Author: Wildbow

Finish Off – 24.9 | Pale

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“They shouldn’t have released the Titan so soon,” the Allaire practitioner said, as she led Avery into the house.  She hadn’t dressed well for the cold, pulling on only a coat, and shucked it off, rubbing at her arms, as soon as she was inside the quaint little cottage.

Avery eyed the ex-familiars of Musser.  The bogeymen in a trenchcoat weren’t here.  But the ones that were were pretty scary.

Raquel had given her a rundown, and Avery was left to put descriptions to faces.

The blonde would be Athena.  Some kind of perfect paragon, maybe like the guy who’d dated and threatened to kill Jasmine had been, at the end of summer.  But different.  Skilled.

Then the psychopomp Daena, Rabbit Killer, and the woman with black hair had to be… Avery forgot the name.  The Icon.  Statue brought to life to be a vessel for divine power, in a way that’d put Tashlit to shame.  Except what was in her didn’t really refill.

It felt weird, having Snowdrop close by, knowing the history here.  Like she was hanging out with Melissa right after the ankle breakage and being all, ‘Hey, Melissa, look, look, see how fast I can run?  See how high I jump?  Are you watching?’

Not that blatant or mean spirited, but given the severity of what Musser had done, even something non-blatant felt bad.

“They panicked, I think.”

Avery turned her head, eyebrow arched.

The Allaire practitioner turned to face Avery.  “The Kims.  With the Titan.”

“Right.  That was the intent.”

“The weather effect, barrier collapsing.  One of them came to talk to us, double check, let us know they were using the alchemist to get control over the situation.  Not asking us.  Letting us know.”

“Can I get your name?”

“Can I get your name?” Avery asked.

“Grey.”

“Is that a first or last name?”

“First,” the brown-skinned woman in white replied.  She looked like she was going to say something, then stopped.  She turned to one of the six or so practitioners who’d gathered nearby.  “Tell me the teenagers didn’t eat all the bread?”

“I think we’ve got some.”

Six or so Allaire practitioners across front hall, living room, and study, Grey included.  The Musser familiars outside or by the door behind Avery and Snowdrop.

“Kettle’s on?”

“Kettle’s on.”

“Come,” Grey told Avery.

“You’re the one in charge here, I guess?” Avery asked, following.

“I’m not the seniormost.  But out of those who were forsworn the longest by Mast- Mr. Allaire, I’m the one who’s most able to… be.”

Grey shrugged, as if that summed it up.

The destination was through the kitchen, where a kettle was already whistling, oven banging as someone popped bread in, to the back of the property.  There was a greenhouse, with snow cleared from the top.  Frozen rain on the glass mottled the view of the world beyond.  But it was warm.

“Tea?” Grey asked.

“Sure.  Please,” Avery replied.  It wasn’t her favorite thing, but she’d learned to like it well enough after visiting various markets and Practitioners’ homes.  “Milk or cream for Snow?”

“Easy enough.  Are we what you expected?”

“We weren’t able to get much in the way of details on you,” Avery admitted.  The notes from the defectors hadn’t amounted to a lot on the Allaire forsworn.

“There isn’t a lot here.  We were young men and women who were promised that we would learn practice, we were awakened, and then we were forsworn.  There was no special training.  The most we learned was some basic shamanism, between the awakening ritual and the forswearing.  It was like that for me.  I was part of his youth group.  He’d get groups of teenagers in bad or low-income situations to do volunteer work and reward us.  Sports stuff, pizza parties, community gifts.  He said he saw promise in me.  Work ethic.  Then he told me he’d make me his apprentice.  Awakened me.  He taught me some Shamanism to tide me over, get me to come back.  He needed me to cut ties with my family and friends, not that I had many, tell them some misleading truths on my way to start learning about magic.”

Grey flourished with a hand as she said that last word, gasping the word while uttering it with some venom beneath the surface.  After the word had passed, only the venom remained, latent in Grey’s expression.

“Once I’d ensured there wouldn’t be too many questions, the forswearing happened.  Him and his then-fiancee had me at their mercy.  Each was different.  Different needs, different wants, different demands.  And I, we… we were malleable.  Like soft clay, in personality.  There’s no room for willpower when there’s no ground to stand on.  Some of us fought longer or harder, or held onto parts of ourselves, but all he had to do was revoke favor.  A whole universe of pain and punishment was looking to collapse in on us.  Without the latent protection, all of that would sweep in to punish us for him.”

Avery nodded slowly, frowning.

“For the wife, for the child,” someone in the kitchen said.

“Yeah,” Grey said, voice soft.  “The daughter was especially vicious.  With a father like that?  With people she’s been told from birth are less than human, to do with as she pleases?  But I’m getting sidetracked.  It’s easy to dwell on.”

“I’d be okay listening, if there wasn’t so much happening,” Avery replied.  “Sounds like a lot.”

The words felt limp.  What the hell was she saying, ‘sounds like a lot’?

“You got off lucky,” Snowdrop said.  There was a pulse of something from Snow, like she was saying ‘I got your back’.

“Three people pulling at you from different directions, one wanting you to fawn, one wanting you compliant, another wanting reactions?  It’s why the ones who were there when I arrived haven’t done so well,” Grey said.  The chair squeaked against the floor as she fixed it under herself, her back to the end of the greenhouse, Avery’s to the door.

Nova and Athena were in the corner, Nova sitting partially on a table, tall and full-figured, wearing a short dress.  Athena gave off vibes like an action movie star.

“The other Ex-forsworn make more sense to the Carmine Exile,” Grey told Avery.  “They’re talented.  He can tell himself that the experiences they had honed the knowledge they have into something fierce, better.  That there has to be a point to it.  But when it comes to us, we weren’t taught much.  We weren’t given anything by the universe for what we went through.  There wasn’t anything to hone.”

“Almost as if what he thinks is bullshit?” Avery asked.  “Sorry for the language.”

Grey shrugged.  Then she pointed.

The pointing was to indicate that someone with a tray of tea and bread was coming behind Avery, but the fact Avery twisted around to see made her almost bump the person and the tray.

She leaned back against the exterior wall of the house the greenhouse was set up against, and let the tray be put down.  There was a glass of milk for Snowdrop.

“If you came at us, with your power, with your knowledge, without those two so close by, and without another two a shout’s distance away?” Grey suggested to Avery.

“Nova and Athena, right?  And the Daena, I forget her name, sorry, and Rabbit Killer?”

“Yes.  If they weren’t here and if you had the intent, you could probably destroy us all.  We’re not strong,” Grey told Avery.  Then, quirking an eyebrow, leaning forward, she said, “I guess you could say we’re still soft putty, in a way.”

“That’s, no offense intended, kind of messed up,” Avery replied.

Grey leaned harder into the table, whispering confidentially, “It’s all kind of messed up.”

Avery got chills, for some reason she couldn’t put her finger on.

Snowdrop did a small full-body shudder as the chills transferred over to her.  Like they chills had gone from head to toe in Avery, transferred across the aether, over to the opossum, where they rolled over Snowdrop’s skin.

“Look, hmm…” Avery paused, trying to get thoughts together.  “Can we reset a bit?”

“If you like.”

“Thank you for the tea, bread, and hospitality.”

“No good milk, jerks,” Snowdrop muttered.

“Can we formalize this a bit?  Break bread?” Avery asked.

“You might not only be stronger than us, you might know these traditions better.  Sure.”

