FSE

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formerly SoFurry search engine

WIP - The Blind & The Cripple

“Oai, lady, we're here." The cabbie groused from the front seat of the beat up old skimmer. “Time t' git out."

Ash snapped awake with a start, blinking at the swirl of unnamable colors swirling in her vision; the metals and plastics of the vehicle, the leather of the seat, the life aura silhouette of the man in the front seat. She sat up and grasped her cane before fumbling for the door latch and lifting the wing door. She had no words for the surly cabbie, Yamatoan by his fading accent though his aura did not reveal such, but ghetto by his sheer attitude. Swinging her legs out of the vehicle, keeping one hand up against the door, she stood and ducked out.

Before she had even turned to push the door back down the vehicle was moving, a rustle of levitation magic shifting the air against her ankles as the turbine spooled up with a chattering whine of poorly balanced vanes. Ash blinked at the glow of magic pulsing under the dark shadow of the skimmer as it swiftly drew away. “Asshole." She groused and swung her cane lightly, tracing the pavement in front of her, listening to the tick and rustle as it struck litter on the ground.

And then she noted the smell.

Wherever she was, it was most certainly not the second level skyway destination she had given the cabbie. It smelled of rancid decay and complete neglect. “Hey!" She called out after the skimmer, anger warring with the surprise and fear of finding herself somewhere unfamiliar and nauseatingly rank but the descending door was automatically closing as it sped away. “Hey!" But the skimmer was too far away for her shouts to have been heard within, even if the cabbie had been interested in stopping again which, judging by the increasing pitch of the turbines, he most certainly was not. Her last 'sight' of the distant skimmer, a complex collection of magic and metals with no distinct shape beyond the mana glow, was of it turning swiftly around a corner and disappearing, likely toward a traffic lift. “Fuck."

She stood still where she was, slowly sweeping her cane side to side, as she listened. She could hear the sound of lazily dripping water, rodents rustling in trash, the distant yowl of a cat, a rather large cat by the timbre, but otherwise silence. No whine of traffic outside of her second skyway tenament, no distant mumble of night life in the plaza in the bottom floor atrium. Nothing but stray animals, trash, and somewhere an air conditioner unit rumbling. The realization that she was not 'home', nor anywhere near it, smacked her in the face almost as powerfully as the humid reek of the place. Had the cabbie, for whatever insane reason, dumped her on Street level?? Why? Because she was blind, in the conventional sense? An easy way to disappear a fare so they could skim her credit until a missing persons report froze her accounts?

She could fix that readily enough, fucking cabbie.

Digging her crystal from a pocket she tabbed the screen alive with a touch of a fingertip, only to see it had no signal in the mana display. She truly was deep, then; terrifyingly deep. She had never been below the first skyway level, often dubbed Dusk level due to the lack of any true direct sunlight because of Metamor City's towering structure. Now, for some ungodly reason, she was below even that; she was on Metamor City's 'ground floor', Street Level, where the destitute and the dangerous matriculated as they were herded from the safer, more civilized levels above. And it was not only the detritus of human and demi-humans who ended up down so far, there were also dangerous creatures hiding in the depths and shadows, predators with no care about the 'danger' of humans and other sentient races; they were simply prey.

She was prey.

The sound of several swoops, smaller single-operator versions of skimmers, passing along some side-street brought her attention back in the direction the skimmer had gone. Her ears, using the echoes caused by the swoops, told her that the street she had been unceremoniously abandoned on was pretty standard for the under levels. A long corridor of stone and metal which bored through the structures above, with doors and alleys or side streets at roughly regular intervals. Where there was a road there would, she hoped, be terminals or other business fronts that required connectivity to the world if for nothing more than monetary transactions or watching old video programs.

Sweeping her cane in quick side to side motions she walked quickly in the direction of the departed skimmer and the sound of the swoops that had already vanished. She felt lucky that she had chosen to wear her normal flats rather than heels as she felt her feet squelch through mud and kick aside discarded… things. Some sounded light, like soft drink cans, and others heavier; bottles and cast-off steel food cans. Wrappers and paper rustled and crunched underfoot and the echoes off of the walls bespoke of ventilation fan housings, metal stairs or ladders, and dumpsters that smelled monumentally worse than the overall stench of the Street.

She knew she had reached the end of the street at an intersection by the change in the overall pressure of the becalmed air, a sense of openness, and the way the echoes of her passage came back from much greater distances. Somewhere to her right, at some remove, she heard the grinding squeal of a traffic lift operating, probably for the swoops. That, then, was the direction she had to go. If she could get to one of those lifts she could ride it back to the upper levels. They were not intended for pedestrian use, often discharging directly into traffic, but it was the surest way to the upper, safer levels defined by the skyways that served them.

Lifting her crystal she saw that she had signal again and dialed her bank by memory. The mana display was clear to her mage sight but she had long ago mastered the location of each number on dial pad, ten-key, and keyboard. Her crystal, however, had a tactile display that would adjust by quarter millimeter increments so users could feel as well as see what was being displayed. It rang twice.

“First Imperial Bank." A warm, slightly feminine voice issued from the crystal. “I am Berryman, Teller number 31211. How may I assist you this evening?"

“I believe my card has been skimmed, I need to freeze it." Ash said as clearly as she could, not knowing just how good their connection was from her end, though she felt like growling. She gave the teller her name and account number, again from memory, and waited, her cane slowly sweeping side to side restlessly feeling the rough, littered surface of the street.

“Yes, ma'am, I have your account information. The last charge appears to have been cab fare, am I correct? Three hundred seventeen credits?"

Ash stumbled and gasped, then snarled, “Cab fare from Dupre north thirty-seventh to… Crestmarch Lane!" Eleven kilometers at most, certainly no more than thirty credits. “But the damn cabbie dumped me on Street level and sped away! I want that charge reversed, immediately! And lock my accounts until I contact you to release them."

“Another transaction was just submitted, ma'am, for a vehicle lift access, two street levels. The user billed the initial fare as private ride share, carpool, not as a taxi service. There is no record appended to the account associated with a taxi service. I have initiated a reversal on both transactions and flagged them for law enforcement review. I have also frozen your card and accounts. Where are you? Do you know?"

“No." She said, her anger the only thing keeping her from breaking down into a fit of emotions. She cast about but there was no real way to identify where she was; the walls were festooned with graffiti done in mana paint, probably to glow for normal sighted people. Something about the walls seemed… off. Her eyes told her that the fresh swath of graffiti across the street covered an entire wall with mana, but her ears told her there was a passage there, an alley perhaps, and no wall at all.

And her ears also told her that she was not alone. Quiet, probably too quiet even in the general silence of this stretch of mostly abandoned Street level, she caught the subtle scuff and click of footpads and claws. The sounds did not carry the pattern of a quadruped, such as a cat, but the distinct bipedal stride of a humanoid. That meant theiomorph, one of those who had taken or fallen under Metamor's Curse into the form of some animal or another.

“There are no street signs I can read, nor business displays. This sounds like a warehouse area, it seems mostly unused. I can hear a service lift somewhere. I'm trying to find it." Ash hurried her steps, shifting from her normal mana sight to focus, instead, on more specific types of mana. Life was the easiest to discern, the microbes and fungi on the ground would help her know where she was putting her feet. Metals and earth would let her know of obstacles in her way or underfoot, such as the discarded drink cans and glass.

Though her steps hastened the sound of the other person did not increase to compensate; they were probably not stalking her, then, just walking somewhere as she was. She chanced a glance back over her shoulder and saw a form defined by life essence some ten meters behind her or so, its shape and the long appendage trailing them immediately revealing them to be a theriomorph though she could not tell which kind without a longer look. It was neither broad nor tall, shorter than Ash by their slouched posture, limbs close at its side probably hands in pockets.

“I have narrowed your location down, only slightly, ma'am, based on public network consoles near your crystal. There is a vehicle elevator not far from your current location, a couple hundred meters or so. Are you safe?"

Ash directed her gaze back to the street once more, her cane sweeping rapidly from side to side, knocking aside litter and letting her feel the surface better than her limited mage sight allowed her to see. “I'm on Street level." She groused sourly, stumbling slightly over a slight crack that lifted the pavement just enough to catch her toe when she missed it with her cane. “So no, I am not safe. Police would be really helpful right now."

“I have notified emergency services, ma'am, but I am not able to ascertain an ETA." The teller was sounding slightly harried but calm, the clicking of her console oddly reassuring through the device, the lifeline, she held in her hand.

“What about the hack who skimmed my card?"

“We at First Imperial value your loyalty, ma'am, and are currently accessing the origin of the fraud. Rest assured they will be located and dealt with according to bank policy."

Ash sighed and nodded though neither she nor the teller could see it. “Real helpful right now." A short distance ahead another graffiti covered wall tugged at her ears, telling her what her eyes were seeing was not what was truly there. Magic, then, covering another street or alley? The leisurely scuff and click of the person on the street behind her had gotten closer, but not hurriedly, probably as suspicious of her as she was of them.

And probably sizing her up, with her touch cane and office clothes, low quality as they were, for their own wardrobe. A blind woman stumbling around Street level, such easy pickings for even a clumsy thief.

And then there were more sounds, boots, heavier breathing; more rapid, excited, the heavy tread far more confident and less stealthy than the ambling therimorph, behind her. She risked another glance back over her shoulder and quailed.

The new arrivals were far larger, far more broad of form, than the diminutive seeming therimorph. None of them had apparent tails or other extra appendages, one was far larger than the others, probably a half-Lutin. There were four of them in total, and a fifth that was not humanoid at all but rather some large quadruped with forelegs far more pronounced than rear. Its mana was somehow inverted, drawing inward rather than radiating outward. A sixth figure followed slightly further back and was much harder to see, their life aura utterly non-existent. A shift of her mage sight told her why; that fifth had no life presence because they were not alive. “Oh, Akkala preserve me, a fucking vampire." She breathed.

“Ma'am? Ma'am, what did you say? A vampire?" The teller's voice had hitched up in fear but Ash was beyond listening, her phone dropping from her ear as she quailed. She shifted her cane from one hand to the other to hold both phone and cane together.

The theriomorph had also noticed them, turning about and backing toward where Ash had staggered to a surprised stop. Her hand plunged into the large handbag at her side immediately finding the largest object secreted in its cluttered depths. Her fingers curled around it and her thumb popped loose the safety cap and she could feel the ring beneath the trigger. That ring slipped over her finger as she shifted her grip up securely around the discharge handle.

'Vamp-away', a not cheap self defense spray, but one she had bought in crowd control size. Mostly three-percent capsicum oil but with added silver nitrate and garlic oil all suspended in a blessed water carrier. The ring had a basic enchantment to protect the user from their own spray and she certainly hoped it functioned as advertised.

“They's two of 'em." A gruff voice spoke up from behind Ash, prompting her to spin back the way she had been going so swiftly she almost stumbled. Six more had somehow drifted across the street while her back was turned without making a sound. Two of those were also vampires. “Which one you want?" The speaker was massive and broad, their life mana tangled in the complex web of Metamor's ancient magic. From the sheer size, well over two meters, stance, and that basso growl Ash could easily identify it as a bear theriomorph.

