Still? Ares was waiting for the brood mother to reveal its full size before he made any kind of move but it was starting to feel like the monster was even bigger than Sandy initially described as this process was taking its sweet time. Limbs the size of windmill turbine blades bent and stretched within and around the mangled ruins, lifting the main body of the brood mother further and further into the air above. Though it resembled a stepper the brood mother had a more horizonal profile than a vertical one, constantly crouching and hunching over instead of standing upright. It bent lower to the ground and craned the majority of its upper body forward as if to peer down on ants below it. In fact, it sort of resembled an archaeologist wielding a magnifying glass up against an object on a desk at an elevated angle. The hunched and arched back, the large looming eye, and the extending neck all gave such an impression. A few of its other limbs were positioned slightly ahead of its eye, firmly planted somewhere behind Ares, so it could lower itself forward but also push itself back up and away if anything went awry with its investigation. It was clearly a wary monster. It definitely possessed a wisdom not found in pretty much any other monster in Isasz other than the Anubis. Then again, this brood mother was probably just as old as the Anubis, if not older, so that checked out.
Ares was really having trouble taking in the full scope of the monster before him because it was just about as big as the ruins itself, if Ares had to take a guess, and had blended in with it spectacularly. Each limb looked like a fallen lamppost, a pipe lining a leaning and crooked wall, or a pile of garbage littered against the curb so when all of them began lifting up towards the rooftops Ares was somewhat taken aback. He'd probably stepped over some of these limbs himself back when he first entered these ruins and never even noticed. Merely standing up allowed the brood mother to form a sort of black net above the entire ruins via its lanky, multi-jointed limbs forming a dome-shaped cage. The limbs planted themselves into the desert surrounding the ruins, like vertical black and bony pillars, and pushed the main body upwards until it became a daunting existence that overshadowed the entire area. A black mass stood directly above Ares, casting a dark shadow over him as the brood mother's eye's gaze shifted downwards to accommodate for its new height. Ares couldn't help but think that if this thing crawled across the desert it might bang its head on the bottom tip of the floating Riddlemyd, it was that tall. In fact, this brood mother might even be able to climb the Riddlemyd exterior if it really wanted to, though it might not be able to breach the barrier at the top. Of all the steppers Ares had seen thus far, regrettably, this one bore the greatest resemblance to a spider of them all. If it weren't for the eye, and bulky black body sporting random hands and limbs, it could be easily mistaken for a ginormous arachnid of some type.
The eye leant further down again until it was a few feet above Ares and he stared right back. "Do you speak? It would be so much easier for the both of us if you could mutter a few words here and there." Ares wasn't expecting the brood mother to speak the same language as him but if it could speak any language whatsoever then his bloodline could very well work and establish communications by translating for him. Ares couldn't understand foreign languages but he could understand speech from other races, monsters, and animals perfectly and he imagined his bloodline would be effective here if the steppers had their own unique language. He would rather not have to fight this monster if he could avoid it but, unfortunately, it didn't look like the brood mother the talkative type so it wasn't going to respond. The psychopath stepper didn't either but that wasn't a guarantee steppers in general couldn't. Maybe, given how long this brood mother had lived, it was capable of speech and simply didn't want to bother.
Nonetheless, Ares stubbornly persisted in reasoning with the brood mother as not speaking didn't mean it couldn't listen to him, at least. He spoke of his plans to the brood mother who had yet to make any moves against him or launch an attack so it was either listening to Ares' words or analysing him for the fight ahead; either way it still refused to respond even after Ares said his piece in full... Well this is awkward... Feels like I'm talking to a brick wall... But maybe that's the point? If this brood mother is doing what I think it is then it's kinda smart, actually... It's not great at hiding it but I respect the cunning attempt nonetheless. Although Ares couldn't prove it, he was pretty sure this brood mother understood, comprehensively, his ultimatum of standing down and surrendering or dying eternally. It was in its interest to not understand, however, as Ares preferred to keep it alive if he could manage it. In this manner, pretending not to comprehend his language, the brood mother could openly defy him and fight for its survival and freedom without explicitly picking the death option because it could feign not understanding the options in the first place. In this way, when Ares finally beat it, it could then choose to surrender later despite never having had any chance of going down that route. If it happened to win the fight, however, it could disregard this entire conversation. Ares might have been wrong about this but he had a gut feeling this brood mother wasn't stupid and knew exactly what game it was playing right now. It was playing both sides to come out on top no matter what happened, loss or victory! Ares didn't much mind because he wasn't expecting to get his way without a fight from the start, though, so he just shook his head and shrugged. "Fine, we'll do it your way. Expect me to be a bit rough with you, though, as punishment for this little stunt. Don't blame me if I blow a few too many of your limbs off!"
