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215 - Vs. Semzar Pt. 1 [Cherno]

The shadowy shape of Eisenretter, blackened by the radiance of his own light, passed unimpeded through Tsetse. His passage and radiant blade cleft a vertical split through the monstrous flyman three-quarters of the way up his chest. Miraculously, Tsetse remained standing. Even as gold-silver flame scoured his flesh from the inside, widening the wound, as Cabral's internal organs spilled out, and as both the Abara Morph's and the Host's blood ran freely down Tsetse's legs, pooling at his feet, he calmly looked down at himself.

“Unlucky… Me. Hoist by my own petard. Heh. I shall see how you do… Against my next self.”

Tsetse went limp, toppling over backwards with a fleshy thud. However, the same could not be said for whomever was inside. Cabral’s lanky, mutilated upper half wrenched its way out of the Abara Morph’s rapidly decaying flesh, confusion evident in his face. Various connection ports stretched between him and his meatsuit, tearing in half as he emerged and propped himself up by his arms.

“Where- Who- How-”

The evoy clutched his head. He then toppled over forward, and the umbilicus connected to the back of his head snapped.

At that instant, he went limp like a puppet with its strings cut.

Meanwhile, “Shadow Eisenretter” melted away and Casus Aristedes was left barely standing in his place, his right arm hanging limply at his side. Frayed muscle peeled away from it. With each laboured step the banisher took towards Semzar’s sofa, blood and other fluids ran down his arm’s length and trailed across the ground. The Silberblut Coupler wasn’t in a much better state — its outer casement had cracked, and its trio of securing claws had been welded open. Casus was somehow certain that the Mamon System’s relic components had purposely taken on the brunt of the strain to spare his life.

Casus, of course, was already unconscious by this point. Nonetheless, his unconscious body walked to Semzar's sofa and sat down, holding vigil over Tsetse and Cabral's rapidly disintegrating forms.

__________________________________________________________________________

Whilst rushing to reach the ballroom, Krahe had encountered several more of Semzar’s subordinates. To call them defenders would have been a stretch — they were either fleeing or just frozen in panic when she encountered them, and only some of them turned to fight. Those stupid, stupid few served as further target practice for her heretofore unnamed tar-whip thaumaturgy, each a new attempt to refine it without slowing down. It would have been terribly convenient if she had just so happened to perfect the thaumaturgy by the time she arrived at the ballroom, but alas, no such thing came to pass.

Oh, she felt close. So, so damnably close. Its true, ideal form was within her grasp, she just knew it. But she had to start fighting Semzar without it.

Furthermore, as she approached the ballroom, another thing became patently evident — something far less positive. That something was that quite a bit of her pain stemmed from the Atomica, or perhaps even from her altered Soul Furnace. She couldn’t discern the exact nature and extent of it, but one thing was clear: Burning thauma was somehow causing her body to break down — as to the nature and extent of the damage, she wasn’t sure, but this was certainly the polar opposite of what she had hoped for with the Atomica. A part of her feared that Yao might have purposely sabotaged the key, but a much larger part was certain this had to do with implanting it prematurely, or perhaps some other factor external to the key itself.Perhaps she hadn’t let it cool off long enough after the transmutation, or it was something as simple as her body not being physically tough enough to stand the power, even if such a possibility was counterintuitive given her frequent use of anathema without issue. The silver lining was that she was certain the damage wouldn’t catch up with her before she killed Semzar and dragged Casus out of there. Half of this certainty stemmed from her possession of the Calbian Molting Tonic — the ultimate contingency from Razem himself, an elixir that would by his description allow her to survive beyond-lethal injuries if she injected it into her heart. Another quarter of it came from the fact Thaumic Fusion still worked normally, allowing her to mitigate the damage to some extent. The rest was just self-confidence, bravado perhaps. It would all come down to how good Semzar was and how long it would take her to off him.

All considerations aside, it wasn’t as if she had much choice in the matter. That much she knew the instant she entered the ballroom. She had arrived, as it seemed, just in time to witness Casus carry out a heroic and undoubtedly self-destructive final attack against Tsetse. The enormous gash in the floor and the seething dagger in Semzar’s hand told the rest of the story. She was certain that, had she arrived later, she would have found Semzar leering towards Casus with the intent to take the banisher’s body for his own. If everything went wrong, she would at least try to get Casus out of there and rendezvous with the inquisitor, whom she knew to be stationed outside the property. At least, she hoped she was still in position. And still alive.

Despite her dicey-at-best position, when she surfaced from her dive and set loose that first salvo of Tracers in Semzar’s direction, Krahe couldn’t help but let a grin push its way onto her face.

A body breaking down from an experimental power source, one high-grade drug keeping her going and another in the back pocket to pull her through the final stretch. An opponent — no, a target — such as Semzar, one with bought and stolen power that he didn’t know how to use properly, relying on the muscle memory of his body’s previous unfortunate inhabitant. The one unfamiliar variable was Casus. A wounded comrade whose life, for once, was a higher priority than the death of her target.

All in all, she felt more clear-headed, more focused, more confident than ever. 

Nothing she had experienced on the face of Zastreon had brought her back as much as this. Her mind raced with countless possibilities and past operations to draw on. Every moment stretched on and on like a distended synthetic tendon. The pain burning through every inch, turned sideways by Class-3 painkillers, suddenly fed into a razor-sharp bodily awareness.

360 - The Weight of Countless Corpses [Sturmblitz]

Making her way into the grove, Zel noticed a wide array of bone statues all around, many placed particularly to let certain herbs climb up them or to support other trees. Outside the shrine’s pillar boundary, two distinctly different pillars poked just barely above the grass, their inner construction intricate to a seemingly unnecessary extent, whereas their surface was plain white. She knew, from speaking with Victor, that it was to be a kind of ritual gate for summoning various servitors stationed at the shrine, ones that couldn’t just be transported inside storage artifacts. A footpath of blackstone squares led up to the shrine, starting at the unfinished gate. It took until she was no more than fifteen meters away, having crossed the shrine's inner boundary, before Victor’s body moved to face her. His face was obscured by a smooth mask of black material — its strange, semi-reflective luster betrayed its composite blackstone-dragonbone construction. Just the fact of the mask’s existence merited questions, but it would wait until after the truly important ones.

From beyond the mask’s three eyeholes, Koschei stared back at her. A sarcastic, impish chuckle came from him, before he set down his strange tools and fully turned around where he sat. Then, he waited, unsettlingly tracking her with his gaze as she closed the distance. With each step, a feeling welled up in her chest — it was much akin to the sort of numb exasperation one feels after spilling a full pot of tea or finding a serious mess that needs to be cleaned.

“Different mask,” she said.

“Different purpose,” Koschei replied. “Lasts longer. More practical for this use.”

“How long?” she sighed, squatting down within hand’s reach of him. She still had to look down.

“Seventeen days. Intermittently. The mask’s limit is roughly six hours within a day, in forty-two minute intervals. You have already deduced the reason, I presume.”

“Eberheim shook him,” she stated matter-of-factly. It was the most obvious conclusion, one she had arrived at without any great deliberation.

Koschei nodded: “The burden of so many anguished souls — it weighs too heavy for one so young.”

Zel completed the thought: “So he brings you out to ease the burden.

“In a manner of speaking. I am but-” Koschei started.

Zel cut him off: “A remnant, I know. You insist upon repeating it so often I am starting to doubt whether it is true.”

Another chuckle. This one, a touch melancholy.

“This mask — as it is now — it amplifies what little there is of me,” he tapped on the mask. With each tap, antediluvian glyphs made themselves known on its surface, only to fade just as quickly. “It makes a… Logic automaton of me of sorts. A servitor, perhaps. There are moments I feel not too far from real. But an echo can only repeat itself ad infinitum. The I you speak to is even less real than that which Zefaris spoke to before Eberheim. Such is the price for allowing it to function for this long..”

Koschei spoke matter-of-factly, without any sadness for the state of his being.

“Take the mask off, I wish to speak with my disciple, not a glorified mnemograph recording,” Zel ordered just as matter-of-factly.

“That is not a choice I can make,” Koschei shrugged. “I may oversee the shrine, the shaping of blackstone and devilbone for continued construction, and I may read the texts within reach to be properly comprehended later. I can’t even change how I work the materials if something goes wrong, just pick up a new piece. There is a sequence. I execute it. If it doesn’t go as planned, return to zero. Hell, my early logic automatons were more flexible than this…”

He gestured to two piles off to the side. One was of blackstone, the other of dragonbone. Both were various components and icons with small but noticeable flaws. Several of these were tiny statuettes of people. With the gesture, Koschei also moved Victor’s body far enough to reveal hundreds of similar tiny figures covering the workbench and the altars behind it, at the base of the shrine.

“I cannot even make us walk far from this spot. At most I can stretch in place.”

“You are well aware of the fact this is not right. Not just mentally, but for cultivation,” Zelsys stated flatly once more. 

“Oh, this is all but pouring fertilizer onto a pile of corpses, waiting for a heart demon to sprout. I know. Victor knows. Yet here we are,” said the echo of a dead king, shrugging once more.

“There was no such reaction after Borea. Either Eberheim was the last straw, or it was different,” Zel voiced her thought process as it occurred. She understood the young man’s state, but she didn’t intend to let him wallow and rot like this. Even if she had to beat it out of him, if it came down to that. Or, perhaps, a crystal-clear reminder that the Order was still out there would work better. She would see.

Despite his supposedly lessened state, Koschei responded with remarkable clarity of thought: “It was the latter. The destruction wreaked in Borea was great, and many were killed. However, the vast majority of those in the destroyed sections of the city managed to evacuate. The fallen who did not count among the conspirators died through coincidence — and many who were buried in the rubble of their own homes simply crawled out of it. By comparison, Eberheim was…”

“An intentional mass slaughter.”

Koschei nodded.

Zel thought for a moment, then reached out and grabbed the mask using the eyeholes. Its thickness allowed for this without the risk of poking the wearer’s eyes. She hoped it would just come off if she gave a strong enough thought impulse, and at first it seemed to, but a split-second later she felt it grip the redhead’s face all over again.

“I’m afraid Victor had no intention of allowing the mask to be removed from him when he put his safety measures in place. Or rather, he did not consider the possibility. I fear there may not be a non-destructive method of removing it from the outside,” Koschei said.

“Oh, I am certain there is.”

Zel let go, rising to her feet. She held out her hand, and two Thundergods grasped the Oculus, winding around the staff.

214 - Right Hand of Courage [Cherno]

With Silberblut’s focus entirely directed towards Tsetse, he was caught off-guard even by this attack that originated in plain sight — under different circumstances, he could have dodged in advance based on Semzar’s body tells. Moreover, even the Left Hand of Anger didn’t react, despite the fact automatic defense was its core functionality. Tsetse was the only target permitted to Eisenretter’s nascent form.

And so, the dismembered Mamon Knight fell to one knee, holding himself up by his remaining arm. In moments, his halo sputtered out and his armor burned right off of him. With a loud thud the severed limb fell to the ground, its armor burning away, musculature wildly spasming. A horrific creaking resounded as the limb’s panicked throes bent its own elbow backwards and twisted its metal bones out of shape.

The attack seemed to shock even Tsetse, enough that he recoiled for a moment and glanced in Semzar’s direction. However, he regained his composure, approaching Casus as he drew back his fist in preparation for the killing blow. 

Right then, a blurry form of black smoke flowed into the ballroom through the backmost door on the left. 

“C-c-cabral! She’s back! Finish him off already!” Semzar called out, panickedly shoving the jambiya back into its sheath and grasping for something else inside his jacket — doubtlessly another artifact.

The fly-man froze mid-step, for but a split second, only to spin 180° on his heel. With a forward stomp followed by an upward knee with the same leg, he sent out a shockwave that toppled the couch and sent the mafioso heir into the air. His Barrier took the brunt of it, and he cried out in outraged disbelief rather than pain.

With a stomp, he rebuked the mafioso: “Honorless cur. First, you failed to deliver the full shipment of thirty. Now, you’ve poisoned my combat data. Our arrangement is void. You can use your own strength to save your own hide.”

Lady Blackhand at this point emerged from her dive a few dozen meters away. She started pelting Semzar with Tracers astonishingly similar to those she had wielded as Viridaimon, while Barzai flew overhead. Soon enough, she started throwing bursters and clouds of supernaturally thick, near-sentient smoke cropped up. Strangely, the raven split from his master and made his way to the stage, upon which half of the band was still to be found. A drummer, a singer-guitarist, a bassist, and a keyboardist with a thaumatech piano — effectively an enormous analog synthesizer. They would have better fit a bar than a ballroom. Barzai perched atop a notation stand.

“Play,” the demonic bird ordered in the same baritone he had used to demand meat from his master. He glanced at the notations… And made a request. “Crest of Z. Can you?”

Confused looks and hesitantly-shaken heads were the response.

“Soul for the Sword?”

Again, the same response.

“Steel Messiah?”

Once more, nothing.

Then, almost jokingly: “Mad Machine?”

This time, they nodded.

Bobbing up and down in return, Barzai reaffirmed: “Play.”

Once the rattled musicians got in position, he abruptly stopped, spreading his wings.

“...Or else.”

With that, he flew off to aid his master.

As the instrumental picked up and carried through the mostly-empty ballroom, Tsetse turned towards the dismembered Banisher, offering clemency: “Run. Leave. Get stronger. I will let you.”

With blood leaking and golden flame bursting out of his eyes and the seams between his skin-plates, Casus choked out these words: “That… You can make that choice. I have no such liberty.”

He reached out for his arm, nearly falling over in the effort. Nonetheless, he picked up the limb and pressed it back into its socket. Wires leapt out from both his stump and the arm, lashing around the ends of the severed bone, pulling them together, winding and tangling around the join into a knot. As this took place, the arm’s grafted musculature rejoined in a similar manner, forming an unseemly, swollen connection, but one that would hold. The hiss of boiling blood could be heard as the binding wires heated to red, orange, yellow and white, soldering the connection. The graft’s internal tubing, too, had been severed, and it, too, reconnected with a gruesome sound and the leaking of blood between muscle bundles where the arm had been rejoined. Golden light erupted from between each and every muscle fibre of the limb, and with the gruesome sounds of metal scraping, it twisted itself back into shape.

The process actually only took a few seconds, but they felt like the better part of a minute due to how closely Tsetse observed it. Meanwhile, Semzar was scrambling in utter panic, trying to create as much distance as possible between himself and a rapidly approaching Blackhand. The ballroom was, nonetheless, huge, and it would take her a few moments more to get within range.

Casus tried to gather the strength to stand, but he could barely breathe. Everything hurt. Even the shallow breaths he could take sent brilliant, burning pain shooting through his body, piercing through the pain that enveloped everything like flares lashing out from the surface of the sun. He wasn’t sure where the pain of injuries ended and where the pain of Isotope sickness began.

“Please… Just once more… Just for a moment… Om, Zavyarana sowaka…”

There, in the depths of a flesh-stripping blizzard of despair, Casus found a golden ember of fierce will, burning ever more brightly in defiance. But… Just as he grasped that ember, consciousness slipped away from him.

That the banisher lost consciousness, however, would not be known to the world just yet. His body stiffened for a moment, and he rose to his feet with a steadiness that did not hint at even the slightest injury or exhaustion.

The three claws holding the Silberblut Coupler’s eye inside the socket suddenly sprung open. Once more, golden flame engulfed him, and out of it burst a figure of ebon-black, blacker than the blackest night. Its only distinguishable features were its blindingly-bright halo of golden fire, a golden blade upon its right arm, and six seething eyes with seven-pointed stars for pupils — one on its head, one on its waist, one on its back, one on its giant left arm, and lastly, the two eyes upon its chest. All else of the figure was so dark as to be more of a three-dimensional shadow than a person. The Face of Judgment, its eyes wide open, screamed a soundless word.

That word reached Tsetse faster than sound would permit, permeating through him, and in that instant, the evoy knew he was doomed.

“BE CLEANSED FROM THE WORLD.”

He couldn’t dodge. He couldn’t block. The matter of even trying never crossed his thoughts. At this instant, he felt as if he was facing down a saint from millennia past, and all will to fight left him.

This wasn’t an attack. This was the blade of a guillotine speeding towards his neck.

FINAL COUPLER CHARGE

CLEANSING BLADE OF COURAGE

213 - Severed Arms [Cherno]

A/N: Small edit, the Right Hand and Left Hand got mixed up. It's the Right Hand of Courage and Left Hand of Anger.

________________________________________________________________________________

Tsetse emitted a grunt of pain and frustration, but he was neither deterred nor thrown off-kilter. The fly-man twisted himself like a humanoid spring in order to deliver a kick from an utterly bewildering angle, sending Silberblut flying into the ceiling. Rather than smash into it, Silberblut tucked in his legs and outstretched his left arm past them. The eye upon it shone with a silver brilliance, and a strange force of the same shade flowed out of it, bracing against the stone. It vanished as quickly as it appeared, but nonetheless slowed his flight enough that he could comfortably bounce off the heretofore immaculate fresco. A face upon that fresco was turned to rocky gore once he used it as a jump-off point. Spinning through the air, the Mamon Knight stabilized himself in a flying-kick position, whilst Tsetse dug in his heels — literally. The Abara Morph’s feet and heels unfolded and anchored into the stone underfoot.

Pulling open his own chestplate, Tsetse revealed an immense array of sonic membranes, and in the same motion tucked his arms close to his body, even now concealing his left hand palm-blaster with his fingers and holding his right hand in the same gesture to not give it away. After all, even if the evoy was fairly sure Casus knew of the palm-blaster, he wasn’t sure that he knew which hand concealed it.

The ground shook, and soon the furniture followed. Glasses and bottles began resonating and cracking.

All sound cut out as it was overtaken by a thunderous bass louder than thunder. To whomever might have the eyes to see, the distortion wave would be plainly visible as it flowed through the air towards Casus. As he met it, the face upon his chest opened its eyes and mouth. His flight slowed for but an instant, as in the next moment, the entire shockwave vanished. In turn, the brightness of his halo grew, and his armor seemed to grow darker in turn — or was that a mere play of the light?

The true blow, of course, had yet to come, and it did come. Tsetse set loose a sonic kick as if the kick was the gotcha, nestling his killer strike within the motion’s end. It was awkward, and that was the point, to go against reasonable expectations, reducing the likelihood it would be noticed.

Silberblut slipped past the kick’s shockwave, holding his left hand out as a shield.
At the very next moment, Tsetse’s trump card struck… Only, the eye of his left hand came alive, locking not onto Tsetse, but onto the trajectory of his strike, all in a singular instant. Silberblut's halo turned clockwise by a 1/7 increment. A burst of light from the eye met Tsetse’s shockwave and dispersed it.

Immediately upon landing, Silberblut transitioned his momentum into an unnatural, zigzagging rush, tearing up the floor as he combined his raw physicality with his left arm’s even more monstrous strength and strange powers to forcibly change his trajectory time after time. Tsetse let off another barrage of kicks accompanied by shockwaves from his chest-mounted array, slipping in two precision strikes, but even those which would have struck had no effect. It was as if they were all devoured by the face on Eisenretter’s chest, or shot down by the eye on his left arm.

