Gleaming scales, clawed hands, and a tail that was a black serpent — not a tail “like a black serpent,” but a tail that was literally a black serpent, about as thick as his forearm and long enough to wrap around his neck like a scarf, with the snake’s head swiveling to and fro as an extra pair of eyes. Despite all of this, he was the most human-like saurian she had ever met. He could be, after a fashion, considered handsome in human terms — his appearance was no less human than that of Casus. His scales were a bit familiar, both in colour and in pattern. They reminded her of that black saurian from the Old Street Butchershop.

  “G’day. I am to take that you are my clients for this hunt?” the saurian asked, glancing between the two of them as he approached. His voice didn't entirely match his rather humanlike appearance, sounding very much unlike a human, and more akin to the rumble of a crocodile modulated into speech. Somehow, it had a subtle drawl to it.

  “There is likely to be one other, but she will not be joining us for some time,” Krahe said. She nearly said that Yao would pull her own weight, but she didn’t know that. For all she knew that old witch would be content to sit back and do precisely fuck and all for the entirety of the hunt, stepping in only to harvest and process what she needed, and probably a bit more than that.

  “Good enough. Tell the truth, I’m takin’ time away from dissectin’ my last catch, so I’d rather we wrap this up right quick. Introductions out of the way — name’s Shavren, and y’must be Blackhand and Silberblut,” the saurian rattled off, sitting in the client chair in front of Krahe’s writing desk, before he brought out an eyebox and a handful of memslates held by brackets to a length of cord.

  As he flipped through his memslates, he continued, “You know what you are looking for, I’m told — violent, smart, supple fur, material strong enough for a fourth-order key and enough of it for that purpose, and none of this narrows it down a bit. I could put up posters of my tracked marks on the wall, toss a dart and hit three of ‘em. It’s the astro-divin’ and the special mind-sharpening organ that makes it a bitch and a half. I know what you want, I’ve seen a few, that’s why Garvesh thought it a good idea to pester me, but that won’t make it easy. Soulbeasts’re already tricky prey, they’re almost-people in the hides of beasts with the strengths of both, but that’s just regular soulbeasts, y’gotta consider what sorta soulbeast develops this or that specialized trait. Not t’mention that they grow stronger when they eat the schmucks that take a shot and get killed, that I can take, but the paperwork to file for compensation, spare me... Ah, here. This one.”

  The tracker’s clawed fingers deftly plucked a memslate from its bracket and clicked it into place on the eyebox. The device was rugged and overbuilt beyond belief, twice the size of Krahe’s old prospector eyebox. There was clearly a reason for it, given the number of dents and scratches all over its casing. There were two separate lenses, labeled “IN” and “OUT.” The “IN” lens was significantly larger, and its shroud had threading akin to what one would find on any other professional-grade camera.

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  After a momentary delay, a remarkably high-quality projection sprung up — a photograph clearly taken from afar using a telescopic lens. To call the beast within it an animal felt somewhat inaccurate. At a glance, its body seemed like not one of a mere animal, but an organic war machine, as if one had taken a combat robot and shrunk it down. Every visible surface gleamed with hard chitin, and Krahe almost wondered if it had any fur at all — but there it was, poking through in the gaps, barely visible. Its four legs made up more than half of its height, digitigrade and nearly as muscular as they were long, and, from its sides, a third pair of limbs extended — long arms, one with a clawed hand and the other, a three-pronged, bladed pincer. The beast’s tail was long enough to come forward above its body as a scorpion’s tail might, and was tipped with a pincer best shaped for grasping, with spikes and a wide base suggesting heavy musculature to support it.

  Its head bore no visible eyes. It had spider-like fangs to the sides of its maw, and a note suggested that the mouth opened to nearly 180°.

  “Wait, no eyes?” Krahe questioned. Obviously, a target with eyes would be preferable so she could lock it down with the Vinculae.

  Shavren smirked, flipping to the next slide. It was another picture of the beast. This time, one could see a number of thin, fleshy tendrils emerging from the intersections between some of its armor plates, each tipped with a faintly luminous bulb.

  “Dozens of ‘em. It wouldn’t fulfil your criteria otherwise. I am not in the business of getting vital facts wrong, Ms. Blackhand. This type of multi-ocular layout demands sophisticated solutions to filter the sensory input. I can’t explain it in empirical terms, but from seein’ it move, I just know that it more likely than not carries what you need, one way or another. Our problem, ‘course, would also be our greatest reward—”

  Reaching into his pocket, the tracker took out a shard of dark-purple material, setting it on the table. It shimmered with dark shades of abyssal blue, devouring light and reflecting the un-colours of the Astral Gulf.

  “A shed scale, one of a handful I’ve found. ‘Sides the usual parts — tough as all hell, lightweight, so on and so forth — they have the unique property of shunting foreign energies and even objects into the Astral Gulf. Once that capacity is exhausted, it loses its luster, and acts as physical armor. No clue what determines the recharge time, I’ve yet to find a correlation with any measurable property besides the fact it’s slower than when they’re attached,” he said. Then, raising three fingers, and pointing with his tail towards one of the beast’s larger armor plates, he continued: “I will not mince words, Ms. Blackhand. Three full plates, and I will find the beast for you. Five, I will do what I usually do for others, I’ll give you the contract to look over in a bit. Eight plus one organ of my choice, and I will use every resource at my disposal to aid in your hunt.”

  From the looks of it, the beast had sixteen such plates in total, and a large number of much smaller plates around its limbs.

  “What if none of the large plates remain intact by the time we kill it?” Krahe asked.

  After some thought, Shavren said, “Twice my quoted price by weight. They can be rejoined, but the cost is steep and the success rate isn’t great. At worst, you’ll still get to keep a fair bit of the beast’s armor.”

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