Chapter 1: Every day’s the same
It was a freezing cold day in Saint Narie. One of the United American Nations few truly coastal towns. Many refused to live near the ocean after the monster began crawling onto land, uet the Tower just off the cast inexorbly drew in adventurers and fools alike. All desperate to seize more power.
With massive rewards waiting on just a bit of good fortune, the city drew in a sizeable population of just over eighty thousand. Even with its particularly high level of unexplained annual citizen deaths and the constant monster production of the Tower of Excess. Around a quarter of those citizens, the truly devoted climbers of the Tower, inhabited the island just off the shore. Many in the employ of the massive military base that was responsible for the U.A.N's research and defense against the Tower, a base named West Point Alexander. The only U.A.N. military base on the west coast.
This particular cold day was a Tuesday, to be specific. A completely ordinary, and very normal Tuesday.
Certainly, it differed greatly in the countless number of, remarkably small, individual choices of Saint Narie's busy citizens. A bold outfit choice, a new restaurant, or maybe even, the rare spur of the moment proposal to a starstruck partner. But when the fates were settled and all the cards counted. Thomas H. Miles was still cold and homeless, on the corner of 5th and Wells.
On this particular Tuesday, August 25th, of the year 3006, Thomas had stubbornly worked a 3 card monte scam for about 4 hours before he finally called it for the day. His fingers were simply too numb to work the cards smoothly. Furthermore, none of the passersby were willing to stand in the cold long enough to invest any large amounts of money into his game.
He packed away his cards into their old beaten box, slipped them in his pocket, and hurried into a nearby alley dragging the wooden crate he was using as a card table with him. He proceeded to curl up behind it to block most of the wind, and then pulled his legs up in his old torn sweater for warmth.
He sat there for a few minutes, simply pressing his freezing hands up into his armpits. Every few minutes he would then press his slightly warmed palms to his freezing toes to try and coax some feeling back into them. He could see three of them, poking sockless, through the tears in his tennis shoes.
Finally, after maybe twenty minutes of cradling his freezing extremities, Thomas was able to relax by leaning into the corner formed by the box and wall and enjoying the gathering warmth inside his sweater. A few minutes of silence later his mind began to wander, and he soon found himself annoyed at the small amount of money he had gathered this morning.
Nearly every aspect of homelessness could be remedied with a simple cure. Money. And Thomas’s work ethic had become second to none once his every next meal was dependent on his paychecks. He had worked the first 4 years after his exile from the Miles family down on the town's docks. Pulling in nets, docking small fishing boats, occasionally swimming to save some poor teenager who was dared to jump off into the ocean by his friends.
He was a good worker too.
Unfortunately, very few citizens without any supernatural abilities were able to compete with the so-called apocalypse's most positive side effect. Every human being was now born with the possibility of magical strength and supernatural abilities. All courtesy of spirit animal companions everyone was now born with, roughly fifty percent of which bestowed some form of gift onto their human companions. People with such powers were referred to as Blessed while everyone else was called unbonded. In accordance with the fact that their spirits, while visible to the human they were born with, never so much as spoke. Merely floated around and sometimes played with their humans.
Thomas was unbonded. And no amount of work ethic could help him keep up with a blessed employee. At least not without magically operated artifact suits, programmed and designed to enable unbonded laborers like himself to operate at the level of Blessed citizens. A miraculous meeting of technology and magic that was still being explored and improved to produce new miracles almost every day. Of course, the hope they brought back into Thomas’s life provided life the opportunity for one more life shattering revelation before the age of 18.
No artifacts worked for Thomas.
Whatever mutation or effect prevented Thomas from being born with a spirit companion. Also left his body completely devoid of any supernatural energy. Once his employers realized that they quickly stopped giving him the better hours of his more fortunate coworkers. All of which set the stage. For yet another slap in the face from life. Saving the best for last as always. Shortly after he tried his first artifact suit. Life began blessing Thomas with splitting headaches and bouts of intense day-dreaming that left him immobile and dazed until whatever fantasy his mind was enamored with ran its course.
When he was first homeless, he didn't even remember hating the taste of lemon tea and lavender incense that accompanied every episode. But now he found himself spacing out multiple times a day. He could barely bring himself to justify fighting for his job after he was inevitably fired.
