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376 - 3 Days [Sturmblitz]

Three days and two nights passed.

Despite his entranced state, to the outside world, Victor never went fully catatonic. Between bouts of screaming and being consumed by inner dragonfire, in the short windows when the throes abated, he made it abundantly clear what he wanted — food. Always food. He devoured a third of his body weight over the course of three days, and consumed about as much Witch’s Brew — she didn’t even bother accounting for the quantity of Viriditas he took in, between what he ate and drank. By Zel’s reckoning, his skin burned off and grew back twice over, and he wept enough bloody tears to exsanguinate him.

In the afternoon of the third, he grasped Koschei’s Key in hand and rammed it into his own chest, and his flesh simply parted before the artifact as if to welcome it in. That had been the turning point. Before then, even Kanberich had seemed uneasy. It was unmistakable.

“He finally broke the delusion. What a monstrous heart demon, this is usually the fastest part. At this rate, if all goes well, this may take a week…” the old dragonslayer grumbled, rubbing his chin as he nervously paced back and forth. It was clear he worried how the rest of the tribulation would go, if this first stage was this difficult, but his worries were for naught.

From the moment Victor took Koschei’s Key into himself, the rite accelerated at a breakneck pace. The redhead grasped onto his staff, using it to prop himself up as he continuously chanted a sutra of purification. The raging inferno once threatening to devour him inside-out now burst out of him as flame would burst from a burning log, each plume rapidly turning from green to the white-black of bonefire.

Three more days passed, over the course of which Victor’s skin grew back, including entirely new bone plates.

Zelsys knew it was done when he doubled over, and a vaguely draconic, grinding pressure lifted.

“How do you feel, boy?” Kanberich asked.

“I feel that… I can finally complete my work,” Victor said. He struggled to his feet, and the miniature shrine he had set up reassembled around him to form Daywolf once again. Zelsys instantly noticed the change in posture and movement, the manner in which this incomplete prototype now seemed to possess a towering presence of which it had not shown a speck previously. As it stood now, she wagered Daywolf would outperform Dawnwolf without issue. Even without any design alterations, the qualitative change Victor had just undergone was already this significant.

There was just one thing.

“Your skin burned off thrice over, you bled out at least once, and you shoved Koschei’s Key into your chest, Victor. Are you sure you’re fine?” Zel questioned with a facetious tone, gesturing towards the half-crusted blood pool at his feet. Opening his faceplace as he looked around, Victor winced. “I, ah, did do that. I am fairly certain there’s nothing wrong, but it would be a good idea to have Makhus look me over…” he said, his eyes glazing over. He took a step, and before he could take the second, he was asleep inside his armor.

And so, she wrapped him up in her Thundergods and simply carried him on her back. She didn’t spend much longer at the Guardian Spire, and neither did Kanberich — with the rite finished, they visited the manor once more and soon made for the tower summit. Kanberich refused to speak until they returned to Willowdale, and so they flew back with an unconscious Victor in tow. In the memento-filled back room of Kanberich’s restaurant, Victor lay sprawled out in full armour as his elders spoke over tea. It was so bitter even Zelsys felt it was a little much, far beyond any mundane plant, but there was something undeniably appealing about it.

The man who sat across from her was not Siegfried Kanberich Eberheart, but Kanbu — sans Zirnitra, sans his imposing aura, only a hint of green flame burning behind his eyes. He drained three cups before he broke the silence at last.

“The tribulation is never pretty, but this one was anything but in line with the established course of events. The boy’s heart demon, his deific cultivation method, that jeweled key, the Despot of Self… But all’s well that ends well. As his foundation stabilizes over the coming days, the true results will show themselves,” he said.

He placed a pair of scrolls on the table. The first had a silver spindle and tan fabric, and felt both old and new. The other was black dragonhide. It exuded an aura similar to the Dragonslayer Flame Method scroll, but weaker, less heavy — nonetheless, Zel got the impression it was at least several hundred years old.

“Here. Take them,” he said, pointing to the dragonhide scroll first. “I made a few of these a long while ago, so I would have them if I found a suitable disciple. It’s a copy of the original. It’s complete as far as the Dragonslayer Flame Method is concerned — the only parts missing are mine and mine alone. I’m sure you understand.”

Then, pointing to the silver-spindled scroll, he continued: “Herein, I compiled the best parts of the leyline-riding methods I had access to within the Guardian Spire. The ones that helped me the most, at least. It seems this, among all others, was a technique that came closest to extinction during the dark ages. It does not surprise me — such a means of travel is advanced and powerful enough to be limited to only a sect’s most advanced disciples, meaning that upon a sect’s destruction, the technique would be lost, and whomever knew it wouldn’t be eager to teach it to just anyone. Yet, at the same time, we old monsters take it for granted, and so it doesn’t come to mind when we think of something interesting to teach the next generation.”

He grinned. “I am sure the survivor sects would rather you not have this.”

Krahe - Femme Fatale

artist is pappaserho

variant with and without detailed chest

228 - Afterburner [Cherno]

“Can you show me the blueprints of your arm?” she asked, expecting a simple no. To her surprise, Sauer reached up and detached the limb. He tossed it over to Krahe and sat down, leaning on his remaining arm.

One of its external access panels mercifully contained a miniature toolset for servicing and small repairs — something she had made use of many times in her early years. She began dismantling the prosthetic, and found something that at once did and did not make sense. It was clear that its internals were being filled in from her memory, but the structure worked. It was as if, the more she unravelled the prosthetic limb, its underlying concept took form from what she knew of cybernetics, as if it desired to exist. She tried to will it to float, so that she might get a better look at it in 3D space, but no such convenient phenomenon took place. She had to laboriously dismantle and reassemble the limb several times before she felt she had a workable grasp of its structure.

The knowledge she gained only reaffirmed what she had already suspected, but it also gave her a way to solve that issue. The problem was a lack of thrusters — the Left Arm of Chernobog as it was now simply couldn’t direct and focus thauma in the number of directions required, with the responsiveness and the precision required. Krahe’s mind turned towards Chernobog’s Mystic Wisdom, keeping in mind that the Left Arm’s system readout had stated it could undergo autonomous evolution. Even if this wouldn’t work, it would feel amiss to not try.

Her question bounced back with an answer: It could be done — but she would need to ritualistically carry out the external alteration within her mental realm.

“You want me to carve my arm open, is that it?” she mused.

The modification was conceptually simple: she would just add the requisite number of Wound-like Grins across the entire limb. Opening them all over again and keeping them open each time she wanted to use the method would be too taxing, so she intended to create permanent places for them and adjust the limb’s inner flow of thauma to facilitate their functionality, mimicking the design of Sauer’s arm. Were it not for her experience using the simplified movement method against Semzar, she would have left this for after she woke up.

“Alright. Let’s give backstreet butchery a try,” she said, tossing the reassembled prosthetic back to Sauer. She proceeded to explain the underlying idea behind what she wanted to do with the Left Arm, and, not questioning it for a moment, Sauer readily assisted her, holding her arm steady and carving away at the spots she couldn’t reach.

The pain was curious to say the least — because it wasn’t pain. It was itching. It itched like hell, yet also radiated a sensation between heat and static, of the sort one would feel after coming into a warm interior from freezing cold. More importantly, however, it worked. After the first slot was finished, her arm pulled back together, and though it wasn’t visible, she could feel how much easier opening a maw would be in that spot, like it was already there, just beneath the surface. Thus, they pressed on.

When they were nearly done with the process, Krahe started hearing organ music again.

Then, the voices.

“Cognitive pressure spiking...tissue hyperactivity… Left arm. Yes, again. …rearranging itself,” Firminus said.

“And the system?” Fidelia asked.

“No issues,” Firminus replied.

“Good. Aristedes, ready for insertion,” Fidelia said. The music changed, the organ rising to a crescendo, and as it did, the door of Sauer’s hut swung open. But nobody walked out.

“...too deep. Up to… now,” Casus said. The music, and with it, the outside voices, faded completely.

“They are waiting for you,” Sauer said matter-of-factly, continuing to carve away at her arm. There were only two spots left, both out of her reach. It was a matter of waiting, and as she waited, Krahe distracted herself from the itching by mulling over what the movement method ought to be named. Eventually, she just asked: “What do I call it?”

“Doesn’t matter. Not my place to make that decision,” came the exact response she had expected. Engram-Sauer did, after all, consider himself as less than even a ghost. Naming the method was on her.

Knowing that the real Sauer disliked the idea of overly fanciful names for techniques or stances, Krahe thought back to names of techniques she knew and tried to come up with one that was straightforward.

Aimpoint Evasion. Contra-Targeting Acrobatics. Multiplane Thinking. Sauer-style Form 16 Footwork. The 73 Sensor-disabling Arts. Sauer-style Sinanju Jointlock Grappling. Hyper-universalist CQC for Short Blades. Blackhand-style Radiation Blaster Combat. These, she knew. These, she was familiar with. All of these fell under the umbrella of Sector 7 Style, and so did countless others.

She recalled five different techniques built just around the Neptunian Dawn G-Model Railgun. Seven more designed for revolvers. Her mind ran through countless techniques that had been incorporated into Sector 7 Style. She was only tangentially aware of their names, properties, and countermeasures, but had never truly learned the vast majority of them.

In the end, rather than trying to incorporate wordplay she decided on “Afterburner Enhanced-arm Mobility Method”, or “Afterburner” for short. Just like with “Wandrei Faust” and German, she went out of her way to name “Afterburner” in English, refusing to let herself translate it. The reason behind the name was simple: It would enhance her existing movement options in exchange for additional Entropy overhead, much like an afterburner allowed a plane extra speed in exchange for higher fuel consumption. She couldn’t help but think of the stupid names Sauer would mention when disparaging the naming schemes of other martial arts.

“It’s finished,” Sauer said. Krahe stood up, stretching. She turned around, but in Sauer’s place, there was only the prosthetic left arm, suspended in mid-air, its mechanical structure floating apart and fraying out of existence before her very eyes. In moments, it was gone. In its last twitch, the arm let go of the dagger, and it went sliding across the nuclear glass, coming to a rest at Krahe’s feet.

Taking up the dagger, she centered herself and began the baseline kata’s dagger-adjusted variant.

And it worked.

It wasn’t perfect by any means, but it worked. Krahe stabbed the dagger into a crack at the spot where engram-Sauer vanished, and made her way to his hut. She had never seen inside — this would have been an exercise in futility if that had been her goal. But as she grasped the doorhandle, she knew there was nothing left for her to do here. There was no point to going back to Sanctuary — or rather, she was already here. This crater was the remnants of Sanctuary. To pretend otherwise was delusional… And she wasn’t sure she would be willing to leave if she actually went to her memory of that place.

Thus, she opened the door, stepped through, and woke up.

227 - Sauer Pt. 2 [Cherno]

Sauer looked around.

“Interesting construct. Remarkably stable. From the looks of this mental space… Yes, this will give us a bit more time.”

“A low-footprint engram should not be this responsive. Not without supporting hardware.”

“And you should not be able to sustain such a high-resolution mental construct without supporting hardware. Perhaps whatever machinery you are connected to also enables me to function in this manner, hm? Ah, but… Who knows. I am a mere engram after all,” he retorted. For just a moment, a familiar grin flashed over his face.

“But-”

“Shut up. I don’t care about your suspicions, I don’t care about your deep dark secrets, and I certainly do not care about how come you’re a twenty-something full-organic again. Do you want my help or not? After this, I’m done. Gone. No more Sauer. Does it matter how this mere engram can function to this extent? Have you not seen stranger things in your time?”

She tried to query Chernobog’s Mystic Wisdom regarding Sauer’s engram, and got nothing. 

Krahe gave engram-Sauer a martial bow, cupping her left fist with her right hand in front of herself.

Sauer laughed.

“Come now, I am not real. Less than even a ghost, I’m probably still alive. Now, where to start. I can only draw upon your severely lacking martial education, so if you’d let me…”

Krahe clearly felt the subtle pressure of Sauer’s request in the back of her head. She let him in, deciding to share everything she knew as far as martial arts went, as well as some memories she had of Sauer — those of his real demonstrations, plus one other. Engram-Sauer’s eyes lit up, and his left arm changed to something she recognized, yet something she had never seen the real Sauer wear. Indeed, it was the arm she had seen during the Six-eyed Dream Serpent venom vision.

“Yes. This will do. Let’s start with a demonstration, then.”

Without another word, he re-enacted the kata Krahe had seen him performing in her vision. Then, he did it again, and again, and again, increasingly breaking it down into individual movements with each repetition. If Krahe didn’t quite grasp a movement the first go round, engram-Sauer would repeat it without her needing to say anything. After that came practical training, and to her great relief, Krahe found that she could channel thauma with impunity — this wasn’t physical reality, after all. She lost track of time, and eventually even the awareness that this wasn’t actually Sauer faded out of awareness.

Engram-Sauer gradually unfolded what Krahe had seen in her vision into something altogether different, something complete and even beyond that. To call it a single technique wasn’t right — it was an entire movement method, combining intentional off-rhythm awkwardness with explosive movements. Each motion could flow into at least three others, and each end-pose would allow for a wide variety of attacks. There was a subset of altered movements that treated user’s enhanced arm as a defensive implement, positioned to interpose it between any incoming attacks and the user.

“Now, let us incorporate armaments. By the looks of it, you no longer possess the Blackhands. What are your current preferences?”

Krahe took a moment to put things in terms that would make sense to Sauer, then listed off the tools she most preferred to use: “A ring-trigger pistol, either hand. A dagger, also either hand. Monowire, left-handed, single or multi-strand up to one for each finger. Back-mounted attack tendril — can be blunt, piercing, or explosive-tipped. Generalized short-medium range inbuilt energy weapons, left hand, from the palm. Lastly, an inbuilt homing missile launcher — it requires a few seconds of preparation. This entails using the aforementioned pistol to shoot a special bullet at any point on the left arm. The missile is an autonomous radiation emitter with a standoff range of several meters and articulated fingers for grabbing onto targets.”

As she did this, she shared memories of each tool’s characteristics, quickly fleshing out aspects she couldn’t easily put into words without going on at length.

“I see. Good choices,” said Sauer, rubbing his chin. He remained in thought for some time, before walking to his hut. He emerged immediately afterwards, bearing a pistol in hand and dagger on his waist. The gun was known to Krahe — an affordable and widespread deliver method for high-yield special ammunition, the Wolf and Raven Lawbringer Type-5. The gun was single-shot, but designed to sync up with a support armature that could select and load ammunition at lightning speed. Mimicking that functionality to the fullest was still out of reach for Krahe’s tar-tendrils, but not as far as it had once been. A robot walked out after him, a huge, clumsy thing made of scrapped-together military salvage, its armor pitted with bullet holes and gashes. The robot, too, was known to her. A “Big Mook” as the real Sauer had called them. This one was based on her memory of Big Mook 21.

Sauer began with the pistol-adjusted version of the base kata, and moved on in the same order as Krahe had listed things out.

Whether hours, days, or weeks passed, Krahe didn’t know, and didn’t care. The sun never set on this desert of glass, and she never felt thirst, hunger, or exhaustion. There was just one problem: Her arm couldn’t actually facilitate the full extent of what engram-Sauer was showing her. It was only capable of a limited, simplified variant, similar to what she had done during the mansion raid.

Over, and over, and over again. And over, and over, and over again, Krahe tried, even if she felt it was pointless, if for no other reason than the delusional desire to bring that vision to life. She hadn’t been sure back then, but she was absolutely certain now: That vision hadn’t been a mere hallucination, and neither had been any of the others. Somehow, the Six-eyed Dream Serpent had truly shown her reality — more than that, it had, in a way, taken her there. Sauer’s hut, that alley in Sector 5, the shore of that alien lake, even the rapid-fire flashes of saints rooting out corruption wherever they went. Whether it was delusion or truth, she didn’t know or care — Krahe fully believed that those things had been real.

“Stop. That’s enough. It’s clear that you lack the proper hardware to execute the method. What do we do when our hardware is lacking?!”

“Change things until it works,” Krahe replied without thinking.

“Correct. Change the method, change the hardware, whatever is easiest, whatever is most effective.”

226 - Sauer [Cherno]

The vessel resembled a tanker in general shape alone. Unlike those vessels, it was constructed in a borderline baroque style, and the iconography of the Twin Churches abounded wherever it could fit. Countless guns, harpoons, and armaments of other sorts that Krahe didn’t quite recognize bristled from its hull. A huge wheel revolved in the middle, its diameter amounting to one-third of the vessel’s length. With seven spokes, it clearly imitated the world-wheel in design. Like the world-wheel, its interior sections were also hidden from view — she could only glimpse the eldritch mechanisms making up the wheel’s beneath-deck sections.

Despite the absence of any crew, the great ship moved ahead, slowly but continuously accelerating by a means unseen to Krahe. She came to wonder how long it would take the ponderous thing to traverse the vast expanse, and as if in response, its wheel began revolving faster, and in turn, the ship also began accelerating at a faster rate. When she lost focus, however, the ship began losing speed. Thus, Krahe made her way to the prow. There, she sat down, and honed her full focus towards her goal. Sauer’s home.

The wheel-ship’s prow split the sea of acid without any resistance, and before long, the vessel reached such a velocity that it should have been thrown out of the sea — but instead, it simply rose above the waves and pressed on regardless. It was then, just about able to see overboard from where she sat, that Krahe realized the ship was completely surrounded by a barrier, one that shared a property with wards in that it only became visible when actively deflecting something, revealing itself to be a mosaic shell of golden light. The sea grew uneasy, stirring and crashing. Waves rose up from the sea to smash against the hull, but the wheel-ship tore through them as if they weren’t even there. From ten, to twenty, to fifty and a hundred meters tall, the sea threw tsunamis in Krahe’s way. Flashes, like lightning, erupted within the waves, illuminating shapes that she couldn’t quite grasp. Even still, the ship cut through, because she willed it to do so.

The further she pushed, the more she began to hear things that didn’t belong. Originating from nowhere and everywhere at once, strange singing carried across the fathomless deep, devoid of words, somewhere between the sound of a human voice and the hiss of a speaker. At times it faded, distorted, or began to sound blown-out. She could almost make out words within the sound, almost. Underneath it flowed the sound of an organ, countless notes in rapid sequence, yet forming a smooth and sublime melody. The sounds of waves crashing against the hull, alongside the thumping of the ship’s machinery, made up a percussive layer, seemingly by pure coincidence. A sense of tense seriousness pervaded the song, but its constant, unerring pace also held within it a machine-like certainty.

Gradually, over the course of hours or perhaps days, the great ship traversed the vast blackness. Waves were joined by storms that appeared from nowhere and vanished just as abruptly, and chthonian monsters of all kinds beset her during her journey, and yet, never once did the ship falter upon its course. Even the flesh, bone, metal and stone of countless titans yielded before the vessel’s golden barrier.

The music yielded to something else. The sounds of footfalls, of tools rattling, even what sounded like a ventilator. Then, came the voices, fractured and frayed, but still mostly coherent.

“...ifting. She’s surfacing. How is that possible?! Cognitive pressure…enormous…growing at a geometric rate. We have no choice…pull…”

She recognized this voice as Firminus.

High Grafter Fidelia’s voice responded: “Nonsense. Spin up units two through four. Plug their diagnostic and input cables into unit one’s auxiliary ports in alternating pairs. I will handle the recalibration.”

The music grew louder and more frantic, and with each passing moment, the obstacles in Krahe’s way lessened. The ship ceased accelerating, and moments later, it ran aground. In the moments of final approach, Krahe saw a beach of glimmering, blue-glowing sand with man-sized rocks of the same blue, glass-like material scattered about. But then, the ship tore straight past the beach and ran up an enormous dune, soaring through the air, and in all directions, an endless desert of glowing glass stretched. The ship came down upon a particular spot, smashing down exactly next to a mashup of things Krahe recognized. It was the yawning crater that remained of Sanctuary, New Dixie, and at its bottom was Sauer’s hut, somehow. The glass desert now made sense.

All of this bizarre scenery, however, didn’t take her aback, and neither did the fact she was entirely unaffected by the rough landing.

No, it was the fact Sauer was there, looking up at her.

