This part of the city had been cordoned off by the police for the last twenty-six hours.
It was unthinkable for such a prestigious neighborhood. Indeed, it was practically within spitting distance from the famed gates of the Majestic Cloud Sect that two cultivators presumed to be within the Fourth Calcification or higher had begun their battle.
Now, that section of the district was unrecognizable.
Most of the buildings around the street of the battle had fallen; for the larger ones that once had reached into the sky, their structural steel had been removed, hurled at walls of warding fungus, the bone-white tendrils of mycelium writhing as they surrounded the projectiles and bled off their momentum.
Within that wall of fungus, now withered and limp rather than charging forth with murderous intent, thousands of pounds of metal were embedded or grown around; manhole covers, sharpened in an instant into discs that could decapitate an elephant, had cleaved through it in some places, while in others whole cars had been used as projectiles with their occupants still within.
Those occupants were still in their cars as corpses; crushed by the forces of the throw as the car skidded and rolled across the concrete, slammed into the walls of the vehicle suddenly as the projectile was stopped by the wall of fungus, and finally their corpses were invaded by the tendrils of mycelium that wormed their way into the car if they didn't bore through the windows outright.
The corpses were pale, drained of all blood.
Strands of the fungus entered through their eyes or their nostrils or their ears and came out through all of those places, bursting out of the fingernails, the strands produced by the grotesque feeding once wriggling but now as still as the rest of the ropes of fungus yet still dripping with malice.
Sirens were audible in the distance.
Decaying mycelium, dropping from the already-dead mass, dropped against the ground with sickening squelches as it warped and dissolved into piles of flesh, the Aetheric technique on it dissipating.
Amusement was breathing heavily. A smile was on his face.
One arm had been completely ripped off. It, too, had been absorbed by the fungus.
Around the stump, an improvised tourniquet of steel, manipulated as if it was cloth and elongated an impossible amount, had been cinched, cutting off the blood loss.
Massive divots covered his body, chunks of flesh taken out by the searching, toothy maws hidden within the mycelium mat. His clothes were shredded, his apron hanging on only by threads, his shirt and pants doing only slightly better.
The liquid metal carrying the lums around in his body had sucked the bubbles of Densified Aether around every single one of his rune-carved bones until they were completely dry.
His remaining arm clutched a yellow-hot bar of steel, formed into a spike taller than he was; it was driven through his opponent, the five arms of the fungal abomination twitching from it's pierced brainstem, her only eye spinning erratically from where it sat in the creature's "mouth."
The concrete beneath her was cracked from where the steel, enhanced by Aether, had pierced into the surface.
Amusement laughed, leaning onto the superheated steel bar.
It bent under his weight, but that only served to press the metal into other parts of the still-twitching Senior Sister, sizzling where it burnt the fungus.
His cackle grew and grew, and he stood up, stumbling backwards.
His hand reached out and twisted, the metal responding to his call; still just a hair away from melting, it began to contort, turning into a sphere that surrounded the cultivator corpse. He closed his hand, and the steel ball imploded, destroying the fungus with it.
He turned around and hobbled to the highest-quality piece of metal he could find and called it to him, where it formed into a fully articulated arm that clamped onto his stump, finger joints clicking as he clenched and unclenched his new hand
"One down," he said, immensely amused.
----------------------------------------
The smoke had not stopped pouring from the Boss's body since he had left the cultivation room.
He sat down on an expensive, luxurious leather chair, a doctor repairing his shredded arms as he listened to his Second. The window was open, and a fan was positioned to suck the constant plume of foul-smelling smoke from where the doctor worked, wiping away dried blood saturated with smoke and delicately wrapping bandages around tattered fingers.
All of it felt so far away to the Boss.
His Second continued to give his report, glancing at the tablet in one of his hands. "The Young Master of the Emerald family, the one you sought to kill for disrespect, has returned to the Emerald estate."
Until those words snapped him out of his distance from the situation, bringing it all back into sharp relief.
His whole body, his whole mind, his whole soul was entirely focused on Nash Emerald; his eyes, formerly almost glazed over, suddenly sharpened in gaze as they reoriented onto the Second, and the muscles of his legs began to tense as if he was about to stand up.