Even more annoying, on a personal level for Thomas, the daydreams weren’t of anything in particular. He often just stared vacantly forward, with nothing but the faint scent of lavender and lemon to show for his seeming hours upon hours of “Day-Dreams.”
Becoming homeless at the age of thirteen had represented a new freefall of his life's prospects. Failure after failure, smackdown after smack down. Thomas had stopped counting the number of times he’d been beaten against a curb for trying to walk into a store by the time he was 19. And yet even then, he felt nothing. Desperately he wanted to be enraged, miserable, upset. But no matter how much his heart rate sped up as he laid against the cold cement sidewalk. Tensing his stomach to try and absorb the kicks of his assaulters.
He felt nothing but numb apathy.
This remained the case for the duration of 6 years, until he met his current boss. Meeting Lucy was the first parachute he found since he was forced onto the streets. She was a healer obsessed with medical oddities and developing new surgeries for recognition in modern medical texts. All to build support for her claim that she was “The greatest Healer Alive.”
After finding him in a daze, which most passersby instantly wrote off as drug related, she immediately recognized the uniqueness of his state. She bought him a meal, promised to let him use one of the clinic's patient rooms as a bedroom, and offered him a copper a day until she cured him of all his ailments. All on “Her word as the best healer alive”. Thomas had never said yes to anything so fast in his life.
She had insisted he not work for the first few months. But once she was forced to accept his illness was incurable, just like every doctor before her, their relationship settled into a more normal employee-employer form. Without her, he probably would have been killed in a mugging, or sent to some high security prison over the mountains to the west like all troublemakers in the east. If anyone alive today was family to him. It was her.
When Thomas’s real family had kicked him out of the inheriting line, he had been offered a second rank position in the family's personal Militia. He would have access to housing, food, wages, and even access to personal Spirit Artifacts if he performed well on the front lines. So long as one of their artifacts in the Mile’s vaults would work for him of course. But something in Thomas screamed at him to get away from them. Something inside his mind pushed him to refuse, to leave his childhood home and get far, far away.
Ultimately, whether he was on the streets thanks to an inborn pride or a healthy fear of “Knife in the Back”-itus. He knew for sure he couldn't stay in the shadow of his childhood home. Or anywhere near his monster of a grandfather. Thomas shivered, losing all of his gathered warmth at the memory of his grandfather's eerie smile. An image of the old man sitting in his wheelchair, just outside the doorway of his childhood home flashed through his mind.
“Ow” Thomas groaned. Rubbing his forehead to ease the pain thinking of his childhood always brought him.
Trying to quickly move on from that thought. Thomas found himself feeling just as calm as he always did. Even after remembering his exile from the Miles family. Thomas couldn’t compel himself to feel any anger or rage towards them. No matter how objectively evil he knew they were. All he felt was apathy.
It kind of made sense, Thomas thought to himself. Really all he lost access to was the family’s Climbing business. Which he had no interest in beyond it keeping them too busy off land to keep up with him.
Not like there's even a need for Tower Climbers any more he continued. The Trials only led to the center of the massive self-proclaimed “Apocalypse Machine”, or more specifically, Tower of Excess. If the apocalypse could be stopped from there, it already would have been. The Miles family knew that better than anyone.
No one actually tried to get through the 7th trial anymore though. There was no point after Anderson H. Miles conquered the whole damned thing over 70 years ago. If the answer to stopping whatever the tower was trying to do was in that tower's center, the world wouldn’t still be ending.
According to the Tower at least.
Now isn’t the time to be thinking about my great-great-skip-a-few grandpa though Thomas chided himself. Here he was making a copper an hour moonlighting, barely able to afford new batteries for his smart watch every few weeks. Which he and everyone else needed to enter this continent's Tower in the first place.
Maybe, if any of the good jobs were on Land, he could get by just fine he snarked. Annoyed at society's obsession with life in the tower's strange continent.
So long as the people of Saint Narie kept choosing to spend their nights in the fantastical magic undercity the tower stored somewhere in its junk pit frame of old T.V. 's, satellites, and cars. Which Thomas suspected would be forever. He was going to need something to load the Towers damn App.
