ENTRY 009//SALT//BINDS DAEMONS LIKE TOADS
> Salt binds daemons like it does to toads: it blocks their skin’s ability to breathe, to take in oxygen. Daemons “breathe-in”, for lack of a better term, lexical energy—that is, unstrung chains of fundamental-universal code—assimilating it through autonomous osmosis. The dead-code for sodium chloride has a tendency to solidify the local ether field, blocking both intake and outtake of a given lexical-physical locus.
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> Many of my contemporaries postulate that sodium, among other elemental chemicals, work to steer and shape a planet’s local ether field—natural natrium deposits as dams and boulders to break apart its streams; noble metals to attract and lesser metals to diffract lexical energy into differentiated allotropes; metalloids to form omnidirectional super-lattices that expand like fractals, no matter if looking from above or below; gasses and sublimates to contain, if only for but a moment, ego signatures.
>
> We’ve ascended from superstition-ladden alchemy into the proper scientific discipline of chemistry… only to return to alchemy all the same. Let it be known that the irony is not lost on me.
—Post-Lexical//Pre-Pandaemonium orthodox excerpt, Berestiah Professor of Applied Lexicology and Daemonics of the Academy of Withershins Metaphysica: On Engrams and Designations.
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The labyrinthine halls had been purposefully constructed that way and enhanced with perception-scattering and ego-radiating wards to further misdirect any would-be assassins.
Killjoy’s inner ear had been through worse disorientation—countless self-inflicted deaths, reality-excisements and the descents unto the abyss of Leliouria//Misophaes had made him callous against tricks of the senses. So long as the sensory input came from outside himself, Killjoy could cope. Still, he wouldn’t get back the time and neon wasted.
-////Lexical energy reserve: [13%] {Construct sublimation in effect and doubled; pseudonym: [Glasya-labolas], subroutine: [Bloodlust] deactivated and put into stasis from overuse; pseudonym: [Glasya-labolas], subroutine: [Obfuscation], protocol: [Moonveil] active but rapidly deteriorating; backlash eminent.}////-
The ninth archon opened a mahogany door—a useless expense that made the maze null and void—to a sight he would have preferred to never have witnessed.
Levi found an uncle-twice-removed balls-deep in an output; a male escort of some kind if going by the Azazel-daemonsign horns growing out of the man’s skull that the Basker held onto. Only those belonging to the Guild Porphyric could wear that specific lexical mod—‘belonging’, unfortunately, meant exactly that; a pact with Azazel meant to be rendered unto Fornication’s Scapegoat, body and soul.
Out of all the archons, Astaphaios was the most despicable; Levi had experienced Her particular brand of ego-death far too many times to hold anything but scorn for the Sin-eater Herself.
Jacob “the Gorgon” Basker was aptly pseudonymed; daemonsign eyes somewhere between gecko and crocodile were wide in surprise as he shimmied his neo-cloth pants back up. Those eyes were as dull green as Levi’s irises were vibrant yellow.
“[Turning off ether notifications for an uninterrupted fuck was a stupid mistake, Jakey.]” Killjoy said as the output quietly and professionally blended into the background corner of the Gorgon’s personal office. Sex-workers of Neo Babylon had no small amount of experience with the city’s pervasive violence. Not those that survived, that is.
Sulfur stung Levi’s nose—the gecko-green daemonsigns were the physical anchors to a grafted daemon of petrification, he knew and had not prepared even an ounce for; it wasn’t needed. Sulfur stung Levi’s nose and not much more; his soul could not be frozen into stone so much as a single mortal could drink all of the mercurial ocean.
The nameless grimoire kept a partitioned snapshot of his shadow-engram, an eidolon negative, shunting away deviations that did not align with the backup. Only through the [-//A-L-T-E-R-K-E] cipher could any semi-lasting change be made under the ministrations of a soulstitcher.
The Gorgon didn’t stay still and balk at Killjoy’s uninvited visitation or his resistance to the daemon’s designation; owing to his mulligan status, the ganger exhaled a daemonic pistol into his hand and fired. Breath was transmuted into corpulent and veiny steel in a flash of azure-blue schema, faster than a blink.
Sodium-laced bullets burned twin holes into Killjoy’s left shoulder as he dodged left in a swirl of maroon scale-feathers. The veiling protocol was an up-front neon burn and so it now burned low and ember-like, dying; Levi had used up all his lexical energy with his blitz into the compound. Even limiting most of his invocations to a maximum of three digits had not been enough.
Killjoy had been banking on the surprise to throw-off the Gorgon’s opening salvo; it worked. Instead of two holes bored into where his eyes should be, Levi only lost an arm—it hung limply, covered in husk-like scales and deformed feather shafts. These were no lexical constructs but instead Malkuth matter, permanent rather than temporary alterations to Levi’s ontological code.
