hard blow, trying to slam his arm up and unsteady his grip on his blade. The Round Table knight is getting a bit dizzy from the energy drain, the wound, and the poison. He should have retreated. But he made an oath.

Also, frankly, he wants to personally see that Mask of Winters dies a horrible death.
All-Seeing Eye      'Those who look back and falter are beneath one such as I.' The words cut through the air as cleanly as Miari's plethora of thrown artifacts, reaching the Alchemical and slapping him across the face. "Is that so," he spits, as the redirected arrows bounce harmlessly off of the Mask's armor.

     Steadily, he marches towards the Mask, wading through the rain of arrows much as the incapacitated Juggernaut waded through (and over, in part) the weapons of now fallen Lookshy. With his hands occupied keeping the arrows at bay, his ability to dodge the incoming tendrils is limited, even with his superior vision. He makes an effort to dance around them, twirling around and under them. This effort is nearly successful, but a miscalculated roll results in one tendril leaving an ugly, crackling wound trailing across his back. The pain draws an involuntary response, slowing his impromptu shield long enough for several arrows to penetrate and make a line across his outstretched arm.

     Clenching his teeth, Eye pounds a fist into the dirt, forces himself back up, and breaks into a sprint. He charges directly at the crowd of undead surrounding the Deathlord, completely foregoing defense. Two more whips join his arsenal, these made of crackling lightning and held in his hands proper. He spins these four weapons until their speed is closer to sawblades than flexible chain weapons, vision locked on the lifeless, milky sea of eyes before him. Mere feet from the front line, Eye leaps into the air.

     His warm brown skin, caked in blood as it is, drains and becomes shock white. Soulsteel cybernetics emerge from his skin, framing his soft face and distorting his clothes with rigid, artificial shapes. With a crack of thunder, he's suddenly surrounded by his spiritual signature, his Anima--a swirling vortex of smoke infrequently lit by flashes of purple lightning. Briefly hovering thanks to the spinning of his weapons, Eye flicks one wrist outwards, sending both whips on one arm towards the Mask's leg.

     He lands--in the midst of the Deathlord's shambling footsoldiers, surrounded by grabbing hands and no doubt assailed by whatever weapons they wield. But rather than fight back, he simply yanks, with all the might he can muster.
Staren     It's hardly the first time that Staren's made a mistake that cost countless lives.

    But if he does not take further action, more will be lost. The past has happened. He must make the future better. Focus on the enemy before you. Even if Bloody Revelations is using the Mask of Winters as a distraction to cause more trouble even now... he has to be destroyed, but this is the last time.

    Staren's not so out of it that he won't FLY to avoid an oncoming wave of spikes. The Star Hawk leaps as soon as they start approaching, flying on thruster power without transforming, switching the laser rifle to its left hand as the left shoulder pack opens to reveal a pistol grip, which Staren draws forth with his right hand.

    A mecha-scale, chrome-plated revolver. It's made to look like a scaled-up peacemaker, but no device bearing that engraved, triple-M monogram could be so simple. Staren's thought of at least one new thing to try.

    He lands after the spikes pass. Those engaging the deathlord in melee prevent him from just firing all three guns in a torrent of destruction -- but with machine precision, he can continue firing the laser rifle during the split seconds when allies aren't in the way. His right hand cocks the hammer on the Annihilator, and at the next opening, he fires. Two four-inch slugs emerge from the barrel, one right behind the other, imbued with the might of mad science by a man who wanted to destroy the horrors plaguing his world, the horrors that prey on humanity and shrug off normal weapons. A man who became a god. If there's any sort of conceptual resonance, divine or otherwise, between the Annihilator and the current situation, Staren hopes it works in his favor. If not, it's still a big ol' mecha-scale mad science cannon, so that's got to be worth /something/.

    Hope.

    In the back of Staren's mind, there's still the faintest hope: That Bloody Revelations is actually a well-intentioned jerk. That Lookshy's defenders are ghosts, who she has a way to imbue with all the positive traits of life, and that she really will do just that and then taunt the heroes about their trust issues and how she accomplished what they could only dream of, creating a better life for the mortals of Creation.

    There's still a chance, right?
Starbound Flotilla     There's a heavy thumping noise of the sound barrier breaking from the force and speed of Albert's mecha breaking to the side as the bone spikes tear through side armor. His metal in his skidding, sliding mecha screams almost as loudly as its pilot roars. "You want worth? You want courage? Determination? This isn't bravery, this isn't stubbornness -- this is science, with more power and more worth than any of your work in Thorns." He darts back and forth, shearing against the huge bone spikes but not impaling on them. His artillery blasts in a constant barrage as he does, between smashing huge spikes away from his mecha with that heavy hammer.

    "I'm a scientist, Winters. I see the encroaching risks in the world. I see the corruption, the sickness, the disease that men like you plant in society!" He strains against the g-forces involved in piloting this mecha, straining to bring it back around. "Ghhhrrrrghhh..." His hands grip the controls tighter, going white-knuckled under the ape-like fur. "Unconstrained by that cruelty, without any of the fog of the fear, we know the price of letting that disease /fester/, Winter!"

    "I'm a scientist, and that means I measure the costs of everything -- and there isn't a price higher than LETTING YOU LIVE!" He takes a harsh turn, suffering a hard impact on the shoulder of his mecha from the impaling spikes to close in hard on Mask of Winters. "This isn't SPINE! This isn't DETERMINATION! This is CLEAR VISION! This is KNOWLEDGE! This is someone knowing the threat you pose to everyone and everything with the sociological cancer you call a SOCIETY!"

    He moves in hard, intent on striking with a huge overhead hammer strike from the opposite end of Gawain... Coordinating with someone he's at odds with almost to spite Mask of Winters. "I'm not just some soldier, I'm a SCIENTIST, and that means when I see the gap between the way the world is and the way the world might become when your disease spreads, I'll build, I'll destroy, I'll make, I'll /annihilate/, anything I have to, to keep you from reaching that!" The hammer blasts with a dozen thrusters all around its head and haft as it comes down with enough force to create a crater dozens of feet wide, and a shockwave even wider. Amid the blasting impact, one might be able to hear him screaming out in that manic mood he's dipped into a handful of times here. "I've lived long enough under men like you, Mask of Winters, to know the only way to live is ON TOP OF YOUR GRAVE!!"
Batou The projectiles hit down onto Tachikoma, with little actual damage to the spider-bot, but Batou takes a couple of bones in his body. One through his shoulder,and the other through his thigh. No pain is registered, but damage is on his internal hud. The verdict? He can still beat the shit outta the creep in tacky armor. But its obvious he'll need more stopping power than a paltry gun.

"Tachikoma, sorry about this!"

Batou reaches down, and grabs one of tachikoma's arms. With a mighty tug, he rips the arm free of its socket, sparks flying as he hefts it like a bat, using the pincers as the grip.

Tachikoma would normally protest from this abuse, but instead takes to just running full force at Masks, Batou holding the arm at the ready.

"Almost... annnnnd... NOW!"

Tachikoma runs behind Masks of Winter at top speed as Batou uses all his might to swing the heavy metal arm at his stupid fucking head.
However, this all out strength has a minor cost to him as his system lags from lack of power after such an intense use of energy, and he's forced to kneel on Tachikoma, panting, even though it holds no use to his actual stamina.

Batou scowls afterwards, ripping the bone fragment out of his thigh, chuckling.

"Heh... Maybe I'll just tear you limb from limb."
Empty Tidings The prayer goes up. Falling Rain stares at the city goddess, her breath held. She listens carefully, hoping against hope that she'll rise up and help defeat the monster.

The voice of the goddess is not what rings in her ears.

That was unnecessary and unwise.

The demon's whisper coils itself through her thoughts. Falling Rain stiffens, raising her arms in a guard as she furtively casts glances to and fro, staying out of range of the immediate slaughter.

                                            Nonsense. It's all part of the plan.
The plan to divulge your identity?
                                       The plan to reinforce it. Later, I can --
You can do nothing. The city is dead. It will soon be theirs.

She becomes aware she's sweating. That icy calm breaks down, cracks widening into gulfs. The pit of her stomach twists into something ugly and painful.

