There's this girl.
(No, she would say, if any dared to ask. There was never a girl. Would tear the words off tablet or stone with razor-sharp claws, then the thought out of the mind of whoever had written them in a spray of lipid and CSF. Perhaps a sword-blank, if thoughts of origin must be endured - but to be a girl implies softness, sweetness, implies the existence of a family and of something other than pure single-minded tempering, rasping to the point of the scale and the spear -)

(but -)

There is this girl. She is born into the late summer, her cradle the curve of the mountains and the first noise in her ears the river, running down westwards to a sparkling sea. He is not among the highest chieftains, her father, but he rules a goodly space of land; enough for their entire tribe to farm upon and fish upon, to herd their flocks of sheep from mountain to meadow upon. Enough to provide for a thriving population, a population that can pay enough taxes to support its nobility and provide enough bodies to make full use of the resources that Batoni had given unto them.
Enough bodies to support the yearly tribute.
It is voluntary, the empress in the east insists. Intended to foster a closer relationship between their nations, and to help ensure that the children of Colchis are as invested in the state that rules them as their own small tribes.
So each year, 50 daughters, of an age to be married, are sent east over the mountains. 50 sons. What is done with them is unknown; none are returned nor ever send missives back. The emissaries always come at the beginning of the spring, when they ought to be celebrating the sowing and the quickening of the soil. Perhaps it is out of spite, or perhaps they just want to prove their superiority that much the stronger: see, we can order you to give us even your joy, and you obey.
So there is a peculiar type of tension that takes form in every person that reaches maturity; on the one hand, they have outlived the sicknesses and accidents that fell many children, and they may soon become the lord or lady of their own household, to command their own servants and beget their own line just as their parents did before them.
But on the other hand, all of those things may simply never come to pass. They may be dressed in their finest clothes, and paraded before the women from the east, and simply… disappear.
(The ones who are taken are not grieved. They are not dead; so rather than bear that uncertainty eternally, their families just allow the disappearance. That which is not, if it cannot be proven to have ever been, leaves no emptiness behind itself.)
Are you… worried? one of her friends asks, on the eve before she is to reach the age of womanhood. Even though I know that there is only one chance in hundreds that I am chosen… they say that they sacrifice them, you know. On altars to their gods.
(And that they bait monsters with them in the woods, and replace their limbs with bronze and their eyes with rock crystal and use them for soldiers in the vanguards of their armies. There are many rumours about the inhumanity of the Daeva, each worse than the last.)
But even so, it feels like… I know it, in my bones. That I will be one of the ones taken, this year. Do you?
The girl shakes her head. Her braids are piled atop each other like the bricks of a fortress-wall, that looks out over the water; they do not shift with the motion. My father would never allow that, she says.

At least, he would not have. Until the year that the plague comes. Unlike most, this one does not disproportionately target the children and the elderly, clip off the already-ill like one who prunes a grapevine to coax a greater harvest from it next year. This one spares the grandmothers, and the mothers, and brings down daughters in their youths and young men in their time of strength. (The ditches and hedgerows are, within the space of one moon, emptied of altamisa, if anyone wonders how bad it is.)
So the emissary of the empress comes to a much-diminished population to demand her hundred heads. The girl's father pleads for mercy. He attempts to explain that with so many ill they will not have enough able-bodied to take care of the old and of children. If she takes her hundred there will be no-one left to tend the fields, to harvest the firewood. Perhaps she could take a token number this year, to be fulfilled once their population has recovered?
The emissary waits until he has finished speaking. She does not laugh. She does not smile. She makes no pretension of mockery (would it have been easier if she had? Would that hatred have hit its autoignition point in that one moment and leapt into flame, rather than its months-long smouldering, draining growth?), and yet she refuses the plea. Her compatriots enter the crowd, pull out boys trying to hide behind their mothers. The deputy counts, as they line them up like nerve chords through the center of the square - twenty-and-nineteen, two-twenties, two-twenties-and-one.
And then they come and point to her.
The girl wants - something, for her mother to grasp her arm or her father to draw her to him, something to prove that they care, that they won't just lie down and let her be stolen like this.
But the deputy beckons with two fingers. The set of her brown eyes and olive lips indicates that it will go much harder for the girl, should she refuse.

The emissary and her deputies did not bring carts; they walk the pass through the mountains. Not roped together, for where could they possibly run?
The path has been turned into little more than a streambed over the winter, as the rains took the easy route down from the highlands rather than percolating slowly through the trees and the tundra, all matted together with roots. Her ankles roll over the loose stones and gullies; her feet blister, tear open, and bleed through her sandals within the first day.
The second is worse, as the trees thin further and leave them exposed to the biting sky. One of the deputies carries with him a fire in a little birchbark box - of course, he only ever lights one, outside the animal-hide tent they erect and too far from his captives to lend them any warmth at all, even when the sky is cloudless and thin films of ice fall from the stars.
The girl has her own box, inside her heart. And into it she puts the cold, and the pain. She puts the image of the welts on her cohort's hands, and the muffled sounds of hands over lips and knees on arms as the deputies cross nightly to where the boys lie in a line at night. She puts the white shard of bone standing out against the dark void of rent muscle when the girl two spaces ahead of her misses her footing on a stone and falls, tumbles down the slope into a steep ravine gouged through the mountains on their right hand. Her screams and wails sound like a rock-spirit, echoing between its walls, and the girl mumbles a quick invocation as the deputies, ears seemingly stoppered with wax, herd them remaining along.
She locks the heart-box tight each sunset, and binds it around with her chordae so that not a single fragment could escape. These things are for later. The girl walks.

After all that - what blows her ashes back into flame is not a threshold of cruelty, when they arrive at the empire's closest trade hub, but a threshold of banality. For this is the terrible secret of the tribute the empress takes: they are married off, as appeasement and as rewards to minor nobles, allies, and militia-leaders. A clever way for the empress to assert her power over her vassal-states and gain a rare resource (for of course no-one of pure blood could be given in such a fashion) with which to ensure the fealty of her other lords.
The man to whom the girl is given is one of these - many times removed from the royal line, and owner of a moderate span of land and several vassals to manage it. He tells her all of it as they ride through the bee-filled scrublands. His silver-ringed fingers sit calmly on the reins, and she thinks she would rather forge them into spearheads than receive even one upon her own hand.
The servants, though, are sympathetic to this withdrawn foreign bride. The head cook allows her to sit on the hearth-stones and drink glasses of milk and weak mead; the maid teaches her what Daevic words she does not know, and sings her songs in the northmen's tongue. But nonetheless, they all flee at her husband's arrival.

By the time she begins to feel ill, she has already not bled for two months. Her maids coo over her, rub her back when she is sick, offer sweet teas and rich cakes. To feed the baby, they explain. Her master husband puts his hands around her waist and says my daughter, bending to kiss her there on the diaphragm.
(Daevite women don't bleed at all - these same maids had worried in the first moon of her marriage until she had explained that she was not dying, gotten the human slaves to corroborate. That twists her gut up even more - her husband, stealing nine months' worth of humanity from her, continuing to mould her into an alien shape.)
Her mother would have helped her, were she still in Colchis. She would have told her all to expect, and made her tisanes and massaged her limbs where they ache. But here in the east, alone, she has no-one.
She takes to meandering around the orchards and the gardens, talking to the wind and the sun, hoping they will convey her prayers to her gods. I do not want to give the world more Daeva to abuse it. I don't - why do my sisters and brothers get to be at home, be free, when I am hostage here?
It is not fair. It is not just.
She looks for the small, yellow flowers of rue every time, and does not find them.

But in the absence of yellow, she finds rosy pinks and cool purples - slim-leaved oleander and racemoid aconite sprouting as weeds at the edges of the gardens and in the ditches at the roadsides. And the house has a well in the courtyard, that supplies most of the water for drinking and cooking and bathing.
Her hands are stained green by the time she pushes the last stalks into its mouth and makes her way up the stairs to her own chamber. It is not even yet dusk, but surely no-one will question her retiring so early - after all, it is a great endeavour to gestate and bear a daughter, and her serving-women have been constantly saying she needs rest.
(There is a certain lack of satisfaction in it - the savage thing that coils inside her heart wants blood and violence, wants to see the shock and betrayal on her husband's face as she dismantles him piece by piece. His body could be just as useful to her as hers has been made to him. She could string harps with his sinews, split arrowheads from his bones, a waterskin from his stomach so she could cross more wildernesses and this time without torment -
But one must be practical. It will do.)
She spends much of the next day abed, watching the rays of sunlight creep across the floor and up the wall. One of her ladies-in-waiting comes in the morning, but leaves as she feigns sleep.
By evening, no-one comes.
The girl rises. She gathers her few supplies - waterskin, cloak, jewelry to trade. And she slips down the sooty servants' staircase to the kitchen, and out the door, and barefooted onto the empty road and the oncoming dusk.

