The following hours passed remarkably quickly. Favonia spoke at length of her battle with Skullhead for Casus’ benefit and of a number of other exploits for Krahe’s, and though Krahe paid close attention and committed them to memory, she didn’t feel entirely present in the conversation. This was not out of a sense of exclusion or a dissociative impulse, but because her focus was mostly on the food. Regardless of the prices, to say the food was to kill for was an understatement — after all, Krahe had killed for far worse food than this… And besides, Favonia was footing the bill.
As the trio made their way out of the restaurant, a bird automaton seemingly sprung out of thin air and landed on Favonia’s shoulder. The banisher, upon reading the message the automaton had brought her, sighed through her nose.
“Looks like I had even less time than I’d hoped,” she said, looking to Casus and Krahe in turn. “I won’t need my horse for some time, you may have it.”
Favonia drew in a breath, and her musculature seemed to inflate a bit, writhing just under the skin. She leaned forward, as if falling, only to break into a sprint down the street, her shape engulfed in silver-red flame as she once more shed even the pretense of base humanity. She was gone before either of them could properly process what she had foisted upon them, let alone the implications of her premature departure.
“Does she do this often?” Krahe asked.
“More often than not,” Casus said.
“But, a horse? Better be an automaton like the others.”
With a quizzical sort of look, Casus asked, “Have you seen any living horses anywhere in this city, Lady Blackhand?”
There was no automaton horse to speak of anywhere near the safehouse, at least not in the open street. Krahe, out of curiosity, pushed the Oculae as far as they could go in order to see through any concealment, and this did reveal that a great deal of new warding had been added since the attempt on her life, but that was all.
However, while there was not a horse, there was a bird — one of Favonia’s automatons, of course, waiting on a street lamp. Unlike the automaton Favonia had used to send and receive messages, which had been kestrel-like in shape, this one resembled, frankly, a somewhat generic bird-shaped body, its distinguishing trait being a long tail and what was obviously the barrel of a gun protruding just under its neck. There hadn’t exactly been a great deal of birds in the megacity.
Having spotted them, it darted off. Clang. Clang. Clang. Clang. From deep within one of the nearby alleyways, an enormous shape emerged, the alley itself barely wide enough to accommodate its breadth. Krahe’s eyebrow rose of its own volition, because this was a horse only in the remotest terms — it was too big to be called a horse. Too big, too thick, too monstrous, and too tyrannical. This beast was a war machine in the guise of a horse. Its body had proportions of no living equine, its enormity obviously a result of being designed by and for Favonia, and the imitation of nature was nothing more than a foundation upon which Favonia had built with her own brutal design mentality.
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Its legs were similar in shape to those of a horse, but thicker, and its head more akin to the head of a mythical dragon than a horse, with a mouth that split it nearly down its full length and six eyes, with two facing sideways, two forwards, and two diagonally rearwards. Its torso was shaped so as to accommodate a rider’s legs, and behind it trailed a coiled tail two-thirds as long as the rest of its body, being as thick as Krahe’s calf at its base and tapering towards a bladed end.
The silver beast approached them, regarding Casus with familiarity, though it passed him by in favour of Krahe, as if it didn’t like him. The horse lowered its head towards her, and the Oculae registered its name within her vision.
[ARION -TYPE BUCEPHALUS-]
“Go on. Touch it. Favonia has likely pre-designated you as an authorized rider, so it wants to… Well, I shan’t rob you of the surprise,” Casus said. Sensing no mischief to his voice, Krahe placed her hand on the beast’s nose and poured in a speck of thauma. The automaton stumbled back as if it had just been struck square in the chest by an anti-tank shell, falling to its knees. The previously subtle sounds of its internal mechanics grew in pitch and volume, and were soon joined by sounds best described as the automaton equivalent of bones snapping and muscles tearing. Mercurial fluid burst out of every-which seam of its armored form, intermixed with streaks of scarlet identical in shade to Favonia’s hair, only to retreat, climbing back up its legs. Smoke and cinders followed, and with each passing second, the horse changed. Silver metal gave way to blued darkness, and elegant, if brutal curves shifted in an almost imperceptible way. The transformation was, in purely physical terms, impossible. Entire components just fell off or burst into shards, or shifted shape right before her eyes. The Arion’s eyes, too, changed, now burning green, and its previously naturalistic predatory teeth gave way to the jagged shark-razors of the Wound-like Grin.
When things at last quieted down and the Arion stood back up, it no longer towered over her as it had previously — the automaton was now closer to the size of a “normal” horse, although still large.
[ARION -TYPE ROCINANTE-]
The automaton’s tail lashed forward, and from its bladed point hung a small whistle of the same appearance as its armor, suspended on a length of fine chain. Casus’ reaction, or rather the absence of it, proved that he had seen this take place before.
“So it changes for every rider?” Krahe asked, taking the whistle and stowing it into her Kenoma Pocket.
Casus nodded, “The change is not so… Strenous, I suppose, each time, only the first. Don’t ask how it is capable of this, I only know it involves an archonforged relic of some kind, and that the relic is also the reason it can operate with no apparent fuel source. The Red Hoods are already far beyond my comprehension, the Arion is another step above them.”
“It’s mighty impressive, I’ll give you that. The question is where do we put it? It doesn’t perchance fold up into a briefcase, does it?” Krahe asked.
“It simply resides in any Twin Churches facility nearby,” he shrugged. “So long we are within a certain distance of any proper shrine, it will hear the whistle instantly. Failing that, you can use it to send a more substantive summoning.”
“Alright. You heard him, go hide. I’ll take you for a ride later. I’d probably puke up my guts if I went for it right now,” Krahe said, walking past the automaton horse. Somewhat indignantly, it galloped away such that it passed by Krahe again, snapping its teeth as it did so.
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