56 - The Wound-like Grin, Again [Cherno]

Firminus had indeed tossed the sample, but before then, he had stored some of it away inside his right hand; among other tools, it contained several dozen hidden syringes, all within his abnormally spacious Kenoma Pocket. He entered that woman’s saliva into one of his machines, a device of mechanical sophistication and thaumaturgic brutishness. It used a complex mechanism to bombard a sample with a wide and overwhelming variety of basic appraisal magic, both breaking apart any appraisal interference and brute-forcing the specific type of appraisal that would work. It wasn’t systemic appraisal, but rather appraisal which targeted specific substances and magical signatures to determine the properties of potential graft material.

There was nothing abnormal. No dead blood cells, no microscopic Thaumstone accumulation, none of the six or seven different abnormal substances found in the saliva of those suffering from anathema poisoning. Even graft-apostles and graft-saints who could handle the strain had some markers show up in their checkup samples for a while after using anathemism. Why not her?

Moments later, the machine began returning false positives. One after the next, every false positive possible. Then, his sample turned black, and fearing for the precious equipment, he shut down the device. When he opened the sample vial he found that it was full of construct-tar, which rapidly denatured into a choking cloud of smoke, and this smoke simply dematerialized into decoherent thauma just as quickly.

Though bewildered by the result, Firminus felt no dread. That Casus Aristedes trusted her enough to bring her here was proof enough of a righteous nature.

“Oh Igaria, what sort of ally have you sent to us?” he sighed.

Firminus decided to warn her when the opportunity presented itself. If she happened to visit a grafter without the same deep, abiding faith in Zavesh as him, and if said grafter chose to sell the information about someone who could tolerate anathema without suffering bodily degradation, she would be hunted down and butchered alive.

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It was a fairy lengthy journey through the city, despite Casus leveraging his connections in this world to source what seemed to be a motorbike. The machine's design resembled that of an art-deco exhibit more than a vehicle, with its engine completely hidden inside the chassis and its wheels just solid discs of brass-like metal which hovered between tuning fork shaped ribs. It had just about enough space for two people.

"Otherworlder tech?" Krahe asked.

"One of the more successful examples, yes. The inventor settled for these when his combine tractor idea turned out to be useless."

"I assume most thaumatech runs on souldregs in one way or another, yes?"

"Most of it does, yes; this one uses a typical Dregburner Drive, as it is a customized Model 3. Some versions, like the Model 7C, can be fuelled by one's own thauma, but they are somewhat niche...

"Just go, you can tell me later," she interrupted him, getting on the machine. She had observed it and determined its controls to be typical, if primitive, resembling those of an antique from mid-20th century soviet europe. Then, she remembered that she didn't have any knowledge of the streets or an internal compass pointing to the destination, and scooted backwards in the seat.

The ride was anything but bumpy, though the motorbike's actual speed was more in the realm of a riced-up moped than the 300kph death machines Krahe had enjoyed riding in her past life. Its greatest strength was the distinct absence of engine noise and its perfect suspension, the dregburner drive sounding more like the whirr of a hoverbike.

The whole journey, Krahe had mentally worked on improving what Thaumaturgies she had and devising new ones. For starters, both the Smoke Eruption grenade and the Burster were easily strengthened with a solid shell. It just needed to be tuned to shatter once the grenade's internal pressure reached a peak. Constraining an explosive was one of the easiest ways to cause its detonation to be more violent.

There was also the fact that her Throughput was no longer a severe bottleneck. She already had ideas of lashing tendrils to smash apart Barriers, and of using her own fingers as the barrels for a beam gatling gun. Precise, repeating strikes that could chew through wards while also serving as suppressing fire in conjunction with her on-demand cover deployment artifact. Then, there was Anathemism. Of course, Cinder Flash would easily find an improvement. Repeating fire would turn it into Cinder Strobe, and it could be made into a slightly closer approximation of the Blackhand Rad-blaster if she leaned fully on the power side of things. However, an ominous idea swirled in her head, inspired by the desire to see just how far she could push the power of Thauma and Anathema. Just how strong was the Forming Toroid's reinforcement? Could she create a construct that would carry out Thaumaturgy-like functions without her intervention, or would that demand an Eidolon?

The Wound-like Grin made itself known again. Krahe had realized by now that it was a representation of the infinitesimal sliver of Chernobog that dwelt in her brain... Whatever Chernobog was. It showed up whenever her actions stirred the sliver of eldritch intelligence, and in turn it took what she herself knew as a means of translating the unknowable into knowable.

Downright magnanimous, this Outer God.

Over the course of the ride, Krahe and the Wound-like Grin engaged in a nonverbal tug-of-war, concocting an absolute war crime of a magic.

The whole construct's design was, fundamentally, simple: A Core and a Shell.

The Core would be made up of Cinder-aspected Anathema, constantly radiating Cinder Flash-adjacent rays outward like an ember. Vitally, the Core's composition would be precisely balanced to teeter on the edge of collapsing into itself and subsequently erupting outward in a violent detonation of Cinder-radiation and Anathema. This was when the shell came in.

In practice, the Shell would be made up of many interwoven tendrils with a special composition, powerfully Earth-aspected and designed to return the core's emissions exactly back where they came: Into the Core. Specifically, they would be made of Tar as a flowing medium, with nano-scale construct-crystals that would actually do the reflecting

The Shell's purpose would be to gradually encase the Core more and more, reflecting its own emissions back into it, until, with full envelopment, the Core would collapse. Moments later, the Core's momentary ignition into a wretched approximation of a miniature star would tear the Shell apart and fry everything in the vicinity.