LIGHTNOVELONLINE 118 – Terror
With not much to do for the moment but wait to be contacted by Mistress Yao, Krahe had taken to occasionally frequenting the Society in intervening days. Due to the Tarnished Jade Flower Stamp’s tracking properties, she went out of her way to avoid any church safehouses, and the same went for going anywhere that might make it easy to deduce information. She went to the Temple of Records, but not to any restricted section, she avoided Garvesh, and only followed up on leads that led her to mundane places. Despite everything, the Society was well-hidden and secure enough, and the library had some texts she couldn’t find in the Temple of Records, and vice-versa. The wargames were also a nice diversion.
On an otherwise unassuming day, she walked through the Society’s second-floor corridor, and found herself confronted with an equally familiar and unwelcome figure. She had to suppress a smirk; it was an honest surprise that it had taken this long for them to meet again, and she was sure that was no accident.
Sorayah. She was clad in rather more normal clothing than that stupid robe, but she wore far more jewelry than seemed reasonable, especially rings, several bedecking each of her gangly clawed fingers. Krahe felt magic from some of them, so for all she knew, it might have just been a way to try and disguise which were magical. Behind her, two others trailed, whom she had not interacted with, but remembered as having stood near Sorayah.
She slowed and came to a halt at the sight of Krahe, a seething anger flaring behind her eyes in an instant.
“You,” she hissed.
Not responding, Krahe merely raised a questioning eyebrow to her.
“Levying false accusations against another member is grounds for expulsion, you know.”
“Reuben delivered my message, then? I’m not sure what exactly he said, but I’ve levied no accusations against you - neither to other members, nor to the Speaker. It was a mere word of caution. You needn’t fear any accusations from me - as it seems I must repeat myself, I don’t intend to play petty politics with you, or anyone else. What was your method, I wonder? A Jas’raban artifact maybe? Oh, but that power can only be catalyzed by a humanoid soul. I wonder…”
“Tread carefully,” Sorayah’s right-hand companion growled, arcane-green power winding about him for a brief moment. Krahe was fairly certain he was stronger than her - at least in terms of raw statistics. The same went for Sorayah… But they didn’t know that. She had felt two appraisal attempts from Sorayah by now, both impotently smothered by Deathsmoke Blessing without sending back any information besides the visceral wrongness of Krahe’s appraisal immunity. Casus had made it abundantly clear in the past; the force obscuring Krahe from unwelcome appraisal was something obviously different to any normal anti-appraisal measures. It was this property that made Krahe decide to handle things as she did in this given situation; merely blocking appraisal was one thing, it could be interpreted as guarding one’s weaknesses or lackluster powers. Deathsmoke Blessing made such bluff-calls infinitely less likely.
“To avoid being bitten by the snake coiled in the grass?” she asked the right-hand man. Then, staring hard at Sorayah, she added: “If we’re speaking of caution, I ought to instead stomp on its head before it can even think to strike at me.”
Sorayah, gripped by rage, elaborate patterns flaring across her body in dark shades of purple, hissed: “Who do you think I am, to be threatened by some nobody anathemist? I’m a level thirty-five Shaman, I have a fourth-order voidkey, I can-”
Before she could finish, or do anything, the black-haired woman who had humiliated her in front of the whole Society vanished. In her place, a shape of billowing smoke, with green-burning dots for eyes and an alien rib cage burning in her chest with the colour of a hot branding iron. The Green-eyed Demon rushed up to her with an inhuman speed, alien whispers and sounds emanating from her form, a raven of the same ethereal countenance upon her shoulder.
Her heretofore loyal companions fled like beaten dogs.
While the mouthless form merely stared at her, tilting her head back and forth, the raven opened its beak and a garbled, hissing, child-like voice came out. Behind it was a constant, grating sound, weird music from a screeching string instrument and rapid singing in a language she didn’t know. In simple terms, it sounded exactly like a crow talking while alien music played in the background, which itself was then played back off of a memslate through a shitty speaker.
“-Do nothing. You. Can. Do. Nothing. I don’t know what led you to the… Mis-be-got-ten. De-lu-sion. That you could harm me. In a way. That matters. Jas’raba could not. Hashem could not. The Dead. Night. Tigers. Could not. Cease this… Or become a stain. Last. Warning.”
With those words, she was gone. Sorayah slid down the wall, slowly deflating in a long exhalation.
Meanwhile, just outside, in the gap between this building and the next, Krahe plummeted three stories straight down. The only reason she dared to perform that exit rather than simply walking away was that she already knew this back alley was here. Thus, she could safely emerge from her dive mid-air, fall most of the way, and then dive again to break her fall. The velocity reduction from the weakened effect of gravity was nice, but even the sudden deceleration of impact had as little effect as any physical attack; that is to say, none.
She made herself innocuous, and turned her mind towards Barzai. The crow was still in the hallway, merely hidden, observing Sorayah. Krahe was perfectly fine with the possibility of the eidolon being detected; it would serve as a nice aftershock for her intimidation tactic.
In fact, once the lizard-woman gathered her wits and got back up, Krahe had Barzai follow from a short distance behind. Then, just as she saw Sorayah shifting in a way that suggested she would look back, she willed the spirit to reveal itself, perched on one of the wall-lights, staring at her. She stifled a slight laugh when the same woman who had tried to intimidate her ran away.
