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120 - Crow Issue Pt. 2 [Cherno]

Going silent, the bird looked sideways, staring at Krahe with one eye. As she ate, the passing thought of invoking Chernobog’s Mystic Wisdom came to her; the Snare-sign of Blackest Pitch did, after all, carry the Outer God’s Touch tag. That thought alone, it seemed, was enough to set it off. A black pinhole appeared amidst the redness of Barzai’s eye, and soon encompassed it wholly. Flashes of knowledge flooded in, confirming one out of several theories that she had come up with for thi...

287 - The Other Side of the Breach [Sturmblitz]

Meanwhile, two-thirds of the supporting force waited behind them. Zelsys had retained a few sect members, Strake, three Third-model tankmen, and three squads of Hellhounds. All others had been assigned to Zefaris and Victor. It was no surprise, between Lady Zelsys and Strake, there would likely only be a tiny fraction of enemy forces to clean up. Victor was sure that it wouldn’t be nearly so easy on their side - not because he thought himself or Zefaris lackluster, of course.

Once Vic...

"Green-eyed Demon" Artwork

Semi-abstract artwork of Krahe's Astro Diver form

286 - Dark Powers [Sturmblitz]

Oh. Oh no. Oh, that was not good. Roderick felt that. All his bodies and subordinates felt that. Her words - they carried a Pseudo-Truth. The world itself reverberated and carried her speech, as if acknowledging the legitimacy of that maxim, or perhaps unable to deny it: The Universal Tongue of Violence.

Come the next moment, Roderick learned what she had meant.

Dozens of the Order’s disciples did, and they all met their end. He’d seen Elder Third in action, his imperious pres...

119 - Crow Issue [Cherno]

This was Krahe’s chosen tactic for the simple reason that Sorayah wasn’t lying when she spoke of her own abilities; based on Krahe’s cursory investigation, she likely had the superior firepower between the two of them. Deception and terror were tactical powerhouses of human history; when it came to going against a superior force, they became prime choices.

The knowledge of how abnormal her astral body appeared had not slipped by her awareness; it didn’t match any written descrip...

118 - Terror [Cherno]

A/N: First paragraph had a mistake, fixed.
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With not much to do for the moment but wait to be contacted by Mistress Yao, Krahe had taken to occasionally frequenting the Society in intervening days. Due to the Tarnished Jade Flower Stamp’s tracking properties, she went out of her way to avoid any church safehouses, and the same went for going anywhere that might make it easy to deduce information. She went to...

117 - The Tarnished Jade Flower Pt. 2 [Cherno]

A few minutes passed as Zachariah began the arduous and, indeed, time-consuming prepwork. The only sound to fill the silence was that of the inkstick grinding against the inkstone.

“I’m curious. How does this work? The thing with the Flower. Not on the magical side, the personal one. Why did you simply take the code-phrase at face value? Did Yao herself order you to do so?”

“You have the right of it, yes. She chose me, and a small handful of others, as middle-men, a first ...

285 - She Who Speaks the Universal Tongue of Violence [Sturmblitz]

These purple-burning sigils were unmistakable in the cursed, ancient power they held, and irreplicable to all but a select few enlightened souls with eyes like scalpels to glimpse the glyphs and ironclad wills to withstand the strain without going mad. It was said that the First Truthseeker had journeyed to Agartha to look upon the Prison of the Unborn, and was struck blind for his arrogance, with his fragmented knowledge becoming the foundation of the Order’s unique, high-level glyphology....

"Green-eyed Demon" WIP Artwork

WIP abstract art of Krahe's Astrodiver form

284 - Explosive Entry [Sturmblitz]

Outside the dome…

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“Hellhounds! Disciples!” Zelsys bellowed. The reply was a concussive blast of amplified sound, a mixture of warhorns and warcries. From her disciples she received flares of magic, bellows of determination, and waves of essentia and aura alike.

“Follow in my wake. You know your orders; exterminate hostile cultivators, rescue civilians, secure the city. Strake…”

116 - The Tarnished Jade Flower [Cherno]

She noticed Reuben staring at her as she thought aloud with her hand to her chin, aghast. There was something there, he wasn’t aghast because of the far-stretched theory. Did she coincidentally hit close to home? But how would he know? At that moment, Krahe realized. She recognized the rings on his hands, and the coin-like earring dangling from his ear. He was one of the people who had stood right next to Sorayah.

