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Level 15

K rahe awoke to a strange feeling in the back of her head and a hollowness in her gut which she could not physically place. It felt as though some organ that wasn’t actually there had distended and now yawned with empty space. What had woken her was a sound, the knocking of a beak against her window, ringing and resonating with an unearthly tone.

She was deathly certain that she saw a raven with infernal coals for eyes sitting there upon first waking, but now that she had gotten her bearings, it was gone. In fact, the window didn’t even face the outside, but a swirling, collapsing maelstrom as if the building hung perpendicular to the side of a cliff. This, combined with Casus’ absence, made it more than obvious that this was a false awakening. She still felt a faint ache with each breath as her new ribcage settled in and drifted off to sleep once more within moments.

Thereafter, she dreamt of the data-plane which she had trawled in her past life, that virtualized pseudo-reality, which some had called things like the “matrix” or the “neo-astral.” The semi-independent network programs which inhabited much of the data-plane were the closest thing to this world’s eidolons that Krahe was familiar with. She wasn’t sure why this unplace had shown up in her dreams, and of all times now, but then it made itself known; the Wound-like Grin, rendered in collage from garbled visual data and images of gore. It opened its fanged maw, the void filled by repeating, crudely tiled textures made from a cartel victim’s skinless face bedecked by a scarf of his own intestines. From there, a simplistic icon of a crow emerged, slowly gaining definition until it became a fully realized high-fidelity model. It perched upon the Wound-like Grin’s teeth, pecking at them. A moment later, Krahe awoke to the sound of pecking on a windowpane… But just as before, there was nothing there when she looked. Not even a feather.

With the dream only vaguely floating at the edge of her awareness, she blinked away the remnants of sleep and went about her morning. Casus was gone, but she found a tall glass of water on the table next to the box of Class 1 suppressants and a small ceramic dish. At first, she wasn’t sure what was in it, being eight crescent shapes coated in brown sugar. The absence of one pill from the box followed by an appraisal using the Prospector’s Eyes confirmed that the Banisher had prepared her pill in this way before he left.

Sighing, she ate one of them. Sticky. Aggressively sticky. The taste was strongly herbal, sour-sweet, and somewhat spicy, fitting nicely with the sugar. She finished the rest while reading a hefty tome on the pseudo-continent of Xaugeth, basking in the dawning sun.

As she read the book, “Xaugeth Encyclopedia Vol. 1, Edition of 5201,” she realized that Ronin had to have been one of the Herculeans listed as a civilized race of Xaugeth. Great big beetle-men, they were, who molted repeatedly as part of their life cycle, growing stronger and smarter with each molt, while each subsequent molt grew more difficult. Some chose to metamorphose into pseudo-adult grubs, called Eternity Larvae for their comparatively extreme longevity, while the beetles were Shieldbacks. The tome went on to detail that Eternity Larvae were subject to the same molting cycles as Shieldbacks, though theirs were far easier and only conferred growth in intelligence while the Herculean remained as an Eternity Larva.

“Some sources claim that at any time, an Eternity Larva may choose to initiate a metamorphosis into a Shieldback, while others claim that it must be initiated by consuming a special kind of jelly. It is possible that this differs between tribes, as the Herculean tribes are as varied as the species of their animal cousins. Once an Eternity Larva metamorphoses, rather than becoming a juvenile Shieldback, it emerges at an advanced stage.

“There is a clear correlation between the number of molts an Eternity Larva has gone through and the Shieldback it becomes, though the ratio is not known, and once again, it likely varies from tribe to tribe. Eternity Larvae frequently remain as such for many years, and some simply live out their extremely lengthy lives without ever metamorphosing, acting as the scholars of the Herculean kingdom.

“A number of mighty Shieldbacks have come from Eternity Larvae, most notable among them the great unifier of the Herculean tribes, the Thousand-year Sapphire Monarch. As his name suggests, this Herculean remained an Eternity Larva for 1000 years, emerging as the Thousand-year Ruby Monarch. He went on to unify the Herculean tribes before molting into his current form, in which he has remained for the past century.”

