When it came down to specifics of their agreement, the Primordial Self proved to have a surprisingly strong grasp of explaining its own knowledge of bodily workings in exceedingly simple terms and abstractions.

It effectively came down to the thoughtform demanding: “Bone to build bone, meat to build meat, white-veins to build white-veins.”

“White-veins?” Zel asked.

“Aether channels. They are difficult,” the Primordial Self answered.

The Primordial Self even boasted about Zel’s inherited traits within this context, stating that: “My… Your… Our lineage is… Strong? No. Greater. We may digest without destroying that which nourishes. You know this as Me-ta-bo-lic Al-ka-hest.”

There was… One exception to her aversion towards directly self-inducing mutations.

Pain, and more directly, the nervous system at large. Comparing the energies at which Zel’s own nervous system operated with a normal person’s was like comparing a flooding river to an idyllic forest stream, but that didn’t mean she thought herself immune to manipulation - whether through the exploitation of pressure points or more arcane means.

“I will require a means to selectively disable our perception of pain, more direct and faster than hormones.”

“Why-” the Primordial Self began, but furrowed its brow before Zelsys could even communicate her own reasoning. It nodded as she felt it grabbing around for information, then, with a pointy-toothed grin and a forceful thumbs-up, it agreed: “In case we must survive on things that are painful to eat, good idea! It will be easy, but making it… Pointy? No. Precise, yes, making it so precise would take time, more time than there is until tomorrow. A simpler path is possible.”

As the Primordial Self went on to explain in clumsy terms and strange metaphors, instead of a localized on-off switch for pain, it would subtly alter how pain is processed in Zel’s brain so that her functional pain tolerance would simply grow to match any pain sensation.

In effect, this would eliminate the already unlikely possibility of someone successfully using pain to subdue her, as well as rendering any potential means of torture ineffectual in the unlikely event of her coming under such circumstances.

When she thought about it, this solution was far and away the superior of the two. Pain was not something she wanted to be rid of if she could help it, thus it was preferable to simply have insurance against this helpful sensation being turned against her.

In the hidden basement of an unremarkable house in a small roadside town, a one-legged, one-eyed, bearded veteran picked up the receiver of a long-distance aetherwave communications array. Machinery whirred to life and arcane glow suffused tendrils of homunculus brain tissue that snaked about inside tubes full of off-yellow fluid within the abomination of essentech like tree roots, this copied thinking-meat of a long-dead sphinx repurposed as a glorified encryption and decryption mechanism.

Over a thousand kilometers northward, in an equally hidden but incomparably larger headquarters, a near-identical machine chimed to alert its owner to an incoming call.

He, too, picked up the receiver.

“Hey. It’s Bard. I’m calling to report the success of my previously assigned objectives and request new ones, along with a change of designation for one of my clients,” spoke the bearded man plainly, not bothering with the obfuscated code-phrase he was meant to use. It was procedure, yes, but he found it a pointless remnant from a time when machines like this one lacked security measures that made them useless to those not meant to use them, the machine either not functioning at all or it being obvious that it had been tampered with to callers and those being called.

The man at the other side of the metaphorical line sighed at his senior’s carelessness before the contents of the initial message sunk in. He blinked a few times, asking, “May you specify which objectives?”

“All of them,” said the man who called himself Bard plainly, pulling up his pants leg to undo the puzzle box-like fake wooden case around the fully articulated cold-iron pilebunker that was his real prosthetic. From within the faux case he retrieved a compartment, within which he had stored away documents and a small mnemonic recording tablet. “As expected further complications have arisen, but the reason I am calling also entails what I believe to be the solution to the aforementioned complications. May I now detail my report before we move on?”

“Go ahead,” came a tired response.

Among the deluge of information and unexpected factors, from the Locust Queen’s altered state, to the Emperor’s direct involvement, to the incident involving the Living Storm and Bard’s belief in Ubul’s impending resurrection, one thing stood out.

Bard reported several new assets to the bureau’s goals, most of them coincidental, and among them, that very client whose redesignation he requested.

When the call was over, the man on the receiving end put down the receiver with a shaky hand and called over one of his assistants.

“Going forward, Client Zeta is to be designated as a Potential Tactical Supremacy Asset,” he said.

Meanwhile, in the aforementioned basement, Strolvath sighed to himself. There had once been a time when he could call the bureau and have a strike team of tankmen locked and cocked at his beck and call to tactically annihilate whatever he deemed a priority target.

Those days had passed.

But then, the contacts he had in Willowdale would soon be able to fill that hole in his tactical network…

…If they survived Ubul.

There was no point dwelling on such things right now.

Strolvath had a concert to play; the best possible excuse to keep an eye on his would-be Tactical Supremacy Asset.

The Sunday sun rose into a slightly clouded sky.

Zelsys had permitted herself to sleep a full eight hours, eating a breakfast containing fruits, cheese, and meat. As much as she would’ve loved to warm up in the courtyard it was an arena now, the Matriarch’s arcanists having laid down a multi-layered glyphic enclosure.

A dozen tattooed men and women in strange dress gathered around its perimeter, alongside strange arcane machines not unlike the sound barrier generator in the governor’s office. Black cables and tubes several centimeters across connected these machines to some doubtlessly horrific essentech assemblage concealed within an armored tractor parked just outside the sect and guarded by tankmen.