From where he stood, he felt her aura; they all did. It was a familiar sensation, as if being in the immediate presence of a predator about to lash out. The difference was that in the past, it only got this intense in her immediate vicinity and when she was fighting. Makhus stood a good thirty meters away and he felt it as if he was no further than five. The sensation, stoking his fight-or-flight instinct and raising the hairs on the back of his neck, grew no lesser when she raised her hand and called out: “Butcher!”
For a moment, there was nothing. A split-second that stretched for what felt like a full minute. Makhus felt Acala straining to parse what exactly she would do next, predicting two-dozen different possible ways she might attack, but he terminated the armor’s divination prematurely. He didn’t want to see it in the ghostly mind’s-eye foresight granted by the Third Eye of Acala. A figure came into being, taking form out of a mass of swirling blades, a woman made of dark metal with an identical figure to Zelsys, yet otherwise lacking in any truly human features. She existed for just a few seconds, her tail of many floating segments insinuating itself end-first into Zelsys’s waiting hand. The next moment, there was no more woman-of-blades, just a huge, brutal cleaver.
Makhus understood what exactly “segmented” meant when Zelsys pulled her arm back and the weapon separated, six segments floating away from the handle, joined by twin arcs of lightning.
What came next was neither a fight nor even a real clash. Makhus surged forward, an explosive mixture of elixirs coursing through his veins. White light ran from his belt, illuminated the face on his chest-plate, then down his arm and enveloped his sword, granting it twice its normal length and vastly amplified cutting power. He saw it coming, of course; Acala couldn’t show him any possible path in which he would reach, let alone strike Zelsys before she could hit him.
A thunderclap reverberated. Makhus saw something coming straight at his face in prediction, only for that something to swerve out of the way and rip past him. He stopped where he stood, knowing he had been intentionally spared a direct hit.
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That something had been the Crown Fang, Carnifex’s endmost segment. Zelsys had wholly understood the alchemist’s ploy, and in truth, she was impressed with just how far he had gotten. She’d taken every precaution she realistically could, willing Carnifex to reduce its weight as much as possible and to dull the section of its edge which might hit him should her control over it prove insufficient. It didn’t, and now Carnifex was stretched out over twenty meters right beside Makhus’s armored head, his sword outstretched, having gotten surprisingly close to reaching her.
“You keep getting faster at a quicker pace than me, can’t blame me for leveling the field with parlor tricks like this,” she said, pulling back the cleaver. Its segments flew back to her, then rejoined into a single mass. Then, the next moment it was gone from her hand, the metal-wrought, many-bladed feminine form of its spirit appearing once more by her side. Zelsys walked ahead to meet Makhus face to face, Fulguris trailing just behind her while Zefaris had already scooted forward to take over driving the sturmgandr. What she said wasn’t a lie; Makhus’ pure speed had grown noticeably more than her own, in no small part thanks to his mastery of the armour. Near-instant reactions were one thing, but pseudo-precognition was a whole other way of not getting caught off-guard.
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They met in the middle, Makhus opening his helmet just before they joined in a left-handed handshake. “It’s good to be back,” Zel said, then with a grin, leaned in close. “You won’t believe the things we’ve brought.”
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To the party’s relief, although their return to Willowdale and the sect at large was met with celebration, it was rather more subdued than any of the numerous feasts they had been subjected to in recent memory. Both Zelsys and Jorfr made known their growth, freely displaying it to the rest of the sect. Victor disappeared into the sect compound and later into the city, citing that he had always wanted to see Willowdale for himself.
Elsewhere in the city, Crovacus Estoras breathed a truly heavy sigh of relief. Finally, he could tone down the aggressive tankman patrols and redirect the resources toward building up Willowdale’s forces now that his strongest deterrence factor had returned. In just the months during which three of the Newman Sect’s Pillars had been gone, a disconcerting number of dangerous beasts, outright monsters, and even legitimate bandit gangs had cropped up within Willowdale’s territory. The number was such that even with the sect’s aid, they simply couldn’t be dealt with quickly enough. Crovacus had no confirmation, of course, but there was not an iota of doubt in his mind that She would go after them of her own volition.
A few days passed. While Zelsys was busy being hounded by Makhus and Ozmir regarding what she had brought from Borea and what was still incoming, Zefaris imposed herself upon Collier. The gunsmith was finally in a place that permitted her to accept walk-ins, though Zefaris readily made it known that she had something truly special to show her and that she would regret refusing or delaying. Zefaris had understated herself; she had much more than just one special thing to show the gunsmith.
Collier examined the revolver up-close, disassembled it, then looked at Zefaris with the eyes of a hungry beast circling its prey. Then, she took the barrel and peered down it, furrowing her brow. She looked angry.
“Whoever did this ain’t a mortal man. This… What the fuck? How did- These are my glyphs, but there’s not a single sign of this being my original barrel. I don’t know how, or that it was even possible, but whoever worked on this for you completely replaced the barrel and transferred my original glyphs onto the inside of it. I thought they were copied, since that’s possible, but no. These’re mine. The ones I put inside Pentacle’s barrel when I first made it, exactly the same ones. Who did this work for you?”
“Ingvald Forgehand. The same blacksmith who worked on reforging Zel’s cleaver.”