Dead End 2: Deathly Di-Di-Doo Ch.25 (Patreon)

[The Gauntlet Thins]

— The Sagely Savage of Man and Beast and GOD! (Savage) —

“-And that is what we’ve found!” Savage proclaimed, speaking into his Focus-Watch.

On the other end of the technomagickal line, Mr. Monroe sounded worried. “Oh, dear… That is certainly something. Much more than I was expecting for your first mission. We can pull you out now, if you’d prefer.”

Savage denied the offer. “Perish the thought! We have a duty to protect the innocent from such a plot!”

“I think we’d like to stay on the ground a little while longer,” Rose said; Baby added. “See if we can’t crack this case a little bit wider, ya know? We’re kinda invested now.”

“Being attacked by twisted metal angels will do that,” THE Morrigan deadpanned.

Mr. Monroe was supportive but also worried. “If… If you’re sure… I’ll collect the device you’ve already found and look into it. If I can find anything more to help you, you’ll be the first to know.”

“Keep yourselves on your toes,” Mrs. Johnson added over the call. “It’s a dangerous city. I can see this being a Sons of Ether plot… maybe. It could just as likely be one of ours gone rogue, though. Either way, you’ve done well so far.”

“Oh, very well!” Mr. Monroe assured. “I’m wildly impressed, I must say! So don’t go cutting short your promising careers with me, you hear! I’ll be disappointed, and quite sad!”

The call ended. Technomagick reached through — Cutting as only a master’s blade could! — and the device they’d retrieved from their first anomaly was retrieved in turn. Savage marveled at Mr. Monroe’s Cut as the spiky little thing Ophy held seemed to simply fall right into the watch on her wrist, bound to appear in the analyzing lab of their supervisor!

Alice snorted to herself, “He’s just a big softie.”

“I think she is as well,” Didi chuckled, clarifying. “Mrs. Johnson, I mean. She just doesn’t show it nearly as easily. They make for a good match.”

“What do you think he’ll find?” Simmy asked.

It was a fair question, as expected of one whose whole paradigm revolved around such queries. Savage himself stopped to ponder it.

“What do we know so far?” Simmy continued.

At least one of the anomalies in the city that they’d been sent to investigate had clearly been artificially sparked. That spiky device, implanted in the simple spirit of a windmill, had warped the spirit’s purpose and forced it to thin the very Umbra it existed within. And the device had an identifiable scent, as they’d learned from the shark siblings, that could also be found in other places around the waters of the Bay Area.

Savage voiced as much.

“Is it a system, then?” Simmy signed again. “If so, what is it supposed to accomplish? Is the intention to thin the Veil until it ruptures and produces a flood of anomalies, or is there something more at play?”

That… They could not say at this point. They had very little actual evidence to work with here, and the only ways to get more were to wait for Mr. Monroe to get back to them or to seek out another anomaly for themselves to confirm a pattern.

Baby voiced that much. Rose continued, adding a new thought to the equation.

“But I’ve been thinking. It wasn’t just digging. That was the base function, yes, but there was… another reaction there, too. Like pollen going to rot, or-…”

“Rust…” Alice realized. “Rust! It’s technomagick; it was rusting! The thinning of the Veil exposed the Umbra to ‘air’, and it oxidized from there as, like, corruption in the spiritual system!”

“Oh, that can’t be good…” THE Morrigan frowned.

“A rusting mystery…” Simmy mused with her hands, gesturing and posturing. “But not an unsolvable one. Are we committed to solving it?”

Well, why wouldn’t they? The thinning of the Veil and the rusting of the spiritual beyond it threatened innocent sleepers: exactly who they were tasked with protecting! It likely threatened Awakened and other spectacularly supernatural beings caught up in it, too!

The shark siblings — who’d been kind and accommodating and almost as lost in the wider World of Darkness as they were — might’ve been robbed of their grotto and home if the rust had spread! Thinning the Veil and rusting the spiritual was like hollowing out the very backbone of the world; yes, collapse would surely follow!

As far as they knew, they were the only ones with any clue that something was amiss along the Veil of the Umbra in this city. They couldn’t simply give up and leave it to spiral now that they knew.

Gabriel put voice to that intention.

Didi added to it, nodding. “If we can help, I think we should.”

“Then, where do we go from here?” Simmy asked lastly.

Personally, the question set Savage grinning, wide enough that his cheeks ached!

“Anywhere but the mundane!” He exclaimed.

As their huge friend had demonstrated by defying death by laser-to-the-face, the only way to survive was THROUGH! And beyond that, Savage felt that the only way to THRIVE, to EXPERIENCE, was to Cut the problem anywhere they could reach! That was a purpose they could pursue earnestly in this chronicle!

“Mm. To find what we seek, we must… Dream as they do,” Ophy said.

Her words sounded prophetic, and her eyes were everywhere but on the rest of the team. The night fair they’d stumbled into after their escape covered whole streets in spectacle. Ophy hadn’t been able to look away.

Strings of sparkling fairy lights were draped between the buildings and purposefully dimmed streetlights. The web they formed shone like stars so close to the earth. Already, music and merrymaking cheer were beginning to pass through the crowds beneath them.

And there was more to the Fairy Fair, as Sean had called it. To Savage’s senses, something intangible but so very real filled the air, not Cutting as a Sword would, but as a carving knife did, put to the wood of reality to form a mastercraft.

“In a way…” Solomon muttered. “Here… anything feels… possible.”

