Krahe and Casus settled down in the safehouse, both resting for their own reasons. Krahe, for one, had a stomach far too full to do anything, and could feel herself slipping nearer and nearer a food coma with every passing minute. Casus didn’t exude an immediate sense of exhaustion, but it was clear he was glad to have the opportunity to take a break. They caught up with each other over the next several hours, with Krahe sleeping for two hours straight even with the effects of adefron incense to aid her — digestion just took time, and that was that. She had to admit some measure of surprise at how subdued his reaction was to the matter of the Oldfield case. The anger was there, that much was obvious, but it smoldered beneath the surface, readily placated by the fact the direct perpetrators had already been caught, and willing to wait for the opportunity to release itself upon the Helmeted Man, who stood behind them. He also insisted on attending tomorrow evening’s meeting with the tracker for their soulbeast hunt.

  Casus freely recounted the plights and indignities to which Favonia had subjected him in her effort to fulfill his goal of being capable of wielding Eisenretter as she did Airgetlamh. The slaughters through which he had marched and at points crawled solely in order to gain a full grasp over Eisenretter would suffice fill a volume all on their own.

  “Farbeit for me to lessen the severity of your own struggles, but I simply must complain to someone,” the banisher explained himself.

  “All things considered, I did have it easier than you in some ways. I have my own roadblocks, but they’re markedly less specific than yours. I can’t very well just work myself to the bone to get over them. Speaking of which, you wouldn’t happen to know of a good method to figure out what my missing Control Rods might be, would you?” Krahe replied.

  “There are ways to achieve what you seek directly, I admit, but all are far, far too severe in my opinion,” Casus admitted. “Perhaps dwell on the matter for some time, maybe light some incense. If truly nothing works, then I shall offer up the method I used to change my Knight of Shining Silver into Crusader of Black and Gold. You’ve already undergone a version of it after a fashion, hence why I believe you already have the pieces.”

  Releasing a sigh, Krahe popped a few insectile beans into her mouth and sat up.

  “Now that I think of it, I haven’t actually seen Eisenretter. Not really,” she said as she stretched in place.

  “I shan’t lie in saying that I would not like to transform right here, on the spot, but I am in no state to do so. Tarnished Silberblut, perhaps, but not Eisenretter. It shall have to wait until our hunt,” Casus said, audibly pained by his own words.

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  Krahe thus made her way to the bathroom, spending some time to shower despite not truly needing it. While in there, the world shut out by the white noise, she dwelt on the question of the control rods.

  “I’m just procrastinating at this point. Something tells me it’ll be easier to work it out if I go back there. Maybe staring into that pit will help,” she mused aloud.

  Having thusly realigned her mental state to some extent, Krahe left the safehouse.

  With just a whistle and a measure of thauma, Arion came galloping her way within less than fifteen seconds. She didn’t expect such expediency in more remote circumstances, but the convenience was nice. As she swung up onto the automaton horse, Krahe found that its design somehow exactly matched her most preferred ergonomics. Just from a touch. She set aside the implications as she got her bearings handling the machine, finding relief that it ceded control to her wherever she wished. There was some autonomous behavior, but it was still an automaton horse — one that balanced itself, didn’t give even the slightest bump in the course of the ride, and frankly responded a little too readily. The physical interface, two recesses just behind the steel beast’s skull, contained grips and a few levers, and merely from brief contact Krahe simply knew that several pedals could spring out of its torso if need be. In short, it just rode how she wanted it to ride. Like a hoverbike with a neural mirroring cache that had been used by the same rider for decades — only, Krahe had never so much as touched this thing. And yet it still carried her through the city at the exact breakneck speed to which she had usually pushed her own hoverbikes in the past, it cornered exactly how she had done, its iron hooves slid through right-angle turns and threw showers of sparks exactly as she wanted them to.

  In the same manner, it carried her out of the city, the guards at the gate making no effort to even call out to her, let alone halt her. They recognized something that was of the churches in the way that made it a much better idea to just not get involved — if someone tore through your open, relatively low-security checkpoint atop a black metal horse at some 250km/h, they probably had either the paperwork or the connections to bypass the usual checks.

  The stars and streaked colours of Zastreon’s night sky blurred past her as she sped through the grasslands. Somehow, neither the wind nor any debris flew in her face.

  Krahe reached the desolate town at the edge of Jas’raba far faster than she had expected, and it was not solely due to the Arion’s breakneck speed. The realization dawned on her that her memory of the trek from this place to Audunpoint felt that much longer because it was one of her earliest memories in her new life. In reality, Jas’raba wasn’t that far from Audunpoint at all. It would’ve been foolish if it were, Audunpoint had gotten its start as a glorified supply outpost after all. Not yet satisfied by the short ride, she circled the enormous pit, time and time again, gradually bleeding off speed.

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