CHAPTER 7 – ALCOHOL BLUES

Before the System – Dallas, Texas

***

Marcus Flynn was not a good man. He knew this. He wasn’t a bad man either or at least he didn’t think so. He did have a heavy drinking problem and he knew that too. His Sister Lilly, who was only a year and something older, and he, had a shit childhood with alcoholic chain smoking parents that made life miserable. They weren’t abusive per say, physically but emotionally, yep and yep. They ignored their existence besides having always attainable microwave food for them to heat up and endless sodas. Absentee parents in every sense of the word who no one could hold a conversation with cause they were always too plastered to make any sense, especially to young kids. They lived on cheating the system, welfare, fake ID’s, whatever they could do while working under the table odd jobs.

Needless to say by the time both of them hit their teenage years they were both hellions who partied, stole, and caused all sorts of trouble. The only big difference was somehow Lilly still did well in school while Marcus averaged a ‘D’ across the board, not that their parents paid any attention or cared. He got a lot of grief from Lilly about it saying he was smarter than she was though he found that hard as a truth to bite into. She was his golden light, smart, pretty, strong. All the things at least in his own mind he was not. Then everything changed.

His senior year his big Sis left him, the only real friend he’d ever had. He’d always been a loner otherwise, a malcontent who always seemed off to whoever he met. His one lifeline left him to the empty echoes of parents that didn’t give a shit.

She went into the Navy and got shipped to Japan while Marcus just wandered aimlessly ending up getting a decent job somehow, out of high school, in a shipping warehouse. It paid well, allowed him to move out of their shitty parent’s house and keep himself in alcohol. Good old alcohol, his new best friend and it stayed his best friend for a long long time.

His life became a monotony of motion; go to work, come home, drink himself into a stupor, sleep, get up, go back to work. On the weekends the only difference being he didn’t go to work and just sat home and drank himself into a stupor while watching old movies. That used to be Lilly’s and his favorite thing to do, a way to escape their uncaring parents and shitty reality.

This went on for years and then something happened that made him think everything would change, everything would shift to something a lot more beautiful. Lilly was coming home. She sent him an email saying only that. Cryptic he remembered thinking at the time. It didn’t matter.

Her tour in the Navy had to have been done and she wasn’t re-upping. He was ecstatic. The only thing besides saying she was coming home was that she’d rented a nice house only a twenty minute drive from his small apartment.

He should have known better than to think it would be a turning point. His life just didn’t work like that, never had, never would. When he showed up to welcome her home at an invite she sent for dinner, she threw multiple shocks at him all at once. The first was the Japanese man who answered the door. He introduces himself of all things as her husband Hiroki Sho, her husband, though he says to call him Hiro. Husband? Lilly gives her a Brother a look like that’s just the beginning. What could be bigger than a new Japanese Husband?

He was then introduced to Gideon, her son, a small little toy sized infant with emerald green eyes just like Lilly. How could she do this to him? It was supposed to be him and her once more, Brother and Sister bac to back against the world.

He immediately started drinking every piece of alcohol they had, made an utter ass out of himself, until the new Husband, Hiro, asked him to leave. He took a drunken swing cause, well, he was a selfish asshole, and ended up on his back for the choice. He drove like a drunken asshole back home.

Lilly attempted to stay in touch, mend bridges, and the few times he took her up on it, all he saw was judgment in her Husband’s eyes as he brought his best friend, whiskey, his most loyal friend, with him every time. The last moment he ever saw them Hiro took him aside and told him he dishonored his Sister, himself, and their family. He told Marcus Lilly had told Hiro that her brother had equal amounts of greatness and pain and Hiro agreed, told Marcus he saw great potential within him if he could defeat his demons. Marcus did what he did, always, spat at the man’s feet, took a big swallow of his buddy, Jack Daniels, he brought, and left, never to return.

Several years went by with Marcus ignoring emails and phone calls from his Sister until they stopped. He was back to his comfort zone, wake-up, work, drink, repeat. It only broke when one day he was contacted by child services and the police to let him know his Sister and her self-righteous Husband died in a fire and if he wanted to take custody of his Nephew or have him moved to the Foster-Care System. He was silent in his mind and his soul. His hero, his best friend, dead. Something inside him joined her in that moment.

Their parents had died several years before, both to cancer. He hadn’t visited or cared but her. A cold empty slid into his bones. He was the only option for a boy with no parents. It took him several minutes on the phone to the point of the person asking if he was still there? All he could think of was those emerald green eyes like his Mother’s, like Lilly.