Avery hesitated a second, then took the hardest looking baguette loaf.  She broke off a chunk, put it on her plate, held it out for Snowdrop, who did the same.

Grey took the baguette from Avery, broke off her own piece, then paused, ready to put it in the basket.  Avery indicated Nova and Helena.  Grey passed it on.  It went around the room.

Avery held up her tea.  “Again, thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Full disclosure?” Avery asked.  “I’m here because you haven’t been assholes to us.  A big part of what we’ve been doing has been scrabbling to survive, adapting plans against different enemies.  Maybe we haven’t been one hundred percent consistent on some stuff, but… I’d like to think we’ve been reasonably fair on some basic principles.  One of those principles is, like, you haven’t been assholes to us.  You haven’t attacked us, as far as I know.  We’ve made peace with people who tried to kill us.  We try to always leave a door open for reaching out, so long as the other person’s cooperating, even minimally.  So… that’s part of why I was willing to come and reach out.”

“Alright.  But you also wanted information?  You said full disclosure.”

“Yes,” Avery said.  “Yeah.  It was the first thing I asked, outside, I think?”

“That’s fair,” Grey said.  “Wanting to know.  I wanted to clarify, not attack you.”

“Thanks.  But yeah, you don’t seem aggressive.”

“Had enough aggression for a lifetime before I was eighteen.”

“And you’re here.  You’re not fighting.  You’re not commanding nasty Others.  It doesn’t sound to me like you’re wholly on the same page as Charles.”

“I said he didn’t know what to do with us.  But I’m not saying we’re not on the same page.”

“What are you doing for Charles?” Avery asked, seriously.  “You’re doing something, right?  The people from St. Victor’s who bailed suggested it.”

“Something,” Grey agreed.  “What have you worked out?”

“You can’t just tell me?”

“The way you respond shapes what I tell you.”

“We had two theories.  The first was that that Charles could be working on a big wish.  Some big reality alteration that could undo the wrongs, let him retake some moral high ground, do away with what he sees as great evils.  But it doesn’t feel like that’s it.”

“Right pieces, but you’ve arranged them wrong.”

“What?”

“You know him.  Better than we do, I’m guessing.  The power he wields, the inherent contradictions, the need for justice against something big and ugly.  The tools he uses.”

“I still don’t understand how you can admit we know him better, but then side with him.”

“If I’m- if we’re willing to say you know the Carmine Exile better,” Grey said, leaning forward.  “Can you do us a favor, and accept that maybe, with everything we went through, we know more than you about what it means to be forsworn?  That we might even know more than you about how ugly, how awful things are?”

Avery swallowed, glancing at Snowdrop, who had both hands around the glass of milk, and was drinking.  Snow gave her a mental shrug, by way of the familiar bond.

“Charles brought you guys up, a while back.  When he was trying to make a point.  He said the practitioner community, the Lord over Peterborough, he knew what Allaire did, and accepted it?”

“Mr. Allaire kept things tidy.”

“But now-!” Avery started.  The moment she did, Snowdrop saw something out of the corner of an eye that could see vaguely around corners with Lost senses.  Avery twisted in her seat as Snow ducked her head down, one hand at her charm bracelet, ready to pull her lacrosse stick free.

Athena the paragon had reacted to the sudden change in volume and Avery sitting up straighter in her seat, by lunging in.  She was there, hand raised for what might’ve been a karate chop.

The two of them remained there, Avery twisted around, Athena behind her, motionless.  Avery licked her lips, then slowly moved hand away from wrist.

“But now,” Avery repeated herself, calmer, with words measured out, not taking her eyes off Athena, “Charles is someone who’s done monstrous, monstrous things.”

“Different results at the end.”

“Are they?” Avery asked, turning her head, trusting Snowdrop to watch Athena for any sudden moves.

“Aren’t they?”

“What were the results when he kept quiet about creating the Hungry Choir, who ate, I’m not even sure, a couple thousand people?  He could’ve said something and fixed it.  He created life, created Kennet below, created undercities all over, with people that were developing with histories and relationships and hopes and dreams and then he snuffed them all out.  And then, last night, London calls, one of the Lords over the entire world.  Giving concessions, letting Charles keep going.  Why?”

“Sure looks like it’s for glorious, magnificent mess,” Snowdrop said.

“To keep things tidy?” Avery asked, echoing Snowdrop.

“To different results.”

“What results?” Avery asked, voice so soft it was almost a whisper.  “What can make it worth it?  He killed goblins.  Two goblin sweethearts.  One funny little dude.  My best friend’s friend.  Her art buddy.  My other best friend’s soldier buddy, who might’ve ended up her familiar.  So many others.”

“Have you ever heard the phrase, it’s better for ten guilty men to escape, than for one innocent to suffer?”

“I think so.”

“How many are out there, like Allaire?  Yiyun’s family?  The Kims?”

“You’re working with the Kims,” Avery interrupted.

Grey smiled a bit, but barely broke stride as she indicated Nova with one hand.  “Or Musser?  We’ll get around to the Kims.  How many are out there.  Monsters like I’m talking about?”

“Too many.”

“What if it’s better for ten innocents to die, if it means one person doesn’t suffer on the level that people like Allaire, Yiyun’s family, the Mussers, are capable of inflicting?”

“What if it’s not?” Avery asked.

“Can you say?  Do you know?” Grey asked, sitting up a bit.  She almost hit her cup of tea with her hand as she moved it.  “You haven’t been there, you haven’t seen.  The arrogance of telling us we can’t do our part to stop it from happening…”

“What do I do then?” Avery asked.  “Do we call on Judges?  Or do some ritual?  I’ve gone through an Alcazar, experienced being Carmine.  I’ve lived an alternate life without my friends and supporters, and it’s foggy now, but I did that.  There are ways.  Should I magically experience a decade of being Forsworn?”

“You seem sweet,” Grey said.  “Naive, but sweet.  I wouldn’t want you to.  Whatever it would take to get you to understand, I wouldn’t want you to go through that.”

“We wouldn’t,” someone said, from the doorway.

Another of the ex-forsworn.

“But then what?  We can’t have this discussion?  Because whatever I say, it feels like you can always go back to that, and it’s a thing you’ll say I can’t understand, I can’t argue?”

“We got nothing,” Grey said.  “We were un-forsworn, owing to the Carmine Exile.  He’s gone out of his way to support us, but the wider universe hasn’t made amends.  There’s no interest paid on the years we lost.  Or the ways our personalities were affected.”

“So you’re demanding amends from the universe?”

“Maybe what we get is the ability to make an argument from a place of knowing, deep down inside, just how ugly this world is.”

“And that’s where you agree with Charles?”

“The Carmine Exile.  Yes.  Mostly.”

“I know I’m opening myself up to that argument again, or opening myself up to being called arrogant, but I think he’s as bad as Allaire.  I haven’t been forsworn but I’ve been through a lot.  Because of Charles.”

Grey nodded.  Then she sighed.  “Probably.”

“But you’re still helping him?”

“Difference between the Carmine Exile and Allaire?  The Carmine is affecting change.  You know his motivations, his personality, his skillset.”

“Summoning?”

Grey shrugged one shoulder.  “The contradictions.  What I’m thinking about probably isn’t what you’re thinking about.”

“Let’s protect the children, now let’s use the children for child soldiers?” Avery asked.

“Like that.  Yeah.”

