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[b][u]Thaum: Group A[/u][/b]

Another arc of white hot light barrelled down the street, pure energy ripping through and obliterating everything in its path. Estelle, Marcus and Don dashed to the side, ducking down an alleyway in the nick of time once again to avoid Gaoh’s relentless attack, but it wasn’t enough. Estelle’s eyes widened in horror as she realised it wasn’t stopping, and instead it continued, turning towards them and consuming the buildings they had taken as shelter as Gaoh shifted his arm in a slow but steady sweep. 

“D-down!” Estelle shrieked, grabbing Marcus and Don’s arms and dragging them to the floor with her, just in time to avoid the arc of death searing overhead. She could feel the heat rupturing overhead, and it was pure luck that her, and the rest of her friends’ hair, hadn’t sparked on fire. 

Eventually the Magitech Cannon’s blast dissipated of energy, leaving a cool, eerie silence behind. Poking her head up, Estelle stared in disbelief at the level of nothing that was left in Gaoh’s path. At the buildings still half standing, the sides of their walls and interiors smoothed out levelly from the edge of the attack. And in the distance, walking towards them with a snide grin, reloading his cannon with another Magisphere: Gaoh. 

“This isn’t going to work,” Estelle said. “We can’t keep running, not when he can do this! We have to fight, we have to-”

“NO!” Marcus denied again. “We have to run, Estelle, it’s the only way!”

A terrific gust of wind gripped the Pride, and propelled their bodies into the air, moving at a diagonal direction inbetween horizontal and vertical. Estelle, Marcus, Selan and Don all landed on their feet one of the house’s rooftops, with Don catching the catatonic Trixie in his arms, still giving a wary glance back towards the relentlessly stalking Gaoh. 

“See?” Marcus said, pointing ahead. Now that they were raised, above the violet fog, they could see the rest of the twisted, nightmarish Thaum around them, and in the distance, in two separate places across the town, on either side of the giant tower in Thaum’s centre… more chaos and devastation. More erupting fireballs of explosions, and the two monsters that could be seen as larger then the surrounding homes’ rooftops-

“A giant skeleton? How is that…?” Estelle gawped, and her hands began to shake as they focused on the next. “And that’s… what the hell [i]is[/i] that?”

“Oren.” Marcus’ eyes narrowed, his teeth clenching shut tightly. Selan and Don followed their friends’ gaze, and they too were left speechless at the gigantic terror smothering the skyline in the distance. 

“But… bro… didn’t…?” Don struggled to speak, but Marcus just shook his head, and another surge of emerald light filled the bodies of his friends, as Gaoh’s magitech cannon below reached full charge. 

“We can’t fight. We simply can’t. We need to get to that tower.” Marcus looked to his friends. “As quickly as we can.”

There was an air of understanding, and the quartet dashed off, rushing along the rooftops as the buildings behind were vaporised into oblivion. Gaoh kept laughing. 

Around them, however, Thaum was beginning to shift, and turn. The very environment itself seeking to oppose the Pride… and to kill them.