At once unnerved and irresistibly curious, Krahe slid down the wall of the crater. He looked… Right. Everything was there. Even the way he held himself was right, the seemingly lazy stance and squinted eyes that concealed a monowire-sharp mind, surpassing even operatives chromed to the gills while only having the absolute bare bones nerve interface chips. 

Short, grey hair, slicked back. Pale skin, untouched by the sun, bearing few wrinkles. Clothes in a style of techwear so old it had gone back in and out of fashion thrice over while Sauer had been wearing it. Everything short of the surroundings was on point.

The old man looked her up and down. His grey-blue eyes cut through her like a hot knife through butter.

“So that time has come, has it?” he said.

“You… Should not be here,” replied Krahe.

“Another of your contingencies. In case you couldn’t find me. You convinced me to implant a hypno-engram of myself — how you achieved this, I don’t know. I, the engram, alongside the memory of my implantation, have been locked away until now. But now that this echo of me is active… It will not last long. Your subconscious mind will erase ‘me’ soon enough, assuming something else doesn’t devour me first. Perhaps the monstrous raven, or your shadow. You really should be aware that there are other things in here beyond your self-identity, girl.”

Krahe’s thoughts ran rampage. An engram container would have to be entirely separate from a living brain, but with her Moravec Transferred brain, it was possible to connect it more directly while retaining a safe degree of separation until the engram was needed. She hadn’t used such outmoded technology — its points of appeal didn’t fit her use case. The only reason to use it in the modern day was for cases like this, to lay in wait and activate when certain prerequisites were met, such as a deep-insertion sleeper agent hearing an activation phrase.

225 - Neo Babylonia Pt. 2 [Cherno]

Krahe walked through the door, finding the “restaurant” to be just as she remembered it. Of course, in reality, it had not been here, but visiting that place was her only reason to take a break at this rest stop in particular, and so her mind placed it in the first empty space it would fit. She held a great deal of nostalgia for this place in particular, despite only eating there twice before it was wrecked. Never once had she been able to find a doner kebab quite like this one.

She wondered if she could even eat in this mental construct, but sure enough, she could even feel the burn of hot grease spitting from the meat-cylinder as it rotated next to an array of blowtorch-style gas burners. The whole apparatus was welded together from scrap, and an old surgical saw dangled from the plug next to it. Besides the basic components, there was intensely garlicky white dressing and several varieties of faux-vegetables — seaweed shaped, textured, dyed, and flavoured to imitate real vegetables, whether extinct or expensive.

When she took the first bite, Krahe almost expected to be disgusted, but no such thing happened. It was just as heavenly as she remembered it.

“Guess it can’t be any worse than I remember it being, can it?” she thought. Even still, it was a hollow feeling. The mere knowledge it wasn’t real, and even worse, that it was just a replay of her memories, somehow sapped all but the most surface-level enjoyment out of it. She spent another twenty minutes or so at the rest stop, simply walking around before she returned to the hovercar and took off once again.

Instead of arriving at her goal, she emerged from the tunnel to a sight very much alike to Neo Babylonia, yet also infinitely different. It was nothing more or less than Neo Babylonia fourteen years later, a wretched image of desolation. Of the great towers, half were toppled or broken in half, and two of those still standing were now no more than inert pillars, their windows all blown out. Still, even still, that Wolf and Raven hoload persisted. It was garbled nonsense now, but it persisted. The cave ceiling had collapsed, allowing the sun to shine down, and construction from the surface crawled into the opening like infection into a wound. 

As she flew over the desolate landscape, noticing the many places where things had to be filled in with sections of other cities, Krahe couldn’t help but stew in how utterly galling the fate of this city was. Even if it had been a generally shit place to live at its height, it had been no worse than that. One could realistically eke out a decent living. In short, it had actually been one of the best places to live in all of Megacity Gamma.

Not long before her death, Krahe had learned the conflict that destroyed Neo Babylonia had been instigated by a man known only as the Tower Lord, who also came out victorious. As the name suggested he owned one of the city’s towers in its entirety, as opposed to splitting ownership between multiple corporations. The man had held the widely unpopular opinion that Sector 8 should be integrated with Sectors 5 and 6, which were under the control of Whitestone at the time. Of course, the Tower Lord in question had bent his substantial resources towards fabricating a false consensus to fool the average inhabitant into thinking they and those they knew were part of a minority in disagreeing with the integration. This had not worked — the people of Neo Babylonia had seen through better lies, and so their malignant hidden overlord had simply chosen to rape and kill them until they accepted his plan for the sake of their own survival. In the end, the simply-named Tower War had weakened Neo Babylonia to an extent where it had no choice but to submit to Sectors 5 and 6, and by proxy, to Whitestone.

In spite of the bitterness, in spite of the journey seeming to lengthen itself with these cruel reminders, she pushed onward. She would reach him. She simply knew that place deep within Sector 7 to be her way out, but she also wanted to go there, one last time. Even if Sauer wouldn’t be there.

The more she focused on that goal, the more time began skipping forward, much as it would in a dream.

And so, she found herself far beyond the half-dead corpse of Neo Babylonia, traversing not real locations, but vast subterranean complexes straight from a VRMMO she would play whenever she had to lay low in one location for long periods of time. The network security had been second to none due to the developers themselves being anti-corporate cyberterrorists and using the game as a recruitment tool, making it one of the few games widely popular among individuals of Krahe’s ilk.

The caves gradually narrowed until she had no choice but to go on foot, and she spent several hours trawling through dungeons and catacombs, even through the hollowed-out insides of long-dead, yet unrotting gods. Eventually, she emerged out of just such a god-corpse’s carved-open stomach onto a beach of black sand against which waves of white liquid lapped. Corrosive fumes lingered near the ground, and the “water” itself was even more corrosive still. As Krahe looked out into the dark, she couldn’t help but feel an unsettling sense of the sublime, like there was something out there, beyond the fog and beneath the waves. She wasn’t sure if it was something other than herself or merely something subconscious, perhaps even a manifestation of the Wound-like Grin itself, but she knew she didn’t want to come face to face with it.

It wasn’t as if she had to worry about that right now, however. She was stuck.

And so, she decided to follow Casus’ advice, and call for help. Looking around, she stared off into the distance vaguely in the direction of the sky.

“I’m sure someone is listening, so if you are: I could really use a ship right now.”

A few moments passed. Nothing happened. Then, just as she considered how she might better get the message across, she abruptly found herself standing atop an enormous, tanker-like ship, the shore just barely visible in the far distance.

224 - Neo Babylonia [Cherno]

A/N: If you got the amazon release of Cherno Caster Vol. 1, please don't forget to leave a rating or a review. Amazon doesn't have any minimum word count requirements for reviews, and ratings and reviews are even more important there than on RR. That's enough of me, here's the chapter.

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It took Krahe a short while to work out the hovercar’s manual controls, but before long, she had the machine whirring a meter off the ground. A moment later, they went shooting off into the distance, soaring over the city that made up over half of Sector 8. While she had a particular goal in mind, it was a ways out, leaving plenty of time to overlook the subterranean metropolis.

“Neo Babylonia. This city, I mean,” Krahe said.

“Why the name?” Casus asked.

“The towers. An ancient myth of man’s attempt to build a tower so tall they could reach God. The myth ended with the destruction of the tower and the creation of the world’s many different languages. There’s also the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, a wonder of the ancient world, which the city somewhat imitates. See how the tallest buildings are all stacked next to the pillars, with the tallest being the nearest to the pillars. Combined with greenhouses atop the smaller buildings, you have another sort of hanging gardens.”

“A curious myth, given the parallels it has with Zastreon’s history…” the Banisher said. His attention quickly returned to being taken up by the scenery, and no wonder.

On the side of a nearby tower, Tower 6, an enormous ad for Wolf and Raven cybernetics shone, depicting the company’s twin mascots bedecked in steel. It had been there for as long as Krahe knew — the building had been sabotaged by a disgruntled engineer so that it could only display this one ad, forever. At the time, this made sense, as Wolf and Raven had only just stepped into the cybernetics market and none believed they could hold up against fierce competition and corporate warfare. However, this particular ad, which had been intended to only run for a few days, had in the end assured their success by turning most of Neo Babylonia onto their products. They were good cybernetics sold at a comparatively cheaper price, as far as Krahe remembered — nothing of interest to her, but fantastic for the common end user.

They continued in this manner for what seemed like hours, if not days. Time was far more congruent here than in a dream, but dream time still seemed to apply to an extent. Taking advantage of the deserted landscape, Krahe swept down to just above street level, flying between the buildings. In reality, turrets would have sprung up to shoot her down for doing this without permission, but no such thing took place here. She pulled back up when streets began repeating, — she didn’t remember the entirety of Neo Babylonia, after all. The bird’s eye view, sure. But she hadn’t seen many streets from ground level.

The hovercar’s radio came alive, and, despite Krahe’s instinctive attempt to turn it off, it continued playing.. It was a mashup remix from an ancient theatrical production and an animation from the early 2000s. A piano line and operatic vocals led into the dark and sorrowful voice of a male singer, a crooner. He sung of dreaming the impossible dream, fighting the unbeatable foe, of bearing with unbearable sorrow and righting the unrightable wrong. Of how that was his quest, no matter how hopeless, to be willing to die so that honor and justice may live. Even when she changed the station, the song stayed the same — the only sign the button even worked was the sound of a raven’s caw whenever she pressed it, barely audible through the music. Clicking her tongue, she gave up and just left it alone.

“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…”
The crooner’s sorrowful vocals abruptly cut to a determined, defiant rap, and similarly, the instrumental dropped the more reserved aspects in favour of electro that mimicked the original piano line at a vastly elevated level of energy. It was vaguely familiar, in that she thought she might have heard it once or twice at some point, but she couldn’t place when or where. Krahe figured this must be some consequence of Casus’ presence, that his manifestation within her memoryscape somehow influenced it in small ways. At least, that’s how she rationalized this occurrence. 

________________________________________________________

Casus, knew that his presence couldn’t induce such changes. He knew that this was a matter of Lady Blackhand’s subconscious mind, and he had the good manners to not bring it up.

As they pushed on, similar phenomena began to take place. Faces appeared on Neo Babylonia’s great spires, and by Lady Blackhand’s reaction, it was clear that she not only recognized them — she hated them. Unbidden, black tendrils sprung up from the earth at the bases of the offending edifices and began to envelop them, reaching above the clouds and to the cave ceiling, transforming the great pillars into grotesque, gnarled trees. Eventually, they at last reached the end of the city, stretching out into a desolate waste, with an elevated road running through it. They flew over a subterranean lake from whose floor emanated a pale-blue glow, enormous cables snaking out onto its shore and towards Neo Babylonia. The road entered into a yawning tunnel in the cave wall, far off the ground level, and they entered the passage.

____________________________________________________

Krahe landed the hovercar at a rest stop. It was down a left turn at a split in the tunnel, through a set of great bulkhead doors. Despite being a rest stop it was in fact the size of a small town, in no small part due to also being the access point for one of Sector 8’s many surface elevators.

They spent a short while walking around the deserted town in silence, until Krahe noticed an abrupt shift in Casus’ demeanor, as if he was hearing a conversation that Krahe couldn’t.

“It appears my time is up for now. I shall return again, assuming you do not emerge before then,” he said.

With that, he walked into the door of a random building. When she peered inside, Krahe only saw the interior of a grimey fast-food restaurant, if it could be called that.

223 - Memoria [Cherno]

A/N: I deleted the first sentence of this chapter from the end of the previous chapter for better flow

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It was at this point that a door in an alcove swung open, and Casus stepped out. Only, the moment he fell into Krahe’s line of sight, his clothes flickered and changed, adapting to her mental image of how he would look in the fashion of Sector 9 — more specifically, a stereotypical Sector 9 street-samurai. A great big armored coat, retro-techwear pants, ballistic vest, the whole lot. The Banisher took a step towards her and opened his mouth, but froze in place when he realized what had happened to him, looking himself over. He immediately turned towards one of the displays to see his own reflection.

“This is how I appear to you?” he questioned, taken aback.

“How you would look if you were from here,” Krahe corrected, approaching. She looked at Casus’ reflection for a few moments, then glanced up at him. “Let me make two guesses. Guess one: I am being operated on, and this is somehow a consequence of total anesthesia, similar to the hallucinations induced during my spine replacement. Guess two: This is the real side effect of the Molting Tonic and I’m stuck like this for the time being, presumably while my comatose body is held in a church facility.”

He did a double-take, briefly meeting her gaze, looking back at his reflection for a moment, then finally meeting her gaze properly.

“Both are… Somewhat correct. High Grafter Fidelia has taken it upon herself to discern the extent and exact nature of the damage, and to rectify it in a minimal manner so that you can choose how to proceed when you wake up. As for…” Casus gestured vaguely at his surroundings. “...this, it is a consequence of the Molting Tonic’s side effects. You likely noticed that the tonic counteracts functionally the analgesic effects of nearly all substances, including those produced by your own body. This is an alternative.”

“Care to elaborate on the sequence of events since the raid? As I recall, you were unconscious when I dragged you out of there.”

“I am afraid I do not know much more than you. Our inquisitor friend, Yazata Heptaxia, retrieved the both of us, and High Grafter Fidelia took over from there. It seems, before you fell unconscious, you used the Liminal Coil to send Fidelia a locational ping. Presently, we are located in a subterranean temple-compound.”

Casus raised his right arm, looking it over. The change of fashion had also entailed a new right arm — a hard-shelled full-synthetic, covered in decals that described every joint and access panel. For a time, a certain subset of Sector 9’s paramilitary sector had been overrun with this trend of imitating the design language of objects intended to be readable to automatic-recognition cameras found on maintenance drones and smart-glasses. A snapshot from the sector’s zeitgeist.

“Interesting. I half-expected to appear without a right arm, considering I am devoid of it at the moment,” said the Banisher. He stopped, looking Krahe up and down, furrowing his brow. Before he could say any more, Krahe glanced into the display once again. It took a few moments for what she saw to click in her head — her appearance had shifted to match how she had looked during the time from which this street and Casus’ clothes were drawn. She now wore an armored jacket over a full upper-body skinsuit, emblazoned with the manufacturing code above the left clavicle. These were joined by dangerously short shorts, thigh-highs of the same material as the skinsuit, and knee-high boots ripped off of a Neptunian Dawn Street Cleaner Mk. XXVIII combat armor. It achieved near-total coverage, while evoking an appearance of the opposite, in no small part due to the skinsuit living up to its name — not in colour, but in fit. Perhaps only the biosuit matched this specific article in how closely it conformed to her body.

Despite her clothes going back in time, she remained devoid of cybernetics.

“Haven’t seen myself like this. The outfit, but no grafts,” she remarked, thinking no more of it as she turned to Casus. “Alright, what now? Just wait?”

The Banisher shook his head.

“You must continue onward until the exit presents itself. That is the only instruction the High Grafter has given me to pass onto you. It’s funny, I was in fact sent in to make you aware of the situation, lest you become lost in the construct, but you were already on your way out when I made my entry,” he said.

“Nothing to do but go deeper, then,” Krahe shrugged as she began to walk. Casus followed without a word, his attention eaten-up by the scenery. Tangled, narrow alleys continued for some time, before abruptly opening up to a truly sprawling vista — it was a subterranean hollow containing an entire city within its confines. A forest of monumental pillars stretched out into the distance, seemingly supporting the cave ceiling. They were dotted with tiny lights. Krahe knew that most of them were fake, near completely solid, with only an outermost layer of habitable space, but that didn’t lessen the impact of this vista. Not back then, and not now. The space was vast enough to have its own miniature weather system, clouds lingering near the cave ceiling and diffusing the light of monstrously powerful lamps into a dreary approximation of eternal moonlit night.

The spot they emerged was a hovercraft landing and service area, and the spot where the corridor connected had been, in reality, the entrance to a large tunnel. They both took in the sight for some time, both for their own reasons. Krahe interrupted Casus’ sightseeing by approaching one of the parked hovercars. She simply opened the door, and a small voice inside her groaned in disappointment that she wouldn’t get to flex her extensive knowledge on the security flaws of these vehicles.

“I must ask… How close is this to reality?” Casus questioned when he caught up to her.

“Close enough,” Krahe shrugged. “The real Sector Eight wasn’t deserted, for one — the air and ground were both swarming at all times. The city was smaller, too. This one looks to go on forever, hell it probably will if I let it. Come on, get in.”

“Do you have a particular destination in mind?” Casus asked.

“Of course. Not every day I get to take a literal walk down memory lane. Might as well make the most of this.”

375 - The Guardian Pt. Final

With a furious roar, the great beast bears down upon the Guardian with the full might of its aura as it gapes open its mouths, unhinging their jaws. An emerald blaze wholly envelops the Guardian’s comparatively tiny silhouette, then implodes upon him, running through a spectrum of unearthly colours in the same manner that mundane fire would grow brighter and paler with greater heat. In a flash, the Guardian’s form vanishes, leaving only a darkly iridescent ember. Light rises in the back of the dragon’s throats, and flame comes spewing forth, swiftly focusing into beam-like torches.

Only, the ember changes. Its iridescence becomes bright, its surface cracks, and white flames burst forth. Just as the dragon turns its breath upon the ember within which it has imprisoned the Guardian, he bursts free, yet he makes no effort to evade the dragon’s breath! Riding atop a roaring pillar of flame, the Guardian furls his cloak of revenants about himself and becomes a scarlet arrow piercing through the vile beast’s might, flying directly into the open maw of its middle head!

The dragon responded in the only manner it could — by focusing all its strength into that head’s breath. But it wasn’t enough. Its own flesh and bone rose up in revolt against it, tightening its throat to the utmost and erupting in jagged spurs. Wherever the Guardian thrusts his spear he finds purchase, he the dragon’s flesh yielding to his blazing force of will. After carving out a place for himself deep inside the dragon's throat, he begins the next step in his plan. While the middle head twitches in place, countless bone-centipedes begin crawling out of its mouth and out of the many spots where bone spurs erupt from its scales. They latch on, enveloping the head all the way down to the root of the neck, and somehow, their feeble candle-flames devour the mighty flame-breath of the left and right heads. Even when the dragon bites itself, the tiny constructs refuse to buckle, acting as a second layer of scales. Soon enough, the dragon’s middle head is fully enveloped, and the centipedes begin melting together, forming an articulated outer shell, and even as this takes place, the middle head fights with the others, savagely biting into the left head’s neck — so savagely that its neck snaps, and the left head goes limp.

Enraged, the dragon reaches for its middle neck at the base and uses its right head to bite down as best it can, but its fangs fail to find purchase. Somehow, the feeble bones of humans, blended with only a small proportion of dragonbone, have become tougher than a true dragon’s teeth — it is beyond the great beast’s comprehension. It manages to score the shell’s surface, and the source of its surpassing strength reveals itself: Through the bones of feeble men, their scarlet-burning spirit of resistance flows, and even now, it lashes out, drawing the gouged-out bone back into place.

A last resort, the dragon wrenches its own neck. With screams so loud as to send shockwaves through the air and set it alight, the god-beast rips its own head off and moves to crush it underfoot, but the moment the middle head fully detaches, it comes fully and undeniably under the Guardian’s control, sprouting spindly centipede-legs. In this absurd manner it skitters about, evading the dragon, while innumerable bone-servitors swarm towards it. Some fall upon the dragon, or otherwise act to distract it, while the overwhelming bulk join with the middle head. In moments — impossibly quickly, in fact — the Guardian constructs a dragon of his own, shod in scales of bone and burning with white-black flame. It stands astride two digitigrade legs, with the usurped middle head protruding directly from between its shoulders. Its arms are many-jointed, built more like spines than anything else, and hang down past its knees.

The Guardian emerges from within his construct’s mouth, standing atop its head. He wills his helmet’s faceplate to open, and begins gesturing with his staff as he taunts the two-headed dragon. A sigil begins taking form on the middle head’s forehead.

“At the moment I came to the realization of what exactly is taking place, what this struggle represents, you lost all hope of prevailing over me, foul dragon!”

The sigil is never, at any point, unfinished. It seems to instantly transition from the beginning stages to total completion, already suffused with an overbearing strength of meaning, visibly distorting the air around it with representations of its meaning in all forms.

PURIFICATION

The Guardian grins in a manner entirely unlike him, for he is not the Guardian. 

