Ceron! Ceron! Ceron!

But it's not Ceron that provides Ember's tactics here. No. It's stories. Half-remembered fragments of myth. Bright excitement is in her eyes as she gives the order: rear ranks, cords and scavenging. Anything that can clack together. Instruments, found in cabinets and stands. Horns, if you can get them. The clay tiles, the fractured pavement, the flutes and whistles and drumsticks that brought the people of Beri joy. Quickly, now: every moment wasted is another awful slash across someone's face, a crumpling shield, and a moment where the Knight might fall.

"Company," Ember yells, beginning to swing a cord with two clay tiles at either end, clacking [i]ratatatat, ratatatat, ratatatat,[/i] "[i]ROAR![/i]"

The cacophony is almost deafening, almost a solid thing, interspersed with howling as a reverberating bass line, drilling into the heads of the Armatii. Stymphalia, Stymphalia! Deep in your heart, you know this: that this is a thunderstorm, this is a predator, this is a disruption in the air, this is [i]no more thinking[/i], this is [i]dismay.[/i] The Daughters of Ceron still communicate as a roiling mass of scents below--

No, rising, too. Leaping off rooftops, tossing up lassos, digging pearl-handled knives into caught legs, dragging down these monsters of the air down into the phalanx like ants swarming over a broken-winged sparrow. There is blood, and much of it comes from bloodied mouths, deep-pierced breasts, ligament-torn limbs, but there are still more, still more, still more, and the pack works together, after all, wounded being pulled away, caught as they fall, but these monstrous alpha predators all descend alone and writhing.

Ember leaps, still swinging her castanets, her knife in her other hand, and when she lands it's one swinging around the throat and the other right in the spine between the thrashing wings. Mosaic, the Silver Divers cannot, will not follow: you must continue alone. This is knife-work, hate-work, a roiling mass that threatens to drive your own ears through your skull. So run. Run, while the Daughters of Ceron raise a din so loud that it might just crack the tiles beneath their feet.

[[i]Overcome:[/i] [b]7.[/b]]