175 - A Reminder of Scale [Cherno] (Patreon)

The only thing left to do was to write a message and send Yao's communication talisman back to its owner. It was a relatively simple process, if laborious due to the talisman's ravenous appetite for thauma. The message was simple, informing the talisman mistress of Krahe's intent to visit and requesting confirmation that she could do so without taking as much of a risk as Casus had done. Half an hour later, when she walked out back to check, she found a camouflaged talisman hovering in the exact same spot as last time.

Not too long after that, she made her way to Yao's home. It was without incident, insofar as her own journey went. However, around the one-third point, the ground shuddered. A huge impact, akin to a thunderclap, sounded in the distance, past the horizon. It had to be a few kilometers outside the city. Then came another, and third for good measure. A few seconds later she saw it: A burning yellow comet screaming into the heavens. Two more followed it, one blue and one purple. The blue one resembled an actual comet, violently tearing through the air with a rocket-like tail, whereas the purple one was smooth, its flight seeming nearly effortless save for the huge arcs of lightning it gave off. A swarm of smaller lights separated from the yellow comet, swarming the others, turning a swath of the sky into a field of explosions, only for blue and purple to emerge seemingly unscathed. The sky was lit up by a dance of lights as these three chased one another and unleashed arcane death upon one another. Distant sonic booms and explosions filled the night, and the conflict of nameless demigods illuminated the city like a wild thunderstorm. Krahe almost felt at home for the span of her walk across the city. It drew out a great number of curious civilians, with a surprising number of people climbing out onto the rooves of their homes and apartment buildings. Despite the number of eyes, Krahe felt even safer from notice - the attention was in the exact opposite direction of where she was, after all. The three comets were still fighting by the time she reached Yao's place.

The two of them walked through Yao's death-gauntlet of trapped alleyways and corridors. Not a word was exchanged until they entered her home.

"First him, now you. I am flattered by such trust," the mistress remarked with a decidedly hag-like, facetious smugness. She spun around on a heel, conjured a slender pipe from between her left arm's talismans, lit it, and took a long drag of it, all in a single motion lasting no more than three seconds.

"In exchange, I trust that you are not here for help with a crisis of ideology," she added.

"Of course not. I have two things that I believe will interest you," Krahe replied, sitting down as she began the process of opening her Kenoma Sack. She found it increasingly more easy to do if she gave it a bodily medium rather than just using the black tablet directly. So, with a yawning maw splitting her forearm down the middle, she brought out two items of interest: Soryah's broken key came first.

"I need to have this appraised. It... Well it sings, for lack of a better term. My gut tells me it has something to do with Astro Diving- Spirit Walking, as you call it."

With a long exhalation of smoke, the talisman mistress near-enough stalked over to the table. The interest couldn't be more evident in her eyes as she sat down, crossed her legs, and leaned forward to get a better look at the broken voidkey's pieces.

"Yes, I recall a scripture which described it as a certain inaudible song that, once heard, one cannot help but keep noticing..." Yao trailed off, curiously picking up the key's pieces with either hand, the pipe sticking to the corner of her mouth in a gravity-defying manner. "It is a typical post-mortem extraction strain fracture. The voidkey is still mostly intact - you could implant it, and it *might* function as-is, albeit to a fraction of its original specifications. That unfortunately means the bloodline lock is also mostly intact. The lock doesn't appear to be particularly profound. I will be able to subvert it, perhaps even maintain the functionality and merely alter it to recognize you as the rightful host. The craftsmanship speaks of a highly skilled craftsman purposely working to a lower standard than he is used to. Nonetheless, it is still better than anything you can readily find on the open market."

Yao put the key's pieces back down, leaning back in her seat.

"I will contact you with any relevant information once I have had the time to carry out the necessary rites. While the key *is* relevant, I suspect it is the less important of the two, seeing as you left the other matter for second," Yao said, glancing down at Krahe's split-open forearm.

Giving a nod of affirmation, Krahe kept pushing in her effort to extract the human charcoal piece from storage. Slowly, painstakingly, a black tendril lifted it out of her forearm-maw and placed it right next to her arm. The moment it was out, Krahe snapped the maw shut and began purging, letting out a deep sigh of relief. For reasons that escaped her, this time the purge remnants manifested as as scentless smoke spilling out of her mouth and nose without cease for the whole duration of the purge. Human charcoal was truly infernally impractical to store in Kenoma storage, taking up many times more space in storage than its actual physical mass. The same phenomenon applied to other magical items, but human charcoal was the most extreme example she had encountered by far.

Yao hadn't said anything at the sight of the human charcoal, tilting her head back and forth, inspecting it from a distance. It was as if she was trying to judge whether it would be a good idea to even touch it, or perhaps waiting for Krahe to explain what it was.

"It’s an anathema radiation source, but not actively hazardous. I won’t say any more until you inspect it for yourself. ”