Beyond the church, Azzemude's district descended into streets too narrow to preserve a view of the throne tower for more than a few seconds at a time. Alleys turned without warning. Bridges linked upper floors across the road, and several buildings had expanded over older structures until the route beneath them passed through irregular tunnels lined with doors. Zehrina's Navi'N continued moving under the party, protecting their feet from the pale spires that occasionally scraped along its underside before vanishing back into the ground.
Orin spent the first three turns trying to follow the tower between rooftops. At the fourth, he stopped and pointed through the building directly ahead.
"Why are we using the streets?"
"Because most people do," Rava answered.
"The tower is that way, and I have a better idea!"
Before anyone could determine whether his idea contained more than the obvious, Orin activated the Ethereal Armor.
"Everybody stay behind me," Orin yelled as he ran forward.
The first wall burst around his armored shoulders. Rooms opened in front of him and disappeared behind, their floors collapsing under steps that carried more weight than the structures had ever been meant to hold. A second building lost two central supports when Orin crossed it, dropped across his back, and broke apart while he continued through the adjoining wall.
Monsters tried to stop him once the route became obvious. One struck his ribs with a heavy hammer and shattered both arms through the impact, leaving the weapon shattered against armor that had barely registered the blow. Another came from an upper floor with enough speed that Orin never turned his head. Its body hit the side of his helmet, spun into the opening behind him, and disappeared beneath his next step.
He kept running in the direction he had chosen, and anything that placed itself between his mass and the throne tower suffered the result. Those knocked beneath him were crushed into the fractured floors. Others broke weapons, claws, or limbs against the advancing plates before Eryndra and the Presidroids killed whoever survived behind him. By the second block, he had pulled ahead of Zehrina's moving floor, with Eryndra flying closest behind him while the rest of the party followed the route he opened.
By the time the party crossed its third newly opened block, they had regained a clear view of the tower. Orin entered the fourth building through one wall and came out backward through the same hole. The unseen impact that had thrown Circuit Court struck the Ethereal Armor from somewhere ahead, lifted its full mass from the floor, and hurled it through the route he had created. Eryndra caught him around the torso before he reached the others. Her boots hit the exposed street and tore two trenches through the stone without stopping either of them.
"Sorry, Orin," Eryndra yelled.
She forced the armored body downward. Its back hit the street, adding another trench between those made by her boots, and Eryndra held him there while broken foundations burst around them. They ground across half the block before the movement slowed enough for her to stop them.
From inside the helmet, Orin raised one enormous thumb. "I'm okay."
"Remove the armor."
Before Orin wrapped both arms around Eryndra, the Ethereal Armor vanished. Eryndra jumped through the ruined passage to return him to the Navi'N beneath the rest of the group.
FDR had already begun searching the exposed buildings when they returned. "No firing point presents itself. Whatever struck him had access to the route directly ahead and left no visible disturbance."
Bands of False Void moved through the same space, passing across shattered walls and the bodies of nearby monsters without finding a spell for Lynder to break. "There is nothing there."
Harmony compared the impact against every sensor aboard the Nightshatter and each drone still operating above the district. "I cannot detect it, you cannot detect it, and the old-ass man cannot detect it. Sensor consensus suggests the attacking phenomenon is not physically present."
Lynder turned from the empty street. "Old…ass… man? That is extraordinarily rude."
"Wait," Andri said. "There is something there."
She stood near the center of the Navi'N floor, staring past FDR toward a section of open air beside the broken route. Roy followed the direction of her gaze and saw only dust falling through the place she indicated. Several retreating monsters crossed it without reacting.
"It's moving," Andri said. "It looks like when you stare through hot air, except the bends go the wrong way. There are more inside the buildings."
Nothing appeared on the drone feeds Roy opened. Harmony changed sensors, increased contrast, and built a composite from several angles. The street remained empty.
Andri's head snapped toward Zehrina. "Look out!"
Zehrina looked to the side and found nothing. An impact caught her beneath the ribs, launched her above the broken rooftops, and sent her toward the cavern ceiling before anyone else had moved. Navi'N stripped from the floor in a dark stream and closed around her body. The sphere struck stone, buried itself halfway into the roof, then dropped free with Zehrina protected inside.
"Captain, Zehrina is unharmed," Tranquility reported after reading her body through the dust. "She is extremely angry."
