Khaexyn was thrilled to discover the time had finally arrived, the moment he had been waiting for the entire trip. Just on the other side of the mountain, he would find all of those responsible for his losses.
Khaexyn was still not in a good mood, especially since his tools had stopped tracking his latest weapon, last seen somewhere within the upper levels of the Citadel. The last fragments of his deer Sxeiva were lost, even with the greatest of his plans yet. He at least got a bit of data, snippets of details. There were four people marked as targets, four people found at fault for these events, with a growing reputation. It was these four who had taken both of his loved ones from him. What bothered him the most was that he only had data on one of them, but it was worry-some data itself. A Qiciri Hero, in fact the daughter of Lady Aiylthhiylz, the same one whom he had heard were in fact responsible for the death of his own parents. Just how deep does the chains of betrayal go, if these assassins had themselves been part of a conspiracy to kill even his own parents?
He was fairly certain that, like his wife, his daughter was dead at this point. Bringers of death as they were, it certainly wouldn't be beyond their exceptional prowess to take out someone as harmless as his little girl. They were both powerful and cunning, that was painfully obvious by now. However, he could be like that too, something he hopes they will suffer in realizing. The colossal was a huge weapon, but his mightiest was still the fortress itself. In realizing how to make it fly, he would be fast upon them, destroying them before they could do a thing about it. He knew to make use of both cunning and power, flying too high for them to attack and using first the cover of clouds and later the cover of the mountain itself so that they wouldn't know he was there until he was upon them, scouring the ground with everything he had. His drop pods would support sending forces to the ground, and the fortress weapons were configured to destroy whatever was required. The first thing that would fall would be the citadel itself.
It was a bit disappointing, to have his home of youth and the meeting place of his love, even the birthplace of his daughter.. all needing to be turned to rubble and ruins. The whole place had turned against him, denied everything, and embodied everything that made fault of the Celese that he needed to have change. It's fall would be the beginning of change, simply the first step. He genuinely hoped his enemy was still inside, so that they would fall with it. Khaezyn started calibrating the fortress's main weapon to fire, ready to lay into the Citadel with the most devastating strike they would have seen ever. However, before anything could happen, the entire Fortress shook violently. He checked over his instruments, seeing that the shielding had weathered the blow, but that a massive thermal surge had occurred in one of the jets. A few moments later, another shuddering and surge. This certainly wasn't his tools malfunctioning, something was firing upon them!
"Woah, nice shot Lwyn. You made it arc upwards so beautifully." "It still wasn't enough, stupid shields can take way more than metal should. How much hotter can we cook this thing?" Thanrie herself was sweating, the heat in the room making things pretty rough. She considered Lwyn's question, not actually certain how far she could go. It was brilliant how Lwyn was remodeling the plasma inside a firing chamber, but the fact that they didn't even have anything that could endure that heat just meant it was all up to Thanrie. She bit her lip to fight off the pain, the pressure of her bracelet making her dizzy. She had actually reinforced the chamber Lwyn was using with her new liquid metal trick, which was rapidly costing her. Being almost as if she was part of the chamber, she felt a lot warmer than she herself physically was.
Mhyl was on hand with Thanrie, watching Thanrie boost the flame while containing it with her gift. Thanrie herself wasn't doing that well, clearly suffering pain in the process, mostly in her wrist. Mhyl was trying her best to simply constantly recover any injury Thanrie was suffering in the process. This was really reckless, but she knew they probably couldn't do anything more sane. She looked towards the Fortress, visible from her position, and tried to identify if they were getting anywhere. Instead, she found there might be a problem. A ring of current lit up around the citadel, electrical pulses between various filaments around it, which surged into a pattern towards a middle section of the Fortress, building in brightness and intensity. There was no way that was damage.
"Qheria! It's about to fire on us!" Mhyl's sharp sight wasn't even needed at this point, Qheria could see it perfectly fine. Like a storm-cloud building up overhead, the Fortress gathered energy, static building up in the air in the process. An electrical surge, with some very obvious voltage. Qheria looked down at the metal she was standing on and cursed her luck. Khaexyn might have actually picked their greatest weakness here. If Qheria tried to block the attack, it would have a similar effect to when Rhyde fired over the swamp, and just surge electrical current over the rest of the facility. Meanwhile, it was shooting with power that made the Colossal look like a playful kitten.
