Water Kanin: Chapter 42: The Warehouse

Zyneth and I arrive in Lustaria around midday, the sun almost directly overhead. Zyneth immediately strips off his cloak, so I guess it must be warmer here. I try to feel the change, but the difference is too subtle for my glass to pick up.

“Do we head straight there?” I ask.

“Yes and no,” he says. “I’m supposed to send a letter ahead so they know when to expect me. Before that, however, I intend to scope out the place. Don’t want any surprises.”

“Sounds reasonable to me,” I agree.

As has become the routine, we first grab an inn and drop off our extra supplies. I don’t need my satchel with me while we’re scoping out a building, and it would only get in the way if we did get into any trouble. I’m still lugging around Caecius’s glass book, which I flipped through on occasion in the Drifting Isles, but it’s far too bulky for casual city strolls.

Zyneth also leaves most of his belongings behind, save for his blades and the null relic. I’ve slowly grown more used to the noxious presence of the null marble, to the point where I can tolerate being in Zyneth’s general proximity while he’s carrying it, but that doesn’t dispel the unease it summons in me and Ink. Walking just an arm-span away has me jumpy and tense, waiting for that impending sense of danger to manifest into something that’s actually, you know, dangerous. It’s not a fun experience. But it’s temporary, I keep telling myself. Just another day.

Grabbing a local map, we maneuver our way through town, and then out of town, as we search for the provided address. The buildings start to become more run down the further out we go, the streets gradually emptying. Eventually we appear to be in an abandoned commercial district, full of factories with broken windows and rotted through roofs.

“I guess Attiru wasn’t exaggerating about the city shrinking,” Zyneth says.

No kidding. “The drop off location being in a deserted portion of the city doesn’t bode well.”

“Possibly.” Zyneth glances around. “I don’t think we’re being watched, at least. But it’s not outside the norm for deals like these to be completed in more covert locations. Pillaging the Ruins and selling any recovered relics is illegal, after all. Possibly the one thing Valenia and Dunmora agree on. There’s not much they can do to enforce it, however, unless you’re caught in the act.” He gestures around to the empty streets. “Don’t have to worry about law enforcement out here. And if any do come, you can see them approaching from a good way off.”

“You don’t think the area is suspicious, then?” I ask.

“Oh, no.” Zyneth laughs darkly. “We’re definitely being set up for something.”

“Great,” I sigh.

We eventually find the drop-off location: an abandoned warehouse at least a half-hour walk from the last legitimate portion of the city. I’m impressed by the scope of Lustaria. When these areas were in operation, it might have been bigger than Miasmere.

I send some glass over the roof as Zyneth circles the perimeter. When we find no one around, we check inside. The building is empty, save for rusted machinery and old, broken spell circles. I activate an Inspect and pump a good amount of mana into it: no active magic that I can find. Zyneth also doesn’t find any traps. There’s nothing special about this location, except for how remote it is. With little else to do, we head back toward the city center.

“You nervous?” I ask as Zyneth quickly fills out the letter to notify his employer of his arrival with the relic. As soon as he finishes, the paper folds itself up into a bird, then flaps off into the sky. Zyneth watches it vanish over the rooftops.

“I’m always nervous at this stage,” Zyneth says. “Especially dealing with a third party. They’re not the one who owns my debt. They have no future need for me. These situations pose the highest risk, especially if they might want to tie up loose ends.”

“Do you think that will happen here?”

He shakes his head. “Impossible to know. All we can do is prepare for the worst.”

That evening, about an hour before I intend to head out, the paper bird reappears, alighting on the table in front of Zyneth just as he’s just about to start his supper. He touches the bird, and it unfolds on the table between us. We both lean in.

It’s a time. That’s it. Nothing else is written on the paper.

“How long have we got?” I ask.

“That will be a little after dawn tomorrow morning,” he says. “Considering the length of the walk, we’ll have to start while it’s still dark. Perhaps they’re hoping I’ll be tired and unalert.”

“That’s annoying,” I say. “Do we still want to try to get there before your employer?”

Zyneth rubs his head. “That would be the safest approach. I guess I better head to bed early to compensate.”

“Ink will be annoyed I’m cutting its nightly patrol short,” I say. “But we’ll be ready when you are.”

Zyneth finishes off his dinner quickly, then retires to his room. It’s still before sunset, but I head out into the abandoned manufacturing district with Ink. Maybe it can find something Zyneth and I didn’t. I’m not sure why this whole situation leaves me feeling so uneasy. Maybe it’s just that damn relic, spiking my anxiety anytime I get too close. Whatever the cause, we spend the night slinking around empty factories and exploring nearby buildings. Even so, we can’t find anything suspicious. We consider waiting out here until Zyneth’s employer arrives, but we promised to meet up with him beforehand. We don’t like the idea of leaving him to walk these streets alone, anyway.

The night passes quickly and without event, but our feeling of apprehension only increases. Something’s wrong, we just don’t know what.