“I think the role is getting to him.”

“Could be.  What if it’s less of that than you think it is?  Some, don’t get me wrong.  He let them get involved in some brutal fights, from what one of them told me.  But what if there’s something that brings it together?”

“That makes me think of the wish I mentioned before.  But it’s not?”

“And you asked what I thought he was doing.  We got sidetracked.”

“Very.”

“Our other theory was, relating to the summoning, a ritual incarnate.  Returning to his roots, from when he was first forsworn.”

Grey nodded.  “We’ve taken to calling it The Crucible.”

Three Judges stood by.  Time had slowed to a near-standstill, and the Titan moved by hair’s breadths every second.  Verona could track the paths of each individual raindrop, see how they splashed.

The man from the Kim family was old enough to have mostly gray hair, long.  A band of beard as wide as a finger ran from the middle of his lip to the tip of his chin.  His ankle-length coat was open, and had no lapels or collar, just the hood he’d had up, that he’d pulled back.  Verona suspected the coat cost a few thousand dollars.  Beneath it, he wore a black silk shirt and black leather vest, and black leather pants with high boots in, yep, black leather.

Helen was right behind him, wearing a much more casual black sweater and jeans with a black coat.  Rougher at the edges.

“Desmond Kim, I normally handle inter-family relations for House Kim, but with the ranking members currently a continent away and locked in a room with the Carmine Exile, respectively, I’m the ranking member equipped to talk Innocent relations and matters of Law.”

“Desmond,” Lucy murmured to Verona, as Helen introduced herself.  “Normal name.  Glad it’s not Nicodemus…ael or something.”

“We had an Amadeus in our class.”

“You know what I mean though.”

“Yeah.  I’m just kinda taking in ‘House Kim’ and the fact they have departments.  I know most families do, but…”

“Totally.”

“…and of the Kims, I’m most familiar with the Carmine Exile, our troublemakers here,” Helen said, indicating Verona and Lucy, and the Others behind them.  “I’ll be standing in and commenting.”

Sebastian had come forward, and stood there in a bulky, lumpy parka which made his skinny legs seem even skinnier, sticking out the bottom.  He wore a suit beneath and it was soaked on one side of the collar.  He’d tried to fix the gray hair and keep it from sticking up.

“Sebastian Harless, Contract lawyer, student of Law for deals and designs.”

“Lucy Ellingson, first witch of Kennet, trifold duelist, and bearer of fang and smoke.”

“Verona Hayward, third witch of Kennet, nascent sorceress, dabbler in half-light and shape, she who conceptualized Kennet found, and co-founded it by way of hatching the moon, peddler of books not written, botherer of higher powers, interpreter of the voiceless.”

“I wouldn’t advertise the botherer part,” the Sable said.

“Especially given present company,” Lucy murmured.

“Can I begin?” Desmond asked.

“You opened the issue.  You may,” the Aurum told him.

“No objection,” Sebastian said.

“Good, because I already gave permission,” the Aurum said, with a tone of rebuke.

Desmond opened.  “Argument: Responsibility falls on those who brought the Innocents here.  They opened those Innocents to risk, exacerbated and complicated the situation, and any breaches of Innocence that exist as a result are on their shoulders.”

“Response?” the Sable asked.

“From the girls who were present, please,” the Aurum cut in.

Verona frowned, glancing at Sebastian.  He nodded once.

This felt hinky.

She glanced at Lucy, who gave her a nod as a signal to go ahead, and started things out.  “The Titan is theirs-”

“Exacerbated by you,” Helen said.  “As Desmond said.”

“They didn’t interrupt Desmond there,” Sebastian pointed out.

“It counts against you, Helen Kim,” the Sable said.

“Sure.  Count it against me.  I still want it known and said, I’ll pay the price in bad karma to do it.”

“Could you three Judges please count it against them?” Lucy asked.  “Collectively?  And not as bad karma.  As weight for the argument?”

“Good,” Sebastian murmured.

“Helen Kim is not ours and not under our control.  She left, she’s become an independent agent.  She’s here as counsel, not as a voice for the Kims.  That is my role and my role only.”

“Creating a dynamic where she can breach rules, eat bad karma to support you and throw us off?” Lucy asked.

“Enough,” the Alabaster said.  “Th-”

“They’re separate,” the Aurum interrupted.  “Helen and Desmond Kim are discrete entities for the purposes of what we’re discussing here.”

Verona glanced sidelong at Lucy.

“And extra consideration will be offered to your side, first and third practitioners of Kennet, for the disadvantage that poses,” the Sable said.  His tone shifted.  “Really now, Aurum?  These are the games you wish to play?”

“It’s my role, in a sense.  Games.”

“Do we have options?” Verona murmured to Lucy and Sebastian.

“This isn’t my bailiwick, I admit.  What I do assumes truly neutral and lawful parties as arbiters of any points of Law,” Sebastian muttered, his arms folded.

“It’s more my ball-wick whatever,” Lucy said.  “Law in hostile environments.”

“Then do your best, I’ll try to assist.  Perhaps write something on the subject at a future date?  I’d read the book,” Sebastian said.

“Bit of a morale boost,” Verona said, elbowing her friend a bit.  “And if you don’t write the book, maybe it appears in my shop?”

“Stay focused?” Lucy asked.

“This is how I stay sane.  Messing around a bit.”

Lucy nodded, sighing.  Then she stepped forward.  “May I actually make my opening argument, then?”

“Carry on,” the Aurum said, smiling.

“The Titan is theirs,” Lucy said.  “Their practice was all over the place.  They broke wards and let the Storm resume.  It was us who rescued Innocents and preserved the Seal.”

“A situation you set into motion,” Desmond said.

“With proper care and precaution,” Lucy said.  “We were ready to pull them out if we had to.”

“And,” Verona quickly added.  “If you want to open the door to talking about who started this-”

“Are you speaking to our motives?” Helen asked.

Verona tried to ignore her.  “-I think we have to start talking about Chuck-”

“Do we have to?”

“-and what he started, which has its rolling ramifications for Innocents and Aware.”

“Chuck?” Desmond asked Helen.

“The Carmine.”

He snorted derisively, then turned his attention to Verona and Lucy.  “That’s a slippery slope of an argument.  Why is the Carmine doing what he’s doing, if not because of wider dynamics and practitioner culture?”

“Are you speaking to motives now?” Lucy asked.

“Or should we take things a step further, and ask what dynamics and forces motivate those practitioners, who were forces acting on the Carmine Exile?  No.  To avoid letting our arguments tumble down the slippery slope, it’s most appropriate to reduce things down to what’s immediate, present, and measurable.”

“So… you guys summoning a titan, then?”

“You brought Innocents to the knife’s edge, until the slightest of metaphorical jostles could slit their metaphorical throats,” Desmond replied.

“A jostling from the Titan you alchemically aggravated,” Helen interrupted.

“A Titan you released when there’s innocents in a town less than ten minutes way, and then you fucked up and let it shatter wards we set up to protect those Innocents?” Lucy asked.

“You brought the Storm,” Helen said.

“And managed it,” Lucy said.

“Are you moving to set a precedent?” Verona cut in.  “Because there’s a long and involved history of practitioners using safeguards while doing big practice near Innocents.  It’s a big part of what Ms. Ferguson did when sending a Storm against Thunder Bay to support Florin Pesch’s takeover, using practice to send people indoors.  It’s part of what Deb does with her Storms too- I’m pretty sure there was text as part of the pages she showed us, towards the bottom, about that specifically.”

