718. Salivating mories“The Librarians have the Capital under their control.”
Anpu, the Lunar Haruspex of the present Tear Retrievers in the Capital contacted Frost. Subtle drips of blood punctuated between his words. The sound of scrapping, gurgling and heavy footsteps echoed within a desolate sanctum of red.
“The streets are teeming with Impuritas presence. Amalgam – Do you rember the sa eggs that used to parade the City of Diamonds? Our surveillance tells us that there are 500 near the castle alone. Gerina’s n claim that we are only seeing a small percentage of their presence. I’m afraid the forecast within Frontier is worse than we thought.”
“Be careful around those eggs. They can steal a page from your life and regurgitate thousands of twisted versions of yourself. The Librarians can’t do it en mass on their own. They need the Crimson Hunger Hearts to churn them out. Any news on them lurking around the Capital?”
“Not nearly as much in the next tower over from what Abadona has seen. If I may add? The loyalist faction of the Empire has made it trivial to gather information on the populace. They’re burrowed deep with traitors of their own Empire like moles. We have information you will want to hear.”
“I’m listening.”
Frost climbed a long set of stairs, the walls adorned by crimson flags dripping with freshly bleeding sinew. She hauled a lump of at up the stairs, chunks tearing from the seams as Frost set her sights to the exit of the underground fortress.
“There are oddities among the White Midnight personnel from what we have seen, and testimonies from Gerina’s soldiers. If you can believe this – it is possible that a majority of their personnel are Librarians. They do not bleed, and I’ve spotted injured personnel interacting with the eggs. They can heal their wounds with its paper cloth.”
The seas of its harbor were dyed red as the survivors aboard their ship took refuge in the recently cleansed fortress. Grandeur archways and battlents that were ant to survive relentless bombardnts of cannonballs glowed orange, for they had lted under the imnse heat of Frost’s magic.
Their chatter could be heard through the floors above. She had just finished cleaning up the Complex Heart buried within the basent of this place. Dragged behind her in a hand was another spoil of war to keep the Ankou still latched by her hip company.
It was a mory Bistro.
mory Bistro
Wrath of the Amalgam
Avoidance of the Amalgam’s Maw
Disuasion of the Amalgam’s Emotional State
Replicate Imdiately in the presence of the Amalgam
See no Amalgam, Hear no Amalgam, Speak no Amalgam
Imprints of the Capital
< Specialty >
Soul Rank: Black | Impuritas: Crimson Hunger
LEVEL : 120
ORIGIN : Impuritas
HP : 8,500
ATT : 0
MAG ATT : 0
ATT DEF : 1,200
MAG DEF : 1,200
MP : 200
RESIST : Nil
AGI : 15
“Is that true? Are the Librarians copying people now?” She asked the unrecognizable sack of at.
It had no discernible humanoid features and carried a list of mories regarding how to deal with her. It mattered little when it was already caught. As a matter of fact, it was the mory Bistro who had removed its eyes, mouth and ears for the sake of preserving its mind.
The mouthless entity groaned with unknown organs. She paused montarily and threw it into a crevice in the wall, lit by a small torch above. With a finger, she carved a mouth for it to speak, but it still could not hear her.
She quickly found that the Crimson Hunger were highly tolerant of pain, as their existence centered around the exposure of flesh and nerves. Even the soul-rending pain of her flas and fingers could not hurt what had the smallest speck of a soul to call its own.
That explains why their RESIST stat is so high. At least regarding pain and conditions. Their hunger is so compulsive that they can’t think of anything else. But that doesn’t an anything. I have more than one way of getting them to talk.
In her spare hand was the pallid-blue lantern containing Terrent’s tortured soul, and it was enough to drive the mory Bistro mad as tiny nubs ford on its sides. It desperately tried to grow arms, so that it could finish off what Frost had spared it from.
Unlike the Fractured Nilhim who could communicate telepathically, the Crimson Hunger could not impart their mories unless it was deposited into a Heart, like how macrophages needed to capture and present a foreign body to helper T-cells.
