11 - Cinder Flash [Cherno]

[Deathsmoke Spray]

[Tags:]

First-order

Burst Beam

Cinder Element

Lacerative Damage

Energetic Damage

[Details:]

A short-lived, unfocused pyroclastic flow.

Burst duration scales linearly with energy input. Scales more efficiently if imbued with Anathema.

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

Inflicts heavy Lacerative damage and light Energetic damage. Ideal against soft targets.

[Deathsmoke Burster]

[Tags:]

First-order

Explosive Projectile

Cinder Element

Lacerative Damage

Energetic Damage

[Details:]

A sphere of compressed flame and pyroclast which explodes after a brief delay. The delay can be adjusted to a degree based on the caster’s Control attribute.

Explosion intensity and area of effect scales strongly with energy input. Scales more efficiently if imbued with Anathema.

Approx. one-meter area of effect.

Inflicts a burst of heavy Energetic damage on detonation followed by heavy Lacerative damage, making it efficient against massed lightly-armored targets and some obstructions.

There was one more tool she would fashion before fully committing to her escape from this hellish place. A smoke bomb. Following her own limited understanding, she followed a similar creation process to the Burster, but instead focused purely on smoke and the idea of it erupting into a lingering cloud on impact. The energy demand was roughly twice that of a baseline Tracer just like the Burster, but since it dealt no damage, the area of effect was several meters across even without investing any extra energy.

She could taste the smoke, but it didn’t burn her eyes or nose, even though it was dense enough that she felt like it should have inflicted those discomforts. It lasted only ten seconds before visibility returned to normal. That was enough, but the level of obfuscation felt lacking, producing more of a blur than a hard wall. A mental pull towards the [Thaumaturgies] menu. The spell’s newly-formed listing put a smile on Krahe’s face.

[Smoke Eruption]

[Tags:]

First-order

Explosive Projectile

Cinder Element

Crowd Control

Position Concealment

[Details:]

A sphere of compressed smoke which explodes after being thrown and striking a surface. The sensitivity can be adjusted to a degree based on the caster’s Control attribute. Creates a lingering smokescreen which lasts approx. ten seconds, obstructing visibility. Caster retains partial visibility and those with magical sight can see through the smoke.

Duration scales linearly with energy input. Scales more efficiently if imbued with Anathema.

Approx. five-meter area of effect.

Inflicts no damage. May induce Choking, Coughing and Eye Irritation in those of particularly low Durability ratings. Caster is unaffected by irritant properties.

The very idea of the thaumaturgy brought to mind the possibility that she might not be able to use her hands in a situation where she might need a smoke screen, so she, out of curiosity, tried just taking a deep breath, burning some Thauma, and exhaling smoke.

A brief fit of coughing later, she found that she could, indeed, do exactly that. A few hours of travel and sporadic attempts later, she got a grip, managing to not only generate a breath version of Smoke Eruption, but Deathsmoke Spray as well. The latter left her feeling like she’d just gargled sand, though. Their properties were identical to their normal counterparts beyond the fact they came out of her mouth.

[Smoke Eruption Breath]

[Deathsmoke Spray Breath]

All this experimentation, and every single spell had that tag: First-order. They were all ordered under that same category of the [Thaumaturgies] menu, so Krahe guessed it was a tiering system. More interestingly, though, her level had risen… And that was it.

[ARCHETYPE: Cherno Caster Lvl. 3]

No alteration to her attribute ratings… Though, she supposed, she had gotten a tentative grasp on magic, so perhaps that was enough to consider sufficient for a level-up or two. Or perhaps it had been her killing of those horrific things. A faint mental impulse nudged her towards the [Boons] submenu, but she had stayed in one place too long.

The chattering of teeth and sound of bony hands on stone sounded nearby.

“Speak of the abomination…” she sighed inwardly, drawing in a deep breath, burning Thauma. Lungs full of smoke and arm glowing like a fresh ember, she sprinted ‘round the corner and down the stairs. She rushed into the entryway of the building she had occupied, meeting the three monstrosities that meant to make a flesh-egg of her. Krahe met them with a deluge of blinding smoke and a flow of pyroclast from her left arm, which consumed two of them. Flesh shredded down to bone and smoldering, Krahe just shot the third one in the head. The other two were disoriented and in disabling pain, but Krahe knew they would soon recover, and she had neither the time to charge two Tracers, or another blast of Spray, nor to make a Burster.

Acting on instinct she collapsed the flame of Thauma into Anathema, stopping just as her Entropy Tolerance neared its utmost limit. It took a fraction of the usual time, just moments, and it took significant willpower to rein it in. The meter rose with a notch that meant something she couldn’t quite understand, and the feeling of Entropy was different to boot, hearkening back to what she had felt in the square. There was another feeling, a burning at the border of untouched flesh and living coal. It sparked a memory of how it felt when she first got her radiation blasters. The nerve interfaces had deteriorated over decades of storage in a forgotten corpo vault; they had become “bitey”.

That spark of memory, lasting a split-second, was so deeply rooted in Krahe’s psyche that it effortlessly outshone the intensity of her initial intention for a particularly fast Spray.

Her arm erupted not with pyroclast, but with a hellish red light, embers spraying forth. This was accompanied by a deafening buzz, the air itself screaming alongside her victims. It lasted just long enough for her to sweep her arm over all three mutants, only a moment. Piles of molten gore and cooked bones were all that remained… And Krahe slumped down by the wall, letting out a sigh of relief and exhaustion both. She glanced at her arm. The inside of her palm still shone cherry-red with preternatural heat. That… Blast. It wasn’t like her rad-blasters, but it was close enough.

[Cinder Flash]

“There’s my shotgun,” she thought.