The lizard released a feral shriek as the attack impacted, causing its entire body to warp violently as the fundamental instructions that gave it life on this plane of existence were damaged. Its massive body creaked under the impact of the attack, shifting feverishly to reorganize the remaining code into a core that could allow it to remain coherent. Luckily, Zed knew better than to try to capitalize on its inability to gather itself immediately, instead hanging back and watching as its black blood bathed the area in front of it. Or so she thought.

“Zed, what are you waiting for?” Daniel screamed over her comm link.

“You want me to go in and get melted by that thing?” She scoffed, but Daniel just shook his head.

“You’ve disrupted its defensive abilities.” He contested. “Its blood is no longer corrosive.”

“Damn it!” Zed muttered under her breath, before vanishing from her location.

Unfortunately however, by the time she reappeared in front of the creature, just an instant later, it has already reconstituted its core. As Daniel suggested, it had lost some of its abilities, but in seconds it had managed to salvage enough of its fundamental essence and reorganised it in order to retaliate.

Zed appeared as it cast off the magical essences previously tied to the now obliterated bits of its core, resulting in a powerful explosion that caught her off-guard and blasted her away, sending her skating along the ground towards one of her subordinates. The young speedster barely reacted fast enough to intercept his Field Commander, catching her and sliding to a stop some distance away from where the two of them impacted. While Nicholas did this, Bobby took aim with his massive rifle lawgiver and unleashed a potent round into the source of the Goliath’s attack. The resulting vacuum siphoned away some of the creature’s jetisonned energy, briefly revealing a sleeker reptilian form amidst the chaotic maelstrom before it vanished from his sight.

Bobby’s eyes widened as the young sniper’s various sensor arrays screamed, alerting him of the fact that something was approaching him at high speed. But even with the enhanced reflexes granted to him by his heroic form, Bobby was still unable to track the creature as it was closing in on him. The result was an attack so fast and so potent, that before he could even react, his physical form was rent asunder. Even Zed was only fast enough to hit the creature after it had completely obliterated Bobby, clipping one of the wings that it now had and knocking it off its flight path before sending it skidding along the ground as she had done just moments prior.

“What the hell is that?” Nicholas gasped with horror as Zed delivered the blast from on top of him, before scuttling to her feet.

“That’s our target.” She retorted. “Now, on your feet.”

She wouldn’t have to give him that order again. Soon Nicholas was standing next to her and once again summoning his outlaw arms into his hands.

This particular ability had originally manifested as the assault rifle that he’d used to thin the swarm of haima’sa encroaching on the team earlier, but now it instead manifested as a much less discrete minigun. A brief whir of the rotating barrels preceded a hail of bullets that traced the long cloud of dust, dirt and plant matter that outlined his target’s trajectory along the almost alien landscape of the Drowned Province.

“That’s the lizard?” Nicholas inquired with shock as the downed creature took off into the sky under the influence of massive wings, while Zed was still shaking off the disorienting effects of the magical detonation that had sent her flying in his direction.

The Rogue Field Commander grimaced lightly as the magic that now polluted her energy streams burned in her veins – but she’d have little time to worry about that. What was previously a hulking Komodo dragon now resembled the more mythical European green-dragon. It’s massive, gorilla-like proportions were now replaced by the six-limbed body plan of the mythical beast, and its shed weight resulted in a drastic increase to its movement speed.

“Bobby, on me.” Zed commanded impatiently, causing the ambient zeta behind her to shimmer briefly before her subordinate’s heroic form began to rematerialize at that location.

“Sorry boss.” Bobby smirked as his body slowly solidified from the ambient atmospheric energy. “That one caught me off-guard.”

“No problem Bobby, but you only get to use that excuse once.” Zed smirked. “Now keep your guard up, those twelve trials of yours won’t keep you alive forever.” She added before turning her attention towards Daniel. “Danny—”

“One step ahead of you Commander.” Daniel replied before she could even issue the order. “Psychic link established.”

“Thanks love.” Zed replied with a smirk. “You two now get information as fast as I can process it.” She explained to Nicholas and Bobby. “It won’t speed up your physical motion, but you’ll react to this thing as fast as I do.”