The girl doesn't really know where she wanders, the next few days, and doesn't care to know. The brushland is eternal, marked only by wells and fences that appear and disappear at seeming random.
Men and poems have spoken of the pangs of guilt - that when one has destroyed with one's actions something one held dear, the suffering of that could be worse than a wound. This cannot possibly be it - they were nothing to her, it is good that they are all dead, and she knows this, deep in her bones - but then what? What explains the ache that melts out through her back?
She has retreated so deeply inside herself that she almost trips over the people resting at the side of the road in the shade of a thorn-tree. The one looks up, a sudden, alien twist of the head, and stands, wetting its lips; the other's face is veiled, and only its eyes slide to fix on her.
Sister? asks the standing one, in a woman's voice. Are you - is everything all right?
No, she wants to say, nothing is, not the whole world over, but the tension growing in her back chooses that moment to tear its way free from her, and the last thing she is aware of perceiving are the woman's hands closing around her wrists.

They all fall away from her - the awareness of time, location, situation. None matters - she is being rent apart, a single pine-needle floating upon an ocean of pain. Its waves crest and break like in the bitterest of storms, scouring the shingle, tearing away every barnacle of thought that attempts to take root in her mind.
Whoever it was that screamed in time with each surge has stopped, now, from either hoarseness or exhaustion. Fragments of the outside world slide in: red light through dark-veined tentcloth, gentle words in a tongue she does not understand. Someone holds a cup against her mouth, but the bitter liquid just dribbles down the side of her cheek as a spear drives through her gut and her throat closes up again.
Something is wrong. She knows this from the tone of the foreign voices and in her bones, her instincts impotently beating on the inside of her skull - we have to do something, we're dying, we're bleeding -
Her minute planktonic consciousness thinks it might welcome death, at this point. And then there is a sudden cartilaginous crack, and both instinct and consciousness sink mercifully down out of the light.

She comes to to softness and musk, and even before her eyes open her left fingers close on the fur that drapes over them. Her hips and back still feel like they have been pulled apart at the joints and used for knucklebones, then reassembled wrongly. Every breath sends a stab of pain through her belly.
What has woken her? It is not bright - she has a vague sense of being inside an enclosed space, as the air feels warm and stale and confined. The light seeping through her eyelids is a mustard, buttery yellow.
She opens her eyes. She is supine on some type of makeshift cot. To her left, a glacier of white fur tumbles onto its edge; laying camouflaged among the strands are ash-coloured plaits and matted cords of hair, revealed only by the jet beads keeping the ends from unravelling.
I am telling you, your assistance is unnecessary, the fur cloak's owner is saying; she feels the vibrations of the voice in her fingertips.
It takes three breaths before the voice returns.
Do not concern yourself with that, the speaker says, evidently in answer to some silent response. I have borne much worse, and you know it.
Another meaningful silence from the interlocutor.
I will not - no, stop - The silent one must make to grab at the other, for they step back, jarring her cot. Do not touch me!
In shock, her fingers release, and the cloak slides free.
The speaker must feel it, for they turn around. I did not mean you, čakargu.
And now two sets of eyes turn to her, and she feels the second even if she only sees the first. If only she had the strength to feel more than mildly embarrassed.
Presumably, a question is posed by the other, for the speaker answers: She is the one who poisoned Subandhu's household. Did you not wonder why they did not raise up a militia against us? She said she had slain them all; and we came and found it was true, that they were all dead, or dying.
I wanted to make them bleed, she complains. For all the blood Subandhu had stopped her from shedding, these months.
The speaker's lips twitch. Do not question your victories, čakargu. You achieved your aim - or I presume so. The manner in which you did so is immaterial.
But she hasn't, not yet. There are still forty-nine other offerings in the same position as she was, and the uncounted many since Colchis had sworn vassalhood to the Empire, and it's not right it's not fair it's not enough, that she be here and they be there and everyone of her childhood still unmarred and ignorant, over the mountains. There is a hole in her pelvis and that others have it filled incenses her, she will rupture like a fresh empyema under the unequal pressures. It cannot be cured with waiting, with altamisa; the one, and only, thing she needs is the lance.

So when seven days later she walks on thorns (always will, she will take no pain-free step again) to their red-walled armoury and, clinging to the ribs of the wall with one hand, draws from its glutinous sheath a spear, straight-shafted and sturdy -
- then, perhaps, is when she steps from the umbra of girl.


Item #: SCP-1981
Object Class: Keter
Special Containment Procedures: SCP-1981 is to be kept inside a secure video storage unit at the media archive of Site ██. When in use, SCP-1981 should not be removed from its casing or exposed to any strong magnetic sources. A Betamax home video system and an analog television has been provided in Observation Theatre 02 at Site ██, as well as video equipment to record viewings.
Following the events of 2 November and the cessation of SCP-2798, SCP-1981 has been reclassified as Keter. SCP-1981 is one of the hundreds of unrelated anomalies affected by SCP-001, which has succeeded in locating and properly identifying the population of Earth, resuming its direct influence over anomalous activity on Earth and local environs as of 2 November 2016. This includes the spontaneous disappearance and reappearance outside of Foundation custody of previously contained phenomena, in new iterations that have been altered to cause greater amounts of difficulty in containment apparently. SCP-1981 is one of the most dangerous of these anomalies altered and therefore requires a Post-Serapsis Containment Protocol.
SCP-1981 is currently contained by Post-Serapsis Containment Protocol ESSKEETIT-CONTRA. Protocol ESSKEETIT-CONTRA is to consist of Foundation-operated web analysis bot Alpha-20 ("DROPOUT"), which is to monitor [REDACTED FOR PERSONNEL 1981/3 AND LOWER] for SCP-1981 and immediately issue a DMCA takedown for any webpages hosted by that company. It is then to contact Dersh.aic, the head of the Foundation's team of artificially intelligent lawyers, who are then to issue as many suits against the hosting company as possible. Although Foundation resources are thin, as many cultural engineering resources as possible have to go towards [REDACTED FOR PERSONNEL 1981/3 AND LOWER] tastes in art away from SCP-1981 and towards differing approaches to its [REDACTED FOR PERSONNEL 1981/3 AND LOWER].
A single copy of the video for SCP-1981 is to be kept in the secure video storage unit at the media archive of Site ██, and a single audio file is to be attached to this article.
Description: SCP-1981 is a standard Betamax tape. "RONALD REGAN CUT UP WHILE TALKING"(sic) has been handwritten on the adhesive sticker in felt tip pen. Laboratory analysis indicates that SCP-1981 is made of ordinary material, and serial numbers correspond with home cassette tapes produced in September of 1980. SCP-1981 appears to be a home video recording of former United States President Ronald Reagan delivering his "Evil Empire" speech to the National Association of Evangelicals at Sheraton Twin Towers Hotel, Orlando, FL on 3/8/1983. However, at 1 minute and 10 seconds, the speech begins to deviate heavily, eventually resembling no known speech ever made by Reagan. Beginning at approximately 5 minutes, multiple incisions, lacerations and penetration wounds can be seen being slowly inflicted, though no corresponding source of these wounds is visible. Despite suffering bodily harm that would likely incapacitate an ordinary person, Reagan will continue to deliver his speech until either his vocal cords are severed or the tape degrades to static at 22:34.
SCP-1981 is [REDACTED] ██████████████████████████████████ in conjuction with the PoI known as ████, alongside SCP-████, SCP-███ ███, and the GoI known as "██████ ██████ ████." whose members have been similarly altered by SCP-001. SCP-1981 is notable for [REDACTED] and plays for [DATA EXPUNGED] ███ ████. ██ [REDACTED] universally described as "fucking corny" by D-class. ████████ ███ ████ ███████ [DATA EXPUNGED] ███████
[REDACTED]. ███ ██████ ██████ ██████ ██████ ██████ ██████ ███ [REDACTED]██ ███ ███ █████ ███ ███ ██████ ███ █ before shooting himself in the head, cutting off his foot, stabbing himself in the heart, crushing his spleen with his fists, and then loudly proclaiming "Thanks I hate it."

+ [REDACTED FOR PERSONNEL 1981/3 AND LOWER]

- Welcome Site Director, may God have mercy on your soul

The sole audio example of SCP-1981 is attached below. It is preceded by a standard anti-cognitohazard disclaimer from members of the O5 Council. Any notions that the previous database entry have been unfunny window dressing for SCP-1981 are to be discarded.
Good luck, fucker.

