LIGHTNOVELONLINE 150 – Lost Sun Killer Myth: Tying Up Loose Ends
Krahe questioned Casus on Tsetse's combat characteristics for some time afterward, going so far as to draw out a surprisingly accurate diagram. Her rendering of Tsetse's forearm got astonishingly close after a few rounds of edits.
"Still, the absence of either Wards or Barriers is worrying... Combined with everything else, I almost want to guess he might have been some evoy version of Mamon Armor. If not that, maybe he was grafted to be as close to a war-morph as he could get. Despite the absence of orthodox wards, his armor did hold up against Silberblut, and he did keep up with you in that form..."
Days passed. Krahe couldn't find an easy route of ingress into Sorayah's home, until she tested the route that was often forgotten: From above. Climbing a nearby building, Krahe got onto the roof of Sorayah's home and skimmed down. Hot, stale air assaulted her and the darkness of a disused attic choked her senses. After getting some light by pouring Thauma into her arm she saw that the attic was completely empty, and had clearly not been used in a long while. She took a moment to bring a small DD-fuelled light out of storage. She used a small tendril to affix it to her shoulder. Krahe didn't even try skimming down, assuming the presence of wards; she simply looked around and found the door. It was old, dusty, and didn't even have a lock, but it didn't open, suggesting a latch at the other side. Its hinges were on this side, however.
Krahe left, deciding to prepare before committing. She sourced a tubular lockpick from Garvesh, and learned that, apparently, artifacts and talismans capable of breaking local wards were fairly difficult to come by. And so... Krahe just gave up on subtlety. If she had the time, she would've tried to source such an item or even develop a Theurgy capable of it, but as she saw it, she didn't have that much time. Sorayah's case was a loose end that needed tying up. It didn't need to be a perfect, cleanly executed ghost operation.
She returned the next day around two hours before Sorayah usually came home, once more skimming into the attic. Ten minutes and a few usages of the Forming Toroid later, Krahe had knocked the hingepins out and propped the door against the wall. A narrow stairway led directly to a hallway on the floor below. The house was quite small, with one bedroom, a reading room, kitchen, and basement. Rugs, wood, bronze, and semiprecious stones made up the decorations, with simple glowing stones set into the walls as lights. It was, just like much of Audunpoint, an ancient building that had been renovated. The bedroom was locked and warded, as was the basement, but the same couldn't be said for the kitchen or the reading room. She picked the locks on both, taking a few minutes for each; this was quite slow, given the fact the locks weren't particularly strong and didn't have any particular anti-picking measures. There was nothing suspicious in the kitchen, unsurprisingly. Going through the reading room, Krahe found a variety of books, including several interesting books on the interactions between Theurgy and Anathemism, none of which were to be found in the Society’s library. There was also a complete copy of Burning Torment Wrought in Black, and fragmentary copies of several Human Charcoal Letters. Besides occult texts, a surprising volume of Sorayah's personal collection was made up of human-saurian interspecies smut.
Unfortunately, Krahe didn’t find any spare keys inside a book, even after searching the writing desk and finding three different hidden drawers. One of these contained a smut manuscript involving a painfully obvious self-insert being taken advantage of by men whose appearances lined up a bit too closely with members of the Society. It also got human sexual anatomy comically wrong, ascribing them with what Krahe assumed to be saurian traits.
What she did find, however, was a book that lit up as an anathema hazard on the Prospector's Eyes, far up on a shelf well out of reach. After getting it down with a Tar tendril, Krahe found it to be locked with a padlock that had no keyhole. Trying to get into Sorayah's mindset under the assumption this was one of her locks and not just something she had found, the first thing she thought to try was to simply pour some anathema into it. At first, it didn't work. The lock lit up with runes, only for a snapping sound to sound from inside. Gradually, after a number of attempts, Krahe got it open by pouring in as little anathema as she could. It was a tiny amount, the smallest she had ever produced at one time, and it felt horrid. Just barely starting the fusion reaction only to snuff it out felt wrong.
While Krahe shuddered in place at the unpleasant feeling, lines of eldritch runes pulsed over the lock's surface and it popped open. The book was indeed hollow, containing a (poorly) shielded box within which the shape of a human hand sat. It didn't really look like charcoal - its surface had a gleaming lustre, with a red glow coming out of a few thin cracks and the cross-section of the wrist. It constantly radiated anathema, twitching in a claw-like rigor as if it was still attached, and as if its owner was in the throes of terrible pain.
"Ohoho, there's exhibit A..." she uttered as she smiled to herself. Truthfully, Krahe wasn't even slightly opposed to making use of anything she found for herself. If Human Charcoal could be used to somehow boost her own capabilities, she would use it. However, given its documented uses, she didn't expect this to be the case. Every application seemed to be some variation of allowing the user to control Thaumic Fusion and/or to shield herself from exposure.
Krahe closed the Hollow Book, set it down on the writing desk, and sat down with the chair turned to the door, gun in hand. While she waited, she read through Sorayah's manuscript. She couldn't take it seriously in any sense of the word, and ended up turning her attention to the other texts, such as a book on theurgy titled "Dreaming of Hyperion Shore".
