With a proper amount of sleep behind them once again, the two girls were ready to face the dawn of another day. With as much preparation behind them as possible, Lyun and Axln made their way to Mheridz’s outpost to await the coming battle.

Lyun obviously didn’t feel at all ready for this. Her stress and worry had actually woken her up repeatedly enough that she had slept in longer than Axln for once. Axln had simply let Lyun get the extra sleep, going over mental exercises in her head about what sort of actions she should be taking in combat. Axln was even so occupied at trying to improve after her considered failures in their last battle that she hadn’t even been properly aware of Lyun’s concerns. It was in this state that the two of them returned to Mheridz to get an update of the situation. However, as the battle was known to happen that dawn, and dawn was a hundred moments long, there was still an unspecified amount of wait time before anything would actually happen. Mheridz was not spending this time fruitlessly though, it remained an excellent opportunity to plan and prepare her troops. Even if their foe did arrive, they would have some time where the thing would just wander around, waiting for their ambush.

“So, where is your standing tower of death?” “I’m guessing you’re comparing your experiences of your last battle to what you’re seeing here. Unfortunately, the foundry did not think highly of the idea of unmovable weaponry when trying to defend so much area. My heaviest hitters are all mobile, we have no sentry weapon on site. The variety of siege weapons however are significant, some with some rather impressive firepower, all of them with some substantial range. I made it clear that things needed range at least, we can’t afford to let anything get close to our enemy. If you’re going to make use of citadel weapons, destroyers might be your best bet for the same reason. The citadel itself might have some kind of suitable long range attack, but not any suitable to people actually working in the area. If you want to have the citadel back us up, please keep that in mind.” “Makes sense. Coordinating efforts would be difficult in the middle of battle too.” Axln nodded at Mheridz’s suggestion, keenly aware of how the citadel’s core weapon was not only too prone to wide area damage, it was also generally ineffective against things made from the void. They needed strikes that were as elemental as possible, or such a strike simply wouldn’t do anything.

“Don’t worry, I’ll be coordinating things with Luna from a distance, we’ll be fine. Someone is going to have to keep an eye out for when the thing decides to call its friends, too.” “Oh, so Vael had to deal with something that could call for backup. Do keep in mind, void spawn, as well as its counterpart, are all generally very distinct. Given time, people are going to start classifying these things by how much intensity of the void it starts bringing with it. As for what each one does, there are no set patterns at all. We can not be certain what our target will be capable of until it is demonstrated. In that consideration, you may want to watch out for any strange behaviours, so that you are not surprised.” “I’ll do that then too. Don’t worry, I’m an elf, we’re sort of physically made for this sort of work.” “Hmm.. do as you wish.” Lyun could tell her optimism felt a little artificial, Mheridz might have even picked up on that too. If Mheridz knew the Lyun from the future, it might be a little rough to cloud such stuff over. Axln however didn’t look into it, she instead simply considered what she herself would need to be doing. At the very least, someone had to commit the thing’s attention, that might have become her job. She was however eager to make up for her past failures, so that wouldn’t be a problem.

Eventually during preparation, word came in about their target being sighted in the ashen dunes. Lyun was the first of the three to get to spot it, her elven vision standing as dependable as she had claimed it would. Axln however was able to see it even clearer once her circlet was calibrated to do so. Mheridz didn’t even bother getting a visual impression, turning to her forces to organize them for battle. The outpost was very empty soon after. Luna had arrived at least to their request for support, ensuring that they would have a stock of her destroyers on site in support of Mheridz’s forces. In another moment, their foe was surrounded with substantial numbers that still kept their distance. Windcrafts scoured the skies in a flurry that unleashed a barrage of explosions from above in a bombing run. The fiend was enraged, but the windcrafts rapidly flew away in all directions. While the fiend remained confused, all of the ground forces opened fire, the ground shuddering in the high impact onslaught. Axln was on route, but she wasn’t even certain what to do given everything going on. It was as if everything was already under control. Lyun meanwhile was all too happy to discover that things were generally going smoothly. She was still diligently keeping to her assigned duty, keeping watch from a distance. Such was why, even obscured by a cloud of explosions, herself doing nothing but watching, she was the first to notice their enemy’s change of approach.

The fiend completely stopped lashing out, its foes being far too distant for such a tactic. Instead, several white lamps lit over the fiend, the lamps not actually providing any source of light. These small stars however glimmered with a subtle ashen dust. While explosions raged around it, and the windcrafts came around for yet another bombing run, a series of ashen flickers resounded in the air in a stream from the strange stars. These sparks surged into the air and struck several of the windcrafts passing by, the affected crafts going down instantly. A few more spark streams surged out from it, striking a destroyer and a couple additional siege weapons. Lyun pooled her observations for Axln before rushing to confront Mheridz about the news.

