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301 - Henshin; Metamorphosis [Cherno]

Before Krahe even left the safehouse, she had eaten more than her fair share from her test-run pie; as good as ekarone was, in its similarity to both pineapple and forest strawberry, the very thing that made it delicious also made it physically painful to eat after a while. This was not the case when it was cooked, so with a scalded tongue and full stomach, Krahe made for the shrine-clinic.

As she entered the clinic, Krahe glanced sidelong at Firminus. In her best approximation of Tiengenzhen-Cantonese, which she knew he understood, she said to him: “I will not tell her vengeance bad, violence bad, live well, and similar. Would be wrong.”

Just in case Juno could hear them.

“I didn’t expect you to,” he responded, also in T-Cantonese. “I am not delusional. Steering her as best as we can is our only option. Suppression would just lead to an outburst later.”

The grafter motioned towards a door which Krahe had not seen opened before. To no surprise, it led to a resident patient room. She stepped through the second door and saw Juno sitting there — not in bed, but in a lounging chair, leaned back, using a chunky tabletop eyebox to watch some thriller-drama that, for some arbitrary reason, was in black and white with the occasional bright highlight colour. The shot lingered, barely changing as one of the two characters spoke. That was all Krahe got out of it. She wasn’t paying attention to the projection, after all.

The “visor,” as Firminus had described it, was similar to that which had been grafted to Seer’s head, only this one was held to Juno’s head by a halo-shaped, cushioned harness. Overall, it resembled a VR headset, only, it rested a bit too far from her face, and Krahe could see the cables coursing between the headset and Juno’s eye sockets. With her eyelids naturally closed, it created a macabre illusion of the wires entering directly into her eyeballs — though Krahe supposed it was no more macabre than reality. Juno’s hair, a ruddy brown, was tied back to make way for the visor’s harness, and it appeared to have been cut shorter. Statuesque, mechanical legs with shells of what appeared to be hammered copper protruded from under her sundress, and a corset-like harness surrounded her midsection, its securing clamps undone and a small power bank resting on the table next to her. Her left arm was, indeed, that of Aldritch, its proportions seamlessly altered to suit the frame of a 17-year-old girl. Using that left hand, she was incessantly scribbling away at a notebook, drawing a rough, but fairly good sketch of the thriller’s main character — a white-haired man with a scaly, beastly right arm, presumably that of a saurian.

Almost immediately, Juno stopped drawing.

“Whuh-” she uttered, turning to face the door head-on. A moment passed, then another.

Her face lit up. 

“Miss Blackhand! Does this mean it’s time for the execution?”

Immediately, that was the first thing she thought of at the sight of Krahe.

Krahe, holding back a chuckle, approached and took a seat, setting the ekarone pie down on the table. “Not just yet, but soon, if you think-”

“By Zavesh, please, yes. I just want to…” she started, only to swerve mid-sentence. “...Get it over with. Oh, is that pie? I’ve been starving, how did you know?”

“I get it, you want to kill them. Pull Aldritch’s eyes out. You’d do it with your own — formerly his — fingers, if you thought you could do it without bursting them. You’ve probably been itching for it since you got over the worst of the shock.”

As she spoke, Juno, with no hesitation, reached for the pie with her left hand. It split open, and the bladed tendril whipped out, cutting out a small piece and lifting it out of the pan in one motion.

Juno, now juggling the still-hot piece in her mouth, looked at Krahe as if expecting a lecture, a “vengeance is not justice” spiel, but Krahe didn’t give one. “There’s nothing wrong with scratching that itch. I’d make a hypocrite of myself if I said anything of the sort.”

Perhaps subconsciously mirroring the girl, Krahe formed a Tar tendril and summoned a dagger from her Kenoma Pocket in the same act. The tendril emerged from a maw within the palm of her hand, already grasping the dagger, and she used it to cut out a piece of the pie in the same way. 

“Just… Take care that you don’t keep scratching to the bone. Once they’re dead, they’re dead. You don’t come after people who just so happened to be in the vicinity of the guilty, things like that.” Krahe added. Firminus, sighing in resignation that “his” seat had been usurped by Krahe, picked up the next-nearest chair and brought it over.

“What of the people behind them?” Juno asked again. “I don’t remember much, but I remember enough. Enough to know they were going to send me off to some Helmeted Man once they were through with me.”

“That’s another story. A story for later, once you’re strong enough to pursue them without walking to your death,” Krahe answered. She cut herself another piece, despite being full. She couldn’t help it. “I won’t tell you not to pursue that path because doing so would make me a hypocrite. But as you are now, you’re in no state to go after anyone like the Helmeted Man. I’m not entirely sure it would be a good idea for me to go after him as I am now. Wanting to go into the woods to track down and kill the man-eating beast is all well and good, but you’d better be sure you don’t get eaten. I can put this a hundred different ways, but you get it, you’re a smart girl.”

“You’re right, I’m weak,” Juno agreed, her mood instantly turning downcast. Holding up her left hand, a pinkish piece of ekarone pie wobbling atop the bladed tendril. “When I was a kid, one of my classmates used to love these terrible pulps. This,” she nodded at the paused projection, “is supposed to be based on one of them. He’d always be doing pullups, quoting “Weakness is a sin,” at the others and challenging them to arm wrestling. I don’t really know where I’m going with this, except that in some way he wasn’t wrong. Maybe I wouldn’t have ended up how I did if I’d had a gun and two reapers in my pocket.”

She ate the piece of pie, and in an instant, her downcast expression returned to one of cheer. But Krahe could tell, and Firminus could too — on the surface, it was sadness, but at that moment, Juno’s voice had become filled with ice and murder.

300 - Sorcerer's Hand Pt.2 [Cherno]

Krahe explained the Sorcerer’s Hand and the reagents she required for its creation. Once she was done, she added: “If it is permissible, I intend to use the hand from one of Aldritch’s accomplices for the base material. If not, I would simply purchase a donated hand for the purpose.”

With a brow furrowed in mild bemusement, he stared at her, contemplating. After a few moments of silence, he finally settled on an answer.

“What you request is a somewhat grey area. However, the circumstances tilt the needle in your favour. They’re already condemned to execution, and you are not only an apostle, you are the apostle who brought them in. There’s no reason why you should not be able to take a hand from one of their corpses. This “Sorcerer’s Hand” doesn’t desecrate the corpse part used, so it’s not heretical per se, only unorthodox due to its intentional use of impurity. It employs certain ancient grafting principles in reverse.”

“Good. That works out neatly, then. Speaking of, how is she?”

Krahe didn’t know how to broach the topic of Juno in a seamless manner, so she just openly twisted the conversation into a hard left turn. With a heavy sigh, Firminus sat down on one of the shelf-access ladders that stood along the graft-vault’s walls.

“Better than I’d expected, for the reason I had feared. That girl, she just takes up whatever graft material I give her like her body is a starving man being offered grilled mutton. I’ve fixed her face, and she’s walking with non-graft prosthetics. I just don’t like it, I don’t like it one bit,” he shook his head. The cigarette became a stub and then became nothing, and a second took its place. He glanced sideways at Krahe, “That arm; the one you chopped off of Aldritch. She asked for it. Wouldn’t take anything else. Fidelia gave it a provisional go-ahead. I barely had to do anything, just some proportion adjustments. It melded to the stump like it was hers to begin with, I’ve never seen anything like it. She’s been cutting up her meals with the hidden blade tendril, thinks it’s the best thing ever.”

“She can see, then?”

“Oh yes, she can see. Through a quasi-graft visor, one of those things that you just hook up to the optical nerve, but she can see. Well enough to function at least.”

“Haven’t found eyes that fit yet?”

“Six pairs ready for implantation with minimal adjustments. Just in my collection. She doesn’t want them, I can’t force it.”

Krahe dragged down half her cigarette, and, after letting the words stew, she said, “Let’s move up the execution, then, get it over with. There’s no point to delaying it. Unless the inquisitor wants to keep the shitbags for a few days longer?”

Firminus let out a bitter laugh, taking a long draw of his own cigarette. “No, no. Yazata sent word a few days ago that it can go ahead any day, just waiting on my say-so that the girl is ready to go ahead with it. I’ve just been putting it off. Like a coward.”

“You at least teach her how to use ocular extraction tools?” Krahe asked, half-jokingly.

A chuckle. As bitter as the previous one. 

“I did, in fact. She said she was bored of my hand-dexterity toys and wanted to try an eye extractor. I requisitioned a few vat-heads, you saw the results yourself,” he said.

“Can I see her?” she asked.

“Not yet. She won’t be awake for a few more hours,” he uttered, drawing down another half-cigarette.

“I’ll come back in a few hours, then,” Krahe shrugged. She stood from her seat, looking back to Firminus as she approached the vault door. The grafter, realizing that she couldn’t leave without him to open the door, snapped out of his stupor. “Can she eat normal food, or only surgery recovery fare?”

“Sure. Digestive tract is fine, more or less, and as I said, her body doesn’t need the usual recovery process. She hates my cooking, so I’ve been bringing the stuff they serve at the temple eatery.”

Krahe grimaced. It was good food, and she wouldn’t describe it as bland either, but it was… Monastic, outside of the occasional desserts once or twice a week, and even these had a distinct sense of austerity to them.

“Any fruit she likes that you know of?” Krahe asked. “Thinking of baking something, can’t have a seventeen-something girl eating like a monk.”

This was important. Krahe placed importance on the fact Juno was, first and foremost, a seventeen-year-old girl. What had befallen her and what she had become as a result was secondary to that identity, it had to be secondary, not to dismiss the severity of it, but for the sake of preserving as much of her humanity as possible.

“No citrus. That’s all I know,” he shrugged.

“Ekarone pie it is, then.”

Several hours passed. Krahe baked not one, but two ekarone pies — one to see if the recipe was any good and eat herself, and the other to bring to Juno. She went so far as to time the second one’s baking so it would be just the right temperature by the time she got to Firminus’ clinic. As the sun rose into the cloudless sky the increasing heat of day made itself known, and this in combination with the heat of the oven led Krahe to make use of the clothes she had had made for this very purpose. She also redistributed her Firminus-pattern Recultured Biogel to her legs to best make use of its body heat regulation, forming it into, effectively, biosuit thigh-highs. It was then, as she was changing, that she remembered the long list of custom clothing she intended to have made, and the most glaring gap within that list, a gap that would need to be filled before the hunt. That self-repair-capable jacket. More than ever, she would need another layer of armor, but she couldn’t see herself wearing anything like a hardsuit, so an armored jacket would be the best. Obviously, using Zirhayna’s parts would be best, but she felt that she needed the jacket to hunt Zirhayna to begin with. Having two jackets wouldn’t exactly be a problem, so she decided to visit Garvesh later that day. She already had a handful of candidates for the commission, but it never hurt to ask someone in the know just in case.

299 - Sorcerer's Hand [Cherno]

While they spent some time simply reading and discussing the matters of the hunt, Casus eventually departed for a checkup. Krahe, after finishing the volume of Rampage she had been reading, returned to work, delving back into the preparations for her Zor’Aguhastra expedition.

Among the Wizard’s ritual secrets, there was a reference to a preparatory divination to ensure that one wouldn’t be in immediate peril when diving. The base ritual was called simply “Gulf Augury.” It was fairly similar to standard eidolon-summoning rituals, using the same foundational “toss out some bait” principles, but that was where the similarities ended. The angle-web, implements, and offering used were entirely different, and those suggested by the Wizard deviated yet further still. Mercifully, the angle-web for Gulf Augury was comparatively simple. While “normal bait” would work, the Wizard strongly suggested preparing a Sorcerer’s Hand, this being the hand of a dead thaumaturge preserved in a particular manner and used at once as both the ritual implement and the offering. This altered version was called the Second Lesser Augury of Heshmad Abbasi.

The Wizard described the rite thus:

“...equivalent to tossing a small piece of meat into a lake to see if there is a predator lurking under the surface. The Gulf is somewhat at peace now, but that will not be the case for quite some time after the Halting. Best you get familiar with it sooner rather than later.”

“To prepare the embalming agent, that is to say to “seal in the bait’s flavour,” you will need the former owner’s souldregs, xanthous gum (NOT xantham gum), shieldback molting bile from a specimen at least two molt cycles old, and your angle-web unguent of choice. Dissolve paste in Graft Embalming Fluid #14 and inject into the hand’s veins until it turns purple. Seal the stump with your leftover paste and smoke over six Zkauba Shrub Roots over the course of approx. 4 hours.”

“While not considered orthodox, this is not heretical under the law of the Twin Churches. At worst you might be liable for a Corpse Desecration charge, so if you’re worried about that, go buy some grafter’s leftovers. A grafter should also be able to supply the remaining reagents.”

Obtaining the base material for this may have been a bit troublesome, in that she would have to go out looking for trouble, but there was an alternative — the execution of Alberich and his gang. The question was whether the execution would take place prior to her departure for the hunt, but then, she had the perfect excuse to check up on Juno. After all, she had just completed her Astral Implosion Furnace and thus had reason to go for a checkup, even if she was almost completely certain that her condition had only improved as a result. Besides these pragmatic reasons, Krahe also simply wanted to check up on Juno.

The next morning, Krahe visited a shrine and had a message sent to Firminus’ shrine-office. A simple question, to see if he was open that day. The mere fact she was bothering to send a message spoke volumes, and Krahe received a response almost right away, much to the shrine maiden’s surprise.

The answer was as curt as one would expect from the grafter.

“Come before noon.”

The grafter awaited her in a cleaner state than usual. In fact, Krahe was briefly taken aback by the sight of him in what was likely the closest thing to casual clothes he owned — a button-down shirt, slacks, and suspenders, overlaid by his usual apron, its top half left hanging down. The shirt was dark navy with maroon pinstripes.

“What, d’you think I walk around in public wearing my grafting robes?” he snapped, the cigarette that hung from his lip bouncing up and down as if threatening to toss its embers at her. The question was why he had opted not to change into his grafting robes, but it was fairly clear that the reason was to do with the girl, and based on the look in Firminus’ eyes, he knew that she knew. She chose not to bring it up, and simply entered. A row of identical heads laid spread out over one of the tables, with four of them missing their eyes. Their skin was semi-translucent with muscle showing through, and their blood was blue; overall, they resembled ballistic dummy heads, only far more detailed.

Firminus cleared Krahe in the space of a few minutes, reaffirming what she had already suspected — the Implosion Furnace’s grand completion had substantially reduced the strain on her body, meaning her conduit lines would hold up for longer than initially projected. Krahe then apprised Firminus of the Scornbeast, sharing her record of it, which elicited the exact sort of concern she had expected. He remarked that he would report it to Fidelia and have it looked-into, and requested to have a look at the omniphage containment unit. Krahe, having no use for it, agreed to leave it with him. Frankly, regardless of the value it might have, she didn’t want that thing taking up space in her Kenoma Sack. Already having been made aware of the device’s size, he brought her to a subterranean storage chamber, whose door was exactly as heavy-duty and which had exactly as complex a lock as she had expected. There, surrounded by the shelves and tanks and sarcophagi that comprised most of the grafter’s extensive collection, she dredged up the hexagonal casket.

“The usual research deal, same as the jambiya. You can have it, but I reserve rights to take it back and requisition samples, so on and so forth,” she said as she finished dragging the coffin-like thing into reality.

Firminus examined it both from afar and up close, looking it up and down, twisting his head left and right to read what text could be gleaned from its surface. “A Vessel-Controller, yet no model number, no manufacturer number, not even the superficial identifiers that one could expect from something assembled under the table. This is… Beyond my expertise. As much as I’d like to crack it open, I lack the tools to do so safely. I will have to send it off to Fidelia. If I had to guess, I would say this is two generations ahead of the open market, so I can only hazard a guess as to the omniphage’s characteristics. And you said it was a fleshy omniphage?”

Krahe nodded, “It plugged up the beast’s wounds as best it could, then went out of control and ate the corpse. The control system kicked in and killed the overgrowth before it got any further.”

“This vexes me. It vexes me greatly. First Abara Morphs, then the stillborn, now tur’ith graft-beasts. What next?” he murmured, shaking his head. He looked to Krahe. “You have compensation in mind, I can tell. What is it?”

298 - The Tracker, Shavren Pt. 2 [Cherno]

“Alright. Say I do take option C — you get claim on eight large plates plus an organ, in exchange you spare no effort or expense. Do you want first-pick on the organs?” Krahe asked.

Shavren thought it over for a moment, perhaps trying to decide if that specific wording was acceptable, and, apparently deciding that it was, he responded: “Assuming there’s nothing volatile, best to break down the carcass first and figure it out from there. Besides the plates, there’s nothing on the beastie I really want, the organ pick is just standard practice. Y’know, just in case. I should explain — my usual package, that is to say five plates and up, includes dissection, butchering, storage, hell I’ll even find you buyers for the parts if y’wanna sell. All part of my standard package, I’m just givin’ it to you on the cheap. I oughta let y’know, I’m not doing this for the love of the game, I’m doin’ it for the same reason as you.”

“A self-grafter? I know you are not required to be certified if you only operate on yourself, but surely…” Casus interjected.

The saurian huffed with faux indignation. “Please, d’you think I’m some barbarian stitching soulbeast limbs onto my stumps whole-cloth? Look at me! You think I hatched like this? High Grafter Fidelia wrote a case study on me, that’s how deformed I was. Near enough half of this is all my own work, baby.” he said, audibly pleased with himself.

“Alright, say I put aside my doubts and take you for your word that you’re giving me a good deal. Why?” Krahe interjected, trying to bring things back on track. She actually didn’t think Shavren was lying, in fact she was fairly certain this was all to do with Garvesh somehow, but she wanted to hear it from the horse’s mouth.

And indeed, without missing a beat, the tracker answered, “Because Garvesh asked me to. Well, that and because you broke my brood-brother out of the Old Street Butchershop. Garvesh knows how to pull on someone’s strings when he wants to.”

Krahe mulled it over for a moment, considering the deal, taking Shavren’s measure, mostly just to turn up the pressure a touch in case something had slipped her notice. Some people could keep up a perfect lie only to burst at the very end. Shavren didn’t, presumably because he indeed wasn’t bullshitting. However, there was… A discomfort to the tracker’s bearing. She knew that look. It wasn’t one of a liar, but of one who had found themself in a predicament, of one who had walked into the heart of peril, of a terrible beast, and just now realized it. Shavren, the man, the head, the face, the eyes, didn’t betray it. It was the snake that was his tail, its tongue flicking, its head turning over, slowly, carefully, as one turns over a hand with wirecutters after realizing one was about to sever the wrong wire. The snake looked around, and saw the warding everywhere, just barely, just enough to realize that the walls within which it dwelt were built not to keep dangers out, but also to trap those unwelcome who were fool enough to enter.

In short, Shavren was uncomfortable because he realized that Krahe had built her fortress into the best approximation of a fortress-killbox she could. If anything, the gaps in her knowledge, the imprecisions, made it all the more blatant that this was not the result of a bored warding-master, but a direct reflection of her mindset.

“Well alright, let’s go over the contract then,” Krahe said. Shavren pulled out the contract and set it down with a quickness that made it clear he had been waiting for the prompt. Simply reading it over took up an order of magnitude more time than the rest of the negotiation up until that point, but that was just how things went sometimes. In the end, neither Krahe nor Casus detected anything amiss. The contract stood out solely in the frankness of its wording, clearly written with some legal awareness, but not with the assumption that it would be picked apart by some sociopathic lawyer — as redundant a term as that was. 

When it was clear that the contract had held up to their scrutiny, the tracker spoke again.

“I can prepare everything within the week. We will join up with one of the Beyond Frontier expeditionary caravans the day of our departure from the city, after that we will have ten days to hunt the beast. Call it superstition if you so wish, but the omens are clear. Ten days. The beasts have been antsy, and so have the caravaneers. Those in the know have consistently observed omens that something big will take place within a little over two weeks, so that is our limit for this attempt.”

“Sounds good,” Krahe said. They signed the contract then and there, and Shavren, reiterating that he really had a dissection to get back to, made his leave.

“Oh, you forgot one thing,” Krahe called out just as he opened the door. Shavren turned back smoothly, giving a questioning head-tilt, but his snake froze in dread. “Yes, what would that be?”

“The soulbeast’s name. I kept looking but your dossier doesn’t say anything of the sort.”

“Ah, that is an oversight. Hm…” 

For the few seconds of thought that he gave it, his tension dissipated.

“Zirhayna? As in armor-mirror,” he finally decided. There was a faint pleading tone. Just the slightest touch of it. Krahe could almost see him ever so slowly shifting through the door.

“Sounds good, not too long. That’s all I wanted,” she agreed, and, with a thumbs-up, the tracker vanished out her door.

“You ought to better-conceal your defenses,” Casus complained the moment Shavren was gone. “I’ve never seen a snake so mortified.”

“Zirhayna, what language is that?” Krahe deflected, idly picking up a volume of Rampage to pick up where she’d left off.

“Khovian. I believe it means armor-mirror,” Casus said, and did the same.

