63 - Inax [Cherno]

A couple of the keys were cracked, pinkish, faintly luminescent fluid leaking out of them. Perhaps the worst part of the whole exchange was that the surgeon died with a giddy grin on his face.

"Eugh, I hate doing the thirst trap," Krahe shuddered as if to shake off the sleaze.

"Truly? I couldn't tell by the way you tried to boil his heart in his chest with anathema," the banisher said facetiously, turning back to look at her.

"He's not even ugly," she sighed, walking over with the map in hand. "It's the part where I have to pretend to be interested in my mark. Makes me feel greasy."

Casus stood, leaning in to get a look as well: "It's that part that makes you feel greasy? Of course he is not physically revolting, Inax do not have deformities, nor do they scar or become overweight. But everything else... I almost thought he was using some sort of mental attack thaumaturgy for a while there, truly."

"Inax. That's what this guy is?"

"Also known as synthoids and homunculi, yes. An artificial race conceived by the wizard Inax to populate his mobile artificial islands, some... Three-thousand years ago, give or take a few centuries. He used knowledge gleaned from the Banishment Wheel, as such, some consider them our cousins. They still inhabit the Wandering Islands, using them to mine precious resources from beneath the sea floor. All sorts of engineered advantages; stronger, faster, longer lived, et cetera. The possess surpassing anathema resistance, but they are unable to make use of Thaumic Fusion, something many would not consider a weakness. It’s likely that if you ever meet an Inax, they will look something like this. Note the fact he has two eyes; that marks him a Falseborn, those born after interbreeding with other races for more than two generations. They're also infertile. Falseborn are second-class citizens in the Wandering Islands, so most of them leave. If you meet one with two extra eyes on the forehead, it's a Trueborn... Though they rarely leave the islands unless they're exiled for some heinous crime."

"Ez-bake ethnostate, huh?"

"Ez-what?"

"Nothing, forget it. Just a turn of phrase. Well, can't say it didn't work, if Inax's little ethnostate is still around three thousand years after the fact. I take it they're violently xenophobic."

"Surprisingly not, since their very biology and the Wandering Islands' racial lockouts ensure that nobody but Trueborn can ever rule them. An unfortunate fact of such ruthless pragmatism is that it often works. Fortunately it takes them centuries to build even one new Wandering Island and their culture precludes them from expanding onto land, so the Twin Churches haven't had to sink any of their precious islands... In a while."

"Enough history lessons, help me unplug this guy," she said, setting down the map as she turned to the man the surgeon had been dismantling. "Let him die in peace at least."

Casus gestured to a beaker of bluish liquid, next to a thick-needled syringe.

"The body is still alive, but see here - Baneworm venom. Severs the Thinking Soul and wipes out  swaths of brain tissue. The meat remains, but the soul has already departed for its next incarnation."

"So he's a vegetable."

"Correct."

Krahe raised her gun briefly, then brought it back down. She raised her left hand instead, fingers in a pistol shape. A brief flash of orange ran down its length, then a ray of orange erupted from her index finger. Another followed from the middle finger, with these two alternating for a moment. The first shot had been enough to bore straight through the dead man's head, so she had slowly walked her aim on down to the surgeon and burned a macabre smiley-face into his skull.

"Good. It works as I had hoped. Do we want to destroy the bodies, or leave them as evidence for later?"

Rather than speak an answer, Casus instead lengthened his blade and proceeded to dismember both the dead man and the surgeon with a few well-placed cuts. The silvery miasma left behind ate away at the stumps, leaving them necrotic and shredded, and thus unlikely to be pulled back into place by a strong baneworm.

As she fired off two Cinder Gatling pulses Krahe felt the usual sickliness of Isotope buildup, faintly. Then, it grew even more faint, and Krahe grinned. The Twin Serpent Voidkey doing its work. It wasn't fast dissipation by any means, but it was fast enough to notice it from one moment to the next. Given her raised capacity and accelerated dissipation, she wagered she had a metaphorical ammunition pool of around two hundred shots before the buildup became a problem, and that was leaving plenty of space for “unforeseen expenses”.

Sneaking further through the compound to follow the surgeon’s path would’ve been easy enough, though of course, neither Krahe nor Casus trusted the man’s directions to be wholly accurate. They were already on high alert to begin with, but now even moreso as they slinked between and through buildings. Krahe used these obstacles as an opportunity to continue live-fire testing tentative Thaumaturgies, as some of them had the instinct to raise a barrier, and Krahe had two rather strong incentives to avoid popping off a handful of gunshots to bust down someone’s Barrier. The first was stealth of course, while the second was ammo preservation, since she had no way of knowing when she would be able to source more ammunition.

The actual thaumaturgy was simple, no more than a combat application of the Tar-tendrils she had already formed. They were Anathema-reliant, that was true, but unlike Cinder Flash and its derived spells, the Tar only required Isotope, not energetic Anathema. The amount consumed to catalyze the tar-forming reaction was miniscule, somewhat to her disappointment.

That first use case for her Tar came when they entered a building through the window and found a man packing up butchering equipment. Rather, he was barking orders at a four-man gaggle of Gor’ah while himself only handling delicate, lightweight items. The man had the good instinct to drop what he was holding the moment he saw them to raise his barrier, letting the beaker of Baneworm Venom shatter.

Krahe instantaneously struck out, performing a left-handed forward palm-heel strike straight out of a branch of Sector 7 Anti-cyborg Style.