The Enigmatic Skirmish - (S2G8) - Final Round: The Tomb of All Things
12-02-2023, 04:17 PM
Thrillseeker sat upon the steps of the grey mausoleum and idly ran her fingers along the surface of the crystallized soul of Black Angel Azazel, her final opponent. It was a small glowing stone, round and flat and it seemed to contain a swirling purple mist. The last remaining dregs of her Lifeblood, the elixir that had kept her alive throughout this campaign, were soaking into her stump, mixing with her blood and dripping to the floor beside her. Her flesh was knitting back together and it fucking stung.
That had been closer than usual. Normally when she was fighting she always had a backup; as long as she was in range of her cauldron she was able to resurrect and try again. Ever since it had broken in the battle against The Historian in his moonbase, she’d been running on fumes.
She was lucky Azazel had only taken her arm; it had only been fair to return the favour in death. She looked down at the mechanical arm on her lap, bone white with black accents, and a wildly adjustable appendage. Back home she knew just the girl who could outfit her with it, and even make a couple of modifications that she’d been considering.
That was, if The Recluse was thinking of sending her home. Her final explicit opponent was dead, and her final implicit opponent was also mostly dead. The two girls who had absorbed its soul were still running around, but they didn’t seem to be fighters. Thrillseeker really didn’t think there would be any satisfaction to bring their stories to an end. But it was starting to look like if she didn’t do something she’d be forced to try to adjust to life in this dead world.
Right now, on the bone white gravel paths before her the final confrontation of the Winnowing Unending seemed to be coming to a head. And for some reason that was taking the form of an argument between the world’s least coherently themed girl band and a volleyball team that looked like it had stepped out of a Mad Max movie.
“Look I’ve talked to the boys, we’re all pretty regretful over burning the cupboard your friend was in.” The volleyball team’s coach was stood in front of the group as they endeavoured to put on their most contrite expressions. “But to be fair she was sending out a lot of elf assassins after us.”
“Nobody’s disputing that Mindy went a little bit mad with power.” Thrillseeker hadn’t bothered to learn their names, but this was one of the two that absorbed The Reaper’s power, the one she’d come to think of as the leader of the group. “We just think that was something of an overreaction. We could have talked her down.”
“We’re going to take your criticism on board, and next time we’ll really do our best to open communications before we destroy entire pocket dimensions.” The coach replied.
Gods, they’re even talking out their differences. How did a Host like The Reaper manage to run a big fight that ended in such a damp squib?
Another one of the girl group stepped forward, it was the Infanta. Even Thrillseeker’s, some would call it a nightmare-world had a version of the Infanta. In her world she’d been an opportunist who’d merged with the Night to become more powerful, this one was evidently president of Earth in her own timeline. God the multiverse was so fucking weird sometimes.
As she stepped forward the volleyball team were all rolling their eyes and the coach got immediately on the defensive. “Yes we appreciate that we can’t make up for murdering your entire staff, yes we know even Kevin, but that was round two us. We’ve grown and learn since then. Back then we were just in it for the adrenaline but now we’ve really come to believe that the real treasure is friendship.”
Thrillseeker pocketed Azazel’s soul, and her arm, grabbed the pitch black Scythe of Iaoael from where it lay and pushed herself to her feet. Evidently she was not going home until this fight was over as well and she was starting to get impatient.
As she approached they turned to watch. Their coach hurried in her direction. “The boys and I would like to offer our thanks to you Miss Thrill. The way you and that Azazel lady carved up that unsavoury Reaper character. A real inspiration. When we work out how to get back home, we’re going to be running a lot of plays directly inspired by your skills out there on the field, and we’ll make sure to give you all the appropriate credit.”
Thrillseeker swung her scythe and sliced the coach’s head clean from his body in one simple movement.
“Coach! Noooo!” The ‘boys’ of the Something Scorpions cried out. It should be pointed out that despite their coach’s insistence on the terminology and their willingness to sit back and let him speak for them these were adult men of a professional deathsport team and not a high school volleyball team who’d won a lifetime’s supply of barbed wire and spikes and were just having fun with it.
