Chapter 66: 64 – Emberthorn

The Sword… Oh, the sword. Alcerys looked upon it and couldn’t help pacing in front of the thing, even squatting down next to it to get a good look. After a few minutes of simply observing and taking in its details, she resolved to finally pull it out. She wrapped her hand around the handle, feeling the cold metal beneath her fingers as the crossguard’s own inward-facing briars receded ever so slightly. With a breath of Fog and a simple, upward pull, it slipped free from the gap between the marble slabs.

If she just ignored its altered form and focused on its weight in her hand, it was almost like the sword hadn’t changed. Almost.

The next several minutes she spent picking through the remains of her armored coat, ripping pieces into strips, and re-wrapping the handle. The fabric may have been stripped of magic, but it was as resilient and flexible as ever. She stepped away from the mat and went through a few of the basic training forms, finding that it reacted to every implied slash, every implied stab, thorns momentarily jutting from the back edge and blue flames enveloping its main edge, shooting off in trails that followed the path of the cut. There was no doubt in her mind that such effects would be more pronounced by orders of magnitude in real combat, but something else pried at her.

It didn’t give her the same feeling as the Aquila Calibur when it produced flame. The gem in its crossguard didn’t glow, there was no feeling of essentia flowing from a fuel source and being spent. With a breath of Fog and a spark of will, she managed to push the sword into catching fire in its entirety, a conical gust of flame spilling forth from it onto the marble floor with a forward thrust, and the charred blade laid silent again. It was… Different. The way it flowed through her chest and down her sword arm, that wasn’t how igniting an Aquila Calibur felt, and it certainly wasn’t how invoking Heatshock felt. Using Ignis was a burning sensation, the feeling of holding fire in one’s bared hand, but this was just… Warm. 

Alcerys felt that there was so much just within reach, but just out of grasp. These artefacts demanded a reason to wake up in earnest, and they would do no more than show her glimmers of what they could do - it was known, for even standard Inquisitor equipment exhibited such temperamental behavior with a new wielder. She herself had gone through this process before, and it would be no more of a challenge this time.

No, the difficult part would be picking up the pieces and building something of her own. In the weeks to come, she would need to innovate and improvise, devising entirely new techniques at a moment’s notice the way her doppelganger and that stoic gunwoman seemed to be capable of doing. 

With a sigh of uncertainty in her own capabilities, she slid the sword into its scabbard… Or she would've, had its back edge not instantly become a thorny mess the moment the point entered the scabbard. It thrummed in her hand, and a realization overcame her. It too wanted a name.

One popped into her head almost instantly, coalescing from the imagery of brambles and fire. Thornbrand. No… That wasn’t right. Emberbrand? No, that wasn’t quite there either.

Emberthorn would do.

And so it was that her attention turned to the only other thing on the ceremonial mat that had survived largely unscathed. Her armor.

It was warm to the touch, its surface almost like burned rock at a glance. Still, the pieces locked in place all the same, its Fog-infused fabric lining adhered all the same, and in the end, the charred suit of plate sealed her in its reassuring embrace all the same. Moving in it didn’t feel or sound noticeably different, in fact it made even less noise than before.

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Alcerys took a little more time to pack up the remains of her things, wrapping her sword in the ceremonial mat as the Confessor had suggested and using a long strip of fabric from her coat to bind it around her back. The belt hadn’t survived, perhaps because the entire length of it had been emblazoned with inquisitorial runes.

She concealed herself with the long cloak of burlap which she had worn on her way to this place, considering whether she should take the fragments of her guns with her. Good cold-iron shouldn’t be put to waste, but… It felt wrong. 

All that which the Judge had burned, he had burned for a reason, and so it would remain here, in this forgotten place of worship. Her next destination would be a tavern, as her stomach growled with the ferocity of a wild beast at every fifth step.

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The late afternoon of the previous day...

Zel and Zef had spent most of their afternoon in idle enjoyment of one another’s company. They had had their lunch at that muscular chef’s restaurant, receiving treatment worthy of kings under the apparent premise of Zel’s dismemberment, despite her joking protests that she’d have her arm back by tomorrow. They then returned to Riverside Remedies to an awake Makhus, who was equally as excited as he was disappointed by the revelation that while the Necrobeast Serum had begun manifesting, it hadn’t developed into full traits yet.

A portion of the early afternoon was taken up by pulling Zef’s sparklock from Fog Storage, the markswoman expertly looking it over and ensuring it hadn’t been damage, almost doting on the killing instrument.

They went on to spend a portion of the afternoon dealing with inevitable inventory-work after Sigmund noticed them pulling things from Fog Storage and asked if they had any seal-bottles in there. Zelsys had jokingly answered, “Yeah, and half your old campsite to boot.”

That single remark had resulted in an hours-long endeavor to go through the entire exhaustive list and pull out of storage anything the household needed more than them, for the simple reason that the household could not conceivably make use of half a dozen medical kits, but it wasn’t out of the question for a beast-slayer to need them. 

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