Author: Wildbow

Let Slip – 20.d | Pale

The screams rattled buildings, shook pieces of the buildings loose, and made the ground shift, tilting.  It felt as though the inside of her head was doing the same thing, and that was scarier than seeing the moon on its way to colliding with earth.

Shouldn’t have thought that, she thought to herself, wincing from the pain, staggering, falling- not even falling downhill.  The directions her imbalanced mind wanted to throw her were different than the directions unsteady ground wanted her to slide or tip.  The walls between her mind’s eye and her eyes were crumbling, and as she fell awkwardly, arm braced against snowy road, leg out to keep from sliding into a growing crack, she could sense the moon’s movement, which stirred up other thoughts, like gravity and devastation, and people would die or be hurt-

It was dusk and shadows on the road started contriving to look like bodies and body parts.  Colors bled and tore and seeing the black girl with the red jacket running made the red stick to her eyes, streaking things when she looked one way or another, expanding out when she kept her eyes still.  Spots in the air were bodies lifted up by gravity.  All from a stray, dark thought.  All underlined by the ugly reality that her mind was breaking.

It terrified her.

The power lines were turning into flesh.  Organs were swelling in size, weeping fluids that tainted the rivers of crimson that the afterimages that were stuck in her eye were streaking everywhere.  Crimson became uglier, diseased colors.  Disease spread, found cracks to seep into, and then foamed, or reacted to something beneath the surface.

Putting her hands over her ears didn’t help, so she stopped, using them instead to crawl.

“Come here!” one of the visiting practitioners shouted, crouching over Gilly.

“Stay!”

“Run away!”

“Die!”

The voices got more guttural, some of the words coming at her like teeth snapping close next to her ear, the sounds vibrating with the ongoing, guttural, reality-shaking scream.

She began to crawl away, until she saw the foreign practitioner crouched over Gilly’s body.  Jen tensed, barely able to see straight.  That smudge of red still painted too much around her with carnage, shadows still suggested bodies, spots in her vision were floating debris, more corpses suspended in the air by gravity.  The closer the moon got, the less bright it became.  A sphere of darkness that blocked out the sun instead of reflecting it.

She scrambled.  Her knees were shot through with pain every time they pressed on hard ground, a casualty of middle age.  She hardly cared.  Her hands dug past bodies – past dark ground.  Through snow.  Through blood- dirt.  She threw herself onto and over Gilly, protecting her from the foreign practitioner, pushing and striking out at the hand that was gripping the side of her daughter’s head.

“It’s okay,” the foreign practitioner said, hands raised.  “I’m here to help.”

“Putting her out of her misery.”

“Who is she helping?  What’s her real goal?”

“She’s with Nicolette, and we all have suspicions about Nicolette.”

Jen shook her head, trying to shake the negative thoughts loose.  Negative thoughts, but they weren’t wrong thoughts.  The only ones present were her and the foreign practitioner.  Gilly wasn’t saying anything.

The scream made her skin feel like someone was taking – she groped for words to describe the feeling, and the groping only took her to darker places.  She could imagine someone taking a belt sander to her, and the skin across most of her body feeling like it was on the brink of tearing and being swept up by the sandpaper.  Remove the abrasiveness from that equation, focus on that brink part, and that was where she was, cold, knees and back hurting, crouching over Gilly, every muscle tense.

That stray thought about the abrasiveness made her start to feel it.  Touches of belt sander at her skin, the feeling of being cold giving way to something that frayed, tore, scraped.  Ratching up that tension, the pain.

It didn’t feel any better inside her head.  The blood and biology was creeping along power lines, spreading at the points where wire met building.  The ground bled from the number of bodies lying across it.  Bulging tumor-sacs were splitting, clawed things spilling out.  Goblins?

She wasn’t sure if the red eyes she saw in the dark were goblins or spots in her shaky vision.  Hallucinations prompted by a thought, as she tried to understand the situation.

Too similar to one another to be goblins.  These all looked like they matched.  Clones of one another.  Same recipe.  Homunculi.

“Hey, chill.  Let me- I can help her and help you.”

“One of Alexander’s students, is she?”

“We keep seeing how that goes.  Over and over again.”

“Broken, dangerous people getting together to share notes and be effective while being dangerous.”

Every time she heard a voice, there were echoes, but the echoes didn’t match what had been said.  They complemented, gave clarity to deep-seated feelings.

The skin- Gilly’s skin was shockingly cold against her hand.

She looked down at Gilly’s-

Gilly’s body.  Jen felt horror creep over her.

“No.  No, no, no, no.  What did you do!?”

“Killed her.”

“Chill the fuck out, seriously.”

“Fuck you, fuck off.”

“Big mistake, letting her in, listening to Nicolette.”

“False Belanger, false Belanger.”

A hand gripped her wrist, and she pulled away.  “Don’t touch me!”

“I didn’t, but it would actually be super great if you’d let me.”

“Kill you too.”

“She’s dead?” Jen asked, and the word shook, picked up by the scream.  Absorbed by bodies that lay like patches of darkness in snow on evening gloom.  Bodies that swelled, twisted, and contorted.

“She’s not dead.”

“She’ll wish she was.”

“She’s cold!”

“Cold as the grave.”

“It’s fucking winter!  Seriously, let me-”

The foreign practitioner reached for Jen, and she fought back, swinging a fist, clawing-

And the cat at the foreign practitioner’s back leaped high- turning human, grabbing Jen from behind as she landed.  Pulling her back and off balance.

Belly exposed, arm around her throat.

The foreign practitioner reached for her.  Hand going for the side of her head-

She snapped, teeth cracking together.  There was nothing to do except twist, use the fact she weighed what was probably twice as much, use strength, and bite.  The howl of the ongoing scream filled the air, making darkness flicker.

The foreign practitioner clapped a hand over Jen’s ear.

And the sound of the scream faded.

The darkness and bodies receded.

The hand that was holding her wrist was Gilly’s.  Gilly was okay.

The girl that had been holding her released her.  Jen saw she was a copy of the foreign practitioner- the visiting practitioner.  The girl high-fived her copy as she walked by her, ducking down low to take a tree for cover, watching the situation at the front lines.  Fire and violence.

“Okay,” the girl said- Verona.  Jen remembered now.  “Better?”

Jen let out a shuddering breath, then nodded.  She judged, opened her mouth to talk, and felt cold air sensitive on teeth she’d clacked together too much when snapping her teeth.  Then, before she could talk, there was a gunshot.

That would be a Belanger, she guessed.  They’d unlocked the gun cupboard at the community hall and handed out guns to the men.

There were still phantom movements in the shadows, and still some unreliability, things felt jittery.

“Better.  Still… still not great.  Ninety percent better.”

“Hold still, going to try to cover both of you with one hand, while I get you secure-ish.”

She was moved to lie down on the cold ground next to Gilly, forehead touching Gilly’s, one of Verona’s hands touching the sides of both of their heads.  With the other hand, Verona penned something out on the side of Jen’s neck.  It was a metal nib, it hurt, and she could feel the faint heat as the diagram kicked in.

“Aaand… how’s that?”

The scream remained muted in effect as Verona removed her hand, but there was a heart-stopping moment where it felt like it was creeping back in.

“Okay,” Jen muttered.  “I’m at… eighty-five percent, I’d guess.”

“Good, because those look like homunculi, and we may need to defend ourselves.  you next.”

The copy of Verona that had grabbed Jen was now crouched low, eyeing the small fleshy creatures, holding a rasp.

Jen watched as Verona drew the sanity protecting diagram work on her daughter’s neck.

“Damn Wye, for getting us into this mess.”

“Wye?” Verona asked.  “Did the scream mess up your head?  Because it’s more Seth doing this.”