“It was,” the Alabaster said.

“How do you-?” Lucy murmured, in Verona’s direction.  She shook her head.  “Nevermind.”

“There’s precedent,” Verona said.

“Which gets mixed results, in terms of past challenges, as I look back,” the Alabaster said.  The flowers in her eye sockets rapidly bloomed, closed, changed to other flowers, and bloomed again.  “Favoring you in aggregate.”

“Not favoring them, if I may have my turn to speak,” Desmond said.  “When weighing this case against past judgments, there’s a number of factors counting against the Kennet witches and Others.  Walking things to the knife’s edge, effectively blinding our augurs with not one, not two, but three practices or threats of practice, clouding conventional vision with the Storm?  Where is the line drawn, for having this break in Innocence foisted upon us?”

“Bro?” Verona asked.  “Take it up with Solomon?”

“Solomon?”

“He set up the Seal with the protection of Innocents foremost in mind.  It got warped and built on over the years, but if you want to get fundamental-?”

“Do we want to get fundamental?  Things evolve,” Helen said.

“I’d like this interruption noted, for the record,” Lucy said, almost rolling her eyes.

“The idea was that Others and practice would skirt around Innocence.  If Innocents waded into a bad situation, it would be on the Others to handle their shit.  That’s why giants and dragons and other stuff kind of faded into the background, slinked away into pocket words.”

“Why vampires did so badly,” Lucy added, glancing at the Sable.

“Things evolve,” Desmond repeated himself.  “We’re not living thousands of years ago.  We’re living now.  Humanity has expanded.  Practice and expectations around practice abide by entirely different establishments.”

“Can you name one?” Lucy asked.

“If it was my uncle, who is currently locked in the room with the Ottawa council, I suspect he could.”

“But you can’t?” Lucy asked.

“I mean, if you can’t name anything and I can, going back to something fundamental and major…?” Verona paused.  “Sucks for you, buddy?  I guess it’s up to the judges.”

“What I find very interesting is your shifting stance around the Seal,” Helen said.  “You’re happy to build a sword moot on it, or lean on it now, but at other times you reject it, actively fighting its establishment.”

“The core ideas at the base of the Seal are decent,” Lucy said.  “It’s about boundaries and responsibilities.  But it was meant to change and get replaced with future iterations and adaptations.  It didn’t.  It became a weapon to be turned against Others.”

“A weapon you’re happy to turn against us,” Helen said.

“I’m all for changing the rules, changing the Seal, doing the new iteration,” Lucy said.  “But that’s not where we’re at.  It’s not happening, and the world of practitioners has become too big and entrenched.  We’d have to budge like, what, ninety percent of the trained practitioners in the world, to rewrite or revise the Seal?”

“Something like that,” the Alabaster said.  “My awareness beyond my borders, though those borders extend farther than Carmine’s, Sable’s, or Aurum’s, is limited, so I can’t say for sure.”

“We’re all hypocrites,” Lucy said.  “We’re all trying to find the parts that work and fighting the ones that don’t, and we’re all biased about which is which.  I helped set up the sword moot to make some forced changes in the region, enforce some new stuff while the area’s vacant.  Making it a little less arbitrary.”

“It’s not hypocritical to have a complicated relationship with the Seal because… that’s the Seal,” Verona said.

“Essentially so,” Sebastian said.  “Even to me, as someone who deals in neutral points of Law, it’s a complex relationship that changes day by day, between myself and the Seal.”

“But for now,” Verona said.  “If you really want to get down to the brass tacks?  It seems to me that you guys are trying to metaphorically thread a really shitty needle, where-”

“Is the fecal matter important?” Helen asked.

“What?” Verona asked.

“Another interruption,” Lucy said.  “Please note for the record.”

“Noted,” the Alabaster said.

Lucy adding to the interruption was as much a mental stumbling block as anything else.  Verona pinched the brow of her nose.  She was better at remembering cool spellbooks than what was just said.

“Threading a shitty needle,” Lucy said.

“Right!  Yes.  So, just to be clear, you guys are asking for an interpretation of Law here, where you want to scoot far enough back from your own responsibility for what happened that it lands on us, but not so far back that it lands on Chuck, without whom this whole situation would have happened.  And you want to use modern Law of the Seal-”

“That you can’t name a case for,” Lucy threw in.

“-but ignore the fact that the Seal was arguably founded to be a thing with Innocence on top, to be worked around, instead of where we’ve relegated it?” Verona finished.

“To add to that last part,” Sebastian said.  “I would argue the modern execution is establishment, not Law, and the Law triumphs if the two are directly called out as being in conflict.”

“The argument is heard, acknowledged, and fits with my own understanding,” the Sable said.

“I see you’re having trouble understanding something very simple,” Desmond said.  “Let’s pull a trio of Innocents from elsewhere in, unrelated to this location, situation, or time, and put it to them in the form of a scenario.”

Lucy shot Verona a sidelong glance.

I know.  I can read your mind on this one, Verona thought.  An innocent dragged in off the street is a wild card.

“I need a good argument as to why we can’t use the proposed ‘man off the street’ test to determine where responsibility lies,” the Sable intoned.

They didn’t have one.

“A test?” Avery asked.

“A test, a challenge, a trial by fire.  Charles Abrams, before he was Carmine Exile, used the residual power of the black dog Yalda as a seed to start the Hungry Choir ritual incarnate into motion.  It quickly swelled in size, and consumed a few thousand people before it was extinguished.”

“I know,” Avery said.  “We played a role in extinguishing it.  Getting the necessary info.”

“Now he has power granted to him by London and other international powers.  Power that dwarfs the power that seeded the Hungry Choir.  As part of the deal, the Crucible will extend no further than the borders of the Carmine Exile’s power.  But it should encompass everything within those borders.”

“Just like that, huh?” Avery asked.

“That’s the idea, the last time it was explained to me.”

“Charles doesn’t have the best track record with that stuff, you know?” Avery gently suggested.

“Honestly?  Neither do any of the other big families.  The things they let go, ignore?  The systems they keep in motion?”

“You mentioned the Kims before.  They’re a weird fit in all of this.”

“The Crucible fixes it.  They’re a good example, actually.  The Crucible becomes a ritual incarnate sweeping over the region, the Kims will be pulled into it and tested.  It makes sense he’d draw them in, keep them close, if you think that he wanted them to be tested and to fail.”

“And the kids?”

“He drove out the kids who would’ve otherwise stayed at the Blue Heron.  The teenagers who stayed, the St. Victor’s students, they’ll be tested.  They’ll probably fail.”

“Testing, failing… you’ve lost me.”

“He started building something smaller, aimed at Raymond, Durcher, Alexander, but it was perverted, turned against him.  That was what became the Hungry Choir, am I right?  It was explained to me weeks ago, I honestly-”

“You’re right.”

“Good,” Grey said.  “This is that, on a grander scale.  With a more noble purpose.”

“Drawing in practitioners?”

“Drawing in the greedy and ambitious.  Forcing the issue for them, as a matter of fact.  Drawing on power would mean drawing the Crucible’s attention.  For the likes me?  My friends listening in from the other room?” Grey asked.

There were some even leaning through the doorway, Avery saw, as she turned around.

“Not ambitious?” Avery asked.

