Unfortunately the first day wasn't very eventful. Mostly because the person I was looking for (Danny) was likely taking care of a comatose Taylor and being depressed over it. Unfortunately I couldn't do much about it while sitting in the middle of a warehouse, keeping track of deliveries and stock.
I could head into my secret base… but that would be a bit awkward to explain. Plus there wasn't any method I had currently on hand to keep track of things outside of my base other than leaving the door connecting my base to the warehouse conspicuously open. So I decided against that.
What I could do was finally, FINALLY, take a look at Notes of Thoth and my Motes.
Notes of Thoth, as I could remember from Kane Chronicles, was really important. For one specific reason.
Shadow Execration.
An execration was a simple spell. You have a smaller representation of the target and you destroy that in order to erase the main target. Essentially a voodoo spell. The spell could also act as a generator for more magical power as well, acting as a sacrifice to cast a larger more expensive spell.
So there were a few things for an execration to work. The first was a representation of the target which was usually a shabti or wax figurine of the target in question or maybe an object associated with the target. The second, as far as I could remember, was the target's secret name or ren which was the representation of a person's soul. Knowing it allowed the user to have total control over the person.
By calling out and naming the target, and shattering the shabti, you would wipe the target from existence, destroying the physical form and even their souls. A near complete annihilation.
Against Gods, it obviously wouldn't work. But the Shadow Execration was a small step up.
Everything in existence has a shadow, their legacy, their mark on the world. In Egyptian mythology, if you didn't have a sheut, you couldn't exist. You left no mark on the world. You weren't anything at all. So instead of just using the ren, you could also use their sheut or shadow. And wipe them perfectly out of existence. You could not return from a Shadow Execration since in the eyes of the universe, you simply didn't exist anymore.
This was what could kill even the gods themselves. And what was found in the Book of Thoth in the Kane Chronicle trilogy. Given that my Notes also seem to 'update to include the local versions of such things in new settings', 'such things' referring to 'the nature of gods, spirits, and other dimensions and planes of existence', I would have to expect that Zion, Eden, and the Shards, were also… part of that, no?
Including Shardspace! Probably… Though I barely read Ward past like the first arc… But let's not worry about that.
Well, I would have to research how to conduct an execration first. Firstly, I wasn't sure if the ren was strictly necessary or was simply to bolster the effectiveness of the execration. Or if I could forgo the ren if I had the sheut already. The second bit was finding where Zion's sheut was, or if it had one in the first place.
The gods usually hid their sheut since the Shadow Execration was so goddamn terrifying but in a world where Egyptian Magic literally didn't exist until the Celestial Forge rolled around, I doubt that anyone actually bothered with hiding their sheut. Though I wondered if I needed to pull from Zion's main extradimensional mass, or if his avatar would work.
I would think that the avatar would work since it was merely an extension of its main body, right?
Like, you wouldn't consider your finger a separate part from your body.
The third… well it wasn't as big of a problem as the previous two but it was still an important issue. And that was the magic energy required to perform an execration. Generally speaking, the more powerful the being that you were trying to execrate, the larger the amount of magic needed to cast said execration.
And Zion… was very powerful indeed.
At best, I die burning up all my lifeforce to finish the chant, killing both of us at the same time. Not ideal.
At worst, I die even before I finish the execration. Whoops. That would be a bit of a problem.
Luckily, I had a little something called True Hero Potential that upped my limits on magic and mana the more I used it. Plus, now that I got a third magic perk, I was starting to feel that the mana pools of each perk were combining with one another. The pool from Enchantment had combined with the pool I got from the Kane Chronicle Mote, which combined with Cult of the Gun's gun magic. The final result was a magic pool that was bigger than all of them individually. And THP was applying a boost on each magic pool individually, further compounding the effect and making my mana pool much larger.
Man. Shouldn't this be called like 'Celestial Throne' or something?
Welp, I had a way to kill Zion that didn't require either a giant fuckoff superweapon that annihilates universes, or Emotional Damage. Cool.
Alright, back to Magic Specialization. Statuary Magic was the magic related to the crafting of statues. Duh. However, it was much better than one might think. A master of Statuary Magic could create shabti so realistic that people might forget that they were fake. Or be able to create shabtis on the fly for spells, such as the aforementioned execration spell or other forms of sympathetic magic.
