At this point, Krahe had completely surpassed any form of surprise or disbelief, finding it both easiest and safest to simply move with the flow of events unless sothing unprecedented or obviously dangerous presented itself. So, she simply nodded in agreent.
“Now, then,” the Queen said, trailing off. Then ca the barest crack, the subtlest parting of her lips, for she had spoken until this point without even having distinguishable lips, and from her mouth issued the na of F———A. No sound nor booming voice, only the Na.
With the Queen’s soundless invocation of that na, Krahe felt her thoughts cast towards one of the sigil-moons wheeling above Zor’Aguhastra, towards them and past them, to a cot-like body orbiting the vast city faster than mortal sight, a half-molten boulder of burning-blue glass. Upon it, at its rear, the origin of its imnse thrust, there was a dark crater, and within that crater, in the storm-eye of its thrust plu, there was a building the size of a city, a temple of fantastic architecture, dream-like, unreal, with curved angles and alien geotry of sinister beauty.
In that temple, there dwelt F———a, King Regent of the Fire Vampires; a living conflagration, a maelstrom of pale-blue fire, centered around the sole distinguishing feature of a vampire-fanged mouth.
There was no doubt. This was Fthaggua.
About her sward the Fire Vampires, and they, too, were just as featureless, having only large mouths and elongated bodies of fla, fla that blazed with preternatural heat in a manner unlike their King Regent. They were Lesser Eidolons equal to Krahe’s own eels in their status as the pinnacle of the smallest mountain, the greatest of the small, the strongest of the weak; that is to say, the apex point of what a Lesser Eidolon could beco without surpassing the boundary of evolution or making the yet greater leap of transcendence to Greater Eidolon. Were she not already accustod to the Chthonian Eels, she would have strongly considered divesting herself of them in favour of these Fire Vampires; in the future, she would certainly seek to obtain at least a handful. There was no doubt in her mind that having a contract with F———a would render them a better choice than most other Lesser Eidolons.
The royals had made clear that Fthaggua qualified as a Greater Eidolon by a small margin, and certainly, the magnitude of its being was indeed far lesser than that of Y——kh; where Barzai felt nearly perfectly real and Y——kh was approaching that point, F———a felt noticeably ethereal, as if she was “stretched thin.” Even so, F———a was to the Fire Vampires as the sun was to a candle. The leap of eidolon classifications was just as much of a qualitative transformation as the difference between unrefined thauma and Six Maxims Thauma.
Krahe willed herself back to the throne chamber as the King of Many Colours began speaking once more. In the middle of the chamber there now hung a projection of the scene she had just witnessed, F———a burning upon its altar as countless Fire Vampires sward around it.
“F———a is weak, for she is young. Therefore, her power is formless and readily fills any vessel, as you have observed with Ktynga, the cot that is her current ho; she shall confer the characteristics of “Palefire” and “Pyrovampirism” to any vessel into which her power is poured. Theurgies cast through her strength may erode the strength of others to replenish your own, or to sustain themselves for longer than they otherwise could. Should you wish it, she will devour the astral bodies of others to replenish herself and to grow. The King Regent of Fire Vampires; a pale, undying fla that devours life and grows in perpetuity, yet which never rages out of control; that is F———a.”
There was an undeniable sense of pride in the King’s words, entirely unlike his tone when speaking of Y——kh.
“I have witnessed the inhabitants of Zor’Aguhastra summoned by a witch and bid to devour the astral bodies of condemned prisoners. How does this “Pyrovampirism” differ from that devouring?” she asked.
The King thought for several seconds before he replied.
“One is brute force, a thod which scatters much of that which is devoured in the process of digestion, breaking down the devoured and using the lowest-order energies for the devourer’s benefit. It is a capability inherent to us all just as eating is to you. Those whom you have witnessed are rely those of us who have developed their inherent ability to “devour” to an exceptional degree. Y——kh’s devouring, while more refined than most, is also of this type. F———a has developed an altogether different thod.”
The Queen spoke up to fill in for her husband.
“Pyrovampirism, the ans of digestion through combustion, slts-subjugates-transmutes what is devoured into a form best suited to the devourer, discarding a far smaller proportion. Palefire, furthers its efficiency, for it is uniquely suited to "digestion by fire," breaking down that which it burns without destroying it; it could be said it cooks in place of burning, or that it pre-digests the victim as a spider would. We have judged this to be the ideal pillar to support the Lesser Heterodox Cycle and to ensure that you, the contractor, do not et an untily end.”
“Y——kh to cripple them, F———a to drink their blood, the cursed raven to consu their corpse,” the King chid in, audibly suppressing disgust as he ntioned Barzai.
“It ought to be comparatively simple to determine a suitable contract na for F———a,” the Queen said. Krahe wasn’t sure whether there was a veiled request within that statent, but it didn’t matter either way; she didn’t see any reason to refra or reinterpret F———a’s vessel as she had done with Y——kh’s vessel.
As she had done before, Krahe cast her mind back into the mythology of her own world, to the Old Ones and Outer Gods that, to her, had been re fiction. She considered if perhaps their existence in her world’s fiction was so epheral consequence of its cosmological proximity to Zastreon’s reality within the sea of Kenoma, but that was not the matter at hand at this mont.
F———a, as an eidolon, was one suitable for theurgy in the sense of lesser eidolons, of scrolls and talisn, of direct instructions and vessels that gave instruction to the eidolon’s power, allowing it to influence the outco, but not to steer it entirely. In short, while Y——kh would do best if she summoned his strength directly, F———a was fluid and best used to empower other things. This line of thought led her to the idea of divine invocation in the esoteric sense, of a remote force descending its power unto others, perhaps even of an official invoking the power of the emperor through the imperial seal. The ntal image of a solar eclipse stuck out in her head, of the manner in which Aztec astrologer-priests had callously invoked its occurrence as proof of their and their liege’s authority. An eclipse was indeed a potent on, one with real weight in this world, and so Krahe allowed that image to influence the vessel that she ford for F———a.
In fact, to say she ford the vessel was sowhat inaccurate; there was no iterative process, as with Y’Alha’Zor. The ntal image snapped into place, and well before the throne chamber could respond to her thoughts, she already had the na on her tongue.
“The contract na is Zhah-Rhan-Thule,” she said. Despite its compound nature, Krahe found it remarkably easy to pronounce.
A crystalline sphere of iridescent-black, shrouded by blue fla that ford the shape of a vampiric mouth. The alchemical sigil of Phlogiston was inscribed upon the sphere’s surface; three circles joined by lines into an upright triangle, with a plus-sign extending from the triangle’s bottom face.
The sphere in its totality was half a ter across.
It ford from nothing at Krahe’s intonation of its na, crumbling in reverse into existence behind her head, the unnatural darkness of its surface giving it the appearance of a pale halo ford by the eclipse of a blue star; in other words, a black sun, and Krahe was its high priest.
User Comments
0 comments from readers