---

The truck veered hard as it narrowly avoided another large pine that had materialized out of the darkness. Whatever items or people that had not been secured previously were tossed around haphazardly throughout the interior. Steady hands expertly manipulated controls, as commanded of the powers that existed that the whole rig didn't stall. Somewhere beneath the roar and protest of the engine, the sound of branches and stone snapping and crunching in the distance, along with sets of glowing blue eyes let them know that they were still being pursued.

"Did she say p-prisoner?!" The princess' voice called out, somehow cutting between the din of the roaring engine and the steady blam of Morden's shotgun. Her voice held a mild tone of panic even as her arm gripped tightly at Justice's arm that kept her stable and still. "Is shooting diplomats out of the sky a normal thing here or- Ah! "

The entire truck bed shuddered and shifted again as Kali weaved through both enemy fire and terrain, the sudden shift silencing the princess. Gerard took that as his moment to chime in.

"Well they're trying to kill us too, so I wouldn't jump to conclusions so quickly your royalness." Gerard commented, using his telekinesis to hold a growing line of shotgun shells steady next to Morden's hand as he fired, so the larger WARDEN could reload without having to pull himself back into the truck. "That being said, I think third party might be a safe assumption at this point. But they have to be pretty ballsy to fly a ship into Rassvet airspace and start shooting."

The ground nearby them exploded as the ship shot at them again, nearly blinding them with the light of the detonation. This time close enough to knock the truck off its wheels for a second before it landed with a rough crash. Stone splinters ripped through the fabric cover of the truck bed and peppered their aegises, magical barriers flaring in response to the shrapnel. As though the explosion was a beacon of light marking their position, a volley of energy bolts streaked from the sets of blue eyes growing increasingly lost in the distance, a horizontal storm of lightning bolts streaking at their vehicle. Justice parried the bolt that was headed straight for the center of the cabin, as Silje's detonation caught the vast majority of the rest. The resulting air stank of burnt ozone, but at least they hadn't died.

This manic chase ontinued for what felt like an eternity. Eventually tires bounced from dirt and stone to slick asphalt, the truck cutting across a road to reach the nearby woods. The darkness gave way to the dim, spread out highway lights, a short bit of open ground before the relative shelter of the woods.

And then something strange happened.

Their pursuers stopped. Mechanical frames slowed at the very border of the preserve, their movements shifting from precise and calculated to jerky and unsteady before coming to a complete halt. Raised cannons lowered, eyes flickered for a moment, as though glaring at the truck, and very slowly they began to turn and disappear back into the darkness. The ship froze in the sky. Another low tone from somewhere within its bowels was sounding and seemed to stretch across the land and vibrate their very bones. The silhouette of the ship flickered and then vanished, taking its storm clouds with it- scattering like a disturbed reflection at the water’s edge, the prior drone suddenly replaced with a very noticeable silence.

They drove onward in continued silence, still on edge. A mile or so ahead of them were the clustered lights of a tiny rest stop and gas station. Gerard peered into the darkness, waiting for yet another surprise. All that was heard was the occasional cry of a beast somewhere in the distance and the sound of wheels against asphalt. The lights of the truck flickered and the engine began to cough as Val finally reached the limits of her ability. The sounds of the radio left on from before and seemingly forgotten in the chaos began to slowly fill the truck.

Collette’s hands were still shaking. Her heart felt like it was somewhere in her neck and refused to move down. Very gingerly she peeled Justice's arm off of her as the truck slowed from its frantic gallop down to a slow, exhausted trot. The old engine letting out a low sigh of relief as it did, only alive because of Val's magic. She flickered her head towards the wildly different looking WARDENs in the back of the truck with her and released a breath she didn't realize she was holding. "They're just gone? Just like that?"

"Hey look, we have cell service again." Gerard commented to nobody in particular as he grimaced at his phone, it's screen having cracked at some point during the conflict and drive.

"...!" Outside of monitored experiments back at the Citadel, there weren't many instances where Valerie had to exert her power to the point of being pretty much incapable of doing anything else, still, it was at a time like this that Valerie's infinitely grateful there was at least one other person among the Barghests capable of functioning as a leader. With Justice at the helm, Valerie felt a bit more assured to risk pushing herself beyond safe limits.

