Chronicles of the Exalted Sun Child

Book 18-5.2: Busy Nights

Nobody paid much attention to Yuriko as she made her way up the automatic stairs. Escalators, she thought they were called, and she was curious enough about how they worked that she extended tendrils of her perception into the mechanism. She only took a glance, though, as she didn’t want to linger overmuch, but what she saw was quite fascinating. She shook her head once she was at the upper end, then made her way to Memory Lane. Once she was in front of the shop, she couldn’t help but purse her lips. The shop’s sign didn’t make it obvious that it was a drug den, but rather, a relaxation spa, of sorts. If she hadn’t grown several inches, and if she hadn’t covered herself in a baggy hoodie and pants, she might have looked too young to enter the establishment. The strip mall didn’t look too strict either, and she thought she saw several teenagers buying cigarettes openly. Tobacco was limited to those of age, and here, it was sixteen. Alcoholic beverages, on the other hand, had restrictions on several levels. The weak beers, which had alcohol by volume at one percent were pretty unrestricted, while the harder liquors required a buyer to be eighteen or twenty years old, depending on the proof. 

Of course, Rakkisgrad being a corrupt pit that it was, Amalia had quaffed whiskey several times over the past couple of years. Half of the time, Yuriko suspected that her mum’s then-boyfriend had been trying to get her drunk. The girl was too canny to take more than a shot, however, so nothing came of it. 

She walked into the drug den nonchalantly, while she used her perception aura to scan the place, and nodded to herself when she found Mum in the fifth booth from the entrance. She was staring at the ceiling, which was dotted with white paint to make it look like a sky full of stars, which was somewhat ironic considering Irisvaile didn’t have any stars at night. Only darkness and a moon. It wasn’t a reflection of the Luminous Moon, just as the daytime sun wasn’t the Radiant Sun. Perhaps they were severely watered-down versions, but she couldn’t feel a single mote of Radiance anywhere other than within herself. 

Well, since her mum hadn’t been kidnapped and had just entered another drug-fuelled haze, Yuriko turned around to leave. The brazier in the room with Mum flared up as the embers got to a powdery substance that was set to trickle down, and she froze at the familiar scent. It wasn’t exactly daemonfyre, but it was close to it. Certainly, it was part of the whole, but whatever was mixed into the Stardust drug nearly overpowered the scent. 

Curious. 

But, she wasn’t about to drug herself just to experience whatever it was in Stardust. As she walked out, she mentally reviewed what she knew of the hallucinogen. It was burned to produce smoke, much like incense, and inhaled for greater effect. Merely remaining in the room while it burned, even while guarding one’s breath, would still see some effect. As she’d never tried it, she couldn’t say what direct effect it would have on her, but she also suspected that the effect would be precisely nothing. Radiance flowed within every cell, and no poison, inhaled or otherwise, could withstand its devouring. 

Part of what made Stardust was sourced from the north, in the Nurev Border Mountain Range. Some kind of mushroom that only grew there? The fungi grew more prevalent with the reanimated corpses, and sometimes, their spores were spread with the shamblers. The mushroom on its own was toxic, and if eaten, it was quite poisonous. Mixed in with other things, and it turned into an addictive drug. From what her mum said, Stardust allowed one to relive their happiest moments as if they were there. 

Perhaps the addictive properties weren’t in its alchemical makeup but in the experience itself. 

So. Daemonfyre. Where in Irisvaile was it sourced from? It was a bit too faint to indicate incursions, but there must be some kind of source. Then again, she was sure daemons came from the depths of the Abyss, but that could only be easily reached in the Chaos Sea. 

Ah, but the most egregious manifestations of daemons came from Irvalla and Astoria. Both realms could be considered distant and cut off from the Great Continent, or from the Chaos Sea and the Myriad Planes. And if what she saw upon entering Irisvaile, the plane was bordered by the Void. 

She wasn’t quite sure how it all tied together. The layers of reality shifted places often, after all, just that Primordial Chaos lay at the bottom, while the Void was in the spaces between the layers. She lacked a proper perspective, and she suspected she wouldn’t be able to get a clearer view until she grew stronger. As it were, she drew most of this knowledge from Damien’s memories, which were already several millennia out of date. 

Well, her duty to Amalia’s remnant regarding her mum was done. She doubted that the oblivious, and neglectful woman was in any kind of danger, and even if she were, she doubted Mum would even notice. Safety in ignorance, perhaps? And as long as she kept her distance, mum wouldn’t be used against her. She was actually more concerned about Lucian now, and she briefly regretted going after the mercenaries instead of her brother. 

Her tummy growled loudly enough that some of the other shoppers heard it. She ignored the giggles, derisive or otherwise, and headed towards a food stall. They sold sausages that could be served on buns or on sticks. The former was more expensive by a Weyrmark but was probably more filling, so she opted for a couple of them. She was still hungry afterwards, so she bought a couple more. Then, she headed to the mini-grocery store to buy preserved food. She racked up a hundred Weyrmark bill, but she had twenty assorted canned foods, from corned beef to luncheon meat, and sausage thingies. She also grabbed seven packs of hard biscuits. They all fit within her backpack, and by the time she was finished with shopping, it was already past nine in the evening. 