“Take them both." One of the shadowy undead figures said languidly from beyond the bear and the four humans arrayed to either side of it. “Once they are secured we will test them to determine which is the one we seek. The other will be yours to do with as you please."

Ash snapped a glance back at the first group and the theriomorph only to find the latter distressingly close, almost near enough for their upraised tail to touch Ash's back. A dry, acrid odor tickled Ash's nose but she was not sure what it was, just one more unpleasant odor mingled in with all of the others that hung like a miasma on Street level. The theriomorph was somewhat shorter than Ash, moreso as they cowered in apparent fear as those facing them approached with a confident swagger. At such proximity she could see, from the shape of the life mana defining the creature's head, that they were probably some sort of canid, probably a fox or wolf as those were very popular forms.

But there was something more about the shape of the strange canid head, a queer doubling, as if there was another head, its life mana more visible to her sight, somehow inside the fox's shape. She had little time to ponder the oddity, however, turning back to the approaching goons in front of her.

“Don't come any closer!" she commanded, her voice far too high, quite shrill, as she snatched the vamp-away canister out of her purse and pointed it toward her opponents. “Or you'll very much regret life!"

The big form, the bear by the growing cloud of mana that spilled across the ground like a fog, bringing the animal's reeking musk to her nose to join the general Street stink, roared a laugh. “Aww, lookie there, boys! Little chew toy has some hair spray." The others laughed along, pausing their stalking advance only momentarily. Three of them drew objects from their clothing, two blades and a chain if Ash's sight of elements was accurate.

“What ever it is, use it!" came a rasping, tenor snarl from behind Ash as she felt the brush of the fox - thing's - tail against her back.

“Come now, mage." One of the vampires drawled but Ash could not see him. “That is who we are after, a mage, or two, if necessary. You've nowhere to go. Surrender and we'll go easy on you."

The fox coughed a snarl, “I ain't no mage! Leave me be!" Shoulders joined tail as the fox, female if the timbre of the voice was any tell, backed up further to stand against Ash. “She ain't neither. So go, take your hunt somewhere else!"

“Our hunt is here, fox." The vampire continued, his voice closer. Ash was wary of the group steadily approaching before her, their confident swagger unhurried. “And you are our prey. If you're no mage, perhaps I will let you join us while we find whom we seek."

Something cracked with startling volume behind Ash and the fox lurched heavily against her back. Reflexively her fingers clenched around the canister in her hand and, with a rushing hiss, it discharged a cloud of its contents. A form was staggering away from Ash, a form she had not even seen approach because it had moved so fast. Its death-black limbs raised toward its head as it reeled away with an agonized shriek. Another gasp of pain came from behind her followed by an enraged snarl.

“Take them, the fox is a mage! Sever the bitch!" another voice, similar to the first vampire, bellowed while the one before Ash spun and retreated, tripping over the curb in its headlong flight at eye defying speeds to slam, face first and at full speed, into a wall.

Ash raised the canister and depressed the trigger as she swept it from side to side at the onrushing mob.

A mob that was, just as quickly, retreating with gasps and coughs as the capcicum, garlic, and silver found their throats, lungs, and eyes. “Blasted cunt!" someone in the staggered group coughed though they did so while retreating from the fog hovering before Ash.

“Fuck!" the fox snarled and shoved solidly against Ash's back, “I'm blocked!" As if informing Ash of that fact educated her in any way. All she could see were wildly gyrating life and death aspected forms of mana moving away on both sides trying to find a way past the lingering fog of her spray. “Hit this side!"

Ash understood that much, so she spun to one side, the fox doing the same in the opposite direction, and sent forth another cloud of irritating spray. The fox's foes had been much closer and, despite realizing she meant to turn that weapon upon them, could not retreat fast enough to spare themselves a liberal dousing as Ash turned and laid into them.

“Bitch." One of them said through clenched teeth, obviously holding their breath, and plowed a fist into Ash's gut. Her air left in a whoosh and she folded over the crushing blow, dropping canister, cane, and crystal as she spilled forward. Her hands barely caught her collapse, paving and debris digging into her palms briefly before she keeled forward to curl up around herself gasping for air like a landed fish, and like that fish, finding none.

Luckily the agent had done its work and her attacker retreated under the stinging burn of capsaicin and other ingredients before delivering any further blows. The ring had detached from the canister, as it was supposed to, remaining on her finger so that she was unaffected by the burn and when her lungs finally began to drag in air. She felt the fox's legs brush against her side as she lay curled about herself and sensed the crowd moving in despite the dissipating clouds.

Marshaling her tattered concentration she shifted through her visual spectra until the thin settling cloud came into focus and she bent her will toward those commingled strands. She narrowed her focus to those essences; stay close, do not drift, she willed at it desperately and the materials obeyed. She saw the tapestry of interwoven essences shift and tighten, rising up slightly rather than settling. They shifted and stirred as the attackers moved in, buffeting at them and clutching at the life-mana shapes that revealed them. As if willfully attacking the cloud shifted from one to another, stirred by their waving arms and coughing breaths.

It did not stop them, however.

From the back of the crowd, where the gas was thinnest, someone sucked in a great breath and then charged forward to tackle the fox who stood more or less directly astride Ash. As soon as they reached the form, however, there was a brilliant flash, a snapping crack, and then a thunderous clap of thunder. Tendrils of pure electrically aspected mana leaped to the attacker, wreathing them in a corruscating net before hurling them back and surging outward with that thunderclap.

Bodies lurched back, their life mana juddering under the powerful magical attack as they staggered and most toppled. The life energies that defined them did not dissipate, however, merely flickered madly under the assault. None of it found Ash, however, spreading outward above where she lay in an expanding dome that faded long before the echoes of its discharge returned. A series of protesting chirps sounded as every crystal in the area was overwhelmed and died noisily. She turned her head slightly, gasping to steady her breath against the dull ache establishing itself in the center of her gut, to look up at the fox.

To her mana sight the fox appeared no more powerful than any other mundane. No spells wreathed their form, no mana built up on their hands nor anywhere else that would indicate they were drawing magic to strike out. She did have a large number of rather low intensity enchantments in the form of amulets or other baubles about her neck and forearms and about her waist. But none of them, to Ash's Sight, could account for that stupendous lightning strike.

Ash saw, too, that the ambient mana, which was omnipresent everywhere and easily discounted in her mage sight, was being held back from the fox by some sort of wavering barrier. When she concentrated on the magic of the spell she could see the boundaries that defined it, and the thread that led from those limits back to a form standing well beyond the coughing crowd of angry attackers and hissing vampires.

That form was not coughing, their life shape indicating one arm was probably across their face, probably breathing through the fabric of their sleeve, and another arm was upraised. Some slender object shone much more brightly and it was from that which the thread emanated to hold the barrier keeping mana back from the fox.

The magic structure of the tendril maintaining the barrier was far too complex for Ash's simple ability to prize out one piece or another in any attempt to sever it so she turned her attention back to the fog that still hung thick around her and the fox. She had to make that cloud stronger, to make its effects more pronounced so they would not be able to enter it without feeling the full burn of undiluted chemical agents.

She knew how to do it, but was not sure she could as the epicenter of a concerted attack. With one hand she batted weakly at the nearest of the fox's slender shanked paws. She felt its attention briefly directed her way, by the foreshortening of its strange double-head in her direction, she aimed her arm roughly in the direction that the thread followed.

“Mage." was all she could gasp through her still unfilled lungs and hoped the fox could do something, or lead the attackers away by somehow attacking the mage. The fox's attention seemed to shift to her arm, the direction she was waving, and then snapped up to bring its attention to the group vacillating between attacking and simply trying to breathe or see.

Using the spell enchanted into the plastic ring around her finger Ash followed its tenebrous thread to the can she had dropped and found, thankfully, that it had not rolled far due to the handle. She was able to reach out and snatch it back before anyone thought to capture it. With that in one hand she shoved her other back into her bag, feeling for the small pockets along the inside.

A strange whooping cough-bark caught her attention as the fox shifted, stepping carefully over and around her as if protecting her or simply staying within the cloud of irritant fog she had discharged. It did not seem terribly upset by it though, by the ragged edge of their rasping breaths, Ash knew the fox had to be feeling it. Ash had heard that sound before, long ago in the earliest memories of her childhood. It was a challenge cry that she had heard animals make, so long ago. Animals she had not heard since.

The fox lurched solidly against Ash, knocking her sprawling again, as something hurtled through the fog and slammed into the fox, toppling them both. Ash was kicked a couple of feet, almost spilling the precious contents of her bag, but she managed to keep a firm grasp upon the canister of vamp-away as the two went sprawling over her.

The fox and the being that had bowled it over, that quadrupedal thing Ash had seen earlier with the disproportionately longer forelimbs in relation to its rear, and been released by its master. Ash had no idea if it was immune to the irritants or was simply so bestially enraged it ignored them, but it alone had managed to brave the cloud and carry the attack to the fox.

And, likely, after the fox it would turn on Ash, herself. The two rolled, spitting and snarling, barking and hissing as they slashed at each other with tooth and claw. One was defined by how its life mana pulled inward at the ambient mana, and the other by its far more normal aspect. The barrier that encapsulated the second wavered whenever it neared the first, pulling inward and simply disappearing wherever it touched the beast.

Turning the can of vamp-away back up Ash released a fresh cloud of irritants, seizing the simple tapestry of essences, and willed them to linger even as the first use was beginning to fade despite her urgent wishes. Under its spreading dome of relative safety she delved her fingers into the pockets of her bag. Within each pocket were small wafers, their surfaces printed in braille and, she knew, etched with mana-inked circuits. Each circuit would do a single, very specific thing that, of its own, meant or did little. But when arrayed together in various ways they could achieve much more useful functions.

In one pocket her fingers traced across the simple, small raised dots that said 'x2'. Among the several she carried those would prove the most useful. There were only three, so they would have to do. Slipping them out, yet still out of sight from her attackers within her bag, she began working to get them properly connected. While each facing would determine the end function, she would need to get them correct and that was somewhat difficult with the two melee combatants rolling about and the ever-present and very real risk something other than an enraged beast would brave the fog to deal with her.

The fox's snarls and sharp barks were suddenly punctuated by a protracted, loud yowl of pain and Ash turned her attention to that nearby fight. She saw that the fox was on its back, what Ash assumed was an arm inside the shape of the beast's head. Mana was flowing, but not away in the form of blood though Ash could see considerable life mana pouring from the point where the two joined, but actual raw mana, the stuff of magic moreso than life. It was flowing thick and swift from somewhere within the fox and being drawn into the form atop it to disappear. As Ash watched in horror something snapped loudly and a flash of brilliant magic briefly eclipsed both fox and beast. A wash of intense heat surged outward, throwing the beast back with a snarling hoot of anger and pain, singing Ash's hair and drying the skin of her face painfully as it ripped past. Her protective cloud of spray evaporated instantly.

