ButcherPete
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Chapter 97: The Price of a Wrong Question
🕑 Added 2025-07-28 07:09:06 +0000 UTCThe journey to Hazy Mountain was quite expensive. A devil of Cashmere’s status didn’t walk when he could buy passage. His golden sedan chair carved from gilded bone made no noise as it hovered past the shrouded slopes. Even the mountain mist seemed to part for him, disturbed not by his presence but by the wealth it represented.
The Dreamveil Compact had once been a joke among factions. A joke with dreams, illusions, and rebellion in its lungs, but a joke nonetheless.
Now?
Now it had a council seat.
Once he arrived at the audience chamber, he left the sedan without ceremony, leaving it where it was, a businessman at his level parks where he deems VIP. Not from arrogance, but from the confidence that came from achieving high end deals and appropriate face.
Cashmere adjusted his collar as the stone hall opened before him. No guards greeted him. Just the hollow sound of his own steps echoing down a corridor carved from cloud-gray obsidian. The humidity made his coin slick in his palm, but he flipped it anyway.
The coin read: [Investigate Further].
He grinned. No sell, no problem.
When the audience chamber’s doors swung open, the scent of incense struck him first, earthy, sweet, and layered with something feral beneath. Burned fruit or bone. A detail he pocketed for later.
And then he saw them.
Baku, the Dream Eater, sat upon a throne of carved dreamstone and obsidian, relaxed in the way only the truly dangerous could be. Muscles relaxed. Fingers laced over one knee. His sparkling grey eyes half-lidded. Beside him sat a veiled sedan. Stationary, draped in silks of pink and soft gold. Ornate patterns of falling roses stitched the fabric, edged in curling gold thread. A single silhouette could be seen through the veil, a slender young devil, seated in silence, posture straight, head slightly bowed.
Cashmere paused at the threshold and offered a shallow bow. “Lord Baku. Hazy Mountains esteemed commander. I bring recognition from the council.”
Baku raised a brow but said nothing. It seems he was displeased with the introduction? Or the address?
Cashmere, unperturbed, stepped forward and produced a thick stack of parchment from within his coat. Folded clean. Sealed in wax. A document of formality and iron words. He held it out with both hands.
“An official decree of the Capital Council,” he said. “The Dreamveil Compact is hereby offered full seat recognition under provisionary status. Congratulations.”
Baku didn’t reach for it.
Instead, with the simplest gesture, an idle twitch of the wrist, he motioned to the veiled sedan. Cashmere watched the letter pass from his hand into hers, the delicate fingers from within drawing it under the silk. A moment passed. Just one.
Then.
Flutter
The parchment was tossed.
It tumbled down the short dais, bounced off a step, and landed facedown in front of Cashmere’s polished shoes.
Silence.
The kind of silence that could break wealth.
Then a voice came from within the sedan. Feminine, yes, but far from girlish. Low and warm, like velvet soaked in mischief and honey, with a maturity that didn’t match the age he’d expected.
“We accept the seat,” she said. “But not the leash. Try again, little devil.”
Cashmere blinked, the sharpness of her tone not lost on him.
He bent, picking up the parchment slowly. “...You didn’t even read it.”
“I didn’t need to,” she replied, and he caught the faintest flicker of movement behind the silk. The silhouette’s head tilted, as though she were amused. “You all speak the same tongue. A hundred words to say one thing. You want us seated where you can count our fingers.”
Cashmere’s grip on the parchment tightened slightly. “It’s a formal contract, standard length.”
“Then your standards are the problem.”
A chuckle, Baku’s, cut through the tension like a knife of calm in a boiling room.
“She’s not wrong,” the Dream Eater rumbled. “Thirty pages to say ‘obey.’”
Cashmere glanced between the two. “There are provisions. Protections.”
“Against us,” Hannya murmured. “Not for us. We’ll rewrite it. Three pages, maximum. And no phantom clauses that allow you to freeze our assets because one of your factions gets nervous.”
Cashmere straightened slowly. He studied the silhouette again. There was something off about her. Not just her presence, but her shape. Unawkened young devils didn’t… curve like that. Not unless they had evolved.