The tome went on to describe various known stages of Herculean development. They had a generally consistent appearance within their tribes, starting at dark earthy colors, moving into greens, yellows, oranges, and then reds. In the same way, the body shape changed and the size of a Shieldback’s horns, mandibles, and other such extremities grew. Patterns and specific colors seemed to differ greatly between tribes. From the descriptions, Ronin had been effectively a juvenile, having only recently metamorphosed from a larva.

“It is known that Shieldbacks possess intelligence comparable to human adolescents from before their metamorphosis, but they do not develop the ability to speak until anywhere between the third and fifth molt. They commonly learn sign language to compensate.”

There was a sudden tug at her mind’s edge, pointing inward. After the third or perhaps fourth tug, she gave in and looked at her menu… She found there were some substantial changes.

[NAME: Brunhilde Krahe]

ARCHETYPE: Cherno Caster Lvl. 15

TITLE: Blackhand

RACE: Human

SEX: Female

AGE: 43/0

MIGHT: E1

CONTROL: D2

ATHLETICISM: E3

DURABILITY: E2

THAUMIC THROUGHPUT: D3+E3

ENTROPY TOLERANCE: D2+D1

ENTROPY DISSIPATION: E1+F2

BOONS

FLESHGRAFTS

EIDOLON VAULTS

THAUMATURGIES

STORAGE

OTHER

Before she could get a good look at her attributes, she already felt that same tugging sensation trying to bring her attention to her Boons.

[SNARE-SIGN OF BLACKEST PITCH]

Tags

Eidolon Vault

Outer God’s Touch

Details

The holder gains two Lesser Eidolon Vaults and one True Eidolon Vault.

A raised eyebrow and a faint smirk were the only reactions the boon elicited from her; Krahe wasn’t familiar enough with this side of the Seven Spokes System to evaluate the boon’s true value, but having seen the effects of common Eidolon Vault applications, she was perfectly happy with it even if she just ended up adding Red Reapers to her arsenal. The growth of her actual attributes, though, was an indisputable benefit. She could feel that a fair bit of it was thanks to the Liminal Coil, but only a fraction. Taking a look at her attribute ratings again, she thought back to that first time in Jas'raba. Since then, her Control had jumped from E2 to D2, while athleticism and durability had both grown by a single numerical increment each. In stark contrast, her base thaumic throughput had gone from F1 to D3, her entropy tolerance had gone from E3 to D2, and entropy dissipation had grown from F3 to E1.

Krahe thought how convenient it would be if the system tracked growth changes, but since she had a habit of intermittently checking her attributes, she would need some way to record attribute snapshots. A memory slate would probably work, but she would have to always keep it in storage so to avoid it becoming a security issue.

It wasn’t long before Casus returned from wherever he had gone, laying out an array of Mamon Couplers across the coffee table, including the non-functional coupler with the cracked core from before. He began polishing them.

“How do you feel?” he asked.

“Good, good. Seems I jumped to archetype level fifteen and got a new boon since I first got out of Jas’raba.”

“What level were you then?”

“Five.”

Casus continued meticulously checking his collection, furrowing his brow as he mentally reviewed recent events.

“An outlier, but not absurd progression for a late starter. Considering the Butchershop and Slaughterhouse 9, it’s to be expected. What is the boon, if you do not mind me asking?”

Many would have said that he was downplaying, that her growth was absurdly fast, but Casus himself spoke from the perspective of an outlier, a man fully expected to become a powerful graft-saint. The very idea of being able to tame the Silberblut Coupler had been considered absurd before he set himself to the task. Favonia, his not-quite-sister, had gained a name for becoming strong at a similarly breakneck pace, and much like Krahe, she too had applied her own memory of her past life to that end. Within his frame of reference, Krahe’s archetype-level progress was par for the course, and he thought nothing of it. No, it was everything else about her that stood out. If anything, her rapid progress in archetype leveling felt like a foregone conclusion, a mere side effect of this woman applying her pre-existing skill set to the Seven Spokes System.

