The Hammer of War, Chapter 61

Name: Amir Azad
Title: War-Summoner
War Points: 0
STR – 88(300)
DEX – 80(300)
VIT – 202(300)
—

Khornate Dungeon Conquered!
Kuzgrath the Eternal Destroyer has been defeated!
Extra Boss remains unchallenged and undefeated (No Extra Loot)
Reward/s:
+30,000 War Points!
[Hellblade] x1

Choose Your Main Reward: 

1. Stats

2. Weapons

3. Units

Huh, been a while since I’ve had to pick from one of these. Or, at least, it felt that way. Stats were always useful and I just received a [Hellblade] as a reward, so now I had no need to spend any of my War Points on melee weapons. Did I need new units right now? Alexandra would say yes, but two hundred thousand Hormogaunts would say no. And, honestly, I was inclined to agree with the Hormogaunts on this one. That said, however, I currently didn’t need to up my stats just yet, especially after the rather extreme additions I got out of the [Custodian Augmentation]. Therefore, the most efficient option was to get a new unit. So, that was exactly what I did. 

New Units Unlocked!

[Drukhari Haemonculi] x1 - The Haemonculi are Dark Eldar surgeon-alchemists, adept at torture and biological manipulation.

[Bloodletter] x20 - Bloodletters are the Lesser Daemons of Khorne, eager foot soldiers that form the core of his vast legions. Possessed of enormous strength, they are renowned for the savage ferocity of their charges. As a host, they march as one in complex formations with supernatural precision, maneuvering for the utmost advantage, but in battle they try to outdo each other in ruthless acts of cruelty and savagery.

I was gonna turn the Haemonculi into a story character as soon as I can, like Alexandra. Having it at my side as an actual person would be far better than just having it as a mindless unit that obeyed whatever orders I gave it. The Bloodletters were an awesome touch. Not very strong, but I wasn’t about to complain, given that they were technically free. Whatever the case, the most important thing was that I now had 30,000 War Points, which was way more than enough to buy some Mindshackle Scarabs for Jung Aera and for Raynare.

The condo welcomed me back with warm air and the quiet hiss of the purifier. The smell of Seoul lived out there in the windows—oil, metal, fried batter, exhaust—and none of it crossed the glass. In here it was tea and laundry soap. The System prompt blinked into place as if it had waited until I exhaled.

Promote [Drukhari Haemonculi] to Story Unit?
Cost: 15,000 War Points.
Confirm [Yes/No]

Yep, having that weirdo be a constant assistant, like Alexandra, would be a huge boon. Plus, I wouldn’t need the [Mindshackle Scarabs] if I had a Haemonculi.

[Yes]

The points ticked down. A line in the world tugged, then straightened. Something took a step out of nothing as if nothing had just been a curtain, a globule of shadow taking shape.

She stood in the middle of my living room, like a grotesque memory of a woman.

Tall. Very tall. Reed‑thin. Armor grown like a garden—plates ribbed and lacquered in a deep green so dark it was almost black, seams that breathed with her, hooks that held tools that weren’t tools. Her hair fell to her hips, glossy and straight. The face said porcelain until the eyes moved. Those eyes were old honey poured over obsidian. Pretty. Wrong. Beautiful. She was like a damn Cenobite cranked up to eleven.

Her shadow held extra arms for a second, then the cloak folded, and the extra choices tucked themselves away. The belt shook with quiet metal—scalpels with bone handles, ampoules with color that moved inside like it was alive, wires and other such implements. When she bowed, her forehead touched the floor with a precision that made it clear she had measured the wood earlier.

“My lord,” she said. The voice came smooth and clean. The accent belonged to no country that existed under a sun. “I am Sindaris. Mistress of the Opaline Coil. Fleshcrafter of Commorragh. By this binding, yours.”

“Welcome, Sindaris,” I said.

Memory Sharing? [Yes/No]

I chose [Yes]. 

The world tilted and the condo fell away.

—

Commorragh came to life in my skull. 

Streets so dark they seemed like dead space. Balconies that hung in the dark with no walls to hold them. Lanterns made from bottled suns the size of a thumbnail. Voices from a thousand throats and none of them kind. A child with black hair and a learning smile walked those bridges without fear. She watched hands cut and fold and sew. She watched a man laugh while a ribcage bloomed outward to make a cage for someone else’s breath. She watched a spine learn to curve like handwriting, and a face learn to wear an expression it didn’t feel.

Her first teacher died because he trusted his locks. Her second teacher died because he loved a mirror more than he loved anything else Her third teacher asked her to rename him and smiled when she did. She didn’t cry when she presented what he had become.

