83 - Spines [Cherno]

A/N: Paragraph fixed near the end.
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As Firminus spoke, it was him who grew increasingly more disquieted, rather than Krahe, due to her overall lack of reaction.

“That all makes perfect sense to me. I see no reason not to go ahead with the procedure, unless it has a sky-high failure rate or something of the sort.”

“The secondary concern is that a spine is one of the more complex grafts, leaving much room for rejection; some forms of rejection are inconsequential, but even a miniscule rejection incidence with the spinal cord or nerve connections can cripple you. Bouts of severe pain or temporary paralysis are the most common, lasting anywhere from seconds to hours. I could bring out my spines and take a look if any one of them fits and has a good compatibility with you. At your height…”

He got up and walked around, looking her up and down.

“How tall are you?”

“One-hundred ninety point seven centimeters.”

“Considering your proportions…” Firminus trailed off as he rubbed his chin. “We have a few options. Regardless, you will likely suffer some rejection symptoms if we go ahead with minimal adjustments. Thus, I will need to put you on mild rejection suppressants for a time, and they’ll have some side effects. However, you will regain use of your legs immediately after the operation. With follow up visits, the graft can be adjusted to do away with any rejection.”

The process was surprisingly short. It started with Firminus taking a sample of Krahe’s spinal fluid and assessing the site of her injury. Then, he formed a construct of her torso and started slotting spines into place. Twenty minutes later, he drew a symbol on her back and over it plastered a metallic lattice vaguely shaped like a receiver antenna, taping it down with several paper talismans. It was connected via a black cable to a human torso model with one of the spines slotted in and a mechanical arm attached.

“Move your right arm.”

She did, and the machine-arm followed, though clumsily and with a delay.

“Bad conductivity. Next.”

So it went.

The candidates were narrowed down to four spines.

Several more tests followed, including several more arcane constructs of Firminus’s making. They were all fascinating in that they all had a clear purpose… And were entirely non-invasive. With each test, it sunk in that fleshgrafting was a highly advanced science, just in a different way to cybernetics.

Over the course of hours more, three of the four were disqualified.

Then, so was the fourth.

Firminus sighed with frustration.

“What an infernal patient you are. My collection of grafting stock is among the most diverse in all Audunpoint, and yet not a single one of my spines could conceivably be made to work for you without major, major adjustments. This is a labour of weeks at the least. If you truly cannot afford to walk the streets as you are, I could shelter you here for the intervening time.”

Despite his words, Firminus’ tone of voice was excited. She knew his type - ever hungry for an unsolvable conundrum to solve. He was also not lying about the timeframe, and she didn’t have that sort of time.

“Is there no other option, then?”

Firminus didn’t answer. A dense silence hung over them as the grafter lit up a cigarette.

“Exhume a relic,” the voice of Casus cut through.

“You know I cannot do that, Aristedes - neither politically, nor practically. Even if I had a relic spine right here in the back room, it would simply not work. She's an unanointed, unofficiated civilian. It wouldn’t reject her, it would simply refuse to interact with her body at all.”

“Lady Blackhand, what do you say to becoming a graft-apostle?” Casus asked, turning to Krahe.

“Sell myself into servitude to the Grafting Church? No thanks. I’ll take my chances.”

“Given your recent deeds, and assuming that Casus sponsors you, none could say that you owe anything to the church should we go through with his suggestion. The duties of a graft-apostle begin and end with a concerted pursuit of perfecting and mastering one’s worldly vessel - so long as you dedicate yourself to that pursuit and do not commit High Blasphemy such as the theft of another’s flesh, none within the church will be able to find reason to come after you. Not to mention, if he does sponsor you, and assuming what you have done becomes known within the church, your standing in the church will be better than that of most newly-inducted apostles. Of course, Casus’s name would be severely tarnished if you chose to just take the graft and disappear. Moreover, to make an apostle’s Prime Graft one so pivotal as a spine would be extremist enough, but for that apostle to be an anathemist to boot… Well, it’s not heresy, but your ability to harness anathema without self-injury will inevitably draw attention - becoming an apostle will only serve to accelerate the process.”

Krahe gave Casus a sideways look, squinting at him, trying everything in her power to find a reason to distrust him, or rather, letting the distrustful part of herself exhaust itself so she could overpower it. She sighed.

“Casus, can the church remotely track graft-apostles using their grafts?”

“It is possible, but rarely done, in no small part due to the difficulty; one must be familiar with the particular graft before even making the attempt to scry its possessor. I would say that any given graft-apostle is far more likely to be tracked through simpler means than scrying. I am also fairly certain that your strange traits will obscure most scrying targeted at you, and you can, of course, simply source a counter-scrying talisman.”

He wasn’t lying, as far as she could tell. There was of course the possibility that he was misinformed, but he himself was an apostle, so the church could’ve easily found him or at least learned of his separation from his belt if they actively used scrying to track things and people.

“Fine, let’s do it.”

“You will pay for my new heart if this one gives out before the decade’s end, so help me Zavesh,” Firminus threatened Casus. “Now let us go. We must visit the central temple. You as well, Blackhand.”

It was a somewhat awkward journey, but they made it to a seemingly random building without incident, and from there entered the central temple’s back corridors through a hidden passageway. Strange, vaguely chemical scents floated in the air, and the many stone surfaces were utterly pristine. They entered into an inner sanctum of sorts, and there, Krahe was left to wait while Casus and Firminus left.