Krahe awoke to a strange feeling in the back of her head and a hollowness in her gut, yet not one she could physically pce. It felt as though some an that wasn’t actually there had distended and now yawned with empty space. What had woken her was a sound, the knog of a beak against her winding and resonating with ahly tone.

  She was deathly certain that she saw a raven with infernal coals for eyes sitting there when she first opened her eyes, but now that she had gotten her bearings, it was gone. In fact, the window didn’t even face the outside, but a swirling, colpsing maelstrom, as if the building hung perpendicur to the side of a cliff. This, bined with Casus’s 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-pne which she had trawled in her past life, that virtualized pseudo-reality whie had called things like the “matrix” or the “neo-astral”. The semi-indepe work programs whihabited much of the data-phe closest thing to this world’s eidolons that Krahe was familiar with. She wasn’t sure why it was this un-pce had shown up in her dreams, and of all times now, but then it appeared; the Wound-like Grin, rendered in colge from garbled visual data and images of gore. It opes 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 iines. From there, a simplistic i of a erged, slowly gaining fidelity until it became a fully realized high-fidelity model of the bird. It perched upon the Wound-like Grin’s teeth, peg at them. A moment ter, Krahe awoke to the sound of peg on a window pane… 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 a about her m. Casus was gone, but she found a tall gss of water oable o the box of Css 1 suppressant and a small ceramic dish. At first she wasn’t sure what was in it, bei crest shapes coated in brown sugar. The absence of one pill from the box followed by an appraisal using the Prospector’s Eyes firmed 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 someicy, fitting nicely with the sugar. She fihe rest while reading a hefty tome on the pseudo-ti of Xaugeth, basking in the dawning sun.

  It was as she read the book, the Xaugeth Encyclopedia Vol. 1, Edition of 5201, that she realized that Ronin had to have been one of the Herculeans which were listed as one of the civilized races 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 of them chose to metamorphose into pseudo-adult grubs, called Eternity Larvae for their paratively extreme loy, 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 ferred growth in intelligence while the Herculean remained as ay Larva.

  “Some sources cim that at any time, ay Larva may choose to initiate a metamorphosis into a Shieldback, while others cim that it must be initiated by ing 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. On Eternity Larva metamorphoses, rather than being a juvenile Shieldback, it emerges at an advaage. There is a clear corretioween the number of molts ay Larva has gohrough and the Shieldback it bees, though the ratio is not known, and once again, it likely varies tribe to tribe. Eternity Larvae frequently remain as suany years, and some simply live out their extremely lengthy lives without ever metamorphosing, ag as the schors of the Herculean kingdom. A number of mighty Shieldbacks have e 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 ay Larva for a thousand 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 tury.”

  The tome went on to describe various known stages of Herculean development. They were sistent in general appearahiribes, starting at dark earthy colours, moving into greens, then yellows, es, and reds. In the same way, the body shape ged and the size of a Shieldback’s horns, mandibles, and other such extremities grew. Patterns and specific colours seemed to differ greatly between tribes. From the descriptions, Ronin was… Effectively a juvenile, having only retly metamorphosed from a rva.

  “It is known that Shieldbacks possess intelligenparable to human adolests from before their metamorphosis, but they do not develop the ability to speak until anywhere betweehird and fifth molt. They only learn sign nguage to pensate.”

  A tug at her mind’s edge, pointing inward. After the third or perhaps fourth tug, she gave in and looked at her menu… Only to find substantial ges.

  [NAME: Brunhilde Krahe]

  [ARCHETYPE: o Caster Lvl. 15]

  [TITLE: Bd]

  [RACE: Human]

  [SEX: Female]

  [AGE: 43/0]

  [MIGHT: E1]

  [TROL: D2]

  [ATHLETICISM: E3]

  [DURABILITY: E2]

  [THAUMIC THROUGHPUT: D3+E3]

  [ENTROPY TOLERANCE: D2+D1]

  [ENTROPY DISSIPATION: E1+F2]

  [BOONS]

  [FLESHGRAFTS]

  [EIDOLON VAULTS]

  [THAUMATURGIES]

  [STE]

  [OTHER]

  Before she could get a good look at her attributes, she already felt that same tuggii t her attention to her Boons

  [SNARE-SIGN OF BLACKEST PITCH]

  [Tags:]

  Eidolon Vault

  od’s Touch

  [Details:]

  The hains two Lesser Eidolon Vaults and ay True Eidolon Vault.

  A raised eyebrow and a faint smirk were the only reas 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 havihe effects of on Eidolon Vault applications, she erfectly 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 be. She could feel that a fair bit of it was thanks to the Liminal Coil, but only a fra.

  It wasn’t long before Casus returned from wherever he had gone, ying out a whole array of various Mamon Couplers across the coffee table, including the non-funal 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 tinued meticulously cheg over his colle, furrowing his brow as he mentally went over ret events.

  “...An outlier, but not absurd progression for a te starter. sidering the Butchershop and Sughterhouse 9, it’s to be expected. What is the boon?”

  Many would have said that he was downpying, that her growth was absurdly fast, but Casus himself spoke from the perspective of an outlier, a man fully expected to eventually bee a powerful graft-saint. The very idea of being able to tame the Silberblut Coupler had been sidered absurd before he set himself to the task. Favonia, his not-quite-sister, had gained a name for being strong at a simirly 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 ar for the course, ahought nothing of it. No, it was everything else about her that stood out. If anything, her rapid progress in archetype leveli like a fone clusion, a mere side effect of this plying her own pre-existing skill set to the Seven Spokes System.

  “The hains two Lesser Eidolon Vaults and oy True Eidolon Vault. Not sure why it only specifies that for the True Vault,” she said. Even now, she tinued reading her book, and altogether remained in a rexed state.

  “Two Lesser Vaults and orue Vault… One would expect a boon of this sort from a specialized Occultist or a Shamanist, but it is heless well within pusible bounds. Misua, this Boon is certainly valuable… But you still have to actually fill those vaults before you make any use of them, and find some means to harhe spirits besides, which I ot help you with.”

  Akaso