                                           I can make this work. You know I can.
I do.

A pause. A breath held.

But our lord demands punishment for disobedience.

Falling Rain makes it two steps away from the prone goddess before it feels like needles are jabbed into her brain. She makes a strangling noise, unable to properly form words for protest. Her vision blurs, and her body warms uncomfortably. She feels uncomfortable in her own skin.


                                   Amuse him.                                  

Everything suddenly snaps into crystal clarity. Falling Rain blinks, drawing a slow, deep breath. She looks down at the rags that cover her, and with a tearing motion, rips them away. She's left in the ragged red-and-gold buff coat, the right sleeve burned to the shoulder. The bandages wrapping her arm unwind, and long reddish leather gloves creak as the tenses her fingers. All fear is gone, replaced by a singular thought and a singular purpose:

She's bored. Fix it.

With nary a glance towards the goddess, Falling Rain starts walking back towards the Mask of Winters. She picks up speed, moving to a jog, then a run, then a dead sprint. She accelerates, moving faster and faster, tearing up turf and sending bodies tumbling in her wake like she was an angry behemoth rushing towards the one who wronged it. She hits the bone-spikes and shatters them with a sweep of her right hand, filling the air with jagged shrapnel, heedless for any who might be caught up in the spray.

With a yell, she jumps. It isn't a shout of indignant rage or righteous fury; it's an attention-grabbing shout, an alert that /she's here/ rather than /she's mad/. She clears the gap between herself and the massive Mask in a graceful arc, and the morning sun shines on her sunny, smiling face.

And then she descends, hypercharged right arm exploding into a corona of green, swirling glyphs, swinging downward like the fist of an angry God and accompanied by a dissonant laugh of pure delight.
Azure Armature The Crypt Miles that the Mask of Winter uses to dispatch All-Seeing Eye and Azure Armature coil and whirlwind around towards the pair at different angles, impossible curling and seeling and lashing out. While All-Seeing Eye dances through them, Armature slides and leaps and pirouettes through the air with flashes of power like the verniers on a spacecraft adjusting her around the spray of death-Essence.

"You really need to shut up. This isn't theatre, and you're not the main character." Blue's clipped voice calls out, as she runs out of room to maneuver and brings both hands forward to create a two-layer thick barrier field before her to soak a surge of the attacks as All-Seeing Eye's anima flares up.

"This is a transaction, a formula, and all of this can be summed down to numbers and simple facts."

The barrier fails, and further smug and-or self-assured comments are strangled out as the seeking attacks strike, forcing her to pop out of reality before further damage is taken.

She re-appears a few meters away laterally, weapons in both hands as more float around her in soft-light digitial projections. Her left hand holds the memoricide wavecleaver, and her right a fist of sinister red bloody daggers, while a large burning fist and a globe of pyreflame falsely dance around her in tune to her movements. She throws the daggers first, charging them to an echoing spray of screaming stilettos that rip through the air. Behind it, she turns the wavecleaver around to grip by the blade and sends it in, the committed essence of the false construct shattering in a large explosion when it connects with the ground or the Mask himself.

Hands free, Azure reaches into the soft light for Falling Rain's burning buster data when the whole array flickers and fizzles.

Essence. She was nearly out of essence, after slinging three people through a gateway, and then repeatedly taxing her translocator with multiple jumps. No time to recover, no time to catch a breath or recharge. It was planning, execution, battle, planning, execution. She was spent.

Angling back away using only her enhanced physique, her mind raced. She had to do something.

There had to be an unburned resource in the area.

And there was. "Be right back." She deadpans, as another pop heralded her disappearance.

When she re-appeared, she was nowhere in eyesight of the battle below, instead in the bowels of one of Lookshy's ships. In the engine room, to be specific. Finding a control console, she began to manipulate the controls, increasing the engine's output to maximum. And then -- jamming her fist into a power line.

Seconds after her disappearance, one of the larger airships Lookshy had fielded, now bereft of command and control, exploded into a fireball of metal and magical materials, and a singed and poncho-less Armature (revealing a simple tactical harness and fatigues under it, how drab) smiling ear to ear like a cartoon character and crackling with blue lightning. "Much better. Resources are meant to be spent." She breathes, before bringing her battle-array back to bear.
Miari     With bone spears flying up from the ground at her, Hueristic Logos Miari has to question exactly what she's doing on this battlefield. This is not her Creation, and it's not her land. Not her people. Not her anything. If all she really wanted to do was learn about the Mask of Winters' forces and his weaknesses, she could withdraw now and simply observe...

    So why not do that?!

    The bones fly up at her, and she answers with the light that flashes in her eyes. Chakrams of white fire materialize from midair and shave and slice at the offending spears, chopping many of them short and blunting others before they have a chance to reach. But she can't deal with ALL of them. A few spears do get through and slam through her form of congealed Essence. Stabbing through a figure of pure hard-light is an oddity, but if the resounding SHRIEK that impaling triggers is any indication... it does indeed hurt.

    She simply exerts her will again though, and the offending bone spears are burned right to purest ash in the disintegrating white flames of her patron.

    Just as in a previous battle, Miari arranges all of her constellation-spheres out before her, splaying out the myriad spheres into a geometric shape that looks very much like...

    A focusing lens or mirror, yes.

    What look almost like LASERS of harsh white light stream from them down upon the Mask of Winters with precision force... and in the aftermath of any strikes, horrid green flames erupt from nothing, carried and embedded along their white brethren!

    "Yes. I suppose the reason I'm here is just to see if there's any justice in this world." She admits to the empty air, with most of her attention on following the flow of blows and energies flying everywhere.
Tomoe Tomoe is just going, she's just attacking almost on Autopilot. She is a tank she knows what her job is, it's to keep the enemy off her allies to get the thing she could not take alone focused on her so her allies can do something. She hears his laughing, she does not reply there is nothing to say at this moment, there really isn't but then come the hatchet it sink into her leaving a red wire-frame rather than blood she's clearly hit.

She came from a world that would be considered weak, a culture likely seen as soft by creation's standards. Yet she's seen a lot of things suffered a lot of thing visions of her death, some are old memories of the Skull Reaper, come to life for a moment her being cut down and no healing item to save her.

Visions of her soul being sucked out of her body and trapped as a ghost in the thrall of The mask comes into focus for a moment as her body rises to turn upon her allies, being hacked to bits torn apart by the Mask in close combat is another, something rising up and ripping her apart from the dead, one of her allies choosing to think those in close combat are an acceptable loss and firing some powerful weapon vaporizing her. Another vision is intermix of them all Sheena pinned to a tree sword in her gut, being force fed potions as she's forced to watch Laughing Coffin Members torture a close friend to death, there is no Kirito at the 11th hour to save her in this. It's hard to tell but even if she's dead? If she's an undead abomination now? She presses onward, Caliburn is in hand and the look on her face is odd, her voice ragged even as the visions of death.

"I do not know if I'm alive or if I'm dead but I have my sword in hand and I move."

She attacks with the blade moving to strike again and again at the Mask of Winters, the assault is brutal she takes bone shards to the back from Empty Tidings it's added to the damage she's taken.

"I'm just dust, a nobody who has fallen into this nightmare, but I can't run, I won't run. Even if me dying is part of the price to see you dead once and for all? Then I WILL PAY IT!"

She keeps up her attacks with her holy blade, upon the Mask but who knows how much longer she can tank?
Bloody Revelations     The zombies serve as an initial screen, but the Elites here are too furious and too determined to fall for the usual trick of being hesitant to cut down former allies and comrades. They are smashed aside by the mecha, blown away by energy blasts, and briefly cut down in scores by All-Seeing Eye's whip dance, losing limb after limb where they aren't outright sliced in half. They pile on him with clumsy swings and clamping teeth regardless, but his lashes find their mark around the Mask of Winters' ankle and send Essence-electrical charge coursing through the corpus that must surely be beneath under all that wailing, sobbing metal.

    "Hhhrgg! And what manner of disfigured puppet are /you/ meant to be?!" the Deathlord spits, reaching down to physically grab the electrified wire and then violently reel the Alchemical in, where he'd let go and his free hand will snatch him by the head, swinging him overhead like a doll and smashing it into the ground. He does it even while stepping through Staren's lasers, moving no more than absolutely necessary to constantly position himself in the gaps between the Star Hawk's two guns as if by instinct. It might even /be/ sheer instinct, from a warrior tens of thousands of years old.