She fished out Amalia’s pager and turned it on, but it had no messages other than the first one, asking her to go to Lucian’s place. She supposed that would be the best place to stake out, and hopefully, he’d be back before too long. She could also snoop on his roommates. Maybe they knew something. Since he was already a target of those bloodsuckers, it wouldn’t change much if they found her in his apartment’s vicinity. 

She kept the pager on as she made her way to a less crowded location. Rakkisgrad had an active nightlife, at least before midnight, anyway. By then, she supposed folks would have either gone back home or were inside the nightclubs. 

It seemed that Rakkisgrad had an inordinate number of establishments open all night. Aside from clubs, there were brothels in plain sight, openly advertising their trade. It was a marked difference compared to Astoria, though oddly, Dragon Fall City and Shangria Station had open red light districts too. 

Once she was in an alley, she scaled up the wall, though she made judicious use of the fire escape ladders too, and wound up on a roof deck. From there, she ambled her way in the general direction of Diamond Residences, though she stayed out of buildings on the actual street. 

She didn’t actually want to meditate out in the open—and maybe she should have also gotten a tent—but she wondered if she could find an empty apartment to occupy temporarily. She could use her perception aura, but she still didn’t understand how that woman tracked her. If she wanted a hideout of sorts, then she couldn’t leave tracks like that, not if she wanted to stay unmolested for long. Alternatively, she could remain awake…? Her body wasn’t quite up to it yet, but in a couple of weeks, once her Radiant Physique was at least at twenty percent, she’d be able to. At the rate she was going, she improved by a percent every day, and her initial conversion put her at ten percent. She also couldn’t rush her physique forging, but it also had the advantage of the process being automatic. She itched to forge Unyielding Guardian Sword Seals, though, and she hadn’t established a baseline of what she could really do with it. 

She had an increased danger sense, and her body reacted faster than she could think, though she expected that was because her 2nd-incarnation body only had six strands of consciousness. She didn’t know how to bolster that number, but she suspected strands could only be formed by her true body. Her greater self would have to transfer it to this body during synchronisation. 

Ah, she could enter a tenement building and spread her perception aura once she was inside. If there was a visual factor to how that woman tracked her, doing so should hide her activity. Or, she could scan several buildings in the vicinity, or across as wide an area as she could manage to make false trails. Best done as soon as possible, really. 

Oh, but she wanted to meditate! And, she was sleepy. Urk. She’d do the false trails tomorrow, and if she got tracked down tonight, that would be a data point in how it was accomplished. 

She settled on a tenement building about seven storeys high, and a couple of blocks from Lucian’s place. The rooftop access was unlocked, and she slipped in without issue. Once she was on the stair landing, she expanded her Anima perception into several cones and scanned the building. There were five apartments that didn’t have any signs of anyone living in them, mostly because they didn’t even have any furnishings. She picked up at the highest floor, cast Helpful Hand to open the door from the other side, then locked the door behind her. 

She had to suppress a sneeze at the amount of dust that was inside. 

“Cleanse.”

It took several castings that nearly depleted her Animus reserves before she was satisfied. She didn’t pick this apartment because it was the closest, but because there was an old bedframe and a couple of rickety chairs. She didn’t have a spell to mend things at the moment, but upon synchronisation, she’d request her greater self to learn one. It would be extremely helpful if she did. As it were, she took out what remained of the chairs’ seat cushions, applied a prodigious amount of cleansing spells on it, then laid them out on the floor. The apartment only had a single bedroom and probably was only a twenty-pace square. Too small for a family, but affordable for singles. 

She sighed, then settled into a seated meditation pose and began converting Radiant motes into Animus lumens. Once she had her reserves filled, she started forging Sword Seals. Her Ennoia core only had a single seal other than the seed seal in the middle of it all, and unlike with Swordlight, Sword Seals actually have to be forged into the core rather than added afterwards. 

The advantage, she found out later, was that she could stop the process with minimal fuss and start it up again later. There would be some degradation at the edges, but as long as she didn’t leave it open for too long, it wouldn’t be much trouble. 

Of course, she knew that because somebody did interrupt her meditation session while she was in the middle of forging her second Seal. 

Just like with making Swordlight, forging Sword Seals took a lot of time. Longer than Swordlight, she discovered. So it was already past midnight, and she was only half done when she detected someone walking down the hallway. Her apartment was nearly at the other end of the hall from the stairs and the barely functional lift, and the room next door’s occupant was asleep in their bedroom. There was no reason to head her way, and the footsteps sounded purposeful.

Yuriko sighed and wondered if the intruder had loot worth taking.