A ghostly tank skidded into Zero's space, perfectly matching its posture and seamlessly merging with the machine. His soul's fingers were no less broken and the metaphorical control stick was no less stuck, but, somehow, Strake suddenly felt like a dozen other tankmen were helping him wrench back control over Zero. In fact, he could swear he saw the faces of strangers and comrades surrounding him, ghostly-green phantoms of the dead. Not just that, but for some strange reason, five knightly figures in boar-head helmets joined them, embodied in pure-white flame.

Voices echoed from everywhere and nowhere at once. They were not the voices of fallen tankmen, but five voices carrying a thunderous timbre and a noble presence. In perfect unison, they boomed inside Strake’s head:

“OUR FIGHT IS LONG DONE. OUR STRENGTH IS SPENT.”

“YOU, BEARER OF THE SPIRIT OF STEEL, SHALL CARRY ON IN OUR STEAD.”

“CARRY FORTH THE BANNER OF RIGHTEOUSNESS, STRAKE SODAN OF WILLOWDALE.”

“FROM THIS DAY FORTH, THOU ART A KNIGHT TRUE: THUS SAITH WE, THE KNIGHTS OF THE BOAR.”

“WE DO NOT ASK YOU TO QUEST ACROSS THE LAND AS A KNIGHT-ERRANT SLAYING DEVILS.”

“SO LONG AS YOU CARRY ON AS YOU HAVE THUS FAR AND REMEMBER THAT WE ONCE EXISTED…”

“IT SHALL SUFFICE.”

“IT SHALL SUFFICE.”

“IT SHALL SUFFICE.”

“IT SHALL SUFFICE.”

“IT SHALL SUFFICE.”

As for Zero, Zero didn't fully understand. It had only known hunger and anger until now. It had only heard the wailing cries of torment and smelt the dense, tantalizing scent of lifeblood, the self-same nourishing force that made the flesh and blood of its foes perfect repair material. Yet now, it suddenly knew all these... New things, heard new things. Those strange statues, that white flame, all so alien. Zero felt a disease spreading with each rev of its engine, an infestation, inexorably and irreversibly burrowing into everything the machine was. Knowledge that could not be unlearned.

Zero heard the cries for salvation of the sacrificed, the prayers of the living, and its anger not only grew, but changed. From raw, animal impulse, to a heretofore alien blend of disgust and wrath. Zero didn’t want to eat the man called Third because it was hungry. It wanted to eat him so it could burn him up in its engine and leave not a trace of him in this world.

Zero also heard the voice of Strake and a dozen others, all giving it the same exact command... And although it could have fought back, Zero now understood why the command was being given, and it obeyed.

Out of the swiftly-collapsing white-flame path came a burning tank, a machine painted in crimson-red, its thrusters erupting with golden-red flame, its speaker blaring a heroic march of drums and trumpets. An outer layer of sacrificial aura trailed from over the machine, bleached white of corruption, almost like sacrificed souls were clinging onto it as a vessel of salvation. A strange sapience now burned within the tank's cycloptic eye - a black dot in the center of the glowing sensor, surrounded by three black lines forming a cornerless triangle.

A MAD MACHINE BECOMES HOLY ARMOUR

A DOG OF WAR BECOMES A KNIGHT

JUDGED BY THE RIGHTEOUS DEAD, YE BE WORTHY

PANZERMENSCH SANCTUS DOMINUS

Halfway across the continent, Zero's sibling, V-2, stomped at the head of a sacred procession on its way to subdue a newly-awakened monstrosity. Suddenly, its pilot, Chalybes Pontifex halted his war-engine, and for the first time in months, emerged into the sun. He looked westward, feeling a strange sense of the sublime.

But that was there, and Strake and Zero now hovered at the ritual circle's edge. Then, with a thunderclap, it zipped elsewhere just outside the circle, circling its outer perimeter.

"What is that?!" came a distressed aetherwave transmission from Victor, garbled by interference.

A series of impacts sent tremors through the ground, Zero's comet-like form dragging another Revenant into the air. White-red flame enveloped the monstrosity, visibly burning away its aura's corrupt, fleshy colours.

A followup soon came: "False alarm. Just... Zero. I think. Hard to tell under the holy flames and phantom armour. It intercepted some kind of aura construct just as the construct emerged from the vortex. I think the window to start the disruption sequence is closing, please advise."

These messages were not voice, but thoughts encapsulated in verbal form, transmitted and received near-instantaneously.

Zel and Zef exchanged glances. The remaining two shields shattered. Zel sent the go-ahead, not even bothering with words, just sending the very idea of "yes" and "begin". She could hardly manage more in her current state. As she sat there, on the roof, the tiles baked beneath her feet and phenomenal elemental power raged barely contained within her grasp. Neither the Fang Rippers nor Thundercannon itself could be recognized as individual parts any longer. Everything else was drowned out by blinding light and ear-splitting snapping and buzzing of thunder. Screamingly loud and bright rings of pure light now drifted away from her, expanding in diameter as the terrifying power coursing through them demanded more space. To mortal eyes, even the rings could no longer be distinguished; the countless arcs leaping between them would blend together into a cylinder.

And indeed, mortal eyes did see. A scant few survivors, holed up in hidden attics and tall towers, bore witness, and they beheld a kneeling figure with hands outstretched, grasping a gigantic bolt of lightning. Next to her could be made out, just barely, the vague silhouette of a woman whose long hair billowed in the gale force winds, somehow giving off the feeling of death itself even across this vast distance.

Mortal eyes were not the only ones who saw. Immortal brothers, drawn here by the isolation array, had been watching the Newman Sect's efforts all along, neither able nor willing to intervene in any substantial way. If they revealed themselves, after all, it would be an infernally slippery effort to put that genie back in the bottle. Despite their disagreements and self-limitation, however, the immortal brothers did intervene, and would do so in the future. By apparent coincidence, not a single one of the Order's members would escape the city. The small number of those who slipped by would be found mysteriously dead, as if their hearts had decided to stop beating.

The immortal brothers were not the only ones whose attention had been drawn to this place, however. The Order of Six Truths was, after all, not the only sect which had survived the Cultivation Suppression Edict by going into seclusion, and one of those other sects just so happened to have eyes in Eberheim: Enki’s Tower, a circle of wizards that had never engaged in sect culture any further than they had to. They held the high esteem of being able to claim their founder had invented the mental exercises that would later be simplified into the “arcane mathematics” used by some noble cultivator families.

A Wizard of Enki’s Tower, alongside a rogue practitioner of the same type of mental cultivation - a Hedge Witch - had been drawn here by the isolation array. They had entered the dome undetected through their own, much subtler method of incursion.

These two watched from the rooftops, not for lack of ability to fly like the Immortal Brothers, but out of a desire to go undetected. They weren't the only other observers, either.