The Primordial Self stepped forward, its form melding into Zelsys. In the span of seconds, her facial features grew harsher and her musculature more defined. All restrictions lifted, the body had begun to produce a glut of Bestia, the essence of pure animalism, a composite of Rubedo and many others. Temporary mutagenic reactions took hold and anatomy reverted to a form from tens of millennia past, from an age of mankind where the weakest hunter had no choice but to be stronger than the vast majority of modern humans; the Primordial Self had, at the Thinking Self’s behest, triggered a process of self-induced atavism. The genetic inheritance of ancient man was made manifest in this humanoid embodiment of violence, forging a vessel able to contain the concentrated fury of seven thundergods.

It was then that the knight captain’s glacial prison shattered, erupting outward in a shower of ice dust that concealed the blast of flame which succeeded it, a blast which Zelsys had anticipated and which she dodged without any apparent effort.

“Such a pathetic transformation, it is no wonder you needed an army to defeat the mere corpse of a divine general!” Von Wickten gloated, whipping his tail forward as the now-familiar glow built in his chest. What she would’ve struggled to dodge before, now was perfectly manageable, but…

“Don’t get ahead of yourself, I wasn’t finished!” she laughed, raising her gun to him, charging it with enough Fulgur to create a continuous arc down the sleeve’s length. The Type-2 shell’s recoil alone was still more than sufficient to throw her backwards if she didn’t brace herself, with the Thundercannon conveniently tossing her across the room and thus moving her out of harm’s way while the deluge of of smoke, shrapnel, and lightning obscured Von Wickten’s vision and shredded away at his scales.

“Don’t you know it’s rude to interrupt something so grandiose as a Mantling, you disrespectful cur?”

Ignition.

Iron and bronze flowed down from the horns which parted her hair and down the rest of her body, musculature bulging and hardening beneath her skin as she grew upwards by a small amount. The bronze-like shade of her skin took on a metallic sheen, webs of glowing silver, too, taking on this countenance, lightning-serpents slithering across her skin with every minute movement. Iron to strengthen flesh and bone that it might better withstand its own strength, while Bronze would imbue nerves, veins, and silver conduits, shielding them from interference and allowing more complex reactions to take place within the body at higher energy levels. As her nerves metallized, they temporarily became like signal wires, brain impulses no longer limited by chemical reactions, perception of time stretched and distended; for each real-time second that passed, Zelsys now had five effective seconds to think and react.

This blazing, brilliant force which now filled her being and magnified every movement with a continuous, automatic form of Thundercharger was… An imperfect replica of its first manifestation; refined in technique, but a shadow of its true self, at least in Zel’s mind.

EGO INSTALL

THUNDEROUS LIVING REACTOR

EMBODYING CONQUEST OF THE SELF AND NATURE ALIKE

FORMLESS BUTCHERY: STORM CONQUEROR’S MANTLE -REPRISE-

“I shall grant you this: You are not a mere beast, for to compare you with beasts casts an undue bad light upon those pitiful creatures!” bellowed the beast-slayer, her braids coming together in front of her and merging together in a spiraling pattern, the beast-heads at their tips forming a singular sneering maw. She pushed her left arm into the back of the formation, bracing it with her right as she focused the imperious deluge of Fulgur swirling about within, filling up her second stomach in mere seconds before she set it loose. It was then that the Thundergod whose head she’d summoned, this construct representing the very Thundergod who served as the central pillar of her Storm-soul Cultivation, opened its mouth, lightning arcing between its jaws. From betwixt these jaws then erupted a deluge of lightning that ripped into the spot of broken armor on Adalbert’s chest, ripping skin, shattering bone, and boiling blood. She had tailored it to just about supersede his Blaze Schneider, expecting him to defend with that technique.

It was just a snap. A single, brief flash, after which he doubled over and a mixture of blood and vomit flowed from his mouth, boiling even as it splattered upon the stone. He raised his head and, in desperation as he clearly felt the charge building again for another strike, he drew upon his own pinnacle technique, his Blaze Schneider, as a mere defensive tool. It ripped forth from his maw well before Zel could loose another lightning-bolt, and though the deluge of his flame superseded her much weaker followup shot, it meant nothing; she just ducked under it, her braids separating as she closed the distance. One braid worked the gun’s bolt with the release of Fog from its vent obscuring her position, while another pulled the spent shell and slotted a Type-1a replacement into the chamber. Her footfalls struck the stone floor with such force that her boots’ climbing claws ripped pieces out of it. The man-dragon rose to his feet, his vitality undepleted by the cauterized gash that now spanned a third of his torso.

