43 - Casus Aristedes [Cherno]

Casus’ claim proved itself true when, as the two of them were on the way to leave, Krahe went over all the other bodies, looting them for easy things like money and small trinkets before harvesting their Souldregs and pulling their Voidkeys. It wasn’t hard to find enough phials for her souldreg harvester, the few gangsters of elevated import all carried their own extractors and several phials to boot. One Voidkey broke as she tried to pull it out. Just one. It didn’t snap, as much as it exploded into a dozen pieces that didn’t make up enough mass to physically reassemble the key. Only the biggest piece was left with any tangible magical hum to it.

By the time she was done - no more than a few minutes’ time - Krahe had already done most of the work needed to open the Kenoma Sack, having anticipated this. Soon enough all that loot was safely in her [Storage] one way or the other, and she could safely open the menu to behold the fact that not a single voidkey in the entire building came even close to outperforming Shiva’s Warding Chain. Fortunately though, the purse she’d accrued through simple murder of mafia members would suffice to buy one of Garvesh’s more expensive offerings and still have plenty left over. Altogether, she estimated it to be just a bit short of forty-five thousand.

“Would sure be nice to see the maximum capacity on all these vessels…” she muttered.

“Fifty-thousand DDs for the First-order ones, a hundred-thousand for the Second-order ones, give or take,” Casus remarked offhandedly. “I can look them over later, if you so wish. I shall wager that my eye has a stronger Appraisal than those glasses… Even if it cannot penetrate whatever magick shrouds you.”

An unpleasant shudder ran down Krahe’s back. She didn’t like how friendly the banisher acted right from the first, even though her gut feeling raised no alarms. It seemed as though he was truly just like this, as if being friendly was simply his default mode of action, not just towards one who had broken him out of prison, but in general. People like that did exist in Megacity Gamma, but they were few and far inbetween, and oft even more trouble than the wolves in sheep’s clothing that pretended to be nice. Cynicism could protect you from a wolf in sheep’s clothing, but it couldn’t protect you from the actions and mistakes of a genuinely nice person.

They absconded from that dreadful place soon after, taking with them the half-spent Dregsteam cartridge which had been used against Krahe. The last thing she did on the top floor was opening all the other cells, checking for any other prisoners. Sure enough, a second prisoner was to be found in one of the cells; a silent, stoic saurian with black scales, wearing only loose trousers and covered in scars. He simply got up and walked out when he saw an exit, rumbling as he passed Krahe: "Thank you, anathemist."

"Semzar Hashem wants to turn you into a skinsuit for his lieutenant," she lied to him.

"I assumed as much. He is a dead man walking," the saurian replied. He didn't even bother walking down the stairs, instead jumping from one of the windows, across the street, and onto a neighboring roof.

On the way down, Krahe rifled through Lipstick’s pockets and found the source of that nickname, a silver tube filled with herbal-smelling green lipstick.

Of course, they didn’t leave through the front, but one of the side entrances. Though cautious about following his lead, Krahe chose to trust Casus’ knowledge of the city nonetheless, and soon found herself in a two-room apartment several kilometers from that butcher shop. Never once had they passed over any major road, though Krahe couldn’t help but notice that their path ping ponged between shrines and grafter shops. It was through the building’s back entrance and up a hidden, cramped, steep staircase. Casus dug a backup key out from behind an illusory brick near the door, muttering: “I’m sure Favonia won’t mind…”

The apartment was objectively-speaking small, but downright spacious as far as Krahe’s own standards for apartments went. Places affordable to 90% of the law-abiding population tended to be cramped affairs in the megacity, offering a living experience most easily comparable to a camper-van.

For some time, they just sat there in silence. Krahe perched herself upon a windowside couch and watched the stars. The window faced an enclosed yard shared with three other buildings, rather than the street. A decorative coffee table stood nearby, carved of dark, purple-streaked wood in a baroque style, with two more couches nearby, all sufficiently lavish to be found in an executive’s personal dwelling. Real fabrics, real wood, real everything, probably handmade if she were to guess. Worth a small fortune in Megacity Gamma, probably just on the upper end of affordable here. Indeed, everything in this place was terribly, terribly nice, from the furniture to even the wallpaper, all evoking the same sense of art-deco wealth as the city’s nicer parts. Without her asking, the banisher returned from another room bearing two cups of steaming liquid that she at first didn’t recognize, but then realized it had to be the natural base from which the chemical abomination of SynthCaf had been derived.

Casus took the cup in hand and sipped, letting out a satisfied sigh.

“Damn good coffee. And hot!” he exclaimed, turning his gaze to Krahe. “I promised that I would take a look at all the different vessels from the Old Street Butchershop, did I not?”

“You did,” she admitted, and laid them out on the table one by one.

The banisher’s unsettling third eye revealed that Shiva’s purple jade ring was her best option, and in this process, she also learned the fact that solid-stage souldreg vessels had storage limits. Shiva’s ring outperformed all the others by an order of magnitude in terms of capacity, revealing itself to be a Second-order artifact whereas all the others were First-order.

“You’d think something so basic as maximum capacity would be easy to read…” she complained, reluctantly taking the offered drink. A small sip. Damn good coffee, and indeed, hot, too. An underlying, cloying sweetness, almost like artificial sweetener without the rancid aftertaste.

“It is. Some vessels don’t even have a specific maximum capacity, they will simply begin glowing when they are near their vague maximum and you run the risk of leakage or bursting the vessel if you overfill it. Some have a maximum capacity, but no limiter. For others, the Contents Concealment trait just hides their intended maximum capacity. What’s the Appraisal rating on your glasses?”

“D minus. Objects only.”

“Uh… Try this one,” he pointed out one of the cheaper-looking vessels, a cut and polished stone wrapped in silver wire with a necklace loop.