Some two thousand miles away, the haima’sa hordes faced a threat more pressing than the Rogue Special Forces however. Since the destruction of Roc and the moulding of Colossus from his constituents, Teros had begun a silent but savage war on the viral fragments of the Annals that made up the core of the haima’sa collective.

It had been weeks since the beginning of his crusade to wipe these marionettes from the face of this earth, which – if he was being honest with himself – served equally as punishment for their insolence and amusement for the fabled Destroyer as he finalised the consolidation of his power within Terra. As he planned his destined clash with Gaea’s Guardians, the powerful demi-god decided that rather than focus his vast energies on the systematic destruction and reconstitution of each individual voice within the haima’sa collective, he would instead imbue the archetype of his creation with the very primordial energies that he had used to marshal Colossus to his cause. The result was a somewhat protracted war for Teros to observe while he coalesced the equivalent of several nuclear detonations worth of energy into the lithe humanoid form that he could now stably maintain.

On the distant horizon of the ensuing battle, his pale form – enveloped in obsidian energy – served as an ominous watchman, bolstering the resolve of his proxies while they persecuted the haima’sa hordes. What commenced originally as a single of Teros’ remnants running raids on the haima’sa stronghold, had in just a few weeks expanded to more than simple guerrilla warfare. Now his war spanned an expansive battlefield, with hundreds of haima’sa soldiers deeply engrossed in combat with Teros’ remnants as his dark moon loomed over the Drowned Province.

This made for quite the sight as the massive RSF assault vehicle entered the area.

“What in the blue hell…” Rueben muttered from aboard the craft as they approached the area to which they had tracked the monstrous lizard-monster that served as their target.

The sight certainly made no sense to the young Itami, who had fully expected to arrive and find a military encampment filled with the vastly varied forms that the haima’sa collective tended to occupy. Instead however, he found a garden set ablaze. Massive beasts flew overhead, engaging in dogfights and performing bombing runs on platoons that fought below; while their terrestrial counterparts—smaller versions of the siege-beast that there were tracking—functioned much like the RSF MT’s that had been deployed in Neo Brighton.

The result was all out war between what he could only assume to be two factions of haima’sa, as he was completely unable to distinguish between those that had been granted Teros’ gift and those who were still loyal to their original cause.

A look of confusion slowly crept across his face.

“Oh this place is gorgeous.” Rueben’s bewilderment at the battle that raged ahead of them was drowned out by the squeals of a pink-haired young woman, who now accompanied the group of channellers.

Unlike Rueben, she had only been involved in this operation at the last moment, and had little interest in or knowledge of the nature of the haima’sa collective. As such, the battle below did not seem particularly out of place. What instead drew her attention was the site on which it was being waged. Smack-dab in the middle of the massive and destitute ruin that was the Drowned Province, had sprung up a massive pelagic garden.

From the depths of the crater lake had sprouted forth massive, towering structures – equal parts tree and mushroomoid fungal hyphae. As their canopies stretched towards the skies, playing host to aerial battles, at the points where they broke the water’s surface, their hyphae spread out to create a substrate from which other vegetation could grow. The result was a mossy floor, laden with the floral and mushroom-like growths that characterised this Eden.

“This place is also completely alien, Yasmin.” Daniel Thorsson interjected from the cockpit of the massive craft, as he brought the vehicle to a slow hover and activated its stealth capabilities. “Preliminary scans indicate that nothing in that little oasis is actually native to this planet.”

“Yeah, the excessive bio-luminescence kinda gave that away Danny.” Zed retorted, with a slight smirk.

“Preliminary scans also suggest that that’s not bio-luminescence.” Daniel countered. “It’s also not zeta-based so if I were a betting man, I’d bet that it was magical in nature.”

Zed just rolled her eyes at the assertion.

“Still not accepting that ‘magic’ is a thing boss?” A dark-haired young man chimed in.

“I don’t think I ever will, Paco.” Zed shook her head, before turning her attention back to their pilot. “Should we be worried about your magical plants Danny?”

