piezophlogistic

You

November 10th, 804

Anonymous patron. As per your request, I’ve constructed a Piezophlogistic Crystal Suit with a calculated 1 E 5 joweles of energy. Squeeze the detonator, and you and everyone in a 5-meter radius will be engulfed in flames. Remove portions of the suit to reduce the radius and temperature, As per your specifications, however, anything more than 500 grams is fatal. I advise thinking very carefully before using it. Perhaps you could employ this in conjunction with some manner of fireproofing.

I expect your traded hyperspace chest to reveal its tantalizing mysteries thusly. I thank you for it. Should anyone ask how I acquired it, I will truthfully state it was donated by a philanthropist who discovered its properties after Quincy’s death, and thought I could use it better than he could.

Godspeed and godheart, Hendrik.

Of course, you had to use your key to decrypt it, defeating the entire point of him playing coy. Unless he somehow, legitimately didn’t know it was you. Or, perhaps he wrote the letter before realizing he should encrypt it, and didn’t bother to change it afterwards.

Didn’t matter.

November 12th, 804

You flipped kata with a wand and a backpack: 2 meals, water, a watch, a map, a sword. A suit of fiery crystal, and a red bit of putty. You weren’t any good with swords, and hadn’t swung one for years. You weren’t any good with wands, either. You could pull a pretty good P₁₀, though.

You had to wait for your personal stores to recharge. You should’ve brought a chair. Or a table.

November 13th, 804

You flipped ana, but somehow fucked up the coordinates and phased into a wall. Apparently, phasing into solid objects simply pushes you back to the fog — of course it would, it’s no different than running into a wall — but hell, did that hurt.

Checking the map again, you most definitely did NOT fuck up the coordinates, and so you had no idea what happened.

November 14th, 804

You weren’t planning on staying 2 days, and you were getting pretty hungry, and had run out of water, but it didn’t matter. You flipped ana, hit a wall again, but this time you had enough momentum to bounce you off of it and pull you all the way to the midworld. You’d ended up a floor below where you’d intended, however, in one of the kitchens. It was 4:23 AM, so no one was about.

Sneaking upstairs was completely infeasible. Probably. Oh what the fuck. In for a halfpenny, in for a pound of flesh.

You raided one of the cabinets, grabbed a potato. Uncooked potatoes were indeed edible, you’d learned that much during your farming escapades. No turnips. Turnips would’ve been better. Or maybe just a slab of meat, but that was probably in the coldroom 2 floors down, and you wouldn’t want to eat it uncooked…

Doesn’t matter, today’s the day you actually kill yourself, and today it’ll actually matter.

November 15th, 804

You ran away. Returned the suit to Hendrik. Let him hold on to the chest for a while.

Reimond hadn’t done anything worth killing him over. More importantly, he hadn’t done anything worth killing yourself over.