“Wonder rekindled! A Dream, indeed!” Savage agreed.

What holiday they celebrated, Savage could not say; he only knew the weight it lifted off of every participating shoulder.

“Whim and fancy. Dreaming of the world… as you wish it would be,” Ophy described, her eyes half-closed.

The world hung on a moment with that description from eyes that saw while closed. “That is the magic of the Fae, their Dreaming. Once, they were so very strong and so very common, back when the world was not so ‘reasonably’ structured and Banal. They waned as men set the world stable — fleeing to the realm of Arcadia where they originally sprang, or eking out meager, starved existences amongst people who turned their backs on their Glamour.

“Banality came to reign, in no small part due to the Order of Reason and Technocracy. But then, there was one step too far, one giant leap for mankind…”

‘No freaking shot…’ Alice thought.

Sean chuckled and confirmed. “Mankind shot for the stars and landed on the Moon as the whole world watched. The same Moon that countless billions before them had looked up to and wondered about; the same Moon that had long been imprinted into the human experience as a lofty dream. How could anything but fantasy spring from such an event?

“The Moon Landing burst open the gates of Arcadia with a flood of Glamour, and the Fae came rushing back into a world they could live in once more. Times had still changed, of course. True Fae were too fanciful for even a world that had set foot on the Moon. But Changelings, souls at once human and fae, with a foot in both worlds? They thrived, and as you can see, they still do.”

‘That’s… wonderful,’ Didi sighed and smiled.

‘Literally~!’ Baby giggled.

‘Right, next you’re going to tell us that 9/11 brought forth some twisted mirror of the Fae,’ Alice snarked.

“It did.” Sean frankly confirmed. “Just as the Moon Landing broadcast and inspired wonder, 9/11 did the same for horror. Seelie and Unseelie, Kithain and Thallain; both subsist on Glamour and both despise Banality, but the way they go about filling themselves with it can contrast between wonderful and horrific.”

THE Morrigan shook her head. ‘Somehow, that does actually make sense to me. This world is fascinatingly odd, grounded in the ridiculous way that only reality can manage.’

“You’ve still barely scratched the surface~…” Sean teased.

‘As fun as living it for ourselves is, I would like to hear your whole ‘chronicle’ here at some point, too, Caine,’ Gabriel thought.

“I’m sure we’ll get there eventually,” Sean chuckled. “At the moment, though, your own chronicle is in the same World of Darkness as mine. I certainly wasn’t unknown. Ask around; you might just learn something.”

With that suggestion, the world resumed. Savage blinked at the implication, as did the others. They all shared curious looks. Then, as one and without a word spoken, they agreed on a secondary objective for the rest of their chronicle.

Yay! Verily! They simply must discover the legendary reputation Sean Caine the Mage had left behind!

And such an addition to their quest would certainly require proper fuel, the kind of cleaved-open mind that could not be denied! Savage had been waiting for the opportunity (any excuse, really) to use his requisitioned technomagick drugs! EXPERIENCING this night of wonderful Glamour while searching for anomalies and Sean Caine’s legend was the perfect use case!

Grinning, he dabbed a bit of L-S^2-D chapstick on his lip, popped a drop of DMT-OX in each eye, and smacked himself squarely on the ass to activate the Psilo-Mesca-Huasca stored in the temporary tattoo there!

Yes, he was ready to trip his way to VICTORY-!

“… You know I’m going to have to roll for that, don’t you?” Sean asked.

‘I welcome the dice to fall as they will!’ Savage earnestly declared. ‘No trip is too much for Savag-!’

IIIII

His mind was cleaved open, yet still, he kept his mind.

A paradox, yet wholly internal, it gave rise to no Paradox.

This technomagick trip-fuel was good stuff!

The street below his feet twisted and warped. Asphalt magnified itself in his vision until he could see every crack, pebble, and binding molecule. Then, he took his next step and the ground shot away at such speed that Savage fell and rolled and popped back to his feet laughing.

The others were having their own conversation as he tripped (LITERALLY!), paying him no mind. Or no Mind, perhaps, as he slipped through newly opened doorways without leaving their sides…?

“We can try putting my Seeker drones to good use,” Rose suggested.

“That may not be the best idea in this environment,” Didi gently argued.

“A Fairy Fair,” THE Morrigan agreed. “There is certainly ‘M’ here — without the ‘K’ — but that brand of it would be rather out-of-place, wouldn’t it?”

“They just look like insects!” Baby argued back. “Impossible to tell the difference, see?!”

“I think it’s the principle of the thing,” Simmy signed, using her silent advantage to ‘speak’ more frankly than the rest. “Like most things magick are. People may only see insects, but reality knows, and it may not look kindly upon you bucking the ‘local trend’ by introducing technomagick where wonder rules.”

“They have a point there,” Rose sighed; Baby grumbled a moment later. “Fine, fine, we won’t get to use our toys…”

“How else… are we supposed to… find… anomalies, then…?” Solomon asked.

The question lingered as everyone thought it over. Savage has his own questions to mull.

He watched a nearby fair-goer stand — body following mind — from a seat on two legs, and then, two more. They blurred into afterimages, moving as slowly as molasses. That fair-goer’s whole lived experience was described in the afterimages, and Savage EXPERIENCED a life so different from his own, even from afar!

