44 - "Lady Blackhand, are you an Otherworlder?" [Cherno]

[WIREBOUND WARDED SOULDREG VESSEL]

[Status:]

Good

[Details:]

Anti-scrying E3

Contents Concealment E2

Capacity 30,000 DU

[Contents:]

263 DDs

“Thirty thousand DUs.”

“Dreg Units, yes. The real capacity is likely higher, but that’s what the maker set as the intended maximum. After a while of owning the ring, it will begin to consider you its owner and its defensive enchantments will no longer affect you. It’s got around five thousand DDs on it right now, out of a set maximum of a hundred-fifty thousand.”

Krahe was paying attention, since this was useful info, but she couldn’t shut out the overwhelming sense of suspicion towards him. There was no reason for him to treat her like this, specifically no reason to act as if it was normal to not know this sort of information. Even a bit of surprise, a bit of “Oh, you don’t know, of course, you’re a foreigner” would’ve helped.

“Spill it. First that attitude, the weird looks, now this. Why?”

The banisher let out a resigned chuckle.

“Explaining myself will demand a two-pronged approach,” he said, holding up two fingers. “Firstly, the reason I mistook you for Favonia. It is because my eye can discern the basic nature of a living thing’s soul even through a wall, though it is no more specific than a blend of colours and patterns. Your pattern happens to be a close match for Favonia’s, and I simply made the reasonable assumption that it was probably her.”

“Secondly, this rather unique, almost damascened pattern arises from the so-called Gift of the Wheel, bestowed upon all Pilgrim Banishers as well as perhaps one in ten thousand other humanoids. That Gift is nothing less than memories of one’s past life, no more than tiny fragments for most, though us Pilgrims remember more than most. Favonia, however, remembers all of her past life, and this shows in her pattern.”

“The fact that your pattern matches hers, therefore, led me to one conclusion. There is also the fact that I simply cannot appraise you, even though my third eye can penetrate even Damrus Hashem’s anti-appraisal defenses. These two things led me to act towards you as I have thus far.”

“And what would your conclusion happen to be?”

“Lady Blackhand, are you an Otherworlder? A Greater Pilgrim, so to speak?”

_____________________________________________________________________

Several hours later…

_____________________________________________________________________

Somewhere in Audunpoint, behind secure doors, in a thoroughly reinforced and warded office, the imposing, pinstripe suit-clad form of Damrus Hashem stared across his writing desk down at his miscreant son. Jeweled rings of power gleamed upon Damrus’ fingers, a lavish pipe in his hand spewed orange-glowing smoke. Beneath his suit jacket, a richly embossed chestplate gleamed, and pauldrons of the same design adorned his shoulders. Even the jacket itself was armored, densely packed with ultra-fine chainmail. It was the best that his considerable fortune could buy. His body, too, was the best he could source, the husk of a once-successful mid-ranking Contractor, grafted soulbeast muscle and all. Since he had won it fair and square in a bet, and its former inhabitant had resigned to his death, Damrus barely had to deal with any rejection symptoms. A few bulging veins across his shining, bald head and down his arms, but nothing worse. He could even grow a beard, though out of respect for the previous owner, he had altered his face such that it could never be mistaken for the original.

Respect for the past inhabitant of one’s shell; it was a Gor’un grace which his fool of a son had yet to learn. He wore the stolen face of a D-lister Silversword Agency reject as if it weren’t the gaudiest shit this side of New Calbium.

“Father, I know why you called me here, and I already told you I had nothing to do with it. It had to be that Seven Spokes butcheress, Favonia,” Semzar argued. “One of her Red Hoods showed up at the Smokery, just walked right in, asked if I was there, and then left. I swear I felt that thing staring at me the whole fuckin’ time.”

Damrus sighed, blasting smoke over his son’s face. He didn’t even care that some of his most competent subordinates had been killed. The effort required to feign the human power of empathy; another grace which separated Gor’un from Gor’ah. It was also another grace which Semzar yet lacked. Damrus would’ve let him off with it a few months ago, but Semzar was mature as far as Gor’un went. He had no excuse. The mafioso decided to arrange for his son to lose that pretty body in favour of one that would take work to make look good. Perhaps that synthoid that had been running up a win streak in the pit, Palehead.

“It wasn’t her. As far as we know, Favonia has yet to return from wherever the church dispatched her to, which I also suspect is the reason that Red Hood didn’t act.”

The Red Hoods weren’t people; rather, they were Banishers who had been severed from the Banishment Wheel, then recovered by the church and reconstructed as semi-autonomous puppets for their graft-saints and high-ranked grafters. One of those monsters could fight on par with a lower mid-rank Contractor, but they wouldn’t attack unless they had been given the appropriate directives, and they were mercifully rare. Damrus wagered that this particular Red Hood was acting on its usual recon-only directives, meaning it would have only attacked if it had gotten a direct line of sight on Semzar or if it was attacked.

“Then who was it? One of the Verullus fuckers? Some Contractor too stupid to know what it is to go against the Hashem Family? I’ll find out-”

“Nothing. We already know. The culprit purposely left a survivor - Bahman, good kid. It was some insane anathemist that calls herself Blackhand,” Damrus interrupted, taking dossier in hand.