The next several hours of her time came down to more productive pursuits — refining the Schwarzfaust’s theurgic pattern, interspersed with short sessions of reading and absent-mindedly inspecting parts of the room to see if she could notice the concealment formation poking through anywhere else. Eventually, having laid a number of Schwarzfaust and Wandrei Faust talismans across the table, both for reference, Krahe finally arrived at a more refined design, eliminating several extraneous elements whilst enhancing striking power and maneuverability. It wasn’t much, but incremental improvement inevitably stacked up.
It was then, in the midst of loading a handful of bullets with this adjusted Schwarzfaust pattern, that she heard footsteps. Two pairs, one particularly heavy. The safehouse’s outer door opened, shut, and the newcomers entered. The first was Casus, his face, his hands, and his iridescent-silver hair were all caked in blood and bits of gore. Behind him, however, stood a towering form whose nonchalant posture was nothing more than a hair-thin membrane stretched taut overtop an unending wellspring of violence.
“Ah, it has been too long,” Casus remarked at the sight of Krahe. He then gestured to the monstrous figure just behind him. “Lady Blackhand, as you have likely already guessed, this is Favonia. Favonia, this is Lady Blackhand. I shall allow you the space to acquaint yourselves, I frankly cannot bear to be this filthy a second more than I must.”
Casus walked off towards the bathroom, trailing blood as he went. Meanwhile, Krahe scanned the monolith before her and finally parsed who — what — she was looking at. Favonia was, for lack of a better term, a WOMAN. Easily two meters tall, and simultaneously the most feminine and masculine individual in the district — if not the city. Her silhouette alone spoke volumes, drawing the sort of exaggerated hourglass one would expect from a pinup artwork. She wore the same style of clothing as Casus, the lacing of her trousers barely able to encompass her legs, creating long windows running down her thighs. A pair of alarite buttons heroically held back her immense bust — each of which had to be the size of Krahe’s head. The lower half of her satin shirt contoured itself around her defined, but not overtly muscular abdomen. The garment was impossible in mundane terms, but it was also easily in the Top 5 of most potently enchanted objects Krahe had encountered. The top spot had been just now usurped by Favonia’s left hand, a clawed limb of gleaming silver that bore a blood-red gem in the back of its palm. A subtle blade ran down the underside of the limb’s forearm, which more likely than not could expand into a full weapon at a moment’s notice. Her left arm was, after a fashion, a direct counterpart to Casus’ right arm.
What Krahe had at first mistaken for a hooded cape was in fact Favonia’s hair. It was an unnatural shade of red, exuding a faint glow, and the sclera of her eyes were matte-black, contrasting with the golden glow of her irises. Her skin was very dark purple, transitioning to lilac at the seams, of which only a few were visible — the most noticeable was a horizontal split across her face, running over the bridge of her nose.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
“Don’t hold the honorifics against him. Took him a few years before he stopped using them with me,” Favonia said. Her voice was deep and husky, perhaps deeper than those of many men, yet still unmistakably the voice of a woman. With what appeared to be a single stride, Favonia traversed the living room. She loomed over Krahe like some sort of resurrected megafauna.
A tangible pressure descended, and Krahe felt herself sink a little deeper into the sofa. She stared up at Favonia, and Favonia, in turn, stared down at her. Her expression hadn’t changed an iota from half-lidded detachment, and it seemed as if she was not even breathing. Her mind was, more than anything else, preoccupied with trying to discern what exactly Casus found so similar about the two of them. In some ways, she could understand his point of view. Personally, she didn’t really get the resemblance.
Favonia briefly opened her third eye, little more than a reverse blink, but that was enough to induce a sensation akin to the wall of scorching heat from a plasma torch igniting in front of her face.
“I see. The similarity really is uncanny,” the giant woman remarked. She took a seat, her presence explaining why one of the couches was noticeably bigger than the others. After a moment of thought, she spoke again. “No pleasantries, then. How long has it been, since you began your crusade?”
Unsure on how to respond, Krahe raised an eyebrow.
“Casus has said much of you. Now that I have seen for myself how similar your astral body’s patterns are to mine, it’s a safe guess that you are also a crusader. One possessed by a compulsion to slaughter demons and uphold righteousness. Come on, I can tell you’re not frozen with fear. You’ve been trying to estimate how likely I am to kill you if you answer honestly, how to escape if it comes to that, and how to fight me if you can’t. I can tell because that’s what I would think were I placed in your situation.”
“Twenty years give or take. The elder of my home town had been working to cure its inhabitants of inherited diseases, make us more capable of surviving in the ravaged environment. My world’s nobility dropped a weapon that creates a miniature sun on the place because the old man had been too successful.”
Krahe had no intention to simply divulge every bit of information relevant to Favonia’s questions, but she also got the impression that, if anyone would keep this stuff to themselves, it would be this walking superweapon in the shape of a woman.
“So that’s why you don’t feel like a baseline human. Your pressure points are all over the place. You have, hm…” Favonia trailed off, sniffing the air as she rubbed her chin in thought. “Three? Several additional hormones not found in humans. Only one of them can be attributed to grafted organs. I admit that I would greatly enjoy speaking at length on the matter of your heritage and grafting, but we are not nearly well-acquainted enough for that just yet. I have my answer. I can tell you when my crusade began, if you so wish. Smoke?”
“Feel free. And depends on what it is,” Krahe answered. “You can’t actually smell hormones.”
“Not physically, that is true,” Favonia admitted. She pulled two thin, black cigars from the mass of her hair, each with a thin stripe of metallic gold running down its length in a spiral, and placed one on the table for Krahe. Well, it was relatively thin. It was still twice the diameter of one of Krahe’s cigarettes. The Prospector’s Eyes failed to appraise it, not due to anti-appraisal measures, but because the gold-black cigar surpassed their capacity for appraisal.
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