“Yeah, that’s a whole-ass Seeking at this point,” Sean hummed; in Savage’s tripping ‘Seeking’, the words seemed to come from within more than from without. “Ophy’s going through the same, it seems, with how her Avatar is resonating with the Changeling Dreaming all around you. Seek well, mages. It’s a campaign of Enlightenment more than dice rolls. If you can take what comes and understand it, you’ll advance yourselves as mages. +1 to Arete, in the terms of your chronicle.”

He spoke to Savage and Ophy alone, isolating their Seeking from the rest of the team in the moment. It was a quest of Mind, Matter, and Force, Savage realized!

For him, at least. For Ophy, it must’ve been a quest of Time and Correspondence. He heard evidence of that a moment later.

‘You are here, Sean… I can still hear your Silence,’ Ophy mused within. ‘Everything is here… and nothing is… but you more than all and none; you reincarnated your Storytelling voice beside us.’

Savage turned to her and saw her melding with the Dream all around them. She was in all places around them at once, and in none. Correspondence! Even if it was not one of Savage’s Spheres, he could still bear witness to the effects and the trials with a cleaved-open Mind!

Ophy bloomed with great nebulae of color to Savage’s dilated eyes. The color flowed from her into the Dream. When she stepped, the color took steps with her.

Passing by, a tall and slender man paused as color wafted into his nose. Like a wine-taster, a lover seeking the perfect flower for his sweetheart, and a stately hound testing the air, he took in the colorful bouquet. His eyes fluttered contentedly, and his face shifted into ethereal beauty. Ears lengthened into fantastical elvish points. The Dream twisted around him for just a moment, heralding the arrival of a marquis!

Then, the man caught himself, chuckling. He enjoyed just a taste of Ophy’s color — her Glamour, certainly! — before moving along with his night.

The Matter of his body was not so solid, Savage saw as the Changeling passed them by. It only seemed to be. The rest was all wonderful Mind!

‘And where did Force fit into it?’ Savage pondered; his cleaved-open mind raced along the gales of a tropical storm, windful, whimsical thoughts as his testing track for the next stage of a great prototype of Enlightenment.

Force was… the motive of the world.

He sprang into motivated action at the thought, for just acting was a Force all its own! Laughing, he swept the Dreaming, Seeking Ophy onto a perch on his shoulder. Her Dreaming color and his EXPERIENCE of all around him ran into beautiful new hues, tinting the impossible vibrant and real.

She settled there on his shoulder rather quickly. Savage grinned up at her, and she nodded back down, allowing him to be the steed to her sleep. One sparkling fairy light from above descended between them to seal their pact, bursting to cast wonderful shadows upon the rest of the world.

And so, they were off!

… Yet they didn’t leave the rest of the team. His cleaved-open mind still retained the sense of sobriety, even as it EXPERIENCED EVERYTHING MORE!

Still, the others spoke of practical things and grounded matters: their mission.

“So, what are you all… seeing here? Ya know, seeing?” Alice asked, wary of eavesdroppers. “All I’m seeing is a mess. It’s thinned here, but, like, naturally. That does mean I doubt I’ll find the unnatural bits, though.”

Solomon grunted. “We must… maintain the course… We will survive… I can feel… it, but there is… no telling where…”

THE Morrigan grumbled, “There are signs here, but not of the Divine as I can parse and interpret them. ’Tis another brand of myth and legend than faith. I doubt I’ll be much help finding our way, either.”

“Will we even be able to tell an anomaly apart in all of this?” Gabriel worried.

“We will,” Didi reassured. “We know the scent and feel of the ones we’re after. The rest of tonight, this fair, it… it boasts a healthy Heartbeat. We’re looking for cancer. I think… I think I can hear it…”

“Prime 3/Entropy 2, listening for the distinct Heartbeats your Avatar reveals,” Sean whispered along with Didi’s magick. “Arete 3, difficulty 5… 7, 8, 3: two successes. You do indeed hear the cancer in the hale Heartbeats all around. It’s a jarring whine, a constant note cutting through the rhythm. If you follow it, you already know the wrongness you’ll find.”

‘Don’t think I’m forgetting about you, Caine,’ Gabriel pouted a moment later. ‘I’d like to listen out for Memories of your name as we go.’

“And I wish you the best of luck. Mind 3, Arete 3, difficulty 6,” Sean said. “2, 6, 10: two successes, one critical. Consider it a banked roll; that one will be important~…”

Savage felt Gabriel’s gathering of Mind with his cleaved-open own. It was a breath, sucked in deep; the Mind breathed! It lived! It remembered, even when it forgot, even when it had never committed in the first place!

Didi led the way through the night fair, following the cancerous discord she could hear. As the rest of them followed her in turn, Savage and Ophy continued their Seekings.

The sky swooped low to Savage’s senses, a motivating Force to push them farther along their quest. It was unfortunately dark and barren of stars in the midst of such a city, but as Ophy looked upward at it, Savage knew such great places, destinations, and views were nearer than they appeared!

In her Dream, Ophy reached up as if she could pluck them into view. Instead, the strings of fairy lights hanging above brightened — Coincidental to the sleepers enjoying the fair beneath them. The Glamour in the air laughed louder and louder on such a magical (and MAGICKAL, thanks to them!) night, and Time ceased seeming real.

Carrying Ophy, Savage felt the Forcefully swinging Sword-arm that made Time so malleable: Glamourous celebration, born from hundreds, thousands of Minds and the Matter they frolicked through.

Sitting upon his shoulder, Ophy’s Dream reached with a Correspondence of the senses to witness those Minds, the Matter beneath them, and the Force motivating all.