The barrier that had been surrounding the fox also rippled and tore under the explosion. Ash blinked dry eyes and wiped her stinging face in the crook of her elbow as the fox was no longer there, at least, the shape was not. Whatever the beast had done had stolen away one of the strange duality of forms and now Ash saw that the new form was shorter still, but still animalistic in general appearance. An angular head, shorter ears, much longer tail, and shimmering all the emotional hues of from pain to rage.

She had no idea what it was. It stunk, she thought, but in the general stench of the Street that was a tentative assumption; some dry, acrid musk that was far more pungent than fox. The beast also had a deep, primal musk that was pungent and unpleasant at such proximity. Luckily its attention was on the once-fox and not Ash.

The once-fox rolled and pushed themselves up on one arm, the other now wreathed in tendrils of brilliant pain hues. Turning up to one knee it threw its good arm outward in a throwing motion though nothing flew from it. Ash heard a grunt and a gurgle followed a moment later by the sound of a body crumpling to the ground. A quick glance revealed that the person who had been holding the arthana and maintaining the blocking barrier was missing. Where they had stood was a crumpled form pulsing the last few throbs of life mana.

All the while Ash's fingers continued to spin and turn the wafers under her fingers, not needing eyes to know what she was doing. She found the input and primary output points on each wafer, turning and flipping the wafers so that the alignments were correct before aligning the pins and pushing the wafers together firmly. The pins would lock securely, she knew, often requiring surprising force to release once they needed to be used again.

Before the once fox could take advantage that they were no longer blocked from the ambient mana the beast was upon them again, forcing them to roll aside and kick out at it. The beast caught their tail, eliciting another very un-fox-like yowl of enraged pain, and shook its head violently as a dog might a rat, pulling them back down before they could regain their feet.

Output A connected directly to input B, switches set to master and slave position her fingertips told her as she cast a fearful glance away from the two combatants. The others were moving in again, much more tentatively, still coughing and rubbing at their eyes, all awash in hues of fury only slightly tinged with pain.

One hand furiously trying to get the third wafer aligned deep in her purse Ash raised the canister, now considerably less weighty in her hand, and aimed it toward the nearest crowd before turning and sweeping it past the others. There was one, perhaps a weak second, blast of the stuff she could use and no more held threads of elemental and organic essence to keep it suspended. She would have to spare concentration to do that, concentration she felt she did not have time for.

The beast, savaging the once-fox's voluminous tail, forced them to fall forward onto their knees. Ash could see out of the corner of their eye as they managed to snatch their tail free and it went up, even as their good hand reached back to pull down, on pants, Ash assumed.

And that was when she realized just exactly what the once-fox actually was. Her fingers succeeded in aligning the third wafer and lock it in place, fumbling for the power switch to set it into slave position even as she sucked in a deep breath.

That's when the beast lunged and the skunk let loose.

She would have maybe a second, probably less.

The beast took the brunt of the skunk's spray directly to the face but was already in motion, bowling the hapless theriomorph under it as the spray was sent in all directions. Ash shifted her Sight to the essence of the spray and captured at its basic strand of incredibly complex chemicals, pushing them away from herself, the skunk, and perforce the beast even as she grasped a single small sliver and drew it in. Bringing the completed circuit from her bag she depressed the trigger on the spray can once more sending out another fog with a loud hiss of compressed air. That, too, she focused on and snatched a single small thread of its complex tapestry. These two threads she quickly touched to the source input of the stacked wafers and flicked up the master power switch before hastily throwing it toward the crowd.

The tiny wafer cell batteries in each of the testers would only last twenty seconds or so with that sort of output, but she hoped it was enough. Immediately the overwhelming fetor of the skunk's spray and vamp-away was intensified by one hundred percent through the first amplification circuit. That circuit fed directly into the second, which did the same doubling from the output of the first, and that fed directly into the third amplification which did the same. It did not increase the volume of spray or chemical agents, it merely increased their intensity over five hundred percent. That intensity, like water flashing to steam, caused the essences to surge outward almost explosively, overwhelming their assailants before they even had a thought of retreating.

The effects were instantaneous. Rather than coughing or gagging the crowd let out a collective gasp of surprise, emptying their lungs when the capsaicin bit into their nerves several hundred times more powerfully than expected. Reflexively after their outward expulsions of surprised breaths they tried to draw in more air and exposed their lungs directly to the combined assaults of skunk spray and vamp-away.

They, to the last, immediately ceased breathing as their brains were overwhelmed and caused their diaphragms to seize. The vampires, stricken by the potency of amplified garlic, silver, and blessed water all dissolved into mist and flowed rapidly away. In her bubble created by pushing those same essences away Ash watched as the assailants staggered, gaping breathlessly and vomiting as they collapsed, the mana that defined their life essence flickering madly as it strove, but failed, to keep life in their flesh. The flickers dimmed from each of them before fading into ambient once more.

The beast was beyond enraged by the blinding intensity of the skunk's direct spray but was spared Ash's excessive amplification within the bubble of absence and it was not so summarily eliminated. It straddled its prey, hooting and barking in that strange voice as it sought a way past the skunk's shielding arm. It had been all but blinded by the spray so was not having much success, its head held at bay by the skunk's good hand at its throat. Each time it lunged downward the other hand, despite the injuries to its arm, pummeled it aside with a fist.

Hunching its back beneath the beast the skunk brought its rear paws up into the hollow of its gut and kicked, savagely, raking its feet downward in a desperate attempt to pry itself from beneath the beast. With a sound like wet leather set upon by a blunt knife the skunk's powerful claws rent flesh and muscle. When the beast sought to lurch away the skunk released its throat and reached up to grapple about the back of its neck, drawing its head down even as it bucked its hindquarters trying to escape those powerful, digging kicks.

After a few moments it struggles slowed as its innards spilled out onto the trapped skunk and shortly after its life mana, too, faded into ambient. The skunk let the beast's dying carcass slump before heaving it limply to one side.

Ash sank to her knees, hands shaking, while the skunk sprawled onto its back, equally spent. Neither moved for what seemed like minutes rather than seconds before each gave a convulsive jerk as if only then coming back to the realization that they were still alive and not the prisoners of vampires and their pawns.

“Fuck me." The skunk groaned in a ragged tenor voice before rolling to its good side and propping itself up on one elbow. “Holy. Fuck. Me."

Turning her Sight toward it Ash could still see its general life shape now little more than a shape defined, quite sharply, by the bright hues of agony. Yet it was not screaming or writhing and seemed altogether unfettered by what, she assumed, would cripple most or send them spiraling into unconsciousness. Not, of course, that she had seen many people suffering such extremis, but she had never before seen anyone so pain wracked.

“Are you okay, girl?" It rasped as it tried to sit up, failing several times before managing to prop itself up against the still form of the vanquished beast.

“No." Ash quailed, her voice shaking and threatening to break before she fought it back under control. She took a shaky breath, and then another, tasting the fetor of the skunk, dead beast, and the noisome stench progenitored by almost a score of the recently deceased. “I'm not hurt, no." She managed after another few seconds. Her body was shaking, adrenaline fading, her brain threatening to shut down after what she had just experienced.

What she had just done. They were dead, all of those who had minutes before been living, and she had been the one to end their lives. She had never killed anything more dangerous than a spider in her life and now she had extinguished the lives of people.

People that were attacking her, sure, but people all the same.

“We've got to get out of here." The skunk groaned as they shifted up onto their knees and leaned forward as if to stand only to settle back onto the hocks of their dog-like legs. Skunks did not have legs like that, Ash's mind dredged up that little tidbit of trivia despite herself and she could only shake her head at the stupidity of it. Who cares what shape its legs were! “The vampires will be back, once your little present fades from their systems. It did not end them, merely sent them running before I could."

Ash stared at the skunk, noting how its magic was flickering unsteadily, but powerfully, no longer masked by whatever spell they had been using to conceal it before. She was rather surprised at how much it possessed and, if the throb in the hues of pain were any indication, was being wracked by as it surged and ebbed chaotically.

She also noted, by the points of intensity in its life aura, that it was very likely male. Those aspects did not flicker as madly as its mana did which meant that whatever had happened to its magic would not kill it. The pain it was apparently experiencing could, however, bring it down without some manner of healing and soon.

“Can you walk, girl?"

“Yes!" Ash snapped, irritated at the way he addressed her by gender rather than as a person. And she was a full grown woman, no mere girl. A woman who had just faced off against vampires and their pawns and survived. “My name is Ash!"

The skunk grunted and nodded, or made some rough physical gesture that Ash could only interpret as a nod by the motion of the shape atop its shoulders. The pain gave that shape far more definition than normal, being a purely internally focused sensation rather than life mana which tended to spill out of everyone all over the place making their mana shapes blurry and indistinct. Only strong internal emotions lent them clearer definition; hate, fury, lust, terror more than less intense states.

One of those, at least, she knew how to use to lend definition to others.

“Can you help then, Ash? I'm Kai, and I am right seriously fucked the hell up."

Unsteadily pushing herself to her feet, surprised to find that she still had shoes on after that fracas, she shuffled closer to the skunk. “Can't we just wait for the cops, Kai? Someone had to have heard that mess, certainly your thunderclap." She cast about for her crystal but its mana was depleted or it had been stepped on at some point, there was nothing to point her toward it. She did find her cane, however, the enchantments making it easy to spot in the thin fog of ambient mana. “Someone would've called about it."

The skunk, Kai, scoffed and shook his head again, raising his good arm in Ash's general direction. Gingerly she took his wrist in both hands, wincing at the tacky dampness to his fur and the stench was overwhelming. His spray, which she still kept pushed back from her senses for the most part, and the ungodly stench of the beast's guts that were spilled across the pavement at her feet. “Fuck no, girl. Ash. This is the Street. No one will whisper a damn thing to anyone about what they may have seen, and there aren't many in this area to see, anyway. It's pretty much warehousing." Straining against her steadying grasp he managed to pull himself to his broad footpaws. “So, that means the homeless, the destitute, the people who don't want to know us and we don't want to meet. Probably waiting to descend on this lot the moment we're gone to pick them clean. Then someone might call in the bodies, if they don't just leave them for less sentient scavengers. Which is another reason we want to get the hell out of here because my stench is not going to keep them away for long, no matter how potent it was."

Ash had to acknowledge his logic there, at least. She had no desire to be anywhere around when the creatures from even deeper than Street level came up foraging. “You live here? Around here, somewhere?"

Awkwardly shuffling back the way they had come before the goons and vampires arrived the skunk, Kai, nodded. “Did. Don't anymore, not after this." He grunted and hissed, his weight falling against her. Ash shifted his good arm up around her shoulders, awkwardly due to his short stature, and began sweeping her cane out in front of her. Its enchantments did little more than keep it from fouling in soft ground and gave it a more rigid sensitivity so she could feel things it touched more clearly. “We can go back there, it's not far. Can't stay long, though. Police, Lothanasi, others of that ilk are going to be sniffing around. I don't want to be here when they do."

