As I put distance between myself and Tkaol's burning lab, I knew I needed privacy. I thought of going back to the inn after an hour, but quickly discarded the idea. The room I was staying in would be too small to do what I needed to do in order to execute the next step of my rapidly-forming plan. Not to mention that my task had the potential to be noisy and thus draw prying eyes, and I didn't want Yehpweyl knowing anything more than she already did about my activities. The noise would also be a problem for working in alleys, so the only remaining place to go for privacy was a rooftop of an abandoned or empty building. Thankfully they were plentiful in the slums.

My new backpack's contents rattled and jingled as I scaled the side of a mostly-stone building that I knew had both a flat roof and an easily-blockable access trapdoor from having passed by and over it several times. I climbed up over the edge of the building, looking down at the streets from three stories up and measuring sight lines, then mentally drew out a circle where I knew I wouldn't be spotted and got to work. I took off the backpack, pulled out a long crowbar-like tool, and shoved it through the handles of the trapdoor, then quickly emptied out the rest of the contents.

My initial idea was simple, I would obtain a large amount of poison and then, somehow, poison Yaavtey. Either he would die or become incapacitated, and in the latter case I would kill him with a weapon when he couldn't fight back. The properties of the poison aided in this, with it being dangerous enough to just touch let alone inject into one's body. However, when I inhaled the vaporized version and noted that its effects were still extremely potent, a variant plan I had been attempting to assess unsuccessfully before that point began to appear viable. When I realized just how much poison could be extracted by Tkaol, I settled on it and made it my main priority, as it was clearly the most effective usage option for my purposes.

Gas weapons were, assuming the substance used was dispersed to an appropriate concentration, cheap and effective. They were also nearly impossible for humans to defend themselves against without proper protective equipment. Gas attacks were so common during the late creator human period that various forms of gas masks were among the most ubiquitous creator human artifacts that could be found, even hundreds of years after their extinction. And yet, there hasn't been a gas mask in sight since I arrived, I thought, with the exception of the one I'm now in possession of. There was virtually no chance that Yaavtey would have such a mask, and thus by simply changing my technique I could make him defenseless.

The mess of metal parts from the distillation equipment as well as a number of other tools and scrap I found was quickly organized into three main categories. Plates, fasteners, and miscellaneous. I need to create a distribution device, I thought, would it be best to go for a pressurized throwable? I suppose I could try that first. It needs to disperse enough to fill an enclosed room with perhaps one open window. Picking out a plate of thin iron, I began to use both heat magic and my own strength to shape it into a cylinder while eyeing up other pieces which could be used to cap it.

“Damn it,” I swore quietly with my teeth clenched. The piece of metal I was working on had snapped again, unable to be bent into the shape I desired. I threw the now-useless scrap into the ever-growing pile beside me and looked at the small collection of pieces I had left. A sigh escaped my mouth, and I looked up to check the time and make sure it wasn't getting too late. Past noon, I thought, I've been at this for a while now.

The problem I was having was both irritating and would have been easy to remedy under better circumstances. The metal was just poor quality, plain and simple. Unlike the weapons-grade steel used in swords and armor, the equipment I had taken from Tkaol was made of very quickly forged iron, with some of it even being cast using molds. It could bend, but bending it often weakened it to the point of snapping. I had no way of reforging the metal either since my heat magic could barely get it hot enough to melt, not to mention I lacked an anvil and hammer. Can't do grenades, I admitted to myself, at this point even if the rest of the metal worked out perfectly I doubt I could create more than three. There’s too much waste.

Looking at the rest of the scrap, and judging mentally how far I could change its shape before it broke into useless pieces like the rest, I tried to come up with some kind of gas delivery device that would at least be portable enough that it could be used in an assault. If only it was heavier than air, I lamented, I could just make something to dump the gas in through a hole in the roof, maybe the chimney, and fill up the target building like a bottle. I ground my teeth together, then stopped, then my eyes widened as I recalled a little-used property of gasses and smoke. Hurriedly I pulled out one of the poison bags and grabbed a piece of the broken scrap that was relatively flat, then poured out a tiny bit of powder onto it.

Shit, I should be doing this with a closed container, but- I thought, stopping mentally to look around. The state of glassware in Uwriy was poor, with the only truly transparent glass I had seen being present in my own gas mask, so I didn't have a beaker or anything similar. Instead, I took some of the new scrap which was already cup-shaped, put the plate of poison into it, then capped it off with another flat metal plate. I heated the container with magic until the bottom was glowing faintly, then carefully changed over to cooling it down with magic. Beads of sweat formed on my head, a byproduct of concentration, and I only stopped cooling the container once I saw water beginning to condense onto it as well.

Moment of truth, I said to myself, then pulled the top plate off of the metal container. Inside, sitting in the bottom of the cylinder like a liquid, was a milky white gas. Cooling it down had increased its density without condensing it back into a liquid. My excitement showed on my face, and since no humans were around to see it I didn't stop my body from expressing itself. This I can work with, I thought, I just need to make sure it's still effective. Tilting the cylinder like a cup, I let the smoke flow towards my face and then inhaled it. The burning of rapid-healing was immediate, and the familiar sensation of vibrating eyes and weakness filled my body. Despite that, I couldn't have been more pleased.