In the time before they scrambled into formation Thrillseeker put on a little spurt of speed and got to the blonde haired catcher, swinging upwards and slicing him apart hot dog style. The other boys were on their feet, the pair of shockers (equipped with electric whips to redirect the death volley) and the remaining catcher (equipped with thick metal gauntlets to allow them to handle the death volley), hurried to get some distance, while the blockers (with jet boots and metal kite shields as tall as they are) rushed towards her, hoping to hit her with a pincer attack.
Thrillseeker did an easy dodge backwards, swinging her scythe around from behind her as landed, and piercing the black haired blocker from behind as he and his counterpart crashed together.
Dispatching the volleyball team was far from a real challenge for Thrillseeker. Even with her recent loss of an arm, she was faster, deadlier and unwavering in her objective. The only part that gave her any trouble was when only the remaining catcher was left and she was forced to chase him off into the graveyard.
—
As she fought the chix stood frozen. “Should we do something?” Atasha asked. Her legendary blade, Glitter, hummed to life as she laid her hand upon it.
“I’m not sure there’s anything we could be doing to stop her.” Zaffy said. “And she certainly doesn’t need our help.”
“It really doesn’t feel like we should be condoning this kind of behaviour.” Sara argued.
“Preferable to sitting around in this graveyard for the rest of time.” Jessica said dismissively.
“We’d die of starvation long before the end of time.” Debbie pointed out. Irabeth who had been perched on Debbie’s shoulder, pressed a finger to Debbie’s neck. She said: “Honestly I don’t think consolidation was ever a real option with the Scorpions, even without the bad blood between us.” a momentary pause, “Anybody else finding this kinda hot?” There was a round of murmured agreement, Zaffy the most enthusiastic, Debbie herself the most reluctant.
—
Thrillseeker stalked amongst the graves. The gravestones here were sometimes for people but sometimes for obsolete ideas, extinct species, lost media, dead languages, anything that once had flourished but now had passed. And the gravestones were proportionately sized, the largest of which bore the names of planets, and full etchings that depicted them. Most of them looked more or less the same. One planet pretty much looks like any other when all you have is outlines in carved stone.
This was just like the fight with 'Ilchwise - Touched by the Infinite' back in her homeworld. At least this volleyball boy wasn’t periodically summoning waves of adds for her to deal with. Just like she had with Ilchwise, Thrillseeker quickly tired of this game of hide and seek and started cutting down any gravestone she passed that was large enough to cower behind.
As a particularly weighty stone labelled Ectopistes migratorius fell the last of the Scorpions scurried out of the way, leaping at Thrillseeker and knocking her to the floor. Her scythe was knocked away, clattering across the cold stone path before landing out of reach. The catcher had his thick metal gauntlet around her throat and was squeezing.
She groped blindly for her scythe for a moment, before changing tactics. Her head was already pounding, if there was ever a time to burn some consumables it was right now. She pulled free the first thing she could get hold of from her pockets, the empty phial that had contained her Lifeblood, without time or capability to reassess she swung the empty flask, slamming it into the side of the boy’s head and shattering it upon impact. The pressure on her neck relented and the boy went awkwardly limp on top of her.
The last of the Sareta Scorpions was dead. The Sparkklechix were the victors of the Winnowing Unending, but they were not shuttled home as intended.
Thrillseeker soon returned to the group with quite an extensive bruise blossoming around her neck and her scythe returned to its place strapped behind her.
“They’re all dead?” The leader asked.
Thrillseeker simply took a bow.
“Well now what?” The goth one chimed in.
Thrillseeker shrugged. She pulled forth a small board and a glowing lump of chalk and wrote for a second. ‘Still no brief respite? Why is it always you don’t have the right?’
