IDOLATRY TRIGRAM

SUBCORE EMBODIMENT

CRIMSON COMMAND: RECREATION OF PAST SELF

“MAKE A SOUND IN THE EAST, THEN STRIKE IN THE WEST”

Following her gut, Zel glanced down at the statue’s base, only for a sudden alarm to shoot through her as she felt the mantis’ presence suddenly appear behind herself. It was unmistakable, the strange feeling of a Fog-walker in her immediate vicinity; one who could fully step into the Sea of Fog to travel as a ghost. She could scarcely guess why or how it worked here, in what she assumed to be a pseudo-dungeon, and therefore a place that was already submerged in that other-realm; perhaps it was akin to the difference between being inside a diving-bell and swimming on one’s own.

Zel whipped around just in time to stare right into Red’s eyes as she felt the mantis’ blade enter her stomach, but merely following the leftward spin all the way through allowed her to pull herself free and bury her heel right into Red’s side. Chitin and bones alike cracked under the force, and the horned figure smashed right into the walls of her own making. When the dust cleared, there she was; still standing. There came that ringing again, iridescent Fog erupting from the core and enveloping her; chitin rebuilt, flesh knitted back together, her left shoulder popped back into place, and all these wounds were seemingly inflicted upon the effigy in her stead before it crumbled to dust.

“Did you really think that would work?! I don’t need to breathe!” she spat, blood bubbling out of her mouth and running down her chin. Red, streaked through with iridescent ribbons.

“No yellow…” Zel thought. “So she really isn’t a bug mutant anymore.”

“...Honestly? No, not really,” she admitted, backing off for a moment. “There’s one thing I don’t understand about all this. Why not just ambush us once we get near the Meat Market? You’d have both the numerical and tactical advantage, plus-”

The mantis screamed in fury and frustration: “BECAUSE I INTEND TO RIP THOSE SCUM OUT BY THE ROOTS THE SAME AS YOU!”

Before Zelsys got the opportunity to ask another question, Red began gesturing wildly as she uttered a prolonged incantation. Iridescent Fog enveloped her yet again, congealing into pointed arrows as she continued chanting. One after the other they shot off in seemingly random directions, bouncing off the walls and floor in equally random patterns, but Zel’s gut told her something was wrong. This was’t randomness at all.

CHAOS TRIGRAM

CRIMSON COMMAND: ILLUSION OF RANDOMNESS

“FEIGN MADNESS BUT KEEP YOUR BALANCE”

Though it damn near made her go cross-eyed to look through the multicolour mess Zelsys managed to avoid the better part of Red’s barrage, finding that each arrow eventually found its way to where she was, and worst of all, perhaps one in five could actually lead. They only determined their own trajectory when bouncing, and vanished into little puffs of Fog after three bounces, though not quickly enough to outpace the rate at which Red churned them out. If she didn’t do something, she’d get drowned in bullets, and so she gathered several breaths’ worth of Fulgur in her second stomach, blending it together before she kicked up a cloud of dust and energized it by spewing out this mass of lightning without focusing it. The blue-white serpent turned grains of dust to little balls of lightning as it passed over them, and not a moment later did they zip off towards Red, forcing her to split her focus and thinning the bullet-maze. However, they didn’t suffice; this was a fast, low-level manifestation of the Dance of the Fireflies technique, low level enough for Red to just summon defenses to protect herself.

“So be it,” Zel thought, deciding to finally put to use the Fulgur she’d stored away in her retributive battery from earlier. Allowing one of her own injures to open back up, she bled a little into the palm of her own hand as she muttered: “Beast-butchering Arts: Dance of the Fireflies…”

She quickly shot the blood into her mouth, blending it with that tremendous Fulguric charge before she sprayed it out in a swarm of furious, blood-red lightning-spheres that zipped around in a truly chaotic fashion, yet just like Red’s arrows, they too found their target; not through deception, but through their relentless pursuit. Just as she had been forced to dodge for her life, so too would Red… And it seemed that just one striking was enough to make the mantis panic, or at least remind her that this technique had been wrought purely to kill immortals of her kind, and it held its unerring accuracy against those like her even now.

