I kept my metal form for the night. It was weird to suddenly have so much information thrust at us and no feasible solution in sight. At least there were options we could explore. The fact that the Crimson Church had not been able to find a solution in several centuries, though… My hopes were slim. Alex was in a similar mood. We stayed quiet and rested but neither of us could really sleep.

A few hours in Catori told me to take out the Thaumonomicon and look through it. Not like we had not done so before. There was a hungry node we wanted to remove. That was the whole reason for going on this journey. The stakes were simply much higher now. Still, I obliged.

When the tome slammed on the table, Alex turned and sat up. She grunted and walked over, sitting next to us. I activated [Telepathy] to let her hear Catori’s thoughts and then we started paging through the book.

Hours later, we were exhausted. We had pushed everywhere we could. There were many things one could do with nodes. And yet, very little by the way of solutions. That was not quite true. There were options, one of them more dangerous than the next. Most of them had likely been thought about already but we had found something that the Church most likely did not know about. It was something I had seen before. In that valley below Gobburgh, the first time I got there. The first time I saw Truth.

It was called the ‘Ceremony of the Eye’. It took a node and turned it into a physical window to the Empty. It would impose the physical onto the beyond and the Empty on the world itself. A bridge between there and here. It would occupy the node and nullify all ‘normal’ effects it had on its surroundings. But it was no solution. First of all, going through with the ceremony required one to get very close to the node to set up an eldritch pedestal with four occult eyes and then impose one’s will upon it. Even if we could get that close without being swallowed, or place the items without them being destroyed, there was no telling what the long-term effects of the ceremony were. It might end up swallowing reality anyway.

Beyond that were the normal options.

Draining it with wands or some other kind of vis storage. If we could empty an aspect, it had a chance to close for that aspect alone. It was an undertaking in futility, though likely the safest option.

Making a Node in a Jar would seal the hungry effect. Good luck getting the jar of glass placed directly around it without being swallowed. We would need to get even closer than for the ceremony and with much frailer materials. Still, I was thinking about attempting it if all other options failed. Catori agreed. We would not die while our body was shifted. Our body might disappear, trapping us in the Empty, but that was the end result of doing nothing, apparently. Still, it was the last resort.

The Node in a Jar was much more feasible for a tainted node but… we had too little information on taint. There was a chance it could harm us even in our shifted state. The biggest issue here was our lack of knowledge about taint. What did it truly look like? Did we have to bring it close to the node and keep it there? Or would it be enough to taint the inside of the whole world? Both options had their own serious problems.

There was the node transducer. A device to break a node down into a small tunnel while somewhat keeping the gate open. It would lead to a constant stream of vis coming from an energized node. The process apparently got rid of harmful effects. Once again, impossible because we had to get close. It would also take several minutes instead of the seconds the ceremony or jar required.

The seemingly simplest solution was having another node drain it through proximity. Only that larger nodes drained smaller nodes more quickly. That meant we would need a node stabilizer which would again be eaten by the hungry node.

Eventually, we had exhausted all ideas. At least there was a simple way to remove the node after tainting it. I wondered if the Church had thought about that. Maybe they had but saw no option to get down there easily.

We got some rest, our minds exhausted from the work. Far too soon, a knock on the door woke us up. Kiara stepped in after a mumbled greeting from Alex.

“Good morning. Did you…”, she spotted the Thaumonomicon still open on one of the tables, “work through most of the night?”

She sighed.

“Well, not like I can fault you. I think everyone did that when they first went down there. Find anything promising?”

I yawned.

“Not much you haven’t thought about yourselves. We really need more information about taint. But we found a solution for fixing the tainted node.”

“Oh? Putting it in a jar?”

I nodded, “So you thought about that?”

“Yes. It’s not feasible. Nodes larger than major ones require increasing amounts of vis in the wand to seal. Something of that size will likely be impossible.”

“Oh.”

Alex groaned.

“What about energizing it after the fact?”

“That has been considered but we are not sure energizing a node will get rid of the tainted state. We haven’t really been able to experiment with tainted nodes…”

“I see…”

“Well, I got you breakfast. You’ll get to see taint today, right? Probably best if you don’t eat a lot.”

Half an hour later we were climbing the stairs into the Cathedral. The Corpus Saxi, as the Cleric corrected me. It was the same old man from the last two days. He insisted to call the two big buildings Corpus Saxi for clarity. The Cathedral proper included the city and the villages in its immediate surroundings.

We were making for a set of laboratories working with taint. What I knew of it was that it was a physical manifestation of flux that had sunk into a living body or simply the ground. Flux could also manifest as a gas or liquid but that would naturally dissipate. If it bonded with the essence of a real object before properly manifesting, it was far more dangerous.

The hallways were leading us in a confusing path through doors and past windows. At some point, we crossed between the buildings. Then we climbed higher, only to cross again. A long descent and a final bridge only a dozen metres above ground and we reached what appeared to be an airlock.

My senses went wild with the magic around it. Auram and ordo were pulsing through gold inlays all over the doors. I could even see it sink into the walls. The Cleric stopped and turned to us.

“While we only have very little taint to work with, it is still incredibly dangerous. We will keep two final barriers between us and our probes. Follow me and do not stray.”

