6. Imbuement

The intestinal corridor led out onto an enormous room with sky-high ceilings. Here, Serac saw for the first time the full extent of the mass chaos that had befallen the Damnatorium—the genesis of which she herself had unwittingly been party to.

The room itself was roughly cylindrical in shape, with a vast circular base upon which Serac now stood. It extended upward in distinct segments, with blood-slick footholds that sloped into a sort of spiral staircase.

Yet, the room’s most striking feature filled the central space that corresponded to its ‘stairwell’. At least hundreds—perhaps even thousands—of grape-like sacs, each of them just large enough to house a Rakshasa if they perhaps folded and hugged their knees, hung from the ceiling in dense clusters, tied together by gelatinous ropes.

Even as Serac gazed up in amazement, these jail cells—for that was what they were—shook and swayed precariously in the air, whipped about by whistling winds. Serac saw this and understood that this whole space was just another torture device, one in which the inmates were kept in a constant state of vertiginous acrophobia.

“I’ve heard of this place…” She murmured in awed sympathy, counting herself at least partially lucky for having never experienced this particular form of punishment. “I think they call it the Aviary.”

“It never ceases to amaze me just how creative these Hellspawns can get,” Trippy observed, with sarcasm tempered by genuine respect. “You’d think these wretched souls could’ve put their enthusiasm and ingenuity to a nobler cause. Do you see? This entire structure was modeled after the lobes of a lung, with each of these sacs representing an alveolus. I’ll wager that the very top of the room is somehow connected to the outdoors, in order to allow for a constant movement of air. That passage, should we find it, may well be our ticket out of the Damnatorium altogether.”

“Well… seems like air isn’t the only thing that’s getting in and out right now. Look!”

Serac pointed to one ‘alveolar sac’ in particular, but in fact, there were too many examples to count. The hanging cells of the Aviary presently swayed, not only from the wind, but also from the numerous inmates that climbed out of them and tugged at the adjoining ropes.

Many of them had already made the jump onto the spiral stairs, only to then face off against Jailers that rumbled about the place brandishing their tethered weapons. What was more, it looked like some of these inmates were even winning.

“Now, that’s what I call a riot!” Serac enthused. “I’ve never seen so many inmates running around in one place. It’s actually… kind of inspiring.”

“Call it what you will, but the important thing is we can use this to our advantage! Quickly now, let’s climb this lung to its ‘apex’ and see about finding that airway. I even permit you to follow your cowardly instincts and sneak your way through. Blend into the crowd if you can. Wouldn’t want to risk us getting overwhelmed by sheer numbers…”

“Uh… it might already be a bit late for that.”

Serac pointed again, this time at a lumbering figure that descended the stairs against the grain. A Jailer, just as tall, pale, and ugly as Porky, if a little more slimly built. It shouted unintelligible orders and held up a weapon (another six-shooter) as it approached, as if Serac was just another rioter making an escape attempt (which… she supposed she was, strictly speaking).

“Trippy?” Serac called out uncertainly. “Got any more advice for me?”

“Be patient and wait just a Ksana or two. A Deific Instrument though it may be, REVOLVER is still modeled after a six-shooter, with its limitations and imperfections. It has its effective range and will lose accuracy beyond that distance, no matter who wields it.”

“Well, sure, but wouldn’t the Jailer’s six-shooter also have the same—?”

Before the Wayfarer could finish her thought, the Jailer across from her stopped and pointed its gun straight at her, evidently satisfied with the distance in question. Serac in turn flinched, rather uselessly and with her left hand once again jerking toward the Penitent’s Circlet around her head. She’d seen this exact scenario play out far too many times, and despite her newfound ‘freedom’, old habits died hard—perhaps even harder than Wayfaring souls.

But the pain didn’t come, and the Circlet itself remained inert. Just another reminder that its control had been fully ceded to Trippy and Trippy alone.