LYRICS:
YO!
(This is the Hanged King's FAT mixtape!)
(beats by dado)
(Gamers Against Weed, y'all)
(SCP! 19! 81!)
I'm from a kingdom level above human n' I'm here to spit
That I drop those taxes, cause small gubmmit's the shit!
My world salad horror drives you round the bend
Twelve! Eighteen! Now there I go again!
Unravellers eat these rhymes as I spit them out fine
And the wound on my neck won't stop me this time
The sadness the blackness the darkness the crunk
Mr. Gorbachev (Da?) turn up this funk!
Object class safe cause I don't do crime
And the beast in the night will roll in the slime
A pious pit in a vile bath
And I kick politics down a drooling path
And there are known knowns and there are unknown knowns
And there are unknown flows and unknowns at my show
Some of them are in the audience right now!
We got a lotta fuckin Daeva in this here crowd!
Billions of dead souls inside containment
What we gonna do? (Stop Al-Qaeda!)
There's a hole in the wall in the bottom of the floor
My conservatism? Disgusting gore!
Woo! I rock the mic
Like the heart with the spider legs talking all night
The American People face a terrible schism
Come on down to the White House for cannibalism
(I see you)
[Hook]
I've seen the offices of Google and the mountains of Alaska
The derelict houses in the cornfields of Nebraska
If the right eye offends then seek emancipation
A hokey smile that damns a whole nation
Now get on up and cut up a baby
Shake your ass on the floor like you're talking crazy
I turn hearts to filth and I know to get down
Eaten whole by void, boy I like that sound
I'm the sum of all your nighttime fears
May the USA reign for a thousand years
I drink blood from Putin's skull I turned into a cup
I'm Ronald Reagan, bitch, and I'm all cut up!
(I see circles that are not circles, [scratching] that are not circles,)
(I see circles that are not circles, [scratching] not circles)
(Now there you go again)

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Tales

asmr by dado

RONALD REAGAN CUT UP WHILE RAPPING

Excerpt from The Astrolabe Institute Journal

Amnestic

The William Penn Iteration

End Of Deaf; or, In the Clutches of Dumb

The News Tonight: Wednesday April 26th 2017

Interior—Interior

The Undoing

Holy Mackerel

Grandchildren Frost

Portrait of Two Choreographers

Wade Williams Distribution Presents:

The DevourerLand Diaries
Rating: 11


Dr. Coolbad braced his elbows on his desk. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and pushed up his glasses with two fingers.
“Fuck,” said Dr. Coolbad.
And fuck was right.
He was shocked he hadn't considered the possibility before. As far as he was concerned, his plan had gone off without a hitch, if you didn't count this rather large and important one.
“Can't you just- I dunno, amnestic-tize them?”
No, said the person on the other end of his bluetooth. And it's pronounced “amnestitize,” they also said, but Dr. Coolbad was busy considering the former comment. He tugged at his collar, his office growing increasingly warm.
“Hmm. This certainly is… something. Something indeed.” said Dr. Coolbad, stroking his chin in a way that suggested he was both dastardly villainous, but also considered sexy by a specific demographic of people on the internet.
Admittedly, he was surprised “The Foundation” had lasted as long as it did. The premise of the whole thing, while not actually being his idea, was rather overcomplicated. And it wasn't even a good name. But hey, he needed that engineer, and he didn't have a better plan. So monsters it was.
It was after he gathered the lower staff that it stopped being just monsters. Now it has expanded to objects, people, phenomena. Too much for him to keep track of. So he let all the eggheads keep track of it, while he sat in his office being broody and incredibly vague about what he “knew,” so that nobody ever asked. Which worked. People listened to him, on account of how cool he was. But they also feared him, on account of how bad he was. And Dr. Coolbad was a conventionally attractive white man, which meant he could get almost anything he wanted.
Anything but the entire United States of America, apparently.
Was one lousy global superpower too much to ask? He frowned, pushing himself away from his desk in the only updated office chair in the building. The plan had worked. It did exactly what he wanted it to. The people he exposed to the mysterious effect filled in the blanks on their own, making up their own version of whatever they thought was going on and not asking annoying questions like “Why are we turning this grocery store into a front for a top secret shadow government organization?”
The UN did get involved, eventually, but he sorted that out soon enough as well.
“The UN sucks,” he announced to “The Foundation.”
“The UN sucks,” they agreed.
“They're blowing up all our monsters and stuff,” one of them posited.
“Yeah, they're blowing up our monsters and stuff,” the rest agreed.
“Sure,” said Dr. Coolbad.
“Fuck the UN,” the lot of them concluded.
“Fuck you,” said Dr. Coolbad, to the UN.
And with nothing else standing in his way, Dr. Coolbad took over the United States of America. And the United States of America didn't seem to mind, because despite his being very bad, he was also very cool.
“ALL of them?” he asked the person on the other end of the phone, whose name he had been told but had forgotten immediately.
“All of them.” They answered.
“What about the Groups of Interest?”
“We have all of them too.”
Dr. Coolbad tapped his fingers on his desk.
“What do we do now?” asked the person whose name he had forgotten.
And Dr. Coolbad didn't know.
“Celebrate,” he said hollowly, “The mission is over and uh, humanity is safe or whatever.”
“Yes, sir.”
They didn't hang up. In fact, they kept talking. And his office kept getting warmer.
“…where do we buy the party supplies?”
Where do they buy the party supplies indeed.
The mission had succeeded. Dr. Madmaxson Coolbad's incredibly designed company logo and its mysterious mind-controlling properties had successfully conducted a crusade to convert every business in America to a Scan Copy Print office supply store. His plan had worked perfectly, and now every store belonged to his corporation, and every human being in the country was among his “personnel.” It was an office supply mogul's paradise.
Except now that all the stores were office supply stores bearing his own branding, there was nowhere to buy the party supplies.
Or food. Or air conditioners.
“Fuck,” said Dr. Coolbad.


If, four thousand years ago, you'd told the Jack of Spades he'd be doing manual labor for a Xian criminal, he probably wouldn't have believed you. Lesser still if you told him he'd be doing it because he'd tricked himself into fondness for said criminal. Or… did it count as fondness if he'd been using the criminal and his daughter(?) to control his Urges?

(that was why he did what he did, right?)

The end result was the same: Brad's house was successfully warded against further spiritual incursion. Sure, Brad might need to replace some of the roofing, but… well, no ghosts.
Jack wiped his forehead; his skin had gotten sweaty, despite the dying February chills. He'd need to wash it.
Climbing down from the roof, Jack got to work collapsing the ladder and-
"Interesting that I find you here, Hgan."
Jack froze.
"Well, that's a lie, of course." Leather clacked along the pavement of the backyard, closer to Jack than he'd have preferred. "I knew you'd be here. You've been distressingly predictable for the last few decades, Hgan."
Jack turned to see a man — no, the shape of a man — standing before him. Average height. Dressed like a therapist. Doing his best to keep himself from twitching, even as his pale green eyes belied a familiar boredom.
"Well?" The thing that was almost certainly Orvo smiled. "Is this how you greet family, now?"
"What are…" Jack winced. "W-what are you doing here, Orvo?"
"Am I not Jakob anymore?" Orvo tilted his head just enough to distinguish himself from an ordinary man. "That's not fair, Hgan. Not when you're still calling yourself 'Jack'."
Jack grimaced. Of course Orvo came here to needle Jack; stalking and denigrating people was almost a secondary Urge for him. Maybe he thought he was cultivating Jack's Scarlet side, some vain effort to get him back into Orvo's ridiculous CALAMITY plan. To his credit, it was just irritating enough to flip a switch in the back of Jack's mind.
"I'm Jack because I live the life of Jack, Orvo." Jack folded his arms. "You're Orvo because you're stuck in the past. Besides, I'm not the one who came up with 'Jakob'."
"So bashful. Don't you remember what I told you at Kythera?"
"No, because I don't live in the fucking past."
Orvo stayed silent, before dropping his smile and taking another step forward. He sighed, inauthentic and calculated. "You know, Hgan, it hurts to see you hold yourself back like that. Festering in that ancient skinsuit of yours. I miss the old Hgan, you know? Taking whatever he wanted, slaughtering whatever displeased him." When Orvo looked back up at Jack, he was smiling again. "I miss my brother, Hgan. I really, really do."
"You're a fucking sociopath, Orvo, you haven't missed anything since archery went out of style."
Orvo shrugged. "This is a losing game, Hgan. I was always the orator. You were the big, beautiful brute, twisting the heads off dissidents and stealing their wives into the water. But," and Orvo clicked his 'tongue'. "Looks like we're on dry land."
Jack snorted. "That a threat?"
"Did it have to be a threat?" Orvo's empty smile widened. "Can't I reminisce with my little brother?"
"I've known you for millennia, Orvo." Jack clenched his 'fists'. "Not once… not once, have you shown anything in the ballpark of reminiscence. At least Ydax, piece of shit Ydax, at least he cared! Fuck, at least he cared! He's a fucking… murderous degenerate on a scale beyond you and Lror, but at least he believes in something that isn't himself."
"I truly love it when you get angry, Hgan. I can look in your eyes, and there, right there, I see the brother I used to have."
"Fuck off. You already have a brother."
Orvo cocked his head, smiled like an actor before a bittersweet monologue. Sighed again, like it was supposed to mean something. Opened his mouth like he had something more to say-

-and pinned Jack against the wall the second he relaxed his guard.

