It was impressive, how far they’d come. How far she had come. Damon had been there for Hekate’s birth, he’d known her her whole life. So to see what she could do now…It was enough to bring a smile to his face, despite his current circumstances.

Hekate and Lilliana, that Meteoris girl that had somehow managed to avoid her family’s darker tendencies, had activated their Embodiments. Damon was aware that both had splintered their shrouds, each of them through Caeden’s Throne. So he wasn’t terribly surprised to see how much power they could output. Throne splinters were always…Special. That being said, their utilization was high, considering how young they were.

One of the main dangers of both Incarnations and Embodiments was the massive jump in power they could bring. Admittedly, some were less impactful, and those were easily adapted to by the shrouded. But stronger forms could be incredibly unwieldy when a shrouded first gained them, for all that they had a certain level of instinctive knowledge in their use.

Both Hekate and Lilliana’s Embodiments looked to be some of the more unwieldy that he’d seen. They fit into a rare and less understood variant of Embodiment, the Aspect Embodiment. Unlike Caeden’s hecatoncheires, which was a more common Monster Embodiment, their forms didn’t mimic monsters. Instead, their bodies were imbued with the raw force and power of the domain their shroud connected them to.

That was a dangerous prospect, as a Monster Embodiment would bring with it the instincts and muscle memory of the monstrous body the shrouded took on. Caeden’s current colossal form was a perfect example of this. Normally, a human consciousness pressed into a body with fifty heads would crumple under the added stimuli and collapse. But the body itself compensated, filling the gaps in a human’s processing capabilities to ease the transition. And all of it was facilitated by the shroud that enabled the Embodiment.

An Aspect Embodiment came with none of those safeguards. Rather, the ladies’ bodies were flooded with energy from their shrouds domain directly. That did create some physical changes, as that much power was bound to warp reality around it. But it didn’t bring any instincts attached to that power’s use. Rather, the shrouded had to learn to control that strength themselves.

Despite some arguments to the alternative, Damon wasn’t of the belief that any type of Embodiment or Incarnation was better than another. Rather, they were situational abilities that required a certain set of circumstances to show their value. On that front, Caeden had shown significant grace. The use of his massive form in most circumstances would be more likely to cause collateral damage than be helpful in combat. Using it only now showed the kind of restraint such an inherently destructive form needed.

Hekate and Lilliana…Had wholly different problems. Looking at the CV screens, Damon watched the two split up down different hallways. Each of them was tailed by another teammate, with the dark armored individual following Hekate while that other continental shrouded, Erik, followed Lilliana.

They’d split up not to cover more ground or out of any arrogance on their part, but rather because they had to. Each of their Embodiments surrounded them in an aura of power that affected their surroundings no matter what they did. Each was destructive in its own way, and Damon knew from experience that mixing Aspect auras was a recipe for disaster. Domains, brought into direct contact through their Embodiments, tended to react violently.

The final member of their group, the one they’d brought with them after that teaching expedition, grew draconic wings and leapt out from within the island’s depths. And thus, out of the view of the CV screen’s receptors. Damon knew that the surface of the island had been ripped up and peeled apart there, destroying most observational equipment.

Focusing back on the two duos moving deeper, Damon took a moment to appreciate his granddaughter’s Embodiment. It was a morbidly beautiful thing, like watching a garden wither and die before your eyes. Horrifying, but strangely captivating.

Her body had lost every ounce of flesh, leaving only bone behind. A cloak of energy so black it actively sucked light from the surroundings settled across her and covered up the bone. The only source of radiance anywhere near Hekate came from underneath the hood of the cloak.

There, her features were rendered over her fleshless skull in sickly green flames that burned with furious intensity. Their light, in contrast to everything around her, only seemed to intensify with time. Completing this walking specter was the staff she’d held in her hand. The seemingly unadorned and plain black wood, which was thickest at the top before thinning along its length, had taken on several new features with her Embodiment.

The wood at the top had split, leaving ragged edges and floating pieces suspended in the surging darkness that wrapped around them. A long spinal column of bone, the many segments revealing a serpentine origin, had pulled itself from the staff during her transformation and formed the long spine of a scythe blade that was forged of a combination of the cloak's darkness and the sickly flames that constituted Hekate’s body.

It was a cumbersome weapon, lacking in elegance or subtlety. And Hekate wielded it as such. Damon knew that she had little affinity for martial arts or weapons of any kind, really. She simply swung the scythe in wide and long arcs as she drifted down the hallway.

It was following those arcs that Damon finally noticed the resistance the founder was putting up against his granddaughter and her friends. He was genuinely surprised to see it, as Hekate and Lillliana’s pace had not slowed in the slightest since they’d employed their Embodiments.

That wasn’t to say the resistance was small. In fact, there were several of the massive Ethermen that the founder had used as his proxy on Baserock, and whole squads of those surprisingly adaptable types that Caeden had handled so adroitly.

Rather, it was a testament to the power of the duo that they simply ignored all resistance. Hekate’s broad swings of her scythe sent forth green-edged waves of darkness that grew larger as they traveled. Everything they touched began to rot and rust in a matter of moments.