STORM SIGN

FORMLESS BUTCHERY: DANCE OF THE FIREFLIES

“A BURIAL RITE FOR IMMORTALS”

Indeed, just one of these spheres struck home before Red completely gave up her own offensive in favor of dodging and defending, for its detonation ripped a fist-sized chunk out of her back. Yet again she vanished, but this time Zel saw it happen: Red didn’t sink into the ground as she’d assumed, but instead disappeared in an instant, leaving only her effigy to be smashed apart while she herself moved invisibly, leaving only a trail of disturbed earth in her wake before reappearing.

“I’ve nothing left from before the Dungeon…” she spat, visibly struggling for breath as her horns pulsed with light and the Subcore shuddered, floating above her hand as it did. “No memory. No identity. I’ve even forgotten my name… Nothing save my loyalty to the Divine Maxims and the promise I made to you: To strike you down.”

The killing flame in her eyes roared back to life as she extended her arm-blade again, yet again charging at Zelsys head-on, summoning pillars and stakes of faux-blackstone the whole way as she zigzagged between them.

Zel had decided: She would allow herself to be run through to land a good strike. Cautiously funneling Fulgur into the Broken Butcher, she exploited the blade’s shape and unique elemental properties to form a short edge of pure lightning, erupting from between the Butcher’s prongs; it was a familiar technique merely adapted for the Butcher’s sorry state. It would only last a flash, but it would suffice. Blue-white arcs cracked between the Butcher’s prongs, becoming continuous arcs as the already-glowing lichtenberg figure covering its metal went from a faint blue to a seething, blinding white glow. The metal itself became red, then orange, then yellow and pure white, the electric arc twisting within its constraints and erupting outward into a violent torch, itself barely as long as the Broken Butcher’s physical blade.

Simultaneously, Zel saturated pertinent muscle groups with a volatile Fulgur-Pneuma blend, reveling in the growing heat and pressure. She knew her own limits, she knew exactly how far she could push herself without burning Metallum to reinforce her own flesh and risking self-injury, and she knowingly walked all the way to that edge.

A STRIKE TO HUMBLE THE GENERALS OF DIVINITY

FORMLESS BUTCHERY: ALL-SEVERING THUNDERCLAP STING

The whipping motion’s immense velocity sent her blade sailing right through the pillar which Red had conjured to defend herself and into her heart, the chitinous plate over it shattered by the force as the Butcher embedded itself in her flesh and its lightning jetted out through Red’s back and flickered out, leaving a gaping hole where her heart had been. Much the same, Red’s blade ran straight through a gap between Zel’s ribs, through a lung, and out of her back.

Neither of them fell; Red simply refused to die, there came a head-splitting ringing just before an iridescent blast of Fog erupted from her wound, obscuring vision without discrimination. Both women chose to kick the other away, and Zel felt her opponent’s stone prosthetic break a rib as she was thrown across the arena. For a few moments she remained in place, reacting Viriditas and Rubedo in her second stomach to produce Vitae, which she then burned to force her wound back together. She even deigned to touch her precious Metallum reserve, though only in order to cement her broken bone back together.

“Thundercannon!” she barked afterwards, a thin bolt of lightning sparking forth from her gun as she pulled the trigger-lever, but it was not an offensive measure. The arc latched onto the Butcher’s handle, and after she poured yet more Fulgur into the connection, Zel was able to rip the weapon free of Red’s chest, it flying right into her hand.

Yet again they clashed. Zelsys already knew that, at some point, she would win, but… She didn’t know how long it would take.

Again and again, Red’s iridescent, primordial magic was brought to bear against Zel’s lightning, blackstone barriers rendered into being and tossed aside once they had served their purpose as lightning-rods.

Again and again, chunks of the dome were smashed away, gaps forming as individual pillars broke.