“Well, seeing as you killed our Host, I suppose it makes sense that we’re still here.” The Infanta said. “Though I’d have thought you’d more than done whatever you were sent here to do.”
‘Weak foe ahead therefore I can’t take this.’
“Are you saying you can’t go until you’ve killed us?” The swordswoman asked. Thrillseeker shrugged and wrote a final message ‘Time for sleep in short Good luck!’ before putting away the slate and slouching off in the direction of the mausoleum to find something resembling a bed to lie down on.
—
Thrillseeker awoke on a wooden bench to the sound of gently trickling water. She turned over, tried and failed to get comfortable and return to that much needed rest. Eventually she admitted she was awake and sat up. The Recluse’s cottage stood before her. A small stone house in the middle of a pleasant forest. A gentle water feature stood to her left, to her right a garden filled with a variety of flowers, all of which were blooming a pleasant maroon.
She’d been here in this garden before, stood alongside a number of powerful enemies, most of whom she really shouldn’t have stood a chance in hell of defeating but all of whom she had prevailed instead of. Every time that she had been here before though the doors and windows of the cottage before her had been shut, and not just shut but boarded over from the inside, not allowing a single speck of light to enter.
Now the cottage before her was open, the door literally hanging open, all of the windows unboarded and inside it was possible to view a very normal little house.
Thrillseeker rolled her shoulders, stretched the fatigue out of her remaining arm, drew her scythe and stood up. Her gait was casual as she entered the house. It would be fitting at the end of a campaign against numerous Hosts that the last challenge she had to face was that of the Host that had brought her here. But such a prospect, though daunting, was not enough to cause her pause.
Nothing inside seemed out of the ordinary. There were no obvious shrines of hatred, or conspiracy boards filled with other Hosts faces. It was all very domestic. It seemed that the Recluse had led a simple life until they’d decided to force eight individuals to systematically murder their peers.
In the living room, the only items on the dark wood coffee table were a hand written letter and what looked like a small glowing coin.
“Dearest Thrillseeker.
Lamentably I will not be there to congratulate you on your victory. Nothing can last forever. Not even we Hosts have the right to eternity. I offer you two things: knowledge that there are more beings out there as strong and cruel as those you have slain, and of course me myself. In one year from now you will be returned to this arena to compete against the victors of other battles similar to mine. I ask that you seize this opportunity to show the Hosts that puppeteer innocents for their own enjoyment that they are not beyond the reach of mortality.
The other gift I give you is myself, the remnants of my power, of my fading soul. Take it into yourself and ascend to Hosthood as you saw Sara and Zafira do so with the soul of The Reaper. Use my power to put an end to the games we have played with the lives of mortals and when you are done, live and treasure your life in the knowledge that eventually you, like all things, will be no more.
Thank you,
The Recluse.”
Thrillseeker picked up the coin; the crystallized soul of the Recluse, and she considered it. The potential within herself she could unlock if she was The Thrillseeker instead of just a Thrillseeker. But where would the joy be in that? To become so powerful would remove the challenge, would remove the thrill she chased. In doing so she would feel as though somehow she had cheated herself. As though she had taken a shortcut and gained nothing. Any victories from that point on would seem hollow. Nothing would be risked, nothing would be gained. Thankfully she knew better.
She pocketed the coin and went to looking for a way out of this place.
—
Thrillseeker had been living in The Recluse’s cottage for a month before another Host showed up to see what was happening. The blue suited woman who had introduced herself as The Authority had shown barely hidden contempt for both Thrillseeker and The Recluse. She’d not really seemed to consider The Recluse’s absence from their own house to be particularly noteworthy and had only complained that ‘of course they left their contestant for me to deal with’.
Thrillseeker considered taking on The Authority then and there, but if she won she would only be resigning herself to even more time spent in this dull little cottage.
Ilmire was a welcome change after the pleasant pastoral nightmare she’d been enduring; a cozy grimy neon city nestled in the underbelly of the White Labyrinth. It was a place that bustled with thrillseekers like herself; all here to try their might against the everpresent threat of the Night for honour and yes, for the thrill of it.
