A wind passed through the cracks of silent sewer pipes and maintenance tunnels. It raced through underground rooms that had seen no use for years, pooled in a single room far larger than its neighbors, swirled around in the wide-open space for a moment, then returned to its master to report what it had seen.
Horan opened his eye and got up off the mold-covered concrete floor of the maintenance tunnel, which he had been kneeling on long enough for his knees to get damp. “It’s about three minutes down that tunnel to the right. And yeah, it’s big. Must be under a shopping center or something.”
“Great,” said Mark, heading down the way Horan had indicated.
Quet moved to Horan’s side once he started to follow Mark. “So, uh, that whole wind-sense thing. Haven’t really noticed you use it until, like, today. You figure something out on how to do that?”
Horan shrugged. “Dunno. It was just something I thought to try when I headed into a human city for the first time in, like, years. Without having something else to think about at the time, I mean. And it’s not like it’s some huge thing, either. I just sort of get a feel for the space the wind is moving around in.”
Quet gasped and brought a hand up to her chin. Her eyes seemed to grow ever-so-slightly brighter. “Thaumic kinetolocation…”
Horan nodded. “Not sure that’s how giving things science-y names works, but that’s not something I think about much, so I’ll take your word that that’s what it’d be called. Yeah, it’s weird, but you know how our powers can be. Sometimes things work because you just expect it to.”
Quet blinked and shook her head in some kind of emotion Horan couldn’t put an exact name to. “Well, okay then.”
“That’s how it is for me, at least,” continued Horan. “I think with the earlier Domains like the Egyptians and the, uh, and the Babylonians, say, whatever process makes us poof into existence wasn’t quite as ironed out, so we’re a lot more whatever on the made-of-magic side of things. Probably why my soul’s got a weird battery attached to it.”
“Hm,” mumbled Quet. “Makes you wonder how a process like that works.”
“Yeah,” said Horan. “But I dunno, I don’t think about this much. Guess I don’t know if this kind of stuff is an ‘everyone’ thing or not. Do powers ever just do new things based off of you just kind of figuring that it’s a reasonable thing to be able to do?”
“Uh… n–no.”
Horan shrugged. “Okay. Maybe I was right. Who am I to say?” He cleared his throat. “Just another right here, and…”
Waia melted the lock of the door that Horan had indicated with a touch, then opened it to reveal a nearly deserted underground parking garage, with cracks stretching across the concrete ceiling and an avalanche of rubble blocking off the ramp that had once led up to street level.
Horan breathed a slow sigh as he examined the vast tract of concrete and brutalist paint before him. “Well, in…” He gave the echoes of his voice a moment to bounce around the garage before fading away, then lowered his voice and continued. “…In all of the small part of downtown that I was able to peek at, it can’t be beat for square footage. It’s a bit sparse, not as good on the lighting side as our last venue, and the acoustics are putting me halfway towards a mild panic attack, but it’s as good a spot as any for us to wait out this fresh new crisis.”
Quet kicked at a small puddle on the floor that had formed from a dripping crack in the ceiling, making the dingy water splatter against the nearby wall. “I can’t complain too much. Proactivity is exhausting.”
“You would, wouldn’t you…” mumbled Waia.
Mark sat against a concrete pillar, folded his arms, and looked up at Waia. “…So. Feel like ripping the band-aid off?”
Waia rolled her eyes and looked down at Mark in turn. “Depends. When you say that, do you mean that you want to complain about how cursed and doomed and woe-is-me you are, once again, or are you going to say how it isn’t nice to hurt people’s feelings like that?”
Mark groaned. “Waia, it’s because you just cost us a safe place to stay, because you couldn’t–”
“Oh, come on!” Waia grabbed Mark by the wrist, pulled him to his feet and folded her own arms. “Don’t just sit down there and act all civil! I remember you outside Salem! If you’re gonna keep calling me a screwup, you might as well show you mean it!”
From the sidelines, Horan leaned towards Quet and mumbled in her ear. “You wanna go stand far away from where we are right now?”
“Yes,” confirmed Quet, “I would very much like that, thank you.” She and Horan shuffled over to elsewhere in the garage.
Mark watched the other two leave, sighed, and glanced at Waia again. “I’m acting all civil because we’ve already had our fair share of shouting matches, and that’s gotten us nowhere, so I’m tryi–”
“Oh, right.” Waia rolled her eyes and looked away from Mark, unfolding her arms just long enough to make exaggerated airquotes. “‘Gotten us nowhere’, like I’m some kind of project. This isn’t some, like, back-and-forth constructive critique between work buddies. You’ve made it perfectly clear that we’re on the same page about this, that you know that we aren’t friends. We all have the one masked idiot between us to kill, and after that, we’re done. You and your motley crew can go play in the snow, and I can go back to my regularly scheduled nights on the town. If you have any issues with that arrangement, that’s your problem. Got it?”