297 - The Tracker, Shavren [Cherno]

“G’day. I am to take that you are my clients for this hunt?” the saurian asked, glancing between the two of them as he approached. His voice didn't entirely match his rather humanlike appearance, sounding very much unlike a human, and more akin to the rumble of a crocodile modulated into speech. Somehow, it had a subtle drawl to it.

“There is likely to be one other, but she will not be joining us for some time,” Krahe said. She nearly said that Yao would pull her own weight, but she didn’t know that. For all she knew that old witch would be content to sit back and do precisely fuck and all for the entirety of the hunt, stepping in only to harvest and process what she needed, and probably a bit more than that.

“Good enough. Tell the truth, I’m takin’ time away from dissectin’ my last catch, so I’d rather we wrap this up right quick. Introductions out of the way — name’s Shavren, and y’must be Blackhand and Silberblut,” the saurian rattled off, sitting in the client chair in front of Krahe’s writing desk, before he brought out an eyebox and a handful of memslates held by brackets to a length of cord.

As he flipped through his memslates, he continued, “You know what you are looking for, I’m told — violent, smart, supple fur, material strong enough for a fourth-order key and enough of it for that purpose, and none of this narrows it down a bit. I could put up posters of my tracked marks on the wall, toss a dart and hit three of ‘em. It’s the astro-divin’ and the special mind-sharpening organ that makes it a bitch and a half. I know what you want, I’ve seen a few, that’s why Garvesh thought it a good idea to pester me, but that won’t make it easy. Soulbeasts’re already tricky prey, they’re almost-people in the hides of beasts with the strengths of both, but that’s just regular soulbeasts, y’gotta consider what sorta soulbeast develops this or that specialized trait. Not t’mention that they grow stronger when they eat the schmucks that take a shot and get killed, that I can take, but the paperwork to file for compensation, spare me... Ah, here. This one.”

The tracker’s clawed fingers deftly plucked a memslate from its bracket and clicked it into place on the eyebox. The device was rugged and overbuilt beyond belief, twice the size of Krahe’s old prospector eyebox. There was clearly a reason for it, given the number of dents and scratches all over its casing. There were two separate lenses, labeled “IN” and “OUT.” The “IN” lens was significantly larger, and its shroud had threading akin to what one would find on any other professional-grade camera.

After a momentary delay, a remarkably high-quality projection sprung up — a photograph clearly taken from afar using a telescopic lens. To call the beast within it an animal felt somewhat inaccurate. At a glance, its body seemed like not one of a mere animal, but an organic war machine, as if one had taken a combat robot and shrunk it down. Every visible surface gleamed with hard chitin,  and Krahe almost wondered if it had any fur at all — but there it was, poking through in the gaps, barely visible. Its four legs made up more than half of its height, digitigrade and nearly as muscular as they were long, and, from its sides, a third pair of limbs extended — long arms, one with a clawed hand and the other, a three-pronged, bladed pincer. The beast’s tail was long enough to come forward above its body as a scorpion’s tail might, and was tipped with a pincer best shaped for grasping, with spikes and a wide base suggesting heavy musculature to support it.

Its head bore no visible eyes. It had spider-like fangs to the sides of its maw, and a note suggested that the mouth opened to nearly 180°.

“Wait, no eyes?” Krahe questioned. Obviously, a target with eyes would be preferable so she could lock it down with the Vinculae.

Shavren smirked, flipping to the next slide. It was another picture of the beast. This time, one could see a number of thin, fleshy tendrils emerging from the intersections between some of its armor plates, each tipped with a faintly luminous bulb.

“Dozens of ‘em. It wouldn’t fulfil your criteria otherwise. I am not in the business of getting vital facts wrong, Ms. Blackhand. This type of multi-ocular layout demands sophisticated solutions to filter the sensory input. I can’t explain it in empirical terms, but from seein’ it move, I just know that it more likely than not carries what you need, one way or another. Our problem, ‘course, would also be our greatest reward—”

Reaching into his pocket, the tracker took out a shard of dark-purple material, setting it on the table. It shimmered with dark shades of abyssal blue, devouring light and reflecting the un-colours of the Astral Gulf.

“A shed scale, one of a handful I’ve found. ‘Sides the usual parts — tough as all hell, lightweight, so on and so forth — they have the unique property of shunting foreign energies and even objects into the Astral Gulf. Once that capacity is exhausted, it loses its luster, and acts as physical armor. No clue what determines the recharge time, I’ve yet to find a correlation with any measurable property besides the fact it’s slower than when they’re attached,” he said. Then, raising three fingers, and pointing with his tail towards one of the beast’s larger armor plates, he continued: “I will not mince words, Ms. Blackhand. Three full plates, and I will find the beast for you. Five, I will do what I usually do for others, I’ll give you the contract to look over in a bit. Eight plus one organ of my choice, and I will use every resource at my disposal to aid in your hunt.”

From the looks of it, the beast had sixteen such plates in total, and a large number of much smaller plates around its limbs. 

“What if none of the large plates remain intact by the time we kill it?” Krahe asked.

After some thought, Shavren said, “Twice my quoted price by weight. They can be rejoined, but the cost is steep and the success rate isn’t great. At worst, you’ll still get to keep a fair bit of the beast’s armor.”

296 - Finding Renzo [Cherno]

Actually finding where Renzo lived proved to be easier than she had expected. Zastreon wasn’t exactly an information civilization, which meant that, on one hand, a person could go under the public radar fairly easily. On the other hand, people weren’t always on-guard about their personal information, an average person just didn’t worry about his address being known, or in this case, recorded in the Audunpoint City Directory, edition of 5235. About four years old. She wondered how often they updated it.

The directory was something of a quasi-phonebook, listing notable individuals, businesses, mostly those who had a reason to have their contact information available — public figures, business owners, officials, a number of comic artists and authors. There was only one “Renzo” identified as a comic artist — in fact, the book plainly described him as the highly acclaimed, best-selling author of Wrought in the Pit. Renzo Dreschner.

Krahe simply compared the fan-letter address in the back of the collected volumes with the address in the directory. The volumes she had were dated as having been printed in the last two years at the oldest, so she surmised the address within them might be the correct one. The search took around an hour, and most of it was actually going there to check. The new address was in a local storage facility — effectively a post-office box — while the old address from the directory was an unassuming two-floor house. She didn’t hang around, merely passing by the property. She didn’t have the time for a stakeout, let alone a break-in and the complications that could come from that. On the other hand, there was still some time until the scheduled meeting, so, returning to the Crow & Raven office, she passed the time reading Rampage and occasionally rehearsing parts of the guidestone ritual.

Casus arrived just as the clock struck 7pm, glancing around with a furrowed brow as he walked in.

“I see that you have made good use of Mistress Yao’s teachings,” he remarked. 

“It was only a matter of time. I admit it was a relief that much of what I already knew translated easily enough to arcane warding arrays,” Krahe said, offhandedly, only glancing in the banisher’s direction before returning her attention to the tome in her hand. Rampage was a true masterwork of dark fantasy, but it was also frustrating to read at the best of times. At the moment, she was making headway into Vol. 2.

Without missing a beat, Casus took Vol. 1 from her desk and took a seat on the sofa to the side. It was a weathered old thing that Krahe had picked up from a nearby antiquarian in the process of furnishing the office.

The banisher flipped to the back of the volume to read the dedications and author’s notes first, and soon remarked, “Oh, this is based on Gottfried of the Iron Hand. Interesting.”

They read for a short while, but Krahe simply knew that Casus had something on his mind. It was just a gut feeling, she couldn’t pick out any specific clue. She decided to just bring it up openly.

“Alright, what is it? Did I screw up whatever you were doing by entering the safehouse?”

“No such thing, no,” Casus shook his head. “I merely witnesed a vision, this being the intended effect of that rite, and I wish to speak of it to best discern whether it is truthful or merely a result of distorted mental projection. You see, at times, even directed visions are simply, how to describe them… The reflections in a stirred up pond. Toss in a pebble — such as another person — and the water becomes even more distorted.”

Krahe put down her book. “Alright, sure. What’d you see?”

Casus went on to describe the entirety of his vision and his interpretation of what he soon learned to be Krahe’s Six Maxims, as she readily explained that she had indeed completed the Sixfold Astral Implosion Furnace.

“If I understand it correctly, your vision was about as close to the truth as it could reasonably be expected to get. Could just be a difference in perspective on the same maxims, I guess,” Krahe shrugged. She furrowed her brow as something came to mind. “There was a word for this, what was it?”

While she fruitlessly searched for the word, however, Casus sat forward with a gravely profound expression, clutching his hands together.

“‘Tis all as I saw it, then? The Love of Justice, the Dragonslayers’ Feast, Majestic Quest. I had known that you were a crusader true, Lady Blackhand, but this… It is no wonder Favonia so readily considered you as “herself, only at an earlier point on the path,”” he uttered, his pupils constricted to thin crosses, his usually unshakeable composure decisively shaken. In an instant, however, just as Krahe was thinking of what to say, how to recenter him, the banisher’s shaken resolve snapped back into place even more resolute than before. His grave expression resolved into a jubilant smile, and he exclaimed, “Zavesh be praised, I was even more right in my judgment than I had initially thought! Why, at this rate, we’ll be able to carry out our hunt, come right back, and do away with Damrus Hashem within the week!”

Krahe blinked a few times as she recovered from the mental whiplash, and to add insult to injury, a series of thumping knocks sounded from the bottom of the stairwell. The tracker was here. It was so abrupt that even Casus was knocked out of his jubilant mood, and Krahe took the opportunity to welcome their guest.

Gleaming scales, clawed hands, and a tail that was a black serpent — not a tail “like a black serpent,” but a tail that was literally a black serpent, about as thick as his forearm and long enough to wrap around his neck like a scarf, with the snake’s head swiveling to and fro as an extra pair of eyes. Despite all of this, he was the most human-like saurian she had ever met. He could be, after a fashion, considered handsome in human terms — his appearance was no less human than that of Casus. His scales were a bit familiar, both in colour and in pattern. They reminded her of that black saurian from the Old Street Butchershop.

295 - Wrought in the Pit [Cherno]

What she managed to wrench out of the two wasn’t quite as helpful as she’d hoped for, but it was enough. Krahe left the Society and, following Glasses’ directions, found the store without issue. That mural truly did look stupid, and the redheaded, armored-bikini-clad warrior-woman that had been painted over part of it truly did have huge tits, albeit not quite as huge as Favonia. The original mural itself depicted androgynous figures with wildly disproportionate limbs in simple shapes, like the artist had been struck by divine inspiration from a talentless corpo illustrator. The buxom redhead, by comparison, was fairly typical cel-shaded art one might expect from a young man whose love of women is inversely proportional to his experience with them.

Now that she was looking at the mural, the redhead’s outstretched sword was pointing right towards the store she was looking for. The statue of whom Krahe presumed to be Galeas was just about visible from where she stood, at least when one of the city’s trams wasn’t passing through her field of view.

Licht Equisetus sounded, on the surface, almost like a normal name, but it wasn’t quite right. It carried the same sense of unreality that pseudonyms typically did. She entered the store, and found that it was almost entirely dedicated to wargaming and various other homebody hobbies. Besides the miniatures popular among the members of the Lost Sun Society, there were a few other types at varying scales, including fairly impressive snap-fit, color-accurate out of the box models of Mamon Knights and various war machines, both mechanical and fleshy. A line of grimey designs marrying crustaceans and WW2-esq vehicles took up one of the lower shelves, titled Ma.W, or “Machine Warriors.” There was even a corner dedicated to modular hobby-grade voidkeys, all priced such that a teenager could reasonably afford it. Half of the generous floorspace was dedicated to tables for the patrons to build or play on. Real-estate was easy to come by in Audunpoint, after all.

The comics took up a modest section of the store, maybe one-fifth. Out of that one-fifth, Rampage had two shelves dedicated to its collected volumes, which ran well into the double-digits, amounting for hundreds of chapters. It seemed to be the epitome of a  gritty dark fantasy revenge-quest epic, grizzled protagonist with a cursed suit of armor and all. Wrought in the Pit was relegated to part of the shelf below, having far fewer collected volumes on sale. Half of that same shelf was filled by tomes of “Soltern Saga,” covering what appeared to be multiple narrative lines in the same setting — Puppetmaster’s Travelogue, Termination Gene, Tragedy of the Upright Ones, so on and so forth.

She grabbed the first five volumes of Wrought in the Pit and a three-volume “Halcyon Years Arc” set of Rampage off the shelf and checked them out. While the clerk — a remarkably pale man considering how much sunlight filtered into the store — was ringing her up, he kept glancing up at her, like he wasn’t sure who he was looking at. She wagered someone from the Society had mentioned her at some point, but she didn’t bring it up. Rather, she made idle small talk, and, flipping through the first volume, she remarked: “Licht Equisetus? C’mon, that has to be a pen name.”

“Haha, yeah,” the clerk uttered automatically.

“Wonder what his real name is though, if he even is a he,” she continued. It was a long shot, but one couldn’t catch a fish if one didn’t cast the hook.

“Uh, I think it was Renzo something. The early prints had his real name on them. Dredger? Dre-something, I dunno,” he shrugged. Seeing that Krahe was already on her way out, the clerk finally spoke up: “Say, you wouldn’t happen to be that Blackhand, would you?”

“Sure, why not. Don’t tell anyone I was here,” Krahe winked. She didn’t mean it seriously, but that clerk took it seriously, and though he would never learn the true extent of his impact, his imagination would almost match up to reality. Almost.

Wrought in the Pit was, truly, a work of immense beauty. Just the artwork contained in each chapter, all clearly drawn and inked by hand, would have sufficed to merit Renzo the epithet of a “True Artist.”

The contents of the story were a touch different. When one looked at the setting and narrative from afar, it seemed somewhat akin to a dark fairytale about children — a human and a diminutive Pilgrim Banisher — exploring a multi-layered, underground megastructure clearly based on Jas’raba. They encountered various places and peoples along the way, both wondrous and terrible. It was, indeed, a fairy tale, if a very, very dark one. The problem was in the execution, the details. Glasses was right in his complaints regarding the author’s apparent fixation on the characters pissing, and on their bodily functions in general. The horrors to which the characters — both the children and others — were subjected in the course of the story were their own pandora's box to get into. Once again, the description of “torture porn” couldn’t help but fit like a glove at points. It crossed a certain barrier, where it was so obviously trying to elicit a reaction from the reader, that instead of feeling the intended sense of horror and revulsion at the gruesome scenes, Krahe simply felt a bubbling contempt for the author. She wasn’t sure why only some fiction elicited this sentiment in her, but it did.

The most notable element of Wrought in the Pit, however, was the antagonist, a freakish man, the depth of whose portrayal made it abundantly clear he was based on someone Renzo knew personally. Even the epithet was the same as the one she had received from Aldritch — Vondreld, the Helmeted Man. It was a vile being, who perpetrated much of the story’s vilest acts, such as stripping down the bodies of orphan children he had raised himself to the barest minimum vital organs so that he could stuff them into small capsules and use them as “environmental protection” in cursed environments, shunting the curse onto the child in the capsule. 

At the end of the day, art was art, and it wasn't as if Vondreld was portrayed in a sympathetic light within those first five volumes — delusional in the belief in his own righteousness, perhaps, but not sympathetic. Krahe had no doubt that a novel written regarding her own life could come out just as dark and stomach-turning as Wrought in the Pit, if not moreso. She just hoped that, were such a thing to come to pass, her life’s chronicler would be a touch better-adjusted than Renzo.

294 - Licht Equisetus [Cherno]

Krahe re-read the Wizard’s memslate several times, taking notes in the effort to fully parse what he was saying. It wasn’t the guidelines that gave her pause, but the actual ritual patterns, which, compared to a standard full dive ritual, were eye-wateringly complex. This was in large part due to the fact the ritual was a direct expansion of the ritualist’s own full dive ritual, requiring a high degree of variability and adaptation. She found herself getting lost in the weeds of preparation and adjustment, much as one can get lost in the cycle of adjusting, testing, and readjusting a section of code. As she typed away, the cognition engine's wild clacking and whirring filled the room. When she was at her wit’s end, she turned her feverish mental energy towards bolstering the Gashward Road property’s arcane security, and when she ran up against a tangle there, she turned back to ritual preparation.

This cycle went on until the sun snapped her out of it. Krahe, with her eighth or ninth cigarette of the night in hand, glanced around, beholding the ominous pattern of interconnected talismans that now crawled across the building’s interior walls, floors and ceilings. She halfheartedly extended a tendril, grabbed her brush, and joined a few connecting lines on the ceiling. The warding array thrummed to life, then quieted down as it sank into the wall, fading out of view. Krahe could still see the patterns, but even to her it remained mostly out of sight unless she focused.

It still wasn’t as secure as the Crow & Raven office on Achra 32, but it was getting there.

The ritual preparations, on the other hand, were a different matter. She was convinced it wasn’t ready yet, but as she went over her notes, time and time again, she realized that it was. Krahe almost couldn’t believe it, but the very truth before her eyes wouldn’t be denied — all she had to do now was actually perform the ritual. She made for Sorayah’s house, deciding to use the basement cell as her ritual site.

After setting up what needed to be set up ahead of time, she realized there was still nearly half the day until her scheduled meeting with the tracker, and so she thought on what else to occupy herself with.

There was only one answer — investigation. Into the “comic artist,” specifically. She’d done some preliminary groundwork in this matter already, but all she had been able to glean was the general area of his residence and where one could find his comics.

Rather than meander in an unfamiliar area, however, Krahe decided to simply visit the Lost Sun Society and ask there. She prepared a stack of Schwarzfaust Zwei papers, handling them much as one would handle foreign currency on a weekend trip. Besides the expectation that they would be in demand, Krahe saw no reason not to offload these, seeing as any she produced now would be objectively superior. In fact, just before she left, she took a few minutes to draw up two copies of the pattern, and just as she had expected, it looked noticeably more refined. Her actual skill hadn't magically improved, it was a simple consequence of the Left Arm's evolution and the enhanced motor control that came with it.

Just as she had expected, her arrival was met by a handful of those brave souls who had taken upon themselves the Schwarzfaust during her previous visit. She gladly spent a few dozen minutes to speak with them in order to get caught up to speed on recent happenings at and around the Society, as well as to give them the chance to hand over their precious, precious Schwarzfaust Zwei testing data. The reward for the two who had given over the most useful data were her improved patterns, of course.

When she saw her opening, Krahe offhandedly brought up “a comic someone recommended to me,” and almost immediately received her answer — not from any of her hangers-on, but from one of the regulars who seemed to spend all their time at the Society painting miniatures and playing wargames with them. Their usual four-man group was down to just two today.

“Wrought in the Pit? Yeah, it’s pretty good. Fantastic art. The author’s got this weird fixation on scenes of the characters pissing, though,” the fatter of the two painters commented, his focus remaining fixed on the wargame table before him. From a glance, it seemed his forces were at a disadvantage. He then rolled a die, and with a single maneuver, had one of his graft-beasts jump over the river bisecting the battlefield, landing atop an enemy and crushing it underfoot with a dropkick. A few dicerolls and an exclamation of triumph marked his success and the fact his jumper unit didn’t break its own legs in the process. His opponent, a glasses-wearing man with long black hair and a bit too much fat in the face for his frame, groaned as he cleared the defeated unit off the table and mulled over his options.

“It’s kiddy torture-porn, call it what it is, man,” the glasses-wearer uttered. “I’ve been reading Rampage for coming up on twenty years and it handled the themes Wrought in the Pit tries to touch on with infinitely more tact — and Rampage is SUPPOSED TO be edgy!”

“Equisetus did say he took inspiration from Rampage…” Fatman argued.

“The same way my shit takes inspiration from my dinner, maybe,” Glasses countered. “Withering Bombardment. Roll your morale saves.”

“One, three, one, five… Whatever, Suicidal Charge. Eat shit,” Fatman said.

“Equisetus, that the artist’s name?” Krahe asked.

“Huh? Yeah, Licht Equisetus. Can you even Suicidal Charge across the river?” Glasses answered before returning right to the game.

“Says right here the Drone Corpses overload their flight packs to charge across any terrain. They’re a gimmick unit, kinda shit at everything else,” Fatman said.

“They don’t feel any less bullshit just because you say they’re not…”

“It’s not my fault you keep not going after the Drone Corpse Aviator.”

“You always sit him in the corner of the map, I can’t.”

“Heheheh, yeah.”

Krahe wasn’t sure she had ever heard a greater sense of accomplishment than that chuckle carried. 

“I’ve been thinking of giving Wrought in the Pit a go, know of any good stores that carry it?” she asked.

“Huh? Sure. There’s a place not far from here, we get our minis there. Sharivan 17. You walk out the front door, turn left, then down the street and turn left again at the stupid looking mural that has the redhead with big tits painted over it, then straight ahead from there until you see the life-sized Mamon Knight Galeas statue in the window, can’t miss it,” Glasses said.

