Chapter 228: 226 – Not an Ounce of Strength Unaccounted For

By the time Arnys ceased the curious blade-spinning routine, the charge disparity around her was visible. Yellow sparks flashed in a circling maelstrom about the woman, dust particles becoming magnetized and getting whipped up in the mess. By the time she raised her sword to the heavens and spoke, Zelsys had not only finished refining the compressed aether in her second stomach into a pre-metabolized form ideal for Thundercharger use, but filled her mouth with a somewhat stable sphere of lightning twice as large as her fist, constantly spinning her tongue around it to stabilize it.

As it turned out, if the sphere was a tangle of contradictory “threads” rather than a contiguous mass, it was orders of magnitude easier to keep in one piece. 

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“YE WHO ABIDE IN THIS VESSEL OF FLESH, COME FORTH, O CLEAR SKIES THUNDERGOD! TENGRI YILDIRIM NEFES!”

So proclaimed Arnys Krishorn, Matriarch of the Krishorn Clan, as she raised her blade to the heavens. 

Neither of the combatants paid attention to the audience, but the band briefly ceased their playing for young Ezaryl to command those outside the oval to cover their ears, before they themselves continued playing even louder than before, for they already had earplugs.

Nary a cloud hung overhead, and yet the maelstrom of lightning and dust that swirled about her only grew more intense, until… From the clear blue sky descended a golden divine spear, a branchless, yellow bolt of lightning that struck Arnys’s blade and enveloped her in a golden glow. The fact that it seemed unaffected by both the barriers it would’ve had to pass through alongside the fact Arnys herself seemed to be the source of the thunderclap were both proof of the phenomenon’s arcane nature.

Upon her thighs, forearms, and the sides of her torso suddenly sprouted thick, light-yellow scales, and from between them thick bristles of fur between which yellow arcs flashed. Her teeth could be seen visibly growing pointier, her fingers growing scaly and clawed, her ears seemingly pivoting forward as they became elongated and grew lynx-like bristles from their tips. The fact that her outfit seemed unmoved by the transformation proved either that it had been designed to accommodate for the change, or that Arnys had enough control over its manifestation to ensure it didn’t mess up her clothes. 

Most striking, however, were two changes. Firstly, the irises of her eyes were now pure yellow, the pupils turned to predatory slits.

Secondly, her sword, too, had undergone this strange transformation. Just as Arnys herself had grown scales, so too did these large yellow scales manifest along the back of her blade. 

In a sentence, the Krishorn Matriarch would best be described as a human who had taken upon themselves the aspects of a great arcane beast without actually relinquishing their humanity. Almost like an Azoth Stone cultivator’s mutation turned inside-out, even though Zelsys had no clue why that comparison came to mind.

The sight dredged up a sunken memory. Deep in the recesses of her mind, Zelsys recognized this as something far beyond her reach at this moment, a magnificent thing that many a nobleman had spent both their fortunes and lives in the pursuit of. Some deep-down part of her knew that this could not possibly be the result of Arnys having devoured some lightning-aspected beast’s Azoth Stone.

Pieces fell into place in her mind. The seeds of epiphany were sown and quickened in an instant as fragmentary memory mixed with existent knowledge, her normal frame of mind bent and loosened by the near-delirious body high of her preparation to surpass her own limits. 

It would have to wait.

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The music and expectant noise of the crowd both built, and built, and built, until the dust within the oval settled and for the briefest of moments, it was as if all stood silent.

Then, Zel held up her left hand, willing its armored fingers to become talons, forging a web of lightning between them by bringing them together, creating short arcs, and then pulling them apart while continuing to supply Fulgur. It wasn’t pretty, merely a tangle of continuous arcs from each finger to every other finger. As relatively simple as it was, it still felt like yesterday when she struggled to control the flow at all.

She opened her mouth wide, sticking her tongue out, and from it plucked the writhing ball of contradictory Fulguric currents, passing its unstable mass from one stabilizing field to another as it now floated in the palm of her left hand.

“I am well aware that you’ve held back for fairness’ sake,” said the Beast-slayer with perfect calm. “But so have I. Therefore, let me meet your display in kind!”

A pointless incantation followed, no more than a battlecry for the sake of the audience, one whose structure Zelsys inadvertently copied from similar incantations that she’d heard.

“BY MY AUTHORITY OVER MYSELF, I NOW USURP EVERY OUNCE OF STRENGTH THAT MY BODY YET HAS TO GIVE…”

“...FOR I AM THE DESPOT OF SELF, MY VERY FLESH MY EMPIRE, AND NOT A SINGLE SOLDIER SHALL BE UNACCOUNTED FOR!”

At that moment, when Zelsys at last made the decision, giving the Primordial Self the go-ahead and felt the proverbial dam in her mind be washed away by a deluge of alertness and exhilaration. Ribbons of blood-red intermingled with the silver Fog of her breath, the realization that her act involved burning her body’s reserves of Rubedo and Viriditas but a flash in the pan.

Her heart racing, pounding so forcefully she felt her ribs moving with each immense pound, the serpents of searing white which enveloped her moving in perfect synchronicity with that frantic drumbeat.

Despite the all-consuming instinctual urge to kill, her clarity of mind remained untouched. The flow of that raging river had chosen out of respect to flow around the rock upon which the dam’s builder sat.

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