Ares watched in slow motion, his brain incapable of coming up with any solutions, as the brood mother screeched and emitted a massive sound wave inside this confined space. He himself was blasted back into the veil as predicted and Sandy's fate wasn't any different from his earlier assumption either.
"SANDY!" Ares yelled as he pushed himself off the wall and Voidwalked over towards the location of her crash as soon as humanly possible. He didn't know where she was in the muck exactly but he'd seen her rough landing location and cast a Pelagic Prison there to try and fish her out. She would be trapped inside the prison for the next five minutes but she would be safe from the poison swamp surrounding her during that time and it was the best Ares could do without suicidally chucking himself in after her. She'd probably already taken a general antidote pill Ares gave her prior, and might be able to live for those five minutes fo entrapment, but Ares figured he would have to save her immediately after or she would die on the spot due to all the poison now in her system. He still couldn't see her clearly, as the Prison was buried underneath the swamp, but he could tell she was inside it at least as her presence was thin but still extant. Thankfully the Prison was large enough to split the swamp and push it aside, gradually revealing its full form, as the swamp rolled off its curved sides, and Sandy within. She looked to be in terrible shape, slumped up against the side of the Prison and severely weakened. There was still some poison forming a puddle at the bottom of the Prison, as it was hastily thrown up and some managed to sneak in, so Sandy threw herself at the wall to try and avoid it but her strength was waning and forcing her to gradually slip back down towards the puddle. Her clothes were ruined in a few spots thanks to the sound waves blasting them to pieces so parts of her skin were exposed and already turning a deep and concerning shade of purple. It was bad and she must have felt like she was burning alive. if it weren't for her fellahin racial resilience, innate toughness, and the fine grind she'd taken, she would have been deader than dead already.
Ares no longer had any options remaining and any thought about taking this fight at a slower pace needed to be thrown out the window. As soon as that Pelagic Prison ended in five minutes Ares needed to pick Sandy up, take her somewhere safe, and remove as much poison as he possibly could from her system... So what to do about this brood mother? If he followed along with his original plan, regarding escaping past the limbs and fighting across the rest of the desert, it would take way more than five minutes to do. The brood mother was tough enough to last longer than five minutes without a shadow of a doubt at the rate Ares was going. Plus the purple rain returning soon would take up another minute of his time and there was no feasible way of winning this fight quickly with a cautionary approach... Fuck. Ares smacked his forehead and considered his limited options again.
Ares was at a crossroad.
He had one of three options... Though one of them wasn't really an option in the slightest and even considering it as such was an insult to everything Ares stood for. He could, A, let Sandy die... Obviously this was insanity and he would never even consider it. There was no point in even going over the merits or demerits because that was an absurd thought and he would sooner die himself than let that happen. So, realistically, it was up to option B or C. B was to just kill this brood mother with overwhelming destruction firepower and be done with it. Then there was option C; be greedy. Keep this brood mother alive but... In order to do that... Ares heaved a massive sigh. From the very moment he unlocked his war aura he'd concerned himself over what to do in a situation like this. He could use the war aura at max power and easily dominate this brood mother until it was seeing stars... But then there was the backlash...
How bad was it really?
Ares was unwilling to give up on his stepper farm so, although he would rather not, he was about to find out what sort of punishment awaited him for misusing his war aura... To think this would happen so soon after he got a chance to even start wielding it relatively freely... Was Ares an idiot or just incredibly unlucky? He wasn't entirely sure but he was somewhat calmer now hat he'd made this decision. He was no longer worried about being unable to deal with the brood mother before the pelagic prison ended because that was all but assured. His real worry was dealing with Sandy's poisoned body, treating it so that she was safe from harm, and then overcoming the backlash off his aura. He knew the aura had a sort of personality to it, to some extent, and would be willing to let him rescue Sandy before it knocked him around. It made the decision to show him mercy last time and it would understand why he was using it now. A proper grasp of the situation meant the aura wouldn't prevent him from rescuing a loved one; despite giving him a backlash it was still his personal tool at the end of the day and would never kill him or betray him in such a fashion. It was going to make him sincerely regret this decision, that was mandatory for most people misusing auras under most circumstances, but it wouldn't also force Sandy to lose her life. Ares' upcoming trial had nothing to do with her and punishing her for Ares' mistake was silly; that was how his aura would see it thankfully... But after he rescued Sandy?... Oh boy, it was not going to be pretty...
