198 - Re: Yazata Heptaxia [Cherno] [+Artwork] (Patreon)

Initially, Yazata wasn’t particularly fond of these “Red Hoods”. Battle-automata that they were, they mimicked human behavior far too closely without the cognitive capacity to be held accountable. They lacked the token animalism of graft-beasts, and bore no esoteric spark to imply the presence of an eidolon intelligence; they were animated wholly by artifice, and were just as unsettlingly cold as that implied. Faceless things they were, yet at once their steel-silver bodies had the shapes of young girls, and each possessed hair of a subtly different colour, hidden under the titular hooded cloak of scarlet fabric.

On the way to the Mirzaii Subdistrict, Yazata and her force of freakish silver maidens encountered some to-be-expected resistance. Even spread out as they were, Yazata was still obviously an inquisitor, and the Red Hoods were an even more immediate bogeyman to the city’s miscreants than her. As they moved towards their goal, they identified and subdued nearly twenty patrolling Hashem Family foot soldiers.

And so, it came to be that she found herself bombarded with a rapid-fire barrage of Red Reapers from a first-floor window. It was inevitable, fully expected. This was no ambush - it was the path of least resistance.

She simply stepped to the side of one red comet, drawing her bar-mace with her right hand and holding out her left. Her eyes burned with purple light as she poured power into both the bar-mace and the Black Bindings that enveloped her body. Instantaneously, reams of Black Binding sprung forth from her sleeve, capturing an encroaching reaper, and with a simple gesture, she sent it flying back. She hopped between two further reapers that had reached her in the intervening second, which appeared to be pushed away from her onto wildly divergent trajectories, debris and crimson energy colouring the space behind her as she simply walked at her adversaries.

All it took was a glance; she merely had to meet their eyes to get them in her snare. Sheer mental focus honed to a razor point, set loose as a torpedo just beneath the skin of reality. A petty hex, but enough to make the trio freeze up on the spot. It lasted all of a second and a half, but that was more than enough.

Finally, she felt her mace come alive, and she chanted under her breath: “Oh, Black Trapezohedron, sound forth from the spires of Zor’Aguhastra…”

The black metal of its blade began thrumming with an unearthly sound, a thick distortion dripping from it, only upwards; it was like a heat-haze, if a heat-haze was as thick as pouring blood, and if it twisted the world itself rather than the air.

With a simple horizontal swing, an invisible force carved a gash across the wall, its existence only betrayed by a wake of the same distortion that enveloped Yazata’s bar mace. The windows exploded out of their frames and the brickwork crumbled. One of the men had his skull cleaved open, while the two others were sent flying back like ragdolls.

Two steps forward and a moment later, the light finally reached the ends of Yazata’s black bindings. They shot out as if alive and mercilessly dragged the trio out of the building, slamming the one with a cleft-open face into the cobbles while restraining the other two. Yazata let out a sigh through her nose as she willed her bindings to restrain the two survivors, detaching the rest once it was done. They were not physical restraints; the survivors’ heads were entirely wrapped up, their awareness sealed for the duration, rendering them vegetables for the next several hours. Yazata honestly wished it were always this easy to place mental restraints.

Following this negligible obstacle Yazata regrouped with her contingent of Red Hoods, directly approached the Gate of Mirzaii, the main entrance to the gated slice of decadence that included the target building. The address numbers only went up to 5, yet it took up an enormous swath of land, with anything and everything the owners could want on their properties. It made perfect sense; Audunpoint had never lacked for space, and according to intel, this place had been well outside the living city’s bounds at the time of its original construction. In short, the city’s expansion had only caught up to here in recent years. The walls were like those of a small fortress, ten meters tall and shimmering with reinforcing runes, with translucent barriers extending further upwards. The Mirzaii Subdistrict was, by all means, excessively well-defended. Yazata decided to look into the owners of these properties after this was over and done with.

Gathering in front of the Gate of Mirzaii, they found it closed, and a guard in well-wrought silver Mamon Armor stood in front, in defiance of intel. It was clear he had been stationed here specifically as another layer of defense.

Covered in fluting and elaborate inlays head-to-toe, the wide-shouldered man possessed a truly baroque countenance befitting of the place he guarded. A large sword of equally complex design simply floated behind him. He lacked a typical belt; instead, to his left arm was attached an enormous tower shield which incorporated the Mamon Coupler into itself, constantly projecting a barrier and its surface shimmering with the implication of warding. Despite the thickly-layered imagery, Yazata could identify no outward sign of the guard’s affiliation to an agency.

“Halt. What is your purpose here?” he asked in a stern monotone.

Yazata simply poured a wisp of thauma into her pendant. The golden, seven-spoked wheel floated a hand’s length from her chest, shining with golden flame. The wheel then shrunk inward, transforming the symbol into a spiky, seven-pointed star with the wheel in the innermost third.

“I am Yazata Heptaxia, Inquisitor of the Inner Wheel. By the authority vested in me by the Seven Spokes, I demand you allow my contingent and I to pass unimpeded. Our purpose in the Mirzaii Subdistrict is the detainment of Semzar Hashem, son of the mafioso Damrus Hashem, whom I have good reason to believe currently resides within the mansion on Mirzaii 2.”

The gate guardian stared her down, motionless, faceless, for a solid five seconds.

“Unfortunate. I was not aware,” he stated, retrieving a large key and touching it to the gate. As its enormous wings swung open, the guard walked off to the side, continuing: “I will see to it that my handler conveys my contract to the church. I would request that I be compensated for the loss of income from any goods confiscated as a result of your investigation. I am sure the Seven Spokes will understand.”