Snippet #2712623

Pulpit's price

Nuria nodded at Jaghati with a smile, "After I've recovered, perhaps. I can still spar with any of the Living Emperor's sons, here, if you like. The 'Black Storm's Heart' engram does not come without its costs even if I can shoulder them well. I must stay within the Altar for a time soon after channeling that kind of power or risk organ failure. Only Myrkul's Vein can suffer unharmed through such immolation poured out from the base planes. And I must inspect it."

She closed her eyes and gingerly set her sword on its point. The metal balanced effortlessly on its own straight up as it hadn't a scabbard but one sheath in five fingers of flesh, blood, and fire. Each digit had its nuanced shallow worn in the handle wrap just enough for the wear's uniqueness to her then took no more. Eyes closed she quieted her mind to open the engram socket inside her weapon. As a rectangular frame of etched bone pushed into thirdspace she took the loom of densely interconnected wires. The threads burnt deeply but black and the whole went further in than its frame's thickness. Some living shard of a burning void that suffered no aetherkind to live howls from deep inside the bone-framed psionic machine. A gale ever screaming through thin walls of ebon strands. The foundation bone was etched in Loross the language of the long-dead empire of the Fallen Emperor. It was his bones shaped into a vessel to contain the power.

She looked it over reverently while her mind's eye sought errant patterns and torn strands. This engram frame could be repaired but not easily replaced one had to be careful while it was removed. They paid to it a great deal of direct attention and maintenance. Speaking aloud she knew Jinhai were always listening, "Only minor damage to the engram. Mostly to me and I will heal. It will have to be stored until Sybil can see to its maintenance."

Myrkul continued in its original thread of thought, "The Celestialkind Odona does not carry a pantheon with her. A minor servant is in attendance. The Aetherkind does not bring an active strategic threat with her. I will pass questions to the Ductu if desired, Living Emperor. I can also thread a gate to that place with my lessers securing it."

There was a faint feel like the hum and spatial torque of a warp engine as Myrkul spun up the planar energies required to create a new node within the Way elsewhere in space. As prodigious mind did so with a distant astral projection it offered with its voice from glinting walls, "It is possible for the Mada 'Sybil' to make the trip through the bulwark once repairs to anchors have completed. Your energies, Mada, widen the egress. We give the Sons of the Living Emperor full dispensation of the Mada quartermaster and smith when she arrives unless the Living Emperor requires otherwise."

Looming watchers

A giant spiral of black dust peeped in one of the front windows at the wooden frame just out of Becca's view. An eye of a creature that arced long and high above the small cottage stared at him quantifying the threat. Though it still said nothing the lesser of Myrkul's Vein pulled away to merely look on with the others out of view of the windows. They were studious to not interrupt though they did nothing to conceal their pervasive auras of order. The humankind Becca couldn't detect such things and it suited them to ensure that the Aetherkind knew they were watching.

The ductu looked out the window for the moment as if speaking. Ductu's dusty voice then then turned back, "We are aware of Ifrit's attempts to corrupt. Genesis appeared to stifle his advance but we cannot protect an infinite plane at all points. We will do what we can and are also content that humankind does not care for you."

Becca weaved her head to try and see what Ductu was looking at but couldn't sit up. She did comment at the Ductu's tone however, "Ductu! She's not a bad person! If you don't like the Ifrit person either we should totally help! I'll get better soon!"

The Patina-eyed Becca tried her best to sit up and only made it to her elbows, "Um if you fought him did you figure out how they were uh, corrupting the land? I guess? He sounds like a demon."