Mark stepped away from Waia and held his hands out in a vague gestures towards reconciliation. “That… That isn’t what I meant. I j–”
“Of course it wasn’t,” muttered Waia.
“I’m not good at this, okay?!” Mark groaned and rubbed his eyes. “I’m sure you can go get Horan and let him pick over all his words and craft the perfect answer to everything you say, but he’s all the way over there, and I’m right here. What I’m trying to get to that we can’t afford to be all laissez-faire with how we do this. Back in Mexico, I had a very different experience of trying to get out of that Servant city compared to you. Horan, Quet and me don’t have the luxury of immediately throwing hands whenever there’s something in our way.”
“Well,” said Waia, “I’d say that by now, you’ve had plenty of time to adjust to the fact that you do now.”
“…I… J–Do…” Mark sighed and looked down.
“Yeah,” said Waia, “There it is. I’m not some big dumb idiot, you know, I can tell when you’re not being straight with me. What I can’t tell is why you’re so desperate to not have any nosebleeds on the playground.”
Mark ran a hand over his hair, but continued to not look at Waia. “It’s… I can tell you’re frustrated, it’s been hard for all of us, but we can’t just start acting like killing people is nothing.”
“Why not?” Waia scowled down at Mark. “The Servants have been trying to kill us all for months now, let alone however long it took for them to get to any of the people in this room, and they sure act like it’s nothing. I get what you’re trying to do, with your whole ‘we go high, you go low’ thing, but that’s not gonna help anyone right now.”
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
“I’m not–”
“A-bup-bup.” Waia held a hand up. “I’m not done. I’m sure it gives you no end to the warm fuzzies to know how much nicer and whatever you are than the nutcases up there. But right now, we’ve got something that needs doing, and it matters a lot more that it gets done than it does that you come out of it looking like some squeaky-clean paragon of virtue.”
Mark sighed. “I’m not trying to come out of this looking good, okay? The problem with you just wiping out any Huntsmen that looks your way is that little by little, you start proving them right in what they say about you guys.”
Waia stared down at Mark in silence for a moment. “…Huh, you really aren’t good at this.”
Mark rubbed his face. “This is asinine…”
“No, no, stop that.” Waia leaned the slightest bit towards Mark. “You just tried to refute the idea that you’re being so delicate with these Servants because you don’t want to look bad, and you did it by saying that the real reason is because you don’t want to look bad. Could you confirm that for me.”
“Okay, yes,” mumbled Mark, “I get that. But I… I…” He slumped back to the ground. “…I dunno.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” Waia turned away from Mark. “That’s the nice part about being right about something: It’s pretty hard to argue against you without just straight-up lying.”
“I’m not lying!” protested Mark.
“And that’s why you lost.” Waia squatted in front of a nearby pillar and stuck her finger into the concrete, drawing random scribbles into the pillar the way one might draw in wet sand. “You’ll have enough of it one day. I’ll be willing to bet. It’s a lost cause, trying to reason with these people. You’ll see.”
“I’m sure,” mumbled Mark.
He pulled out his bowie knife and began inspecting it, his reflection staring back at him from the stainless-steel blade. The idea entered his mind that Waia was right about everything. That he was just putting off having to admit that it would be easier for everyone involved if he just accepted that he was better at killing than he was at these vague gestures towards acting all kumbaya towards the people more than willing to put him in the ground. After all, if everything went well, he and his pack would have their hands on the Seraphium: Any potential consequences for what he’d done to get there would be thrown out the window the moment he could restart human civilization with the push of a button. In all reality, he could do whatever he wanted. In the long term, it would be nothing more than…
He shook his head. That was certainly quite the string of intrusive thoughts. He looked up from his knife at the hunched figure of Waia a few yards away, still seated in front of the pillar. “Hey, uh, Waia? Just one more thing.”
Waia said nothing.
“I–It’s just a quick thing. I’m not gonna make us get into another fight or anything.”
Still nothing.
Mark sighed, got up, and started walking over. “Okay, we don’t need to be childish about this.” He leaned over her shoulder to look her in the eye. “I just… wanted…”
Waia’s gaze seemed glassy, vacant even, as she stared motionlessly at the scribbles in the concrete in front of her. The orange rings of her irises seemed to flicker with the faintest flashes of light.
Mark caught a glance at the finger-sized trails in the pillar. At a cursory examination, they resembled the outlines of mountain peaks and valleys that he had seen in satellite photos. The sole exception to this pattern was a single jagged streak, which stretched diagonally from one corner of the impromptu canvas to the other, connecting two lines which seemed to resemble the ‘peaks’ of two adjacent mountain ranges… How long had he been stuck in his own head just then?
“…Waia?”
Waia blinked and looked up at Mark. Her eyes seemed to have stabilized into looking as human as they could, barring the expected strange coloration. “Sorry, uh, guess I spaced out for a second there. Anything else you wanted to say?”
