dryskies_btb - Dead End 2: Deathly Di-Di-Doo Ch.24

[No-Mage's-Land]

[AN: If you’re not feeling this World of Darkness arc, rest assured that I only have one more chapter of it after this one. I’ve been enjoying it, personally, but then, I already know and love WoD, so I’m obviously biased.

We’ll be back in the DC ‘verse after the next chapter, probably for a plotline rather than a bar story. Something to do with Sean’s ‘Aspecting’, I’m pretty sure, which might pull a whole bunch of interesting characters up in its wake (Endless, Justice League, maybe even the New Gods ‘cause Aspecting sets Sean as, ya know, an Aspect of Existence and that kinda concerns everyone in DC lol).

That ‘Aspecting’ process definitely won’t be all smooth sailing. There won’t be ripples so much as an outright cannonball splash. But that’s part of the fun of throwing a big rock into the still water of the status quo, isn’t it? ;]

IIIII

— THE Morrigan (Hecate) —

The world hung on a moment.

“T+00:00:02. Your mission, the work of your chronicle tonight, has begun.”

THE Morrigan acknowledged their Storyteller with an affirming nod to herself and looked around where they’d arrived. She couldn’t help but hum in approval. As a mere wage slave, the base of operations that SAR had arranged for them would’ve been a thing of dreams. Simple dreams, but dreams, still.

Yet now — THE Morrigan stood straighter — she was no ‘mere wage slave’. She was DIVINE; yes, she was Awakened, and one day, she would ascend from her mortal toil to rule from a realm of gods and goddesses.

Internally, she also couldn’t help but giggle to herself. As fun and natural as it was to live her character, she was still Hecate at her core: an Avatar of Magic that THE Morrigan would’ve looked up to. She did, actually, in the odd but fluid merger of reincarnating player and fully realized character.

‘How novel,’ THE Morrigan thought. ‘Looking up to oneself from both without and within. I must say, Sean, you’ve outdone yourself with this Reincarnating Magic. Is your Aspect settling in there as well as we’re settling in here?’

Sean chuckled. “I’m working through it. Just like Hecate and THE Morrigan are one and the same, in truth, Sean Caine and Reincarnation have been one and the same for a while now. It’s just a matter of realizing it for myself, and mounting the Aspected mantle from there.”

‘I’m proud of you, Sean,’ Didi thought, joining the conversation. ‘Take your time with that mounting. There’s no rush. As much as I wish for you to rise as my Aspected equal, there’s never been any real need for it. Reincarnation — Samsara and Change; I chose you as my Hand regardless. I chose you because you drifted into my lap and I saw you needed an anchor. And I’m glad I did, because you’ve helped anchor me in turn. An Aspect of Reincarnation, as much as you would complement me, changes nothing.’

“I know, Didi.” Sean’s smile was audible. “You still made my Aspecting possible with your choice, though, so thank you.”

‘Always. Until Death; until Life Anew.’

Gabriel sniffled and cooed, ‘Awawawawa~… Didi and Caine are just too cute-! Anyone who thinks I should be jealous hasn’t seen them together! I’m absolutely their number one fan by now!’

Didi smiled back. ‘And I’m the number one fan for you and Sean, Gabriel. I’m glad you came to join us.’

‘Ivy-!’ Harley/Baby cried out dramatically. ‘Ivy, I’m drowning in the wholesomeness! Quick, take my hand!’

‘The moment I do, you’re going to pull me in to drown with you,’ Ivy/Rose flatly retorted.

With a clap and a laugh that echoed through the hanging, Storytelling moment, Sean addressed all of them. “Alright, enough breaking character for now! Don’t let yourself get distracted by me. We’ll all have the chance to catch up after your story here has been told. You have a chronicle to live for yourselves first. Go on; embrace it!”

The world stepped from the hanging moment into the next. Through the portal behind them, Mr. Monroe and Mrs. Johnson left them with some final guidance and advice.

“You’ll find your first anomaly on the western side of Golden Gate Park,” Mr. Monroe told them. “We’ve gotten reports that the Murphy Windmill there is… well, we’re not quite sure; that’s the problem!” He was grinning, wild and excited.

“From the data a sleeper watchdog sent in, it sounds like a ‘dimensional bleed’ anomaly to me, not anything you should encounter hostile entities while dealing with, so I’ll leave the problem-solving to you. Just go with your Awakened instinct; I have faith in you! And if you need advice, I’m just a tap on your watch away!”

Mrs. Johnson nodded. “I’ve already informed the local construct that SAR now has a team in the area. They’re more concerned with maintaining the foothold they have, so you won’t have to worry about overreach or interference. A good thing, too, because the SanFran construct is sorely lacking Void Engineer representation; it’s run by a Progenitor named Ken Himiitsu, with mostly NWO and Iteration X secondaries.”

“Director Himiitsu told me in no uncertain terms that he doesn’t consider an SAR team worth rousing himself for, or even meeting with,” She continued flatly. “You’re permitted to operate in ‘his’ city, but he also warned that ‘making trouble’ will see that permission revoked rather spectacularly.”

“Trouble how?” Rose asked.

“Knowing Progenitors? Anything that requires him to look up from whatever genetic ‘miracle’ he’s making that day,” Mr. Monroe scoffed.

“The same definition of trouble can’t be applied to the local NWO presence,” Mrs. Johnson warned. “If you make the news, even as a mention on the 2 P.M. segment, expect a visit from our black-suited allies. You’ll want to avoid that visit if at all possible.”

“If we… make the news… we would already… have bigger things to… worry about, no?” Solomon asked.

“You’d think so, yes,” Mrs. Johnson deadpanned. “But the NWO loathes being left out of any chance to ‘solve problems’… and make themselves your biggest one in the process.”

“So don’t fuck with the New World Order?” Alice snarked. “I could’ve told you that.”

