There are things a person simply cannot imagine until they experience them firsthand.
Ryan had always assumed that the phrase mind went completely blank was a figure of speech.
He now knew he had been wrong. Profoundly wrong.
The only reason his mind didn't stay blank longer was because the sound of this woman's voice and the warmth of her breath were too immediate to ignore.
This close, her already-striking face was doing things to his composure that had no rational explanation. The deliberate, syllable-by-syllable delivery made it even worse. A single thought was ricocheting around his skull with embarrassing force: Kiss her. What kind of man lets an opportunity like this pass?
Fortunately, this woman was not only beautiful — she was terrifyingly powerful. His survival instinct and his sense of self-preservation were more than capable of sitting on that impulse and keeping it buried. In the middle of that internal battle, he somehow also managed to notice a faint trace of scent reaching him from across the small distance that remained.
When Edith's smile became blinding enough, Ryan finally managed to surface.
"Miss, I... I don't have that much money."
Edith laughed softly, released his chin, and drifted back to the chair.
Ryan found he couldn't even look at her legs now, fully covered as they were. Whether his heart was beating too fast or she had activated something in him that couldn't easily be switched off, even watching her simply walk across the room felt unreasonably distracting.
He kept his eyes on the floor and listened to her voice.
"I'm glad we understand each other, Mr. John. As for the money — you needn't worry about that. As I mentioned, an organization like ours — one forced to operate entirely in the Church's shadow — faces real hardships. We certainly don't have the Church's comfortable problem of having too little potion material to distribute."
She gave a small laugh — just light enough to leave a faint itch somewhere in his chest — before continuing.
"So we don't mind offering the same kind of credit to unlicensed Extraordinaires who share our difficult position, and we're willing to absorb the loss if an advancement attempt fails. There is only one condition: when you attempt to drink the potion and advance to Sequence 8, tell us where you'll be."
She paused again, then stretched — a long, unhurried, deeply contented sound — before finishing with something halfway between a joke and a warning:
"Of course, we wouldn't be willing to extend that kind of trust if we weren't confident no one would try to take advantage of it. Believe me, Mr. John. The Extraordinary powers you've seen and acquired so far are the most ordinary of what exists. What a truly powerful Extraordinaire can accomplish will exceed anything you can currently imagine. Finding one small Sequence 8 in a sea of people is entirely within the realm of possibility.
Don't think about reporting this to the Church either — quite apart from what they'd do with you, what you're looking at right now may not be what I actually look like. And if we can't retaliate against the Church, surely we can manage one person.
Not that I think you'd be quite that foolish, Mr. John. After all — as a fellow Assassin yourself, you know better than anyone what it means when a group of Assassins is watching from the dark. One more thing: after you advance, your current abilities won't vanish. They'll get stronger."
After all that, there wasn't much Ryan could do except nod cooperatively.
Edith looked at him — still dutifully addressing the floor — and her tone picked up immediately.
"Wonderful, we have a deal! The formula is four hundred pounds, three hundred pounds per primary ingredient, and one related supplementary ingredient as a gift. That price works for you?"
He nodded. The market rate was entirely fair. Extraordinary materials were rare enough that paying a hundred or two hundred above asking was considered normal just to get your hands on something.
"All right, listen carefully, Mr. John — I'll only say this once.
The primary ingredients for Instigator are: one heart of a Demon-throat Honeybird, and one venom sac of a Dark Lurker. The supplementary ingredients are: one complete vocal pipe of a Demon-throat Honeybird, five drops of Blue Datura juice, ten grams of Water Fern powder, one walnut, and one hundred milliliters of pure water.
As agreed, I will provide the first three ingredients once you've fully cleared your potion's influence, and all you'll need to pay me is six hundred pounds. Quite a bargain — I'm not even charging interest, Mr. John. That's our sincerity. I hope you won't make us regret it."
"I'm grateful for your generosity, Miss Edith. As for the rest — time will tell."
He was still addressing the floor with complete seriousness when a smooth, pale hand appeared in front of him, accompanied by Edith's laughter — the laughter of someone whose prank had landed perfectly:
"My turn to rob you now, Mr. John. Hand over every penny you have on you, and I'll spare your life."
Ryan looked up at her and, despite himself, played along with a smile:
"Could the lovely bandit perhaps leave me enough for meals? The reason I came back to Mourne is precisely because in another city I was spotted by a Nighthawks officer while running Shadow Lurk. I can't afford to leave any trace for a while."
Edith waved a hand, unbothered.
"I'll leave you twenty pounds. And don't worry too much — you were probably just unlucky enough to cross paths with a Nighthawks officer who happened to have Spiritual Vision active. With it running, he could make out your general shape, but only your outline—"
She looked him over and revised:
"That said, with a build like yours that no disguise technique can salvage, you should be careful."
"Spiritual Vision?"
"A technique in the field of mysticism — something any Extraordinaire with sufficient Inspiration can learn without great difficulty. It allows you to perceive things normally invisible, most commonly the luminous aura emitted by the spiritual power that every living thing possesses."
"Every Extraordinaire can learn it? Then isn't Shadow Lurk basically useless?"
"Not quite. Maintaining Spiritual Vision is itself a significant strain — the lower your Sequence, the shorter you can sustain it. And learning it in the first place takes considerable effort for Extraordinaires with lower Inspiration, like Assassins."
Ryan began counting out the money. When he produced nineteen pounds and some change, and pushed the rest toward her, Edith seemed to remember something.
"You don't know how to meditate yet, do you, Mr. John?"
She pocketed the money without checking it, noted his nod, and said without surprise:
"I'll teach you when I bring the materials. A potion like Assassin doesn't boost Inspiration or spiritual power much, so for now it's not strictly necessary to get through the brief period of instability after drinking a potion. But from Sequence 8 onward, it's a different story — much better to have it."
Before Ryan could respond, she stepped in front of him, extended her hand, and smiled:
"Then — a pleasure doing business, Mr. John!"
He hesitated a beat, stood, and shook her hand. But before he could form any impression of it, he saw the corner of her mouth curl into something that looked like mischief.
She stepped forward before he could react, left a feather-light kiss on his cheek, and said softly into his ear:
"Good boy. What a pity the timing isn't quite right — otherwise I really wouldn't mind giving you a little more of a reward, Mr. John."
Then she pulled back and was gone, her silhouette growing fainter by the moment until it vanished entirely.
"What kind of a cult temptress did I just walk into?!"
It was only after her figure had completely disappeared that Ryan managed to think this clearly.