She brushed away a patch of snow, reveal­ing a cir­cle in the stone: A ring carved with a halo of runes. Snif­fling in the cold, she picked ice out of the let­ters with a gloved fin­ger.

“Ah, you found it!”

She looked up. Over her stood a plump rag­man in a beaver coat and auburn trap­pings. He set down a heavy back­pack and crouched low to the car­ven flag­stone, clear­ing more snow from the ancient let­ters. They exca­vat­ed in qui­et fas­ci­na­tion. Around them, vil­lage traf­fic pro­gressed. Horse­shoes clat­tered. A veg­etable wag­on rum­bled by. A mouse pup hawked hot rye bread from a bak­ery win­dow. A pass­ing clerk sneered at them in dis­ap­proval.

“Lethe, I think this is it. You’ve got it,” said the rag­man, beam­ing.

“Only took three days,” chuck­led Lethe, dig­ging dirty slush from a tri­an­gu­lar let­ter.

“Three days well spent, to an arachaol­o­gist. We had fif­teen more inter­sec­tions to try! Best luck all win­ter.” As he spoke, he unrolled a broad sheet of wax paper. They stretched it over the cir­cle and weight­ed the edges with rocks. Lethe began rub­bing the whole sheet with a min­er­al-smelling con­té cray­on.

A brown mouse stopped beside them, smok­ing, his long feet wet with slush. “Fook’re ye both doin’?” he said.

“We’re tak­ing a rub­bing of this inscrip­tion, Mas­ter Mouse,” grinned the rag­man. “My name is Lans­dale, and this is Lethe Arns­dotr of Wick­er­ly. We are archae­ol­o­gists with the Mont­coy Coterie, a pri­vate research insti­tu­tion.”

Lethe, still squat­ting, stopped to tip her hat at the mouse, who was breath­ing smoke in her face.

“Why’ve you got­ta re-search? H’ainch you searched it before?”

Lans­dale chor­tled. “A fine wit you have, Mas­ter Mouse. This is a new dis­cov­ery, as it stands! We’ve been all over town look­ing for this exact com­mem­o­ra­tive site.”

“You guff­ing with me, you tat­ter­ly laun­dry bag?” chirped the mouse up at him, huff­ing and puff­ing on his smoke. He stamped a foot.

“No, not at all; no offense meant. I—”

A shad­ow appeared. “Hal­lo folks, what seems to be going on here? No trou­ble, I hope?” said a Con­sta­ble in a blue jack­et with sil­ver but­tons. She pressed her gloved hands togeth­er in a con­cil­ia­to­ry ges­ture. Her blue cap was speck­led in snow.

“Bloody Coat-ery re-searchers fink I’m schtew­pid is all,” said the mouse, eye­ing the police­woman. “Gits.” He flicked his cig­a­rette and hopped away, leav­ing a pall of smoke and musty dox­bells.

Lans­dale sighed. “Sir, we’re researchers with the Mont­coy Coterie. We’re tak­ing a rub­bing of this inscrip­tion.”

The Con­sta­ble smiled thin­ly at him. “And will this rub­bing take much more time, Mas­ters? You’re rather imped­ing the flow.”

“No!” said Lethe, stand­ing. “Just done, actu­al­ly.” She showed the paper to them both: It bore a cir­cle of Old Awnish runes sur­round­ing a horned man, his limbs bro­ken and twist­ed about the spokes of a wag­on wheel. The police­woman frowned at it, dis­taste evi­dent. “That old ugly thing. Why do you want an image of that?”

“It’s proof!” enthused Lans­dale. “Proof of dae­mon­ic activ­i­ty in the area around the late Medieval era. We sus­pect this flag­stone was carved to com­mem­o­rate the defeat of a cruor. Or, ah, a dae­mon.”

The Con­sta­ble frowned. “Only Avethans believe in spir­its. This is good old Awnish coun­try. We don’t stand for such things.”

“Well, yes, exact­ly,” said Lethe, blink­ing away snow. “We Awnlings did­n’t stand for them 600 years ago, either.”

“Hmm, right. Straight,” said the Con­sta­ble. “Sup­pose we put it on a rock because we were proud for killing it, then. That’s prop­er.”

“No, that’s the sor­cer­er who con­jured it, actu­al­ly. On the wheel.” Lethe began rolling the paper. “We sus­pect the cruor is buried under this flag­stone, though, along with him.” She uncapped a steel tube and insert­ed the rolled paper.

“Right,” mum­bled the Con­sta­ble, bored. “Lis­ten, you two’ve got a per­mit to be doing this, right?” She tapped her foot.

