Weeping Jade
The severed arm of one of Thorns' more recalcitrant Dragon Bloods flew across the dark operating theater and a curse followed soon after. "How the hell does that bastard do it?"
Ā Bí, first of the Black Caul Chiurgeons, picked up the arm and carried it back to the basalt worktable. He bowed low, and the black shroud he wore rustled with the movement. "Who, mistress? And what?"
Weeping Jade spun on him, her face a mask of fury broken by the soulsteel rings and studs she'd pierced through the flesh of her face. "Rivers Between Us! Every patrol those damned Solars send out is armored head to foot in Gunzosha suits. He didn't steal them from Lookshy, so he must've built them himself. But where did he get his hands on that much raw jade? Does he piss moonsilver and crap orichalcum?" The Abyssal threw a pair of thick, serrated shears to the ground.
"He could have developed a Charm," Ā Bí said.
She cut him off with a glare. "And the speed! Even if we had a dozen resurrection pits and all ten of you could cast Iron Reanimation, we could never build enough walking war machines to defeat them."
As she spoke, Weeping Jade leaned back into her ghoulish work. She stitched the Dragon Blooded arm to half a torso left over from an earlier, failed experiment with a god-blood and cemented the bond by driving an adamant rivet through the bone. Ā Bí bent to help his mistress complete the latest of her Transcendent Revenant Vessels, the bodies that the Mask of Winters' elite Nemissaries wore when they walked abroad in Creation. The grave-born artificer threaded soulsteel wires into the muscles of a second, merely mortal arm, to reinforce the flesh with necrotic power. "Are the Prince Resplendent's Hardened Killers not enough to turn the tide?"
Weeping Jade dropped her clamps and seized a ribcage from the parts table. She shook it at Ā Bí. "Not unless they can start wearing their bones on the outside of their flesh!
"The outside of their flesh..." The Abyssal paused, considering the ribs she held. She pulled at the bone, infusing it with Essence to make it malleable, until it was large enough to wrap around a living man. "Back the bone with adamant...
"Forget the vessel," Weeping Jade said, and she tossed the ribcage to Ā Bí. "call the rest of the Chiurgeons. I've just devised something new, and I need you all to work on it. It's called the Loathsome Osseous Shell; Gunzosha armor born of the grave. We'll soon see what those Hardened Killers are capable of!"
Ā Bí ran off, still clutching the ribcage, and Weeping Jade laughed long into the night.