More than that, every Etherman that was hit would see the energy animating it rapidly shift from white to green. Once the conversion was complete, the victim would wildly attack everything around it in a fit of blind rage. It sewed chaos and caused more and more Ethermen to be too distracted to dodge another arc. The effects compounded on themselves.

Looking at another CV, Damon saw a similar transformation and a similar result. Lilliana’s skin had hardened into deep blue ice. She did not walk so much as float on a wave of icy vapor that continually surrounded her. Her movements, which she made sparsely, were slow and ponderous, like a glacier shifting.

In her hands was also a weapon, a longsword that she had produced shortly before she activated her Embodiment. Before the shift, it had been a beautiful piece with a simple design. A steely grey blade with a simple crossguard, unadorned by even a hint of ether or other ornamentation.

That too had transformed along with her. Now, it was an elaborate filigreed piece that continually swirled with frost and vapor. The blade had lengthed even further and taken on a crystal clear appearance that made it nearly impossible to see, especially with the swirling vapor that surrounded it.

In a similar fashion to Hekate, Lilliana also swung her sword, but to entirely different results. Her blows were far slower than Hekate’s wide but fast swings. She swung almost softly, barely moving her arms, all the motion drawn from the hands.

What followed was a howling gale of icy blades and freezing mist that soaked the entire hallway before her, instantly freezing the Ethermen solid for the blades and bits of hail to shatter them. Rather than the mad chaos of Hekate’s hallway, Lilliana’s was eerily silent in between her swings. The only sound was the soft sigh of the mist and the subtle crunch of ice breaking ever so slowly.

Damon, for a moment, wondered two things. Both questions seemed to answer themselves after a moment of observation. First, he wondered why these two had held back to such a degree while they worked to counter the assault on Baserock. After all, such powerful Embodiments were effective. That was why the leadership of the different nations present had managed to survive. Their strong Embodiments allowed them to fight and survive against a constant barrage.

Looking closely, the reason was simple and twofold. Firstly, it was readily apparent that neither of their Embodiments could fly. That, and while their ranged attacks were powerful, the reach wasn’t particularly far. From what he’d seen, both had acquitted themselves much better on land and in the air using their more versatile and adaptable auras.

This particular situation was simply a perfect avenue for them to use the raw power inherent to the Embodiments. Their enemies were within reach, and confined to a smaller space. Here, their Aspect Embodiments were devastatingly effective. In a search-and-rescue or aerial battle? They would be far more lackluster.

The second reason for their restraint was apparent when he looked past them. Both left a trial of growing devastation in their wake. The raw power of their domains leaked out of them to cover ever more of the artificial island. He had noted during their battles on Baserock that his granddaughter and her team went to great lengths to preserve the lives of allies and enemies alike. Right now, both wielded a power that expanded blindly and destroyed indiscriminately.

His second question was simply, how? How were they displaying such power? Normally this kind of raw might would be the work of shrouded much older than them. But this was easily answered, he simply looked at their hands.

“Shrouded weapons.” Damon whispered, chuckling under his breath. Both wielded shrouded weapons in their Embodied forms. He had no idea where or how they’d gotten them. Shrouded weapons were incredibly difficult to make, and not a guaranteed thing. It was a process that relied just as much on the shrouded gaining the weapon as the one forging and smithing it. Compatibility was often an issue between the wielder and the smith.

But that difficulty gave rise to a potent force. A shrouded weapon was a pure reflection of the wielder's abilities, and worked in sync with them. That allowed the weapon to continue to work even when the shrouded used a higher form, either Incarnation or Embodiment. In fact, the shrouded weapon would feed off of that connection and grow to match the higher form, complimenting it.

Surely, without the sword or scythe, Lilliana and Hekate would have been walking forces of nature, and done more than enough damage to decimate the forces arrayed against them. They had potent domains backing up their Aspect Embodiments, after all. But those shrouded weapons were simply an extra step above that potential which allowed them to trounce every challenge without pause.

Still smiling, Damon looked toward another screen. What he saw there caused his cheer to lessen slightly. Although they were wholly unchallenged, the screen he was reading indicated that the pair had covered a minimal amount of distance compared to the size of the island. Their pace was slow, the power they’d gained taking away much of their speed.

Internally, Damon cringed, wondering at the period of weakness they would suffer after releasing their Embodiments. Now that they’d stepped on this path, they’d have to walk it all the way, using their Embodiments until they were done destroying this entire facility. At their current pace, the amount of time that would take was significant. And after…They’d be incredibly vulnerable for weeks, months. Possibly longer.

By the same token, Caeden had sacrificed his ability to directly affect the inside of the artificial island when he’d used that massive Embodiment. He’d be weakened afterward, unable to assist those inside. That is, unless he intended to hack his way through the whole thing. Which seemed…Difficult.

Despite their impressive showing, Damon looked toward the founder. He was flustered, muttering constantly…But seemingly unconcerned. And Damon began to wonder just what was waiting in this island that had him so blithely unafraid.