“Of course,” laughed Lans­dale, pick­ing his back­pack up off the street. “Or, we will. Not for the rub­bing though. Don’t need one for that. We’ll be back with the per­mit if this checks out.” He and Lethe made to leave. Lethe clutched the tube and its pre­cious con­tents eager­ly.

Irri­tat­ed, the Con­sta­ble put her hands on her hips. “What’s it for, then?”

“For the dig­ging!” said Lans­dale, as they made away into the throng of hors­es and foot traf­fic.

“There’ll be bones, after all. Lead bones!”

A bot­tle rolled on the furs. It fetched up against pineap­ple andirons. Espel­lete brut, vin­tage of 3.438. Fire rip­pled in the green glass.

A gig­gle. A tanned, scarred hand with­drew anoth­er bot­tle. Ice rat­tled in the sil­ver buck­et. “Alphonse, here, dar­ling. Clos­er.” Unsteadi­ly, he dragged Alphon­se’s hand and its lip-print­ed flute near­er. He poured. “When, when!” Alphonse protest­ed. Spilled wine fizzed on the furs. A flir­ta­tious toast. They drank.

They sat in shirt­sleeves on broad minks and squashy damask has­socks. Swel­ter­ing before a vast black mar­ble hearth. Deep herns flanked it, occu­pied by wilt­ing par­lor palms. In the trop­ic-papered walls, deep win­dowsills looked out on a win­ter cityscape. Mono­lith­ic tow­ers of con­crete. Twist­ed chimeystacks. Dri­ving snow.

With­in, it was warm. Hot, and the pair of them were sweat­ing. “Fer­nan,” mused Alphonse, set­ting down his brim­ming glass and twitch­ing a blond lock away. He slipped clos­er and beheld him with glazed eyes. “Do you think we should check on Will? He’s been gone to piss for such a while. Your mon­strous apart­ment might’ve eat­en him.”

Fer­nan rolled his eyes. “Ai. If he’s not back soon, I will have you all to myself.”

“Oh don’t. You’ll ensor­cell me into some­thing dread­ful, you wicked, wicked for­eign magi­cian. Some awful and oiled and col­lared, no doubt.”

“Stop giv­ing me ideas.” Fer­nand plucked up a drip­ping piece of ice and cast it into Alphon­se’s open col­lar, who yelped, then tack­led him, attempt­ing to give it back.

After a brief pant­i­ng and wrestling, there was a sound near­by. A qui­et mum­ble. Both young men turned, sweat­ing.

At the dark­ened hall­way mouth, a spi­ral stair papered in reeds behind, there stood a wil­lowy, tou­selled young man. Gamine, flushed, undone at the col­lar, but bear­ing none of the enthu­si­as­tic joy of the oth­er two men. His eyes were unfo­cused. His hands limp at his sides. Sweat bead­ed on his pale brow like frogspawn.

They beheld him with wor­ry. “Dios mio,” exclaimed Fer­nan. “Will, dear. Were you sick? Too much wine?”

Will shook his head. He stepped for­ward and stag­gered for a near­by wing-backed chair. His knees clat­tered and shook. He sunk into it. This close, a mark like a bruise showed on his right tem­ple, pur­ple and swollen.

“You fell! Oh, these stairs. They build every­thing too steep in this city,” wor­ried Fer­nan, crouch­ing beside him.

“No,” mut­tered Will. His eyes strug­gled to meet. A vein pulsed on his fore­head like a tym­pa­ny. Sweat rolled down his nose. He clutched his knees, knuck­les white.

Alphonse raised his eyes to Fer­nan. “I think he came from down­stairs.”

“Down­stairs?” pan­icked Fer­nan. “Will, dar­ling. That is my work­shop. You know that. Tell me you did­n’t drink any­thing down there?”

“No, I,” He tried, shut­ting his eyes. “I heard a voice down there. It sound­ed like you. Sound­ed like you want­ed help...” His voice trailed.

“What did it say?”

Will’s eyes were still shut. He let out a great sigh. His hands slack­ened. Alphonse gasped. “I’m call­ing for help!” He dashed away.

Fer­nan hard­ly noticed. Blanch­ing, he seized Will’s hand in his, shak­ing it. “What did it say to you?”

Unre­spon­sive. “What? What did it say?” Cried Fer­nan, now very pale.

“I told him let me out!” The voice was harsh, orgu­lous. Not Will’s.

