While the Five True Fang Ripper ran a feverish, screaming track around Red's seclusion orb, Zelsys loaded the first of Ingvald's spitzer-nosed hi-pen shells into Thundercannon, building up a great and terrible Fulguric charge both within and without. This was of course slowed somewhat by the need to fuel the ripper.
Nonetheless, the charge built, and she had a fairly substantial one already built in her Retributive Battery. She wound her braids around her left arm, her Thundergods biting down on the gun's barrel whilst a flame-like expulsion of lightning formed from its muzzle, on its own as long as the gun's barrel.
Calling back the ripper to rejoin Carnifex, she simply leapt down from the top of the sphere, catching herself on one of its many ridges before she buried her arm-cannon into the carved-out channel along its equator.
For a moment, just a moment, she could swear the myriad tongues of lightning which whipped around her had formed into the likeness of the armored sleeve's spirit, floating right to her side, pressing his own left hand into the gap.
That was just a moment though.
A press down on the lever, ever so familiar.
Click.
Click.
"THUNDERCANNON!"
Blinding white brilliance flowing through her body.
Dozens of blackstone pillars scattered about the surroundings, wedged into the earth and trees like shrapnel. The shell's path could be easily traced by uncountable flickering sparks in its trail and the man-sized wound it had carved through several huge trees right behind the blackstone sphere.
The recoil threw Zelsys like a ragdoll, albeit in no small part because she let it. She casually met the ground with the lashing-forward maws of her Thundergods, using them as tendrils to right herself and gently descend feet-first. She worked her gun's bolt as Red careened to the ground, the lower half of her torso completely missing, her heart visibly hanging out the bottom of her ribcage, beating. Dozens of thin, trickling streams of iridescent blood rained down. Her veins glowed in an unsettling blend of iridescent and purple, while her bones were utterly pitch-black, the cracks upon them bleeding the same purple light. Her heart didn't beat, it pounded, and the furious grimace on Red's face was evidence enough of the reason.
Zelsys, though, couldn't be more impressed.
She leaned slightly to the left as if to get a better look at the environmental impact of her attack, despite being able to see it just fine as she was, then leaned back when she returned her gaze to Red. Notably, Zel noticed the distinct absence of her subcores or any of the constructs she used to weaponize them. She had assumed that they were required to create such a powerful defensive formation, and perhaps might still be buried in the rubble. As she performed this gesture, she used a braid to remove the spent shell and let it return into Fog Storage, to be joined later by its sibling, the bullet.
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Abruptly, the fury melted from Red's face; her furious grimace turned to a smug grin. A calm one. Somehow, that was more concerning than seeing her at her most psychotic.
"You know how this goes," she said, transitioning to a tone that suggested she was repeating something. "Did you really think that would work?!"
As far as Zel was concerned, it had worked better than expected. Her only goal with that tactic had been, after all, to break the shell; she'd half-expected Red to emerge somehow entirely unharmed.
The truth was, using the Recreation of Past Self had a major limitation; it could only be used once with each subcore, requiring a massive energy investment to re-arm each subcore after the fact. After Arches, it had taken her until she had formed her pseudo-dungeon in the Crescent Jungle to achieve that, though with it set up empowering the other subcores had been much faster. Red had already quietly used it once before in their fight, and was thus left down to two uses, assuming she could manage to set up the sacrificial effigy in time.
Zelsys didn't know that, though, and Karmesin wasn't about to reveal a major weakness. Three subcores emerged from behind her, slamming into place. At that exact same moment, all of the rubble from her defensive orb stirred to life, ripping itself out of the scenery and piling on around Zelsys in order to enclose her.
Just as numerous blackstone panels took form to shape a mighty cannon around all three subcores, so too did Red's sundered form erupt in northlight, and moments later, she was mended. Another moment, and the fourth subcore joined the other three, forming a pyramid.
Zel couldn't quite find a way out, especially since simply breaking her way out was not an option, and she didn't see herself deflecting what she knew was coming with a parasol defense.
Carnifex Fulguris slammed back together into a solid blade without her input, then demanded a huge influx of Fulgur.
"Yeah. That'll work."
Spiritual muscle strained, Metallum flooded in from below, the already faintly metallic-bronze sheen of Zel's skin momentarily becoming impossible to ignore. Her entire right arm became encased in green patina, and Carnifex grew. Segment by segment snapped into being between the True Fangs, until the cleaver was half a forearm's length longer than Zelsys was tall.
Carnifex's edge swiftly turned to white, and its entirety began to shudder as huge arcs of lightning climbed from its hilt.
Both of them were ready, and for nearly ten full seconds, they stared one another down, one daring the other to strike first. It was Karmesin whose hold over the mighty power she had built up wavered first.
Karmesin's hold over her own magic did falter, but it was not for lack of ability. She could've held back the technique for another twenty seconds if she really needed to.
No, it was a gut feeling. She'd heard of sword qi, of how a skilled or merely particularly violent swordsman might exude a sharp aura; in turn, she had also heard how a particularly spiritual sword, or one bathed in much blood, might have the same sort of aura even within a wielder.