The Dream-quest Scrolls were as bulky as they were strange. Though their construction was that of wood or bamboo-slip scrolls, they were made of dark chitin and bound by ligaments. She took them with her alongside all her other books she’d decided to check out in a bag that she had brought along. Before the librarian even started checking over her choices, he said: “Due to the conditions of your Special Access to Section Thirty Eight, nothing you check out from there will be recorded, only the fact it was done. How many items did you take?”
“Four.”
“Four items from Section… Thirty eight…” he wrote down by hand, despite the presence of a typewriter-like terminal that projected a holographic screen from where the paper would normally sit. In the same manner, he wrote the other relevant information down by hand, and proceeded to disappear the black-bound book into a drawer out of sight.
With a smile, he bid her farewell: “May Zavesh and Igaria both bless your pursuits.”
Before returning to the safehouse for the day, she visited a market where she bought the pincer of a “Great Spiny Land-crab”, which was, as the name implied, from a giant crustacean, and covered in spikes. Just the pincer alone was large enough to feed multiple people. It was in a jar of preservative fluid before the butcher gave it to her. As she had learned from her recipe book, land-crab meat kept much better than that of water dwelling cousins, in that it not only didn’t rot right away, but could even be cured and otherwise treated like the meat of mammals while retaining culinary properties akin to water crabs. This made it a valuable livestock export for the marshy regions that fed the “Calbian River Machine”, the desalinator megastructure that fed Audunpoint’s river. It was still dirt-cheap as far as Krahe was concerned, only a touch more expensive than poultry.
It would take a few hours to cook in the manner she had picked out, but she had no trouble waiting. Three hours and some spare change later, Casus came by to drop off a message and a memoryslate.
“It holds a series of keywords. Hand it over to the receptionist at the Central Temple when you wish to claim your share of the payout for the entire Slaughterhouse 9 incident. There is no information about you on it or in the system, merely contextless data pertaining to the incident and payments due.”
Decontextualization. A reasonable infosec tactic.
The banisher stuck his head in further, sniffing a few times.
“Are you cooking land-crab?”
Krahe nodded: “Yeah, it’s been in there for… Three hours? About an hour left, I reckon. I’ll have more than I can eat, if you want some.”
Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.
“Outstanding! I’ve always liked land-crab.”
Since Casus was now there to act on the kitchen timer’s ringing, she took the opportunity to do two things: Claim her payout, and visit Garvesh to shop for some necessary materials.
The former went without issue. Krahe managed to make herself look not-too-conspicuous and slipped into the temple, passing a handful of faces that she ever so vaguely remembered from seeing them earlier. The bulging of her spine was not as conspicuous as it would have been for another, thanks to her hair naturally covering the upper half of her back, where it was the most obvious.
In particular, she saw the stitch-trail covered, musclebound woman who had gotten blacklisted from the Silversword Agency for calling out favoritism in their ranks. She was still just as massive, but she had a new weapon, a huge shotgun with a long ax-blade on the end. It had a four-chambered revolving cylinder with eight or perhaps even six-gauge shells. What drew attention, though, was the subject of conversation. As before, it was the muscle-woman talking and another contractor listening, and this go round, the subject was Krahe… Or rather, some unknown third party that was involved in Casus Aristedes destroying Slaughterhouse 9, supposedly a mad anathemist that singlehandedly obliterated a graft-beast of Hashem construction.
Close enough.
The normal number of stares in her direction was proof enough that her appearance hadn’t been leaked.
She reached the receptionist after a short wait in line and a man throwing a tantrum over not being given the medication he wanted. He was summarily picked up like a ragdoll and carried out of the temple by an extremely chiseled, bearded man wearing nothing but a turban, a loincloth, and many bracelets both on his wrists and ankles.
Krahe simply handed over the memslate. Seeing its subtly different design, the receptionist immediately looked at one of its sides and took out an eyebox with no visible projector lens. A few moments passed. Squinting, looking back and forth between the eyebox and a document from a lower drawer. Then the eyebox went away and the receptionist said: “Come with me, please.”
And so she did, and was led to a place not far into the Central Temple complex. From there, another member of the clergy took over, checking the memslate and leading Krahe deeper. He neither spoke nor asked questions, and was clothed similarly to Fidelia, though much less ornately and with a simple flat mask.
She walked out of the Central Temple with several hundred thousand DDs to her name, most of it stored on her dregstones, while one-third was in a variety of Calbian Rings. It was then that she learned their common denominations went up to 10000 DD rings, each made of dark-purple Thaumstone and shod with glowing runes that spoke of the power in the ring. The 5000DD ring was made of the same stone, but it was thinner and had five small gems in shades of purplish-blue. 1000DDs meant a golden, silver-inlaid ring with a single small purple-blue gem, while 500DD and 100DD rings were both set with orange gems; 500s were silver, with a large gem. 100s were bronze with a small gem, while 50s and 10s were two different sizes of plain bronze, these three being the rings with which she was already familiar.
In good spirits, she made her way to Garvesh's pawnshop.
Little did she expect it to be closed, and when she knocked on his door, for the lizard to come out pointing a double-barrel loaded with reapers in her face.