Hearing Kael's question, Fischl froze as if someone had pressed an invisible seal upon her. Her violet eyes widened, and for a moment she appeared to be weighing the matter with unusual gravity. After a beat she gave a small, theatrical hum and lifted her chin with a touch of hauteur. Her golden twin tails swayed, and the hem of her purple dress fluttered in the forest breeze.
"I am the Prinzessin of Condemnation," she proclaimed. "Thunder answers to my command. Fate's script is already writ across the black vault of night. These crawling servants of darkness cannot escape my judgment."
She spoke with the conviction of someone who had already seen the outcome. Kael held her gaze without comment, and beneath her bravado a faint change crossed her expression. She looked away for an instant, then forced a winking smile.
"Still, that brute carries too much of a flame aura. Electro can restrain it, but a single arrow may not be enough."
"Of course," she added with one of her habitual dismissive airs, "I am better at detection than slaughter. Had I been otherwise, we would not now stand in this place."
Oz made the practical translation without the flourish. "She means it might not be possible, but she will try."
Kael's mouth tightened. He had not expected her theatrics to contain an actual assessment, but now they did. He rubbed his temple and let out a short breath. If Fischl could not guarantee a one-shot kill, then a different approach was needed.
He closed his hand briefly and a familiar weight materialized: the small tube of salve he had obtained earlier. The container gleamed with a pale blue sheen and bore an intricate frost emblem. Its surface gave off a coolness that fogged the air for a heartbeat.
The Ice Reinforcement Salve. It was a crafted enhancement, a paste that bound latent fate-energy into a weapon and granted it true elemental edge.
Fischl and Oz both turned. The pair had been occupied with strategy only moments before. Now their attention locked to the salve in Kael's palm. Fischl's eyes flashed with curiosity, and her posture, for once, was not grandstanding but genuinely intrigued.
"You hold a talisman of ice," she observed, leaning forward. "Whence came this artifact?"
Oz asked what she had not been able to disguise. "She asks what that object is and where you pulled it from."
Kael inspected the salve with a casual hand. The tube felt slightly elastic under his thumb. Its scent was faint and clean. He had seen this kind of reinforced alchemical product described in scarce trade notes: material infused with fate-energy, ground down into a paste that, when applied, could heighten a weapon's elemental affinity and durability.
"This is the Ice Reinforcement Salve," Kael said simply.
Fischl's eyes brightened further. She reached out with one slender hand, eager to examine it.
Kael moved the salve away in a motion so slight it might have gone unnoticed had she not already reached for it. Fischl's hand stopped in midair. The moment stretched; her expression stiffened for a flicker. She recovered her composure with a small, flustered sniff and an affectation of wounded dignity.
"I merely wished to study its secrets, not to covet it," she said, forcibly dignified.
Oz supplied a concise translation. "She means she was curious, not greedy."
Kael, mildly amused at her pretence, put the salve back into his own grip. He had brought it for this reason. If he could coat an implement with the salve and then lend it his own Fate augmentation, the resulting combination might achieve an effect neither alone could produce.
He set the salve against Fischl's bow. It was a slim, violet-black weapon carved with slender electro runes. As a Vision wielder, Fischl's bow was already an instrument of elemental channeling. Kael had concluded earlier that increasing the bow's elemental conductivity and freezing potential could neutralize the Fire-Axe Mitachurl's heat, or at least blunt its mobility long enough to remove it as a threat.
"Hand me your bow," Kael said.
Fischl obediently drew the weapon from her back and extended it to him without argument. She had the sort of trust that flowed from comradeship and from knowing Kael did not waste words.
"Let me help," Kael murmured. He engaged the small Fate-branch skill he had inherited from Clara. In Kael's mouth the name was plain and direct: Let Me Help. The ability called forth a destructive strand of Fate energy and prepared it to bind to an object.
The bow hummed in his hands. A subtle, uncanny chill rolled across the wood where he applied the salve. The Frost emblem within the paste flared, sending a pale, crystalline pulse through the bow's sinew.
At Kael's touch the bow did something that made even Fischl's eyes widen. The electro runes along its limbs brightened, then a thin red filament traced itself across the dark surface. It looped through the existing lightning pattern and braided with it, forming an unexpected new lattice.
The air shivered.
Fischl saw it and took a sharp breath. Her own pupil narrowed. The bow now carried two distinct forces at once. The violet electricity remained, but woven through it was a raw, red-destructive leer, something Kael's Let Me Help strand had imposed upon the weapon. It gave the bow a new tone, a pressure she had not commanded before.
She felt it resonate deep in her arm, felt as if the string itself had grown weight.
Kael held the bow for only a moment longer. The added Fate energy settled, the salve's chill seeping down the limbs like frost. The whole weapon exhaled a low, dangerous hum.
Fischl glanced at it, then fixed Kael with a look that had lost a fraction of its theatrical distance. "The bow…it carries a strange new presence," she said, voice low and focused. "It is lightning entwined with a force that hints at unmaking."
Oz translated the thought with the economy of his bird mind. The meaning hung between them. Kael nodded once.
"It is meant to blunt the fire," he said. "Freeze the edge, and then Electrode it. The combination will reduce its mobility and make a decisive strike possible."
Fischl's fingers closed on the bow with almost reverent speed. The drama returned to her posture, but there was purpose beneath it now. She drew an arrow and nocked it as if she had rehearsed the motion a thousand times.
"Then let the Prinzessin's judgment be rendered," she intoned, half in character and half as a promise.
Kael stepped back a few paces. He watched the pulse of readiness in Fischl's shoulders. Above them the leaves shivered. Somewhere deeper in the forest the Fire-Axe Mitachurl moved, unaware that the long, thin line of fate had now pinned it as a target.
Fischl took aim.
Kael felt the tiny centrifugal whir of Fate energy in the air, and at the same moment a cold edge of expectation settled across his own senses.