12 - Cinder Flash Pt. 2 [Cherno]

Krahe found that her entropy dissipated normally, but there was still a tentative sense of something off. Her body felt weirdly achy… And it clicked. She queried [Chernobog’s Mystic Wisdom] about the feeling, and lo and behold, her theory was confirmed. It was the feeling of Anathema buildup.

A second and third gauges made themselves known, the second tinged yellow and separated into thirds by two notches, while the third one was tinged red and subtly styled to resemble her left arm. The Anathema gauge was filled to just over the one-third notch and slowly draining, while the arm gauge was empty. Remembering one of her arm’s listed traits she considered trying to drain her built-up Anathema into it, but chose to let it dissipate normally instead. Compared to how she had felt after pushing herself to keep up with corpo assassins in her past life, this was fine. When the Anathema gauge dropped beneath the one-third notch, it turned an atomic green, still distinguishable from the green of her Entropy meter even at a glance. Her body ache faded to a near-unnoticeable level. As nice as these pseudo-HUD elements were, Krahe didn’t want to rely on them.

There was no mind-impulse to draw her to her [Thaumaturgies] this time, but she checked anyway. Immediately, one thing stood out: Cinder Flash was categorized separately from the others, under Second-order, and its Tags also reflected this.

[Cinder Flash]

[Tags:]

Second-order

Cinder Element

Burst Beam

Energetic Damage

Anathemism

[Details:]

A short-lived, unfocused high-energy beam.

Can only be cast using Anathema.

Linear input/output scaling. Burst intensity scales with energy input.

Approx. five-meter effective range, dissipates over approx. a meter afterwards; range very slightly scales with power input.

Inflicts heavy Energetic damage.

She tried casting it with around as much Thauma as a Tracer, but all that got her was a deep-red flashlight out of her palm, and one that faded away beyond five meters regardless, straight out of some shitty VR horror game. Not unexpected, but markedly more disappointing than expected. Querying [Chernobog’s Mystic Wisdom] gave a straightforward answer: It was due to the Thaumaturgy’s order, and this being a Second-order Thaumaturgy, it demanded far more energy to even go off than its First-order counterparts. She tried casting it again, burning Thauma and charging her arm until she nearly maxed out her Entropy, but it still just wouldn’t go through.

Another query to [Chernobog’s Mystic Wisdom].

Cinder Flash’s details changed as her answer.

Can only be cast using Thaumic Fusion.

She’d misinterpreted the first line thinking it merely required Anathema to be imbued into it in the casting. Krahe wasn’t exactly in the mood to irradiate herself any more than she already was, so she just left it be, pulling most of the Anathema out of her arm so it could dissipate. One-third of the limb’s capacity, she left - so she could readily use it to empower her other magic when she inevitably needed to.

Continuing further up through the city’s spiral shape, traversing rooftops where she could, Krahe came across further signs of human activity. Some building entrances were blocked off, others had new doors installed with machines inside. Tubes and cables snaked about as if some hack writer’s attempt to draw a parallel between human constructions and cancerous growths. Everywhere she looked she found dead abominations, charred from one side the same way as her arm, always from a direction facing the center of the pit. Following the traces of human activity led her to some sort of fully subterranean temple, its gigantic, wide-open doors blocked by a junk palisade with mutant corpses strewn atop it. The palisade’s smaller, makeshift gate was intact, latch and all. Beyond the palisade, in the temple’s single chamber, a campsite able to house at least thirty people by her estimation had been established. It was all… Deserted. Not quite like the people had just gotten up from their dinners and left, but not as if it had been abandoned for any length of time. An evacuation of some sort?

As she entered she closed and latched the gate behind herself, looking around for lingering survivors or anything useful.

Someone had left behind a pair of rusty-red trousers, belt and all, as well as a black-stained wife beater. She took the pants for herself, finding that they mostly fit, only becoming too loose around the ankles and being a tad too long, needing to be rolled up. They would do for now, Krahe finally had somewhere to stow the clips she’d been carrying under her suit. A few minutes later, she had taken her gun’s holster out of storage and fixed it to her left hip.

Besides the pants, she didn’t find anything particularly exciting, though some useful objects had been left behind. Pickaxes. Shovels. A few knives, some cheap-looking metal cutlery. By these objects’ make she guessed the manufacturing level to be roughly on par with the Pattner pistol, around late-19th to early-20th century. She took the nicest knife and the cutlery - a bowl, spoon, canteen and cup. The last object of interest was a water-machine much like the one in the lab. This one worked, so Krahe filled her canteen.

The same icons as she’d seen back in the temple-lab lined the walls and their eldritch forms glared down with prime-numbered eyes. The central icon of worship had been defaced; only two vast, trunkless legs remained, wrought of pitch-black stone whose surface gleamed with otherworldly iridescence. They were precisely cut off just above the ankles. At its feet was a basin caked in dry blood, but naught else was to be found in this place.

She stuck around for a bit longer, hiding in an abandoned tent while she checked her menu, giving in to the impulse from earlier.

One new boon.

A grin grew on her face.

[KENOMA POCKET]

[Tags:]

Dimensional Storage

Outer God’s Touch

[Details:]

The holder of this boon may open a rift to an extremely limited personal storage space, separate from the storage space accessed by normal means such as storage artifacts (the holder’s Kenoma Sack).

Opening and holding the Kenoma Pocket open generates Hard Entropy, and adding or removing any items also generates Hard Entropy based on the physical and magical mass of the item.

The Kenoma Pocket and Kenoma Sack cannot be opened simultaneously.