“You didn’t, though~” Baby teased, nudging Alice with an elbow.

Alice nudged her back twice as hard. Then Baby nudged her again, and Alice struck back once more. The Nudging continued until they were outright shoving each other.

Rose, caught in the same body as one of the Nudgers, just sighed. “Right. We’re completely on our own, then? No support from the wider Technocracy?”

THE Morrigan scoffed, “I would turn it down even if it could be expected. The Void Engineers seem tolerable, but the Divine will be no slave to the New World Order!”

“Thankfully, we shouldn’t have to compromise that if all goes according to plan,” Didi soothed.

Gabriel beamed a bright smile. “Indeed! What could go wrong?”

“Hm-hm-h-Hmm~...” Above and beyond, Sean hummed an all-too-innocent tune. “Oh, don’t mind me. Just rolling for encounters.”

IIIII

— Alice the Damnation (Alice) —

She knew things weren’t going to be as they seemed the moment the group stepped past the boundaries of Golden Gate Park.

It wasn’t a small feeling, the difference in the air, in the Veil. This bastion of nature in a land monopolized by urban development was not theirs.

To Alice, the shift was immediately noticeable. She told the others. It warmed her heart that they didn’t shrug her off. They would’ve had every right to. She was just a runaway (in-character, at least).

Instead, Solomon had nodded, slow and ponderous. Gabriel had taken up the vanguard, her head on a swivel. THE Morrigan called upon Divine signs in preparation.

‘I hear the calls of many birds, the skittering of critters in the grass, and the wind between the leaves,’ She thought to their Storyteller.

“So you do. What do you intend to interpret from them?” Dad asked in turn.

Proudly, THE Morrigan explained her thought process. ‘They are signs of nature. I will keep the Satyr-God Pan in mind, stocking magicks of nature for when we need them.’

“Hmm,” Dad hummed. “It is a Sign of the Divine; your Avatar would aid you there. No immediate action, though?”

THE Morrigan shook her head. ‘Just preparation, should we find ourselves… unwelcome.’

“I’ll lower any difficulty checks for nature-based magicks by one, then,’ Dad allowed.

‘I want to use the Veil of the Umbra as a… template…? No, just a guideline…? I want to find a trail for us to walk,’ Alice thought, her intentions starting strong and floundering slightly towards the end.

“You have your Focus-Watch; its scanner can add to your Avatar,” Dad reminded her. “Consider it an automatic success.”

Encouraged by the Storyteller’s reminder, Alice looked down at the watch on her wrist. The data she found there shouldn’t have made any sense to her. It was all technomagick-BS that she wasn’t trained for — fluctuating graphs and shifting maps of an alien sort of logic. But somehow… it just did.

Looking from her watch to the world around her, Alice saw the rhythm in the data, how it had been gathered by listening Enlightenment, and where it could be applied. She saw the Shimmering Veil of her Avatar — a haze of spiritual reality that was at once more real than and so very distant from the physical one.

The Umbra — realm of spirits, as Alice barely understood it — was an overlaying sea of metaphor. And that was just the surface. She couldn’t see how deep the spiritual waters went. The Veil twisted when she tried to look, warning her how easily, how quickly, how wholly she would find herself lost and drowning.

Alice kept her eyes on the surface with that warning.

They’d crossed a bulwark to enter the park — to Alice’s new senses, it seemed so great. It was a border between nations where one shouldn’t be. But there were cracks that showed themselves the longer she looked. The border was far from absolute.

A web was woven overhead and below the earth, propping up young nature, old intentions, and renewed designs. The park transitioned from a barren past to this structured Wyld with it. Woven order was enforced upon natural chaos, but both were fresh — green — in the grand scheme of the world, both Umbral and physical.

Through the ordered chaos, Alice found them a path. It took them through the park, westward. They weren’t harried or hassled as they walked it at Alice’s direction.

At a pond along the path, a duck spirit declared itself king, accepting tax and tribute in thrown bread. A fox ducked into the ordered flora, disappearing down ways only it knew. A set of bathrooms stood like a rest stop on a long road, wafting smoke and pouring disembodied laughter from the thousands of teenage rebels who’d hotboxed it over the years.

Alice found herself awed by the world beneath the world. It inspired grand ideas of magick in her mind, ways she could call upon spirits to alter the ‘real’ world.

At various points on their multi-mile walk — just a group of friends enjoying the park — the world hung on moments.

“There…”

“And here…”

“So far; so close…”

“Watching… Yet… Chillin’…”

Dad voiced what Solomon sensed, Survivor’s Intuition aware of eyes upon their group.

“We are… not… alone…” He said softly. “Do not look… To engage is to… garner attention before… we are ready…”

As hard as Alice tried, she couldn’t help but look. She didn’t find anything in the Umbra, nothing and no one watching them.

All she could see were her Awakened friends. They took on larger shadows as paradoxically bright lights in the Umbra, past the Veil. Didi’s was kind, gentle, and Heartfelt — a steady beat. Savage was a Sword in the storm. Ophy looked to live more in the Dream than in the waking world.

Gabriel, stepping up to lead them, was a swirling spiral of True Faith. Alice could see her wholehearted belief in the Will of Man — their choices and consequences. It forged the Umbra into an ever-straight, ever-assured path ahead of her, even down the trail Alice led them. The spirits, both ordered and naturally chaotic, were at once cowed and enthralled.

“The windmill, there,” Gabriel called out, seeing their destination first.

Regretfully, Alice pulled her face from the surface of the Umbra. Then, she paused. She tried to do so again. It made no difference. She snapped her gaze down to her watch. The readings there were off the charts.

“Uh, you guys seeing this?” Baby asked.

Alice didn’t know what the others were seeing, but she couldn’t tell where the Veil began and ended here.

“Very Quixote; much Don,” Ophy muttered.

