Cyril had no doubt he was looking at one of the revered elders of the cult. Her presence made him up his estimation of him much they valued this region. Either she had been stationed here, or she had the ability to teleport great distances--the sort of technique usually reserved for those deep into the Seventh Sphere of at least one Dominion. Such a woman would be the matriarch of a great tribe, on par with his own mother, and she was a mere elder of the Cult of Leviathan.
Her presence a death sentence, especially if his captive spread the story that he was one of the few survivors of the assault on Fissure. Still, his mind remained calm, though he realized his own hands were trembling.
He had options. None of them held much appeal, but they were preferable to death, or at the very least imprisonment. He had considered one path in particular for a long while, and the temptation behind it had detracted him from truly experimenting with the possibility.
Several potential uses of his qi had appealed to him, but nothing so much as Reinforcing himself with the Dominion of Earth. In the past, he had always chosen to invest the Cantrip with Mass qi, though the idea of using Earth had always been present like an itch in the back of his mind. He had some vague fear that, once he pursued that path, he would abandon his humanity and surrender himself fully to Behemoth.
The moment I chose to live as a cultivator, I accepted that I would no longer be the same man. I’m no longer the mortal known as Prince Cyril. I am his karma, carried forward.
Such a grandiose sentiment. He had said it to Lanazael with such assurance. But deep down, there was a fear. The mundane, human part of his mind asked the old philosophical question: at what point, after a ship has been repaired and restored, is it no longer the same ship that it once was? When half of its original form has been replaced? All of it?
Cyril clenched his remaining fist harder. Philosophy was irrelevant in the face of certain death.
Earth qi surged throughout his body, circulated in accordance to the Reinforcement Cantrip. It was like an unending landslide pouring into an endless pit; every cell within him greedily absorbed the congruent energy, with no sign that they were close to full capacity. His core emptied at an alarming rate, spiraling in a maelstrom that strengthened and solidified everything it touched.
The rusted iron or E-grade metals may have been the most efficient and powerful materials to infuse himself with, but even with his augmented core, he doubted he would be able to invest enough to truly alter himself. He sensed that infusing himself with Earth qi would have a similar rule to Transmutation, though there were some minor differences. He chose to infuse himself with the material of the blessed stone around Lanazael’s temple--many times stronger than basic earth, but requiring relatively little expenditure.
Like his own cells, the Reinforcement Cantrip was greedy. From his experience, it could absorb a truly astounding amount of Mass qi. He bet he could also invest an incredible amount of aspected earth qi into the framework.
Sensing that his chances against Lady Firouza were terrible regardless, he tweaked the Cantrip slightly, merging Transmute and Reinforcement into a new technique. For a moment, it felt as if all the qi within his body was stretching, tendons and ligaments disconnecting, muscles shearing from bone. Agony suffused his body, until he was sure he had overdone himself.
Then, he felt himself…grow. The bronze plate armor expanded along with his overall body, requiring another drain on his core. On the bright side, now that he was acting in accordance with Behemoth’s will, the Titan of Earth poured more and more of its qi into his soul.
The ground fell away rapidly as he poured more qi into the technique, until he stood at least twice as tall as before. The rest of his body had at least doubled in size, though his limbs in particular looked like pillars of stone. His broad shoulders and hips swiveled within their ball-and-sockets joints with unnatural ease, affording him unnatural flexibility. The alteration even felt like it affected him on a spiritual level; his channels felt like tunnels of refined stone.
He still retained the overall shape of a man, creases and furrows imitating defined muscles and striations, like a colossal statue sculpted to flatter some vain lord. Even in his enlightened state, he had not been able to scale up the size of the darkalloy prosthetic hand, but he could still feel it like a gauntlet encased within the outer shell of the limb.
The cultist woman he had been interrogated noticed his transformation immediately, but it had already dramatically progressed over the past few seconds. Cyril was so focused on willshaping his qi and holding strong against the pain that it felt like minutes had passed.
When she snapped a spear of ice in his direction, he grit his teeth and slapped it away contemptuously; frozen water qi shattered into a spray of ineffectual fragments. The memory of the mysterious cultivator launching glaciers into Fissure and annihilating the frozen city resurfaced, but he shoved it away. He couldn’t afford to lose focus.
Perhaps worried that Cyril was about to kill the woman he had taken captive, Lady Firouza waved her staff high above; her reflection echoed the movements perfectly. A ripple formed in the air around the junior cultist, and she vanished within the bizarre dimensional geometry of the technique. Cyril couldn’t even begin to understand which concept the cult elder was using to teleport herself and others, though he wouldn’t be surprised if it was a divine water ability from Leviathan itself. It resonated with Behemoth’s memories uncomfortably.
