That thing didn’t move like an animal. It propelled itself forward upon blasts of flame that issued from the ends of its limbs with each bound, constantly snarling and howling as it spewed a seemingly boundless deluge of bonefire. Such festering, explosive anger spilled forth from the devilbone wolf as to drown out Von Wickten’s own aura of hatred as the servitor circled him. It bombarded him with a constant, blinding outpour of flame, yet never made the mistake of blindly throwing itself at him. Certainly, it was nowhere near fast enough to outrun Von Wickten, and the Impurity Elemental would have doubtlessly smashed it to bits the moment the shock of just what it was wore off… If Zefaris had magically popped out of existence, that is.

With the gunwoman’s redoubled onslaught of covering fire, he had no choice but to face the facts and seek cover behind the nearest Suncage Grid pylon, a tactic which Zefaris had accounted for by placing one of her kinetic mirror glyphs in such a place that its bounce cone covered that area. As he retreated and fought to defend himself, Von Wickten noticed a gap in Zef’s suppressing fire when she had just holstered Pentacle to let it reload, loosing a Blaze Schneider in her direction. She saw him raising his arm and the split-second charge-up, and this, combined with seeing it go off once before, was enough to calculate its exact flight path.

She pulled a silver coin from her pocket and tossed it forward.

The yellow-purple bolt of curseflame smashed into it only meters from Zef’s face and went careening right back at its originator. Not only that, its trajectory was altered such that it struck one of the glacierglass fragments embedded in his back, which were at this point riddled with cracks and on the verge of shattering. Von Wickten’s own Blaze Schneider ripped through the weak point and out the front of his chest, throwing him forward into Midnight Wolf’s waiting fiery maw. Zef saw it grab him and pick him up, but the rest was out of her sight. Victor, however, saw the whole thing clear as day. The construct latched onto Von Wickten’s arm, blasting him with bonefire the whole time, as bursts of flame erupted from its feet and it smashed him against the pylon’s hard edge in a spin. Before he could recover, it let go and continued its spinning flight, careening well out of his reach and rolling across the grass before it managed to recover. Two Blaze Schneiders in a row ripped after it, but the servitor’s flight was so chaotic and its actual body so slim that both shots went wide, blasting apart only the shroud of form-obscuring bonefire that surrounded it.

Zef had to slow her onslaught as she carved a second glyph and continued to refresh the two to maintain suppressing fire, but Von Wickten couldn’t exit his cover lest he be once more faced with her unfettered onslaught. Her sheer fire-rate was entirely unbefitting the arms in her hands, their limitations all but erased by liberal abuse of Flicker Step, her figure flashing from one firing stance to the next in eye-wateringly rapid succession.

Being nearly immobile as she neared the exact moment of transformation, Zel glanced over to Victor out of concern for what consequences such a creation might have had upon him. Bloodied and downright deathly-pale though he was, the young man had somehow finagled his tablet out of its place and retrieved a bottle of Liquid Vigor, which he was very slowly drinking. He gave a bloodied grin and a weak thumbs-up with his left hand when he realized she was looking at him.

“YOU… YOU HONORLESS CUR!” there came a furious howl as Adalbert stumbled out from behind the pylon, defending his left-hand side with his tail and taking care not to lean out far enough to expose his right. A continuous flood of bonefire enveloped him, and though it was true that it could turn even his silver armor brittle and flaky, the rate at which it wore away at him was slower than his armor’s ability to repair itself. In effect, Midnight Wolf couldn’t defeat him on its own even if given a theoretically infinite amount of time, but it did weaken his defenses.

“Honor? You dare speak to me of honor?!” she cackled in disbelief, releasing her hold on the blades which she’d held wrapped up in the hair up until this point. “The only honor you deserve is to die and be remembered as a cautionary tale. Now, cease polluting my world with your presence, filth!”

All at once her braids spread out from her back, electric arcs springing forth from the blade-tongues of the manifested Thundergods at their tips. Each wrapped itself around the hilt of one blade, enveloping it in lightning as their edges became enshrouded in screaming empyrean white. At last, the brilliant core in her second stomach was ready, and accompanied by a deluge of Metallum, it set her being alight.

Skin became armor, nerves became wires, her beating heart a reactor. The pupils vanished from her eyes, consumed by a blue-white glow as one iron and one brass antler grew from her brow. The former’s shape was smooth and sleek while the latter was gnarled and branch-like, and between them a beastly skull of these same metals sat, its colours opposite the antlers.

There was… Something different, this time. Zel felt an animal-like eagerness from her Thundergods, perhaps because she’d traded one of them for one of the Stormbloom’s Blazing Thundergods... No, that wasn’t it, she’d not felt this even once since communing with the Stormbloom. It was as if purposely taking on the image of a pervasive cultural myth had some hard-to-define magnifying influence. Now, of all times, she felt closest to the peak of strength she’d experienced in her battle with Ubul.

EGO INSTALL

EIGHT-ARMED AVATAR OF DESTRUCTION

EMBODYING CONQUEST OF THE SELF AND NATURE ALIKE

FORMLESS BUTCHERY: STORM CONQUEROR’S MANTLE -FULGARROW REPRISE-