No Expectation of Leaving Alive [Lyra]

[Imogen]

The witch's brows raised as the strange wraith described her circumstances. This was actually very troubling- maybe more worrisome than the fact that she'd been brought here like this in the first place. If this strange entity had such effortless command over souls and scrivening alike, by what power had the Dornkirks bound her?

Imogen wasn't entirely oblivious, of course. She'd heard about Stefan Dornkirk's work in raising the new sky islands, though she had never met the man nor visited (for that would have subjected her too readily to his wardings and alarms). But she'd chalked all of these things up to miracles of artifice, a genius of engineering. After all, during her time in the Imperium she'd seen works of magitechnology which rivaled those accomplishments. It wasn't that shocking that Zaichaer should follow suit.

But these thoughts were muddled by the sudden flashbacks which the wraith kept inducing.

A purple-eyed lemur ran through the obsidian halls of Koidhouo’uv, face blank with fear. Not just fear, though; a terror so powerful it banishes all other emotions, quelling the mind at a biological level. The monkey sprinted through cooling magma tubes and scampered up rocks made of sharp black glass, not caring that they cut her fingers.

Behind the monkey, the entire mountain was rising. A hundred feet tall, shedding great waterfalls of magma and molten shallack, the godlike visage of the Primal of Fire moved inexorably towards the fleeing lemur. The strange elemental's eyes were pools of pain and hate and need, and its hot breath, pregnant with the toxic gasses which build up beneath calderas, scorched the lemur's tail as she ran.

”Freedom- is a fine goal. In fact, I am taught by the Tenants not to countenance such a binding at all, whatsoever the crime...”

She stood in the nexus below the roots of Agst'rasera, looking at the tide of shadow rising around her. If it was, as she thought, a superfluity of rot, then it wouldn't do simply to kill the creature which had imprisoned the spirits of the seasons. Leave the shadow-twisted fungus to flourish in some dark corner of the chamber, who could say what would come next? Imogen had spent years working as a janitor in the Pfenning, and she was well acquainted with what happened when you tried to go easy on a particularly noxious stain.

No, it would have to be burnt away. Scourged clean. She focused on the spear in her hand and transmuted it, changing it from bronze to copper- and not just any copper. It shone with a malignant light, and where that light fell, the spores on the walls blackened and died. This was a power which did not abide anything beyond itself, and she could only hope that it did not do too much damage to the wood.

The images faded as Lyra finally spoke her request. Blood.

Blood? She almost laughed. It wasn't ridiculous, per se. A lot of rituals and powers needed blood to function- alchemists used it often to moderate or mediate, though she couldn't remember her aunt's lessons enough to tell you what those words actually meant in context. She was aware that it had many popular connotations as a vessel for dark and terrible magic in the mythmaking of Karnor, but as a reagent it was almost always more appropriate for beneficial uses.

No, she laughed because it was so small a thing for so fell a being to seek. It was, perhaps, that request which set off the next memory in her mind.

The Silent Fisher stood in the midst of the shallow river and tore into her flesh, ripping and shredding. Its claws tore scale and skin like paper- it gorged itself on her organs. It was many times stronger than any natural monster she'd ever known, for all that it was only about twice the size of a goodly orkhan. Her own blood ran hot and plenty down her face, into her eyes, and stained the river red for miles. Through the haze of agony and her own viscera, she thought she could make out her reflection smiling at her. It mouthed the first part of the spell:

A singular weakness it bears by design:
A heart that is humble before the divine.
The hand that can leave any cleft in its hide
Has no expectation of leaving alive.

And she had failed to scratch it, just as the magic promised. But the blood did not stop flowing, and there was ever more flesh to rip. If a snake could smile, she would have. It would take a long time to kill her like this- and it did not understand how little time it had.

”I can give you blood” Imogen promised, interrupting that vision, ”You cannot know how small a thing you ask. Where I would not give a single drop to the thing trapped in the Spire, I can offer you enough to drown a regiment.” She didn't elaborate on what that meant, but it was clear enough to Imogen. This shadow wraith was certainly dangerous, might even be evil in some deeper sense, but her request was strikingly considerate- and the thing trapped in the endless recollection of the Spire lacked either the ability or inclination to care for anything but itself.

”Will you aid me, then...” the wraith had called her 'Bonespeaker', probably because she hadn't given a name. Well, it wasn't her regular practice to give out names to strange necromancers on the side of the road. Still, it wasn't wrong, and she might as well respond in kind. ”Soul-scribe?”

[Lyra]

While Lyra thought the request was reasonable, she had not expected the woman to so readily agree. During her years Lyra had come to accept that the mortal races, especially the sentient ones, were hesitant to accept payments in certain forms. Flesh was one such payment which many disdain, and more found outright sacrilege. As if the vessel were something sacred to be coveted so, that even the shedding of one's own blood were too much to ask no matter the consequence. This was how she had expected Imogen to react, being mortal herself, but maybe her time in the covens had given her a different perspective. Whatever the case may be, Lyra was pleased.

"Then we have an accord." Lyra said with a smile, "I will hold you to your words, little on. Blood enough to drown a regiment, and then more."

The glyphs in the air shivered as a thrum of power washed over their circle, and Lyra turned her eyes on the soul.

"I will deal with the parasite that leaches on your soul. You need only focus on your ritual, and what comes next. I warn you," There was a shifting of something beneath Lyra's skin, "This will be quite unpleasant."

Taking in a breath Lyra extended her hands and the circle of glyphs expanded. Gone were the rough sketched lines Imogen had laid, now entirely replaced by the black ink that even now connected back to Lyra herself. The ritual circle was now layered, rising to form a tome of shifting pictographs which overlayed one another, altering their appearance depending on how one looked at them. The ritual was expanded to fill the entirety of the store room, which caused a certain tiger to stand and flick his tail in annoyance before disappearing down a dark passage.