293 - The Zor'Aguhastra Guidestone Fragment [Cherno]

Meanwhile, Krahe was pressing on in her experimentation. She had yet to discern a method to impart lingering incendiary properties onto a high-propagation explosive — that is to say, to develop a “burning smoke” effect. It was not for lack of trying, she could almost hear the creaking of her Six Maxims Thauma bending as far as it could possibly go, but there was only so much one could do on the spot. Nonetheless, progress was progress. She had chanced upon a means of altering Lasher’s composition and design to one with subtle grooves, rendering it capable of carrying incendiary Tar, which could increase the Solomon Howitzer’s theoretical destructive ceiling.

But she had no reason to complain. The limit was purely in her own understanding, if she put herself to it she was certain she could design a fire-gas grenade sooner rather than later. For now, it was just a toy, something to play with and work at when nothing better presented itself.

And as she was now, she had nothing but better things to do.

Tomorrow’s meeting with the tracker, the execution that she expected to come at the latest within a week, the Wizard’s Lesser Eidolon Vault artifact and his offer, the comic artist and the Helmeted Man, and, not to forget, tying off the loose ends: Damrus Hashem and Brizogia Rasug al-Imuzat. Brizogia wasn’t nearly as high-priority of a target as Damrus, but Krahe held no illusions as to that woman’s character. She would come after Krahe the moment the opportunity presented itself. What she had done at the cafe was no more than a purchase of time, a “let’s handle this later.”

She lit up a cigarette and brought out the Wizard’s stone. The dark shard emerged from storage and immediately began crawling with tendrils of occult symbology whose meaning was just as inscrutable as when she had first received it. She willed the Oculae to appraise it. They gave her the name, then seemed to struggle for a moment before simply skipping the status section.

[Zor’Aguhastra Guidestone Fragment No. 516]

[Status:]

???

[Details:]

Read the memslate. - t.W

Krahe’s eyebrow twitched. Nonetheless, she brought out the memslate and appraised it as well, just to see if the Oculae picked up anything untoward. Nothing. The instructions stored on the memslate were concise and to the point. It concisely explained the concept of leverage-points and artifacts that made use of certain quirks within the Astral Body to function. Voidkeys were listed as a ubiquitous example. The overall writing style somewhat reminded her of the authoritative tone of the scavenger Sorun-authored memslate from the Jas’raba pit’s-edge town, but less insufferable than either that memslate or the Wizard’s own spoken words. To tell the truth, the Wizard’s writing was probably the most personable he could get.

Eventually, however, the Wizard’s memslate did go into information that was new to her:

FILE NO. 1

Much like the Physical Body, the Astral Body, too, possesses a number of unique anatomical features and organs. It should be noted that these are not necessarily directly linked to the Physical Body. The Soul Furnace is not at some specific location in the stomach or the chest, but we can consistently observe that the region of the Astral Body it occupies is linked to the central trunk in most humanoids. The solar plexus, heart, or belly button are common locations. Despite this, the easiest implantation site for a voidkey is the head, as the element of astral anatomy a voidkey exploits is most easily reached from this region. For this reason, a visual diagram is, at best, of limited usefulness, and must be considered with the knowledge that it cannot be taken at face value.

I confer this information in order to make it clear that the limitations of the ritual described within this memslate are not arbitrary — it is the first step of a long astral grafting process, each step of which targets different areas of the Astral Body for reshaping and reinforcement. The method I speak of is one which requires the practitioner to fill in certain gaps in order to ensure it fits them best. There are others without this requirement, I consider them inferior. This is where the guidestone fragment comes in.

The guidestone fragment is a tool by which one may invoke an accord from the Seven Towers Accord era. Through the rituals detailed herein, one must first prepare the astral body through a temporary modification, laying the groundwork. The rite that comes thereafter allows one to make direct contact with those who dwell in the deepest depths of Zor’Aguhastra and partake in the agreement of ancient times — that of fostering one of their offspring within themselves in exchange for receiving the entity’s assistance for the duration of the occupancy. Some believe this to be the true origin of theurgy, they are fools. There are some side effects, but they are minimal — you cannot divest yourself of the eidolon, but it will communicate more readily and lend greater aid than most of its kind.

Any reagents that would suffice for a full dive ritual will suffice for the rites detailed herein, so I have not included recipes for any unguents or incenses. 

For the angleweb diagrams and ritual secrets, see File No. 2

For non-vital information regarding the rites and Zor’Aguhastra, see File No. 3

FILE NO. 3

Zor’Aguhastra is a half-submerged artificial island, just beyond the horizon. Lake Hali and the twin cities upon its shores, Carcosa and Alar, are the nearest places to that island, not by any virtue of physical location, but by virtue of their ancient provenance. One needs only to see that place to understand — an oasis of eldritch vegetation unlike any found in the world, in the middle of the desert. There had once been only the bones of vastest vastness and a plain of black salt in that place, but that was long ago, before even my time. I include this because I sensed something of the Sunken One within you, and so will the sovereigns of Zor’Aguhastra.

The dwellers of the deep gulf carved away at themselves without end, chaining themselves so that their own errant flesh would not desert them, enduring every kind of cruel leverage in order to lay the foundations of that majestic city. They yet dwell beneath the city, enduring and carving, singing all the while. To those who find them they offer agreements — memories, emotions, something of yourself for something of them, in equal proportion. A man may become a paragon of his discipline should he make the right deal, but few have the conviction of spirit to not find themselves haunted by the loss of something so worldly as the sense of taste or the memory of one’s childhood. My rites do not rely upon these exchanges, for I do not possess the conviction to not regret it later. My payment is that of bitter effort — I pay the toll in advance.

Within File No. 2, besides the specifics of how to perform the rites, the Wizard had also included guidelines on what to do and not to do upon her arrival in Zor’Aguhastra.

Know this: Zor’Aguhastra is a place, but it is also a time, and it is also a creature and a belief. It is as alien to us as our world is to those born within its black spires. Respect the difference and do not stray from your chosen path, lest you find yourself becoming a native of that realm, or worse, consumed by the city.

Remain aware of your surroundings at all times. Do not permit your thoughts to wander overmuch. We are creatures of a higher plane descending down — our thoughts weigh heavily there, and our imagination can twist the half-realm. Without proper control, this fact is as detrimental to a diver as it is to the deep ones, and they do not take kindly to fools wreaking havoc in this manner. It is the fastest means by which you may find yourself expelled, and if unlucky, stranded in the Deep Gulf.

You will likely be asked to identify yourself in some way, possibly even questioned on who you are and why you pursue communion. You are not required to answer — the Chained Ones have no choice regarding the fulfillment of the accord. However, should you answer well, you might come away with a greater treasure than otherwise. I cannot guide you on what to say, as they already know me, and have known me since before the guidestone was first wrought. Keep in mind that they do not take human morality under consideration, merely how well and in what direction you will facilitate your contractor’s growth during your time together. Mention not the name of Hastur before them, for the reign of that pallid-faced madman is a source of great shame. It was, after all, he who brought ruin to Carcosa, countless eons ere the Sunken One brought that city to our realm.

292 - Trismegistos [Cherno]

A/N: This one is shorter. The next one will be longer.

___________________________________________

Casus had begun the Three Virtues Ritual as he had done several times since Favonia had introduced him to it. The goal, just as with every prior attempt, was to glean critical insights into the fundamental principles behind Mamon Couplers through meditating on his collection. The theory of it, that which could be quantified and applied to most models, was one thing, but the phenomena that permitted a coupler to operate beyond its theoretical limits, to attune with its user or even attain Catalyst Resonance Evolution, were just as inscrutable as those behind Archetype Evolution. The rite itself was simple, he just used the Three Virtues Angleweb — called by some the Trismegistos Circle — alongside the appropriate perception-enhancing incenses to amplify his Third Eye to the fullest extent possible in the direction of the sublime and immaterial. There was just one incident that merited noting for its abnormality.

The incident in question, of course, was a particular vision. The ritual enhanced the connection between the Third Eye and the mind, but as a side effect, it could cause hallucinations that would spiral out of control if he didn’t control his thoughts properly, thus necessitating meditation. It also distorted one’s perception of time, and induced a form of low-breakthrough-boundary bodily paralysis, these being originally side effects, but intentionally retained due to their coincidentally helpful nature.

Casus’ visions were those of various figures, chiefly those he associated most strongly with his collection of Mamon Couplers: The Skullmask Coupler, the Stonesoul Coupler, a classic Cyclone Hopper Coupler, his Black Magnum Coupler, the Dregsteam Coupler he had used at Slaughterhouse 9, and even a prototype Black Sun Coupler, which the Ironworks had sent him in the effort to get more information on Lady Blackhand. The Skullmask was unique in being a mask and its exceptional performance given its humble construction, but it didn’t work for anyone other than the original owner, who had moved onto the Skullmask v3 many years ago. The Stonesoul, with its shell of ornate brass and cracked core, simply didn’t work, and merely gazing upon it stirred the bitterness of grief in Casus’ heart. The Black Magnum stood out for its stealth and escape capabilities, plus the fact it could be worn with any other traditional coupler underneath it. There was nothing special about the Dregsteam or Cyclone Hopper, they were simply the current-gen, entry-level mass-production couplers and so represented the edge of mass-produced coupler technology as of five years ago.

Among his visions of the couplers’ wearers, there was one that didn’t fit. Where Casus had expected a default Black Sun Mamon Armor as described in the prototype’s spec sheet, with a masked helmet and red eyes, or perhaps his memory of Lady Blackhand’s Viridaimon, he instead witnessed a form that nearly exactly matched the reflection of her Astral Body upon the material world while astro-diving.

Only, it didn’t fit. Not quite. The body of billowing black smoke, streaked through with grey, was there, as was the burning-orange ribcage of the Liminal Coil. Only, Casus didn’t recall the sole facial detail of Lady Blackhand’s eyes burning quite so brightly. There was something else. He felt the presence of a simultaneously ominous and numinous enormity, one not entirely unlike that of Favonia in her most savage state. Lady Blackhand had six shadows, and strange tendrils of Tar spread out across her surroundings, crawling over the floor and the walls, and her astral form’s hair spread out in the same manner through the air, rather than billowing listlessly as it had done previously.

The vision never made any attempt to interact with him, as previous visions had done on occasion, and instead simply departed after a fairly short time. It felt to Casus as if it simply walked by him, returned, sat down, performed some rudimentary thaumaturgy, and then left right away. It was in that moment of thaumaturgy, however, in that moment of ignition, that Casus witnessed with his Third Eye the light of a dark sun casting all around it in harsh reds and blacks. He witnessed, in that moment, a staccato of images, or rather concepts. In order, Casus understood them thusly: The Pursuit of Strength, the Love of Justice, the Flaming Sword, the Mystery of Mysteries, the Dragonslayers’ Feast, and the Majestic Quest.

By the time he parsed this part of the vision, it had ended, and the form of Lady Blackhand had vanished. All that remained in its wake was a piece of paper, and, upon that paper, there was an inscrutable scrawl. After turning it over for what felt like half an hour, dwelling on the concepts he had gleamed, the scrawl began to make sense — a poem emerged from it.

With truth as my sword and faith as its flame,

I battle for all that is righteous without end

My armor tarnished yet my will undaunted,

I partake of the dragonslayers’ feast,

and think of the boundless grace I have received

I take up the sword

and set off to stake my life once more

all that I am, I give for this majestic quest

It took him some time to fully parse this vision in particular. It was not the obvious aspect of his outlook on Lady Blackhand, that was as plain to see as the Wheel itself, but rather the specificity of those concepts which he had gleaned. They were all too specific to be mere projection. He decided to mention them to her later. For now, however, he continued his meditation. Further visions arrived and passed by, and, eventually, he awoke.

As he got his bearings, rubbing his aching temples, the banisher noticed a speck of white on the table, where, in his vision, he had placed the paper with the poem. It was still there. Only, there was no poem. Just a note in Lady Blackhand’s handwriting. It said that she hadn’t wanted to disturb him, before it went on to speak of her successful completion of the Astral Implosion Furnace, a battle on horseback against a giant ur-baneworm, and… Of the leftovers in the fridge, and that he was to leave them be, because she intended to eat them. At the very end, as if an afterthought, she reminded him of their meeting with the tracker on the evening of the next day.

291 - Piling up burned corpses to reach the heavens [Cherno]

Casus awaited at the safehouse, but beyond a silent welcome-back nod, he didn’t pay her much mind. His eyes were closed, but the Third Eye sat open, thrumming with a solar blend of yellow and orange, lazily tracking Krahe as she passed him by. A warmth, akin to the rays of the midsummer sun, spilled out of his gaze. Krahe dared not disturb him — the banisher was clearly engrossed in some sort of meditative ritual, having surrounded himself by a multi-layered circle of what appeared to be crushed pearls and golden dust. Within that structure there were arranged several varied Mamon Couplers, as well as three golden censers. The incense smoke didn’t smell like any real scent, but it was certainly pure and heavy. It reminded her of the incense at Zaveshian shrines, only stronger. That immaterial sense of the sublime was certainly there.

This atmosphere of holiness and purity rather rudely reminded her of the degree of filth that had accumulated during her brief outing. A short shower and change of clothes later, she finally settled down across the room from Casus, and the two crusaders sunk into their respective matters of introspection.

[SIXFOLD ASTRAL IMPLOSION SOUL FURNACE]

Tags

Soul Furnace Reshaping (Permanent)

Details

Facilitates Sixfold Implosion Burning.

Most other burning methods remain possible.

Sixfold Implosion Burning produces Six Maxims Thauma, a unique form of energized thauma with extremely strong ability to conduct its creator’s intent. For this reason, any application of Six Maxims Thauma will produce results directly in line with their intended purpose, e.g. a thaumaturgy intended to fly quickly will be faster. This phenomenon bypasses the normal restrictions of elemental affinity and natural leverage.

Regardless of the method that is used, all forms of thauma-refining (be they burning, fusion, or other), are 14% more efficient. This effect compounds additively with any efficiency increases originating from the holder’s voidkey (current compound efficiency increase: 32%). Other efficiency increases are applied after this one (a base variable of 100 is first increased by 32%, to 132, then by any other efficiency modifiers, e.g. a further 50% modifier produces a result of 198).

When it came to her evolved thaumaturgies, they had their own listings, separate from their normal counterparts. Krahe went over them one by one, and saw more or less what she expected — they worked similarly to their base versions with a number of key differences. The names of those she hadn’t intentionally named were simply prefaced with “Sixfold” — Sixfold Cinder Flash, Sixfold Black Lasher, and so on.

Itano Tracers were described as self-propelled, highly-maneuverable, intermediate-velocity missiles, as opposed to low-velocity projectiles. Their maximum range was a little over a hundred meters, and the system their flight time and velocity both scaled directly with input thauma. Infusing the thaumaturgy with Isotope had the expected effect of reinforcing its outer sheath — the lacerative “drill” following the initial detonation would form a touch slower, but would in turn possess better penetration, borrowing some of the properties of Tar. It was effectively the same interaction that produced Sixfold Lasher’s “flex-glass.” These descriptors, besides giving her a slightly more concrete sense for the ranges, diameters of effect, and so on, were similarly not that impactful. She had seen how the thaumaturgies worked well enough with her own two eyes.

The matter of her left arm was something entirely different, however, not something to be skimmed over in the slightest.

[LEFT ARM OF CHERNOBOG]

Tags

Inseparable

Self-evolving Graft

Channeling Catalyst

Channeling Buffer

Isotope Container

Outer God’s Touch

All-direction Precision Channeling Array (Mobility Focus)

Living Item

Details

This graft expresses amplified performance metrics based upon the holder’s

attributes, archetype level, and applicable grafts (e.g. Adamas Organ).

As part of its first evolution, this graft has been modified with a network of high-conductivity semi-astral energy channels for the facilitation of the Afterburner mobility enhancement method. As part of this graft’s second evolution, this network has been fully integrated into its physical structure, enhancing its effectiveness.

This graft can contain an amount of isotope based on the holder’s entropy

tolerance. Isotope dissipates at a significantly reduced rate while contained within this

graft. Autonomous dissipation of stored isotope can be halted altogether at-will.

This graft can act as an intermediary container for refined thauma/anathema (further referred to as buffering) to an extent far beyond the usual buffering capacity of any normal channeling catalyst. Its capacity to do so scales directly with the holder’s Entropy Tolerance and Durability, and the duration for which it can sustain such containment scales with the holder’s Control attribute. Maximum buffering duration scales inversely with the currently-filled proportion of the graft’s maximum buffering capacity. This enables a form of Overdrafting — the act of harnessing greater energy than the sum total of one’s maximum Entropy Tolerance.

Krahe briefly considered whether the Itano Tracers floating around her arm had been a form of buffering, but, as she tried it, she dismissed that theory. The feeling was different. She also considered testing the specifics on the spot, but instead decided to do it somewhere else — that brief test involving the formation and near-immediate dissipation of a single tracer had been disturbance enough. After all, if Casus were to barge in while she was drawing talismans, start posing, spewing golden fire, and transforming all over the place, she would shoot him. 

Besides, as busy as today had been, she was in a good mood, and so she departed after leaving Casus a note. A walk would be nice. And indeed, it was. She overheard the distant echoes of a thaumaturgic scuffle. Someone rather loudly chanted the name of a Final Coupler Charge named “The Penetrator.” There was no accounting for taste, she supposed.

The Gashward Road property wasn’t exactly the most secure place if she considered her new knowledge of defensive warding, but throwing up a basic perimeter didn’t take overlong. It didn’t give her the same sense of safety as the Achra office, but it was good enough, and so the basement testing began.

Containing power within the limb had a distinct sensation, while the tracers simply did what they did because they were following her will. In fact, the spontaneous self-ordering of pyroclast-tendrils even prior to her creation of Tracers was also a phenomenon directly resultant from the inherent characteristics of Six Maxims Thauma. Seeking to push the limits of the phenomenon, to “stoke the fire as high as it would go” so to speak, Krahe ignited the Implosion Furnace and simply kept burning, trying to see how far she could push the buildup of Six Maxims Thauma without intentionally containing it. Krahe built up a tangle of writhing pyroclast-serpents around her arm, and when it grew too dense, around her entire body. She inevitably bottomed out her Entropy Tolerance, but continued pushing, purging and burning again, and she came up against the wall. Uncontained, unused Six Maxims Thauma faded away in the same way as any other thauma that had been expelled from its creator, only quite a bit slower — thus, the sum total of power she could muster at any given time was a function of this dissipation rate, combined with her Entropy Tolerance and Entropy Dissipation. She inevitably reached a point of equilibrium where her ability to add to the mass was offset completely by its rate of dispersion.

In this way, she had an additional layer of “quasi-buffering” on top of the Left Arm’s capacity. Besides the obvious advantage of being able to unleash greater power, there was also the advantage of being able to “burn in advance.” If she could “pay” earlier and start dissipating the entropy earlier, she would have an upper hand even all else being equal.

The peak of the Wheel remained infinitely far out of sight, but it was, nonetheless, a touch closer.

Standing atop the mountain of cinders and burnt corpses, the dregs wallowing in the dirt could no longer drag her down as they once could. As she was now, all else being equal, Krahe saw herself pulverizing Semzar before Barzai would finish his diatribe. A qualitative change was, after all, a qualitative change. A fundamental distinction. The difference between thauma crudely refined through one’s own natural burning and Six Maxims Thauma was like that between heaven and earth, as much as Krahe didn’t want to use Yao’s own words. The scornbeast was, in some ways, the strongest foe she had bested so far, far surpassing Tindalos, the graft-beast of Slaughterhouse 9, but she couldn’t exactly call it a perfectly even fight, considering Rocinante. On the other hand, were she put up against the scornbeast as she was, without Rocinante, Krahe still felt she stood a fairly good chance at victory.

290 - !!!ARCHETYPE EVOLUTION DETECTED!!! [Cherno]

Based on the last number ticking down by the second, she surmised the first number was for hours. Krahe observed for a few moments more, and thereafter decided to smash apart the calcified layer so she could take-with the scornbeast’s synthetic components. The substance crumbled remarkably easily, and before long she had stuffed her Kenoma Sack to near-full with graft-beast hardware. Altogether, the scornbeast hadn’t been particularly mechanized, its sheer size had simply demanded a great deal of equipment even for light mechanization. Besides the omniphage container, labeled a “Vessel-Controller,” the only items of interest were the busted up Blasting Array, some miscellaneous power-train modules, and a two-thirds-empty tank of off-color thaumine fuel, all presumably somehow involved in the array’s operation. Besides these, Krahe also took several interesting skeletal reinforcements, but that was it. She tossed the rest — various reinforcements and armor plates — into Jas’raba from various angles, ensuring the pieces all landed in wildly different spots, just in case. As she undertook this endeavor, laborious even with Rocinante’s aid, she considered whether she might be able to develop the ability to drag external objects into the Astral Gulf with her. Her clothing and immediate possessions already came with her, why not something she wanted to get rid of and didn’t need to get back? That was what happened to the items in the Kenoma Storage of the dead, after all.

