State of the Unio-- um, Me. Or the Blog.

Whuf. So we're a little off-schedule here. Dark Armor hasn't been updated in weeks, the Thursday D&D posting have been erratic because the games have had scheduling issues, our DM is moving to Boston in just a little bit, I'm two weeks into a new job, and Firstborn is heading off to college in less than a month. 

I am 25000% out of my head. 

The job change is good: better pay, nice people to work with, a much more focused scope, and a lot less bullshit. They actually promote internally. The only real downside is the commute, which isn't a big difference in time but does cost more in gas and tollway extortion. I'm digging into some things that are very familiar -- user roles, workflows, and like that -- and some things that really aren't -- utility billing, permits, and suchlike. 

So far, nobody from the former job has called me to ask for help about the stuff I handled previously, but then I was very careful about who I gave the new cell phone number to. 

Dark Armor will likely be back as soon as I can get the rest of my shit together and put myself back in that headspace. It'll keep its place on Fridays. 

D&D will likely continue, just online, and the high schoolers should hopefully have picked back up by the time this posts; they're due to interact with the orcs who oversee the dinosaur herds. Following the collapse of the campaign that I was playing in, one of the other players is running a series of sessions in Disgraceland: the island that was taken over by his sorcerer-turned-vampire in the last campaign. I'm not sure about posting the notes from that campaign here; I'm playing Olen Mosk, a half-fiend Bard with an emphasis on Bluff and Oratory, and the other players are the priest of a sex cult and a halfling druid who's a literal trash panda. I'm also considering DMing something for one particular Discord server that I'm on; I'm just not sure how much headspace I have for that. 

I'm very sad about our DM moving to Boston; that's going to seriously curtail my social life here in Texas. This is not to say that I disagree with the decision; I can absolutely understand why they'd want to.

Firstborn heading off to college... if we're being honest, I have absolutely no idea how I feel about this. I'm distracted, of course, but I think I'm also in denial; I'll probably figure out how I feel about it when I finally get around to reacting to it, which might be a while. I will, however, say without reservation that I am incredibly proud of the child (even if I shouldn't really be calling him a child anymore; he's old enough to get drafted). It's time to give him room to make his own mistakes. Maybe past time, given that he spent his Freshman year of high school on Covid lockdown. 

My navel-gazing posts are  usually kind of mixed news, but actually I'm feeling pretty positive about this one; it's just that there's a lot going on. I hope the rest of you are on a more positive trajectory as well.

Terror Povos: Trade Caravan

Lithos had just stretched back out on his bedroll when an older dwarf came over from where the trade caravan was lining up nearby. The passage was too narrow for them to full circle the wagons, but still wide enough that they could park them in a row and leave room for another caravan to pass by. This was a deep dwarf, comfortable in the heat, and wearing a sword and leather armor; his hair and beard were black and neatly braided. "Dark said I should come and talk to you," he said as he drew near.

"As you wish," Lithos said politely, and sat up.

"Belrab's Balls," exclaimed the older dwarf, looking Lithos over. "It's true. You look like a goblin, but you talk like a dwarf born. You were cursed into this shape?"

"Something," Lithos said. "I'm not entirely sure how it happened."

"So one of the temples could likely cure you." 

Lithos shrugged. "If I could afford it." 

"Well, I can't pay you," the dwarf said, "but you'd be more than welcome to travel with us. Be good to have a wizard along. Safety in numbers, and all that."

"I might bring my own trouble with me." Lithos admitted. He didn't think he'd be endangering these people by camping beside them. Traveling with them might be another matter.

"Dark mentioned that." The older dwarf motioned towards the fallen ghoul, which lay stinking some distance off. "She also said you could handle it."

Lithos didn't like the idea. Yes, he'd be safer traveling with the caravan, but that was selfish if his presence was going to put them in greater danger -- and so much of that depended on Vinnie. It had been the better part of a week before the ghoul had arrived, though; the demilich obviously wasn't in any hurry to murder him. And Lithos didn't see any way he could turn the offer down without coming off as even more suspicious than he probably seemed already.

"Then yes, I'd be glad to travel with you," Lithos told him. "Granite Forgefire." 

"Schist Splitvein," the dwarf replied. "Merchant, fighter, and caravan guide. It's a pleasure."

Terror Povos: A bit of lighthearted assassination

Lithos was sleeping deeply, and dreaming of the Shattered Golem when something crossed the boundary of his Alarm spell and jerked him unwillingly awake. It was warm here in the deeper tunnels, and he was sleeping on top of his bedroll, so when he snapped upright he came all the way to his feet. 

There was ghoul creeping up on him. 

It hesitated for a bare second, facing him; then he saw it lower its body and prepare to charge. He reacted by reflex, the words and gestures automatic, and a fiery orange ray leapt from his extended hand to the center of its chest. He was lucky; the ray hit, and burned the thing badly enough that it collapsed before it could really lunge at him. 

For a moment he just stood there, shaking. Then he tossed a tiny ball of acid at it, and then another. It didn't move. With a sigh, he walked over to it, and started searching the body the way Whisper had taught him to. 

Even so, he almost missed it. It was pinned to the back of the cloth vest that was the ghoul's only clothing, and Lithos had been checking pockets and likely places for jewelry: ears, neck, fingers. It was a sheet of parchment, folded over and neatly pinned to the cloth. 

He unfolded it.

You gonna run out on me? it said. You gonna back outta our bargain after I went and made things right for you? You think you can just leave? Here. Have a ghoul. Consider it a test. You're still alive, you're readin this, then you passed. Keep your eyes open, though. This one? Won't be the last. You're still a shitty wizard, and you know it. I coulda made you great, kid. So let's see if you can fucking hang.

It wasn't signed, but then it didn't need to be. Vinnie. Lithos shook his head. The thrice-damned demilich was still going to have his fun. Well... fine. He would deal with that, or else he'd die and be condemned to serve as Vinnie's undead thrall. He could think of a couple of possible ways out, but he also knew that Vinnie had almost certainly anticipated them. 

"Ho there, friend," said a gruff voice, and Lithos turned to look. 

A dwarf was standing some thirty feet away, studying him curiously but keeping her distance.

"Yes?" Lithos answered cautiously, in the same dwarvish that the woman had used to address him. 

"Ah... is it safe to camp here?" She was one of the hill-dwarves, beardless, and doubtless too warm in her armor, for all that it was leather covered in metal spikes. "We're a small caravan, and ill-prepared to fend off a swarm of undead."

Lithos looked at the fallen ghoul and shook his head. "You'll be safe enough," he said. "This was a gift from an old friend, and directed at me."

"Some gift," she said. "I thought I was going to watch it murder you, but you took it down neatly. If it's not too rude to ask, what's a goblin doing this far into Silverkeep?"

The lie sprang fully-formed into his head. "I'm not a goblin," he said. "I'm a dwarf. I just woke up this way one morning. Wild magic, cursed ground, I'm not sure."

She blinked slowly. Then, "Miscast spell?" she asked. 

"...Possibly," he admitted. 

"You have a name, dwarf?" 

"Granite Forgefire." He hesitated, then said: "Don't ask. My parents had very particular ideas. I go by Grant."

The dwarf nodded. "All right, Grant. I'm Darkwater Underspring. Do you mind if we camp with you?" 

Lithos thought about that. He didn't think Vinnie would attack him again any time soon; the demilich was immortal and would want to draw out the suspense. So it was probably safe for them, and wouldn't make much difference to him. "Not at all," he said.

A Dream, A Nightmare, A Transformation, part four

In his current mood, Chris didn't even mind Grundus' company. The older wolf walked with him as he changed course towards the dormitory and made his way to his room. They stopped at the door, and Grundus asked: "You aren't an elder, are you?"

Chris shook his head. "Nope. I'm every bit the daft youth I pretend to be."

Grundus shook his head in return. "No, you're not. I still don't know what you are, but maybe it doesn't matter. You protected Elyssa somehow, didn't you?" 

Chris sighed. "I'm just another wolf, Grundus. A little stronger, a little faster, a little tougher... that doesn't make me better. Did you really think I was an elder playing at being a new recruit?"

Grundus studied him for a long moment. "No," he said at last. "I haven't ruled it out completely, but... no, I don't see it. An elder would have pulled us in as allies, to cover for him. You..."

"...Don't like people?"

"For whatever reason, you're a fucking lone wolf," said Grundus. "That's not a condemnation, it's just an acknowledgement. You don't work with others and you don't want to, except when you do. I honestly didn't think you'd make it through the program, but you're loyal to the people you're working with. You and Antoinette -- and now Elyssa -- have managed some amazing things."

"Whereas you want the wolves here to be a single, united community." Chris kept his voice wry, but it suddenly made sense why Grundus had been so focused on him. He was going against the program. 

"Close enough," Grundus affirmed. "But you know what? When somebody asks you for help, you answer. I'll take that."

"Allies, then," said Chris, looking for the word to describe what he thought Grundus was asking for now. 

"Yeah," the older wolf answered. "That'll do."

"All right," he answered. "But not until after I sleep."

