>>5375980”We keep an eye on the formation via the Orrery, stay out of their range…” You scowl, setting your sights on the towering Cord. “…and keep moving West.”
A force three-dozen strong erupts from your hive as you lead the westward charge, Uzu and Gina taking point to chart a stable course as your creations attend to several matters at once—chief among them the retrieval of the three unknown Daughters’ remains. A trio of Bishop-boosted Knightlings swoop in to extract the tattered remains, and you hope against hope that you’re able to gather enough to preserve their dream-states. Your Knights work with a series of cloaked Rooks to string a daisy-chain of baton passes that you hope will deter any attempt by your foes to track their movements…and all the while, another fleet of invisible scouts slip around behind the encroaching Daughters.
Riding upon a quartet of massive armored Amalgams, the four worm-like steeds carry a dark, calcite-plated carriage between them on tight strands of wiry muscle fibers. Only four Daughters are visible topside with the other six presumably sequestered within the carriage of blackened bone, but even the few that you can see tell you exactly what you needed to know. The source of the team’s enhanced sight is made obvious by the girl that sits cross-legged atop the mobile structure, suspended in a crystalline womb in the shape of an eye, the bald figure’s own eyes closed in silent contemplation with a Relic cradled in her lap—a geode of unseeing irises and sharp lashes, delicately held in the Daughter’s pale, fragile hands.
Beside her sits a girl you assume to be a Gluttonous at first due to the dark-skinned woman’s flesh dotted with dozens of softly whispering mouths, though when your scout draws closer you can see the way the air around her shimmers with the tell-tale vibration of a Skintalker’s Lexicon. On the front pair of Amalgams there stand two drastically different Daughters; on the left is a figure whose physical form has been molded into the shape of a classical cannon, her mouth yawning wide into the perfectly round shape of an artillery piece, the length of her spine running down the top of the gun, with its (or rather, her own) bulk held up by eight grotesquely-muscled arms, each one as wide around as Gina. Opposite her stands a Calcite Armorer clad in a sleek suit blue-brushed ivory, her armor’s elaborate filigree extending to the six wide-bore muskets that languidly orbit their creator, who stands at rigid, unmoving attention despite standing on the back of a thundering beast…
(Continued)
