Adalbert’s howling blast of curseflame broke through his shield, shattered the haft of his hammer, and ripped through his side, carrying on and blazing a trail of scorched flowers until it smashed into the cave wall. Its force threw Jorfr back a good twenty meters, trailing blood and viscera from the fist-sized hole in the right side of his chest.

Turning back to face Zel once more, Von Wickten opened and closed his hand a few times and with some degree of surprise evident to his voice uttered: “...HE DODGED. THAT WAS MEANT TO SEVER HIS SPINE.”

A few moments earlier…

Zefaris followed in her companions’ wake, working to conjure Death’s Lieutenant as she went, only to find the cathedral’s doors began closing the moment she left its bounds. So, at the top of the staircase, right within the precipice, she remained, finding that this position was actually a near-ideal vantage point. She saw Jorfr’s split-second clash with Von Wickten play out just as she exited the cathedral’s confines, as they had all gone ahead and she had been slowed down by the demanding nature of readying Death’s Lieutenant. To her relief, she could see Jorfr freeze his wound shut as he struggled to his feet, spitting up blood. The northman knew better than to re-engage in his state, hefting the head of his hammer as he dragged himself out of the way.

“Yes, this will do…” she thought as she pulled Tempesta from its holster, slotting the Stone-blessed Bayonet onto its end so she could wield it one-handed before she drew Pentacle. “...Now let’s deploy some holy heavy metal.”

The Stillness of this place was perhaps the second most potent she’d ever felt, equal to the Deterrence Fields and second only to Ubul’s Tomb at the moment of Zel’s false death. Numbness washed over her and everything slowed to a crawl, a sensation which she’d come to regard as the reaper’s embrace.

Inhale. Exhale. Bone-white Fog enveloped her and coalesced into two formless figures at her sides; Pentacle’s spirit to her right, Tempesta’s to the left. The former played with a phantom coin, the latter saluted. Both were reflections of her own self.

“Praise gun, our savior…”

Tempesta’s spirit mirrored her mouth movements, stepping behind her.

“...Hail death, the master!”

Pentacle’s spirit did the same.

Out stepped a skeletal Ikesian in an unmarked lieutenant’s uniform, grasping a sparklock pistol in one hand and a musket in the other.

PRAISE GUN, OUR SAVIOR

HAIL DEATH, THE MASTER

GUNSOUL UNION: DEATH’S LIEUTENANT

In a few moments, she carved a series of glyphs into the air in front of herself, pumping colossal quantities of Gelum into them. She closely watched Zel’s next clash with the silver-armored monster as she worked, immediately transitioning to carving kinetic mirror glyphs on the two nearest Suncage Grid pylons while still dedicating the vast majority of her own output to the glyphs in front of herself. She noticed Zel fire her arm-cannon, missing Von Wickten before she broke off for a moment, just long enough to reload a particularly pointy shell. A Type-1a.

There came a blinding flash of lightning and a deafening shockwave that swept over the flower-field; Zel had landed a Thundercannon, its otherwise pure wake tainted purple by the purple flame of burning impurity. It smashed into the cave wall. By Zef’s estimation, Zel must’ve used up all of the Fulgur built up in her Retributive Battery over the course of the fight to fuel that technique. Von Wickten seemed utterly unfazed, the gaping hole in his lower stomach forced closed as the metal around it shifted back into its original configuration… But he was open for just long enough.

Having carved two kinetic mirrors, she pulled both her guns’ triggers, willing Death’s Lieutenant to aim at the mirror glyphs.

There came the sound of four frostbound sledgehammers slamming down upon an anvil.

Adalbert’s silverbound form smashed down to the ground feet-first, his wound forced shut in seconds. Her first arm-cannon shot had missed not because Von Wickten had dodged, but because her attention had been partly diverted by a want to see if Jorfr was still alive. Only once she had seen him get back up did she regain her full focus.

“This must be what it’s like to fight me…” a thought ran through Zel’s head as she tried to think her way out of this. She had maybe ten seconds of hang-time left on the Seven Steps to Petrichor, and she couldn’t see a way to make it work besides trying to pin him in place for a few moments using Fulgarrow or maybe trying to outpace him to someplace where she could safely finish it or reset the timer. Such a desperate plan turned out to be unnecessary, however.

That rapturous sound resounded; the bells of salvation.

Four spears of glacierglass rained down on him, and though Adalbert dodged one and blasted one apart with Blaze Schneider, two more impaled him from behind.

BELLADONNA SIGN

EMBODIMENT OF SNOW DEVIL

HEADPIERCER ARTS: FRAGMENT OF LOST HYPERBOREA

In a flash, he was frozen solid. Zel continued her breathing exercise, feeling herself lock up as she pushed nearer to that precipice.

She could feel Von Wickten’s hateful gaze on herself, his eyes turning to stare in Zef’s direction for a moment before he refocused on Zelsys.

“C’mon, hold… Hold… Just a bit longer…”

Even while he was frozen, Zefaris kept re-carving new kinetic mirror glyphs and formed independent ice-stake glyph arrays at Pentacle’s and Tempesta’s muzzles. She couldn’t pull another trick like this for a little while, not with Death’s Lieutenant manifested.

Von Wickten’s iceborne prison didn’t shatter.

It melted.

Bursts of purple curseflame erupted from within his armor, thawing him just enough to let him aim his flamestingers at the spears impaling him.

“HNRRRR… BLAZE SCHNEIDER!”

In a cross-shaped flash of yellow-purple flame they were both shattered, leaving jagged fragments sticking out of his back like a twisted mockery of his desire for wings. One was plainly aimed at Zefaris, the blonde flickering out of the way well before it could hit. She returned the favor with a deluge of smaller stakes, flickering between each shot as the frostbound fury she unleashed forced Von Wickten to stretch his tail and wrap himself in it, blasting curseflame through the gaps to fend off her assault.