No sooner did she turn her eyes to the cathedral’s door that there came an earth-shaking impact, followed by a scream that resounded clear-as-day even through the hair-thin gap which had just opened in those doors.

Like the clarion call of a trumpet, it contained only a singular note. Hate. Hate beyond hate, a hateful flame brighter and purer than any human soul could conceive of. Acting upon instinct, she stilled the purification process at the Sixth Step. Once more she could move without impedance, though she wasn’t sure she could hold the partly-purified ignition charge for more than half a minute.

“Thank you, Stormbloom, but I am not a giant tree…” she thought. As a desperate measure, she wrought a plug of Metallum and sealed her second stomach just in case, readying herself for the clash.

The silver-clad monstrosity which burst through closed a distance of hundreds of meters in seconds, screaming and bouncing off the walls the whole way, trailing gouts of accursed-looking purple fire from its arms. Zel could barely get a read on it beyond its form as a silver-armored humanoid; she met its assault head-on, lacking the time to properly charge any of the blades for Fulgarrow. Given its movement pattern and fervent aggression, she reasonably assumed that it would just as well attack Zef or Victor as herself or Jorfr, and her mind at this moment was not on defeating the threat, but first and foremost drawing it away from them.

It almost felt like looking into a mirror into her own past… Almost. This thing had succumbed to its bestial impulses.

The immensity of their clash sent rows of three-hundred-kilo pews flying, gashes were both burned and cut into the blackstone, and the sound of thunderclaps resounded through the cathedral as the two carried on a high-level debate in hyperviolence. In their inhuman exchange of blows they battled out of the cathedral and out into the field of white flowers. Only there, beneath the light of a Dead God, did they finally separate long enough for either of them to get a good look at the other.

“BEFORE I STRIKE YOU DOWN, TELL ME: DO YOU RECOGNIZE YOUR OWN CREATION?!” the silver man bellowed. His armor was unfamiliar and detailed in the extreme, yet it didn’t look overly opulent, bearing no specific iconography. Its stylings were… Otherworldly, almost. Besides, there was the fact that what little of his body could be seen looked to be covered in - no, outright made of tar. Indeed, at a glance, nothing about his appearance was familiar. His voice very nearly rang a bell, but it was so distorted and utterly consumed by righteous fury that she couldn’t tell. A moment later, when she noticed the details of his gauntlets and that flat, segmented tail, it clicked.

“...Adalbert?” she uttered, disgust twisting her features. She caught the sight of Jorfr and Victor sprinting out the cathedral in her wake, the redhead jumping off the side of the stairway on Von Wickten’s side while the northman bounded down the stairs.

A bitter laugh thundered out of him. He spat to the side, the black tar instantly turning several flowers a deep purple, radiating out.

“YOUR PILL TURNED ME INSIDE OUT. MADE ME DROWN IN AN OCEAN OF MY OWN IMPURITY, MADE ME A PASSENGER IN MY OWN HEAD WHILE MY DEBAUCHEROUS URGES RAN RAMPANT. IN THIS… YOU WERE RIGHT - I WAS NOT AS LUCKY AS I HAD HOPED. I DID DROWN, AND I WOULD HAVE PERISHED WERE IT NOT FOR HIM. INDEED, IT WAS HIS DIVINITY WHO PULLED ME OUT, WHO GAVE ME THIS ARMOR WHICH ALLOWS ME TO HARNESS MY IMPURITY. IF IMPURITY IS STRENGTH, THEN I SHALL WEAR THE MANTLE OF IMPURITY ELEMENTAL WITH PRIDE!”

He outstretched his arms, the silver armor’s many plates articulating as if he were some horrific metal bird spreading its feathers. There came a rapturious, yet still hate-filled proclamation: “DRUGS AND DRINK HOLD NO CANDLE TO THE ECSTASY OF THIS MOMENT, TO THE RAPTURE OF MERELY THINKING OF MY GOAL. MY MIND HAS NEVER BEEN CLEARER! I HAVE A PURPOSE, A MEANING: YOUR DEATH… AND THAT OF YOUR BOREAN FRIEND. I WOULD KILL THAT RED WHORE-”

Adalbert seized up for a moment, correcting himself: “-THE GOOD LADY KARMESIN AS WELL, BUT… HIS DIVINITY HAS OTHER DESIGNS FOR HER.”

Zel whipped her blade at him, in part testing it and in part probing his defenses. He effortlessly deflected with his tail.

“THAT SCENT. AND YOUR HAIR... FIVE OUT OF SIX,” he said, digging his heels in as he openly prepared to charge her. “I AM NOT LETTING YOU TRANSFORM THIS TIME.”

“I didn’t expect you to,” she replied, also taking up a readied stance.

They clashed once more, carving out a circle of bare earth in the midst of everything. Despite his sudden clarity of mind and improvement of combat logic, he made it all too obvious that his priority was trying to get a grapple off on her, despite the constant wild blasting of rancid curseflame from his arm-stingers at every opportunity. Zel meanwhile abused every defensive trick available to her whilst trying to use Arcline to sneak her blade around Von Wickten’s defenses, a tactic which may have eventually worked if he hadn’t forced a separation with a strike that Zel had no choice but to block with her left arm. Its force threw her away from him, and the two were once more apart.

Attempting to take advantage of his attention being directed elsewhere, Jorfr circled the accursed being and spun into him, his hammer wreathed in frost and summoning great masses of magical ice as he dragged it along the ground. Trusting in Jorfr’s ability, Zel resumed the Fulgur purification process. Von Wickten instead directed his full attention to the norseman in an attempt to prevent that which had happened last time, at first parrying his strike with his tail before raising a hand and barking: “SCHNEIDER!”

A hollow stinger of silver metal shot out from his wrist. Gouts of purple flame burst out between the plates encasing his arm, running down its length in the blink of an eye before an immense burst of yellow-purple flame erupted. Jorfr’s reaction time was fast enough to let him transition from attacking to defending, even to raise a defensive frost wall as he attempted to dodge, but it wasn’t enough.