The city mechanic was a woman most easily described as a walking vessel for piercings and chains, known to all as Sister Agony. She had been so excited to see the exotic material that was the arm of Black Angel Azazel that she hadn’t even charged for the adaptation and fitting of Thrillseeker’s new arm. Thrillseeker, had essentially lived there in the shop with her for the next week or two, as the arm went through multiple designs and reconfigurations before both Thrillseeker and Sister Agony were happy with it.
An important part of the process was making it easily detachable, so that in the event of her death and rebirth through the cauldrons of Ilmire she was able to easily reclaim and reattach it when she fully reformed.
When eventually it was complete Sister Agony dubbed it the Soulgrinder Arm of Castigation. Thrillseeker usually just thought of it as ‘my cool new arm’.
Thrillseeker made her first expedition back into the White Labyrinth approximately two months after she’d defeated The Reaper. She climbed the newly emerged Profane Column, fought an enormous many legged horror, Caxrax The Diaphanous Horror, that hunted her through dilapidated half flooded corridors and debilitating miasma, before encountering the foul beast’s kin and its queen, Caxrax The Insatiable Swarm, in a central chamber full of putrid waters.
Overwhelmed by the inhospitable conditions and the ceaseless attack of many boss level monstrosities she’d chosen to use the special aspect of her new arm for the first time. She produced the shining purple soul of Black Angel Azazel and slid it into a discreet slot upon her Soulgrinder Arm. It whirred to life, processing the essence of her former competitor, and its former owner, taking just a moment before it burst to life.
Thrillseeker found her body empowered with a violet flame, adorned with blades from every limb and angelic wings made from blazing indigo inferno. She was the image of Azazel herself, and like she would have, she leapt and soared through the sky, spearing the bastards, slicing and tearing them, ripping loose the spawning pods on the walls where new ones were being grown in a constant cycle. Thrillseeker slaughtered her way through the chamber and by the time that the power granted by Azazel’s soul was running low she had only the Caxrax Queen left to destroy. It was almost too easy.
When she was done she returned to Ilmire with her pockets full of souls and more than a couple unique finds. It was a good day for Thrillseeker. It was just another day in Ilmire.
That had been closer than usual. Normally when she was fighting she always had a backup; as long as she was in range of her cauldron she was able to resurrect and try again. Ever since it had broken in the battle against The Historian in his moonbase, she’d been running on fumes.
She was lucky Azazel had only taken her arm; it had only been fair to return the favour in death. She looked down at the mechanical arm on her lap, bone white with black accents, and a wildly adjustable appendage. Back home she knew just the girl who could outfit her with it, and even make a couple of modifications that she’d been considering.
That was, if The Recluse was thinking of sending her home. Her final explicit opponent was dead, and her final implicit opponent was also mostly dead. The two girls who had absorbed its soul were still running around, but they didn’t seem to be fighters. Thrillseeker really didn’t think there would be any satisfaction to bring their stories to an end. But it was starting to look like if she didn’t do something she’d be forced to try to adjust to life in this dead world.
Right now, on the bone white gravel paths before her the final confrontation of the Winnowing Unending seemed to be coming to a head. And for some reason that was taking the form of an argument between the world’s least coherently themed girl band and a volleyball team that looked like it had stepped out of a Mad Max movie.
“Look I’ve talked to the boys, we’re all pretty regretful over burning the cupboard your friend was in.” The volleyball team’s coach was stood in front of the group as they endeavoured to put on their most contrite expressions. “But to be fair she was sending out a lot of elf assassins after us.”
“Nobody’s disputing that Mindy went a little bit mad with power.” Thrillseeker hadn’t bothered to learn their names, but this was one of the two that absorbed The Reaper’s power, the one she’d come to think of as the leader of the group. “We just think that was something of an overreaction. We could have talked her down.”