The windmill they were tasked to investigate loomed, and the ocean just beyond seemed to rise even higher until it was a wall and the horizon was a ceiling. It was a giant before that canvas of waves. It was just a structure overlooking the ocean. The arms reached in a mighty circle, grasping and tearing the spiritual ground below with automation born of natural forces. With each turn of the windmill, with each gust of wind from the sea, the shadows deepened.

“It’s… digging,” Alice realized. “It’s digging into the Veil.”

“Thinning layers of the Veil, as Alice could tell you all,” Dad narrated. “To sleepers, this area falls ethereal during the day and all too unnaturally real during the night. They witness things they shouldn’t have to concern themselves with, roused from the Umbra. A tourist has already lost herself to the terrible majesty, following the legend of that knight who tilted at windmill-giants. Her vacation has been derailed by the spark of Awakening it struck within her. But this is not her story…”

“How are we supposed to deal with this?” Simmy asked in sign language.

“Silence! Align! Reinforce!” Savage declared. “We must slay the beast and lay it to rest; we must plant it firmly so it can grow anew!”

“Yeah, big guy?” Baby asked sarcastically. “What’s that actually mean, though?”

Just as boisterous, Savage grinned. “I haven’t the foggiest!”

“The arms,” Alice noticed. “In the Umbra, they aren’t synced up to the physical ones.”

“They turn independently,” Didi agreed. “I can hear two Heartbeats in the structure, one of brick and mortar and one of… nagging, corrupting spirit.”

“But why…?” Simmy signed and wondered.

“Something must have set them in motion separately,” Gabriel mused, setting her shoulders a moment later. “We need to get closer.”

“HAHA, into the belly of the beast!” Savage exclaimed, raising his Sword high to lead the charge.

He and Gabriel went first; Alice and Solomon went last. The big guy turned before entering the windmill. He locked eyes with… something… back down the trail they’d come from. Alice watched him raise a flat palm in a wave to the distance, letting it drift.

“What was that?” Alice asked.

“A wanderer’s sign…” Solomon answered. “I showed… we mean no… harm…”

Alice glanced back where he’d waved. She still saw nothing out of place, but she trusted Solomon’s Intuition.

The public-facing space within the windmill wasn’t what they were after, but it was thankfully empty of visitors, at least. They passed through and up the stairs to a locked door. Baby&Rose picked the lock with barely any effort, an automatic success; the windmill’s mechanisms lay beyond.

The whole building seemed to wheeze with the wind. Gabriel immediately set about looking around for anything out of place between the turning gears.

“Perception 1/Investigation 2,” Their Storyteller said. “3 dice, difficulty 6. Oh-ho: 8, 9, 10! Good rolls, Wife! You see a hitch in one of the gears. Looking closer, you find~…”

“This!” Gabriel exclaimed, pointing but not daring to touch what she’d found.

The rest of them crowded around to see a small device in one of the gear’s teeth. It was a small orb, spiky all around like a sea urchin, and it blended into the shadows perfectly. Just looking at it, Alice recoiled, and Didi frowned fiercely.

“It’s Heartbeat is… It’s more of a constant, whining note than a Beat,” Didi said.

“What is it doing?” Simmy asked her Avatar.

Dad conveyed its answer to the rest of them, “Prime 3/Matter 1, and a Question lowers the difficulty to 4. Arete 3, rolling… That’s unfortunate: 2, 1, 7. The botch discards your one success, Simmy.

“The device, it RESISTS… You are not its Creator; it will not answer to you. And so, as you see it, the smooth black metal of the surface is all there is.”

‘[… Oh, phooey.]’ Simmy pouted.

“Let me try,” Gabriel offered. “If we can’t see its mechanism, perhaps its Memories will shed some light.”

“Prime 3/Mind 3 used to assess Memories of magickal past, all that the device has encountered and experienced. Arete 3, difficulty 6: 2, 6, 9 — two successes, nice~…

“The technomagick at work — and you now see the signs — still evades you, but it was made by domineering hands. A master, and not just in skill; an engineer who builds to destroy all technological dominion but their own.

“‘You are mine,’ the device’s memories whisper the words of its Creator. ‘You serve only me. All like you will serve only me…’

“It is part of a set, placed here as one descending node in a parasitic network. It remembers its work here, digging bit by bit into the Umbra’s Gauntlet. All it will ever be is a hitch in the gears. That is its proper place in the order: creation wholly submitted to Creator.”

Alice glared at the seemingly simple device. Everything about it caused her Avatar to bristle, that purposeful fraying of the Veil.

“We should destroy it,” She said.

“And learn nothing?” Rose shot back; Baby nodded. “Remove it, for sure, but don’t go crushing important evidence willy-nilly!”

“How are we supposed to dislodge but not destroy it, then?” THE Morrigan asked, scoffing slightly.

“I will Cut it out-!” Savage began, wielding his Avatar high.

“ZZzzzzZZz~” The sound of sleep echoed somehow

“Ophy takes action,” Dad suddenly narrated, derailing their argument and Savage’s solution. “Correspondence 3 channeled into a dozing shift, aided, strangely enough, by her flaw. Difficulty 6, Arete 3: 10, 7, 9, three successes, one critical. Heh, I shouldn’t have expected anything less.

Towards the back of the group, Ophy had dozed off for just a moment. Sleeping, she stepped forward. Unconsciously, her magick responded to the situation. Her Focus-Watch dinged as it tracked her Dreams.

The space all around the device was isolated by a Dream. It came drifting loose on a restful wave and landed inertly in Ophy’s hand. Like her, the device slept.

Ophy hummed without opening her eyes, “Hm. Solved.”

“I hear only one Heartbeat,” Didi confirmed. “Just stone, mortar, and turning gears.”