He agreed to take the child and had to go through several months of playing peek-a-boo with a child protective service member, playing slip-n-slide with his drinking and purchasing a lot of Clear-eye and mints.

When he’d made the decision he’d promised himself he would honor his Sister and do better then their Parents did but in the end he was a slave to his vices and a selfish bastard. He gave the child exactly the locked memories of his own childhood, easier to rinse and repeat than to deal with the Devils dancing in the dark.

***

Several Years Later

***

Years slipped by only marked by him switching from whiskey to scotch, a monumental shift for Marcus with his best buddy, alcohol. The small child with green eyes that hurt to look at every time had grown and left, joining the army and besides a few initial emails had become a silent footprint of history.

Marcus slid through several more years picking up the last vice of his Parents he’d sworn he’d never do. He started smoking, another demon to dance with the aforementioned devils in the pit gutting his bones. He wanted them to keep the memories of childhood’s empty promises and two sets of Emerald buried deep.

The first was taken care of well and good but the second shoved it’s way down his gullet hand over fist when he’d made the mistake of watching the news. His go-to of finding an old movie that caught his interest had failed miserably and the price of that failure was front and center. A nice fat and clear photo of emerald green eyes, his nephew, called a serial killer and fugitive by the bullshit media, the FBI’s Most Wanted.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Something in Marcus Flynn snapped at that image. Flashes of another set of emerald green eyes dug into the dark places he thought he’d locked a long time ago, those eyes attached to comforting smiles, supporting words, his protector, his first and truly only best friend. The bottle of scotch in his hand flew into the TV, shattering both.

“They won’t take you Gideon. They’ll have to kill me first.”

***

A Month After the First Challenge – City Ruins – Erebus

***

The Deep Woods Panther sits in the lee of cracked concrete in deep shadows waiting to ambush anything that came within it’s territory, its vine tentacles poised to wrap the victim as its fangs took its throat. Behind it a sliver of silver light cut right into the fabric of space, tearing reality, and before the creature can respond a cloaked and hooded figure’s hands snap out quicker then a viper’s bite with two wicked hooked knives, the edges lined with the same silver energy. The beast fell, head hanging on by small strips of tendon, lifeless. Another sliver of silver cuts into the air. The figure steps through and is gone.

***

Umbra Mortem – Erebus

***

Unra had enough going on without this interruption. With the stress filling their Settlement from everyone’s worry about Gideon, another added to it was almost too much. The System might keep her age from being too much of a bother but she still felt it in her mind, all the decades of bare survival and death on the edge of everywhere she looked. But then he came, he and Lady L’Sana and lifted the Shador up or what was left of them, gave them something she thought lost long ago, hope and belief. She thanked the Mistress of Secrets every day for the blessing.

Her feet echoed down the wide stairs, children’s laughter tickling her ears from the Playpen above. L’Sana and Ari were in the Shadow Moon Forest, hunting, growing stronger, attempting to reach Iron or they would be dealing with this no doubt. They’d taken Dori with them to help her Granddaughter grow as well which she was thankful for. The Forest had finally started producing its own beasts, a few in fact.

A plethora of various snakes of the Moon and Umbral variety and hunting cats and even some predatory birds now filled the woods. They didn’t seem to encroach upon the Settlement and their seemed to be no shortage though Unra might have to limit the hunting there if the Settlement’s population kept increasing as it was. The city ruins would be good enough. The population was an amazing benefit to the addition of what Ari called the Erebus System Web controlled by the Issian Corp. It allowed them to recruit people that had survived but had no place to call home, which seemed to be a massive amount. It also seemed like almost every Faction out there were doing the same though they could gather no intel on any of them. Each Faction was inviolate upon the Web, at least for now by the System itself.

They themselves set up a high level scrutiny screening prospective people had to go through before being given the coordinates to arrive. If they were closer to Oklahoma they would go there first and be escorted to Umbrra Mortem bye the Conclave. Being a much smaller Fortress Settlement and in no need of nor desire to hold a sizable population as the Shadow Conclave, the Gunslinger was going above and beyond to help populate their home. Unra had grown fond of the man and his wife since they’d set up a communication relay and Teleportation hub and she’d been conversing with him for the last few weeks. His wife Nuri and Orin had become two peas in a pod jabbering about scientific and engineering principles. The bond between the two Settlements had become Umbral Steel and made them both feel safer for it.