It bode well for him that Firouza had focused on protecting her junior instead of launching an assault against him. If she was the one in charge of this supposedly-peaceful desert expedition, then her abilities most likely leaned in the direction of a support role. Of course, any offensive technique she did have was reinforced by a truly staggering investment into the Dominion of Water, orders of magnitude beyond his own soul.
He waited another few moments to see if Lady Firouza wanted to talk, but despite her calm, alluring appearance, the tempest of her oceanic aura said everything that needed to be said.
Firouza and her reflection flourished their staffs. Immediately, Cyril felt the ambient water vapor seeping away from his proximity. It tugged on his blood and the water within his body as well, but his transformation had altered much of his physiology until he was more golem than mortal.
His profane fusion should not have been able to function properly, but Behemoth existed in defiance of natural law. The spirit possessed the Dominion of Gravity because its presence defied the laws of Gravity; it knew Mass because its Mass transcended the realm of possibility.
Despite his transformed body possessing little in the way of fluids for Firouza to manipulate, the experience was profoundly uncomfortable. Being able to manipulate the insides of another cultivator’s body should have been near impossible due to one's soul rejecting foreign energies, but the gap in their realms allowed her to ignore his innate defenses. Bloody ichor leaked out of his ears and nostrils before evaporating.
Groaning, Cyril forced himself to run away from the afflicted area. He charged across the fertile soil of the oasis, his footsteps leaving deep indentations in the earth. To his surprise, his speed far exceeded his previous limits; the ground blurred beneath him, reduced to stretches of brown dirt and green foliage.
Firouza’s vapor manipulation technique had a second part to it, perhaps the ultimate purpose behind the technique. All of the gathered fluid had spread out in a fine mist around him, including some of his own remaining blood it had managed to extract. Cyril’s mad dash carried him to the edge of the technique and beyond.
A moment later, the mist condensed all at once, collapsing in on itself as if being pulled into a vacuum. Swirls of vapor compressed together into a crystalline orb that radiated deadly intent, around the size of a man’s head. It sped forward, directly at him.
Firouza and her reflection dragged their staffs through the air, directing the path of the orb. The air crackled in its passage, leaving behind a transient stream of ethereal ice as if it was freezing the world itself. Cyril leapt backward, leaving deep furrows in the ground as he hurled away from the path of the orb. It followed on his trail, promising death.
Desperate to counter and introduce some complications into their fight, Cyril directed his overhead Flickers. Four of them toward the crystalline orb, and the remaining two sped like comets toward Lady Firouza.
She dismissed the incoming projectiles from existence with a wave of her staff. Her face remained serene as ever, but he sensed the slightest fluctuation in her aura--annoyance? Her neutralization of the Flickers forced her attention away from the crystalline orb; it veered slightly off course, hounded by the quartet of Sun Cantrips. Its icy presence whittled the offending constructs rapidly, but its own spirituality dimmed from the exertion.
Finally, Cyril reached the limit of the amount of qi his technique would hold; no additional changes had occurred to his body since he partially transformed into a golem, but the reinforcing qi had hardened his defenses into unprecedented heights.
More and more qi flooded into his core, courtesy of Behemoth. Cyril could sense its presence more than ever, and despite its lofty arrogance, there was a disturbing intensity behind its regard. This battle fascinated the Titan, though he noted it seemed to have very little concern for its Vessel. As always, Cyril considered it a vote of confidence.
He leapt side to side, traversing over twenty paces with each jump. Now that he was free to direct his qi elsewhere, he launched an overloaded Pressure Cantrip directly at Lady Firouza. She tilted her chin in amusement, hovering in place several hundred feet above him, seemingly unconcerned about the possibility of his Gravity qi reaching her. Her eyes widened in surprise as it manifested directly on top of her, punishing force driving her down into her own reflection.
Somehow, the partial transformation had even enhanced his sense of hearing. Perhaps because of his experience with the seismic tremors from the wyrms, he could sense the vibrations of her whimper, echoing gloriously within his stone ear canals.
Lady Firouza and her reflection vanished. The crystalline orb suddenly veered off course, plowing into the ground and tunneling deep below the earth until it disappeared beyond the boundaries of Cyril’s spiritual senses.
He resisted the urge to celebrate. A cultivator of her caliber would not have such a lethal weakness, regardless of whether or not she was combat-oriented.
A few moments later, nine of Lady Firouza’s reflections formed around him in a ring, like a magical circle meant to cage a demon. Each of them appeared to have an identical aura to the original, though he assumed it must be an illusion. True clones were a near impossibility for those beneath the pinnacle.
Most disturbing of all, all signs of her previous serenity had vanished. The madness of religious fervor had distorted her face into something grotesque--a smile full of zealous lunacy. For the first time, she bothered speaking, nine soft, soothing voices blending together in perfect harmony:
“Die, fiend.”
