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Bloody Revelations     The siege of Thorns begun at the crack of dawn, and has continued unabated since. It's not difficult to guess why. Thorns sits on a Shadowland, and a very big, and very unique one at that. Attacking under the risk of nightfall would be tactically ludicrous. During the day, the dead and their allies recover their mystical energies more slowly, and it costs them simply to remain material. At night, the Shadowland fully becomes part of the Underworld, and not only does that make retreat impossible until dawn, it allows the enemy to fight in full force unrestrained.

    Not that much daylight reaches the ground. Perhaps appropriate to a battle of this magnitude, certain to grow the Shadowland for years after after how thoroughly it is stained with blood, the sky is thick with an unbroken layer of leaden grey storm clouds, swirling over the city as if it were somehow stirring them into action, with constant, dull rumbles that threaten lightning and rain. The city itself however is relatively untouched for a siege of this size and ferocity. Unfortunately, that has to be by design. Thorns is the Mask of Winters' trophy, not so much his fortress. The Shadowland itself is his foothold, and the people of Thorns have not been evacuated, or even /allowed/ to evacuate. All the better that they serve as collateral damage that dissuades Lookshy's Seventh Legion from firing their most powerful weapons.

    The city walls have been dramatically built up since the last time they were seen, but only to the benefit of the giant weapons, crews, and archers atop the battlements, now covered behind leering fences of soulsteel that reinforce and extend the walls and towers upwards, covered in downward curving hooks to deter scaling. The defensive ranged units are grossly outnumbered, but heavily defended in this way, and Lookshy largely has to make do with massed ranks of their more technologically advanced bowmen and light gunners to thin the ranks and whittle down the machines with volume, lucky shots, and the help of a few Gunzosha snipers from rear positions.

    Ahead of Thorns itself is the bulk of the Mask of Winters' war camp in full mobilization, swollen to ten times its original size. Though the massive forces of ghosts are largely non-present except those who can walk the day by wearing the corpses of men, they're most likely being held in reserve to stall the siege until nightfall, and kept at full strength. Extensive and impressive battlefield engineering has taken place on the otherwise suicidally empty lands around the city on Lookshy's part, comprising labyrinthine trenches and barricades of magically shaped earth, mobile folding shields of jade, and a great number of shimmering energy shields and domes that sprinkle the first and second ranks.
Bloody Revelations     Everything between these two fronts is a blood-drenched no-man's land. Several charges seem to have been attempted, and have wholly failed between the incredible volume of fire between both sides. It could quite possibly come down to which side runs out of ammunition and stamina first, though that would look to be in Lookshy's favour, as they constantly rotate out exhausted troops for fresh replacements to recover, and are heavily relying on energy weapons.

    The decider seems to be coming along as Elites arrive. The sheer number of craters and skyward pointing siege bolts on the Thorns advance line, now in ruins, suggests a preemptive aerial bombardment earlier in the day. The fact that the aerial fleet can be seen returning in the distance indicates that they'd likely exhausted their payloads, retreated to a safe distance to hurriedly repair and rearm, and now have come back for an equally thorough saturation bombing. The sheer amount of weaponry Lookshy had recovered or reproduced from Denandsor is on full display, out-competing the Mask of Winters' admittedly impressive numbers of Necromantic imitations in both numbers and quality.

    Not one to abandon her people, even should it typically be considered ill-mannered for city gods to directly intervene on the part of their charge, Tien Yu is right at the fore. The goddess is impossible to miss, being a nimbus of sparkling energy and a whirl of black jade, spearheading the front rank with some kind of wide defensive aura and gunning down the rows of archers and siege operators that show themselves to fire with some kind of integrated Essence weaponry in her divine power armour suit. It seems a little odd that Elites would be called this late into the siege, when the champions of both sides have likely done their battles and are recuperating for a second clash, and the tides are being waged on sheer volume and firepower that a dozen individuals are unlikely to dramatically increase. Maybe somebody has a plan for why they were held in reserve this long.
Empty Tidings TORIKI FALLING RAIN is, as any good soldier of Lookshy would, following the precise orders she was given.

Unfortunately, those orders are to hold in reserve until the offworld Elite forces arrive. She's been quietly seething, just out of reach of the front, for hours on end. The occasional foray forward to help facilitate communications and cover withdrawls and rotations notwithstanding, she's got some of the cleanest hands of anyone who has been here today.

Fortunately(?), that's about to change.

Falling Rain stands on a short rise lifted out of the earth by Lookshy's battlefield engineers, a spyglass held to one eye. She's staring into the distance, watching the battle for any changes that might indicate a moment they can take advantage of. It's been a fruitless exercise thus far, but she's been spending her time bolstering the morale of the mortal troops around her in the meantime instead with a mix of heroic demeanor and steady words of encouragement.

If they're going to spend their lives for the cause, they may as well do it with a fire in their bellies.
Gawain Even without the light of the sun, Gawain will still fight. While what happened at Cold House is still eating on him, he's not giving up on Lookshy or the people of Thorns, and has said he'll assist in slaying the Mask of Winters before, so when they're called in, he's there as soon as possible, decked fully in armor. The knight is riding atop a positively massive boar, about the size of an elephant. He's bridled properly and could fit additional passengers if necessary, as Gawain and his boar stomp forward towards the battlefield, moving to get in contact with any potential Lookshy forces who'd be able to do such over short-band radio. <"Sir Gawain, present! The massive boar is friendly! Charging for Thorns as we speak!">

As a boar-rider, Gawain has skill, to the point that as they charge into the battle, he's actually trying to bob and weave his massive steed between ranged attacks, using the boar's tusks to charge through any undead in his path. He's hoping to join up with Tien Yu's group as he proceeds, and it's absolutely impossible to miss him.
All-Seeing Eye      The curtain of grey storm clouds above Lookshy's battle fortifications is briefly, minutely disturbed by the falling form of a svelte figure in black. His descent seems at first lethal, until the barely detectible glint of some sort of artifact harness is seen. Much like the harnesses distributed by Lookshy upon the initial strike, this one serves to slow his descent to reasonable, safe speeds, such that the sound of his landing is barely perceptible amidst the roaring din of battle.

     Gawain and his boar rush past, kicking up a cloud of dust and blowing his long raven hair along the same path. Eye calmly brushes his shoulder off, keeping his turtleneck free of detritus. "All-Seeing Eye, Chosen of Autochthon." His vision focuses on the Mask's war camp in the distance. His smile matches the pace of his enhanced vision's zoom function, slowly widening as more details come into view. "Preparing for the termination of hostilities." The blood-soaked expanse of land between the war camp and his present location neither escapes his notice nor concerns him. Slipping the harness off and setting it aside, he confidently strides towards the camp, sleeves bulging with artificial shapes.

     Making full use of his ultra-peripheral vision, Eye wades through the no-man's land, confident in his ability to see threats coming and deflect them, either with well-placed crossbow shots or graceful lashes of his whips. Perhaps too confident? The place /is/ covered in blood and all.
Starbound Flotilla     Albert has pulled out all the stops. What comes for today's front line is meant to be a defense-breaking charge on an insane level. The main hull of what appears to be either a capital ship or a small space station has been equipped with an unthinkable number of turrets, artillery weapons, and missile launchers, as well as being fitted with hover-thrusters, treads, robotic legs, and titanic monster-truck-style wheels. The circular construction is clearly designed to protect some kind of massive internal reactor, a massive spherical construct in the center which leaks arcs of energy so vast that one could mistake the mobile fortress for something that's being struck by lightning repeatedly.

    Flamethrowers, spinning saws, electrified surfaces, streams of acid, and other such hazards bristle from the surface of the machine. Ports on the thing unleash a near-constant stream of flash-manufactured drones designed to home in on enemty craniums and detonate themselves violently with shaped charges. Rayguns all around the huge torus of murder emit beams that freeze, blister, irradiate, contuse, and electrify flesh and bone.

    The huge device seems to already be spinning up something terrifying and awful. Titanic slanted columns inject mysterious processes into the torus, creating a building energy signature that screams danger. Where the artillery ray before was meant to annihilate as much enemy fortification as possible, this construction is meant to annihilate as much enemy flesh as possible.

"Accelerator magnetic integrity is steady, despite all logic."
"Yeah, I don't have cancer or superpowers yet. Hull's fine too."
"Floran isss sssad. Weaponsss overcharge, gonna make everything ash, no meat."
"Aye, tragic. We'll hit front lines soon, I'm throwing the throttle in five."
"Anxious. I can't detect dematerialized ghosts. We'll need to be careful."
"Crush through the remains of the main line. I want enemies on all sides."
Tomoe She would miss the seemingly simple nature of the issue of the Dark Lady, as embarrassing as it might be for her, compared to the carnage of fighting in creation. She could walk away sure? While the option exists it's not the right one given she's meddled and someday she will be very likely to confront Bloody Revelation. Now however their goals still aligned to take out her rivals who were just insane even by the standards of Creation. It was time to fight and she knew it, she had her wings out, so long as there was some light be it sun, moon or star? She should be fine and she was going to need the mobility in a fight on this scale.