“Wye was meant to watch Seth.  This is coming from his corner.”

“Feels a lot like a majority of the practitioners we’re dealing with are from a world where every house has only two corners and there’s an ‘us’ corner and a ‘them’ corner,” Verona said.  “Done, be good, don’t die.”

“Don’t be cavalier,” Jen told her.

“I’m a very cavalier person, I think,” Verona said.  “But I’m serious about this being more nuanced.  I kind of thought you were different, because you were at least willing to work with us.”

Jen shook her head slightly.  She surveyed the situation.  There were fires- that blast kept coming from the distance.  The power line situation was expanding out, the flesh was taking over surroundings, and homunculi kept gathering, but seemed to be holding back.

No- yes- they were holding back, but that wasn’t the entirety of it.  Yellowed flesh was creeping over to take over the crimson flesh, and it was spawning its own homunculi- lizards with gold and black edging on the ends of their scales, each with one claw larger than the other.  Clones of one another, borne of the same recipe, just like the homunculi.  Just a different recipe.

The Bugge.

“Gillian,” she said.

“Yes, mother?”

“Find safety, find the others-”

“Actually,” Verona cut in, leaning forward to put her head between Jen and her daughter.  “I kind of did my thing so you guys could go and spread it around.  Rune should work.  Protect people, regroup-”

“Don’t be stupid.  Runes take power.  You think we have that kind of power to throw around?  How would we even put that into motion?  Against something this vicious and sustained?”

“I dunno!  But it sure seems like a thing you’d want to do.  I can do more runes as I go, I think we can power that.  Kennet’s really strong now and we’re drawing on the entire town, but I think I might have to change focus and work on helping Lucy stop some of these guys.”

“Keep putting the runes down, protect my daughter and anyone else we send your way,” Jen instructed the girl.  “I’m going to see if I can rally help.”

“Um.  No?  I think it’s very, very obvious you guys aren’t fighters, and you’re dealing with a raid of people who very much are.  I won’t say I’m great in a scrap but I have tricks, I have ways, and like you just noted, I have power.  If you don’t have power to do runes, how are you going to stop…”

The girl trailed off, hand extended.

“…That would have been a great moment for another flame blast or horror-cascade thing, dramatically.”

“Mm hmm,” Jen grunted.  “This isn’t a game, and I don’t know why you all insist on treating it like one.”

“I don’t, I’m not.  I-”

There was another blast from the distant flame practice, like a massive cannon shot.

“-there we go.”

“Again, you’re making jokes.”

“Again, fuck off, I’m here to help, I think I just saved your sanity, I’m going to try and save some others, but I’m not going to babysit your daughter who I think is older than I am.”

“Fifteen,” Gillian said.

“Fourteen here.  Yeah.  Exactly.  Did you guys do any preparation after we gave you the list?”

“There’s more to being a practitioner than practice.”

“So… no?” Verona asked.

“Don’t be snide.  You’re a child, you just established that.  Thank you for your help, but recognize you’re a guest here.”

“Okay, well, we did prep, we have some countermeasures.  And speaking of, Julette.”

“Yeah?” the copy asked, still tense, still crouching.

“Find a good hub of that alchemy-technomancy BS, give it a drenching?”

“Can I throw the bottle?”

“Can you hit what you throw at?”

“Yeah.”

“Then sure.  But don’t waste this, it wasn’t exactly like making a cake out of cake mix.”

While the girl was distracting herself, Jen used her Sight as she was checking the state of the situation.  Opening her eyes to the Sight blinded her momentarily- fur and feathers scattering from the space right in front of her eyes.  Wildlife exploded out from her eyesight to fly and scamper forward.

Each one a symbol.  An agent of a pillar.

Cillian the great crow was half the size of a car, talons gripping the peak of the roof of a burning building.  Nessa the hawk, shrieked and flapped madly as she swooped in close to a fight between two different types of homunculi and then veered out toward the conflict at the front lines.  Butterflies crossed the sky above, catching hues and lights that made them blue against a fire-reddened sky at the one end of things, and red-tinted, reflecting the fires, positioned against a blued night sky as they got more overhead.  Many in number, they had one name: Eoin.

She looked for the others.  She spotted Fiadh the wolf with the limp rabbit in its jaws, pacing along the edge of the woods.

“How’s your head?” she asked, voice low.

Gillian, a short distance away, replied, “Me?”

“Yeah.  Who else would I be asking?” Jen asked, a rebuke in her voice.

“I’m okay.  She got to me fast.”

“Good.  At least she has some priorities right.  There are more children.  We had them all go to the recreation center.”

“I remember.”

“When she’s done plotting, take her there, at least.  Get her to tend to the children.”

“Yes, mother.  Should we call Wye?  And Tanner?”

“If they don’t already know, then my estimation of them will fall another few notches.  Let them-”

She turned to look at Gillian as she talked, and she saw Sadhbh.  A spider, silvery in color, wearing what could be described as a veil of spiderweb draped over her head.  Forelimbs raised and extended around Gillian without making contact.  Poised.

“No,” Jen told her, pointing at the spider. “Back!”

The spider retreated from the rebuke, then reasserted her position.

“Are you okay?” Verona asked.

“Gillian,” Jen changed tacks.

“Mum?” Gillian asked, unsure.

“Mother,” Jen grunted out the word, as she dropped to a lower position, to look Gillian in the eyes.

“Mother,” Gillian corrected.  “What are you Seeing?”

Jen crouched down, knees screaming.  Jen knew she wasn’t fat, but she wasn’t thin either, and even the temporary pressure on her knees from kneeling had let them painfully sore.  “I need you to be safe tonight.  Protect yourself, be conservative.  Guard the children.  It’s dangerous.”

“I want to show I’m competent.  I’m-”

“No,” Jen told her, insistent.  “Tonight’s not the night to do that.”

“It’s never the night, according to you.  If I’m going to be invited to the circle- I’d be one of the first women to, from the Belanger family.”

“You’re a Ross.  Gillian Ross.”

“I know, but I’m a Belanger too.  I know Nicolette was adopted, but-”

“No,” Jen repeated herself, stressing the word.  “Sadhbh clings to you.”

“Sadhbh-” Gillian shook her head.  “She indicates opportunity, not just the bad.”

“I think tonight’s bad enough.  Stay clear.  That’s an order.”

Her daughter clutched her sleeve.  “But mum.”

“Stop saying that.  ‘Mum’ is what the intellectually frail use to refer to their parents.  Your parents aren’t your mum and da, we’re your mother and father.  Speak like you have an IQ over sixty, please.”

“Yes, mother.  It’s what Tanner calls his mother.  I think it’s cute.  I’m- they taught me some tricks for self defense, and I know Sadhbh keeps her face veiled.  You might have inklings, but you don’t know.  An augury that’s known for sure is a trap, not a solution.  You’re not the type to dig yourself into that kind of trap.  If there’s a chance that I can prove my worth tonight, make inroads-”

“If you carry on, I will slap you.”

Gillian shut up.

“Woaah,” Verona said.

“Don’t think you’re above discipline too.”

“Woaaah, no.  I’ve got a low tolerance for that shit.  If you try I’m not going to hold back in my response.  And I guess if you hit her too, I won’t be okay with that.  Grow up, stop being shitty, read a- I dunno, there’s probably scientific papers explaining why hitting people is wrong, try one of those later?”

“Don’t talk down to me.”

“That’s really hard when you’re positioning yourself, like… all the way down here,” the girl motioned low to the ground, before adding, “metaphorically.”

Jen pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead, breathing hard.  Her senses still weren’t entirely okay.  She still felt off around the edges.  That verge-of-catastrophe feeling that rested on her skin was still there, faint.