Throughout the conversation, and for as long as Lyra could recall sense regaining her body, she had suppressed her true nature. At first it was out of fear of those who might notice and come seek her. As she was now, she was still too weak, too vulnerable to stand face to face with the greater forces of the universe. So she did as she always had, hid away in the darkness, within the shadows of the world, concealing her true nature lest she be discovered. Eventually practicality gave way to simple routine. She began to hide herself as that was what she had always done, even in the ages past during the great wars between light and shadow. Lyrielle had never been one to show her true self to any, save for Shaeoth himself. She was a whisper in the darkness, a tempting thought in the back of one's mind. A thought did not have a true appearance, it was different for each person that considered it. Like smoke in the wind, always changing moment by moment. Before she was sealed away Lyrielle had thought that was her true nature. To be shapeless, formless, a force more than a person. Yet Lyra did not think that way.

She was the last of the Dinor'afael, the Scribes of the Gods. The Lady of Whispers, who parents used to tell stories to naughty children to force them to behave. She was a broken doll, a general, a seductress, a villain... and now? Lyra had been called teacher. She was called master and benefactor. Most recently she was 'mother', but never aloud. Maybe she was also a lover? Or beloved? Was she hated? Feared? Admired? Worshiped? Suddenly Lyra found herself wondering what it was she was to others, and again she considered the thought of herself, her true self, and her true nature.

"Soul-scribe..." Lyra repeated, tasting the word and smiling. Maybe that was what she was. Ever since her first epiphany she had restrained herself, first out of fear, then out of habbit... but maybe that was in part what had lead her to this place she was now. She considered the advice given to her by others, and then sighed.

For the first time in two years, Lyra fully released her hold on her soul. It was slow at first, her body grew slightly, growing taller as her hair fell down in waves until it touched and blended with the shadows at her feet. The black lines that covered her body began to writhe and twist, splitting away from her skin to claw at the air as they shaped themselves into confounding patterns. Then Lyra's skin began to move, stretching out as the shapes of hands with long fingers threatened to burst free of her flesh, and faces that screamed in silent horror pushed their way to the surface. There was the sound of voices that came from the shadows Lyra cast, soft sounds of whispers from a thousand voices, young and old, male and female. Voices that plead for mercy, or for death. Shouts barely audible filled with rage and hatred. The crying of a child, or maybe an old woman? Still Lyra grew taller, her form becoming thinner as the faces shifted from her skin and began to instead flow down and out to the black tendrils that waved in agitation around her. Those black limbs became figures of darkness, as if the souls trapped within Lyra's body now tried to escape through the shadows she made. Faces of all races, creatures of all sizes and types flowed in irregular patterns from the viscus tar that now dripped from her pours, as well as ran like tears from the corner's of her eyes.

She did not try to restrain her aura, but let it flow and settle as it desired like a cloak around her shoulders. The weak willed or soft minded might go mad if they saw her as she truly was, as Imogen saw her now. The pressure of looking at something that shouldn't be, an Outsider in the world.

Raising her hands Lyra gently touched the floating soul, tilting her head as she read its contents in an instant. She saw through the memories of the person the soul belong to, saw their life flash before her, but she did not concentrate on that. Instead she focused on comprehending the structure of this particular soul, the way it was twisted and bound together, what parts of its life, even before the current shell it wore was born, lead it to where it was now.

I will need more. Lyra soon realized, as the complexity of what she had to do began to settle on her fully.

One hand touched on a particular portion of the soul, and from there a line of scripts unfurled itself like a scroll, extending into the air all the way to the edge of the circle. Lyra repeated this gesture, extending more and more scrolls of Imogen's life until the entirety of her soul had been unraveled and laid bare. In this state the Aether Creep vine was clear. It's thorns dug deep in certain portions of Imogen's soul, twisted in others, and still some parts of her soul remained unsullied. This was a curious find for Lyra, as she wondered what about the curse made it choose to weave itself into those portions specifically.

Despite the pit in her stomach at using so much of her reserves, Lyra dug deep into her soul and summoned her aether, and her flesh began to shift as she reshaped it to her own purpose. Stretching up further, a series of cracking sounds came as great wounds split across Lyra's back and shoulders, from each a network of white bone, flesh and nerves began to wind their way free. Each steadily grew outward, shaping itself as the pool of black liquid below surged upward to begin filling in the gaps in the flesh with undulating masses of darkness. Each new limb, for that was what they were, were long and thin, ending in three fingered hands that were more bone than flesh. There were four new pairs, giving Lyra a total of 10 hands to work with. In each appeared a golden quill, its feather black as pitch.

The process from this point was simple, if tedious. Lyra began tracing the lines of the Aether Creep. Dozens of vines turned into hundreds as she followed the winding paths they took throughout Imogen's soul. Some clung to memories of Imogen's childhood, their grip loose but the thorns imbedded deep. Lyra found that the vines were most abundant in parts of the soul adjacent to each of Imgone's magics, and her memories related to them. In these places it had created small flower like blooms, or maybe small fruit which pulsed with aether. It seemed the curse gathered the aether in these small receptacles, which fed the curse and... did something else. She could not tell what, exactly, but her curiosity was peaked. For now she focused on the task she had been given.

Eventually Lyra found the core of the curse, an unassuming knot of aether that had implanted itself the center of the soul itself. This she left alone, and instead focused on the individual vines. One by one, starting with the most superficial, Lyra began to unweave them. Some dug into memories, or some skill she possessed. These Lyra marked through, removing the chunk of memory as a whole to free the hook that anchored the curse, and then rewrote the memory in question. Again and again Lyra repeated this process, her many hands working in sync as she did. Old memories, such as those from Imogen's childhood, were easy enough to save. Most of the time she could unhook the vines without damaging the memory itself, but then when a vine wrapped itself tightly around a core part of Imogen... It took significant time, and effort, to slowly unwind and rebuild what was damaged. It was a slow process, but eventually Lyra finished by isolating the core of the Curse within a small portion of Imogen's soul. It tried several times to lash out as she worked, but Lyra had discovered a trick. Whenever it would grow agitated, such as when she unbound it from a particularly strong part of Imgone's soul, Lyra would create a copy of that portion and implant it in the curse to have it anchor to it instead. This would lead to several duplicate, and possibly conflicting memories, but if Imogen managed to succeed in her ritual those would be trapped along with the Aether Creep in the Vessel anyway.