A Dream, A Nightmare, A Transformation, part three

He made it back to the compound with ten minutes to spare, then spent five minutes dithering before he walked back through the wards. The magus in the gatehouse glanced at him as he went past, scribbled something on a ledger, and went back to looking at his phone. 

It was finished. The heart of the fallen god was fully absorbed, his original self transformed beyond anything he could have hoped to achieve by devouring the essences of others. He would never be truly human again. 

Possibly he should have regretted that, but he couldn't find any trace of loss or guilt in himself. He'd known what he was doing -- and what he was risking -- when he first moved to devour the resurrected Heart. Even absorbed, it had been... uncontrollable. He could reason with it, bargain with it, ask for its help, call it up to burn out a vampire elder and its nest of progeny, but he couldn't simply assume its power and use it as his own the way he did with everything else. 

Not until now. 

In one way, it was a relief. The nameless god who had been Vengeance and Reconciliation was finally at rest, and its power was fully under his control. He no longer needed to fear its imperatives giving him, giving them, away. In another, it was... a sacrifice. A small death. He could never go back to being what he'd been before the Incident at Pettibone. 

He wouldn't miss his humanity; he'd never felt all that human to begin with. Some of that, he knew, was teenage melodrama; and some was just the inevitable result of being the talented working-class kid at the school for the sons and daughters of the rich and powerful. Some of it might even have come from accidentally absorbing the essence of the speartongue in his youth, and growing up with the knowledge of that second self. 

"Chris?" asked Grundus. 

Chris stopped, turned. He was halfway across the campus, in the open space between the buildings, on his way to... the gym, apparently, he thought. He shook his head and tried to focus. "Grundus."

"I wasn't sure it was you, at first," said the older wolf. "Were you... were you actually smiling?"

Chris offered his most unsettling grin. "I do that sometimes."

"Not around me, you don't." Grundus took a step back. "If rumors are true, you've had a long day. Maybe you should sleep?"

Chris started to argue, stopped, blinked, and then said, "Perhaps you're right, Uncle. Running through the hills helped, but..." He yawned, and then found that it took an effort of will not to yawn again. "I should sleep now."

"Uncle, is it?" Grundus grumbled. "All right, come on. I'll see you back to your room."

Terror Povos: A Letter Home

Dear Marduk & Tara, 

I would address you as my parents, but I fear that I have lost the right. I have made a very, very bad mistake -- but one which, owing to recent events, never actually happened. One of the others can explain the details, if they choose to. I cannot bring myself to explain it, and I am sorry for that; I do not feel that I can return until I have figured out how to undo an event that never happened. 

I want you both to know that I am safe, and on my way to try to build a new life, and that I remain grateful for all that you have given me. 

~Lithos

Terror Povos: The Flight of Lithos

Lithos walked stoically into the darkness. Amergin and Archibald were still with Vinnie, still going to meet with Gorm, but he just couldn't. Not after... everything. 

He hadn't ever wanted to be the villain. He didn't want to now. He didn't know how to think of himself as the kind of person who would tell a demilich to go and murder a century of prisoners and guards just so that he and his family could finally get out of that damned prison. That wasn't who he was. 

Or at least, that wasn't who he was supposed to be. 

They'd tried so hard, too. The disease, the sick guards... it was supposed to be a bloodless escape. But Vinnie, who was supposed to be their contact on the inside, had withheld all but the smallest and most useless sorts of magical help, and since the sleep gas only affected certain areas there was no way out without fighting -- and killing. Their carefully-engineered escape had turned into a prison riot, and then a battle between them and the most powerful of the guards, and then between them and the warden, who was a ridiculously strong fighter for someone who should have been a useless administrator. Then, when the warden finally fallen, they still had to find out a way to get out past the rioting prisoners and the guards who manned the ballistae at the gate.

That was when Lithos had snapped, when he'd suggested to Vinnie the Demilich that he go use the Gas lever. They'd been framed and sent to this ridiculous prison; Vinnie -- and Gorm -- had set them up so there was no way to escape without killing people and further tarnishing their names. If there was no way to avoid becoming villains, Lithos had reasoned, they might as well just get on with it. 

And he had. 

And in the aftermath of all that death? Vinnie had taunted them with the knowledge that he'd been the one to murder the senator and get them sentenced to prison. He'd called Lithos a shitty wizard, and even though Lithos knew that he was young and inexperienced and nowhere near the level of mastery he aspired to... it still hurt. Not because Vinnie was right -- he was, but it was a stupid complaint to level at somebody who hadn't had the time to put in the work to be any better -- but because Vinnie was the only one in his life who'd ever really tried to build him up as a wizard. That accursed skull was the only one who'd ever tried to make Lithos feel better about being a wizard instead of a fighter, a goblin instead of a dwarf.

And the whole thing had been bullshit. He'd just been stringing Lithos along, and Lithos -- being an idiot -- had eaten it up. 

Vengeful? Defeated? Remorseful? Lost? Ashamed and furious at the same time? Lithos didn't know. All he knew was that Whisper and James had left in the night, vanished, and that he couldn't stay either. Not after all that. Master Windborne would repudiate him, and rightly so, if he knew that his student still lived. His parents would be heartbroken. His brothers and sisters... he'd driven them off, and made everything so much worse for them. 

No, there was nothing left for him back there. A new place, a new name... He'd watched Whisper and James leave, but he'd made no attempt to join them. Whisper's judgement hurt, and hurt more -- he thought -- for being correct. He was a fallen thing, a broken thing, a traitor to everything his parents had taught them. He didn't deserve to live, but he was going to do it anyway. Unless Whisper comes after me, or Vinnie does. If Whisper tries to kill me, in all fairness I'll just have to let him. If Vinnie tries to kill me... I won't be able to stop him. 

He knew, though, that Vinnie wouldn't come after him. He wasn't that important. He never had been. 

So he kept walking, not bothering to cover his trail, pack heavy upon his back. 

Terra Povos: The end of the Hole

 So it’s been a while, but we’re still trying to escape from The Hole. That means finding the warden and basically getting the index so we can get our stuff back, and using the lever so the single actual exit will open. 

Lithos, at Whisper’s suggestion, casts Detect Magic and starts going through the storeroom. We go through looking for magic items, and come up with Oil of Slipperiness (+2 on Escape Artist checks) along with some leather harnesses and thirty yards of surgical tubing. Vinnie swoops over and looks at this robe: “I love these things! It’s a robe of bones.” It’s like a robe of useful items, but all the items are uncontrolled skeletons or zombies. Amergin keeps that. 

Small goblin skeleton

Medium human skeleton

Medium human zombie

Medium wolf zombie

We find Whisper’s stuff. Also, the communication pipes are all over the walls, so if people are paying attention they can hear us. Whisper starts swapping out for his original equipment. We continue the hunt. We add an Elixir of Truth, then Dust of Dryness. Then a Hand of the Mage, which Vinnie is also very excited about. Next: a Bead of Force, which we pass off to Whisper. An Elixir of Fire Breath, which Lithos promptly claims. 

Lithos keeps looking, and finds bracers of armor +1. At that point the warden’s door opens and he emerges to swing at James. Lithos hurriedly stuffs them in his bag. James is badly surprised and very nearly goes down. The warden is carrying a magical shield, wearing plate armoir, and swinging a war axe. Baldy sicks his rats on the warden, and they start swarming his armor. Whisper pulls the last of his equipment into place. 

Monster goes to help James. “Hey! I like the tiny one!” He charges the warden and hits him pretty solidly. James disengages and moves back: “Bad touch! Bad touch! No means no!” Cloak of Resistance +1, which Lithos also adds to his inventory. The warden power attacks Monster, and takes him down. The rats do some damage to the warden, however. 

Whisper considers the Bead of Force, and also the possibility of just locking the warden in with the swarm of rats. Whisper commands the horse to charge and attack the warden; it misses. James charges the warden and attacks, but misses. Lithos searches and finds a pearl of power for a second-level spell. The warden cuts at the horse: “Hey! How’d you get this horse!? Ain’t none of you strong enough too– HEY! How’d you smuggle a floating skull in here??? These fucking rats…”

The horse fails to hurt the warden, but it does keep him distracted and covered in rats. Whisper attacks but misses. Monster is just about three seconds from giving a death rattle. Lithos calls back one of his spells, steps to the doorway, and lets loose with a Scorching ray, burning the warden. The warden cuts down our horse. 

Whisper throws the Bead of Force behind the warden, where it explodes, damaging the warden and blocking off the stairs behind him. Monster has been partly revivified, and swings at the warden… and drops his sword. James swings, misses, and takes a step back; Amergin heals him. Lithos goes back to searching and finds a bag of holding type 2. The warden attacks and manages to finish the rat swarm. Then he attacks Monster, who’s still lying on the ground. Monster dies. 

Baldy lifts the pipes and tries to call for more rats. Whisper fires another crossbow shot and misses. James: “Can we talk about this?” 

Warden: “Drop your weapons and lock yourself in the vault!” 

James throws down the cursed mace and retreats to the vault.  Lithos: “How bad is it?”

James: “I’m fine! It’s fine! We’ve almost got him. And his ass looks very fine!” 

