It was at this point that Vic noticed something about her right arm: It was still bronze. The green oxide scales had been removed somehow, probably through a bath considering that both her and Zefaris were clean, but that metallic bronze sheen still persisted. It could just barely be made out against the hue of her skin if the light hit her arm at the right angle. She noticed him observing, commenting on it after she swallowed a mouthful.
“Oh, my arm? It’ll go back to normal in a couple hours, don’t worry about it,” Zel said. She had automatically assumed that, having read the pulps, he might be concerned with the issues of metallizing an entire limb like that, as the process of writing about her own struggle to refine this aspect of Storm-conqueror’s Mantle had taken up a great deal of her thought during the final two months before the pulps were published. Only after she had already reassured Victor did she realize that she’d edited that very struggle out of the books, as it in reality occurred well after the timeframe they covered and the discrepancy couldn’t be reconciled in her mind, regardless of how much the publisher’s editors pestered her to add more true-to-life parts to make the story more believable. It wasn’t as if there was a shortage of day-to-day occurrences to detail, it was just that her day-to-day was so far removed from normalcy that it wasn’t really believable. The Hanging Feudalist Printing Company had taken a real demonstration of her daily routine before they would believe that “On Tuesday, in the second week of September, I spent twelve hours punching still-life images into a giant block of cold-iron” was in no way an embellishment.
She picked up a second piece of meat. Though it wasn’t audible, she could feel her joints creaking. This part was the worst - the half-hour or so after the imbuement began deteriorating, but before her body could fully metabolize and disperse the leftover Metallum. A small mercy was that oxide chips had never formed inside her joints, as she’d read that such things could happen if the technique was performed incorrectly or even if the user happened to have a damaged liver. A wave of concern suddenly washed over her when she noticed how closely the redhead was paying attention to her food, as it sparked another realization in her: “He must be starving…”
After all, not only had he likely not been fed by his kidnappers, Red’s reconstructive magic demanded so much of the subject that it had made even Zelsys hungry, and she rarely got truly, gut-wrenchingly hungry. By comparison, forcing Victor’s body to regrow layers of skin and form the hardened exoskeleton to replace the topmost dermal layers must’ve left him starving, even if he had absorbed thrice the bone mass of his new gauntlet to make up the Ossum.
Zel stopped eating for a moment, and pulled out a second, smaller seal-box out of Fog Storage - portioned out to be her breakfast, and as such more than sufficient as a full meal for someone with dietary requirements closer to a normal human. They were designed to trap heat and amplify the time-dilation properties of any Fog Storage they were placed in, allowing the food they contained to remain nearly fresh for weeks at a time. The problem was that once they were taken out of storage, the seals would destabilize and time would rapidly begin catching up. As such…
“Eat quickly. It’ll start rotting in two hours.”
She had no concern for her compatriots; they had their own tablets and their own stored rations, but there was no such assurance with him. After somewhat cautiously sampling the food, Victor proceeded to surgically and meticulously dismantle his meal with a combined speed and precision the likes of which Zelsys had never seen, for she had never dealt with nobility. He then proceeded to slump in his seat, half-closing his eyes as the nutrient bomb hit him and his body diverted every resource available into digestion - this being much to Duma’s amusement. The Old Man chuckled at the scene, remarking: “Ah, the cultivator’s food coma… Reminds me of my younger days.”
Over the next roughly twenty minutes, Zelsys finished her meal and the four senior cultivators carried on drinking Duma’s tea, until inevitably conversation turned to Zel’s plan to repair the spear by joining it to a staff. Since Victor had taken the staff and stored it away inside his Black Marble Tablet, attention turned to him, snapping him out of his food-induced daze. He retrieved the staff, its jade rings jangling as he put it on the table. Duma’s eyes were frozen on it from the moment it came into view, and it was clear he recognized it, but he kept his words to himself for the time being, instead asking: “May I examine it closer?”
Zel nodded, and he took it in hand, drawing in a shallow breath through his teeth. His lips moved voicelessly as he mouthed an incantation, infinitesimally tiny wisps of Fog emerging from not his mouth or nostrils, but his tear ducts, forming a translucent film over his eyes. His pupils narrowed down to pinpricks before spiraling outward until they consumed his irises, the colour of his eyes shifting to an iridescent purple.
Light flowed down the silver conduits along the staff’s shaft, its jade rings also taking on a glow and beginning to float weightlessly. Then, it all abruptly stopped. The rings fell back down with a jangling sound and Duma exhaled, returning to normal.