“Why?" Ash let him lead the way since she had no idea what direction was what at this level and he seemed to. At least, better than she did.

“Because they're compromised. Damn vamps have their fangs into everything, sure as hell the police. Probably have eyes and ears in the Lightbringers, too. If they're after you and you pop up in some precinct house they'll know about it before the ink on your report is even dry."

“After me?" Ash grunted in surprise, tapping along a wall as they neared the side of the street. “That one guy said he was after a mage. I'm not a damn mage, but you sure are." In some dim corner of her mind she realized she held the now empty can of vamp-away and let it fall from her grasp.

It sure worked, though. She would have to get more once she returned to the reality that had once been her life.

If.

“Not one worth their attention." He groused as they moved further down the street and Ash sensed an alley to one side. The skunk leaned in that direction so she followed his lead despite the uneasiness the cramped quarters made her feel.

“You threw down a damn thunderbolt that dropped all of them." She pointed out, moving more cautiously in the confines of the alley so she could navigate around all of the discarded things they encountered. Boxes, crates, trash cans overflowing with old packing material, and the occasional air conditioning unit poking from some shallow recess or another. “That's no little thing."

“Was an item, not me." Kai muttered before hissing as a shudder of pain made his aura brighten and his already unstable magic flutter maniacally. “Kinda spent my wad on that."

“So why are you pouring mana like a sieve, right now? A lot of it. More than most mages I've seen."

“One of my items may have been damaged by that… whatever the hell it was. The hooting green monster."

“Rift baboon."

“Baboon?" Kai chuffed through a grunt of pain. “Sounded about right, but green. Spots on it, too."

“From the southern rift, in Telvara, where it cuts into the lowlands. Baboons there are green with mottling camouflage, more active hunters than they are anywhere else. Magic-eaters. They go after things with high mana because of their proximity to the Rift."

“You know quite a bit about the one specimen I've ever encountered." His voice took on an edge of suspicion even as he stifled another twinge of pain behind clenched teeth.

“My parents were researchers in southern Telvar. I'd hear them at night, when they'd try to barge in after samples or because some idiot brought a piece of equipment that held a lot of mana."

“Here." Kai stopped in front of a recessed door and fumbled at it with his good hand while Ash steadied him with an arm around his chest from his good side. He was shorter than her hundred-eighty centimeters and that made it an awkward embrace but he managed, balancing with long sweeps of his ragged tail. “How long ago was that?" At length his claws caught on something and the door drew outward with surprisingly little noise. Ash shifted to put a foot out and used that to help push it open.

“Twenty years or so. I don't remember, exactly, when my dad and I left. I was pretty young."

The chamber beyond the door was not large, seven meters or so to a side. It was austere, as well, to Ash's eyes. A rough shape defined by metals and organic mana was probably a bed to one side, to the other was possibly a counter. Her ears told her there were shelves to the right, but the walls were covered in some sort of thick dampening material like blankets hung from above, or tapestries. She could smell water and stainless steel so a sink somewhere as well. The center of the floor was clear and the ambient mana defined complex structures in a circle a couple of meters across.

“See?" She said, jabbing her cane in the general direction of the circle. “Casting circle." She shifted her gaze back over to where Kai had shuffled to the bed and collapsed on its edge to sit, panting heavily. “Mage."

“And you're not blind, then." He pointed out with a chuff. “Good misdirection with the cane and stumbling over junk, but it was obvious you could see just fine." He petered out with a flare of pain that matched a sudden shuddering increase in his mana that dimmed just as precipitously.

“I am blind." Ash argued, “In the way most people see, at any rate. So I was taught other ways to see."

“Mage sight." He grunted with a nod, leaning back and sucking a shuddering breath through his teeth. “Interesting. Wait a bit, I need to try to do something here before I bleed out."

“Do you have bandages here, somewhere? A first aid kit?"

“Ehh." He seemed to focus back on her with a wave of his good arm toward the back of the room. “Shelf, over there. Third from the floor, left side. But I'm going to try my own methods, first."

Moving around the dim, obviously quiescent, circle Ash moved along the far wall where she found a countertop, drawers, and a sink. At the end of that was some sort of toilet stall and basic shower inset into the corner between the counter and back wall. She could hear the skunk's labored, pained breathing and occasional outbursts of hisses or groans as she felt the edge of the shelving. She could see the metals used to form its uprights and horizontal structure but the items on it, many of them magical in nature, were beyond her understanding.

She found a pile of items that felt like rolled gauze and a box that had 'emergency first aid' stamped in braille on its face. While she was collecting them she heard the skunk let out a breathy, deep sigh and the sound of fabric and body sliding from the bed to thud noisily to the floor. She snatched the items down heedless of what was knocked from the shelf and hastened across the room. Luckily the magic circle kept the floor clear so she did not need to use her cane to reach the side of the bed.

The skunk's life mana was still steady, the pain pulsing considerably less in his untidily spilled form, but his magic was flickering in spastic fits that matched the small twitches she could see in his akimbo limbs. She delved deeper into the varied spectrums of mana, elements, compounds, to the spirit which was strong, to the soul which blinded her with the sudden brilliance of a noon-day sun. She staggered and quickly shifted her sight away from that stunning brilliance, deeper still, to the very Numen that was the binding force of creation itself.

Or so she had been taught, before she learned of the strong and weak forces of electromagnetism, gravity, and the flow of time. The Numen was all of those things, running through them like the weft in the weave that was Creation. Alongside that was the deeper darkness always seeping through, attempting to unbind all that the Numen bound in its intricate tapestry. The shimmering, subtle colors that she could not name, that perhaps could not be named even on the electromagnetic spectrum, bent sharply around the unconscious skunk, scintillating hues that swept about him like the complex magnetic lines of a planet; or a star.

All life that she had ever seen at such a deep level bent the Numen toward itself, some more strongly than others, but swept through those who had abandoned creation for the cancerous darkness that lent those creatures their existence. Vampires, most notably, bent the Numen away in the same way life drew it in, was bound and defined by it. When they perished the numen would draw away in a tight knot of scintillating light that, Ash assumed, was the soul of the deceased and no longer curved so strongly about their remains but for the life that was retained in the process of decay

She had only witnessed that once, a mere three years past, and it had forever changed her perception of life, while it was lived, and death. Peace, in some ways, that lessened the grief of loss.

The skunk was something altogether different, more attached to the Numen than any being she had ever seen at such proximity. And ever so slightly removed, one very shallow step up from the tapestry of Creation, was the Soul.

And his shone with the brilliance of a star.

His breathing hitched and then drew in with a gasp that ended with a low groan. She shifted her Sight quickly, as if caught looking in on someone in the privacy of their bath, and quickly set the items on the narrow cot.

“Fuck." He rasped and hissed as the hues of his pain flared to the fore once again.

“Are you okay?" She asked, kneeling to help him shuffle awkwardly back up to sit upon the edge of the cot.

“Ugh, fuck." He shook his head, eliciting a wave of pain that originated somewhere in his head and radiated down though his body, much less intense than that throbbing in his savaged arm but much more encompassing, almost ingrained. “No. My magic is seriously fucked. That thing, the baboon, must have had a venom or toxin that destabilizes magic."

“Likely." Ash agreed as she opened the box and felt about the vacuum sealed packages within. All had stiff plastic labels that were probably printed readably but had also been stamped with braille. “Since they're a mana predator around, probably in, the Rift zone."

“Never been there, so I'll take your word for it." He said while looking at his savaged arm. “Even that little bit, damn. Like trying to tame a live power line. An unstable live power line. Gods damn." Flexing his arm he turned it slowly to examine the injuries. Other than the way the flaring pain defined his limb Ash had no way to understand the extent of his injuries, but the overall shape was certainly not something normal. “I got the bleeding stopped, at least. That's all I can do, here. Nor have we got the time. Police have probably already found our little party mess and will be extending their search for survivors." He leaned forward to stand and Ash moved closer to help. “Or perpetrators."

Even the fur of his good arm was matted and slick under her fingers, slick and tacky with drying gore. Ash certainly hoped it was nothing more than blood but after seeing how he killed the baboon she was probably right in expecting more. Plus the rank stench of the animal's insides that had spilled over the short theiromorph and still clung to his fur.

And, since she was helping him, her clothing as well. She could feel where it had soaked through, cool and sticky against her flesh, and crusty where it was drying against her side and one leg. “You don't want me to dress that arm?"

“Not here, no time." He shuffled away and began rummaging at the shelves, pulling bits and pieces that glimmered faintly with enchantments and other magic before stuffing them in a bag he had taken from a peg at one corner of the shelves. “This room is no longer safe."

“What about hospital, or a temple of Akkala?"

“Both have eyes and with my magic rendered useless I can't render an illusion sufficient to get past their security anyway. No, we've got to find somewhere else to go to ground." He finished shoving oddments into his bag and awkwardly slung at his uninjured side. “And before you mention it, no, your home is not safe for us, nor even you." He turned toward the door and stumbled before pausing to lean against the counter for a moment before raising his good arm toward Ash. Understanding his need she hastened over to slip his arm over her shoulder heedless of his crusty, damp fur or the new layer of viscera she felt pressing against her side.

Her work clothes were hopelessly ruined already.

“Vamps have resources, they'll figure out who you are and where you live probably before dawn. They'll send their enforcers to collect you, because of me." They moved toward the door and, after cautiously peering outside, he led them back into the claustrophobic alley. “They find you, you'll talk, child."

“And tell them what?" Ash challenged as she swept the tip of her cane out before them, tapping her way along with the skunk's vision making progress much easier if not a great deal more swift. “Some skunk mage left me lost in an alley somewhere after wiping out all of their men?"

“You did that." The skunk, Kai, pointed out blandly as they began to ascend some rickety metal stair, the industrial metal rattling around them and squealing as if it might collapse at any moment. “The vamps got away, but you can well bet they'll remember that fact. If there's something vamps have more than sharp teeth it's overwhelming egos and pride. You rubbed their noses in it, so they'll want to mete out what they consider just retribution. I don't think you have any more of that dragon's breath left."

“Dragon's breath?" They paused on one of the interminable landings on the switchback stair as Kai slumped against the wall to catch his breath and fight back another wave of pain.

He waved one hand vaguely, “That spray you used, whatever it was. Damned effective."

“Vamp-away? That's what it was, a commercial self protection chemical agent. I buy it at a store that sells that sort of stuff, tactical gear and such. Too expensive for the cops to carry, though, and too new on the market."

Kai scoffed and nodded as he draped an arm over Ash's aching shoulders and they resumed their struggling climb. “That's the way it always is. Keepers of the law and peace never have what they need. Here, to the right." He leaned their path to one side as they came to a landing slightly larger than those below with a single door set deep in a heavy concrete casement.