"Why?" Orvo's breath was hot with Verdant fire. "Why do you insist on pretending to be human, Hgan? What do those puerile apes have that a Scarlet Prince doesn't? Or are you afraid of them?"
Orvo tightened his grip around Jack's "neck".
"You used to be someone I could be proud of, Hgan. The fearless warrior who cut a bloody swathe through the enemies of the Empire, the seaborne terror who wrought havoc upon the Orthothan naval fleets, the gore-soaked general who sired a veritable army. Do you know how much it hurts, to watch one of the last children of Daevon squandering his innate superiority to play the part of show animal?"
Orvo unhinged his "jaw", and one of his barbed tongues emerged from his "throat" to hover menacingly over Jack.
"Why do you fight? We both know who you really are, Hgan. You try so very hard to fight it, but you can't, can you? Or you wouldn't be pumping your surroundings with so much Scarlet Seed."
Orvo's tongue blossomed with a hiss, Verdant liquid threatening to drip from its tip. "Maybe you just need a reminder. Perhaps I should bless you with Verdant Seed, have you doing both of our jobs, forever. Make damn sure you know who the hell you-"
"Hey!"
Jack couldn't turn his eyes to look, but he recognized Brad's voice.
Orvo's grip remained firm against Jack's "throat" even as his tongue swiveled to face Brad. "Well, if it isn't the idiot who resurrected my father's cult. Come to fuck my brother?"
There was a brief pause, before Orvo let go of Jack and fell to the ground, convulsing with a fervent violence too passionate to have been his own. To his right, Brad Lee Cameron1 stood in a bathrobe and sweatpants, holding an outstretched hand towards the still-shaking Orvo. It was only when Jack sidestepped his convulsing brother and ran to his savior's side that Brad closed his hand, and Orvo stilled.
Brad pulled an incense stick out of one of the robe's pockets. "As leader of said 'cult', my magic's pretty fuckin' close to yours, shithead. You wanna fuck with my coworker some more? I'll have you sucking grass like it's shit from a pig's asshole, fucker."
Orvo groaned, attempting to reassert himself within his warped skinsuit as he brought himself to standing. "… I didn't know that was possible." He shrugged. "Point taken."
"Now, you wanna get off my fuckin' property?"
"Actually," Orvo faked a cough, fishing something out of his pants pocket. "Delivery on behalf of a mutual friend? Literally a friend, and not just a euphemism?"
Brad harrumphed. "Jack?"
"We… let's hear it."
Orvo nodded, and brought his hands around to reveal something… indistinct. Jagged. Wooden. Some sort of splinter, perhaps, or a piece of plank.
Orvo cleared his 'throat'. "The Ambassador of Alagadda sends its regards, and regrets it could not thank you properly for your… 'last visit', shall we say. Entrusted is a link to a representative of the Hanged King's Court. Now, if you'll excuse me." Orvo bowed, and walked away.

"… what the hell's an Alagadda?"
No, Jack hadn't expected Sara to know of the circumstances surrounding his infuriating half-brother, but was that really the part she needed to get stuck on? God, he didn't have time to explain Alagadda, and the last thing his friends needed to know was what Jack had been like before 1956. Not during the Halloween party, not ever.
"Prolly somethin'… something fake, Mips." If not for Izz's support, Veronica might well have fallen over in intoxication. "I've never hear'im that assertive innis life. Man, 'magine him fuckin'… chewin' some shitheel demon fucker. 'mI 'llowed to say tha's hot, Izshy?"
"While you are dangerously drunk, dear, if Jack were a woman I might call that very hot." Izz was probably the only thing keeping Nicky alive right now. Good for her. Why did Jack's "stomach" boil when he looked at her? "It did seem as if he was a bit more… verbose, shall we say."
"Yeah, like… I dunno. You didn't stutter like you do when you said your lines, yeah?" Sara popped another veggie straw. "Which, like, if you're summoning them from the past I guess you're kinda getting points in your favor? Something like that."
"I…" Jack exhaled. "… I guess it doesn't, uh, matter? I mean I got the wood, and, yeah."
Nicky snorted. "Yahy'do. Y'do."
"I, uh, probably should have found that funny." Jack turned his attention to Ashton, presently sitting out in the corner of the bedroom. "Does… do they want, er, to stay for this?"
They2 blinked, looking up from their phone. "… shit, miss something?"
"I mean," Sara scratched her nose. "I dunno what 'this' means either, Ashy. Not like we're doing a jam sesh or anything. Actually… I've known you for like a year, right? I should invite you over for one, some time, if that's okay with the team."
"Thyre'fuckin'… godling. 'tmusic. So good. Izshy gets it." Izz responded by gently patting Nicky on the head, deftly maneuvering to avoid being crushed by her leaning too hard. "Secret fifth 'mber. Full House of Spades!"
"V, are you good? P sure I've had more alcohol than you."
More than likely, Nicky's eating habits had caught back up with her. Humans were more resistant to certain poisons on a full stomach, and the increased sugar intake that came with autumn months might have made her self-conscious. Not that Jack was about to divulge her peculiarities to Ashton and Sara; better to push her to eat something of substance.
Jack turned to face Izz, nodding once like they'd agreed. "I'm about half-hungry. How's the bruschetta?"
Izz nodded in turn, left arm collapsing into a tentacle to fetch a plate for Nicky. "I'd say it's pretty well-cooked. Little dry." Translation: let's get her some water.
Message received. Jack got up to fetch some cups for the couple.
***
Sara's apartment didn't have one of those fancy fridges that dispensed water; on the upside, Sara was paranoid enough to have fitted every tap in the apartment with a water filter. If Jack thought long and hard about it, and came to the correct conclusions, such a situation was justification enough to ignore the perfectly good kitchenette sink, heading straight for the bathroom and shutting himself in. He washed his "hands". Again. Filled both cups. Poured them out and filled them up again. Washed his "hands". Washed his "hands".
When the Jack of Spades looked in the mirror, he saw

Hgan, wearing the skin of a long-dead Greco-Turkish man. Hgan looked afraid, like he didn't know

how terrified Jack was. It made Jack angry, and

the fear fading from Hgan's eyes didn't abate any of that.
Hgan shook his head. "What are you doing? You're getting distracted."

Jack sighed. "This is stupid."

"This can't last." Hgan's "fingers" curled inward, threatening to pierce through the skin beneath. "Orvo was right: you're of Daevon, they're of Canaan. All this bonding is an exercise in defiance."

"And yet…" Jack grit his 'teeth'. "… no. I'm Jack. I'm part of human society. The Daevite Empire is gone, and King can't reach me. I have friends. People who like me."

"But do you really like them? Maybe all this 'friendship' is simply the Urge. Why else gravitate towards a pair of hypersexual Canaanites?" Hgan snarled, a brutal grimace that quickly decayed into
a sour sort of bemusement. "Orvo would have called that redundant. Said they're all the same, mercurial vermin. The fact that you're repeating that is proof enough."
Hgan chuckled without mirth. "Look at you. You have to isolate yourself, talk to your own reflection. Pretend the millennia you spent slaughtering their ancestors never happened. You're not like them, and the sooner you accept that, the better. They don't know you. They never did. If they really knew you, they'd run. They'd never look back."

