Meanwhile, Victor kept spilling the contents of his train of thought unabated: “There’s also our astronomical difference in raw attributes to account for. I’ll need to redesign Midnight Wolf just so it doesn’t bruise me all to hell when it grabs me, then there’s an improved reaction core to deal with so I don’t need a fucking Suncage Grid tower to pull from plus grandfather’s help just to set it into motion… Sourcing high-grade Ignis gems to make ignition cores out of might be annoying but it shouldn’t be an issue… How do I handle all of that infrastructure though? I might as well bulk it up to a full-body armor and stick it all in a backpack like one of those tankmen I guess.”

“Why not copy the Iron Rider belts?” Zel suggested. Vic stopped dead in his tracks and looked up at her, and she could see his face light up. He opened his mouth to speak, but stopped himself and continued walking. He said only: “I… Think that might work. I’ll need to try first. Ideally after all this breakthrough and Antediluvian Gem business is dealt with so I don’t have to redesign the servitor again.”

Reaching the ritual site, Victor was briefly taken aback by the gruesome display, though not for long. There, they continued the preparations, but they didn’t get far before Zefaris came running as well, her dress contrasted by her otherwise haggard appearance and the notebooks clutched in her hands.

The Severance Ritual proceeded without incident, though not exactly as planned. Much like the Curse-sealing Duplex Barrier, it incorporated the use of numerous standalone talismans put together to form a mosaic glyph, formed around the ice-slate as the core of the assembly. However, Zefaris insisted on completely redesigning the mosaic glyph, staunchly claiming that it would be fine, that the knowledge of antediluvian glyphs she’d gleaned from the Black Rod was sufficiently comprehensive for her to extrapolate any glyph into a superior, antediluvian equivalent. She proceeded to usurp the ritual site for herself, scaling the obelisk and from atop it using the Philosopher’s Eye to carve a stencil around the ice tablet while she read from the Itrian scroll with her Homunculus Eye. Just the same she also usurped the creation of the talismans, relegating the others to arranging them.

Her reasoning was that of antediluvian magic being the most appropriate tool to counter other antediluvian magic. None had a counterargument.

She wrote the talismans using strange-looking ink that glittered in unearthly hues, and when questioned what sort of ink it was, she explained without even slowing down her feverish writing: “I used Silver Hawks and some Aether gems from the Willowdale Dungeon… Oh, and some Azoth-auric Amalgam paste. Dissolved it all in a solution of Alkahest and mixed it with some regular talisman ink… Relying on knowledge from the Black Rod feels like cheating if I’m being honest, but I won’t complain.”

“I somehow doubt that anyone could go to Agartha and stare at the Rod to receive knowledge about ancient glyphs, even with a Philosopher’s Eye. Perhaps it thought you a worthy vessel due to your focus on glyphs?” Jorfr commented.

Zef sighed: “I’d rather not dwell on whether the Black Rod had decided I was a good vessel because I was worthy or because I happened to be the first sharp-eyed meatbag in eons to think looking at it up-close was a good idea… I have enough existential bullshit to process just from the implications of my new understanding of glyphs, thank you very much.”

Hundreds of talismans and nearly two hours later, an unsettling and eldritch formation had taken shape around the ice tablet. The glyphs were made up mostly of full and partial circles combined with less curved lines perpendicular to the circles as well as each other, creating a vast alphabet of unsettlingly eye-like symbols that, somehow, all joined into a vast mosaic resembling a lamprey’s mouth. It gave off the same unnatural aura as the Black Rod; each and every symbol upon each and every talisman jumped out and pushed its way into the reader’s mind, as if the writing itself had a fervent will to carry out the intentions of its writer. Over the course of this time, the ice slate froze the Razorflayer’s blood solid, which Jorfr claimed was not an issue.

The ritual, much like that of the Duplex Barrier, went off all at once with a simple trigger, in this case Zelsys removing the Brass Stake and plunging it into the center of the ice slate with the intention to trigger the ritual. She withdrew her hand as the blood immediately thawed and began boiling, at which point Victor tossed in the Antediluvian Gem.

As the blood turned to purplish steam the pendant rose into the air atop a rising stream of it, and an ethereal tether formed out of this blood-steam reached out from the bluish stone towards Victor. Before it could reach him, the remaining ichor spilled out from its confines and washed over the talisman-mosaic, soaking the paper, the writing taking on an iridescent glow so bright it blasted up into the heavens and reflected its maw-like shape against the clouds. Before the tether could reach Victor, all of the talismans rose up at once, crumpling together into a tiny paper effigy of the redhead right in the tether’s path. The moment it met with the tether there could be heard a faint, crow-like howl of defiance from within the Gem, and all at once everything stopped. Colour drained from the paper as ink and blood coalesced into a finger-sized, trigonal rod that pinned the tether to the effigy, skewering the latter through the chest. It was more a large nail than a rod, really. Eldritch, lilac-glowing glyphs softly shone upon the Black Nail’s surface.

The steam dissipated. Both the gem and effigy fell to the ground, inert.

“Feel any different?” Zel turned to Vic.

The redhead gave a tentative nod, uttering: “Something has been severed, but it’s like having my hair cut. I just barely felt it.”