“So, the stupid thing desided to give itself some kind of ranged attack. Our forces are going down easy now, do you have anything that could deal with the thing’s weapon?” “Casualties are acceptable, in fact I generally expected a few. The thing would be bleeding it’s own void aspect simply to keep attacking, so we just need to keep hitting it until it finally goes down. The faster it dies, the less we lose in the process.” “If it’s just killing itself then, wouldn’t it be easier to just defend until it died?” “Too slow, would give it far too many opportunities to attack. You may not have noticed, but defending is actually rather futile. There is nothing that can just weather such purity of void.” Lyun was aghast at Mheridz’s decision to just push with everything they had. Mheridz did at least pass instructions to have her forces more mobile, to at least attempt to dodge. Such was especially good because their enemy had grown more comfortable with it’s new weapon, unleashing strikes in a growing frequency. Such was simply another reason why Mheridz knew they needed the thing to die sooner rather than later.

Mheridz honestly did know of a possible defensive solution, but she didn’t like it. Instead, she removed the armband from her arm and set it on the table, replacing the thing with a new variant. With the new armband set and activated, she turned to another instrument on the table.. which then began displaying an active top-down map of the battlefield. She then drew a couple of her strange orbs and focused upon the armband. For a brief instant, a tiny rift gate opened above the armband, and in that brief window she threw the orbs in her hand through it. Off in the distance, Lyun could see surging bolts of lighting scouring the field around the fiend. So, even from out here Mheridz was still perfectly capable of keeping to an offensive. Lyun felt such a revelation had started to sting, considering she herself was nothing more than just a watcher.

Axln quickly found herself on the front lines, trying to hide behind the wreckage of broken, ashen allies. She had already clued in that the plan was to hit hard and then to hit harder. She peeked around the corner and held up her weapon, taking aim before firing. A wave of darkness surged forward, but after a set distance the wave instead folded into itself. A sphere of darkness was left in its wake, a gravitation sphere that started to pull everything inside. However, as a result of taking the shot, Axln spun backwards, slamming into her cover and causing it to disintegrate into dust. The fiend turned on her in surprise and fired.. but the stream of void was simply pulled into the gravitation sphere. The fiend itself was not denied this experience either, the great thing being slowly pulled in the direction of the sphere. Axln had inspired the idea upon a black hole itself, which seemed to have a lot of good potential. The sphere however quickly failed, causing the sphere to detonate in a burst of dark waves. The fiend flipped upside down as a result of this impact, even if that didn’t impair its blob-like form for very long. Axln meanwhile didn’t budge at all, her forcefield sustaining the entire thing.

It was at this juncture that Axln realized she was the pinnacle of their defense. Not only could she create shots that could effectively block the thing’s attacks, she did have her forcefield that blocked much of anything else. As the thing turned to attack her again, she shot defensively to block the oncoming volley. In the meanwhile, a surge of lighting burst around it.. which was also pulled into the black hole. Right, because such gravitational forces were dark elemental, not an actual matter vacuum. Actually, that was probably a good thing, otherwise such would have had no effect on void at all. It did mean that throwing dark vacuums around was having the impact of making every nearby attack fail, even from allies. However, some of the lightning still struck true.. the ones opposite the thing. Right, because pulling attacks through their enemy would still have an impressive effect. With the next sphere detonated, she shot another before setting her gear to rapidly float around the thing within the span of an instant. She was still not affected by her own dark vacuum because of her forcefield, giving her plenty of opportunity to move around. On the other side of the thing, she fired another shot.. which then started to pull upon the original sphere. The combined path of spheres pulled right through the fiend standing between them, ripping a giant hole through the thing.

However, in the midst of all of her movement, she forgot the thing might have also had a much closer-ranged attack. Taking advantage of the opening provided where no sphere was active, the fiend lunged straight at Axln and smashed downwards upon her. Axln's forcefield weathered the blow, but was not doing very well. She tried to stand up and escape, only to get a second strike crashing upon her after the first. The thing really obviously did not like her right now, and a few more strikes like this would rip right through her defenses. Mheridz meanwhile put a stop to their offense, not wanting to fire while Axln was in such a horrible state. This is exactly why Mheridz didn’t want to depend upon just one person to provide their entire defense. Now things had simply gotten even more complicated. Lyun herself was devastated. Axln was down.. and the fact that they weren’t going back in time implied Axln might also be unconscious. If things stayed like this, Axln would die. If she wasted too much time worrying about it, Axln would also die. So, instead of wasting effort planning her next move, Lyun reacted. She grabbed the armband still upon the table, the one she had seen Mheridz pull out in their short rift through the citadel as she turned to Luna.