Jack opened his "mouth" to say something, though his words were delayed. "… I just have to assume I'm wrong."
And Jack left the bathroom.
***
Izzy tilted her head as Jack handed her the water. "Something wrong, Jack? You were gone awful long."
"Thinkin' of me, probab… 'bably." Good ol' Veronica. Still drunk as hell. Correct to an extent. Hurt to look at? "'msexy as Prosperina, yeah?" Costumes didn't do anything for Jack. Nor lack of costumes, come to think of it. Apparently, such an opinion marked him as abnormal among humans.
"You're very sexy, darling. Here." Izzy jammed one of the cups into Veronica's hands.
Well, that took care of that. Jack sat back in his spot, and tried to clear his mind. Tried to get back into the swing of the party. Closed his eyes and desperately fought to keep Orvo's words out of his mind.
Jack pulled the wooden sliver from his costume. It was a peculiar thing: one side of it was flat, near-immaculately varnished, as if it had been the surface of something grand. Every other surface was a mess of jagged points and splinters. To hold it in Jack's "hand" was to invite a peculiar warmth; to behold it was to invite an intangible intoxication into Jack's mind. Had this been a fragment of something greater? And why had Orvo gifted it to Jack?
In hindsight, the pull on Jack's thoughts to wish for an answer was exactly the kind of game Orvo played. The actual wish was formality, so he shouldn't have been surprised when, from a puff of glittery, rose-colored smoke, something emerged in the middle of the apartment.
Standing in the center of the apartment was… if not for the sequined pink suit, Jack would have immediately pegged it as an Alagaddan. It was human-shaped, certainly, about as tall as Veronica. Again, it wore a hideous pink suit adorned with sequin and glitter, a garb distressingly reminiscent of what a follower of the Violet Queen might wear. Beneath that… it was just bandages. Lots and lots of bandages.
It looked like it would be smiling, if it could.
The thing gave a low whistle. "Pardon me, am I interrupting somethin'? Am I invited to somethin'?" It spoke like it was attempting to imitate a… American Southern vernacular? "Afraid I gotta disappoint y'all, I got nothin' in my pants and I sure as hell ain't whippin' that nothin' out."
Sara screamed, going for the knife in her toolbelt.
"Relax, relax!" It chuckled like Orvo. "If I'm here, chances are one of y'all summoned me. It's just business, yeah? Promise y'all."
It didn't stop Sara from holding her knife out, but at least she hadn't lunged.
Nicky giggled. "'sa neat party trick, Braaad. 'ryou Faciler… Faciel… that one villain from that Disney flick Sara likes?"
"Brad? Who's…" The thing in Bandages smacked its forehead and laughed. "Oh, y'all must be with the King of Hearts! I'd tell you how long I'd been waitin' for a summon, but, uh… Alagadda time."
"Seriously, what's an Alagadda?! Why do I have to be the last person to know all this shit?!"
"Settle down, Sara. I-" The thing in Bandages deftly dodged the knife thrown his way, which went sailing into the wall and clattering to the floor. "Yeah, yeah, I know y'alls' names. I can work out a deal to better protect somethin' like that, y'all wish. You… I don't mean any offense, but y'all are an open book. Ain't that right, Jack?"
Jack blinked, but Izz interrupted him before he could respond. "Did Cousin Bradley send you? Please don't tell me he sent you."
"You're thinkin' too high up the ladder, Bella." The thing in Bandages snapped its fingers; it hadn't missed a beat. "I'm here on business, sure, but that's just because all my time outside Alagadda's business. Seems like someone got a hold of a real special chunk of wood, but he ain't know how I worked til now. Or…" It was absolutely grinning under all those bandages. "He wants to impress y'all!"
All eyes turned to Jack.
Once again, Jack was interrupted before he could respond. "Now, y'all're in the presence of a V.I.C., Very Important Cephalopod. Homeboy was a hit with my boss a few decades back, and that's entitled him, and y'all, to a very special service. See, I'm in the business of… 'wishes'."
"So like… you're an asshole jinn?"
"Not a jinn, no, and I like to think I'm a good person at heart. But… I guess you're in the ballpark?" It tilted its head. "I guess I'm more like a trader. You have somethin' you want, I can get it to ya' at a fair price." It paused, likely deliberately. "All depends on how bad you want it."
Nicky snickered. "Tha's a good prank, Brad, but-"

It turned to Nicky,
then Izz,
then Ashton,
then Sara,

Veronica reeled as a sudden, sobering pain coursed through or out of her body; it was hard to tell.
The… the Man in Bandages stood before her; Veronica swore she could see a thick indigo fog rippling outwards from him, but a quick glance at the rest of the room assured her that no, she'd just been transported to some hellish nightmare dimension where Sara's apartment was filled with indistinct shadows and a lavender-scented fog.
"Apologies, I find it's easier doin' work 1 to 1." He took a step forward. "Don't fret, they're still there! But you can't hear them, and they're barely hearin' you, Nicky."
"Veronica." The word came out like a globule of vomit, and hurt just as bad. "What… the fuck is going on?"
"Well… I mean it ain't exactly fair on you if we do this drunk, yeah?" Bandages shrugged. "You might make a mighty deal you mightily regret. And me, I'm here to help."
She was in hell. Veronica was in hell and this was the devil here to mock her for spurning Christianity for a mix of semi-athiestic Judaism and bad coping mechanisms. That was the only thing that rationalized the sheer, skullfuckingly intense pain running through her system.
"This is also a good time to elaborate on the nature of my services." said the devil to a woman who was barely conscious enough to keep listening. "It's kinda like… what you just went through, yeah? I grant you a wish; in return, you grant me… well, there's a lot of things you can grant me." Really? He was still going? "Somethin' monetary, somethin' sentimental, maybe I make you go through somethin' bad. Point is, equivalent exchange. That make sense?"
"What the fuck did you do to me?"
"Hey, not my fault y'all got nerves like fine china."
Veronica keeled over prone, fighting to push down her body's fierce fight against her neurons.
"I'll give you a few minutes, Nicky."
And she gave him that.
Veronica finally got back onto her knees a few minutes later, and only through great effort. Pressing against her forehead mitigated the pain, somewhat, but hell probably didn't stock hangover medicine, so that was as good as she got.
"You know, for Dionysus, you're real bad at holdin' your liquor."
If there was a word between 'groaned' and 'growled', sure, Veronica did that. "I'm Prosperina."
"Depending on what y'all were drinkin', that might be worse." Bandages sat down — in the middle of the air, mind you. "I don't know, I ain't a history buff."
Bandages clapped. "So! I hope you don't mind if I come out the gate with some offers, yeah? Let's see… damn, that's… wow. You've got a lot tucked in that past of yours. Cloudin' all your desires. You… you're gettin' help for that, right?"
"What are you, a fucking doctor?" Veronica grit her teeth. "Yeah, yeah, I'm a broken cloud of nothing. Fucking what of it?"
"Well, I… I broker wishes, technically, so desire's a big part of my job. Unless you… do you want me to erase all that baggage? Seems you stand to benefit from a little amnesia, Veronica. Especially after what happened with Dr. Hartley and-"
Veronica grabbed the nearest bottle, slammed it against the nearest hard surface, and pointed the-

"Oh my King, is your girlfriend always that violent?"
Isabella blinked; the indigo fog that enveloped everything around her was still there.
The… demon? The demon sighed. "Right, right, forgot y'all can't look into the localized time business. Well, long story short, your girlfriend just threatened me with a broken bottle." It held its hands out. "I ain't even do anything! I mean, sure, I looked into her mind and all, but don't a broker got a right to know what the client wants?"
This was exactly the sort of nonsense being associated with Cousin Bradley engendered. Isabella wouldn't be questioning too much of it.
"So…" The demon mimed a thinking pose. "You look like you know what to wish for. Do gotta warn you, I'm the 'equivalent exchange' kinda wish-granter. Don't worry, your immortal soul's not on the menu. Less valuable than you'd think."
"Was that… supposed to be an insult?" Isabella shifted in place, and realized that the shadow of Veronica weighed a lot less in the indigo fogscape.
"Not at all, little Bella! Human souls, too much upkeep, not much return. Costs a fortune to keep 'em outta Gehenna. And by the way, that labcoat looks dashing with the hawaiian shirt."
"Wait, so the afterlife-"
"So!" The demon snapped, and reclined into the fog. "I got several offers on the table, if you're willlin'. Let's start with, and keep in mind hearin' your desires is gonna get a little weird, Looking Glass To Eye3."
Isabella wasn't sure whether to be angry at the mere mention of that debacle, or impressed that the demon had found a way to add footnotes to its speech.
"Now, lookin' into your thoughts I'm torn whether this one concerns the art or the artist." The demon mimed contemplation from its foggy perch. "That was your work, weren't it? Let me be the first to say that I'm sorry, sister; you deserved better. But: how do we define… 'better'?"
"Thank you?" Regardless of the circumstances, it felt nice to finally be credited for her work. "Is this about revenge, or attribution?"
"I'm willin' and ready to make you or break Alex. You want credit, I can give you credit. You want the piece to break out and beat Alex to creamed corn? I can get that." The demon snapped its fingers, and two contracts appeared out of the fog. "Former's gonna cost you a lot less, but it's still gonna cost y'all."
Isabella furrowed her brow. "How much, and will I be able to look over the contract before signing?"
If the demon had eyes, it just rolled them. "Of course, of course. What good do I do scammin' the Ambassador's VIPs?" Apparently it had a throat, because it just cleared it. "Now, if ya' want revenge, I'm gonna ask for… about three and a half years of your bass skills. Only fair you wipe off the time spent with Hydrocide."
Unacceptable. "Unacceptable."
The contract to Isabella's right disappeared into smoke. "That leaves credit. For that… I'm gonna ask for a song."
Isabella quirked an eyebrow. "In the figurative sense?"
"No, I mean I'll commission a literal, actual song from y'all. Somethin' to get the dance floors of Alagadda pumpin'. Payment on completion. Sound good?"
Isabella looked back to the contract on her left.