He withdrew his arm from her shoulders offering blessed relief from his weight as he moved closer to the door. He was not especially heavy, even for his relatively short stature, but helping haul him up enough stairs, it seemed, to enter the Matriarch's own bed chamber she was glad of the reprieve. The clothes on one side were matted and the crusty gunk was starting to itch unpleasantly. The stench was overwhelming but, luckily, scent filtering was something she had learned to do long ago. Everyone did that, sighted as well as non-sighted, as a simple part of daily life. But, being blind, her smell was considerably more acute, as was her hearing, so her ability to filter was far better.

It still leaked though, though, and clawed at her throat with each breath.

After a few quiet beeps a lock released with a ratcheting sound so loud after their relative quiet that Ash jumped. The rusty hinges of a door squealed as Kai fought to draw it open. Ash had little choice, since she had no idea where she was or how to find her way back to reality, but to step over and help. The door was heavy, extremely thick metal with poorly oiled hinges that shrieked and groaned. They were able to slip through the gap and, as soon as they released the door it began the same ponderous, shrieking cacophony as it swung the opposite direction, closing with a metallic clang that rang in Ash's ears and shook the floor beneath her feet.

They were now in a long, somewhat narrow passageway with a high ceiling. Electricity hummed intensely all around them with such potency she could feel it all the way to her core. “Where are we?"

“Power distribution room below Townsend tower, somewhere." Kai pressed one hand to the wall as they began shuffling through the room. Thick cables criss-crossed overhead and each time they passed under one Ash could feel her flesh tingle and her teeth grow numb. “Reactor turbines are below us."

“How far up to the first skyway?"

“Fourty, fifty meters, I think, Not directly. These are all service areas." They finally reached the end of the camber and entered another, far larger and with a far higher ceiling that hummed so loudly with flowing power Ash could not think enough to speak. She could only follow the skunk's lead. There were another score of corridors similar to the one they had just emerged from, all directing power from the nuclear reactor and turbines somewhere below them. The sheer feel of the electricity in the place made her nauseous.

After several minutes picking their way past control stations and columns of tightly bound transfer cables Kai brought them to a halt in front of some manner of small pedestal. He leaned against it while she took another few moments to work the growing kinks out of her neck and shoulders. She had no idea what time it was and the thought made her pause.

How long ago since a cabbie had derailed her life for his own greed? How long ago since a group of vampires and their goons had descended upon her to make that derailment into a complete train wreck? An hour, a day, weeks stumbling blindly through the wretched rectum of the great and magnificent Metamor City hauling a fucked up skunk?

How long since she had enjoyed a shower, a meal, something so simple as a cup of reheated coffee?

She slumped against the side of the pedestal, utterly spent, her mind reeling, her sense of self unraveling. Is this what people went through when their lives spiraled out from under them and they went from living in the bright lights and sunshine of the upper city to live in its stinking bowels? While some animal that had once been a person pressed buttons that beeped and booped but did not seem to produce anything? Some animal that stood against a handful of vampires and challenged them as if the apex predators of the undead were no more dangerous than bullies on a schoolyard.

“Now what." She found herself muttering into her knees where she found her head resting, legs drawn up close with her aching arms wrapped around them.

“Now what, what?" Kai inquired as he stopped whatever he was doing and sank down against the other face of the pedestal nearby. “For you, me, us?"

“Me!" She grunted pitifully into her upraised knees, staring at the brilliant hues of raw electrical power that dominated her vision so much that even background mana was rendered invisible. “Now what about me!"

“You survive." Kai admonished quietly, his voice no longer stuttering with stifled exclamations of pain. While his hues had darkened only slightly from the brightness of intense pain it was still surprising to Ash that he was still even conscious. He ignored the pain as if completely inured to it. “You survive, you get through this, with me."

She turned her head to one side but she could not cast her gaze at him seated ninety degrees against another face of the pedestal. “With you? Suspira's tits, skunk, with you?"

“At least until we can eliminate those vamps, or find you safe shelter from them and their master."

“They're fucking vampires, you already said, they have eyes, resources! They fucking run everything shady and criminal in this city! How can I hide from that?"

“In the short term? With me." Kai reassured her quietly, hissing a breath through his teeth as his mana pulsed bright and then dimmed in a chaotic strobe. “They'll try scrying to find us, at least at first. They can't scry me at all, my enchantments prevent that, and while you're within three meters they won't be able to scry you, either."

Ash let out an incredulous snort, “So, what, I'm supposed to stay attached to your damn hip for gods know how damn long? Until a vampire master, a being who lives fucking centuries, is put off my trail?" She threw up her arms and immediately regretted that as a twinge lanced through the muscles of her shoulder. “I have a saints bedamned fucking life, skunk! Friends! A job!"

“You have a task, Ash." Kai admonished levelly but without rancor. He grunted softly as he grasped the lip of the pedestal and slowly dragged himself upright. Something chirped noisily in the distance, snapping Ash's head around. The sound echoed, carrying with it the quiet click of something moving, something with wheels rather than claws.

“What task, oh mighty one?" She groused as she pushed herself upright as well to face whatever was coming down a narrow, noisily echoing tunnel.

“To not die."

In the poorly lit, often abyssal, darkness of the street the brilliant lights of the armored vehicle glared with blinding brightness, illuminating the littered pavement ahead as well as to either side and behind. Strobing reds and blues lent their staccato light as well, warning away any who might understand what was approaching and a warning to those creatures that lacked such intelligence as well.

Huge, wide wheels crunched over litter and other discards with barely any perceptible rise as the massive machine crunched its way along the street and began to slow. Navigating the final turn on four wheels that pivoted the machine as much as steered it the armored police response unit slowed to a stop with a hiss of brakes as its lights took in the sprawled bodies littering the roadway ahead. Small scavengers fled from the sound and light, quickly disappearing into the sharp edged darkness etched by the flood lights.

“Report was on the money, sarge." The driver reported as he gazed at the carnage ahead. “No vampire activity detected, no other life forms larger than a rat on scan."

Leaning over the driver's shoulder to gaze through the thick, bullet resistant glass and magic forward window the sergeant grunted. “Maybe no vamps, but something certainly had a party down here." He shifted back and turned to the other three members of the rapid response squad seated in the back of the transport. “Anders, Thomas, cover the rear and do a sweep back to the street corner, see if we ran over any evidence. Shaar, you're with me. Do a scan for recent magic activity or remaining magic influence. I'm going to check the bodies."

“No signs of life on scan, Sarge." The driver reported dutifully. “Temps indicate their deaths are recent, probably fifteen minutes on the outside. A lot of chemical activity, though, so everyone mask up before I crack the seals."

“What sort of chemical activity?"

“Standard background biologics with a marked spike in… what is this, mercaptins? I don't even know what those are. High levels of primary pepper spray components, silver, and garlic. Probably someone came to dust it up with some vamps."

“Or a business transaction that went pear shaped. Mercaptin is added to natural gas so the utilities know when there's a leak, sulfur based. Not sure why anyone would use that against vamps."

“Those bodies out there are not vampire, Sergeant." Shaar, a slim but muscular elf, said as he leaned toward the front of the transport to look ahead. “Someone came prepared for their thralls, however, and that's what we're probably looking at. Two distinct groupings of bodies. Distribution and orientation indicates they were attempting to flee something between them when they fell."

“All right, kiddos, let's get out there and see what we can see. Travis, call it in. We're going to need a lot of wagons for transport. Seal the forward compartment, Travis, and then crack the rear seal. Ready up!" The sergeant pulled a full-face mask from a compartment on the wall and clicked it into place over his face. Magnets snapped it into place and magic instantly sealed it against the outside air. He and Shaar moved back and the armored partition between the cab of the transport and the rear dropped into place. A moment later the rear ramp hissed loudly, heavy metallic thumps of the retracting locks disengaging following immediately after before it lowered abruptly to slam loudly to the pavement.

That was a bit of psychological shock and awe rather than necessity, granted, but it amped the blood of those piling out almost before it landed. Anders, a hulking Breed and their heavy weapons specialist, leaped out and swept left while Thomas followed a pace behind and swept right. Both carried medium rifles, each loaded with ammunition tailored to the threats they might face on the Street or even below. Each shot was explosive and impregnated with blessed silver that might not outright kill something like a vampire but would most certainly weaken it to the point that it would be easily captured or dispatched.

The sergeant and magic specialist, Shaar, each carried their sidearms at the ready, rifles slung at their sides for easy access. They followed the first two but held their position at the rear of the transport until Anders and Thomas indicated their area was clear before moving around to the front of the vehicle. They each paused just behind the forward bumper and slapped their boots, activating charms that would allow them to levitate a few inches from the ground. That would allow them to move through the crime scene without disturbing evidence on the ground or transfer it to their footgear.

“Sarge, Lothanasi response reports they're ten minutes out. Sending up the camera now." The sergeant looked through the forward screen, which was a featureless matte black from the outside, and gave a nod. Another stark, brilliant white light rose from the roof of the transport and shifted back toward the other two still securing the rear of the transport.

“Who's commanding?" Shaar had moved forward slowly, an arthana held before him, slowly sweeping it across the body strewn ground ahead.

“Order Lieutenant Berks."

“Copy, keep them in the loop. Report what we've encountered and that whatever vamps were here seem to have escaped the area."

“Copy."

The street was littered with bodies, none moving and all deceased if the scanners were working properly which they usually did. Sometimes they got out of order, usually when powerful magic was in play, but with none apparent he assumed they were correct. At least to his eyes they seemed to be. There were nineteen bodies, most human with a smattering of Breed, Lutins, and one massive theriomorph; a brown bear from the look of it.

“Sergeant, over here." Shaar's voice had an edge of curiosity, and caution, over his earpiece. He hastened over to where the elf was squatting, six inches above the ground, and looking down at a carcass that did not match any of the humanoids he could see. As the Sergeant approached the elf took several photographs, moving slowly around it to capture all angles before crouching near where the Sergeant had come to stand.

The beast was decidedly odd and most certainly not native. Its short, coarse fur was green with mottled rosettes of purple and blue. The muzzle was broad and heavy with positively huge canine teeth. It looked as if an explosive round had gone off in its guts, leaving a gaping cavity from which intestines and organs spilled to create a wide puddle of viscera and blood around it.

“And what the hell is that?" He asked the elf who, like most of his kind, was much more intimately familiar with the natural world than the sergeant who had spent the entirety of his life in the vertical concrete jungle of Metamor City.

“I am not familiar with it, Sergeant." The elf reported unhelpfully. “It is not native to this region or, I believe, this continent at all. Though it is dead it still strives to leech at my mana, I risk not touching it for a more in depth examination."

Off to the side Thomas and Anders had begun working around the perimeter of the scene taking photographs as well. A larger camera hovered overhead, operated by Travis in the transport, taking a video record of the scene.

“Leech at your mana? Like some sort of vampirism but toward magic?" The Sergeant knew that the video was also recording the audio over their shared communication so voiced his observations rather than silently make assumptions that could later be questioned. He could hear the other two members of the squad speaking details of what they were observing through a secondary channel that was audible, but much more quiet than the channel he and the Elf were using.

