The wind never felt old on Lieze's face. She had recognised her freedom long ago, but it was only when she was clinging for dear life on the Manticore's spine when her inhibitions seemed to melt away completely. Unfortunately, that liberation wasn't felt by everyone who rode the beast - especially Marché, who seemed convinced that he was a hair's breadth away from death as they tore through the darkened skyline.
"I can't keep my balance and aim the barrel at the same time, Lieze!" His voice was torn on the wind, but Lieze could pick up the desperation clearly enough, "You need to slow down!"
"-If we slow down, we'll be nothing more than a stain on the Titan's fist as soon as we get anywhere close!" She yelled back, "Just let the Briarknight handle everything! All you have to do is give the signal to drop the barrel! And remember - you've only got two chances, so don't even think about messing it up!"
The three of them - Lieze, Marché, and the Briarknight, soared between and above the group of gargantuan Rootborne, whose slow but purposeful paces had gained them a worrying amount of ground. Two barrels of blast powder were teetering on the Manticore's back, held in place by two rotting hands prepared to release the explosive containers at the drop of a pin.
The plan was simple enough in theory; drop the barrels straight into the scalps of two unlucky Titans and watch them burst into fire and smoke from a safe distance. The Manticore was nimble enough in the air to evade any attempts to swat it, but the moment of opportunity for dropping the barrels purposefully would be less than half a second long.
"I don't know how you and Drayya handle this!" Tears flew from the corners of Marché's eyes.
"Drayya doesn't! I've done it so much that it doesn't affect me anymore!" Lieze peered over the Manticore's flank, witnessing the sparks of fire dancing over great behemoths through the darkness, "-Look lively! We'll be in position shortly!"
From a rural village boy to a foster child of the Church to a fledgling necromancer to a full-fledged Deathguard - the Marché of last year could have never imagined that chaos and fate would conjoin in equal measure to set him on a very strange path indeed. All it took was a blink, and he was suddenly in the middle of Akzhem, preparing to blow up a pair of gargantuan forest spirits in the name of destroying the world.
"Madness…" Frankly terrified, he lifted himself up and grabbed what remained of the Manticore's fur, leaning down to measure up his impossible task.
Meanwhile, Lieze's thralls - armed with the knowledge of the Titans' weakness - were mounting an assault of their own against the giants. One had already been felled by a Briarknight's hand, who emerged charred yet animate from the creature's burning corpse and was well on its way to performing the same miracle on another. Continuous volleys of [Fire Bolts] from Lüngen's Dark Casters had shaved away the barkskin armour protecting a handful of the Titans' hearts, exposing their fragile cores to vicious divebombs from the Grotesques.
All the while, Marché was made to understand and value the crises while careening through the moonless skies of Akzhem, searching for a perfect moment in the heart of the chaos. It was only as they gained altitude, and when the Titans were preoccupied with the hundreds of thralls grasping at their ankles, that he glimpsed an opportunity.
"There! That one's stopped moving!" He pointed - useless as the gesture was - if only to improve his confidence, "Send us over, Lieze! I'll give the order to drop the barrel."
He regretted the choice almost immediately. The Manticore halted, twisted, and turned its momentum mid-flight, cursing Marché's consciousness with gravitational forces that wouldn't be documented, studied, or researched for at least another 100 years. So, for lack of knowledge, he presumed that he was well on his way to dying of fright.
Their half-lit mount tearing through the damp forest air came to hover over the Titan in question for less time than Marché had to consider the risk of missing. His mind transmitted an order to the Briarknight, which proceeded to release its grasp on one of the teetering barrels, sending it plunging into the darkness.
Lieze's working theory was very simple: if the barrel did not explode, that meant Marché had missed his mark. The burning reactions within the Titan's body would be more than enough to ignite the volatile powder otherwise, which was precisely why Marché felt such uncompromised elation when he was forced to shield his eyes from a blinding flash.
Like a dying star, the Titan's body was blown into motes of celestial dust captured in brief, blinding twinkles. The top half of its wooden body was suddenly off-kilter, perforated with bloodless gashes, crushing and twisting beneath its own weight. Its fall was a tragic landslide for the thralls beneath, whose bloated bodies were crushed and split by the felling timber.
"We did it!" Marché placed a hand over his mouth, uncertain if glee was appropriate considering the circumstance, "...Well - we've still got one more left to hit!"
"Hm… we lost plenty of thralls from that Titan's death." Lieze muttered to herself, thrown back and forth from reality and fantasy by the Manticore's chaotic veering, "I'll make sure to move the next group out of the way before we drop another barrel.
The tide of the battle was quickly turning in their favour. The Titans proved near-impenetrable from the outside, but when the crux of their beings was targeted, they fell like any other beast. Lieze was tempted to summon a Flesh Golem or two at first, but it seemed to her as though such a desperate measure wouldn't be necessary at all.
Soon, Marché had his sights set on another Titan. Lieze cleared its path of thralls by ordering a retreat from its position, guiding the Manticore towards a flight line that took them straight over the giant's crown. More than prepared the second time around, Marché had the Briarknight toss the second barrel without risking another dizzying glance over the Manticore's flank.