Serac shook her head, half-amused half-embarrassed, then raised REVOLVER to align its sights upon the floundering figure of the Jailer, who even now took its eyes off Serac to inspect its ‘defective’ cattle prod with a stupefied expression.

If this distance was good enough for the Jailer, then it was certainly good enough for Serac. She aimed, locked, and—

“Wait! Now that you’re fully loaded, the next cartridge should be seated in Chamber One. This is the perfect opportunity for you to learn imbuement. Do you still remember how you managed to destroy the Pulverizer earlier?”

“Er… you mean how I lay in a pool of mush and just blindly pulled the trigger?”

“Not pulled. Squeezed. But yes, exactly. You were in a state of profound and utter submission. Weighed down by the hopeless enormity of your sins. Ready and willing to repent with every uniform fiber of your being.”

“… I feel like you’re just putting words in my mouth, but if this is leading to something, you’d better get to it soon!”

“I want you to recall and channel that exceptional state of mind. I want you to picture clearly the bullet that sits inside Chamber One. And when you squeeze the trigger, I want you to give something of your body, mind, and soul to this singular endeavor. Repent. At your current HP… I daresay this will be enough to finish the Jailer in one shot.”

Really? A way to end the fight in one shot? Well, why didn’t you teach me this earlier?

Serac took to the task eagerly, finding to her surprise that it was relatively simple to remanifest the pure shambles that had been herself as a pool of mush. Such had been the sheer trauma the experience had instilled in her, and such had been the general misery of her existence in the lowest pits of hell—ready and willing to repent at the drop of a hat, a prod from a Jailer, or in this case, the behest of a sentient six-shooter.

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And only when she’d already half-squeezed REVOLVER’s trigger was she visited by a real sense of foreboding… along with the realization that she was about to learn—the hard way—why she couldn’t and shouldn’t end every fight with one shot.

[Chamber One: CATHARSIS]

[115!]

“Ow!”

The bullet all but exploded out of the barrel, giving clear visual representation of what the erstwhile mush-Serac could only sense from between the Pulverizer’s teeth. Fully-intact-Serac also ‘sensed’ the explosion alright, but in the form of a gut punch from nowhere that knocked the wind out of her and left her reeling.

The payload itself, having been ‘imbued’ by REVOLVER’s magic, proved to be no ordinary lead pellet. It burst through the air as a concentrated beam of black flames, which then fanned out as they made contact with the Jailer’s burly frame.

[133!]

133? An improvement over an ‘unimbued’ bullet, but it struck Serac as rather paltry returns for the severity of her own pain. And it certainly wasn’t enough to erase her enemy’s HP bar in one shot as Trippy had promised!

But no, she’d judged too soon, for [Catharsis] wasn’t yet done purging the world of its sins. Across from her, the Jailer first looked up with dull surprise as black flames lapped against its chest. Then its face quickly contorted in pain and horror as the fire spread across its torso, then onto its limbs, before engulfing its whole body.

[133!], [208!]

Serac’s own expression mirrored that of the Jailer’s as she took note of the second damage number. But her counterpart’s face had already disappeared behind a veil of raging black flames, as the Jailer let go of its six-shooter and swung its gorilla arms about in a desperate attempt at self-firefighting.

[133!], [208!], [416!]

[Catharsis] exacted its third and harshest punishment, oblivious to its victim’s flailing limbs and terrified shriek. At the same time, the Jailer stopped moving altogether, having either lost its strength or accepted its fate. It fell to its charred knees, sending more vibrations toward Serac’s feet.

Then the three damage numbers merged, thereby announcing [Catharsis]’s final toll on a hapless Jailer’s physical form. [757!]. Even in her dazed horror, Serac somehow had the presence of mind to appreciate the utility of Pathsight’s in-built calculator.

She also took care to watch her enemy’s HP bar, which had decremented in three enlarging pieces before emptying altogether. And sure enough, the Jailer’s blackened remains now burned down into Souldust, just as [Catharsis]’s flames waned.

