Emily appears high above the battlefield, wreathed in lightning, completing her warped step and calmly freezing midair, staring down at the flaming woman on the city’s wall expectantly. Their eyes meet and, despite the distance between them, Emily can tell that her opponent’s eyes have long since lost their light, even as her flaming mana dances around her in a song of rage and sadness.

The tune reaches Emily, felt through her mana instead of heard, and resonates within her, causing cold anger to bloom in her chest as she’s reminded of the Mandrago family’s attempts to do the same to her. Instead of quashing the feeling pushing through her emotional dampening, Emily drinks it in, letting it mix with the quietly simmering anticipation of a fight and actively reinforcing the collected emotions with machina to prevent them slipping away.

The glow pouring from Emily’s eyes gets brighter, and her grin stretches wider, becoming manic as lightning crackles on her breath and the air around her seems to get heavier, taking on a metallic, bloody scent. With another step, Emily rips space apart again, exchanging a chunk of her mana to instantly appear over a thousand metres closer to the wall, at the edge of her direct magical perception.

Now too far away, Emily loses her direct link to Elisime and the rest of her army. Her steps stop warping space and speed up as she breaks into a sprint across the sky, moving too fast for the few attacks still able to focus on her, as her mechanical army floods the battlefield below.

One of her cores takes control of her internal machina circulation as she kicks into a twisting flip to avoid two mana-seeking missiles launched by one of the ships above the city. Instead of directing the energy to flow down the nerves in her spine, then out to her limbs as usual, she guides it through her arteries to her heart, which then spreads it through her body in a rhythmic pulse. As she lets the machina slip from her skin, instead of a blaze of lightning, invisible electromagnetic waves radiate out, spreading for miles.

The runic markings left on all her creations across the battlefield resonate with the machina waves, drawing them in to reestablish their link and boost their strength. Emily’s machina begins draining three times faster than when she was broadcasting through Elisime, but her mana maintains its half of the proper circulation for Technomancer’s Breath to keep her reserves from dropping too fast.

The mage on the wall raises a wave of fire to meet her, and all of the ships above open fire, but Emily draws an erratic streak across the sky, dodging metal and magic alike while releasing mana into the air and closing the gap in a heartbeat. Dark clouds rumble above, and a fraction of a second before Emily impacts the Denerii woman’s wall of raging crimson fire, her left eye switches from blue to silver and her skin turns metallic.

Lightning erupts from the clouds, striking down two airships as Emily crosses her arms, deploying a long blade from her left palm and her Claw from her right wrist before coating them in crackling silver lightning and ripping them through the fire. The mana coating extends, forming a sharp net of charge that shreds the attack, letting Emily pass through in a spray of harmless dying embers.

She plummets towards the top of the wall, head-first into a spray of bullets and a few weak magical attacks from the panicking soldiers on the wall. Deflecting a few of the more annoying attacks and letting the others bounce off her, Emily zeros in on a compact, twisting dome of blood-red fire where her target should be.

A ripple spreads across the barrier as she approaches and raises her blades to strike, and Emily’s instincts scream at her to dodge. She snaps her body to the side, narrowly avoiding a thin flaming needle, before flipping back as tens of blazing spikes erupt from the barrier.

A large crimson magic circle rapidly burns itself into the air above them and, at a glance, Emily recognises several runes, quickly judging the type of spell and determining her response. She retracts her left blade and ejects the right from its housing, letting the attached razor-thin wire stretch longer as she swings it out to meet a flaming sword from above.

The magic weapon shatters on contact with her humming blade, knocking it back in a burst of hot air and scattering several incoming bullets from the airships above, but three more swords take its place. As Emily flicks the flying Claw back up to intercept them, she twists her left arm to face the soldiers attacking her from behind, firing the railgun set into its forearm and punching clean through two bodies in one shot.

Emily’s elemental mana bubbles from her skin as she fights, forming precise metal barriers or bursts of charge to protect her from the attacks raining from above and slowly coalescing next to her in the form of five sleek wolves with metal for skin and lightning for fur. She imbues the constructs with her violent will, pulling from the cold anger still resisting her emotional dampening and turning their blank, emotionless faces into furious snarls.