The two-headed dragon charges, meeting his construct in battle, only to find itself utterly outmatched, and its true target gone. The dragon is stronger, faster, more durable, and yet it seems as if at every juncture, something goes wrong. A slip here or there, an inopportune obstacle.  The objectively inferior construct quickly begins to overwhelm the dragon, not attempting to slay it, but instead using its head and arms to bind it.

Meanwhile, a bone-armored silhouette rises into the sky, and with it, so does a cloud of bone, be it solid or mere dust. At the apex of his flight, hundreds of meters up, he raises his staff. Ten thousand drill-like stakes of bone take shape, and his staff grows in kind, forming an enormous point and a great spiraling detonation engine at its top.

He bellows, and his voice carries throughout all lands, beyond the horizon, shaking the earth and scattering the clouds.

“I AM VICTOR KHESTUN, DESPOT OF SELF, KING OF FLESH AND BONE! MY BODY IS MY KINGDOM, AND MY RULE IS ABSOLUTE! THUS, I COMMAND THEE, VILE DRAGON, MAKE YOUR TRUE FORM KNOWN!”

The two-headed dragon erupts into a pillar of emerald flame, racing skyward towards Victor.

The heir of Koschei the Undying swings his staff down, and, joined by ten thousand Devil’s Teeth, meets the pillar of dragonfire in kind, crashing down faster than sound, faster than lightning. A crimson drill-comet with a tail of bonefire, the staff-spear’s bonewrought point at its very tip. 

SPIRALING DETONATION SIGN

SPEAR FROM THE HEAVENS

METEORIC ONBASHIRA

For a moment it appears as if two pillars of flame are clashing, reaching from the earth to the heavens. 

Then, in an instant, Victor splits the green pillar down the middle, and even before he reaches the ground, already his bonefire is ravenously devouring its remnants.

222 - Twin Return [Cherno]

A/N: Been far too long. Got completely tangled in choice paralysis as to how I wanted to start Vol. 3, plus the final steps leading up to Vol. 1's amzn release.

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Deep underground, a chitinous pod cracked open, segments of its shell rising in a motion akin to the opening of a spider’s fangs. From its fleshy interior, a flood of oily fluid spewed forth, draining away through the grated floor. A gangly figure lurched forward, hanging by numerous umbilicals as a puppet would from its strings.

After hanging limply for a few seconds, the shape twitched to life, arching its back as the lower half of its face unfurled in a manner much like the pod. Its lamprey-like tongue whipped back and forth, a gurgling hiss rising from its throat. One by one, each umbilicus was torn free, retracted back into the pod. The moment its occupant was free of its confines, the fleshy machine closed shut.

Coughing and retching, the evoy reached for a nearby grafting table, dragging himself to his feet. Slowly, his coughing turned into laughter. His mind swarmed with an influx of new memories — half his own, and half tinged by the thoughts of another, by the thoughts of a feeble man who had once come to him, offering up his life for the chance at strength — Cabral.

He shuddered in place, stumbling to one corner of the room, where several showerheads protruded from the stone and a mirror hung from the wall. With the turn of a handle, scalding water poured out and washed the oily ichor off of his body, exposing his bone-white, smooth chitin. Malformed, devoid of any protuberances, untouched by Vedesis. An abomination whose existence and method of birth insulted both the Vedesian Swarm and the Twin Churches. The White Evoy glared into his reflection. At rest, the shape of his face almost resembled that of a human — almost. Even his eyes were more like those of men than of evoy, only with black sclera and white irises, and possessing the protective shell of translucent chitin that evoy eyes did. As he was now, he felt even less at home in his own body than normally, his spirit yet to fully settle back into his original flesh.

Once he was done, he made his way through the subterranean complex, passing by vast arrays of grafting equipment, tubs and tubes filled with nascent flesh that ranged from small nubs to entire organs to limbs, eventually reaching a chamber separate from the rest of the complex, one that resembled a living space the most. Instead of being carved into bare stone and reinforced as a mine would be, it was more like a small apartment, only far underground.

He collapsed into a padded chair that waited at the entrance. The bulkhead door slid into place behind him without making a sound. With the turn of a key, the chair rose up astride six insectile legs, and with the push of a control stick it walked over to the workbench at the other side of the room, its small engine churning and thaumine tank bubbling. The chair was not an item of necessity — Cabral had left it here, and the White Evoy found it too convenient to dispose of. His eyes idly wandered over the many tools, bits, and pieces scattered across his workbench, but he eventually gave up and just sat back in his seat, tilting it back by adjusting the posture of its legs. 

For some time, he sifted through his thoughts and new memories in this manner, staring absently into the ceiling.

Eventually his thoughts began to wander, as did his eyes, falling upon a set of chitin plates which he had modified for the eventuality of interacting with Vedesians in his true form. They bore exaggerated ridges and hooked spikes. Moreover, they were adorned with Vedesian icons, wrought from melted-down Igarian idols and seared into the chitin. These Vedesian icons, however, bore the mark of his resentment, emblazoned with scripture that spited the goddess on the sides embedded into chitin, out of sight. The inner sides of these modified plates were similarly emblazoned, blending rebukes against Vedesis with protective warding to reinforce them. In this manner, he would be inured from her influence when he wore them. Had he been able, he would have grafted himself to alter his appearance long ago. While his tolerance for inorganic grafts was near-zero, he had the opposite issue with organic graft-stock. His body aggressively assimilated all organic grafts, reshaping grafted flesh to fit his natural form. The same issue arose with organic, evoy-specific adaptations of the Mamon Coupler paradigm — the transformations all came out as slightly larger versions of himself, with any unique traits he tried to introduce having minimal physical presence.

Only that which Aristedes had referred to as “Abara Morph Tsetse” could be considered a success, the last attempt at the end of a three-decade-long struggle. The fact he had to use another’s body and soul as a catalyst didn’t bother him in the slightest, the only problem was the difficulty of sourcing good material.

Finally, his many disparate streams of thought gathered into one flow, and he sprung into action, feverishly reaching for tools and wet storage capsules as he began working once more.

“Aristedes… Oh, Aristedes, when next we meet, I shall have such sights to show you,” he muttered.

_______________________________________________________________________________

Reality flooded back in all at once. Krahe snapped upright, glancing left and right, at once searching for threats and grabbing for her gun. Reassuringly, the gun was right there, in her hand. For a moment, she felt fine, but only for a moment. Her most recent memory was dragging Casus down the mansion steps and coming face-to-face with that unsettling, owl-like woman.

To start with, she was back in the safehouse. Moreover, she felt fine, as if she had slept off everything from the raid. That wasn’t entirely impossible, if she fully bought into the Molting Tonic’s regenerative capabilities.

But… As she looked around, she quickly noticed small hints as to what was really going on.

To start with, she checked inside the cabinet, taking out a book at random. She had seen Casus reading it before, but hadn’t done so herself, and when she opened it, inside she found the contents of a particularly amusing conspiracy blog she had read once. After checking the safehouse to ensure nobody was here, she made her way down to the street. The city was unnervingly quiet, even taking into consideration the safehouse’s location at its very edge.

Then, she took a left turn into an alleyway she hadn’t gone down before, and Audunpoint fell away. Krahe found herself right back in the cramped corridors of Sector 9. She was flanked to either side by rows of tiny shops, all free space taken up by ads that ranged from LED screens to posters to holograms, selling anything and everything. Even still, nobody was here. Oh, there were shopkeepers and customers, but none of them were real, none of them moved or acted like people. Everything felt ephemeral, like nothing existed unless she paid attention to it.

374 - The Guardian Pt. 2 [Sturmblitz]

But… At this point, all the pain doesn’t matter. If anything, the pain combined with the awareness that he should be dead clears his thoughts. The lightning-wrought giant of light glances down at him, and he meets its — meets her — gaze. The Guardian realizes that this is Old Itria, and these are the wretched beasts of the Divine Emperor, but also not. This is a mere memory, passed down from his predecessor. He grips empty air, and a cold octahedron comes into his grasp. There is a gaping hole in his chest, but still, he stands. His flesh is scorched, bones shattered, and still he stands. A mane of scarlet bursts forth from his head, and a third eye splits his forehead down the middle.

The dragon thrashes against its restraints, and they burst in moments, lashing their surroundings, breaking stone and wood alike, cutting down one of the inner barrier’s onbashira pillars. This, too, doesn’t matter.

All of the blood the Guardian has shed up until now goes up in a white-black blaze, swirling together around his legs and returning to his body. The countless hounds of bone which the dragon had burned suddenly come back together, reforming out of naught but ash, and they set upon the beast, soaring upon black flame, biting with fangs wreathed in scarlet light. They pile upon the dragon, swarming it like bees would swarm a hornet, barely able to inflict more than surface injury — but injure it, they do, and the great beast is forced to split its effort between breaking free, shattering the barrier, and shaking off the bone-wolves. The great beast twists one of its heads and squeezes it outside the barrier. In seconds, the Guardian’s wolves are engulfed, once more turning to dust as the dragon’s green fire spreads, but seconds are enough. With a voiceless scream of burst lungs, the Guardian shoves the aquamarine gem into his own chest cavity, piercing his heart, lest the baleful flame burning within it consume him from within. He doesn’t know why he would do this, his instincts screaming that he is killing himself, but an unquestionable truth resides in his mind that this is the right course of action, that the stone will contain the flame somehow.

The wrenching pain passes as the stone enters his heart, and the Guardian simply commands his flesh to seal behind it. In the same manner, he wills his body to mend itself — and the flesh obeys, ravenously drawing upon the same flame that moments ago threatened to devour him whole, now rendered subject to his will by the power of that familiar gem whose name he can’t quite remember. The fire within him still seethes and rages, but it no longer has any hope of raging out of his control unless he lets it. Thread by thread, he draws upon the raging maelstrom inside the gem, bending it to his will and alloying it into himself as he rebuilds his broken form. It is an act akin to bending white-hot steel with his bare hands, but the hands of will are clad in unbreakable gauntlets of divine gold, and the arms of his spirit are lent the strength of countless faithful dead. In the end, however, no amount of outside assistance can carry him the full distance. The dragon’s fire burns him down to the bone, body and soul, even as he draws it out of himself and saps the colour out of it, even as he knits himself back together with it and claims its strength. Every tiny mote thusly refined sends tears of black blood pouring from his eyes, every thread carves canyons into his flesh, only to be subjugated and turned to the task of healing these wounds. Even then, even after he has subjugated it in this manner, it still burns — and he knows that the flame will always seek his ruin until he slays that three-headed, nine-eyed dragon. He knows that the flame will not be truly his until he unquestionably proves his sovereignty, and he knows that this shrine, even if it isn’t physically real, must be protected.

The more he struggles, the more he breaks and mends in the effort, the more of him burns, layers of ruined flesh and skin sloughing off and burning up in tongues of black-green dragonfire, dragonfire that truly belongs to him… And in the process, they become monolithic plates of ashen bone, some clinging to him, and others piling up at his feet.

His body scorched and spirit drained, 

“Even if this is truly a mere memory passed down from the previous shrine guardian, then as the next in line, it remains my duty to protect it!”

The Guardian reaches out with his free hand. Instantly, the sacred staff flies into his grasp and the shrine’s doors swing open. From within the shrine’s innermost sanctum, a golden star shoots out, coming to rest within the staff’s ring.

His black flame surges, consuming the shrine in its entirety, overtaking even the scourge of emerald dragonfire and climbing up the skeletal form of the great beast entrapping the dragon’s arm. The skeleton’s strength surges, and its fangs crush through the dragon’s stone-like scales, drawing first blood. The moment that purple ichor touches the ground, the Guardian’s flame consumes it. 

However, it isn’t long before dragon frees itself enough to crush the skeleton with its superior size, ripping it apart and scattering it like a poorly put-together puppet before turning its effort towards undoing the last of its restraints. In an instant it is done, and the great and terrible monster once more bathes the Guardian in emerald flame, further tearing open the innermost barrier with its arms as it does this.

The only thing left of the Guardian is a silhouette — one that grows thinner by the moment as the flame rips flesh from bone. And yet, he doesn’t fall. 

Once the three-headed blast of dragonfire ends, what remains of the Guardian is barely more than a charred skeleton. Only a thin layer wraps his bones, and only the heart still beats in his chest. Somehow, the glowing-red mane still clings to his skull, and even more implausibly, his eyes still burn in their sockets, all three of them.

And somehow, he still chants that sutra. The dragon finally crushes two of the innermost barrier’s four onbashira, causing it to collapse altogether, but by then, it is too late. With a thunderous noise, the ground collapses beneath the Guardian’s feet in a perfect circle. The Guardian’s aura spills out, and the air thrums with power faintly like that of the dragon, yet also different — a refulgent, numinous power, and also one perfectly suited for opposing the tyrannical supremacy of naturalborn dragons. The hopes and prayers of the feeble, those who lack the strength to fight for themselves, gathered into a unified front.

New flesh forms around his bones as if burning in reverse, and every speck of bone within hundreds of miles springs into motion. The dragon strikes down upon the Guardian, but an enormous fist of bone surges out of the ground to meet it with equal and even greater force, propelled by great pillars of flame. The fist grasps the dragon’s own, and sends the beast careening down into a spin. Before the monster can recover, already a cloud of white and red has gathered around the shrine — the bones and revenant spirits of innumerable dead.

Then, at last, the Guardian speaks, and a realization dawns on him. It could be said to be a simple realization of what exactly is happening, of who he is in reality, of his own name, but it would be a shameful reduction of what is taking place.

At this moment, here and now, one man has glimpsed Truth — a mere flicker of it, but that is enough.

“Grand. Glorious. Gathering.”

From one breath to the next, the cloud of red and white collapses upon him.

The three-headed dragon rises from below to the sight of not a man, but the visage of a furious deity armored in bone and bearing a cloak of scarlet revenants. Even the staff in his hand now bears a wicked spear-point at its bottom, also wrought of bone.

373 - The Guardian [Sturmblitz]

The Guardian resolutely strikes hammer against anvil, perfectly in rhythm with the sutra he is chanting. His strikes are perfectly paced, perfectly placed, but the metal refuses to bend. His expression is feverish — veins bulge across his forehead and sweat drips from his brow. He brings forth black flame with all his strength, but the steel refuses to even turn the darkest of reds under its heat. Nonetheless he struggles on.

Before him, countless such metal segments lay in disarray. Blood runs from his hammer-hand, down the hammer’s shaft, dripping onto the anvil. The divine vessel of his shrine stands before him, doors closed, his god’s light shining through. Even this is not enough.

Though his words speak of purity and protection, and his acts are resolute, the Guardian’s thoughts are those of failure and despair. His deity has never answered him directly. Only when the adherents’ feverish prayers pour onto him like a waterfall does the deity’s strength shine through — never, not once, has his own strength been enough. He thinks himself borderline talentless, placed into this position solely because he was the only option — an atrocious, borderline worthless option, but an option.

“This world is a hellish freak-show. If this is truly my fated post, then what kind of prayer will it take to save them?!”

He vividly remembers a lifetime of struggle and failure, of watching his charges being slaughtered, unable to save more than a handful each time. The flame of guilt burns away at him with an intensity reserved for the worst sinners, his sense of guilt an endless pyre. Whether the flame is real or not doesn’t matter — it wrenches at him with such brilliant pain that it ought to strike him dead. Even still, the Guardian perseveres in his fool’s errand, hammering away. This is all he can do. Were he to throw himself against the beasts right this second, burn up every iota of strength he has, he would only delay the deaths of his charges. There was no “next time”, no “another shrine”, no “another city”. It was just here and now, the last shrine, the last try.

“Day in, day out, the powerful have claimed that their rule is meant to be, reaching out, saying “Take my hand”, yet offering only chains and butcher’s knives in turn.”

The ground quakes. An immense dragon crests the horizon, taking flight. Those of its lesser kin surrounding the shrine are stirred into a frenzy, and before long, the outermost barrier falls. Many flee, squeezing into what little space remains inside the inner barriers, but thousands are slaughtered as they feverishly pray for salvation. The flame of guilt burns the Guardian ever more intensely, even as the strength of his charges’ prayers surges to impossible heights at the moments of their deaths. Eventually, a gaping hole opens within his chest and tears of blood cascade down his face. His hands, the hammer, the anvil, all are entirely drenched in blood now. Even still he keeps hammering.

With each death, each corpse, a new wolf is born. Flames spring forth from within, bones twist into armor, flesh turns inward. A grisly sight, but also the only reason this shrine has held out this long. The people understand, they revere the dead for their sacrifice. Globs of flame, boulders, and ballista bolts all pelt the second barrier. One bolt skewers an entire family to the southern pillar. They pray even as the instrument of their death flares with dragonfire and burns them away to nothing. The Guardian keeps hammering. 

From far overhead, the incomprehensibly-vast beast swoops down upon six wings, and from its three serpent-necked heads it spews emerald-coloured hellfire, bathing the barrier. Everything outside it is consumed in an instant — man, dragon, it makes no distinction. The three-headed dragon, with its body as dark as the night sky, crashes down straight onto the shrine. One head stares at the Guardian, one bellows to the heavens, and the third draws in a great inhalation — and with this act, it devours the smoke and spirits of all those it has just slaughtered, be they human or its own kin. 

The three-headed dragon, with each of its heads possessing three eyes, digs its talons into the second barrier, and without even pausing, forces its heads through, screaming and spewing flame. Its breath washes over the inner barrier, only to tighten and become like three enormous blowtorches the length of battering rams, effortlessly cutting open even the nigh-impenetrable innermost barrier. The beast doesn’t bother to slaughter the Guardian’s charges – it leaves them for later.

The Guardian feverishly throws up every kind of magical defense he can think of, summoning hundreds of defensive artifacts and wildly gesturing with his bloodied fingers, even as he wields his hammer using force of aura alone. But… He blinks, and the steel is gone. The armor is gone. The anvil, the hammer, all gone, even his charges, all gone! There are no people, not even ghosts — less than ghosts, they are the echoes of the departed. And still. Still. Still they are praying. A sea of red-gold silhouettes, praying towards him despite — no, in spite of his failure to save them. Not only the remnant will of the dead of the present, but also those of the ancient past, of Lost Itria itself, all those who once believed in Bishamonten!

Reams of protective sigils unfurl from the many talismans and relics he has called forth, patching the hole in the barrier and binding the dragon’s body, forcing its maws shut. One by one, the relics burn up, fall to dust, or clatter to the ground, dead. Eventually even the enormous skeleton inside which the shrine is built comes to life, its eyes blazing with black flame as it rails against the dragon, grappling with the beast’s singular free arm and biting it. Nonetheless, the gigantic skeleton is barely one third the size of the dragon, and nowhere near as strong as it.

It is already too late — the Guardian has already been consumed by dragonfire. His sight swims and mind grows hazy from the pain. His skin bursts open, flesh blisters, then burns down to bone, becoming like coal. The blood boils in his veins, his teeth crack under the pressure of his own jaw. The hair burns off of his head in an instant.

372 - Tribulation Begins [Sturmblitz]

A chamber deep within the Guardian Spire.

Twenty minutes ago, Victor was slowly working his way through an ancient, yet remarkably well-preserves book. Beyond merely centuries-old, it was a historical treatise from the height of the Ankhezian Imperium, mostly pertaining to conflicts in far-off colonies — written in the self-translating Ankhezian trade script, of course. Despite the dry writing style, the subject matter easily matched and even surpassed the most fantastical things Victor had encountered.

He had buried himself in the book as to distract himself, but it had not helped.

And so it was that he sat for hours more, quietly murmuring a sutra as he tried to keep himself centered.

Eventually, Elder Kanberich and Mistress Zelsys returned, bringing him back to the spire’s top. There, Kanberich brought out sticks of black, glittering chalk, and began drawing an array circle around Victor. He, of course, was situated in the middle. As Kanberich drew, he explained how the Guardian Spire contained a vast network of array formations for managing the intensity of external tribulations, only to cut this pillar of comfort out from under Victor by adding that the system only works to an extremely limited extent for internal tribulations such as the one he is about to undertake.

