The Beast was the first to make a move, not due to being able to move first but due to Zalga letting her opponent attack first. The Beast shot up in a diagonal line from her outcropping towards Zalga, who used one of her two free hands to swat the psychopath out of the air and back into the hardened rock that made up the arena. Impacting the floor with a hideously grotesque crunching noise, The Beast slowly got to its feet as its wounds mended themselves. Her head had been almost entirely caved in by the force of both impacts and most of her bones and organs had either shattered of been largely destroyed, but in merely a minute she was ready for round two.

Zalga was both impressed and not impressed with the foe who stood before her. Perhaps due to having only ever fought Kain, and only having done so once, her view on the ‘base average’ of combatants was off by a substantial margin. What took the human-thing that opposed it a whole minute could be accomplished by Kain in half a second, and this did not consider the massive power difference between the woman and Kain. What Zalga had hoped would have been an epic fight had turned out to be anything but.

After a few more blows were leveled upon the woman, Zalga only was impressed by the woman’s durability. Even when reduced to a red smear she would come back again and again like nothing had happened. Heck, even her armor repaired itself as her body stitched itself back together, with the largest chuck of flesh remaining being the point from which she regrew everything. After a dozen more smacks to the woman failed to put down the bitch, Zalga became utterly disinterested in the result of the fight.

As The Beast stood up once again, Zalga launched a barrage of magic attacks against her from her two free hands. When that didn’t work, she tried to carve the woman into oblivion with a few swings of her blades, but that didn’t work either. Quickly running out of options, Zalga had one more thing to try. Whether it would work or not, or even whether it would have the desired effect was unknown, but it was better to try that than staying in one spot for eternity and repeatedly reducing an unkillable foe to paste over and over again.

…

The Beast rose to its feet once again and tried unsuccessfully to launch itself at its foe. Once again it was swatted from the sky and reduced to a broken mess on the platforms that surrounded her colossal opponent. Unless the damage was done directly to her soul, there would be no way for The Beast to perish, and thus the engine of destruction would continue to revive and fight and kill. Only the creators of The Beast knew this critical design flaw, but they were no longer a liability as they had long since passed on and their notes were not long since gone as well. The Beast had nothing to fear, for no creature could deal damage directly to the soul without expending an enormous amount of mana and likely expending their lives in the process.

In fact, even if damage was done there wouldn’t have been much anyways. The amount of mana required to do even slight damage to The Beast’s heavily reinforced soul would drain an entire city of life, so how would one mere monster be capable of doing so? However, while Zalga’s blades continued to dance and her tentacles repeatedly slammed into The Beast when her blades weren’t doing so, her two free hands continued to build up magic power. Held out to her sides, they drew in mana from the surroundings and from her own people to create a spell of unspeakable force.

Gazes from across the waves fell upon Zalga as she built up more and more power, as not only Kain, but also Alexis and the House Founders found themselves wondering what the actual hell Zalga was up to. With the power she had built up she could easily destroy any foe the spell was leveled at, with the exception of Kain and Alexis of course, but Zalga’s spell was not designed to kill or destroy. This was a special spell, designed not to harm, but to transform. Zalga was betting on a simple facet of her existence that she had long since taken for granted.

If the spell succeeded, then Zalga would gain a powerful lieutenant. If it did not, then Zalga would need to swallow her pride and call for backup. She would likely have only one opportunity to do this, as Alexis had been quite adamant that Zalga be less powerful than she was. By disguising the spell as one of unbridled destruction, Zalga hoped to keep The Crimson Empress from discovering what the spell was designed to accomplish. If push came to shove, she could always just say that Zero Noir had made her new lackey for her as a gift.

It was a delicate balance she was trying to reach with her spell. It had to be just perfect and work just right, otherwise…

“Tfl’grul nzpcr’a! Slaanalke mei drel’ko narsh’adah zir nekslamvi Vrill-ya fel’magostr’a zenogrnata hemsiljr Zalga Nagadjhar! Piztrana morkieh Vrill-na Nezperdia, rosqclduz piztrana morkieh Vrill-na Atlanti’lyeh! Krrrzikvim coatal nui framgosadra mel xrxgrk! Dro nag sharon’dra wfr’miridia, Vrill-ya Kain!”

