Rather than actually beeline straight to Yao’s paper-walled fortress, Krahe bumbled around the city for a short ti and eventually made her way to Gashward Road. There, she found nothing. No deliveries waiting for her at the nearby shrine, and no signs of break-in. Everything was exactly as she had left it, if dusty.
And so, she waited, passing the ti in any way she could, making for Yao’s only when the ti felt right. The talisman mistress, unlike Garvesh, expressed not an iota of worry for Krahe’s life.
“Two months or two years, I don’t care,” the old monster shrugged. “I saw that you yet lived, and that you would return in ti. That was enough. The changes you have undergone, on the other hand, I cannot ignore. You seem to have failed to ntion anything regarding your cultivation.”
Krahe genuinely wasn’t sure what she ant by that.
“What cultivation? Rember, I am not familiar with your terminology.”
“Your soul furnace. It has been altered. Multiple tis. You have clearly undergone a forced advancent, but the path… Have you omitted your possession of a cultivation manual tied to the Hexkey? But it does not seem to be anything of Shang’s design, how strange.”
“It was part of the Atomica’s implantation-quenching. You didn’t expect this?”
“Why would I? The odds were miniscule, and, I admit, I foolishly expected you to know what to expect from a voidkey of this level — and thus, to know what was abnormal. Co. Tell precisely what took place, for all I know you run the risk of bursting your soul furnace each ti you cast thaumaturgy, if not exploding altogether. It is not my place to stop a stranger from committing suicide, but I will not have my escape route collapse itself.”
Krahe half-wanted to simply ntion that there had been issues and that they had been resolved, but she managed to convince herself to show a greater degree of trust than that by elaborating to greater detail on the Atomica, the Fourfold Astral Implosion Furnace, and the issues that resulted from her foolhardy decision during the raid.
“Well, your decision was not as foolish as you might think, at least. I have seen far uglier examples of forced advancent in my ti. Without your friends in the church, assuming you ca to , I could have had you using the Atomica with minimal side effects within a year at most. I suspect you will say that you do not have such ti.”
“I wanted to say that about the two months the church asked of , but I had no choice in the matter, and would not have a choice were your theoretical course of events to take place either.”
“You ntioned four of these… Control rods, was it? Was that the limit of your thod?”
“Six. The number isn’t fixed, as far as I know.”
“A unique thauma-burning thod that evolves the user’s thaumaturgy, improves efficiency, and allows for gradual advancent, at this early a stage. The world truly is vast beyond reckoning,” the talisman mistress remarked, chuckling to herself with clear disbelief in her voice. “Perhaps, without a curse to fuel, the remnant will Shang left within the Hexkey helped condense so profound knowledge of yours into that thauma-burning thod. Does it seem to have any relation to the words you uttered during the transmutation ritual?”
Krahe looked at Yao for a few seconds, considering what to say, whether to even bother trying to explain or to just say yes and move on. She considered explaining the Solomon atomic transmutation reactor, the mysticism and ritualism involved its design, and how it was an early example of psychokinetics being applied on a large scale. In the end, she decided to simplify things.
“Yes. My Astral Implosion Furnace mimics the operation of a great machine that transmuted pure materials into other materials through physical phenona and harnessed a subtle kind of magic that allowed pure force of will to manifest as physical force. I don’t yet understand the transmutation machine or this world’s magic well enough to translate it in a way you would understand.”
“That which can be conveyed through words alone is not truly profound. What you’ve said has already answered the question I had, that being the reason you decided on that particular incantation. The fact it so directly paralelled the ritual explains why it worked so well. Now, I believe you had a reason to co to , yes? I didn’t take you for one to commit an unannounced visit for company’s sake.”
“Where to start, where to start…” Krahe hemd and hawed, summoning a cigarette. She lit it, took a drag, and let out a smoky sigh, looking around the room, sweeping her eyes over the many talismans plastered inconspicuously over the walls. While many were camouflaged into the stone, just as many were plainly visible, if one had the eye to look at them. And yet, they refused to be noticed. Krahe had to fight to keep her eyes from slipping off them, and even then, they bled together. Finally, she looked at Yao.
“So of those,” she nodded in the general direction she had just been looking. “I an to open up a detective agency with a public-facing office. I’ll need proper security. If I am to open myself up for attack like that, I’ll need to turn the place into a paper fortress of my own.”
“Alright, I can help you set up security — only the basics,” Yao said. With a gesture, a scroll flew off of a shelf and onto the coffee table. “The rest, you’ll have to do yourself. I’m not a charity, and I don’t expect that my preferred security asures would suit you. You can cook up your own traps. Co back to when you have the location. What else?”
She sounded impatient, almost disinterested, clearly expecting sothing more interesting. Krahe figured she shouldn’t be surprised — securing a location must co as second nature to this old monster.
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