2053 Best Laid Plans (Part 1)
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'I lack Friya's dimensional awareness but thanks to the staff's enchantments I can still conjure a few enchantments she taught me.' Solus said.
'What the heck are you two talking about and why do I feel left out of this conversation entirely? I'm working my ass for you here.' Crank was really cranky from blocking one bolt of lightning after another and receiving no recognition for his hard work.
'Sorry!' Solus said, suddenly remembering that he was there too. 'How are you doing?'
'Peachy.' He replied. 'Between my armor and earth magic, the lightning barely stings. What was all that stuff about my air mastery about?'
'It was about this!' Solus bolted from Lith's shoulder and into a thundercloud as she took the very same conductive metals that the Hyperion had purified from the soil out of her pocket dimension.
She used them to form a thin mist around her that worked like a lightning rod and drew the full power of the brewing storm against her. The mother of all bolts of lightning erupted from the blackness of the cloud, illuminating the surroundings with the intensity of a second sun.
The stream of electricity was longer and wider than any Divine Beast Lith had ever seen, yet when it enveloped Solus, he felt no fear. The yellow streak in her wings lit up as she used Domination to take control of the natural lightning and make it spin in the form of a ring around her.
'Is she insane?' Crank said. 'Between my affinity toward the earth element and my bloodline abilities I'm confident to survive even something like that, but your friend there is a pipsqueak.
'If she gets so much as grazed by a lightning that strong, the only thing left of her will be her memory.'
'She may not have your raw strength, but she's much smarter.' Lith replied. 'On top of that, being small has its perks, you know?'
The Hyperion was right. Even a veteran Divine Beast like him would have been severely, if not deadly wounded by such a majestic force of nature. Yet Solus had volunteered to go first because she had something better than bloodline abilities by her side.
She had science and Lith's Faraday cage.
Even with Domination and the Sage Staff, controlling the volatile energy of the storm from so close was dangerous, but thanks to the copper mesh she suffered no damage even when she made a mistake.
Solus had placed the ferromagnetic metals outside the cage, using them to both draw more bolts of lightning to her and to form a path where to safely channel the electrical current.
This way, she could bide her time and focus solely to infuse the air element with her willpower until it obeyed her every command.
'Take it, amplify it as much as you can, and then pass it to Lith!' Solu said once the bolt of lightning had assumed a stable and compact form that anyone could safely control before throwing it at the Hyperion.
Due to the limited mana of her blue core, she couldn't empower it anymore by herself. The ring of lightning had already grown so big that it blinded all of her senses, making it hard for her to keep her focus.
Crank cursed in many languages but remained surprised when he noticed that the energy mass opposed no resistance, answering to his will like a loyal dog. Solus' Dominance was still in effect and she used it from a distance to support him.
The Hyperion used his mastery over earth magic to enhance the magnetic field of the metals and draw even more bolts of lightning. The ring grew in size again until it formed a perfect sphere that shrouded the Hyperion from head to toe.
'This is amazing! I'm naturally attuned to the earth element, but I would've never thought of using it like this by myself. Two opposing elements can actually work together!' He thought as the power of the energy mass grew until it was almost too much to control,
Then, he passed it unto Lith who used his yellow eye and his own Domination to put an even stronger leash on the natural lightning.
'I wish I had the time to boost it a bit more, but right now speed is of the essence.' The electrical current flowed into his right arm and came out of his left hand and yellow eye, split into six smaller streams.
They struck at as many seven-man units, each one hosting one of the remaining Divine Beast capable of using Doom Tide and in charge of steering the snowstorm, tipping the scale in favor of the Kingdom even more.
Those struck by natural lightning died on the spot. Some managed to conjure Silverwing's Bastion just to see it crumble. The anti-Guardian spell allowed the Divine Beasts and those who had a natural resistance to the air element to survive, but only for a few seconds.
The sudden attack had disrupted their formation and left on them a residual charge, turning them into living lightning rods. The Council's elders didn't miss the opening and used their mastery over the air element to kill the survivors without wasting a drop of mana.
The storm was supposed to be Thrud's trump card yet Lith was turning it against her champions. Just a handful of seconds had passed since he had unleashed Ruin but it would have been enough to turn the tides of the battle.
It was supposed to be enough.
"Enough!" Iata the Sekhmet dived from above at Lith while he was still catching his breath. "First you cripple our army and now our storm. You are a Scourge to everything good in this world and I won't allow you to ruin months of hard work!"
After running away, she and the rest of the Life Maelstrom users had emptied their mana organs, splitting the silver lightning between the other Beasts and the arrays. The former would allow them to fight on par with the Council while the latter would ensure that the storm advanced at full speed even during the battle.
After that, Iata had kept herself hidden, using her hard light constructs from a distance to shield her allies and heal them. With two members of her unit dead, joining the fight directly was suicidal.
The fight with Lith had drained too much of her strength and without Life Maelstrom, all the Sekhmet could do was support her allies and be ready to take the place of one of the fallen.
The moment she had seen the Tiamat's coming, she had expected him to follow a similar strategy. She had lain in ambush, waiting for the opportunity to kill him and even the score.
Iata had witnessed Solus killing Leari and had faced both the Tiamat and the Hyperion.
She wasn't confident in defeating any of them even when she still had Life Maelstrom to spare, facing all three of them without it would have been just stupid.
Now, however, Verhen was completely open and weakened from channeling so much power through his body, the golden knight wobbled in mid-air from exhaustion, and the Hyperion was distracted.
Iata would have called it the perfect opportunity but the cost that it came at and seeing the True Queen's plan being hindered so much made it anything but perfect.
