Her mind was swimming, overwhelmed with adrenaline and anger. When two giant bipedal beetles emerged from the ground, Shiloh locked onto them as her next targets. With a swirling vortex of wind, the deity of storms flew like a rocket and electrified herself. Her metallic form was coursing with electricity and she rammed into one of the armored beetles sending a lethal amount of voltage through contact. All that chitin was rendered useless as its internal organs were fried to a crisp, the light vanishing from its eyes. The insectoid behemoth shuddered and fell on its knees, stiff with rigor mortis. Leaving its lifeless body behind she charged, making a beeline for a pair of mantises. Lightning in her hands, she grabbed their heads and forced brands on them, knocking them onto the ground as she left them writhing in agony. The symbol of Antikythera burned brightly on their bodies as they screamed incoherently in their native tongue. Blood pacts done by force rarely ended well, especially when one of the involved parties was clearly unwilling.

Grabbing one of the ants, she tore some sort of shadowy substance out of it before moving on. The insect dropped to the ground, eyes glazed over. At their creator's behest, the thelyphonida constructs swarmed into the compound. Resembling giant whip-scorpions, they attacked the ambushers with reciprocated ferocity. Their weaponized appendages tore into the drones, yanking them apart like dolls. Their armored plating provided excellent defense against weapons, giving them time to retaliate with a spray of liquid incendiary or a well-aimed pierce to the vitals. Outside the sky was beginning to darken as Apoy bellowed, spewing burning rock and ash. Time was still spinning out of control beyond the encampment walls and Shiloh's grasp on it was merely accelerating it further. 

Focused gusts of wind battered the enemies, keeping them grounded while preventing them from making successful advances. The dead would have to be dealt with after this nasty little surprise was over. Summoning a rain of spectral daggers, she turned them on herself. Triggering her powers as a deity, all the daggers were deflected into a spectral storm of bladed projectiles. Strikes of misfortune hit the enemy soldiers causing terrible curses to sink their fangs into their victims. No holds would be barred until every one of those hateful insects were buried six feet under. If they wanted to kill her, she would drag them all down to the Circles of Inferos with her!

Tristana was extremely glad that she had removed the living soldiers out of the scene before Shiloh went all out. If they were here, they would have received all of this damage before they knew what was going on. The fascinating thing about electricity was that it was damaging no mattered how much there was. Tristana could never compare to Shiloh in any way. Neither through battle, magic, defense, agility or anything else. Shiloh was a goddess. Still, Tristana was able to use a bit of the electricity summoned from the sky. She never took electricity away from any of Shiloh's attacks. But there was plenty of electricity summoned in the clouds and skies being unused. Tristana was able to use the electricity using her Galvanic Weaving spell. A group of three ants charged at her. Two of them were soldier ants, one of them was a drone ants. Tristana’s mind focused and acted fast. There were three enemies. Their chests were the strongest part since it was the most heavily protected.

Destroying the legs would be pointless since they would be able to function without them. The weakest part was their heads. All of this passed her mind in a matter of seconds. Tristana aimed two bolts of the electricity she controlled heading directly at the heads of the two soldiers on the left and on the right of the drone ant. The ants were hit by the electricity and unsurprisingly fell to the ground. Electricity directly to the head typically didn’t end up with the victim living afterwards. The drone ant in the middle stopped for a moment to look at it’s fallen comrades. Tristana assumed it was because the ant was using them with the hive mind to keep each other safe. Now they were gone it caused a slight moment of confusion. A small moment was all that Tristana needed. She did not hesitate or try to give the drone a chance. Tristana charged at the drone ant with fire erupting from her mouth. The ant was surprised and didn’t do anything fast enough. Tristana grabbed the ant’s head and continued burning his head until he fell to the ground. She then spotted a mantis nearby that was going to charge at Shiloh.

Tristana charged at the insectoid. The insectoid was alerted of the charge and was able to make an attack with its claws. Tristana managed to barely dodge the hit. It was a close call. The mantis was clearly expecting Tristana to have been hit. She was close enough to reach up and hit the mantis in what would be called it’s neck if it was more human like. Electricity that Tristana was controlling surrounded the mantis’ neck and electrocuted it. She then picked up the claw of the insectoid and gave herself some extra strength using the Strength spell. Tristana managed to rip off his claw. Now she had a weapon that was sharp. She then saw a whip-scorpion like creature come from somewhere and begin fighting with them. However Tristana understood that she needed to keep out of it’s way. Luckily she was fighting on the opposite side of the thing.

A wasp took the chance to attack Tristana when she was distracted. Tristana fell to the ground and used the mantis claw to block the attack. She kicked the wasp as hard as she could between the chest and the bottom part of the wasp. The wasp was kicked back into the air. Tristana jumped back up and sent lightning up to where the wasp was at. The wasp dodged the electricity and watched where it went. Tristana took this chance and leaped up to stab the wasp with the mantis claw as many times as possible. The wasp was not too far off the ground. Tristana landed on the ground and began to get at the next bug. Throughout all of this, her expression remained the same. She was surprised when the scorpion thing appeared but otherwise she maintained that same intense stare. Tristana did not seem angry. She did not seem frightened. She was intently focused on what she was doing. If she let even the slightest thing distract her, like the scorpion did, she would lose focus. 

No no no!

This wasn't how things were supposed to go! All around her Sharifa's forces were falling, and there was nothing she could do about it! ”Damn it, damn it all!” She cursed herself in a scream and found cover behind an already dead large beetle. ”Retreat!” She ordered and sent that through the wasp hive mind as well, knowing that it would reach an ant quickly and then they would know and it would be passed to the beetles and mantis as well.

Retreating would prove hard thanks to the winds and now the ash and falling rock from the volcano. With the winds her units wouldn't be able to fly, and already she had seen what the rocks falling from the sky could do if they landed on someone. And those… things that the Goddess had called up were proving to be stronger than even the largest beetles.

Weighing her options Sharifa moved from her place and stared to fall back with the rest of those that were able to do so. She didn't get far when she felt a hand on her shoulder again and the same male wasp from before caught up to her, stopping her own retreat. ”Sharifa! Your intelligence has led us to ruin! You said that they had lost their powers yet clearly that is untrue!”

Sharifa buzzed with anger. ”My intelligence was correct! But things have changed! How could I have known that Voice thing?! By the reaction of the locals they didn't know about it either!” She challenged. ”Now move!” She then ordered and turned to keep up with the rest of those trying to fall back.

But the male grabbed her again. ”The Queen will hear of this, Sharifa, and we will get to the truth of it. I'm taking command now, so stand down.” He said flatly and turned to continue on, leaving Shar to her own devices.

He didn't get far before he was stopped suddenly with a grunt of pain and blood coming from his mouth, with Shar standing behind him. One of her stingers shoved through his chest, she leaned in. ”You will do no such thing, Jerrik. As your superior I find you guilt of insubordination, the sentence is death.” Her other stinger slammed through his chest and his heart and then she removed them and let him drop to the ground.

Shar stood over his corpse for a moment before taking off running again. She was keeping track of her forces through the hive mind, but they, of course, knew of the exchange that had taken place. Sharifa felt the tension in the hive mind, she knew that there were likely to be consequences for her actions but for now she was just trying to get herself and her people to safety.