Waterstrider

Canvas Town, Tseludia Station, Pantheonic Territory, Thirdmonth, 1634 PTS

The headquarters of the Redwater Gang was a shabby building that had once been the offices of a now-defunct company. It was located in one of the poorest stacks of Canvas Town, where the influence of the Hadal Clan waned due to lack of interest. So long as the local gangs kept order and did not take their rackets too far, the clan permitted them to exist. For a fee, of course. Of these minor forces, the Redwater Gang was one of the strongest, as it was headed by a spirit refiner.

Poison arts generally only related to the concoction and direct martial application of poisons. For assassination, that was generally enough to get most of the way there. The issue, however, lay in getting the poisoner within range of their target. There were various ways of achieving this, and Yun was fully equipped to just sneak in and wait for the right time. However, the gang’s security was almost nonexistent.

Having spent all of her life within the world of martial arts, Yun knew how her fellow martial artists thought. Only the powerful organizations tended to secure their headquarters. Most preferred to just rely on the group’s reputation and that of its leader to protect themselves. After all, why would anyone attack the home of a spirit refiner?

As she had expected, the discipline of the gang members guarding the door was particularly lacking. As she had inspected the group, she found herself questioning what worth a man like the Riverfiend even saw in this sort of organization.

In the end, she decided that a complicated method would be riskier and just waste more time. She might as well just go in through the front entrance.

Contrary to how they were often depicted in plays and novels, the primary tool of an assassin was not stealth in the traditional sense. Rather than sneak in the shadows, dodging the sight of everyone in the building, it was far easier to walk around confidently and openly. The trick was both in one’s bearing and one’s attire.

In this case, she simply wore the dress of a courtesan. The guard at the entrance was young, more of a boy than a man. He gave her a lascivious look, and when she told him her business was a ‘meeting’ with someone, he cheerfully allowed her to pass, watching as she did so. She imagined it would have been more likely for him to make a move on her than to actually prevent her entry. This gang truly was composed of fools.

Once inside, she carefully made her way through the hallways following the route that Cyrus’ yet unnamed ‘associate’ had informed her about.

A pair of double doors opened up into a large room that was once presumably an open office space. The cubicles and desks had been replaced with dining tables, where various gang members lounged and ate, loudly chatting while they were served by a variety of courtesans. No wonder she had been let in so easily. Clearly, this gang was doing quite well for itself. While they clearly weren’t the highest echelon of courtesans, there were at least seven of them, and Yun knew it would have certainly been expensive to hire out so many.

At one of the tables, a lithe but muscular man was giving off an incredibly intense aura, one which many seemed to be instinctively shifting away from. Even without looking at his face, Yun knew this had to be Hidoro, her target.

She gracefully passed through the room, making her way to the side room that she knew to be the kitchen. It was slightly cramped, with two cooks working on frying some sort of meat slices. She made her way to a small tea-making set and set about busying herself with preparing a drink.

When she was young, Yun’s teacher had spent years teaching her the intricacies of tea preparation, insisting it was a vital skill for any poisoner. Now, as it had many times before, Yun found the skill coming in handy.

She whisked the artificial grains of tea into the bowl, and found the opportunity to surreptitiously slip one of her fingers into the liquid.

Manifest energy flowed through her body as she reconstituted the poison that she had consumed an hour before, using the miasma to bolster its effects tenfold. It was a simple task, one which she had done many times before.

She slipped over to a nearby refrigerator to grab some alcohol, pouring it into the mixture. In theory, the alcohol would hide the taste of the poison. She stirred the concoction back together and dipped a fingertip into the tea. She dabbed a bead of tea from the tip into her mouth and swirled it around, feeling the taste of tea, alcohol, and the slightest hint of poison swirl around her tongue.

The poison really added a nice tang to the flavor, if she was being honest. Sometimes, there were some serious perks to a constitution such as hers. When cooking for herself, she often found herself using poisons like others used spices. It was certainly not good for her health, but she had always known she wouldn’t live a long life.

After sampling the tea, she dropped a pinch of spices into it to hide the rest of the flavor of the poison and poured it into a small teapot. Quickly, Yun checked her outfit to ensure she was maximally presentable before lifting it and gliding her way out of the kitchen. The cooks didn’t even spare her a glance as she did so, too engrossed in their own duties.

