Bit by bit, she found grains of info on the influx of strange, yelloer talismans of abnormally high quality. It wasn’t long before she bought herself a corkboard and started w things out using it and an array of memstes and dots. By the end of the first week, she’d gotten her hands on a device that could take notes onto a memste directly from her thoughts merely by funneling a hair-thin strand of Thauma into it.
There were multiple threads to follow, and, in her pursuit, she pulled on all of them.
First was the source of the talismans, a fn woman known only as the Talisman Mistress. Supposedly, she tacted prospective ts rather thaher way around, and she never actually met with them, usie-unication talismans to discuss orders, even to deliver goods and receive payment in the same act.
Sed and third were the assassins. The first was both well-known and sidered utterly unreachable, a wizard known by a variety of niames, the most ong them “Crest Jezail”, for his rifle-staff, which was nearly as renowned as himself. He was known to be difficult to tad expensive, charging not for results, but for the effort he put in.
“One shot,” a man had said, “costs a huhousand DDs, against any random individual. The price doubles for “direct hit insurance”. Double the price for the bastard to make sure he actually hit his target, you believe that? He must be one hell of a killer if he still gets work. Trag a target, shooting someohat might be a troublesome target for any reason, every bit of extra effort is another charge… And if I could afford it, I would sooner hire him than, say, Hassan Asadi.”
As for her studies into eidolons and the Astral Gulf, she found herself progressing in a signifitly less crete manner. She couldly quantify how much closer she felt to gettis, but she did feel as though she was getting closer.
Then, on the seveh day, she broke through.
Krahe sat in the living room, wearing only her biosuit, having moved the table out of the way. There, using Thaumine-based ink that had cost way too fug much, she drew out a so-called “angle-web” across the floorboards, a stratern that both detailed a series of movements, guided kenomaiergies, and subtly weakehe Banishment Veil, merely widening one of its eyes rather than trying to tear at the .
In accordah Barzai’s instrus, she held out her most potent casting catalyst - her left arm - and began ting, stepping onto the angle-web from the Gate of the North. Barzai’s texts had specified a general structure and what eatation should tain and mean, but demahe practitioo struct their own.
Krahe called on key-holders and lock-openers, breakers-down of walls and locked gates.
She ihe pseudonyms of hackers and jailbreakers, of those who had torn dowiculous protes wrought by almighty megacorporations out of petty spite or for their own amusement.
Reag the South-most Pinnacle, she initiated a Partial Dive. The void tore in, the world fell away, and the angle-web now sprawled across untold eons. Barzai had foretold this.
With a breathless hiss, she invoked digital daemons and dataphagic AI, whose names had been plundered from the names of a gods.
Proceeding to the Angle of the North-east, she recalled words and thoughts which she had dredged up days prior. It had been a mere query as she worked away on the intation, and the answer she had gotten was a deluge - a vision of what she was certain to have been her entry into this world, nothing but fragments of light dang over that chamber and of the words by which it had been carried out. These words of power, alongside others, the Wound-like Grin gave unto her; or rather, it spoke them in pieces, rearranged and twisted, in a soundless voice that bsted through her head and made her nose run bloody.
Even now, as she repeated them, she herself couldn’t quite prehend many of the words ing out of her mouth. Zasas. Zasas. Nasatanda. Amrakas.
Crossing the Penultimate Ao the Pinnacle of the West, she once more invoked: “Eternal darkness now surrounds me, Sunken One be my guide!”
At ohe final, eastath became as a burning road of coals, and, as she walked across it, she traced with her left arm’s fingers Barzai’s Sigil of Transformation and ted: “Stepping past the precipice, into the howling vortex, let the Be’s yawning maw carve my chosen path! Trespassing the boundaries of mortality, I embody the key, a and immortal! ZENOXESE, PIOTH, OXAS ZAEGOS, MAVOIGORSUS, BAYAR!”
At the Ultimate Angle, on the Angle-Web’s south-eastmost er, the world rippled, and tore open, and Krahe stepped through, finding herself now wholly submerged withiral Gulf. No longer did she feel the urge to breathe, and she plunged deep into the ic depths, feeling herself drawn in a particur dire. In accordah the Rite of Dho-Hna, the angle-web would colpse and draw her back to realspace should she stray outside the Astral Gulf or remain submerged for too long, giving her a limited time to find herself an eidolon, or hopefully, three.
Casus was returning merely for a ge of clothes, as his shirt was drenched in gore, blood, and other vital fluids, but found himself perplexed at the state of the living room. He found a plex, eldritch sigil drawn on the ground, shining shtly it projected a cage of unlight all the way to the ceiling. It took his Third Eye to peer through and see Lady Bd slumped dowhe south-easternmost er of the sigil, her body stantly billowing with ghostly smoke, both the smoke and her hair billowing about bad forth in different dires. He turned his gaze to the pushed-aside coffee table, and instantly knew what was happening when his eyes fell upon the manuscript. There was nothing he could do at this point but watch, and so, after quickly ging his clothes, he did just that. His butcher’s work for the night was dardless.
Akaso
