Actually finding where Renzo lived proved to be easier than she had expected. Zastreon wasn’t exactly an information civilization, which meant that, on one hand, a person could go under the public radar fairly easily. On the other hand, people weren’t always on-guard about their personal information, an average person just didn’t worry about his address being known, or in this case, recorded in the Audunpoint City Directory, edition of 5235. About four years old. She wondered how often they updated it.

  The directory was something of a quasi-phonebook, listing notable individuals, businesses, mostly those who had a reason to have their contact information available — public figures, business owners, officials, a number of comic artists and authors. There was only one “Renzo” identified as a comic artist — in fact, the book plainly described him as the highly acclaimed, best-selling author of Wrought in the Pit. Renzo Dreschner.

  Krahe simply compared the fan-letter address in the back of the collected volumes with the address in the directory. The volumes she had were dated as having been printed in the last two years at the oldest, so she surmised the address within them might be the correct one. The search took around an hour, and most of it was actually going there to check. The new address was in a local storage facility — effectively a post-office box — while the old address from the directory was an unassuming two-floor house. She didn’t hang around, merely passing by the property. She didn’t have the time for a stakeout, let alone a break-in and the complications that could come from that. On the other hand, there was still some time until the scheduled meeting, so, returning to the Crow & Raven office, she passed the time reading Rampage and occasionally rehearsing parts of the guidestone ritual.

  Casus arrived just as the clock struck 7pm, glancing around with a furrowed brow as he walked in.

  “I see that you have made good use of Mistress Yao’s teachings,” he remarked.

  “It was only a matter of time. I admit it was a relief that much of what I already knew translated easily enough to arcane warding arrays,” Krahe said, offhandedly, only glancing in the banisher’s direction before returning her attention to the tome in her hand. Rampage was a true masterwork of dark fantasy, but it was also frustrating to read at the best of times. At the moment, she was making headway into Vol. 2.

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  Without missing a beat, Casus took Vol. 1 from her desk and took a seat on the sofa to the side. It was a weathered old thing that Krahe had picked up from a nearby antiquarian in the process of furnishing the office.

  The banisher flipped to the back of the volume to read the dedications and author’s notes first, and soon remarked, “Oh, this is based on Gottfried of the Iron Hand. Interesting.”

  They read for a short while, but Krahe simply knew that Casus had something on his mind. It was just a gut feeling, she couldn’t pick out any specific clue. She decided to just bring it up openly.

  “Alright, what is it? Did I screw up whatever you were doing by entering the safehouse?”

  “No such thing, no,” Casus shook his head. “I merely witnessed a vision, this being the intended effect of that rite, and I wish to speak of it to best discern whether it is truthful or merely a result of distorted mental projection. You see, at times, even directed visions are simply, how to describe them… The reflections in a stirred up pond. Toss in a pebble — such as another person — and the water becomes even more distorted.”

  Krahe put down her book. “Alright, sure. What’d you see?”

  Casus went on to describe the entirety of his vision and his interpretation of what he soon learned to be Krahe’s Six Maxims, as she readily explained that she had indeed completed the Sixfold Astral Implosion Furnace.

  “If I understand it correctly, your vision was about as close to the truth as it could reasonably be expected to get. Could just be a difference in perspective on the same maxims, I guess,” Krahe shrugged. She furrowed her brow as something came to mind. “There was a word for this, what was it?”

  While she fruitlessly searched for the word, however, Casus sat forward with a gravely profound expression, clutching his hands together.

  “‘Tis all as I saw it, then? The Love of Justice, the Dragonslayers’ Feast, Majestic Quest. I had known that you were a crusader true, Lady Blackhand, but this… It is no wonder Favonia so readily considered you as “herself, only at an earlier point on the path,”” he uttered, his pupils constricted to thin crosses, his usually unshakeable composure decisively shaken. In an instant, however, just as Krahe was thinking of what to say, how to recenter him, the banisher’s shaken resolve snapped back into place even more resolute than before. His grave expression resolved into a jubilant smile, and he exclaimed, “Zavesh be praised, I was even more right in my judgment than I had initially thought! Why, at this rate, we’ll be able to carry out our hunt, come right back, and do away with Damrus Hashem within the week!”

  Krahe blinked a few times as she recovered from the mental whiplash, and to add insult to injury, a series of thumping knocks sounded from the bottom of the stairwell. The tracker was here. It was so abrupt that even Casus was knocked out of his jubilant mood, and Krahe took the opportunity to welcome their guest.

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