The end result of my tinkering was a very poorly constructed vaporizer. Since I couldn't melt any significant portion of the metal, the only real way I could bind any of it together was to make a hole in two pieces, then put another sliver of metal through those holes. After inserting the sliver, I would heat it and bend it so that it wouldn’t fall out, and attempt to plug the remainder of the hole with whatever refuse or grime I had nearby. The main body of the vaporizer was a wide and flat cylinder, almost identical to the evaporation chamber from the distillation equipment save for a hole on the side and a makeshift lid that could be fastened on. The whole chamber was just large enough to be half full when a single bag of poison was emptied into it.

The aforementioned hole on the side was positioned towards the upper part of the cylinder, and was shaped to fit a metal tube around half a meter long which would serve as a spout. As a test run, I grabbed some sticks from the roof and set them alight in the chamber with heat magic. I cooled the top of the container and, after a few seconds, managed to pour out some of the smoke onto the ground nearby since it had become less buoyant. It wasn't efficient, wisps of smoke leaked out of the cracks where the metal pieces joined together, but it would serve well enough for my purposes.

I cleaned up the inside of my vaporizer and carefully took the metal tube out, placing it into my backpack in two pieces alongside some of the remaining metal which I figured I might have a use for. The rest of the trash I left, and after taking the crowbar out of the trapdoor I descended the building and made my leave with a good amount of haste, heading east so that I could get nearer to Yaavtey. I need to eat something, I thought, it's almost sundown and if I'm not going back to the inn, I should eat before the fighting starts.

“And that's when I stabbed him right in the lowjheyv!” A particularly loud old man shouted beside me. His companions, also old men, burst into laughter. I was sitting inside a small tented food stall, trying to look as inconspicuous as possible while I ate my fill of food. The meat and vegetables in front of me has been positively slathered in oil and sea salt to the point of not having any distinct taste, but I didn't mind because it made it easier to consume large amounts of them.

Another old man in the group began telling a story when the rest had settled down, and the only reason I couldn't tell that it was a continuation of the previous one was because the voice had changed. Honestly, I thought, every single one of these so far has just been an anecdote about a woman, or about someone getting beaten up in a humorous way. It's just like warbreed humor with slightly different subject matter, I can't even imagine how they find them entertaining when the end result is obvious from the outset. The cook and owner of the stall walked by behind the wooden counter and noticed my mug was empty, refilling it with fruit juice.

“Two ngeyt,” he grunted. With a sigh I pulled out two more coins and slid them to him.

“I didn't ask for a refill,” I grunted back. The man just snorted at me and walked off, as if to say you were going to. Looking out into the street I checked the light level, still finding it to be too bright for a good night operation. I was around four blocks away from Yaavtey's home, and I had been keeping an eye out for members of the Hatchet Crew the entire time I was eating. The few I noticed walking around didn't seem to notice me, which I took as a good sign.

“You want more food?” the cook asked. Our eyes met and I could feel the lack of patience in his stare.

“Yeah,” I confirmed. The cook turned around and poured a pan's worth of the same meal into another plate, then slid it in front of me with practiced ease.

“Keepin' an eye out?” the cook asked. I looked back to him with a much harder stare than before but he didn't flinch. “You just make sure you don't break anythin' in my stall, got it?” he warned. Wordlessly I turned to the food and began eating, which was enough for the cook to go back to whatever it is he was doing. Another explosion of laughter came from the old men, who called out and ordered more food jovially. The cook brought some plates over to them, then engaged in some light conversation.

“Oy little Moyyeyfao, come sit with us!” one of the old men offered.

“Sorry, can't right now,” the cook apologized in the same gruff tone he had used with me.

“Look how serious he is,” another one of the old men mocked, “I remember when you used to shit your pants and cry to your mother about it, when did you get so serious?” The other men laughed, and the cook remained stone-faced. After a moment of silence the attention of the men gradually fell on me, and I instinctively tilted my face away.

“You know who he is?” one of the men whispered. He probably thought I couldn't hear him, but the street noise was dying down so making out his words wasn't hard.

“Hatchet Crew, probably,” Moyyeyfao the cook replied lowly.

“He ain't got a hatchet though,” another man muttered, “that axe ain’t a hatchet, right?”

“Just a mercenary then,” the first one whispered, “you be careful kid, something about that guy feels bad. Probably gonna be fighting tonight.”

“I should be telling you that old man,” Moyyeyfao replied with just a hint of amusement peeking through his rough grunting. I finished up the food on my plate, gulped down the rest of the juice, then stood up and walked out.

The sun was down fully, giving me a comfortable cloak of darkness to work with. My belly now full, I once again vanished into a nearby alley and began making my way to Yaavtey's home. If I have it my way there won't be any fighting at all, I thought, just killing.