Regardless of how laborious it was, in the process, Krahe at least had the opportunity to get a grasp of how Six Maxims Thauma affected Tar alone, especially tendrils formed of it. In short, they behaved as she would’ve liked them to behave when she first began using them. Her Tar’s elevated flexibility and resilience was one thing, but Tar-tendrils now seamlessly behaved as extra limbs, requiring none of the conscious control she had dedicated to them before. Were they cybernetics, this change would be as if she had switched out their control unit for one three generations ahead. The strength of a single tendril, naturally, had grown by leaps and bounds, and with their seamless obeisance to her will came a behavior similar to that of her obscuring smoke — when she reached out with a tendril to grab one of the scornbeast’s armor plates, it would wrap around the plate or split apart to better grasp it without explicit input, in the same way she would adjust her hold on something without thinking about it. She supposed that it was high time to stop viewing the tendrils as separate from herself. They weren’t, not any more than the Wound-like Grin.

Having thus disposed of the scornbeast’s last remnants, she made her way around the pit, and thereafter through the desolate prospector town. She slowed Rocinante down to a leisurely gallop once the prospector town crossed the horizon. Sheer, breakneck velocity had its own appeals, but, for now, she wanted to take it easy. Not due to the battle, if anything she wished it had gone on a touch longer; testing things on a corpse just wasn’t the same. No, she simply wanted to take in the scenery, both of the outward and inward kind. Once she got her fill of the unending grassland and of the night sky, that is to say after nearly half an hour, Krahe finally took a closer look at her left arm — and found nothing different about it. At least, in the absence of thauma. So much as a trickle of thauma and a mere thought induced the limb’s surface to shift, cracks widening to better facilitate the possible expulsion of thauma, like the apertures of a thruster widening. Turning inward, she assumed the system readout will likely have changed to reflect its newly-evolved characteristics, but what met her wasn’t the usual, immediate popup of her profile. She felt a faint, membranous resistance as she turned her attention in the system’s direction, accompanied by the feeling that she shouldn’t do this if she was in immediate danger.

The system gave not words or images at first, only an unsettling outburst of pins-and-needles, thrumming through her skull. It faded as quickly as it had come, and in its wake came the deluge of flashing messages, each in turn accompanied by a substantially weaker, but nonetheless noticeable thrumming sensation.

!!!ARCHETYPE EVOLUTION DETECTED!!!

PARSING PROFILE…

PARSING…

PARSING…

!!!AUTOPARSE FAILURE!!!

REQUESTING RE-PARSE…

RE-PARSING…

RE-PARSING…

PARSE SUCCESSFUL

FOUND ARCHETYPE EVOLUTION TRIGGERS:

EXTENSIVE COMPREHENSION OF ONE OR MORE DISCIPLINES

EXPLORATION BEYOND BASELINE SYSTEM LIMITS

MAJOR QUALITATIVE TRANSFORMATION

RECLASSIFYING…

RECLASSIFYING…

RECLASSIFYING…

NEW ARCHETYPE ASSIGNED

BLACK SUN HERMETICIST

ADDITIONAL COMPUTATIONAL RESOURCES ASSIGNED

DYNAMIC SYSTEM FUNCTIONALITY EXPANSION AUTHORIZED

The archetype name snapped back, just like it had snapped the first time from “Deathsmoke Mage” to “Cherno Caster” — this time, somewhat uncreatively, to “Cherno Caster ver. 2.” However, she could see it. Krahe wasn’t sure why, but behind or perhaps within the shifted archetype name, if she looked at it in her mind’s eye just right, she could still glimpse what the Seven Spokes System had actually intended to assign as her evolved archetype.

However, when her full readout came up, the new archetype hadn’t simply replaced the old, it was now right below it, with the two archetypes labeled as First-order and Second-order respectively.

Moreover, her profile now quantified her Isotope Tolerance and Dissipation, or at least attempted to, assigning them the same base ratings as their Entropy counterparts, in accordance with the effects of her Deathsmoke Blessing boon.

She thought that if she could now adjust her instance of the Seven Spokes System, even if only to a limited extent, she may as well use that privilege right now. First, she moved the archetype names to the line below their markers, and then manually added notes of the archetypes’ true names.

[NAME: Brunhilde Krahe]

FIRST-ORDER ARCHETYPE: 

Cherno Caster Lvl. MAX (Deathsmoke Mage)

SECOND-ORDER ARCHETYPE: 

Cherno Caster ver.2 Lvl. 1 (Black Sun Hermeticist)

TITLE: Blackhand

RACE: Human

SEX: Female

AGE: 43/0

MIGHT: D3

CONTROL: C2

ATHLETICISM: D3

DURABILITY: C1

THAUMIC THROUGHPUT: B1+C1

ENTROPY TOLERANCE: C2+D3

ENTROPY DISSIPATION: C1+D3

ISOTOPE TOLERANCE: C2+D1

ISOTOPE DISSIPATION: C1+D2

BOONS

FLESHGRAFTS

EIDOLON VAULTS

THAUMATURGIES

STORAGE

OTHER

While it was nice to see her growth expressed through concrete ratings, it was also somewhat hollow compared to the feeling of actually stretching her wings. She waited to return to the city before pushing on, mostly because “sitting down to pore over system readouts” and “riding a mechanical horse” didn’t mesh so well in her mind.

The silver steed soon passed through Audunpoint’s gates, and mere minutes hence, Krahe was back at the same safehouse from which she had departed. A phantom masked in black salt rode it through the streets, noticed by few and properly seen by none, a smear of black and silver. After Krahe dismounted, Rocinante galloped off into the night in the same manner as it had first arrived.

289 - What does an omniphage do when its host dies? [Cherno]

A/N: Added Solomon Howitzer thaumaturgy creation/finalization poem to end of ch288.

_____________________________________________________

Krahe crawled out from under the monstrosity before the ensuing waterfall of viscera could splash down onto her, let alone before the scornbeast proper could crush her beneath its prodigious bulk. She even went so far as to exit sideways and skim on her way out just in case the monstrosity’s death-knell were a final attempt on her life. It remained upright, joints locked in precarious equilibrium, but as she walked around it, letting off a veritable pillar of purge remnants, the scornbeast shifted in place. It was dead in every way that mattered, but even an entirely unmodified human head separated from its shoulders could survive for a solid half-minute. One could only wonder how long this brick shithouse would take to fully realize it was dead.

In the meanwhile, realizing she hadn’t gotten the chance to properly text a smoke burster, Krahe formed one and just tossed it at the corpse. She didn’t take much extra time in its formation, yet she was still able to adjust the design without issue. As it arced and fell right through the hole her Solomon Howitzer had carved, its shell cracked, the smoke began to “leak out.” The burst came just before it hit the ground, but the shell didn’t truly burst. It opened, its hexagonal plates stretching apart, held together by an inner layer of Tar. A cloud — more of a swarm, really — spilled out, enveloping the body, writhing around it, carving at its skin and filing down the edges of its armor. A shift of intent sufficed to halt the assault and turn the cloud-swarm into no more than a visual obstacle. Her deathsmoke had ceased being smoke at Mirzaii 2, but now she finally had control over it, and just as the Itano Tracer and Lasher, this, too, resembled an armament with which Krahe had grown intimately familiar in her past life. She had even changed the burster shell to imitate that very armament — the GT-08 Nacht Autonomous Tactical Nanochaff Emitter. Infamous for its employment of overzealous short-lifespan nanomachines that, with some adjustments, could be made to strip those caught in the cloud of their clothes, skin, and more if they were unlucky, or caught in multiple consecutive blasts.

Krahe mentally named this variant the Swarm Burster, and willed the swarm to disperse. Within moments, it blew away in the wind.

A standard burster came next, and its evolution was, in some ways, disappointing. The thunderous impact and brilliant flare of its detonation tore up the ground and the scornbeast’s corpse in equal measure, but that was it. A high-explosive grenade was a high-explosive grenade, it couldn’t be anything else. Out of curiosity, Krahe made it smaller, enveloping this explosive in a second shell, which she filled with what she intended to be flammable pitch, liquid enough to spread, but viscous and sticky. The actual explosive core was fairly weak, just strong enough that its detonation would expel and ignite the burning pitch. She also imbued the intention for it to detonate on impact, then threw it at the scornbeast’s back. Another explosion, much smaller this time. An inferno of scarlet flame spilled out, eating away at skin and flesh and bone more like a corrosive than a fire. It burned for only a few seconds, rather than the minutes of burn time a real Fortune Arms T73 B&P Naphos incendiary grenade could sustain. The stench, at least, was true to its inspiration, that is to say vile beyond description.

She considered how she might convey this napalm-esq property to a Swarm Burster, but the simplest application didn’t quite work right, so she filed the idea away for later and decided to finally deal with the corpse. It was far too large to stuff into her Kenoma Sack, and she somewhat doubted Rocinante could drag it along, even if she somehow conjured up an enormous corpse-towing apparatus. Seeing as she had no other recourse, Krahe brought out her eyebox to document it, planning to cut up and burn the thing once she was done.

Round and round she went, taking pictures, but the waterfall of blood never came. In fact, the scornbeast’s omniphage-infused blood, perhaps by design or perhaps as an unintended effect of its death, began devouring the enormous corpse. It spread and consumed, bit by bit; within mere minutes, only a pile of bones and grafts remained of the beast. Well, that and the Red Omniphage — that amorphous, sloshing, undulating mass of liquidized flesh. As the body broke down and the omniphage-mass grew, Krahe backed away and even remounted Rocinante, just in case. She didn’t want to just leave it here for the same reason she didn’t want to flee from the Scornbeast itself. The mass remained attached to a head-sized, hexagonal container, and just as it began trying to pull away and towards Krahe, a light came alive on the vessel.

It was a simple projector lens of the same type as those found on eyeboxes, and projected plain text in bright, fluorescent cyan.

WARNING IS VISIBLE = HOST BODY COMPROMISED

STAND CLEAR

The projection shifted, and with it, so did part of the container. Some mechanism inside it whirred and whined, drawing the omniphage back in until it filled the vessel, barely diminishing the visible mass in the process. The projection shifted.

PROBLEM

RAMPANCY+OVERGROWTH

It held for a few seconds. Then, another shift.

SOLUTION

ABLATION+RECONTAINMENT

BEGIN

A shockwave reverberated through the omniphage, and it halted. Something shifted inside the mass, steam began to rise from its surface, and then came the boiling, and the screeching. It was the sound of steam, escaping through what narrow openings its pressure could pry open, but its pitch undeniably carried the tone of a creature in utter agony. The omniphage roiled and undulated in place, bubbling and shrinking bit by agonizing bit, and soon enough, its surface dried, cracked, then caught fire. 

The entire mass soon burst, just as a half-ton calorie-junkie impaled on the nozzle of an industrial air compressor might do. Its boiled gore scattered all around, coating the scornbeast’s remains in a thick layer of pulpy slurry. A moment later, again in a wave spreading from the container, the slurry calcified into a steaming, plaster-like substance.

Finally, the canister’s projection shifted again, hanging for a few moments before it flickered out.

RECONTAINMENT SUCCESSFUL

ROOT CULTURE PURIFICATION: 296:21:09

288 - Scornbeast Pt. Final [Cherno]

One after the next her tracers set off to hound the creature, their already dark appearance darkened further still by black salt. Krahe completely bottomed out her tolerance solely to unleash the biggest tracer salvo possible, and as they spiraled through the air, she felt a familiarity. Surely this was distinct-enough to warrant a new name. Were these even Tracers anymore? They didn’t slavishly depend on bullets to drag them along, and were more akin to anti-cyborg mini-missiles both in their flight and their two-step means of attack. She supposed they were still Tracers after a fashion, chasing after a target directly instead of a bullet. But the way they flew and the barrage-effect they could achieve thanks to her ability to stock up multiple salvos was entirely different. Despite the energy cost of maintaining the constructs, compounded with the elevated creation cost due to salting them, she was still, in the end, able to put out more firepower than she would have been prior to completing the Implosion Furnace. Krahe was sure that it wasn’t a matter of having gained greater Entropy Tolerance — instead, having been stabilized, her thauma could simply achieve more with less, because it wasn’t fighting itself.

Itano Tracer, yes, that was suitable enough. Instead of strained wordplay, she would just use the name of the man who invented the most prominent anti-cyborg mini-missile of her time, the Type-94 M+, or M-Cross. Out of all her missiles, only five struck home, but they all struck at once, and once more cast down the scornbeast with incandescent agony. In its thrashing and wild disgorgement of distortion-waves, it carved a pit around itself.

Since she had remounted Rocinante, no more than sixteen seconds had passed, but it felt far longer. In that time, she has exchanged three near-miss “jousts” with the scornbeast and carved at least a few dozen kilos of meat out of its back. Most of the cables that had incidentally protected its back now littered the ground, and the armor of its upper-left arm was reduced to scrap, while the surrounding landscape had been torn to shreds. It would have surely been rendered muddy by the creature’s blood were it not the sort of ichor that actively plugged the wounds rather than leak out. There had to be omniphage involved at some stage there. Despite its pain resistance, constantly being subjected to the holy salt was clearly having deleterious effects beyond just the occasional failure of its pain tolerance. The beast’s flesh was growing black and desiccated around the wounds, and the congealed blood plugging them was crumbling apart.

Krahe had salted him plenty.

And now, it was time to pay it off. Having purged herself of excess entropy, Krahe prepared to freeze the beast in place for the full duration, barely enough to fit the moment of delay between the casting and actual firing of the Solomon Howitzer.

In the course of her preparations, she dismounted and remounted twice more, once to avoid a double, arm-and-tail clothesline attack, and once in order to leap onto the scornbeast’s back, with Rocinante running around its rear and leaping over its whipping tail in the meanwhile. All this, just to test Lasher, to make sure the plan was viable. The glass threads, previously fragile and short-lived due to their compound nature, now seamlessly blended the best properties of both, tearing deep gouges into the beast’s toughened flesh and slicing apart the remaining cables on its back with just a few consecutive casts. The individual threads, so thin as to be nearly invisible, lingered inside the wounds, continuing to cut. It was the conjoining of the best traits of Tar and Glass — in a way, she had achieved a perfect replication of the “flex-glass” material that had made up the sharpest monowires of her time. She’d noticed before, in the mansion raid, how the Implosion Furnace had improved her thaumaturgy by allowing it to more directly fulfill its intended purpose. This was the extreme of that, a qualitative change that almost seemed to invalidate typical elemental limits.

Foolishly, the scornbeast whipped its bulbous tail forwards whilst reaching back in the attempt to catch Krahe within a pincer attack. For its effort, it grabbed its own tail, as Krahe had already blasted herself off its back, spinning through the air and using the momentum to lash at the thinnest part of its tail with a red-hot, whip-like Lasher filament, weighted by a fist-sized hunk of smoky jade at the end. The cutting power of that strike alone sufficed to sever the tail in one clean go and chop into its back, snapping inward and wrapping around the beast’s torso as Krahe released it.

Having grabbed its own tail only to have it cut, the scornbeast lost its balance, while Krahe skimmed back onto Rocinante, not even bothering to seat herself properly. She stood atop the iron horse’s back as it galloped to the monstrosity’s front, and the moment she got its gaze, Krahe poured thauma into the Oculae.

In moments, countless wound-like grins opened across the scornbeast’s body and arms of salt emerged to grasp and claw at it. It froze in place, while Krahe was already stoking the fire for what she would do next. With how much work she had put into softening up the scornbeast’s back, that was the obvious place to strike, but it was also the most resilient part of it. For all her effort, none of her attacks had actually damaged its ribcage to a substantial degree.

No, the obvious part where the armor was weakest would be the innermost section of the torso, that which would be best-defended by the arms and the beast’s natural posture, and which would need to have the greatest range of motion.

She skimmed, taking the risk to get in position on time, throwing herself into a slide even as the shell of black salt began to crack. The maximum duration was 0.59s, and she arrived at her firing position on the 0.47s mark, having already “cast” the spell by this point. Indeed, the pulse of furious scarlet was already traveling down the length of her arm, casting scattered rays of light all around. Uncertain of the beast’s true resilience, Krahe pushed so far that this cast’s cost surpassed her total Entropy Tolerance, permitted solely by her arm’s recent evolution.

Having given into the moment, she incanted aloud. Yet, the words that emerged were not those of her voice, but those of thunderous thought akin to the Three Words of Wandrei Faust. Without realizing, she had opened along her arm the Wound-like Grins to speak them.

“SO-LO-MON!”

Krahe went blind with redness beyond red, red akin to Favonia’s astral body. She went deaf with a roar like the unholy marriage of continuous thunder and the scream of an electric arc.

It wasn’t a single blast, but a pillar of blood-red flame streaked-through by absences, the filaments invisible, yet creating gaps in the beam. It burned and shredded skin, it boiled organs, it sawed and scorched through solid bone and alloy reinforcements alike. The sheer force of it was such that it pushed Krahe halfway into the ground.

And she saw the night sky through the hole.

TEN THOUSAND CUTS AND TOTAL IMMOLATION

ALL THE GODS OF OLYMPUS AND DAEMONS OF TARTARUS

BE YE CONDEMNED TO THE ASH PILE BY ONE MORTAL’S HAND

RIVAL TO THE SCOURING WINDS OF ITHAQUA AND FLAMES OF CTHUGHA

BLACK HAND OF DESOLATION: SOLOMON HOWITZER

287 - Scornbeast Pt. 2 [Cherno]

The Cinder Flash’s range was far too short for this use case, but peppering the monstrosity with Cinder Gatling shots proved remarkably effective in slowing it down. This was not because of their firepower, but because she salted them, rendering the orange beams into dark streaks, with only their cores remaining orange, while the outer layer became as black as the swirling mask formed by Salt Mountain’s Visage. The impact alone was enough to turn the scornbeast’s leap into a startled tumble as the creature raised its arms to defend itself, rolling and skidding forward while Krahe dived again to create some distance. Rocinante had turned and was now heading her way again, but it would still be a few moments before it could pick her up.

As she fired off her Cinder Gatling, she came to notice, or rather be reminded of, one thing — the control rods, as part of their foundational concept, also had a marked effect on Thaumic Fusion. It hadn’t been nearly as pronounced before due to the four rods’ uneven effect, but with all six, snuffing the rampaging fusion reaction was far easier. It was almost, but not quite easy enough to say that it “wasn’t difficult.”

Just to see if it would work, she fused some eighty percent of the power she normally put into a Cinder Flash, only to snuff the reaction, retaining that power inside her arm for the moment it took to produce the remaining twenty percent by implosion-burning instead. It was effectively an alternate application of the principles behind the Solomon Howitzer, only simplified to the utmost extent. And lo, with that small bit of additional effort, a two-shaded ray of murderous red sprung forth, with a core of notably greater brightness, screaming and bending towards the scornbeast as it went. It even took a touch longer to scatter than a plain Cinder Flash. The scornbeast, not even having bothered to dodge, simply took the hit head-on, ignoring the faint browning that a patch of its left upper-left back had been subjected to. Obviously, it wasn’t practical at this range, not in this jousting battle, but she had just the thing for such an occasion. The energy-mixing technique had too many steps for her to apply it to the Cinder Gatling shot by shot, but her arm could just as well hold the combined energy for five shots long enough to fire them in a burst. And, just the same, the rays burst from her fingers, curving to strike at the scornbeast’s bare flesh.

And still, it continued on, for its skin was thick, its flesh dense, and its body the size of a small house. Even excruciating the creature was quickly growing less effective, the pain eliciting anger and driving it to behave erratically. Of course a graft-beast based on a degenerate Gor’un subspecies would be resistant to pain. After all, the Jas’raba Civilization’s grafting technology employed no painkillers whatsoever. She wagered its maker had taken measures to further limit its susceptibility, given it was probably expected to suffer enormous trauma in the course of battle. Now that she considered it, Salting the Wounds had likely worked more due to the surprise element than the pure pain. Were she limited solely to the tools she had employed up until this point, she would spend minutes carving away at the beast, using Tracers and Gatling rays to bore into its flesh. She would need to do no such thing.

As it reached her at last, a cruel joy in its twisted countenance as it gaped its maw and spun the blades inside, she simply raised her hand. The Crimson Star flashed with a flash of equally cruel joy to the scornbeast’s face just moments prior, and an unimpeachable force smashed against it. The force of the collision alone dislodged its jaw from the socket. Yet, shocked only briefly, the living weapon’s savage intellect bid it to spread itself out across the expanding shockwave, such that it merely pushed its feet through the dirt while allowing it to remain in a good position from which to fall upon Krahe. The ploy didn’t work out quite as well as the scornbeast had surely wished it to, for the shockwave cast it back just as forcefully as it would a human, but even so, as it slid backwards, it smashed its arms into the ground and forcibly righted itself. The thing’s arms were simply that disproportionately long.