I nodded and he opened the door with a fancy key. This one looked somewhat normal but had a vis crystal set into the back. It seemed to work similarly to the royal palace wards in Eterios where it only worked for a person bound to the system, just with an additional safety measure of needing the key.

The airlock was not quite as simple as it first appeared. For one, there were five double doors. The further we went inside, the more complexity the inlaid gold showed. The fourth door was made from silverwood. The fifth door as well and it had thaumium inlays. On top of that, the hallway shrunk with every step we took. Once we fully entered, it was barely tall enough for Alex to stand in. Two people could just walk by each other. The reason for that was quite obvious. It was all silverwood.

“… where did you get all this?”, I asked, “I thought you only had some stored away?”

“That is the case. The records are sadly not complete. There are writings that suggest we once had living trees in the Cathedral. That is no longer the case unless there is some secret room somewhere. An idea we wish to clear up with that aura detector you helped out with. This area was built before the hungry node was found. The samples are likely over eight hundred years old.”

Alex raised an eyebrow.

“They hold that long?”

“It appears so. Follow me.”

He led us down a short hallway extending to the sides after the airlock. It felt like we walked a half-circle before finding another hallway deeper inside. From there, we saw the samples.

It was… underwhelming. In front of us was a triple layer of glass, the first one a little milky. A door was on the opposite end. While we walked to it, I kept an eye on the centre. There were two pedestals. One had a pile of dark-purple and slightly slimy dirt, the other was some kind of vine or tendril with a slightly lighter bulb at the end of a spiral.

We entered the next round-way where a Cleric stood brooding over some notes. There was a curt nod before they ignored us.

“That’s it?”, I asked, “I can barely get anything from here.”

“I am afraid it would be too dangerous to move closer without protective equipment. Which we do not have for your species.”

Despite my statement, I agreed with his judgement. Even the little I felt through the warded glass and silverwood was giving me the creeps. It was almost like the taint wanted to reach me. I even saw the tendril twitch. That might have been my imagination.

“Is it spreading to the pedestals?”, Alex asked.

“Yes, it is. We swap them out once a week. The top plate is easily removed. Do you see the hatch in the middle?”

There was a little grip to pull open a piece of the ground.

“It leads directly to a bath of sanitizing water. Usually, a remedy for warp but enough of it can cleanse the taint if it has not fully taken over. There is not much we have learned from it. Some entries in the Thaumonomicon become available to a thaumaturge that has studied it more deeply but all of them are warped and appear destructive.”

“So, a tiny bit of taint won’t just immediately spell doom if it latches onto someone?”, Alex asked.

I blinked.

“Correct”, the Cleric said, “But it may if not treated. If you had an auram or ordo affinity, I would let you closer without protective equipment. I hope you can get something from here.”

I continued staring at the weird purple objects trying to push my senses to their limits. I learned much more about the flow of vis going through the wood and windows than my objects of interest.

“You have protective equipment for me?”, Alex asked eventually.

The Cleric hesitated. The other one standing a few metres over answered in his stead.

“It’s stored in the ceiling. There’s hatches on the ground outside leading to the bath as well.”

Our guide hesitated, then indicated for the living fortress to go ahead. ‘In the ceiling’ apparently meant there were raincoat-like clothes stored behind hatches. Once Alex opened it, she was quickly buried under the coat. Her arms found two sleeves ending in gloves. Her eyes peeked out through milky warded glass. She gave me a thumbs-up and entered the innermost circle.

“Drop the clothes before you return to us”, our guide said.

I watched with bated breath as my friend closed in on the extremely dangerous material.

Nothing happened.

Alex walked around the pedestals for a bit, put her hands on one of them, then shrugged and walked out.

“Seems much less spectacular than I expected. I guess it’s mostly in the vis?”

I nodded.

“I can feel it from here. You’d see the danger if there was more of it, I think.”

The other Cleric grunted.

“Shit can get really bad. We had to put down the new girl just last month. She messed up when cleaning and got some inside her cloak. The baths weren’t enough.”

Alex choked.

“You had to kill her?”

“And burn the body.”

“Oh.”

My heart was suddenly much less into the whole taint-the-hungry-node-to-save-the-world-thing. If that kind of thing happened with just a light touch…

“What was she like after touching it?”, I asked.

“At first she was scared. The stuff started to spread up her leg. It took maybe two hours before her fear disappeared. I’m pretty sure she was dead by then. The stuff had probably spread inside her along the veins. She was aggressively trying to attack anyone around. Even insects and plants. Wasn’t hard to kill but the body kept spreading the shit around.”

“Wait, you were able to burn the taint, right?”

“Yes. If it’s wood or something else that’s flammable, you can burn it. Other stuff gets crumbly and if it's affected long enough, it’ll burn as well. We had an experiment with putting a rock inside the dirt pile. It’s very easy to make more.”

“Setting the world on fire after tainting the hungry node wouldn’t work, huh?”

Alex chuckled.

“There are so many issues with that… But it’s honestly better than not dealing with it at all.”

“We will still have to return the then tainted node to something manageable. Otherwise… tainted ashes are not much better than nothing at all.”

I sighed.

“We’ll figure something out. Maybe the old guy comes around…”

That last part was more of a whisper. Only Alex and Catori heard it. I was getting a little angry at Truth. But I had no idea how to make him help us. Or if he even could.