Ares closed his eyes for a brief second and, upon reopening them, two more war aura flags flew out from within him and the hum of war resounded across the desert louder than ever. Ares wasn't sure what changed but there was a hint of electric guitar and a savage riff hidden away underneath the usual melody. The war aura was probably adapting to its new host and personalising itself somewhat but right now none of that mattered. Usually Ares would wear a mad or confident smirk in the heat of battle when the war aura was operating at full throttle but it was different this time. He was worried about Sandy's health and wasn't in the mood to have fun so his face was a mixture of disdain and apathy towards the brood mother. It was as though he was looking down at a bug that had strolled in front of his path and wasted his time, ignorant of the behemoth it was parading around before. There was no true animosity here on his face, only a mere hint of agitation and nothing more. There was a stillness to his seeming indifference but there was definitely an insatiable anger boiling away under the surface no matter how plain his expression was. He was fed up. Fed up of running around and hiding in the building like a rat. This brood mother was getting in over its head and didn't know who it was messing with. Just because Ares had been lenient up until now and not killed it this was what it was trying to get away with? Ares warned it before the fight started he would be rough with it but yet he still showed it mercy and clearly too much. This arrogance needed to be curbed, Ares could not be trapped in a cage like some pet bird.
With a wave of his hand, Ares coated all three flags in disintegration and slapped the air beside them to whip them into action. They each shot off in three separate directions and, in the blink of an eye, now that they were at full power, broke through the purple veil surrounding these ruins. The power of the flags in this state was impossible to match by any ordinary means and this one action alone caused the brood mother's eye to widen slightly. It was starting to understand the horror of the madman that had picked a fight with it because its veil shattering like weak glass was unthinkable. It knew from the start that there was something lurking deep within Ares that was truly fearsome but it hadn't seen it up until now and foolishly hoped this side of him wouldn't come out before the fight ended. Unfortunately luck was not on its side and whatever payment Ares had to cough up to do what he was doing now would be paid in full by him later. The brood mother had pushed its luck by not surrendering despite being loosely aware of how outclassed it was and now it was also going to pay a price. It was realising its little rebellion was childish to begin with, as a superior cultivator and being had locked his sights on it and decided its fate, and was about to be mercilessly and efficiently quelled.
After breaking through the veil, each of the flags turned to the nearest limb and shot through them quicker than the eye could follow. Holes were blasted into the brood mother limbs, splitting them in two and causing the brood mother above to wobble as its support pillars were destroyed. Just losing three was still manageable but the flags wasted no time in flying clockwise in a perfect circle at incomprehensible speeds and blitzing every other limb seemingly simultaneously. In the span of a second every single limb had been shattered and the isolated torso of the brood mother seemed to hang in the air for a brief moment, unaware its support had been cut and it could no longer hold this lofty position. This gravity defying phenomenon didn't last long and the torso, with the neck and head still attached, plummeted towards the round at meteoric speed. It was never going to reach the ground and scurry away without permission, though, as the three flags all shot up in an arc and impaled the torso in sync with one another. Their strength combined lifted the brood mother as they spiralled upwards and further into the night sky before finally chucking it aside, away from the ruins. It's not that Ares wasn't going to let the stepper fall and crash, he just didn't want it to cause a splash in the poison swamp as it would be a massive headache if the mansion sized torso dropped from that height straight into it. As he was controlling the landing point now, however, he figured he would also raise the height of the fall a little to really make it pay for resisting him. Of course he wasn't done with just this either, yet, and there was more in store other than a simple fall.
