23 - Know What's Good For You [Cherno]

Garvesh breathed a sigh of relief.

Something was off about her, beyond the state of her arm. Nay, even that looked wrong. At a glance it seemed to be terribly anathema-burned, but just a few seconds of watching it move disproved that hypothesis. A limb that badly damaged ought not to be able to move at all.

Her gaze, the way she held herself, everything about that woman screamed trouble.

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Just outside the pawn shop's street level entryway, Krahe spent a few minutes fiddling with her new cigarette roller. Its insides were six toothed cylinders, and erelong she had a perfectly fine arrha cigarette in hand. She rolled up a few more and lit one before taking off, but just as she was putting the box away, she heard loud, desperate footsteps quickly approaching. They clicked against the paving-stones like metal shod boots.

It was one of the fly-men, an evoy, dressed in a tunic. His exoskeleton had cracks in places, with meaty tendrils protruding out through them. At first he just rushed into the alley, only to stop dead as if he’d ran face-first into a wall when he approached Krahe. Recoiling, he barked: “Eugh, put that shit out! An- and get the fuck outta my way, right this second, if y’dont wanna die!”

With the second sentence, he raised his hand to her, gesticulating as if the weird ring on one of his three fingers meant anything.

“Huh? Sorry, I don’t have any money,” she feigned ignorance, taking on a slouched posture, hands in her pockets as she leaned against the wall. Not wanting to alarm him, she stopped dragging from her cigarette, meaning to use it as a casting medium for a Smoke Eruption.

“You’re killin’ me here, put that fuckin’ thing out! Don’t y’know arrha is toxic to bugmen?!” he once more barked, banishing any doubt as to the fact he was a baneworm hitching a ride in some poor evoy’s corpse.

Krahe sneered, letting her true opinion of the man shine through: “I’ll be nice, and let you walk away just this once.”

He let out a chittering laugh: “I’ve got Appraising Eye, woman, you’re not foolin’ me with edgy looks. Now stub out that cigarette, kick that gun over to me, and spill yer pockets or I’ll blow your head off!”

She ignored him, taking another drag. Burning some Thauma, she prepared a Smoke Eruption.

“I- Can’t you see I’ve got a Blastin’ Ring?! I’ll blow your-” he started, only to freeze in place. There was another pair of approaching footsteps, heavy and armored, accompanied by a rather pretty whistled melody.

“Helluva contractor I am, can’t even catch a half-baked body thief…” the quickly-approaching voice lamented. The crook’s eyes went wide. She could feel him looking for an exit, and so used the opportunity. A long exhalation. The alleyway filled with smoke, the bane-evoy’s head wildly snapping to and fro. He started waving his arm around, screaming; wave after wave of concussive force erupted from his ring, quickly scattering her smoke.

Rushing up behind him, she put him in an arm bar, angling his ring away from herself and pointing her own palm into his face. There came an unpleasant squelch as her grip ruptured the tendril around his left arm, causing his hand to curl downward like a dead spider’s legs. The motion made the Blasting Ring slip off his finger. His incessant blasting cleared her smoke enough that she got a close look at his face before she removed it with a point-blank Deathsmoke Spray. Arsenic-green ribbons unfurled from his chitin at first, but his wards’ protection only sufficed to ensure that he wound up writhing on the ground rather than dead. On second thought, she figured his exoskeleton also acted as a sort of armor, making Spray perhaps the least optimal choice.

“His dregs are mine. Step off, anathemist,” came the voice from earlier, its source entering the alley. It was a short, bronze-skinned woman. Young, maybe even in her teens. Her very much feminine dress, frills and all, was contrasted by heavy boots and gauntlets, the right-hand one particularly elaborate and set with a large blue gem. A prominent necklace hung from her neck; a silver sword. It couldn’t have been easier to feel that she was stronger than Krahe, at least in terms of raw capability.

“Ho? I see, he was running from you. I take it he’s got a bounty on… Well, what’s left of his head. Be my guest.”

She knew better than to get into a potentially dangerous conflict for something she didn’t know the value of, and this could be a learning experience besides.

“I need only his dregs, nothing more,” said the strange woman. She knelt down and thrust her arm into his head, ripping out a writhing, muscular worm as thick as her arm. A three-pronged Jas’raban void key popped out the dead fly-man’s empty head and rolled out onto the cobbles, unharmed, if slathered in gore.  The woman ignored it, taking an ominous device out of some unseen pocket with her left hand. It was clearly designed to fit in the hand going by its size, with two thick hypodermic needles and an empty glass phial. Meanwhile, the gem on her right gauntlet lit up for a moment, and the next, the baneworm froze in her grip. She stabbed the device into an intact portion of the baneworm and squeezed a trigger on its side.

Purplish, iridescent liquid partly filled the phial over the course of around a minute. During this time she turned her gaze up at Krahe and flatly remarked: “If I were you, I wouldn’t deal with those lizards. Y’know, if you know what’s good for you.”

“I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about,” Krahe lied.

“You’re smoking arrha out in front of Garvesh’s pawn shop,” the stranger rolled her eyes. “Take it as a friendly warning, for helping me catch this good-for-nothing body thief. Involving yourself with them won’t lead you anywhere good. Powerful people want to see them gone, and that fake Pattner on your hip won’t get you far against the likes of Damrus Hashem. Certainly not with an anathema-fried arm, or any voidkey that old lizard can offer you. Can you even move that thing?”