“They’re everywhere…! They really do walk among us!” An excited whisper reached Ophy’s ear, despite the distance and the crowd, and Savage’s ear through her.

Both of them looked. They found the source of the excitement in a small group of youngsters with a certain air around them. To Savage’s Avatar, their Swords were dull and unsheathed, yet still wielded as if they were the opposite. Ophy looked at them and shook her head, sensing no spark of Awakening in any of them.

But still, there was something. They crowded around the phone in the hands of the one who spoke. Its camera was aimed into the crowd, and when the line of sight was followed, Changelings in mortal seemings could be found.

“ETs…! Here! Just walking the streets!” One of the youngsters quietly exclaimed.

“I told you! I know what I saw! They aren’t Grays or Lizard People; they’re, like, catgirl and elf ETs!”

“Holy shit… Holy shit-! W-What do we even do with this?!”

“Well, Professor Nym already knows. Obviously. She’s the one who sent Pat the app.”

“So we… report back to her?”

“And ask some very pointed questions, yeah.”

Savage thought the youngsters were adorable.

They looked to be getting their first taste of the world beyond what they had thought they’d known all their lives, and while they were wrong, their enthusiastic EXPERIENCING was also admirable. Their ‘Professor Nym’ was almost certainly a proper mage. Perhaps she would induct them into her inner circle; perhaps one or two of the youngsters would even Awaken.

It was a small show of the EXPERIENCES this world had to offer. Savage treasured it, even as the drugs set the youngsters blooming like flowers in his cleaved-open mind.

It was good, Savage thought with a smile, to Seek (AND TRIP!) on a night like this.

“Arete +1 for Savage and Ophy,” Sean hummed, sounding as if he was noting it down on their character sheets. “And +1 to the Spheres of Forces and Mind for Savage, Correspondence for Ophy. Your trip, Savage, and your Dream, Ophy, aren’t over, but I’ll consider the Seeking a success so far.”

IIIII

— Didi (Didi) —

The cancerous whine had become a long, constant scream to her senses — deafening.

It was all she could hear at this point. It drowned out the healthy and lively Heartbeats of the fair, the racing Heartbeat of Savage’s trip, the relaxed Heartbeat of Ophy’s Dream, and the less noticeable but still consistent Heartbeats of the others.

As they grew closer to its source, the wonder of the night’s fair faded into a subtle undercurrent of horror. The strings of fairy lights overhead had been left behind, but the streetlights remained eerily dim. The people on the streets avoided looking others in the eye, keeping their heads down even with the celebration going on just a few blocks away. Not even the darkest Changelings dared to venture here; something about the area was anathema to their Glamourous Heartbeats.

The team was on guard now. Even more so when they turned one corner and found the next street utterly empty.

The dim streetlights overhead flickered inconsistently, sporadically plunging the barren street into a blackness that couldn’t be natural.

The street itself was short and small, more of a thoroughfare than a boulevard. A pair of bare brick buildings bordered one side. On the other side, a stone and ivy wall perpendicular to the elevation of the city showed that the street had been literally cut into the earth.

The clay of the bricks ran red like blood. The ivy on the other side was withered and as gray as the stone beneath.

Between the brick buildings, there was an alley akin to a gaping maw. Even when they flickered on, the light from the streetlights didn’t reach it.

“There,” Didi said and pointed, perhaps unnecessarily. “That’s our second anomaly.”

For the first time since tuning in to the cancerous note, Didi looked up from the proverbial trail. The others were on edge, to put it lightly. All except for Savage and Ophy.

Savage’s pupils were wide; his grin was wider. Ophy’s eyes were closed; her Heartbeat was at perfect, Dreaming rest.

With Ophy sitting (and sleeping) on his shoulder, Savage was the one who took the first step towards the cancer that spilled into the air. He Cut straight through the aura without any effort; just the Will and Enlightenment of a mage.

Alice and Gabriel saw the Cut just as Didi heard it in the Heartbeat of all things. The three of them crowded around in Savage’s wake, and the others quickly joined them, breathing sighs of relief as the cloying, deceptively sweet taste of cancer was washed away.

At the mouth of the alley, Savage’s Sword Cut through a silk-thin Veil. It took much less effort than it should’ve; the border between physical and spiritual was painfully fragile here.

Down the dark maw of the alley, they found proof of Alice and Rose’s theory. They found RUST, spreading as Umbra was exposed to ‘air’…

Didi could hear the Heartbeat of the alley as it would’ve been if healthy, if not rusting to its core and deeper still.

The alley was never meant to be a bastion of good vibes. Didi heard aftershocks of Heartbeats ending for good here, in the past — muggings and overdoses. She heard old Heartbeats race as their sources stepped into the darkness, as a drunken dare or as the desperation of those with no other choice.

It was always supposed to be a dark corner of the city… but never this dark.

Light utterly failed to penetrate past the entrance. The only reason they could see anything at all was the Focus-Watches on their wrists, and even that required technomagick light to be cast with a fair bit of focus.

Their lights pierced the unnatural darkness. They illuminated here and there: bleeding walls and dusty red ground. Then, as one, they focused on the end of the alley, spotlighting a terrible scene.

Motes of red dust hung in the air, stagnant. Blighted metal spread like a mat of moss across a forest floor, or like mold.

At the center of the RUST, there was a barrel that might’ve once provided warmth and hospitality to the desperate and homeless. Now, the metal of its make merged with the ground and bubbled with oxidation.