Before Tsetse knew it, his left arm had been severed from his body, and the blade which did it had trailed a half-moon of empyrean refulgence through the air. He stared Silberblut — Eisenretter — Casus Aristedes — in the eye, and felt that Silberblut’s left hand was pressed closely against his chest’s exposed sonic membranes… But so was his right hand against Silberblut’s side. And if he still held any advantage over the Mamon Knight, it was in how quickly his trump card came out.

The wave passed through the black-armored warrior, punching a hole in a table. It merely sent Silberblut stumbling to the side, of course — at this moment, putting him out of position mattered more than the cumulative damage. In that forced stumble, Silberblut’s clawed hand grasped with its monstrous strength, and Cabral found the entire front of his meatsuit all but torn off. The cold air met his real chitin, revealing a many-jointed, lanky form designed specifically to fit inside Abara Morph Tsetse.

If anything would undo Silberblut, it would not be Tsetse’s own combat power. It would be time. His incomplete Eisenretter form, though frighteningly powerful, could not last.

Still, Tsetse was cautious, and he strongly considered creating distance and turning this into a stalling game, even as Silberblut approached him.

“Unlucky. You have new defenses,” the Abara Morph remarked matter-of-factly. It was clear to him that the left hand had been devised specifically to counter his trump card. He was already considering how he might alter his form to counter Silberblut’s counters.

"The Visage of Judgment and the Left Hand of Anger,” the righteous warrior openly named two of his tools. “I would have been a fool to not forge a Mamon Armor that could counter your strength and more. And now, with the Right Hand of Courage, I shall excise your tumorous existence from the world!”

But at that moment, as Mamon Knight Silberblut held out his right hand and golden flame enveloped its curved blade once more, his arm, too, was severed from his body. A sudden flash of moon-azure light, leaving behind a fading blackness alien to the mundane world, ripped through the ballroom. Everything between its source and fading-out point was cleft in twain.

The hiss of frustration pointed to its origin: Semzar Hashem.

____________________________________________________________

Moments earlier…

Semzar had not been idly cowering in place. He had spent the whole battle clutching a jambiya dagger which rested at his waist, for the dagger’s blade was a potent artifact for resolving tense negotiations. Its sheath, in turn, was an artifact of the same grade, capable of concealing the transfer and buildup of power within the blade. As Semzar poured his own Thauma into the weapon, it flowed through its handle and reacted with the thaumstone jewels set into it, creating an enormous buildup of arcane power within the blade. The efficiency was nearly miraculous, the only downside was how long it took to fully power the artifact.

But as he drew the blade, the sheath’s effect was lost, and the swing veered wildly off course — it was akin to trying to steer the force of a tsunami. Semzar did not have even a tenth of the strength required to control the blade properly. Nonetheless, he managed to strike his target.

In a flash of eldritch unlight, reams of of black runes came whirling from the dagger, and all before them was parted — even one of the mansion’s mighty barriers was split in twain, and it only shattered a second later.

BROKEN RELIC OF A FORGOTTEN LAND

FAINT REMEMBRANCE OF A GLORIOUS PAST

TAINTED BY THE HANDS OF A COWARD

359 - Sigmund, the Hidden Elder [Sturmblitz]

Sigmund, as on many occasions before sunrise, was to be found atop the central spire, producing the enthralling appearance of a lighthouse at a distance. Despite emitting great tongues of blue-white fire as he floated a meter off the floor, the air around him was perfectly cool — colder than ambient temperature, if anything. His shirt hung over the railing. The historian’s appearance had changed a fair bit since the Blue Moon War. His skin had lost effectively all natural pigment — it was a pale, ashy grey with blackened, flame-like patterns. Someone unaware of the fact scorchlanders all had pitch-black skin could possibly mistake him for one of their kind. His facial hair retained its wiry quality and even ruddy colour, which combined to make it strongly resemble a mass of red-hot filaments. His head was as bald as ever.

“You’ve really screwed up my plans with Mata, you know that?” he complained before she could even say hello. His tone was perfectly tranquil, if a bit touched with impish mischief. He unfolded his legs as he stopped meditating, the glow of his body turning orange and fading to the degree of being barely visible as he casually walked towards the edge, leaning on the aforementioned railing.

“C’mon, give me a break. I wasn’t exactly in any position to stop her from going in. Besides, now you might be able to properly replicate… What was it called? The Fiery Spirit-talker Dance?” Zel countered, joining him in looking out over the city. Even here, at the very top, the marks of her epiphany could be seen, and without active effort on her part, she held a passive awareness of the spire’s interior at all times.

The name was clumsy, because the translation was clumsy. The actual name of the method didn’t translate into Ikesian whatsoever — in no small part because the native scorchlander dialects had an enormous number of words relating to fiery matters. Their limited knowledge of it painted it as something practiced by a handful in each tribe specifically for handling the dangerous and volatile tribe-guardian spirits.

“That’s true, but we were reconstructing the Rite of Scorched Honour! Refined, dueling-type beamwand arts! Now she’s gone and mixed it with animism, I’ll have to write up a whole new document…” the historian grumbled, letting slip a true grievance.

Zel conjured a bottle, biting the cork out of it. Loose seals trailed from it, and a thin layer of dark sediment swirled at the bottom. It tasted… Different. Not as if it had gone bad, but certainly different than she remembered — much of the pure viriditas had faded, allowing the somewhat grassy flavours of actual herbs to come through. She downed half of it before setting it on the railing next to Sigmund using a Thundergod.

The historian gave her a dubious look, as if trying to gauge whether she was trying to pull one over on him by pretending the seal-bottle’s contents had not gone rancid. 

He took a whiff, made the facial expression equivalent of a shrug, and finished the bottle.

“Tastes like shit. Got used to the good stuff on tap,” he complained, looking up at Zel to meet her gaze. “Come on, something good to wash this grassy garbage out of my mouth. I know you’ve got a stash of Tengri’s Tears up your ass.”

This was true… And now that he mentioned it, that grassy taste did linger a bit too much. So, Zel brought out two bottles of the aforementioned pale-blue nectar. A few minutes and a few sips later, Sigmund spoke up again: “You know, they’ve been calling me the Pure Flame Hidden Elder.”

Looking him up and down, she replied: “You look the part. Hell, you look the least normal besides me. Even Jorfr can pass for a particularly large Borean most of the time.”

“Yeah, well… It’s just a cosmetic side effect. I just figured out how to deal with my condition is all, it’s not like I’ve been chasing power the last year. I don’t recall ever becoming an elder, either,” Sigmund defended himself. Taking another swig, he continued: “I’ve got these dumb kids coming to me to ask for help and I never know what to tell them, so they assume I’m like those temperamental master stereotypes in the pulps. When they can’t come to me, the try coming to one of the scorchlanders. One-arm plays into it and makes them do stupid shit. Mata just spars with them and beats them up, tells them to come back when they get stronger. It’s mostly gone away by now, but… Some of them just don’t know how to give up.”

“Somehow I doubt you want me to do something about it,” she replied.

“Of course not. It’ll do more harm than good no matter how delicately you handled it, no matter whom you got to do it on your behalf.”

“Hang in there, Hidden Elder,” she sneered, patting him on the shoulder before she turned to leave. “You’ll get new subjects before long, I’m sure the Krishorns will bring a few scorchlanders looking to join. Maybe give the Burning Man Manuscript a try in the meanwhile, it ought to have something that interests even you.”

“One more thing,” he stopped her.

“Hm?”

“I’m sure you already know that some of the disciples are directly imitating you. One of them made a working Fang Ripper copy. You may want to look into him. One… Kenneth Colwyn, I think. Half-grekurian half-ikesian, wears a puffy shirt and a stupid leather vest.”

Zel remembered him. He had used a weird ropedart-esque weapon during his entrance exams, to sufficient effect that it qualified him. He had maintained steady improvement and overall excelled in technique, but nothing truly outstanding.

“I’ll be sure to do that,” Zel reassured as she left Sig to his tranquility.

Immediately after visiting the sect’s highest point, she made the opposite journey, venturing far beneath. The lift sped down through the earth, and eventually came to a halt at the entrance of the artificial clearing which was situated overtop the Tree of Life Leyline Well.

The branches of the tree at the clearing’s center, once bent under their own enormous weight, were now held up by bonewrought, multi-armed idols. In some cases, these idols were enormous, towering four or five meters individually. Elsewhere, one could see numerous smaller idols stacked together, their forms interlocked, yet not fused directly.

Four great pillars surrounded the tree at a short distance, bound to it by long reams of scrawl-covered sealing paper. At the tree’s base facing the entrance stood a meticulous, lifelike rendition of Kishin-Shura-Bishamonten, grasping a staff-spear akin to the Oculus with two hands, while six more hands floated at its back. In front of it stood a miniature pagoda, held aloft by four kneeling, demonic figures. The scarlet staff Oculus was placed upon a ceremonial stand at the shrine’s forefront.

Before that shrine, a red-haired humanoid labored in a hunched-over posture — for whomever resided inside that shell, he was not present.

358 - Spectre of Bitter Anguish [Sturmblitz]

The blackwall shook in the night as its mechanisms worked. This was nothing new. The great wall had been set to gradually loosen its net, and it had been doing just that. Indeed, none were the wiser to the fact this shudder was different to the others — not even the ankhezian brothers, for they were not watching so closely as to notice.

Meanwhile, Crovacus Estoras worked in his office, typing away whilst refining his control of the Calamity Flame. He did so by using the flame to sign documents with a pen made specially for the purpose. The eye-watering cost of commissioning such a trinket had been softened by the fact it could still work as a weapon for his martial arts. The hours passed, and Crovacus drifted to sleep — a single hour of nothingness in the midst of inhuman work hours. Such was the price of ensuring everything was done as he intended it to be, the price of directly contending with the Lady in Red.

“Just a few more days, it’s almost done,” he told himself. For once it was not a lie.

In the midst of that night, Crovacus found that a traveler had arrived inside his office, bypassing all security and even his own attention. It was as if, one moment, the figure simply materialized from the shadows in the corners of the room, or perhaps stepped out of the solid wall, or hitched a ride on the aetherwave signals. The stranger’s form was shrouded in a ragged cloak of blackest black, the fabric flowing without weight. In his hand he grasped a three-sided staff of blackstone.

As he looked up, he met the stranger’s gaze. Sunken, tired eyes stared from behind a stone-still mask, as if he had plucked the head from a statue. Their pale-blue glow was as sharp as the force of will behind them, an iridescence swirling within the blue.

A strange voice, composited from two others, resounded — not in the room, but inside his own head.

“You disgrace us, Grekurian. To think it would be one of you…”

Bitterness. Acrid, severe bitterness, enough to make the bile rise in his throat.

“How…” he asked, tentatively. It was almost a whisper, as light as one’s steps ought to be in a duel to the death.

The stranger turned his head, pointing at the aetherwave transceiver box that stood off to Crovacus’ right. Without even needing to look, he noticed something and realized the implication — the sound. The sound it made when receiving a message. By the tone and intensity, it was an ultra-high-output signal.

Secondly, he noticed the absence. The lack of substance. The stranger’s form frayed at the edges, swam in place, never quite fully coherent. Despite the fact his presence subtly altered the flow of dust through the air, he wasn’t truly here. An ascended mirage, a projection in all physical dimensions. By comparison, the stranger’s aura pierced through with an alien keenness, unlike that of any living thing Crovacus had ever met. It wasn’t sharp, or pointy, or hot or cold, or any of the so very human traits that one’s aura was likely to take on. 

Bitter.

So, so terribly bitter.

“Nonetheless… We cannot deny that you have done right by our kin. In turn...”

The stranger raised his staff. For a moment, Crovacus could see as a triangular halo flared to life behind his head, before the brightness became such that he could no longer see. A choking aura pressure filled the room — not by its intensity, but by the terrible sense of regret, bitterness, and exhaustion it imposed upon him. By raw strength it was lesser than what his own son put out during sparring, and yet, it took the breath from him. So terrible it was that bloody tears poured from his eyes and his heart seemed to stop — he thought the spectre was trying to kill him!

A fierce wind whipped through his office, coarse sand buffeting and blinding the governor. Before he could muster the will to defend himself, it all ceased, and he beheld that black sand had filled the corners of the room and scattered across every surface, and before him, three sheets of black stone now sat.

“Guidestones. They lead to treasures — one for the lowly soldiers, one for the prodigal sect, one for your noble line," the stranger said in both voices.

Then, his speech split, the first voice commanding: "Find them. Use them."

And the second voice finishing: "Hold out until my true return.”

The aetherwave comms cabinet emitted a hissing screech, something audibly burst inside the machine, and the spectre vanished, leaving Crovacus staring blank-eyed at what he had been left with. He had no will to try interpreting the shifting images and swimming letters that pulled at his eyes — his stomach was dancing in his gut, and his brain threatened to break his skull open from the inside. No, right now it was time for a Blue Sky Highball, not this. The drink in question was simply a highball made with Winter Peach Brandy as the spirit and Tengri’s Tears as the mixer. The violent, cloying sweetness was thinned out into a comforting cushion for any and every conceivable kind of mental anguish.

________________________________________________________

Without any fanfare, Zefaris departed for the first of many ritualistic expeditions to come. The ritual began even before her departure — she left in the dark of night, in total silence, making her way to a blitzgandr that had been stashed well outside city limits. All in the service of maintaining “stillness”.

Zelsys had taken care to ensure she, herself, did not disturb this, forcing herself into a coma-like slumber for a fixed duration. The moment she awoke, however, it was back to work. Run rounds around the sect. Check on the alchemists, each of them with deep black circles around their eyes. A few of the older ones had faint marks of daytime dust under their nostrils, but the scattered, half-empty bottles of DDLV spoke to the preferred method of mental sharpening for most. She didn’t dare actually enter the laboratory, lest she disturb the delicate work on the True Dragonheart Bolus.

Next, it was onto Ozmir. As several times before, the chef portioned out food and returned to his kitchen. He had been “working on something personal” for a while, now. Doubtlessly a matter of breakthrough utilizing the sect’s newly-bolstered resources. If anyone could use dragon flesh for his cultivation directly, it was him.

357 - Elder's Duties [Sturmblitz]

Zelsys would’ve loved to spar with those more her equal, of course — unfortunately, Makhus was utterly consumed in work on the True Dragonheart Bolus, and Jorfr was working with the owners of Scarlet Hill Farm to bolster their security in exchange for the supply of their product to the sect. As for Zefaris, she had been seemingly everywhere all at once since the dragon hunt. Sigmund was able, but not willing, and so, to the baths she went.

After she was done, on her way back to the surface, Zel chanced upon Lydia in the subterranean corridors. The lightning scar that ran down her face and arm also continued down the entire right half of her body, all the way to her foot. She had also become noticeably more muscular since Fort 57, the sect life and diet clearly being a good fit for her. A touch of nerves was evident in the swordswoman’s otherwise serene gaze. The reason was why — Lucian was her disciple, even if Makhus also involved himself quite a bit in the young man’s training. His progress had been explosive since the first dragon hunt, but Lydia obviously wasn’t sure if Zel was satisfied with him.

“About Lucian—” she started, and instantly saw Lydia tense up. 

“You’ve done well with him — at this point, he just needs time to grow. Take care not to neglect your own cultivation.”

A second of confused silence passed. Then, two.

“I- Of course, Elder,” Lydia stammered out.

Zelsys found great amusement in this, considering the sword cultivator’s otherwise stoic and gruff demeanor, but she didn’t have the heart to lambast her for it. It was her own fault for creating such a lasting impression by using the Eight-armed Avatar of Destruction Formation. The fact it was that version of Conqueror’s Mantle in itself further added to her amusement, as it didn’t have much going for it beyond acting as a developmental stepping-stone.

She moved to walk past the swordswoman, as to not drag out the interaction, only to be stopped: “Wait. If you would be willing, I wish to exchange pointers. I understand that I ought to have volunteered earlier, but—”

“Sure,” Zel interrupted. “You’re a core disciple, I can find the time. Sooner, or later?”

“In two weeks, if possible. I need some time to fully incorporate new additions into my technique.”

“Two weeks, then,” Zel nodded, and went on her way. She hoped Lydia would get more comfortable around her as soon as possible — she was, despite her newness to the sect, one of the strongest members. Sure, their encounter at the farm and the gift of Vysaga may have had a hand in that, but between their first and second meeting, Lydia had undergone a relative degree of development comparable to Zel’s own between her first emergence and the Blue Moon War. Moreover, she had begun mentoring lesser disciples of her own accord, and to great success thus far. Besides just Lucian, Lydia’s presence had done much for the sect’s specialist melee armament cultivators, few in number though they were. One didn’t just stumble over an asset like that, it was like… Well, stumbling over an advanced cultivation method or a mighty artifact, which, now that Zel thought about it, really happened far more often than one might expect.

After her bath, Zel took some time to relax in her quarters, continuing to chip away at the enormous stack of truly profound and truly obtuse texts her predecessor had left her. As she read, her hands never once stopped touching a text — her Thundergods did all the work of moving and sorting them. The original sorting system was a good basis, but it failed to make any differentiation between degrees of esotericism. A few hours into the session, Zef returned, and with her arrived a truly strange scent — it was burnt gunpowder, but none Zel had ever smelled. White-glowing silver conduits bulged out from the skin around her left eye, and she heaved a tired sigh as she pulled the skull-mask off of her face. She brought out the Phantom Scripture as she approached the writing desk as if to sit down and read, beginning the small ritual of reading together, which had become ordinary for the pair. Instead, she just collapsed into her seat and closed her left eye as well, gripping the text without even taking it out of its protective sheath.

“New gunpowder?” Zel asked offhandedly. Like blowing open a dam, Zef readily vented what she had been holding in.

“F-38J. Test formulation. Expansion rate, alchemical stability, generalized compatibility… All characteristics, excellent. Not too toxic or corrosive, at least not enough to harm me or Tempesta. Unbelievable pain to load. Incredibly fine, and the grains repel one another. I’d rather drip Black 7 into each and every shell. Hopefully Collier solves it with F-38K. If the granule-pressing solution doesn’t work, we’ll have to resort to a sculptable resin.”

“And? There’s something else. You don’t have Tempesta with you.”

“Yeah. Collier wants to rebuild it again based on recovered knowledge from the field-test Type-Z we brought in. Lots of small improvements on top of modifications to the firing block to let it fire longer shells and improve the chamber seal for higher pressure. I left it with her so she could draw up plans for a prototype of the rebuild, since modifying Tempesta itself will require great care. It’s promising, but…”

With a long sigh, Zefaris deflated into her seat.

“Also a great deal of testing and broken guns. Plus, with your recent breakthrough… I won’t pretend that I don’t feel myself falling behind. At least now I finally have the time to focus on the Phantom Scripture, so I may be able to catch up. Of course, that catching up will entail traveling to battlefields to collect vestiges, on my own, so I’ll be away from the sect a fair bit.”