“The holder gains two Lesser Eidolon Vaults and one empty True Eidolon Vault. Not sure why it only specifies that for the True Vault,” she said. Even now, she continued leisurely reading her book.

“Two Lesser Vaults and one True Vault… One would expect a boon of this sort from a specialized occultist or a shamanist, but it is nonetheless well within plausible bounds. Misunderstand me not; this boon is certainly valuable, but you still have to fill those vaults before you can make use of them, and find some means to harness the spirits besides, which I cannot help you with.”

“Your turn; tell me your boons,” Krahe prompted. “Just the effects, no need to list the names.”

“Surely, you have more than one boon.”

“Of course, but I suspect you have already figured them out. My other boons grant me a Kenoma Pocket, play havoc with appraisal magic, and facilitate my unique abilities pertaining to harnessing anathema and tolerating Isotope,” Krahe said, purposely leaving out most of the actual details and completely leaving out Chernobog’s Mystic Wisdom.

“Isotope?” Casus asked, confused.

“Anathemic remnants. I found it easier to assign a one-word name to it.”

“Ah. That is a good name for it. I’ve always found it strange that it is so often simply called anathema or anathemic remnants. Even the specific names it has are merely local slang. Bane Soot or just Soot is the most common one I’ve heard of.”

“C’mon, your boons,” she reiterated, continuing to read the Xaugeth Ecyclopedia. “I wager most of them have something to do with Mamon Couplers.”

Casus nodded.

“As the Foreman mentioned, I possess a boon which forcibly raises my compatibility with any Mamon Coupler. Another guarantees the presence of an arm-mounted weapon, nearly always a long, slender blade, as you have seen. My Mamon Knight transformations are abnormally durable, scaling with my durability attribute, and I can push them to perform well beyond their normal specifications for short periods of time. I derive minor benefits from any Coupler I am wearing even if I am not transformed, and lastly, I can make use of catalysts that would normally only be usable by a specific person. However, there are… side effects. Surely, you noticed the change to my personality when I donned the mantle of Silberblut? That is the side effect. The “true” user’s personality bleeds into mine.”

“Can’t say I’m even a bit surprised about those. Well, I guess I’ll have to look into Eidolons before I can make any use of them. Does the Church have exclusive tomes on these subjects, or should I just visit a library?”

“I do not know. Apostles do gain access to some restricted sections of church libraries, however.”

“Figured as much. I’ll look in the Central Temple first, then…”

“You would want the Temple of Records, instead. It is not difficult to find; the building stands adjacent to the Central Temple.”

Despite saying as much, Krahe remained as she was, on the sofa, for the next hour and a half, reading. Casus, true to his habits, also took to reading after ensuring his Mamon Couplers were in good condition and storing them away elsewhere in the safe house. Then, eventually, she rose up, and looking out the window, stretched in place. Casus beheld the gruesome manner in which the Liminal Coil protruded out of her back, creating an unsettling shape even through her biosuit. Despite having seen many grafts, something about that particular sight made a shiver run down the banisher’s back.

He watched as she left, taking the Class 1 suppressant pills with her.

***

Krahe, first of all, bought a pair of tight leather pants and a button-up shirt, getting them adjusted on the spot to better fit her. She also bound her hair into a ponytail as a slight alteration to her appearance that may throw off anyone who may be looking for her. Even small changes such as these could have a tremendous effect.

Thereafter, she made her way to a place where she could have breakfast and listen in on people’s morning conversations. She constantly kept an eye out and moved in such a way as to make less of a target out of herself; this didn’t mean scurrying through side alleys alone, as she didn’t know the city well enough to make that the optimal strategy, but rather using crowds and open spaces to vanish in plain sight. Even if an assassin were to see her, most professionals would try to avoid collateral damage. She was fairly confident that if she kept an eye out, she could dive or skim before an assassin’s shot could reach her, even if it were the same man as before.