The brood mother's eye conveniently retracted, now that there was nothing left to discuss which just further assured Ares his assumption was correct, and rose back into the night sky, readying itself for combat. Meanwhile Ares summoned his war aura and accompanying flag, giving the desert new life as the rumbling of thousands of imaginary soldiers danced across the desert. The crescendo to war kicked things off and Ares wasted no time in tossing the flag like a javelin straight at the brood mother's torso to see how tough it was and what he was dealing with here. Should he aim for the body or the limbs to topple it? There was only one way to discern the best approach and so he watched as his flag flew up high and collided with the torso. It came to a halt and couldn't really progress cleanly but there were signs of damage as black chunks fell off and crashed into the desert. If Ares coated his flag with disintegration it could fly around by itself up there and slowly chip away at the brood mother, that was what he learnt from this interaction and he decided that was good enough for now. Ares needed to be careful not to inflict any major injuries, and accidentally kill his food source, but it was a big and tough monster so that ought to not be too complicated so long as he didn't go overboard. Ares could probably use Auriferous Subjugation on this thing and not kill it so the flag's finesse was definitely not an issue but he still kept an eye on it regardless an made sure not to veer too close to important looking joints.
Neither Sandy not the brood mother were idle and both had already begun taking their own measures. Sandy, specifically, seemed rather invigorated when it came to fighting this particular battle and Ares couldn't tell if it was because she wanted revenge, after having to retreat from this monster last time she fought it, or if the idea of enslaving it for food got her pumped for a tasty future... Ares could have sworn he heard her audibly gulp after licking her lips back when he mentioned the idea out loud for the first time so it was very likely the latter... As for what action the greedy rhino took to get things started on her end; she simply used her magic to create two large sand hands that spawned on the left and right of the brood mother while slowly converging upon it. They shot up out of the sands and reached towards the monster to clamp down on it and lock it down, preventing it from moving too much or retaliating with physical strikes. This was a magic Sandy used frequently back when she, Ares, and the hunters had worked together that one day to murders some western monsters. It wasn't an art but it was undeniably very good at what it did and could be used for cheap on the mana front so it was a good opener against larger opponents. The hands were also a lot more powerful now than they were back then during the copycat hunting day thanks to the fine grind.
Fine grind didn't make magic stronger usually but, in this slightly anomalous case, a fellahin's mastery of, and affiliation to, the sand command aspect was pretty closely tied to their bloodline and race, both of which were improved in various ways thanks to the fine grind. It wasn't a drastic increase but it was definitely noticeable and that had a lot to do with the extremely high quality of the fine grind really making n impact. The major gain was her physical strength increase but the full extent of that could be seen later as this was just an opening measure to see how tough the brood mother was. If it didn't have any worthwhile tricks up its sleeve then Sandy would just clamp it to death with these sand hands while Ares annihilated it so this was a check of its capabilities and little else. The hands were not even an art but they required a counter measure nonetheless and that was impressive given the state of Sandy's damaged meridians. She was well and truly an Enyo-level powerhouse under all those restrictions weighing her down. Though Ares only ruminated on it briefly, before returning his attention to the fight, he wondered if Bellona would find a way to catch up to these two. She was the one most bothered by her own strength, even though it was still in a class of its own anyway, and getting a feel for Sandy's strength when they met later might cause her to feel even more down about it... Ares shook his head and dispelled these stray thoughts as they weren't useful right now; he would worry about Bellona's thoughts n this matter later and discuss it with her in person if it really bothered her.
