In mentally placing herself before the sword and staring into its mirror-like surface, she could witness any of her eidolons, or even “step through” into their vaults, all spaces suited perfectly to hold them.

  The Chthonian Eels’ vaults were nearly identical to their natural environment, resembling enormous volcanic funnels above an endless void of black brine.

  Zhah-Rhan-Thule’s vault was a desolate planet, upon its surface the guidestone fragment in the form of a mountain wreathed in runic chains, with the eidolon’s perpetual-eclipse vessel hanging in the heavens. Krahe had yet to communicate with her, and yet she got the impression that Zhah-Rhan-Thule would be the easiest out of all her eidolons to work with.

  Y’Alha’Zor’s vault took the form of a rather familiar maintenance and holding bay, where he was crucified, suspended weightlessly in an anti-gravity field such that even breaking the exoframe would avail him naught.

  She spent a few moments in that place, taking some time to write various restrictions; she barely needed to think in the process, instead going down the list of typical restrictions that one would code into any given mutant’s control measures. The eidolon’s frustration and haughty anger made itself known through the writhing of its musculature, visibly tightening around its nails in the futile effort to dislodge them.

  Krahe finished writing, and stood face to face with Y’Alha’Zor.

  “There are tales of your kind in my homeland, you know — tales of you, or at least something so similar it may as well be “another you,” one named Y’golonac, the Defiler.”

  The eidolon halted in its silent thrashing, tilting its artificial head as if it was putting the pieces together, as if it knew which short story she was referring to. Haughty unrest shifted into an uneasy motionlessness.

  “Don’t you worry, you’ll get to carry out slaughter aplenty. It’ll just be at my say-so, and under no other circumstances. Am I understood, Y’Alha’Zor?”

  The muscle-writhing resumed, different now, a shudder that passed through the eidolon’s form from its core to the tips of its limbs. Finally it spoke in an unearthly rumble, even as the head remained locked shut.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Barzai’s vault was nothing.

  It wasn’t an abyss, it simply wasn’t any sort of space at all, and contained only Barzai.

  “Empty, huh?”

  “This is a comfortable place to watch from,” he said frankly. “I dislike illusory reality. It is real, or it is not. That which lays in between is distasteful, far too questionable.”

  “Like Zor’Aguhastra.”

  “You said it, not I.”

  The next several days rushed past in a blur of talisman-crafting and study; Krahe visited both the Lost Sun Society and the Temple of Records for texts to guide her, not having expected to contract with Greater Eidolons. She of course mixed the texts she perused to confound whomever might be observing. Similarly, she visited Garvesh and several suppliers whom he knew to source higher-quality ink, as Yao’s talisman paper was already better than anything she could buy on the open market. At this point, expenses she would have wept at didn’t so much as raise an eyebrow. Before sequestering herself to her work, Krahe made sure to contact Yao regarding the hunt to ensure that the old witch wouldn’t bail at the last second.

  Zhah-Rhan-Thule made it all too easy to adapt Wandrei Faust and Schwarzfaust to her, requiring only minor modifications, but talismans were still time consuming to produce. When it came to Zhah-Rhan-Thule, there were two custom theurgies that Krahe wrote solely for her. The first was intended to channel a limited degree of the eidolon’s power solely to imbue a particular action or thing with Palefire and Pyrovampirism; this was the Pale Blessing. The pattern was simple, being a representation of Zhah-Rhan-Thule as the eclipse, with fire dripping from it into a chalice. The back side bore a more detailed rendition of the vampiric mouth, with a burning silhouette impaled on a stake with the life drawing out of it into the mouth, with Fire Vampires surrounding the corpse. It was a perfect and elegant representation of what Zhah-Rhan-Thule was in concept and ability. Krahe made several dozen, and found the process almost relaxing, as the pattern wasn’t excessively exacting in nature; each individual talisman had a slightly different figure being burned at the stake, a slightly different number and positioning of Fire Vampires. Some chalices had jewels, others not, others were basins. Zhah-Rhan-Thule understood, and this was the simplest of theurgic invocations.

  The second, of course, was the full summoning; the Black Sun Halo, which would bestow the properties of Palefire and Pyrovampirism onto all acts of magic she performed for the duration, be they theurgy or thaumaturgy. The duration wasn’t fixed, but Krahe got the impression it would be a little over a minute, and could be either longer or shorter depending on how heavily she made use of its supportive effects; that is to say, if she pushed hard and cast as many theurgies and thaumaturgies as possible, it would naturally be shorter. The pattern, of course, focused on Krahe as the beneficiary of the Black Sun Halo, with the back side largely being an abstract pattern of sigils surrounding a large symbol of Phlogiston. The Black Sun Halo, given its complexity, demanded six talismans of the same pattern.

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  Despite the work she had done with Zhah-Rhan-Thule, the majority of her effort during these days was spent trying to work with Y’Alha’Zor. He wasn’t stupid, and his vessel compelled him to cooperate; it was a simple matter of familiarity, or the lack thereof. There had been some adaptation necessary with Zhah-Rhan-Thule, certainly, but this was something completely different. Trying to arrive at a workable theurgic pattern for Y’Alha’Zor was akin to working with a completely unfamiliar programming language. The first was the simplest in concept: A complete summoning, sheer brute force with no refinement whatsoever. In the end, the problem turned out to be that the pattern was too complex to fit onto a single talisman paper. It required eight, plus a ninth non-theurgic talisman as a lynchpin to ensure the others would consistently end up at the right spots when thrown. Moreover, only the best ink she had on-hand worked, as the remainder of her stock couldn’t withstand the energies involved. Krahe produced only two full sets of these Crucifixion Advent Talismans, seeing as one use would completely exhaust the eidolon. The patterns that summoned only parts of Y’Alha’Zor’s body for a brief moment were markedly easier, especially those employing his hands, as they were, in the end, the most similar to her existing theurgies, even if the language was different. She produced several copies each of theurgies making use of Y’Alha’Zor’s full capabilities in parts; the head to launch nails and bite, the arms to grapple and bite, and the upper torso to bring a larger portion of its brute power to bear without a full summoning. The upper torso theurgy, due to approaching Crucifixion Advent in scope, required three talismans, also made with Krahe’s best ink.