“Uh…” Gabriel took a moment to regather herself, staring at the still sleepwalking Ophy. “That’s… good…? Yes, good. Okay! Now we send that back to Mr. Monroe to analyze, and that’ll be one silenced anomaly under our belt!”

She grinned optimistically as she laid out the plan. It was infectious. Alice couldn’t even find it in herself to grumble.

“If that was what we can expect from SAR work, I think we’ll handle ourselves quite well,” THE Morrigan said.

Descending the windmill, they emerged to a still-thinned Veil. But at least it wasn’t being worn thinner by the minute.

“There is still the business of the device itself and its ‘Creator’, though,” Rose reminded. “Just one was enough to manifest an anomaly, and it’s part of a set. We don’t know how many more of them-…”

She trailed off as they found someone outside the windmill, casually pacing more for some instinctive need to move than any anxiety. He was young, blond, and handsome, with a ‘surfer-bro’ sort of air about him. He wore an open Hawaiian shirt despite the slight chill in the air. And he was clearly waiting for them.

“Sup,” The surfer greeted. “I’m gonna need you to come with me, my dudes and dudettes. Keep those thingy-ma-bobs on ya wrists where I can see ‘em, kapeesh? Totally not trying to shark-out right now, and we really just wanna talk.”

He grinned at them. It should’ve been charming. The shark-teeth in his mouth made it less so.

The world hung on a moment, and Alice could practically hear Dad’s own grin. “Oh, yes. Remember that encounter roll from earlier? I rolled a 10. Lucky, lucky~… Meet the Rokea: Weresharks. Yes, Weresharks. I hope you all know how to swim.”

IIIII

— Gabriel (Gabriel) —

They were taken back through the park, following the Wereshark that had honestly asked nicely, much to Gabriel’s surprise, to the Steinhart Aquarium.

His name, as he told it, was Barrel-Surfer. Gabriel didn’t know how to react to the rather ‘chill’ Wereshark. So she turned to her co-Avatar for a lead. The world hung on a moment, mid-step.

‘Uhm, Caine?’ Gabriel thought to their Storyteller. ‘Would it be too much to ask for some out-of-context advice here since things seem to be… escalating?’

Caine chuckled. “I’ll throw you a bit of a life jacket, sure. What I would suggest most is that you keep in mind that shark stereotypes in popular culture have very little basis in actual nature. Real sharks aren’t the mindless, bloodthirsty behemoths of ‘JAWS’. They swim, they hunt, they breed, they survive; no part of that cycle is monstrous or unnatural.”

‘But some people do believe the stereotypes, don’t they? Wouldn’t that affect Consensus?’ Rose asked.

“To a degree, yes. That would be why shark attacks do happen.” Caine replied. “But how many people have even seen a shark in the flesh? The vast majority of sharks exist outside of human Consensus, firmly in the domain of natural spirits. There, they are as the Wyld defines them.

“All shifters walk that line between human and nature. They are ‘Fera’, chosen by the spirit of the world, Gaia, to be Her champions and defenders. That gives them something of a pass from human Consensus, but it also means they have to answer to spirits and to Gaia Herself. The war Fera fight is beyond ‘just’ humanity, ‘just’ Consensus, and even beyond mages, though they contribute to the war in their own ways.”

‘Is that… possible?’ Alice thought. ‘I was under the impression that mages were kinda-sorta at the top of the World of Darkness.’

“They are a powerful part of it, but no ‘game line’, for lack of a better phrase, is truly supreme. Vampires can be just as important as mages, just as powerful, too. As can Fera. As can Fae. As can Hungry Dead. As can Wraiths. As can, to a much rarer degree, Mummies. It’s a living, breathing World of Darkness, and ever interconnected.”

‘Mummies?!’ Savage barked the thought with enthusiasm.

‘We don’t talk about Mummies,’ Alice deadpanned. ‘They were mentioned in the first session, and eating one is somehow a Chekhov’s Gun for me.’

“Anything can happen in the World of Darkness,” Caine chuckled. “Especially exceptions. But I digress.

“Portions of the war the Fera fight will certainly be important to you as mages, so I’ll share this information for free. They are the Chosen of Gaia, and Gaia is the world as it springs from the supreme spiritual Triat of Weaver, Wyrm, and Wyld: Order, Destruction, and the Natural Chaos in between.

“Alice, you would’ve seen the Weaver and the Wyld overlapping in the park’s near-Umbra: Nature as brought about by human Order. The Wyrm would be the destructive and corrupting forces of the world — even more so in the world as it is now, but that’s a story for another time. As an example, that device you found, whatever its true purpose, carries aspects of the Wyrm in how it drove its host spirit to dig into the Umbra’s Veil.

“Now, Fera serve Gaia. Some do so by claiming the Weaver, most claim the Wyld, and a rare, twisted few claim the Wyrm as its corruption spirals out of control in modern nights.

“Rokea are likely to claim the Wyld, defending Gaia’s waters from deep-water aliens, human overreach, and the out-of-control corruption of the Wyrm. They are as much shark as they are human; you can bet that they’ll act according to their spirits and their Wyld natures, but they aren’t only the shark stereotypes that you might expect.

“The rest, I’ll leave you to find out for yourselves. Why are these Rokea on land, even so close to the shore? Why did they come seeking conversation instead of attacking outright and tearing you to pieces?”

‘Cause they’re just misunderstood Were-teeth-puppies!’ Baby exclaimed.

‘Maybe,’ Rose deadpanned back in the same mind. ‘Or maybe you’re seeing cuteness in danger, as always.’

‘We’ll find out for ourselves,’ Gabriel thought firmly. ‘Barrel-Surfer has been polite so far. Damning him just for his nature and the potential danger he represents is wrong. We’re going to hear him out, at the very least.’

THE Morrigan mentally sighed, ‘I shall keep my Divine magicks primed.’