Hell, even if he had more magic than anyone in the U.A.N, he’d still need a fucking app to enter the tower for the trials, Thomas grouched. Now completely worked into a rabbit hole over how unfair the modern world was. Everyone who wanted money needed to spend tons of it on plans for phones, watches, Bluetooth, or some manner of technology for every one of their family members.
Even if one of their kids never really wanted to work or climb in the Tower, the rest of the family couldn't just leave their kids behind if the front lines fell. Every time the enemy broke through, a full retreat to the tower was called.
One piece of communication capable software would only teleport one person into the tower's continent sized pocket space. While rampaging Apocalypse Beasts would love a stranded child to snack on after their long run from the oceans cursed fucking depths. Thomas grimaced at his own cynicism.
Thoroughly upset from his own musings about the state of the world, he tried to motivate himself to get back to work. If citizens on the coast can live without seeing the inside of the tower and still volunteer to fight on the front lines for the country every year, then I can sit in the cold for a few hours moving cards for money, Thomas internally tried to motivate himself.
Unfortunately, Thomas was tragically morally bankrupt like most of the Miles family, and therefore kept sitting in his warm corner. Content with being lazy so long as he had the chance.
Alright, he thought to himself after a few minutes of comfy silence. Time to think of the perfect scheme to bum more money than anyone else in the entire world. He held his pointer finger up and pushed it against his forehead, thinking hard enough that a vein on his forehead started to bulge as he tensed his muscles.
Pushing out all pointless thoughts, he began imagining a large laser beam that would suck all the money out of his target's pockets, stubbornly focusing on making the image “Better” while ignoring all distractions. Such as his mind's insistent urging that he needed oxygen.
No air he reaffirmed. Only ideas. His face turned progressively red before he finally let out the breath he had been holding. Breathing in deeply a few times, tragically unable to think of a so-called ultimate plan he sighed. Filling the air with a burst of cold mist.
Defeated, he stood up to go buy breakfast with his meager savings and the little funds 3 card monte had gotten him that morning.
Four bronze Crowns he counted to himself as he walked over the snow-covered sidewalk. He only had enough money to buy his usual breakfast if he skipped out on lunch, or alternatively, only bought lunch and skipped the breakfast plans he was walking to now. So really just wondering which part of the day he'd prefer to smoke in. His options were now or later. He resolved to double down and keep walking over to the gas station.
Glancing at a clock through the window, Thomas saw that it was 1 pm as he leaned into the glass-push-door of his favorite corner shop. Today's waves of the oceanic Apocalypse Beasts should've started an hour ago on the North, East, and south coasts he mused. They never assaulted the west anymore, not after the tower of excess rose from the ocean in 2007 Should be some good footage on the walls.
Ignoring the bright purple and gold wall of lottery tickets on his right and all of the actual food on his left.
He advanced towards his true prize. The coffee machine. He grabbed a cup from the stack labeled small. The other options were Medium, Large, and Tower, filled it with cheap coffee, and headed over to the cigarette rack chuckling to himself at the familiar pun. Everything's bigger in the Tower quoted Thomas with a smile. He picked up the smallest pack of cigarettes on display.
Working his way over to the counter Thomas noticed some crates in the back of the shop through a half open door. One was seemingly already unloaded, its wooden top off to the side and a pile of red and black books stacked on a table directly under the room's one light.
Grimoires thought Thomas to himself. Pretending to casually look around as if he hadn't seen anything. Real ones were decades old, filled with powerful magic, and as a result of being made from powerful monsters hide. Usually looked extremely distinct from one another. Meaning that stack of extremely similar ones was likely a scam Andy was about to try and pull on one of the Mage families in the area. His funeral Thomas remarked with a small shake of his head as he approached the register.
Setting down Four bronze crowns for his usual wholesome breakfast, Thomas took in the man behind the counter. Andy stood at roughly six foot seven inches tall. Only ever wore red collar shirts and khakis to his job. And in Thomas’s opinion, he appeared closely related to a grizzly bear, or the Alkian Mountain range.
