Frost spent day in and day out of attempting to create her Aspect of Technology based on Scarlet Logic’s tech. The grueling hours didn’t even faze her. The only breaks she took was when Weave took hers, allowing Frost to make quick visits to H10 with Mimicry, Ignis and Carpalis.
Sleep became a thing of the past again, and every waking minute was spent productively. During the nights when Weave slept in the Reception of the Head, Frost would watch over the Moon Candidates from the window, monitoring their day-to-day growth.
Smashed targets made of twigs became branches. Branches became logs. Malnourished skin and bone transformed into firm muscle. The clash of the Moons lit up the nights and played as the ambience of the Time Reverberation’s HQ, replacing the chirps of cicadas.
The triplets visited as often as Frost needed to send them fighting against an Archived Corrupted. Woe of the Fallen Star was still beyond their reach but by now they were getting the hang of the mechanics imposed by Eternal Night Corrupted.
Ignis was a sponge to Frost’s knowledge, applying it exclusively on Carpalis to the point where color returned to her arm. She still couldn’t move it, but this alone gave her hope to a full recovery.
Her shattered bones were surgically removed by Frost in an agonizing procedure. It was sad to see Carpalis in pain, even though she never tended to show it. Frost was by no means a surgeon, but she knew the body well enough to know what should and shouldn’t be in there. With magic there was no need for sterile preparations, or to fear the common risks like sepsis.
While healing magic didn’t work on Demons, [Cleanse] was an exception as it removed debris rather than healed a person.
In due time Ignis would even be able to stimulate osteoblasts before she could create bones – a topic that became the focal point next to the nervous system and the endocrine.
Manipulating hormones was possible through creating small organs that could either devour or create them. Through this, it was possible to trick the body into doing things it normally wouldn’t do. The problem was that Frost’s knowledge of biology was heavily limited to humans. Who knows what hormones other creatures possessed.
Another major limitation was that Ignis was severely limited with what organs she could create. A miniature pancreas was the biggest milestone she had reached, and that was enough for them to celebrate.
There was still much to learn.
Speaking of learn: Mimicry absorbed many of Frost’s values and safeguards to keep it from causing havoc. Killing indiscriminately was hammered out of its system, and it reached a point where it could now rationalize why such actions were considered ‘bad’.
Acedia was being prepared to work with Oboros Infinitas to gauge its effectiveness in a live environment. If it were to replace Frost in certain roles, then it needed to prove its worth both in intelligence, and in accordance with Frost’s morals.
Therefore, Acedia was planned to manage an entire division on her own. There were seven divisions in total within Oboros Infinitas, each representing a sin. An eighth would be made for her, and it would be a special division named after her.
Those affected by the Piece of the Fallen Star or were originally Corrupted will appear under.
The situation outside of the Nexus eased around the City of Clubs. It reached a point where half of the White Doves were readily brought into Time Reverberation. The Black Doves were still training within the City of Diamonds but were also brought into the Nexus by Frost beforehand to give them a tour and a rundown of things to come.
While things seemed good, Frost struggled with her aspect of technology to a saddening degree. Blood was spilt trying to crack the code. Three weeks of endless setbacks summarized her efforts, and when things seem lost Frost went to wipe the crumbs from her mouth after munching on a cake Jury had brought in earlier for them.
“Amalgam!?” Weave cried in concern.
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“Shit…” Frost waved her injured arm, splashing blood across the white chamber. “I got careless.”
A long laceration appeared on her arm, spraying blood temporarily before it trickled down her elbow. Wounds like this usually did not bleed so quickly – if at all – due to the immediate cauterization of blood vessels, something that wasn’t really seen on people like her.
Frost’s RESIST made her especially susceptible to blood loss, but that was if she could lose blood in the first place.
The blood spilt over the Genesis Stone, coating it entirely as blood pooled beneath. There was no time to switch out the object, so they left it as is all the while Frost allowed herself to bleed, paying heed only to the task at hand.
“Let’s continue.” Frost said nothing more.
“Y-You won’t treat your wound –?”
“The Genesis Stone might explode.” Weave was cut off as she was reminded of Frost’s conviction.