“Very much not.  We’ve been practicing with tools we were given.  Things have been awkward, the Goddess we were working with was imprisoned by the Winter Court.  We’ve got glamour, we’re adapting that in, with a Fae’s help.  We’ve been using Kierstaad longevity practices from the Blue Heron to try to support that.  We’ve been talking to Belanger Augurs, defectors and neutral, to figure out what we might do to keep track of things and keep records.  We become custodians, witnesses, supporters.  That’s the role we agreed to settle into.”

“With the drawback of having to watch people you adore die horribly?” Snowdrop asked.

Grey gave Avery a quizzical look.

“A bonus of getting to see people you hate fall prey to the ritual,” Avery translated.  Things got weird with a bunch of flipped variables, for Snow, but the familiar bond made it easier to navigate.

“A bonus, yeah,” Grey said, before sipping her tea.

“How is that noble, if it’s the same crappy thing?” Avery asked.

“There’s an end goal.  There’s more going into it.  What the challenge is.  What’s asked of the contestants drawn into the Crucible,” Grey said.  “You’ve seen the individual puzzle pieces.  Charles has been creating a wilderness of Others, some mighty and seemingly impossible to defeat… and when defeated, they get replaced by others.”

“The Carmine Lords.”

“A wilderness of vicious Others, small and uncultured, detached from humanity.”

“Yeah.  Waded through a bunch of those.”

“There was another stage, but it had to be cannibalized. It would have represented something else.  The Undercities, supported by the blood goddess.”

“If there’s a pattern, I’m missing it.”

“And a Titan.  All pieces for a greater narrative.  The greatest, you could argue.  Which is why we have the company of Others who would, were circumstances different, want to return to the company of the practitioners they bonded with.”

Avery looked over at Nova.  The Icon.  A statue infused with divine power.  Raquel had talked about her a bit.  Reid’s familiar Drowne had liked her.

“You’re staying because this is a big deal, huh?” Avery asked.

“Yes,” Nova replied.

“The ugliness, the blood, the way kids are fighting, eating up Abyss-stuff?”

“I don’t know of an advancement like this happening without it being ugly, bloody, or cruel in one way or another,” Nova said, with a heavy accent that made syllables clunky.  “Hopefully by being here, I can help good people avoid the worst of it.”

Avery winced.

“The Carmine Exile is prepared to be extinguished as he puts this in motion.  A big ritual with a crucial goal.  He was prepared to be extinguished before, for a smaller impact, but nobody stopped him.  I think he wishes they had.  Because it would have said something about them, and the situation.”

“Not taking responsibility?” Avery asked.

“Something like that,” Grey agreed.  “Complacency, especially from those dwelling in the establishment.”

“We’ve been trying to change things.  But I guess if I say that, we get back to people on Charles side saying-”

“Too little, too late.”

“And you’d rather gamble in a big way, something that might not work or might go out of control, to try to force a change in this way that’s going to take a lot of lives-”

“Of the unjust, ambitious, and greedy.”

“Yeah, I really want to circle back to that,” Avery said.  “Because I think that’s… not great.  But you’d rather gamble than take steady steps?  I’m not even talking a hundred years of waiting to do stuff our way, I think we’ve made a lot of progress since my friends and I awoke in Kennet.  Earned, hard progress, changes to the Seal with the sword moot, the markets, treatment of and opportunity for Others, the markets- I’m saying that twice because I’m really proud of how we’ve got goblins and fairies working together.  That’s in like, six or seven months, we’ve been recruiting and working at this.  We can make a big impact in a few years.”

“Too little, too late.”

“That’s crazy to me,” Avery said.

“How many innocents would you give a swift, clean death to, if it meant one person didn’t have to suffer like we did?  Like Nova and Athena did?”

“None?” Avery asked.  “There has-”

“Then you’re evil.  I’m sorry.  The degree, the depth of the hurt done…?  The fact that right now, having been through what I’ve been through?  Knowing there are others out there who are suffering like we did?  That there’s another family out there like the Mussers, doing something equivalent to taking familiars from practitioners they love?  That’s an emergency.  I wish you could take my word for it.”

“It gives me a panicky feeling,” a woman in the doorway behind Avery said.  Avery turned.  It was a teenager, about Sheridan’s age.  “I think that someone out there is needing help, they’re hidden from sight, there’s nobody to rescue them, and there’s something there, a practitioner family that’s been doing what they’re doing for hundreds of years?  I- I can’t sit still.  I-”

She was tearing up.

“Sorry.  I’m- it’s real panic.  The sympathy I have for them.  This is why I’m- why it’s Grey talking and not me, I get choked up.”

“It’s an emergency,” Grey said.  “The way I see it, I think most of the rest of us agree… either it’s wholesale devastation to people who should’ve done better, been better, known better, and maybe it wakes them up.  Maybe it puts people in situations like the one we were in out of their misery.”

“Or it works,” Athena said.  She was very good at the dramatic intonation.

“Or it works,” Grey said.

Grey had this way of talking about dark or key things like that devastation, or the venom earlier when she’d said ‘magic’, that made Avery think there was a part of her that could stab someone, twist the knife, and smile.  She was really was hurting and angry enough to go that far, even if, removed from those topics, talking normally, she came across nice, reasonable-ish.  And then she could go and sound like she was talking from the soul.

“And you’re okay with that?” Avery asked Nova, maybe the most sensitive, ‘good’ person here, going by what little she knew.  “Devastation?”

“I spent years in Abraham Musser’s close company,” Nova replied.  “Yeah.”

“What you’re talking about feels like it goes further.”

“Charles Abrams was willing to die for less, when he first took the throne.  He wanted the likes of Alexander to know that the people they preyed on could gain power and come for them.”

“He sided with Musser,” Avery commented.

“He had plans.  I can’t say for sure, but I think he’s the type who reacts to pressure.  Being forsworn, finding a way forward through that.  He wanted the pressure of people rallying against him.  It would have pushed him to put plans into motion, and I’m sure he would have dealt with Musser right away, putting the man through the Crucible or whatever the Crucible would have been, had he been forced to start months ago.  You organized against him, for one final push, Musser was put out of his reach, and now, under pressure, he’s putting big plans into motion.”

“So it’s our fault?” Avery asked.

“I don’t know.  Not like that.”

Avery shook her head.

“But he is the Carmine,” Athena said, behind Avery.  “He’s all about conflict.  It makes sense he’d find power and reason in it.”

Avery frowned.

“This might be me being a dum-dum opossum brain, but what is the Crucible, exactly?” Snowdrop asked.

“It’s putting individuals through the gauntlet of history.  To face what came before the Seal, the Seal itself, and what came after.  From untamed wilderness to Titans to bloody Gods rooted in planes like the Abyss, and untamed Others filling the night-time.”

“Those are the pieces he’s using to build it?”

“Most of Ontario and some of Manitoba filled with dark and brutal Others.  A Titan.  The power from a region filled with undercities.  The power given to him by London.  A fast-forward through all of it, to grapple with it, come to terms with it.”

“And practitioners like Musser think they can do it, but they can’t?  Because there’s a twist or-”

“It’s too much.  But not always.  A ritual like this, designed for anyone attempting it to fail?  It doesn’t work,” Grey told Avery.  “There has to be an outlet.  An output.  A reward for winning.”

“One that serves your goals?” Avery asked.  “Charles’?”