Notably Andy also seemed to have some fuzzy creatures skill inked across his chest, Thomas could see its head barely over Andy's collar occasionally as he moved around the shop. Which implied the man was lucky enough to be blessed with a spirit companion that had not only awoken. But also chosen to bless him with its power in the form of a tattoo.
Good for him, really. Thomas thought to himself. Whatever skill it was, It's probably why he thinks he can get away with the money. Hope he makes it.
But he didn't say any of that out loud, he also didn't say that he suspected his spirit was a ferret, Because Andy seemed like he wouldn't respond well to that sort of approach to conversation. Instead he simply looked up and said “Hey, Andy.” Like he did every day.
“Not the-” Andy began rumbling back. Before Thomas jumped in “Not the nice booths Andy I know, not a problem.” To which Andy grumbled some more and eventually passed back Thomas’s receipt and his change of zero crowns.
This Establishment happened to be his favorite because it was the only one that let him actually stay inside to drink the coffee he bought. Meaning I’m going to be back to drinking coffee in an alley pretty soon he sighed to himself. Why can't people just be content with what they have, all the changing around is hard for us folks on the bottom. He chuckled a bit at his own dark joke and slipped into his usual booth right by the door. Settling in with a slight breeze chilling his back.
If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
Thomas glanced out the window to his left, taking in the sea of thick winter coats covering the sidewalks and the thick wall of drivers glutting the streets between them. Some drivers were riding their very spirit beasts, obviously blessed as they sat atop their manifested companion beasts.
The mystical creatures were dotted throughout the metal frames of cars, bikes, and buses carrying citizens around the city. A large white tiger, a small river dragon, a bear who had just laid down for a nap after all the walking in the far-right lane. That particular beast had a small girl yelling at it, but her ursine companion appeared to be enjoying its nap all the same.
Chuckling at the sight, Thomas looked away after she finally gave up and chose to teleport into the tower with a bit of yelling into her phone. The Tower automatically placed any Blessed’s spirit companion into their soul if they attempted to teleport with them manifested physically.
Or maybe that just happened when you teleported, the spirit was part of your soul so maybe space opening and closing just naturally pushed your soul back into one piece Thomas wondered to himself. He genuinely had no idea; his family never having bothered to teach him anything supernatural before his 13th birthday when he was officially exiled.
He honestly didn't know why he was allowed to stay that long, especially when the affinity tests were certainly performed at his birth. Perhaps they’d thought he would “Heal” He joked to himself macabrely.
Bored of looking at the crowds he raised his eyes up the familiar walls of the skyscrapers he'd spent nearly his whole life staring at. In the United American Nations, Saint Narie was made unique not just by its huge number of towering skyscrapers. But the walls of the skyscrapers themselves. Unlike every other city in the U.A.N. Here the walls boxing in every street, park, and shops of the city were far from bare.
Everywhere you turned on the streets of Saint Narie, the walls would show bright screens playing live clips of all the city's news. Kids playing soccer in parks, new food trucks, brave stories of volunteers. All put on display as the beating heart of the city's people.
However, Thomas wasn’t watching any of the local news. He had immediately found the first screen showing the other coasts of the U.A.N. to watch the apocalypse in action. Hordes of strange ocean-like beasts stormed the sandy beaches as mixtures of blessed citizens and volunteering people's militias stood knee deep in the filthy red salt water. Huge cement walls stood where the sand turned to dirt, but most of the soldiers were kicking up sand tearing through the many colors and shapes of monsters. Horns, tentacles, and huge bunches of eyes appear most consistently across the water.
Certain screens always showed the most famous Blessed. And the newspaper he'd stolen last month showed today's view was scheduled for his grandfather. The Holy Blood Mage of Saint Narie.
That screen right now showed the back of the beloved Miles patriarch, his wheelchair at least. As he controlled a massive storm of blood. It rolled over the coast in front of the old man like a red hurricane. Decimating the endless tide of ocean monsters without so much as breaking a sweat from miles away. He was a monster. All the while he rocked happily in his wheelchair, the rusty tires squealing horribly, while he sipped a pina colada in front of the cameras.
