29 - Smokery [Cherno]

A/N: Edit to end of chapter.

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She told herself that she didn’t know why she felt so invested, so motivated to fulfill this seemingly random case. It wasn’t special in any sense other than being her first case since her rebirth. Deep within, she knew what it really was; a burning drive to engage in struggle against evil and prevail. Saving an innocent, seemingly even a righteous life, that was secondary. Krahe wanted, needed to find and expunge wickedness. Zastreon’s unspoilt beauty only served to amplify that subconscious desire.

Lighting a cigarette, she left, drinking in Audunpoint’s tranquil nighttime atmosphere and staring up at the night sky. It wasn’t the smartest move, keeping her attention off of the way ahead, but she couldn’t help herself. That kind of nighttime sky did not, could not exist in her world; chemical pollution, light pollution, orbital pollution, and advert satellites all made sure of that. That was not to mention the Banishment Wheel, ever looming, or Zastreon’s many small moons that hung up there as pale witnesses to all. The moons’ pallid glow made the street lamps feel obsolete.

With Garvesh’s directions, she easily found the smokery, though its location alone confirmed everything she’d expected. A shady place, in a shady part of town, hidden in the city’s twisting intestines, and surrounded by about as much filth as that metaphor implied. Through a back road she found her way to a yard, and a sturdy door awaited within that yard. It was almost unassuming, if it weren’t for the raucous noise and the stenches of humanity blended with uncounted kinds of smoke that issued from within the ancient building.

Unsurprisingly, the bouncer who waited outside the door demanded payment for entry. He mentioned free entry for fighters, but she wouldn’t have gone that way even if she was perfectly rested. The bouncer was a tall, muscular lizard, imposing and deformed in equal measure. His right arm was completely out of proportion, twice as large as it rightly should be and bulging with baneworm tendrils beneath the skin. He let her into the building, where she was met by a nostalgic sight. The L-shaped space was half hookah lounge, half pit-fighting den. It called to mind memories of at least twenty different establishments she’d carved into memory throughout her lifetime. For its shady provenance, it was a rather nice place overall; cushy cushions and couches surrounded hookah-like pipes and curious racks of more typical pipes. She even saw altogether alien implements, chunky machines with sloshing souldreg tanks, wafting iridescent fumes into the air in their immediate vicinity. Somewhat surprisingly, she saw not a hint suggesting the presence of a VIP lounge.

Farthest from the entrance she saw and heard the pit, surrounded by a dense wall of bodies cheering on whomever was within. Flashes of bluish light and the sounds of electric snapping played the companion to mechanical whirring and heavy stomping.

A quite typical bar counter flanked her to the right, several stools lined up before it and an eclectic variety of alien beverages on the shelves. On the wall above hung blackboards with fighter names and betting rates, as well as one with prices for renting the machines and their respective fillings. Apparently the souldreg-powered ones were called, uncreatively, “dregfumers”. Two individuals were seated at the far end of the bar, bickering and drinking toxic-looking liquids. One was an evoy painted head to toe in Seven Spokes imagery, his chitinous plating distorted and patchworked as if huge chunks had been cut out and replaced with grafts. His drinking companion was a man of seemingly ainu ethnicity, possessing dark skin and an asian facial structure. His curly black hair hugged his skull, set into what would be best described as a punch perm. He wouldn’t have stood out, were it not for the fact that his teeth were painted black and he had an additional pair of arms sprouting from his upper back. Krahe didn’t pay them enough mind to take note of how they were dressed besides the evoy’s near-nakedness and the presence of many bright, clashing colours on the four-armed man’s outfit. Both gave off an aura that made her want to avoid fighting either of them.

It was a relief to see these figures and many others like them all over the smokery, including three anathemists that she could pick out just by their widespread anathema burns. One was a female figure, sat alone, wearing a gorgeous golden human face mask that contrasted with red-white hair and burns that seemed to cover most of her nearly-exposed upper body. The two other anathemists stood out by their, to put it bluntly, crackhead twitchiness. She took care to not move her left arm much, but couldn’t bring herself to emulate that behavior.

Krahe sat down at the bar and waved over the barlady. A well-endowed, scantily clad woman with subtly off-colour skin on her face, much younger looking than the rest of her. She ashed a squashed cigarette into one of the several ashtrays littering its aged, pitted, battered wooden surface.

“What’ll it be?” came a chainsmoker’s croak from her.

Half an hour later and a chunk of change poorer, Krahe sat back and took a long drag from the mouthpiece of a hookah. She’d rented it for two hours, buying a lump of a vaguely minty herb that the barlady said to be “a step above Arrha”, called Cassia. From the kick she got on the first drag, she was inclined to believe the sales pitch. She’d given it a once-over with the Prospector’s Eyes beforehand, of course, just to try and make sure she wouldn’t get dragged into a typical addiction hook scheme.

[Dried Cassia]

[Status:]

Good (Average Quality)

[Details:]

Habit Forming F3

Inhibition Release F3

Body Energy Amp G1

Mental Energy Amp G2

A tanned, scarred man with a shaved head approached her stall and asked if he could partake: “Don’t got enough to rent a hookah for myself, but- I’ve got my own stuff and mouthpiece. I can pay you uh a hundred DDs.”