The doctor flinched back.
The Second flinched also, but did much better at hiding it.
They each breathed a sigh of relief when the Boss's muscles relaxed once more, allowing the doctor to return to work.
His eyes, however, still promised to shatter the Emerald.
----------------------------------------
In a hospital privately owned by the Majestic Cloud Sect, a woman that was nearly a corpse was hurriedly pushed through the halls, her organs being held in only by gravity as she was rushed into the surgery room on the gurney.
Her eyes, however, darted back and forth in horror, eventually landing on her own open thoracic cavity; the Young Mistress tried to scream at the sight of her own lungs, the organs studded in shattered shards of metal and asphalt shrapnel and shot through with hundreds of minuscule fungal hyphae, but could not muster up the strength. Her vision swam in and out of blackness, and her thoughts came slow, swimming in a terror that threatened to drag her under.
Perhaps the only reason she was still alive was the life-saving treasure was pinned to one ear; it was an earring made of Aether-beast tusk and carved into the shape of a butterfly.
It was painted with purple inks to form runes of such precision that they could have only been done with a single-bristle brush. With every raggedy wheeze, each of the purple runes glowed brightly enough to burn their image into the eyes of whoever looked at them.
The edges of the treasure were beginning to cavitate as it crumbled, struggling to keep her alive until she could receive treatment.
An IV was forced into her arm as a surgeon began plucking the foreign bodies from her chest.
It was all she could do to not pass out, for she could not even breathe.
----------------------------------------
Nash reviewed the small folder of dossiers he had been given one last time.
There were four that he was expected to lead; one Aquamarine, one Morganite, one Heliodor, and even a surviving Beryl had been dragged out from who-knows-where. Each one was around his age, the largest difference only being of about five years; an interesting development, as he wasn't previously aware that there were any Beryls his age still alive.
He assured himself of his capability, taking a deep breath and handing the manila folder to his aide before he opened the door and stepped in.
The room, of course, was opulent. It was an Emerald establishment, after all.
The meeting place had been arranged to be a room within a high-end restaurant operated by some of the servants, and the eatery was one of the most fashionable places to go in the city. The decor was sleek, modern, but with a bent towards privacy; each table had a room to itself, with a compartment for the staff to put food into and for the patrons to receive it from.
Servants were available if one was required to serve the patrons, but they were expected to bring their own; most of the time, the rich customers of this restaurant wouldn't even see the wait staff.
Slow, measured steps took him across the recently-polished granite floor; he sat down at the head of the circular table, nodding to his guard. He cleared his throat and sat up straighter in his chair before speaking.
"Good evening, everyone," he said, nodding to each of the four Young Masters and Mistresses in turn.
"You have all been called here to take part in a task force investigating a specific cultivator and the organization it originates from," he continued, grabbing another manila folder from his guard. He opened the folder and fanned the prepared and printed presentation slides out, facing the other cultivators.
"Thank you," he said to the guard. "Get a round of tea and some light appetizers. The Western Green Mountain Monastery variety, specifically."
Tapping on the first piece of paper to draw their attention, he turned back to face the assembled cultivators. "I've been briefed on all of you beforehand, and you likely know of me, but we should begin introductions before the tea arrives anyway.”
“I am Nash Refraction Emerald, the Young Master of the main family of the Emerald Clan, and my father ordered the formation of this task force."
He turned towards the Aquamarine, gesturing for him to introduce himself.
The Aquamarine nodded, his face polite but with a sour undercurrent, the same as his voice. "I am Leo Aquamarine, the Second Young Master of the Aquamarine branch family." He was a lanky, wiry man with the awkward gangliness of a teenager that just became rather tall, but as a cultivator he still had shreds of muscle packed onto that thin form.
Clockwise from him, an elegant young woman spoke. "I am Lacerta Heliodor, the Young Mistress of the Heliodor family." She was short and slight in build, her hair cropped slightly above the small of her back; there was something odd about her eyes, and there was a tinge of purple under her perfectly manicured but rather sharp fingernails. She nodded to the next person.
"I am Lycaon, the Young Master of the Morganite family."