“You, because of whose actions the Dungeon Core opened my eyes to His Divinity’s idiosyncrasies!” the mantis howled as she conjured an uncanny mechanism around the Subcore, otherworldly lighting bursting out from it as it was enveloped by an eight-segmented octagonal cylinder, the light seemingly reflecting off of the pieces and bleeding out through the gaps between the segments. With her other hand she formed a six-sided hollow rod, a barrel of sorts, which she attached to the mechanism as it closed shut around the Subcore, spinning up for a few seconds before there came a burst of ringing-noise and a concentrated ray of empyrean flame blazed forth from the rod’s maw.

CRITICALITY SIGN

SUBCORE EMBODIMENT

CRIMSON COMMAND: MASTER SPARK

“WHEN ALL STRATAGEMS FAIL, SURRENDER; EITHER TO THY FOE, OR TO THE FURY WITHIN”

The technique had enough windup that Zel hadn’t even considered that she might not be able to dodge, and she was glad for that when she felt it rip past her and smash the dome wide open behind where she had stood. It was easily as powerful as her own Thundercannon when used with a high-velocity shell.

Visibly struggling to fight the construct’s gyroscopic force, Red physically grasped it with both hands and swung it around to follow after Zelsys, screaming all the while: “You, who cursed me to this existence without a guiding hand!”

Zel dodged around the dome whilst throwing out Thundercannon after Thundercannon, spitting out lightning-sphere after lightning-sphere, working to find an opening so she could get into the cannon’s sole blind spot: Right next to Red. The mantis knew how foolish it would’ve been to let the distance be closed, so the moment Zel ducked under the all-destroying beam and rushed in, Red ripped the mechanism from the rod’s back, spinning around just as the now-unfocused deluge of iridescent destruction propelled her across the dome and right past Zelsys, missing her by several meters.

It was Red’s impact against the top of the dome that finally spelled its total failure, the entire structure crumbling as the Fog-sea’s inexorable silver mass rushed in. The structure vanished in a split-second, what little was left of its constituent faux-blackstone instantly sinking beneath the waves, and the two women found themselves - ever so briefly - atop a mercurial ocean shrouded in Fog. Red continued flying through the air for a moment more before her construct sputtered out and she landed at the Fog-sea’s surface.

This place… Zelsys had never seen it, but it was familiar, beyond just lining up with written descriptions. Was this truly the cosmological foundation of the material world? She scanned the otherworldly morass of her surroundings, keeping an eye on the mantis as she did so. She knew of two Fog-sea landmarks from her studies, and both were well within view; the gates of the Blackwall, manifested even here in the absence of the wall in its entirety, and the Floating City of Karga, shining beacon in the far east. Since there was no such thing as curvature here, it was clearly visible despite being halfway across the known world.

Red struggled to her feet at last, the Subcore’s glimmering form returning to the palm of her hand, absent its octagonal casing. A hideous grimace gripped her features and the cosmic waters underfoot stirred, but before she could go through with whatever she had planned, the waters’ surface gave out under them; they fell into the very waters they had been standing on. Reality rushed back in, and they found themselves back on that dirt road, neither the signs of their battle nor Zel’s companions anywhere to be seen.

Yet again they clashed, tossing aside conceptions of complex tactics and arcane techniques.

Red’s blade sailed through Zel’s neck… And Zel’s did through Red’s.

Both spat out blood. The next moment, both their wounds knitted together; Red’s vanished altogether with an iridescent glow and the ringing of her horns, while Zel’s flesh forcibly pulled itself together before the seam metallized. Neither of them fell, or even budged.

“It seems… We’ve come to an impasse. By the time either one of us falls for good, the slavers will be gone with the wind,” the beast-slayer grinned, satisfied in having arrived at the outcome she’d hoped for.

The crimson lady’s left eye twitched, and a moment later, she retracted her arm blade.

“I will kill you,” she said. “One day… But not today.”

Glancing about for a few moments, she added: “I suppose it would be best to wait for the others.”

“They should be back by now, unless…” Zel furrowed her brow.

Red nodded, “Time dilation, yes. My False Dungeon has a factor of one to three.”

