“Y’know… Couldn’t you just use Arcline as a scaffold to build the snake construct around?” Zefaris suggested, seemingly out of nowhere, after they had already returned to their chambers. Her face was still somewhat flushed, but as far as Zel could tell, she wasn’t outright drunk anymore, at least not on mead.

Zel froze in place, stone-still, not even breathing as she processed those words.

“By the Dead Ones, it was in front of me all this time…” she laughed at herself for not thinking of it sooner, cradling her head in her hands; she had thought of Arcline purely as a fulgurmagnetic rope of sorts, particularly in relation to weapons, because that had been the sole reason she had created it. Just as it had been so many times before, yet again it was a mixture of several outside inspirations that had sparked the idea. She could simply combine Arcline with her Thundergod manifestations to solve the main problem of extending them. Forcing the serpents to extend to any significant distance beyond her body was just impractical, but with Arcline, she could create a secondary construct-body for each serpent without forcing the spirit itself to extrude any further than the head.

Now she just needed to work out the technique itself. Considering that it was just an adaptation of what she could already do, she expected that it would be ready before her battle with Rikke.

Zel slept as she would have done any other night, but she dreamt several times; she dreamt because she had tasked her Primordial Self with inducing that state so that she might maintain her arm’s metallized state without needing to wake. She could scarcely imagine how difficult this would’ve been if she were fighting against her own body. Even this one night had driven in a clear message: She needed those pills. Her Core of Earthly Iron just wouldn’t be able to keep up with the demands of rebuilding living tissue into a permanently metallized, yet still-living form.

Much like a ranking officer might report to his superior at the first opportunity, so too did the Primordial Self burden the Thinking Self with knowledge during the last dream-state immediately before Zel awoke: “Without supp-le-ments, we will not last. Twenty more hours ma-xi-mum. Per-ma-nent damage will begin to take hold after. Use of leyline-well may help; up to thirty hours.”

She couldn’t afford to sit at a ritual site all day; before she even awoke, she had already decided to go to Ingvald that day, realizing that she had foolishly forgotten about the pills while she was there, her mind having been utterly focused on the Butcher.

Zel woke, as usual, before any of her compatriots, and just as yesterday, she found Fryg in the great hall. The ice witch was eating. She raised her eyes to Zelsys, but said nothing, returning to her meal. She was not alone, however. Yvonne, too, was awake, and she gave Zelsys a markedly more cheerful, but equally wordless greeting, smiling and raising a hand. Zel did the same, an audible creak resounding from her elbow.

Exiting the longhouse, she found that all remnants of the hunting party’s return from yesterday were gone. After going through her morning workout at the gymnasium in front of the Wolfblade and having her breakfast at that inn, she returned to the longhouse to wake the others so they could depart for the Bjorn property to get a good look at the place and make first use of their newfound access to a Primary Spring. Upon her return, she found a package from Ingvald had been delivered for her. A wooden box, within it three wooden trays of fifty small, glittering bronze pills each. Both the box and trays were clearly made in a hurry.

A note sat atop it all:

Forgot about the pills.

Next batch tomorrow.

Come pick it up yourself.

Thankful, she tossed two into her mouth and swallowed, putting the rest in storage before moving on to wake Victor. Before she even reached him she felt the strain on her reserves and the stiffness of her arm lightening.

She found the young man already awake, sitting at his desk topless and with his left arm covered in small, cross-shaped cuts. Bruises and scratches clearly made by human hands littered his back, a few scratches even visible on his bone plates. A bloody knife laid to his right; next to it was a small bowl with ground-up jade and one of the moulds Zefaris used to make lead shot for Tempesta. Elsewhere on the table was also a jar of Azoth-auric Amalgam, several small pieces of mutton-fat jade, and a bowl containing glittering paste that was obviously a mixture of the amalgam with ground-up jade. Several small pearl-like beads that glittered with golden flecks were meticulously arrayed in the crease between the table’s two constituent boards.

Off to the side were various bone construct pieces, strewn about on the floor, the table, even the windowsill. One particularly bulky piece, affixed to a spine-like belt in place of a buckle, was accompanied by a variety of small trinkets moulded from bone, especially a variety of keys. It was obviously a replica Iron Rider belt.

The Oculus staff was propped up over it all using three alchemical glassware holders, and Victor was currently in the process of channeling something through its ring while his left hand was palm-up right below it on the table. It already had the cross-shaped cut. Not wanting to disturb him, she watched. A small, yet meticulously shaped piece of devilbone took form; he embedded one of the glittering beads into the item, and with a trigger-word the devilbone piece then shot into his palm as he emitted a hiss of pain. The resulting bulge vanished as he muttered incantations and the glyph circles on both his hands glowed. She recognized the glyphs and words - it was a modified version of the Bone-eating Hand technique.

Once done, he turned to look at her, closing and opening his hand as he spoke: “We’re going to the Bjorn place already? It’s only…”

He glanced to the left at his Tablet and raised his eyebrows, turning back to Zel: “...Oh. I guess hyper fixating on ritualistic self-mutilation really makes time fly.”

“You’re giving yourself Iron Rider trackers?” Zel guessed.

“I doubt these would work with an Iron Rider belt, but yeah,” he admitted, reaching for something previously occluded by the clutter. A small brass cup; he kicked it back, grimacing and shuddering.

“All those spices and this stuff still kicks like a mule…” he uttered. She knew that reaction, and that cup. Vitae elixir.