KeroKerain!And impalement...

  [colpse]

  Emily groggily drags herself out of bed, slipping on a pair of trousers and leaving her room. She walks to the kit, grabbing a slice of bread from the ter before tinuing through to the shop front. Stepping into the room filled with the familiar sound of tig clocks, Emily frowns as an odd scratg starts at the back of her mind. Ign it, she shakes her head and looks to Herber, standing in the middle of the room and watg the door.

  “Dad?” she calls questioningly, approag him and tapping him on the shoulder.

  He tilts his head and she freezes as she meets his cold, lifeless eyes, their gssy hue setting off warning signs in her mind. She stumbles a step back as he turns, revealing the line of red drawn across his throat, gushing blood and slowly turning the floor around him into a pool of death.

  “What’s wrong, Emi?” he asks with a twisted, gargled tone.

  She takes aep back, choking out a sob as Herber’s expression slips into one of fusion.

  “What’s wrong, Emi?” he repeats, taking a step forward. “You did this.”

  A sharp spike of rock erupts from the ground, spearing Herber’s front foot and holding it firm.

  “You killed me,” he says, taking aep and once again having his foot pierced by a poiagmite.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispers quietly, retreating further and finding the wall suddenly pressed to her back.

  She reaches for the door ha finds it missing. Gng over her shoulder, she finds a solid wall with no escape.

  “What have you done?” Herber asks as he tries to step forward and falls to his knees when his feet won’t move.

  Two more spikes of rock burst out of the ground, ripping through his legs.

  “What have you done?” he repeats mindlessly, as if tg onto her weakness, leaning forward and reag out to her as more rocks tear through his stomad arms, pinning him in pce.

  “I’m sorry,” Emily sobs, sliding down the wall and drawing her legs into her chest, hugging them as his brutalised figure looms over her.

  “What have you done!” Herber’s mindless fusion morphs into a seething rage as blood pours from his wounds.

  The blood trickles down the spikes, joining the pool on the floor and slowly rising, filling the room. Emily cainst the wall, trying not to listen to his hateful words while repeatedly apologising. The blood pool creeps up, surrounding Emily and holding her down as it rises.

  When the blood reaches her , Emily is forced to raise her head to try and breathe, meeting Herber’s gaze as she does. The sed their eyes meet, all of Herber’s rage fades like a lie, being repced with a kind, loving smile.

  “I love you,” he mouths as the blood swallows them both.

  ***

  Emily wakes with a jolt, cold sweat running down her back, her breathing quid panicked. Crity returns to her as she feels Juliana shift in her arms, pulling away and looking up at her with tired fusion.

  “Emi?” she asks, a sleepy croak in her voice.

  “It’s nothing, just a bad dream,” Emily says, more for herself than her girlfriend.

  Nodding in uanding, Juliana pulls Emily in, stroking her hair in reassurance. Emily rexes, pushing away the unpleasant dream and enjoying Juliana’s attention.

  After a few minutes, she pulls away, sliding out from uhe covers and cheg The Clo her bedside table. It reads 8 am, so Emily stands up and stretches befrabbing some clothes and hopping in the shower. By the time she returns, Juliana is sitting up in bed, rubbing the crust from her eyes.

  “M,” she says with a yawn.

  “M,” Emily replies with a smile, walking towards her workbench to equip the Cws out of habit.

  Ah, I o remake these. Maybe I should make them a projectile on as well, it worked well when it happened actally against the wendigo.

  Mentally creating a note for the Cws’ iteration, she turns back to face Juliana who has climbed out of bed to approach her.

  “I’m gonna go shower a dressed,” Juliana says, ing her arms around Emily’s ned leaning into her.

  “Okay, I’m not going to join you for meals today because I have some stuff I o deal with from the expedition, but I’ll see you in the evening.”

  “You better e see me ter.”

  “Don’t worry, I will,” Emily replies, leaning dog a kiss on Juliana’s pouting lips.

  Leaving the room with Juliana, Emily heads towards the transportation room at the end of their hallway. She takes a quick dimensional jump to the library, letting her spatial awareness out fully as the transport circle activates, feeling a dizzying rush of information flood over her.