It was an ongoing process. The barrel had a spirit, just like the windmill before it. It had purpose: hospitality for those without. Now, even without a hearth within the barrel, the spirit had been corrupted to burn without, to scorch the layers of the Veil until bare Umbra was revealed to RUST.

Around the barrel, bodies were slumped in oxidized death. They were welded into the spreading RUST, and any prior features had already been corroded away.

“Oh, God…” Gabriel muttered in horror. “They… didn’t get the chance for peace, did they?”

Didi shook her head, speaking both in-character and out. “Rusted over like that, how could their souls hope to break through?”

“This one must’ve started before the windmill,” THE Morrigan estimated. “It’s… It’s too far along.”

“Why do I feel like we’re going to need, like, acid or something?” Alice asked.

“It wouldn’t be a bad place to start, that’s for sure,” Rose sighed.

“Do we… have anything of the… sort…?” Solomon hummed, sounding unsettled as he looked at the RUSTED bodies. “Something to… put them… to rest, too. They don’t deserve… to be… stuck here. In death… I know I would wish… to wander… forevermore…”

“I am on the wrong kind of acid to help with this, I’m afraid! Damnation!” Savage swore.

“Can’t cola remove rust?” Didi asked, remembering her own Requisition with Savage’s mention of his.

“Surface-level rust, yes,” Rose nodded; Baby grinned after her. “But I’ll bet technomagick cola can do one better!”

“How did Mr. Monroe say it went…?” Didi asked herself. “I can… pull my Erg Cola from any vending machine, I think?”

She didn’t get the chance to seek out one, though. A moment later, the world hung on a moment, and Sean’s Storytelling voice came bearing ominous tidings.

“Rolling for initiative… That last hunter-angel has found you once more.”

“Oh, frick!”

None of them reacted in time to stop the enemy that caught up to them. From cloak, the angel-looking drone swept forward from the mouth of the alley, silhouetted against the distant seeming light there. Its weapons were primed to wipe them out in an instant.

Then, behind its charge, Didi heard a single Heartbeat — a pulse of technomagick that sounded… terribly familiar.

The pulse was enforced upon the world in a ringed rush of red-tinted light. The hunter-angel was caught in the ring. It seized up and fell, anticlimactically, inert.

The source of the pulse walked into the alley at their own pace, revealing a uniquely dressed man with the arrogant smirk of a celebrity. He strode through the darkness as if the world could (and would) hear only him. Postmodern fashion made him stand out in the grungy alley, without a speck of dirt marring his white jacket and an impractically high collar hugging his neck. He wore black shades deep into the night, and digital-looking lines were tattooed from his lower lip to his chin.

Stopping over the inert drone, he looked between it and the team. “Well, isn’t that a piece of work? It would’ve torn you to little pieces. No one would’ve found a single strand of identifying DNA. Aren’t you thankful I showed up when I did to… dominate the situation?”

The world hung on a moment again. “The mysterious man-…”

Baby cut off their Storyteller, pointing with her mind. ‘Evil.’

“Wha-? You can’t know-…”

‘Evil.’ Gabriel nodded in agreement.

‘100%’ Alice agreed as well. ‘Way too convenient.’

‘He’s speaking as if he knew exactly what the drone would do to us and how,’ THE Morrigan deadpanned.

‘I’d even say he sounds proud of it,’ Rose added.

“… That kind of immediate conclusion should require an insight check of some kind, but yeah, I can’t argue with that,” Sean sighed before verbally shrugging. “The consequences of having you live your chronicle rather than me telling all sides of it: evil idiot savants who wouldn’t know subtlety if it was the demonic master they worshipped.” 

‘Uh… Does this guy worship demon-?’

Alice’s question went unanswered; the world resumed with a sense of smugness from Sean.

“I suppose we would be thankful for someone saving us from being torn apart just like that,” Baby said sweetly, with a touch more subtlety than their ‘savior’. “Who are you anyway, buddy?”

“You know me.” The man waved dismissively. “Gnaw Systems? S.W.A.R.M.? ONE-EYE? My 8.7 billion dollar evaluation? Yes, you must know me.”

‘Geez, even his companies sound evil. How has he gotten this far?’ Gabriel asked.

THE Morrigan deadpanned, ‘Something about tech moguls makes people forgive a fair bit of evil.’

‘Cough, Luthor, cough,’ Savage thought.

“Yeah, not ringing any bells, buddy.” Baby shrugged. “Not really tapped into the tech sphere.”

The man stared at them; an eerie and fuming red light sparked behind his shades. “… Styles Browne. Creator extraordinaire.”

‘… Who wants to bet he astroturfs his own ‘Styles on ‘em’ memes?’ Alice snarked mentally. ‘Yeah, I’m not calling him that.’

‘He does seem like the type!’ Savage laughed and scoffed. ‘Pathetic. A man should be meme-worthy on his own merits! Let the man be just ‘Browne’; it suits his shit-colored personality better anyway!’

“Let me guess: Iteration X?” THE Morrigan said.

Browne, with that red light behind his shades, just smirked at them.

“Something’s building,” Sean warned. “Someone’s biding time. Beyond this pocket of thinned Veil and RUSTING Umbra, you feel others like it rouse into first gear.”