The final stage required Lyra to connect the recreated parts of Imogen's soul into a seemingly whole copy of her soul, and then bound the Aether Creep around it. The new pseudo soul was little more than a random collection of memories, with all of Imogen's runes and personality still in the main soul, but it was enough to trick the Aether Creep into thinking it was still bound to Imogen herself. There was still the issue of the Curse still being within Imogen's soul itself, but if Lyra understood what she planned Imogen should be able to push that portion of her soul, along with the curse and the fake memories, into her waiting weapon.

"The preparations are done." Lyra said at last, her voice sounding like a mix of several people. She looked down at Imogen then, "Proceed with what you planned next. I will help guide the ritual."

[Imogen]

In times to come, it would be hard for Imogen to recall what the least pleasant part of the process was.

Obviously it was not comfortable to have some darkling power elbow-deep in your soul. Every movement, every thread of curse teased out sent ripples through her spirit. They weren't feelings, exactly, but rather the suggestions of feelings- as though she ought to have nerves there, but did not. And with every new touch, more images joined the cavalcade of flashbacks tearing through her mind. The barest snippets of each time she'd learned a new magic...

She stood on the mountains to the north of Zaichaer, gasping through the pain. She'd followed Master Gerhard up to the ritual grounds in secret, unwilling to accept his verdict that she was unready to join the coven- and he'd plunged a brand into her breast, searing it with the symbol of the sword and the sun. She could feel her sword in her hands as never before, and she gripped it as tightly as she dared with sweat-slicked hands, keenly aware that if she dropped it now, it would swallow her mind and soul.

The old Sunsinger stood there, grasping a spear which ran like liquid light. In the shadow cast over the ritual grounds by the floating stele, he looked almost... regretful?

She lay on the table in Gihah K'uvfoi'uv Fi'uv, drugged out of her mind.

Chief Oping's solution collapsed the distinctions between waking and dreaming. The walls of the hut swam around her as she felt the lemur tail clutched to her chest begin to... wriggle, burrowing into her flesh. She tried to stand, but orkhan to each side grasped her hands and feet, holding her firmly down. Orkhan? What were they doing here? What was she doing here? Why had she entered one of the large folk's homes? Now she would surely be captured and eaten.

She tried to escape again, but her arms and legs were too large, too heavy. She reduced them, pulling them in to their proper sizes, and tore free, rushing for the door. A burly Ork man tried to stop it, so she drew-

"The monkey's got a sword!" someone shouted, horrified.

She lay on a slab in a Gelerian crypt, nude from the waist up. She felt a sudden heat and weight as Carina crawled on top of her, sending involuntary shivers throughout her body where the petit girl's soft skin met hers. She felt a heat on the small of her back as nimble fingers traced its contours, then a sudden sticky sensation. What was she...?

"Is that lipstick?" she asked, tone disbelieving. Carina laughed, then. Perhaps she even replied- but in that moment, the Rune was complete, and the world spiraled into chaos. Imogen found herself falling away from her own body, mind and spirit exposed to the-

She threw her spear, which was now infused with the light-that-kills. It seared the roots of the World Tree, but it also blackened and boiled the foul perversion of the void-creature as it passed.
Where it stuck into the thing's mask, there was a hideous scream, an inhuman gurgling from the thing which had only ever pretended to be more than masked hunger. For a moment, she feared that all of her power would not be enough, that the muck would quench her light and Arcas' fire both, and she'd be lost in the darkness below the roots of the world.

But then, there was light, and the feeling of something more than light; correction. Her diversion had worked, and Destyn had freed the titan, and the seasons with him. She felt their power gather against the screaming ocean of rot.

To her right, a firy bird alit, opening its wings wide as it screeched defiance. She hardly noticed, in that glorious moment of triumph, that the spirit of Searing burnt its rune onto her hand.

There were other memories too; the dream in which she'd been inexplicably given Rickter's skeleton, the moment she'd led the cats to victory over the shadow-demon, the tedious, tormented walk with the abmetal star resting on her back, the moment she'd struck down Kegumu Rekaka, her recovery on the Mountain of Light. But those four were the most prominent, for they were the points in time where she'd bound her soul, nailing it to magic with the Cardinal Runes. She felt Lyra pluck it away from those thoughts, one by one. It was miserable, of course, but it was also a relief- she could somehow feel her powers being freed of it, of the constant drain.

Worse, possibly, was what was unfolding in front of her eyes. Imogen was a master Animist, and no stranger to disgusting transformations, but she'd never seen anyone split themselves fractally as the soul-scribe was doing. Or rather, she had, once. It reminded her almost of the day she had fought Birchen, and the spirit-sword driven mad with grief as it attempted to summon back its Reaver. She'd barely escaped the nightmarish tide of flesh, of writhing arms and legs and soulless faces.

Lyra's transformation was, if anything, worse. The splitting limbs and shadows and spiraling Scrivening defied all logic, inducing a sort of raw, animal terror. It was as if the senses had simply quit, broken down. It was, perhaps, lucky that the work on her soul kept distracting her, or she might have simply stood there, gaping in horror.

And yet, through all of this, her grip on the Pact Binding remained firm.

"Proceed with what you planned next. I will help guide the ritual."

Yes, it was time to bring this to an end. With the Aether Creep now unbound, it took only the lightest force to shift it. It flowed out through the bond, assimilating into the vessel in a matter of of seconds. Time seemed to resume as Imogen completed her allocation, and the weapon and her shone with aether. She could feel it as though it were another limb- ready to be assimilated once again. But there was one more thing to do before the rejoining.

Imogen cleared her throat, and then produced a thumb-sized violet rock from nowhere. She held it in her left hand, admiring it, ignoring the way it blackened and seared the flesh around itself, then said:

”The final component to make it desist
Is something that doesn't, or shouldn't, exist
Is something that seems only willing to hate
Is something no gods, in their wisdom, create.”

The witch walked towards the spear, trying her best not to look too hard at the soul-scribe's specter. As she approached, however...

---

Within the vessel, the gestalt fragments and curse woke...

---

The vessel began to vibrate as Imogen grew nearer, the butt of the ranseur wobbling precipitously. It jerked, trembling, then began to rise, slowly extricating its own point from the ground. Imogen slowed as the ranseur rotated in midair, pointing itself at her belly. Then she grinned.