The advantage of being able to coordinate through the Storytelling system of their chronicle couldn’t be ignored, Gabriel noted. They had their plan to see this meeting through before they’d even followed Barrel-Surfer into the aquarium, and he’d heard none of their conversation, much less the valuable information Caine had gifted them.

With an easy swagger to his stride, Barrel-Surfer led them past the populated public areas of the aquarium.

“It’s not much, dude, but it’s home away from home,” He said, chuckling lightly.

“You live in the aquarium?” Gabriel asked, stepping up to act as the voice of their team.

“When we’re on land, yeah,” Barrel-Surfer nodded. “Kelp-Stalker is the one who actually works here; I’m, like, just riding her wave, heh.”

“It’s a place of power,” THE Morrigan observed. “Poseidon favors you.”

“Woah, Poseidon?! Like, no way, dude! He must be a gnarly spirit!” Barrel-Surfer exclaimed excitedly, very much seeming like the misunderstood ‘Were-teeth-puppy’ Baby had declared him.

“Ah…” THE Morrigan was brought up short by his excitement. “He… must be, yes…? I’ll be honest, I was just trying to relate to you.”

Barrel-Surfer laughed, “Greek ain’t really our style, but we’ll always welcome ocean spirits, dude!”

“If you are so focused on the sea, why did you call out to us by the windmill?” Simmy signed.

Blankly, Barrel-Surfer stared at her gesturing hands. “Like, huh?”

Didi translated for Simmy. Barrel-Surfer lit back up with a bright, easy-going smile. “Oh! Sorry, dude, I only know Diving Signs. It’s cool that you landies have your own version, though.”

“You… don’t know what sign language is?” Alice asked incredulously.

“Dudette, if I’m not catching a wave or coming to visit Kelp-Stalker, I’m swimming my freakin’ tail off!” Barrel-Surfer laughed. “If you want someone who knows, like, anything, you want her, not me.

“Anyway, I came to get y’all ‘cause Kelp-Stalker claimed the whole park as an extension of her land-grotto here, and she likes to keep an eye on things so close to the shore. Wouldn’t want the wolves to start getting ideas. Or whatever you lot are, I guess. She’ll do the talkin’, though; I’m just the messenger.”

They entered a room in the backstage sections of the aquarium as he told them that. It was a large and open space, situated above and around a massive aquarium tank. The whole team stopped to stare down into the water from the catwalks just above the surface.

It was… It was more than it should’ve been. Memories: Gabriel could hear waves crashing above a reef. The water here was deep, not physically but spiritually. The Umbra plunged right into the true ocean, bare miles away.

From the depths, as they peered deeper than any sleeper could, there was movement. It surged upward toward the surface without disrupting the aquarium’s actual exhibit at all. Then, the burst that broke the tension sent spiritual water flying in all directions. The surging creature leaped from the Umbral depths to land beside them on the catwalk.

It stood ten feet tall, a shark in the shape of something more than man. For a moment, all Gabriel could focus on were the rows and rows of teeth in its mouth.

“Partial Delirium,” Caine narrated in an unfortunately fleeting moment of respite. “The primal response Fera instill in humans who see them. The exact emotion is based on Willpower, and since it’s only ‘partial’ for Rokea, you all get +2. The ‘least’ reaction you’ll have is Controlled Fear, and the ‘most’ is Bloodlust/Curiosity.”

In the face of the monstrous beast of the primal sea, the team stood strong. The worst reaction, as Caine said, was Controlled Fear. Even then, Alice and Simmy took only one step back. Gabriel faced down the Rokea while suppressing a different reaction. So much of her wanted to lash out at it with True Faith and push the beast back into the sea, no matter how bloody the battle would be.

Then, the beast smirked at them — still all teeth — and the Delirium faded.

“Strong hearts, strong minds, strong spirits,” It praised. “Don’t worry; it’s not my feeding time. You’re safe here. I welcome you into my grotto as guests.”

Barrel-Surfer laughed, “Always gotta make an entrance, sis!”

The Wereshark who must’ve been Kelp-Stalker made a motion so human that Gabriel could only let herself relax in turn: she rolled her eyes at her brother. Then came the shift, a rapid, uncurling sort of change that left Kelp-Stalker looking so similar to Barrel-Surfer.

She was blonde, pretty, and fit like a surfer. She smiled at her brother with a pair of ‘sharkbite’ piercings in her lower lip.

“Shove off, freeloader.”

“Never! You can’t get rid of me!”

“Why would I get rid of you when I can put you to work with fetch quests?”

“Like, gasp, sis! That’s all I’m good for?”

“You certainly aren’t working to pay your share any other way.”

Gabriel realized something as she watched them go back and forth like that. These were people. Siblings. And it seemed that whatever corner of the world they’d carved out for themselves here, it was just them. Sibling sharks on land; they might’ve even been outcasts from the rest of their kind.

“That. Was. Awesome!” Baby exclaimed. “Like, holy shark! What kind of sharks are you?!”

“If it’s not a faux pas to ask,” Rose added to temper her other half’s question.

Barrel-Surfer looked at Kelp-Stalker. “Uh… Is it a… that thingy to ask us that, sis?”

“Probably,” Kelp-Stalker sighed. “But it’s not like there’s a ‘real’ shark here to bring them to task. We’re Threshers; Homid-born, though. Can’t much fuck up the culture if we never got the invite to it in the first place.”

“My… condolences…” Solomon said slowly and earnestly. “What you’ve made here… on your own… It is… good. You survive.”

Barrel-Surfer grinned at that praise, but it seemed to strike Kelp-Stalker hard in a different way. She stared at Solomon, so vulnerable for just a moment. Then, her inner strength returned, and she nodded firmly.

“Yeah. I wouldn’t have it any other way. ‘Course, that doesn’t mean I can afford to be lax and let everyone run all over us. So you lot, whoever and whatever you are, why are you here?”

