As the mage stood before her, Kista's mind jumbled with a thousand questions. Most importantly ,why was he down here? If he knew her true intentions after all, the moment she was unearthed.. there would be no point in letting her out in the first place.
But another more pressing question of course came to her lips first. “Who are you? You're definitely not Calcimer. He was a wise old doddering..” That got a raised hand to quiet her.
“Now Kissasha Rubelle... oh, my apologies. Kistaria. A girl always runnjing from herself. Who has been persecuted for her powers. For her appearance. Imprisoned. Tortured. Even very nearly skinned alive.”
At this point in time, Kista was a little distraught.. and on the verge of actually being scared. She'd felt fear in her life, sure. But nobody'd been able to crack open the book of her life so easily.. or without her obvious doing in the process.
“Kistaria, let me show you something.” There was no flash of light. No twisting of space and tiome. They were just gone from the dome and now resided in some sort of strange laboratory.
A lot of things were pickled in jars, quite a few small instruments suspended in some sort of clear gelatinous sludge. The occasional body part or eye. Unidentified chunks of metal or minerals. Even a small sample of the purple crystal and a chipped claw of her own.
But it was what was in the base of the demented museum of sorts that froze Kistaria's blood cold.
A dozen large glass tubes, full of a thinner version of the solution... and people inside. There was something of a grin on Calcimer's unaged face as he put his hand on a chamber, containing the half-decayed remnants of an orc man; deep green skin with a shock of white topknot hair. A large scar over a cataract eye. And a clear gaping chest wound probably from some sort of high caliber weapon.
“You're the first person to see this.. Alive at any rate.” His fingers tightened on her shoulder from behind. And his voice had a hint of the leer clearly present on it.
“I've spent a decade pulling people from the cosmos, the stars, even the past.” For emphasis, he pointed to a jar containing an armored lizardman, haunches of his legs more akin to leaping fast and sprints than just walking upright.
“But last year's experiment had some interesting results..” He leads her back to the two final people-tubes, the thirteenth of which was clearly empty.
Most likely meant for her. But Calcimer clearly meant her no harm as his grip on her shoulder softened. “Now now Kistaria, if I meant you any harm you would have been bottled before Eryss rescued you.”
“Of course, I would have had to chip you out myself... as your little purple stone has proven to be.. most disruptive in my plans.”
The water in the fourteenth tank was a murky black, unidentifiable in its contents. But a sudden tugging at her hand found eyes gazing downwards.
Oddly enough, it seemed her crystal generation didn't require concious thought or effort, as a beaded bracelet with a pointed pendant now coalesced into life around her wrist.
What was even odder wasn't its presence, but the fact that the pendant wasn't hanging at all by normal gravity's pull. It was actually hovering against the top of her wrist and hand, with the pendant point animatedly crackling in the direction of the tube.
There was a sudden 'clink' as something within the suspension solution shifted... before the tube's liquid clarified and purified itself.
There was a little chuckle from Calcimer as it was revealed the noise had come from a sister-bracelet around... her own wrist in the tube.
At least it was for most intents and purposes her. The gold arms at the departed variation's back were now chased in silver instead, intricate runewords carved into them and even now in stasis seemed to radiated with cosmic blue energy.
The gray fur with white face, neck and stomach were the same. But as both awed... and slightly horrified Kistaria circled around the encapsulated alternate self the similarities shifted into vast differences.
For one, the Tube-Kista was missing her right arm and eye, while a mechanical limb looking more metal skeleton than bulky armor like the ones on her back replaced it.
A smoldering purple orbe chased in silver filligree now rested in the socket – most likely made out of the purple crystal that was becoming more and more enmeshed in her life.
But the attire was half-disheveled, as if she had simply gone savage. Shreds, cuts, and dark stains that had probably started as drying blood were all over the figure, matted in flowing hair and fur still fluttering in the waves caused by their ripple-inducing footfalls.
But one thing bothered her. No wounds had been on any of the bodies except the one. And now her duplicate, as if the rest had gone peacefully. Wile the orc's savage nature and her own insistantly violent nature had been their undoing.
Calcimer saw something flicker to life in her eyes, and Kistaria actually sensed a sort of hesitation in his voice. “You're the only one that has been brought to Crinochus alive. And even that was luck, as the rest...”
