Manaships clashed in the air just outside Amaranth, and the fog-strewn battlefield was swiftly becoming a no-man’s land.

“Kinetic Shockstorm!”

Spears of blue force tore through barriers and hulls with equal ease, punching into the Hierocratic cutters like battering rams. Even down on the field, Felix could identify Darius’ commander’s voice from the flagship. The prows of all the ships were fitted with two types of weaponry, each developed from their top Inscriptionists’ personal Skills.

Aboard the ships, Legionnaires manned the cannons on the decks, firing them one after the other into the regenerating horde and the other Manaships by turns. Bright blue force bolts erupted the earth into fountains of stone and dirt, while burning shells of fire ricocheted off the wards across the Shining Walls.

Shadows cut off the sun, filling the sky with godslaved flesh as Noctis’ puppets descended on the ships. They swarmed the decks, only to be cut back by well-oiled tactics. The dark pressed close, maws wide, but the Legion proved a difficult meal.

Dozens of the enemy craft fell in the first few seconds as all thirty of Felix’s ships loosed their cannons, the Hierocratic engines catching fire before careening into the earth or walls.

But the cutters were the least of the ships against them, now.

The Ahkestrian galleons were mighty, but their equals were already pushing their broadsides through the city barriers. The Hierocratic galleons took shelter behind the city's wards, shifting themselves broadside so that only their Manacannons stuck outside of Amaranth's protective dome. Golden beams spat out from the city, raining down on Felix’s ships through the fog, tearing across their enchanted hulls as the pilots of House Iretus engaged in evasive maneuvers. In the seconds since their arrival, explosions tore up the battlefield around Felix, and they would only increase.

Even with the Tree, as long as the ships can cower behind that barrier, we’re at a disadvantage.

The portal had worked just as the Grim Nightshade had promised, bringing his army to Amaranth’s walls, but it wasn’t enough alone. No matter how much counter fire Felix’s people sent off, Amaranth could muster more ships than Felix could count. Their soldiers and the godslaved minions outnumbered them by one to ten at the minimum. His people were dying. The ground was littered with the corpses of Nagafolk. The Deepking smashed against the city, wiping out entire fields of godslaved minions with a swipe of his immense tail. It wasn't enough.

Not yet.

Felix gritted his teeth and shoved his anger back. He needed to change the flow of battle. The Manaships and Nagafolk were handling their tasks. Everyone else had to do theirs.

Yin swooped down from the sky, his eyes unaffected by Murk Enclosure that so confused the enemy.

“It’s time to go.” Vess leaned close, grabbing him by his jacket and planting a kiss on his lips. “Good luck.”

"Right back at ya, lady. Keep those kids alive.”

She grinned at him before leaping astride the Dawn Drake's back. They both joined Beef as he rumbled past, riding atop the subway-sized bulk of his Multipede. Archie, Hallow, and the four Eidolon Exults rode shotgun, and the latter gave Felix a grim salute as the entire creature shimmered with a faint song. Together, they vanished into the fray, heading towards the city.

At his back, Felix could all but feel the Risi rumble out of the Aestus Autus Anima, their preternatural cold announcing them better than the hunting horns they blared. Evie led them, riding at the forefront of a fleet of chariots led by bull-sized Hoarhounds. Battlelord Ari and Chancellor Kimaris were at her heels, followed by Warriors, Witches, Berserkers, Chainslaughters, and Riotrime Charioteers. They plowed into the Putrescents of the rot god, freezing their fungal spores before lopping apart their gooey hides with axes hewn from black iron.

“Freeze and smash, boys!” Evie howled.

The giants howled back.

Felix's first task was to clear the way for the ships.

Felix rushed forward in their wake, letting the ice fog rise up around himself before tearing across the battlefield. Arms lifted, he barreled through monsters, tearing their flimsy hides apart with sheer momentum as his Agility and Strength flared. Fog billowed around him, trailing in streamers after the obliterated parts of godslaved minions that got in his way. His movement was as easy as breathing, Stride of the King flaring in his chest and allowing him to flow like water through enemies and explosions alike.