‘They know as little about the wider world as we do,’ THE Morrigan realized and thought through their Storytelling network.

‘We could choose to deceive them,’ Savage pointed out, playing Devil’s Advocate; he didn’t sound eager to do so.

‘We won’t,’ Gabriel decided. ‘They’ve done no wrong by us. They deserve to know about the threat to their domain that we averted.’

Gabriel took the lead, answering Kelp-Stalker’s question. “We are Awakened agents tasked with handling an anomaly in your territory. The windmill by the shore; its spirit was being… corrupted.”

She showed the Rokea siblings the still-sleeping device they’d found there, careful not to prick herself on its urchin-like spines.

Immediately, Kelp-Stalker swore, “Ugh! Fucking urchins! Nothing I hate more!”

Barrel-Surfer stared at the urchin device with an uncharacteristically thoughtful look on his face. “Dude, I’ve… I’ve smelled that thing before. The spirit. All over the Bay.”

“‘It is a part of a set, one descending node in a parasitic network’,” Gabriel whispered, repeating Caine’s Storytelling words on what her magick had found.

Kelp-Stalker immediately took her brother’s word as the truth, frowning. “That can’t be good. Do you remember where? Can you find them again?”

Barrel-Surfer grinned, bright and confident. “If it’s under the waves, I can find it!”

“What do we do when we find more of these urchin-things?” Kelp-Stalker turned on Gabriel with a demand for information.

“They’re technomagick and must be rather expendable by design, so sufficient spiritual force will likely destroy them,” Gabriel guessed.

“I’m more worried about the ones that might be scattered around on land,” Rose said.

Didi nodded in agreement. “There are likely more places of power outside the water than in it. More fuel for these mechanical pests to turn against the Veil, and larger consequences if they should be left to do so.”

“This is… larger than one… anomaly,” Solomon said.

Alice sighed, “Of course it is… Escalation, who?”

As soon as she said it, the world hung on a moment. “Rolling initiative…”

IIIII

— Ophy (Ophis) —

“Hn.”

Ophy could see it now. She should’ve seen it sooner. Though she had put the spiky little device to sleep with her Dream, it too dreamed. Tiny dreams. Insignificant dreams. But still.

The enslaved techno-pest-spirit had alerted its Creator to their interference. That Creator had clearly reacted. Troublesome…

The trail of tiny dreams was being stalked by waking hunters; Ophy could hear them now. They came crawling and fluttering and thrumming along to emerge in force from the Dream. When the Dream hardened in this shark-shifting place of power, they sprang early and flocked the rest of the way through the waking world under cloak and shadow so the sleepers could not strike back at the Creator with their own unconscious Dreams of Paradox.

Spiked and chained to that distant, malicious Creator, they came.

They were technomagick beasts more than mere pests — drones of meticulous and hostile design. Some were small, red-eyed orbs with spiked wings that they clearly didn’t need for flight. About the size of a man’s head, they served as the swarm for the larger hunters.

Those larger hunters were looming angels of mechanical nightmare, four strong. Sharp shards formed fragmented silhouettes. When they arrived, they unfurled themselves in spirit and steel.

Ophy frowned most fiercely. “Nn. Nasty nightmares.”

Alice threw her hands in the air. “I just HAD to say something!”

“Worry not; we have protection most Divine,” THE Morrigan proudly declared.

Despite her ‘big talk’, the sharks reacted first to the intrusion upon their Spot of Safe Napping (and whatever else people used homes for, Ophy supposed).

One of the smaller hunters came rushing forth on phantom wings. Its red eye buzzed with Dreaming fury. It loosed a lance at Kelp-Stalker. She’d already shifted back to her warform, and the lance seemed to splash off her smooth skin. Her brother now joined her, too.

Over that Spot of Safe Napping — and idly, Ophy wondered how sharks slept… — the pair of siblings fought for everything they held dear.

The sharks leaped to make metal chum. The world hung on a moment. “Breach x2, Killing Bite x2 — Gifts granted, now used. The underwater spirits of the grotto flock to its defense, aiding those who would defend them. In such a special and protected place, you’ll enjoy quite a bit of freedom from Paradox. But beware: that freedom bites both ways.”

‘Best get Vulgar, then!’ Savage declared, laughing at the top of his lungs.

Barrel-Surfer snapped his jaws shut around the first small hunter-drone, soaking the laser lance it frantically fired into the gaping maw that engulfed it. It fell, and the other hunter-drones tried to pull back into a defensive formation. Kelp-Stalker didn’t give them the chance to do so unharried.

Her own teeth sank deep into steel and spirit, ripping and tearing. Webbed claws swiped a drone from the air. Another was bitten in half. The swarm of smaller hunters was still some dozen strong, and it was growing as more came hunting down the trail of tiny dreams.

The first move happened in an instant, the sharks acting quicker than should’ve been possible by anything flesh, no matter how terrible. The team was only just beginning to react.

Even then, they didn’t get off the next move. The larger hunter-angels rallied. Hovering as they were, they stood even taller than the shark-shifters’ warforms.

Wickedly spiked tails uncoiled from the fragmented shards of their bodies. They lashed out like serrated whips, biting back at the sharks. Raw flesh was exposed to the air on smooth skin through bleeding wounds. The wounds closed and scarred over quickly enough, but the pain made the shark siblings flinch.

“Not the kind of nature I was expecting, but I believe I can still work with this…!” THE Morrigan called. “O’ Poseidon, with your beard of kelp and coral, aid your shifting folk!”

‘Kelp and coral!’ THE Morrigan hurriedly thought to their Storyteller and co-Avatar. ‘Kelp to gum the gears and coral to grow as stone upon their twisted forms! And then, a wave to wash them away!’

