With a grunt, Rua hit the stone floor the deeper chambers, his vision going red as his life bar and hit points took a sharp decline from the blast wave and the fall. Not giving it any more mind than he had to, the feral swordsman shoved himself off the ground, dipping and skipping away as rubble collapsed around him.
Ducking away into an alcove, Rua took the moment to catch his breath. He had spotted Charon-Ur in the fall, but now the game had changed. He'd have to play it carefully from here on out. Sweeping his gaze around, he smiled grimly as his eyes adjusted to the darkness. Now it was time for a game of cat and mouse. But which of them would be the cat?
Only one way to find out. With a grunt the swordsman pushed off the wall, letting his heightened strength carry him deeper into the temple, his footsteps reverberating through this twisted mausoleum.
===Cher Plek, Contested Airspace===
The Warlord wasn't the only one to move into action when the
Dauntless was shot out of the sky. Within the hour, another airship had appeared in the distance. The
Wolfram's arrowhead profile was a familiar sight to both Stamarian military and Korin guerrilla alike. Now it hung menacingly in the sky, the runes running along the length of the twin tapered spires carried beneath it alight with powerful energy, waiting to be tapped and unleashed.
The White Devil sat on the command chair of the airship, a frown etched on his face. They had come here to begin tapping into the black market's information brokers, to send trusted ones on leads for the Arcanum Relics, and others to find information on sightings of Kasra, only to receive the distress calls about the attack.
"We shouldn't go much farther unless we want to wind up like the
Dauntless, sir," said the helmsman. "The Korin are getting pretty damn daring, if they're ambushing the shipping lanes like this."
"We don't have time to play around with them," the Devil replied. "Two--no, three Paragon are all that's needed for this operation. We'll have them hunt down the battery and destroy it."
"Should we look for survivors?"
"General Becker will be handling that. You can keep a low-level scry open for it, but it's a lower priority," he commanded. "Ready the Sphere team."
Minutes later, a clearing underneath the ship came alight with a complex runic circle emanating a crimson light. A duplicate of it swept upwards, particles of magic spreading and swirling between the two as they condensed into three humanoid figures.
When the light cleared, three players dashed into the forest--one, a tall man clad in white armor, a blonde ponytail streaming behind him, and a massive partisan in hand, its crystalline blade gleaming in the sunlight. To his right, another man, his armor a menacing black hidden within a torn cloak the color of blood. Claw-like shields were on either side of him, attached to the armored limbs of an Extension. To the white warrior's left, a young girl, shorter than both, clad in a white uniform highlighted in light plates of green. Her blue-silver hair cut short, and a mischievious smile on her face, she kept up with her teammates easily, a long katar with a blade lined in a poisonous green was held at her side.
They flitted into the foliage, and disappeared, stalking the fanatics of Korinus.
===The Lodge===
Atalanta luckily managed to keep a straight face and not broadcast her surprised realization.
That's what that old man must've been talking about, she thought. She was familiar with her namesake's legend, but usually when talk of virginity came up around her, she thought otherwise. But no one here could know that she...
Well, no matter.
"It is a little creepy. I don't care much for having some in-game prophet linking me up to some fanciful story for the game's best gear," she replied to Ginther. "Whatever's going on, we should get to the bottom of it quickly. There's at least six prophecies, judging by those two, and one of them involves us. There's got to be more to this, and I kinda doubt we'll like it when we find out what it is."
You better find me something useful, Victor, she hoped.