The mask had dug in pretty hard here, the battle is pitched. She can see the carnage, she does see Tien Yyu is on the front lines. Regardless of what she thinks of the divine city? Tien Yu has a level of respect as those who pay her prayers and worship? Are getting her backup this day, and it is needed.

Though why call them in now rather than sooner? It makes her wonder about what they will be needed to do. As Tomoe drops in the first thing she will do is end up bring up her defense buff to boost troops ability to take damage who knows maybe her buffing might ensure a few make it home at the end of the day, or at least hold out a fair bit longer.

She drops in moving into the front lines near the city god and presse forward she's going to try to get the enemy's attention... now.
Miari     Why waste your energy flying around using sorcery or waste stamina walking or running when one of your allies has managed to tame a GIANT BOAR?! Miari, garbed in her battle dress, sits behind Gawain, her arms around his waist for extra grip!

    "Quite a mount you tamed here! Should ask you how things got to this point later!"

    Very aware that they're all a HUGE target, as they near the front lines she whispers some spells and briefly lets go to shape Essence with various gestures! In a few moments a bronze sheen flows from her outwards, enveloping herself, Gawain, the bull, and any other passengers. When it passes... they are ALL rendered as living bronze, but still just as supple as before. A massive boost to defense! Especially for the big boar, whose primary issue of 'being a big target' is now drastically reduced.

    "Let's give them a REAL reason to moan and groan, o knight!"
Kyoko Takada     Alpha-39 has teamed up with Batou for this one, outlining the plan beforehand based on what information they could get from the Lookshy forces and older intel on the city fortifications, and gathering the requisite materiel. There are a few important considerations, and there won't be time to do a lot of real-time reassessment once they're out there and (near-certainly) being shot at.
    First is the entry-path. Tachikoma can cover that distance faster than on-foot and with a lower-profile than an aerial insertion, and A-39 leaves it to the robot to get them over No Man's Land, with the child soldier clinging to the other side, her packs bulging with a terrifyingly dangerous quantity of less than perfectly stable ammunition. There's nothing like a safe route between two front lines, but there is sometimes a quick route that minimizes the number of active defenders that can shoot down at you without exposing themselves to a flying city god's ire.
    Once across, in whatever shape they manage, and having reached the walls, they'll be no less dangerously committed. The key point on which A-39 has seized, here, is that the soulsteel has been used to extend and reinforce the walls, but there shouldn't have been time to rip out and replace the foundations in the process. The point of all that intel is to identify points whereat demolition charges, of every variety she could get her hands on from the Lookshy army and half a dozen worlds' black markets, might either blow a lower-down hole through the walls, or bring the stronger magic steel down with the defenders still standing on it.
    She has to hop off the spidertank to get about her work, moving quickly and using the defenses themselves to reduce the number of angles of fire against her, cutting holes with her energized blades and shoving in short-fuse explosives as she goes. She doesn't speak as she works, if only because all the necessary chatting is something she got out of the way before heading in here.
Azure Armature A sneaking mission, where neither side is your enemy. Taking a side would only lead to conflict, and create more problems down the road. Picking a side, committing to a group, it closed doors. Someone in the field could radically change the prospects of those back home... If they were wrong.

But the plan had always been to pick the most likely people to give aid to, and become indispensible to them in one way or another.

Who to back, and who to fling explosives at was always a careful balancing act... Or it was the people who were moustache twirlingly vile, wasteful, and desirous of destroying literally all life in an active sense through campaigning against the world. Sometimes it was a little easier to pick sides.

Materializing next to Toriki Falling Rain in a muted 'pop', Azure Armature rose from a crouch, peering down the ridge into the no-man's land that Gawain's superboar and the Flotilla's massive war machine was charging into, among other individuals. "Falling Rain. I thought you'd be at a place with good sight lines... The situation seems untenable in a siege sense. The enemy has the abilitiy to fire into your lines, and you cannot return fire due to danger of collateral damgage. If I may advise - relay to your artillery teams to prepare to suppress the enemy's left and right flank, lest they collapse when the wedge charge breaks their center line. Down-angle one to three degrees to hit hillside and not carry on into the city. After that... We'll need to silence the enemy guns on the walls before the day is won."

'Blue' smirked, over her scarf, extending her hand out in an invitation to handshake gesture to the Dragon-Blooded adjutant. "How's your arm? Still... powerful?"
Batou Batou rolls up with Tachikoma, eyeing the battlefield and wondering about the lateness of this call. Both Gawain and Eye he sees and acknowleges over the comms. "Greetings, Eye, Gawain. This one is gonna go down in a big way. Alpha-39 assisting on this op."

Batou came a lot more prepared to this fight considering the absolute mess that was the previous Battle. He's decked out with various ammunition and weaponry, including a riot shotgun, a small machine gun, as well as a few grenades. Plus, a special weapon inside Tachikoma, just in case anything becomes too... dicey.

A quick rendezvous with A-39 at the start of this suicide mission means she can catch a ride with Batou into the thick of it.

"Good idea... we can blow the shit out of those walls if they haven't been shored up in time."

"Tachikoma, move as quickly as you can to the Mask of Winter's fortress. You know the plan. Let's go."

For better or worse, Batou's gonna make sure this plan goes off without a hitch.
Empty Tidings Falling Rain looks towards the source of the 'pop' and smiles a little grimly when she sees who it is. She tips her head in acknowledgement to Azure Amrature's appearance, and then looks back towards the lines again. "You're right. The civilians are a problem, to say nothing of the extra defensive emplacements they've erected. They're going to try to hold us until nightfall and then make a push." She lowers the spyglass, collapsing it, frowning. "I'd estimate no more than an hour after sunset, if we're lucky."

Falling Rain makes a complex movement with her hands, and then whispers into cupped fingers. She makes a motion like casting a messenger bird into flight, and a gust of wind accompanies the gesture. "I've let them know."

She turns to face Blue more fully. Her armor has been replaced or repaired since last they met. She smiles lopsidedly, showing teeth for an instant. "Better, after the warm-up in Cold House." She takes the offered hand with a strong grip. "It sounds as if you've got something in mind. Shall we?"
Carna     Enark is aged. Changed. His hair is gray, his face weathered. His eyes are the same, but he looks far older and frailer than he once did. He is not stooped as he walks among the armed forces, chanting his Murmurs and dispensing healing water to mend even grievous wounds, and puts barriers upon active combatants when he can get close enough, but he moves with weariness... With the first signs of even a fraction of his true age. The Blue Scholar does not wear his typical blue robes, instead electing for something more mobile in a battlefield like this. Medical scrubs, with a leather apron covered in pockets with various vials of water, antidotes, curse removal ointments, all-purpose disease curatives for any plague weapons unleashed, and a small handful of water blessed by Tharmas. Just two vials, but more potent than even Enark's usual healing draughts.

    He has some empty pouches for collecting samples, and an assortment of other equipment that might prove useful in treating the injured or protecting them from becoming injured in the first place. He has brought some poisons of his own, just in case it is required for him to fight, but hopefully that will not be necessary. One particularly well-protected container has the samples of a certain poison dragon from Lordran that he has blended with the blight from the Ariamis of the past via the mushrooms he collected from that Necromancer's cellar. He is fairly certain it will be as effective upon the dead as the living, but he has no desire to use it, for fear of it endangering allies and civilians. It's a tool of desperation.

    Likewise, he has no desire to make use of his Mimicrafting and risk that awfulness infesting Thorns as it now does Lumiere. But if he has to, he'll do it. He will make that decision if he feels it's necessary. But for now?

    For now, he wants to save lives, not destroy. So he walks among the combatants, and he heals.
Staren     Staren is here too! The Star Hawk is near the field in its hybrid mode, Staren obediently waiting for the call to go in. The elites all striking at once rather than scattering has a better chance of overwhelming and maybe scattering the forces outside the city.

    He'd been considering how to put the power of elite warfare technology to use, but in the end, his lack of organization resulted in going with the plan that was easiest to implement.

    To that end, when the call to move in comes, a pair of the Star HAWK's spare backpacks set up as missile racks a few miles away begin ripple-firing. Half a minute later, forty missiles rain down from the sky at an angle, headed for the city walls on this side. Breaking those defenses so entrance to the city is easier seemed like the best use for them.

    The Star Hawk itself takes to the air and flies towards the camp and trenches. His artillery needs to be deployed quickly -- the big messy area weapons will be less useful when allies have entered the field. The missile packs under the wings open, a further sixty mini-missiles streaking out towards the trenches and camps and detonating in plasma fireballs.

    THAT has probably gotten their attention.

    The empty missile packs drop off, allowing Staren to transform his machine to humanoid mode and land, watching out for the expected aggro from enemy warstriders.
Bloody Revelations     As the Elites join the battle, one piece of the picture they'll get a closer look at doesn't bode particularly well, and is probably another part of why Lookshy is committing to such a brutal and costly offensive instead of playing cautiously through attrition and grossly superior numbers. Where the dead fall, on both sides of the conflict, faintly visible sparks of effervescent energy rise from the corpses, swirling into the air like translucent fireflies, and streaming off into the rear distance of Thorns, gathering just past the palace. They aren't souls, clearly being too small and weak, but it's some kind of spirit-stuff no doubt, and even if it's a tiny fragment per casualty, the sheer amount of death ensures a steady flood of it at all times, which might very well be the fuse on some kind of massive counter offensive from the Mask of Winters. Unfortunately, the theatrical spymaster seems to have kept this part secret, no doubt for a dramatic reveal, and there doesn't seem to be any way to guess what it might be, other than 'nothing good'.

