They formed a circle around the tower, with the primus' occupying three equidistant points and the rest standing between them, cordon split by the various Tyr's. Doing their best to spread their power and ability equally throughout the line. In the time left to them, a swampy moat was dug at the outer edge of the flat parcel of land, tiered in layers. A muddy, spike ridden expanse of funnel shaped earthworks that they could close the edges of and turn into makeshift choke points in the event that the numbers of the enemy grew too great to handle.

Tyr was calm enough, he felt a bit dead to all of the rush in that moment, not particularly concerned with anything but stopping it. From his point of view, it felt like a character shift, he'd been apathetic for so long but here he was - standing beside primus', multiversal clones of himself, shit - his mother! The woman who was supposed to be dead, he'd dedicated his formative years to avenging her and here she was - and she'd barely addressed him. Perhaps it was that, the rush, all of these revelations at once bringing him to the point of dizziness, at least the act of fighting felt familiar to him - this was too much, all at once. He could see it in the others, in any case, how they'd shaken their heads and chosen to ignore the wild whirl of information.

The world had been, in his mind, simple for so long. Now it was complicated, esoteric, mystery after mystery swarming from gods knew where and not a single one of them seemed to have an answer. Not yet, anyways, but he knew that he'd get to the bottom of it eventually. It felt odd, again, somewhere along the line he'd started caring. It was a conclusion he came to with any sort of comfort, gritting his teeth and gripping his sword, hoping that the world didn't end so that he could chase down the truth. No longer was his mind solely concerned with becoming stronger, he yearned for true understanding - swearing internally that he'd find it.

All they could do was wait as the fog closed in, skittering shapes and shadows just beyond the veil, swirling about. All an illusion, Octavian was sure of it, there was no 'space' beyond this fog, it was just a thick layer of reactive void. The eye of a hurricane, some had called it, but there was no true storm beyond it. It shrunk and distorted reality, nothing was on the other side, a literal shelf where reality itself ended. Well... Nothing, everything, cold empty formless space. He found himself questioning the nature of space as an element of the material universe. That void beyond the bounds of the sky of their own world. Ragnar had said they came from that sky, but they'd forgotten how, why, or the other things and places that existed out there. Trying to engineer an answer, some explanation for the devolution of man. The nexus towers and the phenomena of dungeons, ark's and whatever lay beyond the fog to the west on the lost continent. Centuries of research, and he'd never shared his findings, if there were any to be found.

“Incoming!” A popping spark, a faint rippling on the surface was their warning that something was coming through. Materializing in a form that most suited a material dimension. The structure towering over them made grinding noise, almost like the rumbling of cogs or gears in a clock tower. Tick, tock. Tick, tock. Tyr shivered. Tick, tock. Something about the way that sound clicked in his ears. Reminding him of a conversation he'd long ago.

A wide snout burst through the barrier, a hulking monstrosity standing at thirty feet tall, though it did not stand. It flew, or rather swam through the air, unleashing an eardrum popping trumpet, maw splitting wide with enough clamor to shake the earth beneath it.

“A whale?” Girshan asked. It certainly looked like one, at first. Over a hundred feet long with yet more of it coming through the storm. A twisted body of chitinous plates and flailing appendages hanging off it like a lion with a mane of serpents. It had no eyes, a fanged maw inside its mouth, teeth like a lamprey and a horrifying pressure rolling off it like nothing Tyr had ever felt. Only inferior to a gods, he thought, but the creature felt different. Off. It's aura lacked violence of any kind, paying no attention to the bevy of attacks striking its flank. Only existing to move forward, incapable of independent thought.

Smaller versions of the thing, like calf's following their mother on a grazing came next, dozens of them. Not much larger than a drawn carriage, but all were unique in appearance. Bearing only the slightest similarities to bear testament to their relationship. Overlong fangs and malformed arms, tusks and dorsal fins split by a dozen mouths. One was nothing more than a vaguely fish shaped amalgamation of unblinking eyes. Darkbeasts. Mana warped life that could only be found in the cursed lands. Things that by the nature and rules of their world should not exist. But here in this alien atmosphere, they were more at home than anywhere else.

The big one was for the primus', the smaller ones for the Tyr's facing in that direction. As for the rest of them, the fogmen would come. Not soaring through the air, but more real and less indistinct in form. With ridged mouths and flat rectangular heads. Beady black eyes splayed too widely apart, their four fingered hands and footless legs. Scrawny, like humanoids that hadn't eaten in weeks, their hides a light blue patterned with bits of white and gray. Each and every one of them was perfectly identical.

They made no noise, simply sprinting as fast as their legs could take them toward the tower, no longer trailing those strings connecting them to the storm.

“Prepare yourselves!” Signe shouted, halberd held level at her side in preparation of a vicious chopping swing. It'd come, long before the fogmen met their line, a crackling storm of white energy fraying at reality itself and rocketing forward to send a hundred of them back to where they'd come with a calamitous crashing.