That footage was followed quickly by an ad for a new local restaurant, featuring garden grown tomatoes, and then a view of his wife and Thomas's mother appeared on screen. The serene Shadow of Saint Narie. The pale, tall woman was hauntingly beautiful and adorned in a black gown. She appeared as if a beautiful nightmare had walked out of someone's sleep to wage war.
Effortlessly ripping beats apart with black constructs. Spinning in and out of their shadows shredding rows of beasts at a time with razor sharp whips, knives, blades, guns, etc. She displayed an endless armory with mastery of every weapon to a terrifying degree.
The footage was projected in beautiful detail. Proudly displaying the gory footage next to the daily goings on of the many citizens of the lively city.
Gotta love grandpa and mom, they’re famous, Thomas thought with a sigh. Real shame about my grandpas' abusive relationships and my mom being rumored to have murdered tons of other sons before I was born, did I mention they're famous! He grouched at himself. No one really cared about his opinion on his family. And he never spoke to anyone long enough for the city to learn he individually was a homeless ex-member of the famous Miles Corp. family.
Really it wasn't like anyone other than Lucy even knew his whole name. Not that Lucy would care what his past was like. Not with a famous life like hers. And no one else ever talked to him. Why would they?
Meaning he was sassing to nobody right now.
Feeling nice and miserable about himself he moved his attention back to the walls and tried to move on. His eyes lost focus for a moment. A male voice somewhere in memories provided a monologue about the wall of Saint Narie for him. And something about tea. It was important he remembered to-
He couldn't remember.
Oh well thought Thomas. He sipped his cheap coffee, Eyes still unfocused as his mind trailed off.
In his head a man's voice was asking him how he felt about the walls.
Their history was complicated and often lost on an outsider. With the first likely appearance of the practice being survivors writing “Alive Inside” on the walls of their homes after waves of Apocalypse Beasts washed over their houses on their way to the West. He felt pride in the city's resilience, and also for the sheer amount of news the city had to display about itself.
Saint Narie was certainly initially made famous just for the spectacle of its strange tradition. No other city had just started posting their city's news all over the street facing walls of the citizens' homes in response to the apocalypse after all.
But it wasn't until 2052 under the newly formed U.A.N. when the United. Government’s, which had been in control of the American refugees from 2044 till 2049, first law was finally implemented. With that the story turned into a famous spectacle for the continent. No easy feat considering how hard communications across the continent had become after the shattering.
Meaning the wall's existence may very well be owed to the U.A.N.s refusals to abuse their power. Fearing another revolution if they simply passed the same laws. They initiated the Risen Icarus project. In which they reworked the same three laws the U.G. had been dismantled for attempting to resolve the apocalypse with. While also devoting a consistent half of the government's budget to military development of the coasts.
This allowed for the re-establishment of American Media under the authority of the dissolved U. G’s First Law, “A reliable and consistent Government voice should be re-established in every city”. Under the U.A.N, a plan for the construction of various media outlets across the continent was carried out.
The government even set aside a wage promised to full time employees of any media outlet that maintained operations in spite of the ongoing end of the world. A benefit that still existed to this day.
This finally allowed for the Alkian continent, the new name chosen for the American continent in honor of its new shape, location, and inhabiting nation. To re-establish constant communication, and eventually for magazines and T.V. to return to the center of a regular citizen's attention in the comfort of the new Cities thanks to the Second Law of the United Governments. “The Blessed should be Paid by the government to protect the citizens.”
Thankfully the tower only let anyone stay inside it for a maximum of 12 hours a day, otherwise the blessed would never leave the damn thing to do the other half of their whole fucking job Thomas thought slightly upset at the nature of the U.A.N.’s money driven Blessed system. No idea why every Blessed suddenly becomes obsessed with being inside the Tower Thomas thought to himself.
Moving on, what about these two laws indicated that the American people were going to revolt soon. Which they had after the U.G.s fifth year in power. What mattered about the second law they passed was, yet again the United Governments prioritized political power while their citizens died. They did this simultaneously blatantly and inefficiently enough to cause riots over the U.G. 's famous three laws which eventually evolved into the 3rd peoples of America revolution.
The next body formed in 2050 with assurance that more revolutions were coming if they failed to utilize their power to actually stabilize the nation during the actual apocalypse.