When her eyes closed, she unexpectedly visualized a surgeon’s table. The sight beforehand reminded her of the operation with Carpalis, and her experiences as a nurse in her past life.
A sculpture. I need to visualize a sculpture… Tch… Wait. Wouldn’t it be easier to see this as an operation rather than a sculpture?
Weave had instructed her to view the Genesis Stone as a sculpture, and her tentacles as the chisel. But what if she visualized it as something more familiar? An operating theater with scalpels at hand. The tentacles did look like surgical instruments too.
The Genesis Stone appeared like an organ now. A pulsating mass of flesh that quivered in tune with the low-pitched rumble. Surrounding it were the sharpened, claw-like blades of the tentacles, ready to carve away at its flesh.
It never occurred to her that this was possible.
Blood continued to drip from the stone, the splashes being the only sound that played in her mind. The pool beneath turned into a pond. Then a lake. Soon, it turned into a sea as Frost found herself back in the city of blood.
No. What surrounded her was the cavity beneath the City of Spades. A world filled with the Nascent Fluids surrounded her with the bleeding Genesis Stone in the center of it all, pumping it endlessly like a heart.
Bodies could be found within, their wounds healing as thousands of heads emerged from the sea. The Nascent Fluid Ability was the intended power to be drawn into the Gensis Stone, and this visceral visualization was proof that she had finally found the correct key.
All she needed to do now was to twist it.
The bodies fizzled away. The blood twirled like a whirlpool beneath the bleeding stone before it was siphoned away. Ruins hidden by the blood emerged as the object’s pitch intensified, its spin reaching a critical point before suddenly, a beam of light was fired from the stone. It appeared like a crimson pulsar as it screamed in a high-pitched tone; like the blood-curdling scream of dozens of women.
It moved gracefully in the air, falling into her palms as the spinning subsided. Warmth filled her being. The object throbbed like an organ. Its angular contours dug into her fingers.
The finalized product was a black rhombus no larger than her head. Something pricked her flesh, and red lines ran across the surface of the rhombus like veins.
It’s… drawing blood from me?
Frost didn’t even realize that she had returned to reality as she held the object in her palms like a newborn child. Blood dribbled down her elbows as she fed it with her crimson fluids.
“An Aspect that can recreate the body from the blueprint of the soul…” Weave whispered breathlessly; her eyes widened in utter shock. “It’s… taking your blood. And regurgitating it into Nascent Fluids compatible with life. Is your blood really that potent…? How did you… This is Marduk’s power.”
“No. This is mine now.” Frost refused to further elaborate, far too intrigued by the object that feasted on her blood and spilled the excess at her feet. “This is going to replicate the Repenters. This liquid will bring them back to repent as many times as it takes.” Frost ominous warned, panting as her mental exhaustion suddenly caught up to her.
“Replication is not possible until you can capture souls. Carpalis is capable, but there first needs to be an Aspect that can retain them.” Weave stated, wondering why Frost wanted to create this if it had no purpose in the end.
That was until she watched Frost’s mouth curve upwards into a telling grin.
“Don’t tell me…”
“Soul Anchor is next. I told you. I had two Aspects on my mind. This is the reconstitution part. The next will be the vessel. Carpalis can help me on that front when we need to start moving souls. I just need a proof of concept. A place to keep their souls tethered. And a way to Replicate them on the field. I don’t want them anywhere near us…” Frost painfully exhaled.
“Will you use this for your Moons?” Weave cautiously asked, hovering her tentacles around Frost in preparation to catch her.
And to her surprise, Frost fell into her readied hands, needing a shoulder to lean on until she caught her breath.
“No. My Moons deserve better.” There was no way she’d allow her Moons to sacrifice a piece of themselves. She had seen how miserable Scarlet Logic’s personnel were. Her Moons did not deserve such a fate, even if it meant guaranteeing their survival.
Unlike Scarlet Logic’s methods, untethering a person from a Soul Anchor would result in immediate termination. That was if she could go by what Galia said. In fact, she figured that Galia said this so Frost could ensure this was possible.
She was one Aspect down already.
Soon, she’d have everything finalized by the time this was over.