The man saying these words (for he was much too far into puberty to be called a boy) was a stocky, hairy fellow. Unusually for the current fashion, he had a beard, though it was short and well-groomed, the same jet black as the rest of his hair.
The next one to speak was a much slighter figure. "I am Sorex of the Beryls." He looked young, probably the youngest of any of the cultivators in the room, and showed no signs of developing either facial or body hair, likely as a side-effect of his cultivation. His clothes were loose on him in a way that suggested a light airiness, rather than being baggy or too big for him.
A small bell rang from behind a secret compartment in the wall; the aide went up to it and slid it up, taking the still-steaming pot of tea and the elegantly arranged set of delicate porcelain, all on a tray of ivory-inlaid wood. He set down the cups in front of the Young Masters and poured some tea within, each so thin as to be translucent and hand-painted with graceful swooping patterns.
The blood-red tea lent its crimson coloration to the teaware, accentuating the patterns in ways previously unnoticeable.
Nash took a sip of his, and his newly-introduced subordinates followed. "It has this wonderful astringency," he remarked, carefully putting the tea back down in front of him. "That, I believe, is why this tea is so praised; that astringency really brings those floral, almost tart notes out from the brew. Now, back into business."
His eyes wandered across the sheets, refreshing his memory despite them being upside down. "What I am to tell you next shall not leave this room, nor your lips," he said, a measured, stern seriousness entering his voice. "The figure we have been assigned to study is incredibly dangerous, and we must tread carefully in order to not bring calamity onto our Clan, or even the entirety of Wolf Nation."
Despite their apparent disbelief, the assembled clan heirs (or those in line to be heirs, in the Aquamarine's case) watched attentively and silently.
He picked up a piece of paper and held it up, showing it to each of them, one by one. It was a grainy screenshot of CCTV footage, cropped to show the apron-clad form of Amusement.
"This is a picture of the creature I personally met, and the one who caused the destruction by the Majestic Cloud Sect. He - or it is perhaps more accurate - is the result of a technique to prepare the technique's user to enter the Body Destruction realm."
Placing the paper back on the table, he took a deep breath. "This man's name is Amusement. He is at least in the Fourth Calcification, if not more, and has even more unusual strengths in addition to that; not only does he have many profound techniques, originating from a sect that likely has at least one Body Destruction Ancestor, but he has a Sternum Etching on every single one of his bones."
Leo piped up at that. "That's... not possible," he said, his hand resting on the sword at his belt. "There is no way he could survive that many surgeries."
Unaffected, Nash's eyes flicked over to the Aquamarine.
"Junior," he said, not even turning his neck to face him. "I understand that you take after your brother. The two of you are free to have whatever opinion that you may, but that privilege ends as soon as it begins to undermine my authority. Do you understand?"
Leo grimaced, but nodded. "Understood, Senior."
"Good," he said, drinking more of his tea. "Now, to answer the young Aquamarine's implicit question, he was not given any surgeries. He was constructed that way."
Standing up, Nash rested his palms on the table, looking into the eyes of those around the table, starting with Leo. "What you must remember is that Amusement is not a cultivator. He is a half-rabid tool that has been let off its leash to achieve the Ninth Calcification however it sees fit and to further the goals of the organization whenever he finds it possible."
The Emerald Flail materialized, curled around his arm; he reached into it, and drew out his knife.
Turning it over in his hand, he looked at the filigree of carp, the elegant inlay glinting under the artificial ceiling lights of the closed room. "He has no more of a human motivation than my knife does, but he has all the intelligence and all the capabilities of a cultivator, one that was raised in a sect so powerful it does not bother with the affairs of our little Wolf Country. Does anyone have any guesses to why he is named what he is? I give you permission to speak, of course."
Each of the task force members took some time to consider that, taking sips of their tea. Before he got a response, Nash had sat down and begun to look at how the red-tinted light refracting through his teacup fell on the knife, bathing the carp in a sea of blood.
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The Heliodor was the first to speak up this time.
"Is it some sort of moniker?" Lacerta asked, one of her sharp fingernails tapping against the thin porcelain of her teacup, gesturing for the aide to refill it. "The only other reason I can postulate is that it is an alias, a code name, for whatever sect he is from to refer to him as."