“Well, if you want to rush ahead to try laying siege to the Meat Market by yourself, I won’t… Alright, I will stop you, I’m not risking you being in the same boat with those slavers after all,” the beast-slayer stated plainly. For a moment, the murderous aura that had all but gone from her returned in full force, only to fade as quickly as it came.

Red let out a frustrated sigh, summoning a row of meter-tall pillars with the gesture of one hand and conjuring a Fog Vortex with the other, from it emerging a familiar bottle as the Lady in Red sat down. She gave Zel a passing glance, a tacit invitation as a second, noticeably larger section of bench rose up from the ground. A sense of relief washed over Zelsys at the realization that the person Red had become was a little closer to herself in attitude towards potentially lethal violence. It was… A welcome reprieve from the expectations of normal society, to be able to just go from trying to kill one another to casually sitting side by side to pass the time. Taking up the remaining space on the impromptu bench, Zel raised one foot to the edge, resting her left arm on it, so as to not strain one of the cuts she’d been left with. A short while passed wherein neither of them spoke or tried to interact, Zelsys just taking a few moments to reload her gun and refill her ammo belt, replacing the spent Type-1 shell with a surplus stick grenade. She slipped a phial of orange gel labeled “CP-T” into her pocket, the mere sight of it causing Red to go aghast.

“...That-” she pointed a claw-like left-hand finger, daintily holding the now one-third empty bottle of blue liquid in her right hand.

“What? I’m not sticking my arm down a Locust Queen’s throat again… And the seal won’t just come open on its own,” the beast-slayer grinned back. Her gaze happened upon the bottle, prompting her to remark: “Tengri’s Tears, huh? Y’know, I have some of the original formulation with me, none of that consumer-grade shit…”

She pulled out her tablet, retrieving two bottles of the same design as the one in red’s hand, both plastered in hand-made stabilizer seals, both with a plain, white label that read:

“TENGRI’S TEARS”

FORMULATION No. 4

BATCH 6

The seals covering the corks cleverly incorporated the bottles’ numbers in the batch, 16 and 17 out of 20. Zel handed over the one labeled 17, biting the other open and taking a long swig as she did. Clearly not one to refuse such charity, but also not one to trust so easily, Red took the bottle and looked it over, even conjuring her Subcore to shine that strange light upon the flask before she was comfortable with opening it up and taking a sip. To Zel’s amusement, the mantis visibly stifled an ecstatic sigh after that initial taste, and she couldn’t blame her. The consumer-grade stuff had to be safe for normal humans, but with the likes of herself or the sect’s venerable gourmand Ozmir as testers, the testing batches could be orders of magnitude stronger, thus amplifying any inconsistencies that needed to be ironed out. Batch 5 had been the last testing batch, with any further ones being made purely for in-sect consumption.

They sat and drank in silence for several more minutes. While Zelsys found comfort in the silent wait, quietly manipulating things on the inside as she worked to accelerate her own healing, Red seemed disconcerted. It took until Zel shot the mantis a lazy sideways glance to get her talking again.

“I do not wish to make it seem as though I would spurn an offering such as this, especially given the circumstances, but you should understand that despite my changed appearance and demeanor, I am still…” the Lady in Red began, but it didn’t even take another look from Zelsys for her to stop herself. It couldn’t have been more obvious that she didn’t believe what she had intended to say.

“No, you’re really not, at least you don’t have the same presence as your puppet self. It was little more than an extension of the Locust Queen’s own aura, which… Makes sense, if she was puppeting you the whole time. By my reckoning, you’re not the same person as back then any more than I am the same person as the woman whose face I inherited… And I trust her judgment as to your nature more than my own gut, besides.”

Red chuckled bitterly, “So she told you, did she? That certainly explains why you recognized me. Tell me, did she truly say that Judging Eye of hers did not see me to be the same person as my previous self? That the Black Dragon of the Ninth Wind gazed upon this wretched form and judged it to be someone other than the lieutenant of the Dungeon-sinking Locust Queen?”