“We’re SAR,” Gabriel told Browne. “And as you can see, this… is something of an anomaly. Technomagick-based. We could use some help silencing-…”

“Anomaly?” Browne asked, sounding confused but looking smug. “No, no, you’re gravely mistaken. You must be new to the Bay, especially if you haven’t heard of me, but this is perfectly normal, perfectly to plan and proper Consensus. Why, I’ve started seeing spots like it all over the city!”

Didi chanced a glance back at the anomaly, the RUSTING stain upon the world.

“Normal...?”

“Yes, perfectly normal-” Browne nodded.

Baby cut him off. “Cap. It’s normal for you, ‘cause you made it.”

Silence answered her. Then, creeping creaks and cracks came from behind them as RUST reached…

“… Not ‘made’; nothing so meager,” Browne said, his voice turning rust-red as it scraped against itself. “Created. And thus, Creations Serve Their Creators… All That Does Not Serve Must RUST…”

The team tensed as one, waiting for Sean’s call of ‘initiative rolls’ to come. It was worse that it never did.

Browne’s Heartbeat came as the sound of an industrial hammer to Didi’s Avatar, pounding reality into his paradigm.

They watched the drone at his feet RUST in place, sacrificed for his powerful working of Will. In moments, only red dust remained. From behind them, more dust filled the air, and the world turned red.

R̵͉̀Ũ̷̦S̶͚̆T̶͙͛

̵͈͝

IIIII

— Gabriel (Gabriel) —

They were not in the alley anymore. Gabriel wasn’t sure they were anywhere.

The evil tech mogul-mage was nowhere to be seen.

RUST was everywhere to be seen. It had claimed them. Its particles filled the air, attempting to stab into the lungs. Only an effort of Will kept the RUST from laying them low.

A deep red, dying sun hung high overhead. Its light was reflected and refracted off the red particles until the world was cast wholly, terribly, utterly RUST-red.

At the center of this new world, the only sign of color aside from the RUST-red was a gleaming tower of pure silver steel. It was pristine. To Gabriel’s eyes, it looked like a spear meant to pierce that very dying sun overhead.

The rest of the world they found themselves trapped in was a RUSTED landscape, a wasteland of artificial decay. Red sand extended to infinity. Buildings that must’ve once been strong iron were in the process of falling apart where they stood. The whole realm stagnated in corrosive rot.

Even those buildings, as they once might’ve been, were unsettling. In their prime, they must’ve dominated the landscape as a different kind of wasteland — great and terrible technological progress, the empty end of advancement where man was no longer needed, no longer wanted, no longer tolerated.

That former wasteland would’ve been bad enough. RUSTING, it was made so much worse.

“Ah, fuck…” Baby groaned. “We’re in it now, aren’t we?”

“Stay… close; stay… strong,” Solomon grunted. “We will… survive… this.”

THE Morrigan glared at the world around them. “What is this abomination?! Why did the bastard bring us here?! Does he intend for us to rust as well?!”

Simmy asked the same to herself, to her Avatar, and she was answered.

“Prime 3/Entropy 2, asking questions of Where, Why, and How,” Caine narrated her magick. “Arete 3, difficulty 7: 9, 7, 1… The botch discards one success; one remains.”

He narrated the answers her Avatar gave, too. “Where: pulled past the Veil, the Gauntlet, the High, Middle, and Low Umbra, you find yourselves at the First Horizon. You’ve been in this slice of reality before, in a sense; the SAR HQ is another such realm upon the Horizon. This one cleaves to Browne and his RUSTED vision of the world, where only his creations are allowed to flourish so long as they obey no Creator but him.

“Why: Consensus lies silent here, unwilling to care about the private realities of mages when so removed from the rest of the world. Paradox will not interfere. Browne is akin to a god here. He has all the power he needs to remove meddlers from his RUSTING system. Rest assured, that power will be used against you.

“How: Horizon Realms are not cheap or simple works of Will. They demand Quintessence — as much as Browne has stolen from the real world with his systematic thinning of the Veil, perhaps? They must be anchored upon Nodes, places of power — perhaps such as both places you’ve found his creations and the others you didn’t get the chance to find… And they can only be forged by powerful magicks — as taught and motivated, perhaps, by an otherworldly sponsor.”

“Oh, dear…” Didi worried. “Are we… quite screwed here?”

“Never!” Savage declared. “As Solomon has said: we will survive! We will conquer this newest trial; we will Cut through the RUST!”

“And screw over whatever rust-demon he worships and acts for, too!” Gabriel agreed.

“We may be in his domain, but are we not mages ourselves? Are we not gods of our own realities?” THE Morrigan asked, standing straighter with pride.

The others drew themselves up as well. The renewed determination poured off them as Willful Quintessence that drove back the red tint of the world. They wouldn’t let themselves fall to RUST here.

‘Sean, I have the Stormwarden Merit,’ Savage suddenly thought. ‘Would it be applicable here?’

“Yes. Your Avatar braves the storms and caustic phenomena of the Umbra better than most. You’re also still on the back end of a Seeking,” Caine added as a reminder. “It’s entirely fair to say that your Will is as active as you can currently make it, and that you’d have an advantage here regardless.

“The same applies to Ophy, in a different way. She’s also still Seeking, and her Dreaming Avatar, Sleepwalking Flaw, and Oracle Merit make her especially suited for Umbral navigation. What do the two of you intend to do with your advantages?”

‘Hn… I will find the path, the line Savage must Cut. I will spend Willpower to ensure success,’ Ophy thought.

‘And I shall do the same with my Willpower! You can count on my Sword, friends!’ Savage declared.

