Chapter 63: 61 – Metamorphosis

It burned, and boiled, and bubbled, and Alcerys saw clear as day as it burned away the inquisitorial symbols upon her armor and melted smooth the holy etchings, as it utterly annihilated her guns until naught but fingernail-sized pieces were left, as it reached her sword and melted the aquila away, leaving but a twisted, heat-distorted crossguard of brass and cold-iron wiring, the very circuitry that permitted the blade to come ablaze as it did.  There was another lightning-strike. Another roar of thunder. The mixture of blood and ink upon her skin went up in flames, and yet it didn’t burn - it flowed off of her in narrow, directed streams, swirling about across the ceremonial mat and encircling her sword, flowing up onto it. 

Tendrils of candle smoke reached down from above and met with the fire, sucking it in as they wrapped around the sword and lifted it up. The weapon in its entirety was set ablaze, its blade growing blackened and charred at the tip, the blade flaking away as its myriad glyphs visibly twisted into new forms or burned away altogether, the remains of its crossguard twisting and reshaping in impossible ways. As the weapon began visibly falling apart, her armored coat went up in flames. It burned with smoke uncharacteristic of this divine blue fire, but soon she realized it was no smoke - it was Fog, the divine force undoing the enchantments within the garment, drawing them into the sword as the smoke-tendrils took its plates and in singular flashes of blue fire welded them to the blade, the metal so seamless that there was no doubt in her mind the force had changed armoring steel into the finest blade-steel. It went as far as to take fragments from the guns and form them into a new edge where it had been compromised.

Yet more fiery smoke-tendrils brought up fragments from her guns, the blue fire seamlessly melding their metal onto the weapon. A wicked, stinger-like curved point, which soon became myriad briar-like spikes that went up the back edge all the way up to the crossguard, until the crossguard itself was reached. Its shape already twisted, a veritable wreath of cold-iron briars was wrought around it. The briars on the back-edge suddenly receded, forming an uneven, thick, yet visibly razor-sharp blade, almost like it was covered in uncountable miniscule teeth. It moved further up still, burning away the wrappings of the handle and the purity seals they covered, and the glyphs in the handle’s metal themselves, reshaping the pommel into a dull spike.

Her fuel gems were not spared either, the matter of all six she’d been issued somehow drawn directly into the blade’s newly-formed crossguard, their very substance eroded into nothing as their crystalline structure was reshaped into a single formation of blue gemstone amidst the tangle of wires and thorns. It made no sense - standard-issue fuel gems were meant to be replaced, even if they tended to last years under good circumstances. But then, they were never known to turn blue or meld together, and neither was any form of solidified Ignis, no matter how pure. Clearly, what was occurring here was beyond the bounds of modern science.

She would have wondered why the Omniudex had left the dungeon fuel-gem be, were she not utterly entranced - she hadn’t had an imperative to bring the object here since it hadn’t been issued by the Order, but she had, for she believed it to be among the things that tied her to her being an Inquisitor, recent though its coming into her possession was.

For a moment there was nothing, all but the smoke-tendrils which held the blade aloft receding, as if the Omniudex himself pondered what to do next. Several tendrils then reached down, pulling together what remained of her guns, while fire flowed from the tendrils holding her sword and channels were burned into its steel, only to be filled by cold-iron moments later. Such strange reforging left a flame-like pattern upon the blade that was just barely visible to the naked eye, and left behind only a small fraction of the cold-iron that had once made up her Eight Stars of Calamity.

This small fraction too was put to use, for a tendril reached down mat and picked up the blackstone-encased blue-orange fuel gem she’d been given by the dungeon. Omniudex’s tendrils formed a socket around the gem from what cold-iron was left, and Alcerys saw the first glimmers of a tiny chain’s segments attached to the socket before the overhead candle smoke drifted down all at once and obscured all vision, and the Omniudex’s otherworldly tongue resounded from everywhere and nowhere at once.

“BEFORE GREKURIA, BEFORE THE CHURCH, MAN STILL LOOKED TO ME FOR JUDGMENT. BEFORE MAN HAD FORGED WORDS FOR SUCH AEONS AS JUSTICE, I GRANTED UNTO THEM THE UN-THAK, THE TRIAL OF THE GREAT SKY-FATHER, THAT UNWORTHY CHIEFTAINS MIGHT BE STRUCK DOWN.”

It showed her things, formed from the ephemeral fire and candle smoke. Over and over again, the same image, flashing through like one of those new film reels. One ragged-looking figure with a weapon in hand, striking down another in vastly more opulent clothing. From a naked caveman using an antler-mattock to bash in the skull of a chieftain clad in pelts and bone jewelry, through an gaunt-looking Ankhezian cutting down a divine-looking robed figure with a scimitar, through myriad other examples that she didn’t recognize at all, all the way to the Great Heretic impaling the High Priest upon his own holy staff. 

“FOR AS LONG AS MAN REIGNS IN THIS WORLD, THOSE WHO ENACT JUDGMENT UPON THE UNTOUCHABLE SHALT BE REQUIRED. THOU SHALT HAVE NO CODE, NO LAW, NO ORDER TO LOOK TO FOR COUNSEL - ONLY THYSELF AND THINE OWN CODE. 

The light died, and through the curtain of smoke floated down a charred thing with a crossguard of metal briars, and from this crossguard hung an immaculate cold-iron chain with the orange-blue fuel gem set within it. It wedged into the infinitesimally narrow gap between the marble floor panels, the gem staring at her like a piercing eye.

“BELIEVE IN THINE OWN JUSTICE, FOR THOU SHALT BE THE INNOCENT’S RAGE. THE INNOCENT’S HATRED. THE INNOCENT’S SWORD.”

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