    Approaching the front line is an exercise in understanding why soldiers go deaf. The roar of essence cannons, the stomp of warstriders, the grind of siege wheels, and the thundering impacts of return artillery are constant over the battle cries of soldiers and the screams of the wounded. It seems just about all communication is being handled with systems of flags and banners, as well as magical messages between Dragon Blooded unit commanders. There's no way anyone can hear someone more than thirty feet away in all of this.

    Though medics drag away wounded or slain soldiers from the trenches as quickly as possible, so another brave and patriotic young man can leap into his blood-soaked place, it's inevitable that anyone will end up having to step over a few corpses. It's small consolation that there are twice as many on the Mask of Winters' side, and additional three times as many corpses that were previously walking corpses. The initial massed zombie charge seems to have failed to wear down Lookshy much at all, and salt litters the ground from a previous stand against hungry ghosts. The injured are being efficiently taken back to a rest station outside of enemy artillery range, where a full third of the army seems to be mixed between frantic gear repair and warstrider maintenance, trying to catch an hour of sleep or eating, and rolling around in stretchers stained with blood. Enark has his work cut out for him, albeit, safely out of harm's way.

    Gawain comes under fire, and his boar is a /massive/ target, but the longest ranged weapons that have free rein to aim at him are archers, and so it's mostly normal arrows by normal soldiers that divert in moderate numbers towards him, thus they're only briefly a threat until Miari casts her spell. A greater number of the same focus fire on the Flotilla's horrific doomsday machine, but only affect so much as scratching the paint job and annoying everyone inside with the loud noise. Artillery on the walls starts to be repositioned to get them in the line of fire of heavier weapons. With half the Deathknights MIA and no war Necromancer available, that's the best they have on short notice.
Bloody Revelations     Charging across no-man's land is frankly a little suicidal. Both sides have tried it before and been destroyed by massed fire. Though it's late in the day and resources are dwindling from both sides, and a handful of Elites rather than a massive charge don't have commanders ordering multiple units on them, and Elite that rushes across the crimson soaked mud is immediately under fire from more than a hundred archers, a mangonel or two, fire pots, and a volley of gross acid bombs --each. Skirting around the bulwark of closer ranged defensive fighters requires a longer route, prolonging the amount of time they're under fire, and drawing more of it the further they make it across the grassland of arrow shafts, but it gives at least A-39 and Batou a minute to set charges on a section of wall proximal to the southern gate.

    They'll have to blow them immediately, though. The rear lines of melee troops currently waiting for a charge have broken off to pursue them, and they'll be drowning in spears and swords in two minutes flat. The good news is that they have ample help from Staren's preemptive missile barrage. As soon as they clear the walls, the volley of high explosives will surge into the sapped wall segment, and completely blow the crumbling stone off of its shattered foundations, as well as wrench free a considerable portion of the interlinked soulsteel gating covering the breach. They get two minutes solely because the next wave of missiles totally incinerates the first three units that break off to chase them.

    Those who arrive to Tien Yu at the forefront are greeted with a crisp salute from a large unit of veteran Gunzosha, who clear the way to the city goddess at the very front, having just set a bonestrider out of position to the torch. She turns back to look at the Elites, runs a black jade hand through her silver hair, and then smiles as honestly as she can. "Welcome back. All things ideal, we wouldn't need you again, but I have very specific concerns. My intent isn't to hold the battle here until Thorns is reduced to rubble and the enemy is slaughtered to the last. Our efforts have been focused on eliminating as many of the Mask's heavy support and elite units as possible while they're committed to a full defensive. That is because I intend to appeal to the Mask's vanity and have this battle decided before sunset. I need you to be on the lookout for the inevitable underhanded ploy he must still have in reserve, if not several. I believe you are the only ones that could stop him were he to be prepared for this eventuality."

    From there, Tien Yu breathes in, and the sparkling nimbus is drawn inwards all around with it, coalescing into her form and infusing her elaborate armour with an incandescent glow and rippling, watery sheen. There's no other way to describe it: her armour transforms. Like something straight out of a completely different world, its many elaborate plates unfold, rotate and snap together in new configurations, while new metal springs from seemingly nowhere and multiplies its bulk and completeness, compounding on itself in layers of obscenely technical intermesh until when Tien Yu takes her next step, she is ten feet tall and clad fully in several inches of mechanized exoskeleton, like a tiny giant robot, energy weapons and all.
Bloody Revelations     She struts right into no-man's land. The enemy of course takes this golden opportunity to dump as much fire on the enemy commander as possible, but the nature of the divine power she'd just invoked represents Lookshy's unconquerable defenses that have existed for longer than the Realm itself, and the authoritative defense that mythical suit seems to grant renders the attacks completely ineffective. Boulders smash against her like bags of rice. Ballista bolts splinter and snap in half. Blasts of black energy splash as water. She strides right out into the middle of the bloody wasteland, and shouts at the top of her voice:

    "To the one who calls himself the Mask of Winters, would-be ruler of Thorns! I am Tien Yu, city mother of Lookshy, goddess of the Seventh Legion, disciple of Mars! If you have any courage --any self-respect-- then step out from behind your shield of powerless innocents, and demonstrate your so-called might yourself! I challenge you to single combat!"

    Perfectly on cue with her declaration, where the tide of fire from Lookshy's side slows to a trickling halt, and even most of the forces of Thorns fall silent in uncertain expectation of one of Creation's archaic but famous battlefield traditions, the sky is suddenly split with a booming peal of thunder, and lightning cracks against the earth. The bolt precedes the surge of rain that breaks from the pitch black clouds, but it is no rain of any natural description. If the field was caked in blood before, it is now a veritable flood, as crimson liquid streams from the sky in great curtains for miles all around. Inside of Thorns, on Lookshy's forces, the war camp, everywhere. The air reeks with a stench nauseating beyond description, causing even many hardened soldiers to empty the comments of their stomach, and the medics at the rear base to panic as they struggle to cover up the infirmaries to prevent danger of infection to the wounded. The trenches have to be evacuated once the troopers are waist deep in rancid gore, and replaced with power armoured units with filtration baffles and sealed suits. No answer comes, just yet.
Kyoko Takada     "Let the tachikoma take all the fire" may have been an integral part of Alpha-39's plan. Going into this, she's fairly confident that they'll get through, but not so sure as to how much damage it'll take, with her entirely hiding beneath it on the way over. It's not her robotank, anyway, and if she were to be perfectly honest, it's not going to bother her *that* much if all that fire half-wrecks it, so long as she (and Batou) make it through and get the job done. "Live" and "get the job done," in that order, are her priorities.
    Having to deal with infantry during the emplacement was a worry, but less so thanks to the simultaneous attacks, such as Gawain's and the Flotilla's charge, and Staren's bombardment. She gets to focus on what she came over to do, and that involves shoving as much explosive power into a series of small places as possible. These won't all go off at once--she's not waiting to be that precise. She's not even going to trigger the explosions. Part of why she has to work quickly, and why she can't stop moving, is that these are all short-fused bombs, and the countdown begins the moment she peels off to hit the next point in the wall. The first explosions are going off well before that two minute window is up, and she's going to take the last thirty seconds just to get to the minimum safe distance, ditch her emptied packs, and ready her SMG. She's still sticking relatively close to the walls, the possible issue of being dumped on directly from the ramparts having yet to materialize.
    Blood. So much blood. She'd already put in her earplugs in anticipation of standing that close to a series of explosions, but now she slides her mask into place, the piece settling over her face and cutting off direct contact between the air and her respiration. She breathes in through the familiar scent of sweat and her filter, her vision shifting to gain an IR overlay as she tracks for targets, and the last few seconds to her final saboteur job tick away.
    "Clear! Batou. Armor status? Link us back up with main forces, let them take the breach." She doesn't imagine that it could hurt to force the defender's hand by pressing any advantage. Rather, the whole idea of single combat is too foreign to her to take it much into account in her actions.
Carna     Blood rain? That's not great. Enark has a limited supply of magic, which is part of why he prepared water in advance, when he WASN'T in a combat situation, so alleviate some of the healing burden. But that's also a limited supply. He sadly has to stop putting water shields on people, thus, to devote magic to creating a water shield over the entire infirmary, and all of the wounded. It will absorb the blood until the clear waters take on a crimson sheen, but that blood will not be getting through as long as he still has the energy to sustain it.

    Thankfully, blood itself is one of the elements associated with his magic. So he can extract additional power as a multiplier from it, separate out the water from the blood, and stretch his supplies that much further. But everything has its limits.

    The wizard turns to look out towards the war machine, as its pilot offers a challenge. He can't help her. So whether she succeeds or fails is up to her. He'll just have to hope.

    His attention turns back to the injured, as he works on reattaching limbs and regenerating lost body parts by flowing water around them and manually reconstructing flesh.
Batou Batou, Tachikoma, and A-39 all move headstrong into the fray, the arrows not hitting Batou from his vantage point inside the Tachikoma. However, a volley of acid melts part of the metal top of Tachikoma, sparks flying, though they make it through the rest of the way unharmed.