Nash picked up his teacup and swirled it, taking a sip before he responded. "It is because his namesake is the only emotion he is truly equipped to feel."
He looked up from his tea, the cup still near his face and casting a deep red shadow upon his neck. "Imagine it. A powerful cultivator, likely almost as powerful as the Patriarch. But take away his empathy, his anger, his sense of duty. Anything that could be used to predict or restrain him. Nothing left except for what he has been commanded to do and whatever whims he has along the way, and nothing to care about except for indulging in the latter."
"I hope that you all now understand the gravity of our mission. I do not understand why the Patriarch did not assign a more experienced team to this case, regardless of my personal experience with this cultivator and the secretive nature of this task. We are likely not the only ones looking into this matter; be sure not to tip our hand. For now, we are still ahead of the others."
"I will assign your tasks, we shall eat, and then we shall depart. Junior Aquamarine, you are to stay in this room with me for a while; we have something to discuss."
----------------------------------------
"Tea is a curious thing, don't you agree?"
"Sorry, Senior. You said you had something to say to me?" the Aquamarine said, the words forming more of a question than a statement.
"We'll get to that, don't you worry."
Nash held out the teacup, and the guard obliged his unspoken request, pouring a perfectly precise cupful into the vessel. "But back to the tea. There's simply so many things to it, and even within only one session; when tasting tea, you steep it more than once, do you not?"
Befuddled, Leo held out his own cup to accept more tea. "Of course," he said, obviously confused about where things were going.
"Yes, to bring out all of the flavors of a tea, you have to taste it multiple times. Each one brings out a slightly different facet of that total profile, and that is why I have brought up this long winded, somewhat contrived allegory."
He turned to face Leo more directly, leaning back in his chair and peering at the Aquamarine over his cup. "Today we had our first steep. The flavors were unsubtle, competing, only an indicator of what to come rather than the whole experience. Tell me, Aquamarine."
He leaned in, his teacup set to the side as his chest passed through the table to look directly in the eyes of the shorter, younger man.
"In the next steep, will you have the same bitterness? If you do, I expect you to bring something more to the table to offset that. You understand, do you not? I will only tolerate your little displays for as long as you contribute."
"I shall give you time to consider my words. Look in your family libraries for any mention of simulacra, the Hidden Mountain Temple, or methods similar to what Amusement uses," he said while standing up, still partially phased into the table. "That is all. Dismissed."
----------------------------------------
Several things in the criminal underbelly of the Wolf Country's capital city were changing.
For one, the Motorcycle Rider gang had been left leaderless, and without the one responsible for that state of affairs stepping in, (that being the Crimson Bonfire Gang,) the former holdings of the influential gang were up for grabs.
Sleazy bars were seized by sleazier gangs.
The subway platform Arena was abandoned and later raided by police, who arrested the junkies that still lingered there and cordoning off the platform, citing that the location was 'dangerous.'
Those who had a grudge against the gang had begun to act; soon, it was a common sight to see motorcycle helmets taken as trophies, posted on poles outside of liquor stores, dens of both gambling and opium, and 'massage' parlors.
Oddly, a wave of people reported to the hospital; the only similarity between them were their symptoms and the root cause, with fungal spores found inside their lungs.
Most odd of all, the Crimson Bonfire Gang seemed to be liquidating many of their assets and buying up cultivation resources. Word on the street was that it was a direct order from their Boss.
----------------------------------------
A very powerful man sat timidly in an expensive chair.
The Lord Chief of Police, as he was often styled, felt his gear-vertebra spin in anxiety. The skin of his back pulsated as the teeth dragged across its underside, the gears clicking fruitlessly against the safety-latched spines that sought to tear their way out of his body in response to his fear.
He could feel the safety of the spring mechanism, already fully loaded by the spinning of his vertebrae, strain to contain the power of his cultivation-enhanced body as it responded to his anxiety.
There was no sound as the perfectly-installed door opened, except for the air it pushed out of the way.
Despite that, he heard it, and stood up. He bowed deeply.
Senator Emerald barely acknowledged his greeting, sitting down in the chair across from the Chief of Police. He crossed one leg over another and set his hands on one knee in a series of deliberate movements, somehow managing to look down at the policeman despite sitting down and his much smaller stature.