The U.A.N. of course smartly responded with the pitch of “Crisis Authority” to enable them to do anything and everything. An approach that conveniently still prevented political parties from being found guilty, and women from running for office Thomas thought rolling his eyes they really went for the stars with that “do anything” power.
Politics was all the same, really any group that let the people feel safe would have sufficed, the U.G. was just too blatant with its dismissal of the average person's safety. Hell, maybe even the U.G.’s democratic and economy focused approach would have worked to establish itself admirably in another end of the world scenario. But for a population that had just witnessed the fracturing.
Thomas found himself wincing slightly as he imagined what it would have been like to actually witness the fracturing. To have lived through the turn of the century, and been alive for the events that occurred after the impact of the Heracles meteor in 1997.
The meteor falling directly into the Bermuda triangle. The subsequent supernatural reshuffling of the continents. Monsters emerging from the ocean. Fatalities numbering in the Billions for Humanity as the landmasses of earth were crushed into new shapes and moved into the current shape of a dotted line along the y-axis around the earth, bisecting it into a planet of two interconnected oceans. And finally the seven Apocalypse machines, each called a Tower of some specific human sin rose off the west coast of every new continent.
A series of biblical feats which shattered every notion of what living on earth was and turned life into a hellish game where people fought strange monsters which crawled from the oceans with magical powers for their very survival.
The displaced American citizens were forced to flee to the center of their continent. A mistake the various citizen militias and groups realized immediately as it became clear the entirety of the continent was now bisected by an enormous mountain range. Now simply referred to as the Alkian mountains by citizens of the U.A.N.
Ultimately the mistake cost the crumbling nation an untold number of lives as they rushed towards what they thought were open plains. Only to crash into crowds of fleeing refugees, wrecked ghost towns, and eventually. A brand new, impossibly tall wall of Mountains which the army had mistaken for a cloud front up until it could no longer be denied. The West coast was completely cut off from the East.
Shaking his head Thomas took a long sip of his slightly cooled coffee and tried to move on from moping over the past. There were a lot of bad days in the apocalypse, no one was surprised. Eventually society stabilized and the new world map was drawn. Life moved on at some point.
Or something like that.
A headache was starting to form the more he thought about the lesson. The scent of lavender seemed to be floating through the air. His cheap coffee had gained a faint lemon like after taste. Thomas ignored it.
Can’t afford a trip to the hospital. I’ll just have Lucy cast a healing cantrip over me at some point tonight.
Feeling like the lesson was almost over he pushed on through the growing pain in his head. Saint Narie always had an air of uniqueness, but it was the establishment of media in the apocalypse that made it famous. The critics who viewed the clashing, enormous, and flashing walls praised their beauty and rushed to write about them in their personal blogs, papers, and magazines.
All at once and completely without intentional coordination. Defining one of those strange moments throughout human history where unrelated people across the world are struck with the same inspirations and thoughts.
They each wrote their articles, and as consequence they gave the walls, and the city of Saint Narie itself, its current beating soul. They praised the beauty, yes, but nearly everyone insisted that the shifting nature of the walls, and the wide range of the news itself. Which covered everything from city wide traffic reports to personal notices about how proud a particular family was of their youngest's soccer team this weekend.
All came together to give the entire city a wonderfully “Busy” feeling as if the city itself was breathing and moving all around the people, with the people. Which was a saying so beloved that the people made it their motto. Saint Narie, the busiest city in the U.A.N.
Perhaps the people raised it so proudly in defiance of the reputation one would expect from the city closer to an Ocean tower than any other. Not counting the military base Western point base Alexander which sat on the island just off the coast of course.
That Tower, the Tower of Excess, proudly jutted from the water only 86 miles from the shore. Looming over the coast not even an hour's travel from the first block of citizens. The people simply refused to let such a chilling thought slow them down.
Finally, the voice stopped. The blurry image of an older vaguely familiar man hung in his mind for a moment. But he quickly moved on now that the headache was fading. He turned his head to the side to get back to watching the action on the walls. Explosions and soccer games playing over the heads of a million pedestrians to his left.
