Thousands fill the pulpits, heads bowed and hands clasped in prayer. The pastor on the podium leads as Solomon sits behind him on his throne. Everywhere in the TallWinds speakers are spaced out to broadcast the sunday sermon of his church.
The masses pray in small mumbles, creating a harmony of light and low voices.
They pray to him.
He is their God, after all.
They pray for protection, and does he not provide?
They pray for food, and does he not feed?
They pray for power, and is not the opportunity presented to them?
They pray for solace, and so long as they put their faith in him, it will be freely given.
They do not pray for forgiveness, for there is nothing to forgive.
-
Mira walks down the factory, assessing her new acquisitions with an inquisitive eye. They’re a more recent model, but that doesn’t necessarily mean better, she’s having her own mechanics examine the design of one in the back to see if it can deliver on its promises.
“Mira,” says a woman behind her, “I’ve finished with the scans”
Mira turns to Yessenia “and?”
“Well I found a pretty basic shutdown script” she says, “but it was sloppy, so I went deeper and found a remote access script hiding in the heatsink script.”
Mira grunts, “always trust a corpo to stab you in the back.”
She turns back to admire the Walkers.
It’s a shame it’s come to this, Mira has tried her hand at multiple concessions, but they don’t seem interested. Determined to continue despite all the implications.
Fine.
They want to play the game like that? She can match that and more.
It’ll just be costly, but at this point it’s obvious that the war will be expensive anyway. So she might as well take the gloves off and put on the brass knuckles.
-
Rorick is sitting on a chair.
It is a simple chair of synthetic wood. In front of him his daughter is playing with figurines from Uridine's Causality, he watches her with hundreds of little eyes and a smile on his face. Alice huffs and turns to him.
“Daddyyyy, when can I go outside?” She wines.
“Once it’s safe sweetheart, It’s dangerous out there.” He replies.
She pouts, “Why don’t you just kill them all already, It’s been so looong.”
“They won’t simply roll over Alice, like a cornered beast they will fight until their last breath”
Alice scoffs, “Oh please, they’re all meat bags, like me! How much of a fight can they fight”
He chuckles at her lapse in language, “not all of them discard the wisdom of steel.”
“Yes Alice, listen to your father”
Rorick ignores the phantom of his wife as he watches Alice go back to her figurines.
-
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
Asato received a rather idiotic text from his son.
Apparently Ellie put their new magic girl through the wringer, sending her to eliminate targets from the small gangs that’ve been causing trouble. His son sent him a picture of her state and he has to admit, he doesn’t know how she's still alive.
But that doesn’t make his request any less stupid.
Take the girl from a Finger and place her under his wing? What, exactly, does he think would happen if he made such a blatant betrayal of trust? Besides, Ellie is a dependable dog, knowing when to fetch and bite without having to be told. He’d rather not create animosity over something so benign.
The boy’s getting too attached to his new goons, which is not the lesson he wants him to learn. But that’s fine, If he is worthy of his name he will grow out of it.
He takes a sip of his tea, and across from him his first Finger does the same.
-
Pacing, pacing, pacing.
She’s been doing that a lot lately.
One foot in front of the other, turn, then do the same. Over and over again until the thoughts in her head are organised and she can come to a goddamn decision. Her predicament is so stupid, how do they not know the outcome of their warmongering?
“We have to respond.” Says one of her lieutenants, “letting them walk over us will make us look weak.”
“And you think joining the war is a good idea?” Says another, “Then we’ll actually be weak once the corporations decide to pounce.”
“What else are we supposed to do? They clearly want to die, and don’t seem intent on stopping their strikes until we respond in kind.”
The second lieutenant sighs, “but joining the war is suicide.”
She stops pacing, she never wanted to live through an Arthenian war, but life’s a dick that likes to go in raw with no fucking foreplay.
“We’ll defend, but we won’t attack. If they decide to escalate, then so be it.” Talia says grimly.
-
A man in a leather jacket walks through the streets of Arthas. Is he in the TallWinds or the Graveyard? Who knows, war has a way of making things muddled, he’s on Jotun road and that’s all that really matters. Let the gangs continue their petty squabbles, killing and causing havoc.
Every step leads him closer to something that should not be here.
-
Sasha feels…better. It took a while, but the bouts of paranoia and the occasional hallucinations seem to have lessened. It’s impressive considering her operation, she was almost expecting to go full cyberpsycho. She smiles as she can finally see her friends again, they’ve only been calling recently because of her façade of sickness being used as an excuse to leave her alone. Clarice could tell something else was going on, likely used to little brats and their little lies, but she doesn’t seem to have told her suspicions to either Alex or Aki.
She is grateful for that.
As she opens her door to meet her friends, she’s stopped by a gaggle of children scrunching up their noses.
“You smell” one of them gags.
Ok, shower first, then friends.
-
Alex hasn’t been returning her calls.
She woke up two days ago covered in bandages and wires, a mask on her face to give her oxygen. The first thing she did was call Alex, but nothing came from it. She called her every hour since then and hasn’t received a single response. Is she mad at her? Anya doesn’t know what she could have done other than getting shot, but that’s not really her fault, and Alex isn’t an unreasonable person.
But she remembers how easy it was for her to kill a child, how scary her voice turned when she got angry. She knows Alex’s a ganger, knows she’s killed people, but Anya never really took that seriously. Alex is her friend, so it’s fine. She is rapidly learning that it is not, in fact, fine. Nothing in this city is fine.
She was laughed at for trying to get the cops as a crowd of people just watched!
She hopes Alex’s ok at least.
The door opens and a man with very big arms alongside a scantily clad woman enters her room. Anya doesn’t recognize them, she can tell they’re dragons, and more importantly that they’re scars. Alex told her about the pendants of red gold, and what it represents. She shrinks at the sight of two Titans approaching.
“You are Anya?” says the man.
Anya tries to answer but her throat shrivels up, she just ends up staring at them while she shakes on her bed.
“Answer him girl.” says the woman with an edge that kind of reminds her of Alex, except much more dangerous.
Anya manages a nod.
“Good,” the man says as he turns around and leaves the room.
The woman looks at him, then at her, then back at him. She throws her arms up in exasperation and follows the man out.
Anya lets out a breath.
What was that?
-
Dominic hasn’t had proper rest in days, running from the dragons as they send ganger after ganger to find him. He’s killed a few, but mostly he prefers to hide. As he rummaged through the garbage a hand clasps his shoulder.
He turns to find a police officer and sighs.
“Sir,” he says “you’re going to have to come with me”.
His voice leaves no room for argument as he takes out his handcuffs.
Dominic sighs, “yeah, I know”
Then a small cannon pops out from his forearm and blows off his head.
Dominic sighs again, now he’s going to have to travel the sewers.
Just great.