NOVEL NEXT 267 – Calm Before the Storm
At last, when she thought this attempt, too, might be a failure as the fur-like Fog coating of Graze Pulse began to manifest, these fog-hairs dissipated. Her skin stiffened and took on a metallic sheen, the Mercenary’s magic missile suddenly bouncing off like pebbles off a pond.
In this re-enactment of the preceding times she had faced withering gunfire - battered and bruised though she ended up - she finally grasped “Bronze” by trusting the Primordial Self’s instinctual response.
Skin of Bronze had come into being, filling out the reserved technique slot.
The world turned once again.
Tuesday turned to Wednesday.
By Zel’s reckoning, it was a day of small things to do. More recruits arrived at the sect, as a result of which she had to break yet more seals, sequentially opening door after door in order to find the disciples’ quarters.
Zefaris picked up the remainder of her new outfit, yet again proving how developed her personal taste in fashion was. The centerpiece was a dark dress lined with carmine red, its top half possessed of a militaristic flair. It was accompanied by a striking officer’s cap with a belladonna flower in the stead of any badges or emblems, and on her feet knee-high black combat boots - ones which Zelsys remembered eyeing up in the craftsman’s tent. She wore her weapons openly from a sturdy, metal-reinforced belt, having had Tempesta’s holster dyed black to fit with the rest of her getup. The shape of her figure and the way the fabric moved over her made it clear that she wore a corset beneath the dress.
Though Zel was unaware, Zef had learned from the craftsman that the corset was armored, plates of cold-iron concealed within its structure, likely a measure against assassination manifested from the Queen’s expectations of her future high post.
Between Zefaris asking Makhus to reverse-engineer a Fogging Canister, the alchemist’s own razor-thin time margins for research, work, and training, and the gunwoman’s own obsession over advanced techniques she considered to be very nearly within reach, the rest of the day passed in a flash. Zefaris took up much of Jorfr’s time with her own - moderately successful - attempts at ice magic, the norseman eventually coming to the conclusion that she would do well to not merely channel it through her gun or her eye, but both, imparting a seed of Gelum into the gun and forming complex glyphs in front of the muzzle that would then turn that charge into a meaningful effect upon the projectile.
Zel’s own training for the day turned to exploration after she ran her connection to the earthly spirits dry, experimentation with the Fulgur-conductiveness of her boots and attempts at manifesting various techniques through them. To her great joy, All-Severing Scream
could be manifested on her right boot’s wedge-shaped front just as well as on the Butcher’s blade, forming a bulldozing V-shape. Though lacking a sufficient edge to cut into a target block unassisted, a high side kick empowered by a fully manifested All-Severing Scream was able to outright sever a chunk from the top of the block, only stopped from falling onto Zelsys by the block’s own ability to reconstitute itself, no matter how small or, in this case, big the pieces.And so, between training and getting the new disciples settled in to some degree, Wednesday, too, passed.
The most notable event of the day was Zel’s receipt of a personal visit from Arnys - not for the visit itself, but the circumstances. The Newman Elder had decided to take a ride to the northern mountain ridge, the outer edge of the supermassive crater in whose center Willowdale was situated. However, when she stopped at the outskirts of the city to make sure she wouldn’t run anyone over when she fired up the machine’s thundercharger, the matriarch stepped out of a nearby group as if appearing from nowhere, outright asking to ride along and sitting down behind Zelsys without waiting for an answer.
Altogether, the Matriarch did nothing suspicious throughout the ride or when they reached the summit, merely gazing out over the landscape that stretched before her just as Zelsys did, smoking.
“So much history. So many secrets. So much bloodshed. Can’t help but want to uncover it, can you?” she said.
At Zel’s silent look back, at her unspoken question, the matriarch continued: “You don’t need to answer. I know what it’s like. I still feel the itch, too. But my place is with the clan, I can do far more to impose myself on the world this way.”
Drawing in a long toke, she puffed a cloud.
“Don’t get tied down in one place. The world is smaller than it seems, especially to the likes of us. Speaking of, you’d best know that the Serpent’s Head is departing tonight.”
The deceptively youthful-looking woman wistfully craned her head to the sky, before looking over at Zelsys.
“Come watch the lightshow… And when you think yourself my equal, come visit so I might see for myself if you’re right.”
And, indeed, when she returned to the sect, Zelsys saw that the stands and a portion of the stage had already been deconstructed - but only a portion. Much of it still remained, as if it were to be a semi-permanent fixture for the immediate future. Many other peddlers were packing up their things as well. When the night came and the Serpent’s Head arose from her grounded moorings, the manner in which the great vessel’s Fog-sailors split open the Sea of Fog was just as beautiful as its emergence from that other realm upon its first arrival.
Crovacus Estoras had gone to bed with, for once, not all that much stress on his mind. The reality of the situation had sunk in already, and he had done all he could do for now, thus he knew better than to overthink.
Things were proceeding apace… Until two in the morning, when a certain walking fossil of a woodsman came barreling into his personal quarters, and Estoras knew something was terribly wrong. He had granted the man permission to do this solely so that he would be able to deliver his message if something went amiss, and as his urgent, but perfectly coherent rattling of words showed, it was more than just amiss.