Qheria realized the comparison might be apt, the Colossal also needed to take down it's shield to fire. This could end up devastating for the Fortress, but it would still fire. "Thanrie, you and Lwyn need to fire on that weapon the moment it tries to fire, the shield has to go down to do that. Mhyl, this won't stop it from firing, I'm going to need your help to deal with it." Qheria knew they would need to stop this weapon before they could deal with the fortress itself. All electricity wanted to reach ground, that's a principle she was fully aware of. Being in the middle of a mountain pass, they were surrounded by ground, she just needed to find a way to have the hills block for them.
Qheria ran outside of the Facility with Mhyl, and pointed to the ground she stood on. "Mhyl, you made the ground lift me once, way back in the Fortress. Do you think you could have the entire ground lift me up, like a pedestal of stone? Make sure to back off when done though!" "Maybe? Yeah, probably." Qheria braced the ground, ready for Mhyl to lift everything up. Mhyl pulled out her book, setting her gift upon the ground Qheria stood on. Suddenly, the ground shook and rose from up as a giant stone pillar. Qheria held firm to her balance, knowing falling would cost them everything. Once stable, she noticed the weapon above her shining as a bright star, her signal to block.
Lwyn meanwhile looked upon the charging weapon while Qheria setup. She had her own idea. "Ehryinae, please do NOT charge the cannon. Thanrie, come over here, I'll need your help." Lwyn set everything down and rushed to the intake. Thanrie beat her to it, wondering what was going on. Lwyn described her idea, which left Thanrie reeling. It was both shocking and hilarious, but the hard part was just how much liquid metal this would take. This whole idea was going to hurt, but hopefully she won't be the one to suffer the worst of it.
Finishing it's preparations, the electrical coil fired, a beam surging downwards. Qheria had already struck the ground, her black barrier already raised. The barrier struck out the same size as the pass, nearly at each of the sides. The current struck down on this barrier, and coursed along it unstoppably. A lot of the energy was absorbed by the walls, but not nearly enough. Most of it continued along, polarized by the shield itself, and surged along the stone pillar into the ground. In the first moment, this was going fairly well, but very quickly the shield begun to crack under the sheer intensity.
At the last moment, Qheria suddenly disappeared, appearing on the ground a distance away. It was the best she could do, Mhyl could tell, but it wasn't enough. Static built above the peek of Qheria's previous post, electrical energy surging upon it's inverse polarity until the new energy still overwhelmed it. Why? Why was their best efforts not enough? Mhyl gripped her book through that moment, frustrated at how this little spark turned to their will wouldn't be enough to save them. Why wasn't it enough, when it could very well be. Another instant of an electrical pulse, this one turned to her as a friend, helping her to defend her friends. But itself, it was not enough, even Qheria couldn't change that herself. Mhyl would have to step in, to provide further shape.
The center of the spark atop the pillar surged into itself, building upon it's own rising power. Qheria watched all of this, at a loss for how this was happening. Her own actions were already bending reality as it was, but this didn't make scientific sense at all. She looked around, wondering what could be causing something so strange, and only noticed Mhyl focused on her book. Certainly not Mhyl, she used scientific principles for every idea. At a loss, Qheria jumped as a loud sound echoed from the Facility. Qhria instead turned to see a massive projectile fire upon the still bristling weapon of the Fortress, possibly a couple moments slower than she would have expected. The giant metallic sphere pulled behind it a massive... chain?
Lwyn cheered as the blob struck home, instantly setting into the electrical system. "Okay Thanrie, you're up." Lwyn stepped aside as Thanrie, looking connected to the firing system by a chain attached to her wrist, focused along the chain. The entire firing point froze in time, as current was still sent into the central area regardless. Lwyn however fell back violently as a massive explosion detonated, an electrical bomb blasting into the air. Mhyl had unleashed her spark, an EMP that detonated right under the Fortress. The shield flickered, weathering the blow regardless, but not without what was probably considerable cost. The shield was never once known to simply flicker. The electrical coils beyond the time freeze went cold, itself not protected from the burst.