“Gillian.  You have to be safe.  Do not play games tonight, we can talk about opportunities and everything else later.  You have to be good, be careful.”

She saw the spider retreat with each repetition.

“Be good, be safe.  I love you.  Be safe,” she repeated.  Until the spider was sufficiently far away.

She could remember being young.  Born to this family.  She’d had a strong Sight.  Nobody had cared.  She’d cultivated her Sight, she’d practiced, doing what she could on her own.  She’d done and designed her own ritual, named the symbolic animals in a fit of childishness that she hadn’t been able to let go of in the time since, she’d given everything to the family.  She’d married who she was told, had a daughter, gave her daughter her all.

Yet here she was.  Forty-six, knees hurting, teeth cracked from snapping them together, fourth in the order of leadership.  She wasn’t sure which of the three she resented more.

She was beneath Wye, who headed the circle, the business, the investigation and main practice work, established by Alexander, glowing Alexander, brilliant goddamn Alexander, her peer, who’d nearly done himself in fucking a spider and had still come out of the damn situation with the entire family loudly claiming how the dew of his cock tasted like the milk of paradise and oh could they please have a turn trying for a taste.

Metaphorically.

She resented Alexander.

Now Wye came right on his heels, denying her the joy of seeing the golden boy dead.  A younger Alexander, who did all the same damn things but he was new, so they could all claim he’d learn from Alexander’s mistakes, with no evidence suggesting it.

Wye, at the very least, wasn’t a consideration tonight.  But there was Maxwell, senior of the family and the one who made all the short-term decisions that were too minor for a meeting, and who directed the meetings, and Owen.

She looked up at the butterflies, and tracked their movements.  She’d named them Eoin.  ‘Owen’ by another name.  There had been a time she’d really liked Owen, when she’d been young and coming into womanhood, nevermind that he was her cousin.  She’d been infatuated with him, and him with her.  Nothing had ever really happened, and it had been little more than a rich, painfully close friendship with whispered talks trying to make sense of boys and girls, fierce jealousy whenever anyone intruded on their dynamic, and then the two of them drifting apart.  She’d named her butterflies after him.

Apt.  When they were sand in the hourglass.  Representatives of time.  Including metamorphosis- how things changed over time.

Now she dreaded that she had to talk to him.

“I have to go.  The situation’s changed, I need to see if I can make the family see sense.”

“I’m not a babysitter here!” Verona raised her voice.

“Gillian.  A hand.”

Gillian put two hands under one of Jen’s armpits, hauling upward to help her stand.

She reached into her inside coat pocket, and found an old camera.  She pushed her daughter’s head around and to the side and moved her hair.

“That’d annoy the shit out of me,” Verona commented to Gillian.

“It’s not great,” Gillian said.

Gillian took a picture of the runework that was keeping the scream at bay.  The flash illuminated homunculi who were sneaking in closer.  Nessa the hawk swooped over them.

“I’ll see you soon.  Fiadh prowls there-” she said, indicating the trees.  “And butterflies circle.  Ambush imminent.  They’re getting in position.  Don’t be nearby when they strike in…”

She counted butterflies.

“…six or so minutes.”

“Yes, mother.”

“Sadhbh the spider is crouched over you.  Be safe.”

Gillian pressed her lips together, solemn.  Jen cupped her hand around her daughter’s head and pulled it closer so she could kiss it.

“I know you’re not happy, but this is what becoming adult is.  You lose childish freedoms and gain power.  This isn’t your call to make.  Change your priorities and grow up, Gilly,” she murmured, mouth only a short distance from her daughter’s ear.  “Watch the visitor.”

Gilly looked more unhappy as Jen pulled away, but she nodded a little nod of acknowledgement.

“Sounds and looks like you’re saying bye, but again, I’m not a babysitter,” Verona said.

“You’re a guardian of your little town?” Jen asked, looking at the visitor, still testy.

“Yeah.  Of three versions of the one town, actually.”

“Then guard,” Jen ordered, before striding away, ignoring the protesting shout from the visiting practitioner.

Wading toward a source of the screaming was like walking into a headwind.  It hurt, it tested her, but the runework was holding.  She kept the digital camera off, and avoided the area where Nessa the Hawk was perched.  Enemies.

It looked like the homunculi were organized as assets for something greater.  She could see them moving, and when she went looking, she saw Fiadh the wolf, dead rabbit at its feet, howling without sound.  A signal she couldn’t detect.  Instinct, inborn.

They had some kind of lieutenant or general homunculus that would be on its way.

The nameless town had been founded by Maxwell’s father, off the grid and independent, with new houses going up as required.  There were a few buildings that had other purposes.  One was the workshop, which doubled as classroom for the young practitioners and ritual space.  Adjunct to the building, warded and secured as well as anything in this town, was the storeroom.

It was a meager fraction of the power that was kept at the Blue Heron- technically family assets, but loaned out to friends and students while those here went without.

She was privately concerned that Wye had even more power in his office and quarters than they had here.

Years of being here.  Years of being fourth-rung.  Years of watching, waiting with her patience strained.  She knew the combination to get into this facility.  She wasn’t meant to, but Maxwell had assigned one of Owen’s nieces to the job of guarding the storeroom lockup at one point, and the girl hadn’t been attentive about the slips of paper with the passcodes and things on them.

Given how so much of this place was run, there was a good chance nobody had changed the codes.  She approached the door, and saw some people huddled together in the dark.  There were a lot of people inside the building, which the artillery shots and worst of the attacks were avoiding, and guards outside, guarding that part of the building and this adjunct area, but the guards had succumbed to madness.

She punched in the code she wasn’t supposed to know on the door and let herself in.

A gun cocked.  Marlowe Belanger, a dark look in his eyes, leveled a gun at her.

“It’s an emergency,” she said.

“I know it’s a fucking emergency, I’m losing my fucking mind, the power’s out, there’s homunculi creeping in through the outlets,” he said, voice low and growly, every breath labored.  “The only things I had going for me was I was doing my fucking job, nobody can fault me for staying put, and there was a closed door, four walls and a ceiling between me and that fucking Abyssal howl.”

“Marlowe-”

He tensed, gripping the gun.

“Nobody likes you, Jen.  I could shoot you now, trying to steal from us in a time of crisis, and they’d shake their heads and fret, but they’d secretly love me for it.”

“I can be liked or I can get things done, and this family badly needs someone who’s getting things done.  That’s not Max, that’s not Owen.”

“Wye’s doing fine.”

“Wye would let us rot here if we didn’t have a supply of fresh faced new apprentices for him.  So he gives us fifteen percent of the earnings, deigns to visit us for some meetings, some holidays, and then he takes our best.”

He adjusted his grip on the gun.

“Look, don’t shoot me.  I have-”

Marlowe twisted around, swinging the gun and he shot.

In the tight space, the deafening sound of the gun erupting would have brought Jen to her knees, if she wasn’t held back by a worry she wouldn’t be able to rise easily to her feet again.

The gunshot turned a homunculus into a spatter against a wall, while putting a mess of holes in that same wall.  There was a faint ping sound, from the shotgun’s pellets hitting sheet metal that had gone into the construction, to make this place harder to break into.  No ricocheting fragments hit Marlowe- too bad.  And nothing hit her.

Her ears ringing, she put her camera down on the desk, and slid it toward Marlowe.  He caught it before it went over the edge, clicking his thumb on the power button.

The most recent picture appeared on the camera’s display, and Marlowe reacted visibly, tension leaving him, eyes widening, fingers gripping the camera with one hand.  The rune appeared there.  Cut-rate technomancy.

