A forward lunge, a twist of the torso, a whipping thrust motion of the arm, every single muscle involved having been meticulously prepped for full Thundercharger enhancement. The thunderclap resounded. Scales shattered, flesh tore, bones broke. A downward stroke, severing both the left arm and leg before smashing into the ground, ripping a channel through the stone on the return.

A STRIKE TO HUMBLE THE GENERALS OF DIVINITY

FORMLESS BUTCHERY: GESTALT THUNDERCLAP STING

Von Wickten lurched backwards, falling against the wall, his good leg splayed out to the side. He looked down to the stump, the glossy, compound surface of his eyes shuddering; blinking, he reached for the stump with his right hand. The Gu darted out from his forehead, turning to face him as it had done once before. It writhed in place, miming words that only he could hear.

A rumbling utterance came, strained and gurgling: “ACC… ACCEPT.”

In the blink of an eye, it was as if the battle-trance melted from him. Indeed, his resolve was not the only thing melting away - the scalebound hide of his form began sloughing off in a rancid deluge of decoherent flesh, turning to dust around him and blowing away in nonexistent wind. The entomodragon melted away in moments, leaving a mutilated Von Wickten sitting there, his actual left arm and leg both severed just above the middle joint. His left eye was still missing, and his jaw was dislocated, which he gruesomely popped back into place with a grunt of pain.

She turned her head to look in her compatriots’ direction, Victor having joined Jorfr’s side at some point. The look of mixed fear and awe in his face evidenced that he had witnessed the final clash, but there was a third emotion there - an anticipation of further brutality.

“Of course… He was there when we spoke of punishment,” a thought shot through her head.

“Victor,” she said, simultaneously willing her Tablet to send Zef’s device a locational ping. Down and to the west.

“Likely still dealing with the ground-level backrooms of the operation,” she thought.

The young man perked up, “Er- Yes?”

“Fetch Zefaris from the ground floor.”

He obliged without question, running off. There was no ulterior motive, and she had no real reason to send him as a messenger rather than just use short-range aetherwave comms. She just wanted to foster further discomfort for Von Wickten through the implication of something she might not want Victor to see. Jorfr rose from his seat on the ground, slowly drawing closer while Red continued watching from afar, hammer still in hand and rested upon his shoulder.

Zel tapped the Butcher against the ground. A violent discharge of lightning arced between the metal and the stone, the blade’s sawteeth falling silent as the charge departed it .The myriad pieces making up its built-up frame fell away, crumbling to dust before they even hit the ground, leaving only the jagged tuning fork of its true form. A moment later, Zelsys exhaled… And her braids fell limply to her back. With a second breath, the metallic sheen departed from her skin. A third breath, and the horns and skull both crumbled away from the top of her head. So it went until the seventh breath, when at last she shrunk back to her normal frame, exhaustion evident in her eyes and posture alike. She sat down, slumping against a broken pillar as she pulled out her Tablet. With the Butcher’s seals having been burned away, it was growing unstable by the second; electricity was already arcing between its prongs, and an ominous, brightly-shining lichtenberg figure was spreading across its surface.

“I cannot deny that you have beaten me…” croaked Adalbert, his breaths wheeze-filled and bubbling with yellow blood. Though he remained motionless, his voice was full of barely-suppressed fear and trepidation. “Before you execute me, or whatever it is you intend to do with me… Why is it that you so severely disagree with my righteous point of view? You, of all people, seem the most likely to understand things as I do.”

From Fog Storage, she retrieved a spool of specially-treated sealing paper, setting it down on the side as she listened to Von Wickten. She had already made it abundantly obvious, what it was about his beliefs that she took exception with, and so felt no need to elucidate again.

“I’ve already made myself clear. Reflect on my words; I am not a phonograph,” she said, casually looking herself over and opening up one of her shallower wounds, allowing a handful of blood to pour out into her palm before she simply willed it to congeal shut. With this blood she took to drawing out a small ritual circle on the ground, a method by which seal-wrappings might be consecrated quickly in a time-sensitive context such as this one.

Von Wickten observed for a while before piping up again, his voice just as devoid of understanding as before: “What is it, then, that makes you superior to me on the field of battle? I was more willing to sacrifice, I drew upon the might of a creature that had in life shaped the landscape with its strides, and yet you emerged victorious with that hodge-podge of discordant disciplines you call a…”

A bitter laugh resounded from him, the sticky, yellowish hemolyph of his lifeblood running down his chin as it devolved into a cough.

“...Cultivation method.”

Sighing in frustration, Zelsys repeated words which she had once said to another fool who could not understand their defeat at her hands: ”I’m just better than you. That’s really all there is to it: You used raw power as a crutch, when you should’ve treated it as a foundation. That’s not to mention that mentally, you are utterly pathetic; your outlook on combat is utterly malformed. Violence - that is to say, one’s ability to exert force and engage in direct combat - is only one pillar of true power. Because your personal ideology revolves around exerting your power over others, the moment you meet someone who surpasses you in this realm you fall apart, resorting to desperate, dead-end measures like… Gu parasites.”