+---------------<<Dark Messiah Style>>---------------+
        TARGETS: All-Seeing Eye
        TYPE: Crushing
        HIT: Very Likely
        THREAT: Medium
        EFFECT: None
+---------------<<Dark Messiah Style>>---------------+



        He whirls about to meet Gawain again, already right back into the fray as the most insistent of his foes, and daiklave clashes against Galatine once more, flashing back and forth in a brief exchange of flashing gold and flickering black blows, before one final extra-strength strike hooks under his sword and throws his arms into an untenable high stance which he strains to hold against, staring down at Gawain with the eyes of his horrible mask alight with malevolent flame. The daiklave starts coming back, reversing its momentum too quickly and chopping down on the Servant even harder for its extra height.

    The Annihilator is quicker, however. Both massive bullets fly under the Mask's overly-raised and broken guard and explode directly against his breastplate, filling Staren's speakers directly with the shriek of terrified children, but sending the Mask of Winters stumbling away and clutching his chest, where hissing white smoke filters through his gauntleted fingers, dissipating on the wind.

    He's still looking at the flat scorch on his cherry red chest armour when Batou appears right behind him and wings him in the head with the weaponized tank arm. The beautiful mask at the back of his head shatters into shards of ice where he strikes, whereupon the Deathlord howls in anger, stumbling back around to face Batou and slicing straight through the dismembered mechanical limb in one clean cut, then tracing his impossibly huge sword to go right through the cyborg's midsection with a vicious, wrist-flicking slash, and a cutting wave of supernatural cold.


+-----------------<<Frigid Razor>>-----------------+
        TARGETS: Batou
        TYPE: Slashing
        HIT: Somewhat Likely
        THREAT: Very High
        EFFECT: Freezing
+-----------------<<Frigid Razor>>-----------------+
Bloody Revelations     That done, he cocks back the black hatchet, and then hurls it at the Stark Hawk at ridiculous speed, tumbling end over end where it will slam into the armour like some monomolecular chisel. It won't reach all the way into the cockpit, but regardless, Staren will feel the full effects Tomoe did: seeing his own death playing out before his eyes, in every way but the cockpit crushing in around him and slowly breaking every part of his body, to acutely feeling it melt as the reactor fails and being unable to shut off his sensory systems.


+-----------------<<Dark Torment>>-----------------+
        TARGETS: Staren
        TYPE: Slashing
        HIT: Almost Guaranteed
        THREAT: Moderate
        EFFECT: Debilitating Visions
+-----------------<<Dark Torment>>-----------------+


    He throws up his cape, and a wall of solid ice multiple meters thick explodes out of the ground in a matching swirl, curling around him to absorb further laser and raygun fire with explosions of refractive steam. It explodes into shards the next moment, streaking as a wall of jagged buckshot back at Miari and Albert, and where they strike, they not only punch through as if they were made of solid tungsten, but then begin to freeze over everything around the impact point, gradually spreading an immobilizing, energy draining frost. The wall has taken all it can though, and several more lasers rip through it, primarily those made of Essence that aren't diffused by water droplets, and they slam and slash into his chest, shoulders and waist with a shower of white sparks and succession of guttural grunts.


+------------<<Frozen Prayer Entombment>>------------+
        TARGETS: All-Seeing Eye
        TYPE: Ice
        HIT: Probable
        THREAT: Medium
        EFFECT: Slow Freezing
+------------<<Frozen Prayer Entombment>>------------+



Then of all things, Tomoe starts moving again. "You-?!" the Deathlord spits, but is set upon immediately, hammered relentlessly with strings of Sword Art-empowered blows that he has to focus fully on defending against, stepping back and back without steady ground to stand on, the last of his zombies falling around him just from the deflected and collateral fire, until Empty Tidings, rather than Falling Rain, announces her presence, and he spins dramatically to face her at just right right moment. He uses both hands on the daiklave this time, bracing against the tremendous impact with his whole body and dispersing the impact through his massive bulk of soulsteel plate, crushing the ground around his feet and sending ripples of dust and shockwaves through the earth powerful enough to toss and jumble the corpses like marbles.
Bloody Revelations     "Am I to think this heroic?! Insane degenerates and children, all of you! You aren't even worth smelting on the forge for my army!" he snarls. The pulse of green fire blasts him in the face, rocking him way back on his heel, where Albert closes in and delivers the overpowering hammer blow that flattens him into the ground. The shockwave is ten times greater this time, blasting away the dead and shrapnel in a howling gale in every direction, driving the entire gigantic Deathlord an inch into the dirt.

    A second passes, and then the mecha's power hammer is thrown upwards under a fountain of debris the minute its thrusters stop, where the Mask of Winters stands howling in fury, his second mask cracked and fractured, and his cape in ruinous tatters.

    "ENOUGH!" The Deathlord's voice is as thunder, and splits the cratered ground around him as a rivet hammered into its place. "YOU'VE HAD YOUR ENTERTAINMENT! NOW FALL!" In the perfect moment where so many Elites are clustered around him in melee combat, the Mask takes an actual stance for actual sword fighting, and then his weapon disappears in a flurry that cannot be called blinding because it cannot be seen. The motorbike-sized sword becomes dozens of blurry afterimages that buzzsaw around him in overlapping folding orbits, striking out at each Elite within range a dozen times in the blink of an eye. The air explodes a delayed half-second later, as if struggling to realize what had happened before taking the pressure exerted on it all at once, and bursts into fresh arrows of ice.


+-------------<<Unfurling Iron Lotus>>-------------+
        TARGETS: Tomoe, Gawain, Albert, Empty Tidings
        TYPE: Slashing/Ice
        HIT: Very Likely
        THREAT: High
        EFFECT: Energy Drain
+-------------<<Unfurling Iron Lotus>>-------------+



    By the time he looks to Azure Armature, the horrific countenance of his mask is rendered even more terrible for appearance of looking into a broken mirror. "Pathetic! Science? Transactions? This is your /last stand/ and you won't even treat it with proper gravitas! To the void with all of you!" His outstretched palm crackles with malign energies once more, charging up a considerable blast, but then as bright scarlet daggers of molten blood screech through the air towards him in far less human and somehow /more/ unholy fashion than his armour, he freezes up for just a fraction of a second, and says "Where did you get-?!"

    The spark of recognition is a mistake. The whole volley crashes and carves into his soulsteel plate as a tide. The slashing knives of disintegrating flame and blood carve narrow trenches through the soulsteel, which remains eerily silent despite the ostensibly greater damage. The wavecleaver follows up and explodes at his feet, almost hurling him backwards, and leaving him open for one prime shot, but Azure Armature's Essence gives up just in the nick of time.

    In her head, rather than in her ears, she hears a dry, distant whisper, barely distinct over a hundred others chattering in the background.

    "Is this your limit, Larquen Quen?"
Bloody Revelations     Removed from the battle, out of notice, the goddess of Lookshy stirs. Her domain is devastated beyond repair. In an instant, she had felt the agony of every death that had taken place her all at once, and it had nearly killed her. Even now, her Essence is vastly diminished, but somewhere out there, the Seventh Legion still soldiers on, and thoughts of defending their home still burn brightly in their minds. That Lookshy, held in their hearts, is real enough for her. Real enough to reach up and take a shaky grip of the fort crenelations, hauling herself up at the rousing breath of prayer.

    Her armour vents torrents of glittering smoke, before some component sparks and gives out, blowing out its discharge ports. Unsatisfied, she continues to drag and climb until her weight is fully over the edge, and props one arm up on the firing line. Her fingers reach out, as if attempting to grasp the battlefield. They shake with the trembling of a dying woman, but they spark white all the same, drawing from the remaining ley lines that now lie untapped under the dormant Manse.
Carna     Enark awakens. He has some arrows stuck in him, but he's otherwise no worse for wear--okay, no, he's still pretty exhausted, but he has awakened faster each time he exhausted himself in this manner. The first time, it took him a few days. The last time, 24 hours. This time, even less. He's not as recovered as he would be with the full rest period, but he's conscious again. He struggles to his feet, thankful to not be bleeding out of his eyes and ears for once, though that enormously bright light and deafening sound sure seemed to be trying to cause such.