Lithos: “Vinnie… Monster Zombies.” He continues searching and finds a Necklace of Fireballs, Type I. 

Vinnie raises a zombie which moves to attack the warden. The warden promptly cuts the zombie down. It is at that moment that warden notices: “Wait! You didn’t actually put your mace down!” He starts towards James. 

Baldy fires off his crossbow again, while playing the pipes and waiting for more rats to arrive. Amergin swings his shilleleagh and misses. Lithos throws a fireball out there and catches the warden; the warden attacks him but misses. Baldy shoots but misses. Whisper moves to flank, then fires a crossbow bolt that goes right through the chainmail at the back of his helmet. The warden screams: “Beardless testicles!” -- a ferocious dwarven curse.

James moves up next to Lithos and swings at the warden, but misses. Lithos backs away and throws another fireball, burning both the warden and Amergin. The warden steps towards Lithos and pulls a potion out; Amergin smacks him, but he drinks the potion of Cure Moderate Wounds. James swings and misses. 

Lithos drops the fireball at his feet. The warden swings at Lithos, who fails to dodge the blade and drops like a rock. Warden M'Hole swings at James and misses. 

Vinnie: “You got this– NOOOOO!” 

He casts Clone on Monster’s corpse, and this Cronenberg body-horror version of Lithos stands back up. James: “WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?”  He fails, however, to get the warden to turn and look. He swings the cursed mace but misses. 

Amergin steps in and keeps Lithos from dying. Lithos withdraws from the rats but still gets bitten. Warden Hammer M’hole attacks James, missing and then hitting; James is swaying but he doesn’t go down. Whisper stabs the warden, and the warden goes down. 

Vinnie: “That dude was kind of bad ass!” He kind of slurps at the fallen warden, and another one of his teeth starts glowing. We turn back and search the Vault, and this time find the rest of our stuff. We kit back up, and get Vinnie to, well, zombify the warden. 

Upstairs in the warden’s quarters, we find... well... It’s very richly decorated; the index of the vault is totally doctored. The Canary Diamond is up here, but not in the inventory. There’s three flasks of fine whiskey worth about 100 GP each; into the bag with ‘em. We use the lever to open the outer door, so we can finally escape the prison. 

 

"Okay," asks Amergin. "Now how do we get out past the riot?"

 

And Lithos, who has had more than enough of all this, looks at Vinny and thinks, You could pull the lever.

 

Vinnie: The sleep lever? 

 

Lithos: The one marked gas that we thought was the sleep lever. 

 

Vinnie: Oh. Good thinking, kid.
He pats Lithos on the shoulder with a Mage Hand.   

Vinnie takes his new zombie out through the secret door and into the tunnels. About five minutes later the last sounds of rioting suddenly cut off in agonized screams. Vinnie and Warden Zombie return a few minutes later. “Okay, it’s all clear now.” 

Whisper, also in telepathic contact: What’d you do, Vinnie?

“Nothin’! I got no hands! They was just screamin’ because of the sleep gas. 'Cause they saw it coming again.” He nods to the warden zombie. “He's the one who did it. I think this is a bad guy. We should kill him.”

We check through the tunnels. There are two sets: guards, cells, etc. The second set connects the warden’s chambers to the guard chambers with the ballistae guarding the gates. Baldy does a bit of ventriloquism so it seems like the warden is speaking: “We need you to let us out when we come through.”

The guards are convinced, but Whisper stops to have a little chat with Lithos – having slit the throat of his clone. A chat to the tune of, "It's a good thing you're dead back there. You'd better think about who you're going to be when we get out of here, because you can't be you anymore." 

 

We exit The Hole and head up the passages. Somebody has left a rock arrangement that looks a bit like a golem's shattered hand, and we find a scroll from Gorm telling us where to meet him. The whole group stops, looking at that note. Looking at Whisper, and Amergin, and Vinnie, and Lithos. It's decision time. 

 

"Do we meet him?" Whisper chalks on his slate. "Or do we just fade out? Our reputation is fucked. Mom and Dad are going to be heartbroken." 

 

We go back and forth, with Lithos pointing out that we'd been set up to become the bad guys: Gorm sent us into the prison telling us that we could escape fairly soon, but with wholly inadequate equipment to manage that and a "man on the inside" who was a fucking demilich. Everyone else, rightly, points out that we -- by which they mean Lithos -- just genocided a hundred or so political prisoners. Lithos, who is pretty well fed up with taking shit from everybody he meets (with the exception of his siblings, except that even that seems to be giving way all of a sudden) points out that they'd already killed several guards and started a riot; there was no way they were going to come out of this with their reputations intact.

Vinnie takes this as his cue to admit -- brag -- that, well, he was the one who killed the senator. He's a connoseur of souls. That's why he devoured the warden's soul over our objections. That's why he couldn't resist the senator. They were powerful, forceful souls and -- unlike us -- up to his exacting standards for taste. What he wants now is the tarrasque’s soul and the Rogue Caminante Guy’s soul. We'll help him get them; that's why he came with us. In exchange, he’ll use Wish to make it so the events in The Hole never happened. 

We tentatively agree, and Vinnie settles in to rest and prepare his spell. We wait until he’s well and truly resting, and shove him in the bag of holding. Muffled voice: “Are you fucking serious? You still want me to work on that spell?” 

Amergin: “Yes.”

So now we have an incredibly powerful demilich in a bag of holding. Ironically, this will not hold him; but it does give us a chance to discuss things with some confidence that he won't be able to listen in. Whisper takes off, because he doesn’t see any way out of this that doesn’t end in disaster. He can’t take on Vinnie; none of us can. The best he can hope for is to be a loose end, and maybe discourage Vinnie from doing anything to our parents just by being out there. James goes off with Whisper, because Whisper is more terrifying than the rest of us.

Lithos, Amergin, and Archibald agree to the deal, because that's the only way to undo this massacre.

However, with the party thoroughly split and the Demilich largely in charge, this campaign is probably over. 

A Dream, A Nightmare, A Transformation, part two

Viewed from the outside, it was amazing that the training center could remain anonymous, even in the middle of nowhere in western Oklahoma, even with magical protections. It wasn't even a single training center; it was two parallel academies, one for magi and one for outsiders, even if nobody liked to use the word academy for such things anymore. 

It had taken Chris a few minutes to work his way up into the hills, but once he was safely out of sight he'd dropped down onto four legs and let his wolf's body race. Wolves couldn't do that here in the Mundus, unless they'd learned to store Grey the same way that magi did to inform their spells. Chris didn't care; he'd been out in the Grey enough recently that even if somebody noticed, it wouldn't seem out of place. As long as he didn't do anything that would require Cleanup's attention, he should be fine... and he was betting that anything within half a mile of the training center would be thoroughly scrubbed so that Cleanup never had to deal with it. 

He stopped on the edge of the Witchita Wildlife Refuge, and resumed a human configuration. That wasn't all the Dark Heart needed, though, so he dropped from the taller, leaner body of a wolf in human form to his own, original form: purely human though a magus, and nothing more. 

Very good, the Dark Heart pronounced. Now, through your own power, I will be one with you. 

He staggered back as it moved within him, mimicking the power that he'd used to absorb its essence, to take it into himself. He had pulled it in and captured it so that it could rest; that had been the bargain. Now it poured itself into him, destroying itself as it transformed him. Thousands of years of divinity washed through him, revenge and reconciliation side by side, destruction and mercy walking hand in hand: dark fires, cold imperatives, the nightmare weight of divine judgement. 

He felt the fallen god's last, ambivalent emotions as it finally let itself go: regret and relief, mixed and inseparable. Then it was quiet, and he stood in the wilderness burning silent and strong, wings spread behind him, tail lashing at the ground, claws and fangs extended. He reached for the Reconcilation side of this strange new power, this strange new self, and felt himself fall back into his original body. He'd need to find a mirror to make certain it was unchanged, but standing here, now, he felt like his old self. 

Thank you, he thought, to the last of the departed god, and you're welcome.

A Dream, A Nightmare, A Transformation, part one

Chris was drifting on the edge of sleep when the Dark Heart spoke to him again. It is time.

...What?

You are worthy. The voice echoed through him, shaking him, too impossibly large for even a wolf's toughened flesh. 

All right. I... What do you need?

You offered me rest, but I need -- I CRAVE -- release. You are a worthy successor to my power... and my duty. You play at being a wolf, but for this you must drop the act. 

Alone in his bed, Chris considered that. He was still inside the training center, and even Antoinette had come to believe that they had no real privacy here. Whatever the Dark Heart had in mind, it was likely to attract attention from the magi, and he couldn't afford that. So, All right, he thought, and pried himself out of bed. Let's go find a place where I can do that.

It was a matter of small minutes and quick movements to get himself out the door, out of the dormitory, and across the campus to the gates. A tired-looking magus looked up from his phone as Chris trudged towards him. "What?" he asked, bored and impatient behind his desk.

"Christopher Black, Registered Outsider, requesting a one-hour pass to go outside."

"Vehicle?" 

"None. I'm not going anywhere in particular, I just need some time to myself -- and I can't get that here."

