Chương 75: Chapter 74 - New Plan

"Out! Out!"

"Urgh..." Atzi pulled herself up, mentally exhausted. She didn't bother with the old lady, slinking her way back to the inn.

"Are you okay?" Hemm asked as Atzi stumbled her way upstairs.

"I will be." Atzi murmured back, before heading up to crawl into bed. === When Atzi woke up, it was dark outside. She blinked, looking up through her window at the stars and moon in the sky. Must have been really tired, she thought as she got up and got dressed. But now that I know exactly how the plan turns out… … It's time to talk to V. She took her usual route, insisted she had to talk to V privately, had her dagger confiscated, and was let inside. The interior of V's office was the same as always.

A desk near the door, a long line of bookshelves. A carpet covering what she knew had to be an escape hatch down the sewer. V gave Atzi a measured look as they sat across from one another.

"What do you have to report? Are you second guessing your desire to go ahead?"

"Hey V. Nah, I'm all in, that's why I'm here." Atzi waved a claw.

"The bank plan has problems." One of V's eyebrows slightly hitched upwards.

"And what problems would those be?"

"Hinges on me and Paulina doing a lot of very specific, very difficult stuff with no room for error at all, for several hours." Atzi tapped on V's desk with a claw.

"There's no backup plans whatsoever if anything goes wrong."

"And how, exactly, would you know the content of the plan?" Atzi grinned "I'm immortal." V pulled out the extremely sharp knife from their sleeve. One Atzi had seen several times before. Been cut by, like her scales weren't there.

"A bold claim." They flipped the knife in their hand.

"An artifact belonging to the Star messed up and fell out of the sky, and now? I can't die. Permanently, anyway." Atzi glanced at the knife "Uh, well, cause I go back in time if I do. Repeatedly. I've done the heist. As much as I could, anyway. You put too much on me and Paulina and all it took was one little stumble and everything fell apart. Like I said, we need... what's the word... continuity? Contingency?"

"I do not believe you. Stop talking nonsense and explain the real reason you are here." I bet these will convince you. Atzi recited the entire list of guard passwords from memory. V blinked.

"Are these supposed to mean something?" Atzi realized her blunder. V hadn't gathered them yet, so they had no way to know what she just spouted. Atzi crossed her arms and grumbled.

"That's the passwords for the bank guards. Me, you, and Aelia had to go gather them." V stood up. Atzi looked up at them.

"You really left it until now to go check those? I thought you'd done yours in advance..." V wandered over to the door to the office, opening it.

"I see now I have wasted my time with a drugged-up fool. You may leave." Atzi sighed.

"You stole from the sage of Sostra and her spellbook is the payment for Cory. You believe me now? I got more." V maintained the sort of neutral expression one only has when looking at the poor without pity, only disgust.

"Hurry, lest my guards are forced to extract you."

"You gotta be kidding me! Fine - it's hidden behind a loose brick in the sewers under your house. There's a crowbar in the sewage nearby to get it open." V slammed the door shut. They wandered over to Atzi, looming over her, knife in hand. Atzi stared at them in the eyes.

"That's worth a hundred gold, you know? You think I'm messing with you here?"

"And how do you know that?" V asked, voice measured.

"I told you." Atzi ran her tongue over her sharp teeth.

"I die, I come back to life on this day. Every time. That's not even the crazy part. But think about it. If I knew that, I could just take it, right? I mean, how would you ever know it was me? I could have just walked in, took it, handed it over for the hundred gold reward." She shook her clawed hands mockingly.

"And don't say 'oh, you might have sold us out', if I had Terra would be blowing this mansion to pieces to get her book back. She's insane." V made no movement.

"Your foolish story aside, you are correct. Which means you are blackmailing me?"

"Uh... sort of?" Atzi shrugged.

"I wanna do the heist and have it actually work out, but I do want to find out something from you. You managed to break into the university, through every magical lock in there. How? I've seen the defenses, how the hells did you get past them?" V walked to the side of their desk.

"Whether you are telling the truth or lying to me, why should I tell you?" Atzi thought for a moment.