And I believe the final application was the mass deployment of armies. By using wax figurines and shabtis as representation of armies on a map, you could use sympathetic magic and move the figurines in order to rapidly reposition your soldiers in real time.
In essence, it was a mix of Golemancy and Voodoo magic mixed together.
Huh. If that was the case, I could be a necessity in the Endbringer fights. Imagine a wave coming and I could wave my hand and suddenly everyone was under the protection of a shielder. Or immediately pull out a group of capes when their Simurgh limit was approaching.
I… still need to deal with her, don't I…
Checking the time, the clock ticked over and I quickly clocked out for the day. Saying my goodbyes to the others, I headed back home, only vaguely aware of the fact that a car was following behind me. Looking out the window of the bus, I kept an eye on it out of the corner of my eye.
On the bus ride, the Celestial Forge spun up again. I clasped my hands together as the Forge spun up and reached its tendril out into the Lewd Constellations again… And it fucking missed! Gah fuck!
The tendril reached for one of the higher Stars from the Lewd Tech Constellation. Missing by double its length from its previous awakening. I pressed my lips together and took a deep breath. There wasn't a time where I had this many failed awakenings in a row before…
Heading up to my room, I opened the door to my base again. Waiting for a few moments to ensure that the agents didn't suddenly barge into my room, I walked straight into my secret base. Glancing over at Amaya, she was pouring over the blueprints from Machine Madness and creating her own set of notes by the side. At a glance, I could already tell that it was dense enough to count as a memetic hazard by itself.
"Oh, you're back." Amaya spoke up without even looking up from the papers. Her tone of voice was rather bland, without any of her teasing voice that I had grown to associate with her. "Your blueprints are rather interesting. They don't quite break the laws of physics yet. Instead, they alter the physical weight on specific points to generate moments to alter the trajectories of objects, causing them to spin out of the way. It's certainly a creative application of the effect of altering physical composition to affect kinetic energy."
I raised an eyebrow. "So it's useless for you?" I cocked my head.
"Not quite. There are some parts that I could repurpose for what you requested." She highlighted and scribbled a note on her paper. "Especially the projection of the composition altering effect from the device itself."
I… Hmm… I don't think I was used to this Amaya… "Do you need any… help?"
"Dinner would be preferable." Amaya said without even the slightest hint of a double entendre. Well, the entire interaction would be a lot better if Amaya wasn't just wearing her lab coat and underwear.
Prepping a quick dinner, we ate while Amaya continued to pour over the schematics. Compared to her flirty side, she looked a lot prettier like this. Her hair was tied up into a messy bun, glasses askew slightly on her face, only half-paying attention to her food as she tried to eat as quickly as possible while still retaining full attention to her work.
Maybe I should throw her more of these sorts of work then.
Leaving Amaya to her work, I got back into the workshop with a goal in mind. Complete my costume.
Much of it was simply whatever you could pull off the rack from a thrift store really. Jeans, a decent button down, a brown long coat that reached down to your ankles, whatever. And a holster for an airsoft gun for my taser. I didn't really have a perk that helped with armour, sue me. Or the Forge. Whichever was to blame.
However, I had gotten quite a number of perks in the meantime. Firstly, Magic Style: Enchantment. It was ridiculously easy for me to weave in a decent durability boost so I didn't just die the moment I got shot in the chest. Or stab in the gut. Or one of the hundred other ways to die in this damn city. I considered weaving in the kinetic redirect enchantment as well but I wasn't sure how it might interact with so many enchantments touching each other.
Preferably I would like to apply the enchantment over my entire body but I wasn't quite sure how to do that. At best, kinetic impacts would simply ripple out into my coat and expelled out. At worst, they would collect between layers and into specific points and I would vibrate apart. So until then, only the outermost layer would have the enchantment.
That was the clothes done. Along with a pair of proper hiking boots but I guess running shoes would have to do for now. The next part was the top hat which I was going to have to make.
There was a knock at the door as I was looking through the blueprint in my head and figuring out what I needed to make it. Calling for them to enter, the door slid open. Looking over, Claire stepped in with a slight smile on her face. "What's up?" I asked as she walked over with a slip of paper in her hands.