“Now, what I am about to say requires some… Explanation. The design of this staff, that of a large core ring with four or more smaller ones, is known as a khakkhara, after the original use of it as a noisemaker. It originated with and was widely used by the priests of the Kingdom of Itria, this being the nation which Xiān Dì sacked and ousted from what would later become the heartland of Pateiria. I shan’t go into details regarding Itrian religion, as theirs is one of the few faiths that attempts to comprehensively envelop all the eight million - that is to say, innumerable - dead gods which make up our world’s foundations.”
He grasped the broken staff and held it aloft. The jangle of its rings seemed… More important, somehow.
“This… This is one of the Eight Onbashira, so named after wooden pillars the Itrians used and still use to form defensive barriers; an Ikesian adaptation of the name would be Eight Obelisks, or Eight Guardian Pillars…”
The old man, as Zel knew that those with a particular passion for history are wont to do, began trailing off. She knocked on the table, trying to get his attention: “The staff. What is special about it?”
“Ah, my apologies, I just… Did not expect to come across a thing like this. These ancient sacred tools were once used by Itrian shrine maidens, so-called demon exterminators for their role as… Well, the name speaks for itself. They were tasked with leading the defense forces of the kingdom’s eight most significant shrines and the towns which supported those shrines. Five of the Onbashira are known to have been stolen during Xiān Dì’s war against the Itrians, so I suppose one of them is now recovered.”
“Do you know of any special properties that we should look out for? Any enchantments?”
“The Eight Onbashira were said to be capable of turning the power of demons against them, though I cannot say whether this refers to their capacity as high-grade casting mediums or some separate, unique function. My knowledge regarding these artifacts ends with this: The Onbashira were created specifically so that their full capabilities could not be accessed by anyone other than their long-term wielders, and to primarily magnify the wielder’s existing capabilities rather than granting them new ones as typical Pateirian artifacts tend to do.”
Victor piped up for once, his voice still low-energy as he spoke: “So then… They would have been considered to be lesser than other plunder due to differences in design philosophy, and the Emperor’s efforts of history erasure would have made them no more than good staves as far as their Pateirian owners were concerned.”
Pride in his face, the old man nodded: “Precisely, yes.”
“...Which explains how this one ended up with someone as relatively low in status as a Locust Quee-” the redhead continued, only stopping himself when it was already too late. Zelsys was only glad that what he revealed was such an unsurprising piece of information, rather than the knight-captain’s involvement in the affair or the theft of the potentially most significant magical object in the region.
“Alright, history lesson’s over,” Zel broke the silence. ”Let’s get this thing fixed before the Butcher’s temporary seals start deteriorating.”
And so they did. The most challenging aspect of the procedure wasn’t working with Azoth-auric Amalgam, but rather determining the appropriate length for the end product based on the pieces of bloodwood available. In the end, the broken section still attached to the spear-point was used alongside one of the intact shafts taken from the Red Locust Queen’s hoard. The resultant shaft length was somewhat longer than those of the shortspears which Victor was accustomed to.
As for the process itself, it was not perilous or risky - merely tricky to perform on one’s own, even with a supernatural grasp of the metallic as Zelsys did. The necessary quantity of amalgam was measured out, which Zelsys swallowed and manipulated inside her second stomach, activating it using a tremendous quantity of Metallum-coded Pneuma since her Core of Earthly Iron was still depleted. Jorfr and Duma’s skill with ritualism played a role in spiritually joining the two unique objects into one, this part being relatively easy thanks to the fact neither the spear nor the khakkhara had a fully developed weapon spirit.
They cleared space for the ritual, shuttering the doors and windows alike. Duma, font of knowledge that he was, cooperated with Zefaris in drawing the rather complex glyph on the floor and charging it with Pneuma. Meanwhile, Jorfr memorized one of Duma’s joining-mantras and the two men recited it while Zelsys regurgitated the now-prepped amalgam and used it to join the two halves, it hardening into a sort of gold composite in a single instant when she snapped her fingers. The entire process took nearly three hours. Zefaris documented the whole thing with gusto, taking nearly half a dozen photographs as things progressed.
When all was complete, the staff-spear was left floating a meter and a half off the floor, as suspending it thusly was part of the glyph’s function.
