Yao walked downstairs, with Krahe following.
“This seal will have the secondary benefit of further compressing the voidkey’s energies,” Yao said on the way down. She proceeded to collapse onto a sofa, and, in a manner strangely similar to Razem, any sense of transcendence vanished from her. It even felt as if she had aged by decades in an instant. “It may slow the stabilization process, however. Now… Please go. I am exhausted, and if you and the voidkey were to remain here, the energy signature would linger.”
Krahe did as was asked of her without hesitation, placing Atomica into the book-box, giving a simple nod as goodbye, and walking out. The Talisman Mistress’ fortifications fell into line right behind her, one after the next. This was the first time she got a close look at them. Graft-beasts, walls of talismans, traps, dozens of layers. Despite the appearance of normal alleyways and the open sky, this whole section of Audunpoint was a fortress meant to withstand direct assault from a small army, if not perhaps individuals such as the three comets still waging fierce battle in the sky.
After Lady Blackhand’s departure, the domicile of Talisman Mistress Yao Fu was filled by an exhilarated, yet also exasperated laughter. The crippled old monster had predicted a potent result, but what had come out was a full order of magnitude above what she had expected. Perhaps Shang had carried out the suicide ritual in a far better state than she had assumed, or perhaps Lady Blackhand held some profound insight that altered the transmutation rite’s course. It had to be both to some degree. The voidkey’s new name was beyond Yao’s understanding, but she perfectly grasped the magnitude of difference between what it had become, its past incarnation, and what it had been intended to become. There was one thing for certain: Shang had not intended the transmutation to yield this result. The voidkey’s fundamental nature was altered by the concepts carried in Lady Blackhand’s prolonged incantation. Atomica Refulgent was not even remotely suitable for the Onyx-black Hall’s practices; if anything, it was ideal for the type of person that would go against them, a natural anathemist - in other words, it was ideal for Blackhand.
Yes, Yao laughed, bringing out an ensorcelled bottle-gourd that she had brought with her all the way from Tiengenzhen. She took a long swig from it in celebration; it was filled with a small lake’s worth of quality baijiu. If things proceeded at this rate, she might be fully mended before the decade was out. That was the uttermost extremity of everything going as well as the transmutation rite, but even a few decades or a century were an outstanding time frame for undoing the mutilation that had been perpetrated upon her Soul Furnace.
In the end, she had done less than half of the work she had been ready to do. In the time Lady Blackhand took to retrieve the Hexkey, Yao had made preparations, she had taken things out of storage, readied herself to deal with the consequences of carrying out a strenuous ritual that she didn’t fully understand… And while she was exhausted, it was an exhaustion that would be gone before the end of this new day, rather than demanding several days of active rest. In short, Yao was pleasantly surprised by how this whole thing had gone.
Krahe was pleasantly surprised by how the transmutation ritual had gone. Compared to her deep-dive excursion into the Astral Gulf, it had been simplicity itself. Nonetheless, she felt utterly drained. Not physically, but mentally; she had felt this before, especially after Slaughterhouse 9, but it had been masked by far more vivid feelings of tiredness back then. She cut a jagged path through the city, stopping at a small bar. Rather than being seedy, like she was used to, this establishment gave off the feeling of a decent place purposely located out of the way to filter out those who didn’t do their research, tourists, and the like. There was a substantial entry fee, enough to pay for a week’s food. It was nearly deserted, with most of the patrons entranced by the light show overhead, meaning that Krahe got all the privacy she could want.
She spent this half-hour simply drinking and smoking, permitting herself to truly relax for once, without trying to find something to do, without thinking about what she should be doing, without constantly thinking over the possibilities of who was working for whom or what groups could possibly get involved. Keeping local political webs in mind was enough of a pain when one had lived in an area for years, but Krahe was simultaneously learning Audunpoint and causing changes in the process.
It was nice to retreat to a tiny world populated by four people total, including the barman. Some of the drinks were familiar - the typical grain alcohols and fruit mash distillates - but others were… More in-line with crab juice. Shots of mild hallucinogens and psychedelics that took effect and wore off equally quickly were exceedingly common on the menu. It was obvious why; most of them tasted tolerable at worst, and they universally provided an enjoyable experience. One could zone out for a few minutes without such consequences as a hangover or withdrawals. Various mixed cocktails included not only the blending of flavors and fragrances, but also the alchemical blending of different psychoactives for altered effects. A cluster of beverages warned away anyone with oral sores or stomach ulcers, and listed comparatively high prices for antidotes. Yes, even the venoms of various creatures were drunk for fun. Krahe tested out a few, noting with some amusement that the barman insisted that one particular venom was from a ‘properly fed’ specimen of some kind of giant spider, stating that it had no aphrodisiac qualities whatsoever.
One offer in particular advertised the fact it came from a live snake and supposedly could bring about epiphany if one consumed it. Krahe saw it as literal snake oil, but she decided to bite the hook anyway, out of curiosity.
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