The pill came next, alongside a brass cup of Witch’s Brew. A pill… To call it a pill was an understatement. He wagered he could just barely fit it inside his mouth. He’d read the manuscript. Seen the alchemists working. He knew what this would do to him, even on its own, let alone in combination with the Dragonslayer Flame. It would make things easier, make the tribulation go quicker, and, in the end, would make him even stronger — or so his elders hoped. It would supposedly begin to take effect instantly, so he would take it only at the last moment.

Fear gripped him, but Victor knew that this was his best chance. He disassembled Daywolf, reshaping its mass into a miniature shrine around himself. Oculus in hand, he began chanting a sutra, summoning the power of Bishamonten. An iridescent aperture yawned open in the staff’s ring, Bishamonten’s physical core burning behind it. A numinous pressure descended, and a circle of shimmering haze took form around Victor, perfectly tracing the outermost perimeter of Kanberich’s formation. Mistress Zelsys went on observing the formation’s creation, pacing back and forth as she thought, her Thundergods tilting their heads, arcs sparking from their mouths in a form resembling the darting tongues of snakes.

Out of nowhere she took a deep breath, lightning arcing about her. A skull of gleaming metal took form, and around it, she shaped a serpent of writhing aura and lightning — Chrome Skull Viper. It grew until it was long enough to encompass Kanberich’s array, curling around its perimeter. However, instead of outward, the aura-construct directed its attention inward, at Victor. Its form slowly faded from physical visibility, but Victor’s eyes could still see it.

Kanberich finally finished the formation, its sigils angular and hard to read, and took up a position at the formation’s head. With the spear Zirnitra in hand, its wings unfurled and eye open, he brought out the dragonskin scroll. With a wide sweep of his arm he unfurled the scroll and released it from his grip, and at that instant, an overwhelming, searing heat bore down on Victor even through the protection Bishamonten afforded him, but he held it at bay with all his might. The scroll circled the formation, burning glyphs swarming from its surface, joining their counterparts in the formation and setting it alight. Besides relying upon his shrine guardian methods, Victor had the Antediluvian Gem as a trump card — he intended to direct dragonfire into the jewel if it threatened to overwhelm him, so that he could deal with it at his own pace.

Victor stuffed the Dragonheart Bolus into his mouth, kicking back the cup as he tried to swallow. Before he could choke, the mass seemed to disintegrate, washing down with zero resistance. Nonetheless, it burned on the way down, and the flame spread through his stomach before long. His flesh began to squirm inside him, heat filled his veins, and upon finally reaching his heart, it became a roaring blaze.

The Dragonfire Bolus, however, didn’t even remotely compare to the fire that consumed him when the Dragonslayer Flame Scroll completed its final circle and the formation had been fully lit. The artifact darted into the circle and enveloped Victor, bathing him in green fire. He screamed out in agony, his back arching as blood burst from his eyes, but the next instant, his eyes rolled into the back of his head and he slumped over, kept upright only by his ironclad grip upon the Oculus.

_______________________________________________________________

A desolate landscape stretches unto the horizon — a city sprawling beyond the horizon in all directions. A scarlet miasma of cruel death hangs in the air. Buildings lay wrecked and corpses are strewn left and right. The footsteps of a deranged demagogue echo through the streets.

The Guardian looks down upon the symbol of his failure from atop the curled-up bones of a great beast, containing within its ribcage a temple. A miniscule sanctuary amidst the desolation, his shrine yet stands sacrosanct, quartets of onbashira pillars surrounding its perimeter in three layers, barriers of holy sigils scrolling between them. Thousands of people shiver within the sacred barrier’s boundary. Beyond the barrier, death stands waiting: A horde of twisted beasts, dragons of scarlet scale, with tufts of black fur protruding between them. Many of the beasts are bedecked by human flesh and clockwork, melded-together arms upon their backs gripping guns and chipped swords, ballistae swiveling on any free spaces, or needle-launchers embedded where the former wouldn’t fit. Many, still stand only as dragons, bearing neither assimilated gore nor machinery, instead bedecked in hundreds of gemlike eyes.

At the outermost barrier’s border, hounds of blackened steel and wolves of white bone rage against them, but bit by bit, their steel is melting and bone crumbling to dust. In the far distance, calamity does battle against calamity — towering far into the heavens, two giants of light are locked in bitter struggle, a giant of black and gold, and a giant of silver and lightning.

371 - Dangerous Methods Pt. 3 [Sturmblitz]

Kanberich laughed.

“Please, take mercy on my old bones. That trick I pulled back there was exhausting enough, you want me to take you back and then here again? Then carry out the rite and bring the both of you back again?” he complained, almost visibly withering right before Zel’s eyes.

The old monster dropped the act before Zel could voice her doubt, adding: “Just give me a moment. I do need to rest.”

He brought a bottle of Tengri’s Tears, a smaller sealed-up bottle that rattled, and an entire box meal damn near identical to those Ozmir supplied to her. When he opened it, indeed, it was a hunk of dragon-flesh with culca leaves on the side and some indistinguishable third thing, a yellow root vegetable of some kind. 

After thoroughly chewing the first mouthful, he upended the pill bottle and shook three shiny-red marbles into his mouth, crushing them with his teeth before flushing it all with a hefty swig. A long sigh of relief and green flame followed. Almost right away, some of his formerly-regal presence returned.

“I wish I could say I’m still as strong as I was in my prime, but… Well, I already went over that earlier,” he said, cutting another hunk of meat.

After a moment of consideration, Zelsys decided to match her host and brought out her own meal. It was a leftover from the Borea provisions, but it was still not only good, it was still warm, and dragon meat all the time got to be a little much even for her. It also constantly made her dream of fighting dragons as she digested it both physically and spiritually, but this wasn’t a downside in her mind.

“Actually, why are you in this state? I don’t believe it’s just old age, and you’re not just rusty. Call it a gut feeling,” Zel prodded.

Nodding, Kanberich swallowed another mouthful. He eyed the pill bottle, but left it be. After a moment of silence, he simply stated the truth as it was, with no embellishments or hesitation:

“We sacrificed our cultivation. Some of us did so literally, either in the process of burying the Ziggurat or in the ritual of erasing it from notice. Others, like Toza and I, burned their candles in the process of ensuring the Ziggurat could be buried. What Zefaris met on that battlefield… To say it was Toza galls me to no end. It was merely his ghost, still wandering in the flesh, looking for someone worthy to pass his method onto. Back then, Toza paid with his sight and his fate as an unparalleled prodigy of the sword, exchanging it for a phantom sword capable of cutting down anything and anyone, regardless of cultivation level. Toza inflicted Tian Feng with a crippling wound that day. I believe with all my being that wound is the reason the wax-faced bastard has been stuck, unable to advance, for all these centuries, despite all the resources he gobbles up. As for myself… I did no such glamorous thing. I burned my flame keeping this land safe from his Divine Generals — the original ones. The ones who conquered Ikesia alongside him, and whom he purged the moment they were no longer needed. After all was done, I sealed what was left of my cultivation in pieces here and there, hoping to one day recover it.”

A bitter, yet also amused grin took hold on his face.

“As I am now, reabsorbing one of those shards would make me pop like an overripe grape,” he added, returning to his meal.

They continued to eat together, and once done, Kanberich finally took Zelsys back to Willowdale.

_______________________________________________________________

“Huh? The Lesser Bolus? Can it not wait even a few days? If it’s for you, we could probably afford an unrefined Greater Bolus. It’ll wreak havoc, but nothing compared to directly refining Eisengeist’s blood the way you did…” Makhus questioned, eventually drifting into his own thoughts.

Zel cut him off: “It’s for Victor, and it’s as a supporting elixir for an unrelated cultivation method — not its intended purpose, even if it does fit. The Lesser Dragonheart Bolus is already pushing it.”

“I don’t doubt your judgment, but… Could you elaborate? I may be able to make adjustments to the bolus at least. I am also terribly curious.”

While this was Makhus’ private laboratory, a small handful of other alchemists were present, assisting him with the final stages of the True Dragonheart Bolus. Therefore, Zelsys acquiesced with a condition: “In private.”

Makhus nodded, sternly commanding his assistants to be particularly careful while he was gone. With that, they made their way to Zel’s quarters, and she relayed everything pertaining to Victor’s issue and the method by which she intended to help resolve it. It took Makhus a few minutes to process everything, but he eventually came around.

“So the purpose of the bolus is to bolster this dragonstain… Yes, I suppose it would be best to use the safest version. Still, some adjustments ought to be made. Besides the bare minimum of dialing it in for Victor’s physiology. Do you remember anything from your body reconstruction bath? It would be the closest point of comparison I have, and helpful to cross-reference with the Burning Man Manuscript besides.”

Once more, Zelsys spoke at length, this time on the ordeal of subsuming and subduing Eisengeist’s blood.

“I see. Mental stabilizers, painkillers, some culca leaf as binder… Just grind it down and reconstitute the mass…” the alchemist muttered.

“Will that not compromise the pill?” Zel asked.

“If it was the True Bolus, yes, but if I’m careful I can reverse the congealment and re-congeal the modified bolus without any loss of potency,” Makhus said. “The Lesser and Greater Dragonheart Bolus both have to be metabolized inside the user’s body like any elixir, whereas the True Dragonheart Bolus is closer to an artifact than a pill, to be implanted inside the user’s heart. A human dragonstone of sorts. The lesser boluses can lead to the development of a similar organ, but the odds are much lower, and it takes multiple doses over a longer period — so the manuscript says.”

“How long?” Zel asked.

“Half an hour, at most. Victor is easy to adjust for,” Makhus said, confidently.

It took the better part of an hour, but it was done. The Lesser Dragonheart Bolus was a sphere about the size of a plum, composed of grainy, purple substance with streaks of blue and yellow. Makhus wrapped it in a long seal, and after promising to take mental notes on Victor’s reaction to the elixir, Zelsys was on her way.

370 - Dangerous Methods Pt. 2 [Sturmblitz]

“You, I, Toza, old Sanger, the mightiest warriors of Borea, the war-orphans forced to scavenge the battlefields, even that Kargarian noblewoman, Arnys Krishorn — we were born as beasts, or else made into beasts in the earliest moments of our lives. Such is our lot,” Kanberich expounded. “Where the likes of Victor possess surpassing talent in certain matters, the only supreme talent afforded to us is our ability to live in violence. Where others must learn it, grip the razor-ember to their chests until it chars them from the inside, perhaps even disfigures them, we few blessed, we few cursed, have possessed the flame of violence throughout our lives, growing alongside it. My flame rages against dragonkind. Yours is your own, born of your violent nature, a natural urge to claim supremacy over beasts, or perhaps the urge for retribution, I do not know — but in fundamental nature, they are alike. The boy was given the dubious fortune of a noble upbringing, so his innermost flame fundamentally differs from yours or mine. Imagine, how it would rip your apart if you found yourself utterly incapable of putting down a wretched beast? If you just had to watch such a thing walk away with its victims in tow?”

Certain things clicked into place in Zel’s head. She had been aware for some time that she couldn’t truly consider herself the same as the rest of mankind. Physicality aside, she didn’t think like them, but she had never thought this abnormality to be aberrant. In her mind it was just the lot of all cultivators. Only now had Kanberich truly driven home that, even among cultivators, the likes of him or Zelsys were another step removed. Moreover, she had to stop herself from staring off into space. She had, after all, had let the most wretched of beasts just run away. Von Wickten. Zel couldn’t imagine what he was doing, what iniquities he had perpetrated in the time since his retreat at the gate-cathedral. Not even the faintest hint of his existence had made itself known to her, not even with the Bureau on constant lookout for him. Zelsys wondered if Alcerys thought the same of Cao Hu, who similarly made his escape in the wake of the Rigport Incident.

Far away, in the midst of an abandoned church of the Grekurian Orthodoxy, Alcerys sat, ruminating. Somehow, out of nowhere, the inquisitor’s thoughts drifted to him. To the one who got away. Cao Hu, the Curse-eating General. Gall rose in her throat and burned at the back of her tongue at the thought that pus of humanity was still out there, of the iniquities he must be perpetrating at the emperor’s command. To her side, a figure clad in monolithic armor knelt, wearing a masked helmet with a crown of thorns upon its brow. Countless daggers rested within the armored man’s body, sunk into the gaps of his armor, ribbons of sacred scripture trailing from them. Alcerys wondered if Zelsys thought the same of Von Wickten — she knew that he yet lived as a silver-armored impurity elemental for one simple reason: Zelsys had personally gotten in touch, warning her of his existence, so that she may hunt him down if the opportunity presented itself in the same manner Zelsys would hunt down Cao Hu under the same circumstances.

Zel’s racing thoughts ceased as Kanberich continued, taking her reaction for the tacit answer it was. Strangely, at that same instant, the man who was a sheath to a hundred knives also spoke, similarly taking Alcerys’ silence for a response to a question he had posed to her moments before.

“Even if he possessed the ability to simply snap himself out of it, the boy is too far into shock to think of doing that. I’ve seen many fall to a foe they could’ve felled just because they were too terrified to swing, too caught up in their own thoughts. To add onto the fact he is not a beast like you or I, his elevated mental capacity renders him ever more vulnerable to becoming lost in his own thoughts.”

“The enantiomorph must have skewed the mental balance too far towards his Thinking Self. He already had a predilection towards the Lunar, so it’s not so surprising…” Zel thought aloud. Sighing, she shook her head, disappointed in herself. “I should’ve noticed it sooner, all the clues were right there in front of me.”

“He will come back into balance, in time. With the necessary information out of the way — you have questions, I can tell. Ask.”

“What’s the catch with your method?” Zelsys asked. She knew that Kanberich had expected this question, and so decided to get it out of the way. 

“I mentioned earlier the trio of Quick, Safe, and Easy. My method is possibly one of the most potent, that is to say, the fastest, but also one of the least safe, and the most difficult. Precautions can be taken to make it safer, but there is no making the Dragonslayer’s Ordeal easier. If you do not already possess the strength of will and spirit to bend dragonfire to your will, the Dragonslayer Flame will take root and consume you from within. It might just kill you, but at worst, the result is rapid transformation into a monstrous half-dragon descendant, possessing both the strength of dragons and the unbounded savagery of the human Primordial Self. Loss of self-control, inability to do aught but watch from behind your own eyes, perhaps call out in warning as your body goes berserk…” Kanberich spoke. His tone became grave, clearly recounting a real incident. Zel had never once encountered any record of anyone practicing a method like Kanberich’s, so she wondered if his earlier implication that it might only be suitable for him had a direct basis in reality. His following words dispelled this guess.

“Mass slaughter and death for the practitioner soon follow, usually at the hands of other dragonslayers. After this point, there is still hope, as with assistance one can bring the flame partially under control, retaining sense of self and only gradually transforming into a monstrous dragon-man. You must be thinking why I would place him in such risk when he is in such a vulnerable state, but at my age, I have a touch more experience with these things than you do. I created the method, after all. This “Walking Way of the Despot of Self” only reinforces my belief that he will weather the tribulation. My main concern is the comparative magnitude of his dragonstain with his soul, how deeply buried it sits, how stagnant and thinly-stretched it is. I have never encountered such a thing, as none of those who inherited my art were wizards, or whatever the true cause for his soul’s disproportionate size might be. If I were to guess, the Ordeal might go on for an excessively long time, or his Dragonslayer Flame might be too weak to be of use at first.”

The tone with which Kanberich said those the last third wasn’t entirely serious. Zelsys had no issue reading between the lines. Nobody in the sect had laid claim to the Lesser Dragonheart Bolus, with the alchemists too caught up in producing the True Dragonheart Bolus and other disciples not daring to disturb them. So, Zelsys decided it would be put to use in this manner.

“Blood aside, I can bring something more refined. Take me back to the city.”

369 - Dangerous Methods [Sturmblitz]

“What is the risk?” Victor asked, determination audible in his voice, echoing inside Daywolf’s mask.

“That’s the question, isn’t it?” Kanberich grinned. The madness in his gaze flared, then abated. “I am not a madman, of course there are precautions. But they only go so far. Be not mistaken, your life will be at risk.”

“When is it not?” Zelsys questioned. “He goes back in seclusion, it’s right back into the downward spiral. We can look for alternatives, but I don’t expect to find one better than this.”

“You trust my method so much? Without having even read the scroll? For all you know, it might only be suitable for me,” Kanberich countered, but there was no conviction behind his words. He was just trying to get her to argue against that point, even if he didn’t truly believe it.

“C’mon. You conceived the method and wrote the scroll. I somehow doubt you’ve grown senile and unable to take someone’s measure to determine if they are suitable for your method,” Zel replied.

Kanberich grew serious, nodding in silence for a moment.

“Alright. Come,” he said, rising to his feet. “There are preparations to be done.”

______________________________________________

Several hours later.

A chamber elsewhere in the Guardian Spire.

Another loungeroom, this one glaringly isolated amidst a tangle of utilitarian halls — admittedly, utilitarian by ancient cultivator standards, meaning that the flat walls were of patterned stone with head-height murals running down their entire length, and the doorways bore similarly complex decorations.

Zelsys sat and waited. She grew bored, and simply made her way back to the top of the spire, thanks to Kanberich having predicted that she would likely grow bored with sitting and waiting.

There, atop the spire, she summoned Carnifex Fulguris and began running the full gamut of full-extension “Scolopendra” strikes.

Uncoiling. Beheading. Thrashing. Dancing.

Basic. Simple, even. Fundamental. Yet the variance possible with just these fundamental concepts surpassed fixed-shape weaponry by orders of magnitude.

Even a simple descending swing could contain within it multitudes. The number of segments, the space between them, the stiffness of the connecting arclines, whether the segments would retract or grow even further apart as the swing progressed. Mid-swing, segments could split off to form Fang Rippers. She could simply turn a swing into a thrust by forcing Carnifex to extend to the utmost, shifting the Crown Fang’s shape to accommodate a thrusting purpose. Were she so inclined, she could form Carnifex into a shape akin to a claw or perhaps a maw of countless teeth. The incorporation of Predator Aura only added yet another layer of possible variation.

As Zelsys sunk into her martial trance and allowed her aura to come loose, the ghostly form of an enormous serpent came into being. It closely resembled the self-same serpent that took form during her epiphany, with a muscular body clad in armored scales, With each movement, so too did the specter move, and its form changed — from a serpent, to a centipede, to a gigantic lamprey, a bipedal lizard with a gigantic blade for a tail, and countless other beasts, many of which were either not real or had been extinct for so long they may as well be fictitious. The clouds above the spire stirred, and forceful bolts of lightning descended all around, but never actually struck the spire, deflected by its formation arrays of concealment and protection.

Eventually, she was roused from her meditation by way of the lift chamber rising in the center.

“You didn’t throw my disciple into some ancient trial and just leave him there, did you?” Zel asked jokingly.

“He is safe. I have asked him the questions I needed to ask, and now I intend to do the same with you. To get a full picture of his cultivation.”

“Of course,” Zel nodded, dismissing Carnifex.

And so, Kanberich gestured for the elevator to recede back into the spire, and with another gesture summoned a pagoda in its place.

They went over everything she knew of Victor’s cultivation and his natural affinities, including even the matter of Koschei, the Antediluvian Gem, and the enantiomorph by which Victor subsumed his ancestor’s soul. Once they reached that revelation, to no surprise on Zel’s part, Kanberich fell silent, processing it.

“I… Cannot say that I am surprised Koschei had such a contingency. But I am surprised that the inheritor prevailed in the enantiomorph, assuming the rite was the one I know of.”

“I suspect he allowed himself to be subsumed, knowing he was too far gone. But, under the assumption that there was indeed a mental struggle, we should perhaps cover the reason Victor may have prevailed.”

Zelsys brought out the Ivory Scroll — the physical scripture for the Walking Way of the Despot of Self. Kanberich somewhat hesitantly reached out. The scroll lacked a pronounced aura, after all. Even with her current faculties, Zelsys only got a sense of indomitable decisiveness from it, one content to remain fully contained within its vessel.

Two hours later. Almost reverently, Kanberich rolled the scroll back up and slid it over to Zel’s side of the table.

“Putting aside the… Its provenance, as an inheritance of Sagruhel Ironhand, it is… A severe mental cultivation method. Extremely risky. And you say the boy has mastered it?”

“I wouldn’t say as much, but he has taken it far enough to communicate with his Primordial Self, and presumably exert dominion over his thoughts and body. If he had mastered it, he wouldn’t be having this heart demon.”