A sharp inhale. A dot of red fell and splashed on the scarred ridges of Fer­nan’s knuck­les. His metacarpals creaked, seized with sud­den mas­sive strength in a vice-like grasp. Anoth­er droplet, steam­ing.

Weep­ing, dri­ven low, palm crack­ling and spark­ing as the knuck­le­bones frag­ment­ed with­in, Fer­nan raised his eyes to behold what had been Will. To behold the boil­ing, run­ning red from its bulging eyes.

“Release me, he did.”

Fear­ful­ly near­by the Coast exists a world of blood. A uni­verse of bio­log­i­cal plas­ma. With­in this hot, light­less broth exist com­pet­ing microor­gan­ic colonies of incom­pre­hen­si­ble scale and ludi­crous col­lec­tive intel­li­gence. * These are dae­monisms—known as cruores when present in the human world.

A breach between the Coast and the plas­mic realm caus­es a cruor to slosh through. Uncon­trolled, this breach con­sti­tutes a minor nat­ur­al dis­as­ter, for when loosed in the Coastal world, rich with alter­nate ele­ments nov­el to the exploita­tive dae­monism, a cruor rapid­ly cre­ates pan­de­mo­ni­um. It assumes anato­my appro­pri­ate its new realm, annex­ing ani­mal life—typically a human body—and embell­ish­ing it with potent rein­force­ments and new strengths. So equipped, it enacts vio­lences unheard of for no rea­son save one: com­pe­ti­tion.

A cruor is unri­valed in its vicious­ness. In the plas­mic realm, a home com­posed only of fath­om­less liq­uid rivals, it learned to pros­e­cute unend­ing cel­lu­lar war on bound­less fronts. Ter­ri­to­ry, resources, and con­tenders were one and the same: Every cen­tiliter of blood-space a bat­tle­field, a nutri­ent cache to be won, and a micro­cosm of a hat­ed neigh­bor to be squelched. Every moment of inter­cel­lu­lar cog­ni­tion a cri­sis-hour devot­ed to strat­e­gy, logis­tics, and tac­ti­cal evo­lu­tion. It learned unend­ing, time­less war a uni­verse’s gen­e­sis ago and nev­er ceased in fight­ing since.

To such a crea­ture, the human world is par­adise. A cruor unleashed here is glee­ful: Removed from every one of its eter­nal rivals and grant­ed an envi­ron­ment bereft of immu­ni­ty to its bio­log­i­cal aggres­sion, it thrives. Espe­cial­ly, it thrives in the blood­stream of human beings. ** Even a sin­gle cell of dae­monism can devel­op there fruit­ful­ly, for every cell contains—holistically—the entire enti­ty: Its pat­tern of growth, its per­son­al­i­ty, and its mag­nif­i­cent mem­o­ry. Shap­ing a body to suit its needs is the least of its capa­bil­i­ties.

Every cruor ever escaped upon the Coast has spelled dis­as­ter. The first of these, unac­cus­tomed to the World and the shap­ing of its mat­ter, were the mildest. They were crude, ran­dom mon­sters in human bod­ies, unskilled in any­thing but slay­ing. Their sprees claimed hun­dreds. The lat­er incur­sions, of which there were many dur­ing the Dark Ages, were astonishing—by this point, cruores had well learned to adopt mas­sive, preda­to­ry bod­ies. Most of these were slain, leg­en­dar­i­ly, by knights, and left sol­id lead bones as their death­ly spoor. The ulti­mate incur­sions pro­duced cruores that par­tic­i­pat­ed as over­lords in the Predacean Colos­sus, the alliance of ser­pents, sor­cer­ers, giants, and dae­mons that at one point enslaved all of human­i­ty. The death toll mea­sured mil­lions.

It is no mys­tery why these dis­as­ters grew in mag­ni­tude. With every pass­ing incur­sion, cruores entered know­ing more about the Coast, its peo­ples, and its chem­i­cal com­po­si­tion. Far removed in their blood-real­i­ty, the dae­monisms nev­er­the­less devel­oped a pre­pared­ness to invade, despite no ram­pag­ing cruor ever return­ing to the plas­mic realm. They grew in their knowl­edge of the World for one pathet­i­cal­ly fatal rea­son: because sor­cer­ers told them.

Xenomantia

Sor­cer­ers have long induced cruores into the world. They did it, and still do, for knowl­edge. They call it xeno­man­tia—one of the high­est arts of sor­cery.