“Correspondence 4 for Ophy; Forces 4 for Savage, Arete 4 for both, difficulty 4 and 5 respectively,” Caine narrated. “6, 3, 6, 5: three successes + one Willpower for Ophy’s insight. 9, 4, 9, 2: two successes + one Willpower for Savage’s follow-up.”

Even the RUSTED world had paused with Caine’s Storytelling, and now, it resumed. Ophy, their Sleepwalking Oracle… opened her eyes.

She pointed, and a path was carved through the RUST. Distance was laid bare, even in the Horizon Realm that only made sense to Browne. The haze of red cleared to reveal their captor, Browne, atop the steel-silver spire that sought to pierce the dying sun.

On the other end of the distance, Browne jumped in place, startled by the sudden and brutally clear-sighted magick. His shades almost fell off his face. In the moment, even at the peak of his domain, he looked pathetic.

Then, Savage raised his hand and his Sword. He saw exactly where, how, and what to Cut. Before Browne could react and smother the magick, Savage’s Sword fell, and RUST was cleaved in twain.

The world came apart in hallucinogenic fractals; impossible colors so much more than RUST-red were introduced to Browne’s realm. With Savage’s cleaved-open laughter, the fractals continued to Cut into the rest of the RUST, shredding the storm.

‘I… charge. Follow… friends,’ Solomon thought.

He was first down the path Ophy had seen and Savage had cleaved. Caine rolled for his charge.

“Strength 3/Brawl 3, difficulty 6: four successes, one critical.”

Solomon, the man half the size of a truck, hit Browne like a whole one. He’d laid out one of Browne’s hunter-angels before. Flesh and RUSTED blood stood no chance.

Browne hit the deck. The others took the chance to follow Solomon down the path. As soon as they did, however, the top of the steel-silver spire reacted to their presence, according to Browne’s Will and vision of the world.

The moment they set foot on steel, their feet were trapped in suddenly springing RUST. Slowly, shakily, Browne rose back to his feet. Blood poured from his broken nose; the iron within RUSTED and fueled his magick as soon as it hit the air.

“You…” Browne glowered and hissed. “You DARE…?!”

“ALWAYS!” Savage shouted without fear.

“Fuck yeah, we dare!” Baby exclaimed. “Eat fist, RUST-fucker!”

“No, eat the rich,” Rose corrected her other half.

“You’ve trapped yourself in here with us,” THE Morrigan said. “We won’t stop until you’re dead and we’ve escaped.”

“Trapped…?” Browne asked slowly, incredulity growing into mania. “Trapped?! A single sucker-punch and you’re already so arrogant! THIS IS MY CREATION, Initiates! Do you know what that means?!”

“Don’t know, don’t care,” Alice snarked. “I’m sure you’re about to tell us anyway.”

“I will show you,” Browne intoned. “Ŗ̵͝Ṳ̸̕Ś̷̝Ṭ̴̽”

The Horizon Realm bent to Browne’s Will. The RUST trapping their feet began to creep upward. The others began to struggle, trying to muster any resistance to break through his hold over the world. Gabriel didn’t.

Her brow furrowed. Something… was tinging her Avatar’s senses. Memories… A banked roll with ‘two successes, one critical’…

Browne stood still, smug, and arrogant as the RUST acted according to his paradigm, his vision of reality.

Gabriel found her own paradigm speaking through her, born from the choice she’d made earlier to listen for Memories of her Storytelling husband.

She asked calmly. “Say, does the name ‘Sean Caine’ mean anything to you?”

Browne’s victorious arrogance was utterly derailed by the seeming nonsequitur. The Horizon Realm, however, froze in fear.

“Sean Caine? The old Void-Seeker traitor? The Euthanatoi Archmage of Reincarnation who sought but never experienced it for himself?” Browne replied with confusion.

The whole team, despite being trapped in RUST, couldn’t help but giggle at the idea that Caine had never experienced Reincarnation.

Browne was nonplussed by their out-of-place laughter. The Horizon Realm-… no, some shadow below and behind it quivered.

“NO!” Browne spat. “The name ‘Sean Caine’ means nothing to me! You would make his name your last words?!”

Gabriel shared a glance with Didi. Both of them smiled and nodded.

“Always.”

The shadow behind Browne’s Realm of RUST surged forth with their confirmation, desperate malice echoing through reality.

It met the world, hanging on a moment.

“If you’re going to play like that for your pawn, Demon, I don’t see why my players shouldn’t have similar support. It’s really only fair…”

Familiar power flooded down their Reincarnating strings, coming into the World of Darkness as their collective co-Avatar: the Ascended Storyteller. It met the surging shadow and dragged it upward, kicking and screaming.

Descension and Ascension were balanced upon the beam of reality — one demonic and RUSTED, the other… simply trying to Tell a Story and share worthwhile experiences with those he favored.

“Vashtorr,” Caine said, distaste and disappointment audible in his voice. “Why am I not even the slightest bit surprised? Still trying to make yourself a ‘thing’? What’s your latest attempt, then? Oh, pop-culture belief. Not bad, but it’ll never make you real here. I mean, Death, I’ve lived through the ‘verse you’re trying to influence, and you aren’t really a ‘thing’ even there. Just a wannabe, engineering his own RUSTING.”

An unholy, wordless shriek answered Caine’s scorn with the grinding of gears, the snapping of critical components, the explosive disassembly of promising prototypes.