“Zelsys, I… You were at Eberheim, and I was not, but I’ve read the reports. You expect too much of him. He hasn’t been calloused to atrocity yet. Even if he had been merely present, even if his involvement in the incident wasn’t as pivotal as it was, he would absolutely come away shaken — and I am deathly certain he is not the only one.”

“You are aware of how old I am, yes?” she asked.

“Don’t get into this. You cannot hold the rest of mankind to your own standards, to our standards,” Kanberich rebuked her.

368 - The Dragonslayer Flame Method [Sturmblitz]

Kanberich held out his left hand, and within it ignited a flame. From this flame, he sculpted a scene, flicking embers onto the table, illustrating his words as he went. He even went so far as to alter the shade and texture of his flame to give visuals to the idea of someone becoming altered by mere proximity to a dragon descendant.

“This fundamental pillar of my cultivation — this process of “becoming more like a dragon” in the metaphysical sense — is a side effect of the dragons’ original purpose as weapons of war. Their power is unlike any other, infinitely close to yet infinitely far from the pure creation that resides in the Foundations of the World — in short, the closest man has ever come to replicating the true nature of “Law” or “Creation”. In falling short, it also becomes severely unlike the very thing it mimics in particular ways, much like a realistic, not-quite-human puppet feels even less human-like than a child’s toy. This property, in turn, causes the essence of dragonkind to stain and subtly warp the world wherever dragons live. Those who battle with them — or alongside them — are inevitably changed. During the many wars in which dragons and dragon descendants have been employed, those who fought alongside them and the few who managed to slay them have both manifested a vast variety of extraordinary abilities, often in contravention of common cultivation limitations. I, personally, prefer to refer to this as the Dragonslayer’s Gift, but Draconization or Dragonstaining are also known terms for the phenomenon. I admit that my term is somewhat contradictory, because while those who battle with and slay dragons do receive the Gift, it was most often those who fought alongside dragons who did so, as they were exposed to the creatures far more often. Certainly, slaying a dragon descendant and using its body for cultivation resources is nearly guaranteed to confer some semblance of the Gift, but an Ankhezian Dragonrider of old had a retinue of tens of thousands who all worked around the dragon for their entire lives, soaking up its power even while it laid idle, not to mention the widespread use of whatever it might shed.”

“What of Arches’ Order of the Dragon? As far as I am aware, they practiced a False Path method, despite having access to a living dragon,” Victor asked.

Kanbu chortled.

“Living? Alive, at best. Dying, more likely, only very slowly. Not-quite-dead. There is not a chance Ten Billion Fathoms was, at any point in the last half-millennium, anything close to truly “living”. But… You are not wrong. Ten Billion Fathoms is a True Dragon Descendant, not a lesser species such as a Wildfire Kite. Even severely weakened by its incarnation in a body wrought from the flesh of lesser descendants, animals, and humans, and with three legs in the grave, it would still hold enormous power. From what I have read of the Order prior to the Meat Market Incident, I can safely guess that they managed to evoke a form of the Gift, but through misguided methods, without understanding of the phenomenon or perhaps even its existence. They, if anything, were an example — even with an outright moronic method, dragonstaining still takes place and still empowers those subject to it.”

With a wave of his hand he erased the flame-diorama, and finally put forth that scroll. Even still, he only unrolled it partially, just enough that its aura spilled out. Victor reflexively closed Daywolf’s faceplate, flinching back as if he were about to be burned. Zel couldn’t blame him — this didn’t even compare to mundane fire. Her own Thundergods hissed and bared their fangs, their grey forms flaring blue and arcs jumping inside their open mouths, revealing the blades that were their tongues. It was truly akin to the tyrannical presence of a dragon descendant, yet also like nothing she had felt before. The Wildfire Kite’s aura had felt thin and lukewarm by comparison, with a strong physical aspect, almost evoking some properties of typical beastly aura. Meanwhile, Eisengeist had already been subdued by the time she arrived into its presence. The greatest difference between the draconic aura produced by Kanberich’s method and that of dragon descendants was something that could not accurately be put into words — for lack of a better expression, it was subtly twisted in a manner that openly spoke of its purpose for subduing dragons and usurping their strength.

Having gotten the reaction he wanted, Kanberich continued his lecture: “My method is only one of many that permits the practitioner to draw out the strength of dragons. Zelsys, for instance, has harnessed it directly through her body. I wager that her muscles, internal organs, and other tissues have subtly become more akin to those of dragon descendants since she has started consuming Eisengeist’s flesh on a regular basis. A wizard such as yourself might naturally harness it through external acts of spiritual strength, such as spellcasting. My method is not necessarily superior — it is merely a specific way of harnessing the power. I can pass on my technique in full, and even should you not specialize in it, the Dragonslayer Flame will burn your foes all the same. I am… Noncommittal in that way. I could never imagine only ever wielding a single weapon in my life. There is, of course, a catch, as there always is..."

Finally, the old dragonslayer unfurled his scroll across the table, and its aura spilled out in full, such that Zelsys had to flare her own to protect herself. Scorched marks instantly appeared across Daywolf’s surface, and Victor in turn brought up the Oculus. He chanted a sutra, gesturing with both hands as his third jangled the staff-spear in place, and a numinous pressure descended. Bonefire spilled out of his armor’s many gaps and fiercely crawled across him, struggling against the Dragonslayer Flame. A moment later, Kanberich rolled up the scroll as quickly as he had opened it, and Victor visibly deflated inside his suit as the scorching, tyrannical pressure lifted.

With a mischievous flame in his eyes and a smirk on his face, the dragonslayer goaded the young wizard: “That was but a taste of what you will experience should you chase strength through my method. Quick, Safe, Easy — you can only ever choose one. So choose.”

367 - Exorcism Liquor and Dragonslaying [Sturmblitz]

Kanberich nodded: “You could leave this stuff in a mundane bottle and it would still be good in five hundred years. It’s like a glass droplet — the components balance each-other with enormous force, such that it goes around and becomes completely stable again.”

Thus, Zel brought out her bottle with the Sap of Grinning Death. She put a single drop of the substance into her own cup. The dragonslayer’s eyebrows went up in surprise and recognition.

“...Where did you get that bottle?”

“The elder of the Hadegoke Branch tried to use it to kill me, at the behest of someone from the Root Branch. Sap of Grinning Death — it can’t hurt me, so it’s just a fun little thing.”

“I know what it is, and who made it. I am merely surprised that you have it…” he said with utter seriousness, before lightening up. “But since you do, give me a drop as well.”

Clinking their cups together, the Young Monster and the Old Monster drew down their drinks and, with grins on their faces, emitted sighs of satisfaction.

“Y’know, Ozmir has his own reserve of this stuff, but he hasn’t shared any of it, has he?” Kanberich slurred. “Do you even know how the sect got all that Culca in the greenhouses? It sure wasn’t as a cultivation resource. That babyfaced bastard personally went to an Ankhezian enclave and stole a seedling so he could make booze out of it.”

It wasn’t long before clarity of thought and speech returned the old man, in no small part because he used a detoxification technique that involved him exhaling a gust of flame. After blinking and shaking his head a few times, he held up the last remaining, unadulterated cup for Victor to drink, prompting him with a nod. He tentatively did so, still remaining awkwardly quiet. By he look in his eyes, however, Zel somehow didn’t feel that he was spiraling again. Deep in thought, yes, but not spiraling.

“But… Ozmir aside, I had an actual reason for this beyond wanting to share the fruits of my long-time hobby,” Kanberich continued. “This drink is called Aqua Prisma — Prismatic Liquor. Also called Liquid Moonlight and a thousand other names. The highest grade — that which we have just partaken of — is called Exorcism Liquor, for its ability to at once center the mind and suppress mental disturbances. Between heaven and earth, this liquor alone may permit you to truly drink away your sorrows for long enough to resolve them properly. The limitations of its effectiveness aside, Victor being under its effects will be necessary for the next stage: My Dragonslayer Flame Method.”

Both a metaphorical and literal fire lit up in Kanberich’s eyes.

“That’s why you came to me, is it not?” he asked Zelsys, turning his gaze up to Victor without waiting for an answer. “My Dragonslayer Flame Method and my Dragonslaying Spear Art are the only things I can share with you, and spear techniques are clearly not the cause or the solution for your issues.”

Once more he looked to Zelsys. “So come. Explain to me the full breadth and depth of the pit your precious disciple finds himself in. Eberheim considered, it is sure to be one filled with grasping corpses and its walls are sure to be slick with gore.”

And so they did — Zelsys implored Victor to explain himself first, and, in line with Kanberich’s description of his Exorcism Liquor, the redhead spoke with remarkable clarity of thought. Zelsys then went over her own outlook on the situation, and Kanberich nodded along, eventually bringing out a supple scroll of purplish dragonhide. It was actually so dark as to be nearly black, with purple only showing through at the edges of scales and in the creases. This one was truly just dragonhide used as a material, Zel sensed no aura of life from it — its aura was in fact nearly identical to Kanberich’s. In the same vein, the scroll’s aura also reminded her of the Sword Phantom and Formless Destroyer Scriptures, being the distilled essence of the author’s personal understanding. Rather than unroll it, Kanberich gripped the scroll tightly, pressing it to the table as he explained.

“From the sound of it, your attempts at refining dragon tissue are along the right track, you are merely going about it with the wrong method, and you lack the proper tools to achieve the end result through your particular refinement style. In short, dragonflesh does not acknowledge your primacy as King of Flesh and Bone. You don’t lack in strength of spirit, your metaphorical flame is simply not of the correct nature to subdue the self-supremacist strength of a true dragon descendant. The flesh of a lesser descendant such as a Wildfire Kite will bend, but trying to apply the same brute approach to the flesh of Eisengeist is like trying to cage the sun in mundane iron. And so, in order to prevail over dragons, one requires first of all the simply ability to do so, to contend with them in terms of sheer power. This, you possess.”

“But I could not conceivably stand against Eisengeist under my own strength. Not without Deus Machina Teutobochus, and that is not my own strength,” Victor protested.

“Let me finish, will you?! Second, you must find and battle a dragon. Then, another, and another. Even if you lose, even if you must crawl away, what matters is to stand against your betters, even if you cannot defeat them — but philosophy aside, they must still be dragons. This is the most crude and fundamental method of becoming more akin to a dragon and in turn assimilating the strength of dragons. The faster and more glamorous alternative is to actually slay one and devour its power directly, of course. The tangible benefits aside, such an act will irrevocably mark your soul, change you, make your existence fundamentally more like that of a true dragon. As it stands, I am a truer Dragon Descendant than all but a small handful of the strongest Three-eyes on the continent, closer to a true dragon than them, my existence weighs heavier and my will bends the world more readily, even as I am now, yet to recover the vast majority of my cultivation.”

366 - Old Dragonslayer's Manse [Sturmblitz]

At a simple gesture of the old dragonslayer’s hand, a smaller spire rose up in the middle, about as tall as a two-story house and no wider than ten meters across. It was nothing more or less than an elevator, and with a few more subtle gestures, they rode down into the spire, perhaps even into the mountain at its base. Zel couldn’t tell — she experienced no sense of velocity during the journey. Inside was not an indoor complex of cramped hallways, but a singular sprawling chamber, set up to look like an exterior and containing a regal manor as its centerpiece. The chamber itself was suspiciously similar to the design elements of Ozmir’s “False Tree of Life” orchard — even down to the domed lattice of panels that imitated the sky. The difference was that the dome sat atop a vertical wall layer, making this place resemble a greenhouse more than anything else.

Through the clearing they went, approaching the mansion. It was decorated with a great number of statues similar to Willowdale’s original guardians. Unlike the guardians, these openly tracked their movement with their heads. Moreover, Zelsys sensed intent from them — not from each of them, but a singular and monolithic intent from all of them at once, stiff and stone-like, more akin to being watched by a mountain than a living thing. Combined with the ultra-pneuma-rich atmosphere and the countless unidentifiable plants growing around the manor, this place truly felt entirely separate from the world of man, much like the residence of the Smoke Witch. Into the mansion they went, the air growing noticeably colder inside its halls. Kanberich led them through it, up a stairway, and into a reading room of sorts. The architecture and decorations were all ancient and unfamiliar, yet also unsettlingly familiar. Books were to be seen to one side, and a rack of widely varied spears to another. Next to the rack was a pedestal, and next to it an armour stand. The suit which hung upon it closely resembled that which his younger self wore in the pictures, but it was different — this, too, was covered in black hide, and this, too, bore a closed eye, set into the helmet. Zel’s gut told her it was a distinct entity from Zirnitra, not just an item bedecked by more of its hide. Another living dragon descendant turned into a piece of Kanberich’s regalia. Rather than try to comprehend how such a thing might be achieved, Zel moved on. A painting of Kanberich in full regalia hung above the fireplace, black spear and armour both, surrounded by emerald flame.

The old dragonslayer sat at the table of gold-inlaid granite, surrounded by two chairs and a couch, both of purplish leather with a lining of supple fur. Even these materials gave off a sense of power, hinting at some forgotten beast from which they had been taken. Unlike most furniture, the couch didn’t so much as utter a noise when Zel set down her full weight on it. Even back then, only weeks after her emergence, she had already weighed a little over 150kg, and now, between her arm and general growth, she estimated herself to be approaching the upper end of the 100-200kg range. Victor remained standing.

“Ah… It has been far too long since I have come here,” Kanberich said, sinking into his seat, resting his spear under his arm. He snapped his fingers, and with a flash of green flame, called out in Ankhezian. A few moments later, a golem as tall as Daywolf and significantly bulkier walked into the room, its footsteps light and soundless. Wrought of off-white stone, with a minimalist humanoid base design that was richly ornamented by inlays of gold and silver, the construct was unmistakably Old Ankhezian in design. It was as if it had stepped out of a historical treatise on the heights and decline of the Ankhezian Imperium. It carried in hand a platter with a jar and three cups, all of similarly Ankhezian design, with the jar having a narrow neck. It set them on the table through some manner of telekinesis and left. Kanberich enthusiastically opened the jar and filled all three cups, commenting: “I admit, I have been waiting for an excuse to do this. Out of everything there has been a severe lack of cultivator drinks since the collapse.”

The drink was clear, but it split and reflected the light in curious ways and gave off a faint mist. Sipping gingerly, the dragonslayer let out a pleased sigh that sounded like a century of tension releasing from his body.

Following suit, Zel also took up her cup and took a sip. Smooth, ever so faintly citrusy, cold, with notes of spices she couldn’t name. Warmth instantly spread through her body and she felt herself relax. It was fantastic. To compare this with alchemically-activated ethanol was an insult — only the likes of Borean blood mead could hope to compare. As far as she could tell, there was no significant toxicity to worry about, and she trusted Kanberich not to endanger her disciple. As such, she gave Victor a simple nod that it was safe. He stretched out his aura, forming a construct to pick up the cup with, drinking in the same way as they had. His cheeks instantly became flushed, and any stress disappeared from his face.

“Hell of a drink, isn’t it? All the good parts and none of the bad ones, it would be cheating if it wasn’t such a pain in the ass to get it right — get one thing wrong, and it’s poison. Drinkable, but the kid would’ve keeled over from that shot if my brew wasn’t just right. At this point, I’d like to say my version is the best on the continent, but… I’d rather not have that smug old bastard show up at my door again. Ankhezian sages are nothing if not persistent,” Kanberich said, pouring a second round before stopping up the jar.

Zel wondered if this was at all relevant to Victor’s problem, but she felt in her gut that it had to be. Something about this whole setup felt too purposeful to be just coincidental.

“Is it stable?” she asked.

365 - SIEGFRIED [Sturmblitz]

Kanbu led them to a courtyard behind the building. A shaded walkway ran around its perimeter, supported by pillars, with an island of grass in the middle. A statue stood in the middle, bearing in hand a spear. It was nearly identical to the many guardian statues which had played so vital a role during the Blue Moon War. The pedestal was bedecked by a bronze plaque, polished and ageless:

Slayer of dragons near and far

Bearer of a thousand scars

Veteran of a hundred wars

Take care, remember who you are

When passing into the inner square, the background noise of the outside subtly became more distant. A privacy array — one so refined neither her instincts nor Victor’s eyes could detect it before they were already within its boundary.

He grasped the spear, and the statue relinquished it, shifting into a kneeling bow, resting one arm on its knee and the other fist-down to its pedestal. When Kanbu held it, the armament was easily two heads taller than him.

“I am Siegfried Kanberich Eberhart!”

Every word of his true name shook the air and ground, as if each one spoken unsealed a portion of his true presence. And yet, she couldn’t tell how strong he actually was. In a flash of green fire, the plain spear revealed its true form, but Zel couldn’t help but pay attention to the flame before the spear, as she hadn’t had the opportunity to see it many times at all since the Battle of Ubul’s Tomb. Among all the different kinds of magical fire she had seen, no two were alike. Not just in colour, but even in the manner it burned, in how it formed tongues and moved. The spear’s shaft was wrapped in black, scaly hide, and its head was a three-sided spike with barbs running down its length. In an instant, the barbs folded, leaving only faint lines to imply their presence. A pair of wings was present halfway down its length, wrapped so tightly around the shaft that they laid nearly flat against it. Zel also glimpsed what appeared to be claws tightly gripping the spear, and eyes just beneath the spear-point.

“Dragonslaying Aspect-emperor Body: Wings!” Kanbu — Kanberich — bellowed, and a gout of green flame issued from his mouth, forming into wings of flame upon his back.

DRAGONSLAYING ASPECT-EMPEROR BODY: WINGS

“Dragonslaying Aspect-emperor Body: Tail!” he once more proclaimed, and in the same manner, a great tail formed from his lower back, encircling Zel and Daywolf as it took shape. It tapered smoothly, and coiled around Zelsys and Victor easily.

DRAGONSLAYING ASPECT-EMPEROR BODY: TAIL

Lastly, he thumped his spear against the statue’s placard. A curious, bell-like ringing sound issued forth. It made Zel’s eyes vibrate in their sockets, somehow.

“Wake up, Zirnitra.”

The spear’s wings unfolded, and the eye atop its shaft lazily split open, revealing a shining-green dragonstone. There was no mistaking it — not its appearance, nor its unique aura or the manner in which it pierced through Zelsys. Somehow, the armament wasn’t just alive in the manner of any enspirited weapon, the spear itself was a living dragon descendant!

“You might have many questions. All of them, I will answer, in time. First among them: Why did I not do this earlier?” he said, turning to face them. He wore a mysterious smile, but there was an almost apologetic appearance to his eyes. “Why did I not aid you in this manner at Ubul’s Tomb? The answer is… I could not have. Only through the power of secret Kargarian fog-sailing rites was I able to project what meagre strength I had squirreled away, and that ember burned out on that day. I have laboured bitterly since then to reignite just this smattering of my former strength, and even now, I cannot be Siegfried for long. Reforging my steel has been… An arduous walk down memory lane. I can scarcely believe I ever gave this up willingly, even if it was to hide from Tian Feng. Dead Ones, I was a monster once. What I am now is a mere whelp by comparison. But that’s enough of my senile rambling. I promised to hear you out elsewhere, and that I shall do: Take you elsewhere.”

Kanberich’s tail tightened around the two of them, before he pointed his spear skyward and jumped. In the span of a breath, they had gone from standing on the ground to soaring through the air. With a corona of green surrounding them, the three flew as if a comet, and the landscape zipped past at a speed that almost seemed comical. Between this and the sensation of the air, there was no doubt in Zel’s mind that Kanberich was riding a leyline — that esoteric art which still eluded her in all forms.

The air howled in defiance, and through it, Kanberich’s voice rang out in exhilarated laughter.

Far too quickly, they reached the crater-edge mountains to Willowdale’s north-east. Zel assumed that Kanberich had a base there, likely hidden by arrays from detection, but reality proved far stranger than expectation. They approached a particular point near the mountain range, a few hundred meters above. Goosebumps ran down the back of Zel’s neck, and Victor squinted his eyes, emitting a groan of discomfort as he closed Daywolf’s visor. Then, they passed an invisible boundary, and a great spire of stone hundreds of meters tall made itself known. By how it emerged from the mountain, it almost looked to be carved from natural stone right then and there, not built. Windows ran down its entire length, but the outer surface was rough and covered with cubes of blackstone, embedded at uneven intervals like pyrite crystals.