She finally opened the Phantom Scripture, flipped through several of its bladed pages, and began reading when she reached the point she was looking for. They read in silence for a few hours, simply enjoying one another’s company. This, naturally, led to other activities.

356 - The Elder's Coaching [Sturmblitz]

A/N: I'm not dead. I just got sick. I'm better now. Not fully okay, but better.

_______________________________________________________________

After giving it a few moments of thought, Zelsys nodded and held out her hand. Fulguris twisted into being from thin air, then transformed into Carnifex once the end of her tail was grasped in the elder’s hand. Zelsys gave form to a False Fang, dismissing the cleaver as she grasped the fang, elongating its shape until it vaguely resembled a curved sword. In effect, it was just a shorter Fang Spear with a curve added.

She could tell from the way Lucian looked at the Fang Sabre what he was thinking.

“It’s unfair, isn’t it? But this is the only way I can do what you ask.”

A glance to the side, towards Lucian’s quasi-official master.

“Lydia, toss me that sword over there. Yes, the cold-iron one,” she instructed, stabbing the Fang Sabre into the dirt in the meanwhile.

With a flash of pink lightning and a trail of crackling cherry petals, the silvery shortsword went flying towards Zel’s head at the speed of a bullet. She caught it in hand, and simply held it out, allowing herself to connect with it, but not pushing it in any way. Ten seconds passed. The metal began creaking and reverberating like a tuning fork. Visible cracks began to show. Just when it seemed like it would explode, she dropped it, and it shattered the moment it hit the ground.

“Carnifex Fulguris is the only blade allowed to Zelsys Newman. Such is the nature of Storm-soul Cultivation. I’ll make it fair,” she said, whirling the Fang Sabre. A layer of black scale fell from the blade, and as she pointed it at Lucian, it was clear that the weapon had become much duller. Its fuller narrowed at an aggressive, wedge-like angle as always, but rather than an impossibly sharp razor, it was merely as sharp as any well-maintained warknife.

Round four passed without any strikes being landed, despite countless holes in Lucian’s movements begging for correction. Zelsys abstained so as to enable whatever Lucian wanted out of fighting her with a sword. She had no specialist knowledge in sword techniques of any kind, working solely off of fundamentals and what understanding she had gleaned from encountering them and their users.

Even still, with each clash, she realized why Lucian had wanted this, and why he was clearly so frustrated. One by one, Lucian went down the list of conventional techniques, mixing in unconventional Bayonet-eater arts such as the Bearstopper Guard wherever was opportune. Even the small repertoire of Lucian’s unique cards was interesting and, in some ways, novel, but a sword arm could only be so different from a mantis-blade. He just couldn’t do anything sufficiently high-concept to exceed her existing reference library. By the end of the round, his self-transmutation had completely failed and he was left barely able to move from struggling so much.

“Do you… Do you truly not practice sword arts, elder?” Lucian struggled out.

She shook her head, calling forth a small bottle of Liquid Vigor, which she tossed over to him.

“No more Vitae for three days. I comprehend them, as any good cultivator should be able to do. But I am not a “Sword Cultivator”, even of the lowest order. A ravine separates those who merely understand a martial art of any sort, and those who are cultivators in that style, and the only way to cross that ravine is to dedicate oneself to the style in question to a spiritual degree. I believe I made this abundantly clear in Sturmblitz Kunst 0 — no matter your specialization, you must understand the arts of your allies and your enemy as well. As for you, Lucian, I wouldn’t consider you a “Sword Cultivator”, either. A Blade Cultivator, perhaps.”

Seeing the musclehead struggling to stay upright, Zel cut things short and sent him off: “Now go clean yourself up before you bleed out. If you have further questions, you may come to me directly after you have recovered.”

Lucian gave a shallow bow in acknowledgment, only to drop any sense of decorum the moment he had walked a ways away, biting the cork out of the bottle and swirling its contents down his throat all in one go.

“Alright, who else…” Zel mused, sweeping her gaze over the small crowd still gathered in the courtyard. It had thinned out over the past few hours, as very few of those who took up the offer of one-on-one coaching were left in a state for spectatorship afterwards.

There were seven more individuals she truly wished to go one-on-one with today. Among their number, five counted those who had entered the Illusory World of Fangs during her epiphany. 

However, out of these seven, one had suffered severely, and was still recovering — it was an eagle-man who had lost most of his feathers and had broken many bones, named Sachual. Last Zel had checked on him, he was in good spirits, and his aura had noticeably taken on aspects of the Truth of Fangs, but he was nonetheless still out of commission for at least two more weeks. 

Mata Gano had done the same, and though she had not suffered major injuries, she, too, was in no state to train — she was working with Sigmund to rework her martial arts.

Four others were young Ikesians, two boys and two girls, some fourteen or fifteen years each. They had somehow emerged with an eldritch bond vaguely similar to the Triplets she had fought back in Eberheim, able to act as one body while clearly remaining separate individuals. For this reason, she wanted to coach them all at once… But they weren’t here. In fact, they had spent nearly all their time in the forests, and even when they were at the sect, they were never anywhere near where she was. From what she’d heard, they were trying to tame wild beasts.

The last was Victor, but he had been in soft seclusion down in the leyline well since Eberheim. He apparently came to the surface every two to three days, but she hadn’t seen him even once since she had come out of seclusion. For this reason, she intended to check on him when she first got the opportunity.

“Nobody? Very well, we’ll wrap things up for now,” Zel said, turning on her heel and making her way to the baths. She tossed a handful of bronze pills into her mouth as she went. The sound of metal creaking and snapping echoed inside her skull.

212 - Flesh-thief's Hex/Tsetse Battle [Cherno]

A/N: I'm not dead. I just got sick. I'm better now. Not fully okay, but better.

______________________________________________________________________

“Om, Zavyarana sowaka, behold the heretics and set their stolen flesh against them! Om, Zavyarana sowaka! Sear the mark of their sin upon their souls!” Yazata chanted, pulling her church signet from her neck. She held it up as she hopped back and forth in the desperate attempt to keep all three of them in her line of sight. Her eyes burned in their sockets, her hair floated without weight, and her gaze was briefly filled by a numinous light that scorched the grass. At that moment, she went blind.

Yazata’s sight returned to a blurry shadow of what it was normally as the surge of divine power faded. She could see well enough to be certain — she could see them writhing, twitching, wringing their hands together, their cheeks splitting as their faces opened with mandibles and the contents of their stomachs poured out. Coffee grains — half-digested blood. Though not visible physically, their astral bodies had been branded, the curse sigil a modified, refined version of one which had once been used to brand body thieves in a far off land, trapping them within bodies that rejected them.

“Th-the Flesh-thief’s Hex, but ah, it reeks of self-righteousness! What have you done with it, you church harlot?! I shall pluck the eyes from your skull!” one of the three evoy seethed, visibly regaining self-control quicker than the two others.

“Good guess,” she admitted as she struck the Trapezohedron against her leg once again. ”My version is better. My “Plunderer’s Branding” never goes away.”

The Plunderer’s Branding was a reconstruction from the ground up, making it impossible to dispel using the methods that worked on its lesser counterpart. She had even embedded traps that would agitate the brand under specific conditions, and even a targeting mark for the purposes of her other abilities. One such trap was in place to prevent the victim from using Mamon Couplers — terribly convenient, and justified within the brand’s purview by the fact some Couplers could be modified to temporarily suppress rejection symptoms by overriding them with the transformation.

One after another, the three evoy burst out of their skins in a manner Yazata had never seen. A wave of heat and rancid stench washed over her, fluid gushing onto the ground near them. In moments, the three transformed, growing to easily two and a half meters tall, into forms clearly intended to resemble war-morphs — the so-called “Abara Morphs” Aristedes had mentioned.

Yazata couldn’t help smiling, and then, she began cackling.

They were huge, hulking, but also completely malformed. One couldn’t breathe properly. Another’s legs were comically tiny in contrast with gigantic, oversized, clumsy arms. The third — the one who had recognized the curse — was the only to transform mostly successfully. In fact, his malformations increased his offensive power, silver sonic blaster membranes gleaming across him from head to toe.

He would’ve been a problem had Yazata spent the past few seconds doing nothing, but she knew better. While she couldn’t use her eyes as a casting medium for the next several hours, she had backups for backups. This whole time, she had been striking the Black Trapezohedron against her leg, modulating its frequency towards a desired pitch.

The blaster-covered Abara Morph joined Yazata in laughter, shockwaves of sound blasting out with each cackle, shattering the stones underfoot and throwing them out like pebbles, forcing Yazata to focus every bit of her remaining strength towards deflection. Her eardrums would have surely burst, were she unwarded. She weathered the storm for a few moments more, finally reciting an invocation, covered by the noise: “Ring out from the spires of Zor’Aguhastra, and sing…”

At once, distortion flooded out of the Black Trapezohedron, flowing through the air and swirling around the three evoy. Their chitin began to crumple in on itself, as if submerged far underwater, and quickly being dragged deeper.

“Sing, o Great One chained in the deep!”

With the passing of a breath, the three evoy’s bodies burst under the pressure.

Yazata let out a satisfied sigh. Each time one of her coworkers questioned how she could put up with so many limitations to how she could use her magic, she wished she could show them this.

________________________________________________________________________

Dozens of blows exchanged in moments. Hundreds of meters traversed in seconds. Tracks carved, burned, and torn into the flooring, shards of polished stone shifting around and sparking with crimson magic as the ballroom floor tried to pull itself back together.

He had to finish this quickly. To say he didn’t have much time was a generous understatement — he had no time. With each passing second, Casus could feel his brute-force-evolved transformation eating away at him, eating away at himself. He just wasn’t strong enough to hold it together, neither in physical nor in astral body, not to mention where he lacked spiritually. It had been purely this moment, this context, that had allowed him to transform into Eisenretter.

Had it been anyone else, anywhere else, at any other time, he could not have done it.

But it was Tsetse, right here, right now. That, alone, had been the permitting factor. This sword on his arm, this twisted, malformed thing, had been forged solely to cut down this Abara Morph. A part of Casus knew his armor would burn straight off of him if he turned it against Semzar.

As he sprinted, Casus used his left arm as a counterweight, drifting at a 270° angle, nearly flat against the floor, in order to get under one of Tsetse’s kicks. Its blastwave removed the heads of eight or nine fleeing people and exploded numerous pieces of glassware, sending a small tidal wave of razor-sharp dust roiling through the ballroom.

From his near-prone position Silberblut pushed off of the floor with his left hand. The blade of his right arm trailed a gold-burning arc through the air, intended to sever the Abara Morph’s left arm. Tsetse dodged, of course, but the wound had been struck — oily blood gushed forth from a flesh-ravine that now ran the entire length of his torso on the left side. His left arm visibly lost some volume.

Crow and Raven [Cherno][Artwork]

355 - Scheming [Sturmblitz]

The witch spent an hour detailing the plan, but it was, fundamentally, simple and straightforward. It entailed some deception, but even this was expected to be seen through, and whether or not it was seen through, the desired outcome was equally likely to be achieved. Isidora, of course, had her own intentions, but they weren’t mutually exclusive with the objectives of the Four Sects Alliance.

The plan hinged on opening a new Black Horse Sect branch in Arkaley’s borders, as close to the Arkaley Sect grounds as possible. Since the Arkaley Sect was in an unstable transition period from a neglected Sanger Sect branch to a Newman Sect branch, it would be easy to dispute the Arkaley Sect’s legitimacy. Arkaley was a growing town, bordering on a small city — too large for a piddly school like the Arkaley Sect. It was also far enough from Willowdale to not automatically fall under the Newman Sect’s dominion by virtue of proximity. The Black Horse Sect would intentionally send disproportionately strong cultivators to the new branch as elders and core disciples, forcing the Newman Sect to supplement the Arkaley Branch with their own upper echelons. Simultaneously, Zelsys Newman would be invited to meet with the Four Sects Alliance on neutral ground as an attempt to lure her out of the sect. Regardless of whether she accepts the invitation, goes to Arkaley, or does something more drastic, for the purposes of the plan, they only needed to get her away from Willowdale.

Thereafter, one of the Black Horse Sect’s elite disciples would be dispatched to the Newman Sect to act as a challenger. The purpose of this would be to gain further leverage for negotiation through a bet, not to actually hurt the Newman Sect. If the elite disciple lost, the weight of the loss would fall on his head, but the Black Horse Root Branch would compensate the disciple if that came to pass.

Branstein immediately took issue: “I cannot help but notice that your plan does not appear to hold transferral of the sect grounds to our ownership as its end goal,” the sword cultivator hissed.

“Oh, but it does. Such an outcome would be the ideal end goal. I, however, make no assumptions of how things will pan out. You, of all people, should know that it is very possible we may not be able to dispossess cultivator Walking Tribulation of the Willowdale Sect Grounds. My plan accounts for that possibility and ensures that you will get your new sect grounds no matter what. This conflict will create an ironclad pretense for you to distance your sect from the northern capital, and place you in a good position to further disentangle from their oversight — something you would need to do even if the Walking Tribulation were to simply hand over the Willowdale sect grounds.”

Sanger had no issue with the plan, as he not only didn’t care about the Arkaley Sect, he had not known of its existence until now — so uncared for it was. He nonetheless had something to say: “I will not involve my sect in any manner. By rights, I ought to assist the Arkaley Sect, as it is clear they only joined with the Newman Sect after several mortal generations of complete neglect… But we all must make difficult choices on occasion.”

Branstein shot Sanger a furious stare, his aura warping the air into a finger-length blade that shot towards Sanger’s miniature. Sanger, toking from his pipe, countered in kind — his miniature snapped into a stance with its sword pointing towards the ground. The Guard of the Iron Gate. With a flick, it sent Branstein’s swordlight right back in his face. 

The Black Horse elder huffed, but let it go, lest the both of them invoke intervention from the Swamp Witch.

Sanger, meanwhile, took amusement in the exchange, continuing as if he hadn’t been so rudely interrupted: “In light of the unacceptable state of the former Arkaley Branch, for the next two, perhaps three months, I will be busy conducting an internal investigation into the matter.”

He brought out a meticulously-ornamented silver vessel, flicking it open with his thumb. Refilling his pipe with its red, stringy contents and relighting it with a flick of his thumb, he added: “Should this matter not be resolved by then, I cannot guarantee my neutrality.”

For a few moments, Sanger and Branstein stared each other down, cold tension building. Sanger toked from his pipe. Branstein reached for his tea in turn. The cup, alongside a ribbon of steam, had been frozen in the same moment for hours now, and it only unfroze when he lifted it off of its glyph-inlaid pedestal.

“You know just as well as I do that this is not entirely up to me,” Sanger said. “More than a few within my sect believe in our feud to the utmost extent, or otherwise pretend to do so for the sake of their own interests.”

_____________________________________________

The clanging of steel against steel echoed throughout the Newman Sect’s courtyard. One after the next, the Elder met the disciples in single combat, imitating their fighting styles by twisting her own. Despite the fact she pulled her punches, it was a perilous proposition — one often entailing broken bones. Most found one or two bouts to push their limits.

It was the fourth round, and a young man covered head to toe in shallow cuts struggled to his feet. His right hand was merged to the handle of a battered warknife, while his left was shielded by an articulated sleeve of plates. His hair stood on end and glistened steel-grey, forming bladed porcupine quills.

Though gruesome, his state was the result of the elder being as careful as she could conceivably be, attacking using only her recently-formed claws. Even then, she only struck as part of the exercise, in order to point out the most glaring gaps in his defense — and there were many.

“Can… Can you not at least use a sword?,” Lucian choked out between laboured breaths. He choked down the last of a Witch’s Brew bottle, steam rising from his countless cuts as the smaller among them began to close up.

Zel raised an eyebrow. “You are aware that this is the easiest I can make it for you, yes? If you’ve had enough, we can stop right here.”

“It’s not that. I want to see,” he shook his head, casting the empty bottle aside as he shifted into the Guard of the Ox — sword held at head height, pointing forward, adjusted for the warknife’s slight curve. 

“Claws and punches, I don’t know that, nothing to compare against. But swords, I understand. I want to see.”

211 - Evolved Cinder [Cherno]

The mansion was enormous — too large to get from one end to the ballroom in a single Astro Dive. Krahe surfaced intermittently to recover, continuing her advance as she did.

Just from a few tentative tests between dives, it instantly became evident that this was nothing like anathema. More than being transformed, it felt as if every aspect of her natural thaumaturgy had been amplified — the smoke was thicker, the embers burned brighter, the pyroclast came out visibly superheated. Besides being more intense and coherent, it was also more lively, for lack of a better term.

As Krahe rapidly approached the ballroom, so too did resistance rapidly increase — from none, to some. Enough to be noted, to have been a problem not long ago. Now, Krahe saw the brave few who stuck around as target practice. She surfaced just as one of the guards finished an impressive burst of thaumaturgy that really tore up the wall right next to her.

To start with, she wore down his barrier with a few shots from the Pattner before hitting him with a Tar-tendril empowered punch to send him into meltdown. Out of everything, they had changed the least, gaining increased responsiveness and strength, but not much else.

As the quickly-formed tendril crumbled, Krahe formed a tracer, but even a mere tracer wasn’t a tracer anymore. Its elongated shape remained the same, but the first one came out significantly larger than normal. It flew as quickly as the Viridaimon Armor’s tracers did even without a bullet to carry it, and it visibly curved to strike its target as it flew. The man was thrown backwards by the blast, a hole blown clean through his chest cavity.

Two more gangsters later, Krahe had settled on a modified casting procedure. Instead of one, she would spew out bursts of tracers. Their homing was very limited — inferior to even the Viridaimon version. It was little better than the cheapest piece of shit smartguns with the cheapest piece of shit ammo, but even that much was a godsend.

The Viridaimon similarity made her curious as to whether Deathsmoke Spray could now produce a shotgun-blast effect. She poured in some Isotope for good measure in the hopes of improving its coherence with a tiny bit of Tar. It erupted out of her palm less like a burst-beam and more like a whip, lashing one of Semzar’s goons nearly in half before it lost coherence. Hair-thin, gossamer-like threads of tar bound together rapidly-disintegrating slivers of red-hot glass. At that instant, her mind shifted, and she lost any desire to replicate the Viridaimon version. Memories from before she had obtained her radiation blasters came to the surface. Wolf and Raven ZT-8, Model 32 “Tactical Monowire Dispenser”. 

With this in mind, she pushed onward, intending to refine this current “Death-Tar Whip” into something using numerous, separate strands. There was no time to do it now — she had to back up Casus as soon as possible, and, as it happened, four surviving guards had just turned the corner coming her way. Her current toolkit just had to do. Forming bursters still worked the same, the only major difference was that they felt heavier by almost half and she could tell their shells would hold up to slightly higher pressurres. The first one she formed was a smoke burster, intending to just pass them by, given that a fight against four at once could end up going on longer than she could afford.

It went as such: 

“It’s her!” an observant man cried.

The four readied themselves for combat — or rather, two of them did, the other two looked for escape routes.

A gunshot rang out, the bullet carrying the burster along.