Zelsys looked to Victor, tacitly beckoning him to take what was his. In a manner of speaking, this, too, was part of the ritual - his acceptance of his new path, this weapon which represented his actions in what would come to be known as the Fifth Eye Incident as well as his remaining connection to Resved.
Standing here, in the midst of a sprawling, shining glyph which was the only thing to illuminate the darkened room, surrounded by these four larger-than-life, almost mythical figures… With every centimeter closer to grasping the staff-spear, Victor felt his anchor to the mundane world fraying more and more. The rope was on its last strand, and grasping the staff-spear would sever it for good. Being a martial artist, a traveling mercenary, those were one thing, but the traveling disciple of Zelsys Newman, a person in stark and overt opposition to the Divine Emperor… That was an order of magnitude different.
As anticipation - or rather, anxiety - set in, he couldn’t help but notice something incongruent about the spear side.
“The blade looks… Pateirian, I think,” he remarked, running his fingers near it, but not touching it. He looked up to Duma, “Post-Royalist.”
“Ankhezian. It’s an officer’s weapon from the Post-Civil War period, likely the first or second century after the empire went tits up. The Emperor might have had his smiths copy one of his own weapons during his journey to the west, or something of the sort…” the old man began, only to catch himself. “But we do not have time for another history lesson. Grasp your weapon and give it a name, before the levitation glyphs run out.”
“A name…”
Drifting into thought, Victor found himself grasping the staff-spear without even thinking. A brightly-burning thrum shot straight up his arm, and in that flash of brilliant ache, the name came to him.
Akaso
If you’d like to read ahead, consider heading on over to the Patreon! Patrons gain access to up to 20 days of advance content, with further expansion planned for the future. So if you want to help fund my crippling addiction to commissioning art, consider reading a couple chaps ahead.
I’d also greatly appreciate it if you could rate my story, or even leave a review. Reviews and ratings alike weigh heavily in the eyes of the algorithm (not to mention prospective new readers), so that pretty much means they determine the success of my work. A single review or even just a rating can noticeably influence the novel’s performance, especially when it has few ratings overall like this one does as of me posting this.
Same goes for review voting - the reviews with the most upvotes are the ones that most people will see, so you as readers decide which reviews are legitimate.
Discord for inadvertent spoilers from yours truly HERE.
It was at this point that Vic noticed something about her right arm: It was still bronze. The green oxide scales had been removed somehow, probably through a bath considering that both her and Zefaris were clean, but that metallic bronze sheen still persisted. It could just barely be made out against the hue of her skin if the light hit her arm at the right angle. She noticed him observing, commenting on it after she swallowed a mouthful.
“Oh, my arm? It’ll go back to normal in a couple hours, don’t worry about it,” Zel said. She had automatically assumed that, having read the pulps, he might be concerned with the issues of metallizing an entire limb like that, as the process of writing about her own struggle to refine this aspect of Storm-conqueror’s Mantle had taken up a great deal of her thought during the final two months before the pulps were published. Only after she had already reassured Victor did she realize that she’d edited that very struggle out of the books, as it in reality occurred well after the timeframe they covered and the discrepancy couldn’t be reconciled in her mind, regardless of how much the publisher’s editors pestered her to add more true-to-life parts to make the story more believable. It wasn’t as if there was a shortage of day-to-day occurrences to detail, it was just that her day-to-day was so far removed from normalcy that it wasn’t really believable. The Hanging Feudalist Printing Company had taken a real demonstration of her daily routine before they would believe that “On Tuesday, in the second week of September, I spent twelve hours punching still-life images into a giant block of cold-iron” was in no way an embellishment.
She picked up a second piece of meat. Though it wasn’t audible, she could feel her joints creaking. This part was the worst - the half-hour or so after the imbuement began deteriorating, but before her body could fully metabolize and disperse the leftover Metallum. A small mercy was that oxide chips had never formed inside her joints, as she’d read that such things could happen if the technique was performed incorrectly or even if the user happened to have a damaged liver. A wave of concern suddenly washed over her when she noticed how closely the redhead was paying attention to her food, as it sparked another realization in her: “He must be starving…”
After all, not only had he likely not been fed by his kidnappers, Red’s reconstructive magic demanded so much of the subject that it had made even Zelsys hungry, and she rarely got truly, gut-wrenchingly hungry. By comparison, forcing Victor’s body to regrow layers of skin and form the hardened exoskeleton to replace the topmost dermal layers must’ve left him starving, even if he had absorbed thrice the bone mass of his new gauntlet to make up the Ossum.
