Beyond the warrior, between his wide-set legs, waited a passage to a large cave from within which scorching heat flowed. He did not move to attack, or to block her path. Instead, he opened his blue-burning eyes and she felt his gaze bear down upon her.

“YOU BEAR THE KING’S MARK. YOU MAY PASS. LEAVE ALL THAT WHICH YOU DO NOT NEED UPON THIS ALTAR, ELSE THE FORGEMOTHER SHALL BURN IT AWAY REGARDLESS.”

Without a moment’s hesitation, she approached the altar and shed everything she didn’t need. Clad in absolutely nothing but the Impelling Arm, she used this moment to bind the talismans to it. One by one, bit by bit, she felt its plates contort and shift around her arm, until it didn’t resemble itself in the slightest. A warped thing, wrapped top to bottom by ritual bindings. Before she moved forward, she swallowed several pills and partook of Vitae elixir. She carried the Butcher in her left hand. Its segments and the deck of Jade Dragons which she would use, she carried with her hair, and the Brass Stake in her right hand.

The antediluvian warrior regarded her with a look of curiosity as she went through her preparations. He thundered down at her in a melancholic tone: “HAVE WE FAILED? DOES THIS KALPA YET HAVE TYRANT GODS THAT REQUIRE SLAYING?”

“Not those which you speak of, I can assure you of that,” Zel replied.

“THEN I WILL BE GLAD TO RESUME MY ETERNAL VIGIL WITH THE HOPE THAT ELDARTHA’S FLAME IS NOT REQUIRED AGAIN.”

Zel passed the warrior’s precipice, and instantly felt otherworldly heat searing her bare skin. She had no choice but to channel Metallum just to withstand it, and pushed on. The chamber itself was not merely a cave, but the very bottom of an inconceivably deep hole, which Zel presumed to reach all the way to the surface and up through the tower. A stone ledge encircled a deep, open pit, in whose center a lone, glacierglass platform floated, its underside perpetually sublimating and re-freezing in battle against the heat blasting up from below. The beginning of a walkway stretched out over the pit, but reached no further than a few meters before devolving into a molten stump. Still, she felt the King’s guidance pointing that way, and that distance wasn’t even remotely outside her ability to leap across…

…Or, so she thought, until she approached the walkway’s edge to peer down, and deep within the pit witnessed a lake of molten metal. Through the many cracks in its surface, the same northlight as that of the Shifting Labyrinth shone; the light of the Foundations of the World. It was not this that stalled her from jumping, but the heat which rose up from there. That, alone, was enough to make her reconsider, nearly scorching her face with but a brief glimpse. Had she not channeled Skin of Iron beforehand, her eyes surely would’ve been burned from their sockets.

Ere she could dedicate any real time towards formulating a plan of traversal beyond the scorching abyss, her path arose before her from the molten lake. It stirred, bubbled, and swirled around in its crater, and from within it arose the form of a great goddess! That being of glistening metal and blue light, a woman’s form; she was tens, perhaps even a hundred meters tall, behind her trailing a mane of myriad metal segments shrouded in blue flame. Zelsys felt as though she might be scoured from existence at any moment, such was the Forgemother’s incandescent glory, and as she arose, the orange glow of her skin faded into case-hardened iridescence. She arose before Zelsys, holding out a hand for her to step onto, and despite the great heat, Zel did just that, turning her feet to iron in hopes of sparing herself from overly severe burns. It was… Warm. Not burning, not scalding, not even hot; just warm. The Forgemother brought her over to the central platform and set her down. This, too, was warm; the contrast of absolute cold and absolute heat somehow equalized the felt temperature. There was no anvil; instead, the Forgemother simply placed her curled fist against the platform’s side, her little finger outstretched overtop it, the surface of its nail perfectly flat and still.

“IRONHEARTED ONE. HAMMERFORGED ONE. YE, OF ADAMANT WILL. YE, FAVOURED BY MINE SKINLESS BROTHER. YE, WHO BEARS THE REVENANT’S MARK. YE, WHO BREAKS THE WINDS OF FATE. TAKE UP THINE HAMMER AND DO AS THOU WILT. THY TRIALS ARE NOT YET ENDED; THEY HAVE MERELY BEGUN. SHOULDST THOU LIVE THROUGH THIS LABOR, IT SHAN’T BE JUST THINE BLADE WHICH WILL EMERGE REFORGED.”

Zel set the Butcher upon it, followed by its segments. The deck of Jade Dragons followed, one by one, arrayed in four concentric circles around the blade. Three, five, seven, ten. At last she took the Butcher’s handle in hand, steeling herself, channeling Metallum. Despite standing on glacierglass that wasn’t attached to solid ground at any point, the essence of metal all but flooded into her with nary a tug. It only made sense, she supposed. Thus, drawing in vast quantities of Metallum, Zelsys metallized her own flesh as thoroughly as she could while remaining confident that she wouldn’t end up turning herself to a statue.

Skin to bronze, flesh to iron. Thick scales of metal formed across her right arm, its patina racing upward until it met the join-seam past her shoulder.

First, she had to break the stabilizing bands. Raising the Brass Stake, she brought it down upon them. With but one strike, the first band exploded straight off the metal like a cut spring. The second met the same fate, and Zel felt a familiar thrum reaching up her arm from the Butcher’s handle. With the third, faint electric arcs began to appear near the blade’s edges.

Seven sealing bands, there were in total.

With the fourth, the blade shuddered in her grasp.

The fifth and sixth seemed to have no consequence.

The moment she struck the seventh, a bolt of lightning raced up her arm; a serpentine tendril winding itself about the limb and progressing over her chest, to her stomach, and down her leg.