From above, figures began to appear across the already shattered gold of the sky that THE Creature had overwritten moments earlier.
Noah observed them emerge with the same clinical attention he had been paying to every detail of the battle, watching as six Superbius Gilded Ones manifested in the air above THE Gilded White Mountain at varying altitudes and distances!
Each of them carried the same refined gold luminescence of Paleozoic-tier Superbius engineering, each of them was robed in the layered ceremonial colors of their respective houses, and each of them radiated basal Existential Radiation at the steady passive intensity that had pressed Noah down to the cracked balcony when the Gerousia had first arrived.
And then, after them, a seventh figure descended!
She arrived with even less announcement than the six who had come before her, simply resolving into visibility at the center of their arrangement as if she had always been there and had merely been waiting to be perceived, and Noah registered her presence with an immediate sharpening of his attention because the radiation pouring off her was of a different register than the six Gilded Ones flanking her.
Her Existential Radiation did not announce itself with the brash golden luminescence of the Superbius. Her radiation was quieter, denser, older, a pressure that settled rather than pressed, and the settling of it felt more absolute than the pressing of Aurelius Maximus had been.
She was a woman of terrifying beauty.
Her form was tall and slender with the long refined lines of a being engineered for presence across very large chambers of influence, her skin the pale pearlescent gold of a Gilded Lifeform, her hair a flowing river of molten silver-gold that fell past her waist in patterns of arrested motion that did not quite obey the ordinary rules of falling.
Her eyes were a deep amber-gold that held no swords in their pupils the way Aurelius Maximus’s had, but her eyes instead held something that looked like a slowly rotating mandala of interlocking geometric shapes, each shape moving at its own independent rate against the others.
Another brilliant light bloomed near her!
Beside her, floating close at her right shoulder, was a massive muscular Gilded One around whose body crimson red light surged in steady aggressive currents that never quite settled into stillness.
His frame was built along the proportions of an ancient warrior rebuilt at Paleozoic scale, his chest broad and armored in red-gold plate that seemed to have been forged from his own refined Wrath rather than worked from external materials. His eyes were pure unbroken red, the red of arterial blood held at the moment before it spilled!
Noah burned with his newly amplified Superbius Pride as he focused his Infinity upward to extract whatever details Infinity could offer him about the arrivals, and Ruination obliged quickly.
|Entities Detected: Six Superbius Gilded Ones.|
|Classification: THE Paleozoic Scale - Ordovician Tier.|
|All six are Gerousia-ranked or below.|
|Entity Detected: Sororis Prima Elzyana.|
|Classification: THE Paleozoic Scale - Ordovician Tier?|
|Affiliation: THE Magna Sorora.|
|Entity Detected: Custos of Sororis Prima Elzyana.|
|Name: Ferocis Valerius Krael of the Ira House of the Crimson Mantle.|
|Classification: THE Paleozoic Scale - Ordovician Tier.|
|Engineered Ego: Amplified Ira (Wrath).|
"A Young Relictus has appeared in these foul lands and killed a Gilded One."
"A Superbius Gilded One has been killed. Make sure this vile thing...does not escape."
HUUM!
Sororis Prima Elzyana nodded once to her Custos.
Ferocis Valerius Krael launched himself into the sky without a word, his massive armored frame tearing upward with the crimson aggression of his amplified Ira surging around him in intensified currents!
The skies emptied of the response party, and only Sororis Prima Elzyana remained floating above the mountain, her amber-gold eyes holding their slowly rotating mandalas of nested geometry as she turned her attention to the carved remnants of Gerousia Aurelius Maximus still suspended in the shattered air.
Noah observed her go to the processed remains of the Gerousia with a slow drifting grace.
And...
Her expression actually...softened?
Her face, which had held the cold imperious composure of a Sororis Prima for every second since her arrival, softened into an expression of genuine heartbreak as she drifted close to what remained of Aurelius Maximus’s floating carved frame, her amber-gold eyes dimming slightly as she took in the thoroughness of the carving and the specific patterns of the flaying that THE Creature had executed!
She reached out with a pale pearlescent hand and gathered the remnant flayed skin of the Gerousia into her palms with the tender care of a being handling something precious, and then she closed her eyes and held the skin against her chest for a long moment of silence that Noah could feel pressing against the substrate of THE Wyld itself.
Her voice came quiet and private when she finally spoke.
"No Gilded One should ever die is such lands, nor should you have been alone. I...will bring you justice, Aurelius. I will bring you justice, and I will scorch the foundations of whatever bred the Relictus that took you from us, and I will make certain that no such creature ever rises again within reach of the Sororis!"
She kissed the flayed skin once with a kind of intimate grief!

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