Zel threw a right cross, her fist wreathed in lightning. Von Wickten ducked it to the side, his left arm already pulled back to try and strike her with a shot to the liver, but Zel had noticed his tell. As his fist shot forward, she met it with a hook from her left into his fist, robbing his punch of its energy with Siphoning Pulse, while her sleeve dispersed the energy which the technique didn’t absorb across her entire body. Before his arm could twitch back she grabbed it and continued the movement, translating the rotational energy to spin around on her heel, burning the energy she’d stolen from his punch to speed up her own spin. Her right heel smashed into his liver, right before she yanked him forward by his arm and threw him to the ground. She circled him before he could get his bearings, disappearing from his field of view.

Von Wickten scrambled away as he struggled back up, desperately turning in place like a scared animal, his tail whipping about and unfocused flame spraying from his maw as he searched for Zelsys, but from his point of view, she was nowhere to be found. A phantom whose disdainful voice came from behind, only to come from his side by the time he turned around. Even as his preternatural strength smashed apart stone like it was rotted wood, at no point did the entomodragon detect her presence.

“You, wretched manifestation of Man’s capacity for true evil, pollute this world that I live in with your misuse of free will. FILTH THAT YOU ARE, REPENT FOR EXISTING IN MY WORLD.”

The sound of electricity arcing resounded, and two clicks followed. Von Wickten felt the vibration of her boots on the ground behind himself as well as the muzzle of her gun against one of the damaged plates on his tail, but it was too late for him. A geyser of hardened metal, flame and lightning exploded out of the gun and ripped straight through his body, exiting out through his chest and burrowing into the ceiling, the spray of yellow blood from the exit wound becoming inexorably charged, innumerable bluish-yellow electric fireflies forming the image of a sneering beast’s head.

The Entomodragon slumped to his knees, coughing up blood as his Gu strained to keep him alive and plug his injuries, a feat which the parasite achieved… Albeit at a cost. When Adalbert rose to his feet and met the gaze of that lightning-wreathed monster in human skin that had chosen to show itself in front of him, he was short of a solid year of memory from his childhood - a loss he wouldn’t notice, for now. Despite as it may have seemed, the Gu wasn’t malicious - it was a living tool, obeisant to its host within the constraints of its design… And at this moment, Von Wickten’s mind overflowed with a crystal-clear, single-minded hunger for more power. This desire, the Gu obliged, feasting upon several more years of its host’s memories in order to fulfill his wishes, inflicting yet further mutations upon him in the middle of combat. Insect that it was, these mutations were insectoid in nature - the same internal structures that permitted him to spit flame were routed down into his arms, flame-nozzles shaped like giant stingers erupting from his wrists. Von Wickten’s overall size increased as well, his Gu trying to mimic the subtle physical growth of Zelsys by simply forcing its host’s muscles to grow to the absolute limit his mutant body could withstand, the resultant growth stretching his skin and creating undue gaps in his scales. Despite the flaws in the insect’s methodology, the effect was undeniable: Von Wickten’s apparent presence grew twofold… Yet the way Zelsys stared up at him with that look of murderous intent still made him shrink on the inside. Her expression betrayed her thoughts: They were not of the battle at hand, of how she would pursue victory or her chances of attaining it, but of what punishments she would inflict upon the knight captain afterwards. In her mind, victory was assured the very moment she had gone through her metamorphosis.

Every fibre of Von Wickten’s animal brain wanted to run away, even now. Perhaps he would’ve done well to listen.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

Red’s second sight, her ability to directly observe the arcane, was utterly overwhelmed as it had only been once before: At the top of Rigport’s tower when the Curse-eating General, Cao Hu, had set loose his curse, which he had embraced and twisted into a perverse source of power. The curse had been born from thousands of Scorchlanders throwing themselves into their home island’s volcano in a mass self-sacrifice ritual rather than continue living under Cao Hu’s brutal exploitation. The Curse-eating General had exploited the curse’s purpose to his advantage, manipulating it to flare up to his defense when his life was threatened, lest the purpose of the curse - his continued, eternal suffering - be ended by an adversary’s blade. It had been only through the divine might of the Charred Judge and Red’s own ability to give form to the spirits which Cao Hu had been exploiting that he had been defeated.