“I’ll tell you, and if you want, you can try to tell London, Paris, Moscow, Tokyo, Hong Kong, and other Lords of international stature.  They won’t give you a voice.  Even if you got to them and clearly communicated, I doubt they’d care enough to act.  They’re too complacent.  They think they tied a neat little bow on everything here with the deal they gave Charles.”

“But?”

“Most will be swept up by the Crucible and fail, maybe over decades.  Practitioners who want to try to grab at the power.  A jackpot that grows with every practitioner that fails.  The Crucible will consume the most ambitious of them, until one succeeds.  One individual with the right mindset, motives, talent, and the ability to grapple with everything that has come before and everything due to come.”

Avery shook her head.

“The bar is set high.  There’s more to get to grips with than there was three thousand years ago.”

“Three thousand-?” Avery started.  “Solomon?”

“He’ll be killed if this has ramifications that go past the region he’s set here.  It breaches the deal he struck with them.  He’d be forsworn again if this works, which means being extinguished, or worse.  But he’d still have his Crucible give him that one end result he hopes for.  A practitioner of Solomon’s stature, elevated and empowered by the Crucible.  Someone who can build a new paradigm.”

Avery shook her head.  She jumped a bit as Grey lunged over the table, reaching-

Snowdrop leaped to Avery’s defense as Athena had to Grey’s, earlier.  Except Snowdrop wielded a fork and Athena grabbed her wrist.

Grey, for her part, had reached out for Avery’s hand, to seize it.

“Avery,” Grey said, leaning over the table, with that intensity that was closer to ‘stabbing and twisting a knife with a smile’ than any of the other modes Avery had seen.  “Tell me we don’t need a new paradigm.”

“We do, I think,” Avery agreed.

“Tell me we shouldn’t do what we can to rescue people from being forsworn or familiars from being separated from practitioners, or- any of that.  Tell me we shouldn’t be panicked, as humans with empathy, that people are in situations that bad.”

“I won’t.  No, that’s- that’s valid,” Avery murmured.  Grey’s grip was painfully tight on her hand, and the way Grey leaned into the table, Avery was worried it might topple, which would be messy.  “World’s a crummy place, though, I- hmm.  I feel like you’d lose your mind, trying to properly empathize with all of that.  Not that that’s bad, to empathize and care, but…”

She wasn’t sure what to say.

“We lost our minds along with everything else, and then we found the empathy after,” Grey said.  “I think a lot of us here, from the Allaire house, we were good people in bad situations before.  We did volunteer work.  We found so much self worth and goodness, helping Mr. Allaire, we wanted to get into magic to help more people, to be like him.  Before we knew.”

“I get that impression.  I don’t think you’re bad.”

“Help us.  Side with us.”

“But I’m worried that you might do something bad, in your hurry to fix what’s broken.  I don’t trust Charles to handle it.  He fucked this up once on a much smaller scale.  I’m worried about what a Solomon-like practitioner would be like, if Charles has a hand in shaping them.  Not that I even know for sure what that even means.  Solomon-like, or Solomon-tier.”

“You’re saying no?” Grey asked.

“Would you trust Mr. Allaire to fix everything broken?” Avery asked.  She turned to Nova and Athena.  “Or Abraham Musser?”

“They wouldn’t die for a greater good.”

“You guys- look.  If I’m willing to concede I don’t know what you went through, I can’t understand the intensity or panic you feel, knowing others might be out there, can we go back to how maybe me and Verona and Lucy know Charles better than you?”

“Perhaps,” Grey said, settling back into a sitting position, wary.

“Because I’m not sure he’s willing.  I don’t think that’s who he is.  I think this Crucible isn’t something that magically makes Charles make sense-”

“It does.  It can.”

Avery was nervous now, feeling like she was rambling, a big idea in her head that she was struggling to convey.  “It weeds out the bad, ambitious people, so anyone you don’t like gets pulled into it, and anyone who fails deserves it?  It’s starting at the conclusion and working backwards.  If it doesn’t eat someone evil like Helen Kim, who horrified a kid, who did exactly the sort of thing you guys are wanting to stop?  Then will you turn around and say she lived because she’s just, somehow, deep down inside?  Her reasons were good?”

“This is a solution, Avery.  The situation is rigged.  Anyone who could change the system is shut down and suppressed.  The establishment protects its own.  The Carmine Exile has a way of sneaking something through.  The deal with London gives him the power and the elbow room to do that.  Their complacency gives him leeway.  We live in a world where we need another Solomon and the bar for one to be created is out of reach.  The Carmine Exile has found a way.  I know you don’t like him-”

“It’s so much more than me not liking him,” Avery said.  “I’ve been nice to you so far, I think.  I’ve tried to hear you out, but if you say something like that again, diminishing what I’m saying like that, making it out to be about like and dislike, I-”

Athena shifted her footing.  The bodyguard, braced against threats.

But Avery didn’t want to threaten.

“-I think about goblins who were so cute, so funny, so wholesome, so good, who died, and I want to cry,” Avery said, her voice getting creaky around ‘cry’.  Her eyes were welling up.

Snowdrop, eyes downcast, took hold of Avery’s right arm.

“I think there’s a part of this where goblins- they’re you.  They’re-” Avery reached for the words, and the tears rolled down her cheeks.  She lowered her face.

Snowdrop raised hers.  “I’m nobody important, I don’t know anything about this garbage.  But my best friend is a goblin who is smart as anything, bigger than any goblin you ever saw.  Fearsome, her name on the lips of everyone who knows anything about goblins.”

Avery nodded.

“She stepped on tiny goblins and broke their legs and laughed about it, leaving them to crawl away into tiny holes.  There were parasites and Warrens-critters that ate other goblins whole in life or death struggles, that she flicked off without so much as a care.  She never lost a fight.”

“To an inanimate object,” Avery said, with a broken voice, eyes downcast, drying her eyes.

“Definitely didn’t lose a fight to an inanimate object,” Snowdrop said.

Someone offered a tissue, and Avery held the tissue against her eyes.

“Some goblins are mighty, way different from you guys on your worst days,” Snowdrop said.  “They came to Kennet and we were all, ‘fuck you, you huge-ass monster goblin, we’re too good for you, get lost’.”

Avery nodded.

“Some were bigger and some were smaller and I don’t really know that many because this isn’t my deal, but man, the Warrens were great and helped grow them into goblins that kicked almighty ass, ate their fill and handled getting mean and taking mean in big huge kickass ways.  And then they came to Kennet and we kicked their asses to the curb and curbstomped ’em.  Bam.  Not that you could ever understand something like that.”

“You’re comparing us to goblins?” Grey asked.

“A least-tier goblin like Cherrypop to someone forsworn?” Avery asked.  “I don’t think it’s a reach.  But what I wanted to say before is… there were dozens of goblins who were kinda miserable or not doing the best and they were doing so well in Kennet and the Kennet market.  But because of this stupid fight, because of Charles, they’re dead.”

Snowdrop leaned forward, hands wrapped around the empty glass, traces of milk still on the inside.  “How would you feel if you got what you wanted here, if Charles delivered, you rescued people from the situations you’re talking about, and some jackass came and murdered them?”

“And-” Avery talked at the same time Grey did.  Grey gave her the go-ahead, so Avery finished, “And indicated he was intending to keep on mudering?”

“I’d want him to die,” Grey replied.

Avery turned to Nova and Athena.

“Same,” Athena said.

“It depends.  Reasons,” Nova said.