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
-////Lexical energy levels below minimum: [10%] {Protocol: [Subsumption] in effect; lexical warping eminent; daemon, true-name: [C-A-A-R-I-N-C-O-L-A-S] subsumed into salt-principle-substrate.}////-
Daemons tended to protect their hosts in flesh if not mind, owing to a host being their anchors to physical reality. And so, the engram subsumed itself into the mass of the host’s eidolon to preserve their vessel’s physical condition; being low on neon wasn’t so much a direct death-sentence as it was an indirect one. Eudaemonia was all but guaranteed without the excisement of affected tissues.
-////Designation: [Predation] - [Digits 1//6]////-
-////Lexical energy reserve: [3%] {Construct sublimation disabled; protocol: [Subsumption] in effect.}////-
And so, Levi carved-off his left arm with the invoked talons of the right; the pain would’ve sent him into catatonia before the nameless alley. Now, it was just a whisper before the world-serpent’s thousand-thousand-thousand death knells; one for the face of every soul.
This was nothing before being unmaked—not simply destroyed, not simply killed—but unmaked by eight cruel g-ds. Everything that he was had been rendered into nothing, unraveled like so much string—no, that was wrong, not even the string, the very fibers of his being, had been left behind; unmaked.
No ashes-to-ashes, no dust-to-dust. Just a void. Just the black.
Levi grabbed the amputated and rapidly-mutating limb and chucked it at the Gorgon. The ganger ducked the flailing arm like it was the plague—and it, in fact, was—shooting as he threw himself to the floor to escape a follow-up swipe from Killjoy’s claws. Two more holes, separated horizontally by five centimeters, bored through Killjoy’s ribs.
As the Gorgon went to shoot once again, neon gathered in the striations of the corpulent daemon pistol. No matter where those two bullets landed, Levi was fucked.
So, of course, Levi did not cede a nanometer, spearing his uncle-twice-removed through the neck; two sodium-laced bullets scraped across his right clavicle, saturating his circulatory system past the threshold.
-̷/̷/̷/̷/̴D̴e̴s̸i̵g̷n̴a̸t̴i̶o̸n̴:̷ ̵[̶P̸r̶e̸d̸a̵t̴i̶o̵n̶]̶ ̵-̶ ̷[̴D̴i̸g̸i̷t̴s̸ ̴0̷/̵/̸6̷]̶/̵/̵/̵/̶-̷
His invocation—the neon constructs in the form of claws—broke apart like so much glass, sublimating into nothingness. The schematics at the edges of his vision glitched, displaying corrupted information as his grimoire froze.
Salt bound daemons, calcified and solidified them into pacificity; Levi’s netzach-class daemon was sealed away, revoked from perpetuating its designation upon the physical world.
Jacob “the Gorgon” Basker was dead on the floor, blood oozing from the ragged escarpment of his neck. Levi ‘Killjoy‘ Basker stood over him, heaving in breath that came whistling through the twin holes in his ribs.
Levi dug out the packets of neo-sodium from his flesh, hissing with his hands covered in red. Red turned pink and then coagulated into leucistic white as his biomass reverted to its original state: plaster of paris.
There were no corpses left behind when someone died. They just became an amorphous and lumpy mass of clay draped over bones. Jakey was currently in the process of reverting back into a lifeless golem-sleeve—once the dihydrogen monoxide fully left him, he’d crumble into dust.
An arm, covered in white-scales, gas-exhuming hives and deformed maroon feathers, slithered out the mahogany door. Huh. So that’s where it went. Killjoy had wondered where his member had gone. The [Progeny] pseudonym produced some ugly sons-of-bitches, especially so when combined with the [Subsumption] protocol baked into all daemons.
When enough of the salt was removed, Levi’s grimoire-lattice recovered partial functionality—local sub-ether capabilities but no use of daemonics.
Body destroyed, Jacob Basker’s ego defenses were easy to overwhelm; no living id to supply libidic energy to the wards. Killjoy read through the info plundered from his uncle’s dying breath, chains of lexical code transferred via the local sub-ether.
The only thing that persisted between [Iterations] was what was inside Levi’s skull. Knowledge was his only and most valuable power. That and being a deathless, if useless, archon.
“You want his shards?” Levi asked the already-dressed antelope-horned man sitting on a synth-leather chair. He was remarkably well-put together for someone having just witnessed an execution. Especially so because he was in the same room as the violent madman that had just killed six—or was it seven?—people.
Just another day in Neo Babylon.
“Yes—he still owes the other half to be paid after the session’s conclusion.” The horned man replied, his Babel prim and proper; the likelihood of him being a sin-eater went up a couple of notches.
With a nod, Killjoy transferred the shekels to the man, citing his lexical-ontologic signature to do so—a single pseudonym came back: [Verastates]. His ego-bubble in the sub-ether smelled of saffron and lilac, a sultry calling card of the soul.
Abraxian name and an erotic ego-sig; yep, definitely a sin-eater.
“Alright, Verastates, you should leave while I hold back the cavalry, so to speak. Rather not get a bystander dead. Mess’ my doing and all.”
With that, Verastates gave Levi an imperial bow and sauntered out of the room twenty-five thousand shards richer. He went through a secret hatch, to boot—one specifically designed for an easy escape or intake of sin-eaters.
“The tail is getting expensive in this City.” Levi joked to no one but himself as he prepared to die.
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