His intense strength, unhindered by having to hold back for the sake of his friends, was now unleashed around him. He splattered everything that came across his way, his fists driving holes through the hardest of chiton and bursting the stoutest of limbs, until he fetched up against an absolutely huge Ettin Wolf. Felix skidded to a stop, struck by the creature.

“You absolute unit,” he muttered.

The Wolves were strange. He'd seen quite a few across the field, but this one was different. Instead of two heads, it bore three, and it was entirely clad in heavy blue metal barding. Saddled across its back was a Paladin with a long halberd and an impressive-looking plumed helmet, all the same azure hue.

"Fall before the Champion of the Twins!" the Paladin cried.

“Not a Vessel, but a Champion? Interesting.” He took a single step, but before he could move further, Evie cut in.

"Don't mind me," she cried, her chain flinging outward. It caught the Ettin Wolf around one of its necks before she yanked hard. The creature yelped like a dog reaching the end of its rope and fell forward.

"Bad doggy!"

Spikes on her chain burst outward, striking sparks off its bestial gorget and spraying ichor into the air. The Ettin Wolf sized the chain with its other heads, chewing into the metal fruitlessly before the Paladin leveraged his halberd and hurled it free.

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“The gods will be free!” the Paladin shouted, and the spaces in his helmet shone with light.

Evie spun her chain, catching the heavy iron balls the Paladin hurled their way and redirecting them into the ground.

"You handle this." Felix leaped into the sky, cratering the ground behind him.

"Sure will!” Evie was already unsheathing her second chain. "I won't even need to wait for the Berserkers!"

Adamant Discord!

Lightning spiked across his fist as he pulled on the connections he bore to the sky itself.

Shadowbeasts lunged for him, but Felix twisted himself through their grasping talons, scorching them in his wake. He reoriented, hurtling toward the walls. Toward the wards.

The Hierocracy refused to make it easy, however. Felix rolled like lightning between the burning rays of the enemy ships that filled the ground just outside the city walls. Fire bloomed a hundred feet from the earth washing the afternoon with sunset hues, and forcing Felix to kick off shaped air platforms to avoid the worst of the burning sweep.

He couldn’t avoid them all.

Empyrean Embrace!

The Manacannon winked out as he devoured its beam, the wards on the Manaship just beyond the Shining Walls whining and popping audibly. His Will clamped down on the mechanisms, traveling up the beam’s trajectory before it was dispersed by the wards. Smoke poured from the galleon but the crimson-cloaked crew pivoting every other cannon toward their new target.

Six beams screamed across the sky.

Sonata of Dominance is level 136!

Felix seized the light and the fire, Will and Intent bending them all away from himself—directly into the path of a hundred flocking shadowbeasts. They were consumed by the radiance, and the ship whined before each of its cannons bucked with uncontrollable feedback. The galleon rocked back, its keel riddled with embers beyond the barrier.

The way was clear…save for an absolute behemoth between Felix and the walls.

It uncoiled in the air, revealing a winged form that was a mish-mash of too many upsetting bugs to count. Centipede, beetle, and mantis joined together with horned pincers and clamp-blades for arms. It was the size and length of a train, its segmented body coursing with bloody lightning. Its shadow-slick carapace caught in the frenetic light of battle, its wings buzzing with the roaring sound of the bloodstorm itself.

It was mighty, pushing toward what Felix understood as Paragon Tier…but its face hadn’t collapsed into itself. This was no Vessel of Noctis, though it bore all the signs of her power as well as Vellus’.

"Fear me, Fiend! For I am the Champion of the Night itself!” The Paladin on the creature's back was wearing a suit of armor that looked as if it had flowed from the enormous bug to hold him, and bore in his hands a lance of sparkling blood-red Mana crystal.

"Another Champion?" Felix asked, holding onto a bolt of lightning. “Do I really not rate a Vessel?”