Zed watched as broad grins broke across the two young men’s faces.

“That’s all I need, boss.” Nicholas nodded.

“Indeed.” Bobby conceded. “We just aim where it’s gonna be and it’ll do the rest for us.”

“Good to know we’re on the same page.” Zed smirked before vanishing from their location to re-engage their target.

“What can we say, you trained us well.” Bobby smirked as his lawgiver completed its summoning process once again and allowed him to take aim.

On the outskirts of their battle, just as Daniel had predicted, the attacks on the small human striketeam had become much more organised since Zed’s attack on their leader had finally bore fruit. What was once little more than stalling tactics to keep the small team occupied while the haima’sa focused their efforts on the remnant threat, had now shifted to a concerted effort to eradicate this small incursion of pests. And none were exempt from these efforts. Even under the influence of the vehicle’s stealth capabilities, Daniel soon found himself under assault as the haima’sa soldiers simply followed the flows of mana that were feeding his anomalous ability to perceive their magical cores. As a result and much to his dismay, the RSF psychic soon found their ship had become the victim of bombing runs from the winged beasts that made up the haima’sa’s aerial squadrons.

“Shit.” He cursed lightly, noting that he couldn’t pilot the craft and monitor the battlefield to identify magical cores simultaneously.

At some point he would have to commit to one of these tasks, and that choice would likely have dire repercussions.

“Hold tight, Commander.” Luckily for him, he could delay such a decision as Paco’s voice sounded over the ship’s communication’s link.

The statement preceded a concentrated beam of flames impacting one of the smaller aerial units, focusing Paco’s vast energetic reserves on the single target that was quickly consumed by them. Just as Zed’s attack had done to the Goliath, Paco’s attack also impacted this particular unit’s magical core, but unlike Zed’s attack, this one was hardly a glancing blow. As soon as the creature was impacted, it was erased from existence, it’s body and core completely consumed by the flames that continues onwards to punch a hole in the clouds above.

“That boy is a demon.” Rueben muttered under his breath at the Rogue Manipulator’s truly prodigious energy outputs.

Unfortunately however, he would have time little time to marvel at the attack. As Daniel had warned them just a few moments prior, with each haima’sa unit that they truly dispatched, the greater the focus on eradicating them grew. As Paco truly went to work unleashing his fury, it didn’t take long before the skies above them were swarming with haima’sa units, forcing Rueben to finally bite the bullet and release the floodgates on his veranos. A light sigh preceded the green flames swelling around him and his own energy output doubling in a matter of seconds, before the rest of the group noted that their opponents almost instantaneously became more frantic and significantly less coordinated.

“Well, that’s my cue.” The pink-haired young woman finally sounded. “Cover me Paco.”

“You got it, Yas.” He replied with a grin as the young woman finally revealed her unique ability.

With this, Yasmin threw off her humanoid form and adopted a more draconic state. Much like young Tyler and Nicola Cage, this particular Rogue operative had a penchant for assimilating observed abilities. Unlike the Cages however, her abilities relied far less on understanding her targets and instead leaned primarily on her intuition. This allowed her to copy the abilities of channelers whose abilities far escaped her grasp – and this was one such situation. The young woman’s transformation was fashioned after their primary target, the speedy draconic form of the Goliath. However, unlike the source of these new abilities, Yasmin’s body form did not shift completely, instead adopting a halfway state between the six-limbed, wing dragon and her ordinary human anatomy. This granted the now demi-dragon a somewhat more familiar and easier to control body plan, allowing the young woman to enter the fray in a more active role. A powerful flap of her wings sent her hurtling into the air before she was soaring through the skies above them, using the creature’s fowl black breath to engage in dogfights with the same haima’sa units that had been bombarding their transport just moments earlier.

Some distance away, the source of Yasmin’s transformation was flying circles around Zed and her small team, doing its best to evade the hail of bullets that it was still being pelted with from Nicholas’ outlaw arm. Between dodging Bobby’s implosive void rounds and Zed’s persistent assaults, it was taking all of the creature’s mobility just to stay on the defensive while it looked for an opening. But as always, one eventually came. A quick dodge from one of Zed’s lunging strikes was all that the Goliath needed before it spun around for a counterattack – hoping that it could at least take out one of the nuisances that now pestered it.

