By the time the rod was done, she struggled to stand and Red was clutching her head in pain as her horns resonated… But done, it was, the rod floating menacingly in the air as its eldritch glyphs pulsed with magenta light. Zefaris pulled Pentacle from its holster. Every chamber was loaded with Atrine-enriched powder with a lead ball; a configuration she didn’t use much anymore due to a lead ball’s inability to maintain its form under the forces Atrine powder subjected them to. But for this… For this it was perfect.

She projected accelerator glyphs in front of the Black Rod and a kinetic snare at its concave base, into which she fired all of Pentacle’s shots before holstering it, each time imbuing them with Concussion Impact. Again. And again. A vast mass of lead carrying an even vaster kinetic charge.

The last thing left was… A coin.

She flash-carved a glyph upon just such a coin and threw it into the rod’s path, dispelling the kinetic snare glyph and triggering the accelerator glyphs at once. Out from the coin’s tiny surface, a projection of the glyph unfolded at the moment the rod struck it, and the rod’s vast mass was sent straight through the leshy’s chest. The immense force pinned the creature to the trunk of a nearby tree.

BELLADONNA SIGN

MANIFESTATION OF MAN’S REVOLT AGAINST THE HEAVENS

HEADPIERCER ARTS: LEVIATHAN’S FANG -CRIMSON COMMAND-

It thrashed, and roared, and tried to free itself, only for the rod to come alive with an ominous magenta glow that near-perfectly mirrored that which Zefaris had seen above the Blackwall Cathedral. In the rod’s hollow a shining orb of emerald-green took form; the nature-spirit fell limp, and Red’s horns stopped resonating. In moments, its few surviving puppets slumped over where they stood.

“It’s… Taking much less power now. Why?” she said.

“The rod feeds on the leshy. It will last until its material structure falls apart, if we don’t dispel it.”

“...And how long is that?”

“Maybe half a minute at most. So uh…”

Zef drew in a breath and belted as loud as she could: “GET THE MASK OFF, NOW! THE ROD WON’T LAST LONG!”

Gunnar, in his musclebound man-beast form, had already leapt upon the leshy. He turned to her and gave a clawed thumbs-up at her call, and began digging his hands under whatever was holding the mask in place. One by one, the mask’s articulated hooks were forced open. Yvonne quickly treated the wounded by freezing shut wounds that couldn’t be closed then and there with healing poultice. One man had been run through by the leshy’s plant-tendrils in several places, and the snow witch took to pulling out their remnants while the rest of the group gathered ‘round the impaled nature-spirit.

Its mask smashed to the ground, and in another moment, the red glow faded from its eyes. At that moment, Zef and Red both dispelled their parts of the construct; in a puff of black steam and downpour of black sand, the rod vanished and from within floated three iridescent spheres, returning into Red’s waiting sleeve.

“I yet wonder why you needed my aid,” the mantis commented.

Zef turned to Red once more, explaining: “Your subcores were needed as ignition catalysts, amplifiers, and reinforcement agents for the blackstone. The rod would’ve sublimated away in five, ten seconds at most if it had been all ice.”

“I will take that as thanks for my aid, and I will choose not to question how you gleaned a means of replicating God-sealing Pillars… Or share the fact you can do such a thing with the rest of the empire. It would raise too many unwelcome questions, draw too much attention.”

The leshy confusedly looked around, the gaping hole in its chest pulling itself shut. It stood up and just walked off into the jungle with its thralls in tow, heading towards the burned area they’d just come through.

The inside of the mask was engraved with a vast and complex glyph, combining Ankhezian, Borean, and Pateirian arts. Borean knotwork and rune formations, Pateirian hieroglyphs and trigrams, all bound up inside a strange and twisted framework of Ankhezian pseudo-organic proto-glyphs. It seethed with malicious magic, enough that the weaker among the expeditionary force were hesitant to even approach.

Out of all of them, however, Red was the most shaken when she got an up-close look: “I… Have seen masks like this one. How did this heretical knowledge make its way here, of all places?!”

Noticing the questioning gazes, Red sighed and explained: “The Divine Empire’s Divine General Cao Hu had masks such as these made as part of his subjugation tactics against the natives of the Schorched Islands. They were used in an effort to turn the nature spirits which were guardians and subjects of worship, against those who worshiped them and whom they had protected. I thought this one to be merely similar in function since the outward design differs,, but it’s identical on the inside. The masks were discontinued due to the vast production cost, the eclectic skill set required to produce one, and the fact they didn’t actually work as intended, merely driving the nature-spirit into a homicidal berserk state, and the Scorchlanders were far more adept at avoiding the wrath of their homeland’s spirits than the occupying forces. What? Why do you look at me so? I would not so readily reveal what I just did if I were at all involved with this.”

“...I believe her,” Zefaris said. The absolute revulsion in Karmesin’s voice when she described the use of the masks was enough to convince her, and it was consistent with the mantis’ hate towards Pateirian control parasites after having been subject to one.

“Nevertheless, what do we do with it? We cannot just leave such an accursed thing laying around,” Gunnar said.

“Bring it with, I know enough of them to dispose of one,” Red said, turning and walking towards the edge of her hideout. She shrugged, adding: “Or destroy it yourselves, it makes no difference to me if you end up cursing your own land.”

Jorfr grabbed it, not as intimidated by the eldritch cursed artifact as the other Boreans.