Page 26

Charcoal Games

A s Krahe made her way through the city back to Gashward 94, she quickly came to understand what exactly Yao had meant when she spoke of the battle whipping up arcane winds that would scour away any signs of their anthrocite transmutation ritual.

The air was thick with an almost oppressive, dense feeling pervading every breath. Her heretofore unnamed sense for magic was completely dulled, much like how an overpowering stench can smother a more subtle scent. She even felt the waxing and waning of the “winds”—a nonphysical pressure that, with its stronger gusts, sanded away bits of her wards.

Yao’s sealing papers demanded some finesse to use properly, and Krahe spent a few minutes meticulously activating each one before plastering it onto the fake book-box. Despite expecting something to go wrong, nothing did; Krahe reached Yao’s residence without incident, though she took a roundabout path. Several streets away from Yao’s place, Krahe noticed one of Yao’s talismans stuck to a wall amidst old posters and charms. As she approached, carefully observing just how far and wide Yao’s talismans were spread out, Krahe came to the conclusion that Yao likely had an area larger than Slaughterhouse 9 secured as her personal fortress without most, if any, of her neighbors being aware of this fact.

Upon her return, Krahe found that Yao had left her main defenses inactive. Instead, there was a fake wall. It looked convincing from a distance, and it nudged one’s gaze away from itself, but perhaps due to being a welcome guest, Krahe had no issue discerning that it was an illusion. She walked through, feeling a brief bout of confusion as she entered the next section, somewhat like walking into a room and forgetting the reason. This also passed quickly.

Yao called her upstairs when she entered, and Krahe heard the monstrous defender puppets stirring back to life as the door closed behind her.

“I expected the confusion array to slow you down more,” the talisman mistress stated plainly, glancing up to meet Krahe’s eyes before looking down at the box in her hand. Krahe placed the box on the table, and with a snap of her fingers, Yao ignited the talisman papers in golden flames. Krahe then unlocked and opened the box, leaving Yao to examine the hand while her own attention was drawn to the Hexkey. It was suspended in mid-air in the center of the room, revolving clockwise while six rings of faintly glowing talismans revolved around it, themselves also spinning at various rates, much like an armillary sphere. The whole array was contained inside a pillar of floating talismans, emitting a deep, yet noticeably muted hum. The light, much in the same way, was also muted such that one could look straight at it without discomfort. It reminded Krahe of an innovative 3D printer design that was bought out and subsequently permanently shelved by the dominant 3D printer manufacturer, Vishvakarma Manufacturing.

Krahe’s brief bout of reminiscence was broken by Yao’s voice.

“This is… not anthrocite,” the talisman mistress said without looking away from the hand for so much as a second. The tone of her voice and the expression on her face spoke of a mixture of surprise, mild confusion, concern, and slight excitement. In short, she knew what the hand really was made of, and it was probably above anthrocite in value.

“Any clue what it is ?” Krahe prodded.

Yao gave a slow nod, her focus remaining on the hand.

“I cannot be entirely certain, as it does not exactly match the usual signs, but I can make a guess,” the older woman said. Finally, she tore her gaze away from the relic, shutting the book-box.

“Where to start… I suppose the beginning would be easiest. The myth of human charcoal containing the ritual subject’s soul as part of its material is not entirely without basis. It came about from suicide rituals, carried out by the elders of the Onyx-black Puppet Hall to pass down some of their cultivation to their students before they departed for the wheel of reincarnation. The practice died out early in the Onyx-black Hall’s history, as the ritual is, for lack of a better term, a spiritual suicide by a thousand cuts. The master would gradually break down his astral body, while compressing it into as small a region as possible, creating something much like this. It’s… well, I suppose the continental term would be something like astrocite.”

“And you believe your acquaintance carried out that ritual with the intention of creating an inheritance?”

“Not quite the same, but something similar. He must have been crippled and near death at the time, but I can sense it. He condensed his remaining cultivation into this. It would be useless to me even if I stole it from you—your anathema signature is imprinted upon the astrocite. It likely took place when you opened the keyless lock,” Yao said.

A wry smile appeared on her face as she added, “Shang was ever the cautious one.”

“How much longer?” Krahe nodded towards the Hexkey.