There was a pause, and for the slightest instant, he convinced himself that the barrel had missed its mark. A curious need to witness just how close he'd been coaxed him into poking his head over the tufts of fur, only to be rewarded for the effort with a delayed, but similarly glorious explosion.
"Agh! My eye!" He retreated, blinked rapidly, and exhaled, "Am I blind!?"
"You had better not be! I'm not escorting a blind man through these forsaken woods!" Lieze shouted back, "We've done all we can, so I'm going to set us down a safe distance from the Titans!"
In time, Marché's sight returned. With that said, Akzhem was such a pit of darkness that vision wasn't of much help to him either way. As soon as the Manticore landed, he scrambled to descend from its spine and swallowed down the contents of his breakfast before they were forcefully ejected.
As acidity tickled his gums, he raised his head to witness the chaotic scene of thralls grappling, climbing, and gnawing the Titans' bodies, six of which beyond the three already dispatched were already on their way to keeling over while the others contended with their barkskin roaring with uncontrollable flames. Any thralls unlucky enough to find themselves within stomping distance of the giants were reduced to clumps of fleshy paste half-baked into the soil.
"To think I could have dealt with this problem already with a few drops of Mercuria…" Lieze muttered, "I'm never letting myself enter Mana Burnout again. Though I suppose there's no harm in toppling the rest with a Flesh Golem now that we have the advantage…"
[Summon Supreme Flesh Golem] Activated
Remaining Heavenly Favours - 2
If they replenished at dawn, then it would be a waste not to utilise her Heavenly Favours. It would take another few days of travel to reach the Black City, so there was very little Lieze stood to lose from their usage. She flinched from the sudden influx of delusions invading her mind, weathering the Blackbriar's apocalyptic visions of a world dominated by the undead.
"...Oh. Shit." Drayya turned her head as the roaring, tearing chorus of something malignant emerging into the world caught her attention, "Get all of the thralls out of the way! Lieze is summoning another damnable Golem!"
Scrambling to save themselves before their thralls, the Deathguards parted and made way for the behemoth, splitting the army in two. Once the Flesh Golem had risen to its full height, the remaining Titans were on the verge of closing the gap between the two forces, struggling to maintain cohesion of both formation and body as clinging Deathguards and licking flames continued to destroy their bodies from the inside and out.
"Retreat! Retreat if you don't want to die today!" Drayya raised her voice above the commotion, "Let the Flesh Golem handle the rest of the battle! Stay behind if it pleases you, but don't act surprised when you get crushed!"
Like ants, they dispersed into the grasses and undergrowth, fleeing from the carnage that was soon to ensue. Receptive to an enemy of their own size for once, the Titans lurched with arms outstretched towards the Flesh Golem, their carved, grinning faces vandalised with scorch marks and embers.
"Hm… it's hard to make out, but it seems like there are about ten Titans left." Lieze, contrary to Drayya's warning, remained dangerously close to the imminent clash, "How could I possibly get rid of them all with a single Flesh Golem…?"
There was no chance of taking them all head-on - the Golem would be ripped to shreds. Its cumbersome movements wouldn't allow it any more than a few attacks before the Titans closed in. But as the thought crossed her mind, the perfect answer she was searching for popped right into Lieze's head.
"Ah…" She turned her head, "Drayya!"
A pinprick of light in the distance broke off from the others, sprinting back to her position with all the obedience of a pup. Drayya doubled over with exhaustion when she came to a stop, her eyes glued to the silhouettes of giants lingering not far from where they stood.
"Hah… what is it?" She asked.
"Are you familiar with the [Corpse Explosion] spell?"
"I certainly am. How is that going to help us?" She took a step back, "We should really get out of the way before we're flattened."
Inky globules of Mercuria were leaking out from Lieze's Bag of Holding. Drayya's expression grew complicated, already prepared for some sort of ridiculous demand.
"I can't cast the spell myself, but I can infuse yours with Mercuria." She began, "An explosion of that calibre should destroy the Titans outright if we wait for the most opportune moment."
Before she had finished speaking, Drayya was already shaking her head. "Lieze." She began, "We'll die. I would need to touch the Flesh Golem, and even if I could get close enough, the explosion would reduce us to ash."
"There's another method of casting it. A delayed explosion. That would give us just enough time to escape from the blast's proximity." Lieze explained, "It's not that much different from the regular spell. I'll teach you how to do it."
"I… I can't." Drayya shook her head, "A new spell? That would take me hours to learn. We don't even have two minutes."
"Drayya." She leaned forward, "I can't cast spells at the moment. You're the only one I can rely on to get this right. I wouldn't have asked if I wasn't certain you could do it. Please."
"Pl-" That one word sent Drayya reeling. For Lieze to reduce herself to pleading, she had to be desperate, "...Ahh! You're always such a pain to deal with! Do you know that!?"
Lieze paused, "...Does that mean you'll do it?"
"I'm never doing something as stupid as this again!" She declared, "Just start teaching me! We don't have time to waste!"