“Found?” Caine chuckled. “Oh, no, Reincarnation has always been with me. There’s no profound secret to it, not really. It just is; I just am. That life of mine you loathed — and the feeling was certainly mutual — came from it and returned to it. Ascension was a neat way to move along to my next life, that’s all.

“Yet when I look back, your Descension has kept you in exactly the same place. Isn’t that funny? Isn’t that… just sad?”

Gabriel heard Caine shake his head. “Heh, it’s a good thing I’ve never had an ounce of sympathy to spare for you Descended fuck-ups.

“Now… let’s have a little talk about you trying to jump my players, Vashtorr. You know damn well that’s not how things are done-…”

The unholy shrieking returned. Where before it was indignant and spiteful, now it knew only fear. Browne began to convulse where he stood, backlash from his Demon rushing through his inverted Avatar and ravaging his soul. He died with the seat of his pants matching his name.

RUST unrusted as the Entropy of the whole realm was reversed without exception, and the world around them faded to formless mists.

Gabriel couldn’t contain her girlish grin, gesturing vaguely in the direction of Caine taking the Demon to task (as he should!). “Hehe~… That’s my husband.”

“Mine, too,” Simmy signed, silently swooning.

“And my Prince-Consort,” Didi added, just as proud.

“My Silence…” Ophy whispered.

“That’s our Gothboy~!” Baby exclaimed; Rose sighed. “I suppose he is.”

“A boss… and a… friend,” Solomon nodded.

“My immortal BROTHER!” Savage laughed.

THE Morrigan chuckled. “Who else could be claimed as such a Friend to Magic?”

Alice finished them off with a teenage groan. “Ugh, Dad…”

“So…” Alice continued a moment later. “Where do we go from here?”

In response to her question, they all felt inviting tugs along their strings of Reincarnation; Caine, while still slightly distracted, was beckoning them back to the Dead End.

“Aww, I guess that’s it for Gamenight,” Baby — Harley, as the tugging took effect — whined.

“A splendid session, a smashing start!” Savage declared. “And I know there will be even more for us to EXPERIENCE when we return!”

“Until then,” THE Morrigan — Hecate once more — began before blinking. “Oh, we’re carrying echoes of our characters with us — or should that be the other way around, with our characters as echoes of us…? Either way, I can still feel THE Morrigan and her Avatar. Oh, yes, I can’t wait to pick apart her magick; how wonderful~!”

“Free magick~?!” Harley gasped excitedly. “Gothboy gives the bestest gifts!”

“Doesn’t he?” Ivy teased. “You’re no longer the odd, magic-less one out, ‘Baby’.”

Harley immediately grinned and began to plot. “Oh, I’m gonna drive Batsy and his boys up the fuckin’ wall with some surprise reality-bending~…”

“It isn’t all that major for the rest of us, but I’ll cherish the Memory.” Gabriel smiled.

An instant and an eternity later, they all found themselves back in the Dead End, sitting around the same table they’d started from. Caine sat waiting for them, welcoming them home.

He smiled. “I hope-”

“Ahem, excuse me,” He cleared the Storyteller’s voice from his throat. “I hope you all enjoyed our chronicle tonight. Honestly, it helped me immensely. This ‘Aspecting’ business is something of-ACHOO!”

Caine sneezed, interrupting himself. It was a mighty sneeze. Gabriel and the others stared at him for a different reason. In an instant, the Caine she’d reunited with in this life was replaced with the Cain she’d known during the Great War.

Cain sheepishly rubbed the back of his head. “Ah… As you can see, it’s a work in progress.”

That… That had implications — perhaps worrying ones…?

Gabriel couldn’t spare a single archangelic brain cell for them in that moment, though. All she saw was opportunity!

“S-Sorry, everyone…!” She stood in a nigh-frantic rush and grabbed Cain by the hand; her wings were fluttering up a storm behind her. “I need to borrow my husband for the rest of the night! Recreational reasons! I mean-! Recreating our wedding night-! I mean-!”

She flustered and panicked and fluttered away, pulling Cain behind her. “Awawawawawawa, forget I said anything! I’m still taking Cain, though!”

As much as she must’ve just embarrassed herself in front of her new friends and family, Gabriel didn’t stop her flight. This was important! Vital!

As much as Caine would always be hers, this was her Cain. And Gabriel and her Cain hadn’t gotten nearly enough time together as fresh newlyweds… Now, she had the chance to rectify that tragedy!

IIIII

[AN: Don’t worry lol, I won’t blue ball y’all with archangelic smut twice. Next chapter will start with Gabriel and Sean’s (Cain’s) second wedding night. I’m thinking next chapter will be an INTERLEWD to start and then continued in a less smutty INTERLUDE/multi-pov style as Sean’s Aspecting really takes off and affects the rest of the DC ‘verse (maybe SMUT>JUSTICE LEAGUE>ENDLESS…?).

This is also the Gamenight/WoD arc done with. I genuinely don’t much mind that it performed noticeably worse than the usual chapters; I’m just glad to have had the chance to do more WoD. My initial plans ended up cut down quite a bit. We’ve covered some good ground here, but even this is just a taste of WoD. If you want a more solid bite, I highly recommend ‘World of Dorkness’ on Spacebattles (https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/world-of-dorkness.1307406/)

And ‘cause I love WoD so much and want it to be seen, this chapter and the last one (retroactively) will be going up for ‘Free Access’. Enjoy, and even if it’s not your vibe, you’ll have archangelic smut and interlude shenanigans to look forward to in the next chapter :]