"This is gonna be harder to believe, but... if things work out and the city isn't destroyed and I live on, you'll really, really wanna be my friend. I'm gonna be the most important person in the city soon." She grinned like an idiot.

"The Saintess died in Novae. No one but Malus and a few Pomarian necromancers know that. But I know. And I know what she did afterwards." V sat back down across from Atzi. They studied her face, seemingly considering something. After a long, awkward moment, they said, "Leave my office. Wait downstairs. I will fetch you when I am ready to continue this conversation." You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author. Atzi blinked.

"... Alright. Uh, if you're gonna kill me, can you do one thing? Can you tell me something that will make this conversation easier next time? You must have a secret password or something." V just stared at her again.

"I'm serious…" Atzi groaned before slinking out of the office. She waited downstairs as she was instructed. If V just kills me, they're such an idiot. She swished her tail around and hummed a tune to pass the time. A nearby guard turned their helmet towards her more than once. Eventually one of V's guards called her back up to V's office. V shut the door behind her and motioned for her to sit once more. Their expression was as impassive as ever. Then V asked, simply, "What do you actually want? Name it."

Atzi smiled.

"Okay. Sostra is going to be destroyed in six days. The whole empire. I know how to stop it, that's not a problem really, but the big problem is afterwards. There's... a lot going wrong, and I have next to no idea where this artifact is that's bringing me back. Hells, I don't even know if it is an artifact, I'm just going by what the Star's prophet told me." She put her clawed feet up on V's desk while leaning back.

"I want gems out of the university vault, and you know how to get past their defenses. So I can eat them and become a mage and maybe last a little longer next time."

"I cannot do this, nor help you to do it," V replied immediately.

"You would do best to banish any thought of the university's gems from your mind."

"What!" Atzi almost fell back before righting herself, clawed feet slamming against the floor.

"You stole the book! You know how to get past their stuff! How'd you do it?"

"It could be said to have partially been a matter of luck. That is all I will say on the subject."

"If you tell me, I'll owe you. You wanna know why that's good? I didn't finish the story before. See, Malus tried to bring back the Saintess. And she fucked it up. Badly. There's a gate to the underworld under the city and in six days it's going to break open and kill everyone." Atzi drew a claw across her neck.

"But it did work. Sort of. The Saintess is alive again. Except she had to find a new prophet. The first person she could find. Guess who was right above the ritual site when it happened." She gave another awkward laugh.

"You ask me to trust you with this" - V grunted - "tale. I ask you to trust only that I cannot aid you in theft from the university's vaults. I have no reason to deceive you here."

"... You really have no idea?" Atzi's shoulders slumped.

"I screwed up this whole loop for nothing... great..." She looked back up at V.

"Do you know anything about how to get in there? At all? I can keep trying and experimenting until something works. But I don't even know where to start with that place."

"You keep probing for the methods I used to acquire the book. I will not share them, and have good reason for doing so. The reason is not 'I do not want you to have the method.' Even if everything you said is true, you could not replicate the feat."

"Well yeah, I thought you knew some trick. Uh... okay, fine, forget about it. I can tell you how the heist went." V opened their palm.

"Go ahead." Atzi started relaying the story as it happened. She had no reason to lie about any of the details. Though she made it clear that when she got there, she was already tired and injured.

"And what, exactly, is wrong with this plan?" V asked.

"If a single step goes wrong, everything falls apart. That's fine for some parts, but it's hours and hours of having to be perfect. There's gonna be something that goes wrong. I know about their patrol routes more now, I could find out more next time, maybe if we knew the exact patrol routes better we could find a way to ease off what me and Paulina gotta do?"

"Of course, let me plan around your magical ability to travel through time. That was my mistake," V said, their voice heavy with sarcasm.

"Well... first things first, you got private guards and stuff, right? I do need something. Day of the heist, there's a gang of guys that try to burn down the inn I stay at. If that's dealt with before it happens, I'm not tired and bleeding when I go in, so that helps a lot." V took out a quill and paper.