“I want to give as many people as I can that relief.  For that I need power sources.  Which are in the cage.”

She pointed at the wire cage behind Marlowe’s desk, which had a computer and logbook on it.

“You also need Maxwell’s permission.”

“Do you know where he is?”

Marlowe shook his head.

“Didn’t think so,” she replied.  “Let me in.  It’s an emergency, I’m on the local council, I have authority-”

“Barely,” he didn’t take half a second to throw that out there.

Tense, ears ringing, teeth hurting, knees throbbing, anxiety ratcheting up, cold wafting in through the open door that she kept open only because it was the only real light source, she stood there.

“Let me in,” she told him.  “I told everyone we needed to prepare for this attack.  We barely did.  Now I’m saying we need power sources so we can relieve the Abyssal influence that’s driving everyone out of their minds and putting them on edge.  I’ll take responsibility.”

He wasn’t aiming the gun at her, but he looked ready to if she moved, shaking his head slightly, trying to decide.

They’d fucking calcified here.  They’d all been in their fucking places, taking care of business and family on the backend for so fucking long, they barely functioned.  Marlowe here in this box of a storage room, guarding the storeroom lockup, making it stink like fast food that he had his cousin bring in, in the way it could only stink if the fast food was an every day thing and the trash wasn’t regularly emptied.  Game controllers sat by the television off to the side.  That was them every day, grown men playing games meant for little boys, eating fast food.  Never growing up, never changing.  Rotting without rotting.

Maxwell in charge, keeping everything the same.

And what happened?  There was a meeting scheduled for the end of the year, just before the new years party, where they’d decide if Wye would get full control over the circle, all the permissions Alexander had, all the access.  He’d take over for Maxwell on most fronts.

He’d keep it the same.

He’d take Gillian.

Or he’d try.

Because that was how the Belangers operated.  On the one end, they rotted, they calcified, they made enough money to keep this place running and they occasionally produced someone bright with promise that they put out there and showed the world, the Alexanders and Wyes, and they all acted proud.  Offloading the job of being respectable and doing anything meaningful to a select few.  Denying that ability to others.

And what would they get, from that grotesque boys club in that now functionless school?  How long until they ejaculated out another Seth?  How long until they ruined Gillian?

They wouldn’t make Gillian their next golden child.  That wasn’t how it worked.  They’d let her think they would, and then they’d use her.  The likes of Seth and Tanner and Chase would prey on her daughter, one way or another.

“Marlowe,” she said, and the pent up emotions and frustrations of decades made her voice tense- enough to be a threat.

“It’s my job, this.  And my job is nobody goes in the lockup without permission from Maxwell.  If you want something more minor, I go in, I bring it out, but you’d need to find one of the Augury teachers for permission, still.”

Taking the safe route.  Sticking to the rules, even when the rules didn’t make sense.

She understood, even if she hated him for it.  She couldn’t shake the image of the spider Sadhbh so close to Gillian.

She made herself be gentler, which wasn’t her usual.

“Marlowe.  People are dying.  If you don’t let me in, more will die, people will suffer.  And when they look for someone to blame, I can make sure your name comes up.  Or you can let me get what I need, and I swear I will take responsibility if they call a meeting to discuss it.”

The lights, dead, flickered on briefly, at the words, spirits stirring.

Words had power, and-

He moved aside.

That was power enough to move Marlowe.

He turned, went to the cage, and unlocked it, pulling the door open, before looping a string on the door against the wall, to keep it from swinging shut.  He used a flashlight to illuminate the interior.

“There,” she pointed.

“And how do you know where things are kept here?” he asked.  “You knew the combination to get in.”

“I have Sight I’ve trained,” she told him.  She raised her hands, then gestured, crossing some fingers, moving through a sequence of gestures.  One she’d had to learn for the sessions where she’d stood in for Augury teachers on vacation.  He seemed to recognize them, which was good, and didn’t fight as she pushed her Sight toward him.

His eyes widened, fur and feathers moving over the surface briefly, irises turning amber.

“Didn’t think you were the nature-loving type.”

“I used to be.  Artifact of my adolescence,” she said, pointing.

Sadhbh was perched on the wall above a set of boxes.

“Spirit-fucked gods, shit fuck!  That caught me off guard,” he exclaimed.

“There’s no time to dally,” she told him.  He was moving the direction she wanted, so she forced herself to be gentler.

He turned away, and she sagged against the doorway of the cage, feeling the hurt.  She’d spent personal power to do that, and it made every ache and pain worse.  Marlowe pulled the box out, got the crystals, and held them up to see the light levels within each, started picking out a few.

“Give me them all.  I swear I’ll try to use them for the sake of the emergency, and I’ll return them after.  I’ll take responsibility if others take issue with the saved power being spent.”

He passed her the box.

She tore paper from his notepad on the desk, wrote down the runes, and gave him instructions.  “Maxwell, Owen.  Tell them where to find me.”

She gave him two of the crystals.

“What the fuck are you doing with the other twenty-three?”

“What I can,” she told him.  “Go.  Seriously.  Go.  Get them to come here.”

He hesitated.

“Go,” she urged him, and the words came from a heartfelt place that wanted nothing more than for him to shake off the calcification.  Shake off this idea that the likes of a smarmy cockfuck like Wye was somehow his representative, or that Wye’s successes were a stand-in for his own.

This was about more than an Abyssal scream, violence, and deaths.  If they couldn’t change the Belanger family and prove that they were greater than some shadow of Alexander’s and then Wye’s, then they might as well all be dead anyway.

He searched her face, looking into her eyes.

“Watch for homunculi.  They crawl in through the tech.”

Her heart soared, not that he’d know it, looking at her expression.  She worried any sign of joy would stop him.  She glanced at Nessa, who was on alert, and nodded.  “I will.  Marlowe?  Two things.”

He’d already stepped toward the door.

“The homunculi have generals or lieutenants.  If you’re low on ammo, save the bullets for those.  The rest should scatter.”

“Good to know.”

“And you’re more a man than you’ve ever been, in this moment.  Be safe.”

He hesitated, then nodded.  “You too, Jen.  Sorry for what I said before.  About how everyone hates your guts.”

She nodded.

Orange light flared as a blast hit a building across the street.  Someone’s home, demolished.

She arranged crystals, then put down the diagram.

They’d given her the tutoring, up to a point, then they’d abandoned her.  Much of what she knew, she’d had to teach herself, or train in herself.  She found new practices and made them hers with repetition and effort.  She used practice for dramatic effect, when kids were being too loud outside, or when visitors came.

Wye probably knew a thousand tricks.  She knew a couple dozen, but the ones she did know had some clout to them.  Not power– she didn’t usually have much more than her Self and maybe a crystal like one of these, if she filled out paperwork, came here, had Marlowe review everything, call to double check, and go in to fetch something.

She’d never really handled power.

It took time, drawing things out.  She heard gunshots, she heard screams.  Homunculi skittered this way and that, moving as groups around bigger homunculi that looked like gorillas.  Crashing into groups of reptilian, co-opted homunculi.

Nessa screeched without sound, flapping.

There was a gun in the drawer of the desk.  She got it, aimed, and the homunculus that came in through an outlet scampered across the shaft of orange-tinged light that came in through the open door, going outside to join the mob.

She kept working.

“What are you doing?”

Senior in the family.  He’d been teacher for those in the family, but as he’d gotten older, he’d taken on more of a role as the examiner, only really seeing the kids when they’d reached a certain stage in their training and warranted a check about how much those lessons had really taken hold.  Usually he’d put pressure on the kids, while asking them to do a variation on a practice they knew, show they knew the nuts and bolts of it, and why each piece was what it was.