Though things looked like they were going well right now, it was finally time for the brood mother to fight back. A strange purple liquid spurted out from within the brood mother's torso and limbs, splattering everywhere and swiftly eradicating the sand hands grabbing at it while also forcing the war aura flag back a bit. The flag was able to absorb some of the poison into the fabric but the sand hands had no way of dealing with the poison and suffered a brutal defeat before they could really do their job. This was a good a chance for Ares to get a glimpse of the effectiveness of the poison this thing could spew and it was deeply concerning. If the hands' poison was annoying then this was fearsome. If Ares was poisoned by this monster he might lose body parts before his measures could fully stop the poison from spreading. If he had a better physique, like Sandy, he might be able to tolerate the poison a bit better and though it out but he didn't thanks to his adept trait so, actually, in a twist of fate, he needed to be more careful than Sandy after all. Of course neither of them should ideally get poisoned at all but Ares in particular would just melt away on the spot. He still hadn't fully recovered from the shadow stepper fight so having more of his face or chest get corroded away would be extremely annoying and delay his recovery even further. For now, though, the brood mother was just excreting small amounts of poison and not really playing any problematic cards. Ares was grateful he got a chance to understand roughly what he was dealing with before he had to deal with it as this was definitely a notable threat that required caution to tiptoe around. The brood mother was warning its attackers that things would only get worse if they persisted but Ares didn't care! This stupid monster didn't know what was good for it! If it just wanted to live in peace somewhere it could do that in captivity inside his Blade! The terms and conditions looked worse than they were and it was just a little slavery here and there!
Ares recalled his war aura flag and imbued it with a disintegration coating but also stored an art within it that could save it if things got dicey while he was busy fending for himself. Not Even Light was perfect for the job on the off chance the flag fabric couldn't store all the poison for whatever reason. There was an upper limit to what it could shove in there so it was better to be safe than sorry. It already had enough offensive power to its name so Ares giving it a defensive option just meant it could freely keep being insufferably annoying and hard to take down. Ares threw the flag again and used up a small percentage of his mental acuity to maintain control over it as he brought out another weapon, a random spear he had laying around. Sure he could Voidwalk up to the monster and use his scythe or something but, right now, he wanted to take advantage of the surprise factor he held because this art was a relatively unknown one down in the lower domains that could really leave a dent here. Ares only knew it thanks to a certain sleeping someone!
"Big Game Hunter!" Ares felt like he consistently got use out of this art no matter where he ended up and it was a damn good one for the current situation. Sure this art was designed to kill star-sized monsters but that's not to say it wasn't still effective against something like this oversized stepper. As the brood mother shook its body to try and crush the obnoxious flag, a small spear, barely even noticeable comparatively due to its plainness, tore through the wind, blasted into the torso, and froze time for a split second. A light blue scan brought pretty lights to the desert, that may have been confused with an alien abduction if viewed from afar, and calculated the damage the spear was going to deal before time resumed.
BANG
About a tenth of the torso was blow clean off and the massive stepper chunk went spiralling through the sky, crash landing in the desert somewhere out of view. Given that the brood mother's torso was pretty much made of curled and bundled limbs, there was a very tasty meteorite sitting in the middle of the Xascan desert right about now that would be eaten by passing monsters in the future. Surprisingly, however, the brood mother didn't seem to care about this injury and it quickly became apparent why. The brood mother had developed a poison sac and it was stored inside its torso so opening it up like this had also opened up the flood gates. Ares was standing directly underneath the monster and he and Sandy were both in the firing line. A purple tsunami came crashing down from the sky above so they each took defensive manoeuvres to evade the incoming catastrophe. Sandy leapt of the roof and sunk underneath the sand, shifting away through it while Ares entered the void and walked away from the splash zone in relative safety. Opening up the void to escape was slow but the height at which the poison was dropped gave him plenty of time to avoid it with room to spare. This wasn't a great attack from the brood mother, it wasn't even really an attack as it was more like a natural deterrent to stop anyone from hitting it, but that wasn't really its plan; it wasn't trying to attack them in the first place...
The brood mother was playing a game of 'the floor is lava' as the lowest level of the ruins, the ground floor of all the nearby buildings, was now drenched in that purple bubbling liquid. Ares was surprised the buildings weren't melting but it seemed like the brood mother had excellent control over the poisons it emitted and was using mana and magic to control it. Something as simple as having its poison only effect flesh and organs instead of metal, wood, or other such building materials was very much possible. It was similar to Ares' anti -friendly fire mutation he got from Enyo but the negligent toxicology aspect had something similar built in from the get go. It took a while to learn to control it, and was its own challenge, but it could be done if the desire to learn and practice was there. Of course those who were 'negligent' would simply wind up creating disastrous poisons that corroded everything indiscriminately and they were considered real problematic cultivators that were hunted down all the time.
