Another staccato of thought-flashes followed, far more rapid, showing similar scenes of growth, but no corruption this time. Saints arrived all the same, but passed through without incident after solving small problems. It was obvious what it meant; a juxtaposition of some kind, perhaps even a vision sent from on-high, seeing as she was an apostle after all. Krahe didn’t understand what exactly it all meant, lacking the mental bandwidth to properly process so quickly, but the visions all burned themselves into her memory with unnatural clarity.
When she next blinked, she was at that bar, in the exact moment after she had swallowed the shot, and the aftertaste was just starting to set in. She found her gaze slowly wandering over to the snake as she regained full awareness, not unlike waking up from a dream.
The barman - and his snake - both gave her an amused look, with the former remarking: “I would advise you to not get addicted. You’ll have a near-immunity to the positive effects for… Oh, I would say a few years at least given the dose. It would require a blood sample to be sure.”
“What, did you have to get an apothecary license to sell snake venom as a drink?” Krahe slurred, still not quite mentally back together. Some echoes of psychedelia still lingered, and her mind was busy parsing the visions. Before the barman could respond, the ground shuddered. Noticing the difficulty of keeping her balance, Krahe decided that it was high time to head back to the safehouse. She left, having paid for each drink individually so she could keep track of her tab. It totaled an irresponsible sum, but she somehow didn’t regret it. More than half her total was the Six-eyed Dream Serpent Venom. The safehouse was empty when she got there, but a note on the coffee table clued her into the state of things. The Inquisitor had finally gotten around to dealing with Seer, and Casus was, at this very moment, one of the participants in the interrogation. The note also near enough begged her to just wait and not try to take action on her own.
Krahe smoked a cigarette of Adefron Incense, only to wake up to the sun high well above the horizon.
“Five hours…” she thought. From what she knew of Adefron, this meant she would have likely slept around twenty hours had she not used it. In the absence of any particular goal besides waiting - which she hated - she took Atomica back to Gashward Road. Two days passed without any events of note, which was utterly agonizing. Krahe tried to find that bar again, but she couldn’t find it. The location was burned into her mind, but it was as if the place had just up and disappeared. There was a bar there, yes, and it was even the same building, but it wasn’t that bar. The floor plan was the same, but everything from the floorboards to the counter, the furniture and staff, nearly everything was different. So as not to seem suspicious or otherwise stand out, she spent a few minutes there and bought a shot of cheap, nasty, funky rum before leaving.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
After this excursion, she busied herself by attempting to recall and reconstruct the kata she saw Sauer performing in her vision. When that turned out to be a dead end, she turned to Yao’s scroll, and after that, to improving the design of her wards.
In the end, she ran up against a dead end with all three of these endeavors.
She was already struggling to mentally digest her thoughts, trying to comprehend Yao’s ultra-dense writing style only made it worse. Sure, it was clear and largely devoid of pointless obfuscation, but it was still written in a quasi-Cantonese equivalent to renaissance-era scholarly writing.
Improving her wards was theoretically plausible, but she simply lacked whatever made it practical, and she didn’t even understand Wards well enough to know what she didn’t know. No matter what she did, her wards always settled into a homogenous ablative layer of compacted ash. At best she could add some resilience by incorporating obsidian, which did help, but it was just applying the benefits of the Forming Toroid rather than improving the fundamental design or technique.
The trial-and-error process was only made worse by the limitations of her voidkey, which gnawed ever more keenly when it came to something so thauma-intensive as reconstructing her Wards over and over again. Moreover, it was a reminder that the Twin Serpent Voidkey was merely at the borderline between Second-order and Third-order.
It took every bit of strength she had, but Krahe went to Garvesh and, without a bit of pretense, simply asked for help.
“Can’t help with your Wards, not the same as mine. And as I said already, the Twin Serpent Key really was my best. But… I have been looking for one ever since you first asked, and a guy who owes me a couple favours just recently got one for me. Only reason I haven’t picked it up yet or sent you a message is, well…”
The old lizard looked around. He was still in the tub, in the exact same pose.
“Been otherwise preoccupied, let’s say. So, here’s how you get to his place…”
It wasn’t a particular building, but an even more obscure shop than Garvesh’s, one that shifted locations periodically and required an invitation to get in even if you found it. For this reason, he went on for a few minutes and had to repeat himself so that Krahe could write it down. Well outside the city, it was a particular ship ferrying people and goods across the river.
“You’ll have to dial the number, it’s 583791. Remember that - you got it? Good. The code word… I don’t remember. Just tell him Garvesh sent you, and that this is about that favour I called in recently. If he doubts you, just say I hope he hasn’t forgotten what I did for him at the Spire of Glass.”
“What did you do?” Krahe asked, not expecting an answer.
“I’m not telling you,” Garvesh grinned. “Just mention it. He will know. As for payment… We can work that out later. Call it a favor for now.”