  It’s too plicated for me to uand still, but it doesn’t hurt like time travel.

  Filing some notes on the experieo her spatial uanding folder, she finds ay table ales down.

  “Ten B-grade, sealing spells and arrays,” she requests after activating the table, starting her research for the m.

  Emily pores over several books, filling a folder with notes on different sealihods and possibly useful runes. e lunchtime, she shuts the st book oable before her and drops it outside the barrier, letting it fly back to its p the stacks.

  “That’s enough for now. Now I o study how the tooth reacts to different mana types,” she mutters to herself, stretg her arms over her head and standing up to return to her room.

  Emily returns quickly and takes the Mensacus out of the drawer. She opens the bck iron tainer she made, releasing the tooth’s miasma into the room.

  I hope The Dome’s rooms are well sealed enough for this not to affeyone else.

  Emily pces the two empty shells of bck iron in a drawer for ter study and leaves the cursed tooth alone in the tre of her desk.

  “Right, let’s start with the os,” she mutters to herself, pg her hands oher side of the Mensacus.

  She uses her sed core to create an orb of unattributed mana around the experiment, then starts f a strand of fire mana from her left hand, reag into the protective dome.

  As the strand of glowing, white-speckled e grows closer to the Mensacus, it meets resistance. A hazy bd red mist of mana seeps from the fine cracks running along the tooth. It reaches up to the fire mana and begins a battle for dominance, fiercely tearing at the mana that tries to burn it away. After a few seds, Emily dissipates the strand of fire mana, noting the Mensacus’ rea.

  Fire worked well against it, but not enough to overpower the corrupted mana without using a rge quantity.

  , she does the same test with earth mana, finding it slightly resistant to the corrupted mana’s decay, but uo do any damage whatsoever. It’s quickly beaten bad forced out of the protective bubble.

  As Emily is about to try water mana, she hears a kno her door.

  “Tsk,” she clicks her tongue in irritation, standing up to answer.

  Why couldn’t he have sent someone when I was in the library instead of interrupting my experiments?

  Opening the door, she’s slightly surprised when reets her instead of a servant.

  “Hello, Emily. Are you free to talk about your payment?” he questions with a wide smile.

  Emily gnces back at the cursed tooth on her desk.

  Maybe I shouldn’t have cursed objects lying around if I let him in.

  “Sure, gimme a sec,” she replies, letting the door shut in his fad turning away before she calmly returns to her desk.

  She quickly presses the tooth bato its bck iron shell, sealing it inside again and dropping it into a drawer. She looks around at the other scattered projects on work surfaces as she returns to the door, deg none of them ate hiding.

  “Sorry about that,” she says as she opens the dain and steps aside. “e on in.”

  “It’s fine,” Oscar says amiably as he enters. “I arrived unannounced.”

  He casts his gaze around her room in intrigue, taking in the mess of pipes aal.

  “I won’t lie, it does feel odd to walk into a meic’s workshop in the middle of The Dome,” he says with a smirk.

  Emily scoffs, walking past him and pulling out the wheeled stool for him to sit on before settling down in her fortable desk chair fag him. Oscar takes the offered seat without pint, a wide smile never leaving his face.

  “Right. To state it clearly, you will be receiving thirteen point six per t of the expedition’s loot.”

  Emily whistles at his words.

  “Haha, yes. It is a sizeable share. If anything, I don’t believe we’re giving you enough. But, unfortunately, I ’t push much more without upsetting the rest of the expedition or my family. However, if you would ever like any help from the Salvia family, simply give me the word and I will try my utmost to assist you. We’re in your debt,” he says, lightly bowing his head.

  Or you’ve realised I’m far too valuable and want to keep me close.

  “Sure, I’ll sider it, if I ever need help.”

  “Good. Now, before I give you a point value, would you like any of the resources we gathered? Everyone is entitled to up to aeenth of the actual resources we gathered should you want any of them.”

  Emily siders her needs for a moment before replying, “Could I have five ts of each beast material we gathered, other than those we only got a few of, I’ll take whatever I from those. Then five of eaon lesser crystal we gathered along with as many ice, metal, and light as I’m permitted?”

