JUST PING ME WHEN YOU FIND OUT SO I’M NOT BLINDSIDED BY THINGS GOING ON AROUND HER... AGAIN. He didn’t even glance at me.
“Gotcha, and you want the kit for her. She’s going to be traveling with you awhile?”
WE HAVE A BABY TO RESCUE.
“That sounds like an interminable amount of time. Yeah, no problem. I’ll get the kit made up with a spare change of clothes for her, leave it for you at the First Light of Dawn there.”
OBLIGED, GREGORIGORI.
“You do what you need to do, Fred.” I could almost hear bared teeth. “I’ll put out feelers for that Sinbound. We’ll find him.”
The holo gnome bowed, spun, and receded into Fred’s phone.
“Nice. Only Cantrip-level magic, but still pretty cool,” I complimented him.
THEY ONLY MAKE THE GOOD STUFF FOR GOOD PEOPLE, he replied calmly, glancing at me. YOU’D BE PRETTY FAMILIAR WITH THE NAME VACCINE IF YOU CAME FROM HERE.
I could only raise my hands and shrug.
CAN YOU READ INFORMATION IF SOMEONE ELSE GETS IT FOR YOU?, he inquired mildly.
“I have no idea,” I admitted. His thumbs sparked, the holo came up again, and I squinted at the Lexipedia article in front of me, with rather more scrollwork around the edges than the Wikipedia I remembered from over a decade ago in Aelryinth’s memories had.
I ran through the basic information on it, and more as he scrolled up. Founded in Detroit, the Vaccine was a cell phone produced by Infoworks, which was a subdivision of Gritworks, the sprawling technological company that now dominated the landscape there.
Despite myself, I started leaning into this, and muttering things like ‘Gritworks’, ‘Detroit history’, ‘current events’, ‘the Shroud’, and so forth, and very patiently, he flicked between the basic information articles on them.
I didn’t recognize the names of any people, from presidents to pop stars. They didn’t call it rock and roll, however, they called it ‘metal music’, which got a half-smile from me, but that was just a difference I would gloss over.
No Apple and Steve Jobs. No Microsoft and Bill Gates. The current American president was some Hispanic guy from Missouri. The new capital for the country had been built in Kansas after the dead in Arlington got up and butchered a whole lot of senators and representatives, and basically chased a lot of screaming people out of the capitol, making it a true Ghost Town. New York City had been slaughtered by shadows rising up out of their Potter’s Field, and the shadow spawn had exploded across the boroughs in the space of one night, killing millions.
Then all the bodies had gotten up and added to the mess...
October 11, 1941...
There wasn’t actually a lot known, and divination magic either didn’t help, or something on the other end ate your mind or soul, so people stopped trying that route for some reason.
Germany had just invaded Russia, and was driving them back towards Moscow. The cold weather was just starting to kick in, when a great black cloud covered the earth and sky, interrupted by a great flash from above, like a meteor falling.
Then the undead came out of nowhere and killed everything, and the Haze started rolling across the planet, corpses rising from their graves, magical creatures were roused from their sleep or exposed in the middle of society, holy men were blessed by gods, magic knights gained powers, and the Powered came into existence.
World War II had naturally fallen completely apart. The dead massacred by Japan had risen up and eaten their armies... and then any of the native survivors nearby. Germany’s Final Solution had come out of their mass graves and proceeded to slaughter the Germans, who then joined them in their vengeance. Mass graves and corpseyards the world over vomited up dead with axes to grind, and grind them they did.
However, guns were a thing, and the new magic people were, too. Unless they came from an area of thicker clouds that were cutting off the sun, the Shrouds, the undead weren’t unbelievably strong, and could generally be killed. If they gathered, and generated stronger undead, that could be a problem... but guns, dynamite, snowplows, timber-cutters, and other interesting ways of slaughtering them were all put to use, as well as a lot of axes and baseball bats.
The undead under the Shrouds were Cursed and limited by the sun, always to return to their place of origin if they wandered more than a mile from it at dawn, or if they stood out there and were hit by the sun.
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The sudden existence of men and women blessed by the gods had rapidly exposed other magical forces that had been hiding in the shadows, who had little choice but to come forward now, or face the wrath of an aware and Awakened humanity who simply did not have time for their secretive bullshit with undead threatening the whole world.
There was a lot of information about all the whos and hows of who got exposed, but the major forces were the anthromorphs, the werefolk; the Blooded and other Tomb Clans; the ghouls; the Fey; the Hags; the Warlocks; the Magi; the Templars; the Illuminati; the Daoists of the Orient; the Cruxia, the alchemists; the Elves; the Svartalfar; the Dwarves; the Serpent Men; the Gnomes; and the warring marine powers of the Merfolk, the Tritons, the Deep Ones, the Sahaug, and the Kraken.
The people who ended up mutating into what were called Orcs (there was no Lord of the Rings Tolkien here, although I did a search on him and he was one of the early Wizards, and one of the first humans to speak fluent Elvish, and was probably still alive in northern Sweden somewhere) mostly were of Russian descent... and the heartland of Russia and the Ukraine fell under the pall of the First Shroud in multiple locations, and never came out.