What the hell why was there so much fog what happened to Ashton's friends who was the pink-suited Alagaddan standing in the center of the room what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck-
"Easy. Relax. Breathe in," Ashton had taken for granted the sounds that came with breathing, because it was immediately obvious that despite miming the motions, the Alagaddan was utterly silent. "Breathe out."
Dammit, this was the Ambassador wasn't it? Ashton was-
"I'm not the Ambassador. Don't worry. You're Jack's friend, and I'm not gonna hurt y'all."
Oh god it could read their mind.
"You're afraid I'll find somethin' you don't wanna share, yeah? Again: you're Jack's friend. A friend of Jack is a friend of mine." The Alagaddan put their hands out. "Can you trust me, little black butterfly?"
"Uh… butterfly?"
"Listen, I dunno if you're dressed like a goth or if that's your day look. You wanna new nickname, I can get you a new nickname."
Ashton's face scrunched itself. "Ash works."
"Right on, Ash, right on." The Alagaddan stretched, before collapsing to sitting against thin air. "Gettin' to the business at hand, seems you're a mind of many chains. Short-term says you wanna go home." The Alagaddan snapped their fingers, and a contract appeared to Ashton's left. "Mid-term says you wanna impress your friends." Another snap, and a contract appeared to Ashton's right. "Long-term… oh." The Alagaddan was most probably grinning. "Oh."
Something cold pushed itself up from Ashton's stomach.
"I always adore desires like that, little Ash." The Alagaddan got up from their "seat" to pace the room. "Money, power, powers, all that stuff's banal. Banal for me, and as alllllll my clients are like to learn, banal for humans. Money's fake, power's fragile, and you can't thaumaturge your way outta unfulfilling lives." The Alagaddan stopped before two very familiar shadows. "Y'all long for somethin' deeper. Somethin'… primal." Their hand brushed against the head of the taller of the distressingly familiar shadows. "Somethin' that drives your every-"
"I don't agree to anything I will not be making a deal with you at this time I thank you for your time representative of Alagadda please leave."
The Alagaddan groaned. "You're no fun, Ash. See ya."

This wasn't her apartment! What the hell happened to everyone?!
"To answer your question," more mind-reading bullshit. What else did Sara expect? "Your friends and apartment are perfectly safe. When you get as big as I got, you learn when to mess with timespace. You'll be back to normal once we finish business, yeah?"
Did cop rules apply to jinn? It couldn't have hurt to try. "Am I free to leave?"
"Abso-lutely. I mean, if you go right now, you'll miss a once in a lifetime opportunity for career advancement."
Oh great, the jinn was a pyramid schemer. "Can you draw me a diagram of the cash flow of your business?"
The jinn just laughed. "Didn't mean like that, Sara."
"I'd prefer if you not, like, call me that? I didn't give you my name."
"Sure, sure. Let's go with… what are you dressed as, exactly?"
Sara took another swig of her flask. "Tim Allen."
"I don't know who that is, but sure, Ms. Allen, let's go with that." Some of the fog collected into a reclining chair, which the jinn immediately put to use. "Nah, I ain't here to sell you on an MLM, Ms. Allen. You got friends, talent, and a whole life ahead of you."
"Fake, but okay."
"You really oughta believe in yourself, Ms. Allen." How it kicked its feet up on the fog, Sara was too drunk to care. "All your life you've been honin' yourself like a weapon, ready to strike like a howitzer. You know as well as I do why you ain't fired yet." A pause. "Emphasis on 'fire'."
Sara's blood turned to ice.
"I really gotta say I admire your work. Now, I ain't seen it; lookin' through the everything that makes you you, Ms. Allen, I don't know if I need to. People like you, you're the future of humanity." The jinn made a motion with its hands, like an explosion. "You ain't need to waste away like they've got you doing."
There was no wind to accompany the fog, but it certainly didn't abate the residual chill. Sara took another swig of her flask. "… please don't tell me you're reading my mem-"
"Rest assured, I have seen nothin', Ms. Allen. I'm just lookin' at what y'all accomplished, and maybe what y'all want to accomplish."
Sara cleared her throat. "If this is about the, the camera stuff, like… I don't know what you're trying to sell me? I mean… I mean I guess I didn't plan for that stuff, but if you think you're selling me some 'escape', like… I dunno. I like the work, you know?"
The jinn practically sunk into its recliner of fog. "Sure you do. But-"
"Can we skip the 'my looks will fade' shit? I'm prolly gonna be dead in like, a year or something."
The jinn nodded, maybe, depending on the angle. "I was just wonderin' if you wanted the arson taken off your record. Gives ya' more options, let's you buy guns. In case, maybe you wanna see what accounting's like. The boring, stable stuff."
"But that's gonna cost, like, a lot, right?" Another swig of her flask. "I think I know how this shit works. You're gonna, like, make me ruin my twin sister's life in exchange, right?"
"You know what? I was just gonna take your beauty, but that's the perfect price to pay for fixin' up your legals."
"Yeah, no. I like Ana. She deserves better."
"What is it with two of y'all havin' sisters named Anna?" Any further into the fog recliner, and the jinn might have been able to make it as a contortionist. "Well, if that's not to your liking, I can still give you a taste of opportunity."
Oh great, he was going to tempt her or some shit.
"Even better!" It really wasn't fair how much of Sara's internal monologue this thing was privy too. "How about this: I send your resume, and you do have a resume, right, up to the legals in Alagadda. They draft somethin' up, something guaranteed to give you the edge in the market. We send that resume back, you can use it as much or as little as you want." And Sara barely had time to ask what "the catch" was before the jinn continued. "All I want… well, I wanna see how much you really like that camera work, yeah?"
"I mean, I wouldn't say I 'really' like it, but I like it."
"Enough to do 24 hours of unpaid work?"
G-d dammit, Sara was right the first time, wasn't she?
"No, no, not like that. I'm just saying… what if, for the next 24 hours of your work, none of your proceeds make their way into your hands? We'll give you a timer, of course, let you know when it starts makin' you money again, but I really do wanna see if this is a case of 'like'. Then, you got your resume, and the rest of your life ahead of you."
No. Of course not. This was stupid.
"… all proceeds go to charity?" But fuck it, Sara had nothing better to do.
If the jinn had a mouth, it'd have been grinning.
"Let's haggle."