    It takes him some time on hands and knees just to get the strength to stand up. Once he sees what has happened, is reminded of his failure to protect yet again, that strength nearly leaves him once more. But he fights. He fights back into a standing position. He has no more magic left in his reserves.

    And that's why he saved vials of spare healing water before coming to the battlefield, so that the end of his magic wasn't the end of his contributions. It may be too late to save all these souls -- something he will have plenty of time to torture himself about later. But for now, he can drink one of the blessed vials of water he carries, fully restoring at least his ability to act, even if his mental state is rather shoddy at the moment.

    This he does. Then, seeing one who still lives and fights, the goddess of this city, he feels a desperate need to try to save at least one life. He begins climbing down from his perch as swiftly as he can, falls a few times to painful impacts on architecture, and works his way towards Tien Yu even as the goddess forces her armor to crawl and work its way towards the edge of the wall.

    He runs and climbs like it is his life, not hers, that depends upon it. Desperate to save someone, anyone, as though doing so would save him as well. He is not the most athletic. Less so now, in this state, forcibly aged. But he fights to make it in time. To climb up by any methods available.

    He had a second vial after all. The blessing of a being that surpasses a god, even if only a taste of such a power, might be enoguh to at least buy time to figure something else out, right? It has to be able to do SOMETHING right? Gasping and heaving, he pulls himself up onto the ramparts with his weak arms, managing to swing a leg up over the edge after what feels like an eternity of struggling. Every second wasted is a wasted chance at redemption and salvation.

    He barely takes the time to stand before running for where Tien Yu is situated in a firing position. He wraps one arm around Lookshy's goddess's armor, heedless of the sparking, and holds up a vial of Tharmas' water, not understanding what she's trying to do, seeing it as a desperate act, reaching for the battlefield and all the many dead in vain, not as preparation to do anything.

    "Please, drink this." Enark gasps out. "I'll do everything I can to save you. I have... Allies. Friends. People who can bring back the dead. Even I--" he goes into a coughing fit, his laboring ghostly lungs not up to the task of taking in air right now. But he forces it regardless, raspily, "Please...! Drink...!"
Miari     Flying icicles of the worst sort! Miari can't avoid them in her urrent form, a massive primordial presence of purest order and vast power! However... she also can't maintain this form. Not after spending so much of her might trying to bring down Juggernaut with that epic spellwork. Her focus is faltering and energy supply dwindling. Her form wavers at the worst possible moment and--

    With a shattering noise, the entire shintai collapses, leaving Miari swooping around on a small Crystal-Light platform. With an angry and exasperated cry she slashes at the air... and focuses her remaining Mind-Hand energies. The barage of ice shards is deflected off course, but only just. Instead of striking her in the gut, it hits her other arm... freezing it nearly solid.

    With this, she collapses down to the ground, panting for breath and trying to bring forth another burst of power from pure spirit alone.

    It's not going to work. But she can feel power gathering nearby... and so, abandoning the fight against the Mask directly, she hurls herself skyward on her platform and decides to join Enark and Tien Yu up on the battlements, landing only a bit lopsidedly and leaning her good arm against a merlon...

    "Is there... anything more... we can do...?!"
Gawain Even if Gawain has the spirit to fight, he's still drained from firing Excalibur Galatine, and so when the daiklave comes back harder, it pushes him back. If Staren's blast hadn't slammed into Mask of Winters then, he could have certainly taken advantage of that to slash through the shining knight. Gawain grabs another poultice and drinks it, trying to conserve as much of his magical energy as he can. That's the second it takes, however, for Mask of Winters to take a stance that Gawain can tell is actually dangerous, and then to move and blur into them. Gash after gash after gash of the blade cuts through Gawain's armor, drawing blood and bringing the knight to his knees. It's not enough. He's not sure he can keep going, not with this much damage and the fact his vision's becoming so blurry, the fact that the arrows strike into him and drain his energy even more. He even considers, briefly, if a retreat would be viable, even if that goes against everything he knows.

And then, feet stamp in the distance. An angry and frightened animal goes in the only distance it knows that is friendly and not surrounded by corpses, the one where its master had gone to fight. Lovell was an intelligent boar, and while he had not come out of completely altruistic and heroic motives, being just an animal, he came for his valiant knight. Gawain glances back, sees the boar...and manages to crack a smile, if a cold and tense one. It's good enough. "Lovell...hahahaha! And here I was thinking I might fall...no! I cannot fall here! I cannot go this easily!"

"Mask of Winters, your end is now! Allow me to bring it to you!"

Gawain charges, in defiance of any damage he might take. The sun has his back, he can trust it. His boar is watching, he can feel its faith in him. His allies around him believe they can win. And therefore, so does Gawain. If Gawain is to take more damage, so be it. No matter what falls in the path of the Knight of the Sun, his courage will win out. The flames die down on the blade to help conserve energy, so it's pure metal, the holy blade given to a knight many years ago. Gawain charges forth, and moves to thrust that blade into Mask of Winters' chest. Even if it should kill him to do so, Gawain doesn't care. He can barely even consider the possibility. It's all about finishng the mission and slaying the fiend.
Batou Batou doesn't even get time to dash away from the quick counterattack, let alone admire his handiwork thanks to the lag in his software. The blade catches his midsection and slices it wide open, the chilling effect on his internal mechanisms is one of sudden, violent freezing. He grunts as his body up to his chest is ceased up, having barely enough time to grab onto Tachikoma to keep himself from sliding off.

"Agh, shit! Damn magic..." he manages, before grunting and grabbing the rocket launcher off his back.

"You're a worthless fighter, and you shoulda seen that slap coming if you're so good. But I've got another trick up my sleeve. Tachikoma! Fire everything you can from your remaining arm. And I'll just-"
He doesn't even allow enough time for himself to finish as his grip slips, the thankfully automated cannon firing for the Masks head again, followed by Tachikoma's barrage of grenades.
Batou chuckles.
"Oh... watch out everyone. Inbound missle." he manages before laying back to attempt to restart his (quite literally) frozen systems.
All-Seeing Eye      Eye's clothing is more to reduce his profile than to protect it, and so the scores of undead still remaining do manage to wound him where he can't maneuver to evade those clumsy swings. As a result, the Mask's armored hand is easily able to grip Eye's seemingly delicate face.

     The younger opponent attempts to dissuade with some basic nerve strikes taught to the beginner students of most any style. With a soulsteel gauntlet covering his eyes, the Alchemical's mass-penetrating vision is rendered useless, unable to pierce the magical material.

     He hits the ground with a thud--and a groan, as his cyberetics deform from the force of the blow. This of course, means damage to his face, and so a third thing happens upon his impact. He grins widely, evident only in the presence of two porcelain white dimples flanking the Mask's gloved hand. The sound of his own impact against the earth sends vibrations into his ears, and those vibrations rattle upwards, conspiring with the din of battle to paint the figure above him. "You dare strike my face?"

     Kicking his legs upwards, two /more/ whips sprout from Eye's ankles, wrapping around the armored figure's neck. This isn't meant to choke, nor to sever, simply to hold in place. Two clouds of mist race from the Exalt's eyes, passing harmlessly through the gloved hand, transforming into purple bolts of lightning mid-flight and heading straight for the Mask's ornate faceplate--seeking to shatter his already-cracked namesake, and perhaps even strike a killing blow.

     He speaks, his voice muffled by the plated fist over his face. "As you lay dying--truly dying, not this sad mockery. As you writhe, mewling in the dirt, as befits criminal, murderous scum such as yourself..." He giggles melodiously. "I will whisper the answer in your ear." At this distance, the Mask does get some semblance of an answer, however...

     When the wall of ice first forms, there is a moment, before it completely envelops Eye, where the Mask has a brief, fleeting moment of clarity--no whispers from his masters, perhaps even enough to drown out, just for a second, the chaos of battle. Lying prone on the ground, the Alchemical's smiling face is preserved in ice, which bursts blood capillaries in his eyes and slowly tinges them the same black color of whatever serves as his lifeblood. In that moment, there is a sense of purpose, a purpose that the Mask was never intended for, and will never fulfill.