Her teeth gritted as her wide-opened unblinking eyes and skin started showing the ugly signs of mist overdose. Her constricted pupils were jerking erratically as purple bloodshot veins pretty much covered more than half of her sclera, and her pale skin started becoming more and more violet in hue. Now, being too pale wasn't a good sign, but it sure as hell wasn't as worse as turning goddamned purple. If she succumbed to her body's demands, she'd disengage her power now.

However, she felt that even with Kalina's masterful defensive driving, Morden's rapid sabot fire, Gerard's telekinetic support, Silje's explosive countermeasures, Justice's deflecting barrier, and Collette's emotional support, even with all those, Valerie had the distinct feeling that if she stopped now, they'd all end up dead in a smoldering crater. So, there was no other choice, she had to push over her limits and accepted that she'd likely suffer from a certain condition all mist-users should dread, the one aptly called 'Mistburn'.

With each chaotic second passed in the speeding, swerving, and jostling mist-empowered truck, the worse Valerie's conditions became. Though for some inexplicable reason, their pursuers eventually gave up as the airship abruptly vanished with an otherworldly groan, sending no more bolts, nor warbots at the WARDENs. Regardless of the reason, by then, Valerie had passed her power's safe threshold, well past it.

As the truck slowed down to a crawl, "...ffffh..." a weak, pitiful hiss slipped out of her clenched teeth as the Nephilim disengaged her power, the vein growths swiftly receding from the vehicle, reverting its performance back to the old well-worn truck it originally was. "..." Then, Valerie spent almost half a minute in eerie, unmoving silence... "...!!" before she suddenly jerked up, her cheeks bulging slightly and a gloved right hand snapping up to cover her mouth while her left opened the nearest door. Immediately after, she lurched to the side, putting almost half of her upper body to hang out of the vehicle.

"Uuuuuurgh...!!" Without further ado, the petite WARDEN heaved and expelled concerning amounts of blood, glowing purple-red blood out of her mist-burned body and onto the uncaring ground below. The noises she made were unnervingly visceral as if she was on the verge of death - she certainly felt like that - but finally, after a combination of rough gasps and harsh coughs, Valerie pulled her shaking body back into the truck as trembling hands closed the door.

"..." The horned soldier's purple eyes were empty, now only half-conscious as she laid limp upon the passenger seat; her ethereal halo and wings had long since vanished. Yeah... best just to let her squadmates handle their next move for now, they could at least do that... right?

---

The cannon fire from the sky did not deter Morden, nor did the shrapnel of stone, dirt and metal that flew up into his face while he blasted away into the night. He merely blinked the detritus away while keeping robots on the backpedal. Valerie’s use of magic in this case was keeping them just ahead of everything that “third party” could throw at them. And Morden wasn’t surprised. For one thing, Barghest was not to be fucked with. They had Valerie, they had Silje. The robots were good high speed target practice, but Morden only had so many shells. He stopped his assault on the machines after firing no less than 20 sabots at incoming robots.

As they rode off, he allowed his mist-derived strength to wane.

Valerie stopped the truck, and stopped using her magic on it. Morden watched her lurch out of the truck and hurl up blood from mistburned blood. Morden, having a higher tolerance for mist than most Wardens of his level, knew all too well how rough the overwhelming pain could be. So he slung his shotgun over his shoulders by a sling, and climbed out of the truck. He let a plastic case and a flask full of water fall into his hands from his mist pocket, and walked up to Val’s door.

Valerie. Morden opted to use the telepathic spell connecting them all through Gerard, so she didn’t have to speak, and so they could do so without the princess of Vangar eavesdropping. He calmly sat the case down on the hood of the truck, and withdrew a dose of mist-burn medicine.

You are suffering mist burn. Be still. Breathe, compose yourself. Stepping around the pool of blood, he opened the door with uncanny gentleness for a brick shithouse of a man like himself. This will only take a moment.