It closed in once more, and with Rocinante still some distance off, Krahe dove again, attempting to overwhelm the scornbeast through sheer speed, or failing that, buy herself time. She couldn’t cast in the astral, but she could burn and move thauma within her own body just the same. No such luck, simple evasion wouldn’t suffice. Those hateful eyes tracked her without issue, and the monstrous bulk moved such that it would be renowned for its alacrity even if it were one-tenth its size. Nonetheless, her brief dive helped buy Rocinante the time to catch up, regardless of the scornbeast’s clear intention to swat the horse away when it got in reach. Krahe of course had no such plan. She emerged between the two of them, back to Rocinante and front to the scornbeast, and exhaled a salted Deathsmoke Spray into its face. Besides the strong taste and gritty texture in her teeth, it didn’t feel like much at all in her mouth, thanks to the Adamas Organ’s tissue reinforcement. It emerged not as a mass of ash and glass razors, but as the flamethrower she had been hoping for those months ago, when she first conceived of this thaumaturgy, and that single cast burn-shredded the scornbeast’s entire head down to bare bones. Even so, its remnants set upon the creature, burning tendrils shoving into its miraculously-intact, now-lidless eyes. She stared into them, attempting to halt it through Vinculae Peregrinus, but it was still far too slow to go off in time from this close-up. Just as the beast lunged for her, howling in white-brilliant agony, Krahe turned her hand downward and sent herself flying right overhead Rocinante. An astro-skim later she was back in the saddle and the automaton clamped down on her legs once more as they turned rightward, circling the scornbeast. It whipped its head in her direction, screaming out a scattered burst of separate distortion-waves — the synchronization module of its Blasting Array had been damaged.

Krahe set loose another barrage of Tracers, salting each in turn. If she handled this properly, she would be able to buy herself the opening to finish it off in one blow.

286 - Scornbeast Pt. 1 [Cherno]

“Well, Rocinante, our first giant has come,” Krahe uttered, grinning at the patent absurdity of her own words. She drew in a breath as the monstrosity climbed at last toward the surface, and ignited the Implosion Furnace, funneling the first of its energetic bursts into her left arm. A mass of writhing smoke streaked-through by red gathered about the clawed limb merely from the presence of her evolved thauma, while her right hand remained securely locked around one of her steed’s control handles. She felt the burning heat flowing out of her arm, seeping through the cracks and thruster nozzles, yet there was no sense of loss. It lingered, building into serpent-like swarms of pyroclast and red glow.

“Burster first, perhaps? No, it’ll suffocate him. Tracers, tracers will be good,” she thought aloud. At a mere thought, the snakes of living cinder coalesced into three fist-sized tracers, revolving around her wrist. That was strange. She felt… Something shift, inside her arm. The thrusters and their energy pathways were the same, but it was undeniable. Being introduced to “Sixfold Imploded Thauma” had triggered a subtle change that elevated the Left Arm’s ability to retain energy. She would look into it when she had the time.

The armored mass of flesh, which she had mentally named the scornbeast for its hateful gaze, had finally leapt from the lift tower onto solid land, wisely not trusting the rickety gangway to support its weight.

Look at it from this distance, a mere sixty-one meters, Krahe could make out far more detail, and she only grew more certain that the one responsible for this thing was a highly skilled heretical grafter. It had been self-evident before, but the visible stitch lines and metallic-black tubing showing under its skin proved it beyond the shadow of a reasonable doubt. The scornbeast charged towards her, and with just a slight tug on the control handle, Rocinante went speeding towards it. The leg-recesses in the automaton’s torso clamped down as it sped up. A surface of dry, dead dirt be damned, the horse’s iron hooves still went from a standstill to 100km/h in a split-second, and somehow, the dirt didn’t so much as budge under it.

The scornbeast’s mouth yawned open as it ran, or rather bounded forward, its rear legs just barely big enough to keep up. The lower jaw split, a membrane between the mandibles stretched taut and translucent. Within, Krahe glimpsed not just a gaping cavity of teeth, but also rings of counter-rotating blades behind them, and at the back, a shape she only vaguely recognized until it began to glow. That glow, and the shockwave which soon thereafter ripped forth from the creature’s maw, were the exact same as those she had faced at Slaughterhouse 9. It was a Blasting Array, and its spiraling, ghostly-green force carved a channel into the hard ground like a finger through sand. Just as the shockwave began to emerge, the scornbeast smashed its left hand into the ground and whipped its head — alongside its entire body — sideways, all to send the shockwave on a course it believed Krahe couldn’t evade. And why wouldn’t it think so? It had no way to know of Rocinante’s maneuverability, or of Krahe’s own abilities.

But much to the scornbeast’s audible, gurgling-grinding frustration, the infernal horse turned on a dime, nearly tilting sideways to achieve such an aggressive angle. She released her tracers, then three more, and a further three afterwards, all in the span of the brief time it took Rocinante to make a full 90° turn. By the time she completed a U-turn, the scornbeast had been struck thrice, with the other six closing in. In addition to their inevitably-enhanced homing properties, they… Didn’t explode on impact. Not in the way they had exploded previously, at least.

Leaving two shallow craters in its armor and a gruesome tear in the flesh within a gap between plates, the tracers’ remnants, which previously attacked in a vaguely lacerative manner, now instead reformed into six-pronged spirals as they attempted to dig into their prey. These tracer-remnants could only be described as drills, with red bouts of rocket-like flame bursting forth as they burned themselves up. The second salvo not only struck through, it struck very close to the first salvo had, while the third chased after the now-fleeing scornbeast, eventually scattered by the cables whipping from its back. At least an inch of solid metal, and tracers had carved through it. Sure, a complete graft-beast would have barrier generators, artificially maintained wards, better and more comprehensive armor, or all of the above. But this was already a fundamental, qualitative transformation, it entirely overshadowed the half-baked growth she had considered evolution during the Mirzaii 2 raid. No, this was thaumaturgy evolution.

One after another, she exchanged blows with the scornbeast — it, realizing she was more maneuverable than it, attempted to catch her with distortion-waves of wildly varying size, speed, and power, while she simply pelted it with Tracers, and nothing but Tracers, for a good solid minute. As they fought in this manner, gradually moving away from the pit edge, neither flagging, Krahe considered the matter of the scornbeast’s origin. Organic core, synthetic reinforcement, crude plating, Blasting Array in the mouth. This was remarkably Foreman-adjacent work. Were she not certain he was dead, she might’ve wondered if this was the successor to Tindalos. As for the possibility of someone else carrying on where he left of, that was far more likely.

As she rode around for yet another strafing run, simply enjoying herself, the scornbeast at last fired off a shockwave that, she had to admit, she couldn’t dodge. There was no excuse to be made, no extenuating circumstance — Krahe had allowed herself to become intoxicated with her new wellspring of strength. She hadn’t truly taken up the sword, she was just playing with it, still resting in the garden. She willed Rocinante to release her, to drop into a low slide, while she astrodived. The automaton would be fine, and so would she. Immediately seizing upon the perceived opening, the scornbeast made to bound in her direction. Krahe readied the Crimson Star, and as the beast approached, she brought out another of her toys. 

285 - Sword of Six Maxims [Cherno]

There was no doubt in her mind that she had stirred up the Astral Gulf. No matter how real the mindscape of her Soul Furnace appeared from her perspective, Krahe had no doubt that the pillar of red-lit smoke that rose from her as a consequence of her work would be visible to anyone with eyes to see. But who would look? Out here, in the middle of nowhere, at the edge of the ruin of ruins.

She settled back into the world, releasing her leftover Entropy and siphoning as much Isotope into her arm as possible. But as she did this, perhaps as if the world were mocking her, she spotted movement in the pit. Ur-baneworms, dozens of them, scurrying through the streets and jumping between rooftops, fleeing from something. Soon enough it revealed itself, the thing that had terrified those gorilla-armed mutants into running with their tendrilous tails between their nonexistent legs. The enormous silhouette emerged from somewhere out of sight, perhaps a passage in the pit’s walls, and began stomping up the spiral, through the ruined streets, casually clambering over rubble and onto buildings by virtue of prodigious size.

Employing the Oculae’s zoom function in concert with her own enhanced sight, Krahe took a closer look. There was only one thing it could possibly be — a Zitur’ith. A rare form or Tur’ith ur-baneworm that had retained, or rather reawakened some its non-degenerated cousins’ powers of assimilation. Based on what she’d read, which wasn’t a great deal, these creatures normally assimilated one or two others, finding this sufficient to rule over their kin for the full length of their roughly thirty-year lifespans. Rather than meld with a victim to form a hatching pod that would spawn three or four more of themselves, they would begin a similar process, but instead of the usual reproduction they would simply subsume the victim’s biomass, alongside some of their memories and skills in a similar manner to Gor’un. This meant they required victims of increasing size to keep growing, and that they couldn’t reproduce. Krahe could scarcely imagine the chain of contrivances that led to this specimen’s existence, and she somewhat doubted it hadn’t been fostered by someone intentionally.

And indeed, as it moved in the shaded street and into the moonlight, she saw the plates of metal bolted to its hide, and the cables trailing from its back, some trailing mace-like masses from whatever machine they had been attached to. Its enormous mass neared the size of a small building, resembling multiple layers of ur-baneworm layered atop one another, the lines of layered flesh most distinct on its legs and arms. It moved with alacrity unsuited to its size, stopping to look around every now and then, looking for something — the lift to the surface or rather, the scaffolding of its cabin, which had been reinforced at some point since Krahe’s departure from the pit. It was clear that even if the prospecting town and Sorun’s operation had gone defunct, there were still other forces at play in Jas’raba. When it beheld its goal, the beast looked up the tower, visibly planning out its route, until, having caught Krahe out of the corner of its eye, it snapped to her and stared. There was recognition there, she could feel it. The monstrosity possessed four distinct extra faces, trailing down the middle of its chest, and a number of other, vaguely facial formations were embedded in its hide. The second-lowest explained why it recognized her. It was the face of the ur-baneworm Krahe had slain at the base of the lift, manifesting a barrier for the first time during their battle.

The creature was still at the bottom. If she were so inclined, she could just leave. If she pushed Rocinante to its full speed, there was a very good chance she would have enough time to raise an alert and elicit an appropriate-scale defensive response from Audunpoint. The beast, if it followed her, would splatter against a force of Mamon Knights and thaumaturges, possibly even get slaughtered singlehandedly by a midranker.

But what would the point be? It had offered itself up to her, just now, and there was no doubt in her mind that whomever was fostering this uber-Zitur’ith deserved to have their quasi-graftbeast squashed, if for nothing else than for failing to take appropriate precautions. Neither its armor nor the tubes resembled Zaveshian grafting equipment, that was for certain.

At the end of the day, Krahe simply wasn’t going to let an opportunity to test out her newly-stabilized thaumaturgy go to waste. She’d had her rest, now was as good a time as any to take up the sword once again.

So, she made Rocinante back away from the pit edge, circling it such that she maintained a sightline to the lift tower, to the Zitur’ith.

There was something different — there was an absence, an absence of doubt to her thoughts. Looking back, the doubt and uncertainty, the sense of spinning her wheels in the mud, which had driven her to this outing, all seemed patently absurd. There was no doubt in her mind as to the outcome of the coming battle. Ten thousand roads sprawled out before her, and the beast’s corpse laid at the crossroads where they rejoined, briefly, only to split again. As the beast climbed up the tower, its metal creaking in protest beneath the weight, debris tumbling into the abyss, Krahe simply watched. A tension raced up and down the back of her neck, she wanted to set alight the Astral Implosion Furnace, but she held off, breathing through a grin of gritted teeth.

Krahe had wondered why these creatures never left Jas’raba, let alone spread out of it, why they seemed content or perhaps unable to do more than prey on wayward prospectors, but now she knew. They were quick enough, strong enough, sufficiently able to reproduce by directly subsuming prey, but they simply could not surpass the bare minimum of natural fitness by a large enough factor to escape the pit, stuck in both the physical downward spiral of Jas’raba and the figurative one of population decline. They were also in the unfortunate position of having to contend against the watchful eyes of Audunpoint and its contractors, who knew well the catastrophic potential of an ur-baneworm infestation, but could not eradicate them, and so contained them to their natural habitat.

And the ur-baneworms stayed there, because they possessed neither the natural faculties for any sort of magic nor the intellect to work together. Only on occasion, when a specimen of prolific size consumed countless others of its own kind, could it ever escape the pit — and meet its ultimate fate of slaughter at the hands of a human wielding one of the Seven Swords of the Wheel. Krahe wasn’t sure what that esoteric term meant, only that she’d overheard it at St. Gauna’s in reference to the System.

All in all, the ur-baneworms were a ruined and terrible form of life, neither beast nor man nor true baneworm, thus possessing neither the qualifications to benefit from the System, nor the opportunity to become soulbeasts, nor the ability to take over the body and steal the skills of a host.

And the biggest, most terrible of all baneworms had, by the unfortunate coincidence of a remnant memory, made the choice to climb onto the Atomica’s sacrificial altar, the first wretched thing to be felled by the completed sword of six maxims.

284 - THE MAJESTIC STRUGGLE [Cherno]

Back in Megacity Gamma, especially the more desolate sectors, even a smalltime subsector lord could muster hundreds of borged out bodies hopped up on half a dozen stimulants, not even in an attempt to kill her per se, just to inconvenience her, just to try and annoy her into leaving him to his cartelpilled favelamaxxing in peace. Life in Megacity Gamma could truly be that cheap. And oftentimes, Krahe did leave, because oftentimes the price of the bullets and self-maintenance by far eclipsed the importance of whatever reason she had to be in that particular subsector. In fact, reminiscing on it now, it had been at least three different times that she had tried to set up shop or get access to the industrial chutes in Subsector 5J only to have a horde of junkies annoy her into leaving. Each time, she made the attempt because a new subsector lord had taken over, yet it seemed, despite the violent takeovers, they passed down guidelines on how to bother her the most effectively like some kind of ritual secret for expeling a demon. She of course inevitably bit the bullet and spent the money to blow Third’s compound to high heaven, and finally got to dig up the old datacore she had been looking for to begin with in peace. All that, on and off over the course of a year and a half, nearly a thousand dead, just to get the location of one of the critical parts for the Blackhands. That wasn’t an exaggerated one-off, it was one episode amongst countless others throughout some twenty-five years. Frankly Krahe didn’t remember how old she was when Oasis got nuked, and she had lost count of her own age soon after she had Moravec transferred herself. It hadn’t gone exactly right, but all things considered, it was remarkable how little memory loss her ad-hoc version of that fantastically complex procedure had caused.

Even more “legitimate” outfits weren’t that different in how they approached the problem of Krahe’s continued existence as a bramble digging into Whitestone’s foundation. When it came down to the immediate threat of getting fried into an tumor-matryoshka full of electronic waste, executives threw entire security companies at her with about as much consideration as one would give to the bullets in your gun or the bomb drones in your hangar. The commanders of those companies expended their squads in the same manner, just as the captains of those squads did their subordinates, and so on.

In short, Krahe’s path up until this point wasn’t strewn with bones as much as it was paved with them. Everything since her rebirth had been a break, all things considered. Well, perhaps not the raids on the Old Street Butchershop, Slaugherhouse 9, or Mirzaii 2, those were returns to form, so to speak.

When it came to all the killing… The killing itself was not difficult to accept. To say that it weighed on Krahe’s mind would be a lie. It was more a matter of considering it in terms of how it played into who she was. An examination of doubts, so to speak. Why? Why all the killing? What was the purpose? So many had burned. So many would burn. And in their absence, those they would have victimized would once more be able to grow, and the ashes of these wretched beasts would serve to feed the earth. Krahe’s mountain of corpses would come to be a garden of cinders.

No magical, spontaneous breakthrough took place, wherein the fifth control rod formed of its own volition. Krahe could feel that the stage had been set, but actually dredging up the maxim and giving it permanent form within her Soul Furnace was another matter. Hoping that entering the right headspace wouldn’t require an elaborate ritual, she leaned forward atop her steed, resting her chin atop its head. Looking down upon Jas’raba, she projected the mental image of her Soul Furnace onto the city, picturing that the corpse-mountain had been replaced with the Atomica as the central obelisk, with the rim of the pit being the furnace’s equator, around which her four control rods and the two empty spaces were arrayed. At first, it was a matter of actual imagination, no different from overlaying any other mental image onto your field of view, but as she pulled Thauma into her actual Soul Furnace, the Atomica’s gigantic obelisk form came alive and the mental image solidified. In every way that mattered, besides the risk of falling in, she was no longer at the edge of Jas’raba. Rocinante now stood atop the first control rod, that of Will to Might.

She had, in some way, expected it to be easier than before, that perhaps her previous bottleneck of four control rods may have been in part due to exhausting some intangible mental energy resource. This proved to have been true, though only partly. The sheer volume of Thauma it took to do this unassisted was astronomical, eclipsing even the cost of forming Trinity Composite wards from scratch. And so, bit by bit, as if she were pulling the sarcophagus of some lost king from the bottom of the sea with her bare hands, Krahe forced the mental image and ideal of the Garden of Cinders into a concrete form. Yet, despite the difficulty, the toil, the sum total effort expended, she never at any point doubted that she would complete the endeavor — the ordeal was nothing more or less than the proof of her conviction to that maxim.

ASTRAL IMPLOSION FURNACE

FIFTH CONTROL ROD COMPLETE

GARDEN OF CINDERS

And at last, it came down to the final missing piece. It wasn’t a sudden bolt of enlightenment, or a momentous realization, but a gradual buildup. Not since the raid, but even before then, even before her first death. The first seed of it had been an insult, an offhanded remark — the very man who had killed her had once said she was “Don Quixote charging at windmills.” Despite this, he had joined her crusade and persisted upon the path until an irresistible force had pushed him to act. The sole reason Krahe didn’t regret that her body killed that man was the knowledge that Whitestone would’ve disposed of him in far more gruesome fashion.

The struggle had been her life. That seemingly impossible goal, yet one she had come so close to fulfilling.

And now, she didn’t know how to do anything else. Even if she was on the ground, putting the screws to gangsters and hunting down serial killers, it was all part of one greater whole, part of a greater crusade whose goal was to unearth and slaughter the most monumental evils this world could offer.

All this killing, all these scars, the injuries and surgery, the bitterly fought-for strength clutched tightly in her hand.

It was all for this. Whether alone or with allies at her back, this was Krahe’s life. This quixotic crusade. This majestic struggle.

ASTRAL IMPLOSION FURNACE

SIXTH CONTROL ROD COMPLETE

THE MAJESTIC STRUGGLE

Finally, it was done.

Both the Implosion Furnace, and the poem. It had indelibly etched itself into Krahe’s memory. She was somehow certain that she couldn’t forget it even if she tried.

Forging my will into a blazing blade,

I slaughter evil’s brood without reprieve

Drenched by ichor and bearing countless scars,

I rest among the flowers in a garden of cinders,

and think of my long-lost home

I take up the blade

and set off to stake my life once more

all that I am, I give for this majestic struggle

283 - The Second One [Cherno]

Eventually, after five or perhaps six rounds, she came to a rest near the very platform from which she had disembarked those months ago. It had collapsed into the pit since then. In fact, she could swear Jas’raba’s edge was in a far worse condition than before. Large boulders had crashed down, smashing buildings and blocking even more of the streets. Only the corpse pile in the very center remained untouched.

She had intended to sit down at the edge and peer into the pit, but now that she was here, she felt it a foolish idea. Who knew whether her weight would cause another section of the pit rim to collapse. Besides, the Arion made for a supremely comfortable seat.

Thus, astride the automaton that had deemed itself Rocinante, she looked down into the desolate pit, whose downward spiral could in its own way could be interpreted as an inverted Tower of Babel, the pile of corpses as its dome, and the World Needle its ultimate zenith.

Krahe considered Favonia’s advice, that of formulating a poem based on her existing maxims to better help her discern and solidify the missing two. The meaning came easily, at first, but the lines were too crude, and never satisfied her. She mentally reworked the poem time and time again over the course of the next hour or so until she felt it somewhat accurately captured her four maxims of Will to Might, Hatred of Evil, the ideal of the lost hometown, and, somehow, the fourth maxim which she couldn’t properly conceptualize in words. That had been the easy part, now came the ordeal of fishing up the last two. The more she dwelt on the last two control rods, the more her thoughts insisted on returning to that place. Neo Babylonia. Not the real place, but the mental construct through which she had journeyed, to that moment in the hovercar. The ruins of Jas’raba yawning below her only made the feeling stronger.

“And the world will be better for this, that one man, scorned and covered with scars, still strove with his last ounce of courage, to- touch the untouchable, break the unbreakable…”

In some way, the World Needle could indeed touch the untouchable and break the unbreakable. Regardless of the Jas’raba Civilization’s culture, one had to admit the needle was a majestic thing in its own right, even if not quite on the same level as the Banishment Wheel. Surface-level knowledge of the machine’s operation wasn’t exactly restricted — it was so embedded in mythology that trying to smother it would’ve only backfired, and nobody had the tools or the knowledge of its operation, so the churches had resigned to simply keeping an eye on it. That Audun Sorun eventually got it to work was too absurd an outlier to blame them for it, and Krahe was living proof of how well it had worked. She had come to realize that the six-eyed dream serpent had shown him to her, in that Sector 5 alleyway. Who else in all Megacity Gamma would speak of Chernobog and Jas’raba, and in Audunpoint’s exact dialect of the Neocalbian language no less? She was somehow absolutely certain that, wherever he was, he was likely doing well. Perhaps he had wrought an empire of scrap for himself, wielding magic he ought not to have, or perhaps absurdly powerful psionics. Who knew. His struggle, in some way, could be said to be the same as hers, if not in its target, then in its madness. Whether he kept chasing immortality even in Megacity Gamma, she couldn’t guess.