Kanberich damn near ran them into the cliff-edge, only to turn on a dime and begin a sharp ascent.

At the top, the old dragonslayer let them go, himself landing on his feet without issue. The same could be said for Zel, but Victor lost balance and doubled over before he managed to get Daywolf to right itself and land on its feet.

The very top of the tower was flat, with walkways extending from the ledge in eight directions and prongs rising skyward between them, forming a shimmering barrier. The air up here wasn’t any thinner than on the ground, and more than that, it was so incredibly thick with pneuma that one could see faint wisps of iridescent-silver phasing in and out of being with the naked eye.

“Welcome to the Guardian Spire. From this place, older than memory, we oversaw our Great Work, the burial of the Second King’s Ziggurat. Seeing as you-” he nodded towards Victor, “-are the living key to its resurfacing, I thought it an appropriate location.”

With a grin, Kanberich spun his spear. Its eye closed, wings retracted, and his own phantom dragon limbs also dissipated. “Now come. We have much to discuss.”

364 - The Heiress and the Living Relic [Sturmblitz]

The Founder of the Newman Sect walked through the city, followed closely by a bone-wrought figure somewhere between the size of a person and a tank suit. It floated behind her upon jets of black flame, resting the sacred staff Oculus across its shoulders with its hands draped overtop it, and a terrible centipede whipped back and forth from its back. Zelsys, meanwhile, was as casual as she could be — that is to say, each of her steps and even her relaxed attitude still insinuated the possibility of incredible violence. Disparities of size and demeanor aside, Zelsys was undeniably the more imposing presence of the two.

Their first destination was a building not far from the sect compound: The Krishorn Clan’s combination import store and office. Ezaryl Krishorn sat behind the counter with her feet up on its edge, clad in the same provocative outfit as always. She was moking from a long pipe embellished with the motif of a serpent-like dragon, its open mouth being the bowl. A red jacket, only long enough to cover half of her upper body, with a deep cleavage and a single wide sleeve on the left, decorated with block prints of a cloud pattern in white. A flat shoulder-guard was also attached on her left. Her black, parachute-like trousers were held up by a belt of red rope and had excessively wide windows on the sides, making it all too easy for anyone to incidentally glimpse the heiress’s high-waisted underwear. Black, held together by golden rings. All fog-infused fabric; once a luxury, now the norm. From her belt of red rope, a guardless sabre with a plain wooden handle and a plain wooden scabbard hung, held in place by cords of the same shade as the belt.

Her eyes lit up at the sight of Zelsys, and in one motion, the heiress pulled herself up onto the counter, then sat down atop it. The wood creaked softly under her rather modest weight.

“Oh? Ohoho? Didn’t expect you of all people today. Actually… I didn’t expect anyone, now that I think about it. We’ve yet to receive any major shipments since your last visit, but I’m sure I can find something. Tengri’s Tears, perhaps? We got a few selection crates of unnamed non-production formulations while you were in seclusion.”

“I’ll take you up on that offer, but it’s not why I am here. I require consultation with a senior Iron Brotherhood engineer, as well as tank suit plans. Mainly motile system designs, joints and so on.”

“What for, I wonder? Makhus wouldn’t send you… Want to re-mould another of your joints, perhaps?” Ezaryl questioned, but her gaze wandered and her speech trailed off when Victor finally entered the building. All things considered, the space wasn’t cramped even for Daywolf. The ceiling was easily four meters high, and the door tall enough for the armor to pass with a slight hunch.

After glancing between Zelsys and Daywolf’s skull-faced visage for a few moments, Ezaryl became a touch more serious, giving a slow now. “I see. I understand now. I can send Meiben later today at the earliest. Full confidentiality, of course.”

“I appreciate it. Now, about that sampler crate…”

With that, Ezaryl’s upbeat demeanor immediately returned. Soon, she was on her way with two such crates in tow, purchased for an extortionate price that was mutually understood to be indirect payment for the favor — not in cash, but valuable materials, Eisengeist’s own nerves and tendons. Zelsys knew better than to devalue and waste such things by using them as payment willy-nilly, but this situation was exactly suitable to make an exception.

Kanbu was next — the old dragonslayer whom she had met by chance, and who had gone on to play a pivotal role in the Blue Moon War. Not only had he anonymously awakened Willowdale’s guardian statues, he had also employed an enormous technique over a long range to empower the statues and temporarily reanimate the war-dead of Ubul’s Tomb on the side of Willowdale. The green flame of his technique was etched into Zel’s memory, even if she had lacked the faculties to realize its nature at the time. It wasn’t hard finding out who had performed the feat, as Kanbu all but made it public afterward, redecorating his restaurant to more obviously display some of his many trophies and keepsakes. She had eaten the old man’s cooking many times since the Blue Moon War, and in turn, he had shared many tales of his exploits, including countless tiny glimmers of knowledge from the era of the Three Kings and the dark ages after the fall.

There was no doubt in Zel’s mind that, at his peak, Kanbu had the strength to go toe-to-toe with a Three-eyed Dragon Descendant with his own Dragonslayer Flame and come out on top. If anyone in Willowdale knew how to bend dragon muscle tissue to one’s will, it was him.

A wall of tantalizing scents met Zelsys when she stepped through the door, and so did Kanbu’s piercing gaze. Behind the counter he stood, looking decades younger than when she had first met him. His long, grey hair, bushy eyebrows, and deeply-creased skin had been replaced by a visage far more like the individual shown in many of the pictures that bedecked the walls — the main difference being that rather than regain colour, Kanbu’s hair was now pure white. He now looked to be in his fifties.

Zel took a seat and set her bottle down, while Victor maneuvred Daywolf inside. Kanbu refused to react.

At the counter, a haggard-looking man sat, nursing a steaming drink and a half-eaten plate of pierogi. His nose was swollen, flanked to either side by sleazy sideburns, his face still bore wrinkles carved into it by holding a lecherous grimace for years on-end. It was Henry — and similarly to Kanbu, he had improved since she had first seen him. From a living corpse on two legs to merely haggard. She remembered Kanbu kicking him out for incessantly talking about political theory and "Ikesiochauvinists" when she and Zef first visited the restaurant.

There was also one other customer, a red-haired woman with a sword at her hip, sitting next to Henry. Narrow face. Some scars. A multicolored fly-fishing lure for an earring. Early fourties by Zel’s estimate.

Both of them paled at the monstrous armor, requiring Zelsys to reassure them that there was nothing wrong. It took the woman some time to recognize Victor, but once she did, it sufficed to calm her, and in turn, to calm Henry.

With a deadpan tone and an expressionless face, Kanbu questioned: “You want me to ask why you made him bring that unwieldly thing in here, don’t you?”

“No. Well, yes, that is one reason,” Zel agreed, holding back a grin.

A sigh.

“Very well. Why did you make him bring that unwieldly thing in here?” he asked, just as deadpan as before.

She allowed herself to grin. “I thought it would be funny.”

It was true — that was one of her reasons.

“But… My main reason is that I wanted to ask for your help, and you need to examine it up close, while it’s active. We can’t exactly put it inside a storage tablet.”

Kanbu dropped the deadpan act, and a faint smile took hold.

“I knew you would come eventually. I just didn’t think it would be for someone else.”

He glanced at Henry. “Close down after me and you can have it for free.”

A silent nod from the haggard man was the answer, and with that, Kanbu hopped over the counter as if he weighed nothing. With similar dexterity, he slipped past both Zelsys and Daywolf, prompting them from outside: “Come. I will hear you out, but not here.”

363 - "Daywolf" [Sturmblitz]

One by one, the swarm of servitors converged on Victor. Twisting, rearranging, disassembling and reassembling, they gradually formed a lanky, awkward framework, more hollow than not. Numerous holes hinted at an elevated degree of mobility than Dawnwolf — it even had full-sized vertical thrust vents on the front of its calves, protected by downward-jutting, articulated knee-plates. Its faceplate was identical to Dawnwolf, but the helmet fully enclosed Victor’s head. It towered over Zelsys, but not in the manner of Zero or Acala Nova, which was its closest equivalent in build — it wasn’t nearly as stable as either of those machines, and Zel wagered a strong wind could throw it off-balance as it was now. A dozen fleshy, snake-like servitors of varying size slithered into the gaps, attaching themselves inside the suit with squelching sounds. Lastly, a centipede-like servitor attached to the back, forming a curious, tentacle-like appendage with its legs and fangs as grippers. An open mouth waited on the unit’s waist, with segmented plates mimicking the rough appearance of a belt. Victor brought out a stone smoldering with bonefire and fed it to the suit.

“Ignition!”

Black flame flowed through the armour, and the numinous force that swirled about Victor intensified greatly, such that it swept up a false wind. Pale-red aura coursed between the armour’s plates and tinged the silver conduits of the Oculus’ shaft.

Victor wasn’t done yet, making a few tentative movements within the armour before taking up another stance. Grasping the Oculus with both hands, he rattled its rings and invoked: “Sacred onbashira, mighty spear of Bishamonten, skewer all demons and cleanse the world of wretchedness!”

With another surge of numinous force, a spectral outline of the staff-spear appeared. It was significantly larger than its true size, but proportional to the prototype — and then, when Victor once more rattled its rings by raising it up, the real Oculus followed. Somehow, by a mechanism Zel didn’t understand, the implement simply increased in size. It grew nearly to match its outline, only to stop, and for the red glow within its silver conduits to die.

Victor’s shoulders slumped with a groan of frustration.

“Better than last time, at least,” he uttered. At last, he approached Zelsys. The prototype’s steps were unlike Acala Nova’s — it moved more like a stilt-legged theatre costume.

“I don’t recall seeing that enlargement technique in the Itrian Scroll. Where is it from?” Zel asked.

“Er… Bishamonten,” Victor replied. “Scrolls like mine only contained arts usable by any shrine guardian, while the Eight Guardian Deities directly taught methods of harnessing their power to those they “deemed worthy”, in Bishamonten’s own words. I have yet to complete this technique even once, so I don’t even know its name yet.”

Zel saw something there, in the flow of scarlet aura and the motion of his gestures and their lack of conviction — a flaw so glaringly-obvious even she could see it at a glance. She kept it to herself, meaning to bring it up later.

“It doesn’t matter, as long as you’re making progress — it might just need a few adjustments to make it fit you,” Zel deflected, continuing in the struggle to keep her disciple mentally on-track. “Right now, I need you to show me the prototype’s mobility. Do you have a working name? Something like Daywolf?”

“Daywolf has been the working name, yes,” Victor nodded. “I cannot help but feel it doesn’t quite work, but I can solve that later. For now, I will start with on-foot mobility and then transition into aerial mobility. The muscle tissue I am using is refined Hellfire Kite, thus the performance will be at best slightly better than Dawnwolf with significantly more muscle mass.”

“Enough talking. Just show me,” Zel repeated herself.

And so he did. Daywolf’s awkwardness quickly vanished once it got up to speed, and its long legs and somewhat disproportionate build allowed it to sprint blisteringly quickly. The turn radius could use some work, given how wide it was even with assistance from bonefire maneuvering jets. In the air, its mobility was at its peak — even this unfinished prototype took to the air far more readily than Dawnwolf. From swimming through mid air with the appearance of weightlessness, to roaring from one end of the grove to the other, Daywolf’s air maneuverability was its best-developed aspect.

“Alright, I’ve seen enough. Hit me. As hard as you can, no enhancements, muscle strength only — you know how this goes.”

At that instruction, Victor landed in front of Zelsys. He stepped back a bit, then drew back his fist, widening his stance and twisting his waist. It was clear he had at least thought far enough ahead to account for Daywolf’s proportions.

Zel crossed her arms in a simple guard, digging her heels in so as to take as much of the impact as possible. From the  vibrations that traveled up her right arm, she immediately knew it was roughly equivalent to a “Mons Ominosus” rocket-assisted punch from Dawnwolf, but not one fuelled by an extraordinary amount of power.

“Impressive. Efficiency-wise, how long do you think Daywolf can operate under combat output? At least a comparison to Dawnwolf,” she asked.

Opening the suit’s faceplate, Victor immediately answered, and spun it off into yet another defeatism-spiral: “Much shorter. I have yet to optimize it for efficiency, and the Wildfire Kite muscle obeys, but puts up far greater resistance than material from Teutobochus. I’ve considered simply waiting until Teutobochus arrives. I’ve come to the conclusion that Koschei’s estimate for the titan’s speed of self-repair in Borea’s environment was overly optimistic, but the maximum time still places its latest arrival near the end of this year, and realistically, it will likely arrive not long after the Borean caravan…”

“Nonsense,” Zelsys disregarded the very thought. She reached out with four Thundergods and dragged Victor into a slouching posture, forcing him to lean on her shoulders lest he topple over. With her bare hands, she forced Daywolf’s mask open and stared into those weird, weird cruciform pupils of his. “You will rage against your own limitations here and now, to the fullest extent of your ability, and I will see to it that you are able to do so. If the time of Teutobochus’ arrival comes and you have yet to bend Eisengeist’s flesh to your will, then you may consider sourcing more tissue from Teutobochus as a temporary, intermediary solution. No earlier. Waiting for a problem to solve itself sounds easy. You become complacent. Complacency is death. Complacency is how centuries-old cultivators manage to run out their clock and die in a cave somewhere. Daywolf can run at low output for some time, yes?”

“A few hours, just like Dawnwolf. The issues arise with combat output levels.”

“Good! Then just keep it on and focus on keeping it running as efficiently as possible.”

221 - Razgriz Pt. 2 - Volume 2 FINAL [Cherno]

Krahe’s side of that exchange was significantly uglier and more painful. That double-fisted punch had not only burst one and scorched both of her lungs, it had also bruised her heart. Her impact with the wall didn’t do her many favours, either. As she slumped to the ground she slipped out of consciousness, but Barzai’s shrieking call inside her own skull dragged her back into the world of pain. Groaning on the inside for lack of strength do so vocally, Krahe mobilized a monumental force of will, ripping open a wound-like grin within the palm of her left hand. She used a tendril of tar as thin as one finger to reach inside, and by the power of Thaumic Fusion, she brought out the silver-cased injector… but she couldn’t raise it up to drive it into her own heart. Her left arm gripped the implement, but she could barely raise her wrist. Once more, Krahe gathered a monumental force of will, gritting her teeth such that she felt one of her molars crack under the pressure. A strained groan rose from her throat. Blood began leaking from her nostrils, steaming as it ran down her face, and her vision was dyed crimson a moment later.

With a weight comparable to a mountain, Krahe raised her arm and pushed the injector’s monolithic needle into her chest. It scraped against one of her ribs, and with a sensation of icy heat, it pierced her heart. That same sensation soon flooded her, and pain returned as an ocean of clarion clarity — at once, the serum refused to let her ignore her state, yet also clarified her thoughts. Since implanting the Atomica she had been burning herself alive from within, but now she also felt that way.

What had felt like a protracted struggle had, in fact, taken a few seconds — so short in fact that the cloud of dust her impact with the wall had created was still yet to dissipate.

She nonetheless got back up, feeling her own insides writhe as they rearranged and pulled back together. Layers of skin, ravaged and baked to coal, sloughed off, revealing bare flesh underneath, threads of new dermal tissue already growing to cover the gap. It was then that Barzai returned to her, perching sideways on her left forearm.

And so, she raised her hand and once more ignited a flame, collapsing it into the light of anathema.

Tendrils of blackest black, suffused with glass and dark jade, twisted together from her wrist to form a nest. Within it Barzai perched, cackling, and as Krahe emerged from the cloud of dust, the raven began screaming the final stanza to its tirade. Though the sound reached her ears, her mind was so utterly focused on moving forward and not collapsing that she didn’t process what he was saying. She only noticed that at some point he stopped.

At the sight of Semzar, still staring at her in disbelief from behind his barrier, a deep, guttural disgust cut through it all, through the pain and exhaustion. It perfectly matched just how sick she felt. From the boundless well of vitriol she had refined and distilled throughout her life, a rebuke bubbled, and Barzai spoke it alongside her in perfect synchronicity.

“YOU ARE A TAPEWORM. THAT BODY IS NOT YOURS. RETURN IT TO ZAVESH.”

Around the framework of black tendrils, solid panels began forming an icosahedron. Semzar snapped out of his daze and once more began sloppily loosing flaming fists Krahe’s way, but even as wrecked as she was, it took minimal movement to dodge them. He wasn’t even putting the bare-minimum thought into them as he had done before — by now, Semzar was lashing out in pure panic, his ring flashing a dim light that spoke clearly of just how doomed its fool of a wielder was. There was not a chance in hell it would be ready before the Daemon Core was.

But… Just in case.

Krahe opened three more mouths along her arm.

And spoke the Words. She knew not whether or not there was any point or benefit, but she did it regardless.

With the first Word, three flaming fists closest to her were cast aside, tinged in red and black, and sent flying back at Semzar, changing shape mid-air into the clawed talons of Wandrei Faust.

With the second Word, several chairs and tables were sent flying.

With the third Word, the windows blew out.

With each word, the Daemon Core’s formation sped up. 

With each word, the ember at its core burned ever brighter, with ever more wretched hatred for its victim.

THREE KEYS TO SWING WIDE THE GATES OF BLACKEST BLACKNESS

THREE WORDS SO MIGHTY NO MORTAL MIND CAN HOLD THEM

THREE BREATHLESS MOUTHS WITH WHICH TO SPEAK THEM

At the moment of completion, as Krahe gestured forth to sic the Daemon Core upon Semzar, the baneworm had the good judgment to strike, rightly thinking that she was not in the ideal state to dodge his strike. Krahe, without even thinking, raised an unassisted barrier, a swirling, undulating mass of smoke and sparks, almost alive in appearance. It didn’t matter how much entropy it cost her, and it would not have mattered even if that impact had sent her into meltdown. Rather than redouble his assault Semzar began feverishly looking around, and when his gaze fell upon the couch where he had sat, or rather upon the unconscious body of Casus Aristedes, he thought he might still have a chance. But by the time he began moving in that direction, the Daemon Core had, with unsettling swiftness, caught up to him, floating ominously overhead. One of the shell’s panels cracked. 

In the next moment, screaming death poured forth and obliterated everything below his meatsuit’s head, burning a farcical silhouette into the floor tiles. Crimson light filled the ballroom and poured out of all available openings. In every way that mattered, Semzar was already dead. Only an anathema-poisoned, mutilated, dying baneworm remained, writhing impotently within its skull in a vain effort to escape.

AN EYE OF CRIMSON IMPRISONED IN BLACKNESS

ITS GAZE ERUPTS FORTH TO SCOUR AWAY THE UNWORTHY

BLACK HAND OF DESOLATION: DAEMON CORE

Krahe, with every ounce of will left to her, stumbled over to Semzar’s head, leaning on furniture along the way. Slowly, with great effort, she stomped and stomped until the skull cracked open and Semzar flopped out. He was severely discolored, veins bulging beneath his slimy skin, and blackened anathema burns covered a third of what remained of his body. He didn’t even try to escape, twitching in her grasp. She brought out a souldreg extractor and jabbed it into the dying worm. A multicoloured mass of souldregs filled the vial halfway, the natural pearlescence marred by black and purple threads and specks. After stowing it away, Krahe struggled back to her feet and ambled over to the couch, sitting down next to Casus.

Every screaming muscle in her body insisted that it would be fine to fall asleep, that the Inquisitor would arrive any time now. Krahe didn’t buy that, and forced herself back up. Lacking the strength to do anything so glamorous as carry her unconscious comrade out of the mansion, she dragged him along instead.

______________________________________________________________________________

Having already entered the mansion, Yazata was in no position to witness the light show. However, out of anyone, she was particularly well suited to hearing the Words, to feeling the reverberations of a high theurgy being carried out to the utmost extent. Feeling the abrupt dimming of Blackhand’s magical signature that followed the theurgy, the Inquisitor continued making her way further into the mansion with renewed urgency.