"Yes, I said prisoner." Kalina confirmed for the princess's benefit as she continued driving, her foot not leaving the gas pedal. "What did you think was going to happen when a Vangar royal showed up with a dead escort?"

A glance up in the rearview mirror showed no further pursuit, and there was a rest stop ahead. She pulled in, and any option of continuing on was cut off as Valerie lurched out to throw up. Kalina blinked, but left that matter up to Morden and Silje to deal with. No point in her crowding Valerie when the other two had it handled.

Instead, she turned around in her seat back in Gerard and Justice's direction.

"Orders, boss? We've got one of Vangar's princesses and a bunch of robots after us. Should we call it in? Either way, looks like the road trip's cancelled."

Although Valerie was perfectly content to 'sit this one out' so to speak, she couldn't really shut herself off when someone decided to directly speak to her now, could she? Especially not when that someone had caring nurture in mind. "..." The horned WARDEN was slow to respond, needing a few long seconds to finally stir and slightly turn toward Morden, it was as if simply turning her neck was an astronomical task. She had never felt so grateful for Gerard's telepathic field, allowing her to bypass the labor of speaking, "I'm just astonished I'm somehow still alive..."

She'd more than allow Morden to administer the Astral Reducer to her arm and water to her lips, meanwhile, Silje literally hung down from her perch to... check up on her, she supposed, in the Battlemage's own way. "Uuh... thanks." While she could be snarky and mention something along the lines of headpats were the last thing she needed at the moment, but she decided against it. With Morden already attending to her, what else could Silje do? And besides, Valerie was just glad that Silje and everyone else in the squad didn't succumb to mistburn; it wasn't something anyone should be looking forward to, speaking from personal experience.

"Thanks, Morden." Attended, but still exhausted, Valerie let the squad deliberate about what they'd do with the princess. Man, this little road trip was proving to be a lot more than they bargained for...

It was heavy. Even for a single deflection, it felt as though her blood vessels would shred and pop. Still, she was nowhere near as brutalized as Val, who was out of commission after fuelling their getaway. The worst that Justice had was a buzzing feeling on her arms, something that she could minimize by clenching her fists in response.

Morden was left to look after Val. "Good job." She flatly said to the two of them as she finished her cursory status check.

Meanwhile, Silje had immediately pulled out her phone the millisecond there wasn't something interesting happening and said a cursed phrase. She half expected the truck to immediately kick it and any cell service to die once again. But she was right. It could have gone worse. They could have had to actually fight the birthing of all of those robots, or she could have been forced to write eulogies in her report.

"Not a prisoner." Justice replied to Kalina. "That applies to enemy combatants, not diplomats. As fun as it sounds, I'd rather not deal with creating a diplomatic crisis just yet."

Justice ran her hands through her hair. Really, she just had to be the one to deal with a scenario where so many things went wrong, huh? Some vacation.

"That mess is one of three things. First is a third party that managed to sneak through our airspace undetected, but that doesn't explain why they stopped at a border. The second is seditious, so I'll skip that one. The third is that something kicked off an ancient civilization's security alarm centred directly on that preserve, but I'm just making shit up at that point."

She weighed her options and the probabilities of each scenario. Really, she just had to avoid an immediate court marshalling, didn't she? That would be more troublesome than anything else. And for that, she'd need to call in what just happened and who they were with now.

"Gerard, call it in. Attacked by unknown entity. Diplomatic vessel destroyed, diplomat found and secured."

---

"Ah, say it ain't so. I was just starting to enjoy this little vacation." Gerard sighed as the others began to filter out of the truck. Morden went to move and aid Val- they all more or less knew each other's Astral Reducer dosages by heart, Gerard's magic was more for damages of the flesh, which they had surprisingly sustained very little of. Gerard swung himself out of the back of the truck, glad to be out of the stuffy back and breathed in the cool air. Looking up at the sky now, no one would've been able to guess that a ship was up there shelling the crap out of them no more than a few minutes ago. It was like it had up and vanished. "Whatever those things were, they're gone now." he muttered.