As she continued to mull things over, considering how true the mashed-together lyrics might be in regards to her, she also couldn’t help but think back to something else. She couldn’t help but think back to Barzai’s tirade during her battle with Semzar, because it was true. Every word of it had been the truth and nothing but the truth.

In her youth she had, indeed, slain thirty men with her bare hands. She had, indeed, strangled one of them with his own polymer intestines, she had strung their heads from the rafters, and so too had she drowned three among their number in a vat of off-white synthetic blood. By her own hands, she had forced open a steel bulkhead, bursting her own arms in the process, thus forcing her to bite out the throats of the choppergang members who had awaited at the other side.

It had been the earliest of her major endeavors, In retrospect, one could say that what she had done in Audunpoint was to some extent an unintentional re-enactment of that time.

Barzai’s account of her actions in the City of Angels was no less true, from her destruction of Whitestone supporters’ corporate bunkers, the toppling of their personal skyscrapers, and the cruel fates to which she had consigned them when she found the locations of their data-tombs. The gruesome implement that was the nerve lathe was matched in cruelty only by its efficiency in unspooling a mind into raw, inert data. It was also the only method of extracting information from brains as thoroughly borgified and fortified as those of her victims at that time.

Even that, however, paled in comparison to her devastation of domed villas of Xiaosheng following her acquisition of the Blackhands. Barzai’s account remained entirely truthful even here — she had, indeed, irradiated the arcology and filled it with the ultra-persistent nerve agent Cobalt 8. Not out of practicality, but to send a message. Blowing up the arcology would’ve worked just as well, the radiation and nerve agent had been a reversion of what had been done to her home town. Her direct killing of the arcology’s direct owners and their personal security details was almost a footnote by comparison.

Frankly, the events Barzai had included in his tirade during the raid didn’t account for even one-fifth of her past life’s body count. Killing had just been a part of life back then, to the point it merited distinguishing between now and then. A couple gangsters or serial killers here and there was nothing. On average, people could take an order of magnitude more punishment, even with bare-minimum barriers and wards.

__________________________________________

A/N: Chapter title reference: The Second One

282 - Rocinante Pt. 2 [Cherno]

Krahe and Casus settled down in the safehouse, both resting for their own reasons. Krahe, for one, had a stomach far too full to do anything, and could feel herself slipping nearer and nearer a food coma with every passing minute. Casus didn’t exude an immediate sense of exhaustion, but it was clear he was glad to have the opportunity to take a break. They caught up with each other over the next several hours, with Krahe sleeping for two hours straight even with the effects of adefron incense to aid her — digestion just took time, and that was that. She had to admit some measure of surprise at how subdued his reaction was to the matter of the Oldfield case. The anger was there, that much was obvious, but it smoldered beneath the surface, readily placated by the fact the direct perpetrators had already been caught, and willing to wait for the opportunity to release itself upon the Helmeted Man, who stood behind them. He also insisted on attending tommorrow evening’s meeting with the tracker for their soulbeast hunt.

Casus freely recounted the plights and indignities to which Favonia had subjected him in her effort to fulfill his goal of being capable of wielding Eisenretter as she did Airgetlamh. The slaughters through which he had marched and at points crawled solely in order to gain a full grasp over Eisenretter would suffice fill a volume all on their own.

“Farbeit for me to lessen the severity of your own struggles, but I simply must complain to someone,” the banisher explained himself.

“All things considered, I did have it easier than you in some ways. I have my own roadblocks, but they’re markedly less specific than yours. I can’t very well just work myself to the bone to get over them. Speaking of which, you wouldn’t happen to know of a good method to figure out what my missing control rights might be, would you?” Krahe replied.

“There are ways to achieve what you seek directly, I admit, but all are far, far too severe in my opinion,” Casus admitted. “Perhaps dwell on the matter for some time, maybe light some incense. If truly nothing works, then I shall offer up the method I used to change my Knight of Shing Silver into Crusader of Black and Gold. You’ve already undergone a version of it after a fashion, hence why I believe you already have the pieces.”

Releasing a sigh, Krahe popped a few insectile beans into her mouth and sat up.

“Now that I think of it, I haven’t actually seen Eisenretter. Not really,” she said as she stretched in place.

“I shan’t lie in saying that I would not like to transform right here, on the spot, but I am in no state to do so. Tarnished Silberblut, perhaps, but not Eisenretter. It shall have to wait until our hunt,” Casus said, audibly pained by his own words.

Krahe thus made her way to the bathroom, spending some time to shower despite not truly needing it. While in there, the world shut out by the white noise, she dwelt on the question of the control rods.

“I’m just procrastinating at this point. Something tells me it’ll be easier to work it out if I go back there. Maybe staring into that pit will help,” she mused aloud. 

Having thusly realigned her mental state to some extent, Krahe left the safehouse.

With just a whistle and a measure of thauma, Arion came galloping her way within less than fifteen seconds. She didn’t expect such expediency in more remote circumstances, but the convenience was nice. As she swung up onto the automaton horse, Krahe found that its design somehow exactly matched her most preferred ergonomics. Just from a touch. She set aside the implications as she got her bearings handling the machine, finding relief that it ceded control to her wherever she wished. There was some autonomous behavior, but it was still an automaton horse — one that balanced itself, didn’t give even the slightest bump in the course of the ride, and frankly responded a little too readily. The physical interface, two recesses just behind the steel beast’s skull, contained grips and a few levers, and merely from brief contact Krahe simply knew that several pedals could spring out of its torso if need be. In short, it just rode how she wanted it to ride. Like a hoverbike with a neural mirroring cache that had been used by the same rider for decades — only, Krahe had never so much as touched this thing. And yet it still carried her through the city at the exact breakneck speed to which she had usually pushed her own hoverbikes in the past, it cornered exactly how she had done, its iron hooves slid through right-angle turns and threw showers of sparks exactly as she wanted them to.

In the same manner, it carried her out of the city, the guards at the gate making no effort to even call out to her, let alone halt her. They recognized something that was of the churches in the way that made it a much better idea to just not get involved — if someone tore through your open, relatively low-security checkpoint atop a black metal horse at some 250km/h, they probably had either the paperwork or the connections to bypass the usual checks.

The stars and streaked colours of Zastreon’s night sky blurred past her as she sped through the grasslands. Somehow, neither the wind nor any debris flew in her face.

Krahe reached the desolate town at the edge of Jas’raba far faster than she had expected, and it was not solely due to the Arion’s breakneck speed. The realization dawned on her that her memory of the trek from this place to Audunpoint felt that much longer because it was one of her earliest memories in her new life. In reality, Jas’raba wasn’t that far from Audunpoint at all. It would’ve been foolish if it were, Audunpoint had gotten its start as a glorified supply outpost after all. Not yet satisfied by the short ride, she circled the enormous pit, time and time again, gradually bleeding off speed. 

281 - Rocinante [Cherno]

The following hours passed remarkably quickly. Favonia spoke at length of her battle with Skullhead for Casus’ benefit and of a number of other exploits for Krahe’s, and though Krahe paid close attention and committed them to memory, she didn’t feel entirely present in the conversation. This was not out of a sense of exclusion or a dissociative impulse, but because her focus was mostly on the food. Regardless of the prices, to say the food was to kill for was an understatement — after all, Krahe had killed for far worse food than this… And besides, Favonia was footing the bill.

As the trio made their way out of the restaurant, a bird automaton seemingly sprung out of thin air and landed on Favonia’s shoulder. The banisher, upon reading the message the automaton had brought her, sighed through her nose.

“Looks like I had even less time than I’d hoped,” she said, looking to Casus and Krahe in turn. “I won’t need my horse for some time, you may have it.”

Favonia drew in a breath, and her musculature seemed to inflate a bit, writhing just under the skin. She leaned forward, as if falling, only to break into a sprint down the street, her shape engulfed in silver-red flame as she once more shed even the pretense of base humanity. She was gone before either of them could properly process what she had foisted upon them, let alone the implications of her premature departure.

“Does she do this often?” Krahe asked.

“More often than not,” Casus said.

“But, a horse? Better be an automaton like the others.”

With a quizzical sort of look, Casus asked, “Have you seen any living horses anywhere in this city, Lady Blackhand?”

________________________________________________________

There was no automaton horse to speak of anywhere near the safehouse, at least not in the open street. Krahe, out of curiosity, pushed the Oculae as far as they could go in order to see through any concealment, and this did reveal that a great deal of new warding had been added since the attempt on her life, but that was all.

However, while there was not a horse, there was a bird — one of Favonia’s automatons, of course, waiting on a street lamp. Unlike the automaton Favonia had used to send and receive messages, which had been kestrel-like in shape, this one resembled, frankly, a somewhat generic bird-shaped body, its distinguishing trait being a long tail and what was obviously the barrel of a gun protruding just under its neck. There hadn’t exactly been a great deal of birds in the megacity.

Having spotted them, it darted off. Clang. Clang. Clang. Clang. From deep within one of the nearby alleyways, an enormous shape emerged, the alley itself barely wide enough to accommodate its breadth. Krahe’s eyebrow rose of its own volition, because this was a horse only in the remotest terms — it was too big to be called a horse. Too big, too thick, too monstrous, and too tyrannical. This beast was a war machine in the guise of a horse. Its body had proportions of no living equine, its enormity obviously a result of being designed by and for Favonia, and the imitation of nature was nothing more than a foundation upon which Favonia had built with her own brutal design mentality.

Its legs were similar in shape to those of a horse, but thicker, and its head more akin to the head of a mythical dragon than a horse, with a mouth that split it nearly down its full length and six eyes, with two facing sideways, two forwards, and two diagonally rearwards. Its torso was shaped so as to accommodate a rider’s legs, and behind it trailed a coiled tail two-thirds as long as the rest of its body, being as thick as Krahe’s calf at its base and tapering towards a bladed end.

The silver beast approached them, regarding Casus with familiarity, though it passed him by in favour of Krahe, as if it didn’t like him. The horse lowered its head towards her, and the Oculae registered its name within her vision.

[ARION  -TYPE BUCEPHALUS-]

“Go on. Touch it. Favonia has likely pre-designated you as an authorized rider, so it wants to… Well, I shan’t rob you of the surprise,” Casus said. Sensing no mischief to his voice, Krahe placed her hand on the beast’s nose and poured in a speck of thauma. The automaton stumbled back as if it had just been struck square in the chest by an anti-tank shell, falling to its knees. The previously subtle sounds of its internal mechanics grew in pitch and volume, and were soon joined by sounds best described as the automaton equivalent of bones snapping and muscles tearing. Mercurial fluid burst out of every-which seam of its armored form, intermixed with streaks of scarlet identical in shade to Favonia’s hair, only to retreat, climbing back up its legs. Smoke and cinders followed, and with each passing second, the horse changed. Silver metal gave way to blued darkness, and elegant, if brutal curves shifted in an almost imperceptible way. The transformation was, in purely physical terms, impossible. Entire components just fell off or burst into shards, or shifted shape right before her eyes. The Arion’s eyes, too, changed, now burning green, and its previously naturalistic predatory teeth gave way to the jagged shark-razors of the Wound-like Grin.

When things at last quieted down and the Arion stood back up, it no longer towered over her as it had previously — the automaton was now closer to the size of a “normal” horse, although still large.

[ARION -TYPE ROCINANTE-]

The automaton’s tail lashed forward, and from its bladed point hung a small whistle of the same appearance as its armor, suspended on a length of fine chain. Casus’ reaction, or rather the absence of it, proved that he had seen this take place before.

“So it changes for every rider?” Krahe asked, taking the whistle and stowing it into her Kenoma Pocket.

Casus nodded, “The change is not so… Strenous, I suppose, each time, only the first. Don’t ask how it is capable of this, I only know it involves an archonforged relic of some kind, and that the relic is also the reason it can operate with no apparent fuel source. The Red Hoods are already far beyond my comprehension, the Arion is another step above them.”

“It’s mighty impressive, I’ll give you that. The question is where do we put it? It doesn’t perchance fold up into a briefcase, does it?” Krahe asked.

“It simply resides in any Twin Churches facility nearby,” he shrugged. “So long we are within a certain distance of any proper shrine, it will hear the whistle instantly. Failing that, you can use it to send a more substantive summoning.”

“Alright. You heard him, go hide. I’ll take you for a ride later. I’d probably puke up my guts if I went for it right now,” Krahe said, walking past the automaton horse. Somewhat indignantly, it galloped away such that it passed by Krahe again, snapping its teeth as it did so.

280 - St. Gauna's [Cherno]

Krahe raised an eyebrow, not sure if this was a result of Favonia being at a stage where money begins to lose its value. Nonetheless, she began the process of opening up her kenoma sack. Infuriatingly, as if reading her thoughts, Favonia looked over her shoulder, adding: “Bet it seems like too much for what you did, but the church would’ve paid out almost as much if you had gone through the paper pushers. I’m just skipping the bureaucracy here. And I don’t need the money, besides.”

CRC rings and other types of stable currency didn’t take up nearly as much storage capacity as their DD value would take up in liquid form, but swallowing up this snake of cash still took a while by virtue of the sheer quantity of arcane energy, and the resulting entropy that the storage process generated.

By the time Krahe was done, Favonia was just about finishing her report. She had carved it with one of her left hand’s claws directly onto a brass memslate, and she sent it off by the means of a small bird automaton made in the same unsettlingly-lifelike style as the Red Hoods. The automaton shot into the sky far faster than any real bird ought to, and simply vanished from sight, becoming invisible.

Krahe lit up another cigarette as she watched this transpire.

“Food?” Favonia asked.

After a moment’s consideration, Krahe answered, “Sure.”

As they walked through the city streets, filled with a strange tranquility, a pair of Red Hoods rounded the corner, approaching them, only to simply walk past. A question kept gnawing at Krahe.

“What did you say to him to make him look me in the eye?”

Favonia, clearly having anticipated it, answered right away.

“Based on past intel, I knew that he has an always-active truth discernment boon. I said that, unlike him, you were capable of putting me in the ground. Because of that ring, it’s true. You did the rest to complete the deception.”

It was a satisfying enough answer that Krahe thought nothing more of it, and they walked in silence for some time, into a section of the city Krahe had never been to, nor had she even really taken any interest in it when it came to maps. Just another subdistrict. Here, there was a restaurant about two steps in niceness above what Krahe would usually go for. Besides being in the open, it was also clearly decorated in a manner targeting church adherents — from above the door, the upper half of a cross-armed god of musculature stared down at the passersby, with one arm and half his face clad in brass and silver that gleamed in the light. The figure’s left eye, a scarlet circle weirdly reminiscent of stereotypical borg optics, flickered to life at their approach, projecting the restaurant’s name. The style of this projection, too, felt unsettlingly familiar to Krahe.

ST. GAUNA’S

Since 4953

Nearly three centuries, this restaurant had been open — likely since the earliest years of Audunpoint, considering Audun Sorun had been in his early-mid 500s at the time of his death. The building certainly gave that impression, its architecture just as weirdly organic as that of Jas’raba.

“Now watch, when we walk into the restaurant, Casus will be sitting there reading a book. Probably marveling at one of the decorations between pages,” Favonia said.

“Did you tell him we would come?” Krahe asked.

“No,” the banisher replied. She continued with a tone of amusement and some vexation, and as she did, the two of them slowed down, and eventually stopped to give room to their conversation. “This isn’t even my favorite restaurant — but Casus will have accounted for the location I fought Skullhead, of which I had told him, plus his own estimate of how long we might have spent in the gymnasium, and a dozen other small details. He predicts people and schemes at every turn, but refuses to acknowledge it, saying he merely acts with consideration. I say this not to undermine your view of his character, for it is exactly as chivalrous as you think it to be, but he engages in the deepest mind games at the strangest of times, often for the most inane of reasons. To tell the truth, I have yet to learn of how or why he was divested of his coupler and imprisoned by the Hashems, he refuses to tell.”

“Perhaps just to see if you would come to get him. If that is so, it casts into question whether my rescue was even necessary.”

“I don’t think him so callous. He is.. Well, a fool, but he is not stupid.”

“Then he exhausted himself fighting and got snatched up by an opportunistic Hashem. He might not want to admit it because he knows you wouldn’t let him live it down.”

Favonia laughed, “That I wouldn’t.”

The restaurant’s interior was richly decorated with countless curios, chiefly relics of the church and mounted heads of various truly alien creatures. Wherever one looked, one could see talisman papers stuck directly to the wall or fixed in place with wax seals, and a haze of incense clung to everything, instantly clarifying her thoughts and washing away remnant tension. A bar stood to the right, near the entrance, manned by a figure clad in masked robes similar to Favonia’s, even using mechanical tendrils similar to the High Grafter’s to handle tools and bottles as they mixed a drink.

A towering form of twisted chitin emblazoned with the green and yellow sigils of Vedesil stood in one corner, a gaping gash yawning across its torso. Indeed it stood, tall and stiff and proud — upon a pedestal, whose brass plaque marked it a vedesian war-morph, and whose smaller writing stated that the exoskeleton’s supernatural properties had been “nullified,” whatever that meant. Perhaps it had to do with the dense cluster of protective talismen and various seals plastered around and inside the hollow shell, as could be surmised through the gaps. It wasn’t even really a taxidermy, the thing was displayed in a manner appropriate to a suit of armor.

And there, across from the war-morph’s hollow shell, leisurely indulging in a book while intermittently glancing up at the evoy corpse, there sat a long-haired banisher, dressed in a manner near identical to Favonia.

His eyes, burning orange and with crosses for pupils, flicked sideways to greet their arrival. As if entirely unaffected by Salt Mountain’s Visage, Casus met Krahe’s gaze.

“Ah. It seems I overestimated in a few places. I have yet to reach the end of this chapter, yet here I thought I would be done with the next one ere you made your way here.”

279 - Crucifixion Upon the Pyre Tree [Cherno]

Finally, Krahe saw her window of opportunity. She lit a cigarette, rolled her shoulders, and began leisurely walking towards the fray, knowing full well that any stray strike, any  near-invisible sword-wave could kill her on the spot. She had means to protect herself, but these two were fighting at a speed nearly beyond her ability to comprehend even in the most rudimentary way. Still, she moved forward. The operation of Skullhead’s favored attack became clearer as she observed them, they were somewhat akin to backwards-spinning saws, tearing up the ground as they traveled, requiring contact with a surface perhaps as leverage or as part of their mode of operation. As for Favonia… Krahe really couldn’t make out a great deal. The woman was just a screaming, roiling ball of silver, glowing hair, of scarlet spikes and blades that seemed to come out of nowhere and vanish into nowhere just as quickly. She punched, and the ground exploded ten meters away. Krahe was frankly impressed that Skullhead was keeping up with Favonia as well as he was, in no small part because things just seemed to not want to hit him.

Skullhead looked at her. Not quite in the eyes, but he looked at her, and Krahe immediately knew he would try to take her out of the equation. He did, and the cutting distortion-wave passed through empty space, scattering the smoking, sparking remnants of Krahe blasting herself sideways to avoid it before the motion of Skullhead’s swing had even taken place. Even then, the wave only missed her arm by centimeters, and just the concrete rubble it tore out of the ground hit her leg with enough force it would’ve broken something if she hadn’t anticipated this and hardened it in advance. The only reason she hadn’t dived was the danger consideration — a broken bone was something she could deal with, somehow, but the closer to the zone of annihilation she came, the more likely she would need an absolute defense such as a dive or the ring.

And, indeed, she was right. Another wave came her way, with only an astro-skim saving her hide. Skullhead could doubtlessly throw such attacks her way faster than she could skim, so it was a game of chicken that the baneworm didn’t know he was playing, one that he would lose the moment she managed to lock eyes with him.

Three swings and half her cigarette later, that momentous occasion came. By this point Favonia had manipulated the battle such that Skullhead would see Krahe, but so that Favonia’s frankly ridiculous zone of control would be interposed between him and Krahe. And, over the banisher’s shoulder, she saw him. It only took dragging down the rest of her cigarette, tossing it aside, and finally diving to properly grab his attention. To him, it certainly brought across the message of “time’s up.”

Fanged maws split open across the baneworm’s stolen form and arms of black salt emerged from within to take hold of him, clawing and grasping and encasing him. Just the initiation of the effect sufficed to distract him, and Favonia instantly took advantage, binding him with her hair, its strands searing his skin and digging into the hollow caverns of his eyes, physically restraining the very eyeballs so that he would not be able to look away.