"Here. Take a look." Claire handed it to me. Raising an eyebrow, I took it in my hands and skimmed over it. It mostly looked like a bunch of ideas about how to market my debut as a new Toybox tinker, most likely using Toybox's NLP AI to do so.
"For my debut?" I pressed my lips together.
"Yup." Claire replied happily. "What do you think?"
Some focused on what they knew were within my capabilities, mainly the signal jamming, others were more vague and focused on my appearance. The former was a bit too… restricting. I mean, only creating signal-based 'tinkertech' sounded like a pain in the ass. However the latter had its own issues. Mainly that people generally liked having an understanding of what they were getting into.
The Iron Fist team didn't really specify and they were lucky enough to hit me. However, people attracted to Toybox wouldn't send contracts to a dude who they didn't know the capabilities of. So if I wanted to get some lucrative contracts, I was going to have to show a little bit of my hand.
I considered for a moment to sell some equipment based on powers that I could reasonably acquire. Split my stock into tinkertech but relatively normal, think of the usual things like my arm shields, the odd gadget like maybe a radio interceptor to hijack PRT signals, or whatever. Things that would be beneficial for teams to have.
And then 'Powered' tinkertech. So instead of regular smoke grenades, imagine smoke grenades based on Grue's smoke. Consumables only. And I would just churn out a stock of like 500 or so, set a stupidly high price and work off that for the month. Then next month do the same… so on and so forth.
Of course that would require people knowing that I was indeed a power tinker but… let's not worry about that for now.
"Let's go with this one." I pointed to a vague-ish plan. It didn't quite explain my powers but painted a fairly broad picture. Nothing concrete but would drum up quite the mystique and suspense.
Claire nodded. "Sure! Will you be ready by next week?"
I tilted my head from side to side. "Depends. What do I need to prepare?"
"Not much. Maybe a list of products… Your costume preferably. And maybe some physical version of your products to put on our catalogue." Claire explained. "You don't have to worry about making too many products at once if you're worried about that. Most of our work is made to order anyway."
I nodded. Although Toybox didn't really have a rule that members couldn't infringe on each other's niches, it was mostly frowned upon. At least if you do so without alerting the other party first. Signals and transmission was obviously a niche that wasn't being fulfilled right now, as were things like escape tools, and electronic warfare.
So my three products would be my in-ear communicator I had made earlier, something to escape… like a visual obfuscator or glittery smoke bombs, and something that could disable cameras or alarm systems from a distance. Some of which I could also use actually. Plus maybe the kinetic redirector as my first 'Powered' product.
Was giving people the 'kinetic redirector' supremely dumb? Perhaps. Was it actively detrimental to me? Not really.
I had Qu-it It to guard against any attempts to use it against me. A snap of my fingers and suddenly anything they were relying on was rendered useless. So I wasn't too worried. It would be more worrying if tinkers used their own brains (and Shards) to create their own version of said kinetic redirector without somehow using my product as a base. But I highly doubt it.
Claire turned to leave but she snapped her fingers just before she reached the door. "Oh, right! I've been meaning to ask you." She spun around on her heel. "Do you wanna participate in the Toybox game night?"
"The… Toybox game night?" I echoed in confusion.
"Well officially it's the 'Toybox Weekly Team Enrichment and Bonding Exercise'." Claire placed the name in heavy air quotes. "But basically we play games for a night and have fun. It's this Friday if you wanna join."
A slightly confused look settled over my face. "I mean… sure? I don't see why not?" I replied.
She clapped her hands together. "Great! I'll see you then." She walked out of my workshop without another word.
Swallowing, I turned my attention back to my top hat, though I also briefly ran through all the people that I have met or wanted to meet. There was Taylor, Aisha and Lisa from the Undersiders, or at least would be in the Undersiders, Crystal from New Wave, and now Claire, Grace and Marie from Toybox.
Which was a concerning number of girls to handle all at once. I could strike Taylor off since she was taking a nap in Brockton Bay General Hospital. Aisha was only during my gym sessions. Lisa would find me if she needed me. Crystal was the only one from Brockton that I wanted to actively meet for now. As for the others…. I think I would probably just go with the flow. Yea. Much easier on my brain.
Sending my list of requested material to Toybox servers, I would have to wait for about a day for it to be delivered. In the meantime, I guess I could just chill in Toybox's lounge. Deepening bonds and all that jazz.