A dae­monism is a deeply intel­li­gent thing. When unable to grow and kill, it relies on sub­tler means. The first cruores sam­pled from the plas­mic realm by Lit­toran sor­cer­ers exhib­it­ed just this behav­ior. Siphoned into our world—locked into ten­u­ous con­tain­ment via crude magnetism—these spec­i­mens did not long rage in their cap­tiv­i­ty. They set about mim­ic­k­ing their cap­tors. Using what small flesh housed them as a mouth­piece, to the delight of those ear­ly sor­cer­ers, they soon spoke. †

They spoke, and they learned. They were giv­en names, fool­ish­ly, which sor­cer­ers used to iden­ti­fy and tar­get indi­vid­ual enti­ties in the plas­mic realm for siphon­ing. †† They drew them from the sun­less blood-dimen­sion and named a dozen and more alien minds. They instruct­ed them in our sci­ences, our cul­tures, our lan­guages. Our hates and loves. Our his­to­ry and our wars and alliances. Every­thing about the Coast was poured into cruores, told eager­ly by hubris­tic magi­cians drunk on the atten­tion of mim­ic-intel­lect.

All these that they siphoned and tutored, they released—allowed them return to their plas­mic realm with archives of knowl­edge on the human world. They did so inten­tion­al­ly, intend­ing they be siphoned again to draw upon for ref­er­ence. Incred­i­ble sor­ceries were pro­mul­gat­ed this way, shared between prac­ti­tion­ers who oth­er­wise would guard their tech­nolo­gies jeal­ous­ly, but betrayed them to the dae­monisms and their com­peti­tors both for the joy of fat­ten­ing the bound­less minds of the for­mer.

Mil­len­nia of Coastal his­to­ry has been spilled into the syco­phan­tic minds of dae­monisms. Naus­sia did it first, two and a half thou­sand years ago. The Nauss­ian sor­cer­er-kings leashed cruores in caul­drons imbued with elec­tro­mag­net­ic shack­les, and to them spilled the last secrets of the dead Nôr in hate-lan­guage. The Idrans did it too, and in their adu­la­tion of the dae­monisms per­fect­ed the equip­ment still used today to siphon them: The res­o­nance sphere. Even the plenipo­tent Agadese—whose ide­al­ized art, cul­ture, and democ­ra­cy serves the inspi­ra­tional core of many mod­ern societies—debated phi­los­o­phy with cruores, and in doing so made mock­ery of them­selves.

A cruor will always lis­ten. It loves every­thing said to it, but it does not love its mean­ing: It reveres only free­dom. It dotes on the aspect of release upon the world and will abase mean­ing itself to grow clos­er that fig­ment.

In incunab­u­la, and in the old man­u­als of xeno­man­tia, there abound cau­tion­ary tales of sor­cer­ers con­vinced of their cruores’ harm­less­ness who unleashed their own destruc­tion. Equal­ly as many sto­ries tell of trust­ed cruores—summoned time and again from the same “faith­ful” named daemonism—that over the course of life­times sub­tly twist their siphon­ers’ lives into an inge­nious con­trivance for release. Learned neosor­cer­ers need no arcane books to remind that the dae­mon-lords of the Predacean Colos­sus were all the man­u­fac­ture of sor­cer­er-lords too weak to resist them.

And yet, xeno­man­tia exists still today. Increas­ing­ly, the banks of the Coast turn to them for the loca­tion of undis­cov­ered tombs. Too, many of this cen­tu­ry’s neosor­cer­ers ply cruores for the loca­tions of incuan­bu­la, the bet­ter to learn the names of for­got­ten dae­monisms. In recent years, a mys­te­ri­ous research orga­ni­za­tion— the Mont­coy Coterie—has devot­ed skilled researchers and count­less cut­ters to dis­cov­er­ing the eldest known dae­monisms’ names.

In time, soon, an iota of dae­monism will walk upon the Coast, and in doing bask in glee.

How to siphon a cruor

The process of siphon­ing and con­tain­ing a cruor is aid­ed great­ly by mod­ern under­stand­ings of elec­tric­i­ty and elec­tro­mag­net­ism. Both have assist­ing in reverse-engi­neer­ing the ancient tech­nolo­gies of xeno­man­tia.