He hurled himself forward, accelerating fast enough that the air puckered and sound burst ahead of him in a wall of condensation. His punch struck the Champion in its chest, sending a rippling impact of blood-red lightning across its twitching limbs. Unlike any other, however, the creature did not burst or break. A bit of ichor dribbled from the impact, but the wound healed in moments.

Huh.

"Is that all you have?" the Paladin snarled before thrusting his blood-red lance.

Felix dodged aside as a rush of liquid light poured past his position, searing the edges of his coat. The Champion's rear end swung toward him, a barbed tail thrusting for Felix's middle. He kicked off another thickened panel of air, interposing it between himself and the beast, and its attack merely shattered his shaping.

They’re stronger than I expected! Felix flexed his hands, his talons growing. It seemed he would have to get a little serious.

"Don't bother!" screeched a voice, and Pit dropped from the sky in a blur of lightning. His bus-sized body slammed atop the Champion of Noctis, and a flurry of claw, beak, and sparking Mantle sent the creature hurtling downward by a hundred feet.

Pit stretched his wings, air marshaling under all four. "I got this.”

Scylla flew down after, wind gathering at points along her pale wings. "We got this.”

"Kick their asses, bud." Felix grasped the connection between him and his distant targets, aiming himself at the wall as his Companion dove down toward the Champion. "Harn! On me!”

Adamant Discord!

Madness had encompassed the Shining Walls. Hierei Kodal stood still within the command tower, observing the reports from what lay beyond the fogged barriers. A few brave scouts had waded into the frenetic battle, and fewer still had returned, but they all told of bloody chaos beyond the walls.

Filthy serpents were cutting down children of Light. The godslaves had gone wild, murdering everything within their reach, including one another, as they surged toward that Tree and the Manaships raining fire from the sky. Despite their numbers, despite their Authority here on the threshold of the Hierocracy…the Fiend was still alive.

Numb, Kodal checked his other reports, handed hastily to him from scouts. Lieutenants sent with small squads had been dispatched further into the city, each holding requests for reinforcements. Hierei Quist and Kellen weren’t answering—all he had before him were confusing missives about collapsing streets across every district.

We need more soldiers! They needed more forces here immediately. If the Fiend gains a true foothold, the ritual will—

"My lord!" Finks cried. "The roots!"

Above Kodal, the thickened roots of the Spirit Tree rose hundreds of strides above the battlefield, growing so fast it was like they were moving. It stretched, thousands of tendrils clutching against the invisible dome of Amaranth’s ultimate protections, until rainbow hues rippled across its surface.

Kodal flinched back, his Affinity torn by a terrible, haunting wail. It was a sound that he could feel in his bones more than he could hear with his ears.

A dozen Manaships—galleons all—fired upon the roots. Upon the wards. They shivered—flexed—and Kodal half stood up, hand on his sword. Despite the chaos, silence clutched at him.

A single whisper slipped through.

“Empyrean Embrace.”

Ephemeral teeth seized the roots, bolts, and ward all at once. They snapped shut, savaging the wards—

The Shining Walls of Amaranth shattered.

Kodal threw up his arms, a blazing sword lifted in a high guard that cut through the debris. The fog surged inward, rolling over the walls and down into the city like a waterfall, carried by stormwinds that burst their windows and sent the command tower into a treacherous creaking sway.

All his allies were gone, blasted through walls and along the battlements. Only Kodal still stood, his sword the lone Light among the deepening fog. Ahead of him, lit by the blasphemous Tree, blue eyes burned among the heavy features of a dark knight. Claws of a beast arced from his giant hands, and his gargantuan chest was aflame with red-gold as he stood astride an implacable root.

"Hierei Kodal. Are you stronger than the last one I killed?"

The Fiend landed on the battlements, and the pressure of his Spirit laid low what Inquisitors remained. His fangs were bright against his armor.

"I hope not. I'm in a hurry."