This might which Cao Hu had refined his curse into was now overshadowed by her.

This woman that Red had thought herself easily equal to, foolishly assuming that they’d both grown at the same rate since their last battle.

“She had hobbled herself… Fought with one hand behind her back, while I near-enough split my own head open with effort…” she thought.

A bitter lump grew in Red’s throat as she came to a realization that, in retrospect, was self-evident.

The Sevenfold Storm Conqueror; Slayer of Ubul, the Beast Reborn in Stone; the Thundering Engine Beast… Of course their true strength couldn’t be compared. Since her rebirth, Red had spent much of her time engaged in the schemes and machinations of her own service to both the Empire and her own ambition, treating these horns, this immortal might that had been foisted upon her, as an unsightly tool to be used only when it was necessary.

The lump erupted from her as a cackling, resentful laugh, a realization given form.

If she wanted to ever have a chance at fulfilling that promise, if she ever wanted to put an end to Zelsys Newman, Red would have no choice but to walk the same path; she would have no choice but to burn yet another of the few paths that could lead her to a peaceful existence free of treason to the Empire.

Indeed, Red could scarcely hold back laughter at the scene that unfolded before her; the righteous fury, the demand for an evildoer’s repentance, so thinly-veiled by that everpresent veneer of egoism which Zelsys worked so painstakingly to uphold. The grimace which gripped the beast-slayer’s face at this moment was all but indistinguishable from the expression Red had glimpsed upon the face of Alcerys, the Charred Judge, when she stood against Cao Hu, the Curse-eating General. Though she knew that Zelsys had inherited her face from the Judge, it was at this precise moment that it really sunk in just how thoroughly Zelsys had inherited Alcerys’ immovable moral compass. So immense was the righteous wrath which surged through the Storm-conqueror that it spilled out and became palpable; Red could see the blazing flame of crimson-red fury blasting out of Zelsys with such intensity that it completely drowned out Von Wickten’s artificially-magnified presence.

His eyes, there was something wrong there. So terribly, terribly wrong. Von Wickten’s metamorphosis had been monstrous, truly, but what he had made himself become was beyond a transformation. Zelsys could sense it - there was nothing behind his eyes. His demeanor subtly shifted, moment by moment, as if the Gu had scooped out and devoured the infinitesimal scraps of humanity still left inside Von Wickten’s rotten soul.

The Entomodragon’s chest began to shine once again, tongues of flame erupting from his wounds before it flooded forth from both his maw and his hands, blasting out all around Zelsys. Her only possible path of escape was directly upwards, but she didn’t bother. Of the two metals to whose properties she could align her Metallum, Bronze was one she had gone out of her way to grasp in addition to the aspect of Iron which had come naturally, specifically for situations such as these. With a spark of will and a marginal quantity of Pneuma burnt to facilitate the realignment, she willed the Metallum which suffused her skin to Bronze, dredging up yet more to reinforce herself just in case.

A scorching heat swallowed her being, stone melted beneath her feet and the very edges of her armor took on a cherry-red glow, yet she remained unburnt. The mechanically inferior properties of Bronze were by far offset by its properties as a magical insulator, conducting within itself without issue, but putting up extraordinary resistance to outside arcane influences. As such, Von Wickten’s flood of flame was all but rendered impotent.

Upon seeing the failure of his attack, the entomodragon’s compound eyes shifted in place, moving from Zelsys to her compatriots as the Gu darted in and out of its forehead like the flicking of a serpent’s tongue. She was willing to play with Von Wickten for a while longer, but not like this. His lower jaws click-clacked and he opened and closed his hands, the muscles of his forearms visibly shifting. He intended to create some triplicate form of the Blaze Schneider, that much was clear, but Zel also predicted how he intended to land it: By distracting her with an attack on her compatriots.

