The Upyrs shrank their forms to coat themselves in their armors and conjured thick Spirit Barriers. All they achieved was to offer the Annihilation Bullets a smaller target. The seven pillars of light possessed double the strength of the Upyr and their equipment combined, piercing through their defenses like paper. The Bullets burned their prey with elemental fury, leaving behind only a crater full of ashes. Meanwhile, the undead forces kept retreating inside the Stonewall Fortress to recuperate while the Dread Knights galloped behind the Engine. The battlefront had kept them from exploiting their best weapon, Windwalker, but now they had all the space they needed to move. The bloodline ability of their steeds condensed the air in front of the Dread Knights' speartips in a spiral pattern, both creating a slipstream effect in front of the horses and accumulating destructive power as they moved. It allowed a Dread Knight to accelerate without end as long as they kept moving. *** "There's no point holding the formation now that there is only one enemy." Jorl said while studying the situation from the safety of Orpal's lair via the clone's eyes. "Send half the Upyrs to jam Lith's armor with Frost Soul and the other half to storm the castle. "Without the defensive arrays, they are just lambs herded for the slaughter. Only if we get to them before they recover their strength, though." "Good point." Orpal nodded and had his clone parrot Jorl's words. "Remind me again." Erion's voice oozed malice. "Why are we following Orpal instead of Jorl?" "Because Orpal can raise an army from scratch and Jorl can kick your ass in a second. Now shut the fuck up, worm. I'm learning how to lead my troops into battle." Akhton the Bastet growled the Jormungandr into silence. *** Half of the Upyr army charged at the Engine while activating their shared bloodline ability. The other half ignored the colossus and the Dread Knights, aiming for the Stonewall Fortress. No matter how hard or thick it was, natural non-enchanted stone offered no protection against plant folk who could swim through it like water. 'Shield Wall.' Lith threw the Yurial Guard in front of the fortress, and the artifact shapeshifted. It became thinner, barely over two centimeters (1') thick, but it was now 25 meters (82') tall and more than twice across, covering the exposed front of the Fortress. The Upyrs never slowed their charge and slammed into the colossal shield with the boom of a thunderstorm. Yurial Guard was thinner, but still made of an Adamant-Davross alloy. On top of that, it had no offensive enchantments, its power core focused solely on protection and stalling for time. Despite the mass and numbers of the Upyrs, Yurial Guard resisted the onslaught by using part of the accumulated energy to coat itself and the Fortress with a Spirit Barrier. 'Frost Soul incoming!' Solus warned Lith. 'I need your help for this.' The blue eye on the Engine's face lit up, and the golden light on its chest turned blue. Each Upyr had a different energy signature, but they all used the same bloodline ability generated by the same source: Orpal's blood. There had been no time to turn anyone into a Upyr, and Orpal trusted no one not to take their new powers and defect from his cause. The Eyes of Menadion filtered out the useless energy signatures until only the Vurdalak's remained. Then the Ears locked on it, allowing Lith and Solus to control the countless Frost Souls like a single tidal wave. The Engine swept the air with its remaining hand, and the cold front stopped its advance. The Upyrs still couldn't cast any spell or project any enchantment outside their bodies, whereas the tower's workings were unaffected by Frost Soul. *** 'How is that even possible?' Orpal's clone tore his borrowed face with his claws in frustration. 'I don't know.' Night was just as clueless. 'If it were one-on-one, I'd say Domination, but that's not the case. Even a cursed object has just one mind. Nobody can control so many bloodline abilities at once. Not even a Guardian.' 'Don't tell me what it's not, tell me what it is, or this will take all day!' 'Your brother knows about your bloodline abilities. I think he crafted something to counter them.' She replied. 'You know or you think?' Orpal snarled. 'How should I know?' Night snarled back. 'Lith sure doesn't include me in his plans. This is the best thing I can come up with, but still makes no sense.' "Jorl?" Orpal asked. "No point in crippling your own army for no gain." The Griffon replied. "Have them dispel the Frost and activate the Thunder Soul. Have them aim for Verhen. If he falls, so will everything he has crafted. Just make sure no one imprints the artifacts before us." "At least someone here isn't a useless idiot." Orpal lashed at Erion, Akhton, and Night while he relayed the orders. 'You phrased that right.' The Horseman replied. 'Some-one. And that one isn't you.' *** 'Fuck me sideways!' Lith was unaware that the enemy brainstormed his moves as well and was caught unprepared. 'We never found a proper counter to Thunder Soul. Any last-minute brilliant idea?' Unlike Frost Soul, Thunder Soul shrouded the Upyrs as they charged forward, allowing them to prepare their best spells again and have them pierce through the Engine's armor once they were unleashed. 'None.' Solus sighed. 'The Demons are almost ready.' 'Then let's fight thunder with thunder.' The arms of the Engine came together, fusing into a massive stone cannon. Lith loaded two Annihilations from the Cannon Vault and conjured from the Workshop everything he needed to recreate a tower-sized Thundercrash. The anti-Guardian spells spiraled along the barrel while the physical bullet remained steady in the middle. The three components became one upon reaching the exit, creating what Lith had named the Requiem Blaster. The elemental energy of the Annihilations resonated with each other, while the stone bullet empowered by the rail gun gave the elemental pillars mass and substance. Solus split the blast into over a hundred parts, aiming each one of them against a specific target, but without bothering to control them afterward because there was no need to. Each bullet was shrouded in fourteen elemental rays and moved several times the speed of sound. Even the Upyrs with Full Guard active died before they could understand what their spell had detected. On top of that, the bullets were accompanied by a shockwave so powerful that it pulverized everything closer than ten meters (33') from the target and sent those within 100 meters (330') from its path flying. Yet that wasn't the end of it. The fast movement of the bullets left a vacuum in their wake, just like the fourteen pillars emptied their surroundings of world energy. Nature abhorred the void and rectified it with disastrous consequences for the Upyrs. The air displacement pulled those that the shockwave had just pushed away, throwing them off their feet and against each other. The Upyrs conjured their spells to resist the phenomenon, but there was no world energy to answer their call. The carefully planned battle formation was sent in disarray, widening the gaps created in the Upyr's ranks by the Silverwing's Annihilation.