Much like Silje, one of the first things Gerard did was check if the ship made any news, or if anyone else had caught a sighting of it- which shouldn't have been difficult given it's size, but both WARDENs disappointingly found nothing on social media or news. Either truly no one had seen anything, or Rassvet censor nets were already hard at work.

"What I'm curious about," Gerard called out to the group, "Is why princess here crashed here of all places. The peace talks weren't set to happen until tomorrow- and even flying we're a good few days west of Orestia. That's a pretty far distance to fall."

"We never made it to the Rassvet border." The princess replied, also stepping out of the back of the truck, watchful eyes prevented her from straying too far away, so she made do with sitting on the truck's bumper, hands running through her hair to shake off untold amounts of dust. "We were about an hour or so away from the border before we ran into a mist storm. We were only in the storm for a few minutes. When we came out we were- wherever here is, it was dark, and then we were attacked moments later."

"I've heard of mist storms displacing objects- chairs, wallets, keys, but a whole ass ship?" Gerard couldn't help but chuckle out of the sheer absurdity of such a thing, "I've never heard of such a thing."

He sighed but nodded as Justice told him to call it in. Looked like their vacation might end up being cut short after all- great. They' d only just pooled up a bunch of money for this sort of thing anyway, and it's not like Rassvet paid trainees much either. As Gerard walked a short ways away to make the call, the Vangar princess turned to Justice to address her and the rest of the Barghests milling around the truck.

"With all the chaos and running, I hadn't thanked you properly yet." Collette said before giving them a short bow, So thank you, I don't think I would've survived the night if you all hadn't come along."

"I'm guessing you all already know who I am, but for the sake of formalities, my name is Collette van Skymning. I was supposed to be arriving in Orestia to facilitate peace talks between Vangar and Rassvet. For whatever that's worth."

" -no I don't know what they are, that's why I called them unknown entities." Gerard's voice carried through the relatively still air, frustration apparent in his tone. "No sir, we didn't take secure lines with us when we left- we weren't expecting to get into combat some hundred miles or so inside the border. Yes sir. Yes sir. But- Yes sir."

Returning back to the group, Gerard sighed and shrugged his shoulders. "Well, no one whose worth a damn is awake right now, but I managed to get on the line with Lieutenant Setzer, the training company XO. He said he's going to report to relevant parties ASAP, for now we're to hold fast and lay low."

Glancing down at the rest stop a few miles down, Gerard shrugged. " Can we a least lay low with four walls and beds? Rest stop looks like it has a garage, and this junk heap isn't gonna last much longer without some repairs."

After the administration of the anti-mistburn drug, Valerie immediately felt better, at least on the mistburn aspect, alas, her physical exhaustion and mental fatigue still remained. Mistburn or no, she'd still needed rest after such an exertion. Her limbs felt like jelly and she swore she wouldn't be able to hold a small sidearm steady right now, let alone Haylel. If those hostiles decided to return - hopefully not - then it'd be in everyone's best interest for her to stay out of the fight, she'd be more of a liability than an asset.

Justice had her theories about the assailant's nature, but regardless of which one was closest to the truth, one thing was crystal clear, whoever or whatever they were, they had no qualms in attacking both Rassvet *and* Vangar. She'd say foolish, but after seeing that titanic porcupine of a vessel... and assuming they had more of those, Valerie wasn't so sure anymore. In the face of such a threat, not to mention the princess being here, continuing their road trip was obviously out of the question.

The enemy princess' side of the story seemed to support their squad leader's first hypothesis. Someone out there was hellbent on preventing any peace talks between the two nations, enough to veritably declare war against both. Give us a break... That pesky empire was one massive thorn on Rassvet’s side, they really couldn't afford to have another, especially if this third party seemed to operate on "the enemy of my enemy is my enemy" principle. In light of this, Collette's gratitude seemed to ring a bit hollow, like a celebration after a pyrrhic victory; they rescued a diplomat, but discovered a new threat in the process.

While Garreth was doing his report with what she assumed to be a very punchable military officer, Valerie shuffled her way off the truck, shambling like an emaciated zombie toward the group before sitting down on a random object that could serve as a stool. "Sounds good." But really, right now, any place free of things trying to kill them would do just fine.