> “I want to fly again, to not care about the whims and wishes of humans that cannot appreciate they have been given and to be blind to the destruction they wrought to this world. I want to feel the wind whistle and shout as I ride its coattails into the sun and beyond. I want to be free!”
> -Last words of Byrd Mann, a bird-turned-human, before he’s freed from his curse and turned back into his beautiful bird self.
Karistina Larisfin was in love. She truly was, even if she wasn’t aware of it yet. But the happiness was still there, and oh did she reveled in it. Her plan to catapult herself to the top of the Godhome’s pecking order was worked better than expected. No one could figure out how she managed to conquer Yarast Omegon, with most (correctly) assuming that it was all part of a ploy.
No one could figure out what, if anything, Yarast Omegon could hope to gain by associating himself with the God of Minor Scars. For all his flaws, his power and might alone places him very near the top of the Godhome’s hierarchy, beholden to peers most gods in Godhome would kill to be recognized by. But no, instead the prince beholds a pauper of no real value, all seemingly on a whim.
Such was the ways of the enigmatic gods, that they all failed to see things were, for once, exactly as they seemed.
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‘You are what you eat.’
An apt description, especially in Blood Falls. Though perhaps a more appropriate saying would be, ‘You are what you make of yourself’. The mind directs the body, which influences the soul, which manipulates the mind, and so on. As infinite cycles go, it was one of the more forgiving ones, as sons scavenges fathers and daughters rival mothers for the attention of all. Nowhere was this mantra more realized and in-your-face than Blood Falls, where every body part you can imagine literally falls from the sky.
Stevening watched the first outflow of the month come out a bit bored. Sure, as a butcher, he can appreciate the diversity and uniqueness of each and every body part that comes out of each outflow, but they had no grace or beauty to their exit from the drainage grates of the Godhome above. Would it be too much to ask for the gods to sort and synchronize the various gibs and cuts and viscera and liquids so that they all would come out in neat, predictable patterns that would also be visually pleasing and easy to automate should such fancies comes to the minds of those that rule Blood Falls?
Stevening sighed and prepared his umbrella as the countdown for the crosswalk gets closer and closer to zero. The churning of chum in this part of Blood Falls would soon reach its peak, and it would certainly not do to have his brand new raincoat be ruined by the stomach content of a poor fool or another. He hated scrubbing out stains, which explains why he never brings his work home with him, unlike the other butchers like Miken and Dorfonst.
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"I think I’ll go buy some candy for now.” The butcher decided as he turned left, not noticing just in time the specter that slinked out of his shadow and into a nearby alley.
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“The man’s clean. He doesn’t know anything.” The agent spoke into a crystal set into his skin. “And for the record, I’m doubling my rate for wasting my time like this, Cindy. I’m not a baby-sitter.”
The crystal beeped several times in quick succession, which matched how many times the agent’s face changed with each beep. A contemplative look fell upon his face, and he sighed as he laid back against a wall. Assassins only make good money when murder is too much of a hassle to handle personally. And in Blood Falls, where people take things into their own hand, the agent was finding it hard even to sustain himself, much less getting the scratch needed to escape to somewhere else in the Retribution Fields.
The crystal beeped three more times before it became completely dull, signifying to the agent that his job was done, at least for now. He groped around for a shadow to slip into and in no time at all he re-emerged inside his safe house. The agent winced as overly bright light greeted him, but soon adjusted and relaxed his guard for the first time in a while.
He unlocked his hard-suit and shivered as cooled air touched his real skin. The agent didn’t understand why most of the safe houses he’s been to always had the air conditioning set to the lowest temperature they could go with the fan set to the maximum. The agent eyed the door that led to the bathroom as he considered cleaning up, especially given the nastiness one could encounter in Blood Falls, but decided against it, at least for now. He had a few things to check out.
The information room sprang to life as the agent walked in; monitors displaying a dizzying array of information, earphones relaying audio tapped from microphones embedded in places that boggle the mind, and last but not least was the centerpiece of the information room; the simulator, which combined all of the inputs present and fed it into a homunculus, which in turn translated the outputs into something anyone could understand if they asked the right questions.
“Where’s *?” The agent spoke the name even though he knew it would be censored as per the agreement. The homunculus understood him, however, as it shivered and moaned as years of data poured into it and subjective decades passed from its perspective until eventually it stopped and pointed with one withered arm towards one of the monitors on the room’s wall.
The monitor in question had a video playing, showing something readying itself atop the roof of a building. Energy coiled around it as it drew in a breath, before a flash of light flooded the video, scrambling it for a moment before it resumed shortly after, something red-hot glowing in the distant background.
Just then, the crystal in his arm beeped twice, then once. The agent mumbled something about overtime, then made his way to the showers at last. His long day had only just begun.