“Ah, but it’s just a rumor, isn’t it,” she smiled, trying to di...

115 - Case Four: Lost Sun Killer Myth [Cherno]

With that, he left, and so did the rest of the crowd, doubtlessly to change out of those ridiculous robes. He exited by a door behind the chimera, while the others filed out of doors to the sides. In the meanwhile, Krahe made her way to the common area upstairs. The Society was legally an agency, but the contract board was minimal and in the corner, and the main public room couldn’t be more of a bougie coffeehouse if it tried. The bar, manned by a gynoid automaton with the sigil of the Soci...

283 -The Plight of Roderick Von Burgghusen Pt. 2 [Sturmblitz]

The ripple intensified and changed direction, as if… Bouncing? No, that couldn’t be right. And yet, that was exactly what seemed to be happening. The ripple had taken a substantial time to traverse the whole diameter of the dome, and now, it was not only moving faster, but was more intense and less uniform, more unstable.

Another bounce.

Another.

A concerned message came. It was from a direct disciple of the Fourth Truthseeker, one Rosa Diettberg. Neither Roderick nor an...

282 - The Plight of Roderick Von Burgghusen [Sturmblitz]

Zefaris provided most of the structure, glyphs, and a number of reinforcement and velocity magnification glyph circles in the rod’s flight path. Its design wasn’t a spear, but a battering ram, with a gigantic seething glyph at its flat head. It was the most discordant, disruptive Antediluvian Glyph Zefaris knew of - at least, those were the feelings it evoked. Sifting through her mental vault of these ancient symbols was entirely unlike remembering actual letters and symbols, and more lik...

114 - The Lost Sun Society Pt. 2 [Cherno]

Most of them lacked any edge, exuding the aura of high-level enthusiasts and geeks. The Lost Sun Society decisively leaned on the side of a glorified clubhouse rather than a true occult society; that didn’t discredit it as a place for gathering intel, and it certainly made it easier for Krahe. She nonetheless disliked it, simply due to how hokey the occult facade felt in its discordance with what was truly behind the veil.

It felt like walking into a historical orthodox church, only t...

113 - The Lost Sun Society [Cherno]

Krahe didn’t feel cowardice from the man, but he wasn’t brave. He lacked the bravado, the ego, that drove others to smash themselves against a wall; the bravado that had driven her to such an end.

“How much is it?”

“A- quarter mil. A-and another quarter mil for the gun, if it turns out to be a legit Pattner.”

She felt no particular need to kill Cassius, or bring down his gambling operation. It didn’t seem particularly predatory, and she didn’t see gambling as...

281 - Breaching the Red Fog Dome [Sturmblitz]

The colour of the sky had gradually changed from a semi-cloudy blue-white, reddening and growing overcast with a dolorous red. People fleeing the region forced them to slow slightly in a few places where vision was blocked by hills, but otherwise, Zel continued pushing without reprieve. They reached the spot from which the Woodsman had taken his photos before noon. Beyond this point, the Red Fog lingered near the ground and gradually thickened up until becoming a solid wall, forming an imperm...

280 - Fortress of White Stone [Sturmblitz]

Without another thought, she willed Fulguris to consume her Tablet as well. Then, she called Fulguris back to herself, leaving everything as it was, and closed her eyes to begin meditating. Inward, she looked, delving far down, and she found it. Fulguris’ inner realm, the spiritual representation of both the spirit itself and the weapon.

It was unlike the Dream Desert that represented the place between her Thinking and Primordial selves. Bladed mountains of steel, golden sunlight, ser...

"Sturmblitz Kunst Vol. 3: A Living Storm in Iron Skin" Cover

112 - Wandrei Faust [Cherno]

It was somewhat amusing to see three individuals arc overtop the wall as if they’d just jumped on a trampoline. One was an evoy with an uncannily humanoid build, wearing a suit, the other was that pure-white Inax from earlier, while the third was a Mamon Knight of the insectile variety with a pair of cleavers as his weapons.

“Barzai. Kill.”

Less like a living thing and more like an autonomous missile, the crow whizzed down into the alleyway and set upon the evoy, turning him...

279 - What Good are Fangs [Sturmblitz]

“This material feels different to what we got directly from Eisengeist. It obeys more readily. Maybe refining more in this way will eventually lead to a truly reusable mask. Did you at least get some answers?”

“Roughly the same number of answers and questions.”