The magus set his phone aside and turned to his computer, typing slowly enough to make Chris slightly crazy with impatience. It had been a long day, with the trip into Tulsa and the skinless corpse and the ice skating, and he wanted nothing more than a full night's sleep... but apparently the entire Universe was conspiring against him on that. 

"Yeah, all right," said the magus, as something flashed on his screen. He plucked a piece of paper and gathered a bit of Grey, then inscribed two separate glyphs on the paper: one at the top, the other at the bottom. "This one will let you out, and this one will let you back in... but if you take more than the hour you're allotted, we'll know -- so watch your time out there." He sat back, dark-skinned and brown-eyed, with curly hair cut short. "Word of advice? We don't get a lot of these requests, and most don't get approved. Somebody likes you, so don't screw that up."

"I won't," Chris told him. "That's why they like me."

He took the paper and walked out through the gate, watching as the upper glyph burned away.

Taking down the office

 Apropos of nothing, really: 

(Okay, so I haven't actually poured gasoline on anything, but just cleaning out the desk is feeling pretty damned good.)

Music for moving to a new job: 2 Weeks Notice

 Infinite Skillz:

Okay, true story: at the send-off lunch yesterday, I stood up to give a speech. I'd thought about this in advance, and I intended to keep it short and sweet. I was just going to say, "It's been a pleasure working with all of you. I hope your time at the city has been better for my time at the city." Emphasis on for, as in because of.

I had not reckoned with the presence of loud-ish Mexican music in the background and possibly the secret expectations of my co-workers, because apparently what everybody at the table -- including my own dear wife, who was sitting right beside me -- what everybody heard was this: 

"I hope your time at the city is better than my time at the city."

And you know what? Fuck it. I'm not even going to try to correct it. First off, nobody would believe me. Second, even if it's the exact opposite of what I meant to say, it's not entirely untrue and maybe people needed to hear it. But mainly, I'm not going to try to correct it because it's the single most objectively funny Freudian slip I have ever made in my life.

Driving Needs, part sixteen

"Okay, where to now?" asked Chris, once they'd returned their skates and left the ice rink. 

"Karoake," said Antoinette. 

"Karaoke?"

"Karaoke," she affirmed. 

"I have," Chris said, "this vague image of karaoke as a thing where people get up on stage and sing songs."

"Yeah, that's pretty much it." 

"Oh!" said Elyssa. "That sounds like fun." 

"Singing?" asked Chris. "Or watching other people sing?" He couldn't help sounding dubious. 

"Well, both really," Elyssa said. 

"All right, you win," Chris said. "Now I'm afraid." He was only half-kidding. 

"Really?" Antoinette looked at him across the roof of the car. "You'll fall all over the place on ice skates, but you won't sing? Why not?"

He shrugged and unlocked the doors, then climbed into the driver's seat. After a few minutes he said, "I think it's because I don't mind sucking at skating. You all know I'm athletic, and it's something I could learn, so it doesn't bother me as much. Singing is... I can't look at how badly I sing and reassure myself that I have a good voice and could pick it up with practice." He glanced at Antoinette. "And also, I'd want to get some practice if I was going to step onto a stage and sing in front of people."

Antoinette considered that, then nodded. "All right. No karaoke. Take us back to the training center." 

Elyssa mimed a pout. "Aww..." She gave it away by grinning at Chris in the rear view mirror. 

"Karaoke's best kept for when we're old enough to drink, I'm told," Antoinette said. "And anyway, magus Frummelt has something else in mind for our training, starting tomorrow."

"All right," said Chris, and pulled up GPS before setting his phone in its cradle on the dashboard. "We're heading back."

Wizard and Warden, prequel three

Darkvision was essential on the waters of the Opreto. There were shiplamps, of course, but they burned a lot of fuel and still missed things; a sensible captain used them sparingly. Cleave Sparkstone had been a ship's captain for eighty years now, and if the current venture wasn't entirely sensible he still intended to keep his crew focused on what would work. 

The wizard and his pet warrior had done a grand job of clearing the decks; his people had taken injuries and a few were out of commission, but nobody had actually died and nobody seemed likely to. If they could finish off these pirates, it would cement his name as a captain that nobody should want to cross.  

"Starboard side, close," said his First Mate Porphyry, leaning over the rail. "Tracking just ahead of us. Hold course."

"Hold course!" he called, and listened as the word was passed back. Lizard-folk didn't swim as quickly as some aquatic species, but they could hold their breath for a long time. Tracking the fleeing attackers across the water required caution, patience, and skill. "Anything from the prisoner?" he asked the Bosun, who was waiting beside him. 

"I'll check."

A moment later the Bosun was back, the warrior beside him. She was back to her regular size, sensibly armored in studded leather, and smiling as she said something to his bosun. "Captain," she said by way of greeting. "The prisoner says she knew this was a mistake and that sooner or later we dwarves would strike back. She'd like us to sink the boat her people are using and let them swim away; she says she can guide us to the cave they've been using to store their booty."

"You believe her?" 

"Yes and no," the warrior admitted. "I think she was the war-leader's wife, or mate, or whatever it is that lizard-folk have. I'd be willing to bet that she actually did argue that they should change tactics or quit while they were ahead. She still came along to protect him, though. And I'm sure she doesn't want any more of her people to die."

The wizard Valerius joined them on the foredeck. "How goes it?"

"We're tracking them," Cleave told him. "It's not easy, holding our speed down like this, but we're still with them." 

"Could you sink their ship?" asked the warrior Malwyn, looking at her wizard. "If you could, we might convince our prisoner to lead the rest of them out of Opreto and settle somewhere else."

"They're pirates," Cleave observed. "Silverkeep law says their lives are forfeit." 

"True," said the wizard Valerius. "How many of your crew are you willing to sacrifice to make that happen? Right now we haven't lost anyone. If we back them into a corner and annihilate them... I don't think we can manage that without losses. And they're lizardfolk on the water; they might surprise us."

Cleave ground his teeth, but the wizard was right. 

"We've already hurt them, badly," the warrior added. "The ones who stayed behind are likely--"

"SHIP!" called the First Mate, looking ahead. The rest of them saw it a moment later. 

Valerius sighed. "My turn, I suppose," he said, and strode for the railing. Malwyn followed automatically.

Driving Needs, part fifteen

Ice skating didn't terrify him, but Chris was more than willing to admit that he wasn't any good at it. He wobbled out onto the ice, struggling desperately to keep his balance and held upright mainly by the fact that the rented skates were laced as tightly as he could manage. Antoinette glided past him, then turned in place and continued moving backwards so she could look him in the face. 

"Well?" asked Elyssa lightly. "Are you terrified?"

"No," Chris answered firmly. "Awkward, unbalanced, and--" He tried to extend a leg and propel himself forward, wobbled, and promptly fell on his ass instead. "--And a little bit sore," he admitted, then set about the task of getting back upright. 

Two years earlier, he would never have gone out on the ice like this. He would have expressed disinterest and avoided it. Now, after the Incident at Pettibone -- which was how the Magi apparently all referred to it -- he cared less, about his dignity and about everything else. And he was supposed to be just a wolf, so he was supposed to be beholden to his magus, even if this wasn't strictly a situation where she was giving orders. He knew Antoinette wouldn't press the issue if he really refused, and that made him perversely more willing to go along with what she wanted. Was that how teams were formed? 

He tried again, and this time he went further before he had to reach for the wall and steady himself. Elyssa was more certain on her skates; she didn't skate backwards, but she seemed perfectly in control of her starts and stops, her turns and sweeps. Was this something that wolves learned when they grew up out in the Grey? Was he giving himself away by not knowing this already?

If so, the damage was already done. The knowledge was thin consolation, but he held to it anyway. And while this might disprove Grundus' theory -- that he was an older, more powerful wolf pretending to be young and inexperienced -- it would also lend weight to Magus Frummelt's theory that he was a wolf who had been raised in the Mundus, by magi; possibly even a halfbreed. 

"You're getting better," Antoinette said, coming up beside him. "You're nearly all the way around now."

A small child swept past him and he flinched, stumbled, and went down again. "Better isn't good," he said. 

"Maybe not," Antoinette admitted as she helped him back up, "but it's a lot better than worse."

A Minor Rant About Changing Jobs

I'm changing jobs soon. Not just moving within my current employment, but heading off to another job for a different employer at a substantial increase in pay for doing a job that's a lot of what I'm doing now, but with a much better focus, a chance to learn the ropes and possibly even get training, and without twenty-something years worth of accreted other-duties-as-assigned. 

This is being framed as a situation where I received an offer that was "just too good to pass up". That is the kind of bullshit that management comes up with when they don't want to admit that they fucked up and failed to prevent an entirely preventable situation. It's not that I got an exceptionally good offer; it's just that someone was willing to pay me what I'm worth. It's not that I'm moving to an amazingly good work environment, it's just that after years of being largely ignored, trying to find ways around weird and unnecessary roadblocks, and being vastly better-appreciated by every other department that I worked with than I was by the so-called leadership of my own, it'll be really nice to work with people who clearly want me there. 