“I doubt it.” He shrugged. “They seem harmless enough – most likely by-products of all the magic seeping through the Long Island Gate.” He explained.

“I still have no idea how we’d managed to not notice this thing was here after all this time.” A dark-skinned, red-haired young man spoke up.

“Well, the gate is buried beneath about a kilometre of water—” Daniel started. “—and outside of all of the magic spewing into our world, there isn’t much out of the ordinary when it comes to this area’s energy profile.”

“Still, Usiles is Lehomik territory… I suspect someone knew about this.” Zed growled lightly. “Unfortunately, information sharing isn’t a common enough practice in our line of work, Bobby.”

“That’s all too true.” Bobby nodded in agreement.

“Anyway, enough small talk, listen up.” Zed’s words drew the attention of her small team of RSF operatives as well as Rueben’s team of ragtag channellers that had agreed to execute the operation with them. “Our primary target is the big siege-beast that’s been running assaults on Neo Brighton for months. For the sake of this operation, he’s been designated Goliath, and will be highlighted as such on your zeta scanners. There will be no teams for this operation—we’re all one team—so everybody play your positions and we should all make it out of this place alive.”

The group gathered around as Zed spoke.

“Upfront I want Cunall, Jorna and Rude. Me and Yasmin will float between the frontlines and the middle, where Nicholas and Bobby will set up shop. Rueben, you back up Paco at long range and keep any surprises off our asses.” Zed laid out the battle plans. “I dunno what the deal with this little civil war of theirs is, but it’ll play to our advantage since we grossly underestimated their numbers. Rueben, in additional to support, your job is to shut down any attempts by that thing to port out of here – I want this thing out of commission.”

Rueben just smirked.

“You got it.” Rueben nodded. “Something that big should take a least a few months to reconstitute itself from the ambient magic, which should give us some time to come up with a much more permanent solution to the problem.”

“Music to my ears kid.” Zed affirmed. “I look forward to the day when we can just kill these things once and have them stay dead.” She sighed lightly before turning her attention back towards their pilot, Daniel.

“Have you located our Goliath?” She inquired.

“Yeah, I’ve got him in my sights.” Daniel replied, highlighting the largest beast on the battlefield with the designation.

“Excellent, now lay down some cover-fire, love.” She smirked. “I like a clean battlefield.”

Daniel just smirked at her complete disregard for professionalism.

“Roger that, Commander Cross.” He replied, broadening Zed’s smirk to a grin. “Steel rain in 5… 4… 3… 2…1…”

Kilometres away, Teros watched from within the comfort of his dark moon as the fortified position within the centre of the haima’sa encampment exploded. A dark grin broke across his pale lips as he watched Zed’s Zeta Mega Elixer – the massive ship with which she had transported her small team – faded into view from its cloaked position and began to rain a torrent of cluster bombs down on what seemed to be the central command structure of the haima’sa collective.

Slowly his grin broke into a chuckle.

He had been hoping that his Colossus would be the one to eventually break the haima’sa lines and lay waste to the massive beast that served both as their heaviest artillery unit and as tactical commander.

“Still, I’d be ungrateful if I said that this wasn’t a pleasant surprise.” He muttered to himself. “Let’s see how Gaea’s latest misstep deals with that which their kin have wrought.”

Teros narrowed his gaze, focusing in on the infinitesimally small specks that were the nine channellers diving out of the Zeta Mega Elixer. He trained his vision on them as they came crashing onto the earth beneath the Rogue assault vehicle and made a beeline for the creature that had tormented Neo Brighton for so many months. The destroyer just grinned knowingly.

Daniel’s assault had done little to even phase their target, furthermore damage it, instead succeeding only in eradicating the humanoid foot soldiers stationed within its vicinity to provide would he could only assume to be tactical support. The result was a kilometre in diameter stretch of bare ground around the already wounded creature, which would serve as their battlefield.

“Rueben, Paco, keep the reinforcements off of us.” Zed yelled as she energized her heroic form completely and vanished from sight, appearing above the massive komodo-dragon-like beast before it could even react to her arrival on the battlefield.