“Twenty minutes, assuming no further disruptions,” Yao replied, rising from her seat. She approached the ritual circle, performing various gestures that caused the talisman rings to accelerate in their rotation.

And so, Krahe waited.

Two cigarettes and twenty minutes later, it was finished. The talisman rings came to a halt, returning to the mass of Yao’s left arm the moment she plucked the Hexkey from their midst. In the same manner, the papers making up the sound and light suppression barrier rejoined her right leg when she stepped outside the barrier.

Clack. Clack. Clack. The sound of her sandals echoed through the room, the commotion outside having quieted for the moment.

“That scoundrel,” she muttered as she took a seat at the table, turning the Hexkey back and forth in her hand. “He buried a trap array in the key’s structure. It’s not active at the moment, but there is a switch keyed specifically to Shang’s cultivation. Using his hand to complete the key would activate the array. I cannot guess the specifics, but I recognize the pattern. A curse, guidelines to remove it partially, which would likely include steps to make you a suitable vessel, then a guiding impulse to lead you somewhere for the ‘full cure,’ most likely a tomb with Shang’s True Soul and facilities for its transplantation into your body. An insidious body-theft scheme, but I cannot say I am surprised.”

By the sound of it, the trap array would bypass her direct immunity to mental manipulation through indirect coercion. Even if it wasn’t direct mind control, Krahe didn’t want to take the unnecessary risk.

“Can you remove the array?” she asked. “If not, would it be a better idea to simply use human charcoal in bulk? I have access to… I would guess at best two adult humans worth.”

Yao shook her head. “Not good enough. Anthrocite is the bare minimum, and it would require at least six more humans who’ve undergone the Five Torments Blast Furnace Refinement. Sorayah likely used an inferior version of the ritual as well, reducing the anthrocite ratio, thus raising the likely minimum to eight or nine rather than six.”

“Her offensive artifact likely went through seventeen people’s worth of fuel in its lifespan, and she had a nearly intact victim in her ritual chamber. The numbers line up, but I doubt she was responsible for all eighteen,” Krahe mused.

Yao followed her line of thought. “It is entirely possible she found the artifact and the box together with an already partially complete Hexkey, subsequently continuing the work of one or more individuals who attempted its completion before her. Regardless, deactivating the array is not possible, Shang was the superior array master between the two of us by far.”

There was a “however” hidden in those words, and with a self-satisfied tone, Yao spoke it soon enough, looking up from her work.

“He was, however, not my equal in artifact crafting. I can remove the array altogether. I have determined that the voidkey’s fundamental functions will not be harmed by this, but it will lose all defensive qualities, as Shang purposely embedded the array within as precarious a section as possible—I suspect to prevent exactly what I am about to do.”

“And his True Soul will be left to rot in some tomb, probably for a thousand years until the vessel fails,” Krahe guessed.

“A thousand years of dreamless slumber means little compared to the chance at a fresh start without the downsides of starting from nothing.”

“How long will it take to remove the trap array?”

The noise outside picked up again. Wasting no time with a verbal answer, Yao waved her hand over the voidkey and towards the ritual circle in the room’s center. A swarm of talismans from her arm carried it there, forming an armillary-like structure yet again, now enveloped in a spherical barrier of seething golden symbols.

Yao proceeded to carry out a feverish series of hand-signs and gestures that incorporated her whole body, taking a few methodical steps, each ringing out with a loud CLACK. With each sign, the talisman rings spun faster, each at a different rate, as did the intensity of their glow. Soon, the room was bathed in blinding light and a loud thrumming sound. It lasted, by Krahe’s reckoning, for nine seconds, at which point it flickered out and died in an instant. When her sight returned to her, the Hexkey floated over Yao’s left hand. Between two fingers of her right hand, she grasped a hair-thin, cylindrical piece of the Hexkey, about a centimeter wide and twice as long. A complex cluster of glyphs shone both on and beneath its surface, the faint reddish glow fading with each passing moment.

“Done,” Yao breathed. Her good eye twitched, sweat trickled down her forehead, and her chest heaved with labored breaths. She held out the cylinder of removed material. “Here. You might be able to find Shang’s tomb one day. He is bound to have left treasures for himself.”

Krahe took it, knowing all too well that Yao would be involved in such an endeavor more likely than not. This was a simple show of trust.