Six months ago I suggested that they -- our IT management -- really ought to get me a minion, someone I could introduce to all the things that I do and who could work on projects that I simply didn't have time to get to. Four weeks later, management came back with the suggestion that I should cross-train with at least one of my co-workers. Leave aside how insulting that is; when something comes up with one of "my" systems that A) needs troubleshooting, and B) would therefore be a valuable learning opportunity, I need that particular co-worker to take care of issues coming in from another system so I can focus long enough to fix the problem. End result: no management experience for me, no training for my co-worker (who frankly already has enough to keep up with), and nobody in the department has a clear idea of what all I actually do.

Even so, I asked my soon-to-be employer for a full three weeks before I started with them, because I knew it was going to take that long to pull together my documentation for whatever poor bastard(s) my current job responsibilities got dumped on. As it happens, the hiring cycle for my new employer stretched that out to nearly a full four weeks. 

Turns out I'm going to need all of that -- possibly more, but that's not my problem. I have two significant projects that I'm trying to finish before I go, if I can block out the time now that word has gotten around and everybody is suddenly panicking about the fact that I'm leaving. 

And then, last week, my former boss -- now our deputy CIO -- started trying to get re-acquainted with my website-related duties, because he'd tried to add a new editor and suddenly learned that it isn't as easy as just putting them in the right group in Active Directory. That particular internal site is running on ridiculously old Content Management software, and desperately needs to be moved to something new. To add a new user, you need to go into the goddamned SQL, open a particular table, and add the new user there.

This was the point where our Deputy CIO suddenly remembered that he'd had An Idea to move that whole Intranet site over to Sharepoint. That was the point where I sent him a link to the site that I'd finished setting up for that purpose between Christmas and New Year's of 2021, and reminded him that I'd informed both him and our actual CIO that this was done and ready to go, multiple times. What I'd gotten in response was basically, "This'll need to be run past the other department heads," and then radio silence. 

But here we are, looking at this now, with our Deputy CIO suddenly realizing that this was about to become his problem, and he says to me, "I know you're busy pulling documentation together, but could you go through this site and get it up to date? It'd be a nice feather in your cap before you leave."

What I told him at the time -- on the phone, unprepared for this bullshit -- was that I had two solid projects that I was trying to finish before I leave, and I couldn't make any promises. What I actually think, after taking several hours to process the fucking audacity of it, is: NO. This thing was not a priority for management/"leadership" for two and half years. I am not the reason we are not already using it, and thus not -- by extension -- the reason it's out of date. Should we switch over to it? Absolutely. Is that my problem in any way? Not at fucking all. 

And this bullshit, years of this bullshit, is exactly why I'm not going to miss this job one bit. It's not that it's a horrible place to work, exactly; but if I were recommending it to someone in good conscience I'd have to advise that they come, work here for a year or two to get some experience, and then start looking elsewhere.

Wizard and Warden, prequel two

Their two familiars disappeared into the rigging, Valerius' bat flapping silently to the forecastle while Malwyn's owl circled aft. 

"No sign of boats," Valerius said, half-leaning on his staff against the sway of the ship. 

"Nothing alarming back here," Malwyn answered, just before she caught a glimpse of movement out of the corner of her eye and gave an undignified squeak. She cut down at the scaled hand caught the top of the rail and a reptilian forehead raised itself up. 

"Malwyn?"

"Lizardfolk," she called loudly. "No boats, they're just swimming over."

"That," muttered Valerius, "explains a lot." He muttered and gestured, and a handful of glowing red darts launched themselves at a pair of lizardfolk who were coming up over the port railing. 

Malwyn focused, letting the outside world fall away. There was only her blade, the battle, and the aura of icy cold that she channeled into the steel. A faint white patina of frost covered it, and when she struck the lizardfolk warrior staggered back, the edges of the wound in its chest black with frostbite. She swung again, but missed. 

The sailors were fighting back as well, harpoons and belaying pins and a couple of well-placed nets all deployed to deadly effect, and for a moment it looked like the attack would break. Then a lizard-man appeared on the bow, having apparently climbed the anchor, and smashed down the first sailor to come at him with a long trident that seemed carved from pure ivory. Two more came up behind it, even as Valerius surrounded himself with a quartet of illusory images to make himself harder to hit.  

A series of fiery beams lanced out from the dwarven wizard's hand, striking the lizardfolk warleader; the warleader staggered back, but shook off the damage, raised his spear, and threw it. 

By sheer luck it found its target, and Valerius staggered back. Blood stained the shoulder of his robe.

Malwyn broke off from the injured lizard-warrior and flung herself between them. She felt the brush of a bone-tipped spear against the back of her hair as she moved, but another sailor moved in with a belaying pin and she lost track of the enemy behind her. She couldn't get up the stairs and reach the warleader and his guards, but she could distract them... 

She cast the spell she had prepared earlier: Enlarge. 

The warleader, now half her size, lowered his head briefly, hissed, and then flung himself forward. His guards followed at his heels. 

She caught him with her enlarged greatsword before he could get close enough to attack, cut him and poured frost into the wound. The warleader twisted, ignoring the injury, and stabbed hard with his trident, driving it into her thigh. She'd need to remember to dodge; at this size, she was an easy target. And how the hell had he gotten it back? That had to be magic.

The two guards continued past her, angling for Valerius, but Valerius met one of them with Shocking Grasp. It wasn't enough damage to take the guard out, but it was definitely enough to set it back on its heels. 

Malwyn swung at the warleader, and this time both strikes connected; with the additional damage from the aura of frost around her blade, he went down. 

The guards were still focused on Valerius, and two of his illusory doubles disappeared to when they attacked. Valerius and his remaining doubles gestured at the undamaged one, and it collapsed, paralyzed. Malwyn brought her sword around, and cut down the injured guard; at the edge of the railing, one of the lizard-folk looked up to meet her eyes, then threw itself backwards into the water. 

A moment later the attack was over. The lizard-folk who could were escaping; Malwyn thought that was less than half of them, maybe as little as a fifth. 

The ship's captain, Cleave Sparkstone, came hurrying down from the raised stern. "What now?" he asked. 

Valerius was looking at his pierced and blood-stained robe in disgust. "Find their ship," he said quietly, looking over at Malwyn. "If we can't find it, we question to the prisoner here." He gestured down at the immobile lizard-woman at his feet. 

"Ropes," growled the captain. "Bind this one to the mast!"

Challenge: Skills

(This post is part of the Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge. You can find links to other writers' answers over at Long and Short Reviews. I have not been following along as reliably this year as I did in previous years, but I'm still participating! Mostly.)

This week's prompt is actually my thoughts on social media which right now I do not have. However, I did finally come up with an answer for last week's prompt. A week late, but here it is: 

Prompt: A Skill I Wish More People Had, And Why

I wish more people were skilled at taking no for an answer. 

Yes, sometimes more discussion is needed. Sometimes arguing back is appropriate. But I feel like the world would generally be a better if place if more people practiced answering, "Okay," when they got told "no".

Also I wish people were better at time management. And yes, I am looking directly at the fact that I'm answering last week's prompt right now.

Driving Needs, part fourteen

"Cleanup crew's here," said Captain Saintcrow. "I think it's safe for you three to take off."

Antoinette nodded. "What's the final count? What the hell actually happened here?"

"Not sure," she answered. "We won't know until all reports are filed, and even then we might get something wrong. But I've got at least four magi who got together to summon a skin-stealer from the Grey, and a fifth who they apparently sacrificed so it could wear his skin. The skin-stealer then managed to shoot all four of them, dumped the weapon somewhere, and cozied up to a businessman whom it promptly skinned in his own hotel room. He managed to fling himself off the balcony, possibly with its help, and you and your wolf caught up with it before it could finish getting whatever it wanted from me. Meanwhile, your other wolf found the dead magi, allowing us to keep that from becoming public knowledge... all in all, I'd say all three of you have done some really good work today. Tom's people seem to agree."

"All right," said Antoinette. "You've got my number. Ping me if you need anything else."

Chris nodded, because as one of the Ministry's ROs that was what he was supposed to be doing at this point. He was still thinking about the fox, and his feelings were ambivalent: he wanted her to want him; he wanted her far, far away. 

He followed Antoinette back to the car, still distracted, then forced himself to focus and unlocked the doors. 

When they were inside and pulling away, Antoinette said: "So... Elyssa and I have a bet. Neither of us has really seen you scared, and, well, given some of the situations we've been in that just seems wrong. So we have a couple of challenges for you, beyond just driving the car."

"Driving the car isn't--" Chris cut himself off. "All right. What did you have in mind?" Whatever this was, he would go with it.

"Ice skating," said Elyssa.

"Ice skating?" 

"Ice skating," Antoinette told him.

Chris forced his jaw to unclench. "All right. Ice skating."

Driving Needs, part thirteen

"Can I ask you something?" asked the fox, squatting down beside Chris where he was keeping watch on the skin-stealer's body. 

Chris suppressed a momentary nervousness and said, "Sure." 

"When you first got to that conference room, did the smell of gunpowder seem unusually strong?" 

Chris considered that. "Yes. I mean, also blood and voided bowels, but... yes."

The fox nodded. "I thought so. It seemed to be concentrated just inside the door, like the intruder stopped to shoot everybody on the way out."