And Baku seemed to treat her as an equal, not a subordinate. Trusted her. Let her speak as Dreamveil’s voice. He knew the rough details of the Mountain's movements, how she had attended the talks for Hazy Mountains recognition, but this…
“You’ve… changed recently?” Cashmere observed softly, half to himself.
The silk rustled, but no reply came.
He filed that silence away.
Then, tilting his head slightly, he offered the smallest of smiles. “And if the council doesn’t like your edits?”
“Then they can decline,” Hannya said. “And we’ll attend anyway. You gave us a seat. That’s on public record now. We’ll sit in it with or without the chain.”
It was bold. Arrogant, even.
But Cashmere didn’t sense a bluff. He sensed a calculated risk.
And something even colder beneath it.
He slowly folded the parchment back into his coat. “I’ll tell them your terms. I doubt all will agree. But… most will.”
Baku nodded slightly, his eyes showing a predatory amusement. “We accepted the seat, not the scraps tied to it. Let the others argue about respectability. We’re still here.”
Cashmere looked again at the silk-draped sedan.
She hadn’t moved much. But even behind fabric, she gave the impression of weight. Not just authority, but something deeper.
And behind it all… something watching.
“Very well,” he said finally, offering a short bow once more. “We’ll try again.”
And then he turned on his heel, the scent of incense following him back down the hall.
Cashmere slowed his steps with calculated movements before reaching the arched doorway of the audience hall. The heavy, pale blue-curtained veil ahead fluttered faintly in the mountain wind, beckoning him to pass through and descend the stone steps that would take him far from this place.
But he had more questions, and required more answers. So he played off his next actions as a passing inquiry. He was not here only to deliver this contract, but the subtle hostility told him it wouldn't come smoothly. But as a businessman, he understood, never leave with more questions than answers.
He turned, fixing his gaze once more on the silken sedan where the mysterious devil girl reclined behind her veil. Her silhouette shifted, delicate as a cut from fine jade. A shape that suggested ripeness far beyond her rumored age. Evolution. Growth. Advancement through conditions only devils could fathom. Dangerously fast if his assumptions were true.
Cashmere cleared his throat lightly.
“One more thing… Hannya, was it?”
A long pause. The air thickened. Baku tilted his head slightly on the massive throne of stone, eyes opening as if waking from slumber.
“Oh?” Baku rumbled. “Something else, Investor?”
Cashmere kept his posture formal but relaxed, folding his hands behind his back.
“I’m curious,” he said. “A name has begun circulating in certain corners. Strange corners. The Court of Gilded Woe. Would either of you know anything about that?”
At that, Baku’s brows rose in honest surprise, and his head turned slowly to the sedan. A minor breeze passed through the throne hall, disturbing the sheer curtains of the sedan just enough to reveal a sliver of fine ankle. But no words came from Hannya for several seconds.
Then a giggle. High, refined, sharp-edged.
“Kikiki~”
Cashmere blinked. He hadn’t expected amusement from such a possibly damning question.
But Baku? He leaned forward slightly, and Cashmere saw the rare movement for what it was.
Suspicion.
Baku on the other hand, heard the laugh for what it was.
Embarrassment.
“Oh, my,” Hannya said softly at last, “That’s not a question for a little devil who only just delivered a leash and thought it was a crown.”
She giggled again, melodious and chiding. “A phrase stitched by someone tugging at unseen threads. But those threads? They're not yours to pull, little investor.”
Her words stung, but Cashmere smirked through them, as if brushing off ash from a well-pressed coat. “So it’s real, then?”
She didn’t answer directly.
Instead, she shifted slightly in the sedan, and her voice changed timbre, still mature, still lilting, but now somehow hollowed and distant. “A change is coming. Not the one you’re watching for. Not a rebellion, not a vote, not a war. But a change that will uproot old trees and turn oracles to drunkards.”
Cashmere studied the curtain’s edge, as if it might flutter again and offer some angle of insight.
“What sort of change?” he asked.
“The kind that doesn’t need your signature.” she replied.
Baku let out a long breath, and Cashmere swore he caught the faintest shake of the devil’s head.
Change.