“Not quite a Six Trees Killer. Six Trees Vanisher, maybe…” Krahe thought, already entering Astro Dive before it even reached them. With a firework-like explosion, shrapnel scattered with about enough force to inflict a nasty bruise and a writhing wall of grey expanded to fill the hallway.

Krahe was gone in moments, a black blur. 

The four gangsters ended up stumbling around and blindly lashing out in the smoke for a full half-minute, as the cloud shifted around, actively trying to cover them all. The terror of having their vision cut off was only intensified by the manner in which the smoke writhed around them, becoming so dense as to almost feel solid in places. Worst of all, it actively tried to shove itself down their throats, halted only by their wards. One man, a man whose wards had been compromised, emitted stomach-turning wheezes as he writhed on the ground, grasping for his neck.

________________________________________________________________________

A short time earlier…

The Inquisitor’s attention was pulled towards one end of the mansion’s upper floor, as her bound servants broke their orders to flee from the source of the outburst. Even she could sense it, through the barrier. It easily compared to the immense flare of transformation energy she had sensed from Silberblut earlier. Unlike the Silberblut Coupler, this outburst’s signature seemed thaumetic in nature, albeit far too intense, teetering on the output of advanced burning techniques. Yazata didn’t think this was even slightly likely, given that such techniques weren’t common even among mid-rankers, but she didn’t have time to dwell on it.

Her opponents were good. Too good. Their coordination was impeccable, their movements twitchy and unpredictable, and their barriers held up better than most physical walls — against the blunt impact force of her distortions, no less. Their offense, too, was equally potent and treacherous, coming out as invisible sonic blasts with enough force to tear up the front garden and register to the mansion’s barriers. Every once in a while, she would catch a glimpse of the source, the silver membranes and chitinous armatures darting out of her foes’ trench coat sleeves. It was in line with the briefing — a new type of artifact weapon. She was certain now. Certain of what they were. There was no room for guesses with the measure she was about to take, given how vulnerable it would leave her, but Yazata hadn’t gotten this far by hesitating and being unsure.

354 - Meeting of Elders [Sturmblitz]

The Sanger and Black Horse elders continued their argument even as they brought out a series of artifacts in sequence, some unfolding to form miniature landscape features while others created similarly miniature landscapes on the table, including simulacra of rivers, people, and animals. They spent the next full day moving about tiny soldiers and throwing variously shaped dice. The miniatures were carved of stone, inlaid with metals, detailed to the highest degree, and moved by imbuing one’s own aura into them — even including a limited degree of animation upon their pedestals. Many of the larger models represented real people, both living and dead, and of course both martial elders had themselves as the strongest units in the game. This was new — so new, in fact, that Cyrian hadn’t seen it at the last meeting, held during the Fog-sage’s mortal unification campaign. During that meeting, and all meetings prior, the game of choice had been some variant of chess, or whatever obscure card game Sanger had been gambling with. Once, it was backgammon — it came within a hair’s breadth of causing an inter-sect war, and games of chance were banned afterwards. It was obvious to the wizard why wargames of this complexity had suddenly gained appeal with the martial cultivators — they had been, after all, among the tools that allowed a mortal with very limited cultivation to turn the War of Fog into the meatgrinder it was.

“We’ve been playing Ankhezian wargames since our founding, but I’ll let them pretend they have something new,” the wizard thought. He decided not to dedicate his attention to the game fully, for the sake of keeping the peace and letting the meeting proceed apace.

To the surprise of neither of the magicians at the table, they were invited to join and given their own miniatures with their own reasonable rulesets, an obvious gesture of respect and recognition. It took some force of will to hold back from correcting the numerous small and not-as-numerous large inaccuracies, such as the fact Cyrian was represented wearing green robes and branded with his old “Swampweed Lord” epithet. He knew he couldn’t protest it without looking petty — everyone was represented as their younger selves in the game. Alexander and Edmund knew that he knew, and with their sideways glances they made it clear that they knew that Cyrian knew that they knew.

“This is why I stay in my tower. Older than some cities and only growing more petty and childish by the decade…” he complained inwardly. This was despite the fact he had been personally murdering the male heirs of a particular noble family the moment they hit 35 for the last five generations.

The topic of the meeting showed up in the wargame as a unique piece, as large as those representing the sect elders. It was a humanoid beast that emerged from a city tile in the south of the diorama, with eight snakes made of lightning forming out of its white-red hair, and a gigantic cleaver as tall as the rest of the model. The red was wrong, being literally bright red rather than orange. The miniature’s clothing was loose and flowy, wearing only chest bindings and parachute pants resembling the uniform of the Black Horse Sect’s least-favoured branch. The pants looked as if they were merely embroidered with the red-orange-black pattern of dragon-tree serpent scales.

In short, the details were all wrong, intentionally so.

“In the end, we won’t get to complete our game unless it is addressed,” Branstein said, eyeing each of the others in turn as he sipped his tea.

Sanger let out an incredulous laugh, scattering smoke as he did.

“What, do you mean to march to the sect gates and put it up to a fight, like the old times? I may have taken you up on the offer, had you only made it before Eberheim.”

“We have no stake in the matter,” Isidora refused. “Martial sects are to handle martial sect disputes among themselves — so it has always been.”

The witch grinned in an unsettling, cattish manner only she was capable of. Despite her diminutive, teenager-like stature, her seniority was indisputable. Among the four of them, she was the only one with such control that she could perform supernatural feats without any aura signature. To mortals and low-level cultivators, the difference didn’t mean much, but anyone advanced knew what an inhuman level of mastery it truly was. It was tantamount to turning raw ore into a masterwork sword directly through manipulation of its constituent metallum.

“Besides, you have no legitimate grounds for what you want. If they understand our rules, you will not be able to do much more than coerce them into joining our ranks officially. You want the Willowdale sect grounds, so you can get out of the Northern Capital.”

A cold anger flared in Branstein’s eyes, but he had no recourse. The witch was the oldest among the four of them, and by rule of seniority, she had free reign to speak as she wished.

“What do you suggest, then? Regardless of my wishes, she must be dealt with. We can’t have a genius run rampage over our lands doing what she wants, squandering resources and flagrantly disrespecting the conventions which have allowed us to survive for as long as we have. Upheaval after upheaval, genius after genius, we have persisted!”

Branstein thumped his fist on the table to punctuate his tirade, until, eventually, his control over his own aura slipped, and the miniature representing him exploded with the force of a hand grenade. It neither knocked down nor caused any damage to any of the other miniatures, or to anything else on the table.

“Settle down,” Isidora said, suppressing the sword cultivator’s rampant aura with a wave of her hand. She floated down into her seat, taking up a cross-legged position. “I believe we are all in agreement that the Black Horses’ Root Branch does require a new sect ground, and that the Heretic’s Daughter should be brought into the fold. At bare minimum, I wish to speak with her in person and ensure she will not do something foolish that would endanger us all. Her little martial arts proliferation project is one thing, the Dead Ones know you martials need new competitors to push you from that three-century-long rut… But we know nothing as to the extent of her knowledge in fundamental matters, let alone advanced leyline well maintenance methods. If we are not careful, the New Man Sect could cause irreversible ecological damage to the basin. The aftermath of Ubul’s leyline flood has been troublesome enough as is. I’ve not been able to adjust the weather in my territory to half the extent I am used to.”

Silence reigned for a few moments as the witch cast her gaze over her juniors.

"What? You cannot expect me to simply present you with a plan of action."

She went on to do just that.

210 - FOURFOLD ASTRAL IMPLOSION FURNACE [Cherno]

Spotlights narrowed down to laser-like pinpoints, and at once began a wild dance, carving an eye-crossingly complex pattern in the span of seconds before ending at their starting point, where they carved out six hexagonal empty spaces.

The Atomica resonated with a soundless tone, and she instantly knew what she needed: Words. The same sort of words she had used to give form to the Daemon Core.

One would suffice to start with, the others could come later. But she would need all six. She couldn’t afford to take things slowly — she had already felt hopelessly outgunned after losing the Viridaimon armor. How could she keep up if she didn’t grasp every iota of power in her reach, and then dislocate her own arm to reach for even more? How could she strike at the people behind Damrus Hashem if she struggled just with the meagre forces that Semzar could muster?

And so, she spoke the first word, and its emblem was carved onto the inside of her Soul Furnace.

WILL TO MIGHT

Might, not power — in the sense of strength obtained through great effort and will, rather than the strength one possessed naturally. Such had been her modus operandi in her past life, and so it was in this one, despite the powers bestowed upon her by her status as Deiphage. Even the fact she had usurped something of Chernobog, infinitesimal as it was, had resulted from Krahe’s enormous will, grasping for strength even as a disembodied spirit, rejecting death in the face of the void. 

The moment the sigil was completed, the hexagon erupted with gleaming obsidian, forming a control rod of sorts. She instantly realized the reason behind this — it had to be the influence of her incantation during the ritual. A later version of the Solomon reactor used such “control rods” to precisely manipulate the fusion transmutation, allowing larger reaction masses and more complex target results with the same energy input. This, then, was clearly a similar adjustment mechanism for the Astral Implosion Furnace.

One after the next, the Words came naturally. It was no more than self-definition. From the matter of the self, Krahe wrought the rods with which she would control the vast and terrible power of thaumaturgy.

The second could still be vaguely put into words with some effort:

HATRED OF EVIL

It was simple. Straightforward.

However, though she had already formed the base material that were these unspeakable maxims, she nonetheless spent strength to dredge them up and give them form in her Soul Furnace. With each maxim, it felt as though the resistance grew greater. The first came like nothing. The second took effort. The third was an ordeal, encompassing her abiding, melancholic love for the ideal of her home town — the idea of a “better world”.

The fourth, she could barely finish, spending every iota of mental strength she had. She couldn’t comprehend it in the terms of language, and wasn’t entirely sure of its exact meaning, but it was what came into her mind’s hand nonetheless. She was deathly certain it defined a core aspect of who she was, but she couldn’t mentally process it to the extent of breaking it down into simple, expressible concepts.

She couldn’t even start on the fifth, let alone consider the sixth.

Four.

That was her limit.

With that acknowledgement, everything settled into place.

ASTRAL BODY RESHAPING

FOURFOLD ASTRAL IMPLOSION FURNACE

Awareness of the physical world suddenly pushed back into the forefront. Her body floated half a meter off the ground, scarlet light shining out of her chest where she had implanted the Atomica, diffusing through her flesh and out of her mouth. The pressure of time began to return with one subjective second after the next, the hideous faces of the stillborn resuming their approach.

Atomica Refulgent came alive once more at her command, piercing into the beyond, and her Soul Furnace flooded with power — Thauma waiting to be set alight, the substance of Kenoma itself. One after the next the control rods receded, only to slam forward, compressing it all into a spot the size of a hairpin.

At the instant of ignition, Krahe’s awareness returned to the physical. The same could not be said for full control of herself — she remained in place for some time as an uncontrollable deluge of pyroclast erupted from her being. The red-orange death-swarm flooded the corridor, shredding and burning everything that wasn’t its source. Outside, the shutters of several windows visibly began to glow, only to be torn out moments later. A solid flow of glowing embers poured out of each window, gathering up against the mansion’s barriers and forming a waterfall, its colour rapidly shifting to red and then black as it moved down.

Krahe finally returned to full presence in the here-and-now to a scene that evoked deja vu.

Everything was sanded down and charred. The windows had blown out, the shutters melted from the inside. Her smoky jade barricade had become an abstract art piece, the stillborn transformed into macabre statues of compacted pyroclast. Boiled gore had sprayed out of them in places, painting the floors and pillars in oily hues.

They were left frozen in poses of reaching towards her.

The mansion shuddered, an explosion carrying from the ballroom.

Krahe opened and closed her fist, then picked up her gun. Its lanyard had been severed, but the weapon itself was unharmed. A spark of will, and Thauma rushed in. With its ignition, searing-hot power coursed through and tendrils emerged from her back. The intoxicating sense of newfound power was somewhat dulled by how off-kilter everything felt due to the Class 3 Pain Inhibitor’s persisting effects. There was something different in how things felt off-kilter, but Krahe wrote it off as the Atomica settling in.

“I’ll get used to it,” she thought. “Once this shit wears off…”

With a spark of anathema and burst of red light, she sent herself flying to the top of her own barricade, landing atop a pair of narrow pillars. With some trepidation, she skimmed to the next pillar over. Feeling no backlash, she readily initiated an Astro Dive and hurried to the ballroom.

A scattered handful of survivors would tell of a devil of living smoke flowing through the mansion’s halls.

209 - Taking a Stand [Cherno]

“Do you mean to tell me you cannot handle him? Did I pay you for nothing?!” Semzar hissed, trying to project the mask of an indignant, angered employer. It was a poor mask, all but see-through. His eyes trembled, his tendrils bulged under his skin, and his tone veered into pleading in the second sentence.

Tsetse, calmly, reassured his employer: “I can keep him busy. Any more is beyond me as I am now. Unless you would prefer I go after Blackhand?”

It was clear that, in truth, Semzar still considered Blackhand the bigger threat — if for no other reason than because there was a good chance that Aristedes would try to capture him alive. Still, Aristedes was the more immediate threat, while Blackhand had run off elsewhere, somehow drawing away the vast majority of the stillborns.

__________________________________________________________________________

As Casus Aristedes, Mamon Knight Eisenritter, took his heroic stand against Cabral Khan, Abara Morph Tsetse in the ballroom, and as Yazata Heptaxia took her own stand outside the mansion, so too did Brunhilde Krahe take a stand of her own.

It was not quite as glamorous as the other two, as her foes could not be said to possess the mental faculties to comprehend what “taking a stand” even meant. They were, nonetheless, numerous and mighty, a writhing mass of grafted flesh and metal armed to the teeth with heretical technology.

The corridor was being torn apart around her, and her Wards weren’t spared that fate, each grazing hit another step towards an injury she wouldn’t be able to walk off. The only thing keeping her in the fight was her vastly superior mobility and tactical sense. Time and again, she had lost the stillborns thanks to a well-timed screen of smoke, their senses dulled and bodies impaired by the toxicity Arrha held to the Evoy. Yes, it was Arrha that had become her lifeline in this moment, it was this property that she imbued into her smoke eruptions after she had run out of Isotope to thicken her smoke with — or rather, she still had some Isotope, but she kept that bare minimum for forming Tar.

But even this wouldn’t last — Arrha-imbued magical smoke dispersed even faster than that which she didn’t imbue with any extra properties at all. She burned through a dozen cigarettes at a pace comparable to her expenditure of bullets, and at this point, her lungs burned. She couldn’t tell whether the unearthly terribleness of that sensation was natural or if it ought to be blamed on the Class 3 painkiller.

“It’s like my airways are full of menthol oil and glass dust…” she thought, wheezing against a corner after she had barely given the jabbering swarm the slip for the Nth time. Barzai spotted them catching up to her all over again, but she was in no state to run again. She thought to blast herself out of harm’s way once more, but the energy pressure just wasn’t building like it used to. The power she could bleed off for her own use was quickly waning as the attunement process continued — the threshold where it felt as if she would explode became ever tighter.

And so, Krahe purposely cornered herself, making for the end of the corridor. The door to a bedroom could be found there, but it was locked, and so, left with no other options, she burned up every remaining charge in the Forming Toroid to put up a barricade. It wasn’t pretty and it wouldn’t actually keep the stillborns out, but it would have to do.

They crashed into her maze of jade like a tidal wave, but soon enough, the smarter and lither among them began weaving their way through, while some others scaled the rods to climb overtop.

She shot down two as they reached her side of the barrier. A third withstood her last bullet, and she had to bash it in the side of the head with the side of her left hand’s palm. That staggered it enough for her to knock it to the ground, its willowy, unarmed frame the graft-beast’s undoing as Krahe caved in its chest cavity with a full body-weight jumping stomp-kick.

In the time it took her to achieve this small victory, two more abominations had made their way through, and both possessed weapons — the first a blasting array, the second a sonic weapon-arm as well as a ward generator graft.

It was at this point that she made a judgment call, and plunged the Atomica straight into her own chest. The sensation laid somewhere between connecting to a bitey nerve-interface and plugging in an overvolted charging cable. Krahe found relief in it, in the knowledge she hadn’t just killed herself. Rather than refuse to go in, or worse, tear her open from the inside out, the Atomica resisted for a moment, only to finally enter right through her biosuit. An alien, thrumming pulse resonated in her chest, carrying through her spine. She felt herself collapse inward, awareness of the world detaching from presence, time appearing to slow to a near-halt even as the stillborn swarmed towards her. It felt unsettlingly similar to the Rite of Dho-hna, combined with the dream-like quality of her visions during the Liminal Coil’s implantation.

As she got her bearings, she came to the undeniable conclusion that she was inside her own Soul Furnace. She could only make out a few details, including the vaguely spheroid shape and the presence of the Atomica as an enormous obelisk, reaching the center of the chamber. At the Atomica’s end, in the chamber’s center, there floated a swirling mass of black tendrils, within it glowing the unlight of Kenoma. It resembled the Daemon Core, but it was obviously just a closest-equivalent representation for something she couldn’t mentally parse in its true form.

The enormous flow of energy that had been coursing through her and building up suddenly gathered within her Soul Furnace, rousing the Atomica to glow ever brighter, surpassing even its radiance when it had just been transmuted. Six spotlights erupted from it, one for each side, burning the inner walls of Krahe’s Soul Furnace. The initial pain crossed over into the realm of a sensation that she couldn’t even interpret, registering as an itch perpetually being scratched and irritated in an endless cycle, combined with the hellish burn of menthol and capsaicin.

353 - Violence of the Flame Pt. 2 [Sturmblitz]

Zel came crashing down onto the beast’s back, grasping Carnifex with both hands as she buried its sawtoothed back into a particular spot. Instantly, she was engulfed in fire as the dragon focused the full weight of its aura onto her exclusively, yet she seemed unscathed. With a shift of her posture, she dragged the saw all the way through, almost effortlessly. A great geyser of pulped flesh and nervous tissue sprayed out of the wound, and the Wildfire Kite crumpled to the ground — its legs gave out under it.

An earth-shaking scream followed, and the air became almost too hot to breathe. Zefaris had no choice but to compensate by cooling down her immediate surroundings. In spite of everything, the dragon continued its struggle, summoning blades of fire to cut through its own wing membranes so it could free them. A dozen fiery arcs erupted all across its body, each detaching at one point and joining its wings in a backwards strike towards the spot where Zelsys stood. The degree of flexibility the feat required was such that Zelsys hadn't expected it as a possibility, given the kite's muscular bulk.

None of them got the chance to land, as Zelsys had already leapt high into the air, simultaneously burying two more Thundergods into the ground as anchors. The last two, she had slung around the dragon’s tail, using them to force it back. 

At the apex of her flight, she froze in mid-air, seemingly weightless. A sound pierced through the Wildfire Kite’s roar. A high-pitched, furious sound, the air itself screaming. Carnifex had grown to twice its normal length, and ever so vaguely resembled a row of upper teeth. The Crown Fang’s beak had elongated, and was joined by a second, temporary outgrowth from the Root Fang’s shape. Fierce lightning writhed between these two fangs, coating the monstrous weapon’s edge in its entirety. Zelsys had braced her feet against it, grasping it both by its handle and by a sawtooth reshaped into a handle — all of the back edge’s other sawteeth had receded so as not to risk harming her.