Stepping out of my workshop, I was surprised to see only Grace again, working on another cake. Walking over, I took a seat by the counter while watching her work. Spinning the cake around, Grace placed a series of perfectly sized teardrops along the side while only paying a token amount of attention to my presence.
After finishing the first layer, she pulled back slightly and smiled at me. "Good morning, Nathan!" She gave me a brief wave before pausing. "Or I guess it's night right now in Brockton right?" She tilted her head slightly.
"Eh. Anything works. It's not like Toybox has a day-night cycle." I replied. "Nice to see you again, Grace." I said without really paying attention to my words, mostly using Carnal Artist but reeled super far back. The part of the effect of Carnal Artist made me a better flirt but keep it on a tight leash and I could reasonably use it as a charisma boosting power. Except that I have to keep an eye on it so I didn't accidentally drop a suggestive comment when I didn't mean to.
"You're working on another cake?" I asked as I looked at the dessert. Nodding, Grace switched her red icing to an orange one. "Are you like a patissier or something?" I asked as she continued to place perfectly sized and evenly spaced teardrops.
"Something like that." Grace replied as she finished. Smiling, she glanced over to me. "I was actually a patissier before I triggered. Worked at a cake shop in New York before Behemoth attacked." Her smile turned a little brittle.
Behemoth attack? But that was in…. 1994. "Does that mean you're—" I was abruptly and rudely cut off as Grace took a swing with her icing covered fingers. Dodging back, it narrowly brushed against my cheek as I leaned out of the way of her attack on my appearance. Grace hefted the bag of icing in her hands as she moved to yellow now.
"Nathan." Her voice was icily calm. "Don't you know that it's rude to ask a lady her age?"
But I… I took a breath before reeling myself in. "Ah… you look really pretty…?" I awkwardly deflected.
The Celestial Forge awakened. And I got a staff. Just a staff. One that improves spells when I used it. It could change form to some other spellcasting equipment and improve its appearance as I did so. It could even teleport straight into my hand, bypassing the need to walk around with a large stick all of the time. However it didn't even have the decency to improve its strength as well.
What a waste. At least it broke the streak of failed attachments…
"Mmm. Thank you." Grace replied as I suppressed my disappointment. Turning back to her, I wondered how old she was. At first, I thought she was around her mid-twenties given that she looked that old. Her skin was smooth and didn't have a lot of wrinkles, plus her body was fit and toned. Assuming she went straight after highschool, that was still around 4 years at minimum to become a trained patissier. So she was around her late thirties, early forties right now?
"So um… your specialty is in cryogenics right?" I awkwardly changed the subject.
Grace nodded. "That's right." As Glace, she provided cryogenic freezing technology literally centuries ahead of anything else on the planet. Most of the time, the people who bought her pods were hospitals, who could freeze patients until the correct surgeon/donor organ arrived or while a certain medical procedure had to be done while the patient was kept in suspended animation, or the dying super rich who wanted immortality and were willing to wait for it.
And of course just selling the pods wasn't enough. As with all tinkertech, there was a need for aftercare services which formed a massive bulk of most Toybox's passive income. And Grace's cryopods made up the largest portion of that income, with a lot of the rich and famous families paying top dollar to ensure that their cryopods were walking as if they were brand new.
I wonder if I could take a look at her tech and produce a freeze ray… I shook my head to dislodge that thought. Nevermind, there were better ways to deal with water.
"So… what made you join Toybox?" I asked. If I remembered correctly… she joined prior to Cranial… around 1998?
Grace took a moment to think about it. "Bureaucracy mostly. I joined the New York Protectorate after Behemoth rampaged through and it was a living nightmare." She shook her head. "Every piece of tinkertech had to go through seven different rounds of testing, documentation… Although Legend could help push through most of the hoops, any sort of technology needed to be vetted until it was 'safe'." Her lips curled into a distasteful frown.
"By the time my first cryopod was rolled out, it was six months late and I had a new design out that needed to go through the same song and dance again. However, when it came to roll out my designs for PRT internal use… suddenly it was streamlined, only taking a month before it was approved in several PRT Headquarters around the country." Grace bitterly replied.
Yikes. That was… Hm. Yea, I could see why she left.