"Sit down." The Senator's tone was not an offering of respite, but a command. The Chief of Police complied.
The silence was punctuated by the consistent whirring of the Chief of Police's components, audible only through the deep cultivations each of the men in the room enjoyed, and even then only barely louder than a normal human's more organic processes.
"Before I begin," the Senator said, his words as precise as the heat gauges embedded into the policeman's artificial heart, "Do you have an explanation for your lack of results?"
Shamefully, the Aethero-mechanical man hung his head. "No, Lord Emerald."
The Senator's legs uncrossed, and he leaned in. "Is that so? I believe you remember what we said in our last personal conversation on this particular case. Care to remind me?"
"I owe my position to you, Lord Senator," the weaker cultivator began, his syllables still following the unheard, constant beat of his inner crystalline clock despite his distress. "You told me that I only deserved that position you granted to me for as long as I contributed results."
"Did you?"
A pause emerged, short enough to be imperceptible for mortals but more than long enough to be indicative of the Lord Chief's emotional state for a cultivator of his stature.
"Yes, sir. My department, despite our constraints, delivered valuable information on the case involving your son, as well as the case involving the reemergence of the Hidden Temple in Wolf Country. Additionally, we have performed several operations stamping out the gangs of the city, culminating in the most recent one in which -"
"That is enough."
The Police Chief became suddenly silent. It was the Emerald Patriarch who spoke next.
""The only mission among those I personally assigned to you was the case of my son. The others do not matter at this time. Do you understand?"
"Yes, Senior."
"Good. As far as I understand it, the information that eventually led to the return of my son did not come from your examinations, and neither was the force that captured him. Instead, he was located through a civilian informant and a tracking device planted on his person."
An eyebrow raised. "Do you have an explanation for that?"
The organic components of the Lord Chief's body seemed to heat up with that, despite his temperature gauges not corroborating that change.
He spoke, in perfect 4/4 time, attempting to conceal his anxiety. "One of my teams tracked him for quite a while, and were the first to make the connection to the gas station in which he worked, as well as his adversarial relationship with the Crimson Bonfire Gang. Additionally -"
Once more, he was cut off.
"Interesting. You said they 'tracked him for some time?' Then why were they unable to take him in? Did you not devote enough resources to a case of that much importance?"
He reached into a pocket and unfolded a square of paper. "This is the police report for that attempted tracking. Your team didn't even ever get close to capturing him; they barely even saw him." He set the sharply-creased paper down onto the table, the glass top of which was polished to perfection. "There was one more curious thing about that report. Please, refresh my memory - whatever may it be?"
With a motion like a typewriter, the policeman's eyes scanned the page. "I do not see anything unusual, Senior. I apologize, Senior. What offense have I caused?
"That is the issue." The Senator stood up, leaned over the table to stare into the Chief of Police's eyes, the fingertips of one hand still brushing against the smooth glass surface. "I understand if the investigation started with only two police tracking the Young Master as others followed different leads, but as soon as they had sight of him they should have alerted the others and had them join in the task."
He turned to leave. "You are only as good as your subordinates. Remember that, or a 'former' shall be added to your title. Dismissed."
----------------------------------------
Nash was in another hospital.
The sterile surfaces, all hospital white or stainless steel or that dull blue of the fabric that composed the adequately cushioned chairs, were all immaculately cleaned and positioned. Nobody was in the waiting room, and the building was silent except for the whir of medical machines and the muted shuffling and squeaking of doctor's chairs.
The reason for the minimal population was, of course, that this hospital was owned by the Majestic Cloud Sect.
Whatever services it offered, many of them top-of-the-line and at the very cutting edge of both medical and Aetheric technology, were restrained to the sect and their allies. Despite that limited clientele, many of the doctors here still looked exhausted, doubtlessly due to the injuries of the patient who had most recently arrived.
It was this person that Nash was here to visit.
He was guided into a room alongside his guards by an obviously annoyed nurse, who did their rather poor best at concealing their emotional state. They waited there for a while, sitting on the luxurious visiting chairs and looking at the clear plastic divider between them and where the patient would presumably be wheeled, the sterile lights casting everything in the same bluish, sterile tone as the rest of the hospital.