Out from the ground beneath the dragon’s neck, a matching bottom row of teeth took shape, the Truth of Fangs twisting it into shape out of smoldering charcoal and hardened soil.

Half a second. One second. The kite writhed, thrashing against its restraints.

In a flash of truly inhuman violence and with speed akin to a true lightning bolt, Zelsys fell upon the Wildfire Kite’s neck, dragging herself downwards by her Thundergods. A shockwave of thunder ripped through the clearing, and in an instant, the dragon’s aura scattered, as if its very will had been severed.

FORMLESS DESTROYER SCRIPTURE

SKIN OF BRONZE WITHOUT

AND LIGHTNING COURSING WITHIN

WITH PURITY OF VIOLENCE

SHATTER THE LIMITS EARTHLY

REND THEM ASUNDER

A DESCENDANT OF DRAGONS
BEHEADED WITH ONE BITE

BUTCHERING ARTS

THE LEVIATHAN’S MAW

A royal-purple geyser of liquid life geysered towards the sky, casting the scattered dust to the ground. Instantly, the dust was replaced by a curtain of rising steam, the beast’s blood hotter than boiling water.

There, in the midst of the carnage, she stood, rising from a crater of blood and carnage, the dragon’s head at her feet.

_____________________________________________________

In an instant, it was over. 

Zelsys felt the dragon’s life simply stop, she felt it strain and break in the midst of her dragonsteel fangs. At the moment Carnifex passed through the beast’s neck, her aura completely overpowered the beast’s, her existence asserted itself over the Kite’s without leaving any space for question or further struggle. With the slightest mental command, her Thundergods took to snapping up the vestiges that remained of what aura the dragon had manifested.

A part of her wanted to stay here and bask in it, to drink the blood from the beast’s severed neck and tear raw meat straight from the carcass with her teeth, but there was no time for that. The retrieval caravan wouldn’t arrive for another couple hours, even given the fact she had sent the retrieval ping the moment she saw the dragon. The slaying wasn’t the end of her work with the dragon — in terms of time spent, it was only the beginning. She had already picked out suitable stones in the area, and reached out to the first. A trio of Thundergods jolted out from her, winding around the multi-ton mass of rock, dragging it out of the soil while she brought numerous glyphic glass jars out of Fog Storage. She cleft it into slabs, casually spreading them about the clearing. The same fate befell two more, leaving gaping holes in the ground. After gathering as much of the kite’s blood as was plausible, she took to dismantling it, laying out its limbs and most easily-extracted organs on the slabs. She couldn’t carry out a proper, full dissection, but she could do this much.

Its dragonstone was the only thing she left alone, as the bestiary had warned that the extraction could be deceptively delicate — not due to risk of damaging the dragonstone itself, but the surrounding tissue.

Eventually, she cut a smaller slab from one of the stones and brought it back to the campsite. It took less time than expected for the retrieval team to arrive. By the time they did, they arrived to find the dragon slain and the elders dining upon its meat and liver grilled upon a heated stone, drinking Winter Peach Brandy.

________________________________________________________

Four figures sat around a table. One held a long pipe between calloused fingers, and another delicately poured tea with an equally delicate hand. The third floated above her chair just high enough to put her feet up on the table, a bird perched on one shoulder and a three-eyed toad on the other. The fourth listened to the first two argue, notating their exchanges as they took place with inhuman speed.

The first two were the Grand Elder of the Black Horse Sect, Edmund Branstein, and the Patriarch of the Sanger Sect, Alexander Sanger. The other two were the self-same Witch and Wizard who had been present at Eberheim — Isidora and Cyrian respectively, their shared family name purposely buried.

Edmund and Alexander had been arguing for three days now, going over centuries of grudges. The other two had only arrived a few hours ago — the Wizard had discerned how long the martial cultivators had been arguing based on which part of their long history was being argued over.

208 - Eisenretter [Cherno][+Artwork]

“Stronger. Not strong enough,” Tsetse remarked, a faint disappointment in his deadpan tone.

“You speak the truth,” Silberblut agreed. “I must thank you, for reminding me that mere imitation of my predecessor would only doom me on my path. That my reason to wear this belt was just as important as my ability to do so.”

He reached for his waist, as if to press the eye of his belt for a coupler charge, only to detransform. To those who knew what to look for, it was obvious that this was not some kind of sudden failure, but an intentional act. Strangest of all, he didn’t just detransform — he pulled the belt right off of his waist. At that instant his armor burned off of him, consumed by silver fire. As Casus retreated a few more steps, the burning ghost of his armor charged ahead to meet Tsetse, clashing with the insectile giant for a moment before disappearing.

Semzar shouted, and the three-eyed stillborn-handler to his left sicced two of his crebatures on the banisher — one with clawed hands, the other with two gun-arms. Despite being stripped of his armor, his arm shot out with the force and speed of a cannonball, hints of golden flame flaring between the exposed muscle fibres. He shattered the charging stillborn’s chitin with one punch and set it off-balance. Without wasting a moment, he tore into the same spot, his fingers digging into flesh and bathing in leaking hemolymph as he braced his foot against its chest. With a single motion, he tore out not just its side — but also a vital cable. Oily blue sprayed onto the tile as the graft-beast toppled down.

“No ward generator?” Casus asked as he threw the fistful of flesh aside.

“My employer expressed dislike for the sound they made. Those with ward generators were assigned elsewhere,” Tsetse remarked, pointedly tilting his head as he glanced at Semzar. “Your specifications surpass my data. Your compatibility must be excellent to channel the coupler’s power so readily untransformed. Two questions: How, and why? I sense no new relics. No new catalyst. No new voidkey. The change was you. How, and why?”

Tsetse’s tone was full of curiosity, entirely unconcerned by the destruction of his toy. His attention was fully on the conundrum of Silberblut’s abrupt growth.

Driven to nearly speechless fury by the implication that something was his fault, Semzar shouted for the onerous intruder to be struck down. Tsetse didn’t move, but those surrounding him did. His silhouette was completely consumed by the assault, tearing apart the floor and engulfing him in a clashing blender of magic, but it was too late — he had donned his belt once again.

The shape of his armored form, of Tarnished Silberblut, had formed from silver flame, overlaying him without actually becoming the solid armor. Five stars of golden flame burned above his head.

“I am a warrior of justice, not because I have been chosen, but because that is the path I chose!”

A sixth star ignited. Their revolutions accelerated.

“In my past life I fought for what is just, and in all lives that follow, so too shall it be!”

A seventh joined the six.

“Should the shadows grow darker than black, so be it! I need only burn more brightly than the sun, even if it leaves my armor charred black!”

Seven became one — a flaming halo with seven notches. It widened, descending to the ground, and with it, the armor of Tarnished Silberblut took form, pristine and gleaming for just this brief moment.

“Igaria steel my spirit and Zavesh guide my hand, so I pray!”

Then, from the halo, a fiery inferno erupted — at once, it consumed Casus Aristedes whole, and a projection of the seven-notched halo emerged in front of him, as tall as he was. One by one, bursts of golden flame flowed out of the flame-vortex and into each spoke, forming the shapes of additional armor components.

From the midst of the golden inferno, an enormous voice bellowed, one that did not belong to Casus, yet also slightly differed from how the Silberblut Coupler normally sounded. It was distorted in a manner that, to Krahe’s ears, resembled a disrupted or otherwise incomplete signal.

“The son of ho-pe, broth-er to anger and cou-ou-ourage! Mamon Knight Eisenretter!”

In rapid succession, the new armor flew into the pillar of flame, joining with Casus’ silhouette.

The swirling inferno tore itself apart, and the burning wheel which had given it shape rose up, shrinking to now revolve around Eisenretter’s head. His previously horn-like crown had expanded even further, completing a physical halo. The lower half of his left arm was twisted into a gigantic, disproportionate thing, with spherical joints and clawed fingers, an extra cross-pupiled eye adorning the back of the gauntlet. By contrast, his right arm only possessed a minimal gauntlet, a curved blade attached to it and sweeping forward over his hand. The blade looked as if it had been melted in the transformation’s flame, neither its star-shaped form nor elegant attachment joint anywhere to be seen. The close-eyed face on the suit’s chest was a mismatched blend of the robotic and the demonic, with large golden fangs. Similarly, curved golden spikes protruded over the knees, and the boots had short claws of the same colour.

It was crude and incomplete, and yet, the sheer, unrefined power pouring out of Casus at this moment truly felt as if he was the sun.

THE SON OF HOPE

BROTHER TO ANGER AND COURAGE

MAMON KNIGHT EISENRETTER

-IMPERFECT MANIFESTATION-

“Lucky,” Tsetse remarked, a tinge of unease creeping into his voice.

Upon receiving a look of panicked confusion from Semzar, he added: “Catalyst Resonance Evolution. All old-style speaking couplers could do it. Some modern models still can. Enormous performance increase through resonance with the catalyst. This one… Incomplete. He forced it. Got lucky. Hence the detransformation and the excessively complex transformation sequence. Can’t do it properly.”

“Why did you not interrupt him, then?!” Semzar demanded.

Tsetse scoffed. 

“Foolishness,” he said. “In seven thousand years, do you think none have thought of that? Even the oldest couplers have countermeasures.”

207 - Flight of the Crow [Cherno][+Artwork]

The small comfort of using a crowd for cover didn’t last long — Krahe’s aura still pushed people away, and they readily scattered from her even without its encouragement. The stillborns were hot on her trail. She just needed to drag the abominations out of here, and until then, she was glad to let Casus and Tsetse take the center stage. She certainly wouldn’t grace that man-fly with his preferred name, even in thought. 

As she made her way to one of the ballroom’s staff exits, she caught sight of a saurian guard waiting there. Countless scales flowed out of his sleeves as he channeled his magic, swarming towards Krahe. She sent herself flying through that door with a short burst from her arm, her wards gaining numerous new gashes as she flew into the corridor. A handful were only impeded partially, leaving cuts on her trousers and the back of her bodysuit. No followup attacks came — the guard was too busy avoiding the stillborns.

And so, Krahe went tearing down the mansion’s corridors playing a lethal game of cat and mouse with a gaggle of bioweapons. Barzai proved himself invaluable in this matter, as Krahe had him always flying ahead, purposely leaving him visible. The sight and sound of him sent people running well before Krahe would arrive. The eidolon took quite readily to the command to scare off the chaff, harassing people with explosions as he cackled and foretold her coming as if she was an inhuman calamity.

Gradually, the stillborns closed the distance, most of them sprinting on all fours like animals. A few pulled ahead of the pack, standing out as particularly quick on their feet. To her surprise they exhibited a degree of tactical thinking, overtaking her in a clear effort to box her in. Krahe couldn’t help but grin as she pointed her left arm right into the face of the stillborn behind her, releasing her built-up pressure and sending herself flying down the corridor. One of the stillborns that had overtaken her tried lunging at her as she passed it, but she sent it staggering back with a well-placed shot to the chest.

__________________________________________________________________________

Yazata wasn’t sure what was going on.

It was not a matter of lacking eyes inside the building. She could see through the possessed Red Hoods — or rather, through the things possessing them. The problem was, they refused to go to the upper floor. From what they saw through the floor, she couldn’t blame them.

Its shape and damascened pattern suggested the astral body of a human Greater Pilgrim, and even carried with it something sacred, but it was… wrong, somehow. Terribly, ominously wrong. A shroud of pitch-black smoke swirled about the shape, obscuring details normally unseen without appraisal, exuding an implicit threat at all times. Like it was daring her to try and look closer, to see what would happen if she did.

As the creatures they were, who supped upon the astral bodies of their victims, it was the ultimate form of aposematism. Yazata would have understood disobedience if she had tried to command her hounds to consume such a being, but they refused to even come into its vicinity.

Nonetheless, she continued playing her part, and simply commanded the Red Hoods to patrol the ground floor.

It was not as if she had nothing better to do than watch from afar. She was here not just to keep them in, but also to counter any possible reinforcements from the outside. Going by the group of four rather ominously-dressed individuals speeding towards the mansion at this very moment, that prediction was correct.

She struck the Black Trapezohedron against her leg, its blade reverberating with a deep pitch. Distortion bled upwards as she spun around to face the newcomers.

“Hear my shining words…”

Yazata spoke, and lo, they heard, but neither their ears nor minds were spared the mercy of human language.

__________________________________________________________________________

The sound of thunder carried through the ballroom as two armored figures clashed, darting back and forth with inhuman speed. Bursts of gold-silver flame and invisible shockwaves of sound tore into the floor, forestalled only by the mansion’s abnormally durable construction.

With each clash, Casus grew to understand the rift between himself and Cabral — the rift between Tarnished Silberblut and “Tsetse”. While he now knew that the individual’s name was Cabral, in the absence of a known name for his transformed state, Casus simply shifted his perception of Tsetse from the entity as a whole to the transformation specifically. Even as he was now, he couldn’t match the might of “Abara Morph Tsetse”, it was undeniable. He could keep pace in physical terms, and his increased durability allowed him to weather direct blows, but once Tsetse brought out his sonic weaponry, the scales tilted steeply in the Abara Morph’s favour.

He could read most of them, of course. Most. But Tsetse hadn’t simply stopped evolving since their last battle. In their short battle, Casus had already faced three distinct attacks incorporating the sonic blaster in Tsetse’s left palm. It was a horrible, wretched thing, adaptable beyond compare, as Casus soon learned. Both of them had landed blows on the other, but neither had caused any serious damage — not until the third exchange.

Tsetse threw a quick jab, one which he had thrown several times before as a normal strike, and without anything to hint at its altered nature, he imbued it with an insidious vibration at the last split-second. It couldn’t be more than one-tenth of a second before impact, else Casus would have sensed it coming. His fist smashed into Casus, and speared him through with the same concentrated force as that which had defeated him back then, in the lab.

The shockwave continued through him, blowing fist-sized holes through three men before it shattered a window and dented its shutter. Casus followed, thrown backwards into that self-same shutter. He would have flown right out of the mansion had it not been there.

Falling to the ground, he picked himself up, uttering prayers to Zavesh. The pain was one thing, he could withstand it, and his armor could withstand the damage just the same. He wasn’t the same Silberblut as back then.

He was praying because he had learned what he needed and felt the pain he needed to feel. A small part of him was relieved that Tarnished Silberblut didn’t suffice against Tsetse.

352 - Violence of the Flame [Sturmblitz]

A/N: The first 3/5 or so are smut. After that it's right to the dragon hunt.

_______________________________________________________________________
It was at this moment that Zefaris learned just how far her cultivator physique could stretch. That seething, thrumming thing could barely be considered of human proportion, mercilessly bulldozing into her bosom, surging with enough fulgur to knock out any mortal. A long wheeze escaped Zefaris as it skewered her — the last dregs of coherent thought being exorcised.

Then it retreated, leaving an intolerable emptiness behind. The wait for its return, though mere moments, felt as though a torturous eternity. With each thrust, great gusts of dense fog erupted from Zel’s nostrils, and Zefaris found herself emitting sounds more fitting for a rabid beast than a human.

Each pulse of Zel’s heartbeat and ignition of her lungs sent surges of current crashing through her, each an inexorable demand for attention. At some point, her cap fully obscured her sight, but she didn’t notice. In the timeless expanse of sensory overload that followed, there was no dragon, no hunt.

For a moment, she felt as though she might break, and perhaps something did — when the fist-sized mass of flesh entered her at last, a deluge of liquid followed with the spasms. She wasn’t sure whether it was from Zelsys or from herself, and certainly didn’t have the mental capacity to make such a distinction.

By the second eon, she was once again made empty, and found herself blinded by the campfire’s light for a brief moment as she was turned over onto her back. The feeling of near-weightlessness remained, her shoulders barely touching the cold stone as her lower half was hoisted into the air. The indomitable colossus of her infatuation instantaneously blocked the fire’s infernal glow, eyes shining blue. 

The third eon came, its coming marked by the replacement of the fiery spear with a great serpent, writhing and undulating inside her. A measure of clarity returned to her when Zelsys pressed two fingers into her rear, meeting her gaze with a tacit question. She had neither the will nor the intention to refuse, and erelong the blonde found herself being rutted from both ends to the point she couldn’t discern which hole was which.

By the fourth eon, Zel lifted her from the ground as if she weighed no more than a feather, pinning her legs behind her head. The amazon muffled her utterly incoherent, ragged vocalizations by stuffing her tongue down her throat. 

At some point in the pleasure-blurred eternity, it all ended and she drifted off to sleep, but that was still at least another eon away.

____________________________________________________________________

Zefaris awoke to the clarion call of armageddon's trumpets, piercing through her skull like an iron nail. She struggled to raise herself up, only to find she couldn’t stand — her legs just wouldn’t obey. She was stripped naked, yet contrary to her hazy memory of the past several hours, both she and her surroundings were entirely clean. Her hair, somewhat damp, had been untied, and the taste of Witch’s Brew lingered on her tongue. Her right shoulder itched something fierce, thin scabs already peeling away from freshly-healed skin.

The source of that horrific noise became self-evident the moment she came to her senses. It was the Wildfire Kite. Its form was distinct from that of its partner, with a slightly smaller, but much bulkier build. Its scales were larger and pointier, and had a dark gradient towards the points. The dragon was atop the plundered nest, roaring — no, that wasn’t right. It was screaming. With its scales fully raised, jets of flame erupted past them from its skin, growing so dense around its neck they formed a majestic mane of fire.

Off to the side, behind a tree, Zel waited, somehow having concealed herself well enough that the dragon hadn’t noticed her yet. Reaching into the inner pocket of her coat, Zefaris touched her tablet and sent a ping. Their gazes met, and instantly, Zel’s plan of attack shifted to incorporate the Nameless Phantom and supporting fire from Zefaris. She was in no state to provide full-scope support, but that wouldn’t stop her from doing everything she could.

With each passing second, the air was becoming warmer, the dragon’s tantrum stoking its surroundings into an inferno of smoldering charcoal. The beast’s aura was sprawled out around it, but reached neither of the women. Zel shifted in place, and Zefaris immediately saw her self-concealment formation break. The kite fell silent as its attention snapped towards the foreign presence. It was then that Zef felt a ping containing the concept of “Nameless”, referring to the Nameless Phantom. She wasted no time in flexing her aura and directing as much as she could muster towards the Nameless Phantom, priming it to fire. It waited a moment, just a moment, before a ghostly shell came flying from the treeline, bounced off of a kinetic mirror glyph, and flew right into the beast’s open mouth, smashing into its palate. A geyser of ghostly-green erupted from the back of its head, and its flame seemed to die, only to restart with even greater fury… But Zefaris knew she had made the right choice. Whereas before, the flames had been bright yellow and almost elegant in how they flowed, now they raged a flickering, sputtering orange, and the glow of the Kite’s eye died down. This was key — disrupting its ability to bring spiritual power to bear to minimize loss of draconic essence in the end product.