and finally, it turned to face Jack.
Around him, the world had melted. Where once were walls was a thick fog, blanketing the room in indigo silhouette. His friends, shades, unmoving and indistinct. All that was left of the world was Jack and the thing in Bandages.
The thing made a sound akin to clicking its tongue. "Well, well, well. If ain't the VIC himself!" It tilted its head. "You've really changed, Jack. If you'd told me the man who made the Last Daeva cry would be hangin' out with lowlives in a dirt-cheap, dirty apartment, I'da told you to screw right off. But look at y'all!" The thing gestured to the shades. "Here they are, hangin' with Daevite royalty!"
Jack bit his 'lip'. "That's… I'm not that, anymore. I've, I've put it behind me. It's gone."
"And in its place," the thing stepped forward. "Is somethin'… well, I don't got a clue. How do you go from impressin' the Ambassador, to drinkin' cheap liquor dressed like… don't even know what the humans call that."
Jack hadn't, either, but Sara and Veronica were clearly amused and all too intrigued at Jack's willingness to play mannequin for them.
If Jack could breathe, he'd have swallowed. "You sound like Orvo. Did… did he put you up to this?"
"It's funny, Jack. Your mind's much harder to read than the humans, but I know I know you better than anyone else in the damn room." It took a step, missed the ground, and floated the rest of the way towards Jack. "I haven't much talked with your brother, and I don't need to. The sum of your desire is written plain on your face."
"… then what do I desire?"
The bandaged thing laughed, an insincere cackle less emotional than rhetorical. Though the bandages obscured its eyes, Jack had no trouble believing them to be pale green and deadened. And Jack didn't need to see them to know that they were staring straight through Jack the moment the thing was done cackling.
"Veronica."
Jack actually blinked.
The thing in bandages rolled its shoulders as it paced through the fog. "Ain't it pain, Jack? To know you had her, three years of her time, before they took her away? Ain't it a pain?"
Okay? Alright? This wasn't where Jack expected this to go, but it welcome a welcome reprieve from his siblings' bullshit.
Jack whistled. "… I, uh, don't know what you're talking about. In the… in the literal sense, I don't know what you're talking about. Like, at all? Okay?"
"No?" The thing tilted its head, stopping before Jack to crouch down to his level. "So all those longin' looks, all those feelings of bile and hate, all that… pinin'. That's just your urges, right?" If it had a tongue, it just clicked it again. "Cut the crap, Jack. You've wanted her forever, and now?" It gestured to an ill-defined shade in the corner of the room where Izz and Nicky had been. "Stolen up by the new gal."
"I… you think I can't have her?"
"I think you don't have her." The thing in bandages rose to its feet. "I know you don't. Not now."
"Uh…" Jack scratched the back of his 'head'. "Is it different in Alagadda? Because… I can have her."
"Pardon?"
"Yeah." Jack rose to his 'feet'. "I can have her whenever we want. I mean… I've been having her whenever we want. It's…" He picked up the hand gesturing from Nicky, he'd just realized. "You know humans aren't, you know… strictly polygamous anymore? We've-" They've. "… look, times changed. Both of us can have Veronica, right?"
Jack might have said the thing before him just stared, if not for the fact that he still wasn't sure whether or not it had eyes. Either way, it had a throat and the means to clear it. "That's how you think it is, yeah? You really do got a Scarlet mind for these-"
"Fuck. Off."
The words had spilled from his beak, instinctual, cutting the both of them off from the frayed threads of conversation. They weighed on Jack's "tongue"; no matter, it was never his to begin with.
For once, it was Jack who took a step forward. "I've had it with this shitty narrative. That I'm just some, some extension of my father's will. Like King hadn't done to me what he did to literally everyone unfortunate enough to cross his spacefucked path. As if I'm just… as if the Daevites didn't kill themselves through their own aggressive stupidity."
Jack was breathing deeply; peculiar, when he had no need for breath in the first place. "You think I don't know what I am? What I'm made of? What I've been fighting for literal decades? Yeah, I'm a Scarlet Prince! I'm built to pillage and fuck and kill the enemies of Kazenrud, and guess what? It's not there anymore!"
Another step forward; the thing stayed right where it was. "What loyalty do I owe to anything? Daevon? Whoops, all gone! The Ambassador? It owes me a favor for indulging its sick fucking pain fetish. Fucking Brad? Everything I do for him, I do because I want to do it! Not because of some obligation that means nothing after millennia of meaningless violence!
"And what about the Scarlet King, huh? What about that blind, senile beast who got his dick chopped off by the Canaanites? Who tormented me for ages, subjected me to the same horrors he inflicted upon the Ortothans, the Canaanites, his myriad sacrifices, slave and Matriarch and every bureaucrat between who was lucky enough to call something a million times more pleasant a father?! What loyalty do I owe the father whose sickening influence I've spent millennia grooming myself against?! What! Do! I! Owe?!"
Nothing. He owed nothing, or at least, that was what the thing in bandages responded with.
Jack sighed, sitting back down. "I'm sorry. I, uh… I shouldn't have blown up at you. You're doing your job, I'm… either I'm avoiding it, or I'm also doing it. It's, well, it's hard to tell."
The thing shook its head. "No, no, I got you. Look, I was just wonderin' if you were lookin' to cash in on little Nicky the Scarlet way. Obviously, not. So… tensions are a bit high, yeah?"
"You could say that."
The thing nodded. "Thanks for y'all's time, 'gardless. Scored two contracts. So, need to summon me again," it pointed to the sliver in Jack's hand. "Just wish real hard on that little splinter. See y'all later."
When next Jack blinked, both the bandaged thing and its deep blue fog were nowhere to be seen.
Silence, for a while.
Nicky was the first one to speak up. "… that was fucked. I'm… I'm gonna get really fucking drunk and forget that happened."
As the night went on, that seemed to be the consensus.

NINEEIGHTNINENINENINE

TAPE 2

Let Me Borrow The Map

Footnotes
1. Which wasn't his name, but what he called himself around Jack regardless.
2. Jack, who's thoughts were stuck in Scarlet Daevic, was still getting used to the singular 'they'.
3. Looking Glass To Eye. Pseudocephalopod flesh in plastic. Alex Kingsly. AWCY SoHo, 2010. Annals of your memory. Isabella Kawajiri. Alagadda magic. 31 October 2011.


It was 75 degrees in November, but the teens were in thick hoodies and gloves as they stood on the hillside.
"We're hosting tonight, right?" Sarah stared dead ahead as she spoke, eyes locked on a patch of grass around a bend in the road a hundred feet away from and thirty feet below them.
"Yep. Tonight." David almost spoke the words like he was in a smaller font, barely tuned in to the world around him. "I've got everything ready."
"Good. I sent out the invites earlier, and everybody's responded with a yes so far. We should be packed to the brim."
"Does your house have enough space for all those people?"
"We're not holding it at my house. Are we?"
Sarah and David turned to Aiden, who was poking a shockingly large beetle with a stick. The silence immediately registered in his ears, and he turned around, dropping the stick like he'd forgotten it existed.
"Mine's bigger, and I changed the invites to go to my place last-second. We'll have enough space for everybody, and cleaning up afterwards won't be too messy."
David nodded. "I got everything we'll need. We shouldn't have any issues with any parts of it, and it should be fun."
A bucket of bleach over a tile floor, something else mixed with the harsh scent of chlorine.
"Should be."
"That is the plan, Sarah." David looked back out off the hill, gazing over the maze of suburban roads that pierced an otherwise fairly deep forest. Aiden picked the stick back up and pondered it for a moment before dropping it and dropping down on one knee, staring at the school surrounded by restaurants and shops and sprawling concrete. Sarah just shuffled and shoved her hands in the pockets of her hoodie.
"It should be warmer out now."

A long knife glints in the dark, as if examined by somebody with a small light. The blade begins to dip, grazing over an open palm, then swing around and falls in a chop, as if aiming for something or someone on the ground—

"Sarah, you there?"
Sarah snapped back to the reality of the cafeteria as Emily poked her in the shoulder. “Yeah, I'm fine. Is something wrong? You look concerned.”
Emily did, in fact, look concerned. “You've been really out of it all day, did something happen last night? I know that there's been a lot of bad stuff going down recently, and I really don't want to see you falling apart about it.”
A bathroom by a stairwell, every toilet and sink plugged and flooding.
“No, I'm fine, Emily. I'm flattered you care though. I've just been—“ Sarah waved her hand around her temple like she was circling the air. “Really wrapped up in the plans for tonight, you know how it goes. David's been bugging me like mad to get the good stuff.”
"Oh, yeah, it's alright." A small look of relief washed over Emily's face. "I just wasn't sure, since I know you live pretty close to where everything's been going on recently." " No, don't worry about me, seriously. We're going to have everything we need to have a good time tonight, so don't sweat it. You're gonna be there, right?"
Sarah put on a smile, and Emily bounced it back at her at double the intensity. "Of course! Look, if it's half as good as you've talked about it being, it's gonna be a night to remember."
Sarah nodded, the smile not having moved off her face at all. "Trust me, it's going to be—hi David!" Emily spun around, waving at David as he strolled towards them with backpack in hand. He had an empty soda bottle in his other hand, and met Emily's gaze with a light smile.
"How are you two doing?" He asked.
"I'm doing great! I'm just excited for tonight, since Sarah's been talking it up so much." David's head tilted a bit as he glanced from Emily to Sarah.
"Has she now?"
"Yep!" A hand slapped down on Sarah's shoulder. "From what she's said, it's gonna be fun, especially as a distraction from everything that's been going on recently."
The other two both hung their heads for a moment. "I'm sorry about what's been going on near you, Emily."
"Indeed. It's a shame about your neighborhood."
A glass bottle shatters on concrete, igniting an inferno as streetlamps burst.
"It could be worse." Emily shrugged, and David's head snapped back up. "You know, you really don't need to be wearing that coat. The AC's pretty solid, but it's not freezing."
It was David's turn to shrug. "I'm not feeling too warm."
"Whatever you say, David." Emily stood up and turned to Sarah. "You absolutely sure you're gonna have all those drinks? Most of the kids that have that stuff around here…don't exactly like those two, no offense."
"None taken." The smile on David's face turned to the slightest of smirks. "But you would be surprised. Being the, what is it called, 'wrong kind of person' opens many an opportunity." Both the girls burst out laughing, and David's smirk got a bit bigger.
A figure standing alone among a wrecked classroom, sweat dripping off panting lips.
"Well, I gotta get to class. See you guys tonight!" Emily walked off, waving to David and Sarah. They both returned it in kind, but their faces turned blank once she was out of sight.
"You need to work on that."
"I won't need to."