No attempt on her life was made, nor did she feel any hostile intent; all she felt were wandering eyes crawling upon her back, as her shirt was half-transparent, and her biosuit’s color made it shine through all the more. She wagered, though, that it was more the gruesome shape of her spine than the biosuit. Eyes upon her left arm were, of course, a foregone conclusion. So long as she limited its movement, it wasn’t too much of a stare-magnet.

The place she ended up at was neither seedy, nor squeaky clean. It was a happy medium between the two, with good food and drinks at a reasonable price, singled-off stalls, and staff that acted as invisible as the likes of Imraal. It was the sort of eatery she would have considered a great place to eat and ask about local goings-on back home. In Audunpoint, it was one among many, easily found if one knew how to look.

One of the first things she learned in the course of her investigation was that there was a standing order to all Hashem Family members in quite specific wording: Report her location and kill her if the opportunity presents itself but do not actively go out of your way. From what intel she managed to gather, the higher-ups were effectively treating her as an enemy gang member rather than a priority target.

She was perfectly content to reciprocate this treatment until she determined why an attempt had been made on her life. It was possible, likely even, that a higher-up in the Hashem Family had hired the killer. They were the only ones who had a motive.

Krahe had another coffee with her proper breakfast, finding this one to taste completely different from what Casus brewed; it was silky and buttery, without an iota of sugar, pushing notes of caramel into her nostrils. Her breakfast, rather than anything salty or meaty, was a nougat-like candy with whole pistachios inside, apparently a timeless classic eaten all throughout the Afshani Sultanate and beyond. She banished the cloying sweetness with a baked biscuit made with pork rinds that were ground up into the dough, with the rendered pork fat used as a leavener.

Later in the day, she went to the Temple of Records. They let her in without asking any questions. Unlike the Central Temple’s receptionist, the librarian was a grizzled-looking human man, with burning metal spheres in place of eyeballs and thick cables coming out the back of his head to connect into spots on his back. He came across as friendlier than the Central Temple’s receptionist.

“The High Grafter has made arrangements in your stead. You have access to Sections One through Sixteen, as well as special access to Section 38. Temporary supernormal access may be requested, though it may not be granted. Our public title archive includes a comprehensive inventory of all documents within the first thirty sections,” the librarian explained.

Krahe easily found the documents she was looking for, or at least the general category. Everything was sorted by general topic, then by subtopic, and then alphabetically. Books on the basics of harnessing eidolons, known by other terms such as shamanism, demonology, occultism, or spiritualism, were found far from any restricted section. In fact, they were so out in the open that Krahe felt the need to take them and scurry into a secluded corner to read.

There, she first learned that Eidolons could be bound in a vast variety of ways, not necessarily requiring a pre-empowered vessel as she had been made to believe by Thaumshot. It was, rather, one of the easiest methods of harnessing eidolons, because the user didn’t need to actually work with the eidolon; the vessel itself contained the instructions for the spirit alongside everything “extra” needed to make it achieve a specific result.

“Throughout history, such objects of power have ever found their place among the most common and most well-established conduits for eidolons, and for good reason. Sacrificial effigies, talismans and scrolls, arrows, and more recently, bullets. There is, however, a good reason why the mighty wizards of olden times were so famous for memorizing their mightiest magicks and wielding wands and staves…”

She split her attention to a notably thinner and trashier looking book, with a ghostly yellow snake winding its way around the Banishment Wheel with a representation of Zastreon in the center. Blocky, yellow lettering across the cover read Secrets of the Atropal .

Despite the sensationalist cover and foreword, claiming to have been written by a renegade from the group that first developed the Atropal line of Thaumshot, the book itself was factual and well put together. It went over the history of modern Thaumshot manufacturing, emphasizing on how the majority of new Thaumshot was refined and empowered by a vanishingly tiny few highly skilled craftsmen. It also openly admitted that their work targeted those who lack the skill, patience, understanding, or all of the above to make their own eidolon conduits and put together the instructions for the spirit.