"Damn! At least it didn't hit anything vital. Tachikoma, keep those guys off of us! We're not gonna be boxed in by these creeps!" he shouts, pulling out the machine gun and firing into the approaching crowds. Tachikoma starts to throw grenades into the onslaught, humming over the roar around them as Batou comes around to the back of Tachikoma.

"Got your back A-39. Just keep pushing forward till we can get the rest of this shit destroyed."

The blood rain looks fascinating, but as soon as Batou caught a whiff he betrayed a very human gag before shutting down his sniffer. "Damn, what a stench!"
Starbound Flotilla "Artillery's giving us some dents that aren't gonna buff out."
"Run shielding. Don't let their rounds pierce any power conduits."
"Their hostile action has yet to pierce our magnetic integrity."
"Floran thinksss, advantage! Killed sssolar, abyssssal!"
"Good. Double power to the injectors and accelerators."
"Great, let's just go ahead and push the limits on theoretical impossibility."
"Need to smite them. Bringing drones around."
"Focus artillery operators. Decapitate."

"Stressed. We need to make sure we cover Tien Yu, not us!"
"Our /priority/ is--"
"Mr. Petrov, our priority is killing the Mask. Is this not a shorter path?"
"Anxious. Please, Albert..."
"...Maneuver drones and autocannons to barrage any artillery that could fire on her. I'm moving the Atom Smasher to block line of fire between main forces and Tien Yu."
"Boy, look whose heart just grew three sizes today."
"Quiet. We're going to lock every option off Mask but taking the field himself. Continue the charging sequence and ready the ports."

    Albert may be dipping into the moods and methods of mad science, but at heart, he is still a soldier, and he will still obey the rules of war in letter... Albeit only as much in spirit as he can expect this ghost to. His drones and auto-turrets stop detonating and firing, but they move to 'decapitation' position on artillery, holding a blade to the throat of the forces. The main body of the massive armored particle accelerator, whose glow intensifies each moment, moves between the main remaining archer forces and Tien Yu, and makes an unspoken threat.

    Holography above displays Albert's face as a titanic, translucent, shimmering ape's head, a traditional mode of communication and weaponry for Miniknog. "I have seen men like this. Men who live on fear without substance. Cruelty without cause. Torture without power. Your ghost-king challenges the world and hides in his hole when the world challenges him back, because all the overwhelming power you've submitted to only works in the society in a bottle he's built. When he can't abduct your family, twist your flesh, brainwash your leaders, or hold your spiritual sustainence hostage, and you dare to challenge him, he has /nothing/." The huge holographic head flares with light and white fire in the eyes as glitches accumulate from the electromagnetic noise. "He makes a show of challenging the world. But look at how all his damn Anathema were beaten at Denandsor, at the New Haven Redoubt, at any place that isn't the tiny little stage where he can put on a play of power. Are you HESITATING, Mask of Winters? Do you just need a battlefield as disgusting as your regime before you can feel safe?"

    Albert's decided to not only try to help out making sure everything's clear for Tien Yu, but also aggressively try to play at certain weaknesses of this sort of society, to make it increasingly difficult for Mask of Winters to stay backed off of this situation in his own personal presence.
Gawain "Lovell here is my stalwart companion! He's an excellent beast!" Arrows fly at the knight and his boar, endangering them as they ride forward. An arrow impacts into Gawain's shoulder, while several rend into Lovell's flesh, causing the giant boar to give a roar of anger. Luckily, Miari casts her spell to shield them, which gets a grin from Gawain as he checks to make sure a satchel to their side is safe. He'll need the remedy inside briefly, as he makes use of the bronze armoring to help deflect several more. The artillery's the bigger problem. "Hold on tight!"

And then, Gawain drifts a giant boar, moving to slide out of the way of any impending artillery strikes or additional arrows, sliding himself and Lovell towards Tien Yu. He meets the salute with one of his own. "Of course! We will make sure that no sinister plot happens to you, Tien Yu." As she moves to declare the duel, Gawain pulls out poultices to treat the boar's wounds, as well as remove his shoulder and treat his own, and offers one to Miari should she need it. "Miari, keep an eye out! I'll be on prowl to charge should she be ambushed."

Gawain doesn't want to doubt someone's honor on a duel, but he was asked to watch her back, and so, Gawain will. Sitting atop his boar that's about as tall as Tien Yu right now, he's watching her every flank carefully, looking for the slightest issue. His senses are looking for any sudden flare of magic, though it can't detect anything concealed in any way, incase some necromantic sorcery is used. Otherwise, his eyes and ears scan across the battle, even as the blood drips from the sky over them and the 'raindrops' bounce across his armor. If there's any sign of an issue or trap, the boar is sent slamming forward. "Let us hope he has any sense of honor." Pointedly ignoring the smell. It's not what he was asked to deal with.
Azure Armature Azure Armature grips Toriki Falling Rain's hand firmly, and in a rush of strange, digital lights, the pair disappear. For a moment, if Falling Rain were watching herself like an out-of-body spectre, with perfect metaknowledge of the infinite universes out there like some sort of viewer and consumer, there would be a perfect encapsulation of the teleportation effect that they experienced.

'Like the pair tripped and fell headfirst into the math dimension' would be that perfect encapsulation. The bubble of Elsewhere around the pair was perfectly ordered, and precise angles worked clockwork functions in every direction and dimension, stretching infinitely before them.

And then, in the same heartbeat, the operatior and the adjutant popped back into reality on one side of the wall of Thorns, blood-slicked and enemy held, near one of their more titanic siege engines.

"The walls are sapped near the center gate, and heavily barraged." She notes, moving to CQC any lingering siege operators off the wall so she can continue to cutscene. "We can either turn it against the inevitable betrayal, or simply use your... powerful hand to use the siege weapons AS siege weapons. I'll leave it up to your analysis."
Tomoe Tomoe notices the disturbing effect when warriors on both sides fall. she knows little of magic but something is drawing something off those who fall it doesn't' seem to be souls but maybe death? Is the Mask charging a weapon of some sort? That's a very large possibility to her and she doesn't like it. There's not much she can do about it though, the sounds of battle are massive.

"So your picking off his best troops then I have an idea of where this might be going."

So is this a plan to call the Mask out to fight? This sounds like it, give him the bait of a epic dramatic fight? Given how bombastic he would behave he might just bite on such a plan.

The Goddess transform into something Tomoe would expect from a far different world, she watches her strut out into no-mans land, blood rains forn in short order as the Goddess is locking to fight the twisted Solar Ghost. A name that gave older Elites pause, that much she knew. Tomoe is trying to keep out of the gore but soon her form is soaked in the horrible visceral gibs as her father might call it.

She has Caliburn out, a copy blade of a famous sword. Well the version from ALO, still while it's not the real deal in any sense it does have a measure of power and it burns with a holy fire as tomoe waits trying to control her breathing as she makes ready to spring into action should something undue happen with the duel.

She also starts prepping various spells at this time to apply the defence buffs on the power armor troopers who are arriving to replace the ones not in sealed suits.
Staren     The noise of battle is one reason that Staren's favorite place on the battlefield is inside a cockpit. Clean air, comfortable temperature, filtered noise (except when attacks hit near the cockpit, anyway.) With minimal distractions, Staren can focus on the battle and his part in it.

    Although, the experience for him, fed through his cybernetics, is that of BEING a giant on the battlefield, with all the typical HUD amenities and AR markers all over.

    He probably steps on a lot of tiny corpses. He can't feel it.

    He's looking for an enemy warstrider to engage when Tien Yu's declaration cuts through the noise. He turns to look in the direction of Thorns expectantly. This whole time, he's been half expecting SOME sort of reinforcements or artillery to rain down on them. He's saved a few missiles to try and intercept them.

    But a rain of blood... is not what he's expecting.

    He doesn't feel it, or have to deal with the smell, although cleaning his machine will be troublesome later. The soaked ground may force him to take to the air... is the plan to trap the attackers in bloody mud?

    Still, he waits, expectantly.

    ...Wait. What if there's more to it than that? What if the blood is something that enemy casters can manipulate? Like trying to fight a waterbender in a monsoon. Or what if it's magic blood, that revives the corpses, or fertilizes the ground to rapid-grow carnivorous bone trees?

    If it is, though... how can he possibly stop /rain/? Blowing up a bit of cloud probably won't do much...

    He activates his beam shield and uses it to keep some of the blood off of the Star Hawk. His focus darts this way and that around the 360-degree view his cameras are recording. The attack could come from anywhere...
All-Seeing Eye      The motes of light drifting from the bodies of the slain don't draw near so much interest as the overwhelming artillery aimed at halting any advance. The amusement fades from All-Seeing Eye's face, much as it tends to run from the face of anyone who overestimates their own abilities. Warnings and imperatives flash across his vision from nearly every angle, with unflattering probabilities advising courses of action.

     Deciding on one such plan, he twirls, advancing, as a steel cable slides free of its compartment. With an oscillating trill, it lashes sideways, snatching the fire pots out of the air. Taking a step forward and turning once more, he lobs the burning payload right back at its source. The first of the arrows begin to land, covering his arms and chest in a patchwork of wounds before he can bring up a second whip. Twirling it around as a makeshift target shield, the Exalt deflects the most lethal bits of the barrage, rolling forward.