He was a good teacher, really.  He had produced Alexander and Wye, and they were, for all their many failings as human beings, very good augurs.  That was just about where her praise for him ended.  In other ways, Maxwell was so much of what she hated.

He was the one who ran the family council.  He was head of the meetings, the oldest practicing family member, the one who made the big decisions that were too time sensitive or awkward to hold meetings over.  He made the call about who got a shot at apprenticeships and trial runs in the circle.  He’d decided that it would be inappropriate and problematic, politically, to have every Belanger child attend the school that Belangers had helped found and, after the coup to take things from Bristow, managed.

He’d decided she was one of the children who, despite her Sight and talents,  wasn’t worth a shot.  He’d decided Gillian wasn’t worth an apprenticeship, and Alexander had agreed.

He was the one most responsible for where they were now.  Calcified.

“From our guests?” Old Maxwell asked, holding up the crystal and paper with one hand.

“The concept.  The power is ours.”

“I know the power is ours.  But them giving us the idea indebts us.”

“So be it.”

“It makes things problematic for the circle, if we’re seen taking a side,” he told her, voice a creak.  His eyes stayed bright as he walked into darkness.  He’d started using Sight a long time ago and he’d never turned it off.  In normal light and everyday situations, his eyes appeared normal, but when emotion flared or in shadow and smoke, they took on an intensity.

“It also makes things problematic if we’re stark raving mad.”

“You were always too impatient,” he told her.  “Short term gains for long-term losses.”

I’m forty-six and still here.  How patient do I have to be?

She Saw butterflies, and her knees and teeth ached.  She’d spent Self, she was burning embers worth of Self to keep her Sight going, and she was going to hurt for weeks, if her knees ever fully recovered.

But she saw butterflies, heralding an arrival.

“Having your permission, power, and help would go a long way.”

“Your efforts tonight can’t change how the meeting at the end of the year will go,” he said, and she was momentarily afraid his head was so stuck up his ass that he wasn’t going to help.  But he approached, studying the diagram.  “Pushing back?”

“Yes.”

“It’s not bad.  Works.”

The count of butterflies dwindled.  Three, two, one…

She was facing the door when Owen came in.

Owen, who she’d named the butterflies after.  Owen who she’d once loved, even if the fact they were blood related had stopped anything major from happening.  In a place like this, where she was related to virtually everyone, sex and sexuality became feast or famine.  Which was how Alexander, after his stint of spider fucking, had become celibate, and the likes of Seth had become perverts.  Her teenage romantic and sexual feelings had had to go somewhere, and a relationship with Owen where they hadn’t crossed that line was…

She’d been okay with it.  If she had to be twisted or screwed up by this place, there was worse.

Except Owen had become someone who sullied her memories.  He’d been beautiful and now he was ugly.  He’d been trim and now he was fat.  He’d been careful, gentle, thoughtful and now he was… not that.

She’d gone hard and he’d gone liquid.  He was meant to handle the broader accounting but couldn’t even handle his drink, foisting the work off on her and Wye to spend more than half his waking hours and a share of the family money at the shitty bar an hour’s drive down the road.  ‘Owen will fuck anything with two legs and some things with four’, they joked, and Owen laughed along with them, saying ‘only on a dare’.  He got insensate Fridays through Sundays, ‘worked the books’ on Mondays through Thursdays, which amounted to staying just drunk enough to exist in a perpetual state of vaguely inebriated hangover, getting next to no work done, waiting until the evening, when he could get sloshed until morning, and waiting for Friday, when he could get sloshed until Monday morning.

He still got more of a say than her when the family had a big meeting.

Unshaven, bleary, a slob.  And she needed him.

“We might be able to cancel out the Abyssal scream, but when we do, we need to be able to organize,” she told them.  “People won’t listen to me.  Not enough will.  But they’ll listen to you, Maxwell.  And you, Owen.”

For whatever reason.

Because Maxwell was what everyone here wanted to be but didn’t dare to.  Because Owen was the closest thing there was to joy and freedom here, even if ‘joy’ was getting drunk and finding some woman –any woman- to hook up with and hump until she got sick of his beer stink.

And she- she was so much of what everyone here needed but didn’t want to face.  Pragmatic reality.

“It’s just us, we can push back, we can fight, we have resources.  But we need to be willing to tap them.”

“Wye’s circle is on its way,” Maxwell told her.

She stopped short.

Owen was nodding.

“He’s savvy enough to judge who we can be in debt to, and can navigate the broader political…” Maxwell reached for a word.

“Fuckpocalypse,” Owen said.

“Yeah,” Maxwell said.  “He can navigate the political fuckpocalypse.  He’s bringing help, he has the know-how.  We just need to surv-”

Nessa flapped her wings.  Jen turned, raising the gun, and, head turned, hand covering the ear closest to the gun, she shot a homunculus.

It looked like the sound of the shot in the confined space hurt Maxwell and Owen’s ears.

What if she shot them now, while everyone else was disabled?

Said ‘fuck it all’, took Gillian, and drove away until the car ran out of gas, letting Seth pick over the bones of this place?

She saw the bloodied rabbit that comprised one half of Fiadh, one of the animal sets she saw with her Sight.  Gut ripped open, body broken.  But alive.  Surviving.

Fiadh, telling her that there were vulnerable people nearby.  Children.  Others, who didn’t deserve this.  Who didn’t deserve what growing up here would be like, what it had been for her, what it was for Gillian- what Gillian so desperately wanted to escape.

“If you let your short-sighted rivalry with Wye get in the way of things tonight…” Maxwell let his tone be the warning that implied the other half of that sentence.

“Don’t fuck me on this,” she told them.  “Don’t fuck Gillian.  And don’t- don’t make this all about Wye.  We…”

She trailed off, struggling.  Gunshots and shouts were followed by gunshots and shouts.

“…we have to stand up for ourselves, show we’re more than dead weight.  Or Wye and the circle will never respect us.”

It wasn’t what she wanted to say.  But it was what she had to say, to get them to listen.

“The diagram?” Maxwell asked, tapping the desk with the paper and crystals with a wrinkled finger.

She nodded.

“Okay.  We can tie it to the perimeter wards… I run this place, I can give permissions…” Maxwell said.  “Owen.  Draw it as I tell you.  My hands are too stiff for diagram work.”

She slid the paper closer to them.

Letting them work.

She surveyed the storeroom, eyes on shelves, wondering what some of them held.  Her various animals moved across them.  Cillian the crow hopped here and there, making note.  Endings, death, bindings.  Some things that would be lethal to tamper with.  Nessa the hawk noted some weapons.

Jen wished they could hear from Wye that he couldn’t get in.  That something was wrong.  That she could request and get permission to get those weapons.  That she could stir something in herself and everyone in this nameless hamlet through bravery, fighting back.  A desire for retaliation, rather than… than what?  Limply lying there and waiting for the circle to save them?

Nessa was distracted by butterflies, which made Jen take notice.

Incoming… Nessa marked danger, war, and violence.

They’d been more canny at first, masking their approach.  But now the invaders were getting sloppier, overconfident.  And why wouldn’t they?  The Belanger compound had barely put up a fight.

“I want to lay a trap.  They’ll come here.  Let’s hurt them,” she said.

“Do what you want.”

She reached out, putting a finger on one of the crystals- quartz akin to the cardboard of a toilet paper roll in dimensions, but pointed at the ends.  “I’d need some of these.”

“Every bit of power you take out of what we’re doing here is power that isn’t helping our people.”

It was true.

“Jen,” Owen said.  “How many would you want?”

She didn’t know.

One… would one be enough to take them out?  No.  Two made it likely.  Three… she felt like three would make removing one of Seth’s people a certainty.