The sphere opened during her descent. Zehrina returned as a furious swarm, reassembled above the street, and looked down at the empty place from which she had been struck.
"What the hell was that?"
Lynder had stopped searching for a magical signature and begun watching Andri. "The phenomena ignore every inhabitant of this city, yet they have struck our platform, Orin, and Zehrina. They possess neither bodies nor spell structures we can detect. I suspect the Sixth Witch left traps throughout the capital."
"Why can Andri see them?" Rava asked.
"I do not know."
Andri tracked another distortion through the building beside Truman, then pointed when it changed direction toward him. "Move left!"
Truman jumped from the Navi'N floor, and when he landed again, the distortion had already disappeared into another wall.
Their advance resumed with Andri calling directions from the center. She warned Eryndra away from one opening, stopped JFK before he entered an alley, then redirected the entire party when several distortions traveled across the road together. Ordinary defenders continued firing from above. Each warning drew someone's attention from the rooftops, giving the capital's soldiers another opportunity to attack, while the throne tower appeared and vanished between buildings without growing meaningfully closer.
"Captain," Truman said after the third forced retreat. "I know you do not want to do this, but I believe you should make an exception."
Lynder looked from Truman to Roy. "An exception for what?"
Roy had understood before the question. Buildings enclosed them on every side, filled with defenders who could attack through windows and withdraw before the party reached them, while unseen traps crossed the streets below. Farther away, families continued carrying possessions toward districts the group had yet to enter. Voices passed between the structures, some calling directions, others screaming warnings as the invaders moved beneath them.
The city had been built across centuries. Its people taught their language, punished their failures in public squares, raised monuments to the monsters who governed them, and thanked a stranger for mercy before trying to tear him apart. Whatever name Roy gave them, they had made a civilization here, and that civilization had built rooms of impaled bodies beneath its streets.
Roy lowered his head and opened a channel to the Nightshatter. "Serenity, I..."
The order stopped in his throat. Nobody spoke into the space he left behind, and even Lynder allowed him to reach the decision without another warning.
"Destroy this part of the city, clear a path."
"Calculating the required payloads," Serenity answered.
Seconds passed while the party remained inside the shelter of the surrounding Presidroids. Andri continued watching distortions shift through the buildings, pointing whenever one approached, though Roy kept his attention on the streets beyond her hand.
"Ninety-six conventional missiles have been selected," Serenity said. "The VLS will be loaded in one minute."
Zehrina returned the upper half of her Navi'N dome around the group. The dark shell met the floor without leaving space between them, sealing everyone inside while the distant launch systems prepared to fire.
One minute later, Roy opened a portal above the center of the dome. Light from Otherrealm entered the dungeon through its surface, followed by the first missile climbing from Nightshatter's VLS. More rose behind it, passing through the same opening in rapid succession before separating above the city and turning toward the targets Serenity had assigned.
The capital's defenders fired upward. Several missiles disappeared beneath magical impacts, though the next wave crossed through the explosions and continued toward the rooftops. Others descended behind the tower line or dropped into streets the party had crossed minutes earlier.
Near the outer wall, the first detonation removed an entire block, while another opened the district ahead, its pressure reaching the Navi'N dome before the sound and turning the surrounding buildings into fragments against its surface. Across the capital, missiles struck in overlapping sequences, crushing towers through their lower floors, tearing roofs from the structures beneath them, and driving fire through windows where defenders had continued attacking.
As streets folded into the chambers and tunnels below, the remaining bridges dropped between buildings, and through gaps in the smoke, Roy saw entire sections of the capital settle, lean, and disappear beneath the next detonations.
Between each impact, voices carried through the city. The dome could block the debris and pressure, though it did nothing to keep the screams from reaching him.
Rather than shutting them out, Roy kept listening as every group he had spared long enough to test his mercy used it against him. The teacher had thanked him before charging his back, attacks still came from homes whose occupants fled between them, and living bodies fed Delvar's reserves beneath the streets. Adventurers who reached this floor after them would face the same capital without Nightshatter overhead or Andri pointing toward the danger.
When another wave passed through the portal, Roy held it open until the final missile crossed, then closed away the daylight. The screams remained, and he stayed beneath Zehrina's shelter to hear what his order had done.