Within another fifteen minutes, she had arrived at the second location — in total, between following Ogura into his house and now, twenty-seven minutes had passed. Not so much as a squeak escaped the building. After skimming through the fence from a side opposite any of the active windows, Krahe raised a narrow pillar of smoky jade from the ground, jumping off just as it reached the apex of its rise and letting off a small burst from her left hand. Altogether, this gave her enough height to reach the second floor, at which point she skimmed through the wall and into the hallway. Krahe waited for a moment, listening and taking in the surroundings. Old house, old furnishings — the owners, likely Aldritch Herebor’s parents, were clearly well-off. Given the coat of dust covering the few paintings and decorative tchatchkes on shelves, as well as the sorry state of the two plants in one of the hallway’s corners, this place was lived-in, but not cleaned to a standard beyond the minimum. There were two doors to her left, a trapdoor on the ceiling, and a stairway to the lower floor at the other end of the corridor. The walls of the two rooms to her left were covered in a scrawl of maroon glyphs painted directly onto the wall, exuding a vague sense of rejection and impassability.
After some consideration, she formed a high-pressure smoke burster, but took some care to reduce the smoke’s aggressiveness somewhat, so that it wouldn’t suffocate anyone. She also altered the shell’s composition so that it would disintegrate upon detonation, rather than fragmenting, in this case out of consideration for the girl, given the fact she likely didn’t have a voidkey or wards. As she worked on this with her right hand, she formed the first Wandrei Faust shell around her left arm, giving it some extra bulk to make up for the lack of energetic firepower.
Between the two rooms, both were sound-insulated, and both of their windows had the curtains shut, so there was no taking guesses there. They also didn’t have large keyholes she could peer through. She would have just skimmed through the wall like she had done to Ogura, if she could, since skimming didn’t make noise, meaning that if she guessed wrong the first time she could just try again. Unfortunately, she couldn’t do that. As she observed the scrawl and mentally parsed the parts that she understood, it became clear this wasn’t simple reinforcement against physical intrusion. Herebor had gone to the extent of securing at least this part of his home against astro-skimming and even scrying, that was what the maroon scrawl was all about.
After a few tense moments, Krahe decided that she was overthinking.
It was true that she couldn’t just skim through the wall, and it was true that the walls and door were both reinforced well enough that she couldn’t simply punch her way through. But that wasn’t an insurmountable obstacle by any means. Drawing on all the power and focus available to her, Krahe dedicated a full one-third of her entropy capacity to preparing another proto-Solomon Howitzer, aiming it diagonally upwards.
With a scream of red and the lashing of obsidian thread, the door’s entire upper half simply vanished, having been transformed into a mix of charcoal and molten globs, then embedded into the ceiling. Instantly, Krahe skimmed in that direction and got a grip on the situation. Her guess had been, at once, right and wrong. The room was filthy in a manner similar to Ogura’s, with an added layer of derangement rooted in the more crude and openly visible soundproofing glyphs painted on the walls. A triangle of blood trailed between the thoroughly soiled bed, the door to the other room, and the radiator beneath the window. Krahe also saw two of the suspects, sprawled out in one recliner chair each at side of the door she had just busted through, sitting and drinking. Neither Juno Oldfield nor Aldritch Herebor were to be found here, however. Not in this room, anyway.
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As she landed, her burster also filled the space with smoke. Wasting no time, she lit the talisman paper and fired off the theurgy without a single word. The glistening fist of onyx-black stone smashed into Hegio’s midsection, pinning him against the wall as yellow light spilled out, his wards flaring blue against it. Youssef instinctively moved to transform into his Mamon Knight form, but Krahe shot the catalyst out of his hand. She scorched the wards, clothes, and skin off his leg with a low-powered Cinder Flash, then put a bullet in his knee.
He screamed, but it didn’t matter. He was on the ground. Krahe crippled his other leg in the same manner, then did the same Hegio before her Wandrei Faust could begin disintegrating. The two men never saw who had done it. They never even realized what was going on.
Youssef’s coupler was destroyed, but Hegio still had his voidkey. And so, Krahe pressed her gun to his forehead.
“Your voidkey or your life.”
The delinquent didn’t put up a fight. It was an unremarkable voidkey with no special features, but one beyond what someone of his low station should have been able to obtain, even if he had the stolen money to pay for it. In terms of raw performance it was about a step below Shiva’s Warding Chain.
For the last several days, Juno Oldfield’s world had been one of senseless torment. When the light was torn from her skull, it was, at first, almost a mercy, but this vague sightless nothing soon became a hell of its own, unique kind. Eventually, time began melting together into a vague morass of pain and anguish, the only variation being the degree and kind of these two things that she was in at any given time. There were brief, merciful moments when she no longer had any thoughts, when she simply went away to another place somewhere within memory, but they were few and far between.
The vague morass of torment immediately preceding this moment had been one occupied by the voice, the touch, and the violation that Aldritch dished out. She could tell from his voice and his atrocious cologne, but chiefly from the fact that the instant that door creaked open, before he said anything or came close enough for her to smell him, he cut another tally mark into her thigh, just above where her knee had once been.
But this time, things were different. Raucous noise came from the other room. A strange, high-pitched buzzing, almost a screaming sound, combined with the cracking of whips. An explosion. A loud impact, another buzzing noise, a gunshot, then screaming. The gunshots and screaming intensified. Aldritch pulled away from her, sending his vile implements clattering to the ground. Another thunderous buzz, and then a woman’s voice, but Juno couldn’t comprehend the words. Aldritch barked a threat, but a gunshot rung out, followed by a second, closer one, and a searing heat passed just over her head.
Again, that loud impact, and the shudders of something heavy. A snort, filled with derision. Another loud buzz and a wave of heat, followed by yet another gunshot. Screaming. This time, it was Aldritch. Juno hadn’t known anything could sound so heavenly. Aldritch whimpered something. The woman spat, then began speaking. Juno vaguely comprehended the meaning, but couldn’t actually parse the words. Her mind was in no state to do so. Nonetheless, she unconsciously turned her head in the direction of the sound, and, unbeknownst to her, a grin took form on her face.
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