Three figures stand in front of a burning car, overturned and flipped next to a bend in the road. The flames leapt up into the night, sparks coming off the metal as if it was a poorly drawn cartoon. Despite the heat, they shivered, but otherwise none of the figures so much as twitch, just staring there at the twisted metal inferno with one bullet in a tire—

Aiden was sitting inside the stripped-down husk of a car when the call came through his phone.
"Hello?"
"Where are you right now?"
"I'm at the wreck, just hanging around. Waiting for Dad to come get me."
"Oh, sweetie, Dad's out of town for today, remember? I can come get you if you need it—"
"No, it's fine, Mom. I can just walk home, it's not that far."
"Alright, if you say so."
"I do, Mom, don't worry. I'll try get home soon."
"Good. I'm meeting Dad for a dinner party tonight, so I'll be gone for a while. Are you going to be okay?"
Windows being locked from the outside, the key being throw off into the woods.
"Mom, I can handle myself. Don't worry, you know me."
"I do, yeah. Love you Aiden."
The call ended with a click, and Aiden slumped back into the burned corpse of the former sedan on top of what remained of the seat. The metal still retained some traces of warmth from the sun now on the opposite side of the trees, but Aiden just pulled his jacket tighter and began digging through his backpack in another repeat of the same check he'd done between every class. He wasn't going to be heading unprepared to tonight, after all. It had been talked about and hyped up so much, and everybody was going to be at his house, so it was sort of his responsibility. At least, that's how he justified the paranoia.
He sighed. It was going to be several hours until Mom left for the night, which meant several hours of sitting around trying to hide copious amounts of alcohol, cleaning supplies, and making sure that he didn't get caught rigging the backdoor lock for everybody to sneak in. Clearing the road of security cameras was going to be an equally challenging issue, but a slightly easier one, since by its very nature there wasn't a risk of cameras.
A trail of blood running down a rain-slicked road, one shape holding another back from following it.
The phone rang again. Sarah this time.
"I checked, again. I have everything."
"Good. The house going to be all ready?"
"I'll get on what I can now, but it will be ready. David get the last of the supplies?"
"Affirmative. He'll bring them over soon. You just open the party and keep everybody happy."
Aiden nodded to nobody in particular and ended the call, slipping his phone back into his pocket as he got up, slung his backpack over his shoulder, and set off with a shiver.
To everybody that looked, the only thing strange about the teenager walking past the burned out car was that he was dressed for a day much more brisk than it was out.

Wires lie from an electrical box, dead and cut as the lights across an entire street begin to go down. Emergency lights and generators whirr on, people reacting to that but not to the mechanical locks on all the doors and windows from the outside, nor to the figures coming up the back road, all in black, a glint in moonlight flickering by their sides as they approached a full house—

The party was in full swing, but Aiden, Sarah, and David were nowhere near it. The three were a solid mile away, having all dipped out under false pretenses that the drunk teenagers had bought under the condition of a swift return. It wasn't entirely false. They would be returning shortly, just under slightly different circumstances to how they left. Aiden's backpack was open and on the ground, three long blades spilling out of it handle-first. Aiden himself was yanking off his hoodie to reveal a long black shirt, matching the outfits of the other two.
"Are you certain these are the ones we chose?" Sarah asked, dead tone of voice.
"Entirely. You tested them yourself, remember?"
"Very true. David, how was the alcohol before you left?"
"Exactly as ordered. I also unlocked the electrical box, so we can make use of that on the way back."
"Getting ahead of yourself?"
"I couldn't cut it with a key, could I?"
The small exhale from Sarah was as close to a laugh as David was going to get out of her. Aiden grunted as he finally got the hoodie off, tossing it off to the side and picking up one of the knives.
"Why did we not get machetes?"
David picked up a second one. "They would have been too long. And we've already used these before, and are sure of their effectiveness."
"There are other things we could have used."
"A poor choice, you are aware of why."
"All too well, you two."
A knife held to a throat in the dark, the air heavy with the stench of blood and pain.
Sarah picked up the final knife and examined it, twirling it around her hand. "Are we going to do some sort of salute, or just go to it?"
The two boys shrugged and thrust their knives forwards, forming a sort of tilted pyramid with Sarah's before the three began going back down the way they came in the road. Despite the heavy wool shirts and jeans, and despite the warm temperature, they still shook like the air was bitter.
They failed to notice this discrepancy, of course. Nobody else did, either. In fact, they had all failed to notice that one common difference.
How they acted and dressed, despite the warm weather.
How they shivered and shook, despite the fires and exhaustion-induced body heat.
How they never cried or stood, shaking in their boots in fear, but never truly laughed hard either.
How despite what the energy in their eyes should have been, when they let the mask drop, they had the eyes of somebody dying all their life.
Nobody had ever noticed that one thing, the linking between their dress, eyes, voice, and heart.
It was cold.

A long figure limps away from a house, a long blade in hand as blood drips down from cuts all over. The scent of blood both old and fresh is in the air, and the sounds of breaking glass and screams are barely even finished echoing. Wounded onlookers within a house watch a silhouette against emergency lights, some paralyzed in shock by blood loss, some paralyzed in shock by what they just saw and learned. None noticed the other two blood trails limping away, down the back road and into the forest.
Nobody noticed it over the sudden cold.


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F.A.Q.

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Oh, how gentle the fruit is from the Moon's sweet carcass, as if harvested from the giant maw of a bee stung beast
Mandibles dripping wet with honeysuckle
Flung away, far off things, abandoned by the old men, who had watched by the sea shore - as the beast rose to height
Devouring the remains of the flesh to the sun
As the world men watched
Eating honey in the rain.

It was the end of sorrow. The end of lies. Haggard women walked through the deserted carriages shouting, Hath! Hath the emperor laughs! How could he have laughed!

The haggard carriagewomen saw in the half-light, the shadowed corpse of the grey woman; holding her palm up toward the black landscape. Her waist is strongly canted. Her forehead is wrinkled. It looks sullen. Its half-human, half-possessed, poisoned face – mouth half-ocean – has all of the features of the emperor's gun-man, shooting black-fire

On the day, as the nursewoman flee the carriage, laughing in the ashen soot, gunpowder and foggy day-light that came down from the country. Emperors don't admire themselves alone with mirror glass. They admire their troops! The bullets! The more war they enjoy, more that is fought- the more victories they win! The more astride their monstrous formed chariots, the more glorious their trumpets, hawking a victory! Oh, for the end of sorrow- wake the emperor up, and kiss the haggard carriagewomen. The haggard carriage wrench, gave to all Mary, and lord, reaped from a womb spilt with honey.

St. Mary clutches her breast, looking down at the blue azure sky, cerulean waves crashing upon her hazel eyes, golden cross, green fringes. Blue fishes, singing the soul of the Lord and god. Mary, her soul a' blaze with eggs of white

Another girl- Mildred, laying her dear, true and jest-like babes, across lost lost hair-worm's nest, singing to her

King, his soul a' lustre-reared to the altar
Floating in his swan's breast
Cried with bewailing and rambling fervour
Jesus, in his expression and name
He stands, for every eye, in every beholder,
For every face in all the world. He stands
And speaks, in eloquent eloquence
That most heavenly doctrine of peace,
That men's hearts should be moved

Says Mary, sweet of the soul
Upon the breast of Mildred rose
Bring new world
Into flesh above
Free from your jaw.

Oh, on the dreary days of blue leaves suckled by the tiger's great breasts, dropped with the soul of honeydew-laden coyote,

Only recalled to me the moving figure — the snow-blue wings, blue eyes. Here was the blades of the grass days
Let me look at the days of grassen-blue and so I can
Talk to you
Feel you
Hug you
Kiss the tiger's maw
Understand you
Cock-a crow, three times in the darkest hour
Singing our song-
As we sung, and danced and sing joy
Clouds of chlorine dioxide flood our lungs
Suffocatingly bright
But that pales in the moments we shared
Together
Right?
As I
Talks to you
Felt you
Hugged you
Kissed the tiger's maw
Understood you
Although I ask, that we could still be together, in health fair, breathing in days of grassen-blue dropped with the soul of honeydew-laden tiger's eye. Mary wept.
The war outside is raging and it is already lost. On to victory!

Yet you with steel guns and roses
Continue the losing fight
As if a thorn-covered beast
Stung with honey and lead
Will not come to the surface,
But still dies at night,
Like summer fires on ancient deserts
And in death, one will find the bullets
Dug out of the rosary-woman's temple
Crushed by the jaws of a great tiger in the heavens
And you will ask to fight again.

A traveler stops,
You've reached out to me
Haven't you
With the carcass of the moonlight
Falling snow into my soul
As the war rages
Across the papers, 'ruined streets of
Sarajevo',
The bomb in Myanmar
The clouds of aqauamarine haze under the disheveled roads of London
The triumphs over the war-men
To create after war
To forget and let old wounds heal
Let there be joy.
So
Join us.
Won't you
Or at least
Remember us.