“That’s not acceptable,” I replied. Vaozey snorted, then gave me a pointed look.

“Well that’s too bad because I’m not telling you what my weapons are until we’re past the point of no return for this,” she said flatly. “I’m sure you understand the need for secrecy, what with the fact that you could still try to turn me in if you wanted to.”

“I have no intention to do anything like that,” I lied. Vaozey’s eyes narrowed at me. I don’t have any tells, I thought, she can’t see anything.

“Well if you do have some intentions like that, you should know a few things,” she said, cracking her jaw from side to side after her sentence. “Firstly, the guard already knows I operate down here, they don’t come here often. The last time they did they had to fish four bodies out of the filter grates at the docks. Secondly, if you’re thinking you’re going to get a bounty for turning me in you can forget it, because they’re going to do everything they can to avoid giving a foreigner any credit for capturing or killing me. Thirdly and finally, if you do I'll turn the weapons I’ve prepared on you instead of the Rehvites, and they’re not something you can easily fight with magic.”

“Then why not tell me?” I asked. And why do you need me to fight that warrior if your weapon could handle me? I wondered.

“I told you, I want it to be a surprise,” Vaozey cackled, showing her teeth in a grin. “Also, I’d need to get them out of one of my caches to explain the whole thing anyway, so when you meet up with me tomorrow I’ll run you through what they are and how they work. Even a moron like you will get it, don't worry.” I don’t like this, I thought, it sounds like she’s prepared a chemical weapon or something. “Don’t give me that look,” Vaozey huffed. “So long as you stay out of the way, you won’t get hurt by what I'm going to do.”

“You will give me all further relevant details right now,” I ordered. “Operation start and end times, exact points of entry and exit, your planned movements, and the expected ranges and areas of effect of your weaponry on this architectural diagram. You will answer any further questions I have that do not pertain to the exact nature of your weaponry. Upon arrival tomorrow, you will explain the exact nature of that weaponry, and if it is not acceptable to me I will refuse to participate.”

“Agreed,” Vaozey nodded, then she tapped a spot on the architectural diagram. “We enter here…”

From what I could work out, whatever Vaozey had prepared was able to saturate a roughly ovoid area up to ten meters in front of her, spread from person to person in a limited manner, and wasn’t some kind of gas weapon. It might have been poisoned liquid or something similar, but more than likely it was incendiaries with an unconventional design. I didn’t really understand why she insisted on keeping the exact devices a secret, but I assumed that a more average Uwrish mercenary wouldn’t have been able to make the logical deductions I had either. Maybe they're a restricted weapon? I thought, recalling an oddity of creator human law from some long-dormant historical knowledge in my mind. Whatever the reason, it didn't matter much.

The entire operation time was to be around thirty minutes when converted to standard time. We were entering and exiting through the front door, a fact that I did not comment on but had multiple opinions about, and according to Vaozey the streets would be almost entirely empty at the time of night we were meeting at. Vaozey herself estimated that her weaponry would be able to essentially cover the majority of the expected population of the worship hall, allowing Koyl and I to make our way up to the second floor. While the architectural diagrams were fairly precise, I struggled to render them into a three-dimensional model of the terrain in my mind because they lacked any kind of furniture. Vaozey drew a few sketches to show what the inside of the temple should look like, but I wasn’t entirely convinced.

When I arrived back at the inn, Koyl was resting. I let myself into his room, which was unlocked, and found him slumped against a wall, unconscious. Opting not to disturb him, I closed the door and entered my own room. It was late in the afternoon and I wasn’t tired, but I needed to be rested for the temple attack so I opted to attempt to sleep. With any luck, I’ll wake up in the middle of the night, then I will be tired around this time tomorrow, I thought as I willed my consciousness to fade.

