It was done, and it made Casus grima apprehension when he first saw it.
He’d seen grisly talisman designs before, sure, but there was something malicious about this ohe tral image was a disembodied forearm, cwed and with gnarled skin like cooling magma, a more monstrous version of Krahe’s own arm, clearly, with smoke billowing from its bad rays of crimson killing light shooting from its palm. Around it swirled ominous patterns that dragged the eyes, resembling at ohe legs of a tipede and the bones of a ribcage, but it was the back of the talisman paper that gave him pause. In the ter, a three-ered eye with three pupils fused into one shape, and around it, letters which he could not read, alongside the typical occult patterns seen on all talismans.
Killing i. Malice. Hate. Hate beyond hate. Hate so virulent, so vitriolic, that it alone could tea eidolon, a thoughtless spirit that knew her death ion, what it was to deeply desire another’s demise. Casus had read that the exposed theurgic patterns of a Reaper exuded a ceaseless, furious forward drive, and those of an Atropal did the same with the impression of a coiled snake, locked onto prey, ready to pounce. He had even examined archival examples of old scrolls just to get a feeling for it, part out of curiosity and part out of a desire to uand Lady Bd’s capabilities, thinking it only fair since she had shown an i in the ws of Mamon Couplers. This was, heless, fually different pared to a mass-manufactured pattern; not merely more intense, but more profound, in the same way that the feeling of transf into Silberblut was more profound than transf into Omniphage.
Keeping quiet, stilling himself utterly, the Banisher looked on as Lady Bd pleted the third talisman and began on a fourth. Horrible, murderous malice poured out of her, smoke of bckest pitch, filling the room with the smell of sulphur and stinging fumes, only to gather at the tip of her brush as she raised it from the inkwell. With a small handful of strokes, she rehe cwed hand’s outline and filled it in.
“How long do you io wait?” came a deadpan statement as she dipped her brush. From the windowsill, a horrible noise followed. Once more, that distorted se of music, like arm trumpets ing out of a speaker made of scrap metal reading off of a broken and glued-together memste. He hadn’t noticed it at all, but now, he could see that infernal crow perched o the window as clear as day.
“I merely did not wish to disturb you, and at the same time, I was curious.”
“If you want to watch, just watch. It disturbs me more if I know you’re trying to avoid my notice.”
As if to punctuate her point, she clicked her tongue and tossed the talisman paper into a nearby baking pan of odorous liquid. ing closer, Casus saw that within the dish half a dozen more simir papers floated in various stages of having the ink leached out of them. He wao ent on how Bd would have saved a great deal of money if she had learned of this solution earlier, but she had already started over. For a solid half hour Casus looked on, watg three of the malicious talismans being pleted and a fourth started, only for his stomable and cause Lady Bd to make the ti of errors. It was a deviation he himself could just about notice, with his vastly superior vision, but she heless tossed the paper… And shot him in the head. A single beam of burning wrath, searing away at his Wards and briefly gring his vision like a bright fsh of light. It was much weaker than he had expected.
“ime it will be a real ohere’s some leftover stew in the fridge. Heat up the whole pot, and don’t call me over.”
“Very well,” he acquiesced, already starting the work of mending his Ward as he left Bd to her devices.
Later that day, Krahe tested her prototype dregshot - well out of sight, in a subterranean gymnasium of the Grafting Church, of course. She also sicced Barzai upon several dummies to ascertain the eidolon’s natural bative abilities, and found herself satisfied with learning that it could ram into foes as a potent kiic attack, as well as create seemingly instantaneous explosions with fshes of its eyes. The range of this “Bst Fsh” was limited to only around teers within Barzai, required line of sight of the bird, and, from testing against artificial wards and barriers, Krahe ascertaihat it was of an Are nature.
heless, both Barzai’s natural capabilities and the performance of her heurgy were anything but disappointing. Casus had expressed that he wished to e along but couldn’t due to apostolic duties.
Yet ter still they met once more, and as was his nature, the Banisher immediately opened with: “By your demeanor, I presume that you are not dissatisfied with the fruits of your work. What do you io call the theurgy? Another alien py on words?”
“Of course,” she said. Then, purposely speaking actual German, she intoned: “Wandrei Faust.”
“That must be in a nguage from your world, I presume. What a strange sound. It will eat at me if I do not know what absurdly stretched py on words this one is.”
Krahe chuckled.
“Nothing so far-fetched as Six Trees Killer. Wandrei is the surname of an author who wrote of creatures called Fire Vampires, thus the e to my element, and it sounds somewhat like the word for wandering. Faust was the name of a fictitious man who made a deal with an otherworldly entity. It also trao fist, and there was a long line of directed-bst missile ons with that same word in the hough it’s not the exact same operating principle, my Wandrei Faust is inspired by the desdants of those ons.”
Akaso