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“Rift please, you and I need to go and recover Axln, bring her back here. Do it, now.” “Yes, inheritor.” Lyun walked through the rift Luna provided and rushed over to the rift of the follow up destination. Passing through before Luna, Lyun found herself very close to Axln.. and as a result pretty much under her enemy. Yes, this was bad, she was in combat, and she sucked at it. But then again.. Axln’s situation was worse, and she wasn’t about to just let Axln fall on her account without actually giving things a try. She turned her weapon on the thing, her close proximity being the only reason she wasn’t able to miss. Of course, she didn’t exactly seem scary, not compared to Axln. Luna however was remarkably efficient, getting Axln gone before the thing’s initial surprise had worn off. The fiend’s next blow thus landed on empty ground. It was at this point that she noticed a call coming in from.. her armband?

“I’m busy.” “No, you’re crazy. Axln is at least back here safe. Do you want Luna here to come pick you up too?” “The first trip might have been crazy, but the next would be suicidal. It was obvious that we only pulled that off because the thing was confused, it will probably smack first and ask questions later next time.” “Hells, why do you also end up so stupid when things go wrong? I really didn’t like it when Axln threw herself into the front as she did, but you really aren’t much better. We can’t have you dying here like this.” “So leave me alone, I’m busy.” Lyun threw herself away from another crush down from her enemy, finally pulling herself out of it’s range in the process as she ended the call with Mheridz. With all allies cleared out of the way, their forces resumed the initial bombardment, encouraging the thing to once again open fire upon all the surrounding forces. Even standing just out of reach, the thing didn’t care about Lyun at all anymore, there were more annoying threats nearby, numbers it was back to diminishing. This in turn really bothered Lyun, that even this ball of chaos thought that she was completely nothing. She resumed firing towards the thing, her shots occasionally striking their mark.

Instrumentation had been everything to Lyun.. but this was the first time one had ever let her down. The stupid arbalestae was almost useless, just peppering her enemy with light. Quite honestly, it was reminding her of her opportunity to strike a different chaos with a different light, the holo energy used having also been pretty useless. At least.. offensively. They already had the thing heavily being bombarded, they just needed a good distraction. Setting her chaos active, she felt the familiar distortion around her, her power gear going instantly offline. Then she activated the armband, and through it projected a simple holo platform. Of course, she still didn’t have the thing’s attention, but everything was coming together.

“Did you just use a chaotic ability around a void spawn. You do know that they aren’t affected by such at all, right?” “Yes, Velvet was very kind in telling Kori.. Axln all about it. I’m actually hoping that this thing does manage to adjust properly enough, it would be perfect.” “What are you..” Mheridz’s voice vanished once Lyun hung up on her again, the distraction not being appreciated. Lyun could tell Mheridz was getting more and more worried, but Lyun’s panic had evolved to the point where it just didn’t matter anymore, not trying was still worse than trying. First, Lyun let her distortion fade, her test concluded. Lyun then turned to her gift, reversing the flow of frost in the air to build up a growing presence of heat. Doing so, her power gear reacted, augmenting the effect until the whole area was a desert haze. Her power gear also automatically activated it’s forcefield system, protecting her from the heat. She then ran straight up to the fiend and reactivated her distortion. The fiend, being of chaos, shifted along with the world’s principles, going from void to absolute zero. However, even with her direct focus lost, the incredible heat of the area remained, taking immediate effect on the creature now more made of frost. Frost was her gift, the thing was in her domain now. As the heat dissipated, she switched back to set off another heat burst, followed by more distortion and melting.

The fiend at this point had discovered just why this individual scrambling around it.. was actually incredibly annoying. It slammed down in her direction, only for her to call upon a holo and dance away from the thing with all of the skilled training she had applied to such as Rosa. As she dodged out of the way, it sent projectiles towards her, the void shots not converting to ice along the way.. and the vacuum force having no impact at all upon a kinetic holo barrier. She was almost completely untouchable, and doing some serious damage. However, her armband was rapidly running out of power, not having been properly designed for such intensity. She did happen to have a replacement on hand, one which would thus be very dangerous to use. There wasn’t the time to think about that either, as she wired the armband to her knees within a brief window behind a holo barrier. The thing decided to however charge at her during her moment of immobility, the absolute zero frost shattering the holo barrier. She used a quick series of additional holos to attempt an escape, each in turn being obliterated. With the overuse of such energies, her knee was starting to run especially hot.

