Chapter 152: 152 – Iconoclasm

Zefaris couldn’t help feeling concerned when she saw Zel so nonchalantly step into that macabre contraption, even if nothing seemed amiss for the first twenty or so seconds. The needles were huge, sure, but she didn’t seem unwell, until her eyes suddenly went blank moments before the chamber’s lightgems suddenly flickered to red and started flashing. At that moment she knew something was wrong, as she’d noticed that something always goes up shit creek when the light turns red, be it lightgem or glyph. So, she took a deep breath in preparation, felt the Fog filling her lungs.

She saw the statue’s claws pull back, leaving behind globs of black, tar-like glue that sealed the entry wounds, only for the statue’s ribs to stay put. Its hands twitched about, its eyes flickering between blue and red, even as Zel’s arms slipped out of its grip and hung loose by her side. It finally settled on red, the statue’s hands surging inward to impale Zelsys through the gaps in its rib cage.

There was no hesitation in her mind, when Zefaris saw it happening. Raising Pentacle to take aim, pulling the trigger, exhaling Fog, all in sequence as the statue moved to riddle Zel with holes. Zefaris planted a bullet in each of the statue’s shoulders, just in the nick of time, just as Zel’s eyes flickered open.

It was just barely in time, as the statue’s arms screeched and scraped to a halt just as a few talons sank a centimeter or so into Zel’s side. Zef could clearly see the jolt of pain jump across her face.

There flashed a strange light behind her right eye, a murderous glow accompanied by the emergence of a Fog wisp from the tear duct. It was brief and barely noticeable, but the Homunculus Eye still saw every detail. Was that something new, or old? There wasn’t time to ruminate now, as Zelsys sucked in a breath and, with a long exhalation, reached out, grabbing the statue’s arms. With a forceful pull that looked easier than Zef felt it should’ve, Zelsys finished the job and ripped the statue’s arms right off their shoulders to send them smashing down to the ground.

With another breath, she almost effortlessly yanked the stone ribs that caged her from their sockets. She reached out, her eyes wordlessly jumping to her cleaver and then to Zef’s face. The markswoman grabbed the holster by its straps with the hand in which she held the bayonet, hefting it over to her counterpart. Even with this greater strength, the blade still felt impractically heavy.

Zefaris looked on, watching her counterpart pull the massive blade free of its sheath and grip its guard with her left hand, taking a deep breath before she wrathfully roused its sawteeth and smashed them against the statue’s neck. To the markswoman’s surprise, the statue responded to its neck being ripped into, spitting some Fog that formed into a Pateirian symbol. Then, again, and again, and again. It formed new symbols at the same rate as it had previously, only they were in Pateirian and very recognizably different in handwriting than the dungeon’s.

Within seconds, Zel was out of breath, taking a few more seconds to fill her lungs again before she made the sawteeth continue their screaming. Seeing her so barbarously butcher the statue really made obvious just how different the Breath Engine breathing technique was from the one that came naturally to her - she spent almost as much time breathing as she did actually sawing away at the statue, where with engine breathing she would’ve been able to keep sawing with little to no downtime.

After the first four, or perhaps five cycles, when she was about halfway through the neck, Zelsys began audibly invoking the words of a technique she hadn’t used in a little while. 

“Beheading Saw! C’mon, Beheading Saw!” she growled angrily, obviously just taking out her temper on the functionally inanimate object, though it had a very noticeable effect. Each time she invoked it, she exhaled substantially more Fog than she would’ve otherwise, and the saw sunk further into the statue’s neck than it would’ve just through its own ability to chew through black stone. It was only a little while longer before the statue’s head thudded to the floor, its weight breaking its antlers on impact. The lightgems flickered back to normal, signifying the departure of the malevolent influence.

Breathing heavily, the silver-eyed beast-slayer looked to Zef and she felt an ever so brief flutter in her gut. 

“I ah… Y’alright?” she drawled, tilting her head as she looked down at the shallow, already clotting puncture wounds on her lover’s torso. 

Looking herself over, Zel stretched in a frankly shameless and unnecessarily teasing manner, then shot Zef a look of smug self-satisfaction as she said, “Yeah, I think I’ll be good. Might want to sit down for a bit, update the Tablet and see if it can show me what the serum did, though.”

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Strolvath and the Inquisitor stepped through that Fog Gate expecting immediate resistance, so it was a welcome if brief moment of preparation when they saw the locust hive that awaited them. It utterly consumed their vision, sure, but there was only one entryway whose doorman didn’t seem to be alarmed at the slightest. After the first couple swings of that blue-flaming Aquilla Blade, the Doorman’s immovable silence quickly turned to panicked squealing and scrambling of the creature’s undersized feet. 

Dozens more skittering feet soon followed as the hive came awake, at which point Strolvath saw fit to begin playing. Without any guarantee that sonic assault would be effective, he simply played an Ignis-aligned flamenco whilst he peppered in wordless vocalizations. He intended to let the Inquisitor’s sword blaze a path, and its blue flames did indeed burst forth yet more viciously with every chord he played.

She just kept hacking away, but he noticed the subtle turn of her head and slight nod of acknowledgment. When the Doorman finally collapsed under its own weight, all hell broke loose. The gas-masked, plate-armored operative methodically and calmly cut a path into the hive, and Strol gladly followed in her wake.

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