50 - The Forming Toroid [Cherno]

Slipping the bangle onto her wrist, she channeled Thauma into it as instructed, pushing in more and more until it suddenly shut her out. With resonant buzzing and thrumming, the bangle floated from her wrist and began to revolve around it, casting concentrated rays of light every-which-way. Those which struck her carved gouges into her wards, causing them to give off short-lived, phantom smoke. Its ominous, jade-green light suddenly turned an iridescent black like the surface of an at-sea oil spill, and she felt the artifact take hold of her in some undefinable, nonphysical way. It was as if a thousand unseen tendrils or hands were reaching up her arm.

The Wound-like Grin insinuated itself into her mind’s eye once again, this time so vivid that she thought it was actually there for a brief moment. The next moment it was gone, and with it, so were the unnatural phenomena which the bangle had been causing. It was now utterly tranquil, mundane at first glance, but Krahe felt a constant, reassuring warmth from it.

A flood of memories came to the forefront of her mind. Flashes in rapid succession, much like certain old-fashioned indoctrination videos. First was the Great Wall of China, particularly a section in the ocean right off the coast of Taiwan. Krahe remembered that time. 2124, five years after the cloned son of legendary ruler Goujian, Goujian II, had ended the Neo Warring States Period. He had reformed the Kingdom of Yue with all of the formerly communist-occupied mainland, several islands, and a section of former Russia included in its borders. In 2124, he had just expanded the Great Wall to encapsulate a vast section of ocean, including the entirety of Taiwan, as this was where he had been cloned and where the new capital stood.

This memory was immediately followed by an image of jade. Bizarrely it was not any of the many memories she had of stolen jade jewelry, or any of the many antique cabinets with jade paneling which she had smuggled; instead, it was a memory of the Zedong Tower, with its ridiculous walls and statues of synthetic jade, only hours before the the Zedong Jade Tower Bombing of 2089. Also an act perpetrated by Goujian II.

Next, a pop-up barrier, so common all over Megacity Gamma. Designed to instantly turn a fashionable corporate space or a mall into a defendable fortress.

One after the next, more flashes came. Repeating themes of walls and small barriers with jade interspersed in between. The message was fairly obvious; the artifact could make jade walls. The moment that thought crossed her mind, the flashes stopped.

Right then, she appraised the item just to double-check.

[FORMING TOROID]

[Tags:]

Artifact

Archonforged

Jewelry

Passive

Active

[Charge:]

50/50

[Details:]

This Artifact cannot be removed from its bearer by force.

This Artifact bestows its bearer with the Boon “Phase of Earthen Jade”.

This Artifact holds fifty charges. By consuming a variable number of charges, the bearer may use this artifact to generate rectangular prisms of Earth-aspected construct-matter from any contiguous solid surface within 5m. 10 charges will produce 0.6 cubic meters of matter, by default in the form of a 2m by 1m by 30cm wall.

The matter generated by this Artifact is influenced by the bearer’s own affinities, but is by default hardened green jade. This Artifact’s constructs are reinforced by the bearer’s own Durability attribute, Ward strength, and any Ward-strengthening effects also affecting the bearer at time of generation.

The constructs produced by this Artifact last for a minute, after which they disintegrate; this duration may be increased by funneling Thauma into them as one would with any other construct.

This Artifact continuously recovers charges at a rate of 2 charges per hour.

This Artifact’s characteristics may evolve autonomously based on further exposure to Archon Core collapse emissions or the bearer’s own growth.

Immediately afterwards, she turned her thoughts inward to her menu, to see what exactly the curiously-named boon did.

[PHASE OF EARTHEN JADE]

[Tags:]

Elemental Affinity

[Details:]

If the bearer does not possess an elemental affinity which includes Earth as one of its components:

Grants First-order Elemental Affinity: Earth

If the bearer already possesses an elemental affinity which includes Earth as one of its components, this Boon instead improves the material characteristics of the bearer’s constructs.

It was not exactly what she would’ve chosen were she given a choice, but Krahe was nonetheless satisfied with this result. Not only was it a powerful defensive tool in the form of on-demand cover, but also a utility tool for scaling sheer surfaces and bridging gaps. The boon spoke for itself, and fed into the consideration which Krahe had weighed earlier: Creating solid constructs as a Thaumaturgic source of kinetic damage so that she wouldn’t have to rely solely on her gun.

Despite being much larger than her wrist, the bangle didn’t slip off. Even if she raised her arm such that it should fall off, it just stayed put as if it was lined with glue on the inside, or perhaps magnetized to her wrist. When she placed it such that it wasn’t touching her wrist and let go, it just refused to fall, floating there.

“Ey, you alive in there?! Knock on the wall twice if you want me to letye out!!” came a concerned call from outside.

Two knocks.

“So? How’d it go? No meltdown? Yer wards holdin’ up? I know these things can be kinda rough even on mid-rankers.”

“And you didn’t think to warn me?”

“Hey, it never kills or maims anyone, it just refuses to change if you can’t make it go. Kinda weird, that, now that I think of it… But then, these are archonforged artifacts we’re talkin’ about, kenomaic shit. A touch of sentience is on the tame side with these things. Y’give it an appraisal yet?”

She nodded.

“And? What’s it do?”

“I’ll tell you in a bit. This store room is stuffy,” she lied. Garvesh caught on, of course, being a pawnbroker and thus a professional bender of truth. He quietly cackled under his breath as he stood there, waiting for her to pass so he could relock the storeroom. She knew better than to loiter behind the counter, only stealing a brief glimpse at the wide array of goods hidden below it, not to mention three large revolvers and a trapdoor in the floor.