Page 27

Six-eyed Dream Serpent

K rahe, too, was pleasantly surprised by how the transmutation ritual had gone. Compared to her deep-dive excursion into the Astral Gulf, it had been simplicity itself. Nonetheless, she felt utterly drained—not physically, but mentally. She had felt this before, especially after Slaughterhouse 9, but it had been masked by a far more vivid feeling of tiredness back then. She cut a jagged path through the city, stopping at a small bar. Rather than being seedy, like she was used to, this establishment gave off the feeling of a decent place purposely located out of the way to filter out those who didn’t do their research, such as tourists and the like. There was a substantial entry fee, enough to pay for a week’s food. It was nearly deserted, with most of the patrons entranced by the light show overhead, meaning that Krahe got all the privacy she could want.

She spent the next half-hour simply drinking and smoking, permitting herself to truly relax for once, without trying to find something to do, without thinking about what she should be doing, without constantly thinking over the possibilities of who was working for whom or what groups could possibly get involved. Keeping local political webs in mind was enough of a pain when one had lived in an area for years, but Krahe was simultaneously learning Audunpoint and causing changes in the process.

It was nice to retreat to a tiny world populated by four people total, including the bartender. Some of the drinks were familiar—the typical grain alcohols and fruit mash distillates—but others were more in-line with crab juice. Shots of mild hallucinogens and psychedelics that took effect and wore off equally fast were exceedingly common on the menu. It was obvious why; most of them tasted tolerable at worst, and they universally provided an enjoyable experience. One could zone out for a few minutes without such consequences as a hangover or withdrawals.

Various mixed cocktails included not only the blending of flavors and fragrances, but also the alchemical blending of different psychoactives for altered effects. A cluster of beverages warned away anyone with oral sores or stomach ulcers and listed comparatively high prices for antidotes. Yes, even the venoms of various creatures were drunk for fun. Krahe tested out a few, noting with some amusement that the bartender insisted that one particular venom was from a “properly fed” specimen of some kind of giant spider, stating that it had no aphrodisiac qualities whatsoever.

One offer in particular advertised the fact it came from a live snake and supposedly could bring about an epiphany if one consumed it. Krahe saw it as literal snake oil, but she decided to bite the hook anyway, out of curiosity.

The snake, after all, was right inside the terrarium behind the bar, hiding in its artificial environment. It slithered into view when Krahe expressed her interest in its venom. Its head shape was similar to a horned desert viper, but it had six blue-glowing eyes with hairpin pupils, including three pairs of horns—one for each eye. Its scales were varying shades of creamy and sandy off-white, glistening with an eldritch pearlescence that reminded her of the Astral Gulf.

“I’m curious, is the snake actually called a Six-eyed Dream Serpent, or is that just the menu name?” Krahe prodded.

“That is the most common name for them. It is… arguably a soulbeast, arguably not,” the bartender said with a practiced cadence that betrayed the fact he was both used to and fond of talking about his pet. “There is a tribe of snake mystics out west who think these creatures form when a lost soul accidentally incarnates into a snake egg.”

“Interesting. Does the venom have any truly mystical properties, then? Or is it just a particularly potent drug? In other words, will I see things based purely on my own psyche, or do its effects veer into the realm of true clairvoyance?”

He shrugged. “It depends on the snake; I can guarantee nothing. But I do not believe you will be disappointed. Nobody ever is, at least when it glows like that.”

The bartender put on a truly amusing show of handling the snake, which, itself, pretended to be furious, lashing out and snapping mere millimeters from his face before he grasped it by the base of the head and pressed his thumb between its eyes as he held it over a tiny shot glass such that its fangs hooked just over the edge. A spray of opaque, glowing, blue-colored venom filled the glass three-quarters of the way, before the snake’s eyes glistened as if it was taking her measure, and another spurt filled the shot glass the rest of the way. In a flurry of motion, the bartender placed the serpent back in its terrarium whilst also dumping the shot into the half-filled glass. The venom spread out through the liquor, bubbling in a violent reaction as the bartender poured in a salt of some kind while stirring the mixture. After several seconds, the reaction ended, letting it all coalesce into a slightly thick, glowing blue liquid with streaks of light pulsing within it as if lit by an unseen, fluttering candle.

“I suggest you try to get it down all at once,” the bartender recommended.

