It was here that she diverged from the pure path of changing the name to change the vessel. As she saw it, there was no need. If the name of something informed its manifestation, and if looking upon something instantly conferred an idea of its nature, then it stood to reason that remaking the vessel’s form more directly would result in being able to glean an appropriate name for it. She could tell the royal couple were not entirely comfortable with her plainly-obvious intentions, but they made no effort to stop her, nor did they even speak up, so she proceeded.

  First, came the restraints. A frame of dark stone, rising from behind the vessel in the shape of a cross. It hovered behind the vessel, held up by black tendrils as the hands of attendants might hold up an emperor’s robe.

  Krahe didn’t simply pull this design from thin air; as many others, this, too, was based on something she was familiar with.

  The Wolf & Raven Type-39 Alhambra exoframe. The Black Cross. One of the earliest and most resilient models to have a structure made entirely of graph-fullerene, a supermaterial structured like graphene, with fullerene spheres in place of single carbon atoms. Its nickname originated from its appearance prior to application to a subject, combined with its somewhat infamous use on humanoid mutants as both a strengthening and restraint measure, as its design made it particularly well-suited to that purpose. With restraint mode engaged, the subject would be forced into the pose of a crucifixion.

  Krahe bent down, reaching into the tar, and fished out a six-sided rod of black iron. With her bare hands and simple will, she wrought it into a nail the length of a railway spike and twice as thick as her index finger. Its head flared out to one and a half the spike’s diameter, and it had a pyramidal tip formed by six diamond-shaped facets, tapering down to a pinpoint. Into this, she poured the full force of her intent for Y——kh, the intent to “strengthen him through restraint.” There was no resistance. The world that was Zor’Aguhastra, whose world-law of leverage was even more intense than that of the surface world, gave form to her intentions without a speck of resistance. After all, she wasn’t imposing this vessel unto Y——kh, so there was no conflict. She was simply constructing the best possible vessel for the fulfillment of their future contract, and Zor’Aguhastra itself was more than happy to help her facilitate it through leverage.

  Then, she commenced with the hammering.

  Six nails through the spine to secure the main frame. Six more for each limb; three through each major joint along the axis of articulation, and three more to affix the exoframe. From the feet, she moved up, towards the shoulders, and ended with the hands, whose nails were through the palms to best pin their mouths shut. Only one empty spot remained — the head. Y——kh had no head, not even after all the work Krahe had already done. A gruesome mouth yawned atop the vessel’s torso where the neck ought to be, having, at first glance, two rows of six-sided nails in place of teeth, and a tendrilous tongue writhed behind them. The tongue ripped a nail free and, wrapping around it in a tight spiral, launched it with such force it cracked the air. When the mouth closed shut and opened again, it once more had all its “teeth.”

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  But Krahe, in her gut, knew that she couldn’t fully subdue Y——kh when it came down to it without giving its vessel a head, and that she couldn’t just alter the exoframe to exclude that design element. She guessed it might have to to do with the fact the Black Crucifix of her own world had that requirement, so much so that before being applied to a mutant with a particularly deformed neck or head, said mutant would need to have these deformities corrected first. The world-law of leverage went both ways, she had to play along to take advantage of it.

  Once again at her intervention, a head emerged from the tar, formed from the same glistening black stone as the nails and exoframe. Its shape was that of a wedge, its upper half resembling a cut gemstone with triangular facets, devoid of any sensory organs; the entire head was one giant mouth, with a seam that spanned it end to end, and it had a socket at the back specifically for the exoframe’s head section. To the vessel’s torso, it would be joined by a long neck with plenty of space for the tongue and whatever the eidolon bit out of a target, the neck’s articulated frame armored by interlocked, articulating rings of armor. When it came to joining that neck to the vessel’s main body, Krahe once more turned to nails.

  The sheer width of the vessel’s frame demanded a bespoke collar to seat upon its shoulders, one that came down over the top of its chest and back, leaving a gap for the exoframe. She formed sockets upon this armored harness at the points of attachment and nailed it to the vessel’s flesh, wedging them between the vessel’s metal ribs.

  For an eidolon, true physicality was not a necessity, it was yet another point of leverage. A body would be tougher because it was armored and thus because considerations had to be made for the mobility-limiting factors of that armor and for the fact other things couldn’t be put in its place. At the end of the day, it all boiled down to leverage. An eidolon’s manifestation vessel was an idol, every design element a symbol, even those seemingly impractical.

  Y——kh’s natural manifestation, and even the manifestation as Y’garokh the Biter, would likely have potent abilities related to biting and devouring. Y——kh’s corpulent form would have been one to withstand damage by sheer mass and regenerate from it, whereas Y’garokh’s lither form would retain these traits while trading durability for nimbleness. Despite retaining that aspect, this vessel’s chief defense would be armor, and both its nimbleness and regeneration would be stunted as a direct consequence of its restraints; its hand-mouths would be slower to open due to the nails, and the bulk of its armor would limit its movement, forcing it to either move deliberately or charge in a straight line and go to the effort of deliberate anchor-turns using precious nails, placing it somewhere between Y——kh’s natural form and Y’garokh the Biter in terms of mobility. Its chief offensive capability would be to inflict its own state upon others: Impalement, pinning, and crucifixion by way of its six-sided nails; in this manner, it would compensate for its limited mobility by removing the mobility of its targets, creating the openings it needed to bite them.

  The Black Crucifix melded seamlessly to the head. Finally, it was done. The exoframe stiffened, pulling back the vessel's arms and head back as it settled into its locked configuration.

  At last, all else fell into place, and Krahe felt satisfied with both the vessel and the name it evoked in her mind.

  Krahe stepped to the side, glancing past the vessel at the royal couple. The King had eyes once again; six eyes, to be precise, three on each side of his face. Of these eyes, four shifted to stare at her, while the lowest pair remained fixed to the vessel.

  "You are finished?" he questioned, making no effort to conceal his taken-aback tone.

  “I’ve decided," she nodded. "The Contract Name shall be Y’Alha’Zor of the Crucifixion.”

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