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Thanrie released the time freeze, as light traveled at the same moment as light. Having reached the time freeze section first, the electrical current preluded the EMP by a fraction of an instant. The energy surged into the blob, which reacted instantly to the energy, becoming a super corrosive rust, lighter than air. The follow up EMP didn't affect it at all, but did manage to make the shield shudder instantly once the corrosion started to kick in, causing corrosion to leak in past the shield. The entire shield started to pulse rapidly, struggling to keep up with the intrusion of damage. Thanrie's metallic virus was spreading far too quickly for the shields to keep up.
Lwyn looked up at everything, things really turning for the better for them. With the shield suffering so much, they had a great ticket in. They still needed to bring this thing down properly though. The jets were even more of a weak point, with the shields stuttering so much. However, if they take out too much of the engines on one side, it would dive dramatically, instead of falling softly. They needed to hit four opposite sides of the fortress, around the third, sixth, ninth, and twelfth spire, like one for each of them. She herself wanted the sixth spire, just as a matter of spite, and knew her idea would need Mhyl on the opposite spire. Qheria could take care of the third as Thanrie took out the ninth, almost memorably to how she had taken out that side before. Already, they had been firing on the third and ninth spire's jets, to build this sense of balance as they tried to deal with the shielding.
"Qheria, shields are failing. We need to move to the next phase." Lwyn sat back down at the firing mechanism. To match Mhyl's magnitude, she was given access to use the siege weapon to cause whatever mischief she could think of, but she would be on her own. She settled in to prepare herself, working with her ideas to figure out exactly what would work. Not left with much time, she heard an explosion already at the third spire. Qheria had taken advantage of the lack of shielding to simply warp in place of the engine mechanism, the same destructive warp she had marveled in before. Thanrie mumbled something about tele-fragging in English as she tried to keep up. She had the most trouble at this range, but used her weapon to rapidly swing up the wall. At last, she latched onto the bottom of the Fortress with her weapon as she pulled herself in towards it, her bracelet remaining a free hand. Liquid metal resolved around the outer surface of the jet, connecting her directly to it's systems. Having hacked into the unprotected engine, she forced it to overload as she jumped away to safety.
Mhyl watched the pair of destruction with amazement, but realized she would have to keep up. She was slower than the others with this kind of thing, but considerably more destructive. Mhyl was already ready with her book, pursuing an idea. She reversed electrical energy to shut down an electrical system, and in that same right, maybe she should do the same with a thermal system. Thanrie could stop time, but all Mhyl needed to do was to put everything atomically asleep, absolute zero. It was something people knew of at Earth, but never perfectly achieved, like approaching infinity or finding the exact value of Pi. However, that was because they were.. limited to Terran solutions, she had something else handy. Ice rapidly began to form around the jet she was targeting, as the heat it generated starting to result in a decline of molecular energy. As heat continued to push a farther and farther difference in temperature, the whole thing just went colder and colder, until suddenly it just stopped at the quantum level. The engine at that point couldn't even produce heat, the whole system dramatically suddenly running out of fuel as a result.
Lwyn noticed every jet suddenly sputtering as an effect of Mhyl's powerful attack. Shutting down the energy of the entire system at two versions of the idea was having serious impacts on how it kept going. The Fortress started to sink down slightly and swerve, starting to lose control. She had to act now, and she needed something big! Hitting her side would send the Fortress rapidly drifting out past the mountain if she had enough force to provide. That direction would be perfect, it was the field in the middle of the four nations, what used to be the main battlefield between Qicir and Wyxir. The timing was perfect for it, but she needed something insane for an explosion. She considered the situation, and Mhyl weaponizing even things atomically. Lwyn took in a deep breath, she had one idea of a known explosion that could fit the concept of biggest explosion imaginable, but on a classic scale this would also be equally dangerous. A fusion bomb, a nuclear explosion, you just did not get more power than from something like that.
