The golden light of the Paladins' Yellow Aura flared, momentarily blinding Kaelen. The Gravity-Rune clamped down, crushing him to the freezing metal of the Sky-Frost Bridge. His lead club slipped from his grasp. Six Magistone-armored figures floated, glowing, their faces hidden behind visors. Gimli-Var, the traitorous Dwarf, had vanished behind a pillar, his cruel laughter echoing.
"The Orc is bound!" the lead Paladin boomed, his voice reverberating with Aether. "Target the Vanara! He relies on fluid movement!"
Tari was a blur of caramel skin and brown hair, a counterpoint to the Paladins' rigid formation. Three Paladins, their movements precise, began to chant. Mana-circles materialized around Tari, trying to predict his next move, to bind him.
"He tends to over-rotate on his left heel when feinting a high kick!" Gimli-Var's voice, now crystal clear through the Paladins' comms, sliced through the air. "His broken flow makes him unpredictable, but his base stances are still classic Shenzhou!"
Tari, who had been setting up a deceptive low sweep, was forced to twist, breaking his own rhythm. A Paladin's fist, encased in glowing Magistone, slammed into his side. He gasped, but used the momentum to spin, his staff a blur. He wasn't trying to kill; he was trying to disrupt. Each strike was designed to break their concentration, to rattle their "Mana-Circles" before they solidified.
Meanwhile, Nyra clung desperately to the side of the magi-train, her ninth life flashing before her eyes. The train, now an open wound of golden light, sped across the bridge. She could hear Gimli-Var's voice, a sickeningly calm drone, directing the Paladins.
"The Nekojin uses her claws to bypass rune-plates! She can dismantle a B-grade lock in under five seconds!"
A Paladin detached from Tari's fight, hovering towards Nyra. He raised an armored hand, beginning to draw a "Shatter-Rune." Nyra snarled, her whiskers twitching. She was fast, but she couldn't break a S-rank Magistone armor with her bare claws. This was it. Life number nine.
"Tari! The Dwarf is giving them everything!" Kaelen bellowed, struggling against the Gravity-Rune. The pressure on his chest felt like a crushing mountain. He could feel his own Aether-scar ache, the void where his power used to be. He was useless.
"Focus on the main caster!" Tari yelled back, parrying a lunging staff. He danced, a graceful blur, but he was tiring. The Paladins' armor shrugged off his strikes, and their organized Aether-strikes were slowly chipping away at his stamina. He felt the cold seeping into his meridians.
"The Vanara has a weakness to sustained cold! It freezes his internal Qi flow!" Gimli-Var's voice chirped, followed by a burst of crossbow fire. He wasn't aiming at the Paladins. He was targeting the silk threads Madara was using to tether herself and the others to the underside of the bridge.
One thread snapped. Madara cried out as she swung wildly. The bridge itself groaned, not from the train's weight, but from a deeper, more primal vibration. The ice beneath them began to spiderweb with cracks.
The Paladins, momentarily distracted by the bridge's tremors, paused their assault. This was the opening. Tari coiled, ready to launch a desperate, all-or-nothing strike, even as he knew it would likely fail. Kaelen strained, his Orcish strength momentarily overwhelming the Gravity-Rune, pushing himself up an inch.
But then, the true sound began. Not the wind, not the train, not the Paladins. It was a roar from below. A sound that wasn't sound, but a feeling. It rattled their teeth, shook the very Aether in the air.
The ground erupted.
Oba Zimbila's Ascent
With a thunderous crack that split the Sky-Frost Bridge like fragile glass, a massive, obsidian hand—scaled and multi-jointed—punched through the ice directly beneath the magi-train.
The train, its momentum instantly arrested, buckled and then shattered. Magistone armor plating shrieked as it tore apart. The Grace-Bolts, contained in reinforced boxes, spilled out onto the exposed Miasma-infused ice.
A colossal, twelve-foot figure, sculpted from living obsidian, rose from the depths of the Labyrinth. Oba Zimbila. His movements were not violent; they were simply inevitable. His multi-pronged rhino beetle horn glowed with contained Miasma. His four wings, the hind-pair shimmering with Prismatic White, unfurled slowly, pushing aside chunks of the collapsing bridge.
The Paladins, their Yellow Auras dimming under the sheer pressure of his presence, froze. Their Magigrams flickered, their Orgon organs seizing up from the Null-Frequency that Oba Zimbila was passively emitting. Their Power Armor, designed to filter Qivittoq's Miasma, began to groan and corrode under the direct assault of his raw aura.
"What in Omnione's name is that?!" the lead Paladin choked, his Aether-amplified voice cracking with fear.
Zimbila didn't look at them. His Prismatic eyes, swirling vortices of light, scanned the debris of the train. He saw the Grace-Bolts, small, glowing marbles scattered across the ice. He saw the faint, desperate Aether-signatures within them—the resonance of stolen love.
His gaze then swept across the bridge, past the frozen Paladins, to the hidden figure of Gimli-Var. The Dwarf, who had been aiming his crossbow at Madara's last remaining thread, found his entire body locked in a paralysis he couldn't comprehend. His hidden transponder, still signaling the Church, pulsed wildly, then melted into slag.
Zimbila raised one immense hand, not in anger, but in a gesture of profound disappointment. He wasn't focused on the Paladins. He was focused on the source of the agony.
"You traffic in souls," Oba Zimbila's voice rumbled, not through sound waves, but directly into the minds of every living being on that fractured bridge. "You steal the Love from Omnione's children."
His Prismatic hind-wings flared, sending a wave of pure, unfiltered Aether across the landscape. The Grace-Bolts on the ice began to glow, then shatter, releasing their trapped spiritual energy in a silent, beautiful explosion of multi-colored light.