Eventually, the time came for the final preparation. To comply with the agreement to do battle unarmed and unarmored, Zel took off her boots, the Impelling Arm, and even removed the blades from her braids, tying them instead with string. She shared a kiss with Zef before making her way to the central circle. The ground was made up from a coarse clay-rich dirt such that it was a good balance of soft and solid. It was around forty meters across.

“No easy dust, ground slams won’t be as effective either… Jorfr’s anchoring will be affected as well…” she mulled over, quietly sitting there, pulling Zef’s seal-bottle out of Fog Storage, alongside several stormbloom cherries and a brass cup, placing all of these atop her tablet as a tray in front of herself.

There, being watched by tens of thousands, Zelsys popped open the bottle and filled the cup to just below the notch on its inside. She made the bottle drop into a miniature Fog Vortex just after placing it back on the tablet, then proceeded to eat all but one of the cherries while she waited. She also accounted for the pre-battle powerup period’s short length by creating a third-step ignition core for Storm-conqueror’s Mantle and storing it away in her second stomach. It would be even weaker than normal without the Broken Butcher to act as an amplifier, but it was an advantage nonetheless.

Rikke finally arrived, accompanied by a fair number of strangers, some of whom even looked interesting enough to not ignore. By her side, however, were her cunt-faced cousin, his foreign shield-brother, and a one-eyed old man that looked strangely familiar even though Zel was sure she hadn’t seen him before. The beastly woman brought a live rabbit into the circle and sacrificed the creature right then and there, draining it into a silver bowl and painting herself with it before throwing the carcass to the side; someone’s pet wolf ran in from the stands, carrying it away.

She performed her own clan’s version of the rite to create crude Vitae Elixir, involving three herbs and a powder of some sort alongside murmured incantations. A drop of her own blood seemed to be the final catalyst, causing the liquid to boil for a split-second and turn a light burgundy shade. She, too, poured it into an identically-sized cup to Zel’s, though hers was silver just as the bowl, gesturing for Zelsys to go first as had been agreed upon previously.

Zel ate the last cherry, kicking back the elixir and letting it mix with the fruit in her mouth. The combined flavor was so forceful it nearly brought tears to her eyes, but in a good way. It burned on the way down, again, in a good way. She willed both the empty cup and the small pile of pits to vanish into her tablet, then threw it towards Zefaris without a second look. The blonde, of course, caught it.

A mental switch was flipped; the Thinking Self gave the order, the Primordial Self readily turned metaphorical dials and flicked ten-dozen switches. The flesh-machine that was Zelsys Newman’s body spun up into full output. Hormones and nutrients flooded her veins. Her heart rate and pressure both skyrocketed.

An abrupt change took place in her facial features, a relaxed expression suddenly hardened into a sneering grimace of violent intent.

Lightning enveloped her form as she exhaled a great gust of Fog, its gaseous substance forming together with lightning into a typical Beast Self manifestation right in front of her, only… Its shape was wrong. All those present knew it, and they all readily voiced their shock at the sight of a Spirit Animal whose appearance so closely mimicked a person’s physical form. It wasn’t just upright, or even near-humanoid, it was nothing more or less than an exaggerated, primal version of its source. Massive, its face covered by a bear’s skull, its nudity covered by the curtains of its hair.

It only existed for a few moments. The Primordial Self didn’t growl, sneer, or even try to lash out as one would expect. It stood stone-still, blasting out such a powerful aura that dust and small pebbles were ripped from its surroundings and swirled about Zelsys in a maelstrom. With a step forward, it vanished into Zelsys, leaving behind only the bear skull in the form of a half-bronze, half-iron metallomancy artifact, which was soon accompanied by the burgeoning of similarly metallic antlers.

There came a terrible creaking as her metallized right arm subtly expanded alongside the rest of her and the humanity in her eyes was consumed by blazing white-blue glow, monstrous beast heads manifesting at the tips of three of her braids. A metallic sheen flowed over the rest of her skin. A fourth Thundergod manifested. She felt forty thousand pairs of eyes, Rikke’s included, and she didn’t even try to stop herself from glancing past her opponent at her family. Specifically, the old man. She finally recognized him. It was the same weirdo she’d noticed in front of the Hulson longhouse, it was plain to see in his eyes.

“I am nearly done. If you so wish, perform your own strengthening-rites,” Zel offered to Rikke. The Ramdall representative nodded, and proceeded to bite herself on the upper right arm. It instantly began sprouting white scales and growing in mass, lengthening into a coiled cylinder as her balled up fist turned to a smooth serpent’s head. She did the same to her left, which sprouted black fur and with it six bladed tendrils down the limb’s entire length, reaching to the ground. Her mutations took a fair bit to fully manifest, betraying the reason she had offered this caveat; her own transformation had the same flaw as Zel’s. Her already substantial body hair only expanded, covering the rest of her in a reddish coat; only her face and portions of her chest remained bare. Her face changed in shape as well; a black patch formed on her nose with both it and her mouth slightly protruding outwards as her teeth turned to fangs, long bristles grew from the tips of her ears, and her eyes predictably became yellow and slit-pupiled.