With her pack of red hoods in tow, she came across the two of them at the foot of the staircase leading to the ballroom’s main door. To say they were in a sorry state would have been an enormous understatement. Casus bore numerous wounds, his right arm was wrecked, and so was the Silberblut Coupler. He was unconscious, but besides the filth, he would be fine. Blackhand, who was dragging him along, resembled the burnt-out husk of a dead anathemist more than any living thing. The left side of her face was completely overtaken by anathema burns, as was a significant portion of the rest of her body. Trails of blood crusted her face, yet somehow her bodysuit was pristine. Then, a chunk of burned skin sloughed off, and fresh skin made itself known underneath. Calbian Molting Tonic. Unmistakable. That she lived in her state was no longer a surprise — the question became how she was able to walk in her state given the tonic’s clarifying, painkiller-neutralizing side effect.

Yazata didn’t get to ask any of the many questions swirling in her mind. Blackhand locked eyes with her, smirked, and uttered with a death-like whisper: “Ah. Good. You must be the Inquisitor.”

With those words, she also collapsed.

220 - Razgriz Pt. 1 [Cherno]

Once more, the battle settled back into a back-and-forth. Krahe still questioned why Semzar had used the ring that early instead of waiting until he could affect the Wandrei Faust, whose Standoff-mode range was shorter than the ring’s maximum effective range. Did it not work on attacks and constructs of Theurgic nature? Besides being rather generous, that explanation assumed that Semzar knew the nature of Wandrei Faust. The much more likely reason was that Semzar had been holding his mental trigger finger on the ring all along, and ended up pulling it on instinct, without deeper consideration.

Her second Wandrei Faust met its end exceedingly quickly, shot down by such an overkill barrage that Krahe was still happy with the outcome thanks to the opening Semzar had given her. Disappointingly, she had to use that opening to purge entropy instead of ripping into him, but she planted another bullet in his barrier to not let him off easy. Krahe allowed another short while to pass without making any significant moves, half to test whether the ring had a cooldown, and half because she was struggling to keep up. As drugged as she was, the pain of her body breaking down didn’t impede her — but the increasing loss of mobility could not be denied. She increasingly had to rely more and more on diving and skimming to compensate, cutting into her ability to mount assaults of sufficient intensity to pressure Semzar.

A third Wandrei Faust, she sacrificed alongside a burster and a Six Trees Killer to keep the bastard occupied. He shot down this Faust, too, whilst leaping out of the range of the two others before they could detonate. While that took place, he clenched his fist twice, accompanied by flashes of red from the Crimson Star Ring. They were much dimmer than before, bright enough to see, and Krahe observed no tangible shockwave emission. From this, she inferred that he was mentally smashing the button while the ring was still recharging, having both seen and done similar things in the past. Krahe considered using the Calbian Molting Tonic, but the problem was, she would need time to do so, and it would likely take more time after that to take effect. Storing it in the Kenoma Pocket had cost her a significant chunk of entropy, so retrieval would be the same, and she would have to line it up just right to get between the Liminal Coil’s abnormally-shaped ribs, exactly into her heart. In short, the same opening needed to inject it would also be wide enough to finish Semzar off.

It wasn’t long before Krahe lined up another decisive strike, blasting herself through the air and using a fourth Wandrei Faust as a distraction. She rendered her landing abnormally smooth by astro diving, but as she slid away from him, she skimmed into the floor — just far enough to trigger the kinetic rebound. In the blink of an eye she was suddenly sliding towards him, fusion-forming a tar-tendril with a burster in its tip as she transitioned from sliding to a low sprint. He shot down the Wandrei Faust as expected, but before her explosive tendril could reach him, there came another flash from that ring. From this up-close, she could clearly see its two shockwaves spreading out, tearing at the flooring and tossing aside furniture as they went. She immediately realized she had made a severe mistake — she couldn’t adjust her course quickly enough to avoid the shockwave altogether.

Thus, the answer was to skim through it. Spanning no more than thirty centimeters in thickness, surpassing the twin shockwave would be more than possible, and so Krahe committed to that course of action. She released her hold on her burster-tendril, honed her focus to the absolute extreme of Razormind, and, as the world felt as if it would come to a halt, she dipped her feet into the astral gulf, set her target destination, and initiated the skim.

A moving wall of force halted her, and threw her aside like a ragdoll. She had just enough time to realize that, somehow, the Crimson Star Ring’s shockwave could negate Astro Skimming, and presumably Astro Diving. The sole reason she got the time to consider this was that despite her skim being halted halfway, she still experienced a moment of extreme time dilation when she resurfaced — thus she hung in mid-air for a stretched-out split-second, locking eyes with an unaware Semzar. Before she could hit the ground, a pair of flaming fists smashed into her ribcage and decisively sent her flying into the wall. 

____________________________________________________________

Victorious laughter sprung forth from Semzar’s throat, resembling the cackle of a rabid animal due to how hard he had pushed his meatsuit. He didn’t know how or why that demon had been thrown back, he had acted purely on reflex, and it had taken him a few moments to realize what he had just done… But now that he knew, Semzar’s immediate response was to bask in a victory he perceived to be rightly his, even as his body tensed in alarm, senses setting of cascades of body memory that the baneworm himself did not understand.

Another source of laughter rang out. It was that raven. It had begun laughing as it flew towards its master, its persistent presence a hint as to what was to come. A few seconds passed, and, for some reason, Semzar found himself unable to act or move. Something heavy clunked to the floor, followed by a deathly wheeze. Those green pinpricks flared back to life inside the cloud of dust and smoke, and soon she emerged once more. Her skin was utterly decimated, bare flesh showing through in countless places, and the shape of an unnatural ribcage was impressed upon her bodysuit from the inside, lit by a red-orange glow. Her trousers were reduced to rags, yet miraculously retained some vague notion of their original shape as they billowing about her legs. Above her left hand floated a hemispherical tangle of black tendrils, and within that nest, the laughing raven roosted.

“Wh- what are you?!” 

The green-eyed demon gave no answer. Instead, the raven ceased its cackling to speak once more:

“AT THE END OF MY LIFE, CUT DOWN BY A BETRAYER, I, BLACKHAND, THE MONSTER, DIED. EONS HENCE, LIKE RAZGRIZ, I, BLACKHAND, THE HERO, HAVE BEEN BORN ANEW. MILLIONS HAVE BURNED BY MY HAND BEFORE YOU AND MILLIONS WILL BURN ERE I PERMIT THIS WORLD TO BE OVERRUN BY YOUR KIND. THIS IS THE CLEANSING OF YOUR SIN. PREPARE TO DIE.”

In concert with her familiar, Blackhand spat at him:

“YOU ARE A TAPEWORM. THAT BODY IS NOT YOURS. RETURN IT TO ZAVESH.”

362 - 10101 [Sturmblitz]

Zel glanced behind him, at the vast array of tiny effigies, realizing their specific purpose.

“You have explained the reason why Koschei was doing what he was doing. You have yet to explain why you continued using the mask.”

“I… I admit I cannot yet bear with the weight. Obtaining the strength to snuff out the Order lies too far beyond the horizon. In my thoughtscape, I can distort my perception of time to the utmost — I have been using this to attempt, time and again, to create a stronger servitor, a stronger Dawnwolf. But I can’t. My mastery is insufficient — I lack the knowledge to make it function, I lack the raw strength to drive it, I lack the base materials to build it. So, I’ve continued retreating into my thoughtscape. I admit I spend much of my time in escapism, but I also spend just as much meditating on the contents of the Itrian Scroll.”

She sensed that this was not true, but also not a lie. Zel wagered that Victor himself didn’t know whether that answer was the objective truth, but that he also felt as if it was true. She could not blame him. Time, within one’s thoughtscape, flowed much like it did in a dream. A lapse of focus could lead to enormous jumps in dream-time. His conclusion as to how to resolve his heart demon was of sound logic, but it was also too farsighted, set too stringently on the subject of his heart demon. Unsurprisingly, such an issue impeded one’s ability to resolve it. He had set his eyes too far ahead and failed to see the road that would lead him there, overfocusing on the end goal when in truth his turmoil would be resolved by the process of achieving that goal and the sense of progress gained from it. In short, were he to gain the power to exterminate the Order of Six Truths right now, for instance through the sudden arrival of Teutobochus, doing so would not actually rid him of his heart demon. A path of struggle and actual growth would be required to achieve it.

As for his speaking of revenants, she didn’t think it was a delusion. The same ephemeral sensation she had felt from purified revenant aura was also present about him, having surfaced only now that the mask was off.

While Zelsys thought of how she might aid in that process, she asked him a question: “You said the revenants of Eberheim left their lingering will with you. How many?”

Eberheim had been a relatively prosperous city, spared the worst of the war, taken early and without combat — even before the unification, it could not have been said to belong to either Ikesia or Grekuria particularly strongly. All it had taken was some paperwork to officiate the change of hands, and life had gone on mostly unperturbed. As such, it had held one of the largest populations in the country post-war, while its status and proximity to the border had permitted it to forgo significant militarization, inevitably leading to its targeting by the Order of Six Truths. Zelsys had a good idea of the estimated population and estimated casualty numbers, but those could be only loosely correlated to how many revenants actually formed from their sacrifice, let alone how many Victor purified, and of those, how many left their lingering will with him.

The redhead counted for a few moments, then settled on a number: “Thirty-thousand, seven-hundred sixty-three. Of them, nineteen-thousand one-hundred and eight left with me a will of vengeance, wrath, or other desire for the destruction of the Order or their ilk. Fifteen-thousand, seven-hundred and seventy-seven wished to be remembered. Eleven-thousand and three specifically wished to be memorialized in a physical manner. There is much overlap. I believe I can fulfill the wishes of those vengeful who wished to be memorialized physically by building servitors to house their wills. From the vengeful remnants, I may be able to channel strength right away, and those who merely wished to be memorialized will indirectly strengthen me through strengthening Bishamonten. Eventually, their remnant will may naturally congeal to form powerful sacred spirits.”

“How many vengeful revenants sought to be memorialized? Do you have any idea as to how many would be most fitting to entomb within a servitor?”

Victor smiled.

“The “Pure Revenants” number ten thousand, one-hundred and one. Yes, I’ve counted and recounted many times to make sure. I have already given this much thought, and Bishamonten has given me much counsel. I mean to channel their vengeful will through Dawnwolf’s successor. I’ve already had to split the armour into smaller sub-servitors due to its vastly increased size and complexity, for many reasons, including the fact the Gate of Fantasy simply would not be able to transport it in its complete state. The restriction will also allow me to render the final armour more powerful, despite how counter-intuitive it might be from a purely mundanist design perspective. I will be able to freely control how Revenant Aura is distributed between individual pieces to maximize performance where it is needed at any given moment, or to alter the distribution in order to compensate for battle damage.”

He was becoming tangled in his own thoughts again, but Zel couldn’t just zap him again. She would rapidly run into diminishing returns and accumulating issues that way, especially without a technique specifically developed for this purpose. She had to give him a clear direction and a beacon to focus on, and make damn sure he stayed on that path until it became wide enough that one step wouldn't make him fall into the metaphorical abyss below.

“Enough. Show me your best prototype.”

“It’s… I- Well, I have one, but…” he trailed off again.

“You have one,” Zel repeated, gripping Victor’s shoulder, just hard enough to be painful but not hard enough to actually hurt him. “So show me.”

“It’s not even functional,” he argued, continuing to do so even as Zel picked him up like a ragdoll. She pointed to a cluster of strange statues and obvious servitors nearby. “There?”

“I only have so much Teutobochus muscle, and I’ve yet to make any kind of dragon muscle work… Yes, that’s it. Anyway, I know that refining dragon musculature is possible, I simply lack the skill, or perhaps the raw power, or most likely both.”

She set him down in the middle of the servitor-group, shoving the Oculus into his hands, placing her own on his shoulders, and staring him in the face from only a few widths of a finger away. 

“It doesn’t matter, just show me — assuming you can do it without hurting yourself.”

“I can, yes. The suit can’t do much of anything, and the formation sequence is still too slow, but the basic structure works. In a combat situation, I would use another technique to call the servitors to me directly from the shrine.”

Numerous small servitors, alongside two larger, skeletal ones, sprung into motion and arranged themselves in a circle around Victor as he held up the Oculus. He began a ceremonial dance, spinning the staff in hand as he cautiously yet also quickly moved from one pose to the next. The staff’s secondary rings spun in place and a gap in space opened within its main ring, and through that gap, Zel could see the shining, star-like core which resides within the shrine. A familiar, numinous pressure descended, and with a sound like thunder, a circle was stamped into the ground under Victor’s feet, just like back at Eberheim.

“Grand. Glorious. Gathering.”

361 - Re: Brute Unsealing [Sturmblitz]

Arcs of golden fire indignantly flared from the Oculus, but Zel’s Thundergods pulled it into her grasp regardless, regenerating what small wounds they had been dealt in seconds. It burned her at first, but a moment later, as if recognizing her, the relic ceased protesting. The same could not be said for Bishamonten — the shrine’s doors rattled, and the idol of Bishamonten, alongside the demonic statues which held it aloft and surrounded it all turned their heads to glower at her. She spun the Oculus in hand whilst turning it in her palm to produce a rattling sound. The staff remained unharmed, as she did not wield it as a weapon, but as a ritual implement.

It was at the moment Zel reached a particular end-pose, with the Oculus’ rings jangling around, that the shrine’s doors flew open. They revealed the golden sphere within, fiery mist swirling around it in a star-like manner, yet at once entirely unlike an actual star. 

“YOU DARE?!” a mighty voice thundered inside her head, and a numinous pressure bore down on her. The intent it carried was to cast her to her knees and rob the breath from her lungs, but not to cause permanent harm — a surprising degree of tact and caution from a warrior-deity lashing out in indignation.

“Or he already knows it’s me…” a thought crossed her mind.

In an exertion of will, with arcs of lightning and the sound of thunder from within her, Zelsys suppressed the divinity’s indignation, thumping the Oculus’ never-dulling spearpoint against one of the footpath stones.

“Bishamonten, your shrine guardian suffers with heart demons, and I am not sufficiently learned in the Itrian arts to summon you properly. You will simply have to allow this disrespect to pass.”

“Even were I willing, I cannot simply act. The correct rituals must be carried out, in the correct manner, with full intent. I do not doubt your spiritual nature, shura, but I do doubt your knowledge of my sutras.”

“What if I simply carry out my own ritual? Will you supply the power required, or must I do it under my own strength and risk scorching your shrine with lightning in the process?”

Both the ground and the tree behind Bishamonten’s shrine shuddered, and the shrine’s doors slammed shut.

“Very well. This is permissible,” the deity acquiesced.

“You heard clearly when I said the mask’s limit is forty-two minutes of continuous operation, yes? You can simply wait,” Koschei chimed in.

Zel answered: “I have good reason to do it this way — the shock of being forced back into reality. Now, Bishamonten!”

With that, she drew in a breath. With flashes of lightning from within her chest, the grass around her began billowing back and forth. Chittering blue sparks appeared in the air around her, dust and pebbles floating up and becoming more sparks in turn.

Another breath. Countless serpent-like forms sprung forth from her head, forming a cloak of writhing snakes, among which the six Thundergods reigned supreme. Lightning writhed about her, but did not lash out. Kneeling down, she reached out with her left hand and grasped the mask. Her claws sprung forth, becoming enveloped in steel and aura in a flash, scraping into the mask’s material.

“I COMMAND THIS MASK RELEASED,”

“NOT BY THE AUTHORITY OF MENTORSHIP,”

“BUT BY THE AUTHORITY OF MY STRENGTH!”

With each line uttered, she thumped the Oculus against a blackstone tile. Red-gold light flowed down from the rainbow aperture within its ring, tinging her aura. Zel’s Predator Aura suddenly became plainly visible, streaming off the top of her head as an endless geyser of fanged maws, claws, tails, pincers, blades, fists and arms, spikes, any and every armament to be found upon the bodies of mighty beasts. It was thin, barely allowed to escape from Zel’s body, but the degree of compression only made its manifestation all the more condensed. In the same manner, so too did her cloak of serpents and her Thundergods become tinted with Bishamonten’s numinous power, growing horns in the process.

“I SHALL NOT PERMIT MY DISCIPLE TO WALLOW IN SOLITUDE AND MISERY.”

In the same manner, the deity’s strength flowed down her left arm, its veins and silver conduits becoming suffused with red-gold glow and bulging out from under her skin. With a decisive motion, she pulled the mask from Victor’s face, and a great discharge of lightning arced between him and it.

PURE FORCE BREAKS RESTRAINTS

DIVINE LIGHT BURNS AWAY IMPURITY

WRATHFUL LIGHTNING RESOLVES IMBALANCES

GEHEIMNIS: BRUTE UNSEALING

-NUMINOUS PURIFICATION-

Victor was left unharmed, staring ahead with his hair standing on-end. Meanwhile, the mask didn’t just shatter — it was obliterated utterly by the backlash, which continued on to flow up Zel’s arm. She simply took the lightning into herself and redirected the Fulgur excess into her manifested Thundergods. As a result, Victor returned to reality to the image of his mentor grasping the Oculus and surrounded by chthonian serpents of lightning tinged with Bishamonten’s red-gold light, writhing around her with unsettling smoothness. Then, she retracted her aura and it was over.

“Whuh- Oh,” he mumbled, blinking as he realized what had transpired. “I can explain.”

A moment passed in silence. Zel was relieved that the ritual had worked as she had intended, employing the esoteric properties of Wrathful Lightning to clarify his thoughts, foisting most of the strain onto the mask.

“Well? Explain,” Zel said, sitting down in front of him, placing the Oculus across her lap. “You are aware of what I said to not-Koschei, and what he said to me. If you think you can explain, then explain.”

The redhead was silent for some time, considering his words.

“You’re right. Eberheim does weigh on me, and I am using the mask to cope. But I’m not hiding away inside my thoughtscape, wallowing or constructing elaborate mental escapes. I was doing that. The first week or so. But… It didn’t help. I had to surface every once in a while. The deeper I escaped, the worse it was when I had to come up for air. I knew you were in seclusion, so I tried to think what you would tell me, read through Sturmblitz Kunst 0 a few more times, that sort of thing. I determined the causes for my turmoil — two of them. Firstly, the fact the Order of Six Truths continues to exist. Secondly, the revenants of Eberheim. They are with me, still. Each and every one, as I purified them, left with me a flicker of will, and in turn, each carries with it a request: To be remembered, to be properly laid to rest. Anything will do, even a nameless, upturned chunk of rubble, even a stick driven into a mound of stones, they ask. Others yet demand retribution, yet burn with the desire to undo those who killed them. Thus, with your guidance under consideration, I decided on the most direct methods of suppressing and hopefully exorcizing my heart demon.”

219 - Vs. Semzar Pt. 5 - Wandrei Faust [Cherno]

At first, it seemed as if she was punching into thin air from several meters away, but as she reared her fist back, a row of fanged mouths opened down the length of her arm. In perfect concert with the punch, great black tendrils erupted from these maws, and Semzar’s entropy surged — the impact was more than twice the strength of a Yellow Atropal. His vastly superior reaction speed and physicality, driven by muscle memory and instinct not his own, allowed his body to counterattack instantly — whilst Semzar himself was still reeling from the impact, despite the fact he had not actually weathered a strike himself. As he set loose a barrage of lightning-fast punches, she was already gone, and that damnable raven had returned, resuming its tirade.

It mockingly danced between his punches, moving in an erratic manner only ever so vaguely connected to the flapping of its wings.

“ANCIENT ARMS OF NUCLEAR FIRE I UNEARTHED FROM AN AGE LONG PAST AND WITH THEM PUT TO THE TORCH ALL THE WORKS OF THOSE WHO WRONGED ME. ON A QUEST OF TWO MONTHS AND THREE DAYS I DEVASTATED THE DOMED VILLAS OF XIAOSHENG AND SCATTERED ANATHEMA AND NERVE POISON OVER THEM I TURNED THE NOBLES WHO LIVED WITHIN TO SHADOWS UPON THE STONE AND OPENED THE BELLIES AND SEVERED THE LIMBS OF ALL WHO SERVED THEM. THEIR WALLS I CAST DOWN AND LET THE BEASTS OF THE WASTE FEED UPON THEIR FLESH.”

