“Dunno. He’s been spending a third of his time running errands, a third trying to make that Iron Rider belt function, and a third obsessively training one slash,” Zel shrugged, answering plainly and without smugness for once.

“What did I tell him about stress management…” sighed Ezaryl in response, quickly catching herself by transitioning to her next question. “Ah, the main reason why I came here, it’s to do with tomorrow’s duel. Mother appears to have forgotten about a few small, but vital details when she made her rushed decision to challenge you - first, we need a name for the fighting style you will be representing, to go along with your associated organization when your name is announced.”

“Sturmblitz Kunst,” Zel answered, scarcely bothering to raise her eyes from the pulp in her hand.

A sly grin of approval crept across the young woman’s face, “Ah, already forming your own martial arts system! Then this match will certainly aid in lending credence within the eyes of prospective disciples, allowing you to derive additional profit that was not initially within the verbal agreement without breaching its terms. Very proactive. Now, any entrance music preferences?”

Though a little caught off-guard by that second question, Zel would have answered the same as she did even given time to consider: “You’re the musician here. I’ll trust your expert judgment, as long as it’s anything like what you played when I fought the guardian golem.”

Smiling at that, the young heiress turned as if to leave but stopped herself after but two steps, turning back around, “I especially look forward to seeing your seemingly boundless tolerance for pain to the proof, what with mother’s fondness for subduing her opponents by targeting their pressure points to generate such agony that the steeliest of warriors crumple beneath their own weight.”

With that, she was gone.

----------------------------------------

Zelsys had ventured again into the Dream Desert the night preceding her match against Arnys, finding the environment pristine once more, the Primordial Self having manifested in a far less bestial form. Its bodily proportions had become mostly akin to Zel’s actual proportions, losing the unnaturally elongated arms, shaggy fur, and near-digitigrade legs.

In shedding its overtly animalistic traits, however, the other ways in which its form differed became more apparent. Every purely physical aspect of its body was exaggerated, not merely its actual size, but also almost everything associated with dominance and survivability from a naturalistic standpoint. Bulging musculature and visibly thickened fingers with claws protruding instead of finger nails were accompanied by genitalia far more prominent than those of its real counterpart and heaving breasts that nearly reached the bottom of its ribcage.

Simply put, the Primordial Self, in its acquiescence, had been changed to a personification of Zel’s instinct and raw physicality, no longer in conflict with who she was. The form it took no longer differed to an irreconcilable degree with her real body, now differentiated by the traits which the most primal aspects of her humanity still idealized.

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More than anything the sight gave Zelsys an idea of what others must’ve felt when they looked at her, and it certainly did nothing to lessen her perception of herself, as she all but knew that were she to put her mind to it, she could likely reach this level of musculature, perhaps even alter her own body in the deeper ways required to fully emulate this physique, but she had no such desire. Zelsys didn’t want to make any such cosmetic alterations, desiring above all to make changes that would largely go unseen.

It still breathed and held itself in a distinctly animalistic manner, but it exhibited more and more conscious thought, even speaking; its speech sounded as normal as hearing a deeper, more guttural version of one’s own voice could sound. However, whenever it did speak, it took a moment to consider, using simplistic and sometimes overly literal wordings, like someone who had learned and understood a language, but had never really spoken it out loud.

Communication with the Primordial Self started off… Rudimentary.

Speaking was one, certainly, but despite their freshly-formed rapport, the Primordial Self was quick to regress into the twin universal languages of nature when it grew frustrated with words…

...Especially when the response was not hostile.

Zelsys had expected all sorts of roadblocks when it came to spurring the changes she deemed necessary, mainly some manner of accelerating and preventing the over-time decay of bodily condition. She didn’t want to risk trying to directly influence her own body to any significant degree, choosing instead to set a mental switch for heightening the responses that spark the thickening of bone and strengthening of muscle. There was one exception, a small change.

The lowest pair of ribs, instead of floating, would need to be connected to the rest of the ribcage properly so that a breakage wouldn’t leave them floating unanchored. Any reinforcement beyond this minimum would end up being a trade-off at best and detrimental at worst, since it would likely impede the rapid full-lung breathing that Storm Engine was based on.

Such direct, obvious strengthening was something the Primordial Self eagerly agreed to, though actually working out the specifics was more than a little difficult.

Communication threatened to tip over in both primitive directions multiple times over the course of the discussion, and indeed, Zelsys had expected all sorts of roadblocks, from anger-induced tantrums to outright violence; among them had not, however, been the other side of the primitive coin.

Indeed, she had not expected her own personified Id to break into a spontaneous dance of sorts involving a great deal of grunting and stomping. It was quite obvious that the whole thing was intended to be some sort of proto-tribalistic display, but the bizarreness of it shot right past into surrealism, tempered by two things.

First was the distinction between the Primordial and Thinking Self endemic to this inner realm, and the second was the realization that, in hindsight, she should’ve probably expected having to contend with this side of the Primordial Self.

It certainly helped that the thoughtform did actually acquiesce when Zelsys tried steering communication back in the verbal direction.