“I am not sure. It does not show of un-death, however. It was a living creature."

“Was. What killed it?" The sergeant scanned the bodies nearby and saw that none of them showed similar injuries. Indeed, none of them seemed particularly injured in any way, but their faces were frozen in rictus expressions of horror and surprise. All of them showed the dark scleral lesions of petechiae in their sightless eyes.

What under Eli's sight had strangled so many so quickly that none seemed to have escaped?

“Look at the wounds, Sergeant." Shaar brought his attention back to the slain creature, using a long metal probe to point at the savaged remains of the animal's gut. “A considerable number of long slashing marks, many in parallel. The edges are ragged, not clean. Most of the marks initiate toward the rib cage and draw rearward."

“Claws, then?"

“Exactly so, yes. From a creature of analogous size, judging by the width between parallel strikes. Blunt but relatively stout claws, a digging animal, most likely. The injuries are not defined enough to be those of a sharp-clawed animal such as a feline."

“Natural, or theriomorph?"

“There are no consistent injuries to the throat which would indicate defensive biting, so I would assume a theriomorph, from beneath, aligned in parallel head to hind. Raking with the claws of their feet. However, I do not see any blood or other viscera on the animal's muzzle or fur that would indicate biting on the animal's part. It is difficult to determine if it was the attacking animal or the attacked."

“A necropsy will probably be able to learn more." The Sergeant shrugged, much more at a loss than his more learned team member. “At any rate, it's dead. What about the rest?" He turned to wave one arm at the bodies sprawled from one side of the street to the other and for some distance along as well.

Shaar nodded and stood smoothly, falling into step with him as they walked slowly on air from body to body, examining them but finding nothing that would indicate how they were killed. Most had foam clinging to their mouths, some of it bloody, many had vomited, and perhaps aspirated on that, in their final moments. All had wide staring eyes ringed with red petechiae and tracks of tears through the grime below their eyes. Their faces were the purple of asphyxia.

“Pepper spray?" The Sergeant asked of the elf as they knelt over a skinny wreck of a human who was clearly in the more advanced stages of intravenous addiction. “I've never seen it do this to people."

“Travis said the scanner indicated the presence of capsaicin which would indicate the use of such an agent, yes. And you are correct, conventional formulations cannot cause asphyxia except in cases of already compromised respiratory health."

“And what about the other things it detected? Garlic, silver, and that chemical they put in natural gas to make it stink?"

“The garlic and silver could be from any number of anti-vampire items freely available on the market. The other agent I suspect it was defensive in nature, from something like a skunk, civet, or similar species. If it was attacked by the deceased animal it may have released the spray, by intent or panic."

“And then gutted it while everyone else suffocated? That would've been one insanely potent skunk."

“Or the pepper spray. Autopsies will conclude which of the agents was responsible for this carnage." Shaar stood and walked lightly over the scene, rising and falling as the levitation in his boots took him over the corpses. “Whatever slew the animal left paw prints, notice." He was looking down at a somewhat unsullied area of the pavement at a large, bloody print on the concrete. Perhaps as wide as the Sergeant's hand if not as long with clear prints where the tips of the claws had touched. “Foot, no other prints indicating a forepaw, so bipedal. Definitely a theriomorph." He photographed it as he spoke.

“Sergeant, got a decap over here." Anders growled into their channel, standing some twenty meters further down the street at the mouth of an alley. He left the Elf to his photographing and made his way over to the hulking Breed who was photographing the body he had found.

The man's manner of dress was slightly better than the majority of the other deceased, all of whom looked to have been little more than Street level muscle or denizens. His head was also missing, though it had come to rest not far away, in the same puddle of blood that had pooled around the collapsed body. Also in the puddle was a slender length of wood, slightly tapered and clearly worked.

The deceased human's arthana, the magical implement with which he had cast spells.

“You won't believe what killed him, Sarge." The breed said as he stopped photographing, directing his gaze and the Sergeant's attention toward the wall near the mouth of the alley. Something had sliced into the wall and become stuck there, blood still dripping slowly from its sagging form.

“Is that cardboard?"

“Yeah." Anders said with a shudder in his voice. “Something stiffened it and moved it so fast the poor sod probably never saw it coming, or even realized he was dead when his head hit the ground. Beheaded by a damn diaper box." The Sergeant noted the print on the sagging cardboard where it was not fouled by clean streaks of blood. Dandee Diapers, a pretty cheap brand, that he knew came in boxes of twenty four or forty eight. The count was obscured by blood. “He's the only one, other than that dog thing, that shows any visible injuries."

“Only a mage could do that, or a tornado." The Sergeant observed with an atavistic twitch as a chill ran up his spine. A mage with enough control to pick up a piece of discarded cardboard and send it flying with enough force not only to decapitate a man but imbed itself in a wall was not a mage he wanted to encounter.

Travis cut into the channel, “Lothanasi are here, Sarge."

A low, sleek skimmer in brilliant white with the Lothanasi doubled cross painted on the hood and doors was drawing to a stop behind the transport, its landing skids touching down lightly. It did not completely power down but the doors opened as it idled, three people getting out from the rear and front passenger side. Their stark white, crisp uniforms standing out baldly in comparison to the well worn uniforms of the Sergeant and his team.

“Lieutenant Berks." The Sergeant greeted them, his voice lent a flat, muffled tone by his mask. The Lothanasi, Lightbringers, did not wear masks and, other than a slight pinch to the expression on the youngest, did not seem disturbed by what the Sergeant could not smell through the ventilation. The trio moved like stalking predators around the transport and took in the scene. “Sergeant Adrian, third precinct, currently on attached duty with the second." Since only the third precinct had the wheeled crawlers that could more easily navigate the confines of the street and carry enough armor to defend itself against some of the nastiness that tended to migrate up from below. The second precinct had all but ceded the entire Street and Dusk levels to the third, interesting themselves only with the second skyway and higher.

More visibility for them, and that meant more funding for their shiny cars and well pressed uniforms.

“Well met, Sergeant." Berks' voice was as crisp as his uniform but held a degree of informality as he nodded in greetings. “What have you found?"

“No vampires. At least, not anymore." He reported and then laid out why they were there, a call to emergency services from an Empire Bank teller, what they had found when they arrived, and what they had discovered since. “Initial dispatch said the claimant overheard a client saying they had encountered vampires and tracked their crystal to this area using local terminal triangulation. Apparently they overheard some manner of altercation before the call was terminated by some sort of explosion."

“Lightning." Was Thomas' response from several meters away, “Scorch marks." Indeed, once the Sergeant took a closer look at the ground he could see thin, crazed black lines radiating outward across the ground from between the two groups. They were subtle, and most were disguised beneath disturbed litter and dirt, but readily visible once his attention was called to them. “Certainly a spell."

“One of the decedents did have an arthana." Sergeant Adrian connected the dots. “At any rate, the lightning or magic probably trashed anything like crystals the caller may have had. The teller who called it in lost contact after that."

“We received much the same information, relayed from your dispatch." The Lieutenant said as they walked beside the Sergeant through the scene. The other two Lightbringer officers had moved toward the perimeter and made contact with Anders and Thomas to compare notes. “Though it seems that, now, it is no longer an issue for the Lothanasi Order. Judging by this pile of detritus the vampires in question were not ferals on a rampage, I see no evidence of their grizzly habits. Perhaps a meeting of gangs that fell into a dispute." He indicated the two discreet collections with a sweep of one arm.

“Well, there's a strange animal. And one man lost his head. Cut off by a bit of cardboard." He directed the Lieutenant over to where the dead animal lay sprawled on its side, guts spilled out. “I've never seen the like."

“Nor I." Berks admitted as he stared down at it. “It is nothing native to this region but looks like a baboon from the savannas of Sondesh."

“Baboon? Aren't they brown, with red or blue faces and rather protuberant backsides?"

The Lieutenant nodded and then shrugged, “I admit, I've only seen them in the Zoo in Brightleaf Tower. And they were not green."

“Sergeant, Lieutenant, I've something else odd." Once more Shaar's voice spoke, in his normal, unflappably calm way, into his ear. They walked over to the Elf who was kneeling over another patch of pavement, camera clicking as he took photos. The object was oblong, about fifteen centimeters long, comprised of three squares five by five centimeters. They had been white and their surface was strangely etched, each square identical to those attached to it.

“What is it, more litter?"

“No. It lies atop the dirt and these scuffs." The elf used a long metal rod to point out the scuffs in the dirt of the street. “Something used in the fray, though to what purpose I cannot determine." The tip of his rod came to a stop a few millimeters above the center of one square. “That looks like a rune from a mana-tech device. They are not rune structures I am familiar with in my practice."

“Is it still functioning?"

“No, it is fully inert. The materials are not infused, which would be the case if it had been an enchanted device, or devices. It looks ceramic or similar."

“Forensics will figure it out. Make sure it's flagged for closer examination." Much of the debris collected during the forensic sweep would be discarded as little more than trash and the Sergeant did not want a piece of evidence ending up in a dumpster.

One of the Lightbringers called for his Lieutenant and Sergeant Adrian followed. The man was examining another seemingly random object amidst the trash not far from the 'baboon' corpse. At one time it had been a use-polished length of tooled wood with a few minute chips of colored material along the thickest length of the shaft. “Arthana?"

“Yes. Artifact, probably an heirloom." The Lightbringer said softly without touching it. Thomas sidled over with his camera to catalog the find. “Judging from the mana infusing it this was in use for a very, very long time. Whatever enchantments it may have had, however, seem to have been disrupted by its destruction."

"Curious." Berks muttered, rubbing his cleanly shaven jaw with one hand. “Arthanae are usually quite tough, to survive the power being channeled through them. It would take quite a bit to simply snap one like that, unless the bonded user did it themselves."

“Vampire strength?"

“Perhaps."

“If one were still up to a fight with all of the silver in the air." Adrian pointed out. “Silver, garlic, pepper spray, and some other chemical that my officer deduced may have been a theriomorph's defensive musk."

“I noted the skunk the moment we got out of the squad." Berks said with a nod. “You have determined it was a theriomorph?"

“Found a few paw prints. Large and bipedal, but no other biologic indicators that one was in this fight. We have not found any fur and any blood would be lost in this mess. Not even the animal shows signs of having bitten anything."

“It did." The Lightbringer who had discovered the broken Arthana said as he glanced over at the eviscerated animal. “The signs are subtle, but there are indications around the muzzle, notably the blood along the gum line, that indicates its teeth were put to use."

Adrian raised an eyebrow incredulously, “You figured that out from two meters away?"

The man chuckled and rose. “I grew up with hunting dogs. If they got their teeth into something there were always stress injuries along the gum line, nose, lips. It's not easy punching through the fur and hide of a struggling animal."

“There's no fur around the muzzle, though."

“That is curious, yes. But if the target was a mage there spells to remove traces of them, or their associates, are pretty common. Expensive, but common. I suspect that whomever lost that arthana survived the fight and obfuscated their trail. Or the vampires did after taking them."