The salt took him. In the mere moments for which the shell held him Favonia carried out a series of signs with her left hand. Krahe couldn’t see them — she could only see the blurred motion and hear the seven thunderclaps, and with each gesture she felt the surging tide of arcane force pouring out of the silver arm’s jewel, congealing and intertwining into a pattern at once so complex and with such tension that it distorted the air. There was no vocal incantation to accompany it. Favonia simply opened her mouth, and an inaudible shockwave forced the meaning directly into Krahe’s head, filling her ears with a monumental noise as the surroundings shook and the ground cracked under the banisher’s heels.

FINAL COUPLER CHARGE

SECOND SPOKE OF THE BREAKING WHEEL

CRUCIFIXION UPON THE PYRE TREE

No acrobatics, no flaming sword, no such honor of direct execution came to Skullhead, only a gathering of burning-red hair at his feet, outlining the shape of a seven-spoked wheel. His flesh freed itself from Krahe’s black salt at the last moment, just before a spiraling spire of scarlet, the wheel’s axle, skewered him from below. The light of its travel shone through from within his flesh, until it blossomed into a crown of branches out of his mouth, his nostrils and eye sockets. It spread his legs apart and forced his arms into the posture of crucifixion in the same manner, forming an X shape, and two additional branches erupted from his sides, completing the shape of seven spokes. Favonia snapped her fingers. The tree was consumed by flames with a core of silver and edge of the same incomprehensible RED that Krahe had seen Favonia when astro-diving.

Favonia looked dissatisfied. She was watching for something, something that didn’t appear, not even as Skullhead was rendered to nothing, leaving behind only a silhouette of the hair that had pierced and shredded his body from within. Inside the figure’s head, within the outline of Skullhead’s true, lamprey-like body, Krahe spotted a small purplish gem. With the fire having gone out, strangely, the pyre-tree didn’t seem so macabre. All in all, it possessed an unsettling sort of beauty and purity, exuding a similar sense of the sublime to the statues of Zavesh pulling his ribcage open. Perhaps Favonia’s strange fire had purified him in some spiritual way — Krahe didn’t really know.

A small gesture was all it took for the gem to float out of the tangle, disturbing not a strand along the way, and into Favonia’s waiting hand. She grimaced, and swallowed it. A moment passed, and she sighed. “He had truly come to the conclusion that his behavior was in some way acceptable. Shame. I would’ve liked it better had he been a liar. Release.”

With a flash of silver-red, Favonia’s armor burned off of her. The banisher exhaled, tension visibly releasing from her massive frame. Black veins spidered over her entire body, threatening to burst open, and her flesh almost seemed charred, as if ravaged by extreme omniphage sickness and massive amounts of Isotope. However, with each passing second and each breath that Favonia took, the damage retreated, a haze of heat and reddish steam rising from her skin. She looked to Krahe, smiling. “Were it not for that opening, it may have taken me another two, maybe three minutes to bring him down. He might’ve even managed to escape if he got lucky. I ought to properly report it and have them pay you out later, but… Here, your share.”

Just like that, Favonia pulled a long string of densely-packed CRC rings from the mass of her hair and hefted it onto Krahe’s shoulder, walking past as if this thrumming mass of arcane metal was just pocket change. 

“Take your time to store the cash, I need a few minutes to call for clean-up. It’s just money, don’t overthink it.”

278 - Skullhead [Cherno]

“I won this flesh in a fair duel agreed-upon by both parties,” the skull-headed man said, smugly.

Favonia gave him a hard stare. With a measure of controlled, yet seeping disgust in her voice, she spoke.

“How many before him did you bait into duels they had no chance of winning, by concealing your own strength, by devouring and impersonating those they had quarrel with?! Spare me your hollow words, and I will spare you mine — you and I both know this is no matter of law or heresy. Your existence offends me. I will slay you because it is inevitable that you be slain.”

The baneworm gave an exasperated chuckle.

“I suppose that is as valid a reason for killing as mine. There is just one problem —  you wish to kill me, but I am in no state to take a new host just yet. What say you we reschedule, hm? Perhaps a few weeks out so that I can digest you properly? I’m joking, of course. I know of the lengths to which you have gone to ensure no creature such as myself can ever take hold of your flesh. How about I leave? I just walk into the steppe and go be a problem for whomever you wish, whomever the church needs destabilizing. How’s that sound? No? Try to kill each other, then? We can always do it elsewhere, away from the city.”

“There is more than enough space here for me to dispose of you,” Favonia spat, raising her left hand. 

“Alright, so be it,” the baneworm acquiesced, holding his hand out to the side as he took up a swordsman’s stance. A vaguely sword-shaped distortion took form in the air. Krahe couldn’t sense the same explicit threat from him as she had from others of strength greater than her own, but there was an undeniable sense of foreboding nonetheless. It only made sense that a baneworm of this man’s provenance would have learned to conceal his true hand. As if to confirm this, he continued by openly unfolding several of his cards, doubtlessly to distract from an ace up his sleeve. “Electroplating. Repulsion Field. Contra-Barrier. Flesh Union. Freedom of Thought. Bone Crucible. Vasara Invincibility, Third Layer. Omniphage Blood. I have no illusions as to my ability to slay you, slaughter-witch, but how many of my defenses will you breach before I make my escape, I wonder? I am a monument wrought from the greatest strengths of all those I have bested. Not an iota of resentment courses through me, for all whom I have slain died believing me to be their rivals, they died having agreed to hand over all that was theirs, flesh and blood included! So come, Saint, try your hand at cutting down he who has shamed your high and mighty Twin Churches by walking the narrow path of your law!”

“Cast in the names of Igaria and Zavesh most holy, I decree you guilty! Hexenmesser: Airgetlamh!”

Krahe had neither the sight nor the speed of perception to comprehend Favonia’s ensuing transformation — all she could see was a blinding flash of red and silver, and the shockwave that passed through her when the transformation took place. Even the skull-headed baneworm staggered back. Favonia’s Mamon Armor, if it  could be called that, was no full-body suit of techno-arcane plate, but a skintight sort of armor with fewer hard plates, and not even a full helmet, but only a lower-face mask, doubtlessly so as not to impede her hair. Her left arm had grown to an exaggerated extent, and its heretofore subtle blade was now half as far as Favonia was tall. Even her hair had grown, a writhing mass of tendrils more in line with what Krahe had seen during her dive earlier, glowing with a heat that somehow turned red into pink and even white towards the middle of larger bundles.

For a moment, Krahe thought she may have unconsciously entered another astrro-dive, so strongly it felt that the world  had slowed down. Everything seemed to grind to a halt under the tyrannical presence, the oppressive avalanche of violent intent spilling out of Favonia as she fully settled into her transformed state. Even the baneworm, whom Krahe had mentally tagged as Skullhead, seemed frozen in place, struck still in a snapshot of smug self-confidence.

Favonia exhaled a great gust of scarlet steam through her mask, and the writhing aura of silver-red that was about her seemed to settle.

A MAJESTIC MOUNTAIN

PILED WITH THE CORPSES

OF GODS AND DEMONS

ATOP IT A SCARLET FLOWER

BLOSSOMING FROM GNARLED WOOD

UNSTOPPABLE VIOLENCE 

IN THE NAME OF RIGHTEOUSNESS

MAMON KNIGHT

HEXENMESSER AIRGETLAMH

Slowly, ever so slowly, Skullhead’s sword hand tilted upward. No more than four seconds passed, despite stretching on and on. The exchange of entirely inhuman violence that followed was well beyond Krahe’s ability to perceive. Everything shook and her ears rang as a rapid series of explosions rocked the warehouse, and countless new gashes joined the many that already painted the floor. What little furniture still remained scattered about was quickly annihilated in the incomprehensible exchange of blows, painted to Krahe’s sight only as smears and flashes of writhing light and vague motion. Every once in a while, here and there, she could pick out part of an exchange, but that was it. Suddenly, the very idea of acting within the battle of these inhumans seemed absurd.

But even so, she waited, waited and watched, observing as the general zone of annihilation resulting from Favonia’s and Skullshead’s battle moved through the warehouse. They could traverse the entirety of it withion moments, and they did zip back and forth, but for some reason they tended to clash within the same general area. She could vaguely make out some shouting whose volume far surpassed any human voice, but couldn’t discern its contents — her only hint as to what had been said was the fact she suddenly began noticing a great deal more attention from Skullhead directed towards her. Just occasional glances, but the caution and focus within them was piercing and cold.

277 - Seekers Pt. 2 [Cherno]

“Nine years. He’s been evading the church for nine years, killing and feeding, mostly through semi-legitimate duels,” Favonia said. “By this point he is strong enough to operate in the open, but also smart enough to know he is better off not doing so. No living soul has come to that shrine since the baneworm moved into this subdistrict, even the Seekers being given the go-ahead to conduct their training there was part of the honeypot, even the fact one of them is always apart from the group — the strongest among their number who is able to conceal his own abilities. That man was not present at the gymnasium, meaning the baneworm has already gotten to him. We accounted for this, so my collaborator had me place a method of tracking into his astral body — a curse — that only I can detect. Even if he is dead, it will linger on his physical body for several weeks, and I can sense it in this area.”

The banisher spoke matter-of-factly, explaining her modus operandi in regards to this case with the full expectation that Krahe would understand it, and she did. It was very much in line with something Krahe could see herself doing if she were strong and established enough to act without looking over her shoulder at all times. She could feel herself moving in that direction, but she also knew she wasn’t there yet. The Seekers, Favonia, even Casus as he was now, they were all stark reminders of just how far up the mountain she had yet to climb and that others wouldn’t just stop climbing if she did. Despite Favonia’s matter-of-fact  tone, however, it was fairly obvious that she held some measure of personal animosity towards the baneworm of whom she spoke, the sort of vaguely-directed animosity one would hold for an enemy one has been chasing for a while without even meeting them.

They had reached a fairly deserted area, filled with various buildings that weren’t just out of use, but had in fact never been in use in living memory, just the bones of ancient Jas’raban architecture, renovated only with the barest of modern essentials.

“Wonder if the Oculae would work while astro-diving. My astro-diver form retains at least my eyes as a detail. Could dive to try and bait him into looking at me and then freeze him for you,” Krahe speculated aloud.

Favonia slowed, then stopped, glancing Krahe’s way with a raised eyebrow.

“Perhaps. I would rather not risk having you kill yourself after the effort I’ve made in order to aid me against a foe I can take down on my own, but if it’s astro-diving… The old man didn’t know how counter it and it’s not exactly a common defense around these parts. Try the trick on me right now, just so we know for sure.”

She was a bit doubtful at first, but sensing no veiled threat from the mountain of woman before her, Krahe took in a shallow breath and willed herself to dive into the murky astral shallows. Immediately, the world slowed down and grew desaturated, but Favonia instead grew more vibrant, becoming a smear of scarlet piercing through everything. The vast mass of her hair spread out over the surroundings far beyond its physical appearance, crawling over the ground, the walls, even through the air, like the tendrils of  some unknowable terror, and her left arm was just an indiscernible mass of writhing, silver light, the jewel a star of such redness it surpassed any conventional description. She couldn’t make out any other details, but she could see the wellsprings of burning orange that were Favonia’s eyes. Mustering her will, she ignited thauma and poured it into the Oculae. Once more the faint taste of salt sprung into being on her tongue. Krahe sensed the vague currents of the astral gulf stir into motion, barely-noticeable in the state of a partial dive as they were. More and more thauma, she poured in, until mouths began to open upon Favonia’s form, each a wound-like grin from within which a spectral arm of black salt emerged, each arm itself covered in countless eyes, and each of these arms wrapped itself around Favonia as best it could, grasping and clawing wherever possible, spreading a shell of solid salt wherever they touched. In the span of moments, Favonia became a motionless statue, and even the brilliance that her presence projected into the Astral Gulf dulled to a bare sputter for the moments that the binding held. It took hold quickly, even given Krahe’s dilated sense of time, but it took long enough that she could tell it wouldn’t be easy to land against a resisting opponent. Just as quickly, then, as it took hold, so too did the shell shatter, its remnants disappearing into thin air. Krahe emerged from her dive while Favonia shook her head, blinking.

Favonia did something Krahe viewed, in some way, as unthinkable — she shivered.

“I had thought experiencing it a few times had made me grow accustomed. Your manifestation is particularly unpleasant,” she uttered, her excited tone contradicting her words of complaint. Without waiting, Favonia shook her head once more and continued on her way. “Let us make haste.”

Their destination was a warehouse that stood out in no way, shape, or form, besides perhaps its size. Inside, the place was a wreck. Rubble was scattered every which way, the stone floor bore countless gouges, and a figure sat at the center of the sword-scar pattern. It was the figure of a man, clad in a mixture of rough-hewn, indeterminate cloth and chitinous armor. On the ground before him laid splayed out the stripped skin of a man’s head, and his own head was encased by a skull-like helmet. The eyes that turned to point their way as they entered were piercing, pale blue. Krahe kept to the side, attempting to look the observer for now.

“You have come. As he knew you would,” the sitting man remarked, his voice apathetic and echoing with a distortion that divorced it from any common humanity. “I would have run, as I have many a time, but he made little effort in concealing the fact of your ability to track my location. Clever, clever. Shall we do it, then? Only one at a time, please. I despise threeways.”

“Your existence is a mistake — one I intend to correct,” Favonia said.

276 - Seekers [Cherno]

“You can say that twice,” Krahe agreed, “Can’t help but expect roundabout mystical solutions or pitfalls placed for those without secret knowledge.”

“Not necessarily an incorrect mindset. One must only be careful to also consider the path ahead,” Favonia said. 

Krahe wanted to ask something, but she was interrupted by the sound of footsteps on sand. Favonia perked up, turning towards the sound.

“They’re here. We can continue this conversation at the safehouse, free of any who might overhear. This would also be a good time to test the Salt Mountain’s Visage. Knowing this lot, at least one of them would want to fight you on sight. That is simply how they are,” Favonia said, rising from her seat.

“What, connected to one of the groups I’ve gone against?” Krahe asked, somewhat painfully lifting herself.

“No. I told you, that is simply their character. Sword cultivators of a sort… That doesn’t mean anything to you, does it? Battle maniacs, they’re battle maniacs. They would all wish to “exchange pointers” with you, but only a few of them would lack the manners to stop them from demanding to fight you on the spot. They beat that out of the newbies pretty quickly. Usually.”

“It’s the Dead Night Tigers, isn’t it,” Krahe guessed.

“More or less. A small agency called he Sun Source Seekers. They split off due to ideological differences, but they’re still considered to have close relations with the Dead Night Tigers,” Favonia affirmed.

“This isn’t the best time to ask, but it gnaws at me. What exactly did you mean by ideas that cannot be conveyed directly, but must instead be caged-in with metaphor?”

“Makafukashigi. Mysterium mysteriorum. Something too profound for words. It just so happens that the “Sun Source” is one such example of makafukashigi. Only the original founder of the Dead Night Tigers and a handful of later successors ever figured out what it was, and all of their interpretations were different, hence the schism.”

Krahe knew what both of those terms meant, she just hadn’t expected to hear them here. Makafukashigi was a buddhist term for mystery beyond mystery — she’d seen it translated as “mystery, but a hundred times more mysterious,” albeit that didn’t quite cut it. Mysterium mysteriorum directly translated in english as “mystery of mysteries,” and had a somewhat more solemn context. Each was undeniably a suitable term for ideas and information that couldn’t be conveyed directly, requiring one to effectively be tricked or guided into realizing them of one’s own volition.

As the resting area’s doors opened, Krahe drew in a breath of thauma and began pouring it into the Oculae, willing them to obscure her from the eyes of those who would challenge her to single combat. She knew that trying to disguise herself might very well draw attention even more than not doing anything at all, but she couldn’t possibly know enough variables to discern a right or wrong choice. A vague, faintly salty taste took hold at the back of her tongue, and black grains began to swirl through her sight, not enough to be an impedance, but enough to notice. Gradually, she increased the power she afforded to the artifact, mentally turning the dial as the swirling mask took form around the front half of her head. Nonetheless, the Oculae continually gave her the sense that the mask wasn’t taking, that it wasn’t stable, despite her not using implosion-burning to power it. Krahe was well aware that in such situations it was a matter of not having a sufficient grasp on the mental impulse, so simply reaching up to her face as if she were donning a mask more than sufficed to stabilize it.

There, within the sand-filled arena of the cathedral, warriors had arrayed themselves, some clashing with blades, exchanging fists, and setting upon one another with magic. From just a brief glance, Krahe instantly knew thatshe couldn’t equal more than two-fifths out of their number in terms of direct combat power. She immediately poured more thauma into the Oculae, lest their sharp eyes fall upon her, but Favonia, momentarily taking the place of the sun for these seekers of ultimate violence, drew all gazes to herself merely by the virtue of her presence. The cathedral-gymnasium fell silent and still within the span of two breaths, with Krahe quietly following in Favonia’s wake, subconsciously positioning herself so that the banisher’s frame obscured her from as many of the Sun Source Seekers as possible. Even so, she got a good look at a fair few of them as they made their way to the exit. The warriors all bore the symbol of a seven-spoked wheel in one way or another, but it was different from any version she had seen before - the seven-spoked wheel of the Seekers had a distinct gap in the center, and its spokes protruded slightly outside the circle. Combined with the subtler elements of its design and the group’s name, it was clearly meant to conflate the spokes with the rays of the sun.

As they neared the cathedral’s main door, Krahe realized that one among the Seekers’ number was looking directly at her — a pale man with a thin, black mustache and short goatee. He seemed puzzled, perhaps unable to recognize her face, but he was looking at her, and at his urging, the man he had been sparring with also managed to lock his keen attention onto the fact that Krahe was there. Somehow, she was certain that he recognized her. She committed his face to memory, but otherwise moved on from the brief encounter, distancing herself from that concern just as quickly as the elevator rushed towards the surface.

The light of day glared Krahe’s eyes as they stepped out into the shrine’s back courtyard, and made their way back the way they had come.

“We have a detour on the way back to the safehouse. Just an errand,” Favonia said, but she seemed uneasy, her brows furrowed as she glanced to and fro.

“There was another reason to pick that gymnasium, wasn’t there,” Krahe deadpanned.

“Of course. Quality time, remember?” Favonia said, turning her gaze deeper into the building. “Do you know how baneworms develop?”

“Besides the way everyone else does? By consuming a part of their host’s skills and memories,” Krahe answered.

“And what would be the best way for such a creature to gorge itself?” Favonia asked. She was following tracks, Krahe realized — the tracks of the Sun Source Seekers on their way to the shrine. They certainly took a strangely roundabout route.

“Oh, I see. A baneworm figured out the Seekers’ path to and from the shrine and intends to snatch one of them. Sure is a convoluted path. Bait?” Krahe deduced.

Favonia gave a shallow nod.

275 - Mutatis Mutandis [Cherno]

“Awake and aware? Good, because it turns out we’re encroaching on a local martial society’s scheduled time, so it would be best to go over this quickly. I’ll start with your movement technique, since it’s the easiest one,” Favonia said, wasting no time from the moment she saw Krahe awake.

Krahe slowly sat up, stretching in place and hissing when she came upon a particularly sore spot. She glanced at Favonia sideways and raised an eyebrow, waiting for her to continue as she began rubbing one of the remedies the saintess had provided on one of her many bleeding bruises. It was a sort of translucent-orange gel, one that burned and thrummed at first, but then numbed the pain and soon enough made the bruise start shifting colour as if on fast-forward.

“It’s good for what it is,” Favonia said frankly. “I can’t find any real issues with it that aren’t obviously a result of your inability to use the method to its full extent. I liked what you showed me towards the very end. If you can pull off that kind of manoeuvering more consistently, that alone will place you a cut above. The name doesn’t make much sense to me, but I don’t know what it refers to, so…” She shrugged.

Krahe nodded, “That’s why I’m chasing after a soulbeast, a graft to help me more easily slip into the mental state that Afterburner requires without having to put my neck on the line. My real issue are my thaumaturgies, anything that fully relies on implosion-burning has one crippling flaw or another, and no matter how much I try to solve the issue, I can never find the right equilibrium. They vary too much from cast to cast, even within the same cast the power output will fluctuate wildly.”

After thinking for a few moments, Favonia spoke. “I will not go on at length explaining the intricacies and history of the matter, you can research them on your own time. What matters here is the reason your thaumaturgy behaves as it does, which is the same reason both anathemism and advanced thauma-burning methods are desirable. They both permit the elevation of base thaumaturgy by way of further refinement prior to use — the raw thauma is not only further transformed, but also imbued with stronger intent and perhaps even the caster’s own gnosis, that is to say profound understanding. Thus, it allows thaumaturgy to more effectively fulfill its purpose. This refinement and transformation of thauma is “mutandis.” Anathemism carries it out through brute force, allowing anyone to achieve the heightened state of thaumaturgy, while advanced burning methods achieve it through training, modification of the Soul Furnace, or both, or even other, more obscure methods. Anathemism is a parallel path, given your Solomon Howitzer you must’ve already noticed that anathemism benefits from your skill in its sister discipline, as well as from the modified state of your Soul Furnace. The two can coexist, as they do within your Solomon Howitzer, but it requires meticulous balance to make them work together, else anathema will readily overpower thauma and drown out any profundity, no matter how refined. I could go on at length using counterparts of drive and form, light and dark, yin and yang, but it would be pointless, you already understand. You would likely only grow frustrated and shoot me again.”

