Chapter 1664 (1/2)

Congratulations! Your Fatepiece the Hierarchy of Burden has grown to Level 2!

Randidly released a slow breath as he felt his Fatepiece establishing a sympathetic link between the crimson bottom of the inverted pyramid and his body. He was sitting with his legs crossed beneath him, imitating the meditating Nether Gatekeeper population. Small tremors ran through his arms and legs intermittently and his tail was almost constantly sweeping back and forth, but absorbing the dangerous drag of the Hierarchy was more manageable than he had thought.

The feeling was unfamiliar, but not uncomfortable.

Randidly carefully raised his hand and moved each of his fingers in turn, watching his digits tremble and stutter even with his extremely high Fidelity of the Ascendant Moirae. Maybe it’s due to my high Stats… but rather than pain… the real issue is the random muscle contractions…

Learning to handle this will greatly increase my physical control...

Crimson bolts of snaking electricity occasionally sparked to life across his body. They exploded from nothing, sprinted across some of his surrounding flesh, then faded as they ran out of animating force. Every one of his cells seemed to be charged with the energy flowing through him, steadily nurturing these brief births. His musculature was steadily adapting to the energy’s presence, but the rather random manifestations were difficult to account for.

Randidly’s focus shifted back to his Fatpiece and he felt himself proceed deeper into the electromagnetic layer. The sympathetic connection strengthened. Instantly, the sensation of buzzing across his body intensified and he could only bare his teeth to the dark, Nether rich air of the shaft.

Congratulations! Your Fatepiece the Hierarchy of Burden has grown to Level 3!

With the increase in intensity, Randidly could feel the electric discharge flowing through his body as though it was alive. The random electric serpents were birthed more quickly, sometimes even in grand batches as though someone had kicked over a basket full of the bastards.

Gradually, Randidly’s legs spread beneath them and his limbs extended and twitched. Behind him, his tail was alternatively shivering and madly sweeping back and forth in the darkness. The soft hair of the tail was sticking straight outward. The electricity seemed alive, swimming down to small and forgotten muscles in Randidly’s body and forcefully tightening them to a painful degree.

No sooner had Randidly used his Willpower to consciously relax an area and keep his powerful body from tearing itself to pieces than the electricity moved on, going to another part of his body. One second his tongue was trying to twist itself so forcefully that it would rip out its moorings in his mouth and the next the hidden muscles in the arch of his foot were squeezing themselves into oblivion.

Randidly growled. Goddamnit, in this case, my powerful body is more of an issue… this electricity can turn my own force against me…!

So Randidly began to engage in an extended war in his own body for dominion. At the same time, his Nether Core continued to slowly spin in his chest and produce extremely dense Nether. This Nether was taken by a small portion of Randidly’s attention and stored away in his Soulspace. Randidly Ghosthound was in no rush; he intended to stay down here for a few months and gather the tools he would need to empower himself.

“Do your worse,” Randidly said to the empty air. He tried to smile, but his face was cramping up too much to allow the expression.

Influence +11!

*****

Tatiana stood at the wide windows of the newly renovated Kharon Town Hall and looked out at the lively square below. Shiny stainless steel food carts sat atop intricate mechanical treads lined the edge of the space, forming a mechanic wall that sizzled and smelled of meat and tangy sauces. Brass automatons manned these popular stands, their blank faces carefully designed to appear human enough without looking too human.

The groups of civil servants and students of Kharon Academy who weren’t currently on campus didn’t truly mingle with each other but coexisted around the beautiful central fountain. The afternoon rush was definitely the busiest of the day when all unoccupied workers seemed to make a new excuse to come see the entirety automated square, driven either by a fanatical devotion to the steampunk mystique or because they felt great pride over the much-lauded clockwork of Kharon.

Tatiana tapped the window frame with her finger, wishing she had thought to keep the surrounding buildings lower; when the sun was directly overhead, the square was extremely hot, made even worse by the machines and friers that dominated the landscape. The stiff air was begging for a breeze.

Not that the students minded the circumstances; the heat just drove them to discard their shoes and socks and stick their feet directly into the fountain. Some waded deeper, romping joyously under the choreographed sprays of water that repeated themselves every thirty minutes. The civil servants were more reserved, but some of the younger ones moved the edge of the fountain and dipped their fingers in the water.

Tatiana glanced sideways at her secretary. “Make a note to call the Environmental Office and examine the feasibility of installing temperature controls in the square.”

The brass automaton nodded obediently, making several marks on the page in front of it.

Tatiana turned back to the window. She had a human secretary too, but since the day that the refineries of Kharon had figured out the method to tap into the System’s universal translation software, bypassing the need for complex Engravings to make the clockwork understand orders, basically everyone who could afford the raw materials had a personal brass automaton made.

This trend had continued to the point that Kharon was lousy with them: thousands hibernated in vast stacks in some of the internal warehouses of Kharon, their metal edges glittering in the darkness. When confirmation had come that the Calamity would indeed still be happening and was only eight months away, Tatiana had given the order to keep Kharon had been operating at full capacity arming its clockwork legion.

Even if the only role they eventually served was in protecting and evacuating civilians, Tatiana firmly believed it would be worth it.

Once more, Tatiana’s gaze drifted down to the square. The area was thronged with people now, but in a few hours that gushing wave of humanity would slow to a trickle and then completely vanish. Before dinner, the entire square would be converted, the clockwork attendants and the tank-like food stands rolling toward the hatch that would open in the ground, where they would rest and recharge by connecting to the vast furnace of Kharon’s engine until the morning.

At night, this place would be transformed into a swanky salsa club and tapas bar. Small, secured floated platforms with tables of varying sizes would drift around the courtyard while a live band played on a hidden stage that would be revealed when the fountain dried. Tatiana smiled wryly. It was exactly the sort of place to which she or one of her girls would have accompanied politicians before everything changed… and now she owned it.

After saying a small prayer for her previous self, Tatiana looked up, beyond the encircling buildings and toward the sky. There, hundreds of streamlined and Engraved flying motorbikes whizzed through the air, following the direction of the moss spirits. And beyond the constantly shifting flow of thoroughfares in the sky were almost a score of floating islands, trailing after Kharon like a comfortable entourage of civilization.