Chapter 195: 193 – A Common Foe

When the Thundersaw Beast turned into a distorted cleaver, and then returned with metal screeching to a vague approximation of its true form, the Primordial Self was left there, laying in a crater of glass, half-enveloped in a brittle cocoon, bleeding and struggling for breath, its left arm severed at the shoulder.

Then it got up, a tendril of blood whipping from the stump and yanking the arm back on before, with a scream, it lunged at her again.

Zelsys cut it down, already swinging when it telegraphed the intent to lunge. Despite not having seen it, she had timed the slash well enough to split the thing down the middle, the pain of it intense enough to carry through their link, but because pain was a reaction even below instinct, it was easy to tune out here.

She knew it had reformed before she even turned around, seeing that the right half of the bear-skull had fallen off its face as it struggled to its feet, exposing the truth that she had known long before she saw it for herself - the Primordial Self really was just a more physically developed version of her, face and everything, teeth metamorphosed into a fang-filled beartrap.

And in that face, there wasn’t rage. There was defiance, the primal desire to be the one on top. 

Zelsys had to laugh, recalling every time she’d defied or undermined authority figures, whether it be through mere presence and attitude or active defiance. This token - laughter - turned out to at least be among the things the Primordial Self understood, for it had been endemic to man since long before he had shelved the bludgeon of instinct for the knife of thought.

Indeed, it understood, and it laughed too, even if only briefly.

There was no way in hell she could reach the desired conclusion by simply dominating the Primordial Self. It was just a distorted, even more self-destructive version of the very instinct-chaining that the scroll had warned against.

No, she needed some better means of communication. She needed something to help her own instincts understand that they were better off without such pointless internal power struggles, that a house divided would not stand, that there was no usurpation to be had here. There was no other, no enemy, only Zelsys, and the part of her which recognized this, which wore lightning and shaped the dream-realm with her gift of sapient thought - of Gnosis, the divine spark - decided that a real other was necessary.

A tangible enemy, or at least as tangible as one could be, one which neither the Primordial Self nor the Thinking Self could defeat alone, one which actively demanded them to unite as a means of conveying her message.

It needed to be given a form and the will to grant its shape, it needed to be a weed cultivated upon the compost of uncertainty and trepidation.

A many-faced colossal monstrosity wrought of blackened stone and abominable flesh, a manifestation of every individuality-smothering tyrant and existential horror she’d encountered and feared in her short, yet extremely eventful life.

So it was that Zelsys summoned those compartmentalized thoughts and metaphorically broke off a piece of herself so give it life and a semblance of autonomy.

The Colossal Failure’s tumorous asymmetry and writhing flesh. 

The ceaseless monstrosity of the Necrobeast.

The Maneater’s unsettling dualism which so aptly illustrated just how wrong this endeavor could go.

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It would possess the Locust queen’s sheer psychotic madness, the mutant advantages of every member of the hive, the stolen blackstone constructs which rendered the Queen so difficult to dispatch…

...And it would be everything Zelsys had considered a possibility for Ubul when he woke.

The Dream’s internal logic bent and buckled under the strain as Zelsys dredged up every doubt, fear, and moment of tension from her numerous life-or-death battles and brought them all alive in an abominable mosaic. 

From the sands it then arose, a living monolith of twisted flesh and stone, striding atop legs the size of buildings and possessed of six diverse arms. From its back sprouted three pairs of insect wings the size of ship’s sails and a writhing centipede taking the place of a tail, spitting hundreds of venomous quills that blotted out the sky.

Its upper pair of arms was tumor-ridden, bug-armored flesh, the middle craggy rock, and the lowest blackstone, its torso tremendously muscled meat bulging with writhing insects and spilling out through tiny gaps in a blackstone exoskeleton the shape and placement of a ribcage.

From its neck sprouted three heads:

The leftmost was Ubul’s, a yellow-skinned, red-haired recreation of the stone man’s with empty eyes of blazing yellow light that shone down upon whatsoever it looked at, like spotlights.

The middle belonged to the Emperor himself, as insufferable, improbably perfect, and visibly dead inside as the real thing.

The rightmost was, of course, the Queen, barely-preserved human face and all, though out of her mouth telescoped the jaw with which she’d bitten off Zel’s arm, set with teeth of jagged blackstone and possessing a writhing centipede for a tongue.

A blinding flash of purple, and the Composite Titan had vanished. 

The Primordial Self looked around in confusion, confusion replaced by a sudden visage of alert that prompted both it and Zelsys to dodge. Half a second later, the area where they had stood was crushed under the titan’s colossal fists.

Zelsys grasped her cleaver once more and once more poured her will into it through an exhalation of lightning, building it up and up and up into a Thundersaw Beast all over again, and had it throw itself at the titan. It ripped its way up its lowermost left arm, carving a gash before its tail swatted it away.

The Primordial Self, not being foolish, saw the greater threat and decided to set aside their conflict for the time being, itself unleashing its prodigal violence upon the beast, climbing atop it and erratically leaping all over it as it ripped and tore and bit at every inch of exposed flesh it could find, to no avail. 

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