The rest was up to Zelsys. Zefaris didn’t want to risk dracofulminate against a dragon descendant, at least not one this important. The seconds it took the black cylinder to unload Pentacle and reload it with atrine felt like hours, in no small part due to how far Zef had to stretch her own perception to make sense of what followed after the Nameless Phantom’s shot.

A blur of steel and lightning exploded from the treeline, scything down a dozen trees in one fell swoop. Out from the dust, four enormous grey serpents flung entire trunks as if they were spears, which had somehow been severed from their leafy crowns and sharpened into spears in the aforementioned explosion. The dragon outstretched its wings, sheathing them in flame, and in a comparable feat of explosive motion, used them to parry the incoming tree-spears. The shape which was their source had already leapt into the air, arcing upward only for two serpents of seething-white lightning to pierce the Wildfire Kite’s wings. They continued further, wrapping around its legs before digging into the ground.

351 - Rising Tension [Sturmblitz]

A/N: Mild smut at the end

_________________________________________________________________
Despite not saying it aloud, Zelsys felt that she knew the real reason for Strake’s acquiescence to Zero’s newfound chivalric virtue — he was, fundamentally, a virtuous man. He had just decided to play the part of an unrepentant war-dog, and he played it to the point of fooling even himself.

The rest of the ride passed by uneventfully, and they reached the nesting site without incident. Zel found herself unable to mentally check out — it wasn’t just the insistent manner in which Zefaris pressed her fingers into her sides, even her scent was different. In her mind, she knew it was physically the same as always, the same unmistakable perfume, but somehow she could smell the tension through it. She ignored it for now.

A fair distance from the charred clearing, the sturmgandr came to a halt, and they reached the place not long after. Besides the battle damage and environmental disturbances caused by the harvesting of the previous dragon, it was quite clear why the Wildfire Kite had chosen this specific spot for its nest — at least to Zelsys. As they circled the derelict, bloodsoaked nest, she allowed that thought to slip free: “No wonder the dragon chose this spot.”

“Why? I don’t see anything in particular. The kite set up some formations, but it could’ve done that anywhere…” Zefaris questioned without an iota of doubt in her voice.

“Not sure myself. It just feels right. I would set up a campsite here for the long term, given the choice.”

Zefaris manifested the Nameless Phantom, sending him off into the treeline and well out of sight. They made their way to the planned observation site some distance away and began setting up camp. It was a remarkably flat-topped rocky outcrop, and bore signs of repeated past use for this purpose. The reason was simple: It was the beneficiary of a natural concealment formation, making it slightly, but appreciably more difficult to notice. From the marks in the rock, it seemed there had been folk formations in place at some point.

As they settled into their observation spot, Zefaris began carving a replacement for those worn-away formations, one which would concentrate and amplify the area’s natural properties to the point where it could conceal them even from the plain sight of a dragon descendant.

Meanwhile, Zelsys carried out rites of appeasement to the local monads, a clumsy imitation of what Jorfr made appear effortless. She supplemented the lackluster well of power by cheating with the same instinctive attunement that had made her notice why the nesting site seemed right, adjusting rocks and sticks as well as scraping shallow channels into the dirt.

Two hours passed in the blink of an eye. Zel had set a fire, balancing a griddle over it, with two pots. One would be a stew in a few hours, while in the other she combined Winter Peach Brandy with a splash of Rubedo and several spices to help mask it. It was no invention of her own, but something conceived by Ozmir.

Two hours. Still nothing. Normally, the tension would have boiled over by now. But Zel held off, and Zef had, for some reason, made the choice to not make the first move, despite the fact Zelsys saw right through the mask. Though unsure of the reason herself, Zelsys felt it right to hold off for now.

“A bit longer, not yet…” her instincts told her.

Neither of them was sure of the reason for this standoff, and yet, they continued on with it all the same.

Hours passed. The sun had set. Zel could feel the tension growing, and gradually realized why she was holding off — and also when she would finally stop. That time was not yet.

Zelsys had spent most of those hours reading, whereas Zefaris had fully dedicated her attention to overlooking the perimeter, intermittently carving one glyph or another on the trees in preparation for the dragon’s arrival. They hadn’t exchanged more than a few sentences, and by now it was fairly obvious Zefaris was frustrated, having consumed 2/3 of the mulled brandy. Eventually, the gunwoman laid down on her stomach at the very edge of the outcrop, using her coat as a blanket, Pentacle in hand and a cup of brandy to the side. The dragon could, after all, appear at any moment.

__________________________________________________________________

A small part of Zefaris had come to worry that the new outfit wasn’t to Zel’s liking, despite knowing full well that she would have said as much if that was the case. But now, it was clear nothing had been wrong.

Zef felt Zel approaching from behind well before anything took place, her intentions spilling out like a static field of violent want. Her coat was pulled off of her, shoved to the side in a pile. Solid, steel-cold tendrils coiled around her body, only to surge with current as they moved further. Her peaked cap slipped forward, obscuring sight and allowing loose strands of hair to fall into her face. 

Coiling and tightening as if a swarm of constrictor serpents, Zel’s Thundergods bound her legs and arms. The fourth spiraled around her chest, burrowing beneath her clothing, while the last wrapped around her neck, so tightly she could barely breathe, and these two together lifted her helplessly off the ground as the heat and static of Zel’s body washed over her, soon followed by the amazon’s enormous frame. Zefaris felt nearly weightless, held aloft, her arms pulled behind her back and bound by the intertwining of two Thundergods. A searing-hot, pulsating spear pushed itself between her legs, yet she was denied the release of being pierced by it, its forceful twitching battering against her womanhood.

The sound and warmth of heavy breath approached her right ear, a trickle of viscous saliva dripping onto her neck. From her left, a pair of fingers pushed into her mouth, and then teeth sunk through her shirt, clamping onto her shoulder.

206 - Ballroom Shootout [Cherno]

A dozen men aimed their guns and thaumaturgies at the black-armored banisher. At least three unique iterations of Mohawk’s “bladed chains” motif sprung up among them. Pandemonium unfolded — but the gulf between Silberblut and his foes was simply too great. None could strike him, let alone harm him.

“What are you waiting for?! Kill them!” Semzar barked as the women swarmed away from him and he raised his barrier. It formed instantly as a flat wall of purple force, letting off mist and electric sparks, before bending to wrap around Semzar’s personal space. The instinctive ease with which he wielded it betrayed that it was stolen from his current host, the body acting before the worm’s mind realized what he was doing. After realizing he had raised a defense, his head whipped to and fro as he called out: “Cabral? Cabral!”

Tsetse looked down at Semzar in silence. Almost resigned, he stepped forward to interpose himself between his employer and Casus. At this point, Casus felt the geyser of power swirling around Lady Blackhand intensify even further. Through the eye on his back, he could see her holding that voidkey above her head as she ran, power visibly bursting from her arm. Were it anyone else, Casus would have expected them to explode at any moment.

“Your name is Cabral?” Casus asked matter-of-factly, in his hand grasped a battered corpse. The mass of flesh shuddered as a bullet tore into it. A Red Reaper followed right after, shredding what was left of the dead man’s rapidly-dissipating wards and tearing off a third of his torso alongside his left leg. Casus dropped the body, but the shooter was already fleeing.

Tsetse answered in the same manner: “Cabral Khan. You will not find me in your church’s registry.”

The true battle started only then. Those with half a brain and a will to live had already cleared out from the middle of the room, and many had scurried away, with guards quietly opening other doors in an effort to facilitate evacuation.

The two warriors faced off - tremors carried through the floor and thunderous impacts rang in people's ears. The alien whirring and bassy thumping of Tsetse's sonic weapons played the percussion, whereas Silberblut seemed to fight in an almost restrained manner, avoiding coupler charges in favour of trying to feel out his opponent.

It seemed, at first, that Silberblut might even keep up - at first. Within two exchanges it became clear Tsetse still had the upper hand. Within three exchanges, Silberblut was obviously on the back foot and Blackhand was soaring overhead, riding on a scarlet pillar of high-energy thauma.

________________________________________

As she felt the tides of chaos rising, Krahe raised her right arm, purposely stoking the flow of power between herself and the Atomica. Many pairs of eyes immediately turned her way. The Atomica responded instantaneously, and as the intensity of the current grew, so did the intensity of the Liminal Coil’s resonance, until the pain was nearly unbearable. In turn, the glow of her left arm also intensified, narrow geysers of crimson energy erupting from the cracks as a constant blowtorch-like flare vented from her palm. A second and third tendril inadvertently emerged from her back due to the sheer energy output, their nascent silhouettes writhing under her suit the same way her muscles twitched and seized.

Bullets and thaumaturgies were loosed her way, but the power writhing about her swept them aside — bolts of power went careening wildly in other directions, while bullets were simply obliterated. Nearly every stillborn in the ballroom immediately began doing everything in its power to reach her, some dragging their handlers along. Others responded to their handlers’ attempts at control by turning on them. Two packs slew their handlers, and in turn their heads exploded, adding further to the chaos. Only one handler managed to retain control of his beasts — another man with an implanted third eye. He did so by dragging them over to Tsetse, who exhaled a misting of what had to be pheromones onto the creatures.

Having achieved her goal and not wanting to risk it any longer, Krahe disposed of the excess energy as best she could — by expelling it directly. The only problem was that the mere thought of doing it was enough to set it off, well before she could properly align herself. She went flying through the ballroom, leaving a gaping, seething hole burned straight through the floor, rampant magic eating away at its edges even as she flew. On one hand, the pain abated right away. On the other, there was no way she would be able to reorient herself mid flight. Skimming was her only choice, and something told her the backlash would be an order of magnitude worse this time around.

In the span of moments, she did several things. First, she ripped a pen-type autoinjector kicking and screaming from her Kenoma Pocket, despite the item’s audible creaking and the scraping of otherworldly fangs against her skin. One out of many she had looted from dead bodies, it was loaded with Class 3 Pain Suppressant. Second, she willed her tendril to squeeze the Pattner's trigger just as the pistol happened to be pointing in the right direction. The bullet struck Semzar’s back. Not nearly enough to get through his wards, but he certainly felt it.

The landing was just as rough as she had feared. She skimmed at the last moment with the intention to shunt all her momentum, landed perfectly on the ground, and immediately doubled over in pain as the people around her stumbled back, visibly being pushed away as the carpet under her feet unraveled and burned. The painkiller, somehow, made it worse. As it spread through her blood, the secondary effects of pain fell away, and even the nature of her pain changed, but it remained, and alongside it, all other sensation was altered in turn. Her insides felt like a wriggling sack of serpents, her eyeballs throbbed in their sockets, and that was just the start of it.

Nonetheless, she could move again, and that she did. She wove through the mass of panicking bodies, and was provided ample cover by the half-stampeding crowd that had formed around the ballroom’s outer perimeter. Such was the threat of collateral damage that even numerous gangsters, despite being able to harm Silberblut and especially Krahe, had been cowed into inaction.

350 - "This must be an intentional mating display." [Stumblitz]

The trio continued discussing the plan of the hunt, working out the details. The main problem was that the second Wildfire Kite could not be found out in the open, and only exited its cavern nest once every two weeks to check on its counterpart and to feed. The location of the aforementioned nest was not known. For this reason, the only way to readily track down the beast would be to wait at the nesting site and slay the beast as it came upon the nest remnants.

It soon became evident there was no more to be achieved through debate.

“Well, the plan’s settled,” Zel said, rising from her seat. ”May as well go out and get it done, then.”

Zefaris rose up just as readily, clinging to Zel’s side, and Makhus, giving a look of tacit understanding, made an excuse that the next batch of Black 7 would likely need to be checked on. This consideration would turn out to be unnecessary for the moment — as if she was exerting some insurmountable feat of willpower, Zefaris peeled herself off of Zelsys.

“You go on ahead, I’ll change and catch up in a moment,” she excused herself.

Zel did so without questioning, preparing the sturmgandr and waiting at its side — she didn’t pay attention to how much time passed, busying herself with the simple pleasure of reading a pulp about a power-fantasy character clearly inspired in part by her personal legend. The novel’s creativity with its martial arts was admirable, despite the author’s clear lack of any basic understanding. Really, it was impressive how complex of a system the author had created without ever considering even the most rudimentary things that, in Zel’s mind, ought to come naturally to any amateur. 

Finally, she felt an aetherwave ping from Zefaris. As she looked up from the pulp, she expected any of a half-dozen outfits that she knew Zef favoured for their blend of fashion and practicality. She did not expect something entirely new, let alone something so alike her own tastes. Certainly, it was unmistakably something to Zef’s sensibilities in terms of militarist fashion, not something Zel would think to wear, but it was nothing like the reserved, elegant fare Zefaris normally wore.

She came out of the sect’s front door wearing a modified Ikesian commander’s coat as a cape, all national iconography replaced by that of belladonna flowers and eyes. A dark-grey dress shirt was held tightly to her body by her usual armored corset, worn on full display rather than concealed. Her ever-present peaked cap retained its spot securely on her head, but she had tied her hair into a bun, and had clearly cut it shorter to make that bun possible. A tube-like, tight skirt, grey in colour, covered her legs down to the knees — or it would’ve, were it not for the slit that climbed most of the way up her thigh, allowing her left leg to peek out with every other step. Simple, opaque black stockings covered the lower three-quarters of her legs, crowned by lace and held up by garters. Even her choice of footwear went against convention, having noticeable heels where Zefaris had rarely strayed from combat boots. Pentacle and Tempesta hung proudly by her hips from criss-crossed belts, with her skull-faced mask accompanying Tempesta on the right-hand side.

Zelsys was keenly aware of the fact she was staring, and she made the conscious decision to keep staring. As the blonde gunwoman crossed the yard, the Primordial Self made itself known in the back of Zel’s head: “This must be an intentional mating display.”

Zel disregarded the thought for the moment, though she didn’t disagree. She kept quiet for the moment, waiting for an opportunity to present itself.

__________________________________________________________________________

The Newman Sect’s two highest elders rode out with no extensive preparations or fanfare, yet nonetheless were met with it from the city’s people. Zel couldn’t help but feel a sense of rapid change as she steered her sturmgandr through Willowdale — the city, previously half-deserted, had become far more lively in recent months, with many people seeking permits for permanent residence.

Outside the gates, a procession of tankmen made their way down the road, approaching the city. She recognized several of the hellhounds she had fought alongside in Eberheim, just by the aura they gave off. They were clustered at the front and back, riding blitzgandrs. In the middle, meanwhile, marched children — teenagers barely old enough to fit into their Second-model suits. The procession’s suits bore a new type of outer armor, polished and painted prominently with various heraldry — it had been customized to integrate the aesthetics of antique knights, and their blitzgandrs bore cloth coverings reminiscent of what might be worn by horses. Singing an upbeat marching cadence, they gave off a sublime sense of glory — faint, weak even, but undeniably there. At the head of the procession, an enormous titan skated along, similarly covered by a cloak of bright livery. too tall to be a First-model and too bulky to be a Third-model. It was concealed , but unmistakable.

Zel met the tank suit’s sensor lens as she passed it, and she could swear she felt Strake warning her to not go spreading around what she had seen.

“Wonder what that’s all about. Wasting tariff money on parade livery without good reason doesn’t sound like Estoras…” she remarked.

“Zero pushed for it,” Zef responded. Her arms clamped down on Zel with every iota of superhuman strength she could muster, despite the fact she could easily keep her balance atop the machine standing upright at 200kph, and Zel was barely pushing it at half that speed.

“...Zero? Did the Knights of the Boar influence it so much?”

“It believes in the knightly virtues. Wants to cleanse the realm of evil and shelter the small. Estoras took the opportunity to er… Take inspiration from the Order of the Iron Dragon. Nothing official yet, but he sought our approval for the formation of a knightly quasi-sect of sorts to juxtapose the Hellhounds and help raise new tankmen separately from the city militia.”

“Wonder why Strake went along with it. Maybe Alcerys had more of an influence on him than I’d thought.”

205 - They Were Good Foldovers, Semzar [Cherno]

“Are… Are you alright?” Casus asked.

Krahe gave a nod, raising her right hand. The Atomica floated in her grasp.

“Pre-implantation attunement, can’t use thaumaturgy properly until it’s done. One-third of the way there.”

She glanced the way of the stillborn’s toppled lower half.

“Something tells me those won’t be the last freaks to blindly chase after me in the meanwhile.”

“Of course. You are a walking beacon,” Casus agreed, walking up to Strongman’s corpse. He took the keyring from his belt and moved to unlock the doors that stood between them and the rest of the upper floor. “Do you think it may be better for you to hide until you are in a more combat-ready state?”

“As it stands, I am… Somewhat more combat-capable than with the Twin Serpent Key. My wards will hold out a bit longer, and you’ve seen what my unrefined energy output can do. Tactically speaking it would be best for me to purposely draw the graft-beasts away from the ballroom, and thus away from Semzar. I will be able to outmaneuver them, possibly barricade them all out of the way with the last of the Forming Toroid’s charges.”

“Moreover, humouring Semzar with a face-to-face confrontation would likely work, given his personality…” Casus thought aloud. Clack. Clack. The circuits of the door’s warding flared for a moment, and then it slid open.

“...A bulkhead disguised as a swing-out door? How tasteless,” he remarked.

As it slid open, they beheld… Nothing. At first. The hallway was deserted, with neither guards nor stillborns nor barricades waiting for them. In fact, it was suspiciously calm. Then, the door across slid open just as the first one had, revealing the ballroom, and right through the precipice, Semzar upon a sofa, surrounded by women and guards — a throne of debauchery.

He was visibly pressing something on an unassuming remote control — Casus could see that it was emblazoned with a “closing door” glyph, but he didn’t get the time to say as much. Both doors began closing, only for Krahe to summon short walls as she passed through, jamming their mechanisms open.

Krahe, despite being undeniably the more vulnerable of the two, walked right into the midst of the enemy, adjusting her stride to exude an aura of piss and vinegar to match her very real aura of writhing, seething magic. She was in a weakened state, but she also exuded the single brightest aura in the building, and it wasn’t as if anyone could discern that her state was anything other than a power-up — certainly not with any of the half-dozen appraisal attempts that feebly washed over her.

Behind Semzar, Tsetse stood, calm and motionless — entirely in contrast with how Krahe remembered him. It felt like a different person piloting the same battle body. Countless performers and lower-ranked gangsters were clustered throughout the ballroom, but only a vanishingly tiny minority seemed ready to fight, even among those who seemed competent at a glance. The majority of Semzar’s security force comprised stillborns and their handlers — about sixteen stillborns in total, three to a handler. Of these sixteen, only one in three had visible weapons, and less than half had ward generators. Most of them were also sonar-types, with domed “helmets” that lacked visible eyes. Their heads immediately snapped onto Krahe, and some of them began approaching her, only for their handlers to pull them back — some with commands, others using physical leashes.