“Spirit 3/Forces 3, Arete 3; difficulty 6, lowered to 4 due to your preparation. 3, 7, 10: two successes, one critical. Poseidon answers your call.”

Ophy felt the Dream shift to THE Morrigan’s frequency. Arms of kelp reached from the depths below. They lashed and wound themselves around the fragmented nightmare shards. Where they touched, coral sprouted and hardened immediately, bleaching itself bone-white. A wave came from the depths last, washing over the four hunter-angels. It battered at them and weighed them down with waterlogged magical nature.

The technomagick cared not for mere water. Spiritual water was a different beast, however. It slowed them in showers of sparks beneath the wave, and gave the rest of the team enough time to react in force, the world hanging on a moment.

‘I am already riding HIGH on this new EXPERIENCE; I shall charge, Sword in hand!’ Savage declared his intentions.

‘Someone get me a spear, and I will hunt! Even just a Memory will do!’ Gabriel called.

‘If I can… I will stand… on the front line with… our allies…’ Solomon thought, composed even now.

Three of their number fell naturally into frontline roles. Manifested by his Focus-Watch, Savage found himself with that desired Sword in his hand. Solomon was already equipped with the EXO-Skeleton beneath his clothes, and his ‘Huge Size’ besides. Gabriel required a bit more support.

‘The reflections in the water!’ Baby exclaimed, seeking to give Gabriel what she needed.

Rose picked up her other half’s line of thought, ‘We can use it to summon spirits from the grotto, can’t we? A mirror is a portal, and before silver-backed glass, still water was all humanity had.’

“Spirit 3 to summon forth spirits from the reflections you can see. Still water is rare here and now, but you may just find it. Do you have any particular spirit in mind?” Sean asked.

‘Get our fearless leader her spear!’ Baby thought; Rose added. ‘A diving spear, maybe even a harpoon?’

“Arete 3, difficulty 5: 10, 3, 3. One critical success. The water below you is chaotic, far from still as you need it to be. Yet you are Awakened; the world bends to your will. Water stills, and you reach for a spear that was once held by a Native Ohlone diver in years long past. She used it to feed her tribe; you intend to use it to spear a different sort of prey.”

Baby&Rose dipped a hand into the water below them and emerged with a primitive spear of sharpened stone and shell. They threw it to Gabriel.

Catching the weapon, Gabriel bowed her head to its spirit for just a moment. “You are old, wielded to the Will of one long gone. You served her well. I ask that you serve my Will now. Please…”

“Invoking your Avatar; an automatic success,” Sean whispered in response to Gabriel’s communion. “The spear commits itself. It will be an extension of your arm. Its head may be primitive, but Will has sharpened it for ages. Now that the hunt calls again, it will not fail.”

The rest of them were a touch more lost in such a pitched battle. Their Storyteller turned to them in that hanging moment.

Alice immediately cackled her intentions. ‘Oh, I’m pulling my piece and lettin’ it bang, for sure!’ 

‘[Query: Weaknesses? Query: Function? Query: Origin? Query: Escape Route as Last Resort…?’ Simmy questioned.

‘… Too loud,’ Ophy realized for herself. ‘I… cannot Dream here.’

‘Stick close; I’ll help however I can,’ Didi reassured her. ‘You and I aren’t built for the front lines, little one. We can still protect what’s important, though. The pest-device is our only lead. We’ll keep the hunters from recovering it.’

“With such an unwieldy tool, just ‘pulling your piece’ is a whole action in itself. I’ll also warn you that gunshots can’t be easily ignored in an aquarium,” Sean told Alice.

“Simmy, you’ll reach desperately for your Avatar. Prime 3/Matter 1/Entropy 2, Arete 3; difficulty 7, I’m afraid. This is not a space conducive to Questions at the moment. 5, 7, 10; goodness, you’re all rolling rather high.

“These are the hunters a Creator calls upon when they need to fix bugs in their system — they fight the war against all that goes against the Creator’s technological dominion. They are masterfully created, engineered without any telling weaknesses. Their armaments include lasers, tasers, and phasers for threats of Matter, Mind, and Spirit, respectively, and physically, they will wear down even Fera regeneration if given enough of a chance.

“To escape, you might think to look downward, into the Umbra of the grotto. As soon as you do, you see how futile and ill-founded that idea is. You are not creatures of the depths; dive, and you will be lost forevermore. If you wish to escape, Occam’s Razor presents the best option: run.”

‘I have a plan,’ Gabriel thought. ‘These foes are after us. If we flee, they’ll follow. But they won’t be able to follow us in public without risking Paradox. So we hit while we can, and then… we run. Alice’s very big, very loud gun will be our signal. The moment she shoots, we can slip away in the inevitable chaos.’

‘What of our new allies?!’ Savage protested.

‘I think… they can… handle themselves just fine…” Solomon pointed out.

The world resumed with their plan in mind, and immediately, Solomon’s statement was proven accurate.

THE Morrigan’s spiritually summoned wave allowed Kelp-Stalker and Barrel-Surfer bare moments in their natural habitat. It revitalized them, and as it swept over the stunned hunter-angels, they reengaged.

Barrel-Surfer used the wave to slip under one of the angels, swimming at full speed and cutting through the animating technomagick with a sharpened dorsal fin. That angel fell as disconnected shards into the remnants of the wave. Barrel-Surfer ripped and tore into the metal like it was flesh.

Kelp-Stalker burst from the initial wave and anchored herself on top of the water below. Her teeth-filled maw stretched open. Ophy felt the spirits of the Dream wake.

With a great, spiraling twist, the open maw was filled with eddies, then riptides, then a whole whirlpool. Half a dozen hunter-drones and one of the hunter-angels were caught in the pull. They were swept so deep, disregarding any physical sense, that they simply ceased to be, Dreams and all.