  Altogether, the theurgies calling on Y’Alha’Zor’s power were:

  Hellmouth, which summoned the head and neck for the purpose of launching nails or biting.

  Stigmata, which summoned one of the arms, and Twin Stigmata, which summoned both; Twin Stigmata was in fact a proper separate theurgy using a single talisman, and summoned both arms a fixed distance apart to ensure they could reach the target. If this was not required, then two Stigmata talismans could be used.

  The Three Curses, which summoned the upper torso, including both arms.

  And last, Crucifixion Advent, which summoned Y’Alha’Zor in his entirety with a maximum time limit of 33 seconds. This time limit could be extended if the summoning was blessed by Zhah-Rhan-Thule; that is to say, if Y’Alha’Zor kept killing and devouring, his rampage could continue beyond the time limit.

  At first, Krahe had wondered if it wasn’t strange that communicating with Greater Eidolons was that much easier than her eels, but she came to the conclusion it only made sense. The Chthonian Eels were animals, they thought like animals, and thus had to be communicated with on terms they could comprehend, like emotion, intent, and basic concepts of movement. By contrast, Y’Alha’Zor and Zhah-Rhan-Thule were sapient. The differences didn’t end there; theurgies using Lesser Eidolons had a fixed power output, and there was a fixed number of theurgies of a given power that a Lesser Eidolon could fuel before being exhausted. With the Binding Obelisk’s enhancement, each of Krahe’s Chthonian Eels could power four Wandrei Fausts or eight Schwarzfausts, a 30% increase. A Greater Eidolon’s output couldn’t be quantified as easily, because the degree of power they could put into a theurgy was variable; a single theurgy could be given more or less “fuel,” it could be held for longer, and so on, depending on the limit of the theurgic vessel and/or medium. Moreover, Greater Eidolons continuously recovered their stamina, and did so quickly enough that it could end up being a factor in a protracted battle; unlike Lesser Eidolons, there was no delay after exertion before they could begin recovering.

  In short, if a Lesser Eidolon was like a hardpoint with a single torpedo or a one-shot pod of missiles, then a Greater Eidolon was a turret connected to the battleship’s deep stores of ammunition, or a fighter that could land and reload in battle. There were still hard limits that would cause a Greater Eidolon to become "exhausted" and thus unusable until the next day or even longer, such as firing off too many theurgies in quick succession or summoning the eidolon in full, but it could stretch much further than a Lesser Eidolon.

  The summoning limitation also made it blatantly clear just how different True Eidolons were. From what Krahe had read, the ability to remain materialized for long periods of time was not unique to Barzai, it was just that his stability was completely disproportionate for his relatively low strength in his initial, pre-evolution state. In fact, Barzai’s “base form” had been somewhat pathetic in terms of combat capability, even for an unevolved True Eidolon. And now, after evolving, it was the other way around; his capabilities, at least as far as she could test them on dummy targets, surpassed those of first-evolution True Eidolons by a substantial margin; not an extreme degree, but enough to be beyond normal deviation. He had been two weight classes below others of his developmental level, and now he was two weight classes above. This was all, no doubt, due to Krahe’s own priorities; when she had summoned him, it was utility, so he manifested with greater focus on utility, with most of his offensive power being contained in harassment and the overwhelming finishing blow of the Daemon Core. Now that Krahe considered herself strong and connected enough to act more in the open, Barzai’s evolution had changed him to reflect that, merely retaining his original utility capabilities without significantly improving upon them. Sure, the form of the Executioner’s Assistant had hands and could thus pick locks, but it could also wield weapons made for humans.

  With all other preparations made, Krahe carried out her final act in Audunpoint for the immediate future: Picking up her armored jacket. It was nothing truly exceptional and had no outstanding abilities or characteristics, as it was only “nice” as far as mid-ranker equipment went, but it was still a very, very good quality jacket with a remarkably strong defensive rating thanks to a combination of shapeshifting soulbeast leather and a layer of metallic omniphage. Besides its direct defensive power, it gave her an entirely independent, self-regenerating layer of wards, something she sorely needed, even if it wasn’t a thick layer of wards. As utility went, it came with the ability to change size to a fairly significant degree, with the caveat being that it only had so much omniphage inside, meaning if she turned it into a trench coat, the armor would be more spread out. Her only customization was a patch on the back, that of her own grasping left hand. Besides the jacket, she’d had the craftsman make a harness to go with it, to comfortably stow her Pattner, some spare ammo, and a number of talismans. Just in case she couldn’t afford to pull them from the Kenoma Pocket at any given moment.

  With that last errand, it was done. She killed the final day at the Lost Sun Society, reading, partaking of the shooting range, and trying her hand at wargames.

  Come morning, Blackhand met with her compatriots at the Crow & Raven agency’s office, and thereafter rode out from the city upon an iron horse.

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