Watching the traffic was amusing to Thomas but being able to sit and take in the walls from behind a window in a semi comfy seat. That feeling was itself a particularly bitter desire for most of the homeless in Saint Narie. To the average citizen, stopping and staring at the walls out on the street was nothing more than a particularly annoying habit of Saint Narie’s bums. But they didn't understand the appeal of what they already had.
After all, the walls were completely visible from the windows of their comfy homes, so they never grasped the motivations behind staring in the middle of foot traffic.
Thomas had too few places he could let himself be comfortable over the past near decade. One of them being this very booth, which he had only found after being roughly thrown out of a dozen corner shops just like it. Here however, Andy even generously limited himself to near constant angry glaring and only ever really yelled if he sat in the “Nice Booths” at the back of the shop, right by this shop's request board.
This particular shop's legally mandated screen of course had been installed when literally every other request board was. In every public space of the U.A.N. Thomas thought, rolling his eyes. Andy’s “Nice Booths” really weren't meant for any unbonded. There'd be no point unless you enjoyed reading about all the tragedies occurring across the coasts of the U.A.N. The unbonded world was a totally different place than the world seen by the perspectives of the Blessed who could make millions of crowns from every one of those tragedies.
Thomas, annoyed by his own thoughts, decided he was finally bored of staring at the looping footage of the walls, especially the occasional glimpse of his grandpa's leering grin among the popular footage. The updates came every few hours which made the walls slightly boring second to second, but compelling to refer back to throughout someone's day.
He shifted back in his less than nice booth into a vaguely comfy position and started peering across the room at the source of the nice booths so called “Niceness”. The request board itself was a large black rectangular screen showing thousands of small blocks filled with words in various languages and fonts, all marked with a timer showing how long since the request was made.
Even as he watched a few new ones bubbled up in the middle, glowing a warm shade of light green and counting up from zero, zero, zero. The expensive project had actually been the last Democratic decision of the United Government in 2049. “The installment and maintenance of live crisis tracking in every public space of the Alkian continent.” Planned in 2049 and completed in 2058 by a different active body of power.
All finished just months before the American Dollar lost all its value and therefore power in the face of magic currency from the towers. Crowns being recognized officially as the U.A.N.’s official currency in 2060 after some particularly nasty revolutions that tried to maintain the dollar's legitimacy.
The screens themselves showed up-to-date emergency requests linked to both news stations and apps on every citizen's phones. It had by the hour updates on a continent wide level and updated live for every screen within 500 miles of each request on the off-chance civilians and off duty Blessed could volunteer to help with the crisis.
It was happening again, Thomas realized. Some stream of consciousness was guiding him back to a history lesson. He rubbed his wrists which suddenly hurt with a sharp phantom pain. But no memories came to the front of his mind. Just a man talking about the different governments of this continent.
He sighed. Whatever he thought, letting his mind wander back to the lavender scented room. He could make out a table between him and the man now.
Cross continental communication is managed and directed entirely by the U.A.N., with citizen groups that demonstrate potential in that field being purchased and worked into the government's program regularly. The U.A.N. tries to be extremely hands off with the self-governing approaches of every single group in the government. As if still worried about the revolutionary citizens that put it in power deciding they don't want them to rule anymore.
But really the few revolutions of American citizens only occurred due to the government's extreme incompetence in the face of the apocalypse, something that honestly probably could not be blamed on the government considering the circumstances. The U.A.N. had a lot of breathing room for mistakes compared to its predecessor the U.G. They were just too scared to use most of it.
Case and point. The U.G. before them had always been damned, but the third law they passed really is what pushed the civilians into a revolution. After it was finished, every dollar was voted to have been spent under duress and therefore “Crisis Spending”. Which allowed them to establish the entire store screen installation process as volunteer work at every step of the nationwide project. All for the sake of “helping as many citizens as possible”, the project's core motto.
And it did. However, the project bugged the U.N.’s citizens. It was unclear in its goals or limitations, had an insane budget well in the trillions, ignored different states opinions, and refused to pay its own bill. But most of all, it left everyone with the distinct feeling that there were a few, very obvious, cheaper, and likely more effective solutions.
Yes, in the case of the “United Governments”, everyone felt the faction was entirely too “Government”, and it was fittingly dissolved just five years after its creation and marked as a success by political historians, with a helpful note to just move on tucked next to it.
