The malformed corpse of Imraal’s cart was still out front, now joined by a trail of dried blood going inside the building. Krahe half-jokingly muttered a prayer to the deceased machine, then went inside, following the blood trail up the stairs to Garvesh’s apartment. From the direction, it was clear a corpse had been dragged out - obviously the baneworm. This guess was confirmed when Krahe entered the bathroom, finding Garvesh still in his pool-sized tub, with the corpse gone.
“Couldn’t they clean the blood after they took the corpse away?” she asked.
“Hrrm?” Garvesh grumbled, the sound more akin to the deep rumble of a cyber-gator than the vocalization of a person. He looked up at her, a predatory glow in his eyes, pupils constricted. Then, it suddenly melted away and he returned to his normal self. “Oh, it’s you, thought it was the cleaner. You just came in after he left to dispose of the meat. He will clean the blood too, if he knows what’s good for him. Well? How’d it go?”
“The snake guy I met with didn’t sound too happy when I brought up the Spire of Glass. Gave me this box that looks like a miniature sarcophagus…” she said, holding out her arm as she began the process of opening the Kenoma Sack.
Garvesh simply watched in silence while continuing to repair another of his ward-scales, this one two rows down and three to the right of the previous. A glint of recognition lit up his eyes at the sight of the box alone, but in the next moment, his gaze became distant. The Thousand-yard Stare; it was unmistakable. Coming closer and kneeling in a spot free of blood next to the tub, she set it on the edge and finally opened it. Immediately, a strong, dense aura spilled out, like a wall of smell hitting her in the face, only it didn’t smell like anything.
For the first time, she took the voidkey out of its container. It was a comet-like shape formed by a three-pronged bronze spiral, suspending in its center a shard of jagged black metal that thrummed with a mysterious and ominous aura. Cuneiform symbols were etched down the length of each of the voidkey’s prongs, as well as on one facet of the shard, though in the shard’s case they were fragmented. Something further inside the box grabbed her eye - a rectangular piece of the bottom, as wide as a memory slate and twice as long, could be pried out. It even had a cutout for a finger on one side.
“Oh, it’s one of these…” the lizard muttered at the sight of the key. Krahe pinged the rectangular stone, and received confirmation that it was, indeed, a memslate, and even that it contained the voidkey’s specifications. Setting the key down, she brought out her eyebox and finagled it to get the too-long memslate into its slot. It only went in halfway, leaving the springloaded cover open, but the eyebox read it just fine. She wondered if this was an old, outdated design, or perhaps just an alternate style of memslate that was still in use.
[SHARDKEY OF HESHMAD ABBASI, No. 7624]
[Tags:]
Third-order
Voidkey
Ancient
Series 7/8
[Details:]
Thaumic Throughput +D1
Entropy Tolerance +D1
Entropy Dissipation +D1
Barrier Catalyst (Hardened, Form-fitting, Shatter-type Anti-Meltdown Safety)
Barrier Hardening +D2
Barrier Formation Rate +E1
Barrier Upkeep Reduction +D1
Ward Catalyst (Hardened, Interlaced, Trinity Composite)
Ward Hardening +C1
This voidkey was wrought of the 7624th fragment of the armour of Heshmad Abbasi. May each among the 8888 Immortals of his great army forever bear a piece of his unfaltering strength.
“A shardkey. Bastard thinks he’s funny throwing it back in my face…” Garvesh said, anger in his words. He shook his head, asking with a calmer tone: “What number is it?”
“Seven-thousand six-hundred twenty-four, Series 7/8. Whoever made it seemed to be under the delusion that it was for some truly elite army.”
“The 8888 Immortals were one of the most elite armies of their time. You just got the second weakest kind of shardkey, the kind used by those of them who didn’t see combat or were not important enough to worry about assassins,” he quickly corrected, seeming as insulted as if she had described a high-caliber revolver as “primitive” to the average droid-wrangler. He held out his free hand to grab the key, and still seeing the dissociation in his eyes, Krahe handed it over. As he examined it, he continued speaking. His accent thinned out, as if he was forgetting to use it: “Each series of 1111 delineates a jump in the voidkey’s power based on the size and quality of the armor shards they’re built around. I’d even say that one of these is the epitome of a low mid-ranker voidkey, solid allrounder with exceptional defensive characteristics. They’re even designed to be compatible with upgrades and are highly collectible, so either way if you keep it or sell it later on you can’t go wrong.”
“How much would it have cost me in DDs?” Krahe asked in the same tone she used when haggling. That pulled him back.
“Who’s to say?” the old lizard grinned, his accent returning in full force.
“I’m sure you’ll call in that favour I owe you for a tenfold profit,” she grinned back, taking the shardkey out of his hand.
“We’ll see when that time comes. Now go, I…”
Garvesh plainly struggled to finish repairing the scale, his eyes constricting, steam erupting from his nostrils, followed by a trickle of blood. With superhuman effort he did it, and stumbled to his feet, staring ahead like a warrior on the precipice of death. A rumbling noise could be heard from his stomach, and he turned to look at Krahe.
“...I really hope this is yesterday’s dinner instead of the alternative.”
He coughed, and another trickle of blood ran from the corner of his mouth. Again he glanced her way, nodding for her to go, and so she did, trying to ignore the gruesome sounds coming from the bathroom as she left. By the rancid stench that reached her just before she got out of the apartment, it seemed the lizard had gotten his preferred outcome.
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