Before we leave the warehouse, we store our Chained ball of glass in the warehouse and attempt to hide it beneath some rotten boards. It makes us nervous to leave so much of our glass behind; if anything happens to it while its outside our range of influence, we’ll have no way of knowing. But since we’ll be storing our body in our Inventory while we accompany Zyneth, this is the best way to ensure we’ll have some ammunition on the scene. When there’s only a few hours left before dawn, and with little else to do, we reluctantly turn back toward the inn.

And that’s when we finally pinpoint it.

The unease isn’t coming from the situation at hand: it has a physical source, and it’s coming from somewhere outside the city. The feeling is distant and familiar. Nerves prickle through us, and we stop, turning to face that faint yet distinct pull. What is it? Why does it feel familiar? And why does that familiarity not fill us with warmth, but unease?

It’s the same feeling we felt back in Harrowood, and before that at sea. Those encounters were weeks and months ago, and so far apart. This can’t be the same source, can it? If so, how did it find us out here?

We want to go track it down. We want to confront it and learn what it is, finally ending that itching uncertainty.

But Zyneth needs us. We don’t have time to do both. Maybe once the job is complete, we can leave the city and hunt for the source.

Painfully, we turn away from that unnerving allure and return to Zyneth’s inn.

By the time we arrive, he’s already outside, waiting in the dark. We quickly switch back into a bipedal form before approaching him.

“Already up?” I ask him.

“Couldn’t sleep,” he says.

“Me neither.”

He snorts. “Shall we?”

I pass my translator over to Zyneth, then Sculpt the glass around my chest so I can remove my core. I hand that to him as well. I experience a strange shift as my sense of “self” switches from all of my body to just my vial, with the body itself abruptly seeming more like a tool or accessory. Zyneth holds up my vial to my body, and I bump into it, adding the whole form to my Inventory.

The void that had been clinging to my body puddles to the ground, melting into the dark street. I’ve a handful more loose pieces of Attuned glass on me that weren’t Chained to my body, and I decide to leave those to float within Ink’s void. Since we’re heading out a lot earlier than I had anticipated, it will be easy to bring all our void while keeping it hidden in the street’s shadows. In fact, I hand over complete control of our void to Ink, allowing it to wander and scout ahead as it pleases, so long as it remains covert. I don’t have to order it to stay close; it couldn’t wander out of my range if it tried.

Zyneth has me repeat the potion bottle act like we did before, chaining myself to his belt. The proximity to the null marble in his bag immediately sets me on edge. Ink bristles, too, but is able to keep our void further away from Zyneth, which helps stymie the effect. I grit my metaphorical teeth, trying to ignore the sense of danger that threatens to tip me into panic. Mind over matter. Just a little bit longer.

Finally, we strike out into the quiet and empty pre-dawn streets.

“I sensed something,” I quietly tell him as we head to the warehouse, in part to distract myself from focusing too much on the null relic. “That feeling again. There’s something out there… watching me.”

Through Ink’s eyes, I can see Zyneth frown with worry. “Can you tell where?”

“Outside of town, I think.” I pause to search for it again, but it’s nowhere to be found—or perhaps it’s just too faint to sense over the thundering presence of the null marble. “I don’t feel it now. But I felt it earlier when Ink and I were checking the warehouse. So it might be in that direction. At least it’s not in the city, yet.”

“Do you think it might be connected to this job?” he asks.

I think hard about all the times I felt it before. The ocean. Harrowood. “I don’t think so. It might be a coincidence. The times I’ve noticed it have been too random to feel connected to your job. I think it’s just… something that might be following me. Or trying to find me. I don’t know.”

“We’ll go investigate as soon as the relic is delivered,” Zyneth says. “Better to confront it now than let it fester.”

His words make me feel a little better. I hadn’t wanted to push him in that direction, but I’d also been wanting to investigate as soon as humanly possible.

Homunculusly possible? No, that’s terrible.

“Thank you,” I say, falling quiet after that. We complete the rest of the trip in silence, each of us wrapped in our own worries. We’ll just have to take these obstacles one at a time.

When we reach the warehouse, threads of yellow light are spilling from cracks in the building.

Zyneth swears under his breath. “Thought we got here early enough.”

It’s been about an hour since I was last here; they must have just arrived. “We can still catch them off guard.” I feel my glass when it falls within my range once more; it’s right where I left it. “We should go in now before they have more time to prepare.”

“My thinking as well,” Zyneth murmurs. “Alright. Stay quiet, and leave your void out of sight.”

I relay the message to Ink, telling it to keep outside the warehouse door until or unless it’s needed. It doesn’t like this plan. If there’s going to be danger, it wants to keep close to our core.

If you show up unannounced, that might cause the danger, I point out.

Reluctantly, agitatedly, it agrees to remain out of sight.

Zyneth makes his way to the front doors.

Something pings at my mind, and Ink tenses.