But how many people would each crystal save?

She reached for Owen, and moved his coat- revealing the paper and crystal inside.  She could judge the glow of the crystal.  How much power had been drained already, to protect him this long?

A seventh?

Would one full crystal then be five or ten minutes for seven people?  Was each crystal she appropriated to fight back seven people she was leaving in abject, dangerous misery?

She put a hand out, turned sideways, so one crystal at the edge of the diagram was beneath the heel of her hand, and another was at the tip of her middle finger.  She slid them closer to herself.

Two.  Fourteen people, at a loose guess.  Too much of this for too long and they’d suffer.

For her trap.

“Okay,” Owen said.

She suspected that if he hadn’t said okay, Maxwell would say no.

“For what might be nothing?” Maxwell asked.

“I See trouble incoming.”

“But you don’t know it as Truth,” he told her.

“Truth is a trap.”

“There are worse things when setting a trap.”

“Let me,” she told him.  “I was always better at this than you pretended.”

Owen was already moving crystals around the perimeter of the diagram they’d done.  Spacing them out to balance things out.

Again, she suspected that without the implicit support of this beer-and-piss scented lump of a man, who seemed to think he’d die if he couldn’t keep his cock slick by any means, this mockery of a boy she’d once loved, Maxwell would have refused her.

But he didn’t.

“Fine,” the old man said, turning glowing eyes toward the work.  He nodded at Owen.

Owen turned the crystals to align with the diagram, points extending outward, and things lit up, power feeding in.

She hurried to do her part, with the crystals she’d requisitioned.  A trap.  It wouldn’t be fancy.

Maxwell put his gnarled old hand beside the table, then slid the paper with the crystals at its edge onto the flat of his hand.

The crystals should have fallen, but the paper held rigid, the diagram too strong.

He walked outside, Owen with a hand at his shoulder, steadying him.

She wrote up the trap.  A simple explosion.  The storeroom had things that weren’t magic- supplies for fixing things up.  She moved jars of nails and other things into the way, eye on Nessa, and on the dwindling count of Eoin butterflies.

She stepped outside into the bracing cold just in time to see the diagram flare.

The scream still tore through the air, even if it didn’t touch her.  As the lines of the diagram expanded out past paper, it caught on the sound of the scream, matching it, vibrating with it.

Power pulsed.  They couldn’t fight back against the kind of power that could do this kind of damage for this sustained a period of time.  The power they were up against was limitless.  The power they had at hand was a collection of crystals stored up with energy, that would be used up and gone in less than a minute.

But even a splinter of wood, pressed against the right spot in the right moment with the right direction and force, could make a man cry out in pain.

Power like this could be turned back.  It wanted to be turned back.

So she’d written it to bend power back at its edges.  With the work tying to the perimeter, they turned this settlement into the same sort of space that the storeroom had been when the gun had gone off.

The scream that would’ve gone out and faded hit a barrier and bounced back, an echo, sound reaching its source.  Were the screamer to shout a word, they’d hear it come back at them, muddled, loud, three or four times, depending on how far it traveled out to the barrier.

He’d get what he put out there, three times over.

The scream was cut off, and she felt satisfaction.  She released the breath she’d been holding back and her breath fogged in the winter night air.

Maxwell seemed satisfied.  Owen smiled for what felt like the first time in decades.

“They’re coming for us now,” Maxwell said.

“I bet,” she replied.

People all over were picking themselves up.  Very few looked like they were in very good shape.

There would probably be lingering effects.  Hopefully Wye would be able to put them in touch with resources.

Nessa was letting her know that they were coming from the storeroom.  Flesh at the power lines was feeding in, and they were investing enough into this to push back the corruption of the Bugge.

“The black girl,” Maxwell said.

“Lucy,” Jen supplied.

“Yeah.  She went after the one who was bombarding us from afar.  Dragonslayer.  Had a big cannon he’d made out of an elemental. There hasn’t been a shot in a hot minute.  She’ll loop back.”

She nodded.

She noted the butterflies.  The spider, poised on a burning roof.  Nessa.  She did a quick estimation.

“Not in time,” Jen murmured.  “Three are coming for us.  They’ll get here before she does.”

“Okay,” Maxwell said.

“Might get ugly,” Owen said.

“Okay,” Maxwell said again, voice soft.  “If I pass tonight, Owen’s in charge.”

“Could be Jen,” Owen said.

I wish I could believe that was because you believed in me, Jen thought.  But you don’t want the work.  You don’t have the confidence in yourself.

“It’s you.  Run the meeting, get us through the thing with Wye on the thirty-first.  Don’t make it a coronation.  It has to be a balance.  More of one than we’ve had.”

She looked for Sadhbh, and for Nessa, for Cillian.

She saw Sadhbh had moved to the roof of the workshop building with the attached storeroom.  Cillian haunted that same rooftop.

“It’s not you they’re after,” she told him.

“They don’t care about you.  They’re after other things.”

And with that, the invaders began to make their appearance.  Flesh boiled forth inside the storeroom- she’d left the door open.  And a man approached from the front end of town, where the worst of the fighting had been.  His clothes were scuffed, his coat didn’t suit him.  He was pear-shaped, balding, bug-eyed, with thin lips that had spittle crusted and maybe frozen at the corners.  He should have been freezing, coat open, head bare, hands uncovered.  He didn’t seem to care.

Nor did the two who were emerging.  Bloody homunculi spilled out of flesh sacs at the storeroom, exploding out, painting the area in layers of gore.

Two men slowly stood from that gore, naked, streaked and matted in blood.  Like newborn calves.  One she recognized as Freeman Boyd, technomancer.  The other… she suspected he was the alchemist.

Freeman Boyd said something and she didn’t hear it.  But it seemed to be a command.  Flickers around him marked the slow appearance of clothing, and other tools.

The pear shaped man -the Bedlamite- approached.  A boy staggered behind him.  Half his attention seemed to be on the building to his right.  The place where most of the vulnerable were huddled.

“Lenard,” Maxwell said.

Right.  The name had been in the file.  Maxwell had read it.  She was surprised.

Lenard licked his lips with excessive thoroughness, getting only some of that crusted, frozen-on stubble.  He glanced sideways at where the two men were in the storeroom.

When Solomon had made the seal, and had gone to the effort of making certain things Law, had this been the ugliness he’d been trying to avert?

These were men who’d crossed an unforgivable line, breaking an oath, and instead of being condemned, they’d thrived.  They’d been rewarded.  They had this power now.  It came with arrogance.

“That hurt,” Lenard said.

Maxwell replied, “Which?  The-”

Lenard pointed at the paper, and the spent crystals in the snow, that had fallen when they’d run out of power.

“Good,” Maxwell said.

“It’s a double edged sword, what I do.  Josh here can tell you.  You feel it as bad as you get it.  But you turned both edges against me.  That could’ve destroyed a man who…”

He paused, smiling with overmoist lips.

“…didn’t embrace the kinds of madness the Abyss can deal out.”

This was a man who lived in the world she’d glimpsed.  Where stray thoughts could become vivid hallucinations.

“You enjoy the insanity, do you?” Maxwell asked.

“Oh, it’s not quite insanity.  It’s not mental illness.  It’s madness.  Emphasis on the M-A-D.  That’s what the Abyss likes.  It’ll kill every feeling in you except the inner fire.”

The butterflies of Eoin were swirling around him.

The technomancer had found the right frequency or whatever it was that he’d needed.  The blood flickered away, the clothing appeared.  He had weapons, tools…

“I’m buying time, by the way.”

“I Saw,” Jen replied.

Lenard smiled.  “Three against three then.”

Clothes on, everything situated, the technomancer hung back, pulling out his phone.

