Perpetual Conversion
Read on Ao3
Ei Irulac, Last of Her Coven, keeled over and died quite pathetically. It was unsurprising given her condition (an arc staff piercing her through like a shish kebab), but kind of cringe nonetheless, the dying scream she shrilled hoarse and strangled and her limbs flailing about awkwardly. The staff's owner walked up to her prone body and yanked the weapon free, with their other hand reaching for her Ghost. It twitched frantically as five gore-splattered fingers curled around its core and squeezed hard.
The Guardian then kicked the body, clasped the staff to the harness on their back, and leaped into a nearby mirror, chucking a grenade behind them as an extra safety measure.
A long while passed.
The unstable Arc charge was beginning to fizzle out by the time Šimmumah Ur-Nokru stepped into the chamber, eyeing Irulac's body impassively. A few of her Acolytes scuttled behind her.
She floated up to the Ghost's shatters, sprinkled on the floor right next to the corpse. The Acolytes spread out in a five-meter-radius circle and began drawing the runes.
Three incantations and one botched rune resulting in Šimmumah briefly experiencing an eyehole hemorrhage later, Ei Irulac cracked her middle eye open and peered up at the necromancer with a bemused expression. Her Ghost was still shaking off its freshly reassembled shell.
"Do try to be a little gentler next time," it chided, glaring at Šimmumah (though its optic was still recalibration, which ruined the effect a little). "I can feel all my insides jingling."
"Do try to refrain from dying next time," one of the Acolytes barked back.
Irulac drew herself unsteadily to her full height.
"I feared they would break the conduit," she said. The chamber was still strewn with blood and gore, floorboards marred with cracks and soot staining the bullet-ridden walls. Šimmumah only gave the mess around a fleeting glance.
"The experiment was a success, fortuitously." She turned with a flutter of robes and beckoned Irulac to follow with a gesture. The group of Acolytes swarmed around them like ducklings. "The First Ghost has asked about you. I shan’t tell him what a sorry display this was."









