Vol. 4 Chap. 39 Signs and Portents

Vol. 4 Chap. 39 Signs and Portents

Truth kept the scrubs. They weren’t dirty, really, and he liked having a costume change on hand. One trip into the locker room, a quick change of clothes, and Doctor Bone-Bro, M.D., Ph.D. (U. Jeon) D.Thaum (Hons. Behem U.) vanished. Exiting the locker room was Peuth Reduchi, Talisman Service Technician First Class, Ever-Rite Equipment Rentals Corporation (a Starbrite Family Company.)

Amazing how you can be invisible two completely different ways, in the same place, at roughly the same time. He got a little grin out of the whole thing.

Had the day been a waste? No, not really. He had a better sense of a lot of things, now. He might not be much closer to cracking Cup and Knife, but progress was progress. Besides, it felt good. The whole exercise, even the stupid, annoying people, made him feel good. He wouldn’t want to do that every day, or even every week. But for an occasional thing? It really wasn't anything too bad.

He paused, as he watched a little girl walking through the hospital with her mom. He couldn’t tell which of them needed help. Maybe they were here to visit someone.

Oh, it was the kids.

That’s why he did all this. It was the kids in the factory and the meat processing plant. He just wanted to do something decent. Something... unarguably good. He could come in, make changes and make people’s lives better. Even if only for a moment. Even if “better” just meant ‘less bad’. He wasn’t helpless here. He could do things.

Was that another secret of Starbrite’s control? That learned helplessness? He had left those kids in the factory because he couldn’t imagine a plausible scenario where anything good happened to them. It was Starbrite’s favorite trick- you don’t need to defeat people if you have already convinced them they can’t win.

Time to push a lot harder than he had been. Time to see just how hard he had to shake the tree to make clues fall out of it.

Stepping out of the hospital was disorienting. It had been daytime when he went in. It was night now. Somehow, he hadn’t felt the connection between light and dark- like the hospital existed in a bubble universe, a pocket of white blood cells fighting a cyst trapped under the skin of the ‘real.’

Golden cherubim appeared over the city. As one, they started a loud scream. A pause, then another. Pause, than another. People bolted from the sidewalks, into buildings or out of them and into subways.

Elderly folk seemed to materialize on the streets, bright orange arm bands and thick helmets both stamped with “Air Raid Warden''. They were waving signs or glowing talismans, yelling “This Way! This WAY! One orderly line! There is plenty of room for everyone, now go, go, go!”

He bounced between high rises, wanting to see for himself. Up on the roof top, watching the lights go out over the city. Watching the lights start to glow on the northern edge of the horizon. Explosions. Streaks of flaming bolts firing out at ten thousand rounds a second, chewing through summons and spellbirds.

Traceries of gold and orange and blue and venom-green twisting and balling together in the night sky, obscuring the stars behind them. Closer to the city, flights of angels flew in rigid patterns. Waiting for the enemy to come. Demons, fat toad things, dotted the ground in their dozens. Enormous eyes tracking targets, waiting for the opportunity to launch acid in long spears up into the sky.

Anti-Air batteries spun around, subtle detection systems scraping the aether for the precise nature of the incoming attack. Did they load counterspell rounds to take out tactical curses? Banishments, abjurations, or simply load for carnage and shred any incoming spell birds? Systems of systems, talisman networks of incredible power and subtly, working with some of the best spellcraft that money could buy, all to lock down the sky.

And if it didn’t work, there were always the brutal artillery pieces behind them. Truth let his eyes run over them. Not a shred of light there, to make things harder on attackers. They were in use though. The enormous fetishes rising from the ground and swiveling to the north.

Someone had to make sure that the Q2 Reciprocating Widget numbers were properly correlated and organized according to the latest accounting directives. Who did you expect to do it, the CFO? No, it was dozens of more junior officials, each dispatched with the knowledge that a single error in their tedious job would result in nothing, on account of it never being discovered, or their execution. No middle ground permitted.

Bonuses for doing dangerous work? Rewards for hard and careful labor? Call internal security, I’ve found a spy! You certainly are no son of Jeon!

No, the hotels were full, and apartments did not seem to be noticeably empty. It was time to pull a maneuver he had hoped to avoid. He found a suitably generic apartment building, caught the door as someone was walking out, and started listening for people heading out to work. As people stepped out of their rooms, he stepped in. Just having a quick look around at the state of the place. Third time lucky- the owner had invested in a large sectional sofa, so Truth didn’t have to try and ignore the warm spot in a freshly vacated bed.

“Thrush, keep watch while I sleep.”

“Yes, Dread Magus. Seep well.”

A few minutes later, Perks slithered out of the confines of Truth’s shirt. He was a pretty relaxed snake, as snakes went, and was usually happy to be next to a perpetual source of heat. Still, it did you good to get out and stretch, so out he went.

The snake wound his way across the sofa, onto the floor, then made his way to the walls. His tongue flicked out, tasting the strange smells in the air. It slowly made its way along the wall to a crevice between a kitchen cabinet and a cold box. A tiny, tiny little gap, far too small for Perks. Most humans would have ignored it entirely, as the gap was barely the width of a human finger.

Perks curled up and went still. Perks didn’t have eyelids, but you could be forgiven for thinking him asleep.

Roughly an hour after Truth fell asleep, a mouse came out of the wall. It generally preferred the nights, but when your metabolism burned through calories like an oilfield fire, you ate whenever you could.

It was a very careful mouse. It could smell the sebum trail it, and other mice, had left behind. No smells of predators. Some strange new smells, but no predator urine or anything like that. Being an urban mouse, with its last twelve generations living and dying in this very apartment building, it had never smelled a snake.

Squeezing through a gap that forced its body to radically compact, the mouse made the passage out into the dangerous, but food rich, world beyond its nest. Staying hidden simply was not an option. Hunger compelled it to forage. Its flesh insisted the biochemical bonfires be fueled.

The mouse was careful. It led with its most accurate sensor, its nose. It swept the air for any traces of danger. Whiskers carefully shook, sensitive to the air around them. No sudden movement in the air would be overlooked. It took a few careful steps out into the room. Its eyes weren’t very good, but it used them carefully anyway. Wide ears twitched, listening for a betraying footfall.

It was a careful little mouse. It moved silently and carefully into the still apartment. It was really very careful. It didn’t matter.

Perks exploded out from his coil, striking faster than the mouse could react. The vipers fangs sank through skin and muscle, sliding past bone, piercing organs as they curved back and in. The microscopic amount of venom did almost no additional damage, but it surely didn’t help the mouse any. A few quick gulps later and the mouse was safely dead and swallowed.

Perks curled back up where he was. A few minutes later, apparently uncomfortable, Perks retraced his path and returned to Truth’s chest. There, it got on with the important business of digesting. A surprisingly small bulge made its way down the length of him. It would take time to break down. That suited Perks fine. He was perfectly content, just where he was.