The Thundergod skulls’ chrome-like gleam brought to mind a Knights of Rebellion song, and an untoward chuckle escaped her, and she reached up, taking the skull from between her antlers and seating it around her right hand, melding it onto her metallized skin and forming a handle for it as she did so. She regurgitated a compressed mass of Fulgur, a sudden flash of lightning striking from her tongue to the metal skull. The unmistakable form of her first-ever Thundergod took shape around it, its features substantially more aggressive than the others. A blade-like ridge protruded from its nose, much like the beak which the Butcher developed after she split the lightning.

She decided that if their manifested forms were to continue playing an increasingly prominent role in her toolkit, she may as well name them for easier differentiation… And these names would just be numbers one through eight, skipping five because she had traded Five with the Stormbloom.

“Thundergods, be unleashed!”

The incantation was all a show, of course, but what was her other option? Just bleeding herself to generate such a deluge of crimson fireflies that even Rikke’s armour couldn’t stand up to it? A striking display to be sure, but it wouldn’t bring across the message that she wanted. It wouldn’t remind the Boreans that stagnation was death, that a foreigner had not only gained command over both the berserker and shamanist arts, but that she possessed insights absent from Borea’s own well-developed, yet stagnant traditions.

No. She would do this properly, even if she had to put in twice, thrice, fivefold, even tenfold the effort necessary.

Her ego wouldn’t be satisfied if she didn’t leave a lasting impression.

The sheer amount of Fulgur she had just mixed in her second stomach was equal in sheer intensity to a Conqueror’s Mantle ignition core. She made her stomach lining bleed and transferred it into the Essentia Gut. She used half of its empyrean might; it flowed all throughout her body and out into her braids, the crimson hue of blood lightning seeping into her thundergods’ manifestations and her aura alike. Arclines formed and wound together, Fulgur condensing as proper bodies were formed for Zel’s thundergods, which extended out serpentine and covered in zig-zag patterns resembling lightning. Their bodies even extended backward, entirely encasing her braids all the way to the back of her head, while bursting geysers of lightning erupted around her braids’ roots.

GEHEIMNIS: THUNDERGOD UNLEASHING

Zel’s aura flared to such an intensity that even Rikke’s quills burned up in its furious, screaming maelstrom. The ground baked into red-hot crude ceramic around her.

Rikke flexed, grunting in exertion. Several quills clattered to the ground behind her.

Another damn white snake erupted from her back taking the place of a tail, a trail of quills down its spine. It was twice as thick and long as an arm. Launching quills by every means at her disposal, spitting acid from her mouth and serpent-tail alike, Rikke tried to strafe Zelsys into submission by sheer volume of fire, rapidly approaching. An obvious attempt to close the distance and remove the travel time that allowed Zelsys to parry her quills.

One of Zel’s braids coiled, lashing forward like a whip; the Thundergod at its tip shot forward, its nearly massless body becoming a serpentine lightning bolt with the massively supersonic velocity to match. A thundercrack sounded through the arena.

The impact threw Rikke off-course, the Thundergod’s body temporarily dissipated. It retracted and reformed in moments, while another lashed forward. Another. Another. Bright-blue flashes accompanied each lash, scales ripping away from the berserker’s body, yet even still, she persisted. Her own aura was so fierce, her flesh so tough and quick to heal, that even this couldn’t stop her; it merely slowed her down.

Zel used the second half of her blood lightning ignition core, also burning the vast majority of her remaining metallum reserves to reinforce her right arm, its bronze patina reaching all the way to her shoulder.

Thunderclap Sting. Arcline. Manifested Thundergods. Metallomancy. Retributive Battery. Despot of Self. Storm-conqueror’s Mantle. Even a dash of blood magic.

A culmination of myriad techniques unified for the sole purpose of dispelling the delusion that the Ramdalls - or any of the conspirator-clans for that matter - possessed the means to stop her.

No. 1 opened its mouth, and between its jaws, in Zel’s open palm, a ball of crimson lightning had formed. All six other Thundergods wound together around her upper arm, each of their manifestations extending down to join No. 1’s mass, their own open maws arrayed in threes to the sides.

In a single moment, the crimson ball of lightning was purified and concentrated by the vast spiritual power of seven Thundergods and their master.

A miniature star was born; perhaps not in nature, but in its empyrean incandescence.

With the same whip-like punching technique as was the foundation for Thunderclap Sting, she cast the serpent forward in an oblique arc, its manifestation carrying in its maw her false star. A strange thunderclap resounded; a two-fold explosion, nearly simultaneous, the first from the Gestalt shattering the sound-speed barrier many times over, smashing Rikke to the ground and piercing right through her.

The second came from the faux-star’s subterranean detonation.

The entire ring shattered into seven segments, and from the cracks molten rock erupted while Rikke lay there, a gaping hole through her stomach.

Even Rikke’s utterly inhuman, bestial savagery couldn’t stand up from that.

FORMLESS BUTCHERY: GESTALT THUNDERCLAP STING -BLOODSTAR IMPACT-

Zel pulled the Gestalt back, allowing both it and Storm-conqueror’s Mantle to dissipate. The patina crumbled from her upper arm. She felt wrenching hunger, but that was it; neither did she struggle to stand, nor was her Metallum reserve hopelessly depleted.

A stone drum’s bell-like sound rang out.

“ONE!”

Another ring.

“TWO!”

Another ring.

“THREE!”

And so on. Rikke didn’t get up. Her snake-tail weakly slithered to her stomach and stuffed itself into the hole, geysers of steam erupting around it.

“SEVEN!”

The snake’s headless mass fell away, leaving a spiral-shaped pattern of white scales on Rikke’s stomach.