Cashmere knew this wasn’t just political posturing. This was something she felt deep in her essence, some instinctual certainty. And for a devil to speak in riddles like that, with such confidence… it meant she was either mad, or she’d seen something others hadn’t. Possibly both.
Cashmere played the careful card. A tactful retreat, the probing proved too volatile for his wallet. He would need to try a different angle.
“I see,” he said neutrally. “Then allow me to thank you for your time, Lady Hannya. I’ll inform the council that you’ve… amended their offer.”
He bowed, not too deep. Not too shallow either. Then turned again toward the curtains, making it two steps before-
“You may stay.”
Her voice echoed across the chamber, silky yet unmistakable. A pull in it. Velvet nails in the spine.
Cashmere stopped.
“You may stay,” she repeated, “and correspond with your little council through comm-crystal. Surely such a flexible man can afford to linger. We even have apples… if you’re fond of fruit.”
Baku made a quiet noise in the back of his throat, disapproval or concern, Cashmere couldn’t tell.
But the mentions of apples made his hair stand on end. So she knew, and wasn’t even trying to hide it.
Cashmere didn’t move for a moment. Then turned his head slightly over his shoulder.
“Generous,” he said smoothly. “But I have other markets to visit. Other ledgers to balance.”
“A pity,” she sighed. “Your scent suggested patience, but your actions say urgency.”
Cashmere said nothing, carefully watching a small paper that had fluttered from the veiled sedan during her reply. It landed delicately before his feet, an insignia inked in black and pink, shaped like a spiraling rose curling into a demonic sigil. Her summoning circle, laying there, simply released.
“You’ll need that,” she said. “Not for you. But for another.”
Cashmere stared at the sigil in silence. He felt its weight even without touching it. The sharpest deals were always the ones unspoken.
Was she referring to… Abigail?
He never mentioned her name. Never wrote her in any letters. But the connection was there. Old history, subtle loyalty, shared ambitions. How she knew his dealings with a human, he couldn’t even begin to guess.
A chill climbed his spine like frostbitten tendrils.
Still, he kept his voice level. “A vague gesture with heavy implications. You're fond of those.”
She responded with silence, though if he listened closely, he thought he heard the light creak of the sedan frame. A lean? A shift in weight? Or simply a reaction to his deflection?
“I take it,” Cashmere continued calmly, “that I’m not meant to understand this change you hinted at.”
“Oh, but you already do, don’t you?” Hannya replied, voice sultry yet dark, like roses dragged across cracked bone. “You feel it. You fear it. You spin your coin to guess it. The gears of commerce won’t turn fast enough to outpace what’s blooming.”
Baku, from his throne, didn’t interrupt. His grey eyes studied her, quietly calculating. Hannya’s shift in behavior hadn’t escaped him. Her restlessness seemed to be increasing, and so were her unpredictable actions.
Cashmere tucked the sigil into his sleeve.
“I have other work to do. The world’s still moving.”
He stepped away, pivoting smoothly with the grace of someone always expecting a knife in the back. But it was only when he reached the chamber’s threshold that her voice followed him once more.
“Farewell, Cashmere.”
He stopped in place.
He never gave his name.
He turned slowly, eyes narrowed behind a cool mask of courtesy. “I never introduced myself.”
“Didn’t you?” Hannya tilted her head inside the veil. “Perhaps it slipped.”
His heart locked, like a vault snapping shut. Cold sweat tingled behind his collar. His expression remained neutral, but inside his mind was already sifting through answers.
Had he been careless? Had one of the guards said his name aloud earlier?
No. He was meticulous. Nobody in this hall had spoken his name since he arrived. Baku addressed him only as ‘investor.’ No slips.
Cashmere didn’t let the tension show in his body. Only his pupils shrank slightly, and a twitch passed through his thumb as he flicked the edge of his coat sleeve.
He didn’t let the conclusions in his mind cloud his business sense, even when pieces of the mystery began falling into place.
Baku, now sitting straighter on the throne, gave Hannya a sidelong glance. He too noted the anomaly in her words. Though he didn’t question it aloud, his finger tapped the armrest once, a quiet warning.
Cashmere, after a moment, offered a shallow bow. “Then perhaps I’ve slipped enough.”
That made Baku finally close his eyes again, as if exhausted by the theater.