The door on the other side opened, and the patient was brought in.
Next to her was a doctor, a guard, and a nurse, each with a first aid kit on their belt, while the guard rested their hand against the long shock baton still in its sheath. Each of them wore sterile white clothing, face masks, hairnets, and latex gloves, all in the same soulless shades of white and gray.
The patient herself was in about as good of a state as Nash could have realistically expected; attached to her gurney, half a dozen different IVs hung above her, pumping her full of medicine and liquid Aetheric treasures. Every part of her skin that was still exposed was covered in bandages, and what seemed to be a metal frame had been bolted together around the remains of her torso, keeping it in the correct shape.
Attached to the frame was a small pump, hooked to many more batteries, and every cultivator in the room could hear it working to keep her chest expanding and contracting, manually forcing respiration.
"Good evening, Ms. Gardner," Nash said, a genial smile on his face, every bit of his training required to restrain the instinct to gawk. "Many thanks for your allowance of this interview, despite your current... Indisposition."
"Oh, it is my delight," the Young Mistress of the Majestic Cloud Sect attempted to crane her neck to look at Nash, but the doctor gently pressed her head down where it was supposed to stay. "My schedule is not exactly packed right now, as you may have guessed," she said. There was an odd rhythm to her words, as she had to say them as the machine forced the air out of her damaged lungs, and afterwards she was forced to wait for each evenly spaced inhale to finished.
She attempted her trademark tittering laugh, but it instead turned into an alarming hacking cough that made the doctor's eyes look like they were going to bug out of her head. Soon, though, she had recovered, much to the relief of the doctor, and began speaking once more.
"Another thing, after all, is that it is practically my responsibility to speak of this matter to you. How is the culprit supposed to be brought to justice without all of the information?"
Nash nodded out of habit, a strained smile on his face.
"Well said, Ms. Gardner. " He reached out a hand without looking, and one guard passed him a manila folder. He opened it and flipped through it, arriving at his list of questions. "Now, Ms. Gardner, I am sure that your medical team is anxious for this to be over so that you may return to resting properly. Don’t worry, this will be kept short."
He looked up. "First of all, did you see a man wearing a leather apron in connection with the recent, ah, incident?"
"Yes," she said, her voice sour. "In fact, he was the one to precipitate the whole thing. He happened to kidnap me, in fact, which was why I was present during the altercation."
Nash's brow furrowed. "Sister Gardner, could you please elaborate on the kidnapping? What exactly did he want?"
She appeared deep in thought for a moment. "He definitely had something against my Sect," she said, her face wrinkled in concentration.
"I'm afraid my memory of that night is rather spotty, but I remember him saying that we were being punished for insulting them, somehow. I think he said we had been disseminating techniques of the 'Temple,' whatever that is." There was a pause as the machine whirred, pulling air into her body. "He had subdued me and brought me to his vehicle, piercing my Sternum Etching with some form of cultivation-suppressing spike. He monologued for a bit, and then I felt an odd urge to say something that I cannot remember."
She took a deep, shaking breath, or at least attempted to; the machine did it for her, so all her attempt did was satisfy a deeply ingrained habit. "Then... Then I felt something claw its way out of my torso, tearing it open, and it began to fight the man. It called him a 'simulacra.'"
A pencil danced across paper in a shorthand that only Nash understood; words were abbreviated or absent entirely, and every character had been simplified to near illegibility. "I'm sorry to hear that," he said, his pencil still dragging noisily across the paper. "That must have been traumatic. Do you remember anything else?"
"No. Nothing really. Except..."
"Except?"
"The man called the thing that crawled out of me Senior Sister."
----------------------------------------
The Young Master of the Emerald Clan sat at his personal desk, recently installed within his room in the Emerald Estate, sifting through a stack of papers.
A stack might be too generous a term, though, he thought, staring at the rather small and disorganized pile of reports composed by his newly-assigned subordinates. Each of the reports had been typed up either by the Young Master or Mistress themself or obviously assigned to a much more competent assistant, as was obvious by the incredibly varying level of quality across the selection.
