Zel answered without dwelling on it, grasping the first mental thread that came into her grasp: “To possess true freedom through supremacy over the self. To acknowledge one’s flaws and move past them. To stand against insurmountable odds and arise not merely victorious, but to appear as if the feat were effortless. To inspire legends and live up to them twice over.”

“Is that all?” asked the spirits, their glow briefly drowning out Jorfr’s irises.

Zel allowed a toothy grin to creep onto her face and said the second half aloud.

“It is best in life to seek out the wretched beasts of this world and butcher them as the beasts they are, regardless of how many legs they walk on, what honeyed words they speak, what false titles they claim, what stolen power they boast…”

That wasn’t all. She had thought to make it short, but as she spoke, more came to mind.

“...To live, to struggle, to impose myself upon the world. To lay a new path for others to tread upon, one without the false twists and turns of mysticism and vested interest.”

Deciding to use her last question solely to satisfy her own curiosity, Zel asked: “Please, explain how it is that, through you, the sphere is shielded from the ravages of the outer realms.”

“We are that which drives the heartbeat of the sphere. Through us, this world is warded from the ceaseless fury of that which Man knows as the corpse of the Sun God… And were the aforementioned fables to be taken at face value, our function would have been vital in constructing the Black Rods which now pierce that self-same star.”

Blinking a few times and performing the same intertwined-finger gesture as before, Jorfr somehow subdued the light within himself, still speaking with a chorus of voices as he warned: ”Your time grows short. Soon reality will come flooding back in, and this transmundane connection will be severed. Do as you will, but do so now.”

“I have no more questions,” Zel nodded. “I wish to forge an accord.”

Letting go of the gesture, Jorfr’s eyes were once more rendered unto pearlescent searchlights, the light drowning out his irises. They now pierced right through her, staring at her, and wheresoever the lights fell upon her skin, her body paint took on a bright glow while her skin felt as if it were simultaneously turning to metal and being pierced by uncountable needles. She couldn’t tell whether the feeling was mere discomfort, or if her own pain tolerance made it far more tolerable than it otherwise would’ve been.

As he scanned over her, he spoke, the chorus entirely drowning out Jorfr’s voice.

“Even the strongest vessel of flesh is but worthless meat waiting to die without a sufficient driving spirit, just as the greatest machine is but inert metal waiting to rust without a sufficient driving engine.”

“Pray, do not look away, lest you feel your life’s beat ebbing.”

Slowly, the spirits’ gaze spidered its way up her body, to her face, and to her eyes, staring right into them. The light was simultaneously blinding, yet perfectly tolerable, it simultaneously drowned out everything else, yet didn’t impede her from seeing her surroundings. It simultaneously threatened to wrench her skull apart with a wracking headache whose intensity belied the fact it wasn’t mere pain, yet introduced a reassuring steadiness to the ache that promised it would pass soon.

It felt as if her very eyes were turning to solid metal, surges of that numb, steady ache pounding through her brain. At first every second, then twice a second, progressively speeding up until it felt nearly continuous. She could see those steel-blue motes swarming around Jorfr, pulses of light the self-same colour running down his arms and into the heretofore purposeless liquid that covered the altar. Now she saw its purpose, as these bluish, barely visible motes entered into the liquid and suddenly became glimmering, pearlescent specks, swirling aimlessly upon its surface like stars in the night sky.

“Pray, place your hands upon the altar.”

Her body grew stiff and immobile, her fingers felt as if unoiled clockwork when she opened and closed her fists. Her muscles, too, felt stiff and strange. A colony of Metallum-aligned earthen spirits was making its home within her.

Time stretched onward, and Zel felt her heart slowing, her breathing growing labored and difficult. Marshalling every ounce of will she could, she willed herself to take a continuous, long, deep breath, burning it into equal parts Aether and Fulgur with a long exhalation. She forced herself to breathe, her heart to pound, she forcibly raised her hands to the altar and gripped its edges, lightning arcing across her skin with even the tiniest movement.

She felt the stiffness waning bit by bit, only to return once more, ebbing and flowing as her body fought to break down what was doubtlessly Metallum building up inside her bodily tissues. A solid lump of something was beginning to form in her second stomach.

“Even the most sublime flesh grows stiff beneath our tempering presence, but the will which drives this flesh…”

An uncanny, inhuman, stiff smile twisted Jorfr’s features.

“It is wrought of myriad pieces, damascened and inexorable. Yes. An accord, you shall have, for your soul, human, is already a ceaseless engine. Even now, thy flesh ravenously devours the slag produced in our forge-welding of ourselves to thy soul.”

The glimmering motes within the puddle upon the table now surged towards her hands, their entry punctuated by yet more pounding, aching pressure, crawling upward through her arms leaving yet further stiffness in its wake, dissipating when it reached her chest.

Zel wasn’t sure how long this tribulation went on for, having reignited the Breath Engine and transitioned into a sort of extreme shuddering state in order to counteract the encroaching stiffness. She constantly shifted about in place ever so slightly, and awkward though it was, it served well enough. The ordeal stretched on and on, until at last, all of a sudden, it ended. More and more the swarms of blue spirits around Jorfr thinned out, until eventually, the tendril yanked itself from the back of his head, retreating into the leyline river.