And with that Cashmere left without another word.
Behind him, the curtains then closed.
He stood in the hallway outside the audience chamber, the sigil still warm in his sleeve, his fingers ghosted over it as if it might bite. He hated not knowing how deep a deal ran, and this one, this little gift from Hannya, reeked of layers, but the chill it left on his neck hadn’t faded.
He stopped before the curving stair that led him down toward the gate, pondering the reluctance in the pit of his gut.
One last question.
He pulled out his coin. The same coin he’d flipped to survive ambushes, win auctions, and broker impossible treaties. He whispered the thought into the coin’s edge.
“Should I risk one more question?”
He tossed it.
The air held its breath. The coin spun like a gilded eye, then slapped into his palm.
[BUY IMMEDIATELY]
His lips drew into a tight, knife-thin smile.
“Well then.”
With casual precision, he turned on his heel and reentered the chamber, stepping back through the silk curtains and into the cool, perfumed gloom. His presence rippled back through the air like the return of a bad idea.
Baku’s brows lifted faintly in amusement.
Hannya didn’t move, though the outline of her silhouette inside the sedan seemed to shift ever so slightly, as if she hadn’t been expecting this.
Cashmere didn’t play coy. He bowed, hand still casually over his heart.
“One more question, if I may,” he said, voice smooth.
“Oh?” Hannya replied, tilting her head inside the veil. “Changed your mind?”
“My coin did.”
She chuckled lightly. “Kikiki… and what did it whisper to you?”
Cashmere’s smile didn’t quite reach his eyes.
“Do you worship someone known as the Caged God?”
Silence fell like velvet over the chamber.
Then, just faintly, Cashmere caught it. A subtle shift in Hannya’s aura. A pulse. A ripple of something. Something... personal. A mistake covered in the space of a breath.
But it was there.
She replied too smoothly, too quickly. “I do.”
The room shifted again. Baku, seated on the throne beside her, grinned. The slow smile of someone watching a jigsaw finally form a full picture. Finally, he could feel it coming. A new morsel of information, precious and unprompted. Hannya stiffened slightly in her seat.
That grin from Baku did not go unnoticed. Her veil twitched.
Cashmere, sensing opportunity, let his voice drop just slightly, leaning in to press the wound.
“And is the Caged God trapped… inside Greed’s [Deep Pocket]?”
That did it.
The air snapped like a cord being plucked.
Cashmere flicked the coin again, almost without thinking, pure habit. But the moment it left his fingertips, something went wrong.
The coin twisted, veered.
Jumped.
It didn’t land in his palm. Almost like it avoided him. Landed edge-first on the polished stone floor with a metallic ting and spun violently, as though alive.
[SELL IMMEDIATELY]
Before he could register the result, a crack echoed across the room like a mountain splitting.
A massive obsidian mirror burst from thin air, landing like a guillotine between Cashmere and the veiled sedan. Its frame was etched with demonic glyphs, glass tinted with a strange molten gold sheen that shimmered like a cursed pond.
Cashmere froze, breath caught halfway to a gasp.
“What in-”
“Kikiki!” Hannya’s laughter peeled through the chamber.
Playful… and a little annoyed.
“You made the wrong gamble, little devil,” she purred. “And now the mirror wants to collect.”
Baku said nothing, but his pity was visible. He watched Cashmere now like a teacher observing a promising student ruin a perfect test.
Cashmere took a single step back, the mirror towering over him like a final judgment. His reflection in it was... wrong.
The mirror showed his reflection in sickly inverted hues. White eyes, black teeth, and hollow, gray skin. For a half-second, Cashmere stood frozen in place as if caught in some child's crude painting of him. Then the mirror pulsed.
“Mirror, mirror,” Hannya said slowly, her voice gaining an eerie melody. “Look down on him.”
Cashmere’s spine stiffened. He tried to break the gaze, but the mirror pulled at him, mentally if not magically. Like it wanted him to see something. Like it wanted to offer something.
Behind the veil, Hannya’s voice coiled out again. “You ask too much. Now you’ll see too much.”
Cashmere didn’t answer. He reacted on instinct. He reached into his coat and pulled out a second coin, one he hadn’t flipped in years.
