Outside the dome…
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“Hellhounds! Disciples!” Zelsys bellowed. The reply was a concussive blast of amplified sound, a mixture of warhorns and warcries. From her disciples she received flares of magic, bellows of determination, and waves of essentia and aura alike.
“Follow in my wake. You know your orders; exterminate hostile cultivators, rescue civilians, secure the city. Strake…”
“DRAW HOSTILE ATTENTION. BREAK DOWN ENEMY MORALE. MAKE THEM RUN WITH THEIR TAILS BETWEEN THEIR LEGS.”
“Correct!” she grinned. Two more bounces.
Finally, the moment came, the penultimate ripple, converging right in front of her. Her breach would send it back, and Zefaris would in turn tear open a path on her end. She’d had all the time she could want to build up a sufficient charge, and now, it was time to use it. She whipped the Five True Fang Ripper forward, instantly taking a pair of pre-charged Fang Spears in hand. The Fang Ripper’s brilliant cutter collided with the Fog Dome, the ripple closing in around it as it ever so slowly pushed in. Like a solution of starch in water, what had once been a mere dense fog suddenly became as though solid crimson stone.
And yet, the Ripper acted in accordance with its name.
For an agonizing seventeen seconds it hung there, slowly carving into the dome, while the surrounding fog twisted and bunched up, as if a mass of torn muscles being made to contract. Finally, it tore through, a hole opening much like a cavity opens in a water surface when a pebble drops in. Zelsys instantly threw her spears, intent on preventing the fog from rushing back in to close the gap. In rapid sequence, six thunderclaps in a row, her spears roared forward and skewered the fog, forcing it into its pseudo-solid state. With sickly veins of purple light pulsing out from where each Fang Spear had struck, a tunnel through the Red Fog now yawned.
Zel surged forward without another thought, leaving her sturmgandr behind as she sprinted headlong into the opening, tearing gashes into the ground with her feet and gathering the separated pieces of Carnifex. Before she could even get through, when the first rooftops came into view, she was attacked. It came from two, maybe three dozen figures, perched on the roofs and in the windows and some on the ground. Each of them, giving off the unmistakable aura of a cultivator, which had felt like an ephemeral, vague “something” to her not so long ago. They all wore archaic robes, some black, some green, and a small handful, crimson-red; such convenient threat level identifiers. A deluge of metal flowed in her direction from all sides, some of it only falling short of the sound-speed barrier by a hair’s breadth. Needles, knives, spikes, all aimed; some at where she was, some at where they thought she would be at the time of impact, and others at spots where she might possibly dodge, meant to cut off vectors of escape.
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There was, indeed, no conceivable way by which she could dodge all that, not even with perfect full-body Graze Pulse.
She didn’t need to dodge. She was aware of them all, of each and every projectile, entering her zone of influence.
All at once, with nothing but brute fulgurmagnetic force, she brought them to a halt, every single one. A flowing mass of poisoned metal, seething, threatening to burst at any moment under her Thundergods’ power if the strain wasn’t being shared across enough metal to make up three or four Captain’s Cleavers.
With a swing she sent them all back, unaimed, but nonetheless lethal. Three Black Robes fell dead on the spot, and two more retreated, plucking needles out of themselves and screaming that they had been hit. She could feel her Fang Spears straining under the array’s desire to reform, but they would hold for now.
Zel’s job right now was carving an opening for the Hellhounds, and that, she was more than happy to do.
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Fulgurkinetic magnetism, vastly superhuman physicality, a metal arm. Roderick’s mind ran rampage with guesses at who and what this intruder could be. The fact it was some variant of Storm-soul Cultivation was obvious; Roderick wasn’t even aware of any monadic cultivation method that harnessed Fulgur, and couldn’t imagine it being possible under any circumstance other than some mountain sect with access to a peak that so happened to be in the right height range to be swallowed by storm clouds. Even then, monadic Fulgur cultivation would just end up being a support for the daemonic, looping him back around.
Going by the full-metal arm, he estimated that she had to be some hidden expert, at least fifty, very likely over a hundred years old. It also clued him in on her secondary cultivation method likely being daemonic metallum cultivation of some type, perhaps not even a specific method. As for her left arm, Roderick felt a pang of confusion. It sort-of looked like a Roaring Thunder Cannon, but it was much too thin, thin enough to be some kind of out-there hidden weapon, even, but it wasn't hidden, it was out in the open. Maybe a convenient way for setting off flares and delivering explosives? A mortar, rather than a cannon?
And the way she moved… That was no mobility technique he was aware of. It was more like a panther or perhaps a cougar running after prey than a human, yet the savagery endemic to techniques that drew on the inner beast was tempered… No, it wasn't tempered, it was still there, but it was as if the beast’s intentions, somehow, perfectly lined up with those of the human self. How? Had she by some secret method fettered the beast and beaten it into subservience? The only peoples Roderick knew who could do that were the Boreans of the far north.
Two things sparked alarm - panic, even - within him.
First, the manner in which she had opened a gap in the Crimson Fog Array, particularly what was holding that gap open. Not the spears themselves, but the sigils on them - Black Rod Glyphs.