"I don't suppose if I go trawling through the internet I might find your previous identity?" I cocked my head as I watched her continue adding rainbow scales. It was strangely hypnotizing.
Grace shook her head. "It was Chiono but you won't find it anywhere on the PRT's or Protectorate websites though. I think… the only mention of me is on PHO now? When I received a medal from the President after using my technology to save those affected by the lingering radiation in New York."
Furrowing my eyebrows, I asked, "Why are you only mentioned there?"
Grace giggled slightly. "Well, I officially resigned in November 1997. Then Glace appeared in January of next year and… it didn't take a genius to figure out what happened. My PRT identity was quietly struck from all official media and taken off websites."
"How…" I tried to think of the appropriate word to use. "Petty."
"Right??" Grace whirled to look at me. "I know it's not exactly 'good' to go straight into a quote-unquote 'villain' group immediately after leaving the Protectorate, but you know how many things I made for them in the four years I was there?" She slammed her hands on the countertop as she stared at me. "So many! I had cryopods obviously, but I developed chemicals to induce a hibernant state to preserve the body, handheld portable miniature body preservation devices, devices to temporarily shut down specific parts of the body…" She started listing several pieces of tinkertech off and I was surprised that the Protectorate somehow fumbled this badly on such a valuable tinker.
"I single handedly brought the fatality rate across the city down by 43% by the time I left. At the very least, recognize that I helped instead of wiping me off the record!" She must have been bottling that up for a while if she was ranting that much about it. I also made a careful note to not ask how much that fatality rate was originally or how much it rebounded after she had left as all her tinkertech started shorting out.
"So… you left to join Toybox because of bureaucracy stopping your tinkertech from reaching the people who need it?" I summarized as Grace panted slightly after finishing her rant. Running her clean fingers through her hair, she nodded. "But isn't it harder now for your tinkertech to enter hospitals and the like?" I cocked my head.
"It depends." Grace shrugged her shoulders. "European and Oceania hospitals generally have looser restrictions so they can afford having cryopods, Canadian hospitals often send a proper request through the Guild which has less red tape to sift through. And American hospitals just use them under the table with the PRT of their cities closing an eye in the meantime."
"Wow. The PRT closing an eye to the use of tinkertech?" My eyes widened in surprise. "Wouldn't think I would live to see the day."
Grace cracked a small smile. "Mhm. The hospitals, when they receive my cryopods, immediately put them into constant use, cycling patients in and out while they handle transplants or other procedures. The PRT can't revoke them since they are in constant use, the hospitals profit from them, and the public will crucify the director if they try to forcefully seize them." She had the most satisfied smile on her face as she explained it.
"Although, they did try to do it once though. I believe it was the… Jacksonville PRT? A PRT squad broke into the Florida Memorial Hospital in order to seize the cryopods there…" A smile tugged at the corner of her lips as she reminisced. "Unfortunately, they triggered the alarm and the cryopods shunted the freezing agent out into the room they were in. If I remembered correctly, 3 agents were incapacitated, 4 had frostbite, and all of them had cold burns."
"What happened then?"
Grace shrugged. "Nothing much. Since they were in the hospital already, they were brought to the ER while the PRT director immediately started running damage control, making it sound like it was a rogue operation done 'for the safety of the public in mind'." Her voice dripped with sarcasm. "No one believed it of course, and the team was fired and the leader transferred out."
I paused for a moment as I digested that. "Wait, you said the hospitals earn a profit right? Aren't hospitals notorious for charging stupidly high prices on everything that isn't under insurance? How do you make sure people who need it can afford it?"
Grace smiled, or I guess 'bared her teeth' would be more accurate. "If they don't, I'll simply make sure they understand that the patients should be their priority." There was no emotion behind it, an absolute chill that made a shiver run down my spine. Blinking, I nodded and decided to move the conversation along.
Eventually, the conversation veered away from Grace's tinkertech, but I made a mental note to never get on her bad side. But cryogenics definitely sounded interesting. If anything, it sounded like her specialty wasn't quite cryogenics, but on 'preservation'. Technology that could maintain the current state of the object it was acting on. But the moment had passed and it was far too awkward to bring it up now.
A/N: Egyptian Magic could be a whole fic on its own, so naturally what Nathan thinks could be possible may not be actually be so.