“You think you could make peace with it?” Avery asked.

“I think there are situations I might have to,” Nova replied.

“But,” Grey replied.  “Turning that around on you.  Those goblins you talk about.  Brought up out of Warrens-mud and fighting and stagnation and worse, situations for the smallest that might be like being forsworn?”

“Going in that direction, anyway,” Avery said.

“What if someone said there was a man out there, detestable- I haven’t denied he might be as bad as Allaire, he’s giving us all a chance, let’s say a twenty-five percent chance, to rescue them all.  Offering his life to create someone who’ll  change things, to save every goblin?”

“I’d question if the offer is real.”

“Let’s say it’s real.”

“I’d question that twenty-five percent chance.”

“Let’s say it’s actually twenty five percent.  Just tell me, tell us, answer for me, knowing there’s a chance, and that another opportunity might not come along for centuries, where someone has this much power, this much elbow room, this much of the establishment broken or scared off, and this much intent, to actually bring about change, will you let that happen, or will you get in the way?”

“Will you save the countless wretched little goblins who might never ever have someone say a kind word or offer them the littlest bit of help?” Nova asked.  “Letting them be stepped on, eaten, ignored, for the hundreds of years it might take for another person with another shot at fixing things to come along?”

“Will that person even be better?” Athena asked.

Grey leaned forward.  “It might already take decades or a hundred years for the person we’re talking about to get underway.  How much longer if we wait?  How long can we afford to wait?”

“It’s not Charles,” Avery said.  “It can’t be Charles who tries it.  When he made that first ritual incarnate, the Red Heron God, he was targeting something like five to twenty people.  And it became a disaster that killed thousands.  Now he’s making something similar, bigger, targeting…”

“Fewer.  One person,” Snowdrop said, solemn.  “Smaller scale.  Tighter.”

“Even if it was Allaire, I’d say yes,” Grey said.

“Allaire’s daughter?” Avery asked.

Grey paused, then nodded.  “It’s too important.”

“Then that might be where we disagree,” Avery said.  “In a way we can’t bridge.  Does that mean we’re opposed?”

“We’re not fighters.  They are,” Grey said, pointing to Nova and Athena.  “But we aren’t.  I can’t imagine us fighting you, now or later.  I hope you fail, Avery.  I hope you fail but you come out of it okay, intact and alive, with enough of your loved ones alive.  I hope you’re there when and if we succeed, if we bring someone good into the world.  Then maybe I can invite you in for tea again, and I’ll forgive you.”

“I hope that in a world where the Crucible happens, you aren’t disappointed by Charles or the Crucible’s methods or results,” Avery said.  I hope you aren’t malleable, molding yourself or your way of thinking to something that reinterprets a failure or disappointment into something else.

“Is that it, then?” Grey asked.

“I should go.  You guys won’t get in my way?” Avery asked.

Grey looked over at Athena, who shook her head.  Athena said, “I spent too much time with Entriken, who insisted on decorum.  Breaching hospitality?  He might come back, despite everything, to find me and give me a talking to.”

“Good,” Grey said.  “Thank you for talking to us, Avery.  As much as I want you to fail… I won’t mind as much if you succeed.”

“Thank you,” Avery said, standing.  She pushed the chair in.  “I wish I could turn around and say the same, but… too much is too raw.”

“I’m sorry about the goblins.  And the others.”

“It’s okay,” Snowdrop replied, before flashing a toothy smile.

“The word ‘authorities’ has bad vibes,” Lucy said.  “Emergency services.”

“Which implies there was an emergency when the purported emergency was not only of your own doing, but largely false,” Desmond countered.

Verona had dropped to a sitting position, head in hands.  Without looking up or moving her hands from her head, she said, “Simplify.  Fire engines.”

“The sentence would have to change,” the Aurum said.  “Is there any objection to the line, ‘the second party arrived on the scene with thirty locals and several fire engines?'”

Lucy shook her head.

“I’m not personally set on the term ‘fire engines’,” Desmond Kim said.  “I would like to leave inroads to reverse the prior decision on saying, instead of a Storm, that a fire was set by the second party.”

“Biases them,” Lucy said.

“It’s an inherently bias-generating act.  The Storm was harmful to everyone present, to property, to design.”

“Or we could just tell the complete story to the Innocent, and mind wipe them after?” Verona asked, still with hands on head, still sitting down.

“Impossible to do in a tidy way,” Helen said.

“Let us at least try this?” Desmond asked.

Sebastian returned to questions of wording and law.

“I feel like it’s got to be easier than this,” Verona muttered.

“I think we’re being played,” Lucy murmured to Verona.

“I’ve felt vibes that way,” Verona murmured back.  “Got anything more concrete?”

“Time’s stopped the immediate fighting, but there’s stuff going on in the background, right?  If they’re back there, talking, planning, does it wind backwards?”

“So… this is a scenario where they’re eating the karmic hit, maybe even to the point of being limited in practice, but they make up for it by scheming?” Verona asked.

“Think about where our guys are.  If our backup who came in, like Zed, McCauleigh, Anthem, what are they doing?  Recuperating?”

“Makes sense,” Verona said.

“And the Kims… recuperating, I assume, but also strategizing?  Because we’re our strategists here, and we’re tied up talking about fire trucks?”

“Can they?”

“If Avery’s out there and she can do stuff, and if Anthem and McCauleigh and Matthew and the goblins are resting, I assume their side can too?” Lucy asked.

Verona scrunched up her face.

“We lost the element of surprise and putting them on the back foot already,” Lucy added.

“But we can’t bail, right?” Verona asked.  “If we give up the argument it means we don’t weaken them, and I’m not sure how we deal after that.”

“I think the argument favors us,” Lucy said.  “But it’s a wild card.  There’s no telling what the people off the street might arbitrarily decide, when things are pitched at them.  I think they only proposed it because they knew things were slanted against them.  And the Aurum might know they want to stall, which is why he’s helping…”

“Right,” Verona whispered, quick.  “So this taking longer works against us, but if we forfeit the argument or the wild card acts against us…?”

“We lose.”

“We need options.”

“Brute force, in a Law sense,” Lucy said.  She turned and walked up, putting a hand at Sebastian’s arm to let him know she was there.  “Judges?”

“Ms. Ellingson,” the Alabaster said.

“This is dragging on, and as important as it is, I think the fact it drags is changing how things might turn out, outside this.  The time effect is primarily for the sake of stalling out the Titan, as I interpret it?”

“And any immediate fighting,” the Sable said.

“Anything could change outcomes.  A lot of variables apply.  The world keeps turning,” Desmond said.

“I would like to suggest a truce,” Lucy said.  “A compromise and rebalance of karma between our groups-”

“No,” Desmond said.

“-Weighted according to the leaning of the Judges at the current moment.”

“There is far too much to unpack there, no,” Desmond said.

“I think Desmond and Helen Kim are contriving to drag this out and force a less-than-expedient resolution, so their people can strategize and plan.  The hard refusal of the truce, before I even finished, which is another interruption, for the record…”

“Noted,” the Alabaster said.

“…suggests their intent.  By dragging this out, we work against Law, not for it.”

“I do wish that was something I could use more often,” Sebastian muttered.  “Long work day, ‘dragging this out works against Law…”

“To add to my argument,” Lucy said.  “The Aurum has clearly been playing games, acknowledged by other Judges, and we have karmic lean against Helen Kim.”