Krahe had consumed far worse before, so it was no issue; the shot was fine, taste-wise, sour-sweet with a slight burning heat. Its aftertaste was one of buzzing numbness. The effects that followed were akin to a DMT-induced vision of a dream-like alternate reality, but rather than seeing angels or devils, Krahe found herself momentarily spirited away to a particularly filthy alley in Megacity Gamma’s Sector 5. In this back alley, a local gang dumped the bodies of their victims, because the local cleanup drones were faulty and just mulched the corpses alongside the trash. A man with no arms crawled out of the trash container, muttering. It was… something about Chernobog and Jas’raba. And it was in the continental tongue of Ashametan. His eyes met Krahe’s, and in the next moment, she was elsewhere, at another time.

She found herself on the coast of a dark lake, with an ancient city at her back, the alien stars of Zastreon overhead and the Banishment Wheel in the far distance. There came a deep, sonorous sound; Krahe heard and felt it in equal measure. It rumbled up from underfoot, reverberating through her ribcage and her spine—resonating with the Liminal Coil. There was a question in that frequency, a question and a sense of advice, but she could not comprehend it.

Sector 7. That old bastard’s… Sauer’s hut. He was out in front, going through a form Krahe had never seen and using a cybernetic arm he had never worn before. Its outer shell closely mirrored naturalistic muscle curves in shining chrome, following old-style aesthetics. It bristled with plasma nozzles from palm to shoulder, and with each of Sauer’s movements, greenish flame erupted from them, amplifying the motions. The old man was a whirling dervish one moment, then stone-still the next, his face hard and coldly angry in a way Krahe had never seen while she studied with him. Krahe watched for what had to be several minutes, but from this distance, with these eyes, she could only follow the general gist of it at best; even then, it was because she recognized parts. As the mutant art that Sector 7 Style was, even this advanced form of it incorporated elements from other parts. The occasional thunderclaps and accompanying shockwaves from Sauer’s more forceful movements, however, made it no easier to comprehend. Her next impulse was to look closer, but the old man froze and stared through her. Then, she was once more spirited away.

In a staccato of flashes, Krahe beheld the same scene playing out in wildly different settings. The founding of a small town on the frontier of civilization, the type that were frequently founded in an effort to reclaim or unearth ancient ruins. Growth, both of the town and its church. Then, corruption. Even the declaration of a splinter faith. The people suffer. Conveniently, as if by divine providence, a Saint arrives and tears out the corruption by the roots. Again. And again. And again. Thousands of iterations with wild and great variation, yet the same overall arc.

The vision lingered on a particularly egregious case, wherein the church’s presence in an isolated town degenerated into corruption to the point of being little more than a bandit band extorting the townsfolk. A skull-faced saint, covered head to toe in exposed, root-like musculature, arrived, annihilated them, and took over, restoring the town only to disappear once things settled for the better. The vision lingered on that skull-masked face, with lilac flame burning in his skull’s hollow sockets and the sigil of the Seven Spokes emblazoned on his forehead.

Another staccato of thought-flashes followed, far more rapid, showing similar scenes of growth, but without corruption this time. Saints arrived all the same but passed through without incident after solving small problems. It was obvious what it meant; a juxtaposition of some kind, perhaps even a vision sent from on high, seeing as she was an apostle after all. Krahe didn’t understand what exactly it all meant, lacking the mental bandwidth to process it so quickly, but the visions all burned themselves into her memory with unnatural clarity.

When she next blinked, she was back at that bar, in the exact moment after she had swallowed the shot, and the aftertaste was just beginning to set in. She found her gaze slowly drifting over to the snake as she regained full awareness, not unlike waking up from a dream.

The bartender and his snake both gave her an amused look, with the former remarking, “I would advise you to not get addicted. You’ll have a near-immunity to the positive effects for… Oh, I would say a few years at least given the dose. It would require a blood sample to be sure.”

“What, did you have to get an apothecary license to sell snake venom as a drink?” Krahe slurred, still not quite mentally back together. Some echoes of psychedelia still lingered, and her mind was busy parsing the visions. Before the bartender could respond, the ground shuddered. Noticing the difficulty of keeping her balance, Krahe decided that it was high time to head back to the safe house. She left, having paid for each drink individually so she could keep track of her tab. It totaled an irresponsible sum, but she somehow didn’t regret it. More than half her total was the Six-eyed Dream Serpent Venom. The safe house was empty when she got there, but a note on the coffee table clued her into the state of things. The Inquisitor had finally gotten around to dealing with Seer, and Casus was, at this very moment, one of the participants in the interrogation. The note nearly begged her to wait and not take action on her own.

Krahe smoked a cigarette of Adefron Incense, only to wake up to the sun high well above the horizon.