Different poisons were designed to do different things, when created by an experienced toxicologist, and this brood mother was well aware that this environment was worth not destroying so it tailored its poison to be ineffective against these buildings for now. It had multiple types of poisons, some of which just tore through everything, but again that wasn't the goal right now. The buildings were currently acting as containers, trapping the poison within the confines of the courtyard they formed directly in the centre of all the ruined buildings. Ares' space to run around on the lower floors was limited now and, if enough poison was gradually built up, it could all be unleashed later in one big, unavoidable tide. In contrast, if this poison tsunami happened in an open area it would just fizzle out over the hills and dunes, destroying large chunks of the desert but disappearing swiftly after. Keeping it, and Ares and Sandy, trapped like this served multiple purposes so the correct poison was used for the correct job. In fact, the brood mother was already spitting out more poison but this time it was lighter in colour and looked to be closer to a bright fuchsia than a dark purple like the swamp below clogging up the ground floor.
Ares immediately recognised the effect of the new poison because he still had grievances with the oleander flower from the mecha dryad back in Baja forest. One of the oleander flowers spewed a sort of sleeping powder tha made Ares drowsy and slow to react think things through; this poison seemed to be similar in nature to that. It was rapidly wearing away at his mind even though it wasn't anywhere near hitting him and that put a sort of timer on him to win this fight. This new poison was being spewed from every single one of the brood mother's limbs and it merged into the purple poison rolling around down on the floor beneath the ruins, creating a zone in which the sufferers became sluggish that gradually spread upwards towards the rooftops. What was once relatively safe turf now became a minefield of corrosive perfume that dulled the senses and melted anything that touched it directly. If Ares wanted to leave the poisoned ruins he would have to chart a careful course and run past the stepper limbs acting like a cage but God only knows what those things had in store for him if he dared try to barge past them carelessly. For now, at least, it was better to stay within the confined area and just put up with the smell by sticking to the high ground where it was relatively safe. Ares could lightly coat his nose with disintegration magic too so it wasn't all bad, just inconvenient and annoying... For now. The brood mother hadn't really launched any attacks yet, it was merely setting the stage to make its final move more devastating...
Slap
Though it was too little too late, Ares realised he could have used the war aura flag during his Big Game Hunter... The increase in power would have been astonishing... But, then again, he might have accidentally killed the brood mother so maybe it was for the best he didn't. This thought came to him as he watched the flag dance through the air and trim away the torso piece by piece, rendering the brood mother a bare husk slowly but surely. It was doing a good job and even attracted the monster's attention enough for Sandy to resurface somewhere safe and reconvene with Ares by creating sand pillars to lift her up to the rooftops again. The initial assault failed but there were still plenty of options and the night was still young! Ares took out his scythe and walked a single step forward before he was made to hop backwards and lash out in front of him with the blade of his weapon. A hand had shot up through the rooftop to try and grab his leg but Ares' awareness was too sharp to be caught asleep at the wheel like that. Ares severed the hand an activated Voidwalk to take to the sky but a loud cry from the stepper summoned a deluge of purple rain that made him frown. Sandy warned him about this rain and, apparently, it would last for about a minute straight. Ares could summon a Not Even Light but it wasn't a long enough lasting art to counter this rain...
"Not Even Light..." Ares cast the art merely for cover and sighed as he descended back down towards the rooftops before taking cover inside the buildings while Sandy dove underneath the sand again to go hide and wait out the rain. Thankfully there was a pretty long delay between uses of this purple rain, and Ares could fight properly after it simmered down, but that didn't mean this wasn't troublesome. The poisonous swamp outside was building up as the rain dripped into it and the hands were constantly pestering him inside the room he was holed up in so this stall tactic was annoyingly effective. Less so against Sandy but Ares couldn't exactly live under the sand like she could. She could have brought him along with her but then she wouldn't be able to defend herself from the hands that were rummaging around under the ground to chase her so it was for the best if they split up temporarily and waited out the storm. Ares' Not Even Light had given them the leeway they needed to find cover but it soon ended and the pitter patter of destructive rain swept across the ruins without being fettered by the black hole any longer. Unlike the previous poison this one was corrosive enough to tear through the buildings.
Poison seeped through the roof above Ares so he was made to retreat to a lower floor and it was in doing so that he came to understand the brood mother's game plan... It would fill up the bottom of the ruins with poison eventually, meaning Sandy wouldn't even be able to hide down there under the sand for much longer, while also eroding the roofs above. Ares and Sandy would eventually be sandwiched between the swamp below and the rain above while being unable to escape past the limb cage surrounding them. It was a slow process but the poisons would add up eventually, including the aromatic one that tired them out, and leave nowhere left to run. The brood mother had trapped them within these ruins and they were going to have to subdue it quick before the situation turned dire and these ruins became their final resting place...