”Ah, yeah. No, saw that coming, sorry.” The witch raised one finger into the air, then bent it.

Above the ritual site, Ysandre's Smile erupted into motion. It fired not a single bolt of sunlight, but something closer to a coherent ray, a fist-sized laser constructed of sunfire. The beam knocked the misbehaving Pact vessel to the ground, holding it there in a wash of silvery light. Imogen began advancing upon it again, holding out the Voidrillium-

Then there was a sudden twist in the air, as the vessel sucked in the sunlight holding it down. The curse had adapted to Imogen's power, after all, and so it knew how to feed off the Sunsingers' magics. She'd hoped the bow was too new for it to have learned, but perhaps that was a forlorn hope. Freed of the blast from above, the spear jerked forward, faster than the eye could follow, aiming for Imogen's heart.

Clang!

The vessel found itself flying backwards, having bounced off Imogen's pact shield.

Clang!

Clang!

Clang!

The spear whipped through the air, again too quickly for a mortal eye to follow, seeking some angle from which it could kill its creator. Unfortunately, the shield did not need to move; it simply shifted through slipspace, keeping effortlessly abreast of the rebellious vessel. The witch crossed her arms.

”You are embarrassing me in front of the scribe, and I won't have you adding insult to the injury you've already managed. Stop moving.”

When the vessel appeared disinclined to listen, the witch puffed up her cheeks in a ridiculous way, looking for all the world like she was pouting- then kept inhaling. She continued to breathe in for another twenty seconds, though her chest barely budged, while the vessel continued to ping uselessly off her diligent Pact shield. Then she breathed out.

Golden fire flooded the air in the room- but it gave off no heat. It was bizarrely insubstantial; it gave off light, but the light did not really disturb the shadows, for it was not quite in dimensional syncopation with them. The fire expanded for a moment... then the entire stream of it darted after the spear, fleeing it as it dodged, breaking apart into a thousand streamers of light which pursued the vessel in every direction. As soon as one grazed it, the vessel froze in midair and was suddenly suspended in the golden flame, dematerialized and unable to exert force against its surroundings.

Imogen advanced upon it yet again, clearly confident that the spear could not possibly break free of this particular spell. But as she watched, it began to consume the fire, pulling it inward like a spiraling streamer.

”Fuck's sake.” the witch swore, ”Can you not just stay put-”

The Sunsinger's words were cut off suddenly as the ranseur broke free of her spell, consuming the last of the force holding it against the Veil. It burst forward with desperate speed... and this close to Imogen, it bypassed her guard, burying itself deep in her gut. The spearhead tore through her intestines and out the back of her severe black officer's dress uniform. A moment of shocked silence rang throughout the room.

Then Imogen reached down and grabbed the shaft, grinning through the blood leaking out of her mouth. She pulled the ranseur slowly out of her stomach- and her flesh closed up behind it, the ragged stab wound rapidly disappearing as the flesh knit itself back together. The spear seemed to bend and struggle in her iron grip, but she didn't rush herself, instead bringing the head methodically around and examining it. She looked almost proud of the weapon's work.

Then she pressed the Voidrillium into the spearhead. The vessel ceased moving as the thumb-sized dragonshard sunk into it, sending circuit-like veins of purple in every direction. The Ork used her sleeve to wipe the blood away from her mouth, then looked down to check on her (now-unwounded) stomach. Good gods, but it felt so good to have that curse out.

”Sorry about that.” she told the fractal soul-horror of shadows and glyphs and the disinterested lion demigod. ”I didn't expect it to put up quite so much of a fight, but the vessel is filled and the binding is finished.”

[Lyra]

With her work done Lyra allowed the soul to once more weave itself together. This was the inherent nature of the soul, no matter how spread or weakened it might become it would always seek to return to its normal state. That was the entire basis of her first epiphany, and a fundamental part of Lyra's own understanding of souls. She had to do little more than guide a few errand strands back into place, and once it was done the soul returned to Imogen and the ritual commenced.

Lyra flowed back then, finally taking note of the form she had assumed. During the process of unwinding the Aether Creep she had not thought much on her appearance or the shape she had taken. She had simply dawned what felt the most appropriate for had to be done, yet she had inadvertently copied some aspects of a divine. Though Lyra had met Myshalla once recently, the interaction was seared into her soul as it was a turning point for her entire destiny. It was during that encounter that Lyra had awakened the ability to view souls through the lens of a Dinor'afael, and to manipulate them as freely as she could a scroll full of glyphs. It was not an exaggeration to say that her meeting with Myshalla had in fact allowed her to become, as Imogen had called her, a Soul-scribe. Perhaps unconsciously she had sought to mimic the appearance of the Mist Lord. Even now she could remember clearly how the Spider Most Elegant had appeared over her, limbs spread wide like the branches of a twisted tree. Both withered and new, beautiful and ugly, the picture of what Lyra saw as the pinnacle of power in the world. Now looking down at her elongated form and many limbs Lyra could see a striking resemblance, and that almost made her laugh.

Like the soul had done before, Lyra's body began to wind itself together once more. The many limbs looped together, twisting around one another before they began to melt into a familiar tar like slime and melded together once more. When all of her limbs had reformed into one Lyra looked down at her hand and wiggled her fingers, testing that all still worked as expected. She shrank down as well, returning to her usual proportions but the otherworldliness of her appearance did not fade away completely. Limbs and faces still bubbled out of the black liquid that continued to fall from her body, though now dark smoke also draped her like an eldritch cloak, doing little to hide her nakedness.

What transpired next was something of a spectacle. Though she had been told in a way what to expect, Lyra had no way of knowing exactly what would happen as she returned control of the ritual back to Imogen. She still kept a loose grip on the flowing magics, but she allowed the aether to move as the Orc wished, only interceding to smooth a wrinkle or two in the magic to ensure that, if anything were to fail, it would not be the ritual circles themselves.

A part of her expected a manifestation or something similar to appear, based on the description Imogen had given. She did not expect the weapon to wield itself. Lyra was not a warrior, nor was she a competent physical fighter, but even she could recognize masterful skill when she saw it. As clumsy as the woman was at the scripts, her control over her aether and physical body was exceptional. Silently Lyra revised her opinion of Imogen, moving her from bumbling child firmly into competence in her selected skills. It seemed Lyra had not given the covens enough credit, if this one was an indicator of what their other members were like.