“We’re going to take your criticism on board, and next time we’ll really do our best to open communications before we destroy entire pocket dimensions.” The coach replied.
Gods, they’re even talking out their differences. How did a Host like The Reaper manage to run a big fight that ended in such a damp squib?
Another one of the girl group stepped forward, it was the Infanta. Even Thrillseeker’s, some would call it a nightmare-world had a version of the Infanta. In her world she’d been an opportunist who’d merged with the Night to become more powerful, this one was evidently president of Earth in her own timeline. God the multiverse was so fucking weird sometimes.
As she stepped forward the volleyball team were all rolling their eyes and the coach got immediately on the defensive. “Yes we appreciate that we can’t make up for murdering your entire staff, yes we know even Kevin, but that was round two us. We’ve grown and learn since then. Back then we were just in it for the adrenaline but now we’ve really come to believe that the real treasure is friendship.”
Thrillseeker pocketed Azazel’s soul, and her arm, grabbed the pitch black Scythe of Iaoael from where it lay and pushed herself to her feet. Evidently she was not going home until this fight was over as well and she was starting to get impatient.
As she approached they turned to watch. Their coach hurried in her direction. “The boys and I would like to offer our thanks to you Miss Thrill. The way you and that Azazel lady carved up that unsavoury Reaper character. A real inspiration. When we work out how to get back home, we’re going to be running a lot of plays directly inspired by your skills out there on the field, and we’ll make sure to give you all the appropriate credit.”
Thrillseeker swung her scythe and sliced the coach’s head clean from his body in one simple movement.
“Coach! Noooo!” The ‘boys’ of the Something Scorpions cried out. It should be pointed out that despite their coach’s insistence on the terminology and their willingness to sit back and let him speak for them these were adult men of a professional deathsport team and not a high school volleyball team who’d won a lifetime’s supply of barbed wire and spikes and were just having fun with it.
In the time before they scrambled into formation Thrillseeker put on a little spurt of speed and got to the blonde haired catcher, swinging upwards and slicing him apart hot dog style. The other boys were on their feet, the pair of shockers (equipped with electric whips to redirect the death volley) and the remaining catcher (equipped with thick metal gauntlets to allow them to handle the death volley), hurried to get some distance, while the blockers (with jet boots and metal kite shields as tall as they are) rushed towards her, hoping to hit her with a pincer attack.
Thrillseeker did an easy dodge backwards, swinging her scythe around from behind her as landed, and piercing the black haired blocker from behind as he and his counterpart crashed together.
Dispatching the volleyball team was far from a real challenge for Thrillseeker. Even with her recent loss of an arm, she was faster, deadlier and unwavering in her objective. The only part that gave her any trouble was when only the remaining catcher was left and she was forced to chase him off into the graveyard.
—
As she fought the chix stood frozen. “Should we do something?” Atasha asked. Her legendary blade, Glitter, hummed to life as she laid her hand upon it.
“I’m not sure there’s anything we could be doing to stop her.” Zaffy said. “And she certainly doesn’t need our help.”
“It really doesn’t feel like we should be condoning this kind of behaviour.” Sara argued.
“Preferable to sitting around in this graveyard for the rest of time.” Jessica said dismissively.
“We’d die of starvation long before the end of time.” Debbie pointed out. Irabeth who had been perched on Debbie’s shoulder, pressed a finger to Debbie’s neck. She said: “Honestly I don’t think consolidation was ever a real option with the Scorpions, even without the bad blood between us.” a momentary pause, “Anybody else finding this kinda hot?” There was a round of murmured agreement, Zaffy the most enthusiastic, Debbie herself the most reluctant.
—
Thrillseeker stalked amongst the graves. The gravestones here were sometimes for people but sometimes for obsolete ideas, extinct species, lost media, dead languages, anything that once had flourished but now had passed. And the gravestones were proportionately sized, the largest of which bore the names of planets, and full etchings that depicted them. Most of them looked more or less the same. One planet pretty much looks like any other when all you have is outlines in carved stone.