     When the ice wall shatters, Eye coughs, hacking up a viscous mass of this strange, artificial blood, spitting it with a toothy, stained-black grin. "Face the wages of your dissidence, wretch." All four limbs lash outwards, sending two, four, six whips (two of which are pure lightning) towards the Deathlord, wrapping around his armored body like constrictors.

     The fiend's body is promptly flooded with every bit of Essence-powered electricity the Alchemical has. Not because it's his most effective attack, but because it's his most painful.
Azure Armature Azure Armature crackles with electric power, like a haywire circuit "This isn't my last stand. This isn't even Lookshy's last stand." She replies, hearing something echo inside her head. Like a very un-pressing status update, she tilts her head uncomprehendingly even as she surges with ionic pops. "Gravitas is a false sentiment created by entertainers and historians to distort facts. There's only three possible results here."

Blood daggers multiply around her like a cloud, wavecleavers dotting the swarm like overlarge birds of prey hanging in suspension. "One. You defeat us because the Plan wasn't good enough."

She crescents her right hand through the air, a half-dozen pyreflame cannons roaring into existance in a half-halo around her. "Two. We do not have the resources to defeat you, and are forced to draw the battle into a retreat."

Then, she draws back her right fist, taking a fighting stance, as both arms wreath themselves in malevolent green fire. "Three? The plan is executed on. And then we move on to the next mission."

While Azure Armature finishes her speech - her cutscene, which was both Dramatic and Extended, but sometimes even heartless operators need to dramatically pose in clouds of cherry blossoms while a themesong plays.

The clouds are not cherry blossoms, though, they're ash and death and fried zombie and a hundred different powerful attacks from every angle. But we can call them cherry blossoms.

Blue unleashes the full charge of her attack, spiralling daggers and shattering, exploding wavecleavers woven in between All-Seeing Eye's vicious whip attack with mathematically perfect precision, lining up an all-angle attack simply to pin him down - Feet, wrists, ankles - any potential motive to be jammed, stuck, or even simply forced back into the centerline for the tidal wave of vengeant force to fall upon him.

The two fists come last, from either side, a sweeping pair of rocket-limbs to not strike but GRIP, HOLD, SQUEEZE the massive armored form into place synchronizing with Gawain's killing stroke.
Staren     Mask of Winters is fighting the others. The Star Hawk has taken some damage... how long has he just been STANDING there?! The Star Hawk slowly raises its weapons. Disoriented and out of it, Staren half expects this to be another vision. But Mask of Winters hasn't disabled or killed him yet, so...

    Forget the laser rifle. The Annihilator is what works. Staren takes aim. Thank goodness for mechanical precision -- if he were trying to aim with flesh and blood right now his hands would be shaking. Even now there's a slight unsteadiness to his movements.

    As soon as noone's in the way, fire again.
Staren     Did the Annihilator HURT him?! Staren mutters a "Thank you." under his breath. And it looks like being hurt /surprised/ Mask of Winters enough for Batou to land a hit as well. Then there's a brief surge of fear as he sees Mask retaliate, before he remembers that Batou can /probably/ survive being horizontally bisected if it comes to that.

    He should have been worried for himself.

                                   ----------                                  

    The hatchet slices clean through the cockpit, and through his body. Fortunately, he has enough emergency power to transfer his consciousness to the Star Hawk itself before his cyberbrain dies. "FOOLS! Don't you understand you never had a chance?! Face the true power of the Neverborn!" As Staren takes aim again, Mask spreads his arms wide, opening a gate to oblivion that begins to suck everyone in. He tries to fight it, but you can't escape a black hole. There has to be somewhere else to jump to. But he didn't bother to set up any devices in Lookshy. If he lost to the point that both the Star Hawk and his body were destroyed, the enemy would surely destroy everything in Lookshy after, he'd thought.

    He's failed. He'll never see his friends again. He'll never get to discover the true workings of the Multiverse. Will there even be anything left for Morg or Mizuki to recover?

    He hits the void

    And is sitting in the cockpit again as the hatchet misses the cockpit but goes right through the reactor, depowering the Star Hawk. The behemoth's severed hand skitters towards him like Thing, his weapons barely making a dent before it pinches the Star Hawk between its thumb and forefinger. He doesn't even have time to try to cut or blast his way out as he's crushed. Why does it hurt so much?

    Staren can barely think about dodging before the hatchet cleaves through the cockpit, through his body. Something's wrong with his reactor. Electricity courses through him, heating it up. The radio's burned out before he can jump. But how is anything else still working? His body smokes, sizzles, melts. The sensors whose input his cyberbrain recognizes as pain should all be destroyed, but it hurts so bad all he can do is scream as it all fades away.

    "Ah, welcome back! You didn't think I'd make it quick, did you? Oh no, I have USE for YOU." He awakens to Mask of Winters standing in front of him. He tries to move, but can't. "Ah-ah-ahh-uhh!" Mask waggles a finger condescendingly. "MINIONS move when I tell them to! Now arise, and destroy! AHHHH-HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAA!"

    He stands. He can see now that he's the Star Hawk, with some parts replaced by soulsteel and undead flesh. And in front of him is... Selendos. He's in the middle of the undead army bearing down on it, steadily overwhelming dragon-blooded defenders, and at the center of it all, Untamed Breeze's anima blazing as even she is slowly overwhelmed. He grabs her when she's low on essence, and begins to crush her. He tries to say that it's not him, that he's sorry, but his chassis is silent.

    Wait a minute, didn't he

    sits in the cockpit as Mask of Winters holds his arm outstretched, laughing madly as beams of necrotic energy eat away at the Star Hawk's armor and then at his body. "AHHHH-HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA! FOOLS!"

    didn't he already die

    Everything is restored, only for Mask of Winters to leap towards him, skillfully stabbing that daiklave into the parts of the Star Hawk needed for him to jump to it, then impaling him with it and channeling some kind of necrotic energy that hurts like the lifehunt. "SUFFER!"

    several times already?

    Mask of Winters charges his daiklave into some kind of giant necrotic beam, and slices right through him and the Star Hawk. He's left only able to watch as the deathlord fights the others, cutting them down one by one.

    This can't be

    Back in the cockpit. Mask of Winters raises the hatchet, charged with some kind of necrotic energy... no, wait. What's really going on?
Tomoe Tomoe can't think of more to say at this point, she's moving she's attacking she hears him talk she sees takes a hell of a hit she pops every damage mitigation ability she has to tank this, what to her mind she'd call a Tank Buster. The attack hits she's drained she's hurt there's a horrible wire-frame impact point and even with it catching her shield the mourning wall take it it's damage hell she's forced to banish it to her inventory or it's going to end up lost.

Tomoe is looking like a mess, a ragged mess of wire frame lines and she's looking right at the Mask.

"For ... Tien Yu, for everyone whose died today, you end here."

Tomoe takes her sword in both hands and she faces down the mask she charges moving to leap at them and bring the blade down from their head to their crotch trying to bisect him with all the strength she can muster in this form. She will then bring her blade around again and again attacking as often as she can but she knows he's time is short soon she'll be the Iron Lily no more and Sheena Armstrong here? Will join the dead in short order and she knows it.

Creation is a terrible place and even if the Mask falls? She may never think she'd done any good for creation, with the events of today and what has lead up to it. She may come to see getting involved was a terrible mistake. For now she is is focused taking down the Mask or at least holding him from her allies.
Empty Tidings The ground craters. Falling Rain, her guise as a vagabond cast aside, is a picture of contradictions. The scraps of uniform and the coloration on her blood- and soot-streaked face speaks of one of the Lookshyan Dragon-Blooded, still in the thick of the battle. The Old Realm glyphs that ring her right arm, though, burn with the light of a foreign sun, a source of power only seen on the field in the hands of Miari and turned against the titanic Juggernaut mere minutes ago.

'Insane degenerate' about sums up her present countenance, though.