“Helen Kim’s karmic lean can’t count against their wider organization,” the Aurum said.  “It has already been ruled.”

Bullshit ruling, Lucy thought.  “But your lean can.  If we interpret this as bias.”

“Can you prove it?”

“The Others who fall under the Aurum’s scope hanging out on this battlefield, clearly led here by you, does that not count?” Lucy asked.  “Come on.  But I’m willing to leave it to the other two Judges to work out.”

“All three Judges,” Desmond said.

“All three Judges,” the Sable said.

“I’m moving for the speedier resolution,” Lucy said.  “What Verona said.  Let Judges with full knowledge over the situation weigh things.  One against us, one arguably for- or against what the Carmine is doing to the region.  One neutral.  Or bring someone in and mind-wipe them.  If you guys agree these are shenanigans, let’s force the faster wrap-up on this.”

“I’d move to argue my case against Aurum bias,” Helen said.

“Dragging things out more?” Lucy asked.

Stalling to try to buy her side time to recover and strategize.

“Requesting my due in matters of Law.  Ask your lawyer guy,” Helen said, shrugging.

“The Aurum went out of his way to let you make your interruptions,” the Alabaster Assembly said.

And it threw me off my game, Verona thought.  She hadn’t made the arguments she’d wanted to make, like with the responsibility of the situation over the Titan.  Lucy did better against the interruptions and petty head games.

“Here, the scales tip the other way,” the Alabaster said.  “We confer.”

The shadows of three Judges extended out, each tinted a different color, and then bent, forming a loose circle shape.

Lucy stopped being able to hear what they were saying.  They barely moved their lips.

“Hopefully no wild card of an innocent off a street,” Lucy muttered.

“I’m seeing an outcome where they do go that way,” Sebastian said.

“This is a secure zone, right?  Audience with Judges?” Lucy asked.  “Augury can’t see in?  We can’t communicate in or out, short of letting someone go, like we did with Avery?”

“No.  It would be an oversight if it could,” Sebastian said.

Lucy took a second to secure them against being listened in by little horror ears or whatever.  Anti clairaudience runes.  Her earring helped.

“We want to be in position, outside the door of that meeting, for when Charles leaves it.  That means we have to get there and hold that ground.  Securely enough we can be there for however many more hours the meeting lasts.”

“We need to win here, yeah,” Verona said.

“Heads up,” Sebastian said.

The Judges were done conferring.

“We’ve decided to speed things along, out of concern that not doing so will change the outcome,” the Alabaster Assembly said.

“To those ends, in acknowledgment of the fact that more data gives a better picture, we’ve voted, each Judge taking a side, that’s one point of the triangle.  We’ve selected for one sleeping individual, far from here, agreed on by us three to be appropriately neutral, who is currently being brought up to speed with the particulars of this situation.  He will be your innocent, weighing in as soon as he’s done.”

“That would be the second point of the triangle,” the Aurum said.  “For the third, we put it to five randomly selected Others of Law from the wider region.”

Wild cards after all, Lucy thought.

“By the time we’re far enough into this ruling, the stragglers will have gotten back to us with their individual verdicts,” the Sable said.

“In aggregate, weighing this situation, it leans against the Kims.  They were reckless, they overreached,” the Alabaster said.  “The Kim family will be stripped of practice temporarily, with karma weighing against them.  Along with them, the alchemist Josef Miller, the bedlamite Abyssal practitioner Lenard Lily, apprentice Teddy Kilburn, several new apprentices from St. Victor’s, and nearly twenty Others who played a part in benefiting from the Titan’s havoc will be stripped in the same manner, with different amounts of karmic loss.”

“But,” the Aurum said.  “There is an overriding sentiment that this shouldn’t be something done often or repeated, and so some consequence falls on your shoulders.  Lucille Ellingson, Verona Hayward, and Avery Kelly, who is represented by those here, you will also be stripped of practice temporarily, as if gainsaid, with no karmic loss.”

Damn, Verona thought.

“Verona plan, metaphorical slap up the back of the head,” Lucy muttered.  “Why am I surprised?”

“To be clear, the weight leans heavily against House Kim and associates,” the Alabaster said.  “It is, functionally, twenty Kims and twenty-seven associates great and small affected on their side, as opposed to three individuals on yours.”

“To avoid the resumption of events changing too much or putting those here at too steep a disadvantage, the time slowing effect will be staggered, starting at you, and expanding out, with those at the fringes catching up and resuming activity late.  There is a titan here.  Be aware.”

Then the Judges were gone.

The world creaked as things began to resume.  Lighting around them got weird, as it filtered through altered time, trying to figure out what it should be.

“Avery, Avery, Avery,” Verona muttered.

“Stripped, right?” Lucy asked.

They collectively backed away from the Titan, who was also creaking slowly into motion.

The Storm that was getting back underway with the wards having been knocked down, it was starting to resume too.

They ran.  As they did, they met with slowed air, which was thick and tarry.

It was like a bubble expanding out from them.  Giving them more of a leash to work with every second.  It meant they could avoid being stomped on or hit with a blast of ice from the Titan, and they could move to be out of the Storm, but they weren’t free and clear yet.

Helen and Desmond were also taking advantage of the situation, retreating.  Helen was splitting her limbs, defensive.

“I want to go after them,” Lucy said.

“Breaches the rules,” Sebastian said.  “These sorts of meetings have a kind of latent hospitality, you can’t attack people on the way in or out, exactly.”

“Yeah, saw some of that with the Carmine Contest,” Lucy replied.  “Still wanna.”

“Will you be okay?”

“It’s an okay outcome,” Verona said.

Lucy’s practice was weaker, which meant her wards against the Storm were going to shit, but her earring was her, and that power remained.  She caught the sound of Avery’s running footsteps.

“Avery!” Lucy hollered, one hand at her earring, one hand cupped by her mouth, shouting into that wall of slowed time.

She heard Avery’s footsteps change.

They got more leeway, getting very close to things resuming in a normal way.  Avery caught up with them as they retreated.  They pet, Lucy catching Avery out of that pell-mell run, with Avery having enough momentum that she kind of span in a half-circle around Lucy before pulling to a stop.

“We lost?” Avery asked.  “I lost most of my practice all of a sudden.”

“We’re okay,” Verona replied.  “We got the Kims and a bunch of their side.  I figured we’d lose practice, right?  From Charles gainsaying or something else.”

“It’s not great,” Lucy said.  She looked up and winced as rain pelted her face.

The Storm was kicking in again.

“We’re on track okay, then?” Avery asked.  “I have so much to catch you guys up on.”

“Let’s meet the others,” Lucy said.  “The Storm’s outlived its usefulness, so anything we can do…”

“Titan, too,” Verona commented.  “Kinda a problem.  For all sides, I think.”

“Yeah.”

“If Ave can’t practice, we’ll want a Garrick.  Someone to get us and key friends on a Path,” Verona said.  “Everyone else holding down the fort here, best they can.”

Lucy’s earring caught prowling in the woods.  Lucy pulled on Avery and Verona’s arms, to get them moving.  Trouble was incoming and they were pretty much unarmed, now.

“Path?” Avery asked.

“And from there, getting us in position,” Verona said.  She looked at Lucy.  “Like we just talked about.”

A drop in, from Path to that door, where we want to be when Chuck comes out? Lucy thought.

Through Charles’ people and assets, to be ready for Charles himself.

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