“Now…” Yao began again, taking a moment to catch her breath. “We can move on to the simpler, yet more laborious part. I shall begin preparing the ritual circle whilst describing its properties, feel free to interrupt at any point. It is not a delicate operation, so modifications can be as crude as necessary.”

They spent the next half-hour or so preparing the ritual while the battle in the sky raged on. Krahe learned more about ritual circles and ritualism in general in that half-hour than she had from most of her reading combined, but she also spent most of that time kneeling on the ground, building. An icosahedral framework, entwined through and through by tendrils of Tar impregnated with anathema-reflective particulate to form a sphere; it was a larger, sturdier version of the Daemon Core’s reflector shell. The most obvious issue was maintaining the construct-matter, but Yao wasted no time in lightening this burden; in moments, she created six new talismans and bound them to the sample chunk of human charcoal with spectral threads of golden light. Thereafter, she suspended the coal chunk above the dome and placed the talismans on the inside of its perimeter. With each one placed, Krahe felt the burden lift and saw the coal chunk flaring more brightly with crimson flame. It shrank moment by moment. By the end, only a small hole was left in the shell, large enough to insert the hand and Hexkey.

“It will hold for a few minutes. Long enough,” Yao said, regarding the shell with a critical, yet satisfied eye before glancing Krahe’s way. “Once it begins, the ritual’s own energies will feed my stabilization talismans. I could have achieved the same effect with lesser ink, but better to waste it than to have the shell burst open. I shall take hold of the shell for a moment, but it must be you who inserts the material.”

And so, Krahe did. After placing the Hexkey into the Astrocite Hand’s grasp, she wrapped its wrist with a tendril and carefully inserted both into the shell’s center, wherein it became weightlessly suspended. Thereafter, she sealed the shell, and they both examined the whole assembly with a final pass.

“Is there anything we’re waiting for?” Krahe asked.

“No, I do not suppose there is. We do require an incantation, however. I have my own, but you are the primary ritemaster in the end. I am only here to ensure everything proceeds correctly. The incantation can be nearly anything; grasping for it should be no more difficult than grasping for a theurgic sigil. It must have an initiating and a finishing component; I can signal for the latter when the time comes, but I do not expect you to need it.”

An incantation to set off a ritual such as this; the complete transmutation of a voidkey via what was effectively a crude reactor. Krahe chuckled to herself as a memory surfaced. In her time, she had seen many things she was not supposed to. Technologies that were said to be vaporware for decades after their invention, because someone powerful didn’t want them in the open. For this reason, she had just the speech to parrot as an incantation. She took a few moments to mentally shift gears, recalling the words and muttering a Japanese tongue-twister to get her mouth used to speaking that language again.

Krahe mentally returned to a time and place far removed from here and now. Her eyes saw what was before her and her body remained fully present and aware of her surroundings, but the majority of her attention turned inward. Megacity Gamma. Sector 8. The observation deck of a hidden, highly illegal research facility. She had infiltrated the place as part of an investigation, and though it ended up being a dead end, it at least gave her this precious memory.

Once she felt confident that she wouldn’t stumble over her own words, she held out her hand to the ritual circle, with Yao doing the same in response. Krahe began reciting, “Neptunius Heavy Industries experimental atomic transmutation reactor ‘Solomon’ v7.9.108 Test No. 66, ready to proceed. Reaction mass in place. Estimated transmutation ratio: 87%. Preliminary computations loaded. Biocomputer array reads as operational. Hyper composite capacitor arrays operational.”

Blending with her intent, a thread of Thauma flowed out to connect with the ritual circle. It was the simplest thing; she just had to build up enough pressure to set off the reaction, keeping in mind the general intended course of the ritual. No more and no less than the consumption of the Astrocite Hand for the transmutation of the Hexkey into its final form. The reflector shell floated about a meter off the ground as it began rotating clockwise. A quartet of talismans from Yao followed after it, followed by another, and a third, each forming another ring that, in turn, revolved at different speeds and in different directions, once more like an armillary sphere.

Krahe continued reciting. “Capacitor charge at 80% projected capacity. 90%. 100%. 110%. 120%. Capacitor charge stable at 124% of projected capacity. Preparing laser pump array for connection. Connection successful. Initiating ignition. Capacitor discharge… successful.”