“…No,” said Mark. “Just wanted to check out what you’re drawing.”
“Oh, no, it’s nothing.” Waia shrugged and inspected her right pointer finger, which was still coated in a small glob of red-hot concrete. She wiped it off against the floor. “Just keeping my hands busy… I, uh, maybe we should just kind of be in our own spaces for a little. I’m getting kinda tired.”
“Yeah, uh, guess so.” Mark called out to Quet and Horan, who were seated about a hundred feet away. “Okay, it’s been about sixteen hours, I’d say. Might as well call it now, see where we can take things tomorr… Uh, later, yeah.”
Horan gave a thumbs-up and cupped one hand around his mouth, his voice accompanied by significant echoing. “I’m just gonna hang out a little longer, it’s five to one.”
Mark shrugged. “Whatever you say.”
Horan lowered his hand and dug a glyph-covered pebble out of his pocket, setting it down in his lap. “It’s an… okay way to end the day, I guess. All things considered.”
Quet glanced at Horan’s watch, eyes tracing the myriad scuffs in the tarnished gold of the scavenged timepiece. Horan had no qualms with trading up whenever he found a more upscale store. It wasn’t like gold watches were in much higher demand than run-of-the-mill ones these days.
Quet cleared her throat. “You think we should put your watch ahead by a minute by now? It’s usually off by one after two or so weeks.”
“Eh,” mumbled Horan. “I’ll reset it once it becomes a problem.”
“Fair enough.” Quet was silent for a few moments. “…You want me to leave you alone now? Like usual.”
Horan shrugged. “I feel like with acoustics like this…” He snapped his fingers and listened to the distant echo for a moment. “…Everyone’s gonna hear no matter what. Not like it’s some big secret, either way.”
Quet shrugged. “Okay.” Nevertheless, she scooted away by a few feet.
About a minute later, the stone in Horan’s lap began to glow with a dim rainbow light, filling the space between his folded legs with color. Horan quickly picked up the stone. “Dad! Hi! Almost missed you today. Yeah, it’s been super busy today, we only found a spot quiet enough to talk to you just now.”
He went quiet, and while Quet couldn’t hear anything herself, Horan’s expression indicated that he had something to listen to.
A moment later, he continued. “Yeah, we, uh, it’s October sixth up here. That’s the one-year anniversary of me meeting Mark, so, uh, y’know, some stuff happened around that. He ate a bunch of meat and almost got sick, that was this whole thing, y’know. Some more stuff might happen tomorrow, maybe even a couple days after that, so if I don’t pick up on those days, that’s why. I’ll still try my best, though.”
More silence.
“…Oh, that’s great…! Yeah. Yeah, I heard about that. You said it didn’t come around often, yeah. Just make sure you read the hazards section in the manual… Yes, I mean it, this time. You won’t always luck out and have someone on hand who can fix your hand for you.”
…
“Yeah, I mean, like I said, he’s not done the best in terms of treating his fragile human organs, but he’s doing the same as usual, pretty much. He’s doing his best.”
Quet glanced over at the two other people in the garage. Both Mark and Waia already seemed to be asleep.
“…Oh. Her, right. Sounds like you’ve been paying attention to what I’ve been telling you about her, huh? Yeah, I’m still trying to figure her out. She’s… a lot. I’m kind of worried about whether we’ll be able to make it work with her. But that doesn’t really matter, of course, she’s with us for the next while whether any of us like it or not… Yeah, no, I don’t think she’s found any better options yet. It’s kind of just us up here, so, y’know.”
…
Horan glanced at Quet out of the corner of his eye, which she pretended not to notice. He sighed and looked down at the stone. “…Yeah, they’re the same as always… I know, yeah, I know I always say it, because it’s always true. They’re not doing anything right now. Theirs is a simple existence. Sometimes I envy them.”
…
“No, dad, I don’t care how cute you think we’d be together, I’m never going to ask them out. Stop asking me about that, please.” Horan cleared his throat to try and dispel a vocal crack that had formed at the end of his last sentence. “Wanna talk more about what’s going on with you?”
…
“Yeah, okay, I know. But it’s not like I’m swimming in cool stories or anything, so that’s not applicable. And I’m not desperate enough to ask how your garden’s going, so I think that’s all we’ve got for each other today. Yeah. Of course. Love you too, see you tomorrow.”
Horan pocketed the stone again, which darkened back to normal. He stared at the concrete floor for a while. “…You know, even though nothing I say to him is a lie, because it literally can’t be… I somehow still am. And it somehow feels even worse than it should.” He looked up at Quet. “You know?”
Quet produced a glyph from one of her pockets and squeezed, producing a weighted blanket that spread out over her shoulders. “Well, no use being a bummer about that now. You wanna get under here?”
“I…” Horan sighed again. “Okay.”