A few minutes passed as Zachariah began the arduous and, indeed, time-consuming prepwork. The only sound to fill the silence was that of the inkstick grinding against the inkstone.
“I’m curious. How does this work? The thing with the Flower. Not on the magical side, the personal one. Why did you simply take the code-phrase at face value? Did Yao herself order you to do so?”
“You have the right of it, yes. She chose me, and a small handful of others, as middle-men, a first layer of vetting so to speak.”
Slowly, round and round, in slow, steady motions, Zachariah ground away at the ink stick. With each revolution, the water on the flat portion of the inkstone turned to ink, the pigment coalescing into unnatural wisps of perfectly-scarlet colour, draining away into the reservoir at the other side of the inkstone, leaving only a tiny puddle of water. Time and again, this cycle repeated until no water was left and the reservoir was filled up to a particular line. Zachariah tipped the stone back, so that the ink would return onto its flat portion, and took out the Tarnished Jade Flower.
He pressed the hybrid badge/stamp into the stone, which fit together perfectly. Performing a series of hand-signs with his free hand, he poured an impressive torrent of thauma into the stamp, wisps of golden light spiraling around his arm. Just from the aura it gave off, Krahe was certain that it was a greater feat of raw arcane power than she was capable of, and yet, it was this contained.
When he raised it up, all the ink was gone, and the stamp now shone with a bright-red mirrored outline of its symbol.
“Now, Lady Yao did state that this ought to be placed upon as flat an area of skin as possible…”
“Must you apply it?”
“I’m not sure what you mean-”
Krahe unbuckled her pants. The sound of the buckle was clue enough.
“Ah. I see. No, my part is done. You need only hold it strongly to the right spot until the buzzing sensation passes. Shall I…”
“Turn around, yes.”
“...Right.”
With that, Zachariah spun his chair around, awkwardly holding out the stamp backwards. A few moments later, Krahe had the stamp/badge clamped tightly between her thighs. “Buzzing sensation” was an understatement; it felt very much like having a tattoo done all at once… Perhaps due to the fact the stamp’s magic was trying very, very hard to pierce anti-scrying defenses that just weren’t there.
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“Er, is… Is everything alright? It has been twice as long as usual.”
“And yet it’s still going,” she remarked dryly.
It was another half-minute before, at last, it gave up, leaving a patch of irritated skin in whose midst Krahe could make out the flower sigil. She popped three Tabryxa pills into her mouth. Nonetheless, it was done, and Krahe absolutely did feel an indefinable something exit the stamp when she removed it from her skin and put it back on the table.
“You may turn around now,” she said as she buckled her trousers once more.
The Speaker, all too eager to not speak of the mildly awkward sequence of events, instantly took the stamp, wiped it down, and put it back in its case.
“Now, it is a matter of waiting,” he said. “I hope that you find whatever it is you are looking for. And ah… Do not mind Sorayah. She and her circle are merely wary of new members.”
That was a huge lie by way of understatement if Krahe had ever heard one, but she didn’t feel like confronting the old man after he had just shown her serendipity, so she simply gave him a nod of acknowledgment and left.
----------------------------------------
Within an unassuming, random, yet exceedingly well-warded house, which stood on a street just off the city’s main arteries, a woman sat. The house, built in millennia past, would have seemed utterly normal, only lightly warded, to all eyes, for even this was part of its warding. Its magical protections, like walls a kilometer tall and wrought of solid steel, had the appearance of mundane stone, neither taller nor thicker than normal.
She sat, globs of scarlet ink orbiting her hand like planets around a sun, its ivory fingers and golden joints glistening in the faint light of the light-producing talismen she had affixed to the walls in lieu of using the inbuilt lighting. Like a painter, she mulled over her canvas, yet it was not stretched over an easel, but a single piece of yellow paper, held fixed in mid-air by the weakest of magics. She cautiously guided the flame in her gut into a roar, ever cautious, feeling like she was fostering a candle-flame, yet also feeling that it might burst her open from the inside at any moment. In a few quick gestures and splashes of ink a new talisman came to be. Meanwhile, her precious brush rested nestled in the midst of her chest, beneath a curtain of myriad necklaces, from beads to precious stones… Unused. So pitifully unused. But it couldn’t be helped. In her current, sorry state, she was in no position to use that brush.
Suddenly, a would-be customer made herself known; someone who had dug in the right places, or who had perhaps caught the interest of the right people. Yao Fu pulls on the new metaphorical red string, expecting, truly, just another customer, someone to put in the queue for simple exchange of goods and/or services.
But no.
This one demands her attention, her full, unbridled attention.
A woman, named Brunhilde Krahe, also known as “Blackhand”. Currently located in the Lost Sun Society. The rest of the information was incomplete. No… Tainted. Obscured by black smoke. Were it a book, its pages would be blackened and glued-together by tar. The same tar that now held together Yao’s own Soul Furnace, which rightly should have been shattered, irreparable, leaving her forever crippled. Yet here she was. Reduced to be lowermost rungs of power, hiding at the other side of the world, sure - but not for long… And either she had just found the soul whose summoning had opened her window to communion with the Black God of the Labyrinth, or the heavens were playing a truly cruel trick indeed.
She would learn which it was soon enough; Brunhilde Krahe instantly shot up to the top of her priority list.