“Zavesh, spare me, and here I thought I was ready to meet you in person. Is your face rejecting you, or is that what you consider handsome? Is your venom gland perhaps atrophying?” Krahe sneered at the sight of the mafioso’s visage. It was nearly identical to how he had looked when she first saw him at the smokery, but his jawline and cheekbones were even more pronounced. He resembled a plastic surgery addict who got lucky and ended up looking only somewhat grotesque.

“So speaks the half-burnt anathemist. I expected you to be more cowardly in your approach — to think you would have a sense of decorum about coming after the boss of a rival gang…” he replied, visibly trying to put on an air of self-collectedness. The panic behind his eyes nor the twitching of his tendrils could not be denied, even as he smugly raised a cocktail from the table and poured it into his gaping maw, exhaling a puff of bluish mist.

“Rival gang?” she balked. “The bounty you put on my head was one thing. I was almost flattered, really. Then, you sent Crescent Jezail after me, twice, and even paid him for a custom shot just for me the second time! Didn’t work, I can tell you that much! But the last straw, what made me decide to tear you out of that stolen skinsuit with my own bare hands — was that you had a street vendor killed just because I bought my breakfast from him. And what, did you think I wouldn’t find out it was you? Or that I wouldn’t come after you? I liked that food cart, Semzar. He made good foldovers, Semzar! I really miss that fucking food cart, you half-Gor’ah trust fund fuckboy!”

The mafia heir shrunk back at that last phrase as if he’d been struck. 

Krahe felt Casus’ cold, firm hand on her shoulder, snapping her out of her tirade — despite being physically cold, an ephemeral warmth spread out from the spot he touched. Krahe had to gather herself. She realized she was much angrier about Imraal’s death than she had thought. Her anger had shown itself in her tendril gesturing wildly with the Pattner, randomly aiming it at the members of Semzar’s retinue. She hadn’t noticed herself giving into all her built-up anger and frustration, so busy was she trying to wrangle the flow of thauma within herself. She masked it by fishing a cigarette out of her pocket, lighting it up. Then, she immediately went back to pushing, not being willing to let up an advantage of psychological pressure.

“You wish this was just a gang war. That leaves room for politics. This is both a personal and a church matter — and would you look at that, both of your victims are right here, and it just so happens we're the executioners to boot!”

She finally took a drag.

“Aristedes, if you would.”

Casus stepped forward.

349 - Full Consolidation Pt. 3 [Sturmblitz]

The slightly viscous fluid with which Zel filled the vial was not human saliva. The alchemist turned it over inside the flask, sniffed it, poured out some onto a flat alchemical spoon, and set it over a burner. It took some time to boil, yet seemingly refused to evaporate. The whole time, he muttered about how it resembled the saliva of various cultivator-beasts and how curious it was that humans could even produce such a thing without specialized mutagens. After handing the sample off to his queasy assistant, Makhus took the last implement from the table.

“Alright, last one for now, blood pressure.”

The device for measuring blood pressure was a tourniquet of sorts, wrought of unknown, yet incredibly supple materials and enchanted to carry out this specific task, projecting a circular gauge with Ankhezian markings. It was a rare example of traditional, purely magical tools in use at the sect, having been found during cleanup operations in one of the abandoned underground floors.

The moment it was around Zel’s arm, the gauge jumped far beyond any normal human bounds, around 2/3 of the way towards the maximum.

“This is, ah…” Makhus started, finding his words. His eyes lit up as he took the shackle off of Zel’s arm. “I would wager that inducing blood pressure this high in others is a lethal technique in some small far-off sects; this would rupture someone’s organs very quickly, assuming the absence of thorough body reinforcement. My blood pressure might get this high for seconds at a time when I really push it, and even then my elixirs barely bolster me enough to withstand the strain. It certainly explains how you don’t have problems with your blood being as viscous as it is.”

“All tests done?” Zel raised an eyebrow, stepping down off the table.

“Not even close,” the alchemist laughed, shaking his head. “But what I got today will occupy me for a while. You better not go undergoing any further wide-reaching body transformations in the next few months, understand?”

“I’ll do my best,” Zel grinned. “You mentioned something else when you called me — some trouble with the Dragonheart Bolus project.”

“Hey, consider how I feel, won’t you? At this rate I’ll have to make Acala taller again in no time.” he said, jokingly. “And the Bolus… Well, it’s not a problem now that you’re here. Bet you’re itching to flex against a live target — how about we make that target a Dragon Descendant?”

And so, a medical examination turned into a briefing.

Makhus retrieved the Bestias Arcanorum, flipping to the page on reproductive behaviors. It was severely lacking in substantial information, covering the subject as far as it related to threats against human settlements and the hunting of the beasts. This was sufficient.

“In short, we simply got unlucky with the specimen’s age. It turned out to be much younger than anticipated, barely a hundred years where we had expected at least three-hundred. Its alchemically usable draconic essence had thinned out due to it spawning so many young so recently before we slew it. As a result, after what it had spent in battle, there was barely one-third as much as would be necessary for the True Dragonheart Bolus. Its counterpart, however, has not been depleted in such a manner, and if it could be killed without a fight to speak of, every iota of draconic power could be extracted. If. Slaying the first one was trouble enough, and we were working on a plan to achieve a near-instant kill on the second one up until your emergence. Couldn’t be sure that you would be combat-ready by the time of the hunt…”

He looked up from the book.

“...But it’s clear I worried for naught.”

“I won’t say I won’t do it, because I will, but you just reminded me — why didn’t you ask Jorfr?”

“He came back with a whole pile of harvested beast parts and herbs, requisitioned a new tablet, and immediately departed for some place called Scarlet Hill Farm — he seems to be convinced that incorporating them will benefit us greatly. Been sending in reports every three days with the instruction to search for him if he failed to report in for four or more days. I don’t know much about it, but…” Makhus trailed off, his eyes veering towards Zefaris, who had once more fallen into a trance.

She snapped out of it far more readily this time, continuing the train of thought: “I was there, yes. At the Slaughter of Scarlet Hill. Didn’t actually get to do anything, but I was there. It was one of the early battles involving full mechanization. The mortar crews buried the entire Howling Moon Sect under two meters of mud, shit and shrapnel. I’m not aware of any farm in the area, but the place was a subject of constant bickering even before the war due to its nature as a herbal treasure trove. It’s not a far-fetched thing for a farm to have sprung up now that the forces who once claimed ownership of the hill are gone.

“Y’alright? You’ve seemed out of it since—” Makhus questioned.

“I’m fine. I just… Need to go out for once. I’ve been locked up for too long. Every time I close my eyes, I see them,” Zefaris sighed, rubbing her eyes.

“See what?” Makhus asked again.

“The formation patterns from the central spire, mostly…”

Makhus shot Zelsys a questioning glance. After holding eye contact for a few seconds, the gears in his head finally clicked into place, and he immediately moved on from the subject.

_________________________________________________________________

Across the land, the silhouette of an enormous man carved itself into memory. With an arm of abyssal-blue crystal, the Walking Glacier was said to be among the few to equal the Walking Tribulation in inhuman strength and righteousness. It was said he could halt the flow of a broken dam and cast small armies to the ground with his presence alone. With each passing day, his legend grew and his power grew with it — for that was the nature of Superbia, the god-killing hammer that resonated with his Truth.

In Willowdale, however, the ripples of Eberheim still had yet to calm, and the Walking Tribulation was just now preparing to return into the world once more.

204 - It Scuttled Like That One Scene in The Exorcist [Cherno]

The Atomica was preparing her Soul Furnace for the reshaping it would undergo during actual implantation. She was stuck like this for now. As she wondered how long it would take, a new HUD element manifested, a simple percentage bar. It readily faded out of view, but Krahe remained aware — agonizingly aware — of its wavering rise, slowly going up and down by half-percent increments, totalling out to a gradual rise.

She suppressed a groan — one of frustration, pain, but worst of all, pressure. With each percent, Atomica shone brighter with both light and power, and so did the flame of thaumaturgy within Krahe’s chest. A ceaseless deluge of power roiled inside her, flowing back and forth through the voidkey. Withstanding it was one thing, she could do that, but she was deathly certain that proper thaumaturgy was beyond her. She had the one tar tendril, and that was it, all else would be theurgy or crude energy expulsion.

As far as facts went, she could see herself just sitting here for a minute or however long the process took, hiding.

But she felt that was not possible. The Atomica burned too brightly.

Casus shouted a warning through the thunderous noise of his battle with the chief of security, but Krahe had already seen what he was warning her of through Barzai’s eyes. All the borged abominations had snapped in her direction, one already rushing towards where she was. She knew with certainty that she could not dive as she was — it would be catastrophic for what was taking place between her and Atomica. But a skim… She could afford that.

The abomination scuttled up to the door, smashing and wrenching. Soon, one of the hinges bent and broke, and the stillborn leapt in through the hole, flying perfectly towards Krahe. She adjusted her position, waiting. At the last moment, she wrenched control of the enormous flow, forcing it into her left arm. With a flash of red, she sprung upward from the ground, arm cocked back. She unleashed the punch at the last moment, sending the stillborn flying towards the vaulted ceiling. The pressure in her Soul Furnace waned — she would have to let it build up before doing something like this again. A silver lining, it appeared that the flow readily scoured away all impurity, be it entropy or isotope, meaning her dissipation was currently comparable to how it would be with the Atomica fully implanted. It was not a particularly thick or lustrous lining — in effect, it only meant that as long as the process continued, she was effectively operating on a cooldown system.

Before that thing could fall and possibly become a problem again, Krahe jumped through the half-busted door and went running. The floor under her feet shook and thunderous impacts reverberated as Casus did battle with that strongman-looking guy in a nice suit. He parried flying fists of grey force with his arm-blade, casting them towards the walls as if they didn’t carry the force of two Yellow Atropals each.

Strongman took note of her between clashes, throwing a flying fist her way. Krahe skimmed out of its path rather than risk a physical dodge, and immediately regretted her decision. As she emerged, in that instant of extreme time dilation that allowed her to reorient herself, it felt as though the Liminal Coil had been struck with a tuning fork-shaped sledgehammer. The enormous flow of energy going through her roiled and whirled about in an unstable manner, forcing her to lean against the wall as she ran across the foyer.

That one moment of distraction had sufficed for Casus to push his already obvious advantage even further, carving gashes into Strongman’s wards with a flurry of flame-wreathed slashes of his arm-blade. Krahe didn’t have the luxury of watching — two more stillborn had crawled out of the woodwork to come after her, one of which was familiar and had a gaping hole in its chest. Somehow, by some stroke of luck, that punch hadn’t hit anything important for that abomination’s functionality. She could see its ward generator peering out through the ruined flesh. It took her two shots to hit the cabling and send the creature tumbling head-over-heels — her aim just wasn’t that good using a tendril instead of her own hand.

Atop the foyer’s stairs, Strongman reared back for a desperate strike, holding both fists together as he struck out, placing his enormous body-weight behind the punch. A giant grey fist flew forth — it was a meter wide. He instantaneously began melting down when the thaumaturgy came out, and it seemed as if Casus could be hit for certain.

This was true. Casus didn’t dodge.

At the instant of impact the eyes on his chest shot open, filled by the same exact pattern as his belt.

And in a blaze of gold-silver flame, his armor devoured the thaumaturgy. Another mote of flame flickered to life above his head, and he approached his foe.

“Ah… So you are Silberblut!” Strongman wheezed, his form stiffened and rendered monochrome by his ongoing meltdown. A coughing laugh sounded from him — Strongman had already come to terms with his own impending death.

That death came to him just as he expected. Casus skewered him with an uppercut, running his blade under Strongman’s ribcage and up through his skull. The baneworm tried to burst out of his body’s eyes, but golden flame consumed his true body all the same.

As Casus wound down and spread out his focus once more, he noticed Lady Blackhand running from one of the stillborn. Just as he was about to aid her, she turned in place, and with her palm turned towards the graft-beast, a red flame exploded from her hand. It was far too violent, far too unfocused to be called thaumaturgy. Nonetheless, the discharge of raw power sent her flying through the foyer, and in turn obliterated the stillborn’s upper half.

Casus nonetheless aided Lady Blackhand — she shouted “Catch me!” as she flew, and he did. He then immediately dropped her, for his instinct screamed when he touched her. The energies coursing through Blackhand made her as though a roiling furnace to his sight.

203 - Return the Flesh You Stole [Cherno]

The sizable man stared down at Casus, grey force coalescing around his fists and continuing further up his arms. The telltale tendrils of a baneworm twitched under his skin, concealed somewhat under a generous layer of fat.

A grey fist came flying at him. Casus shifted to the side and came running after his foe right away, closing the distance.

The man was impressive — his strength rivaled Casus’ own, and despite his size, he was no lumbering brute. It was true that his sheer size limited his mobility, what movement took place was both calculated and explosive. His technique was equally impressive — a mixture of common bare-knuckle boxing techniques elevated through understanding and adjusted to fit the user’s nonstandard anatomy. It wasn’t every day one met a man built like a hippo — that is to say, a mountain of solid muscle disguised by far less fat than there seems to be. On top of that, he seamlessly weaved thaumaturgy with boxing, using only simple but rock-solid techniques to magnify his comparatively far more advanced martial arts.

Casus matched the giant blow for blow, seeing something unsettlingly familiar in him. He wondered what exactly it was, and in the midst of their second exchange, he realized it. Tsetse. This was astonishingly similar to Tsetse’s style, but focused near-exclusively on the arms.

Right hook. Casus blocked it, ducked right, and drove a flame-wreathed uppercut into his foe’s armpit. A left hook came flying in, but Casus willed his arm-blade to spin, its force throwing the punch off-course, cutting through the wards, and biting into flesh. Without time to spin up in advance, it didn’t get much further than a shallow cut.

He immediately hopped back, landing across from the giant. To his right, the stairs and the rest of the foyer. To his left, a scorched, ash-encrusted double door, beyond it a hallway across which awaited the door to the ballroom. The graft-beast was banging on the door beyond which Lady Blackhand was, but Casus held no doubt in her ability to deal with just one of those things. Still, he shouted a warning — he couldn’t afford to do much more.

Though he had not noticed it, a fifth star had joined the four revolving above his head, and with it, his strength had grown in all aspects.

Casus had decided: this battle would end with the next exchange.

“My name is Casus Aristedes. Return the flesh you have stolen and go unto Kenoma,” he recited as he pressed in the eye of his belt, expecting no reply.

“Some call me Strongman,” his foe replied, not divulging his true name.

The third exchange came and went, a dance of violence. Casus took some hits, but compared to Tsetse, Strongman was a manageable opponent. Merely applying what he had learned from his fights with Tsetse was enough to start pressuring the giant.

Such was his thought process: How could he ever become something more than a mere shadow of Silberblut if he couldn’t even best someone objectively weaker than Tsetse, let alone Tsetse himself?

To any reasonable individual, of course, this was an absurd mindset, but it was the epitome of reason for Casus Aristedes.

His heroic aspirations demanded him to surpass himself, and with hope and anger in his heart, that was what he did.

____________________________

Strongman didn’t understand what was happening.

With every passing moment, that black-armored Mamon Knight was just getting stronger and stronger. He called himself Casus Aristedes, and sure, his suit resembled descriptions of the Silberblut Armor, but it clearly wasn’t the Silberblut Armor. The eye on his belt was all wrong as well, and the outer rim was the colour of copper instead of gold.

And yet, somehow, he would have preferred to be fighting Silberblut right now.

He had sent out his emergency ping before that explosion, but no help had arrived yet. Even that stillborn had left his side, bashing at a random door on the lower floor for some forsaken reason. Strongman hated this… But he still put up his fists and summoned his strength.

____________________________

Moments earlier…

___________________________

The moment it was out of the box, Atomica’s seals sloughed off, revealing a gleaming mass of opaque, red crystal. Despite its far weaker physical glow, it still seethed with an immense aura — noticeably less intense than it had been right after transmutation, but far more solid. Tendrils of crimson energy reached out for Krahe and the key floated towards her hand, floating near it. Only one talisman stayed in place — it stated the voidkey’s system readout.

[ATOMICA REFULGENT, FRACTURED SOLOMONIC KEY]

[Tags:]

Fourth-order

Voidkey

Incomplete

Imprinted (Brunhilde “Blackhand” Krahe)

[Details:]

Thaumic Throughput +C1^

Entropy Tolerance +D3^^

Entropy Dissipation +D3^

Thaumic Fusion Efficiency +18%^^^

Isotope Tolerance +D1^^

Isotope Dissipation +D2^

It curiously showed which aspects had grown during its stabilization period, with small upward arrows next to each attribute signifying growth. A side effect of the seals? she wondered, thinking back to Yao mentioning the possibility. She peeled it off, stowing the box back in her Kenoma Sack. The readout continued onto the other side — there was one new line, a reiteration of the warning Yao had given her about possible collateral damage.

First-time implantation of this voidkey will reshape the holder’s Soul Furnace, permanently conferring the following Boon: “Astral Implosion Furnace”

This voidkey may be safely implanted only by the Imprinted individual. Implantation by any other individual will result in catastrophic Soul Furnace rupture (as with simultaneous implantation of two voidkeys).

First-time implantation may cause volatile thaumetic phemonema. Conduct in a safe place free of fragile objects and/or people.

Stowing the paper in her Kenoma Pocket, she quickly formed a tar tendril, grasping her gun with it — the loaded clip held six mescalt bullets. After that, she extracted the Twin Serpent Key, her unenhanced dissipation more than enough to maintain that one tendril. At the instant the Twin Serpent Key was out, her thoughts of implanting Atomica triggered something. With a pulse of red light from the hexagonal voidkey, Krahe felt a searing hot sensation race up her right arm, quickly spreading throughout her entire body, settling in her chest, in the same place she felt the flame of thaumaturgy when channeling. Her spine and ribcage thrummed with a strange vibration, a dull headache took hold, and then, she knew.

202 - Black Sun Nova Burster [Cherno]

Smoke, ash and cinders began pouring out of every crevice of the Viridaimon suit, enveloping her in a swirling maelstrom. It resembled a swarm of insects more than anything else. Her casting medium, meanwhile, formed a small bead of sputtering, flame, an ember more than anything else, and yet, its radiance grew. As if being fed with pure oxygen, the Black Sun Coupler roused an ember to the intensity of raging fire. She began walking through the short intermediary room separating this wing from the foyer, raising her arm above her head.

Streams of pyroclast gathered there, swarming like moths around a candle, casting a dark kaleidoscope of unsettling shadows over the foyer as countless shouts rang out and magic began raining down. All was consumed in the storm of pyroclast; in its self-destructive final flare, the Black Sun Coupler brutishly devoured hostile magic and converted it into yet further power for its final attack, its core blazing with the final flare of a dying star. Two Red Reapers, a Yellow Atropal, and four independent, albeit decently potent thaumaturgies struck her. With each one, the ember burned brighter, and cracks spidered across the plates of her armour. A fifth thaumaturgy came, a ghostly fist wrought of stone-grey energy. It landed with such force as to send her stumbling back, caving in her chestplate and knocking the wind out of her. It was that bear-like man, and his other hand was already encased in another ghostly fist just like the first. Even as her body screamed for air, Krahe leveled her arm at her point of aim, above the defenders’ heads.

