At that moment, she gestured at the paper and splashed a new pattern onto it, creating an eye-like shape with the dot of purple at its center. It was enveloped by golden light and an image came out, slowly solidifying as Yao sharpened her concentration.
“There. I requested one of my employees to look into her suitability as a customer when she was trying to contact me, and he sent this back as part of his report. I’m afraid I know nothing of interest about her, she is not well-known enough for specific information to leak and be circulated.”
The image was that of a young woman, and had the unmistakable appearance of a snapshot from a larger photo, enhanced and zoomed in after the fact to pick someone out. She looked… Normal. Wealthy, dolled-up, but normal, from her curled brown hair to her makeup-caked face, notably paler than the rest of her swarthy complexion, to her eyes and lips which were accented by streaks of purple. She looked like any middle-eastern young adult with too much spending money.
“No further information?”
“I’m afraid not,” Yao said. Her smile returned, and she added, “Though I am certain that, knowing her identity, you will have no issue finding out more. You got to me, after all, and how long did that take you? A week?”
Before Krahe could respond, Yao moved on, sending the talisman over to Krahe: “You may keep this. Now, Crescent Jezail…”
She thought for a moment, not trying to remember, but clearly considering how much to say.
“He is a customer, that I admit. He signs each of our communication slips, but he is also elusive-enough to avoid both my and my employees’ efforts to identify him. Moreover, he disfigures his own magic such that I cannot trace anything specifically back to him. That is to say, I have traces, but they are no more useful for finding him than traces from any other customer. You already know who he is, so I am sure your next question will pertain as to whether I can help you exact retribution upon him…”
Yao’s smiling expression, heretofore nothing more than that, became tinged with a demonic malice, “...As I assure you that I fully understand the thought process.”
Krahe hadn’t actually planned on trying to track down and kill Crescent Jezail at the moment; it wasn’t a high-priority objective. After all, he was just a hired killer. Odds were, she had been just another job, and killing him would only harm her efforts against Hashem by tipping them off that she was after them. Still, she went along with Yao’s not-entirely-wrong assumption, as it was true that she did want to take precautions against Jezail if she had to fight him in the future.
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“Crescent recently sent in an order for a custom offensive talisman, self-powered, with a fairly hefty pre-payment for the supplies necessary. It may be intended for you, if his employer realized that you survived.”
“How recently?” Krahe asked.
“Four days ago. I had started working on it just before you received the Tarnished Jade Flower stamp.”
“That… Lines up, I believe. I made myself known to Hashem’s people in the process of tracking you down,” Krahe said. She wagered that Yao already knew it was to do with Hashem, but she purposely dropped the name to be sure.
“In that case, I will show you,” Yao nodded. A gesture brought an unfinished talisman to the surface of her arm, then made it float before her. Just the paper’s texture spoke volumes to the higher grade of this talisman, appearing, if she didn’t know any better, to be an ultra-thin but otherwise unprocessed strip of wood, grain and all. The patterns, too, were mesmerizing, and an order of magnitude more complex than Wandrei Faust; it didn’t seem so at first, but, like layers of watermarking, different patterns came to the surface and receded depending on the angle of the light.
“Once activated it will multiply, much like the Paper Cocoon talisman, then surround and envelop the victim before flash-cremating them. Failing that, it will fire off its stored energy as a deluge of individual beams.”
Yao took back the talisman once Krahe had gotten a good look, replacing it with a blank paper as she added: “Pour your magic into this. I will add a hidden trigger to the Cremation Cocoon Talisman so that it backfires if used against you. Only a true master of the craft equal to myself could even have a chance to notice it.”
“I cannot bring myself to trust your word alone,” Krahe admitted. “How about you demonstrate how such a selective disarm trigger would function?”
“Sure,” Yao shrugged, as if having expected this. She brought out a pair of plain talisman papers, splashing ink on both of them. In the time it would take another to cast a normal thaumaturgy, she finished the talismans. The relative simplicity of their designs did nothing to detract from how impressive a feat this was. A single thick-lined chinese-adjacent symbol served as the centerpiece.
“These contain the First…” Yao began, but then stopped herself, simplifying: “They create a direct kinetic attack. I only put enough power into them to equal a normal, mundane punch.”
A mere flick of her finger was all it took to send one of the papers darting at Krahe, strangely rolled up into a narrow tube. The moment it left her vicinity, a rod-mace of golden light took form around it, and it smashed into Krahe with, indeed, the force of a very strong man’s punch, albeit concentrated down to the surface area of a fingertip. It punched a small hole into her Wards, but didn’t do much more.
Waiting not a moment more, Yao splashed an extra streak onto the second paper, and both Krahe and Casus almost immediately lost track of where it was, hidden maserfully among the rest of the pattern. Once again Yao set it loose against Krahe. The bar-mace construct formed as normal, but before it could strike, it suddenly exploded into many shards towards Yao, though they dissipated well before they could harm her.