The moon ascended over Belburry–silver tears dripped down, flowing down the cathedral spire, pooling into a mercury sea. In its midst the great temple stood, a vast bridge connecting its steps to the city beyond.
Aric stepped across the bridge, and entered the grand cathedral. Inside, dim light revealed a cavernous hall, held up by black columns engraved with silver-filled carvings of wooden puppets. Numerous rows of seats stretched before a risen altar. Above, a great hand-shaped chandelier lit up the room, silver threads dangled from its fingertips. The air was filled with the taste of wine and smoked cherry wood.
Aric kneeled before the altar, which bore an idle of a great hand controlling a marionette.
Praise the Great Puppeteer, he thought vigorously. After offering his praise, he took his seat. An old man stood behind the altar and began preaching. The man to Aric's right, an older man who appeared to be in his early forties, reached out and touched Aric on the shoulder. Feeling this, Aric subtly reached his hand into his pocket, finding a smooth wooden handle.
Aric swiftly drew his pistol and fired 3 shots into the old man's head, leaving no time for a reaction. Before he could even scream, the man's head was reduced to a pink and red mush. The man's body hit the ground, shifting into a strange form–a humanoid figure formed of twisting black tentacles.
All the other people continued their worship, not batting an eye at the gunshot or the grotesque corpse, as if used to the sight. Aric dragged the corpse out of the building, careful not to disturb anyone, and carried it to the bridge. He checked the pockets of the bloody clothes, producing a wallet.
One, Two… Seven qirsh and twelve chips… Not bad for an unplanned hunt. When hunting a Parasite it was difficult to prove ownership of a kill, so instead of offering bounties the city of Belburry instead lets the hunter keep anything the victim had on their person as compensation. Aric without another thought tossed the body into the silver abyss below.
***
Clang! Clank! Clank!
Sparks flew as Aric hammered at the steel. After countless swings, the metal barely changed shape.
"Gods, yer' useless!" barked William, the shop's old blacksmith.
He stumbled over and shoved Aric aside, leaving a cloud of cheap booze and tobacco in his wake. Grabbing the hammer, William swung wildly, half the blows missing their mark.
"Old man… you okay?"
William glared at him, swaying drunkenly.
"Why wouldn't I be, you damn sootbeak?" he snapped, spraying a mix of spit and half-chewed food.
"I'm th' most okay'est man th' world's ever seen. That's why you ain't met 'nother one who been livin' since before the rain."
I certainly haven't met anyone else as fucking weird as you, Aric silently insulted him.
Clank! Clang! Thud!
The old drunk continued working on the metal, occasionally slipping and hitting the anvil. While he focused on hammering, Aric noticed a small white spark got out from William's mouth. The next swing crashed down, splitting the metal into a few perfectly formed nails.
Despite being a hopeless drunk, this was the reason William could stay in business—he was a nomenclator, someone who could wield True Names to manipulate the world around him. William was rather unskilled, and could only invoke the True Name of metal, but in return when it came to said True Name he was as efficient as it gets.
Aric quickly scooped up the nails and dunked them in a vat of oil to harden. Once quenched, he dropped them into a barrel already full of hundreds more.
We'd have more if you could swing your damn hammer straight, but you're too busy suckling from your bottles, he thought, silently criticizing William.
Sitting back in a chair near the forge, William pulled out a cigarette and lit it.
"Yer pretty damn good at doin' all that busy work. Guess tha's reason nuff' to keep ya 'round," the old drunk muttered, half-joking.
Aric rolled his eyes while organizing the equipment. "Just pay me already, grandpa." He reached into the barrel and pulled out a dozen nails. "And take out a cut for these."
William grumbled under his breath, tossing seven coins onto the table. "Take it, ya greedy bastard."
Aric pocketed the coins and set the nails on the table. Around the nails he used copper powder to draw a crude hand with threads sprouting from each finger. On each fingertip he placed a lit candle.
Now I can show this bum he's not the only useful one here, Aric thought inwardly while preparing the ritual.
After setting up the altar, he began his prayer.
"Praise the Lord who wields the world on the end of a string. Praise the unseen hand who guides all things. O Great Puppeteer, bless these armaments with your unseen guidance."
As the ritual concluded, a thin silver thread connected the tip of each nail to the sight of a pistol on the table—Aric's pepperbox revolver, modified to fire nails instead of bullets due to the high cost of gunpowder. This prayer, though, was not the reason for the altar set up on the old man's table. He rested the nails along the copper dust, pointing toward the roof. This time, instead of a prayer, he planned to invoke a True Name, closing his eyes as Nomule, the energy only understood as 'building blocks of True Names,' gathered in the air around him. Channeling Nomule into his voice he whispered a single word:
"Taranis."
Aric's hair stood on end, and a blinding flash tore through the smith shop and the tightly packed streets outside. Heat seared the room, smoke filled his senses, and a deafening crash echoed through the building.
Holy fuck! I didn't expect that, Aric frantically thought.
When his vision cleared, the shop was intact—except for a perfectly circular hole burned through the ceiling, its edges red and smoldering. On the table, twelve nails now crackled with electricity.
"Hey, old man, look at that, it worked!" Aric exclaimed, failing to hide his excitement.
I hadn't tried using the True Name of lightning before… who knew I'd have such a high affinity for it, he thought inwardly. He cleared his throat and regained his composure before he loaded six nails into the revolver, placing the others in his coat's inner pocket and turning to William.