The shockwave casts her back. Falling Rain flips through the air, stopping herself by grabbing hold of part of Albert's mech and twisting herself around. Her fingers mangle steel with inattentive strength for the scant instant she's in contact with it, and she flings herself back downwards into the fray like a loosed arrow with a thundercrack of acceleration.

Right into the lotus.

Falling Rain lets out an ululating cry, diving into the murderous mess. Her hands move with terrible speed, flashes of emerald loosed off her arm and scattering wicked flames all around as the enormous sword impacts her gloved hand and shreds the leather. Black stone throws up sparks, and the flaming glyphs flare in intensity, her masterful interception of unseen swordstrokes nearly-completely saving her from being rendered into bloody chunks.

Nearly completely.

Blood sprays from her left side. She staggers as the air itself detonates, and the icy arrows seem like they'll finish the job, punching clean through her. When they exit the other side of her body, they leave trails of inky black smoke hanging in the air where their paths were, a spiny shower of what should be gore and is instead darkness made manifest momentarily.

Falling Rain begins to collapse bonelessly but freezes mid-fall. She looks shocked and thin. Her body is papery, her movements jerky like a puppet's. Then the afterimage dissolves, coming apart under the battle-stress, and she is, apparently, no more.

"Ah."

Empty Tidings sighs, stepping out of Mask of Winters' shadow, smiling and silently weeping. She bears none of the deadly wounds Falling Rain seemed to have taken. She's dressed all in black, as if prepared for a funeral, but beaming with pure joy on her porcelain features. A disk of utter darkness rests upon her brow, painful to look upon. "She was fun while she lasted."

And then, she hits him.

Green fire erupts from her arm like the backwash from a launching rocket. Primordial Essence burns hot and long, the glyphs brightening to the intensity of a solar flare as her anima explodes into sight around her. A massive swath of ruined farmland behind her and to her right is instantly scorched away, the ground blackened and left in a state of perpetual shadow. A terrible green totem of too many endlessly-twining fingers clutching at nothing rises towards the sky, reaching upwards as if to grasp the sun and tear it down. Bruise-violet hues mix with the brilliant green, and flickers of utter darkness shoot through the display with flashes like silent photo-negative lightning.

That arm, that awful thing, a construct of black stone banded in brass and bearing an etching of the face of one of its long-dead victims, carries the strength of the countless dead within it. The true terror of it isn't in the colossal killing power: it's in the glyphs that appear, the promises that are made manifest, the bindings and oaths that holds the deathless power of the Mask of Winters within them. It's the awful green radiance, the poisonous sunlight of the Demon-Realm, that burns them away and renders them unto so much sand with every resounding echo of impact.

Somewhere in Yu-Shan, the Loom of Fate shrieks with word of this blasphemy, and the spiders are sent scurrying to their keepers in utter terror.
Starbound Flotilla     "GRAVITAS?!" Albert roars, swinging the hammer wildly against the icy wall until it becomes clear that one of the heavily damaged arms is already being consumed by ice, and the armor is badly ablated by the buckshot of shards -- and, of course, by Empty Tiding grabbing ahold of one of the weaker, more damaged arms, and sort of slingshotting around his back. Dammit! "You want importance? Respect? Or do you just want a story that scared families will tell each other about how terrifying the great Mask of Winters is! About how pointless rebellion would be!" He moves the damaged, half-frozen hammer in a dozen desperate parries and landing only a few. The blade plunges hard into the mecha, surging and impaling through the knees, the elbows, the shoulders, and soon slicing through the cockpit, but Albert keeps going.

    "I've seen the power of what you have to give to this world! I've seen the ash it leaves behind!" He leans hard to one side, barely getting out of the way of a blade that slams directly through the midsection of his cockpit, tearing apart the front display and leaving a broken-open gap. "I've seen what men like you are capable of! I've seen a society of nothing but broken families and fear! I've seen cities of nothing but slaves! I've seen a civilization's worth of cruelty in the payload of a virus and I've seen one man's ego and greed subjecting an entire society!" The entire outer segment of the mecha is gone, and its head is cleanly decapitated, leaving only the piloted torso segment. "I've seen seas boiling! I've seen horizons on fire! I've seen hundreds of thousands dead, and millions more who death would be /mercy/ for!"

    The machine screams with the strain of trying to deal with this barrage of hits head-on and face-first. "I would kill Lookshy all over again, and then I'd kill THORNS if it meant making sure the only guidance you'll give to the dictators of this world will be an effigy burned against the dystopia you tried to build!" A stab plunges into the cockpit and shears away half of Albert's helmet before he can lean out of the way; it draws a deep gash along his face.
Starbound Flotilla     He tries to block a lethal strike with one of the mecha's arms, and the price he pays for that is the entire arm, up to the elbow. "The death and the decay and the rot you wield are nothing compared to what you wield in your throne on Thorns, the cancer that could destroy civilization! The sickness that could infect worlds!" His voice is getting hoarse and desperate. "I would be a hero if I could afford it! If the price of your life weren't the highest price in this world, but I /won't/!" One of the legs gives out. The other arm fails a parry and is sheared away below the elbow, only good for propping the machine up. Albert ejects out the top, in full armor, bruised and battered by the battle yesterday and the accumulated wounds of today's engagement.

    Just in time. Azure's knives present an opening, and Albert gets well enough out of the way of those who choose to take advantage of it with explosives, and can join in those taking advantage of it in melee. As he twists and arcs through the air, he draws his more modestly sized power-hammer, steadying himself with the arc-boosting and hovering effects of his armor's micro-thrusters. "You wanted HEROISM? If you wanted a HERO, you should have become a VILLAIN! You should have marched your soldiers! You should have slain your enemies! You should have waged war on humanity, not war on decency! YOU SHOULDN'T HAVE BROUGHT THAT SOCIOLOGICALLY CANCEROUS DYSTOPIA INTO THIS WORLD -- OR ANY OTHER!!"

    "KNOW THE DEATH OF A DYSTOPIAN LORD!" His suit's thrusters blaze to life and he surges down. "THE END EARNED BY THE CRUELTY OF A TYRANT'S MAD SCIENCE!" His armor surges with shining white fire, and leaves a trail like a shooting star. "THE TRUTH OF REBELLION -- DEATH TO THE DICTATOR!!!" Albert brings his hammer down with a shout that's equal parts hoarse, desperate, and full of rage. The hammer itself, if one could isolate this phenomenon in the laboratory, would be as close as most mundane weapons could ever get to the platonic ideal of the Unstoppable Object. With the forces involved here, even if Albert missed, he could still start more than a few of the first steps on the path to taking Mask of Winters directly to the Mouth of the Void itself.
Bloody Revelations     Against all odds, despite the sheer amount of necromantic and martial might the Mask of Winters has dumped on his collective foes, beaten, bleeding, shaken and exhausted, the battle still rages on at such length and ferocity as would make a Solar of legend proud. Taking a fighting stance at this point may very well be too little too late. The Necromancy as well, though highly impressive, was not enough to kill, and now pressed on every side, he has no time to gather his energies and resort to his most powerful trump cards. In fact, from the look of his movements, preternatural as they are, he fights as if he is partially blind, moving more on instinct and secondary senses of what is around him than clear vision and planning. Not that it makes him much less deadly.

    Essence bolts from the prone Alchemical strike him flat against his gorget causing his hand to snap back and clutch at his throat before his arms are restrained and thoroughly electrocuted, drawing out a bellowing roar of incoherent fury. The Deathlord /stomps/ down on All-Seeing Eye this time, driving him into the dirt under his heel, but he's barely ripping himself free of the cables when torrents of grenades and rockets explode one after the other against his back, and when he raises his boot a second time he is thrown forward, and forward, and forward, trudging and sliding further and further under the thundering blasts on his screaming plate where he cannot gain his balance.

    Battered and bludgeoned into the way of another titanic double revolver shot, the wailing of his armour reaches a crescendo as fine cracks suddenly appear in its outermost and thickest layer, and releasing built up torrents of ghastly mist and pale, gaseous blood that must have been boiling inside his superheated suit of mail.

