PotM: Secrets Shared

Leandra pretended to be surprised, though she'd long since figured it out. The Moon and the Sun brought forth children, with each other and sometimes with other members of the court; occasionally, their attractions fell differently, and only a few heirs were introduced. Given their other responsibilities, that was considered an acceptable outcome to the matching, and various nieces, nephew, and cousins moved into play as potential replacements when the Sun and Moon ended their reign and ascended at the end of their thousand years. 

There were no such issues this cycle. Vishan was one of six borne of the Moon, with the Sun as their father; there were two others raised to the role, one from the Moon and her Lord Crescent and the other from the Sun and his Lord Marshall. He worked dutifully to learn the things he would need should he be chosen as either Sun or Moon here in the Neverworld, but so far as Leandra could tell he wasn't depending on any particular outcome. If two of his siblings were chosen to rule the next cycle, he would be utterly content to have earned his blade and serve as a knight or lord. 

Leandra knew she would never be more than a knight; her origins were too humble for anything else. She also knew that once she earned her blade, she would pledge herself to Vishan in whatever role he eventually rose to in the Realm. He was, and would always be, her first friend here.

So she smiled, and promised not to speak of it to anyone else, and clenched their friendship with secrecy and trust.

When her father and mother returned at the six-month anniversary of her arrival at Margull, they found her standing in the company of a knight in crimson and gold, with a young man in dull grey watching from behind and grinning madly as the knight handed out the judgement of the school: Leandra was worthy, and would continue her training until she earned her blade.  

More Dreams - the hidden beast at the renfaire

Slept hard last weekend, and woke up late. Dreams were... something to do with an eldritch monstrosity showing up at, more or less, a renfaire or at least a small community that existed in a sort of perpetual state of renfaire. I was a kid of about twelve -- not my actual self at that age, just this one kid -- and there was a lot of running into the woods and hiding in the brush or behind the piles of *stuff* that everybody had accumulated for their projects. 

There was also, I should note, a whole-ass renfaire going on at the time, with booths, and people in garb wandering around, and shops, and like several hundred people any one of whom could be the monstrosity.

When the monster finally found me, it was in the form a woman with a sort of fractal array of arms and legs, which was a singularly disturbing image. I woke up shortly after that. 

Ah, the Ritual...

Having come into a bit of money, we're now looking at moving to England. Found a lovely fixer-upper at a very affordable price, and it's probably not even haunted. So... look for big changes (and probably a serious disruption to my writing here) over the next six months or so as we start getting ready for this next stage in our lives. 

Where will we be living? Well, take a look! 

PotM: The Fall of Shanlinn Firehand

There you are, thought Shanlinn Firehand as the Captain of the Watch, Vikor Creuller, swung out from the back of an oversized jaguar which had grown a police car around its spine. He was massive, nearly eight feet tall and half that wide, armed with baton and pistol and various other tricks hidden beneath his long black leather coat. 

She'd killed the two guards who had been following the Moon, though, and none of the rest of them knew she'd been anywhere near him. She had to be a tempting prize; they'd been hunting her for decades, now. The dagger in her hand was a potent weapon, but not so potent as her sword; she was betting that even Viktor wouldn't note its absence until it was too late. 

If this had been an ordinary operation, she would have had an escape route mapped out, with a half-dozen others as fallbacks. Instead, what she had was desperation and sacrifice.

Viktor studied her for a long moment, held at bay at the back of an alley by a group of guards with spears. "Take her," he said. 

"Dawn," she answered, and let the Sun flow through her. 

It was a blessed death, the light searing in this ever-dark city, carving through the City Watch, their bestial vehicles, and a substantial portion of the park beyond. She hoped the Moon had made his way through; she'd given him as much time as she could manage. 

Four decades of gradually-increasing nightmare would end for her, here and now, and her sword was safely in another's keeping; she held to the hope of being reborn. And for this select group of suborned assholes, she would bring a fiery death. 

PotM: Victims -- aren't we all?

Warden Viktor Creuller looked down at the body in the box. It was dead, of course; a perfect stab wound, right up under the ribs. So very, very precise. Oh, the knights are going to pay for this... 

There were only a few of them left, Shanlinn Firehand chief among them and despite her origins the most adept at evading his patrols. This should have been a standard encounter, one of his men preventing the citizens from trying to help each other. Now that man was dead, and the murderer... 

Vanished, he admitted to himself, clenching his teeth. No tracks, no traces, for all that old man Telomere had called the intrusion in. The upper floors of the tower were empty, derelict; a few long-dead bodies, but no signs of life, hidden or otherwise.  The murderer might have been Shanlinn herself -- she was known to use a dagger, betimes -- but he didn't think so. No, this was something else. Something new. Something Braderick Cytosene -- old man Telomere -- had sensed in his city. 

There were back ways, of course, but the Watch stood guard over those. The streets would still be busy; a bold murderer might travel that way. Or, there might be a nearby bolt-hole, hiding the perpetrator away. 

"Sir! Sir." The Watchman who stopped beside him was one of the constables. "We have her. Shanlinn Firehand.  We have her cornered down by the park!"

Viktor grinned. "Excellent," he purred. "Have your fastest beast carry me there." 

That was a mistake

I did it. I did the thing I shouldn't have done. I knew better, and I did it anyway.

Folks, I looked at the news. 

That was a mistake. 

I was immediately treated to video clips of the President of the United States of America spouting a steady stream of bullshit that sometimes veered into outright nonsense -- as in, "those words do not mean anything when you put them together in that order". This, while everybody else at the table just sat around nodding along. I don't see how it's possible to see that and not conclude that that the man's health -- both mental and physical -- is visibly declining. And on national TV, yet.

Meanwhile, we're winning the war with Iran (we aren't), they're begging to make a deal with us (they aren't), we have a plan to decisively end this conflict if they don't fall in line (we don't), the Strait of Hormuz will reopen completely any day now (it won't), and the economy hasn't taken a massive hit (it has). All of this while spending about a billion dollars a day, after decades of being told that there was no money for healthcare, housing, infrastructure, education, or anything else that might actually help people.

So now the Pentagon is preparing to ask Congress for another $200 billion just as we're slashing medicare, and congress has apparently zero information on how they plan to spend it. 

 Y'all, I'm so, so very tired.

 

StV: Meanwhile in Downtown Dallas

None of this should have been complicated. The bank vault was walled in reinforced concrete with a heavy steel door, impassable except that Antaeus could slide through from below and punch the door off its hinges from the inside. That would set off the alarm, of course, but the Witch of the Mists could offer cover while Evil Gecko slid in and helped Antaeus bundle up the take. After that it was just a matter of walking out, while the mists foiled cameras and any guards on site.

It was the spotlight glare cutting through the mists that was the first sign of trouble. The masked figure that dropped down in front of Antaeus was next, but Antaeus punched her into the next block. 

"This way!" called Evil Gecko, as Antaeus hauled their spoils clear of the bank and The Witch of the Mists held her position, hiding them. 

Gecko lifted a manhole cover, and motioned Antaeus down. "That way," she pointed. "Three ladders, then come back up. Spider should have a van waiting."

The Witch of the Mists came up beside her. "Hold your breath and drop," she said quietly. "I'm going to make it very unpleasant up here."

Evil Gecko nodded and dropped down the manhole, rolling as she landed at the bottom. Likely the witch would be climbing down after them, and... yes, that scraping was the manhole cover being pulled back into place. Whatever band of heroes they'd run afoul of, there was a decent chance they'd gotten away.