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312 - Apotheosis in the Garden of Flesh Pt. 3 [Sturmblitz]
🕑 Added 2023-10-15 03:06:15 +0000 UTCAs lightning surged through Zero’s cabling, the tank’s engine howled and its pile bunkers took on a white glow. With an exertion of his will, Strake made yet another lever work itself. Thruster-vents opened up along Zero’s chassis; four on the backs of its legs, and a giant twin-chamber one straight out of the engine. A recent upgrade owing to a collaboration between Willowdale’s Iron Riders branch office and a certain unnamed wizard.
In a great burst of blue-white flame, the multi-ton war machine exploded upward and went flying on a meteoric trajectory towards Cathedral Square. In his wake was left a molten crater full of boiling meat.
This jump wouldn’t get him all the way there, but it would be enough. He prayed that it would be enough. As if in answer, Zero’s thrust abruptly jumped, and Strake realized it would be just enough to land him right at the edge of the giant ritual circle, just outside the square.
From his vantage point well above the city’s buildings, Strake saw not just the rapidly-growing maelstrom of crimson energy, he also saw the epicenter of it: The Cathedral. Fleshy tendrils covered much of its surface like cancerous ivy, spreading out to connect huge mounds of quivering flesh spread out all over the square. He knew they contained people, not because they were even remotely recognizable, but because of the constant, ceaseless screaming. With another ring of the bell, pulses of light ran down the flesh-tendrils' length. Another wave of screams erupted when the pulse reached the flesh-mounds. With it, both blood and that crimson energy burst out, as if being squeezed out of a fruit. Before long, the entire square would be flooded.
The belfry crumbled apart under the maelstrom, shingles and stones torn away until only the bell remained, tethered down by fleshy ropes that attached it to the cathedral, alongside the figure of whom he presumed to be "Lord Third".
With the burning brass brand encased in glyph-glass that was Zero’s single cycloptic eye, he also caught sight of his allies on the ground.
Zefaris and Victor were both to the east, working on a pylon of bone and black ice shod with those ominous purple glyphs. A number of similar pylons stood along the whole ritual circle’s perimeter, and by his estimate, only two were left to go before the circle was complete. Something was strange about that staff of Victor's; the veins along its handle shone bright white, and a burning red sphere was suspended within its ring. A bright white core burned in the sphere’s center, whereas its exterior was enveloped in pitch-black flame. It felt almost like the tainted energy used by the Order, but… Purified, somehow, and infinitely more concentrated.
As for Zelsys, she stood on the ground well inside the ritual circle, just on the outskirts of the Cathedral Square. With her arm cannon aimed at twhat was likely “Lord Third”, she seemed to be anchoring herself. Not merely taking a wide stance, she stuck her cleaver into the ground and did much the same with her lightning-serpents as if her braids were anchor-cables. Strake could swear he even saw the stone under her feet rising up to wrap around her legs.
The Third Truthseeker, alongside the bell, floated further and further above the belfry, the sacrificial maelstrom simultaneously expanding and flowing back into him. Strake's flight came to an end as he reached the apex of his trajectory and, like the multi-ton mass of metal it was, Zero crashed to the ground.
Then, there was light.
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On the ground, Zefaris and Victor toiled away, not even knowing for certain that their plan would work. The further along the ritual circle's perimeter they progressed, the less and less fragile it seemed, a chimeric monstrosity that concealed its resilience beneath a haphazard surface. It was a patchworked-together tapestry just as Victor had guessed, but that patchwork nature meant that unravelling one section wouldn't affect another section in the same way, or even at all. A swarm of Flesh Unions stalked the streets in their immediate vicinity, ruthlessly warring with the Order's survivors; their strength was replenished and their wounds healed by the ritual just the same, despite their changed allegiances. It seemed counter-intuitive, at first, but unlike the Flesh Beasts, the Unions weren't mere puppets. They were living curses driven by furious, unrestrained will to take revenge for the humans they had once been.
What she had hoped to complete long before the rite could begin was now still two steps from completion while the rite was in progress. The only hope of seeing this plan through was to have Zelsys slow the maelstrom's expansion somehow. It would be ideal if the Third Truthseeker's concentration was also disturbed when the counter-array came into effect, but that was just Zefaris *hoping*.
It didn't help that Victor had grown markedly less helpful since the ritual had begun; rather, he wasn't any less useful, but his staff was reacting in a strange manner, greedily sucking up every bit of sacrificial aura while refusing to function in its intended role as an arcane amplifier. The redhead was working under his own strength alone while trying to wrangle the Itrian artifact back under control, chanting strange mantras under his breath all along.
She felt it. Something unearthly shimmering around that staff, just like before, when he turned the Flesh Beasts against their masters.
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Not more than half a minute earlier, Zelsys sent out a wide-area aetherwave comms burst to warn all of Willowdale's forces to stay away, be they tankmen or lower-ranked cultivators. She rushed past Frierich's petrified corpse and jumped three stories straight up to reach the top of an apartment building, and immediately went flying over the roofs at breakneck speeds, reaching Cathedral Square in no time. The few enemies who managed to even try striking at her were left throwing needles and firing bolts at nothing. The even smaller few who managed to, by some miracle, intercept her in her path, were torn apart by Carnifex with just a twitch of her wrist.