     His leg kicks out and a third whip snatches the acid bombs from the jaws of the earth, hurling them back at the artillery which launched them. Heavy payloads from the mangonels begin to crash into the dirt around him, spraying up little geysers of soil, one of which lands mere inches from the prone Exalt's head. Rolling across the ground without daring to get to his feet, Eye narrowly evades being crushed by this payload--and when the next volley comes, he's on his feet once more, arrows sticking out of his chest and arm like the quills of a porcupine.

     He rears his arm back to begin deflecting once more, only to note that the approach angles of the projectiles have changed. They seem to be heading for... "Tien Yu," he says with a small smile, his expansive vision alerting him to the commander's presence without needing to turn around. He listens to the proclamation... then scoffs.

     "Surely you don't expect him to comply," he says. "He has no reason to." Pointing backwards as the last of the projectiles bounces harmlessly off of her, the Exalt further derides the plan. "Even /Gawain/ thinks he'll trick you. And he's... well," he utters with an exasperated sigh as the blood rain continues to fall. "He's Gawain. As usual, I'll be here to pick up the pieces when the 'honor' doesn't cut it. Ta!" He waves the fingers of one hand in an entirely-too-familiar fashion, then waits--should there be any of those little motes of light escaping from his handiwork with the siege weapons, he'll use his vision to track them.

     If necessary, he'll track them all the way to the city itself, circling along the exterior walls and no doubt inviting attack. His goal is to follow the motes of light to whatever is drawing them, looking through whatever solid obstacles he can to find it, tromping though the gore-soaked mud with a sour expression of disgust.
Empty Tidings Falling Rain is drawn into what is best described as the Math Dimension. Except it isn't /really/ that; it's a pure encapsulation of the Primordial Essence that makes it up. She feels that somewhere inside of her, a bone-deep acknowledgement of the perfect clockwork order she is momentarily enmeshed in. She Is Here, it says, and she simply /knows/ that it's nothing less than Perfect Truth.

For those scant heartbeats, Falling Rain feels more at home than she ever had in Lookshy. When they pass, she feels utterly revulsed by the acknowledgement that she would be constrained by such a perfect, ordered thing and feel any kind of comfort from its eerily familiar embrace. There /must/ be a way out, a spark inside her hisses. There /must/ be a crack to exploit, her serpentine shadow hisses.

She shivers. It must be the awful rain.

Falling Rain blinks once, draws a breath, and nods sharply. She moves parallel to Blue's path up the wall towards the siege weapons, felling hapless siege engineers with brutal bare-handed blows. She seems to grow in stature with every strike, and pauses to make sure none of them survive her passing with gruesome effectiveness. She's definitely taller and broader at the shoulder than when they arrived.

(Distantly, a terrified astrologer huddles in a corner, muttering, 'Themonsterishere, themonsterishere, themonsterishere --')

"We just need to wait," Falling Rain says, smiling widely, "for the proper moment."
Miari     Some of the arrows never make it to Lovell and his riders. They're neatly deflected by some invisible force, nudged just ever so slightly off course so that they slam into the ground or fly higher than they ought, lose momentum, and tumble out of the sky. But a few make it past Miari's invisible defenses and slam into her bronzed skin! To... little avail, apart from one embedding a half inch and drawing a hiss from her.

    She, like Gawain, has her eyes peeled... and this includes mystical senses. Which are promptly overwhelmed for the moment by the wash of death contained in ALL THAT RAINING BLOOD.With a scowl and cry of distaste, she turns her Mind-hands towards parting the downpour above her and and Gawain so they won't be too drenched in it...

    "... NECROMANCERS." She splutters out in disgust.
Bloody Revelations     The rain of blood, though revolting in the extreme, does nothing overtly hostile just yet. Enark's shield to protect the wounded and vulnerable works its magic, and the doctors around him have to stop and stare in amazement for a while, before jolting and returning to their jobs when he starts doing it for them, not about to let this stranger show them up completely. Miari, however, would feel something a little more subtle. As the clouds thunder and flash and the deathly blood soaks the land, she can feel her connection to the fabric of Creation weakening and dimming. Her ability to gather Essence is quickly dwindling as even the Shadowland's taint intensifies.

    Azure Armature and her unlikely tag along pop to the walls without fuss. With all eyes on Tien Yu, it's actually easier than it would have been in the frenzy of battle. It should be surprising to neither of them that they find siege crews surreptitiously adjusting the pitch and elevation of soulsteel pyre flame cannons to have direct line of sight on Tien Yu. Some of them have already been struck down by the anti-personnel fire being whipped right back at them by All-Seeing Eye or by well-placed grenades from Tachikoma. Others are swiftly dispatched by advanced CQC and inhuman strength and brutality, with a lack of advance warning going down the broken wall, thoroughly demolished beyond the ability to move or even communicate over by A-39 and Batou. That's one possible avenue of attack to skew a duel covered, but surely there must be more.

    Gawain's sense of the ambient magic is easy to follow. A tremendous amount of energy, gathered from the countless slain of the battlefield, has coalesced into a blazing star of raw power on the opposite side of the city. For all he can tell though, it's hovering in midair --very high-- and the source is completely invisible, it is, however, exactly from where the familiar, bone shattering thunder of the Mask of Winter's blood curdling voice is amplified from, felt as a leaden, physical pressure all across the battlefield, leaving blood feeling like ice and the rest as if it'll turn to jelly.

    "Tien Yu. The mightiest of the eastern war gods, here on the field herself, in gross violation of her heavenly duties, all for the sake of the poor fools who believe rebellion to still be possible. What laughable bravado! What deplorable false hope! What utterly depraved intention to burn as brightly as you can before the fated end of Lookshy arrives! Ahahahaha! Yes! Exactly as it should be! Come then! It is only right that the 'saviours' of Thorns would be none other than the doomed soldiers of the Seventh Legion at their final hour on Creation! Let all see that there is no escaping the destiny of your utter destruction! I accept your challenge!"
Bloody Revelations     No doubt about it. Tien Yu had appealed exactly to the Deathlord's sense of theatrical melodrama exactly as she intended. Here is the part where he'll gladly strut out in front of the hopeful people of Thorns and utterly decimate the mightiest force in Creation aside the Realm itself, crushing all hope once and for all in a climactic third act that will let all the world know that his is invincible. Beyond what anyone could have calculated, what anyone could have anticipated, he doesn't do it by simply strutting out to the field.

    The Mask of Winters answers in exactly the same way he had taken Thorns to begin with. The end comes back to the beginning.

    One crack of thunder a hundred times louder than any of the rest splits the sky. The clouds are blown apart in a swirling ring around the pillar of pitch black lightning that crashes to earth, striking directly in the center of no-man's land with such catastrophic force that the blast wave strips away even the Mask's own foremost line, and buffets Tien Yu and the Flotilla's giant machine with a scouring wave of corrosive void energy. Only Gawain gets to feel it coming mere moments before it strikes. Tendrils of electricity race through the ground in every direction, tracing out the veins of the earth as they leave oozing, spreading blackness in their wake. The air briefly visible beyond the cloud deadens, and then all at once, the sun winks out of the midday sky, plunging the battlefield into blackness. All around them, the dark lights up with the soft, ghostly glow ghastly lanterns and luminous fauna, and the same old scenery of the gnarled, dead forest, and the silent, onyx ocean come back to greet them. There's no mistaking it. Whatever tremendous blast of gathered energy it was, the Mask of Winters has driven the Thorns Shadowland like a nail with a hammer, smashing it straight through the fabric of Creation and plunging it directly into the Underworld. For all intents and purposes, it is now the middle of the night, and anyone and everyone is stranded.

    That is, now stranded with tens of thousands of fresh, bloodthirsty ghosts, waiting incorporeal in the black fields of the Underworld. Even here, the bloody rain has soaked between worlds, and covers their luminous bodies in deep crimson gore. The bodies of the dead have come with them too, and where the rain continues to fall, the black Essence of the Underworld seeps into them, and begins to raise the dead as shambling corpses to reinforce the Mask of Winters' depleted battle lines.
Bloody Revelations     "And you! Circling, opportunistic vultures of foreign lands! Would-be righteous crusaders who flock to battle and profit from taking the winning side! What hope might you have given those who had despaired of Creation holding out against the dark? What high plans they must have had for you, who talk such bold words and wield grandiloquent weapons! I have watched you. I have seen your work. Every step you've taken has gone on under my infinite eyes and ears, and I know who you are. I know where your limits lie. I know very well that you are less than you claim to be, and that your arrogance wobbles atop a match stick tower of success you could never accomplish alone! Come then, and be destroyed, so that all may know that not even heroes of /other worlds/ can stand against the Void! I've waited all this time just to show you, after all! Once your vainglorious allies and their petty empire have crumbled to dust, the entirety of the east will be mine, and there will be no one, /no one/ left to challenge me!"

    Zombies are a problem, but possible to handle. The fresh wave of ghost reinforcements will be costly to deal with, but Lookshy still outnumbers them, if only just barely. The plunge into the Underworld has cut off all option of retreat and any further opportunity to recharge weapons and magic, and so it'll have to be settled quickly and decisively, but it still isn't a lost battle. There is one more thing though. One very, very big thing.