He picked one out from the pile at random - it was the one from the Aquamarine, and it had obviously been foisted upon some poor assistant. The actual quality of the arrangement and presentation was good, but the information provided was so disorganized and scarce that Nash had been forced to assume that Leo had rambled some half-baked, reluctantly researched information to a hapless servant before calling it done.
Setting it down, he picked up the next. This one, at least, seemed to have been done by the one assigned to do it; it was the Morganite's report, the hairy fellow apparently putting some effort into the actual research. Nash's excitement at that had abated as soon as he had realized the rambling, rote, faux-intellectual quality it had. He was surprised it wasn't handwritten, since he hadn't immediately recognized the rather interesting font choice.
He heard a knock from his door.
Looking up from his work with a sigh, he looked through the solid object with his Aether-sight. Recognizing the set of channels immediately, he pushed the button integrated into the desk, painted and sanded to look exactly like the rest of the wood.
The door opened, and he looked back down at his work, shuffling through the paper. "What is it?" he asked, sorting the papers into a more organized pile.
"Young Master," the aide said, their tone unwaveringly respectful. Nash had no doubt that, if he were to look back, he would see a perfectly and precisely polite position, the guard's hands clasped behind his back.
"You have received correspondence," the aide continued, and with a series of sounds of paper sliding across fabric a note was retrieved out of a hidden pocket and set down on the desk in front of Nash, the aide taking a polite step back.
Nash opened the envelope and set the folded piece of paper back on the table. "Good on bringing that to my attention," he said, a finger resting on the piece of paper.
"The envelope was unmarked," Nash remarked, still not looking up. "From whom was it sent?"
"That would be the Lord Chief of Police, Young Master," the aide replied. "Shall I take my leave?"
"Yes, but stay nearby. I may need to send a response."
"Of course, Young Master."
Nash gave a vague noise of approval, waiting for the door to smoothly click closed. As soon as it did, he unfolded the square of paper, reading what was written on it in that precise, robotic script that could barely be called calligraphy or handwritten at all.
He folded it back up and placed it carefully in an organizer.
The meeting was on.
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In the dark reaches of the abandoned subway tunnels beneath the Capital City, the sound of groaning metal and a screaming Aether beast could be heard.
Even the rot had receded from this platform, where a dome of metal had been constructed, the thick walls of steel and firebrick containing a great conflagration, the fire dancing and burning whiter than white within.
There was a single opening into the great furnace, a small vertical ellipse cut short by a lip of steel. Hanging below that lip was a maimed creature, struggling futilely against the restraints around it; it was chained to the platform and left to dangle from thick links of great chain, and similar, smaller links were wrapped to keep its thrashing to do any actual damage.
The creature itself was something with the body plan of a frog, though covered in a soft white fur and possessing a tusked, toothy mouth.
Its screams echoed throughout the platform, much louder than something its size should have been able to achieve; every scream the nascent Fourth Calcification equivalent beast let out came out as something between a croak and a tortured squeal.
A tortured squeal was exactly the response appropriate to what was happening to it.
A one-armed man took his pliers and clamped them at the thing's 'shoulder,' wrenching it off and tossing it into the fire, provoking another round of pained screams. Setting his pliers down, he reached behind him and took a thick bar of steel, feeding it into the furnace where it could melt alongside the Aether-beast arm. He pressed his foot down on a pedal and a hissing sound commenced as various lines of gasses, some simply oxygen and others more esoteric concoctions, were injected into the dome through tuyeres built into the structure.
Picking up the pliers once more, he carefully nudged the still-thrashing beast as it dangled from the lip and used the edge of the pliers to bite into the thing's torso.
He pulled down, peeling the beast open and exposing its organs.
Taking a smaller pair of pliers, he precisely extracted a few specific organs and threw them into the furnace, in an obtuse but seemingly planned order; despite only manipulating the now-dead creature with only one arm, his movements were confident and exacting, even taking into account the swaying of the body as it swung back and forth on the chains.
Nearly two hours later, the whole Aether beast and several more bars of steel had been tossed into the furnace.
Another hour later, and Amusement walked out from the tunnels with a new prosthetic that glimmered oddly in the artificiality of the streetlights.