“Instant Pyrography…” she uttered; smoke and sparks emerged from the first scroll and flowed to the second, new burn marks appearing on its wood. A few seconds later, she threw the still-smoldering scroll over to Zelsys.

“It has the core Itrian shrine guardian arts; mostly various seals and sympathetic magic, some simulacrimancy as well…” she explained, again turning her attention to Victor.

“Your inherited Ossomancy should come with an intrinsic understanding of musculoskeletal structures, so I’d suggest you look into the Itrian arts, especially the simulacra; few are able to just skip the most significant barrier that stands between a wizard and the creation of semi-autonomous servants. It should go well with that Onbashira, whatever you did to get your hands on one. Using the staff as it was intended should also help deepen your connection with it so you may one day commune with the associated Guardian Deity.”

“Isn’t creating a golem a labor of years, if not decades? And how would my understanding of such bodily structures help one of my creations to understand it? I would need to transcribe them and figure out…” Victor asked, muttering to himself in confusion as he mentally ran through the gamut of tasks necessary to make a golem actually move.

“That’s Golemancy, not Simulacrimancy. Golemancy is thaumaturgy, Simulacrimancy isn’t; with Simulacrimancy, you conceive the form of your desired construct which you store in spiritual muscle memory as you would any other spell or technique, and give it temporary physical form through magic, while Golemancy removes the reliance on a specific human operator. The two disciplines have fundamentally different use cases, but Golemancy arose in order to fill in where Simulacrimancy doesn’t work. If it seems similar to the natural manifestations that tend to come about from someone who has subsumed a Daemon - like a Storm-soul Cultivator, for instance - that’s because the mechanics are similar, just reliant on something of your own creation rather than a tamed nature spirit. Borean ancestor-summoning tends to fall under Simulacrimancy, for instance.”

Jorfr furrowed his brow, turning to look at the witch. He looked half confused and half insulted, yet he didn’t speak up.

“Can’t exactly have hundreds of simulacra stand around in a city as statues until time comes to defend it…”

“Exactly, you can’t pull the ol’ Stone Army trick with simulacra. Obviously, there’s a great deal more to Simulacrimancy than what I explained to you; the discipline is nearly as old as Shamanism, after all, but the scroll holds about as much as I would be comfortable telling you to begin with, so just read it on your own time. Now…”

The witch hopped off the writing desk and returned to the table, tossing the original scroll back into its place. She ended up right by Jorfr’s side.

“I believe we still have some time before my housemates catch wind of your presence, and er…” she began, only to sniff, squinting her eyes at Jorfr. “You fucking stink, northman. Go take a bath.”

She snapped her fingers. The floor and walls shuddered, something shifting nearby. It reminded Zelsys of the way it felt when a Dungeon’s chambers changed.

“Door across the hall. Go. Before I fumigate you.”

Her gaze thereafter turned to Victor: “You too.”

Jorfr protested: “I need this paint to guide us through the forest. I can wait outside, if need be.”

“I’ll just drop you off outside my fucking woods, how about that? Now go. Both of you.”

The borean begrudgingly stood and walked to the door, chips of dried blood-paint falling from him as he did so. Victor, too, moved to stand, but then stopped, leaving his necklace on the table before he walked out in Jorfr’s wake. The witch snapped her fingers, muttering: “Waste Incineration.”

With this gesture, the chips left behind vanished in tiny bursts of sparks and smoke.

Once Vic and Jorfr were gone, the witch shamelessly hopped up onto the table, squatting down in front of Zelsys with her arms propped up on her knees.

“Now, you. First, why’re you in my fuckin’ woods? Were it just the kid, I know for a fact that the old man wouldn’t have sent you here. Plenty of hermits with that knowledge around in less dangerous places. Where are you trying to go in this vicinity, hm?”

“Agartha. I need to get to Borea.”

“Oh… That explains the norseman, right…But nothing else. The long road north should be clear this time of year, and you’ve clearly got a means of travel suited more to that path than slogging it through eldritch, cursed ruins. You’ll have to leave those things at the entrance, unless someone’s installed a lift since I last made the trip… Which is admittedly possible. Still. Why Agartha? You’re not trying to get to the Foundations of the World to play fuckfuck games with the Old Gods, are you?”

Zel sighed, and explained the entirety of her situation; from her absorbing the Living Storm to slay Ubul and the Butcher breaking as a result of the sudden growth, to the overly convenient blockage of the long road north.

“Oho…” uttered the Smoke Witch, not having doubted a single one of Zel’s, by any normal standards, absurd claims. “And you can house seven fat fuckin’ daemons with room to spare ‘cause your soul is a weird mosaic like that so the buggers don’t interact unless you let ‘em, thus sparing you from getting ripped apart by the internal stresses. Frankly, it’s almost a shame that you’re a Storm-soul Cultivator. You’d be a nightmare had you gone for a Galegod or Blazegod, but then I suppose forest fires aren’t as common as storms, and I’m biased myself… Well, alright, how ‘bout a trade: Give me a pint of your blood, and I’ll give you a bargaining chip that’ll get you at least some of the many things you will need to reforge your spirit-blade and future proof it.”

“On the condition that you don’t try to use it to make a copy of me,” Zel agreed.

“Even the ancient Ankhezians couldn’t figure out True Homunculi, y’think a washed up witch like me could pull a stunt like that? Nah. I’m not one for growing meat-things anyhow. I’ve been trying to grow a dragon-tree for the better part of four-hundred years, and at this point, I figure the genetically neutral blood of a homunculus with dragon genes is as likely to help as anything else.”