LIGHTNOVELONLINE 149 – Unlucky Pt. 3
Silberblut got halfway up his arm before the giant evoy twisted his arm free and used its blast to propel himself backwards, wings exploding out of his back at the same time. Despite the catastrophic damage to his limb, Tsetse looked fine for the most part. That didn't add up. Evoy didn't have compartmentalized bodies like that... And it looked like there was a cavity in the center of that upper arm.
For a few moments, they stood some ten meters across from one another in a standoff. Tsetse retracted his sonic emitters, only for several plates on his chest to slide out of the way and expose a dinnerplate-sized emitter lens. A rising whirr began to issue out of it as the surrounding membranes shuddered, the blood vessels within them bulging out... And then it died down, and its covers slid back into place.
"No point. You're prepared. You would just turn it against me," he said, his apathetic tone now tinged by resignation and mild disappointment. His wings began beating, gradually speeding up as he turned his head to Seer: "Lucky."
Though he attempted to close the distance before Tsetse could flee, driven by the righteous will to exact the full extent of his deserved punishment upon Tsetse, Silberblut found himself thwarted. The fly-man simply caught his blade by skewering his good hand upon it and leapt away into full flight a moment later, leaving the entirety of his forelimb, seamlessly detached at the elbow. Silberblut exerted a herculean force of will to draw back the flame of his arm-blade, instantly dropping out of his transformation and stumbling to the ground. He hadn't quite realized just how mighty all of Tsetse's blows had actually been; the immediate surroundings had been demolished by their fight, with several civilians worriedly peeking out through broken windows. It was, in part, due to the Silberblut Coupler's eponymous Silver Blood, which invasively reinforced his body from the inside; were his compatibility with the coupler sub-ideal, he would risk massive rejection each time he transformed. Even if he didn't take a single hit, transforming still left him sore all over for several hours; a painful side effect he was entirely willing to bear. A few bloody coughs came up, their violent contraction making him distinctly aware he had some cracked ribs.
"Nothing broken, that's good..." he uttered as he got back up to his feet. He glanced around, and saw that Seer was gone. After reassuring the local civilians that the Seven Spokes would foot the repair bill and then some, he questioned them to see if someone had seen where Seer had gone. The three testimonies he got all lined up to suggest he had run off towards their original destination: The nearest branch-temple. Casus ended up finding him just there, hunched over before the statue of Igaria muttering a generic prayer for protection that betrayed his lack of familiarity with real scripture.
"I hope you kept an eye on my mask."
Saying that made Seer jump up like a Reaper had just whizzed past his head. Once he realized it was Casus, however, he deflated with relief and gestured to one of the pews. After this, Seer was moved via a daisy chain of underground passages to a secure holding place beneath another Seven Spokes branch temple. Casus left him there for now, himself visiting an ordained grafter in one of the city's shrine-clinics. Based on questioning the man, he brought Tsetse's forearm to a church-affiliated independent grafter known for his research into insectoid biology - whose clinic happened to be halfway across the city, deep in the bowels of the unfinished tram line. He had gotten to the safehouse only two hours before Krahe.
It had become abundantly clear that Krahe had something to say about the incident the moment Casus mentioned the location combination of a gambling house and the evoy apartment building. She nonetheless waited to bring it up until he was done, bearing an unsettling smirk on her face all throughout.
“Well well well, half a million each? How convenient, if “Seer” can point the finger for us, we ought to go collect the bounty in person. Just hope he's reliable.”
“What exactly would you have in mind for ‘collecting the bounty in person’?”
“An anonymous individual makes contact with Semzar, offering to have us both brought before him at a given date. Semzar prepares the money, and, quite likely, some sort of spectacle for Audunpoint’s underworld, if he is as much of an idiot as I think he is. We show up and make Slaughterhouse Nine look like a fucking joke, possibly with church support depending on projected enemy forces. His father may even be involved in an attempt to redeem himself for getting me involved in the first place. He just talked about your capture in the open in a smokery, can you believe that?”
"We shall know for sure in a few days, once Seer has been properly interrogated and any leads he provides have been checked. I doubt that his case is anywhere near high-profile enough to grab the attention of the Inquisition, but..."
"Hold, hold, stop. You mentioned inquisitors earlier. Explain."
"They are an arm of the Inner Wheel specializing in investigation and... Severe edge cases. For instance, if you had not gotten involved with my kidnapping, and if one of the Hashems took my body for himself, an inquisitor could have investigated the case and carried out judgment. I've only met inquisitors a handful of times. Severe people. Scarily competent. Not well-known besides the fact their powers of truth-extraction are nearly unmatched."
"Secret church police, outstanding."
"Comparing inquisitors to night-watchmen is a severe insult. An Inquisitor's work is not so far from yours, they are nothing less than specialist investigators for the Inner Wheel."
"I'll be sure to be more respectful if I ever meet an inquisitor. Wouldn't want to be accused of heresy and burned at the stake."
Seeing the confused look which she received for that statement, Krahe sighed: "The Inquisition had extremely negative connotations in my world. Let's move onto Tsetse, give me more specific details. I've got an uneasy feeling that one of us will run into him again. Start with those sonic emitters."