    Juggernaut. The neglected lynchpin of the Mask of Winters' domain over Thorns. That impossible colossus that had been put off and put off because there had never been a good plan to deal with it, and it had been stuck in the Underworld for arming and retrofit anyways. It's here. It is right behind the palace, half a mile tall at its shoulder; an impossible titan of endlessly rotting flesh in the shape of a grossly misshapen man, painfully bent and forced to crawl on hands and knees under the weight of the soulsteel fortress built atop its back, oozing such viscous ichor and gore that it trails blackened waste in its gargantuan, earth-shaking wake. That high vantage is exactly where the soulstuff had collected, and so almost definitely where the Mask of Winters watches, high atop his throne on his mountainous war machine, content to watch as it strides into enemy lines, unbound by the laws of the day and the fabric between worlds, and able to operate with absolute impunity.

    The colossus, the mountain that is a dead man, strides forward, and one step carries it over the entirety of Thorns, though its dragging knee crashes through the middle of the city anyways, no doubt killing hundreds without a thought. Its giant palms come down on the Mask's own ghosts, zombies, mortals and machines, squashing them like bugs as it claws itself across the muddle hellhole of a battlefield. A vast, tormented groan like awful, malign whale song thrums across the field largely in the subsonic range, felt rather than heard. Though it looks like it is moving in impossible slow motion, it sheer size ensures that it reaches Tien Yu and the Elite line in seconds. Even the front guard of Lookshy breaks and retreats under its monolithic shadow.
Bloody Revelations     "What is this, you gutless bastard?! Even single combat is too good for you!"

    "Oh, I've broken no formalities, petty hero. According to all conventions of war, a commander is allowed to choose a champion to fight in his stead in a single duel. So, I choose Juggernaut! Ahahahahahaha! AHAHAHAHA!"

    The behemoth's next fall of its hand comes down as a plunging fist that shatters the earth and sets off a phyical wave of pressure like an exploding bomb, leveling the forward barricades instantly and assaulting the gathered Elites unlucky enough to be on the wrong side of the wall with similar force. Tien Yu clears the area by dematerializing at the last moment, reappearing to the flank and giving the mental order for all artillery and all warstriders to fire. The rear lines of the Seventh Legion light up in earnest, but with the sorely missed lack of air support, with the aerial battalion having not been close enough to ground zero to be sucked into the Underworld as well. It may not have even mattered. Though city-busting volumes of First Age weaponry pours into Juggernaut's shoulders, neck, and face, they are shooting literally millions of tonnes of dead flesh. The behemoth doesn't even notice.
Staren     Huh. Did that really work? The Mask of Winters himself is accepting the duel? Not that Staren thinks that settles it. Of COURSE it will be more complex than that.

    Starting with EVERYONE being forced into the underworld. His machine can see in the dark, but it's still less than idea visibility. And of course, if they lose, now there's no going home...

    THE BLOOD MADE <s>zombie goasts</s> GHOSTS AND ZOMBIES! He called it, see?! Staren starts trying to crush them under his machine's feet and firing the railgun at the ground to try and disperse them with sheer kinetic force, and then Things Get Worse.

    He barely has time to take to the air and transform before the shockwave sends his machine tumbling through the air. He recovers, and then sees Lookshy's forces shooting the Juggernaut. It doesn't seem to be working.

    There must be some weakness. A nervous system or necromechanical analogue. An animating enchantment that needs to be dispelled. Of that much, he's sure. But he has no idea of the specifics of this thing.

    After a few seconds of thinking about it, he returns to ground combat for now, trying to help clear some of the lesser undead around Lookshy's remaining ground forces. Better to do SOMETHING instead of just standing around until someone explains how this thing works.

    SOMEONE knows, right?
All-Seeing Eye      All-Seeing Eye suffers the transportation more or less quietly, his eyes narrowing. He gestures vaguely with a hand towards the advancing behemoth, nodding towards Azure Armature. "You see? I warned her." He taps his temple with the index finger of the opposite hand. "I have proof. What did she think would happen? That he would just sashay down the stairs in a suit of articulated plate, and the two of them would bang their goremauls together for an hour or so?" He makes to run a hand through his hair, but notes with disgust that his gloves are soaked with conjured blood--just as much as his hair is.

     He takes a moment to begin ripping the arrows free of his chest, wincing slightly with each pull. It takes a moment for the scale of the weapon to truly sink in, and he sighs. "It will have to go, you realize," he says more to himself than to Armature. "Such an excessive display of Voidtech can't be allowed to exist. Ah, goodness me. The work of a Soulsteel is never done." He looks up from his wounds, turning his head slightly to face Azure Armature.

     "I recall you from the little incident with those 'refugees' some time ago." Crossing his arms and turning to face her fully, he smiles. "Blue, was it? The scarf is a good look--quite recognizable! Listen, I don't suppose you could get me on board that heretical abomination if I were to, say, use my Mass-Penetrating Scan to find any viable entry points?"
Starbound Flotilla     The Atom Smasher is drenched in corrosion. Shields falter, fail, and overload; within the "bridge" of the massive toroidal mobile fortress, one of the consoles near Seft detonates, spraying her with a rush of heat and pressure. Albert suffers what looks like burns all around his armor as the void energy seeps through the main bridge structure. The sudden rush of enemy foes, right as the shields on the Atom Smasher go down, is even more dangerous. Treads crush, hover-engines explode, wheels crunch, legs bend beyond their limits, but the mobility remains workable... For the most part.

"Focus. Get mobility back up. I want them at a distance!"
"Panicked! The hand is coming down!"
"Hold fast and press the swarms back! Pavo! Reboot the legs and hover-engines!"
"I'm trying, I'm trying!!"
"Floran hasss never... EVER hunted... like thisss! Guhhhh..."
"Run an outer discharge on the loop!"
"Yeahyeah! Floran FIRING!"
"Star Six, hull repairs! Keep magnetic integrity!"
"Fuck off, do it yourself! I'm not goin' out there!"
"FINE."
"Panicked. But the hand is coming down!!"
"Hold fast! Everyone brace!"

    Albert's emerged from a port outside, and he's already well on the way to working on restoring the hull integrity, and most importantly the magnetic particle direction systems. He has to hold for dear life, suffering massive impact as the huge wave of force slams the Atom Smasher up and then back down again, roaring in anger. As he clambers, monkeylike, around its surface, firing rayguns at any of the swarms of ghosts that near him and integrating everything back together with his array of tools as best he can.

    Despite the barrage of injury, his works completes in time before Juggernaut can make the next move. For now, he focuses on the ghost. "Biteblade! FIRE!" He calls out, and within, a screaming Floran slams a big red button with her tiny fist. Ports on the outside of the mobile fortress open wide, hum loudly, and suddenly discharge a wave of coherent force from a dozen exotic particle collision events all at once, a wave of devastation meant to use the same principles that Albert's found so successful so far with his heavy science rayguns at a tremendous scale. He plans to emit wave after wave like this, and so the gradually-restoring mobility of the Atom Smasher focuses more on getting into swarms of the ghosts and less on approaching Juggernaut. They need to maintain internal integrity and maneuverability long enough... get the behemoth's arms weak enough... For the plan to be put into action!
Kyoko Takada     "Well, shit." That about sums it up.
    There's no way out but through. It's the worst possible situation, the kind with no retreat, and Alpha-39 is grinding her teeth in her hatred of it. "I'm never coming back after this. This crosses the fucking line." She'd spit if she wasn't, you know, wearing a mask. Stomping her foot's not exactly going to improve the situation, either. Shooting a bunch of zombies through their spines is less "improving the situation" than it is "remembering to breathe," under the circumstances.
    "I need the rest of these," she says, and grabs that last pack she'd strapped to the tachikoma, along with herself. It replaces the discarded containers that had carried the fuel to break the wall down, the same wall against which she'd managed to weather the shockwaves up to now, and takes only a moment to secure, in-between firing her SMG into the crowds. "Ghosts, why'd it have to be ghosts?" She's not getting out of this target-rich environment unscathed.
    She moves quickly after that, withdrawing the climbing gear from her tools belt, fitting the Lookshy-acquired essence scope in front of her mask, and scanning for targets for both. The colossus crawls, deceptively quickly, but it's only about the length of a battleship. She fires her climbing lines, getting her hooks into the nearest limb, and pulling herself up with quick, mechanical assistance that would be incredibly dangerous if she weren't trained for the exact problem of fighting giant monsters in three-dimensional environments. With the essence scope, she looks for the most accessible, and not necessarily the nearest, point at which there's a thin-enough defense protecting a heavy energy signature. The artillery fires as she goes, but she's hopeful that the explosions will rock the upper and forward surfaces, and she alternates her grappling lines along the underside of the giant, less climbing than swinging and yanking harpoon-like lines, getting her right up where she needs to be to start cutting in with her blades.
    It's still with that cross of irritation and hate for her circumstances, the grudge of the put-upon worker, the situationally inappropriate tone of one considering ways to fillet an employer for putting this upon her, that she braces her feet near-upside-down and slices and drives in and cuts away shoves the whole pack of unstable chemicals and demolition material in as deeply as her scope tells her she can reach in whatever passes for this monster's anatomy. She tosses in an incendiary in place of lighting any fuses, and drops her way back down, the cursing only ebbing at that point, strengthened by every movement that reminds her of freshly-gained, warghost-inflicted wounds.
Azure Armature There were any number of forks in the plan. There were so many potential good lines of attack to handle one large-scale actor.