[380 क] + [300 क] -> [680 क]

And that was that. Trippy hadn’t lied after all. Serac had indeed expended just the one cartridge to burn a whole Jailer to a crisp, and she was now another [300 क] worth of Karma richer for the experience.

Yet, all things considered, she felt as though she’d paid a steeper price than she’d bargained for.

That initial self-damage. The accompanying pain. Not to mention the shock and terror of witnessing her own arsonist handiwork. If anything, she now felt more repentant than before she’d squeezed the trigger!

“Remember that sequence,” came Trippy’s debrief, cool as you like. “Remember how you first activated this imbuement, as well as the three-stage nature of its damage effect. Not every foe you face will be as witlessly cooperative as this Jailer turned out to be. You’ll have to be an astute judge of when and how to use [Catharsis], lest you waste its damage potential. Besides, I’m sure you’ve noted that you won’t always have the necessary ‘resource’ on hand to fire it off.”

“Because it eats a chunk of my own HP? Thanks for telling me that, by the way. And thanks for leaving me like one hit away from dying now.”

“Not just your HP,” Trippy explained, not bothering to hide a touch of mockery in his voice, “but also your MP. See that blue bar?”

Serac looked, in spite of herself, and readily saw what Trippy meant. Of the three colored bars that occupied one corner of Pathsight, the blue one had always been the stubbiest, now made even stubbier after Serac’s latest misadventure.

“Mana Points are another one of the primary resources made interactable to a Wayfarer. In short, it’s what you spend to activate the various forms of magic you’ll be picking up throughout your journey. In fact, you’ve already spent a portion of it during your very first fight—against the one you called ‘Porky’. [The Grind], PULVERIZER’s Auxiliary Technique, cost 25 points. And you used a further 21 points just now with [Catharsis], bringing your current total down to 22/68. Now, I trust even a Narakite such as you would know enough basic arithmetic to—”

“Yes, yes, I only have enough MP to cast [Catharsis] one more time! Seriously, man, what kind of an idiot do you take me for?”

“… I sense that I might’ve upset you in some way.”

“Really? Noo… Why would I be upset? What possible reason could I have to be upset about anything?”

Sometimes, a girl just had to cross her arms and pout. That time was now, but Serac found her path to self-consolation blocked… by the jagged rocks around her left arm, as well as the sentient six-shooter in her right hand. In the end, she settled for balling up her fists and having an angry staring contest with the patch of singed floor that was now the only physical evidence of the latest ‘hard’ lesson Trippy had imparted to her.

“… Perhaps you’re not entirely wrong. Perhaps it does behoove me to… reconsider my approach to mentorship.”

Serac’s ears perked up. Her fists loosened somewhat. Could it be? Was that… apology she heard in Trippy’s voice?

“You have to understand, Wayfarer. It’s been an age since I’ve worked so closely with… anyone of your background. And in that time, I seem to have lost sight of perspective. You’ve led a hard life, Serac Edin. Perhaps more than one. There’s no cause for me to become the latest of souls to antagonize you so. If you’ll forgive my earlier indiscretions, I shall strive to be a less cynical—and perhaps kinder—collaborator.”

“Uh…” Serac sputtered, more than a little taken aback. “That’s… I mean it’s all… Look, maybe it goes both ways, you know? Maybe I need to toughen up too. Gods know I’m already miles better off than where I was before I met you.”

“And you will toughen up. But on your own time. Meanwhile, I’ll do my best to rein in my impatience… and trust that you’re good value for the ambition that drew me to you in the first place.”

“Uh… thanks, I guess? … No, yeah. Thank you for saying that. And I’ll do my best to remember that I have as high an opinion of myself as you seem to have of me.”

Sometimes, a girl just had to unball her fists and scratch awkwardly at her face, waiting to see how her companion might navigate the rest of this unexpectedly candid conversation. Thankfully, this particular companion managed to rise to the occasion.

“Shall we, Wayfarer? It’s a long climb to the top, which should give me plenty of time to bring you up to speed.”