When the lightworks began Lyra frowned and drew in the shadows of the Void around her, shielding her eyes with them as she did so. While the light did not exactly hurt her, she now felt an aversion to it she had not quite had before her imprisonment. Perhaps it was spending so much time in the void, meddling with the darkness of the world and the spawn it produced. Maybe the Nyxus was slowly changing her. There was still a small fondness for light, but it was reserved for the light which came from the mark she carried from the Prince. She had not used it in a very long time, and suddenly this witch was a reminder that she did carry such a thing at her disposal. It was... somewhat discomforting in a way Lyra could not quite explain.

The entire play was coming to an end, and for a moment Lyra had thought it had failed. The vessel plunged into Imogen's gut, and the delicious sent of red made the hunger inside Lyra growl in anticipation. Had it all been for naught? Lyra wondered if she would need to step in, if not to complete the ritual then at least to save the orc's life. Yet it seemed that would be unnecessary. Lyra's eyes followed the voidrillium shard as it was pressed into the vessel, disappearing and at last calling an end to to the dance.

"Did you achieve what you desired?" Lyra asked?

With the ritual complete the flow of aether within the many layers of glyphs began to fade. With an absent wave of her hand the black lines began to evaporate, becoming a line of smoke that trailed back to Lyra's palm where it condensed into black liquid that ran between her fingers to join with the viscus tar on the ground. Lyra looked down at the ground where there were small flecks of blood still on the stones, ruminants of the battle, as well as just a bit still on Imogen's hand. She thought for a second... then crooked her finger, drawing on her rune and pulling the flecks of blood to her until they formed a small orb at the tip of her nail. This orb she, perhaps a bit too eagerly, licked from her finger before turning her attention back to Imogen fully.

"With your work finished, I trust you will honor our deal." Her eyes trailed down to Imogen's hand and then back up to her eyes, "That was a voidrillium dragonshard you used. Can you procure more?"

[Imogen]

Imogen turned the ranseur over in her hand, careful now not to let go of it. With the hard part over, it would be absurd to ruin it and spill the curse back into her being over something as amateurish as a slip of the hand.

The newly-imbued weapon was beautiful, though. They always were, in one way or another. The Sunsinger smith had done solid work, fitting the ash perfectly into the gold-tinted metal she'd struggled to work with, producing a perfectly-moulded speartip in the traditional forked pattern. The strange metal sparkled near the middle, where the fading light throughout the room struck the purple crystal inset, which had spread several inches throughout the blade in angular patterns.

It was not a dragonshard with which she had a lot of experience- affixing Voidrillium to your soul was generally thought to be an elaborate and particularly stupid way to commit suicide. There was a reason she'd gone to such lengths with the abmetal to create Metallabzieher. And come to think of it...

”My father always told me that it was bad practice to name your weapons.” Imogen confided to the waiting specter, ”It mystifies something you need to maintain a clear understanding of. But the corollary to that rule is that you ought to name a weapon you don't really understand well, to remind yourself of that reality. So I think I will call this one Uncertain Death.”

There was a low hissing sound as Unc'uvieain d'uvaeh branded itself on the haft of the spear, just below the spear-point. The smell of burning wood, rich with scents of spices, wafted throughout the dark room for a moment, causing the Ork's nostrils to flare for a moment. She allowed her eyes to linger on the words for a moment, then turned to face the shadow-mage anew.

”You have fulfilled your promise, and you may trust that I will hold to mine. The Sunsingers follow many of the tenants of the High Arbiter, first among them that an oath must be honored even unto death.” The witch raised a finger and closed her eyes, as if quoting, ”The clock may stop, the clock-hand fall; be that the end of time for me. You need only tell me where you would have the blood spilled, and I will see to it.”

The question about the dragonshard took her by surprise; it was clear enough that the soul-scribe was hungry, drained, even if her true form was incomprehensible and monstrous. But why seek one of those awful stones? As far as she knew, Voidrillium had little value as a source of power- the closest thing she'd ever seen was that bizarre mechanical spider which the Imperium had sent to Ecith, armed with a Voidrillium stone array. As for any rite not intended to cut open magic shields... well, she'd used Voidrillium in this rite specifically to weaken it, after all.

”Given some time, I might acquire more- it is not easily found. But if you need it...”

Aurin had found the damned stuff once, he could probably be persuaded to do it again, though if she ended up owing him many more favors she expected he'd try to leverage her into bed with it. Perhaps the Senate in the south had a store? It didn't seem like the kind of thing the Commonwealth would hurry to collect, but then again- who could say? Hell, maybe Deravaecia knew where to get more, though her intel would be centuries out of date.

”The last part of the Pact Binding is the rejoining of halves.” Imogen explained, ”To unify wielder and spirit completely, they must be sufficiently pressed in battle, like tempering hot steel. Until that is done, I cannot let go of the spear again.” She glanced down at the weapon.

”I had thought to ask the Mountain of Light to assist me, but I'm not sure if it can hear me from here. Is there something which would serve in this place?”

[Lyra]

Lyra agreed that it was a beautiful weapon, but likely not for the reasons Imogen thought. In her eyes it gave off a muted glow, similar to an aura. When she looked deeper Lyra realized she could pierce the veil around the weapon itself much like how she did when looking into another's soul. The ranseur had a soul of its own, after a sorts. Or rather it possessed a part of Imogen's own soul. Lyra had never inspected other pact weapons, and so she was not overly familiar with how they functioned within the magic of Reaving. Was this a normal outcome? Or had what the orc done somehow changed the weapon in some fundamental way? The more she examined it she could see the thin vines of the Aether Creep, still twining around the fragments of the soul it could not be coaxed free of. Then there was the Voidrillium itself. Lyra wondered after its purpose. Perhaps to wear down the curse over time, as the dragonshard was apt to do? It was a force of purest destruction, and after her own experiments she was well aware of its nature.

