The colour of the sky had gradually changed from a semi-cloudy blue-white, reddening and growing overcast with a dolorous red. People fleeing the region forced them to slow slightly in a few places where vision was blocked by hills, but otherwise, Zel continued pushing without reprieve. They reached the spot from which the Woodsman had taken his photos before noon. Beyond this point, the Red Fog lingered near the ground and gradually thickened up until becoming a solid wall, forming an impermeable dome consuming the city.

Zel couldn’t see any weak points on the dome, but she felt a flow to the movement of the Red Fog, and she was utterly certain that she could find a weak spot. After observing from this vantage point for some time, they collectively decided to circumnavigate the perimeter and get a fuller picture. Fortunately, having absorbed her White Marble Tablet didn’t impede her ability to send and receive aetherwave messages - if anything, it smoothed out the whole process. Actually navigating the city’s outskirts was a challenge, albeit a minor one, as the Red Fog in its lower-density form acted as a disorientation effect, placing a strain on all their senses. It kept trying to turn them around and send them deeper towards the city, and in the end, it became more of an annoyance than an impedance. There were signs of recent conflict to be seen; gouges and bullet holes in the buildings, and other kinds of environmental damage that implied a level of destructive power well beyond the reckoning of mortal men. Though covered by the fog, trails and smears of blood could not be mistaken, either. And yet, no corpses. Not a single one.

“It’s an entrapment array, with only secondary defensive features. There are more measures to prevent someone from leaving than there are to prevent entry… Likely some sort of method of killing or incapacitating those who come through…” Zefaris commented as they started the third circle around the whole city. She had studied arrays and formations, but knowing what patterns meant and actually finding those patterns were two different things. Her visual capabilities were making up for her relatively shallow experience in the discipline.

With Victor’s eyes to determine how the array’s operation disturbed the local environment, Zef’s visual calculus, and both Zef’s and Zel’s different methods of seeking out the weak points of things, it wasn’t long before they managed to find two specific weak spots, determining a method by which an opening might be made in the dome.

Zelsys positioned herself at a south-westward angle, a distance south of the ankhezian road, the 7:30 position relative to the Cathedral. She formed a Five True Fang Ripper and a number of False Fang Spears. She stabbed them all into the ground, with Zefaris carving a number of Antediluvian Glyphs down their lengths. Then, she and Victor rode off towards a spot somewhat on the opposing side of the city, roughly the 2 o’ clock position. On their way there, they worked in concert to form weakening pylons, with Zefaris actually dictating the design while Victor provided devilbone structural support to her black ice. The fundamental idea behind these pylons was to act as resonators - Zefaris would send a ripple across the dome, which would bounce back and forth until it headed towards Zelsys, who would strike at the right moment to cause localized catastrophic structural failure in the array’s structure. A split-second later, Zefaris would do the same thing on her side, thus opening a second hole. Such was the theory, the hard part was putting it to action.

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The lack of external guards alone slowed their progress, given how aggressively suspicious it was. Even if it was purely a capture and containment array, it still didn’t explain the utter absence of anyone on the outside. Zel supposed the array’s makers had to be truly confident, or they might have just not cared about someone getting in.

It was, in the end, not much of a problem. They ended up waiting some time for the tankman contingent to arrive; though it was all but certain that the initial opening would be short-lived, it was best to be sure that the tankmen could flood in at a moment’s notice if a more lasting opening was made from the inside, or if the whole array went down.

With half of the tankman contingent waiting some distance behind her, Zel readied to carry out her half of the breaching procedure. Holding Carnifex between her teeth, she spread her arms out and began Engine Breathing. She formed a core of bronze and iron-aspected Metallum in her second stomach, suffused it with Fulgur, forming layers and layers around it, compressing more and more power into it.

First step.

Second step.

Third step.

Fourth step.

Fifth step.

Sixth step.

Seventh step.

With the rapid cyclic rate of Engine Breathing, and with each step only taking one lung’s breath, it only took a few short moments to complete the cycle. Conqueror’s Mantle also no longer demanded any reinforcement beyond her body’s natural durability, but now Metallum served an additional purpose in the transformation in addition to enhancing her durability, which itself was an evergreen benefit.

In moments, a maelstrom of lightning poured out from her, great tongues of it whipping out and grabbing the Fang Spears, pulling them into the waiting maws of her just-manifested Thundergods.

The Five True Fang Ripper made known the abrupt spike in her output the most visibly; it had been revolving at a breakneck pace already, but now the velocity of its revolutions and fulguric power wreathing it made it appear more akin to a disc of screaming, killing light than the buzzsaw which it was. The cutting power of All-severing Scream, now contained in this remotely-controllable, flying package that just kept going without the prep time or split-second timing demand of that technique.

Meanwhile, at the other side, Zefaris and Victor once more cooperated in forming a construct. He provided the raw propulsion, entombing the Oculus within the base of their White-black Rod and forming a spiraling detonation engine around it.