It was jagged, old, chipped at the edge.
His panic coin.
A simple artifact, and a devil’s last bet.
In spun from his palm in a desperate snap. It flashed mid-air, a spark of alarm magic embedded in it activating with a harsh clang.
The mirror recoiled.
The chamber howled. The curses screeched as if denied a meal. Cashmere vanished in a rattle of air and distortion, like a deal refused.
Silence.
A quiet clink followed. The coin dropped to the floor, inert now.
Baku leaned his elbow on the arm of his throne, grinning wide as he turned his head to the veiled sedan where Hannya lounged, legs crossed. "Should I go fetch him back, kid? I quite liked him."
Hannya's veil fluttered slightly. She didn’t look his way. “No need,” she murmured with a chuckle in her throat. “The one I wanted got through.”
Baku blinked. “Just one?” He raised a brow. “Which one was it?”
Hannya tilted her head back, almost as if savoring the aftertaste. “Greed’s Mark.”
For a beat, Baku looked surprised.
Then he threw back his head and let out a rich, volcanic laugh. “Kahuhuhu! Oh, that's fitting! That will make all the greeders hunt him on sight. Investor or not. Their instincts and worship will burn him out in no time.”
“Even their ledgers will tremble,” Hannya said, reclining fully now behind her silks. “His debt is now mythic.”
Baku wiped a tear of amusement from the corner of his eye. “Typical Greed devil,” he said, shaking his head. “Always trying to use leverage where silence would serve better. Thought he could play you like one of his coins.”
Hannya hummed behind her veil. “Kikiki… And now he’s been appraised in turn. He flashed his gold too close to the sun.”
“All that polished pride,” Baku said with a grin, “only to end up marked. They really do think every devil has a price.”
“He tried to buy a glimpse of the unknown,” Hannya said, tilting her head. “Instead, he left with a curse no contract can clear.”
Baku chuckled darkly. “Serves him right. You don’t bring bargaining chips to a seance.”
“Kikik!”
“Kahuhuhu!”
Baku tilted his head with a curious smirk and a fox-like eye. “Speaking of Greed… don’t tell me that Deep Pock-”
“Don’t.”
A sudden silence, like glass ready to snap.
Baku blinked, his grin faltering just for a moment, before shrugging and stretching his arms.
A drop of nervous sweat slid down his temple. He gave a dry cough and muttered, “Kuh… alright. Not my business.” Backing off with theatrical ease. “Spoils the taste of a good laugh anyway.”
The mirror’s surface rippled again, faint, as if in warning.
And just like that, the moment passed.
Just like the weeks that followed.
None from the council heard from the Investor, but the dealings went on all the same. The council gave their seat to the Hazy Mountain and Greed’s machines still turned in the North, but now with a strange, impending rhythm.
And far beneath it all, a single, tasty curse quietly bloomed as time slowly stretched forward.
The kind that lingered. Grew sweet. Ripened.
The kind Gula liked best.
And somewhere in the depthless gold vaults of the North, where the ledgers began to slowly stop whispering, a day circled in red crept closer on every calendar.
Tax Day.
Greed’s hungriest hour.
Comments
Prent
Upon rereading I notice that Cashmere’s coin was, in fact, correct. One more question was good, Hannya wasn’t happy, but she didn’t do anything to him. Unfortunately for him follow up questions are indeed different questions.
ShadowTycho
Is the coin that got dropped at the end the escape coin or his special coin? He drops the special coin but doesn't pick it up resorting to the escape coin immediately. It seems like he dropped both but im not sure with how it reads. Very intrested in seeing how his interaction with Abigail goes now, he does have a deal to give her the mark, but he was offered no consideration for it so it shouldn't be binding.
Aune
Hmmm thin ill take a reread after work, alot to unpack here, boy
Prent
Cashmere, more like mere cash lol
Cosmoros Subs
Don't think we forget that today we have ANOTHER chappy. I'm in your walls.
Aune
I do wonders when the bone choir and the rest of the outliers who will make a return to the mountains. Like a upkeep of existing treatise, and alliances
Aura
One heck of a boss battle! Looks like the Investor was just a little too Greedy. Looking forward to how this impacts Abigail and how/if he can come back.