Dreamless sleep followed, along with a strange awareness. I knew I was asleep, and I knew I was in my room at the inn, but I was also resting properly. Somehow I even had a decent handle on how much time was passing, so when I thought it was around an hour before midnight I willed myself awake. Strangely, once I saw my room I realized that I hadn’t had any sort of thoughts when I was asleep, besides keeping track of the time. I checked my window and confirmed it was night, then walked out into the hallway to find an angry innkeeper facing me.

“You didn’t pay for tonight,” he said. I pulled out the inn fee and slapped it into his hand, then made to pass by him and check on Koyl. “Price went up,” he said, drawing my attention back to him.

“Since when?” I asked.

“Since right now,” the innkeeper growled. “One more ngoywngeyt, and pay for his as well.” He gestured to Koyl’s room, and I sighed. Deciding to avoid further conflict I paid him the money, then shoved him aside and opened up Koyl’s room. Koyl was still in the same spot that I had found him in, which unnerved me.

“Bunch of bums,” the innkeeper muttered, stomping off back to the stairs. I shut the door, then approached Koyl and checked his pulse. Still alive, I exhaled with relief, it’s incredible that he hasn’t moved. I took a closer look at Koyl and saw more of the znahdeyvtih power residue around his nose and mouth. A quick examination of his medication pouch showed that nearly all of it was gone, perhaps two or three days of doses remained. Fuck, I panicked, shutting the door behind me, how much did he take?

“Koyl,” I spoke loudly, trying to get his attention. Koyl didn’t move a millimeter, and his breathing was so shallow that I could hardly see it. “Koyl,” I said louder, jostling him by pushing his shoulder. How long is this supposed to last? I wondered, as Koyl didn’t have any reaction to being moved. Could it be a substance that is metabolized at a set rate, so an overdose just leads to a much longer effect? I wondered. As I debated getting a cup of water to throw on him, Koyl’s lips parted ever so slightly and he let out a low groan.

I stood Koyl up, holding him on his feet since his legs were limp, and moved him over to his chair. After sitting him down I slapped his face lightly, eliciting no immediate reaction but causing another low groan a few seconds later. Drool dripped from his lips onto his gambeson, and then his left arm jerked lazily before relaxing again. Delayed reflex response, I thought, it’s probably neurotoxic, though that’s not a problem for him unless he’s low on magic. I blinked, thinking the thought a second time, then frowned.

How can I tell if he’s low on magic? I wondered, How is magic stored? I knew it must have been stored in the body somehow, though the exact position and mechanism eluded me. Koyl probably has short and long-term storage like I do, I thought, but where exactly do the organs that store and release that power exist? I hadn’t considered it much before since I had assumed my body wasn’t human, but considering that I appeared to be as human as Koyl was, we likely had similar internal systems. That meant three organs for long-term storage and one for short-term.

Something Yaavtey had said jumped back into my mind. What is a “powm”? I asked myself. At the time I had assumed it was just a word for liver, or maybe some other abdominal organ that I had knowledge of, but upon reflection, I was probably mistaken. What if Yaavtey was somehow stealing magic from Koyl by eating a magic storage organ? I thought. The hypothesis made a lot of sense in retrospect, but it didn’t help me with my current problem since I would have no way to identify or fix such an organ.

I slipped Koyl’s gambeson off, revealing his heavily-scarred abdomen and skinny ribs. Unless Yaavtey was digging around a lot, one of them must be near the liver, or perhaps the stomach, I thought before stopping myself. Concentrate on making sure he’s not going to die, then analyze further, I told myself. Taking out a throwing knife, I gently sliced the skin of Koyl’s scar and watched its rapid-healing response. Slowed, I noted, could it be because he isn’t capable of feeling any pain right now? Maybe a larger amount of pain could wake him. If only I could figure out the electric magic, but I guess this will do.