The voice of the man faded away. Seemingly content with just breaking down U.A.N.’s relationship with its own monarchy like power and the reasons the U.G. before them failed.
Annoyed and slightly bored, Thomas tried to read one of the many requests from across the shop out of idle curiosity. “Crystal bones, whole only. 10 crowns a piece.” Nonsense to him he thought while he savored his coffee. You'd think Crystal Bones would be terrible for supporting some kind of monster.
He continued to muse while scanning the request. Oh, look at that “Known source: Crystal Skeletons Locale: Garnet Forest” Nothing to support if you're a skeleton, makes sense in a magic tower kind of way he thought. He began chugging the rest of his coffee and preparing to leave again. The cold outside was unpleasant, but no amount of warmth was worth enduring Andy’s unnerving glares.
Coffee finished, Thomas got out of his booth and waved to Andy on the way out of the shop. A quick flash of lavender caught his nose and he almost stumbled. His body reacting to a passerbys perfume as if it were allergic. He almost stumbled into the crowd but pulled back at the last second. Regaining his feeling and control of his body at the last second.
Just in time to feel a stranger's elbow slam into his nose.
He was suddenly staring at the sky, hot liquid seemed to be filling his mouth and his face felt strangely hot as he stumbled back a step or two. Thankfully at 115 pounds, the scary thin 21-year-old was too small to even be felt through the thick winter coats he stumbled into. Otherwise, he may have been beaten on the sidewalk again.
Feeling lucky, Thomas didn't want to owe Elaine any more money for her healing spells or show up to work bleeding on her floor again. He stepped back into his gap in the crowd. Then all the pieces clicked together in his mind. Thomas realized he must have stepped too close to a wealthy pedestrian when he left the shop.
He was all too used to being elbowed or punched in the face at a speed too quick for him to register. It was a common interaction between the blessed and unbonded after all. At least he thought the punch was from a Blessed. He was relatively confident in his ability to dodge the strikes of the typical unbonded pedestrians who were so easily upset with his presence.
Holding his hand to his face to staunch the blood flow he looked back to see if he might be able to pick out the attacker. Only to plainly see a girl walking away in the opposite direction, idly texting on her phone. A slightly older teenage girl with a beautiful red bird covering nearly half her right arm and wearing an outfit that screamed summer on the crowded winter streets.
Thomas was immediately sure she was his assailant. Her outfit was the equivalent of a blood-soaked glove at the crime scene. She was clearly a Blessed who felt herself so much better than regular folk.
She was only better technically Thomas thought sarcastically. For example, Thomas would be dead by now if he had imitated her in wearing a crop top and designer shorts out of the clinic this morning. He pulled his collar back up over his nose and ears and got back to walking, mumbling apologies to the people he had held up with his staring.
He couldn't quite push down the emotions yet though, he tried to recall her tattoo sleeve in his mind. A red bird, probably some breed of phoenix he thought bitterly Of course. One of the most sought-after powers in the world. Even perfect for tower climbing, she probably has a whole career laid out in front of her just for being born.
He walked along grinding his teeth for a few moments before letting out another sigh and dropping the unpleasant line of thought for a more familiar self-hating narrative, his supernatural affinity. He had long since moved past his jealousy at the more blessed half of society, hell Thomas wasn't even mad at his family for dropping him into this life anymore.
How could he be, once it was revealed his spirit affinity appeared as: 0, something previously thought impossible. He had understood everything. Letting the heir apparent to a tower climbing company get the position when the kid would never even summon his own sprit or use an artifact of any kind would have just been idiotic.
Breaking into his thoughts, he heard a nearby man's voice whispering “Dammit! Can’t even hep me with the fucking cold? Been feeding you for years. Something, anything would be nice! I’m freezing here!”
Another fire type thought Thomas. The apathy he felt straining. But no real emotion ever flared up from within him. Probably pissed because he saw that girl. Funny that both of us were more focused on her outfit after watching her break my nose. He chuckled to himself at his own dark joke. Then focused on getting back to his little alley. Compared to a person with a spirit. He really had no reason to be mad. Not like he would ever amount to anything anyways.