We headed down one of the halls Biggerstaff had shown us the day before.
“I know you Death affinities ain’t got no control,” Warcry said, “but I want my shot at that Nameless trash, so don’t kill him on your first go.”
“I wasn’t planning on it until you said something. Now I’m gonna have to think about it.”
He shook his head like he couldn’t deal with my sarcasm right then.
The Smoking Dragon Distillery was open for business when we got there. In the storefront, holograms of dragons made of smoke drifted and moved under an unseen blacklight. Inside, weird psychedelic music drifted down from the speakers, and little electric fountains hung on the walls, smoke and water pouring over smooth rocks. Elaborately shaped bottles of every size and color filled the glass shelves with little paper price tags hanging off their necks. Fancy treasure boxes sat open, displaying pills on velvet, and pipes made of glass, wood, steel, or clay rested on pipe stands next to silk bags of different smokables.
While we were looking around, a blue-skinned lady with long dreadlocks that looked like jellyfish tentacles came out of a back room.
“How might I help you boys this wonderful morning?” She pointed a webbed finger at one of the pipes on the stand in front of us. “Looking for a little boost before a fight? Can’t absorb Intensifier faster than through your lungs. All my pipes are handcrafted for efficiency, with a smoke reclaimer in the stem. Less than a fraction of a percent lost.”
“Thanks, but we’re actually here to pick up our healing elixirs for the week,” I said.
She nodded, jellyfish hair sliding over her bony shoulders. “I thought you looked like newbies. I only give out one bottle a day to probationary Dragons. You’ll have to pick up the next bottle before your next fight.”
She headed back to the counter and pulled out a pair of brown bottles labeled Healing Tier 1 in scrawling cursive from underneath. It reminded me uncomfortably of Muta’i’s writing.
“Do you make this stuff yourself?” I asked.
“These base elixirs we import from small-batch distilleries around the Territories,” she said. “Once you’re past Level Six, you’ll move up to my healing elixirs. Not before.”
I tried to think of a way to ask without sounding like a dick, but all I could come up with was, “How do you know these aren’t poison?”
She squinted up at me, crossing her skinny arms and leaning them on the counter. “Ever met a distiller who couldn’t tell the difference?”
“I knew a distiller who made way more counterfeits than he did of the real thing.” And I’d spent most of the last month sorting the real ingredients from the fakes so he could do it.
“If he sold me counterfeits, then you didn’t know him very long,” she said. “The Eight-Legged Dragons aren’t kind to swindlers and charlatans. You’re thinking of the Jianjiao.”
Warcry and I each pocketed our elixir, and she marked down our names in her HUD to make sure we didn’t get more than our share per week.
Instead of turning to go, though, Warcry asked her, “You got any Blackout Curtain or somethin’ like it?”
“We have a proprietary blend called Deep Night, guaranteed to shut out any dreams, nightmares, or restless sleeping conditions,” she said, pointing to a little glass jar of what looked like black kidney beans. “Seventy-five credits a bottle.”
I let out a low whistle, but Warcry just scowled.
“Blackout’s only thirty-eight,” he said.
The distiller smirked. “And it’s full of impurities.”
“Bollix it is,” Warcry snapped. “That’s made on Qaspar-7. Quality control’s through the roof.”
“The more hands you have on a product, the more chance for Spirit impurities to seep in,” she said. “Deep Night is small-batch made, and no one but me touches it before the customer, so there’s less chance for contamination.”
“You mean so’s you can charge twice as much,” Warcry said.
She shrugged. “If you can get mass-produced trash way out here, more power to you, but Deep Night’s the only thing I carry.”
He cussed under his breath. “Fine.”
He transferred the credits, and she tossed him the jar, its contents rattling inside.
“Happy sleeping,” she said.
As we left, I glanced over at the bottle in Warcry’s fist. Something that shut out dreams might be a good idea for a while. At least until my brain started working right and stopped feeding me all this miserable crap about back home. Maybe if I upped my feral-killing game, I could afford a bottle.
I opened my mouth to ask Warcry if he’d been having weird dreams since we got to Bogland, too, but he cut me off.
“Mind your own, grav, or I’ll mind it for ya, right out the side of your face.”
Cool, so we were done with the civility for the day. Good to know.
Grasping at Oblivion
A MESSAGE CAME IN WHILE I put my clean clothes back in my little closet of a room. It was Kest wondering if I wanted to eat breakfast with her and Rali. Nothing about holding hands or the night before, but what did I expect her to say? Thanks for touching my arm stump?
I said I’d meet them downstairs in a minute. I’d already eaten, but I could use a little more, something of the bacon or sausage variety.
“You coming with me or staying here?” I asked Sushi.
She stopped swimming around the corners of the room and went to my newly washed jeans.
“Staying here,” she said, squeezing in between the folds.
“I might be gone a while.” I checked my HUD. “My first fight’s in an hour.”
She nestled in deeper and closed her mismatched eyes. “Hour.”
“All right, have fun.”
Rali and Kest were just sitting down with their food when I got to the market court. I waved at the twins, then got in line for a place that sold mainly meat. Way more people were out and about by then. Most of them looked like fighters gearing up