The alchemist -Josef, she was pretty sure it was- stepped forward.  Ready to help.

The runework she’d laid by the one window shone through that glass, painting the corner of the bigger workshop building with reflected images.  Not important, but it told her what she’d done and invested two crystals worth of power into had at least activated.

The rune detonated.  An explosion, tearing through glass mason jars of nails and bits of metal.  Glass and nails, fire and smoke, all blasted through the pair.

She could see it in how they moved and reacted- her glimpse of them through the open door.  That they had time to react, that the explosion took a second to reach them.  That they could turn away.

It would hurt, but it wouldn’t kill them.  If she’d invested three crystals, that might’ve done it.

“One against three, then,” Lenard amended.  He didn’t seem bothered.  “I didn’t think you lot had that in you.”

“You don’t count him?” Owen asked, indicating the boy.  Josh.

“Oh, he’s done his job,” Lenard said.  “He’s only here to observe.”

“Week one of being an augur,” Maxwell retorted.  “You learn that when you look, others can look back.  Or they can jab you in the eye through whatever peephole you’ve devised.  Observing is dangerous.”

The boy stood up straighter, eyes wide and wild, and took a step back.

Lenard twisted around, reaching back to grab Josh by the front of his coat.  “Don’t run.  Running is no better than observing.  When you observe, things look back, and when you run, dangerous things want to chase you.  Don’t give dangerous things an excuse to chase you.”

The boy was starting to hyperventilate.

And Lenard was twisted around, not paying attention.

She didn’t have many practices under her belt.  She’d never been afforded much chance to learn.  There had always been people and circumstances to tie her down, to convince her it was worth staying, only to make her feel like a fool after.  To walk away from all of this, at first, would have meant losing Owen.  She’d bought into that until she was nineteen or twenty.  Then it would have meant walking away from the implicit promise she’d be given the same advantages as Alexander. That got her to stay until she was twenty-eight or so.  Then Maxwell had been sick, she’d helped cover his duties, and it had felt like he could die and she’d be first or second in line after him, while Alexander was gallivanting around, setting up his business.

Then she’d been married.  Then she’d had Gilly, and the trap had set in.  Leaving would mean leaving her husband.  Which would mean split custody.  And them, with their resources, practice and connection workings included, and Belangers with their resources, Alexander included, they’d win.  They’d be able to keep Gillian anchored here, a resource for them to use and spend.

Better to be here.  To be able to guide things, have control.  The alternative would be not being around when they came for Gilly.

She’d spent her entire life waiting for a key moment.  A turnaround.  And in the process she’d ended up here, hurting, stunted.  Feeling like she’d never lived up to her potential.

She’d injured two, at the very least.  Now here was the third, threatening a boy she had no connection to, his back mostly turned to her, and she didn’t even know a good attack practice.

She didn’t know what it would cost her, out of her stunted, limited self, to use one.  How much did it count, that she’d just had a victory?  How much reserve did she have?

Her hands moved at her sides.  Fingers crossing.  Moving through sequences of gestures.  It wasn’t a common way to practice, but it was a convenient one.  Any symbol worked for communicating to the spirits, if established through sufficient pattern.  Even hand motions.

She kept the gestures the same in each hand.  She backed away a step, because Maxwell was to her right, and Owen was beyond him.

“Don’t be weak,” Lenard said, releasing the boy’s collar.  “You’re so much better than that, Joshua.  You don’t want to end up like them.”

His eye fell on her hand as she finished the gesture set.  Lenard smiled.  “Try.”

She thrust her hand toward him.  He moved his own hand, a black cord wrapped around the palm.  Ground cracked and barked, there was really no better word for the sudden, angry sound, and the cracked ground spat up something black and violent.

It was like a parrying, an effort to block or turn back whatever she’d throw or cast at him.

Except she didn’t.  She gave him her Sight, at the same time she gave it to Owen.

Owen at least, knew what the animals were, and didn’t balk at their sudden appearance.  Lenard struck out twice, aiming for the animals- Sadhbh who was attracted to circumstance, and Nessa, who was attracted to violence.  But they were symbols, indicators.  They weren’t real.

He paused, getting to grips with things.  A practitioner of madness who was realizing he was seeing things that weren’t there, and while he worked on that, he missed that Owen was there, approaching from the flanks, stooping low, almost falling as he grabbed up a rock from the side of the road.  Bringing it overhead for a downward swing.

And the boy, sanity hanging on by tatters, worn out, scared, and wanting to run, stood straighter, and used a practice he’d been taught.  Calling on something Abyssal.  A yelping, quick strike of darkness and distilled violence.

Tearing into Owen, changing his trajectory.

Joshua defended his master in the moment of momentarily blindness.

Jen sagged.  She’d spent more Self in the last hour than she normally spent in a year.  She was hurt, and the hiss of breath she drew between her teeth made her feel the sensitivity of what had to be cracks there.  Her legs barely managed to keep her standing.  They wouldn’t let her move out of the way.

Darkness tore into her and tore her down.  Nessa the hawk embraced her on the way down.

And he hit Maxwell too, for good measure.  Three strikes, three of them gone.

“Good,” Lenard said.  “Good job.”

Joshua didn’t reply.

“You want to tear into me next?  You want to keep going?” Lenard asked.  He sounded inquisitive.  “That’s good.  Hold onto that.  But if you do want to do it, you’ll need to get closer.  Use fist, nail, tooth, weapon.  The Abyss likes me too much to be a tool to use against me.”

Jen was bleeding.  The cold embraced her through the tears in her coat.  She could feel cold air kiss the inside of open wounds.

It made it hard to talk, because one of the wounds was in her face, beneath her nose.  It made it hard to breathe.

She observed.  As she’d done all her life.  Lenard and Joshua approached.

“Do you know what separates us from them?” Lenard asked Joshua.

You don’t stand for anything.  Your word means nothing.  You’re little more than the hedge witches and warlocks of the pre-Solomon era.

“We’re fighting to do something.  They’re fighting to hold onto something.  Virtually all of them.”

She thought of Gillian.

Oh, gods and spirits, she thought of Gillian, and horror raced through her.

“Virtually all?”

“Exceptions for the exceptional.  Alexander.  Musser.  Bristow.”

“The Kennet three?”

“Not even them.  They’re trying to hold onto that town of yours.  Onto friends.”

“Beg to fucking differ!”

Lenard used his offensive practice again.  That bark.  Striking at something Jen wasn’t in a position to see.

Lucy.  A storm of foxes, of dogs, maybe-

It felt like Jen’s Sight.  As if Fiadh had come with all her brethren.  Fiadh, who was instinct, social groups, pecking order.  Nature.

She could remember being a child and cultivating a Sight that- she’d liked the woods around this place.  The lake, the sun, the snow and how quiet the world got in winter.  How long had it been since she’d gone out to nature?  A younger, brighter Jen had crafted and trained a Sight that represented all the core forces of the world with animals.

A storm of fur and Fiadh swallowing her up as blood loss carried her consciousness away felt so very compelling.

But Gillian.

Ten or so foxes moved in sequence, so close to one another they looked like an optical illusion, the gaps between the fur ruff and leg of one a triangle shape that suggested the ear and snout of another.  They flowed together until darkness and violence tore them apart.  They tumbled, fell, kicked up snow and dust, and found coordinated footing with a grace no real fox had.

Jen tried to move and found she didn’t have strength.

Metal clipped dirt and snow.

She fought using love, thinking about her daughter, trying to find that ‘mother bear’ strength.

When that wasn’t enough to overcome how hurt and exhausted she was, she fought with spite.  Because there was no fucking way she’d let Wye show up late here and turn things around.

That helped.

