Chapter 159: 159 – Orchid Mantis

“I’ll have to figure out a use for that Fulgur when I’m not close enough to use the saw, but I’ve got some ideas,” Zel said as she rose to her feet, pulling Zef with her.

Zef chuckled, half-jokingly questioning, “What, Thundercannon not enough for you?” 

“You never know,” Zel responded as they passed into the intermediary chamber. “It might run out of ammo, or get jammed, or I might do something stupid and fuck up my arm too bad to work the lever.”

The chamber was an expanded version of the usual layout, with a projection glyph plus control handle on the wall to either side. The one on the left was the same pattern Zel had seen on floor one, whereas the one to the right looked like a downscaled and simplified version of the glyph in the Fog Transit chamber. In the short time whilst they waited for the door to the next chamber to open Zef curiously grabbed the right-side wall’s control handle to check the map. It showed two options.

Dungeon Map

Path Map

Selecting the former showed a smaller version of the projection they’d seen back in the Fog Transit chamber, whilst selecting the latter showed a more detailed display of their path to the next Fog Transit chamber. Zef found that she could even will the map to zoom into some chambers and show their interiors. For the one they’d just left, it showed a static layout, and the same was the case for the next one. The last chamber on their path, it showed in real-time from multiple perspectives, each suspended within the eyes of an abstract, humanoid statue. There was a strange blur in the  center of the chamber, a flickering gap in the projection that was overlaid with the golem head symbol. 

“The map shows room layouts, but it’s obfuscating what the last room’s golem looks like,” the markswoman grumbled in annoyance, turning her gaze to Zel only for her eye to be drawn towards a bright, eyeball-sized sphere of lightning above her index finger.

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While Zef examined the map, Zel attempted to produce some form of usable lightning without using her hands.

Running current through herself and even producing arcs up to about a meter in length, both of those came naturally. The issue was that the essence of Fulgur, being what it was, tended to act similarly to mundane electric current. Zelsys struggled over and over again to bend that flow, to make it come out of her shoulders or her back, but it didn’t want to. At most, she could produce small, unfocused arcs.

Not unless… Not unless she gave it a core to form around, like the sparks from her gun’s striker. Wondering if a sphere of Fog would be enough, Zel took another break and held up her index finger, compressing her lungs without exhaling as she focused on exuding a small bead of Fog from the digit.

A thin, glowing line ran down the length of her arm towards the digit, and a silver wisp as thin as a hair unwound from the tip of her finger. It tangled around itself and balled up into a bead no larger than a droplet of water, tenuously attached by the hair-thin umbilicus. 

Then, it was a spark of will and more Fog to ignite it. A few tiny arcs jumped from her fingertip to the bead before the vague luminescence of Fog became seething, white lightning, chittering and chirping, just as Zef turned around to see it.

Her eye flicked from the orb to Zel’s face, then back to the orb, then back to Zel’s face. 

“You figured it out already?” she questioned with audible befuddlement.

“Uh… If by it you mean a glorified parlor trick, sure,” Zel chuckled back, whipping her hand towards a wall. The tiny ball lightning zipped off, zigzagging on its path before it struck the wall and popped with a tiny flash of light, leaving no trace of its existence besides a few firefly-like flashes of ionized air.

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Furrowing her brow and clearly curious as to how the possible new technique worked, the markswoman posed another question, “You can make a bigger one, can’t you?”

“Probably,” Zel replied. “Though I’d wager a sovereign that it’ll take a good bit of polish before it’s practical to use in a fight, since I had to extrude a Fog core for the Fulgur to stick to and all. Way easier to just… Y’know...”

She raised her left arm and mimicked the motion of pulling the lever.

“Thundercannon.”

Their conversation might have continued, if the door hadn’t finished lighting up and slammed open, revealing a downward staircase. Relaxed discussion became relaxed caution as they peered down the stairs, advancing into the depths below. 

Seventeen stairs to the next landing, then a right-angle turn.

No sound, only their own footfalls and breathing.

Seventeen more stairs. Another right-angle turn.

Then another.

And another.

Then, at last, another door, one that opened instantly at their approach.

Stepping through met them with a dimly-lit, square chamber. In its center sat a lithe young man draped in a loose, bright-red robe. He was surrounded by the corpses of Locust Nobles, fourteen in number. They varied from almost human to almost fully locust, and three of them possessed the telltale bright-red mantis mutations. Each of them had had their throat slit in the same, perfect way, and none of them showed signs of struggle.

The man’s skin and even his hair were utterly snow-white, accentuated by streaks of pink. Subtle chitinous plates could be picked out here or there, his pinky fingers entirely turned to armored talons. His facial structure was indistinct and so utterly symmetrical it was unnerving. In front of him were laid out carved bones atop a small mat.

Zefaris circled him with her gun squarely trained on his head, occasionally looking down at a corpse here and there to make sure they were really dead, whilst Zelsys just… Approached.

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