Lyra's interest was piqued at the concept of naming the weapon. She found she disagreed with Imogen's father. In her experience, to name something was to give it greater purpose, solidifying its form and strengthening the connections one had to it. It was why mortals were so obsessed with names. They would name their children, their pets, even their lands and homes. It was an act of laying claim to a thing, yet at the same time it was an empowering force. Lyra could see through the veil as Imogen presented the name Unc'uvieain d'uvaeh, and as it was carved into the wooden haft so too was the fragment of the soul remade. Its glyphs were subtly altered, reflecting the new name in the language of the soul.

The longer she spoke with the witch the more Lyra's respect grew for her and the coven she represented. She had thought oaths had become mere words thrown about without care or concern of their meanings, yet here she was presented with a people who seemed to comprehend the weight of their own words. Though Imogen may not realize it, this simple act of acknowledgement would solidify her standing in the old specters eyes. Perhaps there was hope yet for the children of the current age.

"If you can find more, it would be of great benefit to me." Lyra began, coming closer to the woman now that the ritual was fully complete. She glanced to the side of the room, down the dark passage where Et'Vaaran had appeared once more. He sat near the doorway, seemingly uncaring of their conversation, but Lyra could see his ears perked and angled toward them even as he cleaned a paw.

"Our agreement called for blood first and foremost, thus, if you manage to find more voidrillium we can come to another arrangement. I am certain I can offer you something worth your effort."

The Nyxus was a place of corruption. It weighed upon those that stepped foot within, steadily chipping away at their psyche as the cold tendrils of the void itself sought overwhelm and consume all that entered. Throughout the ritual Lyra's magic had shielded them, aided by the flowing surge of aether which lead to the creation of the new pact weapon. Now that all of that was complete, however, the weight of the Void would likely begin to settle on Imogen. To Lyra it was a comforting presence, but for the Reaver it was likely a growing burden held up only by the strength of her soul and the powerful magic she wielded. That, and the fires of light that she carried likely helped beat back the suppressive darkness of this other world.

"Yours is quite the temperamental magic." Lyra commented, once more looking at the weapon, "But I suppose all magic is in its own way."

Lyra smiled and motioned for Imogen to follow. She began to lead them up the stairs, out to the theater above which was open to the dark sky and black sun. As they walked the shadows around them shifted. Things began to move in the darkness, peaking out behind corners, looking down from rafters. Things of many shapes and sizes, some recognizable and similar to animals of the material realm, others a mass of parts and mismatched features that could not easily be described.

"You stand in the Void, a place absent of light and many things common in the Material Realm. It is a... dumping ground of sorts, a place where the broken and forgotten and thrown away. Failures, mutations, and things that were not right for the world you know."

More and more of the shadow spawn began to appear, filling the open space of the theater but they did not approach past a few hundred feet. Et'Vaaran padded close behind them as they made their way out to the broken reflection of Zaichaer. He was quiet as a shadow, but his amethyst eyes glowed a warning to spawn that seemed too eager to approach.

"The creatures spawned from the darkness are starved for meaning, for purpose. They lack any concepts of self, or reason, or souls. They are a void wrapped in shadows, and they seek to consume to fill the emptiness of their existence." They paused near the entrance of the theater, where they could see the rest of the city. Lyra turned to look at Imogen, "The ritual you performed, where your soul ways laid bare to this world, was like a bonfire in the night. The brighter your light shines, the more you will attract the attention of OTHER things here. Things even I do not care interfere with."

As if on que the sound of a bell, deep and unnerving, rang across the city. It shook dust from the crumbling buildings around them, and all the shadow spawn shrank back. The tiger's tail flicked in agitation, eyes narrowing before walking to the side, disappearing into a shadow on the ground without a backwards glance. Lyra watched him go.

"I believe you have attracted the attention of one of the Apostles." Lyra pointed down the street where a figure was shuffling toward them. It was tall, its limbs too long for its body. Its skin was a mottled swirl of black and greys, the robes it wore were tattered and torn. Where its claws drug the ground deep grooves were cut into the stone. "There is one of its Disciples. Dangerous things, and what awaits those who are corrupted by the Void."

The Disciple, or an abomination as they were also known, were what resulted of mages that tampered with the Void and failed to resist the haunting call of the darkness. Their souls were corrupted, and their bodies were twisted into something grotesque, a mockery of life, but they were not undead. The creature that walked toward them was very much alive, but its soul was blackened and scarred, as if chunks of it had been torn away. As it drew closer its voice could be heard, dripping with madness.

"More... more to take, more to hold, never enough, never enough... What glimmers, what shines, what lies hidden beneath? It’s mine, it’s mine, all of it mine. Your soul, your secrets, your sorrow—yes, yes, all of it, all of it! Give, give, give... or I will take, take, take..."

It repeated these words in random arrangements, over and over again, its voice shifting from whispers to half shouts as its eyes locked on Lyra and Imogen.

"Will this thing do?" Lyra asked, one eyebrow raised.

[Imogen]

The witch wasn't really sure what she'd expected to see beyond the hidden storeroom. Maybe a dark reflection of the entire city of Zaichaer made just as much sense as anything else, really. Still, something about the shadowy reflections, the silhouettes of familiar buildings outlined against a nonexistent sky- it shocked her. The thought that all of this was just waiting on the underside of every shadow was more than a bit disturbing.

But it made some sense. For the whole of the Eclipse, everywhere she'd gone, the shadow-creatures had hunted and haunted. She'd supposed that they had to come from somewhere, it simply hadn't occurred to her to wonder what that place was. Well, perhaps this was it.

Imogen felt for the Slipspace through her rune, reveling for a moment in how easy it was, with the Aether Creep removed. It felt like she'd been bunded up in a half-dozen casts for the last six months, moving and stretching with only the greatest care and difficulty. To actually move about freely was exhilarating.

The shadow spawn, she largely ignored. She'd learned from the eclipse just how fragile they were (though perhaps it didn't hold true here, in their home? The matter bore investigation) and with so many Pact weapons deployed, she could have scythed her way through the crowd of them without difficulty. No, her attention was solely on the thing the soul-scribe identified as a "Disciple". A void-twisted mage, then; that could be dangerous. It really depended on how much of its wits and power were left.