Fox chased fox, Lenard fended off a stream of them with a shattering darkness.  An Abyssal rebuke.

The stream broke, fox hit ground, and one fox broke away, to become a crouching teenage girl, rapier in hand.

Another broke, and became a shower of goblin things, that exploded into gas, smoke, slime, and snakes.

The girl lunged, rapier point extended, shifted her footing, and changed direction abruptly as Joshua acted.  Creating a blast just to Lenard’s right.

The blast hitting so close to Lenard made Lenard react.  He seemed to be able to fight past the obscuring smoke and avoid coughing in the gas, but it did slow him down.  He acted defensively, striking out blindly with darkness, to buy himself clearance, space, and time.

Jen got to where her elbows and knees were beneath her.  Her forehead resting on the ground.

“No you don’t.  Arena!”

The arena expanded from the teenage girl, who’d moved to a wholly different point on the dirt road that ran through the hamlet.  The town.  The compound.  This calcified place.  An expanding circle of red and pink.  Where colors were different, vibrant, and swords studded the earth.  The girl changed in the midst of it, hair billowing out.

Glamoured foxes looked in from the outside.

“Your apprentice tried to run like that.”

“So I heard,” Lenard replied.  “Fine.  But while the ground is cracked… I’ll call on scourged names.  Orchid eater.  Mr. Lollipop.  The Axegrinder.  Baghead.  Beartrap.”

Bogeymen.  He only had to say their name, and they came, emerging from dark and distorted earth.

Only four.

“Four,” Jen panted out the word.  Five names called, four appeared.

“I think you’re out of date, and your claim is weak.  That’s four,” Lucy said.  “I think someone did away with Baghead while you were forsworn.”

She’d had the same thought as Jen, apparently.

“And this is our arena.  It’s meant for you and me, not guests.”  Lucy motioned.

The bogeymen, rising up from the ground, stopped.  The ground didn’t release their lower legs.  They were trapped, stuck in place.

“I’ll leave it up to you, Lenard,” Lucy said.  “Do you want to allow calling in friends?  We can agree.  The arena can put it into place.”

“Wouldn’t mind,” Lenard said, with a thin smile.

“Or we could end the arena business.  So long as you won’t run away, off to the Abyss.”

Lenard chuckled.

Lucy turned, and began walking toward Jen.  Her back to Lenard.  “Just say the word.”

Lenard opened his mouth wide.

And he let out that Abyssal howl once again.  Short range.

Jen’s protections had lapsed.  The damage done to her body had damaged the protective rune drawn on the side of her neck, beneath her ear.

Lucy dismissed the arena, still walking away.  The bogeymen were freed, allowed to start forward again.

And the collection of foxes that had been at the arena’s perimeter dissolved.

A collection of soldiers were crouched in their place.

They opened fire with handguns, pistols, and one assault rifle.  Gunning down bogeymen, who fell one by one.

Jen’s senses dissolved into pain at the loud report of the guns.  Too loud.  Her ears rang.

“Guns-” Lenard’s voice was nearly drowned out by a fresh spate of gunfire.  The Mr. Lollipop Other shielded him with his body.

Bogeymen who’d fallen first were first to surge to their feet, pushing forward.

“-aren’t very effective against Others.”

“True.  But fire?” Lucy asked, turning around, jamming hands into her coat pockets.  “Fire tends to work.”

Some of the soldiers didn’t have guns.  One at the flanks had a flamethrower.  Another threw things that the flamethrower ignited.

It looked like Lenard did run after all.  Jen could See him go, slipping into the Abyss.

Joshua was slower.  The fire hadn’t been turned his way, and Lucy held up a hand, bidding the soldiers to stop.

One, standing near her, young, pointed at him.

“Too many boys on battlefields around the world,” the soldier said.

“Are you going to shoot me?” the boy asked.

“Unless she tells me not to,” the soldier said, head tilted toward Lucy.

“Don’t put that on her, Horseman.”

“It’s okay,” Lucy said.  “You hurt so many people, Joshua.  People died tonight.  The damage you did?”

Joshua inched toward cracks in the ground.

“If you move again, these guys have permission to shoot you, hold on a second.  Let’s talk.” Lucy said, turning away.  Back toward Jen.  She crouched down and pulled out a thermos.  “Healing potion.  I’m not sure if it’s meant to be poured on or drank.  But most of the damage is around your face.”

She poured it on and let a lot get into Jen’s mouth.

It did not taste like it was meant to be imbibed.

Jen nodded as she felt wounds close.

Her knees hurt less.  Her teeth hurt less.

“He’s still thinking about it.  And some of those bogeymen are going to get back up,” Horseman murmured under his breath.  “I’d love to promise he won’t get away, but-”

“Shoot to wound,” Lucy murmured.

“Not as much a thing as people pretend.  Bullets kill.”

“But you’re good.”

“I am good,” he said.  He aimed.

“I forfeit!” Joshua raised his voice.

The wind turned.  It felt like an oath did.  The way spirits moved in response.

“I give it all up.”

Jen felt it.  In the same way she’d feel someone was Forsworn.

“No,” Lucy said, quiet.

Jen, still hurt, the healing potion not enough to bring her to par, shifted position, to get a better look.

She saw the boy, standing there, eyes closed.  She felt him become innocent.  She saw it, in how tension in his body faded away.  A weariness was released.  One Jen felt deep in her bones.  One that had calcified around her and in her.  He let it all go.

“I can’t shoot,” Horseman said.  “I mean, I can, but-”

“I know,” Lucy replied, quiet.  “Fuck.  Fuck this.  Fuck, no.”

A woman wearing white hides with antlers decorating her stepped out of nowhere, approaching the boy from a perpendicular angle.  She touched his face as she passed in front of him.

In the moment he was out of sight behind the woman, he ceased to be there.  Sent back somewhere.  She walked on, stopped, and turned, dipping her head in acknowledgement, before she disappeared too.

“No,” Lucy said.  “How do you deal with that?  What- they can go all out, do this damage, and get off scot free?”

“Help me stand.”

Horseman did.  One strong arm pulling on Jen’s.

Lucy just stared around at the town.  Burning, bodies- ones Jen wasn’t hallucinating.  Things were destroyed.  Fighting was still ongoing.  Homunculi were in the shadows.

“Fuck,” Lucy muttered.  “What a mess.”

Jen didn’t disagree.

Maxwell was lying there, bleeding.  Alive.

Damn it.  Mess indeed.

“Wye’s on his way,” Lucy said.  “Or his circle is anyway.  They’re bringing Nicolette, Zed, and some others.  They should be able to get things organized.”

And it all stayed the same.

That was the way it went, wasn’t it?

Jen stopped short.  She could see the girl with the cat mask and her copy.

“Your friend.  She’s meant to be with my daughter.”

“Verona?  She was helping me stop three of the attackers, including the one bombarding this place.”

Jen looked.  She saw Fiadh, her wolf of Nature.  She saw Cillian, looming larger and darker than she’d seen him in a long time.  There were butterflies.  There was Nessa, indicating ongoing fighting at the rear of the town.

“They came for the children.  For vulnerable ones,” Jen breathed, horrified.  “Maxwell thought they came for him, but…  They were after others.”

“As a backup plan,” Lucy said.  “To ransom for control over the family, I heard.  They-”

She stopped talking after seeing the look on Jen’s face.

The spider her Sight used to mark certain things was missing.  The spider who tracked the momentous.  Power.  Fate.

Gillian was missing, last seen in the spider’s embrace.

Jen started to run, then fell, because she was still too hurt to really move.  She shouted words, and her tone approached a tenor that would make a Bedlamite nod their approval.

“Where is my daughter!?”