The two remaining hunter-angels were just beginning to recover as both Barrel-Surfer and Kelp-Stalker slipped into the depths of their grotto, untouchable. They turned their red-eyed sights on the team.

Lasers lanced out of red eyes, targeting the frontliners.

“DODGE!” Savage roared.

“Rolling to dodge… Savage: 5. Gabriel: 8. Solomon… 1.”

Savage ducked the full might of the laser, earning a scar of burned flesh along his raised Sword arm. Gabriel dashed in and under the laser aimed at her. Solomon took his straight to the face.

Only his EXO-Skeleton saved Solomon from critical damage. It took the brunt of the laser for him, and Solomon himself did the rest.

‘To survive… the only way… is THROUGH!’ He uncharacteristically roared.

“I like your spirit! Let’s make that cinematic damage, difficulty 8… You rolled a 9!”

Like a charging bull, Solomon pushed through. He didn’t even slow from the pain, the sparking of the EXO-Skeleton’s thin shield on his skin. When he reached the hunter-angel that really should’ve wounded him, his fist reared back with brutal, bashing intent.

“Strength 3/Brawl 3, 6 dice, difficulty 6!” Their Storyteller called out, getting into the moment. “1 point of Willpower — Hell, 2 for the price of one! 2, 7, 3, 10, 8, 9: smashing success!”

Solomon punched the hunter-angel in its technomagickal face, knocking it prone despite its hovering capabilities. The barely coherent, shard-based form scattered, and only the core was left twitching.

Then came Savage and Gabriel, continuing their charge on the back of their dodge.

‘Cleave the thing from its shards!’ Savage cried.

“Dexterity 1/Melee 2, 3 dice, difficulty 6, with one automatic success for acting with your Avatar. 8, 1, 7; the botch is discarded by the automatic success, leaving you with two. And thus, you CLEAVE!”

For good now, the hunter-angel’s prone core was severed from its shard-body. It sputtered and sparked, immobilized. Gabriel raised her spear and aimed it home.

‘It is my Will; this false angel will fall here,’ She solemnly declared.

“Dexterity 1/Melee 3, 4 dice, difficulty 6. If you strike, the spirit of your spear will grant you spiritual damage. 9, 1, 9, 8: two successes.”

The simple diving spear, tipped with stone and shell, pierced the core of the hunter-angel and pinned it there for its final moments. The red eye burst like a bubble upon a child’s finger.

And then there was one.

The last hunter-angel turned to the targets closest to it with its swarm of hunter-drones. It seemed to bristle with distant indignation; for the barest moment, Ophy felt her Dreams of the future turn to nightmares. Glowing awfully, it sought to vaporize her friends.

Alice called out before it could. “I’m ready!”

She raised her BFG with both hands, leaning on the railing of the catwalk to steady herself against its unwieldy weight.

“Get the FU-! FRICK out of the way!”

Savage, Gabriel, and Solomon all dove into the water below.

Their Storyteller chuckled. “Without a Firearms skill, it’ll be +1 to difficulty: 9. But at the very least, it’s a target-rich environment, and you get 10 shots to hit: 4 for the angel, and 6 for each of the drones. Fire at will, Alice.”

Didi sighed, ‘We’re absolutely about to make the news.’

‘Can’t be helped! Let loose, girlie!’ Baby chimed.

‘And remember to run,’ Rose added.

‘Oh, I hope the shark siblings will be okay…’ Gabriel worried. ‘I know it’s not entirely our fault, but this must’ve really ruined their day.’

Alice took a breath and braced herself, aiming. Ophy was already covering her ears. She was right to. As soon as Alice pulled the trigger and held it down, it was LOUD. Like an earthquake more than gunfire.

“3, 7, 6, 9: one success for the angel. 6, 10, 3, 2, 5, 2: one critical success for the drones. Honestly, I’m surprised you got that much.”

In the world-shaking cacophony, the hunter-angel was punched back by the one bullet that landed. It seemed to hit with the same force as Solomon’s fist… One of the hunter-drones was slapped right out of the air into another, taking down two for one.

At the same time, the team turned to make their escape.

Gabriel called over her shoulder to the still-submerged shark siblings, “We’re sorry about all of this! We were terrible guests! Please, forgive us, and please, try to lie low until it blows over!”

Barrel-Surfer’s laughing, good-natured voice replied from the depths of their grotto, “We’re cool, dude! Thanks for the help!”

They ran back into the public spaces of the aquarium and saw the crowd panicking. Ophy, struggling to keep up, was scooped up by Solomon as they disappeared into the chaos.

Outside the aquarium, the sun was beginning to set. They ran. Not long after leaving the park, they saw first responders rushing to the scene. They ran and ran. The streets of San Francisco twisted and turned to Ophy’s senses. They ran and ran and ran.

Eventually, they found themselves in a new section of the city, untouched by the chaos they’d caused in the aquarium. There, the mundanity of broad daylight was waning with the sunset. People in costumes and merrymaking tourists filled the streets.

As soon as the sun had dipped below the horizon, something else rose. The lights of a hundred unseen fires were sparked by some signal, a raised scepter. Some of the costumed people on the street cheered, but notably not all. Those who cheered practically exploded with the surge of unseen energy to Ophy’s Dreaming senses.

A fair had begun in earnest, a jarring transition filled by the spectacle and wonder of Mad Dreams.

Instinctively, something in Ophy’s Dream resonated with the celebration.

“Fairies…” She breathed in awe. “A Fair of Fairies on a Starlight Night…”

“While some sleep, others Dream — perhaps differently from yours, Ophy, but just as valid and just as fantastical,” Sean said. “Childlings, Wilders, and Grumps; commoner and noble; chasing Glamour and laughing as they run from Banality. More than Vampires, Fera, or Awakened, Changelings make up the beating heart of San Francisco proper. This is, indeed, a Fairy Fair.”