Zel stopped eating for a moment, and pulled out a second, smaller seal-box out of Fog Storage - portioned out to be her breakfast, and as such more than sufficient as a full meal for someone with dietary requirements closer to a normal human. They were designed to trap heat and amplify the time-dilation properties of any Fog Storage they were placed in, allowing the food they contained to remain nearly fresh for weeks at a time. The problem was that once they were taken out of storage, the seals would destabilize and time would rapidly begin catching up. As such…
“Eat quickly. It’ll start rotting in two hours.”
She had no concern for her compatriots; they had their own tablets and their own stored rations, but there was no such assurance with him. After somewhat cautiously sampling the food, Victor proceeded to surgically and meticulously dismantle his meal with a combined speed and precision the likes of which Zelsys had never seen, for she had never dealt with nobility. He then proceeded to slump in his seat, half-closing his eyes as the nutrient bomb hit him and his body diverted every resource available into digestion - this being much to Duma’s amusement. The Old Man chuckled at the scene, remarking: “Ah, the cultivator’s food coma… Reminds me of my younger days.”
Over the next roughly twenty minutes, Zelsys finished her meal and the four senior cultivators carried on drinking Duma’s tea, until inevitably conversation turned to Zel’s plan to repair the spear by joining it to a staff. Since Victor had taken the staff and stored it away inside his Black Marble Tablet, attention turned to him, snapping him out of his food-induced daze. He retrieved the staff, its jade rings jangling as he put it on the table. Duma’s eyes were frozen on it from the moment it came into view, and it was clear he recognized it, but he kept his words to himself for the time being, instead asking: “May I examine it closer?”
Zel nodded, and he took it in hand, drawing in a shallow breath through his teeth. His lips moved voicelessly as he mouthed an incantation, infinitesimally tiny wisps of Fog emerging from not his mouth or nostrils, but his tear ducts, forming a translucent film over his eyes. His pupils narrowed down to pinpricks before spiraling outward until they consumed his irises, the colour of his eyes shifting to an iridescent purple.
Light flowed down the silver conduits along the staff’s shaft, its jade rings also taking on a glow and beginning to float weightlessly. Then, it all abruptly stopped. The rings fell back down with a jangling sound and Duma exhaled, returning to normal.
“Now, what I am about to say requires some… Explanation. The design of this staff, that of a large core ring with four or more smaller ones, is known as a khakkhara, after the original use of it as a noisemaker. It originated with and was widely used by the priests of the Kingdom of Itria, this being the nation which Xiān Dì sacked and ousted from what would later become the heartland of Pateiria. I shan’t go into details regarding Itrian religion, as theirs is one of the few faiths that attempts to comprehensively envelop all the eight million - that is to say, innumerable - dead gods which make up our world’s foundations.”
He grasped the broken staff and held it aloft. The jangle of its rings seemed… More important, somehow.
“This… This is one of the Eight Onbashira, so named after wooden pillars the Itrians used and still use to form defensive barriers; an Ikesian adaptation of the name would be Eight Obelisks, or Eight Guardian Pillars…”
The old man, as Zel knew that those with a particular passion for history are wont to do, began trailing off. She knocked on the table, trying to get his attention: “The staff. What is special about it?”
“Ah, my apologies, I just… Did not expect to come across a thing like this. These ancient sacred tools were once used by Itrian shrine maidens, so-called demon exterminators for their role as… Well, the name speaks for itself. They were tasked with leading the defense forces of the kingdom’s eight most significant shrines and the towns which supported those shrines. Five of the Onbashira are known to have been stolen during Xiān Dì’s war against the Itrians, so I suppose one of them is now recovered.”
“Do you know of any special properties that we should look out for? Any enchantments?”
“The Eight Onbashira were said to be capable of turning the power of demons against them, though I cannot say whether this refers to their capacity as high-grade casting mediums or some separate, unique function. My knowledge regarding these artifacts ends with this: The Onbashira were created specifically so that their full capabilities could not be accessed by anyone other than their long-term wielders, and to primarily magnify the wielder’s existing capabilities rather than granting them new ones as typical Pateirian artifacts tend to do.”
Victor piped up for once, his voice still low-energy as he spoke: “So then… They would have been considered to be lesser than other plunder due to differences in design philosophy, and the Emperor’s efforts of history erasure would have made them no more than good staves as far as their Pateirian owners were concerned.”