A lot of nations didn’t survive the revelations of these old forces existing and controlling people, or their populations mutating into new subspecies and forms. The resulting fights generated more undead, which either stopped the fighting by mutual agreement, or mutual annihilation.
The United States had fared better than a lot of countries, as it didn’t have the same long bloody history of longer, more established nations. It definitely didn’t get off scot-free, but other than large cemeteries and a battlefield like Gettysburg or two, there hadn’t been as much of an effect.
With so much dangerous shit in the seas, the coastal cities became far, far more dangerous than before, and people pulled out for the inland areas in droves. Major cities on the oceans had declined in population, and with it, importance. Florida was almost wilderness now, one of the major holdings of the older Blooded clans, who were fighting constantly with stuff coming up out of the water...
Detroit and Michigan had profited. It was a major city on a body of fresh water, and had a large industrial base and highly skilled workforce, with major universities close by. The population of the city had exploded, and the nearby lands in Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio, too.
Chicago seemed to be almost something of a supernatural hotspot, with conflicts by all sorts of mystical factions ongoing there. The Magi were openly represented there, and ran the most respected school of pure Wizardry in the nation there. Some Harry guy had a formidable reputation as a peacekeeper there...
-------
I waved more pages away with a sigh. He was very patient, and didn’t mind doing it, but it was a lot to digest. I had to put times and dates and people into order, and there was just so much that had changed, and I had to re-order it to fit.
I didn’t have any of the ‘key events’ that would unite people of a certain age, so I was going to be missing a lot of references. I was definitely going to be going through years of back issues of magazines just to catch up on popular references... and how do you catch up on decades of completely new television shows and movies?
Oh, well. They didn’t have Scooby-Doo here, and Disney had gone out of business after Florida was invaded by sahaug the first time. The reality of wererats and werewolves didn’t jive with a talking cartoon mouse and dog...
“Ugh.” I rubbed my temples. “Well, on the world I came from, it was 2004, not 1941, when we got hit by the multiverse.”
He gave me a weird look. YOU HAVEN’T HAD MAGIC AS LONG AS WE HAVE?, he asked, obviously confused.
“We had an outworld teacher come in and lay down a foundation of the magical system he used, which he taught us by masking it inside a virtual reality video game. You’re learning it from the ground up with no real instructors... except maybe those you don’t want.”
He nodded slowly. CLEVER OF HIM, he complimented.
“It cost him his life, too.” I looked back at him. “I’ve been meaning to ask... you can’t reach beyond the Veil to Call in an actual Patron, so there has to be a Celestial trapped on the world. Did the World-Angel make it through? Is he your Patron?”
His multi-hued eyes flickered. I’VE NEVER HEARD OF A WORLD ANGEL. THERE’S ONLY ONE CELESTIAL ON THE WORLD STRONG ENOUGH TO AFFIRM A HEAVENBOUND PACT, AND NATURALLY HE’S BEING HUNTED BY MANY FORCES, AS KILLING HIM WOULD BASICALLY STOP ANY NEW HEAVENBOUND FROM BEING BORN. AS A RESULT, HE CAN’T INVOLVE HIMSELF PERSONALLY IN CONFLICTS, AND ONLY ACTS TO CONFIRM NEW HEAVENBOUND AND SUPPORT US.
“Ouch.” I looked at the sky. No World-Angel. “He doesn’t have contact with Heaven either, does he?”
HE ADMITS TO LOSING A GREAT DEAL OF THE DIVINE KNOWLEDGE AND AWARENESS OF GOOD THAT HE USED TO HAVE, AS WELL. He gestured to an armband around his bicep, holding a little box. HE EVEN WEARS A PHYLACTERY LIKE THIS, SO THAT HE WILL BE WARNED IF HE BEGINS DEVIATING FROM THE RIGHT PATH UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF THE SHROUD.
I nodded at the wise move. Faithfulness was a simple but powerful thing to protect your soul, and vitally important for a Celestial caught in circumstances like this, caught in the dirt and mundane ills of the mortal world. “Pass on a message to him, if you will.” Master Fred just blinked at me. “If and when we do manage to bust this Shroud and re-establish contact with the Heavens... he, as a Celestial, will immediately lose all awareness and knowledge of the Shroud and what happened here during his time beneath it.”
Even the imperturbable Warlock had to purse his lips at that. “So, it would behoove him to set down a history in writing, to retain the knowledge and wisdom that he has experienced in this circumstance. This can then be shared with mortal agents, who are not subject to the Curse of the Shroud, and then spread throughout Creation. This is not the first world that the Shroud has come upon, and it most certainly will not be the last.”
He nodded slowly after a moment, and tapped upon his Grit, thumbs sparking. I guessed he didn’t have battery worries, either.
HOW MUCH KNOWLEDGE DO YOU HAVE OF THE SHROUD?, he asked, looking up at me as the thought struck him.
“I won’t call it extensive as far as HOW it works. But what it does... I am very clear on it.”
THAT IS FAR MORE THAN WE KNOW, he informed me somberly.
“Perhaps you might want to record my words.”
YES.
Well, that was all he needed to say...