    It seems wrong that a foe of such size and intimidating weight could right himself with an outstretched hand clawing the dirt and a full body flip, but he does it anyways, crashing right into Tachikoma with his full weight and then vaulting off the robot entirely with a show of force that cracks the ground and causes the air to boom. Even as the last afterimage of his sword flurry are fading, he all but /flash steps/ right into the Star Hawk's central camera, and cleaves straight downward through the head in an arc of furious purple fire entirely unlike the mundane bite of the hatched, goughing the sword in and using his full force to send it punching into the ground.

    He turns to Tomoe still pressing the assault, shifting to a more realistic defensive stance, smashing away her sword again and again, bashing against her legendary shield, and the lashing out with a full body boot to her guard that should send her sailing away. Without theatric thunder of his boasting, somehow the masked and armoured figure has become more imposing and not less, where the actual martial might that would back up his reputation surges to fill in the space left by his silence.
Bloody Revelations     Frigid Razor moves as if by strings to twirl and pivot into the ridiculous barrage of buster fire coming down on him by Azure Armature, even going so far as to use the Star Hawk as cover, moving around it to constantly put Staren in the way of her aim, but even where he parries away each blast, the bloody daggers leave building, jagged scores down the flat of the blade, marring its runes and slowing its ghostly spirals, such that further shots pelt his pauldrons, cuisse and greaves, subtly jerking his massive body mass back with each penetrating blow.

    This is what he should have been doing at the start. Had he his rear mask still, he'd even have seen out the back of his head in time when Empty Tidings appears right behind him --but he doesn't. He let that one slip. An avalanche of Malfean steel blows rain down on him, battering his sobbing, wailing, pleading platemail so badly that it begins chipping and splintering along its existing fracture lines, until with another mighty roar, he turns and leans into the pummeling, and even with his corpus wasting in green fire, he smashes the Infernal with a semi-truck's weight behind a spiked shoulder bash, fit to drop a mammoth.

    "AGAIN, FOOL! WHERE DID YOU OBTAIN THAT?! WHAT MANNER OF PAWN ARE YOU!" he bellows at Azure Armature, and even then looking to Empty Tidings. "AND WHAT SLAVES OF THE COWED OLD ONES BELIEVE THEIR TREACHERY SHALL GO UNPUNISHED?!" A sweep of his cloak blows a hurricane of icy force out from him on all sides, pelting the surroundings with tiny pebbles of the previous freezing shrapnel, and he strides forward into Gawain with his sword held high, thundering outrage as he straight up tanks the holy sword straight through the chest, all its power focused down to a penetrating point and spearing out his back with a lance of golden light. He pushes against it, grinding his backward slide to a halt and then planting heavy footfalls forward one after the other to drive Gawain back, blade locked up in his abyssal plates.

    Even in agony, he claps his gauntlet down on Gawain's shoulder and grips him tightly enough to break his collarbone, keeping Frigid Razor held high where it explodes into an even greater torrent of black flame not unlike an Anima in of itself, poised to strike down on him once and for all. Instants before a second death would visit Gawain, Albert bails from his mecha completely, and it is the strike of the hammer that wrenches the Mask of Winters free from Galatine, where the tip of Frigid Razor impacts the ground between Gawain's toes and fires an exploding geyser of necro-flame upwards instead.
Bloody Revelations     "AND YOU!" the Deathlord Howls as he spins and tumbles backwards, still managing to snatch Albert by the arm, but he doesn't even finish the thought, simply taking the Apex with him until he can hurl him like a fastball against the walls of Lookshy with a grip of bubbling acid. With another stomp, the ground around him erupts into a cascade of purple void tendrils with geyser up into the air to slash and grab at Azure Armature autonomously while the Mask of Winters moves again.

    Cleared on the field for the moment, the Deathlord takes a slow and steady march towards George, dripping not just the blood of Creation, but rivers of his own in his wake, smoking with the boiling of his corpus beneath his near-invincible platemail. He approaches the walls of Lookshy, as he had meant to do from the start, the last of his remaining mask steadily falling to pieces from the impact of that mad scientist's hammer.

    Yet atop those walls, quiet and inconspicuous in the fighting, the few forgotten in the frenzied melee have not been idle. Enark's preparation may just save Tien Yu in the short term, as the goddess wrenches her shattered helmet free, face horrifically burnt and scarred, and downs it. Watching the battle with tense, hateful, grief-stricken eyes, her powered suit whines and sputters, crackles and sparks, snaps and sputters, as it struggles to channel its former power through its massively diminished divine fabric.

    The white glow coalescing in her hands grows fractionally by the minute, pulsing brighter and brighter as the Elites below fight for their lives, for the mission, for revenge, or even for what's right. The Mask of Winters moves almost blindly toward her, gauntlets grasping at the now useless hood that once bore the twin masks, pulling it away so that he can fall back on his own eyes, which is as good a moment as she'll get, in her opinion.
Bloody Revelations     "The lance of the fallen age." is the only thing Tien Yu gets to say in this whole battle, and it is both her final word, and The Final Word. The last of Lookshy's remaining power compresses to a tiny, white hot point in her hands, and then releases all at once in a flaring lance to rival the light of the terrible weapon that had claimed the lives of her entire city, focused down to a brilliant, incandescent spear of divine energy that takes the Mask in his moment of bloody, exhausted, blind distraction, and hits him at such velocity that it causes him to disappear entirely. The ground to either side splits and furrows upward like parted waves, though the beam doesn't even touch them. The air superheats and explodes, leaving a trail of thunder and fire lingering well in the beam's short-lived wake. The walls rumble and the dead jumble together. The shot continues all the way to the Juggernaut Citadel in the distance, where it strikes the apex of the keep and blows it off entirely. Tien Yu slumps over, and falls from the top of the gate.

    When the dust settles, the Mask of Winters is no more. His failing defenses and half-depleted Essence have given way entirely, and the last gasp of Lookshy's defiance had ripped through his completely, tearing a manhole sized tunnel through his torso that slowly expands as if he were made of flaking charcoal. The Deathlord takes one staggering step back. Then one more. Frigid Razor clatters from his hand. The souls of the children trapped in his plate fall silent. A low, hoarse laugh gutters from his mouth, where the bottom half of his masked hood is burnt away, exposing the pale flesh of a surprisingly young and handsome face, no older or more menacing than Gawain, and that voice completely lacks the deafening, terrifying quality it has had all this time. It is that of a man.

    "Do not think . . . that this is the end . . . You have no comprehension . . . of my master's true power . . . none . . . at all . . ."

    The Mask of Winters falls to his knees, and crumples over dead. His ghostly body disintegrates into so much translucent fog, seeping out through the rents in his destroyed armour, and dissipates on the wind.
Gawain Even though he strikes true, the Mask of Winters is able to take that strike and keep going, and Gawain's bones shatter under the Deathlord's great strength. Gawain looks up at the flame, defiantly staring his mask in the eyes and trying to twist the blade and draw it out. He knows that will kill him. He knows this is the end...but even so...

And then Albert saves Gawain's life. The strike of the hammer frees Galatine, allowing the Sun Knight to disengage his sword, though the geyser of horrible flames burn against him, charring his armor and boiling his skin, cauterizing several of his wounds while creating several more at the same time. The knight can't strike again. It's impossible. But the battle isn't lost. Tien Yu's sacrifice makes sure that they win.

Gawain falls to his knees. He doesn't move except to slump over a bit, but luckily, he's alive. He just has barely any energy left, and is running on fumes. Even another burst of fire would probably be his last. The boar approaches the knight slowly. They'll be okay. But Gawain has quite a lot to think about, once he recovers.
Carna     Enark didn't know her. Had never even heard her name before the siege of Thorns. Has had no direct interaction with her. But in the wake of the cataclysmic attack unleashed by Tien Yu, and then her apparent death, the disbelief as even someone he made it to in time for once, even just one life that he's holding the remaining armor of in his arms, with the empty container of the only solution he had the time to present literally in the palm of his hand, slipping away from him and then gone, is profound. Tears form in his eyes, only half due to the pain of loss and the other half due to the despair and frustration at his own uselessness.