Closed rooms. Open screams. Contracts gilded and written in soft threats. Applause that hit the skin like cold rain. Sindaris learned to tune pain into devotion and devotion into obedience. She perfected the stitch no one could see. She learned to hum to nerves and watch the song change color. She built galleries of beautiful monstrosities: a woman with living lace that blossomed from her back; a warrior whose smile had thirteen maws; a courtier whose eyes showed each guest the face they loved most and none of them noticed the empty space where her name should have been.

Rivals learned to say her name slowly. Clients learned to stop saying it at all. The Opaline Coil brought her trophies wrapped in silk. She made them useful. She learned how to pull a memory free and fold the edges until the scream lost volume. She learned how to split a thought without opening the skull. She learned to write new habits under old scars. The first time she rewired a mind in the time it took to pour a drink, she laughed because it wasn’t hard.

Sindaris saw me. And in her eyes was a master worth serving.

—

The rush ended. The condo came back in a snap. The purifier hummed. The city breathed through glass. My heart kept going because that’s what hearts do.

Sindaris lifted her forehead from the floor. Her mouth smiled without teeth. Her eyes smiled with knives.

“You are sentimental, my lord.” she said. “There are many uses for those who grieve, but it is not my place to tell you what to do with your playthings. I am yours.”

“Good,” I said.

“Ground rules,” I said, though I really didn’t need to.

She pressed her hands together like someone hearing grace. “Your word is my command, my lord.”

“Then there shall only be one law for you to follow,” I said. “Your art shall not be conducted without my permission or my guidance; is that understood?”

“I live to serve you.” She said. “I understand.”

“Good,” I said. “Because I brought you here for someone human. She asked me to take weight off her mind. I promised. We’re keeping that.”

“The unbinding of memories,” she said, almost scoffing. “A child’s exercise.”

“You’re confident,” I said.

“I am accurate,” she said. She tapped the little roll of ampoules at her hip. “I can tune a memory with a breath and a song. I can make a horror into a photograph and leave the photograph where it is easy to file. I can make a tyrant into a loyalist with one thread.”

The safe door clicked. Alexandra stepped into the living room. Her coat was buttoned. Her cybernetic eye hummed once, then set its focus.

She took one look at Sindaris and the air between them went sharp.

“Haemonculi,” she said.

“Inquisitor,” Sindaris said.

If this were their old universe, neither of them would have let the other finish the second word. Here, they looked at me and served only me. My condo, my rules.

“Alexandra, Sindaris. Sindaris, Alexandra,” I said. “We’re on the same side.”

“By your grace,” Alexandra said. 

“By your leash,” Sindaris said. The tone matched. The meanings did not.

“Next,” Alexandra said, eyes on Sindaris. “You can’t walk around like that. There’s nothing in Seoul’s laws about flensing gowns, but the neighborhood association would write one before morning. Human guise. Now.”

Sindaris sighed like a prima ballerina asked to work the ticket booth. “Must we make art small?”

“We must make art boring,” Alexandra said.

Sindaris considered, then nodded. “I will need a room.”

“Reinforced room,” I said. “Down the hall. No windows. Plenty of power.” 

I gestured. “Basement’s yours.”

She glided past us. Tools clinked. The scent she carried changed from sweet and wrong to rosemary and warm metal as the door seals kissed shut behind her.

Two hours later, Sindaris stepped into the hall looking like someone you would pass on a train and linger on in your memories like a ghost. Because that was the look she chose for herself. Human by technicality, but so pale and uncanny that the sight of her would probably give grandmothers heart attacks.

She had kept the height and most of the grace. The armor was gone. A charcoal skirt fell to her calves. A black blouse. A long coat hid the exact lines of her shape. Her black hair settled at her shoulders with a simple clasp. Her eyes kept their focus but calmed the color to dark hazel. 

Alexandra walked around her once and checked for seams that would give us away. 

“Acceptable,” she said.

“Offensive,” Sindaris said, but with only half the heat. “Blandness is camouflage. Camouflage is useful. I will endure it like a hair shirt for a saint.”

“Congratulations,” I said. “You’re ready to meet a traumatized human.”

We crossed the living room and went to the spare room. The line of light under the door cut the hall. I knocked.

“Jung Aera,” I said. “It’s me.”

The door opened four inches. Her face lived there—tired, steady, pale. She saw Sindaris over my shoulder and froze. Not cat‑seeing‑a‑laser freeze. Deer‑looking‑past‑the‑headlights freeze. She didn’t shut the door in our faces. That counted.

“This is Sindaris,” I said. “She’s a…………… surgeon. She’s going to help.”

Sindaris softened her mouth. 

“I am here to take weight off your spine,” she said. “You will not feel pain.”

Aera looked at me. “You said three days.”