“Judging from the residual silver and garlic I doubt they stuck around to even see the fight through." Adrian pointed out. “Any more than you would linger in an active kiln for long. That silver had to be playing hell on them."

“And garlic. And pepper spray." The Lieutenant continued. “Pepper spray might not directly harm a vamp, but their senses are many times more acute than a mortal's. It would've been like standing in, and breathing, fire even if it did no actual harm. The silver and garlic, on the other hand, would've been profoundly worse."

Anders, who had roved much further down the street, ambled back with an evidence bag rolled up around something he carried in one hand. He gave the Lightbringer beside his Sergeant a nod and held out the object. “Found this about thirty meters further down." It was a large aluminum canister with a dispensing handle and a logo of stylized fangs within a circle bisected by a line. Above that were bold red letters that read Vamp-Away. “Probably tossed once they realized it was empty. Saw more paw prints, and footprints; woman's flats, probably office shoes. But they faded as the gore wore off so after about twenty meters that way," he jerked his head in the direction he had just come from, “there's nothing. Oh, and check this." Thomas turned the bagged canister upside down to reveal the concave bottom where a series of numbers was printed. “Serial numbered!"

So the theriomorph, perhaps a skunk, probably a mage, and whomever was with them had, indeed, escaped. Whether that was good news or bad was indeterminate.

“Good find." Adrian noted but with an internal frown. That just expanded the radius of the crime scene considerably; that much more trash for forensics to catalog, collect, and examine before disposing of as wasted time. “Any ETA on the crime scene teams?" He asked Travis over the comms.

“Yeah. Half an hour from three, probably more than an hour for two. Coroner won't even bother sending anyone until after forensics releases the scene."

“They do realize that there are twenty dead and stinking bodies down here, on the Street, where they're going to attract Eli only knows what?" Adrian snarled, though at the situation more than his driver. “And five mooks with a single crawler to secure it?"

“Nine." The Lothanasi Lieutenant waved an arm to take in his two associates. “We'll stick around, even though this scene does not appear to, at the moment, be under the jurisdiction of the Order. At least until you've got enough manpower in place." The man gave a rakish half-smile. “Just in case, you know, those vamps reappear." He tapped the ornate hilt of the slim sword belted at his hip. It wasn't the huge beast of a blade the head of the Order carried around but was probably up to the task in the Lieutenant's hand.

Adrian gave the Lightbringer a grateful nod. “Much appreciated. Anders, Thomas, string up some tape."

Ash and the skunk turned their attention to one side of the chamber as something emerged from the tunnel with a thump of displaced air and whispered to a stop in front of the pedestal. Some sort of flat conveyance upon wheels, with another pedestal at one end and what looked to her vision like seats of plastic and metal. “Come on, this is our ride." Kai caught the rail on the side of the trolley and unsteadily stepped aboard.

“To where?" She asked, boarding as well with little other option. It was stay with the skunk or find her way out of the maze on her own. Even with her Sight she knew that was a doomed effort.

“Another safe place to hole up until I figure out our next steps and try to recover my magic." He moved to the seat facing the trolley's pedestal and, flicking his lush but ragged tail to one side, sat and pressed something on the face of the panel. Immediately the trolley began reversing its course, picking up speed quickly but smoothly and, with another thump of displaced air, hastened back into the claustrophobic tunnels deep beneath the city of Metamor.

The trolley moved with surprising speed, the wind making it all but impossible to speak or be heard, roaring in her ears as she hunkered down in the plastic seats. The passage it sped down was narrow and not very high, though she probably could have stood if she had been able to withstand the blasting wind. She gathered it was some sort of service trolly for workers to move from one place to another below the city between jobs. The wheels were encased in solid rubber which did little to soften the occasional harsh bump from one section of track or another, metal rims making sharp shrieks each time it sidled over an uneven section.

Despite its speed it still took almost thirty minutes before she felt it beginning to slow and another ear popping thump of changing air pressure heralded their entry into another huge chamber of stone rather than dense concrete. Power thrummed here, as well, and considerably more of it than the previous chamber. A fierce dry heat caught at her lungs and made her cough slightly as the trolley slowed smoothly to a stop alongside another pedestal on the side of the track.

“Now where are we?" She asked around the itch induced by the much hotter, drier air. “And why is it so hot? We're underground, I thought caves were supposed to be cool?"

“The Foundry." Kai answered as he shuffled out from the front of the cart and stepped up beside her on the platform. “This is where mithril ore, and other ores, are smelted down into usable material."

“Mithril?"

“Yes, of course mithril. Where do you think Metamor got most of its wealth before it was an Empire and earned its way by all of the other methods it now employs? Did you never study history?"

She shook her head, taking up his arm once more when he pressed against her side. Her shoulders had recovered, if only slightly, from the earlier exertions but still ached horribly. “Not Empire history. I did not go to primary school in the Empire."

“Ah." He tried to take on more of his weight, using her more for balance than support, and steered them toward the far end of the chamber. “You're not Metamoran? I never assume, considering the Curse and the Empire's rather laissez faire immigration policies. Where did you attend school?"

“Muraer, Sondesharra until I was nine or so. Then the Terin Mosque north of the Holy land for another five. They certainly don't teach much Empire history, there, nor further south. I graduated in Silvassa before we came to Metamor."

He stopped before yet another door that, after a few moments, opened to an elevator car into which he led her. “We?" The bank of buttons were merely shapes to Ash's sight but he pressed one of them confidently.

“My father and I, six years ago." The elevator began to rise, though at a much more sedate pace than the racing trolley. “Before he died because Metamor could do not a good gods damn for him."

“Oh." Kai said quietly, “Sorry to hear. What happened?"

“A fungal cancer in his lungs, probably from the Desert of Dreaming. He was a mycologist and was studying the healing properties of the desert funguses." She let out a sigh and shook her head at the painful memories.

Kai actually snorted a short nasal chuff of humor, “Rather than the psychedelic properties?" The elevator slowed to a stop and the door whispered open with no ding to forewarn them. He stepped out into a corridor that was only slightly cooler than the swelter below. A distant industrial cacophony reached her ears from some distance ahead, probably machinery that dealt with the foundry.

“Those, too, for the healing properties. The hospitals of the Holy Land were beginning to look into psychedelics to treat mental health issues, with some successes and a great deal of failure. But my father's health had deteriorated beyond their ability to heal with technology or medicine, so they suggested he look to less modern methods and more… traditions outside of their expertise." She shook her head at the painful memories. “The damn fungus was completely entrenched, immune to every magic the Healers had, even Akkala's priests. And the curse would not take hold because of it." That denied her father even the surcease of the Curse's one-shot restoring transformation. “It pretty much ate him from the inside out. Slowly." After a short walk, where the noise became increasingly loud, they stepped into a truly vast chamber that rang with the clangor of uncountable machines doing incomprehensible things to her confused sight.

Magic flowed about the place thicker than anywhere else she had ever seen though it did not seem to interact with the countless moving parts that stretched away before them and out of sight to either left or right. She could neither sense nor See a ceiling above, only more machines and, beyond the platform where they stood, no floor was discernible.

Kai steered them toward a wide catwalk that vibrated under her feet with the deafening sound of the place and, here or there among the machines, she could see people moving about. Forms of life energy, at any rate, though she could not determine if they were human, Cursed, or any of the other numerous species and races that made up Metamor's population. None of them approached, busy with their own tasks and apparently oblivious that unauthorized people were traipsing about their demesne.

She glanced down over the edge of the catwalk where some manner of conveyor that glowed with bits of moving magic. She could not tell what any of it was, though most were completed forms of bound magic in some form or another rather than raw mana. Kai saw her attention and paused to look down as well before leaning close.

“Recycling." He yelled into her ear before pulling her onward, toward another platform across the yawning chasm full of machines and down another corridor. After a couple of turns the sound was dampened away considerably. “Mithril requires huge amounts of mana and energy to melt it, so used magic items that contain mithril are sent to the foundry for recycling. The metal is refined back to its base state and the magic reduced to raw mana that returns to the local ley lines." He explained, a little loudly as their ears had not yet accustomed to the drop in decibels. The corridor straightened and became much more broad, with wide metal doors appearing at regular intervals down both sides.

The sound of the foundry had mostly faded behind them when he stopped at one of those metal portals. It proved to be the roll-up door of a storage unit with a normal door to one side which the skunk opened after tinkering with the lock for a few moments. Ash saw no key in his hand and heard no keypad, so he probably had some magical device attuned to the door's lock.

Through the door was a large chamber that was very similar to the one they had been in before, though much more spacious. Sound was dampened by some sort of thick fabric on the walls, as before, and the center of the floor was uncluttered, probably for another casting circle. She sensed another cot to one side, shelves and counter along the opposite as well. Here and there items shone with brighter magic whose function she could not identify, but the thick mana that pervaded the cavern outside was little more than a trickle.

“This is a 'bolt hole'? It's more like a lair, a proper apartment."

Kai withdrew his arm from around her shoulder and shuffled over to slump down on the edge of the cot. “Safe house. We can't be scried in here, so you won't need to be attached to my hip, here."

“A safe house? As in, a spy den? Someplace to hide from authorities?"

“Or criminals, or gangs, or other supernatural beings who might want a piece of me for whatever reason." Kai clarified, “Or you." He sighed heavily and rested his injured arm across his lap with a flicker of brilliant pain that raced up the limb, through his shoulder, and blended in with the other pains that wracked his body.

“How do you do that? This?"

“What's that, or this?"

“The pain, you act like it's not even there." She waved a hand at him as she stood near the closed door and frowned. “This! Slumming on the street in some bolt hole, or in another secreted away in Matamor's mithril mines. What the hell are you hiding from? Whom?" She had so many questions they wanted to all rush out at once and her emotions, held in abeyance as a simmer on the cusp of boiling just at the edge of her self control. Fury, terror, anguish, grief. Her life had upended by a crooked cabbie in minutes and now she was trapped, not knowing where she was or who she could even find to help, without her crystal device to even make a call for help if she wanted.

And the last sane person from her former reality had been a bank teller who probably neither knew nor cared what had become of her in the middle of that call.

“You get used to pain, eventually." Kai said with a sigh, drawing his satchel off and dropping it unceremoniously on the floor to one end of the cot. “I guess you could say I'm just a vigilante. It makes me pretty damn unpopular with both the scum I bring justice to and the authorities who waste their time getting in my way."

Ash snorted, crossing her arms briefly over her chest before the crunch of dried, crusty unmentionables flaked from her clothes and crumbled down the front of her hopelessly ruined blouse. “Bring justice to, rather than to justice, huh?"

“Yeah, pretty much." Kai shrugged one shoulder and rubbed his temples with the fingers of his uninjured hand. One side of his head looked simply odd and Ash had not noticed before. It did not look like an injury because there were three tiny motes of mana where she assumed his left eye would be. An eye patch? “Look, you're at the end of your sanity, right now, and we're both exhausted. There's a shower over there, to the left corner of the room, and towels on the shelf, there. A lot of towels." His arm made a motion at himself, “Fur." he said simply as an explanation. Yes, Ash figured it would take quite a few to get that heavy, thick pelt dry. “A hot soak will help you a lot, a good cry if you need to, I can understand."