The revolutions intensified, as did the reaction. Anathema began leaking out, coalescing around the shell’s exterior, granting it the appearance of a blood-red star. The room was bathed in red light. It even occasionally erupted with flare-like tongues, these soon being pacified when the talisman mistress adjusted her containment array.

“Capacitors 87 through 143 sending alerts, replacement in progress. Fusion reaction initiating. Activating TK Containment Field Emitters. TK Field operators injecting Psi-Amp fluid. Plasma field contained successfully. Fusion proceeding. Exotic particle emission within projected boundaries. Transmutation in progress.”

As Krahe recited the NHI reactor operator’s test report, the containment array’s revolutions grew to a fever pitch, as did the tangible tension within the room. It felt as if the entire structure might fly apart at any moment. It went on for a span of time that Krahe could not discern; it felt simultaneously like mere seconds and hours, so wholly focused was she on the process itself. She couldn’t see it, but she felt it. The building pressure within the shell, the Hexkey’s gradual transmutation, the spindown of the reaction before the final surge. Yao gave a signal to say the final lines, but Krahe didn’t see it as her mind was wholly consumed by the star-like patterns of crimson light.

“Finalizing. Maximizing TK Field output. Venting remnant plasma. Test No. 66 complete. Estimated final transmutation ratio: 98.7348%. TK Field operators, inject Psi-Suppressant. Dispatching drones to extract reaction material. Rapid spectrometry has just confirmed: We have elemental platinum. King Solomon lives.”

The array abruptly halted, as if frozen in time. A momentous and undeniable sense of change washed over them as the shell began cracking. Blinding light shone through the cracks, piercing the layer of red. Yao’s eyes went wide and it seemed as if she wanted to call out in alarm, but she didn’t get the opportunity. With a thunderous, roaring sound, the reflector shell flew apart in a hundred pieces, and a deluge of anathema poured out, only to be quickly drawn back in. Though abrupt and forceful, the blast was delayed and sapped from most of its force by Yao’s precautions, rendering it little more than a messy and noisy firework.

There, between the two of them, floated the Hexkey with the Astrocite Hand still grasping it. In the next moment, the hand crumbled to dust. The key’s shape had not changed, but all else was different. Its composition was neither stone nor coal nor anthrocite, but a perfectly homogenous mass of red, opaque crystal. A constant outpour of anathema flowed from the artifact, possessed of an equal purity and furious brilliance, a beacon of power.

Yao instinctively threw up her barrier, taking the shape of nine talismans with a golden lattice of symbols between them. Krahe, meanwhile, bathed in the baleful brilliance, for as long as it lasted. It only took the talisman mistress moments to isolate the artifact. With the voidkey enveloped in a spherical barrier, Yao sent it over to Krahe, barrier and all. It stopped in front of her, facing her with one of the papers which was positioned out of step with the pattern. The specific paper’s symbols slowly filled in, absorbing the voidkey’s emanations, and once complete, it projected an appraisal readout. Krahe couldn’t help but notice that it was as detailed as her system readouts, unlike the shallower appraisals given by her glasses.

[ATOMICA REFULGENT, FRACTURED SOLOMONIC KEY]

Tags

Fourth-order

Voidkey

Incomplete

Unstable (Temporary)

Imprinted (Brunhilde “Blackhand” Krahe)

Details

Thaumic Throughput +C1

Entropy Tolerance +D3

Entropy Dissipation +D3

Thaumic Fusion Efficiency +15%

Isotope Tolerance +D1

Isotope Dissipation +D2

First-time implantation of this voidkey will reshape the holder’s Soul Furnace, permanently conferring the following Boon: “Astral Implosion Furnace”

This voidkey may be safely implanted only by the Imprinted individual. Implantation by any other individual will result in catastrophic Soul Furnace rupture (as with simultaneous implantation of two voidkeys).

[ASTRAL IMPLOSION FURNACE]

Tags

External Source (Voidkey)

Details

The holder’s natural Thauma-burning will take on some of the properties of Thaumic Fusion: Increased efficiency and heightened intensity of output energy. Lesser Thauma-burning methods will remain possible.

The holder’s natural ability to initiate and carry out Thaumic Fusion will grow in efficiency. This efficiency increase will compound with the improvement of the voidkey’s direct fusion efficiency.