“Imagine my shock, then, when I heard of well-respected wizards throwing around Citrine Atropals because they were, in their own words, good enough to get the job done.”

The history of Atropals and their rivalry with Reapers apparently went back over 2000 years, with the two theurgies embedded in every conceivable form of conduit throughout the millennia. One interesting method that stood out was the usage of scrolls wrapped around high-grade casting catalysts, such as a staff, allowing the user to benefit from the flexibility of scrolls while empowering the catalyst’s effects. The book went on to lament that unless a firearm was specifically engineered to enhance a certain type of Thaumshot, it was generally incompatible and underperformed compared to traditional methods. Dregshot apparently outperformed Thaumshot in terms of output and was easier to manufacture, but it had its own flaws, including lack of focus and no reusability.

When she reached the section that meticulously broke down how an Atropal worked, Krahe realized what this book really was—a craftsman’s effort to procreate in the memetic sense, to pass his own discipline onto the next generation.

That section ended up swallowing her for several hours as she compulsively correlated everything with her own understanding of weapons systems. It was altogether occult and mind-bending, but by the time she tore her eyes away from the book, she felt like she had gained enough understanding to experiment with theurgy. She had also learned that “theurgy” was the most commonly used word for explicitly referring to the pattern by which the power of an eidolon was channeled into forming the likes of Reapers and Atropals.

Before any experimentation, however, she needed to figure out how to get herself an eidolon. She read and read and read, finding numerous different methods and rituals, but, eventually, she became frustrated and queried Chernobog’s Mystic Wisdom regarding the Snare-sign of Blackest Pitch and how she might most easily catch herself an eidolon. It pointed her toward Section 38. So, she checked out a hefty stack of books, some scrolls, and a memslate, then made her way there.

Section 38 was well underground, in a cold, dry-aired chamber with heavy stone doors that used three keys, all of which the librarian had given her. The room was small, more of a large closet tucked away in the corner.

There, she found scrolls on Astro Diving and immediately knew why she had been given special access. Among them were texts penned by Barzai himself, significantly more legible than anything pertaining to the Liminal Coil.

In her exploration, Krahe discovered not just guidelines for executing a full dive but a rite for doing so safely, including precautions, the so-called “Rite of Dho-Hna.” The prerequisites were only that one needs to be capable of performing a Partial Dive unassisted, leading Krahe to believe she could make use of this rite even without a Gulf Key. The many treasures of Section 38 numbered far more than merely four volumes. However, Krahe found that, for the time being, most everything beyond the fourth volume was incomprehensible to her or simply covered the same topics from a different perspective. So, she took with her the first four volumes of Barzai’s work, Dream-Quests Into the Astral Gulf: Of Ye Unguents and Angle-Webs Most Sublime, Of Ye Invocations and Words of Power, Of Passing Through the Veil Without Rending It, and Of Ye Rite Of Dho-Hna.

The Dream-quest Scrolls were as bulky as they were strange. Though their construction was that of wood or bamboo-slip scrolls, they were made of dark chitin and bound by ligaments. Krahe added them to her bag alongside all the other books she’d decided to check out. The librarian, before even reviewing her selections, informed her, “Due to the conditions of your Special Access to Section 38, nothing you check out from there will be recorded, only the fact it was done. How many items did you take?”

“Four.”

“Four items from Section 38…” He wrote it by hand, despite the presence of a typewriter-like terminal that projected a holographic screen from where the paper would normally sit. He jotted down other relevant information in the same manner, then proceeded to disappear the black-bound book into a drawer out of sight.

With a smile, he bid her farewell and offered his blessings. “May Zavesh and Igaria both bless your pursuits.”