"I didn't get far enough into the room to compare," Chris looked at the body in front of him, then met the fox's eyes. She was older than he was by several years, unexpectedly attractive with that red-brown hair and those dark brown eyes, that hint of sharpness to her teeth. He ignored that particular stirring -- and what the hell could he do about it, really? -- and added, "Thought it was better to close the door and call it in."

"You're young for Enforcement," the fox told him. "All three of you are. Most teams don't get sent into the Grey until their fourth of fifth year, when they've established themselves." 

Chris froze, then deliberately rolled his shoulders. "You've been looking at our files." 

The fox tilted her head. "Does that bother you?" 

"Yes," he said immediately. "It shouldn't, and I should have known you would -- but I didn't, and I don't like being surprised." 

"We're investigators," the fox said, looking away to check over their surroundings. "It's what we do."

Chris nodded. "I know. Like I said, I should have expected it." They squatted side by side in silence for a long moment, and then he said: "Makes it damned hard to cultivate an aura of mystery, too."

The fox laughed, a startled bark. "Mystery? Around a fox? That's catnip for us. You do that, you're all but asking for us to take an interest."

Chris chuckled. "All right. If I have to guess -- and I'm guessing you want me to -- even after reading our files, you're wondering how an inexperienced group like us wound up covering an established first responder like Captain Saintcrow in a very public, very unusual situation like this."

The fox smiled at him and offered a slight shrug. "You were on the scene before we were; we'd have had to interview you regardless. I'm not saying you're wrong, though."

Chris rose to his feet and turned away from the murderer's corpse. "Magus Frummelt," he said simply. "He knew we were nearby on other business, so he tapped us when this came up."

"Your magus reports to him?" 

Chris nodded. "She does."

"If I'm reading your files right, all three of you have stumbled into some things that should have killed you and managed to survive. Is that why he brought you onto his team?" 

Chris hesitated, knowing that the fox was probably reading his expression no matter how blank he kept it. "I'm going to say yes, but if you want more detail you're going to have to ask Magus Frummelt."

"Ah." The fox waited for a heartbeat, then asked: "So why didn't you follow the skin-stealer? By all accounts your senses are excellent. You and Elyssa must have both known that you were sending her down the fresher trail. You're not a coward, either; if anything, I'd have expected you to throw yourself after the intruder."

Chris nodded. "You're not wrong. It just..." He remembered the voice of the dark heart. "...It seemed more important to find out where that thing had come from and how it got here."

"Well," said the fox, "you weren't wrong either. And you probably saved the Cleanup crew a lot of headaches; if one of the mundanes had found that room first, it would have created a lot more work."

Driving Needs, part twelve

No Dark Armor today, sorry. There's a lot going on and my brain's not in that place. I'll try to get back to it next week. Meanwhile....

"Jesus, Lili." The man looking around the crime scene was white-haired, with pale blue eyes and skin wrinkled with age, but he stood and moved like a man in his thirties. "What the hell happened here?"

"Tom," she acknowledged. "You brought a squad?"

He nodded towards a van that was parked at the edge of the street, and the side door opened. Six people slipped out, formed up, and approached as a group. Watching them, Chris thought that five were magi and the sixth a wolf... No, he corrected himself a moment later, a fox. He'd only ever met one such fox, and it had very nearly been his undoing; he hoped this one was less observant even as he immediately doubted the possibility.

The older man turned back to Captain Saintcrow. "Where should we start?"

"Start with the skin-stealer over there," Saintcrow answered immediately. "The wolf--" she nodded at Elyssa "--ripped out its heart, but I don't know enough about them to make sure it's dead. I've got a skinless corpse on the street here, and a murder scene in a room on the eighth floor, but before you get to those I've also got a conference room with five or six dead magi who I think summoned the skin-stealer." 

The spry old man nodded. "We'll confirm that once we're sure the skin-stealer is dead. Cleanup left about ten minutes behind me, but they drive the speed limit... could be a bit before they're here."

Captain Saintcrow nodded. "I've got the scene. You and your team should do their thing, and then Cleanup can spend the next few headache-inducing hours figuring out whose memories need to be modified, what stories should go out, and why none of us actually exist." 

"As per fucking usual," the white-haired man acknowledged, before turning back to his team. "All right. You heard the priorities. Get to it, and keep me informed."

Driving Needs, part eleven

"Blessed Morrigan, what a mess." Captain Lilith Saintcrow said, looking over the blood-soaked conference room. She looked at Chris. "This is how you found it?"

Chris considered. "I'd like to say that I didn't step inside, but I did. It took me a moment to process what I was looking at."

Antoinette said, "So much Grey..."

The captain nodded. "Just hanging in the air," she confirmed. Still looking at Chris, she said: "You can feel it too?" 

Chris nodded. "The moment I opened the door. I'm assuming they summoned that thing."

"They better have," Litlith muttered. "Otherwise this thing gets even more complicated, and I have enough of a headache already."

"Did they summon anything else?" asked Antoinette, and Chris blessed her for the distraction. He hated being deceptive, and he was never sure if that was because he was no good at it, or if it was the other way around: he was no good at it because he hated it. He understood the concept, it just felt wrong.  

Captain Saintcrow stepped into the room. She raised her hands, traced them through the air. "I wouldn't swear to anything, but I don't think so. Investigations can check that, whenever the hell they get here." She looked around, then stepped back. "The thing was damned precise. Two bullets for each of the magi: one to the heart, one to the head. And then the other victim, cleanly skinned... and it must have been fast."

Elyssa asked, "So we think we're done? Or do you want to keep us on scene?"

The captain tilted her head to look at the wolf. "Are you in a hurry to get out of here?" 

Elyssa met her eyes. "Not a hurry, exactly, but our magus promised that we'd get to do some things while we're in town. We can do them later if we're needed here."

Saintcrow laughed. "I'll try not to hold you up too much, Wolf. I need you at my back until I've got a full response team here, though." 

Antoinette nodded decisively. "We've got you," she said.

Terra Povos: Wizard and Warden, prequel one

"Is this really a good idea?" asked Malwyn, glancing at the guisarme that she had carefully strapped to the wall at the back of her bunk. It was just too long to be used effectively aboard the ship, which left her relying on her greatsword... and frankly, there were more than a few places belowdecks where even that was too much.

"If you've come up with a better plan than this one, I'm sure we'd both love to know about it," Valerius answered wryly. "I'm not real keen on waiting for these pirates to find us, but they don't come ashore and nobody knows where their lair is. The good ship Honeypot was our best bet, even if getting Alderman Thunderbrew to set us up with it was like pulling teeth."

Malwyn sighed. It wasn't that she didn't trust the plan. Not with all the work she'd done putting rumors around about the sort of valuable cargo the Honeypot would be carrying, not with the information they'd gotten in the dockside taverns and from talking with the Customs officers. "No, you're right. We're right. I just wish they'd show up already. I hate being on a boat, and I hate waiting for us to sail into an ambush."

"No argument there," Valerius replied. "Still, shift change is coming soon. If they've been watching the boat, that's when they're most likely to move. And I think it'll be soon -- this change, or next."

Malwyn paused. "Divination?"

Valerius shrugged. "I might not be much more patient than you are, my warden."

Malwyn nodded. "Let's get up on deck."

Driving Needs, part ten

"Antoinette?" Chris asked, when her partner finally answered her phone. 

He heard her swallow. "Where are you?" 

"Standing in the doorway of a conference room, looking at a bunch of dead magi. Did you find the skin-stealer?"

"Yes. It was presenting itself to Captain Saintcrow as an older magus, Stephen Dalbritten, telling her it was there to help with the investigation. I think it was going to move on her, but Elyssa got to it first and the captain threw up a seeming to hide them as soon as she realized what was going on. That was right before she locked it down and Elyssa ripped out its heart."

"Anybody down? Besides the skin-stealer?"

"No, we're good. Dead magi?"

"Yeah. I think they might have brought it here. The other end of the trail ended at a hotel conference room, where four people had been shot. Maybe more. And that sense of the Grey? It's all over the place."

"No survivors?" 

Chris hesitated, then said: "None."

"Shit." Antoinette hesitated. "So it looks like the threat's contained, but Cleanup is going to have an even bigger job on their hands."

"That's my read on it," Chris told her. "Glad you took it down."

"Yeah," said Antoinette. "Me, too."

Driving Needs, part nine

"Are you almost finished? We need to leave." The voice was male, but muffled by the closed wooden door. Chris didn't recognize it. 

A woman's voice replied, "I'm going as fast as I can. You said that we'd have time to clean up after it took Stephen."

"This is not my fault! It was supposed to impersonate him, not start scattering bodies in the streets so it could add more skins to hide beneath."

"Yeah, well, it did," said another man's voice, "and now the Ministry's crawling all over this place and we really need to cover our tracks. So quit distracting Miranda while she's trying to disperse the traces and come help me with the last of the blood."

Well, this is clearly the right place, Chris thought. 

Indeed it is, replied the voice of the dark heart. Not bad for someone searching by scent alone.

