A spark of will. Water and bone gathered from all around, rising up and freezing into a perfect bone-backed mirror before him. He already saw ways to improve, myriad changes that would need to be made to make such an armor function in reality, but… It didn’t matter. This world was his own, and here he was not limited by physical reality.

With but a snap of his fingers and a jangle of his staff, he turned the half-demolished former prison of his own instincts into an impenetrable keep. Myriad towers rose up in place of those long gone, shattered walls grew to thrice their original height and thickness, and a tsunami of bone swirled about from every corner of his mind-realm, answering the call of its ruler.

Long, long before the enemy he had created for himself arrived, his Citadel of the Self was manned by an armada as boundless and untiring as that which he had given to Gamma-Koschei. Knights, and beasts, and warmachines of bone, all blazing with monochrome flame in a way shamelessly inspired by the impact left upon Victor by Zelsys’ recollection of a mysterious dragonslayer’s necromantic feat in the Blue Moon War.

A battle beyond mortal reckoning thereafter took place, tides of bodies crashing upon one another below as Victor faced down Gamma-Koschei and the False Self. Titans of flesh and bone rose up from the ground on Gamma-Koschei’s side, fireballs and lightning rained down from the shattered sky, and every manner of imaginable dark magick erupted forth from the imaginary wizard’s fingertips, for Victor had no clue as to what his grandfather could actually do. The False Self rocketed about like a wild beast, chasing after Victor with the simple directness of absolute rage, lacking the tactical direction of Gamma-Koschei.

Victor spent just a moment fleeing from his fake counterpart, ripping through the air as he summoned thousands of Devil’s Teeth in rapid succession, different from their real counterpart in the ability to change direction. A chaotic dance of missiles unfolded, a veritable circus in the sky utterly overwhelming the False Self while Victor closed in once more grasping his staff with both his left and third hands while his right was pulled back, a third layer of armor growing around it in moments. His False Self had already been riddled with holes, its armor broken in places and revealing an emaciated, wound-covered form covered in tumorous bone growths and permanently attached to its armor. He smashed down into a nearby mountain and raised up his spear, its blade becoming shrouded in flame as a twin-chambered devilbone thruster grew around its ring.

SPIRALING DETONATION SIGN

SPEAR FROM THE HEAVENS

METEORIC ONBASHIRA

The dream-realm’s sound-speed barrier shattered when Victor threw it, the structure of its thruster sending it into an ultra-high-velocity spin, twin tails of black and white flame bursting out in a spiral pattern. The blaze shrouding its blade formed into a black drill with swirls of white revolving about its perimeter. and with its impact naught was left of either his False Self or the mountain. With but a thought he summoned the spear back to his hand, touching it for just a moment before once more sending it on its way to rip through Gamma-Koschei’s titans while he ignited the thrusters of his right arm, howling: “MONS OMINOSUS, O MOUNT OF BLAZING FIRES!”

Pushed by his armor’s permanent thrusters and pulled by those of his right arm, he ascended well above Gamma-Koschei and descended upon him. The sound barrier was shattered once, twice, thrice over, Victor aiming for the self-same volcano into which he had cast the Von Wickten-Hoedorff thoughtform. His fist clashed with Gamma-Koschei’s staff, grasped in both of the latter’s gaunt hands. As the wizard’s titanic constructs fell, he uttered an incomprehensible word and their mass rose up behind him once more, arraying into a devilbone rocket nozzle ten times the wizard’s own size. The vast forces involved in its ignition set the air ablaze and blasted away the landscape behind him, but Victor asserted his command over his own mental realm and willed his own armor to burn brighter, for but the split-second which elapsed before Oculus returned to him. Spinning it in hand, he willed its devilbone additions to disintegrate and in the same act gathered a blazing-black inferno within its main ring, the four secondary rings arraying at equidistant intervals as they spun outward.

“Unleash, fire and flames alight…”

The flame collapsed into a singular bead.

“Full force, strike! WE FIGHT THE NIGHT!”

The detonation wasn’t a scattered blast as much as it was an incredibly tight cone carrying such force that it completely erased Gamma-Koschei’s midsection in an instant and carried on, carving a gash into the ground far below.

Before he could fall, Victor grabbed the wizard and impaled him upon Oculus’ tip before he sent him flying down into his mindscape’s volcanic pit.

Lightning struck in the distance.

He awoke feeling as if he hadn’t slept, his tongue feeling like a hunk of dry meat, his head pounding, everything… Everything, he felt. Every heartbeat, breath, muscle twitch.

“Water. We need water,” came thoughts that were his own, yet distinct in tone from his normal internal monologue.

And there, right next to him, she half-knelt. Smiling.

With one hand she held out a bottle of blue liquid atop one of Quincy’s sealed food rations… And in her other hand was the Antediluvian Gem, just hanging freely as she leaned her elbow against her thigh.

“Well done. You can let go of the scroll now,” she said.

Victor did as told, gritting his teeth and hissing as he did so; his entire hand ached from death-gripping the artifact by one of its spindles. He glanced at his hand, and when he looked back, the Antediluvian Gem was gone from Zel’s hand. She put the food and drink down in front of him; he took the latter, pulling the cork with his nails before drinking half its contents.