Walking through the clamoring mass of gang members and the courtesans that served them, Yun found herself having to walk carefully, not because the room was so crowded she needed to find space to move, but to avoid the chance that one of the gang members would grab her and arm and order her to personally serve them.

She was lucky, managing to make her way through without issue. She stood behind Hidoro, who was working his way through a plentiful selection of a fatty meat dish.

He turned, sensing her gaze. His eyes scanned up and down her body, giving her a relaxed smile.

“Meridian establishment, huh… quite powerful for a courtesan. I don’t remember that place having one like you?”

Yun got the feeling that he was asking not out of any particular suspicion, but simply interest. There was very little in the microcosm that was Tseludia Station for a spirit refiner to fear. Sadly for him, she was one of those rare existences.

She gave him a coy smile.

“I was personally invited, sir.”

Hidoro raised an eyebrow.

“Oh? And you were told to serve me?”

Yun nodded demurely, still carefully holding the teapot. He waved her over and she sat down beside him, carefully filling his cup.

Hidoro allowed her to pour his tea as he ate another piece of his meal.

“So what brings a woman like you here to the station? You’re from Bounty, correct?”

It was actually mildly impressive that she had recognized her slight accent just from that short exchange. She nodded to him again as she finished his tea.

“It’s a common story, sir. I was a member of a small martial academy in a coastal town that was destroyed during the war. I was the only survivor, so I decided to make a new life somewhere free from war.”

Hidoro nodded. Even mortals had been willing to make the long, lonely journey between stars to escape the conflicts that as of the latest news, fifteen years old, still raged on their homeworld. Bounty held some of the worst fighting, so the news went, and there were many with similar stories to Yun.

It was an easy story to tell him, and most of it was even true, only missing the core fact that she had fled specifically because she had poisoned a number of Sunlit Hall officials in a bid for revenge.

A wistful expression filled her face as she thought back, missing the warm embrace her master had given her while she bled out. Hidoro noticed, tactfully changing the subject.She would almost say he was a nice person if he were not a brutal ganglord known for running extensive extortion rackets on innocents. Not that she could blame him. It was in a martial artist’s nature to seek after better lives for themselves. She herself was doing something similar.

She passed the cup over to him, carefully and gracefully. He took it with a smile, grinning as he sipped it.

“Delicious!” He smiled at Yun. “You’re certainly quite skilled at making tea/”

She smiled in return as she watched him drink the poison. She quite liked watching someone happily drink one of her concoctions without any idea of what it was.

“You could say it’s a hobby of mine.”

“You should start a teahouse, some day when you retire.”

Yun found the remark amusing. Given her bottleneck, even if she were actually a courtesan, she would be dead long before the establishment forced her to retire due to age.

“Perhaps I will, sir.”

As he enjoyed the drink she surreptitiously slipped a hand into a hidden pocket where she had kept her digital phone, pressing a button to send the message she had prepared to the Riverfiend. In less than fifteen minutes he would arrive and challenge the man beside her to a fight. While it would be fun to witness, she felt it would be better to find a chance to leave. Being dragged into the engagement any further ran contrary to her goals.

She noticed that his plate was running low on food and moved to stand.

"I'll refill that for you-" she tried to say, but was stopped by the calloused hand of a sword artist gripping her arm. She met Hidoro's gaze, and it was firm.

"Stay here. I wish to talk to you more. One of the others can bring me more food."

"I- I see, sir. Of course."

Internally, she was cursing the man, hoping there would at least be a chance to slip away in the commotion as Cyrus broke into the building. If she was still sitting next to Hidoro when the poison kicked in, her life would be in danger.

Poison Arts: [While poison arts can refer to any usage of martial techniques to deliver poisons, true poison arts involve the application of manifest miasma to consume poisons, cultivating them internally to magnify and perfect their effects. A poison artist who is sufficiently talented, educated, and possessed of access to the right ingredients is easily able to affect or even kill those far above their realm if they catch the target off guard. Poison arts are considered unorthodox because of the significant negative effects of a poison constitution has. though they develop some resistance to the poisons they consume, poison artists are still somewhat affected, and the effects add up over time. Among other side effects, most common is a reduction in vitality that leads to drastically shorter lifespans, comparable even to that of a sickly mortal. The more powerful the poisons they use, the faster the practitioner is affected. Like all unorthodox arts, the only true solution will always be continued progression along the pathway to immortality without faltering.]