"Well, save those pops for the elves, we have a situation here!" Hoshiko hissed at Jun. The slur aside, the tiger princess was already up to something.
"I know you two wanna do some body guarding - " she reminded Xian and Wen,
" - but we don't know what these are, and it looks somewhat safe in here." Moving up to the cathode ray tube television in the virtuality, she pushed the buttons until the last good camera-frame of the attackers was on display.
"Zoom...enhance!" Looking at the creatures in detail, Hoshiko frowned. Their feathered bodies seemed...wrong somehow. She brought out more CRT tvs and set them up too.
"They are unknown to us," Lady Nimue calmly began to reply to Wen, closing her eyes. "But of course, of course," she continued, unsurprised at his words. Hands clasped together, the wood panel behind them retracted like a roll-up door. On the
Aos'Si displays, they could see the flying creatures pointing their lances together. "But, horned one," Nimue addressed Wen, "Are you cer - " In a flash of thunder, brilliant lightning bolts combined together into one before arcing down from the heavens! In a blink, the bolt zigged down at them, only to suddenly zag at the last moment into a nearby tree. Bursting into flames and splinters, their steed powered on as the remains pattered against their shelter. " - certain?" Nimue calmly finished asking the bull. "Our wards remain intact, but have been lessened."
"Something isn't right about these things," Hoshiko crossed her arms in meatspace.
"Yeah, I'd say they just shot lightning," Hoshiko glanced at
Reina.
"I suddenly feel like a cat that wants to stay indoors during a thunderstorm now," she admitted with a sarcastic smirk. Despite the temptation to just shoot at the damned things, the princess seemed content to let others leap into action for once as she narrowed her eyes at the images of the creatures. Outside, the Aos'Si riders raised their spears into the air as the creatures kept their distance, circling like vultures leering at some lively prey. Bolts of energy and arcs of thunder leaped up, but these things managed to swiftly evade. At the same time, the Aos'Si on the deck of the howdah flung boxes of black steel bolts open. Loading them into their polybolos, tiny rubies embedded at the tail glinted in the sun before they were cranked out. Arcing up into the sky, the creatures dodged these too, only for the projectiles to erupt into small fireballs, their metal fragments thrown about.
"Doctor, there's something horribly wrong with these things," Hoshiko spoke aloud, her feline eyes resting on Reina. Gesturing at the Aos'Si display in meatspace, and the increasingly large pile of televisions in their virtuality, she pointed at the limbs of the creatures. "The bodies don't have any legs, and are very smooth and refined looking. But here, the arms, the hands..."
Golden lances in hand, pink nailbeds peeked out from under feathers as the creatures circled, bolts of lightning now leaping back and forward between the two bands.