“What’s wrong? Did you expect this’d work after how badly it failed down in the pit, just because it’s a few hundred degrees hotter? Ankhezians used to make shields out of bronze to defend against artillery mages, and you thought your glorified blowtorch would work on me?!” she mocked to grab his attention once more. He met her with furious, flame-empowered fisticuffs, of which she defended or countered the vast majority, tapping into her waning reserves to invoke Skin of Iron, hardening her fists even beyond their already-hardened state. Besides this, she harnessed the great geyser of Fulgur which sprouted forth with each of her breaths not merely to accelerate and empower her own movements, but to form momentary coats of white-hot lightning around her fists and legs. With each ground-shaking punch, one of Von Wickten’s scales cracked or broke; with each left hook, she fired a low-powered Thundercannon to deepen the wound. With each thunderous kick his flesh split open, and with each right kick, the dozer-blade around her leg burrowed into him. He just… Wasn’t slowing down. It was all surface damage, his flesh not as tough as hers, but magnitudinous beyond reason. The sheer amount of muscle on him meant that, at this rate, direct unarmed attacks would take too long to bring him down for her liking, leaving him all too much time to hatch some new plan or come after the others, or even try to escape.

So it was that she created some distance, and channeling into her left arm, fired another Thundercannon, calling out: “BUTCHER!”

As before, the arc latched onto her blade’s handle, and as before, it was yanked back. But as it was, it was too short unless she cut his neck arteries or somesuch, and even then the arrangement of his scales would demand their removal before she could get at a vein. In the sparse few seconds which she took to think on her next course of actions, two things happened: First, Victor came-to, confusedly poking his head out from behind Red’s tidebreaker. Though he ducked back into cover swiftly at the sight of Von Wickten, the reminder of the young man’s presence was enough to motivate the opportunistic thing that he was into action.

Red and Jorfr had both proven they could stand up to him, but Victor was still nothing more than a victim in his mind. After all, nothing the redhead had done could realistically harm the entomodragon. His fingers twitched a bit before semi-liquid flame sprayed out of the nozzle on his left arm, and as he raised one arm to Zelsys, he raised another left and upwards such that the spray would fall upon Victor.

“No you don’t,” she uttered, funneling a surge of Bronze-aligned Metallum into her right arm until it was so saturated with it that a layer of green oxide formed on her skin up to just above the elbow. Sprinting and leaping upwards, she stabbed the Butcher into Von Wickten’s arm at such an angle that it pinched the tendons, veins, and tubes inside his wrist, running a tremendous surge of Fulgur through the blade as she grabbed his arm-nozzle. She stuck her thumb in the opening to plug it just long enough to rip the nozzle clean out of his arm, burning venom running out over her arm and splattering onto the ground.

He pointed his other arm to her, spraying more organic napalm as he obviously charged a Blaze Schneider, leaving her plentiful opportunity to break the stream with her still-hardened right arm and just grab the other flame-nozzle as well, breaking it in half with sheer grip strength before she ripped out one of the scales on his wrists and slit it - or rather, sawed through it with the Butcher - severing the flow of flame-venom to this extremity as well. She thought to just destroy the entomodragon’s heart and be done with it, since the Butcher’s reduced state wouldn’t matter much if she used it to strike there, but… No.

That wouldn’t suffice.

Von Wickten had to live long enough to be punished properly, as she had planned. She would make him puke up every ounce of impurity in his soul, and that was that.

But… Zel found herself faced with an all-too-familiar problem: The Butcher just wasn’t big enough to do its job of dismembering her foe. Having anticipated this very situation due to the fact there had been times when Butcher’s full length didn’t suffice, she had devised a means of temporarily restoring her blade to a mirage of its true self. In fact, the blades which tipped her braids were fragments from the Butcher’s original blade which she had originally tied to her hair for this very purpose.

She briefly glanced towards Victor, her face flashing with a smug confidence that said: “Watch closely, now. I’ll show you something you won’t find anywhere in the books.”

And indeed, that was just what she did, gripping the Broken Butcher by its guard whilst working her arm-cannon’s bolt with one of her braids, closing up the chamber after the spent shell popped out. With a smooth motion she slotted the Butcher’s handle into the arm-cannon’s muzzle, lightning arcing between the blade’s prongs the moment its handle was fully seated.