Spinning in place, now utterly disoriented, Semzar released a guttural scream of frustration as he hunted for Blackhand. He glimpsed her shape — at last! But he was merely reacting, and he had glimpsed her in the midst of executing on a premeditated attack. Before he could even chamber a punch, let alone release it, a singular tendril with a mace-like head whipped around him and buried itself into his left side. An explosion of fire and razors followed, tearing away a vast swath of his wards. The shockwave smashed into his barrier from the inside, and the pure kinetic force, having caught him off-guard, sent him tumbling head-over-heels. Swarming pyroclast followed in his wake, sticking to him and shredding away. Semzar had no choice but to shroud himself in fire, burning an enormous deal of thauma just to cleanse the lingering deathsmoke from himself.

But it never stopped.

She continued her onslaught without relent, and in turn, so did her familiar continue its tirade. It just… It just went on. And on. And on. And on, fading into background noise. In the brief moments of mental clarity, the tirade somehow pushed itself into the empty space. Atrocity after atrocity. A life of endless murder and conquest. Within the last minute, the raven had recounted the merciless extermination of six mafia families, each larger than the Hashem Family by an order of magnitude.

________________________________________________________________________

Time after time she lashed at Semzar, dumping atrocious sums in mescalt ammunition into his Barrier all the while lashing at him and herding him around the ballroom. Finally, she spent the final bullet in the clip on a Six Trees Killer, timing it such that it would go first before a nearby burster detonated as the real attack. The moment she pulled the trigger, Krahe had already conjured a clip of dregshot alternated with mescalt, and was moving to slam it into place. The grenade approached the space above Semzar’s head, the new clip pushed the old one out, and a rapid sequence of events of took place. First, he dropped his Barrier. Second, a bright red flash issued from his hand. Third, a shockwave of swirling scarlet force burst out of his being, spreading out in a spherical shape. It cracked the floor tiles, swept up a violent gust of wind, and flung furniture across the room as if it were weightless — and much in the same way, Krahe’s Bursters were flung aside as well.

Krahe hoped it was a one-time consumable, but also knew it was unlikely. Were that the case, the form factor would have betrayed it. If she was unlucky, the ring could just do that on-demand. She theorized that the ring either guzzled thauma to recharge, or at least had a cooldown between uses. That could not be confirmed, so she would just have to continue as she had with the ring in mind as yet another factor. Semzar had so graciously brought out one tool after the next, it was only right for her to do the same. 

She shot the Pattner at her left arm, the empowered talisman plastering across her blackened muscle. In a mere moment, with a single mighty eruption of power from the Implosion Furnace, a mass of red-black pyroclast enveloped her left arm and solidified into the form of a monstrous appendage.

“Wandrei faust!”

GRUDGE-FILLED GRASP

DEATH BORNE UPON CLAWS OF HATE

BLACK HAND OF DESOLATION: WANDREI FAUST

The monstrous claw ripped free, careening headlong towards its prey with the command to reach optimal standoff range outside his Barrier’s effective angle before firing. As it flew, Krahe wasted no time and unleashed a prolonged burst of Cinder Gatling beams, taking the opportunity to tear away at the mafioso’s wards. It took him a second and a half of their angry strobing to get his barrier back up, and by then, his Wards’ reactive flaring had grown feeble indeed. His Wards now had a gaping hole in the right side of his chest, about 20cm across. Wandrei Faust, having reached overhead, flared with its theurgic fury and spewed forth a screech of yellow killing light. Despite all expectations, he ate nearly the full brunt of it, the flesh scoured from his side so far one could see his organs. Clutching his side, Semzar leapt backwards with a howl of pain. An angry fist scattered the nearly-spent Wandrei Faust into a puff of glassy ash.

That injury, despite its grisly nature, was not a disabling one. It presented an ideal weak point to aim for, but the baneworm shifted his tendrils and used them to restrain his meatsuit’s organs at the expense of his left arm, which lost much volume. That loss of volume and pure physical power didn’t impact the performance of his ranged attacks — if anything it made them harder to deal with because it altered their timing somewhat.

218 - Vs. Semzar Pt. 4 - ASHURBANIPAL [Cherno]

To Semzar’s gaze, which instinctively understood anatomy for the purposes of assessing a would-be host’s suitability, she was worse than a rotting corpse. She was poison. Death on two legs in more ways than one. No… Not death. Murder on two legs.

“Why? Why? Why?! Why won’t you die already?! Whywhywhywhywhywhywhy-”

Each “why” was accompanied by a flaming fist, a machine-gun cadence of thaumaturgic strikes. Each potent enough to strike down its target, each ripping apart furniture and flooring when it inevitably missed. Dust and debris wildly scattered into the air all around her.

Each fist flew mere centimeters from its intended target. She swayed as she walked, moving no more than necessary to remove herself from each fist’s generously telegraphed trajectory. With each movement, minute bursts of flame sprung forth from the many glowing fissures that split her skin. The wild currents of magic that leaked from her being set her hair billowing in all possible directions, and the dark smoke of entropy shrouded her. Semzar could swear she initiated a purge every ten seconds, as if mocking him, and all the more infuriating still, he never managed to hit her during one. Even while devoid of magic, she simply denied him at every turn. Each time he got close, she would simply vanish in a plume of smoke and appear elsewhere nearby — sometimes less than a single step’s distance, other times a full three meters, and everywhere in between. It was Astro Skimming, that much he knew, but he didn’t know the maximum range. It had to be something like five meters, it couldn’t be more, but he wasn’t even certain of that much at this point.

There wasn’t a person behind those eyes, which swirled and flickered with green light. Indeed, through their apertures peered not a human, but a demonic being of murder. A single-minded obsession, a whirling madness, spilling out with such pure hate and revulsion that Semzar thought, perhaps, she was employing an ocular curse. He had felt  it before, having been the subject of curses, and he recognized that curse-like will flowing in abundance from her gaze, only… she was staring not at Semzar, but through him. For a moment, he genuinely considered if Blackhand intended to use his corpse as a medium to directly strike at his father or at the Benefactors. He well and truly came to think that this was the true reason she was after him — such was his coping mechanism for the reality that his own actions had directly led to this.

And the music. Why was the band playing? What was this trite love song?!

"Mad machine - I chase down my prey on a speeding bike! Mad machine - this fire burning in my chest defies logic! Time flies, chasing us, like a suffering, wounded beast. My burgeoning ferocity has me in its grasp…”

Another line came, but Semzar didn’t hear it. That infernal bird screamed over it: “The more masks I remove, the less human I become!”

Then, wasting not a moment, as it bombarded Semzar’s barrier with explosions, the red-eyed thing began… Orating, for lack of a better term. It spoke in a man’s booming voice, the volume exactly matched with the music, creating a confusing and frightening cacophony. Perhaps the most frightening aspect of the tirade was twofold: The plethora of alien words used, and the fact that Semzar, somehow, understood all of them, their meaning imbued into the sound itself.

Thus spake the raven:

“AT AGE TWENTY-ONE I SLEW THIRTY MEN WITH MY BARE HANDS I STRANGLED SEVEN WITH THEIR OWN PLASTIC INTESTINES I STRUNG THE HEADS OF THEIR KINDRED FROM THE RAFTERS AND DROWNED THREE MORE IN WHITE BLOOD. BY MY OWN HANDS I FORCED OPEN A STEEL BULKHEAD AND HAVING THUSLY BEEN CRIPPLED I BIT OUT THE TENDONS AND THROATS OF THREE WHO SOUGHT TO VIOLATE MY FLESH, AND TOOK THEIR LIMBS FOR MYSELF.”

Blackhand rapidly closed the distance in the form of a flittering smoke-demon, emerging only momentarily to lash at Semzar’s barrier, cutting gashes into the floor with each flash, gusts of flame erupting from her palm each time she opened it to cast the thaumaturgy. He couldn’t comprehend how it worked — it appeared to simply cut, but it was such an outlier, why would she only have this one arcane thaumaturgy when everything else was either energetic or construct-reliant? He glimpsed the flickering remnants, thread-like in appearance, but they were so short-lived that he simply assumed them to be the bare minimum to which she could reduce the thaumaturgy’s visibility.

A dense mass of smoke erupted from her mouth, writhing forth like a swarm of ravenous insects, moving to envelop him. Semzar’s fists, both those he set forth and those which defended him, scattered it handily, his own thauma neutralizing Blackhand’s. Even still, what remained of of the cloud swiftly moved in to fill the gaps and obscure his sight as best as it could.

“I HAD THE BUNKERS OF THE CITY OF ANGELS UTTERLY DESTROYED AND I COUNTED THEIR OWNERS AND SPONSORS AS DIGITAL GHOSTS I TOPPLED THEIR SPIRES OF STEEL AND GLASS I TOOK THEIR BRAINS FROM THEIR DATA-TOMBS AND DAMNED THEM TO THE NERVE LATHE. I LEARNED FROM THEIR DYING SCREAMS THE NAMES AND HOMES OF THOSE THEY SERVED AND HUNTED THEM IN THE SAME MANNER.”

Despite the fact his eyes could somewhat see through the smoke, it added to the numerous elements acting to overwhelm his mind. He didn’t even know it, but he had already been driven on the back foot — even as he lashed out and forced Blackhand to back off, Semzar didn’t think. He didn’t make plans or consider how he would finish her off. He was just reacting.

She appeared from the smoke, far too close for comfort, and Semzar’s first reaction was not to strike — it was to pour his will into the Crimson Star ring. The artifact replied with the cruel knowledge it wouldn’t be ready for some time.

217 - Vs. Semzar Pt. 3 [Cherno]

“You stole that thaumaturgy, didn’t you?!” she mocked him. “The flames are barely warm! Could you not simply adjust it to remove the fire element? Could you not even go to the effort of stealing a fire affinity to go with your stolen thaumaturgy?!”

No verbal response came — but Semzar’s flames visibly grew, both in size and brightness, and so did the number of punches he sent flying her and Barzai’s way. In turn, they became even sloppier, as did his positioning. Frankly, he didn’t seem to be thinking about positioning at all, which was itself a problem. No thought meant that it would be harder to manipulate him into standing near a trap-burster. Nonetheless, Krahe managed it, more by pure luck than her own efforts. With a snap of her fingers, the burster went off right at Semzar’s feet, as he was standing atop a table. He was consumed by a great burst of pyroclast and splinters, which in turn was dispersed by the reactive outburst of his wards.

Then, Semzar did something unexpected, because it was perfectly logical: He closed the distance, and not with a careless lunge, but with a steady, yet quick approach while keeping up his offense. If he closed the distance, Krahe would have less time to dodge his flying fists, his Barrier would take up more of her field of view, and she wouldn’t be so ready to detonate any given trap-burster lest she herself be caught in the blast. Even if she were to do such a thing and, say, dive beforehand or skim just out of the blast radius, Semzar could read that as a tell. This was all assuming that Semzar was thinking tactically rather than rushing in like a frustrated moron.

Krahe, of course, did what she could to manage the spacing, but even Astro Diving and Skimming could only go so far against someone who could bound around like a suited-up cyber-ape. Not wanting to dump a Cinder Flash or even Cinder Strobe straight into his Barrier, Krahe decided to simultaneously mix him up and refine her tar-whip thaumaturgy by employing it at this close-mid range. Right now, in this razor-like mindset, centimeters from death and burning up from the inside, she knew she could grasp it, much like a self-destructive artist could grasp his best work whilst overdosing on hallucinogenic toad saliva.

And indeed, right there, in the refulgent moments between engagements when the world seemed to pause, there her answer was. Refining the lash’s thinness and velocity only got her so far — the final step was hidden in plain sight, being the simple incorporation of her fingers as an additional layer of casting. By quickly opening her hand as the trigger gesture, the thaumaturgy came out as five separate threads centered on the palm of her hand and each connected to the tip of one finger. They sprung forth with the speed of a bullet, lashed at their target, and then disintegrated into smoke. A fair portion of Lasher’s quickness and the velocity of its filaments stemmed from the Left Arm’s increasingly superhuman characteristics, fed both by Krahe’s physical attribute growth and by the Atomica’s monstrous Throughput. Thaumaturgy and the filaments’ whip-like motion did the rest of the work.

The combined velocity and gossamer-like thinness of each thread created the illusion of Krahe cutting things through sheer force of will, with the mere gesture of her arm.

With a slight adjustment, she could detach the filaments from her palm early, allowing her to use them for a more traditional swiping attack. Forming a single, stronger cutting filament was still an option, especially if she wished to, for some reason, dust off monowire martial arts.

And so, after a monowire she had named it: Black Lasher, or just Lasher for short. 

The original had been a legendary armament in its own time, the first “true” monofilament whip, capable of cutting straight through the most advanced hard armor composites. Her version was perhaps not so universally effective, but it had an undeniable point of appeal: Overwhelming cutting power that allowed it to be effective even against Barriers and Wards, despite being predominantly lacerative in nature. In terms of efficiency it didn’t even remotely hold up to Cinder Flash or Tar-tendrils in their intended roles, but that didn’t matter. One couldn’t expect to always be able to use the exact right tool for the job. Black Lasher came out faster than Cinder Flash and had a range somewhere between it and Tar-tendrils, allowing it to fill in where the other two fell short, not to mention its ideal use-case for cutting through flesh — a use case that Krahe dearly hoped she would get to demonstrate against Semzar.

As it stood, she was satisfied with seeing his disconcerted look when the filaments ripped into his barrier and his Hard Entropy spiked much like it would with a purposeful kinetic attack. In concert with a hail of mescalt bullets, it was only a matter of time before he would have to drop his barrier or go into meltdown. Semzar, knowing this, turned to the logical answer: Spending his entropy on trying to either kill Krahe, stop her from hitting his Barrier, or disrupt her attempts to do so, in that order of priority.

One fist passed by her arm, close enough to agitate her Wards, yet nothing happened. Another passed near her leg and tore a yawning gash into her trousers, leaving the edges smoldering. Another, still, ripped her bodysuit on the left side, the gel already closing over the superficial burn it left behind.

Semzar realized that she had no wards. Whether they had collapsed from damage or from implanting this new voidkey, it didn’t matter. To him, that realization was a shining ray of hope, it was victory within easy reach. He just had to get one, maybe two good hits in. How hard could that be?

__________________________________________________________________________________

As the battle went on, Krahe felt time rapidly catching up to her. Even if she instantly stored any generated Isotope inside her arm, its presence within her body nonetheless caused damage — negligible damage, at first, but it gradually built up. Eventually, despite burning away as much Isotope as she could by generously tainting each and every one of her Thaumaturgies with it, she nonetheless exceeded the Left Arm’s capacity.

Each use of Thaumic Fusion poisoned her, yet in turn, each Implosion-Burn set rampant thaumic power coursing through. Only 95% of the power generated by Implosion-Burning actually went where it was supposed to. The remaining 5% was tearing her apart from within, and now the damage was starting to show. Her skin was splitting open, scarlet light shining through.

And the more she deteriorated, the more Semzar’s terror grew, the more his already fragile grasp on focus slipped from his bloodied fingers.

216 - Vs. Semzar Pt. 2 [Cherno]

Hopping backwards and scrambling to keep distance from her, the mafioso babbled something under his breath whilst rummaging through his inner jacket pockets. Krahe wasn’t sure if it was an incantation of some kind or just a nervous tic. His physique began stretching his suit, tendrils bulging out from under his skin, which itself turned an unseemly shade of bluish purple. He became faster and faster, his apparent physicality now equal to a Mamon Knight using a High-Pressure type Dregsteam cartridge — only, with none of the finesse. More than anything, he resembled an ape in the manner he bounded from spot to spot. Between barrages of Tracers, Cinder Gatling rays, Krahe threw in a Six Trees Killer — but one of a different kind. Semzar’s movements were too erratic for a timed fuse, and as she understood the evolution of her thaumaturgy, she thought remote detonation ought to finally be within her reach. The mechanism was a simple pulse of thauma keyed to a particular thought-impulse, much like a real radio detonator would work. She couldn’t just release Thauma in all directions at any reasonable range, so she still had to keep the Burster in her sightline, but that was an acceptable limitation.

A satisfied chuckle rose from her throat when the bullet-propelled-grenade zipped over his head and the shockwave nearly knocked him off his feet a moment later. He quickly got his bearings, and with an angered gesture stood his ground, stomping with a great release of thauma. The floor cracked under his foot, the fissure racing forward as great gouts of blue flame sprung forth. A display of power to be sure, but a mere decoy. The real danger was a double-barreled pistol he pulled with his free hand, and from it set forth two Bloody Reapers in quick succession.

Krahe stopped where she was and simply dived, letting them pass through her as she made mocking gestures towards the mafioso. Immediately after emerging, she whipped a burster his way, and while his attention was on it, she peppered his side with a few Cinder Gatling beams. And so, the struggle continued.

As the two played cat-and-mouse through the nearly-deserted ballroom, Krahe scattered a great deal of smoke across the field, and it was not just smoke. Within the smoke, under tables, and even in plain sight, she dropped fuseless Bursters. By slightly reducing the internal pressure, she ensured they would last without maintenance for a little while.

It could not be said that he was so gutless as to just take her onslaught whilst trying to run away. When she managed to slip a handful of Tracers past his Barrier, Semzar responded with a mighty flex, and a second pair of arms burst free from his trapezoid muscles. These arms were not of flesh, but of the same translucent purple force that formed his Barrier. Their fists were enveloped in dark-blue flame, with long wisps of it trailing off. Out of the four Tracers that she managed to sneak in, only one actually managed to hit — the other three were punched out of the air by these newly-formed arms. In the process, they fully detached from Semzar’s body, now floating above his shoulders. As for the single Tracer that struck home, it smashed right into the side of his face. Its scarlet-black explosion elicited a counter-burst of blue flame and a smattering of purple shards, akin to explosive reactive armor.

The obvious answer to the question these arms posed was an attack that could not be shot down — Cinder Flash or Wandrei Faust. As things stood, she couldn’t get close enough to land a Cinder Flash. Barzai, though not able to inflict serious damage, aided in herding the bastard away from Casus… And towards one of the Bursters which she had quietly dropped earlier. However, before she could lure him to one of her traps, Semzar finally found what he had been looking for inside his jacket — a silver ring, with a faceplate wide enough to cover the entire lowest segment of a finger and a four-pointed star of deep red gemstone as the centerpiece. It was none other than his father's "Crimson Star" ring! The mafioso slipped it on his right-hand ring finger, his flesh deforming hideously before the band expanded to fit him. Then, he began a reckless counterattack. It was a barrage of superhumanly fast, yet also amateurishly telegraphed punches, his fists wreathed in blue flame. With each punch he sent flying a fist-shaped construct, each taking with it only thin ribbons of that blue fire. They were fast, to be sure, but not the speed of bullets — between the volume of fire and size of projectiles, dodging them was much like dodging particularly pretty fertilizer rockets. It was as if, with the ring on, he felt safe enough to finally stop running. Krahe decided it had to be a defensive artifact of some kind.

Nonetheless, dodging Semzar’s rocket-punches meant she wasn’t attacking, and eventually, he might get lucky. Unlike him, she couldn’t afford to eat even one unlucky hit, and she had to keep pressuring him. There was only one solution that came to her mind, a counter-intuitive solution that would bring her closer to danger: Smaller movements, closer dodges. Whether one dodged by a meter or by a centimeters didn't matter, so long as one didn't get hit. Less time spent dodging. Thus, more time for counterattacks.

“Sharper.”

Thirty centimeters.

“Sharper.”

Fifteen centimeters.

“Even sharper!” 

Five centimeters.

The fire licked her skin and left the sensation of hot water behind — like going into a sauna from the freezing cold. It wasn’t even hot enough to cause a surface burn.

A state of absolute focus and perfect efficiency of motion, a pinnacle of clarity that warriors from eras past had spent their lives training to achieve and maintain for short bursts. A thing she had taken for granted, a thing she had considered as one of the absolute basics thanks to neural implants, cognitive conditioning, and hormone controllers. Krahe had slipped into that familiar place a few times since her rebirth, always in the midst of battle, but never to this extent. Never fully. She had never managed to truly snap into the zone until now, only ever veering in and out for moments at a time. The reflexes, the muscle memory, the cognitive conditioning — it was all still there. She just had to get into the right physical state to set it off.

ZERO HESITATION

MAXIMUM FOCUS

ACCELERATED COGNITION

TACTICAL SUPREMACY

A LONE OPERATIVE

PREVAILS AGAINST ALL ODDS

SECTOR 7 STYLE: RAZORMIND