“The rest you found and dumped into this Museum of Horrors, to figure out what you were doing wrong.” Kistaria's voice was flat. Monotone. But hinted on anger.
Vicious anger. “It doesn't matter.” Now the rage was rising. Truly and fully rising. Seeing this abomination of herself was enough to set her off.
“I've seen enough of this twisted nightmare. What do you want from me?” Kista's normally lavender eyes had taken on a glowing pink hue.
“I, that is...” The wizard stumbled back as some sort of malevolent power was rising in the body of the catgirl. She was charging with energy now, curiously fuschia-coloured electrical arcs now spiraling through her fingertips and up her forearms.
All six setsw of them. And then with a spark, a twisting bolt of energy leapt at... the Kistaria-corpse's tube and coalesced over.. and then through the glass and liquid within.
There was a sudden and ominious clap of thunder from the shocking output, before the Kistaria within the tube all but completely vanished. Except for the orb and false limb now resting within her twin grasp.
Her back arms transformed, now chased with silver upon the golden limbs. While the mechanical constructed arm was just flat out looked at disdainfully. And the false orb was actually tucked into a pocket for later examination.
“Crude, almost barbaric to my skill now.”
Kistaria was even nice enough to set the pseudo-limb aside before her real hands come to rest on her hips.
“As you said, if you meant to kill me, you would have just left me in the Heart. So what do you want?” There's now a little sneer on her lips, as the upper hand has changed to be in her favour.
Sure, he'd aimed to intimidate her. But this clearly wasn't her 'first time' dealing with a psychopath. And it wouldn't be her last.
Calcimer stumbled over his thoughts, before his true intentions came to fruition. “The Counsel has become.. close minded as of late. Their biased views on technomagery.. on you...” He licked his suddenly dry lips before a glare made him continue.
“Has already seen several mage students banished to the Shocking Sands, with the rest of the discovered Technomancers so they can never be a threat again.”
“The only reason you're not there with them... is your mentor Caldeus. He sees you just as an unlucky girl, who almost died and is eternally grateful to us.”
Kistaria gave a derisive snort at this, before she forced Calcimer to shuffle back a step as she advanced.
“So you want this blending of machine and magic to be legal again... so you can keep stealing people people from other times and places to pickle them. Just like you did the other me. And obviously like how you were going to put me in a jar.”
Not even Calcimer could predict her next move, as a blurred twist found one of her upper arms ensnaring his neck. And fwip! Lifted right off the floor with magimechanical might.
She could have ended it there. A little twist, and he'd be nothing more than a broken corpse at her feet. More than he'd shown the other her, she gleaned. A pulse of energy coursed through her however, as clearly Calicmer wasn't just a defensive mage.
“Tsk tsk...” Kista chided him as she slowly, oh so slowly released him. “If I wanted you dead... well I'd already have stuffed you in 'my' jar and watched you drown.”
“No, Calcimer... you have something I want. Something I need. And when I get it, you'll be gone from here. I've figured out your methods...” She bluffed, her ego having finally slipped out of its holding pen.
“And you don't want the blood of innocents on -your- hands. That's why this...” She held up the purple crystal bracelet for emphasis. “Started talking to me in my dreams.”
“Because you're probably tired of wasting power to hide your covert little 'projects'. You want to be doing it in the open, bending the cosmos to your will.”
He almost started to interject on her most likely blatant sticking of words in his mouth. But a snarl of feline rage quickly silenced him again.
“At this point in time, you know a direct magical attack is pointless against me...”
There was a sudden flare of red in the runes on her back-arms, and four sisters of the fireball spell they'd leeched off him trying to use against her sizzled to life.
“So just give me what I'm after, and you're free to live your life.. out of the Citadel for the rest of your days. Think of it as a self-imposed exile slash vacation... no longer bothered by the petty needs of the many so you can explore and delight in the wants of yourself.”
Calcimer's voice was hoarse, and definitely carried a note of trepidation in it.
“Wh...what do you want?”
Kistaria's sudden grin, feral and vicious could chill the most stalwart and strong warrior's blood.
“The keys to the War Machine Pen. I don't really need them at this point... but it will save me minutes of minor frustration.”