That way, they could mount a coordinated response against the attacker. Afterwards, mory cells specifically built to fight that foreign body would appear for the next instance. The mory Bistros represented these mory cells. But unfortunately for them, they functioned far too similarly to the human immune system.
Those cells were only useful if they could be used at all, and most importantly, if the threat was identical to the one they morized.
Frost had changed a lot since she last openly interacted with the Impuritas.
Furthermore, she only needed to walk into a Complex Heart with Silence of the Stars, and it was already over. None could resist the light, aside from the mory Bistros whose RESIST was still defined as NIL.
She scrapped it against the wall, spreading its flesh like mural as the Hired Arm guarded the staircase in case soone accidentally witnessed the Lantern. Frost attached it by her hip with steel string on the opposite side of the Ankou.
The cold, pale diaphragm of Die Agnosis was placed against the mory Bistro’s minced flesh, and she spoke to it in a more direct manner.
“Tell , why are the Librarians copying people in the Capital?”
Her voice reached an inner sanctum never ant to see the light of day; her voice like a ray of sunshine reaching into the bowels of an abyss.
Its thoughts scattered, but it did not yet speak to Frost. Die Agnosis was useless on an Impuritas as well, since she could not aningfully interact with their State of Mind, perhaps due to their lack of Light.
“There is nothing for you to know. All mories are archived individually, so that our secrets can never be revealed.” It responded, however, Ankou spoke on its behalf.
“Amalgam, they have baseline mories, and mories that they are imparted with before they are separated from their collective.”
“Insolent –!?”
“To clarify…” Terrent’s voice seed to register in the mind of the mory Bistro. “And to begin with, they are terrified, Master.”
This was because Terrent, despite his physical state, still inherited so of his Impuritas abilities. Telepathy was one of them, although this could only be used on those with significant Trepidation Stacks, regardless of one’s RESIST.
Terrent then continued.
“mory Bistros store and take mories out from their collective. You may call them Hearts of the City. They are given only what they need, never what they want. But we have conducted experints of our own on their kind, long before we beca… accomplices. CogitO and the Subderma were quite fond of how they could store mories. Unsurprisingly, the first successful instances of a Collection used the Crimson Hunger as a basis.”
“The point being?”
“You will be on your way to the north. I am no advisor, but I can show you how to interact with the Crimson Hunger to the best of my ability. Hearts of the City, as a collective, retain countless mories. But those mories are divided amongst each other. The triplets were fond of flowers, so I shall use it as an example. A flower grows in its own soil. A Heart of City will know much of its surroundings, as would what you call a Complex Heart.”
Terrent then added how he knew of a thod to extract mories from the Crimson Hunger. Part of his experints prior to becoming an Impuritas was through using the Crimson Hunger to store mories and experiences.
With the mory Bistro, it was possible to use it as a thod to extract information from a Heart of the City.
At least from the Crimson Hunger.
“Amalgam. Fear, to us, is not rely of the mind.” Terrent began as he directed Frost’s hands. “It is an instinct tied to those we believed are unprepared to face the future Nilhim envisions. A force of weakness, but it is a force that can be exploited. Scrape its flesh and smother in it. Expose every nerve to my light. The Crimson Hunger fear only one thing – starvation. They are slaves to instinct.”
She did as he said, scooping the mory Bistro’s flesh from the wall, and patting it around the Lantern until the light was smothered. This way, she could keep it alive until they reached the Crimson Hunger’s Heart of the City.
“Surely, if there’s one thing that’s going to know sothing, then it’ll be that. We lack so much information about them that hearing ‘I don’t know’ is driving crazy. You’d think an Ankou would know sothing as well, but in the end, you’re all just pieces on a board, huh. Goes to show how valuable you are in their eyes.”
The Ankou didn’t speak a word, and the Lantern regretfully shuddered in agreent.
“It’s annoying that I can’t dig deeper into your mind like how I did with that Red Giant and the Blood Moons, but neither can Elysia. I could’ve turned it into a Confessor, but I can also confirm what you’re saying. I see a list of mories it carries. Terrent. Extract what you can from it. The ‘Imprints of the Capital’ sounds important.”
“As you wish, Master.”
User Comments
0 comments from readers