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275 - War Dog Cafe [Sturmblitz]
🕑 Added 2023-07-27 03:01:34 +0000 UTCWith a smile, she dropped a cold-iron sovereign and a golden coin on the counter, taking one of the pastries as she passed behind Ulrich. Three gelt for a pastry. She vividly remembered paying a single gelt for a full meal her first time in Willowdale. Such was the price for a stabilized economy; that single gelt back then had the buying power of five gelt now.
The back half of the so-called War Dog Cafe was what made this location special. The front half, the cafe half, was a refurbished store, with walls having been knocked out to connect the whole first floor of this building. The other side was a bakery and storage, but it also included a garage. There, in the open, facing into a particularly wide service-access alleyway, Bloody Zero stood, that monstrous thing. At this very moment, Strake stood on a ladder fiddling with a gun that, weirdly, Zelsys recognized.
“You’re welcome for the gun,” she said, smugly, with a mouth half-full of pastry.
He twitched as if a bullet had just whizzed past his ear, despite the fact Zelsys knew that he was not the type of man to twitch from a bullet flying past his ear. A frustrated, preparatory sigh escaped him, and he slowly turned to face her, sitting on Zero’s shoulder.
“I heard that you were back. Didn’t think you’d think to visit lil’ ol’ me, o high and mighty sect elder. What’d you want?” he hissed.
“Eberheim.”
That word alone, and the fact she purposely said it without any sense of jovial lightheartedness, got Strake’s attention.
“What of it?”
“Surrounded by impenetrable red fog. The whole city. Woodsman thinks it’s some hidden sect doing something shady with the city. I’d guess they’re setting it up as a permanent base of operations, or preparing some kind of mass human sacrifice ritual.”
“And what’d you want me for? I don’t know shit about arrays or formations. If Woodsman couldn’t take it down, I don’t know who can.”
She smirked.
“Me and mine will handle opening a path and hopefully taking down the whole array. I need a mobile force that can clear and take sections of the city once the barrier’s down, while also effectively fighting against lower-ranked cultivator forces. I’ve got a platoon of Hellhounds and five squads of Third-models, you’re the only missing piece.”
“And what if you can’t find the array’s weak point, huh? What then? D’you expect me to sit on my ass cookin’ in the cockpit for hours, days on end? Hell, I could manage, but Zero won’t like that.”
“I’m not too worried about that, but I understand where you’re coming from. How’s Zero’s drive train holding up?” she asked.
“Been better. Been worse. Wasn’t designed for the highest output peaks, gotta let the girl rest in between bursts… Or feed her. Added some aux lines to offload some stress, but now I’ve got a heat problem,” he played along with a glimmer in his eye.
“Sounds like a materials problem. How ‘bout I source you something better than cold-iron for those cables, huh? I’ve got nerves from a dragon as thick as my forearm just laying around… And I might have a way to stabilize your Victory Echoes, too.”
“My condition’s stable,” Strake hissed. In an instant, the rise in his mood from the offer of such an exotic material as dragon nerves was dashed to an even worse state than he’d started at.
“Oh, I’m sure it is. You don’t look like you get rubedo seizures or anything... But wouldn’t it be nice to be able to pull a stunt like you did back at Ubul’s Tomb without frying yourself alive?”
He scowled at her.
“I’ll think about it.”
“We’re leaving in two days, big man. Think hard.”
___________________________________________________________________________________
As she walked back to the sect, Zel devoured eight windmill pastries, and left the remainder for later. Upon her return, she found that both Zefaris and Victor - the first people who came to mind for dealing with a formation - were nowhere to be found. It was swiftly elucidated to her that: “Lady Zefaris took Disciple Victor to one of the private rooms on the second floor and asked not to be disturbed, citing that she intended to carry out an experiment of some description.”
Instantly, she knew what was going on; they were testing Crow Mask’s formation-restricted version. Zel decided to take this time to fulfill other preparations for the excursion. She visited Makhus in his primary laboratory, finding the alchemist alongside Sigmund and Old One-arm poring over the Burning Man Manuscript. An alchemical apparatus, nearly completely enveloped in various seals, bubbled away, with a flask of purplish water as the source. The smell was unmistakably Eisengeist’s blood. This alone was an achievement - Eisengeist’s blood didn’t dissolve in water on its own, and alkasnail alkahest was too aggressive. It was Ozmir’s expertise that had led to a method by which the blood could be brought into a lower-concentration solution.
“Minor problem with the Dragonheart Bolus,” Makhus said. “What we have is too strong for the other ingredients. We can try to reduce the potency of the blood by several orders of magnitude, source blood from a One-eyed Dragon Descendant like an Ankylodragon, or try to reconstruct the missing next step on the ladder - the True Dragonheart Bolus.”
“Well? You’re the alchemist. I can’t make judgments on the matter in your stead. I’m just here to pick up some Witch’s Brew.”
Such was the name Makhus and the other sect alchemists had come to call the Smoke Witch’s improved vitae elixir. It had spread like a plague through the sect - both the elixir and the name. It was no wonder. The liquid was borderline magical, in the sense of pushing the basic concept of a vitae elixir to its limits. The trees and herbs required for its creation, likewise, had grown like weeds in the Leyline Well grove, and continued to do so after being transplanted elsewhere, some to indoor greenhouses and others to the surface grove.
“Already running out?” the alchemist asked.
“No, but I expect to need more than usual. The governor called. Someone not affiliated with any known state power took over Eberheim - the whole city is hidden by weird, red fog. The Woodsman thinks it’s some hidden sect’s isolation array or formation.”
“Eberheim’s a pretty sizable city…” Makhus rubbed his chin. “We’ll need bodies on the ground. A main force to go in once there’s a way to go through the fog.”