(Very Rough Translation: “Insignificant speck of surfacer trash! I am the immortal and unending goddess of the great nation that covers more territory than you could know, Zalga Nagadjhar! I am the Empress of both Nezperdia and Atlanti’lyeh, and thus all that is covered/ near by water! Even your own inferior kind slowly have learned to supplicate themselves before my superior race! You will fall into line due to the divine power of the true wife of my beloved, Emperor Kain!)

Zalga’s voice boomed like thunder as she spoke in her native tongue, a language that no surfacer could replicate. She had been so preoccupied with weaving her spell that she had forgotten that humans could neither understand her kind’s speech nor pronounce it, not to mention being unable to write it out in any meaningful way. Still in the rush of the moment, Zalga spoke to the rapidly regenerating mass of meat and metal as if it could understand what she was saying.

“Slrmivra ra-thostr’a nek zi mi-lim! Gri Klfshzl Nehl’svruthu Q’adia Samt’tzek Brelkioa’npvr! Yykzl’ma Mmn’sdr Drkr’imhi Krtzi’pfr: Hrtzmena’la Lm Kzak’ry’rm-ehk!”

(Very Rough Translation: “Now serve me forever! Return to the aquatic life that your people emerged from so long ago! Ascended Forced Evolution: Daughter of Divinity!”)

Zalga’s hands turned to face the newly revived Monster that had just risen to its feet again. An explosion of magical power erupted from her open palms and focused itself on The Beast like a laser, impacting The Beast and infusing it with a massive amount of specially tailored magic. The Beast staggered and for a brief window of time it seemed to both parties like the spell had made no impact.

Then The Beast hunched over and gripped its stomach in pain, slowly teetering forwards and eventually falling off the platform. The Beast sunk into the water, taking a fetal position as the spell began to take effect. Satisfied with the result, Zalga felt the connection be established and turned her attention to the bubble that was almost right below her in which the exiles cowered in fear. The titanic ‘goddess’ ripped the ground beneath the exiles up through the water and forced them to gaze upon her magnificent form.

“Zarlszk… Krem’v’js na kr dll-sk mnan curumni kurulja? Mneive iq jrdkly noskoro’klafma vem-snada kuross’uma grm wiltma’rinvya tosieka djanra mkru’lya brentkvtar?”

(Very Rough Translation: “Well… What to do with you lot? You do know that staring at a woman’s underside is perverted, right?”)

Cowering together as they saw the nightmare that towered above them, the exiles began to foam at the mouth and their eyes rolled back into their heads. Their mouths contorted into Cheshire grins right before their sanity shattered like a pane of glass dropped onto pavement from 100 stories up. Laughing uncontrollably through their grinning, foam-covered teeth, the exiles neck muscles were forcibly commanded by their brain and their necks all snapped simultaneously even as they bled profusely from their eyes, ears and nose.

This time, Zalga caught herself and spoke in a human voice that was both sultry and terrifying due to her massive size and lack of control over her magical power causing her voice to boom like thunder.

“What a letdown. Well, at least I got something out of it, didn’t I?”

Her tentacles pulled away from the ten platforms and she slipped beneath the surface of the water. She found the new life that was being formed from the sunken remains of The Beast and cradled it in one of her webbed hands. With her duties done, Zalga swam off towards Nezperdia with the intent to diligently care for and raise the new member of her nation. Humming a simple tune to herself, she though of how she couldn’t wait to see the look on that stuck up lamprey’s face when she unveiled her new servant. All she needed to do was to make sure no one found out about her new ward and she would be well on her way to supplanting the air-breather as Kain’s true wife.

The only thing she was unhappy about regarding this plan was the fact that her new ‘child’ was not born of a union between herself and her beloved. But that would change once she unveiled her new ace, or at least it would after her new ace was ready. Zalga was like the rest of her kind, patient as the water itself. She could easily bide her time until her moment came, as long as there were things to preoccupy her in the meantime.