After the three flags dumped the torso aside and let it fall, they formed a triangle with their poles and their respective fabrics dangled in the middle of the gap between them. The flags fluttered in the wind and gradually grew, intertwining with one another until they formed a chaotic, red, triangular void which from within a massive red hand and arm appeared. Much like the soldier hand Ares could summon with one flag, these three could summon something very similar but it was more 'complete' comparatively. It was far, far bigger and the size of the hand, wrist, and bicep combined was bigger than even the brood mother. It grew ever larger while the fist clenched and the muscles, in the arm that emerged behind it, flexed. Once this colossal arm and hand grew to full size, dominating the night sky in place of the fallen brood other, the fist fell vertically, like it was stamping a document, and pummeled the brood mother from above with a mighty BANG. The brood mother had been crashing to the ground at a frightening rate to begin with but now it was like a shooting star breaking the sound barrier and collided with the ground not even a fraction of a second after it was squashed in the air like an insignificant bug.
The hand was absorbed back into the triangular void portal of the flag fabric and disappeared completely. Omniscience allowed Ares to keep track of the brood mother through the massive sand smoke screen its crash landing kicked up and, though it was injured, it wasn't incapable of moving, surprisingly. This thing was sturdy with a capital 'S' but Ares wasn't going to let it flee as it was so clearly trying to. Rather, trying to run away in the presence of the war aura was not a good idea at all... Much like its shadow stepper offspring, the brood mother felt the stinging stare of thousands of bloodthirsty and manic soldiers all turning to face it at once. It tilted its eye to look backwards and watched in hero as the three flags homed in on it like they had a score to settle and vengeance and retribution to enforce with burning passion. They looked inescapable, unyielding, unstoppable, and implacable. They would not break, they would not bend, they would rest until their judgement had been cast and the brood mother dared not stop them despite being the target of their pent up aggression. The flags sunk effortlessly into the brood mother one by one with each landing higher up along the brood mother's body. The first flag created a large hole neatly smack dab in the middle of the torso and singlehandedly anchored the entire monster to the cold desert. The second made short work of the brood mother's neck, landing between specific joints so that the neck could no longer twist, turn, or move without snapping offa nd beheading itself. The third and final flag left the most precise hole but also the most damming as it had pierced the brood mother's eye and stapled it to the sand without room for discussion or negotiation. The target had been punished for daring to retreat and it wasn't going anywhere without the war aura owner's permission. This was how the universe worked, the war aura was supreme now and always.
Ares strolled over to the brood mother and crouched down in front of its giant eye, his facial expression still unchanged from the initial moment he summoned the war aura in full. He took a long sigh and formed a claw with his hand, one that slowly scratched the eye from top to bottom. It was already damaged but this act caused it to become bloodshot but the brood mother dared not complain or yelp in pain as it was getting what it deserved for playing this game in the first place. It knew now that Ares was unquestionably aware of what it had done and so it had no business pretending otherwise or acting like this was undeserved. It would have no right to be mad if Ares wanted to kill it, even. It could speak, to some degree, but what was the point of that now and outing it as the fraud Ares already knew it to be? Ares knew from the start so remaining silent here and letting him do as he pleased was perhaps the best way to appease him and hope he didn't murder it. Luckily Ares had no such intention. He'd brought out the three flags specifically to subdue the brood mother, he had other means to kill it if he really wanted to and this method was unnecessarily roundabout. Killing it now would be a complete waste of his resolve to suffer the backlash and that was idiotic. If he killed this brood mother in a fit of rage then Ares wouldn't get far in the future because being unable to control his emotions was a massive weakness. Sure his war aura gave him an urge to kill and beat things but it wasn't beyond his control, not even remotely. Plus it only really kicked in when fighting. Against a surrendering and deflated opponent like this it all but vanished. There was no excuse so he pulled out a Puny Prisoner instead and activated it. Normally a monster this size wouldn't fit in the Prisoner but Ares cleverly used nothingness to cheat a little. By placing a nothingness mark over the brood mother, and one inside the Puny Prisoner, it was as though the brood mother existed inside the Prison despite being outside it. As that was the case, the Puny Prisoner's shrinking magic also applied to it when activated and so Ares was able to shove the miniature brood mother, and its shrunken limbs, inside the tiny prison and keep it there. It would be unable to escape, unable to summon more steppers, and unable to heal while it was like this. Ares would make it abundantly clear to this thing where it stood soon enough, and dump it into his Blade, but for now he had more pressing issues.