Pride in his face, the old man nodded: “Precisely, yes.”
“...Which explains how this one ended up with someone as relatively low in status as a Locust Quee-” the redhead continued, only stopping himself when it was already too late. Zelsys was only glad that what he revealed was such an unsurprising piece of information, rather than the knight-captain’s involvement in the affair or the theft of the potentially most significant magical object in the region.
“Alright, history lesson’s over,” Zel broke the silence. ”Let’s get this thing fixed before the Butcher’s temporary seals start deteriorating.”
And so they did. The most challenging aspect of the procedure wasn’t working with Azoth-auric Amalgam, but rather determining the appropriate length for the end product based on the pieces of bloodwood available. In the end, the broken section still attached to the spear-point was used alongside one of the intact shafts taken from the Red Locust Queen’s hoard. The resultant shaft length was somewhat longer than those of the shortspears which Victor was accustomed to.
As for the process itself, it was not perilous or risky - merely tricky to perform on one’s own, even with a supernatural grasp of the metallic as Zelsys did. The necessary quantity of amalgam was measured out, which Zelsys swallowed and manipulated inside her second stomach, activating it using a tremendous quantity of Metallum-coded Pneuma since her Core of Earthly Iron was still depleted. Jorfr and Duma’s skill with ritualism played a role in spiritually joining the two unique objects into one, this part being relatively easy thanks to the fact neither the spear nor the khakkhara had a fully developed weapon spirit.
They cleared space for the ritual, shuttering the doors and windows alike. Duma, font of knowledge that he was, cooperated with Zefaris in drawing the rather complex glyph on the floor and charging it with Pneuma. Meanwhile, Jorfr memorized one of Duma’s joining-mantras and the two men recited it while Zelsys regurgitated the now-prepped amalgam and used it to join the two halves, it hardening into a sort of gold composite in a single instant when she snapped her fingers. The entire process took nearly three hours. Zefaris documented the whole thing with gusto, taking nearly half a dozen photographs as things progressed.
When all was complete, the staff-spear was left floating a meter and a half off the floor, as suspending it thusly was part of the glyph’s function.
Zelsys looked to Victor, tacitly beckoning him to take what was his. In a manner of speaking, this, too, was part of the ritual - his acceptance of his new path, this weapon which represented his actions in what would come to be known as the Fifth Eye Incident as well as his remaining connection to Resved.
Standing here, in the midst of a sprawling, shining glyph which was the only thing to illuminate the darkened room, surrounded by these four larger-than-life, almost mythical figures… With every centimeter closer to grasping the staff-spear, Victor felt his anchor to the mundane world fraying more and more. The rope was on its last strand, and grasping the staff-spear would sever it for good. Being a martial artist, a traveling mercenary, those were one thing, but the traveling disciple of Zelsys Newman, a person in stark and overt opposition to the Divine Emperor… That was an order of magnitude different.
As anticipation - or rather, anxiety - set in, he couldn’t help but notice something incongruent about the spear side.
“The blade looks… Pateirian, I think,” he remarked, running his fingers near it, but not touching it. He looked up to Duma, “Post-Royalist.”
“Ankhezian. It’s an officer’s weapon from the Post-Civil War period, likely the first or second century after the empire went tits up. The Emperor might have had his smiths copy one of his own weapons during his journey to the west, or something of the sort…” the old man began, only to catch himself. “But we do not have time for another history lesson. Grasp your weapon and give it a name, before the levitation glyphs run out.”
“A name…”
Drifting into thought, Victor found himself grasping the staff-spear without even thinking. A brightly-burning thrum shot straight up his arm, and in that flash of brilliant ache, the name came to him.
Akaso
If you’d like to read ahead, consider heading on over to the Patreon! Patrons gain access to up to 20 days of advance content, with further expansion planned for the future. So if you want to help fund my crippling addiction to commissioning art, consider reading a couple chaps ahead.
I’d also greatly appreciate it if you could rate my story, or even leave a review. Reviews and ratings alike weigh heavily in the eyes of the algorithm (not to mention prospective new readers), so that pretty much means they determine the success of my work. A single review or even just a rating can noticeably influence the novel’s performance, especially when it has few ratings overall like this one does as of me posting this.
Same goes for review voting - the reviews with the most upvotes are the ones that most people will see, so you as readers decide which reviews are legitimate.
Discord for inadvertent spoilers from yours truly HERE.