Juggernaut was not one large-scale actor.
Juggernaut was a scale-shattering setpiece being applied in army-scale combat. It was like fistfighting an entire fortress. The mind had trouble comprehending the sheer massivity of the task, or how to attack it. What did you shoot, when its body was like a mountainside passing over you?

Azure Armature leaned over to the pyreflame cannon Toriki Falling Rain and she had disabled just prior, her right hand gleaming as she acquired the weapon data from the siege engine. It was a surprise tool, to help her later.

Looking at Falling Rain, she then leaned over the battlement to look below, at the masses of engineers, support troops, and extras, and did some mental math.

As she did so, Falling Rain asked her a very simple question. 'How's your aim.'

The answer, of course, was 'Impeccable'. Reaching out to take Falling Rain by the hand once more, her colors shifting rapidly with a surge of green flame around her right arm as digital brass slats stablized her grip on the dragon-blooded. "Don't freeze." She smirks, before spinning once and slinging Falling Rain over the lip and down like a humanoid missile into the crowds below. The crouds of 'free lethal health levels of damage to stack', below. Falling Rain was powered by murder - Blue intended to capitalize.

Shortly after, All-Seeing Eye arrived, across the broken battlements, as Blue dismissed the green Mega-Arm she had copied off of the adjutant. "Agent. I'll see what I can do." She nods curtly, before glancing up (and up and up) at Juggernaut down-field. "I can't get a read on it myself. Your means are more expedient... And I don't want to miss. But precision and brutality really is your speciality, isn't it?" She opines, smirking. "I'll get you there. Just point me in the right direction. I don't like this idle theatre any more than you, I think. It stinks of apostasy."

The word slips - perhaps intentioanlly - into her speech, before she turns to watch Juggernaut directly, her scarf fluttering in the ill wind. "I appreciate the compliment about my attire." She adds, like an afterthought.
Gawain Gawain's looking to see if the Mask would join the duel, when insteadhe can feel it coming. His eyes suddenly dart up to the air, noticable by Miari, as he starts focusing on what he can sense...and the Mask of Winters speaks. He accepts her challenge? Alright, then, Gawain won't strike...

Except there's that feeling. He suddenly pulls Lovell back as the electricity races through the ground, Ghosts and corpses rise from the dead, as they're drawn into the Underworld. The knight frowns sharply...drawing his blade and pointing it to the sky. Especially as the Juggernaut is there, scraping through the ground. The knight just stares for moments. What is that thing? Is that even fair? It's not a duel anymore, with Tien Yu sending her men forward...he doesn't know how to feel about that, but the Juggernaut definitely just killed quite a few people, and it needs to be dealt with. A man who thinks about this would come up with a plan, probably pulling back in the process, maybe trying to join the other soldiers.

Gawain is a knight who acts first. This thing needs to be dealt with, and he's on a steed and has a blade. "Miari, hold on tight! We're charging the Juggernaut!" His boar was an odd one. One who bonded with him over the tunes of classic 80s music. It was the most bizarre thing...but an odd knight fits well with an odd boar, and both were, in the end, more brave than they were cowardish. With a small kick, Lovell went charging forward, aiming for the Juggernaut's arms on recommendation. If there were any ghosts or zombies in the path, the boar would move to slam straight through them, as Gawain moved forward, set his holy sword awash, and tried to line up against one of the arms, trying to cut through the side and the muscle and continue along its exterior. If he has to double back around and slash it again, he would. There was no way he could do much...but he could try and do /something/. "Juggernaut! Mask of Winters! Whether or not you can hear me, you say you know me! Then know this! I promise you that your reign of terror will not succeed! Those I fight with are heroic and just sorts, and they will fight until the bitter end to stop you! You cannot defeat the burning spirit of justice! I will not give up!"

Hopefully, and most importantly, that'd help motivate any of the soldiers who can hear Gawain to atleast do something instead of give up. To atleast be able to get their wits. "Miari! If you have any abilities to boost our strength, please do so! Otherwise, try and attack the arms!"
Batou Batou, Tachikoma and A-39 are speeding along, cutting down whatever is in their path. Batou looks up in a mixture of disgust and revulsion at the behemoth, sighing as he hears an idea he really dislikes developing over the comms. "Roger that, Eye, take a scan. I've got a feeling we're going on the worst expedition ever."

With that, he pulls out the special weapon in the tachikoma. A handheld computerized rocket launcher is that special something Batou just /knew/ would come in handy. A-39 launches off, and Batou shouts after her.

"Hey! Don't, ya know, die! We'll be over in a sec!"Tachikoma quivers at the giant beast lurching, already jumping through the air to get through past as many corpese and whatever baddies the Mask of A Really Awful Time has cooked up.

"Mr. Batou are we really going to go-"
"Oh, yes. Yes we are. Get ready for that eventuality."

"Heads up! Missle inbound on the same target, Gawain!"

Batou aims the rocket launcher at the same arm that Gawain is slicing for, letting the computer guided missle locking onto its target, and fires.
Tomoe Tomoe is very worried about the blood, she fears what it might be a prelude to? The Mask goes on a rant of his and seems to be enjoying it far too much too. She makes ready as the void energy slams into her given her location at the front lines more or less. She watches the strange effects, what the heck is going on now? The Juggernaut arrive from the underworld the huge thing is a nightmare to behold for the Iron Lily braces herself. She has not seen something like this since the battle with the Black King, which seemed like a life time ago for the Salamander.

She flares her wings out and she's now moving as the dead take form from the blood? Or was it used like a beacon to summon them from elsewhere? She does not know she is however in the air now as the fight is going.

So that's how it's going to play out she's now in the air like an angry Angel, sword burning with holy fire and she's flying for the titanic monstrous thing, she says a prayer not to any of the gods of this world, then she's charging heading for the thing's head.

It's got a head, given how big on dramatic the Mask of Winters is? She's going to go for the most flashing attack she lets the Starbounders make their attack even as others make their plans, its' got to have means to see and the like right? She will be before it golden runes dancing about her body as she calls out in old Norse, it doesn't stop she's chanting spell word after spell word together. She's not a focus caster but right now? She needs all the boom and this thing can burn right?

She will end up unleashing a huge fire spell right in the face of the hulking necrotech horror and with a focus on what passes for eyes, that's the biggest idea, go for the eyes with as much fire as she can muster!
Miari     Miari, brave as she might try to be, is quietly... well, she may have to change her garments later. Because when everything plunges straight into the Underworld amidst that dreadful voice, she realizes she's prooooooooooooooobably in over her head here.

    Way, way over her head. Both her shoulders bunch up in a mixture of horror and sheepish embarassment. OOOOOOOPS.

    Now she shivers atop Gawain's mount, rapidly shaking her head to try and clear it. And then... all she can do? Is hold on TIGHT to Gawain. For once no amount of bravado, knowledge, or Primordial power coursing through her can make her brave. She's just glad to NOT BE ALONE.

    "I do, but you will REGRET them later! But we cannot afford to be picky any longer... I'll... show you my power!"

    Emerald green flames lash out from her eyes as she finally gains some focus. A brilliant green-white anima erupts across the dreary battlefield, a baleful and malicious light of a very different nature from the gloomy pyreflame and rotten zombie swarm!

    Power FLOODS out from Miari into thsoe she's touching. Both the Great Boar and Gawain. The boar's eyes and nostrils fill with the same green flames. The fire of Ligier courses through his chakras now, and the bronze tinge fills with cracked, corroded patterns of other metals that shine with a greasy tinge in the strange light.

    Gawain, too, can feel the power flooding into him. It is NOT a pleasant sensation. This power is corrosive and unclean and full of a terrible alien malice, but it is power nonetheless. Like running on the wrong kind of fuel. She has leased her inner flames to him, but he'd better be careful how hot he lets them burn - lest he be scorched by them!

    In the same moment, Miari reaches up to her hair and undoes several ribbons. She has her spells at the ready...
Empty Tidings Falling Rain is about to use that siege weapon for its intended purpose on the side it isn't supposed to be pointed at when everything goes straight to Hell.

Or... the Underworld, actually. That's a different place entirely. One would be preferable to the other right now.

Juggernaut looms, and Falling Rain cannot find it in herself to be terrified. She's full of a sense of odd serenity, a feeling of contentedness that turns to restlessness when she's not actively engaged in reducing someone to a pile of their component organs or something to fragments of the materials it was forged from. It makes this whole problem feel distant and somehow simplified, as if the Primordial Essence filling her is asking, 'Can it be struck down with your bare hands?'

The answer is, and always will be, 'Yes.'

A brief conversation ends with her clasping Blue's hand again. She smiles faintly -- and then she's airborne. The Dragon-Blooded adjunct is flung from the wall. She lands amidst the carnage below, cratering the ground and scattering the walking dead. She rises, turning to the monsters therein.