Ares didn't de-activate his war aura yet. If he was going to suffer a backlash anyway then he might as well make the most of the current situation. With a point of his finger, Ares directed the flags towards the Pelagic Prison and had the fabric continually absorbed the surrounding poison. It wasn't much but it did lower the overall level of the poison in the nearby area, making it easier for Ares to save Sandy after without any more sloshing over her and exacerbating the problem. As soon as the Prison disappeared, the swamp would refill itself in the semi-circle shaped gap that appeared and that was problematic. Sandy would fall straight down towards that gap and Ares didn't really have a way of quickly scooping her up and dragging her out. He wasn't too far from her, so it wouldn't be too bad, but if draining the swamp here and there made this process even a little smoother then there was no reason not to do it.
Ares had timed the Pelagic Prison pretty well in his head so, after another few minutes of waiting, he watched it disappear and took swift action, Voidwalking, Shifting, and even combining Echo and Double Jump to place his arms underneath Sandy's falling body as soon as possible and take her away in a princess carry. She was breathing sporadically under her clothes and the heaving of her chest was accompanied by faint wheezing. The poisoning looked bad but Ares' Omniscience was telling him there was still time to fix this and help her live. Had he been any slower in summoning the Pelagic Prison earlier and rescuing her form the swamp, or if he waited another minute now to take her to safety, she would froth at the mouth and die as her innards were melted beyond recovery. Ares could save her but she'd need a few days rest after before she was good to start moving around again like normal. Allie's healing pills would get her right as rain in due time but it wasn't exactly a quick process. Ares was in the same boat, actually, and would no doubt need recovery time after his backlash so it seemed as though the scavenger base raid was on hold for now. They didn't know Ares and Sandy had located them and were coming so there wasn't any real rush to get it over and done with, thankfully.
Ares Voidwalked over to his Elliot and barged through the door with his shoulder. The door swung wide open and then swung shut again after Ares passed by. He lay Sandy on the couch and began removing her clothes to see the full extent of her poisoning but the more he removed the more he understood that this was looking to be quite bad, worse than he thought. She could be saved but it seemed like Ares was not going to have a good time of things here... Just running disintegration through her veins and bloodstream wasn't going to be quick enough. Ares would need to be slow and methodical with his disintegration so as not to cause damage but he really didn't have that kind of time as her innards were practically sizzling right now and couldn't take much more... There were multiple deep purple patches all over her, totalling around ten from head to toe as far as Ares could tell. There were probably also a few on her back side and they all needed to be dealt with with no exceptions whatsoever. Leaving even a single one would allow the poison to slowly spread and infect everything else eventually anyway. Sandy was in no position to heal herself even if Ares only left a few patches so he really did have to personally remove them all by himself and that was kind of a massive problem. Thighs, foot, waist, stomach, chest, neck, face, shoulders, shoulder blades, hip, arms, hands, ears. These were the locations she'd been poisoned and needed treatment...
Although treatment was definitely not going to be the usual kind and this was where things got both dicey and spicy.
Ares wasn't exactly a healer. His blood was capable of healing, and he would use that to help speed up this process... But there was only one way of removing the poison quickly and effectively... This was going to get a bit lewd... Though, for what it was worth, Sandy was nearly naked right now anyway. Ares had to tear off most of her clothes to understand where exactly she was poisoned... But now he was going to make it worse by opening small cuts in the afflicted area and sucking the poison out. He could wriggle disintegration into the wounds carefully this way, as well as smear his tongue with his own healing blood, so it was a three for one in terms of effectiveness. Sipping the poison out, disintegrating it, and healing the damaged area with his blood all in one... It was a fantastic way of curing her but it was definitely going to be a little... Exciting for Ares... To say the least... He hadn't banged his wife in forever! He couldn't be blamed for feeling a certain kind of way at the mere thought of this! Still, he had a life to save and he wasn't about to get shy or distracted so he took out the prowler, to make small cuts with, and got to work while reminding himself that hits was not going to be all fun and games. He still had to personally absorb the poison himself and, though the Converter and his regeneration would take care of it, he was going to come out of this feeling incredibly sick and miserable. Then there was the backlash on top of all that... Ares was going to be in a truly pathetic state once all was said and done so damn right he was going to at least enjoy this while the going was still good! If it took his mind off the impending doom then that was good enough!