Noble felt that she should have seen this coming.
When he had come to save her, Mordret had come out of the reflection of her sword.
Why wouldn't he be able to watch them from the mirror-like windows as they moved and then corner them when he finally brought them down to earth?
Naeve slid to a stop and furrowed his brow. "How did he…"
"The reflections," Noble answered in the second between Master Neris's arrival and his attack.
Thousands of needles formed on his skin, making him look like a human urchin. They shot out in a poisonous spray.
Noble turned her head just in time for the needles to bounce off her helmet as she mentally diverted as many as she could sense.
A large swath of the perilous pins jammed into the ground or surrounding buildings, but some still found human hosts.
Gripping his sword, Naeve rushed forward to take out the possessed Master, but Mordret anticipated his swing.
Neris stepped aside, blocking his hit with a sword made of the same spines he had just flung in every direction. In a blur, the two warriors exchanged strikes before Neris disengaged. He backed up, preparing for another spray across his victims.
The vessel's goal wasn't to kill Naeve. He only needed to stall them long enough for the other vessels to arrive. So instead, Neris targeted the weaker members of the group.
Letting go of her daughter's hand, Dawn raced toward her husband and the volley of spines. All around Noble, the people ducked and covered their ears. Sensing his wife's approach, Naeve instinctively rolled to one side.
Dawn opened her mouth, and a sound blaring louder than any siren filled the area, breaking every window and pulverizing the onslaught into a fine powder.
Noble covered her ears too late. Releasing her Zenith, she gripped her head. She could only imagine what the man on the receiving end of the attack must have felt.
The purplish smoke hung in the air for a moment, obscuring the people's view from Mordret and Naeve.
Rather than run headlong into the poisonous air without any hearing, Noble used her second sight to view the struggle. Naeve had rolled between two of the structures right before his wife's less-than-melodic outburst, and now he emerged in the haze, holding his breath.
Neris saw him at the last moment, turning and punching down into Neave's helmet when the man came at him from behind. Naeve's blade came down at Neris's ankle, suddenly becoming much heavier in the wielder's hand. It struck the vessel's armor, piercing it with the force of a mountain.
Neris cried out as he brought down his sword across Naeve's back. The Saint of the House of Night crumpled under the pressure of his blade and slid across the pavement with his sword.
Neris staggered back to get his footing before raising his weapon to finish what he started.
The sword flashed as the sun finally broke through the haze, but instead of a look of triumph over his foe, Neris wore a look of confusion. Looking down, he saw a blade sticking through his chest from behind. The Zenith was dripping with purple, not unlike the world around him, making it completely lusterless.
How else would Mordret have missed a piece of metal hurtling towards his back?
A smile curved onto the vessel's face even as the poison coursed through his veins.
"Well played."
The vessel's eyes dimmed as Naeve's sword rebounded and tore into the flesh beneath Neris's helmet. The sound of glass filled the air as Neris's head separated from his body.
'He...he abandoned it?'
Noble didn't quite understand what had occurred, but she was sure that Mordret had left the body before Naeve's hit.
More than that, Mordret was...amused?
That didn't seem right. Nothing about this did.
Had he given up the vessel because Noble had forced him to, or because he no longer found it useful? The maniac had at least thirteen Saints in his morbid collection, so what was a Master by comparison?
Was this all some twisted game to him?
Noble felt sick to her stomach as she dismissed her sword. She would have to process this all later—what else was new…
Right now they were still being chased by a fiendish saint and his crony son, or at least that is who they used to be. Now they were two-thirds of the vessels that had been sent to trap and murder their former clansmen.
The remnant of the House of Night hurried to regroup as the debris behind them was carelessly thrust aside.
Freed from its previous target, the Zenith shot like an arrow at the possessed Saint.
Behind it, a golden Symncus materialized, his bulging muscles pushing against the ground with all their might.
The blade dashed through countless limbs, creating a clear path for the echo to bound forward with relentless determination.
It wasn't until the pair made it through the watery vines that they parted ways. The sword went directly for Saint Vorn.
But Helios lunged right at the Awakened who had once been his son.
'Get him.' Although Noble could not look back, she could sense what was happening. Now that the windows were broken all around them by Dawn's scream, limiting Mordret's viewpoint even more was key.
So even though Vorn was the bigger threat, Noble sent her Zenith to distract the Saint while her echo went after the easier target.
The younger man's eyes opened wide as Helio's form broke free from the mayhem. He wielded a whip to tame the beast, but his cord caught in the Symncus's mouth.
Claws ripped into the Awakened's throat before he could cry out. The sound of glass filled the air a second time.
Noble wished that she could share Helios's vision like she could for Nectar. Even without that visual, the floating Saint felt another of Mordret's emotional signatures fade from the area.
'And then there was one.' Noble knew they wouldn't be able to take down the other Saint without heavy casualties both to the people and the surrounding area. Already, they were creating a wake of chaos that would take some time for this part of the city to rebuild.
They needed to keep moving. At the front of the group, Naeve continued to guide them.
'Helios, make sure no one falls behind.'
The golden creature obeyed. Soon, two of the mundane humans were on his back, clinging to him for dear life.
As precious seconds passed, Noble alternated between checking on Naeve, monitoring the group, and helping Aether delay Vorn at the rear. The last part was the most difficult. Having relinquished control of the Zenith to wreak its poisonous havoc by levitation, Noble called on her Paradox Fang.
The weapon was not long enough to slice through the watery tentacles, but it could pierce the limbs and release its insidious power in that small area. As a result, the columns of water were constantly in need of healing from the holes and cuts.
However, Mordret never wavered. He bore down on them like a tidal wave about to overtake a hapless lifeboat, but somehow the group just barely maintained their lead ahead of the coming doom.
Just when Noble thought they would not make it, they turned the corner.
"There!"