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361 - Re: Brute Unsealing [Sturmblitz]
🕑 Added 2024-06-30 09:50:34 +0000 UTCArcs of golden fire indignantly flared from the Oculus, but Zel’s Thundergods pulled it into her grasp regardless, regenerating what small wounds they had been dealt in seconds. It burned her at first, but a moment later, as if recognizing her, the relic ceased protesting. The same could not be said for Bishamonten — the shrine’s doors rattled, and the idol of Bishamonten, alongside the demonic statues which held it aloft and surrounded it all turned their heads to glower at her. She spun the Oculus in hand whilst turning it in her palm to produce a rattling sound. The staff remained unharmed, as she did not wield it as a weapon, but as a ritual implement.
It was at the moment Zel reached a particular end-pose, with the Oculus’ rings jangling around, that the shrine’s doors flew open. They revealed the golden sphere within, fiery mist swirling around it in a star-like manner, yet at once entirely unlike an actual star.
“YOU DARE?!” a mighty voice thundered inside her head, and a numinous pressure bore down on her. The intent it carried was to cast her to her knees and rob the breath from her lungs, but not to cause permanent harm — a surprising degree of tact and caution from a warrior-deity lashing out in indignation.
“Or he already knows it’s me…” a thought crossed her mind.
In an exertion of will, with arcs of lightning and the sound of thunder from within her, Zelsys suppressed the divinity’s indignation, thumping the Oculus’ never-dulling spearpoint against one of the footpath stones.
“Bishamonten, your shrine guardian suffers with heart demons, and I am not sufficiently learned in the Itrian arts to summon you properly. You will simply have to allow this disrespect to pass.”
“Even were I willing, I cannot simply act. The correct rituals must be carried out, in the correct manner, with full intent. I do not doubt your spiritual nature, shura, but I do doubt your knowledge of my sutras.”
“What if I simply carry out my own ritual? Will you supply the power required, or must I do it under my own strength and risk scorching your shrine with lightning in the process?”
Both the ground and the tree behind Bishamonten’s shrine shuddered, and the shrine’s doors slammed shut.
“Very well. This is permissible,” the deity acquiesced.
“You heard clearly when I said the mask’s limit is forty-two minutes of continuous operation, yes? You can simply wait,” Koschei chimed in.
Zel answered: “I have good reason to do it this way — the shock of being forced back into reality. Now, Bishamonten!”
With that, she drew in a breath. With flashes of lightning from within her chest, the grass around her began billowing back and forth. Chittering blue sparks appeared in the air around her, dust and pebbles floating up and becoming more sparks in turn.
Another breath. Countless serpent-like forms sprung forth from her head, forming a cloak of writhing snakes, among which the six Thundergods reigned supreme. Lightning writhed about her, but did not lash out. Kneeling down, she reached out with her left hand and grasped the mask. Her claws sprung forth, becoming enveloped in steel and aura in a flash, scraping into the mask’s material.
“I COMMAND THIS MASK RELEASED,”
“NOT BY THE AUTHORITY OF MENTORSHIP,”
“BUT BY THE AUTHORITY OF MY STRENGTH!”
With each line uttered, she thumped the Oculus against a blackstone tile. Red-gold light flowed down from the rainbow aperture within its ring, tinging her aura. Zel’s Predator Aura suddenly became plainly visible, streaming off the top of her head as an endless geyser of fanged maws, claws, tails, pincers, blades, fists and arms, spikes, any and every armament to be found upon the bodies of mighty beasts. It was thin, barely allowed to escape from Zel’s body, but the degree of compression only made its manifestation all the more condensed. In the same manner, so too did her cloak of serpents and her Thundergods become tinted with Bishamonten’s numinous power, growing horns in the process.
“I SHALL NOT PERMIT MY DISCIPLE TO WALLOW IN SOLITUDE AND MISERY.”
In the same manner, the deity’s strength flowed down her left arm, its veins and silver conduits becoming suffused with red-gold glow and bulging out from under her skin. With a decisive motion, she pulled the mask from Victor’s face, and a great discharge of lightning arced between him and it.
PURE FORCE BREAKS RESTRAINTS
DIVINE LIGHT BURNS AWAY IMPURITY
WRATHFUL LIGHTNING RESOLVES IMBALANCES
GEHEIMNIS: BRUTE UNSEALING
-NUMINOUS PURIFICATION-
Victor was left unharmed, staring ahead with his hair standing on-end. Meanwhile, the mask didn’t just shatter — it was obliterated utterly by the backlash, which continued on to flow up Zel’s arm. She simply took the lightning into herself and redirected the Fulgur excess into her manifested Thundergods. As a result, Victor returned to reality to the image of his mentor grasping the Oculus and surrounded by chthonian serpents of lightning tinged with Bishamonten’s red-gold light, writhing around her with unsettling smoothness. Then, she retracted her aura and it was over.
“Whuh- Oh,” he mumbled, blinking as he realized what had transpired. “I can explain.”
A moment passed in silence. Zel was relieved that the ritual had worked as she had intended, employing the esoteric properties of Wrathful Lightning to clarify his thoughts, foisting most of the strain onto the mask.
“Well? Explain,” Zel said, sitting down in front of him, placing the Oculus across her lap. “You are aware of what I said to not-Koschei, and what he said to me. If you think you can explain, then explain.”
The redhead was silent for some time, considering his words.
“You’re right. Eberheim does weigh on me, and I am using the mask to cope. But I’m not hiding away inside my thoughtscape, wallowing or constructing elaborate mental escapes. I was doing that. The first week or so. But… It didn’t help. I had to surface every once in a while. The deeper I escaped, the worse it was when I had to come up for air. I knew you were in seclusion, so I tried to think what you would tell me, read through Sturmblitz Kunst 0 a few more times, that sort of thing. I determined the causes for my turmoil — two of them. Firstly, the fact the Order of Six Truths continues to exist. Secondly, the revenants of Eberheim. They are with me, still. Each and every one, as I purified them, left with me a flicker of will, and in turn, each carries with it a request: To be remembered, to be properly laid to rest. Anything will do, even a nameless, upturned chunk of rubble, even a stick driven into a mound of stones, they ask. Others yet demand retribution, yet burn with the desire to undo those who killed them. Thus, with your guidance under consideration, I decided on the most direct methods of suppressing and hopefully exorcizing my heart demon.”