A strong pulse of mana below them alerts Emily to an attack from the other fourth circle mage on the battlefield, but she calmly leaps away from the flaming barrier as her wolves leap towards it, dodging a slicing blade of stone that shreds the wall below to reach them. Emily spins, turning her back to one opponent as she slashes her Claw in a wide arc before disconnecting the wire at her wrist with a second blade attached. The lightning-charged wire spins across the top of the wall, cleaving soldiers in two and clearing the distractions.

Emily’s lightning wolves zigzag towards the fire mage’s barrier, dodging the falling blades as they fend them off, and the leader of the pack dives into the spinning flames. Flaming spikes skewer the construct, but as they melt through its metal skin, they only release the raging lightning within, letting it rip across the barrier, tearing the spikes that try to form to shreds and allowing the other four wolves to sink their sharp fangs into the spell.

A machina-charged shot from her arm-mounted railgun shatters the ravaged barrier and sinks into the mage within’s stomach, stunning them for a moment. Emily’s magical servants take advantage of her help and are on their opponent in a flash, closing their jaws around her limbs and flooding her body with lightning. The Denerii mage releases a hoarse scream with fire erupting from her throat as she tries to resist, but it only takes a few seconds for her to faint, collapsing to the ground in a twitching mess.

The second her shot lands, Emily leaves her first target to the wolves and leaps from the wall to search for the second, panting slightly as she releases more mana into the atmosphere to fuel the storm ripping through ships above with the help of Elisime’s distant railguns.

‘Where are they?’ she asks Mensacus, her gaze scanning the hundreds of vents and shooting windows that have haphazardly opened across the landscape to combat his previous attack.

‘Playing with my puppets,’ her son responds, transmitting information about his link to his monstrous creations through a thread of mana.

Emily zeros in on a patch of smooth, unbroken earth a few hundred metres from the city, kicking off the wall behind her and shooting towards her target. She forms a drill-like cone of metal in front of herself right before colliding with the ground, using the crackling lightning flowing from her hands to form a powerful magnetic field.

The shield rockets forward, spinning fast enough to blur the jagged grooves spiralling down its length as it cuts through the ground like a warm knife through butter. After only a few metres of dirt, they burst out into a large cavern with tens of tunnels leading off in all directions, with the sounds of panicked soldiers’ footfall, screams, and gunshots echoing down them. In the centre of the room is a large circular stone structure, covered in runes, with large pillars around the edge holding up glowing brown crystals.

The heavy-set mage in the centre of the formation is surrounded by a wall of rotating stone feathers, fending off a small horde of twisted monsters with vaguely humanoid shapes. Mensacus’ victims are crawling on all fours, with jagged bone spurs jutting from pale white skin stretched thin over their bloated muscles.

Emily’s instinctual reaction at the sight of her son’s newest creations is disappointment: despite the strength they display while throwing their disfigured bodies at the earth mage’s defences, their bodies lack the elegance and longevity that was present in his first monster, the wendigo.

‘It’s impressive, but they’re falling apart to maintain that strength,’ she says through their link while killing her momentum and letting her shield continue forward alone. ‘What a shame.’

‘I can do better. Please give me time and a stronger mage to turn, Mother.’

‘We’ll see.’

The flying drill clashes with a wall of stone feathers, releasing a grinding screech as they push against each other. In sync, the moment Emily’s attack collides, Mensacus’ monsters leap against the shield and burst one by one, releasing powerful shockwaves filled with razor-sharp bone shards that shred feathers by the fistful.

The barrier finally disperses as Emily’s drill shatters, revealing the panting figure of another brainwashed fourth circle mage, stripped of their identity and marked as a servant. Emily glances at her system, seeing her machina and stamina dip below the halfway mark, and her mana into the last quarter.

“Let’s wrap this up,” she says, injecting a drop of mana into her voice to make sure it carries to her opponent, who’s still pouring his mana into the centre of the array below him. “I’ve got royals to kill.”

“For the king,” the man facing her spits, seeming to completely believe his own words as the cavern begins rapidly collapsing inwards, the walls charged with earthen mana.