As it spun and released its attack, all Nicholas would feel was a fist on his collar before he was yanked away form his location, preceding the area being drenched in a black mucous that dissolved the earth beneath where he previously stood.

The young man’s eyes widened with shock, not possessing the unique twelve trials that allowed Bobby to survive such an assault just moments earlier.

“Wow, good looking out Bobby.” Nicholas exhaled a sigh of relief, drawing a smirk from his partner.

“Don’t thank me, thank the boss.” Bobby retorted as he dropped his fellow gunslinger and took aim with lawgiver as the beast circled around for another pass at them.

Luckily, before he could even get the creature nestled in his sights, a powerful impact parted the clouds, revealing Zed – bathed in white energy – as her fist impacted the now much smaller target. The radial shockwave that radiated off her attack reverberated through the battlefield, heightening the frantic nature of the haima’sa foot soldiers that were now swarming the others.

Daniel’s focus drifted back towards the other members of the team, who were slowly being overrun as more and more units were diverted away from the front lines with Teros’ remnants and towards protecting the entity that led their army. Already Rude was pinned down under ravenous humanoid units, while Jorna and Cunall did their best to free the nigh indestructible psycher.

“You two, move!” Paco commanded, giving them just enough time to clear the area before a stream of red flames washed over the dogpile and reduced the rabid units to cinders.

Daniel breathed a sigh of relief as his focus returned to the haima’sa commanding unit, noting now that the beast was still pinned to the ground where Zed had smashed it just moments ago ago. As his gaze shifted away from their Field Commander, he focused now on Nicholas and Bobby, who had both switched their summoned weapons from their more offense-oriented options, to those more geared for support. After all, they acknowledged that they were both completely unable to affect these ‘magical cores’ that powered the haima’sa. As such, Bobby had since dissipated his lawgiver in favour of a pair of cryogenic pistols called the frost wolves while Nicholas’ outlaw arms had once again shifted form – this time from a powerful minigun to a long ranged taser.

While Bobby encapsulated the downed dragon’s limbs in ice, Nicholas’ stream of zeta-based current disrupted what passed for the creature’s central nervous system, removing any control that it had over its bodyparts and keeping the beast stationary long enough for Zed to complete the charging of her final attack. This time, rather than a mere glow, her energy charged visibly outside of her body, hovering in a massive sphere over her head. Viewed from a distance, the massive ball of kinex complimented the dark ball of energy that encapsulated Teros, serving as a luminous sun to his dark moon.

It now took everything that Rueben and Paco could muster to shield Zed from the stream of attacks that had been redirected towards her, as now even Rueben’s veranos infused form seemed too insignificant to keep the attention of the haima’sa on him rather than Zed. But unfortunately, there was nothing that could stop the Rogue Field Commander at this point. The pinned dragon watched in horror as the fate that had befallen too many of his comrades in the recent past now hurtled towards him.

What had seconds ago been a massive sphere of energy was now redirected towards the Goliath, stretching and warping from the luminous sun before transforming into a shining deluge of ki streams that now rained down on the creature’s body. As these waves of energy crashed over it, the draconic entity let out an all too alien shriek, shaking the battlefield as the primal ki washed over what remained of it’s magical core, drowning out it’s native code and rinsing away the viral energy patterns back into the Annals.

Some distance away, all Teros could do was smirk at the outcome, watching as even the units at the front of the battlefield were broken. With the magical core that contained the vast majority of their tactical knowledge completely destroyed, their combat strategy was just as soon reduced to anarchy.

“That’s enough, return to the ship and let’s get the hell out of here.” Daniel commanded to the exhausted strike team as he abandoned his coordinating role and allowed the ability to perceive magic to drain from his eyes.

The psychic stumbled as he pulled himself up from the observation deck and dragged himself back to the cockpit, where he could decloak the aircraft and provide cover fire for the team as they retreated to the ship.

While he did that however, Teros’ voice echoed in the mind of his Collossus, the commander of the now vast army of former haima’sa warriors turned remnants under his command.

“Their ranks are broken, finish them.” His dark voice reverberated. “But leave the humans, they die another day.”