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130 - Enigmatic Gale

It took a concerted effort to put holes in his heart, and yet more to bring it to a halt, forcing her to burn a lungful’s Fulgur and surge it through her hand just to cease its beating.

With a gurgling, coughing inhalation, as bubbles of black blood foamed around the corners of his mouth, the old man smiled.

“I’ll be watching you from beneath the Fog-sea’s waves,” he gurgled, then went limp. Before she could even pry her hand free of his torn-open ribcage his body had al...

129 - Dutybound

Despite its prodigal, bone-shaking volume, the music was drowned out by the noise that followed.

A singular, all-consuming THOOM, accompanied by blinding light. Zef was among the few to see what transpired, and even that only thanks to the Philosopher’s Eye being able to compensate for such sudden changes in brightness.

First to catch her eye was the arm-cannon - flying right into the treeline, tumbling in flight, trailing sparks and smoke. Next...

128 - Flying Thundersaw

A/N: Need a day to do story cleanup, so no chapter tomorrow. I expected I'd need to do this when the caravan came, considering how much shit is going on simultaneously.

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Enough to let her get through the next all-consuming onslaught. Though the Horse-man came at her with yet greater ferocity, yet more rampant abuse of its Fog-walking, it was still missing an arm. Zelsys knew better than anyone the ga...

127 - Formless Butchery

If it didn’t work, if this effort ended with her merely wasting the contents of her Essentia Gut on a fruitless endeavor… Then she would figure out something else. Exhaustion was still far out of reach.

The Horse-man had vanished from sight once more, only to appear behind her. There was a delay there, subtle but noticeable. It wasn’t instant movement - it was Fog-walking. Knowing that it was not going to simply reappear in the same place it had previously occupied, Zelsys leapt i...

126 - We Fight the Night

Five seconds.

That was how long the statue remained silent and motionless after she stopped talking, staring at her. Then, once more, it spoke.

“To teach plainly, to avoid such muddling of the arts hath ever been amongst the founder’s - amongst Lord Branstein's - teachings. That thou speaketh of such things with such conviction maketh clear that the rot truly must run to the roots...”

Creak. Crack. Snap.

The chains holding the Horse-man’s ankles strained, then ...

125 - Face the Music

Zel could’ve sworn she saw the inklings of a fog vortex in there. The woman had a manic energy about her, like some battle-hungry pit fighter waiting to be set loose, just… Instead of a pit, a stage. Going by that sword on her hip and the way she subconsciously maintained a guard though, there was no doubt in Zel’s mind that she could hold her own.

Igniting it with a tiny spark of lightning, she took a long toke before blowing a puff of bluish smoke off to the side.

“Say, ...

124 - Lottery/Nobles as Stage Musicians

She would spin the drum a bit and pull out a lot, the merchant called out a plot number, and she then called out whatever was written on the lot - be it the name of a business or an individual.

The whole affair took less than half an hour, and at points Zelsys dissociated altogether, so mindless it was.

After the drawing, Zel’s attention was drawn to the stage taking shape across the street. It wasn’t any of the peddlers or larger mobile shops nearby, but instead that stage wh...

123 - Teeth of the War-Dog; First Arm of the Fierce Deity

The Charred Judge emerged from the field closely in tow, taking care to flip up the hood of her cloak. Even if they walked quickly and forcefully, their cloaks obscured them enough to make them look like able travelers in a hurry - doubtlessly a threat in the eyes of the sycophants that manned the checkpoint nonetheless.

“I am killing every uniformed bastard in that checkpoint and you can’t stop me,” Sodan’s voice echoed flatly from inside his helmet. It was cold. Numb. Empty. A...

122 - Cry For Retribution

A/N: Woke up sneezing uncontrollably, continued throughout the day. Productivity at 0. No chapter tomorrow. Sorry.

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The remainder of the box - and its majority - contained a number of round metallic pills that could almost be mistaken for ball bearings by a layman’s eye. Catalysts for Sodan’s abilities. He knew not why that man cared, or how he knew the specifics of what Sodan could do, but he wa...

121 - Smoking in the Rain

The bitterness of his voice betrayed an ulterior message. Behind his eyes wasn’t the fire of anger, they shone with cold melancholy, his snarling face stiff and locked-up. Alcerys wasn’t sure how she knew - whether by the Eye’s power or her own familiarity with that headspace - but she knew exactly how Sodan felt, and she knew that he was lying about his motivations. Whether he himself knew that he was lying, that was a whole other question.

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120 - Dog of War

With a smile, the merchant leaned against the wall and let his mouth run with the unending glibness of a good salesman, spinning a volcanic pistol by its lever all along: “Oh, but I never made such claims! In fact, I would argue that First-models and Second-models are most efficacious when deployed side by side in distinct roles, alongside more traditional infantry. Equipping caravan-guard squad leaders with Second-models has had a tremendous positive impact on the losses sustained by carav...

119 - Merchant of Menace

Under the cover of near-darkness they continued to travel, reaching the counterintuitively named rallying point Delta a short while after sunrise. They were met with a well-established campsite concealed behind three different layers of perception barrier, effectively imperceptible from the outside. In fact, they wouldn’t have found it had their contact not peeked out of the bubble and grabbed their attention with some sort of voice-throwing spell.