Before returning to the safe house, she visited a market where she bought the pincer of a “Great Spiny Land-crab,” which was, as the name implied, from a giant, spike-covered crustacean. The pincer alone was sufficient for several meals. Preserved in a jar until purchase, the land-crab meat, as Krahe knew from her recipe collection, surpassed its water-dwelling cousins in terms of longevity without spoilage. It could be cured like mammalian meat, maintaining qualities similar to sea crabs, and was a valuable export for marshy regions that fed the “Calbian River Machine,” the desalinator megastructure that fed Audunpoint’s river. It was still dirt-cheap as far as Krahe was concerned, only a touch more expensive than poultry.

It would take a few hours to cook in the manner she had picked out, but she had no trouble waiting. Three hours and some spare change later, Casus came by to drop off a message and a memslate.

“It holds a series of keywords. Hand it over to the receptionist at the Central Temple when you wish to claim your share of the payout for the entire Slaughterhouse 9 incident. There is no information about you on it or in the system, merely contextless data pertaining to the incident and payments due.”

Decontextualization. A reasonable infosec tactic.

The banisher stuck his head in further, sniffing a few times.

“Are you cooking land crab?”

Krahe nodded. “Yeah, it’s been in there for… three hours? About an hour left, I reckon. I’ll have more than I can eat, if you want some.”

“Outstanding! I’ve always liked land crab!”

Since Casus was now there to act on the kitchen timer’s ringing, she took the opportunity to do two things: claim her payout and visit Garvesh to shop for some necessary materials.

The former went without issue. Krahe managed to remain inconspicuous as she slipped into the temple. The bulging of her spine was not so conspicuous, thanks to her hair naturally covering the upper half of her back, where it was most obvious.

She passed a handful of faces she vaguely remembered from earlier, in particular, the stitch-trail-covered, musclebound woman who had gotten blacklisted from the Silversword Agency for calling out favoritism in their ranks. She was still just as massive, but she had a new weapon, a huge shotgun with a long axe blade on the end. It had a four-chambered revolving cylinder with eight or perhaps even six-gauge shells. What drew attention, though, was the subject of conversation. As before, it was the musclewoman talking and another contractor listening, and this go round, the subject was Krahe… or rather, some unknown third party involved in Casus Aristedes destroying Slaughterhouse 9. Supposedly, a mad Anathemist that single-handedly obliterated a graft-beast of Hashem construction.

Close enough.

The lack of extra stares in her direction was proof enough that her appearance hadn’t been leaked.

She reached the receptionist after a short wait in line and a man throwing a tantrum over not being given the medication he wanted. He was summarily picked up like a ragdoll and carried out of the temple by an extremely chiseled, bearded man wearing nothing but a turban, a loincloth, and many bracelets on his wrists and ankles.

Krahe simply handed over the memslate. Seeing its subtly different design, the receptionist immediately looked at one of its sides and took out an eyebox with no visible projector lens. A few moments passed. Squinting, looking back and forth between the eyebox and a document from a lower drawer. Then the eyebox went away and the receptionist said, “Come with me, please.”

And so she did, being escorted a short distance into the Central Temple complex. From there, another clergy member took over, checking the memslate and leading Krahe deeper. He neither spoke nor asked questions and was clothed similarly to Fidelia, though much less ornately and with a simple flat mask.

She walked out of the Central Temple with several hundred thousand dregs to her name, most of it stored on her dregstones, while one-third was in a variety of Calbian Rings. It was then that she learned their common denominations went up to 10,000 DD rings, each made of dark-purple thaumstone and shod with glowing runes that spoke of the power in the ring. The 5,000 DD ring was made of the same stone, but it was thinner and had five small gems in shades of purplish-blue. 1,000 DDs meant a golden, silver-inlaid ring with a single small purple-blue gem, while 500 DD and 100 DD rings were both set with orange gems; 500s were silver, with a large gem. 100s were bronze with a small gem, while fifty and tens were two different sizes of plain bronze, these three being the rings with which she was already familiar.

In good spirits, she made her way to Garvesh’s pawnshop.

Little did she expect it to be closed, and even less so for the lizard to come out pointing a double barrel loaded with reapers in her face.