Her hands come up. Her smile widens, teeth gleaming in the dark.

The restlessness fades to certainty and violence.
Carna     It seems that this Mask of Winters has somehow expanded the Shadowland's radius. That's Enark's guess. He's not particularly familiar with the mechanics of these things, though the familiarity of a realm of death, somewhere between the Underworld and the world of life, tells him that he isn't in the world they entered through anymore. As ghosts appear everywhere, and threats abound from all kinds of sources, there is little Enark can do about it. He already has a shield up, so he will just have to maintain it.

    "Keep attending to the wounded," he says to those around him. "They are our first priority. Let the warriors wage war. It is we healers who must heal." His shield should hopefully keep the ghosts out, acting like the rivers of Hades to keep the dead from crossing over, but he can not say how such things work in a world that is not his own.

    And either way, sheer violence is enough to eventually deplete his shields. There is no reason they could not just hit it over and over. So he must do all he can until that happens... And trust that his allies can handle their jobs in turn.
Bloody Revelations     If the battlefield had been barely directed chaos before, it is absolute pandemonium now. Where Juggernaut drags itself moaning across the face of Creation, the fortified lines of Thorns crumble, the dead themselves flee in every direction or are crushed underneath, Lookshy's Seventh Legion abandons their posts and barricades and struggles to pull everything valuable back before the undead mountain rolls over them, and full sized rivers are left behind, dug with palm and knee and filled with rancid blood and pus. There is nowhere that does not physically tremble under the sheer force that Juggernaut exerts on the earth, and probably does for miles. In ploughing into the fray, it has done as much, if not more, damage to its own allies as it has Lookshy, where even the warstriders of both sides are folded like aluminium foil.

    Admittedly, the utter disarray is the perfect thing to take advantage of. While the Mask of Winters' own soldiers and ghosts scatter in flight of his mobile citadel, they are disorganized, distracted, and ruthlessly gunned down in the hundreds by Staren's railguns, and blasted away in scything waves from the repeated pulses of impossibly unstable energy from the Flotilla's steadily accelerating advance. Where Juggernaut leaves the back line, it quickly becomes a massacre. Even those who flee back to the walls only run into A-39 and Toriki Falling Rain, cut down by the score with all the ammo the former can spare and beaten to bloody pulps or splatters of ectoplasmic corpus by the latter. The advantage that could have been gained by surprise reinforcements of this number is totally lost in the Mask of Winters' desire to be as terrorizing as physically possible. Though many units manage to flock to rejoin Juggernaut as escort, at least a thousand lay destroyed, and many more routed and scattered, making it unlikely they hold the city in the Mask's absence.

    Some braver and more foolish decide to tackle juggernaut themselves. Sixty million tons of corpse and then an entire citadel on its back as the clincher. Fighting it is indeed like fighting a mountain that moves. The most merciful thing about it is that it's so massive, and apparently so simple-minded, that it doesn't even notice most of them. Even then, as soon as they approach, the overwhelming stench of the blood rain intensifies threefold, becoming so debilitatingly sickening that it's partially visible as a rancid, yellow miasma.

    Gawain and Miari charge valiantly, at least on the former's part, into battle atop the war boar, and great cleaving arcs of Excalibur Galatine rip through the thing's cold, insensate flesh, spilling fresh fountains of revolting viscera. Batou's rocket launcher strikes in the time between cleaving passes, percing into the rent flesh and exploding with a splintering crack of bone like a colossal redwood being struck by lightning, and when the next charge comes, Juggernaut lifts its colossal arm, and its wrist breaks, leaving a limp hand dangling from its stump by connective tissue. It keeps moving.
Bloody Revelations     A-39 grapples onto the behemoth and is taken for a far wilder ride than she might have anticipated. The deceptive speed at which the titan is moving creates an extreme wind current that rips through her clothes and hair, threatening to tear her off the disgusting hide of the dead giant with every movement. Her blades rip into it without its attention, leaving charred and sizzling meat. She sticks piles of explosives into it, and when they go off, they breach all the way down to the ribs, and rip a car-sized passageway into its torso.

    It immediately becomes apparent why more of the flesh isn't absorbing these shocks though. One glance into the wound and A-39 sees the myriad holes that run back and forth through Juggernaut's tissues --honeycomb tunnels wide enough to squeeze a bull through, and with their own inhabitants as well. She is immediately tackled from her grappling line by a translucent, wriggling white maggot the height of a horse and twice the length, with nothing but a veiny sawmill of teeth for a face. It weighs about as much as one too, though that means that no matter what its pulsating, shredding mouth does, it violently splatters when it hits the ground far below. A number of the same slip out of Juggernaut's rent wrist, most dying on impact, but some close enough to the ground to surround Gawain and Miari, crawling on Lovell and bogging the noble boar down, eager to consume it down to the bone.

    Tomoe gets right up in its face, and wreaths of magical fire hitting it directly in the eyes aren't quite something even Juggernaut with ignore. The behemoth roars with organ-pulping volume, slowly reaching up to swat her out of the air, but it doesn't even get to her before the thorned black citadel of soulsteel atop its back does. What must be only a small portion of hundreds of siege weapons turns to face her, this time Essence weaponry on par with Lookshy, rather than simple catapults and ballistae, and numerous beams and blasts of necrotic energy converge to smite her out of the sky, making even an approach by air suicidal.

    The medical camp is in full evacuation. The staff are grabbing and hauling as many as they can save before Juggernaut ploughs right through it, and plough through it does. Even though Lookshy's lines scatter before it, it keeps moving right on through, stomping and crawling beyond, and straight off to the north, putting its back to the battlefield entirely. It is perplexing behaviour, until everyone hears the war broadcast of Tien Yu's voice in their head, solemn, cold, and strained.

    "It's heading for Lookshy. The bastard is completely ignoring us. He's going to aim it straight at our city and level it while we're all the way out here, stranded in the Underworld. I'm calling a full retreat. We need to reach the nearest Shadowland and escape back into Creation before nightfall, or else we'll never make it. Any of you who can, send word back to Lookshy as soon as possible. Mobilize the reserve legions and the Manse guard. Tell civilians to take shelter in the central city Manse and prepare it for war. It'll be at the gates by morning. We can't fight it and chase it at the same time. We need the defense force to hold out until we can catch up and pincer it from the rear, and only if we move /now/!"

    There is one final thing of note, as Juggernaut crashes off on the warpath towards the so-far impenetrable fortress-city of Lookshy. Scanning it through certainly gives a good idea of the sheer scale of how its insides have been eaten away, where organs have been replaced with foul machinery, and where the citadel itself burrows into its spine and taps its heart, drawing tremendous amounts of Essence. That last part being what it is, instead of the reverse, is the sticking point. For all intents and purposes, as far as anyone can tell, the city-smashing horror the Mask of Winters is riding isn't a Necrotech creation. It isn't even reanimated. Juggernaut is alive. Rotting, mutilated, and enslaved, but alive.
Gawain Lovell maintains his charge, and Gawain is able to assist in breaking the behemoth's hand. Even so, it keeps moving...and before Gawain can circle around to strike again, the maggots crawl out, surrounding the boar. As they begint o crawl on it and the massive maggots bog it down, Gawain is finally feeling that boost. It burns. He can feel it in his veins, the hellish fire, as he whips his sword around and slashes through one, while the boar breaks past its mortal limits and gores one of the maggots on its tusks. The pair of knight and boar rip them apart, even though using this power is going to hurt afterwards. He was aided to fight, and he's not going to allow Miari to get hurt on his watch.

As the voice booms in Gawain's heads, he sighs, and turns to Miari, smiling softly, trying to keep a good spirit. "We need to join up with the others if we're to stop this thing. Continue holding on...let us ride!" For now, the knight and his boar are going to group up with the Lookshy forces. Tomorrow, he'll likely have to break out Excalibur Galatine. This thing's large enough to need that sort of power.
Staren     Learning that the construct's anatomy MATTERS is the key piece of information Staren is looking for. Although that it won't STAY down unless they throw Mask of Winters into the abyss is troubling... one problem at a time.

    Now he knows what he must do.

    Staren flies his machine up into the air. Part of the right shoulder pack unfolds into a massive sniper rifle. He takes aim, trying to track the distant beast's head. Now, if his allies can get it to hold still just for an instant...

    Hey. Hey, where's it going?! He starts to chase after it, when Tien Yu calls a retreat.

    How's it going to strike at Lookshy from the underworld? Freaking deathlord bullshit.

    Still, a message delivery, he can do. The sniper rifle folds up again, and as soon as someone tells him where the nearest shadowland is, he's off light a jet, a sonic boom echoing across the underworld... if physics even works that way in Creation, anyway.
Tomoe Tomoe has got the monsters' attention but she does know from what Bloody Revlations has said, she has the nightmare's attention, she's got it and that is such an high amount of firepower her way that she can not tank that. This is what she'd refer to as a tank buster, you do not stand in that, you get the hell out of the way even as the open fire comes she will takes hit even as she's moving trying to get the hell away, from it she's forced to break off and evade.

She's lookingto not die and worse the warning from the goddess of Lookshy? So this was a very clever set up, she will flee to catch up with Lookshy's troops, this fight is far from over and she knows it.