”Let's find out!” the witch declared, voice cheery, ”I'll give it a test. See if it can weather the first strike.”

Semblance was one of the most popular Runes among senior witches in every Coven; the power to judge an opponent at a glance, to understand their actions and even predict them... well, she'd sparred with Carina enough to understand how powerful that was. Unfortunately, she didn't have it. Her seniors had judged her almost entirely without aptitude for the art, and worried that the rune would drive her totally mad. As a result, she had no way of judging the "Disciple's" power at a glance. She would need to take a more aggressive tack.

The shade's warning about the attention of the greater powers of this place echoed in Imogen's ears, but the witch wasn't concerned about drawing attention, at this juncture. In fact, she welcomed it. And anyway, she wanted to get the feel of her new weapon, and the best way to do that was to practice manifestation.

The Sunsinger shifted her hand up the shaft of Uncertain Death, letting her power pass through it, capturing every detail in her mind. To duplicate a Pact weapon required a great deal of focus and concentration, for the Reaver needed to maintain a perfectly detailed image of the weapon throughout, and then to cast it out into the world and control it. Students often took months before they could fashion a proper duplicate, and it took even longer for them to make one strong enough to do more than snap when brought against an enemy.

But Imogen was not a student. She held up her hand, and duplicates of Uncertain Death formed in the air behind her- first one, then six, then a dozen, then a hundred. Each was a nigh-perfect copy, not just of the metal and structure, but of the magic within the spear, the voidrillium and even the curse which had gnawed at Imogen's spirit. She brought her hand forward to point at the disciple, and all hundred copies reoriented themselves in midair, pointing directly at it.

Then they shot forth.

The effect of so many spears being loosed at once was not much like anything seen during an ordinary battle. It was more like a flow, a solid river of flashing steel and glowing purple and polished ash filling the air for a few seconds. The spears were not simply static, either. They swam angrily through the air, twirling about each other, jostling madly to ensure that none swung wide. And where each one impacted, they erupted, exploding as the aether from which each was formed reverted suddenly into bursts of nova-flame.

All vision of the street was immediately lost, blocked by smoke and light and the flying detritus of explosions. The force of the impacts was enough to send head-sized chunks of shadowy cobblestone flying a hundred paces, and the sound of the impact and explosions birthed a dull roar which echoed through the entire quarter of the shadowy Zaichaer.

”Oh.” Imogen sighed, the echoes of her attack still dying away, ”It feels very nice to do that again.”

[Lyra]

It was an interesting combat style, Lyra admitted. It would be difficult for anything to avoid a mass of spears such as this being hurled at them, and as the attack commenced Lyra could also tell the additional magics within the pact weapon were also present to some extent. Whenever it came to close combat, especially with Reavers, Lyra had often avoided them entirely. After all she was not the sort to get 'up close' with anyone with a blade, let a lone a magical one that could respond and reshape to the users will. In most cases Lyra found it was simply best to whittle away at them from afar, or work through a proxy who would deal with the sharp end of the weapon for her. Unfortunately for the abomination, it had no such options.

The spawn quickly disappeared behind the swarming spears, but even with it visually hidden behind a cloud of dust the sounds of flesh tearing and bones breaking was audible.

"That is quite the display." Lyra praised, though as she said it she floated backwards and away from the witch. Not in a hurried fashion, but she did make it obvious she was putting distance between them. Lyra's eyes swept the streets, pausing on darker patches against buildings and near rubble where the glimmer of eyes were appearing one by one. Though non approached the number of shadow spawn was steadily increasing, growing from dozens to hundreds as the display of magic grew more fantastical. Imogen seemed unconcerned of the impact her actions had on the Void and its denizens, and in truth Lyra did not blame her for her ignorance. During the events of the Eclipse the world had been flooded with shadow spawn, and even to Lyra they had been rather pitiful. Yet know Lyra knew something of their nature, and had come to realize the shadow spawn that invaded the world especially in the early days were like starving dogs. Vicious and aggressive, but weakened due to the nature of the Void and its lack of aether or access to higher concepts and ideas. With the coming of Nyx, and the advent of a new Greater God of the Void, things had changed dramatically. The disciples were just one such example.

When the smoke finally began to clear they were greeted with a mound of flesh that only vaguely retrained its humanoid shape. Its flesh was pulverized, its organs crushed and oozed from the gaps in the grey sack that was its skin. But it was not yet dead. It lurched forward, claws the first thing that reformed as it drug its slowly reforming body across the ground like some grotesque snail.

Shadow spawn by their nature were not easily killed within the Void itself. They were made of the material of the Void, the darkness of the Nyxus and the negative energies of this other realm. Lyra herself had found them quite troublesome to deal with, and often fell back to simply injuring them enough that they would flee. Over the years since the Eclipse the Shadow Spawn that ventured outside the Void had grown more powerful in many ways, having consumed concepts of the outside world and gained powers from them, but along with those concepts came something else as well. A shadowy sense of self preservation. Now the most powerful shadow spawn would attempt to flee if they felt they were unable to claim victory over their opponent, a clever adaptation which ensured the most powerful shadow spawn and the most intelligent would continue to grow. The Disciples of Greed, however, seemed to lack this.

From the throbbing flesh a dozen tendrils of reddish black slime shot forth, not toward Imogen, but toward the shadow spawn that had begun to gather in greater in greater numbers. Each of the shadow spawn captured were drawn in and consumed by the flesh which used their wiggling mass of shadows and tentacles to reknit itself together. This was one of the inherent abilities of the Disciples of Greed. They could rapidly consume other shadow spawn and both use their bodies to repair themselves, and in the case of more powerful shadow spawn adapt some of their abilities to their own ends. It made even the weakest of these abominations frustrating to face. This combined with their fractured souls, and any magics they once held when still sane, meant that the scale of power for any given Disciple was quite broad.

This one leapt forward, attempting to close the distance as its half regenerated body sprouted another dozen tentacle like appendages that now arched toward Imogen and her weapon. Its muttering continued, but was nearly unintelligible as blood choaked its vocal cords, leading to its spouting wet gouts of reddish saliva.

[Imogen]

Imogen raised a brow as the dust settled and the monster's diminishment was revealed. Not that it had been a looker before, mind, but this- she almost felt pity for the thing.