“I did,” I said. “I got what I needed early.”

“Is it… safe?” she asked.

Probably 

“Yes, it’s very safe,” I said. “Safer than what you did on the roof.”

She breathed once through her nose. She opened the door and stepped back. 

“Will I forget?” she asked.

“You will remember,” Sindaris said. “But it will not touch you.”

Aera stared at the floor long enough to count the grain. She nodded. 

“Okay,” she whispered.

Sindaris unrolled a silk bundle on the table. The tools were simple and wrong. A little ampoule with color that moved like smoke learning a dance. A needle that wasn’t metal. A spool of thread that didn’t cast a shadow.

“You will breathe this,” she said. “You will drop. You will wake. My lord will stand where you can see him when you open your eyes. The ugly stern one will guard the door and count your breaths out of habit.”

Aera almost smiled and then didn’t. “Okay.”

Sindaris soaked a cloth and hovered it near Aera’s face without touching skin. Aera breathed once, then again. The third breath went deep. The fourth got stuck halfway and turned into sleep. I caught her shoulders and lowered her to the bed. She weighed less than I expected. I tucked the blanket up to her ribs. She didn’t stir.

Sindaris got to work. The needle and thread moved through the air above Aera’s forehead and made a web so fine it disappeared when I blinked and reappeared when I looked from the corner of my eye. It hummed. She twitched the needle and the web changed tune. Her work was… fascinating to witness. The way she seemed to coax flesh and bone and sinew was beyond any medical science that this world recognized–or, really, any science at all. I wasn’t even sure if it could be called science when Sindaris herself thought of her work as art. 

Yeah, I guess that was the most appropriate word for it. Her work was art.

We waited. Alexandra watched the door and the hall beyond it. 

Fifteen minutes later, Aera’s breath changed. She made a small sound. Her eyes opened. She stared at the ceiling and then found me.

“Hey,” I said.

She blinked. “Hey.”

“How do you feel?”

She tested the air like someone diagnosing a room. 

“I feel quiet,” she said. “Like the noise moved next door.”

“Can you talk about it?” I asked. “If you want to.”

She looked at the wall and told the story. The words didn’t stumble. The breath didn’t trip. She stopped at the end. She waited for the floor to fall away. It didn’t. She pressed a palm to her chest and blinked like she had expected to find a hole there.

“It still happened,” she said softly. “It just… isn’t swallowing me.”

“Good,” I said.

She reached for my hand and squeezed once, careful. 

“Thank you,” she said. “I don’t know how to say it so you understand.”

“You already did,” I said.

Alexandra set a folder on the table. The folder was black. The card stock would stop a small knife. She opened it with neat hands and laid out a life.

“Your new name is Anya Jung,” she said. “Your age moved down three years. Your birthday moved two days. The databases will nod and keep walking. This is your passport. This is your ID. This is a residency package that doesn’t exist yet unless someone who matters asks, and they won’t.”

She set down a phone still in plastic, then a brick of cash.

“This will get you out of Korea without anyone memorable staring at your face for more than three seconds,” she said. “You’ll fly to Vancouver. You’ll take a bus to Seattle. A driver will meet you at the terminal. He’ll ask for your new name. He will take you to a studio in Fremont. The lease belongs to a trust with a name that means nothing. There’s a locker key in the back envelope. It holds money–a lot of it. There’s a card for a language tutor. There’s a card for a clinic that won’t ask for insurance. Here’s a card to call us–but only call us in the utmost need and not because you feel like it, okay?”

Aera stared at the pile of documents like the paper might stand up and run away. Her hand hovered over the passport and then landed.

“You’re not coming?” she asked me, and the second the words left her mouth she looked embarrassed.

“I can’t,” I said. “But if you need to hear my voice, call. If I can answer, I will.”

She smiled. Small. Real. “Okay.”

The ride to Incheon moved in clean lines. The car was smooth and steady–not sure where Alexandra bought it, but I didn’t ask questions because that was literally her job. The city slid by. At the departures drop‑off, the air smelled like luggage wheels and hand sanitizer and tired children. We kept it simple at the curb. No speeches. No promises we couldn’t keep.

She hugged me. She hugged Alexandra. She looked at Sindaris.

“Thank you,” she said.

Sindaris nodded. 

“Go live, monkeigh.” she said. “It will look good on you.”

Aera went into the river of people and didn’t look back. We stood long enough to feel the cold. We walked back to the car. The drive home took less time. The city’s lights found the glass and shimmered there.

The condo felt different when we stepped inside. But I think that was just something I felt. Sindaris, like a giddy child, turned to me. “Now, my lord, was there not a most fascinating specimen for me to examine?” 

“Oh yeah, Raynare.” I said. “Go have fun.”