For a half-minute or so Victor sat still, focusing Viriditas in the eye of his staff as brambles grew out of it and bound the implement to his hand; Zefaris was dumbfounded by how utterly calm he remained in this situation, as if he had done this a dozen times before. Or, at least it seemed at a glance; she could see his heart beating out of his chest plain as day, and… Was the Antediluvian Gem glowing? It looked to be, but the glimmer vanished when Vic leaned forward and placed his staff just over the Sturmgandr's rear wheel and a shotgun-spray of seeds erupted out of it, instantaneously growing into a field of tangled brambles. A few seconds later, vertebrae and teeth sprouted all over them. The bramble-field managed to tangle a single-digit number of golems by virtue of elasticity, but what few golems stumbled and fell served as jump-off ramps for those behind them. Nevertheless, it bought them some precious distance.

Faster.

Using her lungs as a secondary engine for the machine, Zel sent a surge of Fulgur down the Sturmgandr’s control cables. The Thundercharger module came alive. A miniature sun ignited within its glyph-glass chamber, instantaneously snuffed out as its constituent essentia was siphoned into the engine. The engine screamed bloody murder, white-blue arcs shrouding the Sturmgandr’s wheels as it shredded the ground and the speed dial surpassed three-hundred kilometers per hour.

Faster.

Another surge. Then another, and another. Lungful after lungful. The machine howled in defiance, but obeyed its master.

FASTER.

The matte-black skull of a gigantic skeleton crested the horizon, its mouth gaped open; its arms soon followed, splayed out to either side, their upper bones broken from some immense force. It rested on the slope of a mountain range which seemed to circle the entirety of the Deterrence Fields.. At first relief washed over her, but… Then she noticed that something was wrong. She couldn’t see Jorfr and Vic’s bike in her peripheral vision anymore; they were falling behind. With a spark of intent, she made her Tablet send out a question to Victor, knowing that Jorfr didn’t keep his Tablet on his person.

“How many Fulgur cells left?”

It only took a few seconds before she received the answer: “Two.”

Her next message was not in words, but thought: She wished for them to use their remaining cells to catch up so she could throw the Broken Butcher at their machine and form an Arcline to it, allowing her to power both machines’ Thunderchargers simultaneously.

A mental impulse of affirmation returned to her. Moments later, she could see their machine push into her field of view. Without waiting a moment, she grabbed the Butcher from her back and threw it, grasping the Impelling Arm’s trigger lever the moment it left her grasp in preparation to fire the Arcline’s igniting spark… Only for the blade to smash into the machine’s front wheel, bounding high into the air. Firing off a Thundercannon, Zel formed the connection and pulled the blade back into her hand. She kept the Arcline alight; it was less energy-intensive.

One more cell left. She only hoped it would work this time.

Jorfr grasped for the last Fulgur cell, only for an unforeseen bump in the surface to rock his motorbike; both him and Vic held on for dear life, but the Fulgur cell was lost. It careened off the machine and smashed into a pursuant automaton, erupting in a burst of lightning that stunned half a dozen of their pursuers.

In a split-second decision, the redhead gave up the idea of casting another Mud Slick and braced his staff against the back of the motorbike such that its ring rested over the exhaust, mere centimeters above the rear wheel’s death-grinder. Ossomancy and Pyromancy brought together, he instinctively formed a devilbone nozzle fusing his staff, the exhaust, and the bike’s rear together, channeling every ounce of Ignis and Aer he could muster into the structure, barely leaving enough breath for himself. The searing heat which ran down his arms and was of no concern, and the eerie glow of his pendant didn’t even register; his mind was utterly, singularly focused on this one feat.

“Reaching the point of no return, arise now, face to face we burn!” he howled an incantation, unable to hear his own voice. A tremor shot up the staff and his arms, and a burst of monochromatic flame sputtered out of the devilbone thruster. Its otherwise immense might was not nearly enough here, barely nudging the machine forward.

“More, I need more…” a thought shot through his mind. As if out of nowhere, the strength which he lacked flooded through him, a brilliant, seething pain, glorious and wretched. It alighted the silver conduits of Oculus’ shaft to a blinding white, and suddenly, he knew it would work.

“Unleash this blazing force so bright, Fight the Night!”

It couldn’t be described as anything other than a continuous, vortex-shaped explosion erupting out of a giant rocket nozzle made of bone. The sheer force of it could be seen in the wake it left; carving a channel into the ground and smashing away the few runners who had gotten close to the bike. They were catching up thanks to it, getting out of the horde’s range. Relief flowed through Zefaris at the sight of it, until she noticed the pendant: Shining like a star in the night sky, floating just off the surface of Vic’s chest.

SPIRALING DETONATION SIGN

SPEED DEATH DOOM RIDE STRAIGHT OUT OF HELL

DEVILBONE ARTS: FIGHT THE NIGHT -ANTEDILUVIAN MAGNIFICATION-

The glorious display lasted all of ten seconds before the thruster exploded under the tremendous forces exerted upon it and Victor slumped over in his seat, barely stopping himself from falling off the bike altogether by resting against his staff, threaded onto the exhaust as it was. It didn’t matter. His effort had closed the distance between the two machines.

“Throw it, they’re in range!” she screamed over the noise. Without even turning to check, Zel reared her left arm back and whipped the Butcher towards the other bike, an arc of lightning trailing its flight path. Jorfr’s hand, wreathed in ice, shot out and caught it by the guard, wedging one of the blade’s prongs right into the Thundercharger’s power cell slot.