Chris studied the door for a brief moment. Then, on a whim, he tried the knob. 

It wasn't locked. Whatever these people had done to summon that thing, they'd done it without bothering to lock the door. The thought he shared with the Dark Heart wasn't an actual sentence so much as a profound sigh. Then he drew his gun, spoke the Word for silence, stepped inside... 

And started shooting.

Dark Armor: Another Departure

"Why didn't you tell me they were real?" asked third-princess Ashmiren, as they followed the gathered elders down through the undercrypts and out to the eastern caverns."I'd have... I don't know. Made ill-advised promises for a chance to see them, let alone ride one."

"I honestly wasn't sure," Pallian replied. "They were a story, like that ancient goldfish in the pools."

"Does this happen often?" asked Ember. "Where you do not know what is true about the place in which you live?"

Pallian and Ashmiren exchanged a glance. "Yes," said Pallian. "Surprisingly often. Is that different from your experience?"

Ember considered that. "No," it said after a moment. "Not in any way that matters. I had... I had hoped it would be different here."

"So had I," muttered Pallian, and Ashmiren smiled and touched his hand. 

"Your father has done poorly by you," she said. "Not all the noble houses are like that."

Pallian looked ahead, then looked back to her. "Too many of them are."

Ember considered that for a long moment, then said: "So we should avoid them. Especially since they will seek to learn my name and bind me to their service."

Pallian and Ashmiren exchanged a glance. They didn't say anything, but Pallian saw it in her eyes: they were both thinking that it wasn't the worst idea they had ever heard. "My father would absolutely send assassins to murder me -- or worse."

"It would completely destroy any chance of alliance," answered Ashmiren. Then she added, "If they learned of it."

Driving Needs, Part Eight

"Which direction?" asked Antoinette. 

Right, said the voice of dark flames and screaming silence.

Damn it, Chris thought back, let me do this. But he said, "Right."

"Then we'll take left," Elyssa replied, and turned with Antoinette to follow the scent. 

Chris followed the other trail. The scent was fresher to the left, he thought, wondering if it was worth focusing some of his stored Grey into the word for Connection in order to get clearer answers, or whether that would just wake the dark heart further and make it even more difficult to manage.

It was, the voice replied, rich with weight of its own cold fire and divine certainty. The murderer went to the left after it departed the killing-room, and your friends will kill it. We have other prey.

Chris swallowed. He'd known when he absorbed the dark heart that it was too much, too powerful. Even if he could have absorbed it forcibly, it would would have overwhelmed him. He would have become part of it, rather than the other way around -- if any part of him had remained at all. It was only because it gave itself up willingly that he was able to take it in, but that meant now that it retained an individuality, a will of its own, that none of his other captured essences possessed. You'd leave vengeance to others?

To kill the killer is a small vengeance. It is the ones who summoned it here who must face my wrath. If you would prove yourself worthy, then you must find them and destroy them.

The scent-trail was still clear, but Chris slowed for a moment to sort it from everything else hanging in the half-stale air of the hotel hallway. No blood, no terror, just that rancid, half-rotten scent. Either the hall had been empty when the skin-stealer passed through, or nobody had recognized it as inhuman. 

All right, he replied. Watch me hunt.

Challenge: Childhood Misunderstandings

(This post is part of the Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge. You can find links to other writers' answers over at Long and Short Reviews. I have not been following along as reliably this year as I did in previous years, but I'm still participating! Mostly.)

Prompt: Things I totally misunderstood as a kid...

I grew up with a large-ish wooden chest in my room. It sat under the window, and we kept stuffed animals, sheets and blankets, and toys in it at various points. It had a lovely little cushion on top, and it was very solid and a good height for sitting on. So, naturally, we called it the seater chest, 'cause it served as a seat. 

Seater chest. For years, I genuinely thought that thing was a type of furniture known as a seater chest, in the same general way way that a small, two-person couch is a love seat. Made perfectly good sense. 

It wasn't until I was sixteen and getting ready to leave home, and we were rearranging the room, that I discovered it was called a seater chest because it was...

...made...

...of...

...cedar. 

It was a cedar chest, made of cedar wood, and my parents had put a cushion over the top for no better reason than that it seemed like a good idea at the time, not because that sort of chest was supposed to be padded for seating. 

I would not have been more surprised if I'd discovered that my mom had been a cephalopod this whole time. Absolutely mind-blowing. I don't think I've ever recovered.

Lithos Foundingstone: Arcane Limitations

"So we're going to have to pull the warden out of his room," Amergin said, looking at the guard they'd taken prisoner. 

The monk nodded reluctantly. 

Well, all right... Lithos considered what spells he had left to help out with that. Damn it! He was down to one prepared spell: Silent Image. It was a good spell; he liked illusions more than necromancy, to be honest, though he wasn't going to admit that with Vinnie around. He'd even considered specializing in it, but... no, he still wanted access to everything. 

One spell. And it wasn't going to help them here. 

"Vinnie?" he asked tentatively. 

"Yo kid! What's up?" The skull was, of course, floating beside him -- still wearing its hat and sunglasses -- and just waiting to see what they'd all do. 

"So I know we've used most of the spells that you prepared for us," Lithos said cautiously. He wasn't sure how he felt about that; the choices offered to them seemed more whimsical than practical, like they were designed to entertain the demilich more than actually help the group escape. "I was just wondering if you had anything ready that could help restore some of my spells."

There was a momentary silence, and of course it was impossible to read the expression on a skull; all it did was grin. Constantly. Then Vinnie said, "Kid, you've done good here. I liked that Enervation you hit the berserker with. But the thing you've got to learn about being a wizard is this: it's all about planning. You gotta conserve your resources, know what you're gonna need and when you'll need it. A bit of divination woulda helped you with that."

Lithos raised an eyebrow -- an expression he'd practiced because it was so effective when his mother used it on him. "You think I should have been doing divinations from inside an anti-magic field?"

"Oh. Right. That. Okay, maybe it wouldn'ta helped you now, but it's somethin' to remember for next time. Anyway, kid, the answer's no. I ain't gonna restore any of your spells."

"So you can't," said Lithos.

"I didn't say that!" The green gems affixed to some of the skull's teeth suddenly flared brighter. 

Lithos swallowed. "What if I said you could raise one zombie for each spell I got back? That's not permission," he added quickly. "I'm just asking."

There was a momentary pause as the skull spun around in a full circle. "All right, kid, ya got me. I actually can't restore your spells. That's gotta be you, and it takes rest and study. But damn that was a tempting offer, kid."

Driving Needs, part seven

"This door?" asked Antoinette. 

Chris and Elyssa inhaled, looked at each other, and nodded. 

Antoinette rattled off a phrase, and Chris felt the Grey gather around her and settle into place. Luck? Armor? Some kind of protection, anyway. She'd muttered it under her breath, so he wasn't sure what she'd actually spoken. 

"I'll take the door," Elyssa volunteered. She glanced back at Antoinette. "Chris should go through first, with you ready to speak against anything that comes at him."

Antoinette nodded. "Sounds good. Do it." She muttered something else and the lock clicked.

Antoinette reached forward and opened the door. Chris slipped through, gun out and angled to cover everything he could. He was relying on sight and sound now, but nothing moved and the only sound was the very faint hum of the ventilation and the slight dripping of a leaky...

He'd expected a faucet, or something similar. It wasn't. The blood was soaked into a king-sized bed ahead and to his right, and dripping onto the tight weave of the carpet. A suitcase was open on a small stand to his left, beside the set of drawers with the large hotel television on top. A memory tried to push its way up, but he shoved it back down. 

The bathroom door to his right was open. "Cover front," he said automatically, and turned into it. Practice at working as a unit had definitely paid off. 

There was nobody on the toilet, nothing in the bathtub, no surprises under the counter. He came back out, stepped deeper into the room. 

"Closet?" asked Antoinette.

He stopped, turned to his left, and slid the door aside. Coats and slacks hung on the hangers, and there was a small metal safe tucked up onto a shelf above them, but otherwise the space was empty. He still couldn't hear anything, and so far he hadn't seen any movements. The scents, though... blood and urine and emptied bowels, the body-scent of terror still hanging in the air, and something else... something that smelled like rotting meat. He'd smelled it out in the hallway, too, but it was better to start here and be certain...

And now he was. This was definitely the place. He stopped and looked around again, but the only tracks in the room were traced in blood and emerged from the far side of the bed, racing out towards the balcony. 

"Following," said Elyssa calmly, letting him know that she'd moved into the room behind him. 

He nodded without looking back, and finished circling the bed. Lowering his gun at last, he said, "Yeah. This was the place. We missed it."

"You smell that?" asked Elyssa. 

"Same as the hallway," he confirmed. "Problem is, the scent goes both ways out there. Which way did it come in, and which way did it go out?"

Antoinette had come into the room behind Elyssa; he turned just in time to see her swallow as she focused on the bed. "So the victim was skinned here, but managed to throw himself off the ledge. We have no idea what the killer was doing when that happened, and there are two possible paths it might have followed when it left." She swallowed, then looked at Chris. "Can I trust you not to get yourself killed if we split up?"

Chris considered that for a long moment, then nodded.

