Arcs jumped between the Butcher and its next closest segment, not yet conjoined. Zel turned the Brass Stake in hand, pushing past the sense of trepidation to raise it overhead and bring it down with full intent.

Mimicking that motion, the Forgemother, too, raised her arm, and in her grasp a ghostly imitation of Zel’s instrument took form. The goddess brought it down upon her own hand much in the same way as Zelsys brought down its real counterpart upon the Butcher.

CLANG.

There came a brilliant, golden flash. A single, tiny crack made itself known within the Brass Stake; too small to be noticed otherwise, yet infinitely significant in this very moment. With that blow, the world shook. It shook not in the sense of an earthquake, nor the forceful shockwave produced when metal struck metal. Nay, this reverberation was one which carried through the invisible, undefinable fundamental nature of reality itself, the world itself wavering. Zelsys felt a change begin to take place, and she knew that it would take far more than a single strike to bring it to fruition.

Zelsys’ focus total, her will resolute, intent honed to an infinitely fine needlepoint. Carried forward by a thoughtless, trance-like state of pure drive, she brought the Brass Stake down upon her blade’s seven segments time and again in repeating sequences; one to seven, seven to one, then one-three-five-seven-four-six, one-four-seven-three-four-five-six, and so on. Eons seemed to pass. With each hammerblow, each resounding CLANG and flash of draconic essence, with each radiant deluge of ache racing up her arm and threatening to split her head, there came tides of otherworldly light. Exploding upward from the molten lake below, great deluges of northlight surrounded her. By the time the eldritch colours faded, her surroundings had always changed, yet she remained solidly within the divine smithy, upon the platform, surrounded by the Forgemother’s embodied form and a lake of molten metal.

One moment, she found herself atop a windswept peak. Another, in the midst of a busy street utterly filled by motorized vehicles, right in the path of a racing tram. As she hammered away, she moulded a core of lightning in her second stomach, intending to use the ignition of Conqueror’s Mantle as the final step.

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CLANG.

The bottom of the ocean. Crushing pressure. The water boiled away around her, and the sand turned to glass beneath her feet.

CLANG.

The dream-desert, littered by hundreds of fulgur-glass blades and just as many eldritch thoughtform monstrosities. Once more, the sand turned to glass beneath her feet.

CLANG.

Ubul’s Tomb.

The mud boiled around her and became dust.

CLANG.

Those woods.

Trees caught aflame and, like torches, blazed up in the night.

CLANG.

That bunker.

It was all askew and monochrome, long sunken into the Sea of Fog, yet still half-real. Its Core yet struggled to keep it afloat, even as that place continued its doomed descent into cosmic waters. The Faceless Things from one of its upper floors now wandered its halls, and in her presence, dozens turned to human-shaped embers. Her lightning whipped at the walls and cut open the pipes of the very machine which had given her life.

CLANG.

The war room. An utterly unassuming man stood across from her. With a grim resolution he spoke: “Despite everything we’ve done, the war is lost. There is aught I can do, short of´venturing into Agartha. I will raise Hedan’s Wall.”

All this while her surroundings burned, including That Man’s form. He didn’t seem to notice.

CLANG.

That same man’s eyes, now tired and sunken in, hidden behind a blackstone mask that depicted a flawless, statuesque face, including curly hair and a wreath. Everything below the diagonal line from his left shoulder to his right hip was blackstone, and in his right hand was a staff.

He was standing at the edge of a bridge she recognized, deep in the Shifting Labyrinth.

It almost felt like he knew she was there, even though he stared right through her. He thumped his staff to the ground. It struck at the exact same moment as the Brass Stake struck the Butcher.

CLANG.

Another battlefield; the tunnels beneath Willowdale’s city hall.

CLANG.

The final chamber of the Willowdale Dungeon, devoid of locust infestation, the shriveled remnants of hive-material the only evidence there had ever been one.

CLANG.

A deserted square within an untold city of cyclopean architecture, at the shore of an iridescent lake, beneath an alien sky.

CLANG.

CLANG.

CLANG.

CLANG.

CLANG.

CLANG.

CLANG.

CLANG.

CLANG.

CLANG. CLANG. CLANG. CLANG. CLANG. CLANG. CLANG. CLANG. CLANG. CLANG. CLANG.

CLANG. CLANG. CLANG. CLANG. CLANG. CLANG. CLANG. CLANG. CLANG. CLANG. CLANG.

CLANG. CLANG. CLANG. CLANG. CLANG. CLANG. CLANG. CLANG. CLANG. CLANG. CLANG.

CLANG. CLANG. CLANG. CLANG. CLANG. CLANG. CLANG. CLANG. CLANG. CLANG. CLANG.

CLANG. CLANG. CLANG. CLANG. CLANG. CLANG. CLANG. CLANG. CLANG. CLANG. CLANG.