This was just like the fight with 'Ilchwise - Touched by the Infinite' back in her homeworld. At least this volleyball boy wasn’t periodically summoning waves of adds for her to deal with. Just like she had with Ilchwise, Thrillseeker quickly tired of this game of hide and seek and started cutting down any gravestone she passed that was large enough to cower behind.
As a particularly weighty stone labelled Ectopistes migratorius fell the last of the Scorpions scurried out of the way, leaping at Thrillseeker and knocking her to the floor. Her scythe was knocked away, clattering across the cold stone path before landing out of reach. The catcher had his thick metal gauntlet around her throat and was squeezing.
She groped blindly for her scythe for a moment, before changing tactics. Her head was already pounding, if there was ever a time to burn some consumables it was right now. She pulled free the first thing she could get hold of from her pockets, the empty phial that had contained her Lifeblood, without time or capability to reassess she swung the empty flask, slamming it into the side of the boy’s head and shattering it upon impact. The pressure on her neck relented and the boy went awkwardly limp on top of her.
The last of the Sareta Scorpions was dead. The Sparkklechix were the victors of the Winnowing Unending, but they were not shuttled home as intended.
Thrillseeker soon returned to the group with quite an extensive bruise blossoming around her neck and her scythe returned to its place strapped behind her.
“They’re all dead?” The leader asked.
Thrillseeker simply took a bow.
“Well now what?” The goth one chimed in.
Thrillseeker shrugged. She pulled forth a small board and a glowing lump of chalk and wrote for a second. ‘Still no brief respite? Why is it always you don’t have the right?’
“Well, seeing as you killed our Host, I suppose it makes sense that we’re still here.” The Infanta said. “Though I’d have thought you’d more than done whatever you were sent here to do.”
‘Weak foe ahead therefore I can’t take this.’
“Are you saying you can’t go until you’ve killed us?” The swordswoman asked. Thrillseeker shrugged and wrote a final message ‘Time for sleep in short Good luck!’ before putting away the slate and slouching off in the direction of the mausoleum to find something resembling a bed to lie down on.
—
Thrillseeker awoke on a wooden bench to the sound of gently trickling water. She turned over, tried and failed to get comfortable and return to that much needed rest. Eventually she admitted she was awake and sat up. The Recluse’s cottage stood before her. A small stone house in the middle of a pleasant forest. A gentle water feature stood to her left, to her right a garden filled with a variety of flowers, all of which were blooming a pleasant maroon.
She’d been here in this garden before, stood alongside a number of powerful enemies, most of whom she really shouldn’t have stood a chance in hell of defeating but all of whom she had prevailed instead of. Every time that she had been here before though the doors and windows of the cottage before her had been shut, and not just shut but boarded over from the inside, not allowing a single speck of light to enter.
Now the cottage before her was open, the door literally hanging open, all of the windows unboarded and inside it was possible to view a very normal little house.
Thrillseeker rolled her shoulders, stretched the fatigue out of her remaining arm, drew her scythe and stood up. Her gait was casual as she entered the house. It would be fitting at the end of a campaign against numerous Hosts that the last challenge she had to face was that of the Host that had brought her here. But such a prospect, though daunting, was not enough to cause her pause.
Nothing inside seemed out of the ordinary. There were no obvious shrines of hatred, or conspiracy boards filled with other Hosts faces. It was all very domestic. It seemed that the Recluse had led a simple life until they’d decided to force eight individuals to systematically murder their peers.
In the living room, the only items on the dark wood coffee table were a hand written letter and what looked like a small glowing coin.
“Dearest Thrillseeker.
Lamentably I will not be there to congratulate you on your victory. Nothing can last forever. Not even we Hosts have the right to eternity. I offer you two things: knowledge that there are more beings out there as strong and cruel as those you have slain, and of course me myself. In one year from now you will be returned to this arena to compete against the victors of other battles similar to mine. I ask that you seize this opportunity to show the Hosts that puppeteer innocents for their own enjoyment that they are not beyond the reach of mortality.
