The puppets themselves had not changed. They were still made of the same material and the design had not drifted that far from their origin. The distinction was in the details. Before, each soldier statue had been covered in simplistic plate armour, and had a sword. Now, the sword had been reworked. On each sword the edge was sharper, the blade thinner, and the spine of the weapon tougher. They were still barely more than three inches long, but they did not need to be much longer. The armour each soldier wore had been reworked. It was practical, but stylised, with an impression of a hammer on either pauldron.
Like the soldiers, the armour of the beasts and the bracings or cloth on the mythical creatures had been reworked and reshaped to match the intricate style that Fen had formed in his time travelling. The features of each puppet were far more delicate than before, bordering lifelike to the point where even the carved fur on the wolves looked soft enough to sleep on. Each creature had been given the hammer of the Hephaistia clan as part of their design and part of the array that bound them in a unit, allowing for Ruko to have an easier time in controlling them.
The most pivotal change was that of the utility of each statuette. With the active existence of Ruko, Fen could focus on a supportive role, repairing each puppet in the midst of combat. As such the primary role of the support puppets became a secondary one.
Ruko spread her arms. Strings of mana linked her to her tools, dictating the direction that the puppets would move in with mere thoughts. The puppets moved like a wave, attacking and guarding, blocking, and when the occasion allowed it even opening holes in Mari and Tomas’ guards before the mythic puppets peppered them with pellets, fireballs and thunderbolts.
The two Avalonians tried to strike back, but they were suppressed by the sheer volume of strikes heading their way at all times. It was like they were fighting an army of models with powers only slightly lesser than their own. Every so often they would damage a soldier puppet and rejoice before watching it be dragged away by a beast, returned to Fen and repaired while another soldier puppet took its place from the pool that the children had kept in reserve. They tried to target other things, be it the beasts or the mythic creatures, but if they let up on the soldiers at all they would be stabbed by innumerable toothpick-length weapons. It was like the two were fighting a meat grinder being guided by a small girl.
In a desperate attempt to defend themselves, Tomas took on guarding Mari alone as the woman began stabbing bones from a pouch attached to her waist into her skin before screaming, “burst!” into the sky. Each bone attached to her turned to dust and a ripple of force spread out from her in the epicenter.
The ripple spread over the puppets, severing their connection to Ruko, and in turn Ruko stepped back in fear. Fen’s eyes widened and he moved towards his sister, but he could not reach her before the spread touched her. She fell back, staring at her hands as she felt the wave pass her, salt crystallising on her skin. She began to shake in terror, but as Fen reached her she realised she could still move.
“Sis!” Fen cried, brushing the salt off her skin delicately while raising wall after wall of dirt to obstruct Mari and Tomas from approaching them.
“I’m fine,” she replied, “I’m fine.”
“I want to hurt them,” Fen whispered. “They tried to hurt you and I don’t like it.”
“Let’s hurt them then. Let’s hurt them really bad.” Ruko smiled before spreading out her mana and reconnecting with every puppet around her. The mana within each puppet was still intact, they had all just been shut off by the burst of Gi produced by the destruction of the bones in Mari’s hands.
As the puppet swarm renewed their foray, Mari grabbed Tomas’ arm. “Have you got any more bones? Or high quality ones? I used up almost all my stash in the last burst and we could barely capitalise on it at all.”
“None,” Tomas growled in reply.
The two of them looked at each other, and began pulling back in an attempt to join up with Dayel and swing the fight in their favour, but before they could Ruko increased the ferocity of the puppets she was controlling. Their swings did not become sharper, or faster, but each puppet acted more recklessly, dealing more damage in dangerous situations but taking more in the process. It was like the meat grinder had moved up a gear in processing speed, but was destroying itself to keep up with that speed.
Cut after cut, Fen and Ruko forced back the two Avalonians. Their puppets washed over the two, leaving them no recourse and barely any way to respond. They tried to cry out as the puppets began drowning them in cuts and their own blood. The two Avalonians sank under the weight of the puppets on top of them, struggling less and less as the puppets continued to act. Eventually Ruko pulled back the puppets and both children looked at the corpses of their fallen enemies. As the puppets ordered them in front of the twins, they watched Ayna cut through the air and summon a giant bone arm. The arm shot through the air and pounded into Jim, crushing him into the wall near the gateway. As a dust cloud burst out and obscured the blow from sight, Ruko cried out at the top of her lungs, “Master! No!”
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