Five hours, she thought. From what she knew of Adefron, this meant she would have likely slept around twenty hours had she not used it. In the absence of any particular goal besides waiting—which she hated—she took Atomica back to Gashward Road. Two days passed without any notable events, which was absolutely agonizing. Krahe tried to find that bar again, but it was nowhere to be found. The location was burned into her mind, but it was as if the place had just up and disappeared. There was a bar there, yes, and it was even in the same building, but it wasn’t that bar. The floor plan was the same, but everything from the floorboards to the counter, the furniture, and the staff—nearly everything was different. So as not to seem suspicious or otherwise stand out, she spent a few minutes there and bought a shot of cheap, nasty, funky rum before leaving.

After this excursion, she busied herself by attempting to recall and reconstruct the kata she had seen Sauer performing in her vision. When that turned out to be a dead end, she turned to Yao’s scroll, and after that, to improving the design of her wards.

In the end, she hit a dead end with all three of these endeavors.

She was already struggling to digest her thoughts, trying to comprehend Yao’s ultra-dense writing style only made it worse. Sure, it was clear and largely devoid of pointless obfuscation, but it was still written in a quasi-Cantonese equivalent to Renaissance-era scholarly writing.

Improving her wards was theoretically plausible, but she simply lacked whatever made it practical, and she didn’t even understand wards well enough to know what she didn’t know. No matter what she did, her wards always settled into a homogenous ablative layer of compacted ash. At best she could add some resilience by incorporating obsidian, which did help, but it was just applying the benefits of the Forming Toroid rather than improving the fundamental design or technique.

The trial-and-error process was only made worse by the limitations of her voidkey, which gnawed ever more keenly when it came to something so thauma-intensive as reconstructing her wards over and over again. Moreover, it was a reminder that the Twin Serpent Voidkey was merely at the borderline between second-order and third-order.

It took every bit of strength she had, but Krahe went to Garvesh and, without a bit of pretense, simply asked for help.

“Can’t help with your Wards, not the same as mine. And as I said already, the Twin Serpent Key really was my best. But… I have been looking for one ever since you first asked, and a guy who owes me a couple favors just recently got one for me. Only reason I haven’t picked it up yet or sent you a message is, well…”

The old lizard looked around. He was still in the tub, in the exact same pose.

“Been otherwise preoccupied, let’s say. So, here’s how you get to his place—”

It wasn’t a particular building, but an even more obscure shop than Garvesh’s, one that shifted locations periodically and required an invitation to enter even if you found it. For this reason, he went on for a few minutes and had to repeat himself so that Krahe could write it down. Well outside the city, it was a particular ship ferrying people and goods across the river.

“You’ll have to dial the number, it’s 5-8-3-7-9-1. Remember that. You got it? Good. The code word… I don’t remember. Just tell him Garvesh sent you, and that this is about that favor I called in recently. If he doubts you, just say I hope he hasn’t forgotten what I did for him at the Spire of Glass.”

“What did you do?” Krahe asked, not expecting an answer.

“I’m not telling you,” Garvesh grinned. “Just mention it. He will know. As for payment… we can work that out later. Call it a favor for now.”

And so, Krahe set off for that place; the ship was not nestled quietly in the corner but was, in fact, the largest one. Garvesh’s debtor plied his trade from deep within its bowels, and given the fact that none of the crew stopped her as she walked into areas obviously not meant for normal passengers, she wagered that they had been paid off. She arrived at a modified bulkhead with a small vault door embedded in it at roughly chest height, and an intercom to the side. Well, not quite an intercom. It was an antique-looking telephone handset bolted to the wall just above the keyboard from a Dregstrider, requiring her to dial the six-digit number Garvesh had given her to even speak to the proprietor.

“Who…” a hissing, snake-like voice came from past the bulkhead.

“Garvesh sent me regarding his recently called-in favor.”

“I don’t know who…” came the voice again, uncertain.

“I wasn’t finished,” Krahe interrupted. “He wants you to know that he hopes you haven’t forgotten what he did at the Spire of Glass.”

An agitated hiss burst from the earpiece, and the sound cut out as the other side hung up. Before she could grow uneasy, the vault door slowly opened inward, revealing the scarred face of a serpent-man staring at her from the other side. He was no mythical gorgon, but a lanky humanoid with a neck that transitioned into a diamond-shaped head, his neck curved in a question-mark shape to allow him a forward head orientation. An eyepatch-like prosthetic supplanted his left eye, and numerous scars marred his poisonous-looking, red-yellow scale pattern. He set a small sandstone box on the counter, slid it over to her side, and shut the window forcefully enough to blow a gust of wind in her face. It smelled astonishingly similar to Firminus’ office, only more herbal. As for the box, it had no hinges, only a rectangular lid which bore cuneiform symbols on its surface. Krahe wasted no time in bringing it back, as awkward as transporting it was.