Shit. It’s that feeling again. Whatever it is that’s out there, watching us. It’s still outside the city, but the sensation is stronger now. It must be heading our way. Crap, we need to get this job over with, and fast. I’m about to tell Zyneth this latest development when he pushes the door open and steps inside.

There are two people waiting in the middle of the room: a dhampyr and an orc. The space between us is lit with a handful of Glow spells. The orbs are hovering and randomly dispersed across the front half of the room, which bob and sway from the breeze of the open door. Their haphazard placement causes Zyneth’s shadows to scatter at random angles, casting the machinery in the back of the room in only faint glimpses of light. I imagine the purpose of the lights’ placements is to create an unsettling atmosphere, but it actually provides plenty of gently swaying shadows to hide in. Ink, who can see through my eyes as easily as I can see through its, sinks to the ground and follows Zyneth through the door, skirting away from the lights and using Zyneth’s shifting shadows to retreat into a dark corner of the warehouse.

As Ink finds a hiding place, I give the dhampyr and orc a nervous Check, half distracted by that distant, familiar presence, and still fighting to ignore the wrongness of the relic.

[Voragin: Level 34 Dhampyr Hemomancer]

[Pogra: Level 31 Orc Pugilist]

They’re the muscle, then. So where’s the employer?

Voragin steps forward. He’s slim but fit, much like Zyneth. I suspect his fighting style also involves small blades and agility. “You came alone?”

Zyneth stops a healthy distance away, still closer to the door than to the thugs. “Of course.”

“Armed?” Pogra asks. His voice is a deep, grating rumble, and a battle axe is strapped as an obvious warning to his back. Him, I’m less worried about. He might be strong, but his size means he’ll be slower.

Zyneth gives the orc a disappointed look, resting a hand on the hilt of one of his blades. “Obviously.”

“You are required to leave your weapons at the door,” Voragin says.

“That’s not going to happen.” Zyneth reaches into a pocket, and the thugs tense. He removes the null marble and holds it up for them to see. “I believe this is what you’re looking for. I’ve been instructed to leave it with your employer. Are they here?”

“You may step forward and hand it over to us,” Voragin says.

Zyneth does not do that. In the back of my mind, that distant presence keeps itching at me. The sense that it sees me, that it’s heading my way, is only growing. Come on, Zyneth, we need to hurry this up!

Zyneth places the marble on the ground, then straightens back up and puts the toe of his boot on it. He scuffs his foot forward, sending the relic skidding across the ground. As it rolls away, its mental pressure recedes. Whew. At least that’s one less thing to worry about.

Vorigan stops it with his boot as well.

“I believe that fulfills my obligation,” Zyneth says. “Unless there’s anything else, I’ll be taking my leave.”

“Wait,” Vorigan says. He steps away from the relic, waiting for Pogra to pick it up. “We need to verify this is the agreed upon relic.”

Zyneth folds his arms, waiting. He taps his foot and gives a bored sigh, but the act doesn’t fool me: I can feel his tension. I’m tense, too.

Pogra removes a scrap of paper from his pocket and places the relic on top of it, cupping both in a hand. Or maybe it only looks like a scrap of paper, swallowed by his mammoth fist.

“We were told you might come with an ally,” Vorigan says as Pogra activates the spell on the paper, and a blue light bathes the relic. I Inspect the spell while Vorigan is talking. It’s just a mundane identification spell. But then I notice something else.

“What ally?” Zyneth asks, voice tight.

There are more spells in the room—and not just the Glow spells. I risk pushing a little more mana into my Inspect to increase its range, careful not to drain my reserves; I have a sinking feeling I’m about to need all the mana I have. There’s a network of spells, embedded in the walls and reaching all the way around the room in a great loop. Those weren’t here before.

“A homunculus,” Vorigan says. “Made of glass.”

The spell network originates somewhere in the back of the room, hidden in the shadows. I quickly activate a Bond Trace, and the souls within the room, buried in each person’s chest, blaze to life like miniature suns. An additional soul flickers to life in the back of the room, right over the source of the spell network.

Vorigan and Pogra stir as my spell passes through them. Zyneth notices, too.

“Zyneth!” I blurt, starting to warn him. But he’s already spun on his heels and is sprinting for the open door.

The chain of spells activates, and the doors snap shut. Zyneth grabs the handle and yanks back, but the doors are magically sealed. We’re trapped. Like flies in a web.

The soul in the back of the room drifts forward. I don’t even need to see its owner to feel who it is. Cold, calculating, patient.

“Now, now. Let’s not be hasty.”

Zyneth turns back around as his employer emerges from the shadows.

“After all. I’ve expended a significant amount of resources to bring you here.”

Like a white specter emerging from the dark, the arachnoid fluidly picks his way through the machinery, stopping behind the hired muscle. He languidly laces his fingers together and regards us with a smile.

“It’s an absolute pleasure to see you again,” Yedzaquib says.