Even now, bloodied and propped up by another, she grinned, by some impossibility exuding the appearance of an untouched, truly victorious warrior. It reminded Ubul of the Emperor, of Xiān Dì, in his younger days- nay, it reminded him of Young Master Tian Feng. That young man from all those centuries ago was an altogether different person to whom he became, a distinction even the Emperor himself had acknowledged in changing his name.

“Every last word,” she said. “A soldier who had turned himself into a wendigo, the mere existence of a necrobeast or the Living Storm, my own birth in an Ikesian bunker… All consequences of the war. I needn’t mention the strength I took from the Dungeon, or your Emperor’s genocide five centuries ago, for it was the Core’s spite that made it do all in its power to aid me.”

Ubul couldn’t help but chuckle, or as close to it as his deteriorating self could: “TRULY, A WARRIOR BORN ENTIRELY FROM THE RAVAGES OF OUR WARS… THE BLACK JUDGE DOES NOT OFT HAVE A SENSE OF HUMOR SUCH AS THIS.”

“HEARKEN TO ME, ABOMINATION. HOMUNCULUS. VANQUISHER. WORTHY FOE.”

“THOUGH MY TRUE SELF WOULD HAVE PREVAILED, THAT MAN IS DEAD. THIS IS WHAT I AM NOW, AND I… I AM DEFEATED. IT IS AN HONOR TO BE DISCHARGED OF MY DUTY BY ONE SUCH AS THEE; PRAY, GRANT MY MADDENED COMRADES THE SAME REPRISE… PERHAPS THEN HIS DIVINITY MAY SEE PURPOSE BEYOND DIRECTIONLESS CONQUEST.”

“THAT SAID…” Ubul trailed off, raising a hand. The geomantic glow of his deteriorating form surged one last time, the top half of his head and the metal of his skull crumbling away to expose an amber-coloured crystal in the exact shape of a human brain, only his mouth and lower jaw left to suggest the presence of a face. “FOR AS LONG AS A FLICKER OF LIFE REMAINS WITHIN ME, SO SHALL I DO BATTLE AGAINST THE ENEMIES OF THE EMPIRE… AND THERE IS NAUGHT BUT DYING ASH. IF NOTHING ELSE, I KNOW TO FACE DEFEAT WITH DIGNITY.”

He closed his fist in a crushing gesture, and the wall surrounding the battlefield began to crumble.

“PERHAPS IN MY NEXT LIFE, WE MIGHT MEET AS FRIENDS.”

Ubul’s true self crumbled to a million pieces, and their glow faded to grey. The rain washed him away into the soil, leaving only the empty, inanimate husk of the body he had, in his last moments, made for himself. What Terra was still left within Ubul at the time of his final death seeped into the stone, rendering it an eternal testament to his defeat, one that wouldn’t crumble or wear away with time.

With the shroud of lightning that had enveloped her gone, the rain at last fell upon Zelsys, soaking her top half in seconds, the cold downpour washing away all the pain of her injuries. In this moment of victory, her thoughts turned towards remorse, ever so briefly - remorse for the worry and grief she must’ve caused to Zefaris and the others, even in a few dozen seconds of false death. The clouds parted, allowing the moon to shine through once again, its tranquil light refracted through the raindrops. She felt herself slipping, falling into microsleeps as she watched those from outside the wall re-enter the field, some cautiously, others swarming in. Makhus helped lead her in… Some direction, she wasn’t sure where, but she trusted him enough to just go along with it.

Oh, there was Zef.

“We need to rest. NOW.” the Primordial Self demanded, and the Thinking Self acquiesced.

__________________________________________________________________________________

Zelsys drifted back to consciousness to the sight of a tent’s interior, laying atop an uncharacteristically comfortable bed that turned out to mainly be pelts, a red-stained glass set atop an ammo box alongside two seal-bottles, one of Viriditas, one of Rubedo. Atop the ammo box was also the Lightning Butcher, or rather, what was left of it, a dagger-length chunk covered in blue-glowing cracks, seething with arcane power as if to spite its broken state. The Impelling Arm, alongside her ammo belt and boots, was neatly set to her right as well. Her gaze lazily swept from right to left as she turned, noticing the blonde in a black dress who had slumped over next to her, her face covered by an officer’s cap and her arms wrapped around Zel.

The pain of existence soon clawed its way to the forefront of her mind, even if for only a moment before she subdued it and pushed it to the edges of her awareness. Indeed, for only a moment, after which she marshaled Herculean mental effort to raise her left arm, nudging the cap off of Zef’s head as she ran her fingers through the blonde’s hair. The markswoman snapped awake in an instant, her head twitching upward, her eye instantaneously snapping to Zel’s face. Despite wanting to ask how long she’d been out, Zelsys gladly gave into the overt display of affection that followed.

It was the arrival of a third party that pried the two off of each other, this being some random tankwoman, wearing the unarmored exoskeleton of her suit, probably to aid with carrying those awfully heavy-looking crates in her arms.

“Eck- You’re uh… Awake! I’ll just-” the brunette panicked, setting down the crates to the left of the entrance and just running out. They heard her calling out that Zelsys was awake, and a little while later, four people entered the tent: Estoras, Makhus, Sigmund, and Jorfr. It was the alchemist who sprung to action, striding ahead of the group, pouring three different powders into the glass, then mixing it with Viriditas and Rubedo to make Vitae, before he handed it over to Zelsys. She raised an eyebrow at him, but downed the mixture without question, at which point he pulled out a small, oval, brass-topped flask filled with white-glowing liquid, handing it to her.

“I took the Philosopher’s Heart with me. You’re welcome,” he said tersely, but his relief at her state couldn’t have been more obvious. The feeling of consuming the elixir was… Tranquil. It felt as if every drop of the liquid was spent in directly righting whatever was wrong with the body, surpassing biological causality, even if she knew it likely operated by some complex daisy-chain of bio-arcane reactions.

Wait, if Makhus had had the time to brew a batch of Fivefold Philter for her… The question she’d wished to ask slipped out the moment she swallowed the last of the philter: “How long was I out?”

“Three days,” he responded.