The other gift I give you is myself, the remnants of my power, of my fading soul. Take it into yourself and ascend to Hosthood as you saw Sara and Zafira do so with the soul of The Reaper. Use my power to put an end to the games we have played with the lives of mortals and when you are done, live and treasure your life in the knowledge that eventually you, like all things, will be no more.
Thank you,
The Recluse.”
Thrillseeker picked up the coin; the crystallized soul of the Recluse, and she considered it. The potential within herself she could unlock if she was The Thrillseeker instead of just a Thrillseeker. But where would the joy be in that? To become so powerful would remove the challenge, would remove the thrill she chased. In doing so she would feel as though somehow she had cheated herself. As though she had taken a shortcut and gained nothing. Any victories from that point on would seem hollow. Nothing would be risked, nothing would be gained. Thankfully she knew better.
She pocketed the coin and went to looking for a way out of this place.
—
Thrillseeker had been living in The Recluse’s cottage for a month before another Host showed up to see what was happening. The blue suited woman who had introduced herself as The Authority had shown barely hidden contempt for both Thrillseeker and The Recluse. She’d not really seemed to consider The Recluse’s absence from their own house to be particularly noteworthy and had only complained that ‘of course they left their contestant for me to deal with’.
Thrillseeker considered taking on The Authority then and there, but if she won she would only be resigning herself to even more time spent in this dull little cottage.
Ilmire was a welcome change after the pleasant pastoral nightmare she’d been enduring; a cozy grimy neon city nestled in the underbelly of the White Labyrinth. It was a place that bustled with thrillseekers like herself; all here to try their might against the everpresent threat of the Night for honour and yes, for the thrill of it.
The city mechanic was a woman most easily described as a walking vessel for piercings and chains, known to all as Sister Agony. She had been so excited to see the exotic material that was the arm of Black Angel Azazel that she hadn’t even charged for the adaptation and fitting of Thrillseeker’s new arm. Thrillseeker, had essentially lived there in the shop with her for the next week or two, as the arm went through multiple designs and reconfigurations before both Thrillseeker and Sister Agony were happy with it.
An important part of the process was making it easily detachable, so that in the event of her death and rebirth through the cauldrons of Ilmire she was able to easily reclaim and reattach it when she fully reformed.
When eventually it was complete Sister Agony dubbed it the Soulgrinder Arm of Castigation. Thrillseeker usually just thought of it as ‘my cool new arm’.
Thrillseeker made her first expedition back into the White Labyrinth approximately two months after she’d defeated The Reaper. She climbed the newly emerged Profane Column, fought an enormous many legged horror, Caxrax The Diaphanous Horror, that hunted her through dilapidated half flooded corridors and debilitating miasma, before encountering the foul beast’s kin and its queen, Caxrax The Insatiable Swarm, in a central chamber full of putrid waters.
Overwhelmed by the inhospitable conditions and the ceaseless attack of many boss level monstrosities she’d chosen to use the special aspect of her new arm for the first time. She produced the shining purple soul of Black Angel Azazel and slid it into a discreet slot upon her Soulgrinder Arm. It whirred to life, processing the essence of her former competitor, and its former owner, taking just a moment before it burst to life.
Thrillseeker found her body empowered with a violet flame, adorned with blades from every limb and angelic wings made from blazing indigo inferno. She was the image of Azazel herself, and like she would have, she leapt and soared through the sky, spearing the bastards, slicing and tearing them, ripping loose the spawning pods on the walls where new ones were being grown in a constant cycle. Thrillseeker slaughtered her way through the chamber and by the time that the power granted by Azazel’s soul was running low she had only the Caxrax Queen left to destroy. It was almost too easy.
When she was done she returned to Ilmire with her pockets full of souls and more than a couple unique finds. It was a good day for Thrillseeker. It was just another day in Ilmire.