Arcs of blue slithered about her, metallized muscles writhed beneath her skin and creaked with effort, the heretofore subtle silver lines under her skin now shone bright milky-white and covered every inch of exposed flesh.

Kyriak grasped the largest boulder’s cold-iron handles, and with a distinctly bear-like scream, he forced it off the ground and above his head before slamming it back down and emitting another, even louder howl of sheer physical struggle. Seeing this and not being one to be outdone, Zelsys decided to try one-upping the man-bear rather than settle for a draw. The odds that she was stronger than him in terms of lifting strength were low, but if nothing else, she was going to make this one hell of a draw.

Then, she turned from the boulder and to one of the cold-iron target blocks.

“Are these anchored to the ground in any way?” she questioned. Satisfied by the reception of head-shakes, she approached it from the rear and dug her fingers into the metal near its bottom edge, forming handholds in the metal by coating her digits in lightning.

Zelsys spent nearly half a minute building up Fulgur in her second stomach and all throughout her body, as well as channeling Metallum to reinforce herself. Muscles bulged against skin as they swelled with blood, metal antlers grew from her brow, and her braids wrapped around her arms. She marshalled nearly every strength-enhancing technique at her disposal short of Storm-conqueror’s Mantle… Including trickery. The Fulgur charge in her second stomach and the wrapping of her braids around her arms were not for raw strength, but for the harnessing of magnetism.

A maelstrom of lightning swirled about her as she began her lift. The vast Fulgurmagnetic forces she’d conjured took the shape of an immense, bear-masked humanoid figure, akin in shape to an even more exaggerated form of Zelsys. The Primordial Self’s manifestation stood over Zelsys and smashed its arms into the target block.

In a singular moment of truly inhuman struggle, the bronze-skinned foreigner forced a block of solid cold-iron to rise from the ground and lifted it over her head, aided by the semi-physical manifestation of her own Primordial Self. One could plainly see the block warping and twisting under the vast, conflicting magnetic forces which affected it, but none cared. Screaming in exertion as rivulets of blood ran out of the scars where her neck and arms had been severed, Zel slammed the block back down in its place.

“Y’know… I could’ve sworn these were heavier!” she laughed as she marshaled every bit of focus to correct the newfound slight bend to the bones of her legs, masking the horrid creaking sound by stretching.

Kyriak approached as she did so, looking down at her by sheer virtue of his superhuman size. He had a look in his eyes that said: “I could also lift one of those, but I won’t.”

The sheer respect that radiated out of him almost made her feel bad for pulling that stunt. Almost. He waited for Zelsys to get back to her feet as the sound of the heretofore-gathered crowd rose around them. Placing his incredibly heavy, hairy, sweaty, and giant hand on her shoulder, he gave her a solemn nod before sweeping his gaze around and gesticulating upwards with his free arm. Kyriak then proceeded to scream, and Zelsys could swear it was louder than the report of her arm-cannon.

For a moment the small crowd which had gathered echoed the deafening noise, only to dissipate the moment Kyriak lowered his arm and fell silent. He took Zelsys aside and the two of them sat in silence for a few minutes. Two Boreans stuck around next to them - Zel figured they were Kyriak’s retainers or somesuch.

“One of my clan sent you here, yes?” the man-bear then piped up.

Zel nodded.

“So you knew who I was, Zelsys Newman,” he continued.

She nodded again. Kyriak smiled.

“Good. Then you are not a coward. Come, I would have words with you - elsewhere.”

He nodded towards a nearby building. It was a sizeable structure whose roof superficially resembled the upturned hull of a great warship. Above the doorway hung a vastly oversized model of a one-handed sword, the establishment’s name etched along the blade.

WOLFBLADE

Two others accompanied the two of them into the building. Zel had, at first, assumed the place to be a weapon store of some sort, or a general outlet for smithed goods. This was proved partially correct when they entered and a stench-wall of sweat and alcohol smashed into her face, immediately followed by the sight of a counter protected by bars with much more reasonable-sized swords and axes displayed within. A metal sign with a pictogram of a sword pointed to a door next to the counter, to the right-hand side from the entrance. A second, beaten-looking metal sign next to that door warned patrons that they would not be sold a weapon if they were too inebriated to hold it properly and cut a dummy into five even segments. It also warned them that for safety the weapon would be delivered to their home no sooner than three days later to avoid drunken violence.

There was a main hall with around fifteen or sixteen patrons scattered about, and a fair number of doors lining the sides. A large, albeit markedly less muscular man stood behind the counter and immediately turned his attention to Kyriak. He asked: “The usual?”

Kyriak nodded, adding: “Bring the good mead. I have a guest.”

The barman’s eyes briefly flitted over to Zelsys, then back to Kyriak. He gave a silent nod and disappeared into the door behind the counter. Kyriak gestured for Zelsys to follow, and she did. The whole time, she wasn’t sure just how on-edge she should be, but she instinctively kept herself ready for violence to break out any moment just in case. She found herself led up a stairway at the back of the main hall, up to a back room on the second floor, its interior a plainly furnished rectangular layout with no windows and a back door. She couldn’t help but notice that the doors were in fact solid iron with wooden facades and that the sound of the exterior world faded out the moment one of Kyriak’s retainers closed the door.