There were few arcane techniques which demanded such mental focus from Zelsys as to necessitate multi-line incantations; besides Dance of the Fireflies in its fullest manifestation, this was one.

“Butcher o butcher, ye cleaver of wrath baptized by the blood of the undying…”

Two of her braids wrapped themselves around her arm, their phantom heads biting her arm-cannon’s trigger lever.

“Sup of mine power, usurped from the heavens above and earth below…”

Two more yet followed, these biting the gauntlet.

“...And bare thy fangs of defiance ‘gainst the skeins of fate!”

The last two, spiraling down her right arm, bound her hand to the Butcher’s crossguard and bit the blade itself. The seals wrapped around much of the Butcher began to burn at the edges as arcs of electricity raced between its prongs and its structure began to distort, the fragments of its original form resonating with the weapon. There came a terrible creaking and snapping as the Butcher’s twin prongs erupted in growth, forming a thorny, malformed thing that by some grievous miracle possessed a vaguely congruent blade edge on one side, while most of its length bristled with innumerable screaming sawteeth. Its crack-covered surface pulsed with a pale blue glow.

SIMULACRUM SIGN

TUNING FORK OF SEVEN STORMS

FORMLESS BUTCHERY: GESTALT REBIRTH

Each time she used this technique, the form taken by the short-lived blade could be completely different. Once, it was nothing but sawteeth. Another time, it was a gigantic, inwardly-curved blade, akin to a scythe. The only constant was that it was always an appropriate implement for the battle at hand. This reforged Butcher was short-lived, doomed to return to its broken state, but the brief time in which it resembled its past self would more than suffice. Lightning surged through the Butcher, its sawteeth screaming as its cutting-edge became white-hot.

In the timespan it took Zelsys to transform her own weapon, the entomodragon’s Gu parasite emerged to nearly its full length. Both it and its host writhed in place for several moments, the mass of of his tail and many of his broken scales being re-absorbed. A moment later, the scales around his hands thickened and proliferated until they were utterly enshrouded, his fingers fusing from four down to two, plus thumbs. With blades and flames both having failed, he meant to try bludgeoning his way to victory as a last-ditch effort.

They met in a furious clash. For each punch Von Wickten threw, Zelsys swung her massive saw-cleaver twice over. The horrendous, raucous clanging and metallic resonance of her blade melded together with the entomodragon’s growling and screaming, bolts of flame from its maw splattering against the cleaver and being struck from mid-air by Zel’s braids. At this moment, she became further removed from humanity than even Von Wickten - a fleshly embodiment of a storm’s unceasing fury, a vaguely humanoid blue of cold-iron and lightning, smashing apart the body of a man-become-dragon. Such was the terrible fury and rancor of their battle that they carved and burned a visible sphere of mayhem around the site where it took place, with rubble, scales, and gore piling up around them and being tossed about the chamber as the beast-slayer brought her fury to bear against the entomodragon’s last, desperate push. She cut, sawed, and smashed apart not merely Von Wickten’s hands, but much of his armor as well, going so far as to sever even this form’s horns solely to make it absolutely clear that he was her lesser. A desperate right hook of his opened up a wide gap in his guard, and Zel exploited it by darting in and taking her hooked blade to his stomach, wrenching it deep enough that it ripped through skin, flesh, and bone, spilling out a serpent-like tangle of yellow intestines.

This grievous wound drove the entomodragon to twist sharply upon one heel, stepping forward as it turned its side to Zelsys, holding out its more intact left hand as it held in its cut-open stomach with its right. To say it was intact in any appreciable sense, however, was a compliment; his left arm still had fingers and a fist, but it was nevertheless stripped of armor and covered in deep cuts. The right half of his lower jaw hung limply, the joint broken, many teeth missing from the upper row as well; the burned gash in his right side had grown such that one could plainly see his ribcage and lungs underneath.

Zel was just about ready to finish this; a terrible fatigue was dawning upon her, an inexorable sign that she would soon need to rest. Even if she could withstand this more refined, but lessened form of Storm-conqueror’s Mantle for much longer than the original, that was still only a short while. She pulled back her blade, adjusting the position of her feet...