  “Sure! In that case, I’ll have those delivered ter today and I’ll trahe rest of your payment now.”

  He reaches for his crest, dramatically tapping it, releasing a small burst of wind, before stretg his hand out for Emily’s. She obliges, taking her silver crest from within her robes and tapping it against his hand. She watches the number on the back of her crest soar up, increasing till it es to a halt reading ‘1840’. Emily ’t help the satisfied grin that forms on her face as she reads the amount.

  Perfect, this is enough to start recreating iing items from the market.

  “If you would like the full breakdown of the harvests and how we valued them just let me know,” Oscar says, pullitention away from her crest.

  “No, it’s fine. I’ll trust your word,” she responds with a smile.

  I don’t care that much even if he did cheat me. I’m not going to be using these points normally anyway. This will be plenty to st until I reach third circle.

  “Wonderful! Now, would I be able to p order for...”

  After a quick discussion about selling him some mrenades, Emily waves Oscar out of the door aurns to her experiment, unsealing the Mensacus again. She ests water and wind mana, finding both utterly useless against the corruption. The st of the os she utilise is light, which burns away some of the corruption like fire, but it gains less ground than fire did before it reaches a stalemate with the corrupted mana.

  Fire and light. I already know it eat maaal, so testial mana is pointless.

  , she tries lightning mana, finding almost the same result as light.

  “Okay, so it deals poorly against light a. I should be able to make this work,” she mumbles to herself while reag a strand of purple spatial mana towards the tooth.

  She watches with intrigue as the two seem to pass through each other, the corruption only burning the spatial mana a fra of a sed before it makes tact with the tooth.

  How iing. I’ll have to study spatial mana’s iions further.

  She hat down for ter before standing up and walking to the steam sour the er.

  “I should update you soon too,” she muses, running her hand along the smooth metal top of the primitive magical steam geor with intimate familiarity.

  A spark of maa spreads through the mae, igniting the magical array within and breathing life into her workshop with the hiss of steam. First, she takes a fresh k of bck iron from her materials colle, seleg a pie inch rger than the Mensacus in all dimensions. She heats the metal in her hands with a quick cast of burning hands.

  I should make some better spells for manufacturing. I could definitely design some for better-targeted heating and shaping if I put in a little time.

  Brushing away the thought, she brings the glowing hot metal to one of her rge maes, passing it through two heavy-duty rollers and f it into a sheet a few millimetres thiext, she pulls a sketch, detailing the Mensacus’ exact dimensions, from her system notebook and overys it with the metal. She moves the sheet between a few maes, cutting and pressing the metal until it forms a perfect shell to snugly fit the tooth.

  Letting the metal cool, she tests the tooth’s fit, sliding it in through the open top.

  “Perfect!” she says with satisfa.

  Moving on, she brings up another virtual image of the tooth, this one showing the fiwork of cracks c it.

  If I’m right, the meeting points of these cracks should be focal points for the mana release of the curse.

  She probes the tooth with light mana, finding it to be a nice baween aggression and submission for her tests. She repeatedly pokes with a strand of light mana, noting points that give more or less resistance, quickly pig out the focal points with the stro corrupted mana release.

  Thought so. It’s just like w with a magic crystal.

  With her theory proven, she overys the virtual image showing the stro focal points onto the bck iron shell. She takes the shell to her drill press and carefully cuts ten fiapered holes through the metal.

  Oisfied with the holes, she tests the tooth’s fit again, making sure all of the focal points line up correctly befrabbing a k of white iron. She leaves the tooth in the shell, closing the top and sealing it shut before melting the white iron into a liquid form in a small crucible and p it over the bck iron.

  She uses metal-attributed mana to carefully guide the molteal into the holes, filling them pletely and making solid tact with the tooth within. The glowing molteal slowly spreads across the cold bck surface, seeping into every gap she left and sealing the tooth in.

  She lets the metal cool, holding it ih mana until it turns solid enough to keep its form, before carefully applying water and ice mana to quickly finish it without weakening the material. After a few minutes of careful work, she sits bad stares at the glistening white ovoid before her, feeling the malevolent mana leaking from it with a satisfied grin.

  “Done. Now onto the sealing array!”