As she spoke, she unwound a length of wrapping from the spool and piled it up in the ritual circle, once more draining out some of her blood afterwards. This time it was enough to fill her cupped hand twice over, which she poured over sealing wrap. There were no incantations to be chanted, only the pinpoint-precise focus of her intent to contain the Butcher’s wildly unstable weapon-spirit. She felt strength leaving her and her head pounding with spiritual exertion as the circle took on a weak glow, the blood she’d used seeping into and proliferating through the entire, nearly three-meter length of fabric she had used.

The knight-captain’s face washed over with a lingering fear as he looked upon the ritual and a misguided assumption took root in his mind.

“...You do not intend to place a- a blood-curse on me, d-do you?” he questioned with a begging tone. Zel couldn’t help but laugh, her amusement shared by Red, who had from her seat afar seen the ritual being carried out. There was nothing about it beyond the involvement of blood that someone with even surface-level knowledge of the arcane could construe as a cursing rite.

The blood which soaked into the paper soon took on the form of rough glyphs, signaling the success of the small ritual, at which point she took one end of the wrap and began winding it around the Broken Butcher’s handle, still chuckling to herself.

“No, no, of course not. Even if I were able to do something of the sort, I wouldn’t waste a blood curse on you,” she said. “This is just a temporary seal to keep the blade-spirit of Butcher over here from breaking down its physical vessel and evaporating all of us alongside this temple in a deluge of primordial lightning.”

He fell silent at that, as if terrified that any interruption could cause the tuning fork to go off like a powderkeg. Zel got most of the way done with wrapping the handle and guard by the time Zefaris and Victor finally returned.

“An egomaniac who has been faced with one undeniably superior to themselves…” came Zef’s voice from the doorway. “Truly there is no creature more pitiable in this world.”

Turning to look, Zel saw that both of them were splattered with droplets of blood; Zef’s boots and face bore the marks, while Victor’s stomach had been spattered by a spray of blue. Zefaris approached, disdainfully glaring at the knight-captain. A question came from her disgust-crooked lips: “How many slaves did those False Drakes buy you, hm? How many beasts of war did it take to buy an innocent life for you to ruin?”

“I-I do not recall,” he stuttered. “They… They changed the prices on a case by case basis. I often had to bid against people who later turned out to be associated with the slaves’ original owners, once I paid six drakes and a thousand Gelt for this one Pateirian… Didn’t even end up getting my money’s worth, little shit slipped away and stole from me to boot…”

He fell into a despondent silence once his monologue trailed off and he once more realized his own situation. Zel took her time finishing the re-sealing process, wrapping up the Butcher end to end until it was entirely covered, as unlike the greater talismans it had borne previously, this sealing-tape could barely keep it stable even like this. Moreover, it would only last a few days before it would need to be replaced.

As the time went on, the others slowly gathered within the same ten-meter-square area. Victor had picked up the Locust Queen’s broken staff at some point, its smaller jade rings quietly jingling against the larger one as he walked. Over the course of the minutes which it took Zelsys to re-wrap her weapon, the dread in Von Wickten’s face grew and became truly immediate; his own imagination, painted by the very things he had done to others, was a more effective source of horror than any spoken threats. Once she was done, Zel stood up.

This alone was enough to make the knight-captain’s panic boil over.

“Please… I- I am sorry, truly I am!” he pleaded.

All present sneered at the display. Jorfr spat in his face.

“Victor, do you think he truly is sorry?” she turned to the very redhead who had once been Adalbert’s next would-be victim.

Staring down at the broken dragon, Vic only found disgust for the man’s overplayed prostrations. He heard the knight-captain pleading with him, too, but the words didn’t truly reach his ears.

“Yeah, I do,” he said. A brief look of relief flashed over Von Wickten’s face, soon to be replaced by rage and horror. “Sorry that he got caught and beaten. Not for anything he’s done.”

“Consider yourself fortunate; you may find redemption yet,” Zelsys said grimly, retrieving an oblong white pill. “This pill…”

She squatted down, holding it out in front of his face.

“...Will cause you to expel the impurities which stain your soul. Execution, or repentance. Do you think there will be anything left of you after the filth is gone? Do you feel that lucky?”

Not a spark of consideration went through his eyes; the knight captain saw what he thought to be a chance to avoid execution, and desperately nodded agreement at the chance to survive. Zelsys pushed the pill into his mouth, shoving it down into the back of his throat with her fingers.

As she rose up and wiped her hand off on her pants, she said to Von Wickten: “A piece of advice: Find a river.”

Von Wickten tried to question, but he found his voice silenced by a hacking cough. The five of them remained there for a short while, watching the pill take effect. He convulsed in place, tears of black, rancid-smelling pitch trailing down his face as he fought for every wheezing breath.