Using the knife, I carefully cut a small hole in Koyl’s skin and muscle near his kidney, then shoved my finger inside. Wiggling it around, I felt the inside of his body and did my best to stretch the tissue without doing an extreme amount of damage. Koyl began groaning again, more forcefully than before, then his body started to tense up. I pulled my finger from the wound and watched as Koyl flailed for his abdomen, doubled over, and fell out of the chair. His skull made a dull thump as he landed headfirst on the floor, then his neck and chest flexed as he did something I could only explain as “vomiting slowly”. Viscous fluid oozed from his mouth, forming a large puddle on the floor under him, and once the vomiting was finished he flopped to the side and groaned again.

“Whasgoinon...” Koyl slurred, one eye flickering open and squinting in the lantern light. As I was preparing to respond, Koyl gagged slowly again, oozing out more mucus and moaning.

“You are overdosing on znahdeyvtih, most likely,” I said. “Can you understand me?”

“Doncutme…” Koyl mumbled, at an agonizingly slow pace. “Idonno… whereheizz…” Slurred Uwrish was quite difficult to understand, and it took me a moment to figure out what was happening. He’s not aware of his surroundings, I realized, it’s like he’s still asleep. He thinks he’s back in the Hatchet Crew's basement.

“You are inside your inn room in Owsahlk,” I told him. “You are not in Yaavtey’s torture room.” While my assurances hadn’t helped much on the boat during his nightmares, Koyl’s mind was far more relaxed in his current state, so I figured he might be more receptive. However, it turned out that the relaxation was so extreme that Koyl began to fall asleep again.

“Lil golden… torture racks…” he murmured. “Wearing’em… on their shirts…” I can't even tell if this is an improvement. I grumbled, but then my mind seemed to accelerate out of my control, snapping memories together. The torture rack in Yaavtey’s basement has six mountings for limbs, not four, I remembered, At the time I didn’t think much of it, but I’ve seen similar figures before. Like that woman’s golden cufflink, it was almost exactly the same.

“Jhaoyeyl…” Koyl mumbled. The albino’s shop as well, he had an icon of the same variety in his store on that tapestry, I recalled, two legs pointing up, four pointing down. Segmented body. An ant as viewed from above, judging by its shape. That’s at least three Rehvites, or Rehvite associates, related to that symbol. More pieces began assembling in my mind, relating events and statements that I had previously not considered important. “They” told Yaavtey I would be coming, I thought, “they” knew I would kill him, but he never said who “they” were. Perhaps not Yaavtey, but someone in his organization was probably a Rehvite if they were using a Rehvite design in their torture room-

“Yuwniht?” Koyl mumbled, and I was drawn back to looking at him. Koyl’s eyes were fixated on me, and though his blinking was slow I could tell he was slowly regaining functional consciousness. “Where's…Yehp?” Koyl asked, slowly looking around the room. His face made wet squishing noises against the mucus on the floorboards, smearing it into them.

“We are in Owsahlk,” I repeated, pulling my attention back to the situation at hand. “You took an overdose of znahdeyvtih, as far as I can tell. Do you remember what happened?” Koyl tried to get up, succeeding in doing little more than spreading his vomit around further.

“So… heavy,” he grumbled, looking at me again. “You…drug me?” I sighed in frustration, then let the emotion go. Maybe I should get him back in the chair, I thought, but I don’t want to get that vomit all over me. With careful use of force magic, I managed to grip Koyl’s wet side from a few centimeters away and his dry side with my other hand, pulling him up and placing him back in the chair. He teetered back and forth but looked stable enough.

“You drugged yourself,” I said. “What happened?” Koyl turned his head and leaned dangerously close to tipping the chair over, then looked forward and straightened up. After blinking slowly three times, his head nodded forward and he almost fell asleep again. I grabbed him and slapped him on the face hard enough to redden his cheek, waking him back up. “What happened?” I demanded.