The holder’s natural arcane attributes will be improved to a variable degree, with possible secondary physical effects.

“It’s as you said. No defenses whatsoever,” Krahe remarked, looking to Yao. “Do you think you would be able to complete it? If you were to have a suitable voidkey, could you simply graft its defensive capabilities onto the Atomica?”

“Were higher-order voidkey crafting so straightforward.” Yao grimaced, turning away and stepping to the writing desk. She sent a talisman paper downstairs, and moments later it flew back up, carrying a partly filled inkstone. She began drawing another series of talisman papers as she continued to speak. “The voidkey is in a state of flux, highly unstable. If you implanted it right now, it could very well tear you apart, or worse, injure you such that it can never be removed. It must be left to sit for some time, then quenched via first implantation. You will know when it is stable enough; it is not a subtle change. Such a quenching implantation tends to be… energetic at the best of times. I suggest implanting it at a time and in a place where collateral damage will not be an issue. After that, I will require a suitable donor key and a suitable binder, such as material from a soulbeast, possibly other materials as needed. Depending on the voidkey’s stabilized form, it may even be better to avoid using another voidkey altogether. For now, we can only speculate. Here.”

With a gesture, the papers containing the voidkey flew back to Yao, replaced by a swarm of no less than twelve others that plastered themselves all over the item, creating two or possibly even three layers. Their symbols quickly began to exude the same glow as Atomica itself, but much weaker. The voidkey’s presence diminished until it felt only slightly more significant than the Twin Serpent key.

Yao walked downstairs, with Krahe following.

“This seal will have the secondary benefit of further compressing the voidkey’s energies,” Yao said on the way down. She proceeded to collapse onto a sofa, and, in a manner strangely similar to Razem, any sense of transcendence vanished from her. It even felt as if she had aged by decades in an instant. “It may slow the stabilization process, however. Now, please go. I am exhausted, and if you and the voidkey were to remain here, the energy signature would linger.”

Krahe complied without hesitation, placing Atomica into the book-box, giving a simple nod as goodbye, and walking out. The Talisman Mistress’ fortifications fell into place right behind her, one after the next. This was the first time she got a close look at them. Graftbeasts, walls of talismans, traps, dozens of layers. Despite the appearance of normal alleyways and the open sky, this whole section of Audunpoint was a fortress meant to withstand direct assault from a small army, if not perhaps individuals such as the three comets still waging fierce battle in the sky.

After Lady Blackhand’s departure, the domicile of Talisman Mistress Yao Fu was filled by an exhilarated, yet also exasperated laughter. The crippled old monster had predicted a potent result, but what had emerged was beyond her expectation. Perhaps Shang had carried out the suicide ritual in a far better state than she had assumed, or perhaps Lady Blackhand held some profound insight that altered the transmutation rite’s course. It had to be both to some degree.

The voidkey’s new name was beyond Yao’s understanding, but she perfectly grasped the magnitude of difference between what it had become, its past incarnation, and what it had been intended to become. There was one thing for certain; Shang had not intended the transmutation to yield this result. The voidkey’s fundamental nature was altered by the concepts carried in Lady Blackhand’s prolonged incantation. Atomica Refulgent was not even remotely suitable for the Onyx-black Hall’s practices; if anything, it was ideal for the type of person that would go against them, a natural anathemist. In other words, it was ideal for Blackhand.

Yes, Yao laughed, pulling out an ensorcelled bottle-gourd that she had brought all the way from Tiengenzhen. She took a long swig from it in celebration; it was filled with a small lake’s worth of quality baijiu. If things proceeded at this rate, she might be fully mended before the decade was out. That was the uttermost extremity of everything going as well as the transmutation rite, but even a few decades or a century were an outstanding time frame for undoing the mutilation that had been perpetrated upon her Soul Furnace.

In the end, she had done less than half of the work she had been ready to do. In the time Lady Blackhand took to retrieve the Hexkey, Yao had made preparations, she had taken things out of storage, readied herself to deal with the consequences of carrying out a strenuous ritual that she didn’t fully understand. While she was exhausted, it was an exhaustion that would be gone before the end of this new day, rather than demanding several days of active rest. In short, Yao was pleasantly surprised by how this whole thing had gone.