Vidarr burst into action, a booming peal of thunder his herald, shooting through the air and shouting in the old tongue. The whale made no move to stop him, nor did it turn away, simply meandering on through the sky with a total lack of concern. Even when his thunderclap of a landing split its chitinous plates, it kept moving. The blood coming from the spiderweb of cracks on its flank floating off and similarly content to ignore natural order, rising skyward in globules of blackish purple liquid giving little heed to gravity. Vidarr was shocked at the durability of this creatures hide. Harder than the stone of mountains, and yet more flexible. He hammered its flank again, pounding it until it begun to crack and split, shattered bits floating off into the nether. He wasn't the strongest primus, but he had awakened long ago and did not understand how it could be so difficult, he'd put everything into that initial strike and it had barely reacted. Any other earth born monster would have been shredded to pieces by the wash of spira alone...

Vidarr scrambled about the wide body of the thing searching for a weak spot. There were gaps in the plates, but beneath them he only felt springy, dense flesh. It had no organs, no brain, only a cavernous maw ending in a spot of nothing at its center. A ball of dense, pure mana too deep to penetrate to and destroy before it reached the tower. All the while, Jartor and Octavian were doing the same as he was.

It frustrated him to no end. A worthy opponent might have excited him, but the thing just ignored him. Sailing on as the others engaged its lesser kin. Vidarr raised his hammer into the air, a bolt of lightning falling from the heavens to land on its blocky surface, filling it with blue light until the metal itself seemed to glow from within. He was impressed at the make of these hammers. To think they could keep their form not only under his strength, but also when conducting his aspect.

That was precisely their purpose. Tyr wanted someone who could push the capacity of his runes beyond their limit as a challenge to himself. And Vidarr served as the perfect test subject, unafraid of damaging the weapon if it was for a good cause. The steel warped as more power flooded into it. Dozens of tendrils of lightning striking down at him like a rod made for collecting the power of the storm, letting the last fall alongside his hammer to strike at one at the side of the beasts head.

Jartor joined him on the other end, reaching deep of his aspect, breaking the sound barrier with the head of his maul. Like beating on either side of an anvil, Vidarr's rapidly crumbling hammer crunched into the beasts skull and flattened it – unable to keep pace with Jartor's incredible strength and eating the inequity of the force coming from the other side. Sending him careening toward the ground and forcefully buried into the surface. With no head left to the creature to stand on, Jartor fell with significantly more grace to the ground.

It trumpeted again, its skin splitting and roiling as eyes opened all over its body. Chitin became melted wax, moist popping noises coming from each new eye, split wide and obviously in wroth.

Finally, perhaps unfortunately, it recognized the ants below it as threats. Unfortunately for it, even as it turned to bury the others under its bulk, Octavian was there to follow up. Hands empty of any weapon, he hovered in the air for a moment, shrouded in ethereal emerald light. Hands clasped together in preparation for a hammer blow of his own, a tower shield of immense proportions materializing in the air above the creature. Pounding down to squash it flat with a meteoric crash. Killing it instantly, but the smaller kin all around it were driven into action, turning from their path toward the tower and charging at the others. All three primus' rallied to provide what support they could, knocking away the darkbeasts and sending their formation into disarray.

Vidarr with his blistering storm, Jartor with brute strength, and Octavian with manifested spira constructs and impenetrable barriers cast of spira – the odd spell in between. They were all nervous, none of them had fought a creature so incredibly resilient as that, something superior to a leviathan or higher undead. It did not bode well that the first stage of the attack had contained such an impressive foe, when it was clear things could only get worse from here.

On the other side of the battlefield, not so far away, things were even more confusing. The fogmen had charged, reaching the first trap moat, and they'd almost immediately stopped. Freezing in place and turning their backs on the defenders to stare at the newest arrivals behind them. More darkbeasts, but only in the same way a 'monster' was a 'monster'. Terrestrial ones, all more twisted than the last. Bladed spiders limbs rising up to end in the torso of a twisted and mummified husk of a humanoid. It's distended mouth split in a silent scream of agony. They were a lot like chimeras, various animal parts blended together at random, with some aberrant nature, to make it impossible to name them something as mundane as 'lion', 'spider', or 'whale'. A lamb with eight eyes and twelve stilted insect legs bawling and crushing anything that happened to have the misfortune of crossing its path.

Tyr followed his mothers lead for the time being, as did the others, to charge beyond the barriers would be unwise. These enemies seemed to have no capacity for a long range assault and were animal in intelligence at best. Thus they waited, waited as the horde of darkbeasts launched themselves across the snowy ground, and all the while – the fogmen waited. Stock still and ghastly in appearance, just... Waiting.

For what?

Tyr squinted, mystified by what he was seeing. Before his very eyes, the fogmen had leaped forward in perfect synchronicity at some silent command, throwing themselves into the black tide. Both sides engaging one another and ignoring all else. More of each creature began to pour out of the fog, turning immediately upon one another with an inhuman ferocity. The fogmen were many, thousands of them all around, but by and large – the darkbeasts were stronger. Tougher, with a biology that was harder to inflict crippling wounds on. The entire field devolving into a melee as the the thunderclaps of the three primus' fighting in the air beat in the background like a drum.