“Mmhm,” Zel nodded in affirmation, taking a long swig of her drink. A short while longer passed in silence before she asked a question of her own: “How’d you come to be like this? You obviously didn’t just shed the parasite armor.”

“Do you truly expect me to tell you, just like that?” the mantis laughed in disbelief. The homunculus just shrugged.

A few minutes more passed, and finally Red decided to speak: “Tell me, what stood out to you about the Dungeon’s Fog Gates when you passed through them?”

“They repaired minor injuries and removed unwelcome foreign objects; stingers and poisons and the like,” the beast-slayer replied with a smirk, referencing the fact she’d learned about this property of the particular Dungeon’s gates when one such gate had removed Red's own stinger from her heart.

Red nodded, “Precisely. My teleportation talisman misfired, or rather, it was thwarted by the Dungeon Core. I was caught in the net of its gate network’s security measures, and it… Got to work. Every parasite, geas, false implanted memory, it cut and burned out everything that had been done to turn me into the “Me” you fought, reshaping all the crystal that had erupted from my head into these…” she said, raising the bottle and tapping on one of her horns; even this gentle tapping produced a twinkling sound.

“The thrice-damned automaton gloated that my punishment would be, ahem: “To walk the land a sovereign, and thy free will’s buckling against thine manufactured allegiances shall be thy punishment,” or so it went. It dropped “me” in a cave, half my Maxims-damned skin sloughing off of me alongside my armor, my gut full of dead parasites. I do not recall the weeks afterwards beyond the fact I rebuilt myself, and that I eventually made my way to Rigport to take my position as Cao Hu’s advisor,” she continued, lying about her own memory of that horrific time. Spitting aside in disgust at having recalled it all, she took another swig.

Her gaze turned to Zelsys again.

“I’ve answered your question, now answer the same one for me,” she requested.

“Well once we had offed the Queen, we found the comms array in the back of her chamber and had a little talk with the Emperor,” Zel began, exerting more effort to simplify and break things down as much as possible than to actually remember them. She wasn’t about to explain how exactly she’d obtained any of her current abilities, so a simplified account of the “How”s and “Why”s had to suffice. “He seemed to have been amused by the fact I went out of my way to metaphorically spit in his face at every turn, so he gave me the Blue Moon Prophecy, warning of how the next time a blue moon rose Ubul would wake up… And that sort of just set everything into motion. More or less everything I did between the moment I left the Dungeon and the rising of that blue moon was in service of obtaining the means to deal with his awakening. It truly was that simple, in the grand scheme.”

Glancing over at the Lady in Red - flabbergasted as she was at Zelsys so proudly claiming to have “spat in the Emperor’s face” - Zel asked: “Of course, I did write about it. I’ll let you look up the details yourself, being that what’s in those books is as much as I’m willing to tell you.”

“...I did read them. How truthful are they, exactly?”

“Eh, I’d say seven-tenths.”

They both finished drinking in silence, with Red glancing at her own bottle, then at Zel’s wounds.

“I suppose I owe you now, at least this much…” sighed the Lady in Red, raising a hand. The Subcore emerged from her palm and that crystalline ringing started up yet again, rainbow serpents swirling about her. Though the slayer eyed her with caution, she didn’t feel any alarm in her gut; she didn’t feel the need to be particularly cautious to begin with, having found that unlike people, whether a magick was infused with hostile intentions was easy to read. This one wasn’t. Red muttered an incantation under her breath, and at her command, the Fog-serpents slithered through Zel’s form in the spots of her more severe wounds, leaving behind seamlessly mended flesh and an intense thrumming sensation that faded in moments. Zel felt the sudden exhaustion of Vitae in the area, cluing her in on what exactly Red had done, a guess that the mantis herself soon confirmed after downing another long gulp of DDLV.

“...I cannot simply rebuild someone else as I do myself, but this will have to suffice. It will have exhausted your reserves as much as healing the wound properly, so do take care to replenish them.”

The sound of Sturmgandrs approaching soon became audible.