“You said you wouldn’t go on at length,” Krahe noted, though she didn’t mind.

Favonia smirked. “Even the shortest path to the summit is one of a thousand steps. Trust me, this is the shortened version. As I was saying… Actually, that was almost everything. Why do you think the thauma refined through your implosion-burning is unstable?”

“The only possible reason that comes to mind is that, out of six possible “control rods,” I have only formed four. But it feels almost too obvious of an answer, or maybe like an answer that sounds obvious but is in fact absurdly difficult,” Krahe said.

“You’re using Dao Pillars to perform multi-layered mutandis very quickly, of course an incomplete set would cause instability. Other methods could be fine, but the method you’ve described is obviously set up so that it requires all six pillars to function properly, just as a furnace can’t stand only on two legs. This is likely also the reason the internal injuries you sustained during the raid were as severe as they were. The higher you climb, you more perilous the fall. The danger of clawing for more strength only grows from here on out.”

“Dao Pillars? I’m not exactly well versed in daoism, I’ll have to disappoint you,” Krahe admitted.

For once, Favonia was the one growing frustrated, and Krahe had to admit she took some measure of joy in this.

With a huff, she shook her head, and began gesturing as she spoke. “It was the most suitable descriptor that came to mind. These control rods of yours are formed from intrinsic truths of who and what you are, or perhaps from some profound beliefs you hold, yes? Then just reflect on yourself and finish the last two. It couldn’t be a simpler thing. Those you have already completed ought to point the way. If you find yourself struggling for direction, consider trying to write a poem based on your existing pillars and then complete it. The only roadblocks are not knowing yourself and lacking the mental strength to condense the pillar, neither of which is an issue from which you suffer.”

“There might be a small issue with that,” Krahe said. “Of the four control rods I’ve completed, I can only define three.”

“In words? That is… Hm. Not better than most, but higher than most. It doesn’t matter if you can define it in words, if you have succeeded in solidifying it, then you understand it. There are some things that, no matter how complete one’s understanding of them, cannot be directly expressed in words. Teaching these things is insufferable, since you must write around what you wish to teach, sort of cage it in with mental exercises and metaphor.”

“I don’t want to seem unthankful, but-” Krahe began, only for the damned saintess to interrupt her again.

“-my advice sounds obvious, I know. But how long would it have taken you to consider these options, left to your own devices? You would have kept hyperfocusing on one thing or another instead of trying the simplest solution. Tell me I am wrong, go on. I know this is true because I have also met with these pitfalls. You overthink and become paralyzed with choices.”

274 - Hexenmesser Pt. 3 [Cherno]

Favonia was unharmed. She struck out with a fist that would have sent Krahe flying, just as before, had the woman not skimmed straight through her. A simple kick — a pivot of the body on one leg, barely engaging in proper generation of power — ought to have caught that evasion, but again, Krahe evaded, eruptions of scarlet flame from her left arm shifting her out of the path by a hair’s breadth. Another swing of the flaming sword followed, this time accompanied by an explosive-tipped tendril and another exhalation of smoke. Krahe was speeding up, and to match her pace, so did Favonia.

Soon enough, Favonia was punching with enough force to leave some lasting injuries. Krahe knew this, in no small part by the thunderclaps and gusts of wind that came about from the monstrous saint’s mere movements, but her mind didn’t register it as a problem. It was a fact, and she had to contend with it using the tools she had at her disposal.

At some point, they ceased talking altogether, and at some point, Krahe stopped registering much of anything outside the present moment. She wasn’t sure when, but the first couple punches that almost took her head off had served well enough to clear her head of any stray thoughts, and there was no time for new stray thoughts to take their place. There was only the fight. At some point, Krahe staged another jumping attack, only this time, she skimmed directly into the ground, and using the principle of inverted momentum, attempted to land a rising uppercut. Favonia didn’t budge, and simply threw her to the side.

This was enough for her to come to the conclusion that none of “her own” tools would suffice. She had known this already, but now she had thoroughly proven that fact both to herself and to Favonia.

“I think it’s pretty clear by now that nothing I am capable of doing under my own power will suffice to make you move from where you stand,” Krahe said, approaching even as she did, forming bursters in both hands. Both were smoke.

“And yet you do not yield. There is a reason,” Favonia said. She knew that reason. Krahe knew that she knew. It didn’t matter.

With Krahe’s exhalation, a beast of accursed smoke took shape to flood the surroundings once again, and the two bursters went flying when she summoned a pillar of smoky jade beneath her own feet to send herself into the air. Favonia simply punched it in half from twenty meters away as it rose, but having expected this, Krahe wrenched a large piece of the stone using several Tar tendrils, throwing them Favonia’s way. In the moment afterwards, she marshaled every iota of throughput at her disposal to turn her left arm into a booster, throwing herself through the air straight at Favonia. Before the banisher could punch her out of the air as she had done far too many times during this session, Krahe entered astro dive, emerged just before landing, and skimmed into the ground. As the force bounced her upward and her perception of time froze, for just a moment, she pushed her will into the Crimson Star Ring.

There was nothing to be done after that.

No matter her strength, her attribute ratings, whatever techniques she had, within the format agreed upon, Favonia could not defend against this, because she couldn’t prevent the Crimson Star Ring from moving her from where she stood.

“Your sword, is it?” Favonia questioned with amusement in her voice as she sat up from the tomb of sand she had been pressed into.

“The sword made of my own bones is nothing more than the power I have accumulated. This ring became “my sword” the moment I pulled it- picked it up from the greasy stain that had once been Semzar Hashem. If it comes down to it, I’ll gladly drown the dragon in corpses and stolen treasures,” Krahe retorted, reaching out a hand. Favonia didn’t need the held, and Krahe was by far the more injured between the two of them, but she took it anyway, and damn near pulled Krahe’s shoulder out of its socket just by doing so.

“That sword analogy needs work,” Favonia said.

“It served its purpose, it can hang on the wall for all I care,” Krahe said. A new problem assailed her — that sword analogy. Somehow it irritated her now that the fight was over. She didn’t even use a sword.

“Regardless, I believe I now have a sufficient grasp to aid you in some small way. Come. Let us rest. We can speak on the matter of your unstable thauma-burning method once you don’t look like you’re half a step from death’s door. Your movement technique… I can’t help you there. It clearly requires a specific battle-trance, and based on what Casus has said you are already pursuing the solution to that problem.”

And rest, indeed, they did. Favonia readily parted with pills that, to Krahe, felt as if they had a similar potency to the Molting Tonic, at least in the way they seemed to just wash away the exhaustion and force her wounds to mend so quickly that her many cuts and bruises gave off steam and visibly shed dead tissue. Toxicity buildup wasn’t exactly a concern for her, given the fact she wouldn’t have access to these pills outside of what Favonia supplied to her.

As they rested — that is to say, as Krahe rested and as Favonia ate enough for three men — Krahe explained some things that she felt their bout might have failed to fully get across. The most important of these possibly-missing pieces was more or less everything Krahe knew about the Astral Implosion Furnace. Krahe went on to sleep for a full hour with the aid of adefron incense. She had felt no reservations about doing this because, as far as she was concerned, awake or asleep would have made no difference if Favonia were to decide to harm her. The nap helped, albeit not much. She was certain she would be feeling the consequences of their sparring match for the next several days. 

Krahe found that Favonia was in exactly the same position she had been in when she fell asleep.

273 - Hexenmesser Pt. 2 [Cherno]

Slowly, painstakingly, Krahe picked herself up, dusting the black grains from her scraped skin. Not long ago, she would have taken this moment to catch her breath, but that was no longer a limitation she needed to work around. Akin to a bird’s lungs, the Dead Man’s Root provided a continuous flow, and her body was still far from being able to use it faster than her lungs could provide. If this whole exercise was meant to help her work through any dead-ends and blockages, then… Why not give into the unreasonable? Why not let flow that which would usually go stemmed or redirected to more productive purposes?

“What am I to do, then? How am I to find the dragon sleeping in the swamp if I do not hunt down those feeding it corpses first?! How am I to slay the dragon if its flame would melt my sword! And even if I were to strike it, my sword would dull against its scales! I nearly killed myself to defeat a fuckup like Semzar Hashem, how am I to stand against Damrus Hashem or whomever stands behind him?! With these hands, how am I to assail the forces of those who regard me as little more than a nuisance?! Tell me! Two decades, I spent scurrying around, fighting for the sake of a world that feared and hated me!”

While she spilled what she had genuinely thought on occasion, Krahe brought out three talisman papers — two Schwarzfausts, one Wandrei Faust — one each between the fingers of her right hand. Forming the first shell around her left arm, she bit her tongue and sprayed the blood over the talismans, pouring thauma into them to substitute the missing thaumine-gunpowder. Meanwhile, she extruded two thick Tar tendrils, forming the Schwarzfausts around them. The trick was twofold — the actual Wandrei Faust was on the right-hand Tar tendril, not her left arm, despite the fact doing this increased the difficulty significantly. She wouldn’t do it in a real fight, not yet. The second trick was a Smoke Eruption Breath, as dense and Isotope-laden as Krahe could make it, the living smoke already writhing in her chest before she even released it. The spoke spilled out, but with it, the words kept coming too. Having begun the torrent, her hands lacked the strength to shut the dam again. A cloud of glittering black surged from her mouth, writhing with serpentine shaped and menacing with teeth as it swam over the sand. As if alive, the smoke moved to obscure Krahe’s movements from Favonia specifically.  She advanced, releasing her three theurgic missiles, whose forms blended almost seamlessly into the cloud as they closed the gap with Favonia. Favonia, in turn, scattered swaths of the encroaching cloud without much effort, only to find that it swarmed back into place in a manner more befitting insects than the mass of smoke and ash it was. Despite being able to disperse the whole cloud with ease, the saintess elected to put up only a token resistance, finding that while the smoke proved smothering even to her sight, it failed to suppress her other senses in any significant way.

“Two decades, I spent carving away at myself and searching for weapons that could slay any dragon!” Krahe bellowed. “Even then, even having clad myself in steel, even having stripped from myself the weakness of flesh, even having become a monstrosity unequaled in violence throughout the skyless hell of concrete that I called home, the dragons of my world still won! All my life, my struggle, my crusade for what?! A spectacular failure, all because I made the mistake of trusting myself to a coward who bent to the promise of an easy life! Whoever you are now, whomever you were in your past life, I couldn’t possibly care less! How dare you, how dare anyone insinuate that I am not doing all that I am capable of?!”

The words and emotions that spilled forth were not new, they were not something suppressed suddenly geysering out when given the opportunity. These were all old things, well-worn linens that Krahe was more familiar with than the unmarred flesh she dwelt in. But if the purpose of this exercise was to dig through things, to determine the best method by which to overcome her present shortfalls and mend the cracks in her strength, then this, too, was necessary. All these insecurities, doubts, the history of self-inflicted pariahhood and suffering, they were all close friends to her, cornerstones to the foundation of who and what she was. Time and time again, throughout her long crusade of a “mere” quarter-century, Krahe had considered the path she had walked until that point and the path ahead of her, she had spent many hours of subjective time simply thinking while a fraction of the time passed by in reality. Countless times, she had considered and reconsidered her doubts, and in spite of the occasional consideration of whether it might be best to resign herself to the coward’s way out, whether to simply hide and “live well,” she had concluded it to be impossible.

“And yet you persist upon this path, even given the chance to start from naught, you continue in this struggle!” Favonia countered. She met two of Krahe’s flying fists in a contest of strength, mustering enough of her own to equal them and not an iota more, while the third circled. Expecting the third fist to fire a beam, Favonia simply willed her hair to defend her, but it was in fact the fist grasping her right hand that poured sufficient fire into her palm to carve through a stone wall. Not an unforeseen uncome, but a pleasant, if small surprise.

“What good is a road, painstakingly laid out, if I don’t walk it? What good is a sword, carved from my own bones and oiled with my own blood, if I don’t slay a dragon with it?! So what if I am to crawl in the mud pulling up weeds and squashing pests for a few weeks, a few months, a few years or decades!” Krahe reasserted. She had walked this far, she had made of herself what she was, and with her self-given purpose unfilfilled, she couldn’t bear to relinquish it. She was much closer to Favonia now, and, following the sound, Favonia had no issue tracking her position. Krahe, knowing this, immediately moved when she fell silent. Knowing that her movement disturbed the smoke, she drew out a dagger and astro-dived, blending into the mass. Favonia could still track Krahe in this state, even as she moved far more quickly and erratically than someone of Krahe’s own weight-class could reasonably track. Like a rabid animal, Krahe leapt out of the smoke at Favonia, enveloping her dagger in a layer of ash and black glass as she flew. A burst of heat erupted from the diminutive blade, turning it into a flaming sword that for just a moment. A bundle of Favonia’s hair moved to defend, but in concert with a whip of black glass from Krahe’s left hand, the attack cut through and struck her across the face.

272 - Hexenmesser [Cherno]

Contrary to what she had claimed earlier, Favonia actually took them to a shrine some distance from the safehouse, circumventing two shrines that Krahe knew for a fact had underground seclusion-gyms. The shrine was large enough to be in some ways considered a small temple, but lacked some of the design elements that Krahe had noticed throughout all “proper temples” of the Twin Churches. There was an elevator, a stone platform atop an enormous screw pillar that descended at least twenty if not thirty meters into the ground through a shaft whose walls were covered in a scrawl of carved patterns.

As they stepped off and walked through a decidedly un-gymlike corridor, Favonia spoke: “I misspoke, back at the safehouse. I failed to account for the fact the nearest shrine’s seclusion-gym wouldn’t suffice for our purposes. This is the nearest one that will.”

A mix of heavy doors and sealed doorways dotted the passage’s walls, and at its end awaited slab doors twice as tall as even Favonia, and Krahe realized that she had seen this construction style — in Jas’raba. The dark stone, defaced and stripped of its original imagery, moved soundlessly as they approached, and closed behind them in the same manner. Beyond, there was a cathedral. Despite the modifications that had been made to convert it to serve the function of a gymnasium, it was unmistakable. Many of the statues that lined the walls had been allowed to remain. Perhaps the decision of which to remove had been put up to whether they held a direct link to whichever Outer God the Jas’raba Civilization had worshiped. Favonia wasted no time in giving Krahe a quick tour of the facilities, which included everything one would need for prolonged isolation training. The main floor, the Jas’raban equivalent of the transept, provided abundant space, and had a fairly deep layer of large-grained black sand, likely in place of the original floor since the doors hadn’t seemed to be out of alignment.

Here, in this place, beneath the eyes of ancient kings and sages, the two crusaders faced one another.

“I will lay out this path for you in the manner in which I wish it had been laid out for me. Know that whatever takes place here, it is solely to your benefit,” Favonia said, her voice carrying as if she was speaking right next to Krahe. She raised her left arm, the jewel at the back of its palm shone, leaving in its wake a slowly-shifting trail of dark light that almost resembled blood. Krahe once more began to feel the unsettling weight she had sensed when she first saw her. 

“Hexenmesser: Airgetlamh,” the banisher uttered, tensing the fingers of her left hand.

Krahe somewhat expected a bombastic Mamon Knight transformation, but it wasn’t nearly so overt. The already unnaturally-bright red of Favonia’s hair took on an actual, literal glow, turning pink towards the middle, and her hair began to move and shift as if it were underwater, or perhaps alive. Favonia opened her third eye just as her irises began to glow, but that was where the visible changes ended. Krahe was certain she sensed something akin to a Mamon Knight transformation, but this clearly wasn’t one. Perhaps some method of drawing out only some of the transformation’s power.

“Launch thaumaturgy at me,” Favonia said, her voice reverberating in the same manner as the effect of a Mamon Armor. “Strike me, shoot me, do whatsoever is within your power to force me to move from this spot or actively defend myself. As it stands, I will not lie, I don’t think you possess the ability to seriously harm me.”

Favonia’s jovial and well-humored tone from before had completely disappeared. The oppressive, predatory aura that she exuded also seeped into her voice. Feeling no need to wait, Krahe drew the Pattner and shot Favonia in the head. The bullets never reached her — her hair swatted them out of the air. The Tracers that Krahe attached to those bullets met the same fate, their detonations leaving behind ravenous pyroclast that briefly ate away at the red-pink burning mass. However, even this made no headway, as anything missing from Favonia’s hair just grew right back.

In this manner, they continued for some time. Krahe alternated between going down the list of every thaumaturgy in her arsenal and taking out her frustration. Favonia seemed amused, if not impressed by the ingenuity behind the Six Trees Killer. Perhaps it was the name. One by one, Krahe ran down her list of thaumaturgies that she could cast with natural thauma-burning only. Anathemism came next, starting with Cinder Gatling, which properly grabbed Favonia’s attention. She left out Cinder Armor-hunter, given its extremely limited range. Mentally shifting gears, Krahe once more went down her list, this time employing every thaumaturgy she knew of that benefited from Implosion-Burning.

From the moment Krahe began making an earnest effort to force Favonia to dodge, things took a turn. Favonia started fighting back. Not truly, of course, but enough. Enough that it was a threat, enough that Krahe felt the need to dodge, even employing Afterburner a fair few times over the course of only two exchanges. The most remarkable thing taking place here was the precision with which Favonia was pulling her punches, both figuratively and literally.

Even faced with every permutation of Lasher and Cinder Flash, Favonia wasn’t satisfied, and neither was Krahe by how far short her own offensive capabilities fell. They continued on for some time, with Krahe attempting a wide variety of tactics, even employing theurgy in the form of two Wandrei Fausts, both of which were shot down — one before and one just after firing in standoff mode. It was enough to buy Krahe a direct hit with a high-powered Cinder Flash, but even this wasn’t enough to pierce Favonia’s absurd hair-barrier. It behaved like an autonomous defense, but it didn’t exhibit any vulnerability to energetic, or kinetic damage. Lasher worked better than most, seeing as this was almost exactly what it was designed for, but still not well enough. As they clashed, they also spoke, with Krahe taking intermittent breaks to rethink her approach. In this manner, Favonia came to know of what Krahe had been doing since the raid, and in turn, Krahe came to know some smatterings of Favonia’s exploits. The fire-haired banisher made no attempt to embellish or soften what she said, and she spoke freely of slaughters undertaken by her hand over the past several decades. Most notably, however, Favonia spoke of her and Casus’ quest to recover the Silberblut Coupler from its burial place, which had been swallowed by a moving, subterranean Hazard Zone. The Casus described in the tale was significantly different from the one Krahe knew, something that was explained early on by the fact this had been Casus prior to his awakening, merely acting upon the quest given to him upon incarnation by the Wheel.

As Krahe sat, considering angles of attack, Favonia finally broke the silence of several minutes.

“Come now, your strongest thaumaturgy, show it to me already! I refuse to believe this is all you possess!” the banisher cried out in a frustrated one. She wasn’t truly frustrated,  that much was obvious, but Krahe was irritated enough that it struck her regardless.

“Alright, fine. It’s still slow. You’ll have to just let me charge it.”

And indeed, slow it was, but with a scream of red, nearly-invisible threads tore forward, riding the hateful solar flare as they sought to rip into the paragon of violence for the sake of righteousness before her. And… She blocked. Favonia didn’t dodge, but she did raise her arm.

“And you’re using this on street thugs? You know, animal cruelty is a crime,” Favonia said, sounding almost insulted.

“Fuck off with that. It’s not ready for use against an opponent that fights back. Besides, I already told you I got a lead out of those small-fries,” Krahe rebuked. This wasn’t the real conversation taking place. Favonia had questioned Krahe’s confidence in her own abilities, and Krahe’s retort was nothing more than a statement of fact — it had nothing to do with her confidence, it was half pure practicality and half coincidence that she hadn’t gone against a near-peer adversary since the mansion raid.

Favonia, unsatisfied, redoubled her efforts: “Is this the objective of your crusade? To root around in the muck, pulling out weeds and catching leeches? Where’s the ambition? You know as well as I that killing gangsters and catching petty serial killers doesn’t satisfy!”

Krahe knew better than anyone that Favonia was just provoking her, but her words still carried truth. Nothing worked better as provocation than the truth doused in vitriol. For all her efforts, she couldn’t make Favonia even dodge in place, let alone budge from where she stood. Thrice now, the monstrous woman had swatted her away, waiting exactly long enough to let her harden the impact zone, and never striking hard enough to cause a real injury. Even so, the force was enough to send her skidding across the sand, and to leave her ribcage ringing for a few moments. Krahe was certain that the very first punch had bent three of her ribs, ever so slightly, before they snapped back into shape. It was never a physical punch, of course, Krahe never came that close. The first two times, it was the hair. The third time it was indeed a left-handed punch, but one that landed several meters beyond its physical reach, marked by nothing more than the brief flash of that scarlet jewel on her hand. Krahe couldn’t see more than a vague flash of light, but she was certain there was some kind of construct that came into being just long enough to send her tumbling head-over-heels.