Reality came rushing back in, an all-consuming, wordless scream of “CANNOT BE” as the mundane reasserted itself over the arcane, the underground meadow uniformly, glaringly bright .

Zel blinked, her eyes painfully dry, and scales of metal slag fell from her eyelids. As she struggled to raise her hands and veritable curtains of brittle scale fell from her skin, and she saw the pearlescent tendril retreat into the empyrean river, Jorfr’s form slumping forward as he drew in ragged breaths, coughing up tiny metallic pebbles that shattered and turned to rust when they landed on the altar.

“Fuck me, I knew it’d be bad th-HGHRCK…”

The norseman’s voice was stolen away by a coughing fit.

“The moment I realized they were metal sp-EGH HUECK-" …Once more he coughed up chunks of brittle metal, this time carried by a small glob of blood. His breathing cleared up, suggesting the obstruction was gone: “Didn’t expect it to be this bad… Let’s get cleaned up, the paint stains like hell if you leave it on for too long.”

“Was it any easier when you received your uh… Gelum spirits? Or either of the previous times you played intermediary?” Zel asked, furrowing her brow to remember the essentia of ice as she stretched and tried to work out if any untoward stiffness remained within her form. She allowed the bear’s pelt to slip off her as she stood up, only for its head to break off when it landed in the grass, for what was left of its head - and its head alone - had transformed into a bare, antlered skull of the self-same brittle metal. while the rest remained soft. As far as she was aware - and thoroughly aware, she was - her body had, in reality, undergone no structural change. The chunk of metal in her Essentia Gut was quite real, unfortunately, but she had already willed her body to break it down into smaller chunks that she could spit out easily.

With the pelt gone she put her chest straps back on, but left the Impelling Arm on the ground, not wanting to risk any of the body paint getting stuck somewhere inside the glove. Instead, she put it in Fog Storage.

“When I got mine? Much easier, just a little frostbite, but the other times… Yeah, those were about this bad,” he grimaced, slowly and stiffly rising to his feet. “Your reserves will be quite limited to begin with, and they’ll grow over time depending on how much you use them… As if I needed to tell you that. There are also further rituals that can be used to temporarily and permanently bolster your connection and thus your reserves, but all except the most basic, temporary ones are beyond my ability.”

“What, like the thing with chicken blood you did in the pit?” Zel asked, and Jorfr nodded.

“Such sacrificial rites trace their roots to a more religious time, when we honored imagined, capricious gods rather than the very real power of earthly and ancestral spirits…” said the norseman who had just dredged up metal spirits from a leyline to imbue them into one who had already devoured a thundergod. He added, “...Though I suppose things have not changed all that much. Either way it involves immortal, wise individuals meting out judgment and passing down knowledge of mystic rites.”

They spent a short while at the altar as Zel helped Jorfr gather up his things, with the only thing left to clean up being the mess of liquid and rust on the altar. Jorf, however, solved the issue before it could even be brought up. The norseman gingerly retrieved his starmetal knife and looked it over before he put it away, took on a wide stance, and put his palms on the altar.

“And this…” he said, as lines of frost spread out from his palms, progressively turning the entire puddle into a solid plate of ice. “...Is how you dispose of the spirit medium!”

With a swing of his entire torso, he tossed the frozen mass away. Some few more minutes were spent making sure the ritual site was clean, with Zel putting the used bear pelt in Fog Storage to be discarded later. In the same action, she also took a look at her traits list, smiling when she saw a new trait listing.

CORE OF EARTHLY IRON Type: Druidism, Symbiotic Trigger: At-Will (Limited - Requires ground contact) Effects: Metallum Extraction B+, Metallum Digestion S, Metallumkinesis C+, Hardness Enhancement D Advancement: Achieve a Hardness of A “I am the conqueror’s blade, the emperor’s treasure, the dragon’s scale. I am that which enchains the stars and gods themselves. I am the immovable object, the unstoppable force, I am superbia.”

How amusing. Whether her interaction with Jorfr’s possessed form had been influenced more by his own humbler nature or the fact that nature spirits have no will and thus no ego, their expression as one of her traits certainly reflected her own rather healthy self-esteem. There were, of course, new techniques to look at as well, but she chose to leave looking at them for later.

The duo then made their way towards the Fog Gate to the surface, Jorfr striking up further conversation as they went with a curious, slightly concerned query.

“...By the way, how’s your Spirit Animal? I noticed some slight warning signs - what with the pelt changing and all - but it seemed like you really do have it under control.”

“I wasn’t exaggerating when I said we have an accord,” Zel smugged. “Now, what was that you mentioned about berserkers again?”

“Hell if I know, I’ve only ever met a handful. What they do is a vastly more advanced and more terrifying form of the transformation I used in the pit,” the norseman laughed it off, only to shift into a serious, nearly somber mood in mere seconds.

“Some of them become so thoroughly transformed that they dwarf even that blood-red walking tank they paraded through the streets a couple days ago. I think the specific name for them would translate to “spiritwalker” in Ikesian. Regardless, does this place have some sort of bath, or is that the point of the bathhouse down the street?”