That pity fled at once as the creature began to ransack its fellow spawn, drawing them in with meaty tendrils. This style of regeneration was a nasty trick, one which she'd had thankfully little cause to encounter in Ransera proper, and it called for a total shift in strategy. There was simply no point in beating a monster to a pulp if that pulp was going to get back up and attack you anyway.

And attack it did, flinging itself wildly in her general direction. The spongey mass of shadow and tortured flesh drew itself up, quivering, and decompressed itself at her, moving like a cartoonishly energetic bit of sputum. Although the witch had spent many long years working as a janitor in the building behind her (well... sort of, anyway) and had seen many and more disgusting sights, this one really bore no comparison. Nausea welled up in her stomach, and she clamped down hard on it.

But gross wasn't the same as dangerous. The Disciple was surprisingly quick on its... slime, but Uncertain Death had been orders of magnitude faster. The creature found itself impacting the austere surface of Imogen's pact sheild with a wet schlork-ing noise, sliding slowly down the ample surface of the pact weapon.

”Durable- and disgusting” the Sunsinger noted, with some disappointment ”But I'll need something a shade more fearsome. Let's see if this draws anything.”

The witch's general style of fighting was to stab or slash, and that was terribly ineffective against this kind of amalgamous beast. For strictly magical contests, fire and light were her go-to tools, but fire was a bad match-up against shadows, and this realm had proven capable of draining away all but the most focused and intense bursts of sunlight magic. So what could she do which would effectively kill--or at least, incapacitate--something like this while in the realm of shadows?

Imogen let her right hand and Uncertain Death fall to her side, then raised her left hand, turning it palm-upward. White, opalescent scales spread across her digits, running up her palm, and the entire limb seemed to lengthen and twist, bulking up into a disproportionately-large lizard's claw. Then, with a single shimmering wave, the scales turned from shiny to dull, keratin hardening into iron over leathery flesh. The Orkhan woman clenched and unclenched her fingers a few times, as though testing their flexibility... then plunged her hand into the air, where it disappeared.

When she withdrew her hand, it was holding on to Metallabzieher, the spell-dagger she'd crafted a year ago to defeat the Primal of Metal. The knife, made of golden abmetal and crowned on the pommel with an enormous magmatyte, of a quality few smiths would even have seen in their work, was hot enough to slowly heat her scales to glowing. The knife's materialization produced a blast of heat, which tore down the street in both directions like a stiff breeze, intense enough to produce visible distortion in the air around Imogen. She didn't seem very bothered.

With a casual underhand toss, Imogen threw her Pact Weapon at the Disciple, her Pact Shield vanishing into nothingness to move out of the way. It wasn't a very good throw. Most of the dagger didn't even touch the slimy beast, the point instead digging directly into the street, with only the crossguard making contact at all.

This proximity, however, was sufficient to cause the Disciple to catch fire, which it plainly did not appreciate. This was only a sideshow, however; Imogen's intent was made clear a second later, as the street below the dagger began to glow, seething and bubbling as it melted. Molten lava exploded out of the street, splattering everything within a few meters and adding to the city's serious pothole problems.

Nor did the lava stop there. The witch made a jerking motion with three fingers of her left hand, and the molten rock began to climb up the writhing Disciple. Within seconds, it was coated in a layer of rapidly-cooling molten stone... then another, and then another still. Within a minute, the witch's spell had entombed the Disciple in a foot-thick hump of cooling rock.

”Well!” Imogen's sounded a bit winded for the first time since she'd completed the pact binding underground. She stopped to catch her breath, metal scales slowly returning to pearlescent karatin before sublimating back into her own flesh. ”D'you suppose that's done it?”

[Lyra]

Lyra watched with interest as the witch shifted tactics. It was true that the standard methods of dealing with foes would not be as affective on this creature, and she was interested to see what Imogen would come up with. When she reached into some phantom space Lyra's interest only grew, reaching a pique as she saw the weapon that was revealed. It was a beautiful work, near glowing with power. Was that why the Ork had to reinforce herself with the scales of her dragon kin?

Had Lyra accepted too low of a price for her aid with the soul binding pact? As it stood this young witch had showcased both exceptional skill, as well as a wealth of resources that even Lyra might grow envious of. For the first time Lyra felt as if she had undersold her works, and experienced something akin to buyers remorse. Even if Voidrillium was outside of this one's reach, Lyra suspected she could access other things that would be of great aid to her.

Lyra withdrew further as the wave of heat washed over her, forcing her to once more cover herself in shadows to shield from the worst of the boiling temperatures. Around them the shadow spawn seemed to react as well, most drawing back though a few Lyra recognized as having consumed elements related to fire inched just a bit closer. The weaker of the shadow spawn went up in flame as the thrown dagger passed them by on its way to slam into the mass of flesh that was the Disciple. Those that remained would grow more powerful, Lyra knew, as even now those that had never touched an element were steadily trying to draw in the excess aether in the air to incorporate the concepts of heat and manga into their vacant cores.

The Disciple at first seemed eager to accept the dagger that was flung at it. It wrapped its tentacles around it, all but guiding the weapon into itself and giving no mind or care to the fire that consumed it. It was a property of Greed to consume vast quantities of any and every concept, and the abomination tried to consume the flames along with the dagger which produced them. Maybe the madness had blinded the corrupted mage to the dangers, or perhaps what little sanity remained simply was not enough to give it caution to its actions. This was the folly of Greed. It focused on taking at the expense of all other reason. It wanted, it craved, id needed everything it deemed valuable. By the time the Disciple realized its mistake, it was already too late.

When the stones had begun to cool Lyra gazed through the Veil, to the twisted soul of the creature within the cooling rock.

"It lives." Lyra came close once more, still eyeing the trapped spawn, "But I do not think it will so easily escape this." Or it might never escape, depending on the power at this spawn's disposal. If it possessed a rune of elementalism then perhaps it could, but given it showed no signs of manipulating the elements Lyra doubted this was the case. The shadow spawn around them were drawing closer as well, though many were now looking at where the Disciple had fallen.

"Have you sated your battle lust?" Lyra finally asked, "Or do you need to seek another opponent?"