"Lets see, there were about... a dozen and a half of 'em?" She gave descriptions of the main ones she remembered. V wrote down 'Knowledge of book stolen', next to it 'Denied', and below wrote 'Guards day before heist'. They rolled a hand.

"Continue with your requests."

"Uh. Right. Do you know any other source of gems...?"

"No."

"No secret stashes? Aw..." They wrote 'Knowledge of gems', 'Denied'.

"... Okay, let's say you had this trick. You die, you go back to this morning like nothing happened. You can try stuff as many times as you want to get it right, there's no real consequences to anything cause it all gets reset anyway. What would you go for? Besides the bank." V said plainly, "I would try to discover the secrets of as many powerful people as possible, to attempt to bend them to my will. Like you are attempting with me, right now."

"... Like, blackmailing? Oh shit, I do have something on the Star. You think I could blackmail their prophet? How would you do it and not just get murdered, though? I tried that with the Shapeshifter's prophet once and the asshole killed me."

"Certainly, you could try. If it fails, well, should you be telling the truth - does it matter if you die? Any risk would be worth taking if you suffered no consequence from it. All failures would just be more information."

"It still hurts! You ever been burned alive?" Atzi stopped for a moment and thought.

"Okay, dumb question, but I have and it hurts like you wouldn't believe. That's why I don't mess with Malus if I can avoid it. She's psycho. She finds out I'm the prophet of the Saintess and she kills me straight away. Unless it's at the godscouncil, then she can't get away with it." V tapped their quill against the page.

"What would be pain next to the power you held? You could rival even the so-called gods with enough time."

"Yeah, but... I just wanna live in a fancy mansion like this and sit on my ass all day eating jewel beetles. And not die. Ever again. If I can help it."

"If that's your only goal, simply steal a large amount of money or something worth a large amount, either stop the disaster you claim will happen or get out of its range, and purchase yourself the desired home." Atzi blinked. Oh, that is easy.

"I guess... as long as I make sure the gods know about the gate to the underworld, it's not like I need to tell them who I'm the prophet to. Then they'll leave me alone and I can do what I want… Thanks, V." V's eyebrows drew down.

"Is there anything else?" Atzi shook her head.

"Nothing comes to mind. Uh, at the meeting tomorrow, I'm gonna act like I'm really scared and stupid so no-one realises something's up. I forgot one time and Fence was really suspicious."

"And if I were to keep you from this job?"

"Who else are you gonna find who knows half as much about it as I do? I've done it already, remember?" Atzi smiled.

"I wanna pull it off because I'm pissed off it went wrong. I mean, I guess you could, but then I'd just not tell you next time and do it normally anyway. I did that before. I just gave you the passwords that I remembered finding already."

"I see."

"The one time I came to you with this stuff... you actually helped a lot. I got killed, but you did help me a lot. Uh, Malus killed me. So that's why I came to you, with this. You're trustworthy. When it matters." V did something Atzi never expected. They laughed. Atzi was so surprised, she laughed too.

"Hey, I'm serious... you know Terra killed me once? Just turned me to dust. She's insane, that one. Really strong, but totally insane."

"I'm leaving the city," they announced bluntly.

"... what?" Atzi leaned forwards.

"Uh... is the heist off then...?"

"Yes."

"Oh. Shit."

"I have decided that whether you are telling the truth or lying, it is the wisest course of action."

"... Shit. Uh... can I have your mansion, then?"

"Do you have the gold to pay for it?"

"Probably in the future...? I think the prophet of the Saintess gets a big haul. They've gotta, right?"

"The churches often line their coffers with the money of their followers. Whether or not you earned much, you would have access to that amount." Atzi nodded rapidly.

"Yeah, it's gonna be great." Then she frowned.

"Uh... what do I tell everyone else?" V stood up.

"Do not bother."

"Wait. Wait, no, I could run it. I know the passwords, I remember your plan."

"If you believe they will listen to you, you are free to try. With that, goodbye." They opened the door to their office again.

"... Uh, would you take an 'I owe you' for the mansion...?"

"No."

"Shit." Atzi slinked out, disappointed.