“Couldn’t… sleep…” Koyl mumbled, more coherently than before. “Tried everything… Didn’t work… Took some powder… Still couldn't sleep… Made tome tea… Put some powder in it… Laid down again… Had a dream… ate it from the bag… tasted good…” His eyes began to close again, so I forced one of them open to keep him looking at me. The red iris wanted to drift away but kept itself mostly focused on my face.

“That wasn’t a dream,” I told him. “Do you know what to do to recover more quickly from an ingested overdose of znahdeyvtih?” Koyl blinked again, with the eye I wasn’t holding open, then took a long, deep breath. I thought he was going to vomit again, and prepared to move back.

“Need to throw up,” he said slowly. “Get it out of me.”

“You already threw up,” I said.

“I threw up?” Koyl asked, then his hand slowly touched his face on the wet side. “Oh no,” he lamented, looking almost ready to cry.

“Concentrate,” I ordered. “You have already thrown up, what do you need to do now?”

“Just wait…” Koyl said. It took me a moment to realize he meant that he had to wait, and not that I needed to wait for his reply. “Why’s Yaavtey behind you?” Koyl asked, sending an instant spike of adrenaline through me. I looked, seeing nobody there, and cursed my human body for being irrational. “I’m cold,” Koyl complained. “Oh no… he’s reading it again.”

“What?” I asked. “What do you mean?”

“And thusly, under the g-guidance of the prophet’s hand, the c-cuh-contorted flesh became like silk, and Rehv’s will was done upon the body, rendering it b-beautiful once more,” Koyl slurred. “What a stupid book… Reads like a commoner trying to write for… pretentious noble geynaob.”

“Yaavtey said that?” I asked. He's never talked about this before, I thought.

“He always says it… before he starts,” Koyl mumbled. His eyes weren’t focused on me, and I could tell that he was experiencing some kind of dissociative element along with his hallucination. Znahdeyvtih is supposed to be dissociative, I recalled, maybe it's somehow interacting with his psychosis, leaving him more lucid than normal.

“So Yaavtey was a Rehvite?” I asked. “I suspected, but-”

“Nah,” Koyl scoffed, spitting up saliva and smiling. “He’s just… an asshole. He even said he was just… using them for their money… since they were so stupid. Bragged about it… they were just giving it away. Like it wasn’t worth… anything.” Koyl's attention seemed to drift even further away, and I processed the new information. It must have been the Rehvites who told him about me then, I reasoned, but then, how did they know? I only spoke to that one man, and the journey back to the mainland would have taken almost as long as I was in Vehrehr for. Do they have some kind of long-distance communication technology? Even if they did, why me?

“Did Yaavtey mention who told him about me?” I asked. Koyl didn’t reply, just staring into space where some unknown scene was playing out in his mind.

“Shh,” he hushed me, “he’s starting.”

“Who’s starting?” I asked. “What’s going on?” This is some kind of… living memory, I thought, maybe he can see something that’s useful to me. If the Rehvites know about me, I need to know how and why.

“He’s using a different one today,” Koyl smiled. “It’s all jagged… it looks like a little bolt of lightning.” Koyl’s head bobbed from side to side, and his dopey smile didn’t leave his face as he tracked some invisible object until it stood over him. “Right here,” he smiled, clumsily tapping the scarred area on his stomach. “I’m not really here… so it’s okay… take your time. I still won’t tell you anything. He’s probably… long gone by now… If he has any sense… I wouldn't… come back for me… that's for sure… so there's no chance… he will…”

I tried to get more information out of Koyl, but he rapidly became incoherent again and fell asleep. I used his gambeson to wipe off his body, then set him in his bed and left him to his dreams. As if I needed more justification to enter that temple, I thought, now I really want to know what's inside it. Maybe there's some kind of advanced technology. I walked down into the inn’s nearly-empty bottom floor, then out into the night streets. I might as well do my own scouting before the raid, now that I know the address, I thought, There have been more than enough surprises already. If Vaozey has some kind of bacterial or viral weapon instead of incendiaries that's going to be more than enough to work around last-minute.