“That’s the spirit,” Satori said with another more honest laugh and even Katana deigned to grind her black iron plates together with amusement. “Fortune favors the bold.”

In the distance there was snarling, there was growling, and the steady pound of charging feet getting closer and closer. For Satori the stampede was not so sudden, her dark vision was near perfect, enough that she had been able to make out the wretched form of the Primeval in the distance obfuscated only by the creatures desire to hide itself. The ghouls however were different. She saw them rise in their thousands such that they made the sweeping forest appear cramped. Then with a nod of her head Katana swept her bladed fingers low and cut the terrified horses.

“I hope you don’t mind if I show off now.” Satori jibed. “You're good, but you lack style...”

It wasn’t uncommon for members of the Knights Division to be overlooked by their enemies. After all the majority of them were men and women, ones who had made great sacrifices for great power, but at their core still very much human. Before monsters who could rearrange the stars and sing songs that brought the death of universes they appeared very small indeed and yet they survived every encounter to die another day. But sometimes being clever wasn’t enough, sometimes it was important to let the world know just how dangerous you were, and for Satori the answer was clear. The night was her domain and it was everywhere in these dreary woods and with a click of her tongue it came alive. Grasping hands appeared from every crack in the ground and foliage, every bend of the tree, every hovering cloud that darkened the earth below, even in the wake of the falling raindrops. They swept out in hundreds to catch ghouls by their stray limbs and sent them tumbling back, which in turn send them rolling along the floor and into their fellows, turning the stampede into something of an avalanche of bodies with broken limbs.

The automaton was busy swinging itself into the front seat of the APC and pressing its metal to the pedal. With a start the engine revved and the metal box leapt forward, leaving a shower of red panel in its wake as it went, straight towards the two-headed ghoul. Already burdened by the overgrown deer head a mass of tangling hands had snatched its ankles and were looking to toss it onto its back. Just in time for the all-terrain vehicle to drive its treads into the flesh of its head and climb mount ghoul with all the ease of a sand dune.

Of course the ghouls were still around, she hadn’t done a damn thing about that, they were just doing their best three stooges act at the moment and it was about to get better. Along the way Satori reached behind her back and grabbed the child sized warhammer hanging over her back and swept it around, its head was a single solid block of metal and the runes carved along the flat were in an alien language not yet known to Guild Space, while she leaned out of her seat and grasped at the railing to intercept the large rock with her hammer. The Solar Hammer was not the real deal but it was more than enough to shatter the stone and generate enough momentum to begin channeling Quaking Fire, which promptly fed its way into the shadows beneath the APC and traveled through them, out there in the forest a thousand shadows spat liquid fire that in itself traveled through the natural heat-generating reactions of the ghouls, and in an instant the Plague Forest went up in flames. Those ghouls that were directly affected by the tumble would likely be reduced to ash by the trailing liquid fire while the rest of them were to be set alight by proximity alone. Even the weight of the rain was not enough to stop the rampaging fire.

It was not a stretch to say that, in an instant this dark and dreary night was suddenly a very muggy and blindingly bright day. Of course ghouls were ghouls, even if hundreds of them died there were still thousands with their flesh melting off, using the last moments of their life to charge forward before their limbs snapped and their muscles melted away. But they would have to catch up with the APC now moving along at a solid fifty miles per hour and rolling right over everything in its path. And then there was Satori who, slithered away from her seat and now standing on top of the transport with her hammer sheathed and her arms folded.

“You’ll have to try harder than that to get one up on me, Primeval!” She roared into the darkness, well aware that she was now picking the same fight she had asked Eubeal not to.