W off of decades of tactical instinct, she ran into the ter of the square, towards the fountain, intending to use its height for cover while she cleared out some of the beasts and made her way to a better tactical position. At worst, she could scale the fountain itself and py king of the hill. They were trying to make her panid run as predatory beasts or pack-hunter drones were wont to do. She gripped her pistol in both hands, diagonally offset in a ter axis relock position.
Just having reached the fountain she shot down another of the beasts as it tried to crawl towards her, taking two shots to hit its spine. Forward-back. Forward-back. gs flying through her field of visio shot burst open the head of a third creature just as it leapt up at her from the side while she stood atop the fountain’s lowest tier, calf-deep in ice cold water.
Digging her fingers uhe edge of her bodysuit, Krahe pulled free and smmed into pce a fresh en-bloc clip, the empty oering onto the fountain’s edge. Adrenaline c. Heart pounding. A primeval FIGHT rea kept barely under trol by sheer force of will and decades of bat experieched into her brain, something that didn’t magically lose its poten spite of the absence of hormuting cyberics.
While her attention lit between the remaining creatures she was already aware of, a seventh creature leapt onto her back. The impact sent her rolling across the square’s smooth tiles, still holding ontun with a deathgrip as she struggled to stop a her bearings. She mentally kicked herself for not having paid closer attention, but she had her eyes in the back of her head nor neural coprocessors to hyper-accelerate her rea times. Krahe could feel the beast’s ribs cmp down around her, its “tail” ing around her leg and its tongue around her neck. Its ulingly humanlike arms reached to her stomad dug their cwed fingers into her suit as if trying to disembowel her. They hooked around her arms to pio her sides. As she struggled to free herself and reflexively sent out mental impulses to cyberics that were no lohere, she instead felt something altogether differe deep within herself. Something eldritch flowed from elsewhere into her and a fme came abze within her chest, her left arm ing alive with a fme-like glow like a reignited ember. Dense, pitch-bck smoke began to seep out of the limb. The four survivis from the inal six closed in, and one of them leapt at her from the front. She mao just barely raise her left hand far enough to aim at the thing, pulling the trigger..
The gunshot was apanied by a sudden burst of smoke inating from her arm, rather than the gun. Within its tenebrous mass she caught a gnce of crimson light, in the brief timespan of its flight.
It smashed into the beast like a gale-force wind, a fsh of crimson light bursting through the creature while the strange smoke scoured its flesh, like a swarm of ravenous nanomaes crossed with superheated psma. The are projectile evoked memories of prototype onry firing just suanite-sheathed psma bolts.
A vaguely sickly feeling was left behind, only to flow away into her left arm and vanish from awareness. Even the left arm of the creature mounting her was shredded down to bare muscle by what little smoke had caught it, but the pain only motivated it to try harder, a perverse gurgle-growl eg from just behind her head. Its cws pierced her suit and dug into her flesh. The fme in her chest became something altogether different, colpsing unto itself and untrolbly drawing in more of that eldritergy. Krahe felt her own sciousness fade as the bzing force erupted from her in the form of a pyrocstic flow illuminated by blood-red light and filled by an all-ing buzzing sound.
Krahe returo awareness into the se of a city square utterly devoid of life, the outlines of its parasitic octs burned into the stone as ghosts. Everything in her viity seemed… Sanded-down, the surface yers stripped away. She even found herself to be sitting in a shallow, just barely noticeable crater.
A sudden, rising siess gripped her, and an untrolble deluge of revolting, acrid smoke came spilling out. She spent the several minutes coughing ag as the otherworldly miasma poured from her face. Despite her bodily state, Krahe mentally searched for that menu again, frantically listing through its articles in the hopes that it would expin what had just happened.
Already, the initial menu had ged.
She had an archetype now.
[ARCHETYPE: Deathsmoke Mage Lvl. 1]
However, it was the Boohat held her awo of them, in fact.
[OBOG’S MYSTIC WISDOM]
[Tags:]
Taboo Knowledge
od’s Touch
[Details:]
The holder of this Boon possesses the knowledge of obog; she may query this Barding subjects tagged with od’s Touch.
Grants the holder full trol over Thaumic Fusion, making it more effit. Ehe holder to tain Anathema geed through Thaumic Fusion within the Left Arm of obog. Ahus stored has no effe the rest of the body, but does not dissipate unless reintroduced into the body.
Rehe holder immuo mental manipution and capable of dising the true nature of things.
[DEATHSMOKE BLESSING]
[Tags:]
Elemental Affinity
Eldritch Corruption
Identity Obfuscation
[Details:]
Grants Third-order Elemental Affinity: Smoke
Grants Zeroth-order Elemental Affinity: Anathema
Bloonsensual Appraisal attempts targeting the holder, regardless of potency or anti-cealment properties. Ehe holder to corrupt the results of sensual Appraisal attempts such that the nature of Boons/Grafts tagged with od’s Touch is obfuscated.
Ehe holder to tain Anathema geed through Thauma Fusion within the Left Arm of obog. Ahus stored has no effe the rest of the body, but does not dissipate unless reintroduced into the body.
Improves the holder’s Anathema aropy Tolerance.
Causes the holder’s Aolerao scale with her Entropy Tolerance.
Improves the holder’s Entropy Tolerance growth.
Still hag and heaving, she dragged herself over the fountain; she wasn’t coughing up her lungs or puking smoke anymore, but her body was gripped by flu-like siess, making even small movements demand full effort.
Akaso