• Obtain or build a res­o­nance sphere. These con­tain­ment units abound in tombs and in the ruins of sor­cer­ous work­shops, but most are defunct. You will invari­ably need com­plete plans for a sphere, whether to build one, repair one, or main­tain either. These are often writ­ten in For­mal Idran, of which you need a firm under­stand­ing.
  • A Nauss­ian caul­dron also suf­fices, though its oper­a­tion is entire­ly dif­fer­ent and requires a sor­cer­er’s stone.
• Obtain elec­tric cur­rent. Eas­i­er done, in these elec­tri­fied days. Magi­cians of yore were forced to obtain dan­ger­ous antique hex bat­ter­ies for this pur­pose.
  • The cur­rent source must not fail. Fall­back bat­tery cells are required.
• Proof the sphere. A man­u­al of xeno­man­tia will guide you through the tests. The sphere must be evac­u­at­ed, dynamized, and made to con­tain var­i­ous sub­stances with­in its sus­pen­sive influ­ence, includ­ing mer­cury, blood, and mol­e­c­u­lar acid. No leaks or field fail­ures must occur.
• Obtain a reac­tion mass of hypo­nor­mal viridi­cal weight. Usu­al­ly, the refined hemo­glo­bin of a thou­sand mince toads suf­fices. Great care must be tak­en in han­dling the mass—spontaneous dis­ap­pear­ance is a real risk. You need a stor­age casque of hyper­nor­mal weight, such as bas­pho­ry lead.
  • This requires an advanced grasp of aar­time­try, the study of detect­ing, mea­sur­ing, and nav­i­gat­ing inter­sti­tial forces. In short: The art of nav­i­gat­ing oth­er worlds.
• Pre­pare the sphere. Care­ful­ly add the reac­tion mass along­side a 600 gram mea­sure of 1:1:1 human fat, lean mus­cle, and blood still be warm from har­vest. Evac­u­ate the sphere and dynamize the field.
  • If the reac­tion mass dis­ap­pears, you suc­ceed­ed.
  • Should you know the name of a tar­get dae­monism, you should per­form the accom­pa­ny­ing mea­sures at this time. These may require high­ly spe­cif­ic tem­per­a­tures, spa­tial ori­en­ta­tions, and times of day.
• Wait. If you suc­ceed­ed, a cruor will siphon through in place of your reac­tion mass.
  • If it assumes imme­di­ate con­trol of the pro­vid­ed flesh, your cruor is a greater dae­monism, one that has been siphoned before and become accus­tomed to it. These are the most learned. Usu­al­ly, a name is required to siphon one of these.
  • If it assumes con­trol slow­ly, you have a less­er dae­monism. These can be observed for a time to judge their mer­it, but should usu­al­ly be released. Do not mis­take these for harm­less, how­ev­er: Even dae­monisms unused to siphon­ing are dan­ger­ous.
• Con­verse. Enjoy the wis­dom and strange per­son­al­i­ty of your cruor. Take care to main­tain the integri­ty of your sphere and its source of cur­rent.
  • Do not touch the sphere. A min­i­mum safe dis­tance should be observed. Some cruores may attempt to star­tle you, hop­ing your clum­sy reac­tion dam­ages the sphere.
• Extir­pate the cruor. This sends is back to the plas­mic realm. No reac­tion mass is required for this. Rather, you must per­suade it to leave by elec­tro­cut­ing the sphere. The cruor either dies—which it will avoid—or manip­u­lates its own viridi­cal weight suf­fi­cient­ly to depart­ing the World.
  • Do not open the sphere for a fort­night. Many cruores have feigned their own depar­ture or death
  • Alter­na­tive­ly, allow the cruor starve to death. It won’t appre­ci­ate this—it prefers to rejoin the plas­mic realm. If you starve your cruores, future siphon­ings from the same dae­monism will be less con­ge­nial. They track the cruores you siphon and hold a grudge for each one killed.

classical siphoning

The most ancient xeno­man­tic method is self-sus­tain­ing, requir­ing no exter­nal elec­tri­cal source. Clas­si­cal­ly, a shard of philoso­pher’s stone is includ­ed along­side the reac­tion mass. Cruores, clever as they are, extract from the bio­plas­tic stone unend­ing vital­i­ty; or, at least, remove from them­selves the waste­ful bio­me­chan­i­cal process­es that would starve them, con­vert­ing to rely instead on ambi­ent light and heat. So aug­ment­ed, a cruor will not die. It might die, but no cruor would choose sur­ren­der over even a sliv­er’s chance of free­dom.

The clas­si­cal method is inac­ces­si­ble and dan­ger­ous. Few have achieved the height of sor­cery that is the man­u­fac­tured philoso­pher’s stone, and few exist­ing, buried stones have been found. If achieved, a cruor aug­ment­ed with a leg­endary Heart of Stone, if only a small part, is a grim­ly potent thing. One that can­not bear escap­ing.

notes

I swear the blood dimen­sion was con­coct­ed before Iron Lung.

Dae­monisms became more and more like LLMs as this con­cept devel­oped.

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