"How close are we to the castle, anyways?"

"Uh, maybe half an hour?"

"I'm good to keep riding, then."

A2 keeps running, then.

At least until an explosion carves out a massive crater in front of their path!

"What the shiiiiiiiiiit-" She skids to a halt at the edge.

Bellona peers over her shoulder! And does not jump off A2's back quite yet because she isn't actually stupid.

It looks like someone took an ice cream scoop to the ground, an almost perfectly spherical section blasted clean.

A pair of strange flying contraptions, almost but not quite humanoid in shape, swoop past overhead with a high-pitched whining sound, turning quickly and beginning a vertical descent.

"Oh, fuuuuuuuuck me," A2 groans.

Those look faster than A2, and that power output -

Also, they either tried to fucking kill her and A2 just now, or somehow thought that was an appropriate warning shot.

She learned not to fuck around with flying enemies capable of ranged attacks after the fucking dragons - but they're moving too fast to tag with an alkahestric anchor - but they aren't currently moving -

Her hands are already nearly together. It takes barely a thought to carve a modified version of Kimblee's arrays - taking into account what she knows of flame alchemy and alkahestry - into her hands, her thumb and forefinger and the flesh between them containing the central circle, elaborations to the side - and she can frame them in the circle created by her thumbs and forefingers touching without much trouble - 

She doesn't blow them up, though, not yet - just verifies briefly that she can track them even at these speeds, then properly clasps her hands together again, synthesizes a mild stimulant into her bloodstream, creates a durable carbon shield under her skin (leaving some circulation on the outside so she can sweat), reinforces her bones and important organs, and starts mentally putting together equations for a proper armored hiding spot - with that power output she doesn't have the material in this soil - but according to Bellona Two atoms are divisible, the other version of her already created and shared an array for true freeform transmutation - the calculations for highly exotic materials are probably too complicated for active combat, but she can pull off something with improved durability - or at least she could figure out how to non-explosively disable the flyers - 

...Relatedly, are her and A2 getting shot at again?