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118 - Strake Departing

“I must apologize for approaching you like this, but there appears to be a small issue, you understand. There simply was not sufficient time to assign plots to all candidates who had won the lottery for operation in this area, and we have no choice but to approach you as the owner of the property for counsel,” he explained, the salesman-like personage slipping quickly as the voice of someone clearly under more stress than they are used to bled through. Zel was certain that besides her, hi...

117 - Exotic Influx

A/N: Due to family matters I have no choice but to take this weekend off. Yes I'm mad about it.

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“The Fourteen Reborn would be powered by a to-be-installed grid of Fulgur-Igneic reactors, six variable-output units for long-term use and a single high-output unit in the case of a truly dire attack. This system, combined with our newly-mechanized militia, Kargarian Irregulars, and Slayer’s Guild, wo...

116 - The Caravan Arrives

All around the northern city gate, be it within or without the walls, upon the streets, in the road, in the ditches and the cleared-out fields, roiling crowds of people had gathered. They were kept within a certain distance of the walls by a long chain of men, no less than half of which were clearly just mercenaries dressed up to look like city guards. Atop the northern gate’s walkway, there stood several guards and just as many extraordinary individuals.

There among them were a homun...

115 - Decision/Distortion

Beneath the dress’s subtle white straps, opulent, lacy black ones told plainly that Zef was still wearing that same lingerie, much to Zel’s amusement. She wondered if it would show through in the sunlight.

“What’s in these?” Zef asked, leaning on the table as she looked over the remaining turnovers.

“Cats’re spiced ground chicken, the rat’s cheese,” said Zel between bites. The blonde gave a slight smile and took a cat, sitting down and also kicking up her feet. H...

114 - Honest Ping's

Two left in line.

An Ikesian woman in an archaic dress and a Grekurian man balancing on stilt-like metal feet, attached at the knees. He wore nothing of note, save a pair of old military boots.

Old and young.

The former exuded more life than the latter.

Then, just the crippled soldier was left.

A half-minute and a brief exchange later, the soldier left the stall with a reinvigorated stride, a wry smile upon his scarred visage as he bit pieces from a fried turnove...

113 - Metamorphosis Continued/Morning of the Serpent's Day

It was then that she thought to just get back in bed and realized something. Her side of the bed was not one that would be directly illuminated by the moon. Next, she realized that Zef was nowhere to be seen, and that in fact, the room around her was like a smudged painting - it held up when her focus was on something else, like a mutant cock attached where one certainly had not been previously, but under any real scrutiny it fell apart.

Zel looked out the window. There was nothing outs...

112 - Entanglement Continued/Metamophosis

A/N: Still NSFW. 

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The moment she looked upwards - or rather, backwards - and saw Zef staring back at her, Zel took another deep breath and without another moment’s wait plunged her tongue all the way, sending through it as much Fulgur as she thought her lover could conceivably handle. Though it wasn’t much, it was still enough to make even Zel’s tongue convulse and writhe uncontrollable i...

111 - Entanglement

A/N: NSFW chapter, but also super saccharine

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The hallway just went on and on. Somehow, despite the ever present haze of steam, the walls were dry. Neither of them paid attention to anything about their environment beyond that which was necessary to reach a particular heavy door. Past it was yet another short hallway with another door at the other end and four stalls to the right, each effectively a ...

110 - Caught You

A/N: Might need to take a day off to unscrew my sleep pattern. Less to do with me feeling like I can't get the writing done to keep up, and more that I uh... Kinda just slept for way way way too long and it snapped my time management for the day in half.

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The moment she pushed Zef through that door, she was hit by a wave of hot air and a sort-of ephemeral, flowery, earthy, otherworldly smell, one tha...

109 - Sparks and Ball Lightning

She continued to use the dumbbells, but moved onto exercises other than lifting - squats, bent-over rows, crunches, push ups with alternating lifts between each rep, and a few exercises that she couldn’t quite remember specific names for.

The entire time, Zel felt Zef’s eyes on her as a nearly all-consuming stare, only occasionally dimming whenever the blonde couldn’t keep her stone eye open any longer. When Zelsys was done with the dumbbells - that is to say, when she got bored -...

108 - Shameless Infatuation

“Mafia?”

“I’m not surprised you didn’t know, it was long ago,” the old man nodded sagely. “Many current-day Heroic Families and cultivation sects were founded by outlaws during the feudal era when most lethal weapons and forms of martial arts - let alone cultivation - were outlawed. If you find a sect older than three centuries, chances are they still have some traditions rooted in their outlaw origins.”

“Uh-huh. I take it you pay to get in?” Zel asked.

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107 - Rising Heat

Zel continued to make full use of the pavilion, moving from dummy to dummy and quickly developing a cycle of training punches, kicks, bladework, and testing what she could do with the Essentia Crucible. She couldn’t quite get larger ball lightning right, but with each attempt that destabilized into a continuous, barely-controllable lightning tendril, she felt herself coming closer to getting it right. It was just a matter of practice.

Zef was much the same, about an h...

106 - Training Grounds

Every conceivable sort of target or dummy, multiple smaller buildings near the main one’s entryway up against the walls, even… Hold on, were those fountains on the walls of the main edifice that fed into aqueducts that themselves ran into irrigation tanks right next to those structures? In fact, the sheer scale of this place just hadn’t dawned on her until now, as if the barrier made it seem significantly less magnitudinous than it truly was.

Not even including the doubtlessly vas...