"Wha' th' fuck wuh that?" William yelled, his voice a mixture of fear, shock, and awe.
"Hm? I just used the True Name of lightning to inscribe these nails. I even did the ritual for more effect," Aric explained. He tossed two paper qirsh onto the table. "This should pay for the ceiling. Keep the change."
***
Aric walked through the slums of Belburry, the sun just beginning to set. These slums were a breeding ground for parasites. The people were starved and easy to infect with no nomenclator or priests to kill the parasites before they took a host.
I really need to make some good money tonight… The ceiling repairs cost more than my paycheck, Aric thought, keeping an eye on his surroundings. He turned a corner in an alleyway, when a silver flash of movement streaked across his vision. He quickly leaned back narrowly avoiding an attack from a sword-wielding man.
The man before him was scrawny and frail. His arms were nearly as thin as the neck of a wine bottle, and his legs weren't much better. A few patches of oily gray hair covered his head. The man had sunken eyes and a mouth with no teeth, his tongue replaced by a grotesque black tentacle. Despite the body's pitiful state, thanks to the parasite it moved at speeds a normal human was unable to react to. Luckily, as a nomenclator, Aric could channel Nomule to invoke the True Name of Body, pushing his body to move at superhuman speed. Sadly, Aric was not physically powerful, so even in this state he couldn't compare strength-wise to an exceptionally strong mundane human.
The parasitized man's combination of superior strength and relative speed allowed him to swing his military saber at speeds that Aric could hardly react to. The man swung his sword in an unpredictable storm of metal, something a skilled Nomenclator swordsman would be able to handle, but Aric was no trained fighter. As Aric's back hit a wall in the tight alley, the sword closed in on his neck. Just as the blade made contact, it drew a small bit of blood, he channeled Nomule into his neck, and the blade effortlessly passed through, meeting no resistance.
The true power of a nomenclator was not in manipulating the True Names of the world, but in manipulating their own True Name. No one was born knowing their True Name, or even a fragment of it. Instead, understanding of a Personal True Name was separated into several tiers, known as Selves. Not all were publicly known, but Aric knew of several: material, mental, spiritual, vital, and spatial. By understanding their place in different parts of the world as well as different parts of their identity, one could accommodate their other selves and work toward mastering their Personal True Name. Aric had accommodated his material self less than a year prior.
With each self accommodated, one gained a power. Aric's material self had the ability to turn parts of his body intangible momentarily. Though he couldn't do it often, he could use it to avoid lethal blows! As the sword flew past Aric, the parasite lost its balance, putting too much force into the swing. While it staggered, Aric wasted no time in counterattacking. He drew his pistol and shot a lightning-inscribed nail through the man's head!
As the nail made contact, lightning ripped through the man's head, charring the tentacles in the place of bone, then evaporating the blood before it could make a mess. A deafening boom roared through the alley as the man fell over, dead. Aric reached into the man's pocket, pulling out four chips.
That's… forty-six left before I break even, he groaned inwardly. He picked up the man's saber, still thinking: this is in good condition… I could probably make at least fifteen chips from this!
As he began to move to find another parasite, a scream tore through the air from nearby. Aric quickly ran in the direction of the sound, where he saw a man whose body was torn open from the inside by numerous black tentacles. These tentacles grabbed a corpse belonging to a young boy, whose face was still frozen in horror–the source of the scream. Before Aric could react, the tentacles ripped open the child, slithering into his body and consuming his bones. Blood stained the cobblestones under the scene, as the child's skeleton was consumed in an eerily silent manner.
Oh gods… Aric stood there, frozen in disgust. Luckily I skipped lunch or I wouldn't be able to hold it down.
Aric looked away and pulled back the pistol's hammer. The barrel rotated, a loaded barrel taking the empty one's place. The mystical thread connecting the loaded nail's tip to the pistol's sight shot forward, connecting to the head of the parasite's host. Without looking, he pulled the trigger. The nail flew out of the barrel at the speed of lightning, following an unnatural path along the thread. This was the effect of the Great Puppeteer's blessing, to guide an attack on a path guaranteed to hit the target. Before the nail made contact, Aric muttered a word: "Taranis." The lightning inscribed upon the nail suddenly flared up in strength and intensity, vaporizing everything from the man's sternum upwards.
Aric jumped down and moved forward to inspect the man's corpse. To his surprise, the man wore surprisingly nice clothes for the slums. He checked the wallet and counted. One, two, three… Gods, twelve qirsh! And twenty-two chips! In just two kills, I've made thirteen qirsh and one chip, and that's not even including the sword! Aric stuffed the money into his pocket before turning to head home.
***
Aric sat in bed, bandages covering the small cuts from the sword-wielding parasite. He reached onto his bedside table and grabbed a book titled History of Belburry after the First Rain, a required read for anyone studying at the city's universities.
Sixty-three years ago, on the first day of winter, quicksilver poured from the sky, filling the lower streets of Belburry and the streets below the Cathedral of the Puppet Master. Since then, every eight years, a new catastrophe has struck the world on that day… interesting. So the old man is practically ancient, Aric thought. It's just a few weeks until the onset of winter.
Knock. Knock.
Aric's thoughts were interrupted. He stepped to the door and saw a letter that had been slid under, sealed with wax bearing a noble emblem. He pulled it open. The message was simple: 1240 Elbur St. Tomorrow at noon.