Preparations took less than a minute; Zefaris donned her mask with a fresh canister, while Victor settled himself in a backwards-facing position behind Jorfr and downed over a liter and a half of liquid to help ease his spellcasting; a full bottle of Liquid Vigor and a liter of water. Not entirely trusting of the redhead’s ability to hold on at the breakneck velocities they expected to reach, Zel tied him to Jorfr by stringing several belts together.

“Remember, these things are designed to get people out of the Deterrence Fields,” Jorfr reminded them. “They will not give chase once we reach the Mouth of Prasticaris; the Titan itself is beyond their purview.”

With an exchange of nods, they took off, pushing their machines into three-digit velocities from the outset. Gigantic arms whipped by in a blur as they carved a path through the mist, and for a few minutes it seemed as if they might be able to cross the Deterrence Fields without incident. This illusion was quickly dispelled when Zefaris spotted a nearby field of arms stirring, ancient stone and metal coming alive. In moments, dozens of humanoid golems erupted from the ground, sprinting after them and easily keeping pace. Their legs moved like a blur, their lower halves shaped into digitigrade-esque springs not unlike some non mechanical prosthetics. With each step they went bounding forward and the ground erupted under their feet, yet the automata behind the front row never tripped or faltered. Two pairs of inhuman, blue-shining eyes were seated in their otherwise featureless faces, unflinchingly staring down their chosen quarry.

“They’re catching up. Faster!”

One-hundred. One-fifty. Two-hundred kilometers per hour. Jorfr loaded a second Fulgur cell into his bike’s Thundercharger.

Untiring, unfaultering, utterly inhuman; the automata sped up as if to exactly supersede their speed by a small margin. A design feature intended to make them try to chase people out of the Deterrence Fields before resorting to violence, perhaps.

Zef tried firing on the golems, only to find that they had the raw reaction speed to dodge her bullets, or perhaps some hyper-advanced perception ability that let them predict where her bullet would hit in the split-second between trigger pull and gunshot.

“Of course it wouldn’t be that easy…” she thought she holstered Pentacle and turned around. She stood up on the motorbike and grabbed onto Zel’s shoulders to steady herself, feeling the wind whip past her as she estimated the distance and drew in a deep breath. At this velocity and given the time it would take her to carve the glyph, she had no choice but to form it in mid-air rather than on the ground… And so she did. One breath after the next, she mentally attuned herself to the stillness of this place and opened her left eye.

“Death, my old friend, let me share the stillness of your embrace once more!” she incanted, barely restraining a laugh at the absurdity of those words.

Numbness overcame her, washing away all physical sensation save for the feeling of her hands on Zel’s shoulders. A ray of pale blue and bone-white erupted from the Philosopher’s Eye, carving a circle tens of meters across into the air before it began filling it out with mind-bendingly complex glyphwork that was very nearly beyond even her own understanding. Bit by bit, the glyph circle filled out as they neared the space over which it hovered. Jorfr slotted in a third Fulgur cell to keep up.

The automata sped up to the point of nearly catching up as if sensing the impending obstacle, forcing Zel and Jorfr to push their machines harder still; it meant a fourth burned Fulgur cell for the Borean.

Triggering the glyph was a matter of milliseconds; they rocketed beneath its sprawling complexity with the automata less than ten meters in their wake… And a ray of light erupted from Zef’s eye exactly as the rear ends of their vehicles exited the area of effect. An eruption of snow slammed down on the golem swarm, freezing them stone-still in time.

BELLADONNA SIGN

THE STILLNESS OF DEATH UNTO ALL THINGS

HEADPIERCER ARTS: ETERNAL SNOW

It only lasted a short time… But it was enough time for her to unholster Tempesta and carve a series of three glyphs into the air right in front of its muzzle, pouring immense quantities of Gelum into the gun, such that the brass shell of its action frosted over. She slammed off three shots, each turning to a spear of glacierglass as it passed through the glyph array and stopping dead when it met the perimeter of Eternal Snow. Each spear slammed home true, shattering against a golem’s exterior and exploding into a mass of short-lived magical ice, altogether engulfing the whole front of the swarm. It barely slowed them down at all, with the golems just running right through the blockage as if it weren’t there.

“Hope that’s enough, I don’t have another one like that in me…” she thought, shifting back to a seated position.

More and more golems on the flanks came alive as they passed them, emerging from the earth and forming a pincer-like formation alongside the main swarm. Suddenly, a truly prodigious geyser of oily mud poured out right behind Jorfr’s and Vic’s bike, erupting from the young man’s hand and seemingly multiplying in volume as it passed through the eye of his staff. Such was the volume of muck that it turned the parched ground to mud and bogged the golems down, their feetless, spring-like legs utterly unsuited for dealing with sticky, greasy mud. It was enough time to buy several hundred meters, and their mobility was sufficiently impaired that Zefaris was able to slam them with several more ice-stakes. She honestly didn’t understand just how he had produced a spell of such magnitude, but she just assumed it was a combination of prep time and the Oculus’ magnifying properties. As immensely useful as the feat was, however, the golems on their flanks were now a vastly more immediate problem, closing in together and forming a new spearhead right behind while the original swarm freed itself and began catching up.