Yet again, the world came to a crawl for the historian. Despite Sigmund having learned how to focus a beamwand’s output into a single blast, only now had he truly pushed it in any real way, let alone one as significant as this feat. With this, the technique was forever branded into his being.

THE FIRE OF HEAVEN REMADE THROUGH MAN

TRANQUILITY ECHOES: HEAVEN-PIERCING COMET

At that same moment, a mighty CLANG sounded, its clarion call cutting through the fray of battle as a blazing, twin-tailed orange comet soared over the field towards a tree, a second CLANG ringing out before the first even struck its target. A third, soaring skyward towards the glyph upon the clouds, and a fourth, a fifth, in rapid succession, both of the last ones targeting glyphs carved on trees.

Of this fivefold assault, Ubul’s mastery of geomancy allowed him to block three parts, but two of the Mogralt comets found their way to his body and drilled their way in, wreaking havoc and ripping up his rather homogenous internal mass for a short while. Most importantly, it occupied his attention, for long enough for the Guardian of the Wall to finally come sprinting out of the treeline at full tilt, smashing into Ubul and knocking him off-balance as it plunged its sword directly into his torso and wrapped its free arm around his spear hand, digging its heels in.

This was Zel’s opening. The beast-slayer had already been sprinting as quickly as her feet would carry her, but the sheer scale of both the battlefield and Ubul himself made keeping up a struggle, regardless of her ability to run faster than many motor vehicles. Even as she bounded across the battlefield, using claymen’s heads as stepping stones, she saw Ubul struggling to get back up, pulling himself back together, plugging the holes in his body and undoing all their hard work with frightening speed. Indeed, his blazing gaze seemingly fixed upon the Guardian of the Wall, his few remaining arms focused their ire upon her specifically, two seven-fingered arms raising dozens of stones out of the ground and magickally propelling them towards her in mesmerizing patterns, while four others ripped up larger boulders and threw them not at her, but at where she was going, in blisteringly-fast sequence.

Even as she ran and burned much of her output to fuel the constant need for Graze Pulse, she found herself being struck, her skin being sanded off by mistimed grazes, but she didn’t care. All this lightning, all this kinetic energy built up, these antlers that burned so brightly upon her brow, all this would serve her well. It was exhilarating, no matter the peril she could only derive entertainment from this inferno of projectiles, constantly forced to think on her feet and meticulously plot out her path, it was like a moving maze.

At last as she jumped off of a wrecked tank, Ubul suddenly stomped his foot and sent a boulder he had been preparing hurtling straight at her, and as she was in the air, with no way to maneuver out of the way besides burning her entire kinetic battery, Zelsys took the risk… And waited. She waited, and waited, and in the painstaking moments that to her felt multiplied threefold, she prepared a Siphoning Pulse, stockpiling Fog within her left arm and relying on the Impelling Arm’s mechanism to conceal the technique until it was needed. She didn’t punch, as much as she merely held out her fist, waiting for the boulder to strike, meticulously timing the pulse, ensuring her fist would contact it at an angle from below… And stopping it dead in mid-air, yet intentionally imparting just enough momentum right back to keep the stone in the air for a moment.

Zel used the split-second before gravity took hold to dig her fingers into the rock, pulling herself up and using it as a jumping-off point to send herself flying straight under Ubul’s many left armpits, coating the Butcher’s tip in lightning and using it as a climbing assist to make her way up Ubul’s back in two swift bounds, all the while the Guardian of the Wall did everything in its power to occupy the general’s attention. It was by the nature of his tendril-arms that Zelsys was able to move as she did, their tremendous length also hindering their ability to quickly wind back to strike at her. Only now that she was perched right above the nape of his neck could they lash at her like angry serpents, now that she could just cut them down as though they were flesh by the blinding-white howling fury of the All-severing Scream.

In fact, seeing the fruitlessness of this, and as Zelsys braced herself and gathered her energies for her upcoming feat, Ubul redoubled his assault on the Guardian.

Six arms enveloped the Guardian, winding around its form, slowly tightening, breaking its outer layers apart in an effort to shatter it completely.

“WHO HOLDS THIS PUPPET’S STRINGS? TELL ME, AND I SHALL SPARE YOU A MOMENT LONGER.”

For a moment the Guardian stared blankly ahead, and in the next, geysers of Fog erupted from its eyes, forming into a humanoid figure perched atop its head, clad in a robe and a dragon’s-head mask.

“My soul is much too old to step foot beneath these cursed clouds,” a tranquil voice issued from the figure. “The Storm would think me one of your kith and kin, even through a stormward talisman. However… There is something I may do with this stone edifice, a cursed art that in my time contributed in no small part to my reputation as a necromancer.”

Kanbu smiled in his sensory deprivation tub, the Guardian’s stone-still countenance cracking and shifting to mimic his expression.

“...Rightfully so, though I loathe to admit it. You see, the magick at core of this statue may not suffice to strike you down, for it was built and put into motion with the sole intent of protecting Willowdale, left to sit there for centuries, accumulating reserves dredged from the great leyline fount beneath the city. I had planned to merely seal you for a while longer with that half-millennium stockpile, but somehow, or rather because of someone, I feel confident in indulging your decisive battle doctrine.”