Krahe wondered what the hell terms like Anathema or Thauma Fusio, or even just Thauma on its own, thinking of the supposed feature of her first boon. It didn’t go off. She tried fog on the idea of Thauma Fusion as it reted to the boon, and this time, it worked.

  Knowledge that wasn’t her own flooded in, like someone had just given her a back-alley memory impnt operation. It was in fshes of thought aal association, but slowly coalesced into a coherent thought-mass.

  First came the idea of drawing in the essence of some nebulous other pce, this so-called “Thauma”. Sed was the idea of using one’s own body and soul as a furnace, burning Thauma as fuel; to power artifacts, give form to mental patterns, jure spirits. Magi and simple.

  Third came the memory of that sickly feeling. Impurity left behind by the burning of Thauma. Entropy. What was happening to her at this very moment was just the body’s rea to an excessive buildup of Entropy, one surpassiolerance for it.

  At st, the actual idea of Thauma Fusion.

  Instead of a fme, there was a sun, but in a fsh, it ged to a fusioor.

  It was a rea that could only happen inside a living human, the colpse of Thauma into something greater, yet altogether far more terrible: Anathema. A force so great and terrible that only the truly mighty or truly desperate dared wield it, for just as it scoured away one’s foes, so too did it grind away at its wielder, twisting the flesh and cutting lifespans short. Every spell and attack fueled by Anathema carried its mark, causing them to inflict these same madies upon those struck by them.

  The image of a weakling who throws his life’s dle into a fusioor just to bze with that infernal power for the brief moment of his lifespan. A walking corpse glowing with otherworldly power just as her own arm did. Immediately afterwards came the image of an imperious, shining form of true might, a paragon of mankind bending Ao his will through unimpeachable power and skill. Both bore the epithet “A”, but for the former it was a mark of disdain, and for the tter a badge of aplishment.

  Then, there was her.

  A fner forever ged by tact with whatever it was that had brought her to this world, her being twisted into a form that fear Anathema’s sc radiance.

  As the sickly feeling faded, her coughing slowly became a bitter, dark, yet thankful ughter.

  “You made me a fug nuke mage… A walking dirty bomb…” she cackled to herself, not expeg that otherworldly preseo hear her.

  Her archetype ged, as if in response.

  [ARCHETYPE: o Caster Lvl. 1]

  “Oh, go fuck yourself,” she uttered, finally getting her disbelieving ugh under trol. The cruel humor of it wasn’t lost on her - she had, after all, voluntarily chosen radiation bsters as her on of choi her past life. That sickly grin in her mind wasn’t there anymore - as far as she could tell, this was just an impassive system trying to adapt to the end user as any adaptive software would.

  Krahe took stock of her surroundings, reloading her gun as she did so. Not sure where to put the empty en-bloc clip and knowing what a pain it could be to get new ones, she cmped it around the edge of her bodysuit. Rather than spend any more time in the open where she risked being ambushed again, she rinsed off the ashen remnants of her assaints, stuck the hose ba the water auro the boratory.

  Once more, her mind wao the true implications of her predit. Her death, this new world, all of it.

  A part of her wale g with this, but she didn’t have it in her. She’d already learhe hard way that letting grief overtake her was foolish, that there would be a safer time and pce to process it all. Even this fate - to be thrown into an abandoned city possibly filled with horrifying mutants - was fine. Refreshing, even. pared to waking up armless in a cyber-butcher’s body dump and having to deal with the everpresent malignaion of Megacity Gamma’s lower levels… This was a rough hike at worst, she thought.

  So it was that Krahe walked through the a city, leaving a trail of wet footprints and errant droplets, not all of which were fountain-water.

  As she walked, in an effort to occupy her mind, Krahe repeatedly attempted to pull up the menu while maintaining awareness of her surroundings. It was a on exercise to her, one she’d done hundreds of times, as it was standard practice for any modification that added or altered the menus one could pull up on their hud. It worked just as well with this more esoteric alternative as it had with the cyberic HUDs she knew.

  Once she’d gotten a handle on the mental trol, she browsed through the various submenus, starting with [Thaumaturgies] since she figured if she could use magic, she might have a basic spell or two. Surely, whatever she had done back at the square ted.

  What weled her was half of an expnation, in the form of a single listing.

  [Deathsmoke Tracer]

  [Tags:]

  First-order

  der Element

  Bimodal Projectile

  Lacerative Damage

  Eic Damage

  [Details:]

  A core of pressed fme tained by a jacket of razor-sharp ash and smoke particles.

  Linear input/output sg. Scales more effitly if imbued with Anathema.

  Low-velocity projectile; be attached to another projectile such as a bullet, trailing just behind it. Dissipates over an approx. five-meter stretch after passing approx. thirty meters; range scales with power input.

  Inflicts a burst of Eic damage on impact followed by Lacerative damage, making it effit against lightly-armored targets.

  “My outburst didn’t t as a Thaumaturgy, then…” she thought. Her line of thought led her to sidering what exactly she could do without having it listed ihaumaturgies] submenu.

  Akaso