Victor traversed the rooftops towards the longhouse, summoning up dozens of Devil’s Teeth as he went, sending them down upon those who still dwelt outside the longhouse. Not many of the enemy remained, a fair number of them being frozen solid, while a smaller, compact force waited just outside. Just outside the longhouse, he counted over two-hundred corpses, a number that had grown a bit by the time he reached the longhouse.

He entered through the already smashed-in window on Zel and Zef’s room, tucking his body next to Dawnwolf to fit. Fully focusing his mind, he took stock of the situation the moment he emerged onto the walkway outside the room. A few Aase were fighting against staff-wielding magic warriors whom he didn’t recognize, and below, he beheld a sight that clarified who was the enemy and answered his question as to why Jorfr hadn’t responded to his aetherwave ping. That answer was a jarful of CP-T thrown into the smoldering flame of his anger, and he felt a bitter pressure grip his chest.

The all-devouring fury from before, the source of which he had worked so hard to tame. He let it burn, and even as he allowed his rage to consume him, Victor’s mind remained crystal-clear. In this rapturous state, he gave himself over to the siren call of hyperviolence.

“There will be no better time to see what we can do than now,” he thought.

“All this blood and corpses… Perfect. We shall make use of them,” his other thought-train answered. It was true. The place was a treasure-trove of dead meat and bone, as rich with Ossum, Rubedo, Carnis, and myriad other compound essentia as a riverbed was rich with Aqua.

“But first…”

He let his focus turn outward once more, and the world came rushing back in. Taking the Oculus in hand, he turned its spearpoint and Dawnwolf’s terrible wrath against the Aase who fought atop the walkway. Fight the Night to blind them, Devil’s and Dawnwolf’s Teeth alike to slay the survivors. Erelong, he felt that the Hulson allies there could handle the rest.

Ismaar barely noticed the initial ruckus, easily lost amidst the sounds of battle as it was. However, he could no longer ignore it now that its source had leapt down from the right-hand walkway, taking a stand between him and Gunnar, his would-be prey now that the old berserker had been worn down. It was a red-haired man standing atop a great beast of bone, whose tail whipped back and forth and lashed out every-which way as a skeletal hand at its end grabbed for Ismaar’s men. Its fingers impaled them and it threw them aside as if they were dolls. The bone-beast’s maw spewed monochrome fire which harmlessly flowed over the ground, only to viciously burn the flesh, armor, and weapons of those Ismaar deemed allies - not into coal or ash, but brittle bone that shattered into razor-sharp fragments. Even Ismaar himself found the strong armor which protected his legs crumbling away, bit by bit, terrible heat radiating upward at him.

The sound of a Hulson woman; the shaman who had been trying to resurrect the heartless corpse of Jorfr.

“Victor?! Where is-”

“On the way,” he answered before pointing his spear at Ismaar. “You. Where’s Asgeir, huh? Kristina? And what of Svend? Were you the best the conspirator clans had leftover? A chattering mongrel with imitation Deep Dweller teeth?!”

Incensed by the taunt, Ismaar hucked a quill his way, but before it could even leave his hand, Victor fell straight into Dawnwolf’s back. In moments it reshaped itself into macabre armor around him. Its skull made up the helmet, his red mane protruding out the back, and its tail had become a third arm stemming from between his shoulderblades. A mighty gauntlet of clawed fingers and thruster-nozzles sat upon the Khestun’s right arm. Similar thrusters could be seen on his boots and the back.

An aquamarine gem shone upon the armor’s forehead, and a strange key with a gem of the same sort floated in the palm of its wearer’s hand, enveloped by a faint golden light.

Upon his waist sat a segmented, semi-rectangular box.

With slight gesture, the key slammed into its side and turned by a full revolution.

A crow-like voice issued forth from the belt, its core flaring: “Ignition!”

The belt’s segments extended out to the side, revealing a fanged maw in the middle. Its jaws snapped open and a blazing-black core alighted in its mouth, bonefire erupting from the armor as its helmet snapped shut in front of Victor’s face.

REX OSSUM PYROS

MAGUS GESTALT DAWNWOLF

With but a gesture of his left hand and a wave of his staff, the arcane implement’s rings began clacking against one another.

“Be bound in blood you’ve spilt.”

At his word, the wealth of life-fluid which pooled on and soaked through the floor flowed to Ismaar’s feet, instantly clotting and gathering into great brownish masses that bound him to the floor. They wouldn’t last, of course, but that was not their purpose. His allies charged in to try and intervene, and some of them even got past the hailstorm of Devil’s Teeth that Victor set against them. They found themselves impaled, incinerated, their heads punched off or crushed by the mighty gauntlet that was his right hand, their rib cages caved in by rocket-propelled kicks. A poor fool found himself slain right through a thick chestplate of solid cold-iron due to his armor’s lack of enchantment; Victor had done nothing more than kick him in the chest with his boot-heel, and the shock had sufficed to stop his heart.

That entire time, what counted up to nearly ten seconds, he kept on funneling Pneuma into Koschei’s Key, invisibly, for the Antediluvian Gem’s capacity was not so trifling that such an amount of magic could change its colour.

Another mongrel put down. Ismaar had just broken free; just in time to be bound again.

Another keyturn.