    A pained, high-pitched groan comes from his throat, nearly animalistic, as he lowers his head. Then he throws it back as he screams out, "WHY DOES EVERYONE I TRY TO PROTECT DIE!? IS THERE NO ONE I CAN SAVE!? SOMEONE!? ANYONE!?!" He looks around wildly at all of the corpses, reanimated or otherwise. Miari nearby is largely ignored in his franticness to be saved by saving others.

    All this death and destruction for what? To take down the enemy? So another can replace him? Pointless. It's all pointless. All he can do now is hang his head, the drained vial clenched in his hand, and sob, feeling that he will never break this cycle, no matter how hard he tries.

    The costly victory, the ultimate success even at a price, means nothing to him. It is hollow and ashen and he wants none of it.

    'God,' he thinks, realizing a terrible truth to his existence, his endless cycle of failure. 'This is all there is.'
All-Seeing Eye      Cables and streams of energy snap in a chorus of angry sizzling and shrill oscillation., with all four of Eye's limbs splayed out from the sheer strength of his enemy. This leaves him wide open to the heavy soulsteel boot, which crashes into his abdoment with a grisly, wet snapping sound. Synthetic bones pierce synthetic organs, sending a dark geyser of Alchemical lifeblood spurting from Eye's mouth, staining his alabaster face and seeping into his turtleneck, there to mingle with a steadily growing, dark wet patch on his stomach.

     He is still--troublingly still, and quiet--until the Mask bellows his question at Blue and the woman formerly known as Toriki. Though freezing, pebble-sized shrapnel buffets his prone body, the Alchemical manages to utter a laugh. His body stirs, as the Mask blindly marches towards the empty city's walls. Gloved fingers dig into the dirt which forms the ring of the crater he lies within, pulling him up and out of it. An attempt to stand up fails, the brutal strike apparently having robbed him of his ability to walk--he hits the ground just a meter or so from the spot where he tried to stand. "No matter," he says, as Tien Yu prepares her final attack.

     The Exalt's cybernetic limbs whine audibly as he pulls himself across the ground. He leaves a trail of intermingled dirt and lifeblood on the ground, smearing both into his clothes, but his smile never falters as his legs have. One hand is brought up to shield himself from the searing light of Tien Yu's attack, but even as he does this, the other arm continues to pull him, ever crawling forward with a rhythmic, hydraulic whine.

     He doesn't make it in time, before the Deathlord's body dissolves into fog, and only upon realizing this does his smile falter. Even so, it doesn't fade completely, simply taking on a somewhat melancholy note. His hair matted to his face with blood and dirt, arrows sticking out of his arm like the quills of a porcupine, Eye watches the fog roll away and delivers his message, late though it may be.

     "You sad old fool," he muses with mock bittersweetness, lips pulled into a melancholy smirk. "I serve the 'old one' who has escaped your evil for five thousand years, who saw it for what it was long before you became this twisted mockery of his work. He returns, and his servants will raze your heresy from this place like locusts in a field of wheat."

     The Exalt sighs... then allows his arms to give out, laying down in the dirt.
Empty Tidings "Dare you call me a slave," Empty Tidings asks, voice pitched with a curious lilt, "when you yourself are nothing more than the same? The king of eunuches," she declares, laughter bubbling up into her voice, "in all his splendor!"

She's cast backwards by the sudden impact. Blood sprays from her mouth, and she tumbles across the grass. She bounces twice, slides, and then skips back up to her feet, grinning. Her left arm swings weirdly, bent strangely, and she doesn't seem to notice it one bit. "Perhaps if you looked into that broken mirror of a mask, you'd see the answer to your question. You'd see me."

Her eyes alight with wicked green. "Living in the crackssss..." She sways, drunkenly, laughing again and forcing her arm back into place with her right hand and a sickening sound. "...in your old, dusty, /boring/ mirror."

The battle builds to a climax. She can't close fast enough to make more of a difference. The billowing green fires lessen, her totemic aura dwindling to a more 'manageable' green-and-purple bonfire. It isn't until Mask of Winters is no more that she can manage to find the energy to stride forward again.

"Aha!" She manages a jog. The numbness that should be pain is lessening. Bloody cuts have begun to be covered with gleaming scales of some sort of sea creature. She ends up next to All-Seeing Eye, and reaches down one-handed to scoop him off the ground. She smiles widely at him. "I remember you from the Lintha ships. How would you," she asks, already hauling him off towards the dead city, "like to come with me and have a /wonderful/ day?~"

Wuh-oh.
Staren     Seeing that armor crack, seeing Mask leak... ghost blood? brings the life back into Staren... only for the Mask to do something not unlike the visions and appear to be about to cleave him in two! He tries to dodge being bisected in the cockpit, but it turns out that besides cleaving the head, the deathlord is mostly pushing him into the ground, which is... a problem, as he's never had anyone do that before and so has no reflexive response to it.

    Azure Armature fights the daiklave around him as he tries to come up with a response, before finally deciding to drop his weapons, transform the torso to bring the arms lower, and push off with arms and thrusters to get his legs out of the ground.

    While he's doing that, he gets to see Mask nearly strike a killing blow on Gawain, just like the visions. He races to try and catch Albert, careful not to decelerate too fast.

    And then, the next thing he knows, Tien Yu turns the battlefield into something resembling Zone 92.

    It's over.

    Mask of Winters, dramatic villain to the end, says a last few threatening words as his very body/soul/body-soul crumbles away.

    Staren sets Albert down, retrieves his weapons, and then... transforms back to humanoid mode and starts walking off in the direction of the nearest warpgate. There are no survivors here to tend to, after all. And he just doesn't have the heart to try and loot the place right now, however much use the magitech might be in saving the world later.
Tomoe Tomoe gets the Mask to not rant at her, she will take that as a win for herself she gets a boot, the Mask's boot, which send sher flying awya,. This turns out to be good for Tomoe, as she'd not at ground zero of all the assaults on The Mask, she ignores his dying words as she tries to get back up, she struggles up, she's still got some HP left she feels terrible but she knows they don't have long before it becomes a shadow land. Tomoe is pushing herself again as she goes to try and ... see if she can find any souls who who lived throughg it. The most telling things

She's in pain she's going to be a mess when she drops out of henshin but she is going to do what she can pull out those who have surived.
Batou Tachikoma takes the full brunt of the Mask of Winters and collapses under the weight, leaving an enormous dent in the top of its frame, with Batou's leg crushed right into the Tachikoma as well by the heavy weight. All he can do is watch in a moment, /just/ a moment, of terror in which he thought that they may truly fail to bring him to justice. The most instense fighting he's experienced in the multiverse, possibly in his life, and he could die here on a far away battlefield. Tachikoma slowly stands, not completely trashed, and both Batou and Tachikoma get to watch Mask's undoing at the hands of the goddess.

For Batou, this is good enough. He sighs, listening on as Tachikoma offers Gawain a ride. Then, after a brief squabble with Bloody and Eye, Tachikoma comes round and kneels to allow the damaged Elites climb on as best they can, with Batou assisting.

Batou can only offer his condonlences and gratitude to the dying god, before riding off with everyone in tow.

Fuck ghosts.
Azure Armature For a moment, there is a pang of guilt that fills Azure Armature's emotionally-sympathetic mind as Toriki Falling Rain is annihilated. A useful soldier - a 'worthwhile human', cut down. Among the losses, the uncountable amount of deaths and it's one of the empty faces bearing a name that caused her to regret.

She loses sight of things after that. The ground, you see. It explodes under her. Natural toughness only takes people so far. A haze of wounds, body zones yellowing and then going orange in the corner of her sight.

But it ends, with Tien Yu's last gasp, and she's freed from the ground trap that had threatened to end her on the spot.

Prone and scorched black, Armature groans and rolls onto her side on the rancid ground, coughing to clear her lungs of smoke. She notes, in a distant and more focused part of her mind that wasn't concerned with pain, that the silhouette of Empty Tiding's demon arm was the same as Falling Rain's. The part of her mind that was in incredible pain found a little solace in that.

So, nobody that mattered died. That was comforting.

Sitting up, she conjured a new scarf to wipe her face with like a towel before surveying the landscape, and everyone leaving after a job not precisely 'well' done, but certainly 'very' done.

Another lung-clearing few coughs, and she disappears with a pop to go lick her wounds and sharpen her knives in a more private locale.