Barzai had manifested without prompting at some point, circling around her. Screaming and laughing. Krahe could barely move now, her thoughts wholly focused on firing this off and then immediately diving.

“Hahahahaha! Burn them under the fallen sun! We know what must be done!” the eidolon cawed in a manic tone.

With a low roar, a column of flame came pouring out of the casting medium, simultaneously propelling the sphere of ash and cinders whilst pushing Krahe back. Not the Viridaimon Armor — Krahe herself. The recoil impulse coincided with the Viridaimon Armor’s final and total structural failure, pushing her out through the suit’s back, which crumbled under her weight with barely any resistance.

Her dive was instant. The moment she felt the air on her own skin, she dove into the astral other, and briefly beheld the aftermath of the Red Hood’s rampage within the foyer. The traces were everywhere, almost painting a picture of how it had slaughtered those gangster. Krahe’s visual calculus did not have the time to even begin working out the puzzle, of course — there came a high-pitched squeal, a brilliant flash of light, and the air caught fire. The room fell victim to a pyroclastic flow worthy of an actual volcano — not in scale, but in intensity. Krahe couldn’t tell how the effect operated — she certainly couldn’t see through the mess, doubly so not from her side of the astral gulf.

FINAL COUPLER CHARGE

BLACK SUN NOVA BURSTER

In her state, she couldn’t remain submerged for long; she barely managed to escape the foyer back the way she came, and was left with a nearly bottomed-out entropy tolerance at the other side. Casus glanced down, nodded, and turned the corner in her wake, shutting the door behind himself — not before Barzai slipped through to be the lookout, of course. Last she saw of him through her own eyes, the four stars above his head began revolving so quickly as to form a contiguous halo. A moment later, she both heard and felt his explosive take-off towards his opponent, with Barzai’s sightline becoming obscured by a cloud of dust.

Krahe unbuttoned her back pocket and pulled out the Twin Serpent Key, shoving it into place behind her ear. Already, she could feel her wards crumbling, and the Twin Serpent Key’s re-implantation only slowed that decay — it couldn’t hold them together properly. The labour of wrenching open a window to her Kenoma Sack began as the sounds of superhuman violence played out just next door. Rapid footsteps came from the other side, the wing of the mansion they had entered through, and Krahe’s instinctive reaction at that moment was wall. Without a moment’s hesitation she dragged a 10-charge slab of smoky jade from the ground, stretching it out to obstruct the double-winged door. She heard it open moments later, and bewildered profanity followed. The people on the other side banged on it, even shot it, and then ran off. Fifteen centimeters of magically reinforced stone would stop a fair bit, a couple reapers, even, but Krahe had no illusions of true safety. She pushed harder and harder, painstakingly dragging the box out of Kenoma’s grasp as Casus fought in the other room. Tremors from his clashes with the head of security reverberated through the floor and walls, and set the overhead chandelier swaying ever so slightly.

____________________________

Casus beheld the aftermath of Lady Blackhand’s final coupler charge. He instantly deduced it to have been some variant of burster, perhaps an empowered variant of the Six Trees Killer — a “Sixty Trees Killer”. He chuckled at his own wordplay.

Only the backless, one-armed husk of the Viridaimon Armor remained in the midst of the sanded-down foyer, and a layer of ash covered everything. The barricade had been torn asunder, one barrier generator still heroically soldiering on as thaumine dripped from its cracked fuel tank, projecting a garbled wall into the air.

Two of the defenders had survived the blast, alongside, it seemed one of their graft-beasts.

One was an enormous man in an unmistakable suit — the militarist-fusion work of Kharim Bayat, or a truly faithful, high-quality imitation. The man stood at the top of the stairs, his suit only slightly charred, clearly having faced the blast head-on. Two giant forearms of translucent grey force rose before him as he held up a boxer’s guard.

Despite blocking it entirely from the front, Lady Blackhand’s coupler charge had clearly bypassed that defense, based on the fizzling and flickering wards around the man’s sides and back.

As for the other human survivor, it was a three-eyed man, currently stumbling away as he coughed up globs of copper-green sludge. He had hidden himself behind his commander, likely using a high-coverage barrier to shield himself from the secondary element of the attack. The graft-beast was at his heel, scuttling behind him until the larger man called for it, causing it to join him instead.

201 - Rendezvous [Cherno]

Indeed, the mansion shook and a wave of discordant magic washed through the floor, blackened lines showing through the carpet as the stench of burning fabric filled the room. Through Barzai’s eyes, Krahe saw similar backlash taking place in the hallway, spreading from one particular window. At its precipice, the walls burst open with the force of rupturing arcane circuitry, the phenomenon she had observed being just the waning aftershocks. In the next moment, an indistinct distortion clawed its way through that window’s shutter, outlined only by black wrappings. Within the silhouette floated a Red Hood, seemingly controlling the form. It sprinted down the corridor, broke into a room, and dragged out a screaming, thrashing bane-saurian. The distortion monster bit into his head, but he remained physically unharmed. He screeched in a rather bird-like manner as something flowed out of him into the manifestation, and he went limp, soon discarded like an empty soft drink can.

As far as she had been briefed, she should have had no fear of being attacked by what was obviously a result of the witch-inquisitor’s skills.

As far as her gut went, she still preferred to stay away from esoteric, unknown, and extremely dangerous combat vectors, even if they were allies. After all, even if it had no intentions of harming her, she might get caught in the crossfire.

The possessed Red Hood made its way deeper into the mansion. Krahe waited until it was gone, then decided to follow in its wake. A small part of her regretted not laying eyes on it directly — that same part was thoroughly convinced that the distortion-creature was familiar, somehow, not in terms of having met or seen it before, but in terms of its fundamental nature.

Before long, Barzai saw a pair of familiar faces running for their lives — gangsters who had run down the way they were now running from, towards the basement. One of them, unfortunately for him, barged into the room she was hiding in. A prolonged burst of Tracers did just the trick, sending the man stumbling back out that door in a seizing, gore-spraying dance. His half-pulped corpse soon slumped back against the outer wall.

A third, fourth, and fifth came running from that same direction, but long before they could even reach the now-open door of Krahe’s hideaway, a matte-black blur bulldozed through them, leaving one missing his head and the other writhing on the ground, legs broken. Now that he had stopped, she could see; it was Casus. He squatted down next to the survivor, said something to him, and moved on, with the survivor crawling towards another room.

Krahe willed Barzai to reveal himself, making sure Casus saw him before calling the eidolon back to herself. The banisher followed as expected.

“Took you long enough. Close the door,” she said.

“How long have you been in this room? Is the suit locked up?” he asked, approaching her where she sat, immediately kneeling down to inspect her belt.

“Not long. The belt seemed to be struggling so I decided to give it a rest and wait for you to get here. Didn’t think it had enough juice left to get me to the upper floor.”

“A correct assessment..” he said, standing back up. “Perhaps half a minute of combat output. Perhaps finish it off with a ranged coupler charge. If you give the mental command, the armor should self-destruct as part of the charge. It will be more potent that way and spare you from the aftermath. The coupler will likely not survive, however. The inserted voidkey will be at risk as well.”

“Can’t worry about that. I’ll just implant Atomica, won’t have the time to pull the Shardkey out of a busted belt anyway,” Krahe replied, holding out a hand. Casus pulled her up without wasting a moment.

“It will take me some time to go through with the implant, so it will be up to you to cover me.”

A simple nod.

“Let us go.”

Despite expectations, they encountered minimal resistance on their way to the foyer. Krahe sent Barzai up ahead to do a quick fly-through. The first thing she noticed was the state of the foyer itself. Signs of combat were widespread, with five or six corpses strewn about — she wasn’t sure, some were torn apart while others were just dead with no visible wounds.

At the top of the stairs, the defenders had set up a barricade using furniture and a pair of small thaumine-fired barrier generators. There were eleven human defenders — eight male and two female gangsters, all in cheap suits, the glaringly-obvious commander and four stillborns. The man was giant, with a bear-like build, and was dressed far too well to be a footsoldier, wearing a properly fitted, real suit that heroically contained his bulging gut. The stillborns were arrayed behind the barricade, not in a good position to readily spring into action against an attack from the stairs. One of them — an abnormally lanky man with a third eye crudely implanted in his forehead — pointed in Barzai’s direction as he flew through, calling down an ill-aimed outburst of bullets and magic that didn’t even come close to hitting the eidolon.

Krahe immediately decided that spending her last coupler charge on breaking the barricade was the best choice. She reached to her belt, twisting its dial, honing her mental focus as she did so. Shivers ran down her back as the belt began creaking under strain, with the only reason the defenders didn’t hear it being that they were making far more noise.

It would be nothing complex — a projectile that flies a certain distance and detonates in mid-air. A glorified Six Trees Killer. She had considered actually constructing a giant one with the casting medium as an ad-hoc thruster, but the armor dashed that idea by resolving her mental command with a much simpler response of what it could do.

The power would be an order of magnitude below the Daemon Core, but Krahe was certain it would at bare minimum smash apart the barricade, disable most of the defenders, and at least seriously wound the commander.

348 - Full Consolidation Pt. 2 [Sturmblitz]

The colour of both her hair and the Thundergod manifestations had also changed; in most cases, the beastly heads of her Thundergods manifested in a pale greyish-blue, blending Fulgur, Metallum, and Predator Aura into a stable form that was simply solid and nothing more. In this state, her hair moved with a relaxed smoothness, but had a tendency to coil around her, occasionally snapping from one spot to the next with great violence and flashes of blue light. In an instant, however, this “relaxed” state could become the form she was most known for, blazing with blue-white lightning and tearing away at solid cold-iron with lashing bites.

It seemed as if the maintenance costs were simply negligible.

Of course, such a drastic effect elicited a great deal of curiosity, especially since she had never once specified what the technique was and where she had learned it. She had, after all, only developed it after the Blue Moon War, and had never given it a “proper” name, being satisfied with “Thundergod Manifestation”.

The questions were truly incessant, especially the ones that weren’t spoken directly to her.

It was in the privacy of Makhus’ personal lab that she would be finally convinced to name the technique. As had become somewhat of a tradition, bodily change was followed by an examination from the aforementioned alchemist — an increasingly-advanced battery of sample-taking and testing. The only people present were Zelsys, Zefaris, Makhus, and an assistant-protegé of his whose name Zel couldn’t remember for the life of her. His face and hair were both a sullen, greyish shade, contrasted by large, saturated-burgundy eyes.

“Why did you not name it earlier? It’s not as if you’re one to lack imagination in naming techniques,” the alchemist spoke, his words a mere second fiddle as he cut into Zel’s side. Her skin and muscle parted seamlessly before his scalpel, wrought from the broken-off point of a once-revered sword and enveloped by the milky-white glow of his Armament Aura. To call it a cut would in fact be an overstatement; no fibres or veins were severed, it was merely an opening assisted by the “able to cut anything” aspect of Makhus’ natural aura. A mass grave of edge-stripped scalpels sat piled up to the side, and numerous light lines zigzagged Zel’s skin, already fading.

“I just settled on Thundergod Manifestation and that was good enough,” she said, shrugging with her braids so as to avoid shifting the skin around the vivisection window. “After that I just kept applying other developments to it, and it gradually grew into this. I had never predicted that it would reach this state, even if, in retrospect, it was inevitable from the moment I started taking it for granted.”

“Well, come up with a name, or people will come up with one for you, and it will be stupid. You don’t need me to tell you that.”

He was right, of course. She was just putting it off — some half-dozen potential names had been floating around in her head ever since she first noticed the change, before anyone had even asked about it.

It was only now that she finally gave in and chose one out of the six candidates.

“Seven-headed Leviathan Method. I’ll tell them it’s part of my Pandaemonium Scripture if they ask where it’s from.”

PANDAEMONIUM SCRIPTURE

GEHEIMNIS: SEVEN-HEADED LEVIATHAN METHOD

There was no such thing as a Pandaemonium Scripture; not yet, at least.

“That works, sure…” Makhus uttered, his actual focus squarely on observing Zel’s internal organs. She sat there, using aura to invisibly hold her own skin and muscle apart so that the sect’s premier alchemist and his assistant could peer underneath, observing her increasingly more alien biology directly. No blood spilled forth, and her bones appeared grey.

“You mentioned your lungs, but what of your heart?” Makhus questioned, squinting against the flashes of blue escaping through the vivisection window.

“Atavism. I stole it from an ancient caveman, so to speak. It requires far more energy and far stronger flesh to operate correctly, but in all other aspects it suits me far better.”

Her heart had not suddenly become an alien organ of six chambers — it merely appeared alien due to its fundamentally more rugged design and the appearance of Zel’s flesh overall. Thin bands of silver and bronze could be seen threading through the deep-crimson flesh, tracing the muscular structure, further added onto by the scattered patterns of silver conduits. At this moment, it beat abnormally slowly, only once every two seconds. With each beat, a sphere could be glimpsed, illuminating it from within, albeit to a much dimmer degree than the ignitions taking place in her lungs.

“Alright, close yourself up. I think—” Makhus began, glancing towards one of his fresh-faced assistants. The young man, no older than sixteen, was already doubling over and trying not to vomit. As soon as an empty jar was placed at his feet, he let rip his breakfast.

Makhus, meanwhile, looked down at the boy, more confused than anything.

“He’s been handling all sorts of tissues and dissecting animals for months now. I’ve no clue what took hold of him. Next on the list… Open your mouth as wide as it will go and stick your tongue out.”

Zel did as asked. Her mouth opened, and then opened some more, and some more after that. It was a yawning cavern of razor teeth, with numerous threads of saliva stretching between the top and bottom. Her tongue dangled out as a massive fleshy tendril, visibly separated into four lengthwise bands of muscle with shallow channels between them.

“Zefaris, can I get the dimensions?” Makhus requested.

Silence.

Makhus turned in confusion, looking for Zefaris, finding her staring with both eyes open. He snapped his fingers in front of her face, prompting her to, in turn, snap out of her daze. She blinked a few times, listing the data he had asked for.

“You don’t bite in fights, any reason to change your jaw?”

Zel didn’t answer, giving a simple shrug. Makhus brought out a sample vial, handing it over.

“Spit. We’re almost done here.”

347 - Full Consolidation [Sturmblitz]

With a sound like a sword being unsheathed, the inscribed shells that made up the scripture’s case slid apart. Inside was a scroll of large metal slips and animal bones. Zel partly unraveled the mass of metal and bone, then took a particular slip in hand. Its surface was densely damascened lengthwise, with only a short description of its contents visible in writing. As she poured aura and intent into it, the slip expanded in width several times over, becoming more of a metal slab, revealing the writing contained upon it. With another spark of intent, different layers of the metallic lattice revealed themselves, thus revealing different sections of text. Index marks on the side of the slip indicated which layer was being shown. She vividly remembered attempting to manually recreate Compressed Writing, giving up, and conceiving of this alternative based on her understanding of metallum and the natural structures of metal.

The writing itself seethed with pure meaning such that all who looked upon it would be able to comprehend its contents. Zelsys did not know how to write in such a way, but reality could not be denied. She came to the conclusion it was a result of her Truth being embedded in the manuscript.

The entire text exuded an aura that, to Zelsys, was as familiar as her own breath. She wagered that, to others, it would seem ominous if not extremely perilous.

It was, after all, something of the Truth of Fangs put to writing.

It spoke of violence, its nature, and how one could interpret the entire world through the lens of violence. It spoke of the nature of Man as the supreme predator, not as a matter of hegemony, but as a matter of potential — despite having ascended beyond the need to be in constant contact with his Primordial Self, it was Man’s clarity of mind that permitted him stand as the weak and tear out the throats of the strong, to upturn the old natural order, cast down the Dead Gods and reign over the natural world. On the same page, she laid out the need for the strong to elevate the weak and root out wretchedness, much like any long-reigning apex predator manages its territory rather than depleting it. For this reason, the scripture incessantly stressed the need for clarity to balance out ferocity, for the Lunar to balance out the Solar. She had included explicit statements that some kind of communication with the Primordial Self was enormously helpful in this endeavor, pointing towards the Walking Way of the Despot of Self.

Further sections focused on the esoteric ideal of “Pure Violence”, the state of being consumed by violent intent while retaining full self-control and clarity of mind. Martial diagrams and formulas took up a fair bit, being a more complex expansion on the fundamentals of Sturmblitz Kunst 0.

Zel skimmed over large portions, mentally reciting them as she did so and hoping that she hadn’t made some ridiculous mistake in her entranced state.

Over half of the scroll remained empty, waiting to be filled in.

There was just one empty spot left, the one slip that didn’t expand, the one that would show when the scroll was rolled up — the cover, so to speak.

Zel flexed her aura, and with her own claws carved out the title.

STURMBLITZ KUNST 00

THE FORMLESS DESTROYER SCRIPTURE

She stored the scroll away, then made her way to the bedroom to use the mirror. The face that stared back at her was the same, yet at once different — the steel-grey of her irises had been overruled by a blue glow, though it was neither as widespread nor as intense as that which manifested when she channeled truly great quantities of fulgur. It was, overall, a tiny change, but enough to be noticeable. The writhing, serpentine tendrils that were her braids had shifted in colour — the metallic white had crept further downward, now reaching below her shoulders.

As far as she could tell, she had grown in height by seven centimeters. With each heartbeat, flashes of blue subtly illuminated her ribcage from within. To an untrained eye, it would seem as if she was perpetually in the state of Conqueror’s Mantle, and she had no intention of trying to dispel such rumours.

She spent a short while inspecting herself, taking particular interest in her new joints and the shapes formed by her newly-altered muscular structure. Her back had undergone the largest muscular changes, forming many unsettling shapes depending on how she flexed; one stood out for resembling a grimacing, demonic face.

After she was done shamelessly indulging in egoism, she dressed herself, feeling her trousers and boots reshape themselves to fit.

And so, with a bodily transformation and the completion of an entirely new scripture, the qualitative change Zelsys had begun at Eberheim was now complete.

_____________________________________________________________

The Founder’s emergence from seclusion was, at once, a momentous occasion, yet also passed without much fanfare. She certainly made no effort to trumpet-up how much stronger she was now, and many rightly assumed it was because she had no need to do such a thing. It was self-evident from just a glance, nay, from being in her general vicinity. Her physical size, let alone her newly-clawed hands, were the least of it. Curiously, at first it seemed as if her presence had retracted by comparison to the times after her return from Eberheim. It soon became evident that she was merely holding it in, as its weight bore down onto onlookers like the breath of a ten-story-tall monstrosity even when only partially unfolded — rumours abounded as to what the full force of the founder’s aura might look like.

Strangely, of all the changes, the most eye-catching one had to be her hair. The fact the founder’s hair could turn into serpents at any moment was well-known, to the point this had been portrayed several times in a literal sense. But until now, it had always been deliberate. She had always clearly done it with full intention. That had changed; it was now constant, and unsettlingly seamless. Seemingly without even being aware of it, the founder’s hair constantly moved about, scanning her surroundings, grabbing things without direct, explicit intent.