They entered the immense purification room of the Ithaca factory. Lyall immediately felt the abnormal concentration of nexium. The air vibrated, charged with the unstable purity of the raw crystal, held in liquid form by extreme pressure in massive vats. The pipes snaked like veins, pumping the volatile energy.
Elara activated her solis stone, her oracle style extending to detect the slightest flux ruptures. "The nexium is too purified to be stable. The slightest resonance..."
Two agents from House Ferix armed with pressa stones burst in, activating their reflector shields. Lyall could not charge them without risking his own momentum bouncing back. He applied the teral over a wide area around the two agents. The heaviness spread, not as a targeted strike, but as an overwhelming environment. The pressa agents had to mobilize all their resources to maintain their shields under the effect of the anchor.
"Right!" Elara called out, sensing the weakening of one shield. Lyall instantly focused the teral inertia onto that weak point. The reflected mass suddenly became too heavy, and the pressa shield imploded, taking the agent out of the fight. The second agent panicked and fled.
A shout echoed from the heights: an echor agent armed with an echor stone positioned himself on a walkway, adopting the shockwave posture. Lyall and Elara knew that this agent was targeting not them, but the nexium pipelines. The sound wave would cause the explosion.
The echor agent struck the air. An invisible, powerful vibration tore through space.
Elara used the solis to trace the wave's path. "Lyall, absorb! Now!"
Lyall could not dodge. He used the anchor defensively, manipulating the teral to densify the air in front of him and the nearest pipes. The space briefly became too heavy for the sonic vibrations to maintain their resonance. The shockwave front died out, absorbed by the atmosphere's new density. Lyall groaned; the effort was immense.
"The nexus!" shouted Elara, pointing at the main vat where the nexium was injected into the forging mixture. "The instability comes from the injection point. We must force an over-mass into the flow before it integrates."
Lyall rushed forward, leaving the echor agent stunned by the failure of his attack. He reached the vat, facing the bubbling flux. It was the ultimate anchor test: he had to inject the teral power into the purified nexium, unbalancing the cause of its purity.
He placed his hand on the metal wall. Lyall pushed the maximum of his bodily heaviness and his own teral flux into the stone. He felt the nexium's fury resisting, trying to siphon his teral flux to corrupt it. Lyall had to completely anchor himself to the ground, his body trembling, fighting to stabilize his own stone while unbalancing the world around him.
The over-mass was injected.
Instead of an explosion, the factory reacted with a terrifying silence. A sudden, invisible mass fell upon the structure. Steel bent, concrete crumbled, and the ground split open under the added weight of inertia. The vats did not explode; they were crushed downward by an artificial gravitational force, sweeping all the raw nexium into an underground collapse.
Lyall withdrew his hand, staggering, the teral stone barely luminous.
"Let's run," whispered Elara, the solis indicating the fastest route to the surface.
They barely made it out as the entire Ithaca site sank into the ground, leaving behind only a massive crater. Lyall had ripped the root of Merikh Vane's invasion fleet away from him. The anchor had triumphed over chaos. The dark wind was waiting for them.