Lwyn settled and calmed her mind, as it furled through thoughts of how this was a very bad idea. Scientifically, especially at this distance, this would be stupid. But that's just why she had to make sure things would not work like it would on Earth! She needed a fusion reaction that was still contained, that burned up it's entire reaction in a small area, and then rapidly had to resolve it's state, maybe even violently, until the atomic factors it caused were reversed. Like having a half-life of 3 seconds! If most of its reaction was energy, it would also be countered by the currently ongoing absolute zero that Mhyl had caused, which would stabilize everything! Mhyl called forth her heavy missile with her hands and set it into the chamber, building pressure for it. She knew the cannon didn't have the pressure to force this shot far at all, but it would be her gift that made it lift off and fly, she was just.. aiming it.
Lwyn's projectile shot out, then started hovering in the air, a massive burst of steam jetting out from behind it as it built up power. The projectile started to glow a bright yellow as the intensity within started to build, and the projectile dashed right into the designated jet, into the containment area behind where it tried to build up the heated pressure. The missile crashed into the steam vent, pressing deeper into the system as it found the internal water pipes. Arriving at it's destination, the missile bracketed to the wall, blocking the pipe and causing a major pressure buildup. The piping system itself started to rupture, unable to sustain the pressure, but the missile itself wasn't designed to take much more either. Finally suffering more than it was designed for, the missile was crushed by the pressure, causing it's contents to rupture onto itself violently.
The explosion retained a large measure of safety, but still managed to sound like the original article, a nuclear explosion. Thanrie shuddered in fear, recalling Terran legends from her related home about just how much such a weapon had yielded devastation. Qheria was also aware of similar tales, and just stared at the results. "I guess.. nuclear launch was detected?" Qheria wondered if she had missed the red icon, or if Lwyn really had done nothing to warn them. Mhyl fell over, completely losing all of her concentration, realizing to what magnitude Lwyn had gone to in her own attack. Sure, all of them just did some pretty significant things. Qheria had tore apart a large section of ship by just warping through it, some serious quantum-level destruction with maybe some faster-than-light movement. Thanrie might have hacked it, but Mhyl could tell there was no actual computer or anything running that section exactly, Thanrie had probably more hacked reality itself to cause it to just.. fail explosively. She herself had just used energy to make energy stop being energy, and all the quantum effects that came with that. Lwyn's attack might have actually been the most natural of them all, even if it completely redefined what a fusion explosion would mean. Even so, as a large portion of the hull of the Fortress clattered against the mountain on one side, and the entire fortress shot wildly out of control in the other direction, to suddenly meteor into the ground at high velocity exactly where it was aimed.. Lwyn's attack had the most impressive magnitude.
Khaexyn clamoured back onto his feet, having no idea what in the world had just happened. System failures everywhere, shields crumbling, then more failures in engines and then.. a major burst of the Fortress. The entire outer area of the Sixth spire was suddenly gone, the damage was substantial. All systems in the outer area of the Twelfth Spire were offline, nothing working at all, not even any reports of why. Significant damage in a few other areas, from more explosions, the crash landing, and ongoing floods. Khaexyn smashed the unit in frustration, exactly how powerful was his enemies to have done something like this to his Fortress? There was no helping it, he had only one thing powerful enough to counter something this mighty. He would have to bring the full might of the Veil upon this threat, and as he tore through the worst of the world itself, any foes he had would find themselves falling with it. He wanted to be much more careful and cautious with his approach, but it seemed there was no room for caution. Even a violent destruction of the world laws, he would have to just turn his attention afterwards in cleaning it up.
What had bothered him the most was not the damage to his Fortress. Khaexyn turned away from the display monitor which had failed him in the crash, his mind still rebuilding what he had seen from it. He had seen Yhse there, staring up venomously, before turning towards the firing mechanism of such design and firing it. Obviously he could expect his daughter to be as capable as himself, but to think his enemies had resorted to a matter of brainwashing to force her to do their bidding. This would be his first concern. Starting with her mind, he would remake basic principles, to return her to his side, and from that chain he would spread forth his will onto the world's design itself. It worked because he had already set his gift onto her before, when she was young.
Lwyn was already tied to him as a result, as a matter of inevitability and fate. From these chains, he would bind all of Celesi's fate, and tear its future asunder.