Unra had Iona shadowing her steps as she went to see this Stranger who demanded an audience. The Settlement had gone through vast improvements in the bit over a month since Gideon had gone to face whatever the System was putting him through to see his Soul-Pillar healed. There were now twice as many crossbow emplacements, the walls had been reinforced, and the biggest one, the communications and surveillance network had been upgraded multiple ranks. Nothing would get anywhere near them without her knowing about it including the annoying Issian Corp camera drones which were fitted with heavy duty magical shields so weren’t worth targeting.

Speaking of Gideon L’Sana was bouncing off walls and little Shira just sat in her room crying mumbling about Giddy and never getting her mask. Her heart went out to the child but no healing they’d tried had done anything about her scars. The System was brutal when it came to such things. Unra held to hope as an anchor for not only herself but all of those that looked to Gideon as their hero, leader, and more than that, their safety. They all knew, factually, he still lived as they would be told if the City Owner was dead but a month? A month being in some construct of the System was tip toeing on the brink of a cataclysm and spitting in the teeth of death.

As Gideon was fond of saying, Focus Old Woman. A stranger needed to be dealt with. As they curved down the last set of stairs to the central main floor she stopped at the last few steps to appreciate the statues that dominated the area. Lord Gideon, Lady L’Sana, and Ari. She absolutely adored it, the whole scene, the statues and the way they over looked the huge fountain which the young ones loved. She finished the last few steps to the floor and threw her gaze onward.

The man in question stood near it with several Umbra Mortem soldiers surrounding him led by the grizzled Gritzdek who was now their Captain of the Guard and becoming a legend in his own right with his peg-leg excursions in the last Monster Wave. She smiled when she saw his new cybernetic leg provided by the wonderful Nuri with the help of Orin in the crafting. It was entirely made of Umbral Steel and had been enchanted by the Engineering Soul-Pillar Nuri herself. His trusted halberd sat in the crook of his arms as he hard stared the stranger.

Unra took one step but then stopped at the base of the stairs with Iona at her side holding her glaive casually but Unra knew better, knew the veteran soldier could react to violence faster then an Old Woman could take a breath.

Her eyes settled on the Stranger. The man was a middle-aged human though something a bit different, an air of mystery radiating off him as if it was natural. She would guess a Bloodline of some type. He had long grayish red straight hair, a scraggly beard covering his cheeks, and looked as if he’d been stuck in a war zone for the last decade. He wore a heavy cloak and leather armor underneath, all black as night with silver trim. She couldn’t see any weapons but the man himself seemed like a walking weapon, an edge of danger in every shift of body and roving eyes or she should say eye. He had a patch over his right that in no way hid the massive scar that ran down his cheek all the way to his lip causing a half sneer on that side of his mouth from the scar tissue. The one eye that turned her way was a bright blue and held an intensity as if he’d been walking the road of violence for far too long, one of old wounds and broken hearts filed to raw memory.

She started moving towards him just as he started closing the distance himself. He only made it two steps before the soldiers circled him and Gritzdek slammed his halberd down in front of the man, growling heavily.

“You will go no further or I will leave your entrails upon the stone.”

Most people would find the massive Beastkin intimidating but the man’s single eye just returned their Captain of the Guard’s stare until Gritzdek did something Unra had never seen, took a step back from whatever he saw in the man’s steel gaze. Unra couldn’t blame him. Even though the man only came up to the Captain’s chest and was scrawny on the verge of almost emaciated, there was an air of barely restrained violence. She could [Identify] him but she found as one got stronger within the System it was difficult for [Identify] to pull anything of use on other Citizens. She was sure there were builds that were focused on such but she was not one. The vibrations radiating out from him gave her a feeling this man might be the first Iron Ranked person she’d met. She saw the tension in her Captain’s frame and even Iona next to her had shifted her glaive into a threatening position.

Unra decided to diffuse the situation, at least for the moment. She waved everyone down with a word and a raised hand. She than spoke.

“Welcome to Umbra Mortem Stranger. What can we do for you?”

Whatever stare that had been shown to Gritzdek was now shared with her and if not for her high Will, which was her highest Attribute, she herself would be taking three steps back if not stumbling but she clamped down hard, flexing her Will. An awkward smile that with the scar just came across as an even bigger sneer lit his lips but she saw the humor in those dangerous eyes. His voice was rough and ragged as if he hadn’t spoken in a long time, weathered in blood. A silver light ignited within his eye, like a bright and powerful moon as the words left his lips.

“I am here for my nephew, Gideon Sho.”