Emily flashes forward, charging her legs with lightning and appearing before the man before he can blink, grabbing his face with her right hand and driving his head into the ground. She cracks the array’s foundation, but a thin layer of stone forms across her opponent’s skin to protect him.

Her left hand locks onto his chest as he lifts his arms, forming stone blades along their length and driving them towards Emily’s torso as she presses against his stone armour. Her fingers buzz with machina, and the stone cracks, caving in and taking several of the mage’s rib bones with it.

The man winces in pain, letting out a choked breath as his arms bounce harmlessly against Emily’s metallic skin. The slot in her palm opens, and a needle fires out, punching through the shattered armour and piercing his flesh, injecting a powerful sedative into his bloodstream.

Emily wraps herself and the struggling mage in a cage of lightning, deactivating her metal connection and casting a bolt through the reinforced stone looming over them, connecting to the open air above before tearing space apart to reach it. She appears on the surface with a thunderclap, grimacing as she checks her mana again and finds it almost depleted.

Releasing a harsh whistle, Emily calls her wolves down from the wall. They leap down, two of them carrying the unconscious fire mage between them, and she directs them to take the other prisoner and head back to Elisime.

She deactivates her lightning connection as her constructs leave, glancing up at the scattered airships still in the air, undamaged by the brief storm that’s now fading and yet to be targeted by the distant railguns. Several of them spot Emily and turn their guns on her again, but most of them are leaving the city’s bounds to try and fight against the mechanical army that’s slowly advancing, turning up the earth around Denros’ trenches and pushing several large, rolling artillery placements that fire devastating shells in a rhythmic beat.

A quick glance over the battlefield as she dances between shells and a few focused beams of mana leaves Emily satisfied, so she turns to the pile of scorched slag where part of the wall used to stand and races forward, only casting a single acceleration spell to coat her legs with charge and still shooting forwards in a hard to trace flash.

She slips through the city’s border, killing a few soldiers, hiding inside the wall to try and cover the breach, with a few shots from her palm before slipping into a tight street between factories to avoid the eyes of the ships above. The rain of attacks doesn’t stop, destroying the buildings around her, but Emily weaves ahead, keeping as covered as possible, and quickly loses the gazes following her.

She immediately draws all of her remaining mana into her circles, covering her signature with machina as she continues to race towards the centre of the city where the royal palace stands. As she runs, Emily reaches into her belt and pulls out a thick, shimmering potion that constantly shifts between colours, from red and blue to green and purple, never staying the same for more than a second.

She holds it in her hand as she turns into a silent residential street with several figures peeking fearfully through the slats covering their windows. She looks at it with a hint of hesitation before gulping it down, listening to the anger telling her it will be worth it and reinforcing the feeling further with machina, draining her reserves faster and faster.

The potion is a recipe she found buried in The Covenant’s library, arrogantly named Goddess’ Blood by the original creator and almost living up to it if it weren’t for the drawbacks Emily is yet to completely remove. It’s made from a blend of magical crystals and the blood of several high-circle beasts, designed to give the drinker a flood of mana to instantly refill their reserves. However, the original would cause the consumer to lose all sense of reason, thanks to the powerful wills left in the blood, and it leaves their mana circuits in pieces, a horrible condition for any mage to fix.

Luckily, Emily has managed to remove the first issue by using her own fourth circle blood as a stabiliser, pouring a large amount of her own lifeforce and mana into the brew, weakening herself at the point of creation instead of consumption. As for the second side-effect, that has been partially resolved by the nature of her expanded Magic Network and her heightened strength and vitality, leaving her to only suffer unavoidable pain for a day or two as she heals, without affecting her casting at all.

The shimmering liquid slips down Emily’s throat with a deceptively sweet taste and, in an instant, it’s broken down, turning into a flood of mana that rushes to her heart to fill her concealed circles. Her veins light up with an iridescent glow, and within a few seconds, her mana returns to full. She starts converting the overflowing energy to machina, directing it towards her cortex for storage as she closes in on her final targets, cowering in their palace.