Of course, her knee contained that tempered magma core, a thermal power source for her current operations. However, this was notably the first actual field test for just how much her original design could take. She hadn’t actually accounted for the design to need to endure much stress, knowing that there wouldn’t be much demand to push such to its limits. Such.. may have been a mistake, but it was one in her favour. She called upon another holo, as dense as possible, with the maximum kinetic factor. The fiend broke right through it.. and the one that generated right after it.. and the one after that. At this point, the heat of the air was persisting especially long, her knee venting excessive heat from all of the heavy usage. With enough energy buildup venting, she reverted her distortion.

Her power gear was still down, and she herself felt especially dizzy. Her knees were staggering, the influx of elements making regular operation impossible. Of course, presenting heat to her frosty enemy was one advantage she held, but her tempered magma core was also effectively the planet’s lifeblood, an immense concentration of all elements that was now venting in an augmented form. It in turn reacted with the shard also in her knee, drawing massive elemental qualities through an augmentation shard. Her instruments went wild, the massive energy spike being too much for all of it. Her forcefield glared in a staggering intensity, as the gift booster in her gear augmented all of these elements further and further, until the shield was a staggering sphere of intense elements. The fiend smashed down upon this sphere.. and any traces of it vapourized on contact.

So she was currently overwhelming it with the elements? Then maybe it was time to give that one instrument yet another chance. Of all things, she drew her arbalestae again, pointing in the fiend’s general direction, and fired. The shot, of course, was aimed poorly. Once the shot connected with her shield, all of the mass elemental energy swirled to gather around this new host of elements, unfurling a spiral force around it as the shot flew. The beam struck the ground a good 30 uyn away from the thing.. with the ensuing flare of elements covering far more than that. Several destroyers and siege weapons over 200 uyn away simply shut down, the elemental energy having completely overloaded them. A few instants later, all of the affected instruments simply exploded. Lyun’s had however compensated for this reaction, having reacted to the shutdown of her gear by activating one more distortion. However, the presence of all the active elements were thus represented in their most scientific form. Optical light of high intensity, the flare being blinding. An electrical surge with significant current. A blazing heat, far more than the heat she had already tried to generate. All of this was layered upon principles of matter, the stone and gravitational forces being as crushing as the aquatic pressure. Matter and energy in an uncontrolled reaction. Such presence was only there for a fragment of an instant before all of such rushed outwards towards areas not appreciating such concentration.

The barrier of her distortion thus proved to be ground zero for the biggest magnitude of a reaction between worlds in the entire process, the elements shifting to molecular processes and back again in a mass spiral of change. All of such would be things Lyun would only learn about later, as the entire process had completely knocked her out. She would not recover for quite some time either, the saturation of conditions having made her significantly ill once again, much like when she had exposed herself to an atomic reaction. Even while unconscious, her distortion remained. As such, it was impossible for anyone to recover her until dawn was almost over. Axln herself had been the one to awaken late that dawn to herself handle the rescue efforts, though Mheridz had already provided healing support for their return. Instruments would have been useless within Lyun’s distortion, so they only had rudimentary methods and a few of Mheridz’s cross-world tricks. It didn’t help that such had involved leaving Lyun in such a condition for so long either, even if being left in the void had played absolutely no part in the problems. Even well past Lyun’s rescue, the edge of her distortion was still radiating raw elements. It was far more impairing in that trying to be safely close enough to Lyun to administer any support without the caregiver themself getting sick, that was itself proving challenging. This hadn’t stopped Mheridz from recovering her own arm guard at least, even if the whole thing was also completely overloaded and in need of decontamination of elements.

Axln however found herself wondering at that point if everything had worked out. Of course everything had.. way earlier that dawn. Oh, that wasn’t her thought, was it? Axln took the opportunity to consider that Lyun would need to get some rest, to recover after everything she had just done to commit to their victory. Axln also took the opportunity to consider that, between atomic fallout and elemental saturation, Lyun would really need to find less dangerous ways to deal with scary situations. As Axln already felt the growing impression of a counter argument, she cut the link between herself and Lyun and simply looked into Lyun’s physical needs. She had more than enough to deal with as things stood than to find her thoughts in conflict due to Lyun’s added perspective. This was something they could simply discuss more after Lyun was feeling better. Mheridz meanwhile didn’t even need access to such an inner voice to grasp contexts of mental conflict. Lyun had, has, and will always be like this, even in her future. She had hoped that Lyun’s compulsion for sacrifice would have yielded an easy surrender, but it was always sacrifices such as this which had always propelled them into more dramatic circumstances. No matter what, she had to ensure that such recklessness did not rub Axln the wrong way, leading from dramatic circumstances causing dramatic problems requiring exceptional solutions.

It wasn’t until Mheridz had found both Axln and Lyun gone suddenly that she had thus discovered.. she may have been too late in preventing such unwanted outcomes. Rather than having compelled the two into a quick surrender, Mheridz had found salvation had become even more fleeting.