In an instant, she was hovering just above the creature with her arms and legs spread apart, before she pulled them in towards her body and flung herself into a rapid spin. The creature eyes widened with shock, for the first time displaying some anthropomorphic features, before she delivered a powerful blow with the heel of her right foot and sent its lizard-like face careening into the earth below.

Kilometres away Teros chuckled at the sight, before turning his gaze towards the weaker occupants of the battlefield.

On the periphery of Zed’s battle with the Goliath, the Rogue pyrokinetic – Paco Evole – was setting up a perimeter with his personal energy-type Cronus. Within just seconds of his arrival, raging red flames erupted at the perimeter of Daniel’s assault and spread like wildfire towards the edge of his area of influence. The result was a kilometre-wide ring of absolute carnage, stretching to a maximum of two kilometres from Paco’s location in the centre of their cordoned off battlefield. Even Rueben’s eyes widened with shock at the feat, watching as the haima’sa foot-soldiers who had been outside the area of effect of Daniel’s aerial bombardment tried to race to their leader’s assistance only to be caught up in the young man’s raging inferno. He couldn’t tell how exactly Paco’s cronus worked, but one thing that he could say for sure was that it was no ordinary flame. Everything from the odd magical foliage to the very creatures rushing through these crimson flames were consumed more like paper than kindling, and the more that these entities fed his flames the higher and hotter they raged. But what made things worse, was the fact that even the stronger few who managed to make it through the ever-thickening wall of blood-red flames immediately found themselves the targets of Zed’s two mid-ranged marksmen.

This was definitely the mark of military efficiency, Rueben noted. From what he could tell, both Bobby Stryder and Nicholas Wulfe possessed a Summoner class and specialised in conjuring firearms to complement their fighting styles. Beyond that, they each wielded their weapon of choice with deadly accuracy and precision.

Bobby’s gun most closely resembled an anti-materiel rifle in size and shape, but despite its apparently unwieldly girth he flung it around more like a common hunting rifle than anything else. Its blasts seemed to create small vacuums within the environment, tearing their unfortunate targets asunder as their flaming bodies rapidly expanded to fill the physical and energetic voids created by his shots.

Nicholas’ weapon was even more sinister. While certainly less ostentatious in appearance, this assault rifle fired absolutely terrifying rounds. Each shot of his rifle was like a drill, boring deep into their targets before detonating violently. What made Rueben’s eyebrow tip upwards however was that the resulting explosions were much too big and too powerful for a channellers at Nicholas’ level. His eyes narrowed as he focused in on the effects.

These results were no less terrifying than anything done by Paco or Bobby. Nicholas’ rounds didn’t just burrow into their targets, but also siphoned the energies that powered these strange creatures. Rueben could see the ambient zeta around these things being sucked into the rounds, and he could only imagine that their native magic was doing the same – feeding the violent reaction that eventually spelt their rather explosive demise.

“These Rogues are monsters.” He muttered to himself, as he detonated kaigen in his palms, sending out powerful shockwaves that blasted two stragglers back into Paco’s expansive field of cronus.

“Rueben, focus.” Zed’s voice drew the young Itami’s attention away from her subordinates and back to the task at hand.

As he turned, he watched as the limber Rogue Field Commander somersaulted away from the Goliath while it reared back its head, preparing for the foul breath attack that it had used in their first encounter and every other since. Rueben quickly concentrated his energies, which now manifested as a full-body white aura, before he detonated it to erect a wall of light and force between Zed and the Goliath’s vile attack.

Zed smirked as the fluid-like energy washed over Rueben’s barrier, just metres from her face as she charged her rebuttal. The shrieking energy that she normally manifested – uninspiredly named kinex – went about its primary function of hyper-accelerating the arcane atmospheric energies that she controlled, exciting them far beyond their natural state before she finally unleashed them to wreak havoc on her target. As the Goliath’s attack seeped into the mossy ground on which their battle was waged, Zed unleashed a maelstrom of shrieking energy directly into the creature’s head, for the first time tossing it from its feet and throwing it a few metres down the battlefield.

Zed beamed with pride, but there would be no time for celebration.