“A best-case outcome, then… What is the Walking Way of Veles? Did Koschei mention anything like that? I can’t help but think about it, but I can’t recall any context.”

Zefaris spent the next short wh...

278 - The Sun is Also a Warrior [Sturmblitz]

“Know you, how vast your own world is? Know you every tree that surrounds Willowdale? Every city in Ikesia? Every country and tiny municipality on this continent? Every continent and island on the face of the planet? This planet, why, this Sun, is only one, and look how many shine in the heavens. Who is to say that other worlds are not going through their own Revolt Against the Heavens or War of Fog at this very moment? Or, from another perspective, who is to say that our sun is the only on...

111 - Green-eyed Demon [Cherno] [+Artwork]

A/N: Attached is the chapter illust. as well as an alt variant of it.
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On motorbikes, he alongside five of his best subordinates went after the woman, catching her before she even got out of his territory. Despite her speedy escape, she obviously couldn’t keep up that smoke-form for long… And he knew this area better than the back of his hand, as did his squad of five.

He had her in a...

110 - Shura [Cherno]

Krahe conjured a capsule of Class 3 Painkiller and threw it at him. One of his hands caught it.

“...Pristine. Original capsule. Unbroken seal. Where’d you get this, I wonder? I won’t ask. I know better. The deal’s made. Come with me.”

Several minutes later, Krahe realized that most of this side of the first floor and the basements below was all Nozar’s property. All the piled-up stuff wasn’t just trash, but strangely-organized piles of records, towers of memslates an...

109 - A Hornet Steps Into a Hive of Flies Pt. 2 [Cherno]

The moment she laid eyes on the structure, with its blacked-out windows, she fully expected to be antagonized or even openly attacked. As she walked through its halls, somewhat to her disappointment, she only got hateful stares from beyond cracked-open doors. Before she could reach her informant’s basement door, a group of three surprisingly bulky, strongly-built fly-men, each proudly and openly displaying their natural vedesian markings, emerged from his door. They stopped the moment they ...

277 - Crow Mask [Sturmblitz]

”Do not worry, it does not corrode cold-iron. It does, however, do this…”

Fritz took out a long glass pipette and put it to his mouth, drawing in precisely one single drop of the compound after Makhus opened the flask for him. Then, he dropped it onto a shank of chicken meat which he had pulled out of somewhere in his many-pocketed apron. The single drop of Black Seven struck the meat and instantly began devouring it. In seconds, half a kilogram of chicken had become a puddle of b...

108 - A Hornet Steps Into a Hive of Flies [Cherno]

“Am I right to assume that you intend to test it against a live target some time soon?”

“I’m not in the mood to go looking for trouble, but trouble has a habit of finding me nonetheless. All my leads go straight into Hashem territory, so I’ve got a good feeling that I’ll get to give it a test run sooner rather than later…”

In preparation, Krahe loaded six dregshot bullets into two clips; in the first, they alternated with thaumstone-core lead bullets, while in the ...

276 - Dracofulminate and Black Seven [Sturmblitz]

“I’m sure our disciples will be glad to get in on the action, but I’ve already solved the problem of numbers even if nobody volunteers. Plenty of tankmen, both Second and Third-models. Strake, too.”

“Really? How’d you convince him?”

“Dragon nerves for Zero’s drive train.”

“Ah. That makes sense. I never expected that, of all things, nerves and lymphatic fluid would be some of the most magical parts of a dragon. Speaking of…”

He laid out several...

275 - War Dog Cafe [Sturmblitz]

With a smile, she dropped a cold-iron sovereign and a golden coin on the counter, taking one of the pastries as she passed behind Ulrich. Three gelt for a pastry. She vividly remembered paying a single gelt for a full meal her first time in Willowdale. Such was the price for a stabilized economy; that single gelt back then had the buying power of five gelt now.

The back half of the so-called War Dog Cafe was what made this location special. The front half, the cafe half, was a refurbish...

107 - It's a Research and Development Montage Pt. 2 [Cherno]

It was done, and it made Casus grimace in apprehension when he first saw it.

He’d seen grisly talisman designs before, sure, but there was something malicious about this one. The central image was a disembodied forearm, clawed and with gnarled skin like cooling magma, a more monstrous version of Krahe’s own arm, clearly, with smoke billowing from its back and rays of crimson killing light shooting from its palm. Around it swirled ominous patterns that dragged the eyes, resembling at...