Krahe stared at the mutilated form that laid across the room from her, hooked up to tubes and cables, hollow eye sockets covered by fresh gauze. She felt herself sink in place, her sight growing detached, merely pointed in that direction, but not truly focused. A strange grinding noise came from her mouth. Teeth on teeth. She could feel something wet run down her face. Strange. She didn’t recall Firminus’s ambulance having leakage issues anywhere.
“One of them I mentioned… Aldritch. She said she wanted to take his eyes out. Completely calm. Surely, you’ve noticed?”
Firminus glanced between Krahe and Juno. The grafter sighed, drawing two cigarettes from inside his apron. He lit both and tossed one to Krahe, took a long draw, sighed, and dropped his full weight onto a chair to the sound of many tools clattering. Krahe sniffed the smoke. Bitter, but not astringent. Cloves. Tea. A weird smell only describable as “clean.” It was the same on the inhalation. Bitter and clarifying. Even if she held it in, it dissipated on its own, leaking from her nostrils as if the smoke didn’t want to stay inside.
“Of course I noticed. When I put her new eyes in, she’ll look at me the way you do — the same way a handful of my other patients do. Through the grace of Zavesh, all fleshly harm can be mended, but… I can’t undo the rest. The identity that was ‘Juno Oldfield’ is, for all intents and purposes, dead. After rehab, she could appear to lead a normal life. But the girl you were asked to find is functionally dead. The church will keep an eye on her to ensure she doesn’t end up a spree killer or some such. Direct that living revenant in a good direction if we can help it.”
As he spoke, Krahe became a bit less certain that he was speaking of Juno specifically. There was something more there, between the words, that he wasn’t mentioning. It galled her, somehow — the way he flatly observed the death of Juno’s previous identity as if it was a mere fact, a mere switch-flip, as abrupt as switching a domestic robot’s personality chip. The fact she could tell he didn’t actually mean his callous words, that she could hear him coping with the cruel and revolting truth as he spoke, that only made it worse, more bitter, far more bitter than his cigarettes or a sip of rancid Mind’s Dawn. She restrained herself from giving voice to that bitterness, and instead latched onto the first other thing that stood out, if not out of curiosity, then to distract herself, in some way, any way.
“Living revenant, huh? That just an expression, or a piece of jargon?”
“The official term is ‘Wrathful Martyr.’ Immune to rejection from using forcibly-taken graft material, ‘cause they’re already so suffused with ‘impurity’ that nothing in a graft could compare. This is all on a purely on a need-to-know basis, of course. The higher-ups don’t want anyone trying to create the poor things intentionally.”
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“Of course.”
They sat in silence for a while, smoking, exchanging cigarettes. Each of them had smoked three arrha and three of Firminus’ blue incense cigarettes by the point Krahe decided it was her time to go.
“Mind writing up an official letter? Something to give her parents for the time being.”
“Aye, I should,” the grafter sighed.
With the letter in hand — writ in immaculate calligraphy and stamped with a complex sigil — Krahe traversed the city, searching for that bar. That ethereal place whose owner kept a six-eyed snake for a pet. It was nowhere to be found, and, frankly, Krahe didn’t actually want to get drunk. She had hoped to find that bar specifically. Failing that, she decided to visit the Lost Sun Society, and there she spent the better part of fourteen hours, seven of which was made up of learning and playing wargames. The remainder was taken up by the library and her efforts to research eidolon evolution rituals. Thanks to Yao’s influence on Zachariah, Krahe was given access even to otherwise restricted texts. They truly were tremendously helpful, but even these felt as though they were missing some pieces. She was completely drained by this point, and with no force of will left for the first time in a while, she returned to a random church safehouse, where she slept until the sun crested the horizon and painted the heavens blood-red.
Krahe awoke with the previous day’s thoughts still fresh in her mind. She spent the first minutes of her morning smoking out the window.
“What the fuck am I doing? One girl? That’s all it takes to rattle me now?” she muttered. Later that morning, she delivered the letter to the Oldfield household. Despite its grave tone and the fact it made it clear she had suffered extensive injuries, Firminus, through his mastery of prose, had softened the blow enough that Juno’s parents were far more glad for her rescue than they were distraught. Mr. Oldfield immediately brought her payment, wasting no time. It was somewhat bitter, and not all that much all things considered, but she accepted it with a professional thanks. At her office, she cleared the pegboard, and stowed all material directly related to the case in a small box, and stowed that box in one of among a great number of drawers. In this manner, she mentally severed herself from this case as best she could. Once she witnessed the Four’s execution, she would be able to leave this case in the drawer for good.
Until then… Well, she had more than enough things to do. Continued research into eidolon evolution was the obvious choice, especially given the fact Sorayah had some materials pertaining to the matter in her collection, but there was only so much Krahe could do before it came time to actually undertake the ritual, only so many theoretical angle-web diagrams and incantations she could draft before her eyes glazed over.
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