Music: Seven Days to the Wolves

Nightwish:

No dark armor today, sorry. This week took a turn for the surreal (and also very busy) and I simply haven't had time or energy to envision the next scene.

Terra Povos: A Prison Break Most Broken

Whisper has pulled the Sleep lever in the Safe Room, and pretty much everyone is asleep except for Whisper and probably the warden and a couple of guards who had retreated into the guardroom. At this point, Whisper is the only person still conscious. He’s in the same room with some of our treasure as well as some utility items: pipes of the sewers, elixir of vision, 2 tanglefoot bags, 2 smokesticks and some miscellaneous weapons and armor. There’s also some food and water. 

Whisper leaves the sleep gas on, and hears some voices coming out of one of the tubes, labeled guard’s quarters. 

Warden: “I’m going to retreat back to my room with a couple of guards. You take the tunnels and go pry them out of the panic room. We’ll get this all wrapped up."

Whisper opens the trapdoor and looks down into the tunnel system. There are actually two trap doors, and they appear to go into different tunnels. Can hear feet coming down the tunnel; three people, he thinks. He spikes the trap doors closed, starting with the one with the footsteps. He then grabs a bunch of weapons and heads down the stairs. He comes to a side-passage whence he can turn left or continue on straight. 

He comes up a set of stairs that apparently end in a blank wall… but there are wisps of gas still slipping through the cracks. He hears a smashing sound down the tunnels; it’s probably guards trying to get through the trap door. He waits. They continue smashing at the trap door and finally get through. Whisper stays silent where he is. 

One of the monks-guards arrives in the passage with Whisper. Whisper opens the door and slips through, finding Baldy on his back on the stone. He move and kicks Baldy awake, leaving the secret door open behind him, and drops the pile of weapons on Baldy. 

Baldy scoops up the light crossbow and loads it. The monk runs into the room. “They’re in-- ugh!” Baldy shoots him with the crossbow. It doesn’t do that much damage, but it brings him to a momentary halt. Whisper stabs the monk with a dagger. Baldy shoots him again. Monk: “Fuck! Shit!” He backs up as Whisper stabs at him again, and shuts the door behind him. 

Whisper tries to open the door, but the monk is holding it closed. Baldy gets up and charges the door and manages to smash it open with his body. He and the monk both go tumbling down the stairs. The monk tries to grapple Baldy, but Baldy manages to slap him away. Whisper slides next to them and stabs the monk again. Baldy is still slap-fighting, but the monk manages to grapple him. Baldy: “Oh, yeah, pin me Daddy!”

The monk has called for somebody to get back to the sleep lever, and Whisper hears steps. The monk attempt to slap him into unconsciousness, and Baldy opens his mouth to absorb the blow. Whisper runs for the lever room through the tunnels. He’s sprinting, but he’s a dwarf; he’s not that fast. He runs up the stairs and finds one dwarf by the levers and one looking surprised. These guys are *not* monks; but one of them pulls the gas lever. The other one pulls a weapon and starts toward Whisper, but misses him.

The monk attacks again, but Baldy manages to avoid the attack through sheer carnal flexibility. (His favorite class in school was mouthmatics.) 

Whisper throws himself on the guy with the lever, knocking him away. Baldy is getting himself tied in knots. The guy that Whisper tackled manages to throw him off. The gas is now creeping down the stairs. Baldy: “Oh! We’re going to wake up in each other’s arms. Now *that* take me back.” 

The monk finally manages to land a blow, and Baldy is stunned. 

Whisper stabs the guy in front of him. One of them slices him, but not badly. The monk grabs Baldy, take a deep breath, and runs up the stairs to drop Baldy just inside the secret door. Whisper is still fighting the two guys; Baldy is back to being asleep. 

The monk slams the door and then crumples against it, also unconscious. Whisper continues fighting, but nobody hits anybody. Whisper manages to hit one of the guys, then smashes the glass and grabs the red lever; he looks at the two guys threateningly. They attack him. 

He pulls the lever. The anti-magic field goes away. Vinnie: “Awwww, yeah. That’s the stuff.” Whisper stabs with his suddenly-magic dagger and takes one guy down. He fights with the other guy, taking a bit more damage in the process, and takes the second guy down as well. 

He shuts the gas off, and starts counting down waiting for it to dissipate. While he’s waiting he flips the emergency doors open, then goes to finish off the monk. He gets about halfway down the passage and hears footsteps running towards him. Vinnie hasn’t got much left for us in the way of spells, but he drops Phantom Steed in the passage, and the horse charges the monk. “Oh! Fuck! Shit!” The horse runs over him and he takes damage. 

Whisper follows the horse around the corner and stabs the absolute *fuck* out of the monk. The horse attempts to stomp on him, forcing him to dodge and preventing him from getting to his feet. He tries to sweep Whisper’s legs out from under him, but Whisper resists and stabs him again. 

The horse promptly tramples him to death. 

Vinnie: “You know, I was thinking Fireball, Lightning Bolt, and then I thought… horse!” 

Baldy wakes up to see Whisper coming past on a ghostly horse, tossing weapons around. He decides to shake Monster awake and have him come with us. 

Lithos wakes up to mouth-to-mouth from Vinnie. This also wakes up James, who is only slightly less appalled than Lithos is. 

We still need to finish getting people out, and Monster accepts a greatsword though he seems a bit reluctant to use it. 

The riot in the yard has resumed, now on somewhat more equal terms. Baldy rushes over and grabs Lithos’ and Amergin’s stuff. Baldy also grabs the Pipes of the Sewers, grins maniacally, and starts playing them. He also grabs Roetta Blackwood’s spellbook: Scare, Cause Fear, and Chill Touch. 

Whisper gallops back to Solitary, pops the lock, and gets James and Lithos out. We should go. But first: tunnel to the guards’ quarters. We start routing people down into the tunnels. Whisper jams the sleep lever. We disable the lever labeled “gas” too. 

Leaving the riot to fall as it may, we take to the tunnels and head for the guards’ quarters, with Baldy playing the Bagpipes of the Sewers . We come to the stairs leading up to the wall. Whisper charges through the door on his phantom steed, smashing it open; Whisper tumbles off and lands neatly beside it. The horse fails to trample anybody. A monk tries to tumble over next to Whisper, but whifs it; Whisper tries to stab him but misses. He attempts to punch Whisper and hits him. 

Amergin throws Entangle into the room. Various guards attack, mostly missing. Monster lumbers up the stairs and swings at the monk but misses. James races up behind him, jumps across the horse, tumbles, and lands in the back. Lithos fires of Glitterdust, blinding a couple of enemies, while Baldy sends his rat swarm up the stairs to assault the blinded glitterdust victims. 

Whisper takes out a blinded scrub. The monk attacks Monster with a stunning fist; Monster is stunned. The rats are on the monk, the legion fighter, and one of the scrubs. Amergin moves up and heals Whisper. 

The legion fighter turns around, looks at James, laughs… and turns around and attacks Whisper, hitting him very had with a dwarven waraxe. The battlerager, however, attacks James and hits once, doing a bit of damage. The blind scrub misses, and the other scrub misses the horse. The horse, meanwhile tramples the scrub and moves further into the room. 

James swings his awesome mace of awesomeness and hits the battlerager with a sneak attack. Lithos hits the battlerager with a Ray of Enfeeblement; his target loses a significant portion of his strength. The rats continue working on the legion fighter and the monk. Baldy moves up, still playing his bagpipe, and and puts a crossbow bolt through the throat of one of the scrubs. The scrub goes down. Whisper stabs the legionnaire, doing a fair amount of damage. 

The monk attacks Monster again, hitting him critically but failing to stun him. The horse is basically rampaging at this point. Amergin heals Whisper again. The legion fighter attacks Whisper, but doesn’t do much damage. The battlerager attacks James again, doing a bit of damage. The remaining scrub is just attacking the stone wall. Monster attacks the monk, doing a chunk of damage. James hits the battlerager again. Lithos tags the monk with Scorching Ray, burning him badly. The scrub is still struggling on, blind and being eaten by rats. Whisper moves to flank the battlerager, stabs him, and watches him fall. Vinnie: “Oh, yeah! Hey, I should start turning some of these guys into zombies." 

Lithos:  "No! Not now!"

The monk hits Monster again, and stuns him. Amergin gives him a bit of healing to help him keep going. The legion fighter attacks Monster and takes him down. 

James is still caught in the Entangle and tries to move on the Legion Guy; Legion Guy takes damage. The monk manages to slip through the Entangle and attacks Whisper but misses. Amergin stabilizes Monster. Lithos renders Whisper invisible, and he takes out the legion fighter. The scrub finally goes down as the pile of rats swarms over him. The monk takes a bit more damage from Lithos throwing acid. Whisper attempts to shank the monk. The monk sizes up the room and surrenders. 

Amergin ties him up and starts asking questions. 

We use the warden’s keyring to open the vault. The place is absolutely full, and after ten minutes we’ve made a huge mess but we haven't found our stuff and it’s taking too long. The warden has the lever for the outer doors and a book that lists where things are kept in the vault; we're going to have to go dig him out of his hole.