The Dream-quest Scrolls were as bulky as they were strahough their stru was that of wood or bamboo-slip scrolls, they were made of dark chitin and bound by ligaments. She took them with her alongside all her other books she’d decided to check out in a bag that she had brought along. Before the librariaarted cheg over her choices, he said: “Due to the ditions of your Special Access to Se Thirty Eight, nothing you check out from there will be recorded, only the fact it was done. How many items did you take?”
“Four.”
“Four items from Se… Thirty eight…” he wrote down by hand, despite the presence of a typewriter-like terminal that projected a holographic s from where the paper would normally sit. In the same manner, he wrote the other relevant information down by hand, and proceeded to disappear the bck-bound book into a drawer out of sight.
With a smile, he bid her farewell: “May Zavesh and Igaria both bless your pursuits.”
Before returning to the safehouse for the day, she visited a market where she bought the pincer of a “Great Spiny Land-crab”, which was, as the name implied, from a giant crusta, and covered in spikes. Just the pincer alone was rge enough to feed multiple people. It was in a jar of preservative fluid before the butcher gave it to her. As she had learned from her recipe book, nd-crab meat kept much better than that of water dwelling cousins, in that it not only didn’t rht away, but could even be cured and otherwise treated like the meat of mammals while retaining ary properties akin to water crabs. This made it a valuable livestock export for the marshy regions that fed the “Calbian River Mae”, the desalinatastructure that fed Audunpoint’s river. It was still dirt-cheap as far as Krahe was ed, only a touch more expehan poultry.
It would take a few hours to cook in the manner she had picked out, but she had no trouble waiting. Three hours and some spare ge ter, Casus came by to drop off a message and a memoryste.
“It holds a series of keywords. Hand it over to the receptionist at the tral Temple when you wish to cim your share of the payout for the entire Sughterhouse 9 i. There is no information about you on it or in the system, merely textless data pertaining to the i and payments due.”
Detextualization. A reasonable iactic.
The bauck his head in further, sniffing a few times.
“Are you cooking nd-crab?”
Krahe nodded: “Yeah, it’s been in there for… Three hours? About an hour left, I re. I’ll have more than I eat, if you want some.”
“Outstanding! I’ve always liked nd-crab.”
Since Casus was now there to a the kit timer’s ringing, she took the opportunity to do two things: Cim her payout, and visit Garvesh to shop for some necessary materials.
The former went without issue. Krahe mao make herself look not-too-spicuous and slipped into the temple, passing a handful of faces that she ever so vaguely remembered from seeing them earlier. The bulging of her spine was not as spicuous as it would have been for ahanks to her hair naturally c the upper half of her back, where it was the most obvious.
In particur, she saw the stitch-trail covered, musclebound woman who had gotten bcklisted from the Silverswency for calling out favoritism in their ranks. She was still just as massive, but she had a neon, a huge shotgun with a long ax-bde on the end. It had a four-chambered revolving der with eight or perhaps even six-gauge shells. What drew attention, though, was the subject of versation. As before, it was the muscle-woman talking and another tractor listening, and this go round, the subject was Krahe… Or rather, some unknown third party that was involved in Casus Aristedes destroying Sughterhouse 9, supposedly a mad a that singlehandedly obliterated a graft-beast of Hashem stru.
Close enough.
The normal number of stares in her dire roof enough that her appearance hadn’t been leaked.
She reached the receptionist after a short wait in line and a man throwing a tantrum over not being given the medication he wanted. He was summarily picked up like a ragdoll and carried out of the temple by aremely chiseled, bearded man wearing nothing but a turban, a loincloth, and many bracelets both on his wrists and ankles.
Krahe simply handed over the memste. Seeing its subtly different design, the receptionist immediately looked at one of its sides and took out an eyebox with no visible projector lens. A few moments passed. Squinting, looking bad forth between the eyebox and a dot from a lower drawer. Then the eyebox went away and the receptionist said: “e with me, please.”
And so she did, and was led to a pot far into the tral Temple plex. From there, another member of the clergy took over, cheg the memste and leading Krahe deeper. He her spoke nor asked questions, and was clothed simirly to Fidelia, though much less ornately and with a simple ft mask.
She walked out of the tral Temple with several huhousand DDs to her name, most of it stored on her dregstones, while ohird was in a variety of Calbian Rings. It was then that she learheir on denominatio up to 10000 DD rings, each made of dark-purple Thaumstone and shod with glowing ruhat spoke of the power in the ring. The 500 was made of the same stone, but it was thinner and had five small gems in shades of purplish-blue. 1000DDs meant a golden, silver-inid ring with a single small purple-blue gem, while 500DD and 10s were both set with e gems; 500s were silver, with a rge gem. 100s were broh a small gem, while 50s and 10s were two different sizes of pin brohese three being the rings with which she was already familiar.
In good spirits, she made her way to Garvesh's pawnshop.
Little did she expect it to be closed, and when she knocked on his door, for the lizard to e out pointing a double-barrel loaded with reapers in her face.
Akaso
