The Past
"Dec," Oren said. "I wanna have a look at a demon in Gel'Grandal. Can you think of any reason not to?"
"Not unless you got a morbid fear of death, no."
Oren fiddled with one of the artefacts Galeas had brought along for his use in his part of this grand scheme; he felt a wave of exhilaration, and his new sense made it feel like something special. Ghostwine and enchanted tools, and his sense of the world shivered, blurred, gelled. He 'saw' cool, geometric intricacies of energy. Supposing this was how a certain sort of mage saw things when looking for demons. He punched a button on the device. Gel'Grandal.
"Up," the soul totem said. "It'll be high."
They ascended lattices of light, flying rather than climbing because here, he felt unlimited. Levels strobed, blue flickers of some other sort of magic, he supposed, than the white.
That'll be it, Oren thought.
Douma was a simple cube of white light, that very simplicity somehow suggesting extreme complexity to his new senses.
"Don't look like much, does it?" Dec said. "But you just try and touch it."
"I'm going in for a pass, Decimo."
"Be my guest."
Oren drew closer to the cube. Its blank face, towering above him now, began to seethe with faint internal shadows, as though a thousand dancers whirled behind a vast sheet of frosted glass.
"Knows we're here," Dec observed.
Oren punched the devices control once more, drawing nearer. A stippled gray circle formed on the face of the cube.
"Decimo..."
"Back off, fast."
The circle bulged smoothly, and this part of the cube looked less like a cut crystal and more like something organic and reaching. It became a sphere, and detached from the cube.
Oren felt the edge of the artefact in his fleshly hands sting his palm as he slapped at the section of it that would allow him to backpeddle, or whatever the equivalent was in this layer of aether that ghosts and demons could see, overlaying the real world of dumbasses and drug addicts. Everything blurred and then he was plunging back down where before he had risen.
He looked up. The sphere was darker now, gaining on him. Falling.
"Get out," Decimo said.
The dark came down like a hammer on his consciousness.
*~*~*
Cold steel odor and ice caressed his spine.
And faces peering in from a forest of trees or tall buildings, sailors and hustlers and whores, under a poisoned silver sky.
"Look, Oren, you tell me what the fuck is going on with you?"
A steady pulse of pain, midway down his back—
*~*~*
Rain woke him, a slow drizzle, his feet tangled in coils of rope. A sea of sound washed over him, receded, returned. Rolling over, he sat up and held his head.
Light from a hatch behind him showed him broken pieces of junk that enterprising street rats might fashion into something useful. Some kind of elven script was stenciled to the side of one particular piece, the paint faded.
He glanced up and saw a dirty window, a faint glow emanating fromw ithin.
His back hurt, his spine.
He got shakily to his feet, brushed wet hair out of his eyes, red darkened into something sinister.
Something had happened...
He searched his pockets for money, for drugs, found nothing, and shivered. Where was his jacket? He tried to find it, looked behind the junk, but gave up.
In Cathena, he took the measure of the crowd. Wraedas. It had to be a Wraedas. Jamila was probably in the arcade. Might have money, or at least cigarillos... Coughing, ringing rain from the front of his shirt, he edged through the crowed to the arcade's entrance.
Magical glamours twisted and shuddered to the roaring of the games, ghosts overlapping in the crowded haze of the place, a smell of sweat and bored tension. A sailor in a white tunic dropped a magical explosive upon some Imperial city on one of the old games; everything here was at least third-hand, the lowest of Cathena's society playing old, wheezing games left behind by the highest. An azure flash.
She was playing a game, lost in some wizard's castle, her gray eyes—smudged round with black kohl—and her mind caught.
She looked up as he put his arm around her, smiled. "Hey. How you doing? Look wet."
He kissed her.
"You made me blow my game," she groused. "Look there, arsehole. Seventh level dungeon and the godsdamned vampyres got me." She passed him a cigarillo. "You look pretty out of it, man. Where you been?"
"Don't know."
"You high, Oren? Drinking again? Eating Nadi's shit?"
"Maybe... how long since you seen me?"
"Hey, it's a put-on, right?" She peered at him. "Right?"
"No. Some kind of blackout. I... I woke up in the alley."
"Maybe somebody decked you, baby. Got your roll intact?"
He shook his head.
"There you go. You need a place to sleep, Oren?"
"I guess so."
"Come on, then." She took his hand. "We'll get you a coffee and something to eat. Take you home. It's good to see you, man." She squeezed his hand.
He smiled.
Something cracked.
Something shifted at the core of things. The arcade froze, vibrated—
Jamila was gone. The weight of memory came down, an entire body of knowledge driven into his head like an axe into a stump of wood. Gone. He smelled burning meat.
The sailor in the white tunic was gone. The arcade was empty, silent. Oren turned slowly, his shoulders hunched, teeth bared, his hands bunched into involuntary fists. Empty. A crumpled, wax paper candy wrapper, balanced on the edge of one of the games, dropped to the floor and lay amid flattened butts and paper cups.
"I had a cigarillo," Oren said, looking down at his white-knuckled fist. "I had a cigarillo and a girl and a place to sleep. Do you hear me, you son of a bitch? You hear me?"
Echoes moved through the hollow of the hall, fading down corridors of games and cheap carnival attractions.
He stepped out into the street. The rain had stopped.
Cathena was deserted.
The glamours flickered, danced. He smelled boiled vegetables from a vendor's pushcart across the street. An unopened packet of cigarillos lay at his feet beside a book of lucifers. EDAIN VAL'KRYSÓS IMPORT EXPORT. Oren stared at the printed logo and its Mythrasi translation.
"Okay," he said, picking up the lucifers and opening the pack of cigarillos. "I hear you."
The Present
The valley's gritaeri had allowed a bare inch or so of snow to fall and linger this deep into winter as there were no crops currently growing that couldn't be protected on the small scale, and the wilder parts of the valley needed a true winter as a part of their life cycle.
Aurin shivered on the porch, observing the glow of moonlight on the white blanket as he smoked a cigarillo. Torin was asleep inside; he didn't want to bother him with his odd craving, and he would brush his teeth and hands and face and hope the cold would keep the rank stink from lingering upon him.
Somehow, the junkie Oren had crawled his way out of the claws of addiction. The healer had helped. Trauma had, oddly, helped him erect boundaries. Perhaps it was this: having a boy and a place to sleep. That required something to smoke. A part of him wanted to ask the air, 'Do you hear me, you son of a bitch?' but he didn't want to tempt fate and demons. They didn't make him react as the Dread Mists since saving Eshar from their clutches, but he still didn't want to fucking truck with demons if he could help it.
A flicker of darker shadow in the shadows of the treeline caught his attention. Huntress.
He waved. She approached, daring anything to attack her when she looked so stark a shadow against the snow.
Huntress was probably the most dangerous creature in the valley these days, short of the gritaeri and Aurin himself. He hadn't been paying so much attention to her while Torin and Sivan were in Silfanore. She had gone into the mountains around Kalzasi and gone gravid. Her pups were living with her in the valley now. She probably wanted a safe space for them while they were most vulnerable, and would teach them about the dangers of the wider world when they were better equipped for it.
"Better mum than mine," he said by way of greeting.
She growled.
"Yeah, all right. Come on."
He put out his cigarillo, and turned toward the door. Bare feet took him indoors and she followed, peering at him and wondering why he was only wearing a few clothes out in the cold. Oh, you sweet summer child, he could imagine her thinking. She always did seem to be thinking.
Chafing his bare arms, he walked with her toward the larder for some treats that she preferred from the city, as well as some fresh meat for her litter.