“And then what? I've got no damn clothes other than this shit I'm wearing that's soaked in Eli knows what."

“Robe, shelf above the towels. And, right now, there's no light in here so I'm hearing you more than seeing you. Shower, get some rest. I'll be in meditation for the next few hours so as long as you don't step into my circle you could throw a Parade of Song in here and I'd never notice."

Ash could only nod, her mental state bouncing between exhausted emptiness and a cascade of emotions she knew would shred her the moment she let them loose. Perhaps the shower would offer a little sense of peace where she could simply let herself break down.

Get in a good cry, as the skunk said.

“Oh, and Ash?" She paused at his voice but did not turn. “Child, you've got strength in you beyond most anyone I've ever met. Fire. You stood your ground against vampires and their horde and did not falter." He paused, then laughed ruefully. “You even saved my ass, and that was no small miracle. Be proud, Ash, be very proud. You've earned my respect, and that's no small thing at all." Another pause, another long sigh, “And, Ash, you've earned my gratitude beyond all measure. Now go, get yourself a shower. You're safe, here."

Without replying to his admonitions Ash felt her way gingerly along the wall beyond the cot, finding the shelving rack by the metal that she could See, and the dozen or so heavy, plump towels piled atop it. On a hook nearby was a robe of the same material. A couple of steps beyond was the door to the nook which contained a pretty normal bathroom; toilet, sink, and large shower stall. Not bothering to remove her ruined clothes she stepped in and drew the door that secured shut with magnets.

She was too exhausted to feel elation that the dials on one wall were actually labeled in mana paint. A large button below the hot and cold read dry which meant the stall probably had an air drier common to facilities designed for theriomorphs. As she turned the dials a quartet of shower heads above coughed, hissed, and sent a stream of bitingly cold water over her that drew a pained gasp as she pushed herself as far out of their spray as she could.

Soon enough the water warmed to a bearable level and, before the heat became too much she dialed back the hot until it was a mere few degrees from scalding. She let it cascade over her and tilted her head back up into the stream, letting it sluice away the crusty, unmentionable gunk that made her clothes cling unpleasantly. She did not know how long she simply stood there, her mind blank, letting the heat work its way into her flesh and ease the aches twinging her back and shoulders.

That skunk might've been short, even by theriomorph standards, and did not weigh a lot, but the distance she had walked supporting much of it had wracked her muscles to their limits. Dialing the heat back a little further she felt along the wall where she had sensed a small shelf with objects on it. Sure enough she soon found a number of large plastic bottles that her nose told her were cleansers. There was actually braille molded into the plastic that told her what each contained, if not the ingredients; liquid body wash, fur shampoo, and fur conditioner.

Fur conditioner. For a vigilante vagabond skunk mage. It would've smacked her as strangely ironic if her mind was in any state to catch the humor in it. Taking a liberal dollop of the body wash she began scrubbing at her clothes, grimacing at areas where the gore had caked on especially thick. Her side where the skunk had been leaning through most of their journey was almost hopeless, the grime ground into the fabric stubbornly refusing to release its hold. After removing as much as her fingers could find she stripped off her shoes and hose. Her skirt followed and then her shirt, finding themselves in an untidy heap in the corner of the stall atop her shoes.

Luckily those were simple canvas flats worn more for comfort than looks so she would still be able to use them, sodden or no. Her underwear and bra followed. At least those had been spared the worst of the encounter and could be worn again. Once she was down to her skin she scrubbed vigorously, but still the sense of foulness clung to her.

They were dead.

Twenty living, breathing, laughing, hating, violent people were all dead. And she had done it.

She had killed them.

Like a savagely shaken soda bottle being abruptly open the realization of her plight broke over her in a wave. A gasp, then a short cry, bubbled up from her breast and burst forth in a body shaking wave of hysteria. She let out an anguished cry and collapsed to the floor of the shower, body quaking in an uncontrollable spasm of weeping.

She had killed people!

Because of her they would not be going home to families, friends, lovers; not even to victims for their predatory glee. Dead!

And that was not even the worst that had happened. Her life was over! She had been swept up by something more than her own existence, her former life dashed like a crystal wine glass on stone. Her friends would not know what had happened, could not reach out to see if she was all right, her crystal was lost. Her job, her friends, her lovers, all as lost to her as she was to them.

Because of a mother fucking, gods be damned greedy ass cab driver! That son of a misbegotten whore had left her in exactly the wrong place at exactly the wrong time and completely fucking destroyed the normal reality that she had called life.

It took a long time for tears to stop competing with the deluge still pouring from the shower heads, heat unabated. She scrubbed her cheeks and took a shaking breath before grabbing feeling around to find the hand bar and haul herself to her feet. The skunk had said she was strong.

She would just have to convince herself of that. She was still alive, Eli only knew where, stuck in a room with a strange theriomorph who had all but kidnapped her. But she was still alive. That would have to do, for now.

Counseling would certainly be needed, later, though.

Dialing off the water she wicked what she could of the water off her skin and depressed the button labeled 'dry'. Immediately she felt a throb of warmth accompanied by a subtle draft that did not seem to originate anywhere or disperse anywhere, the dryness of it tickling at her throat. She could see a weave of magic spiraling about the small chamber that was a mix of fire and air.

Convenient.

She let it continue until her long hair felt dry to the touch, if madly frizzed. What a fright I must look, now, she thought as she knelt and sought out her clothes. They were still damp, but far from sodden as she would have expected. Her panties and bra, having less material, were fully dry and a little coarse for the lack of fabric softeners as she slipped them on and tapped the dryer off.

The robe, once she had fumbled around through the barely opened toilet door, proved to be pleasantly soft and blessedly clean as she drew it on. She retrieved her clothes and hung them from the hook previously used for the robe before emerging back into the austere storage locker the skunk called his safe house.

That personage was seated, legs crossed, in the center of the room, his arms propped loosely upon his knees. Around him was a set of large circles interlaced with countless incredibly complex runic structures not even remotely similar to those she worked with at her job. The magic in them was a steady glow of numerous interwoven colors that flowed up and inward toward the skunk. The complex flow seemed to be at odds with his own magic, which continued to flicker and pulse unsteadily, growing almost blindingly bright before dimming abruptly. Occasionally thin streams from the circle would find their way into that maelstrom, causing the circle to flare and strobe in time with his damaged mana before breaking free to stabilize once more.

Under it all she could still make out the distinct form of his life mana entangled in webs of throbbing pain. The shimmering hues of his mangled arm had faded, slightly, but the other pain seemed to be no different than before. It wrapped tightly about what Ash could only assume were his mystic centers, where mages held the mana that allowed them to reshape the world around them to their needs. That all seemed to originate from a root somewhere about the left side of his head, where the three little motes of steady mana that shone from where his eye should be.

He was dangerous, she knew, perhaps deadly, since he had already named himself a vigilante and challenged the likes of vampires with his spells. Only the other mage's blocking and their baboon had overcome him, and handily so. People like him were outside of civil society, acting with goals that typically did not align with the rest of the world as a whole.

But he had also said he brought justice to scum, however he defined those foes. That he used the word justice hinted that, perhaps, his idea of scum might be akin to her own, meaning he was not evil, just dangerous.

Sidling around the edge of the circle she moved to the cot and settled upon its edge to stare at him. He had not moved, not even twitched, since she came out of the shower. She saw no flickers of emotion or other responses that might indicate he was aware of her, clothed or not, mere feet away.

The exhaustion of the past few hours slowly stole up on her as she stared at the unmoving theriomorph and the magic he was attempting to command. She shifted her seat, then lay down, gazing sightlessly at the ceiling and watching how the ambient mana swirled and bent toward the mage's circle. Lowering her Sight to the numen she saw how it flowed smoothly across the ceiling, bending only slightly toward the circle or, closer, diving sharply toward the seated, somnolent skunk, wrapping about and plunging through him in a complex tangle that only flickered slightly with the chaotic pulse of his mana.

Slightly higher was that brightness she could not look upon for more than a second, shining with shocking, steady brilliance utterly unaffected by whatever was happening with him. Was that his Soul, she wondered, or something else, some other investment that shone with such power. She could see the like every day if she stood in one of the upper skyway parks and looked toward the apex of the Magistrix's spire using the same degree of Sight.

Those were the Immortals, both gods who walked the earth and their chosen consorts. She had never seen any of them in the city itself. Indeed, other than a brief visit to Akkala during one of her aid visits to less prosperous countries, she had never been closer than those parks to another of the Immortals.

Yet even Akkala had softly said she could do nothing to return Ash's sight. Even at the age of seven Ash could see the sadness that delivering that news had brought upon Akkala. Her eyes were not injured, the Goddess had said, there was nothing to Heal even by her Miracles or those of Eli.

But Ash had spurned those kind words, but not in such a being's presence. She had strove hard at the teachings of the Lutin Shaman her father had hired to show her the way mages saw the world, using the Sight. The Elven mage tutors had despaired her inability to grasp mana directly, at her considerable yet utterly barren reserves, but aided in refining her Sight, allowing her to grasp at strands of essence mundanes were not even aware of. And still she was blind to the ways others saw the world, unable to gaze upon a tree, the dawn, a painting, or even the expressions on a person's face. She could not even see where she walked, requiring a cane despite her Sight.

Sleep stole up on her and yanked her consciousness into its dark embrace.

She awoke with a start some time later with a snort and a gasp. She lurched and grasped at the edges of the cot as she fought to process where she was. The office, the cab, the vampires, running, a dark room with a dangerous animal.

The stench of blood, of ravaged bowels, garlic and pepper spray.

No, those were far away. That fucking cab smelling of nicotine, alcohol, canabis and the body odor of the driver. That Eli damned driver who dumped her into Hell.

Vomit, urine, and shit were predominant, fresh, even over the fading reek of dried bile, close by.

Blinking at the darkness as she shifted through her Sight she found the shimmering glow of dim ambient mana but nothing stronger. When she turned her head toward the casting circle it was dark, not even a lingering echo of its presence. A body was sprawled across the floor, unmoving.

Another shift of her Sight; it was alive, the heartbeat steady but slow. A long plume stretched behind it like an oversized comma defining the tail, arms awkwardly pulled close against its silhouette, mana oscillating in slow, intermittent pulses.

“Kai?" She rasped and coughed, clearing her throat to call out again, louder. “Kai?" The form sprawled on the floor did not move, the pulse did not change, the haze of his omnipresent pain considerably damped. She turned to sit up on the cot, the floor cool beneath her bare feet. “Kai, are you okay?"

Still, He did not move.

Shifting down from the cot to the floor she cautiously approached, hoping that the absence of mana in the circle meant it was safe to breach its perimeter. Nothing happened as she moved closer, then stopped with a disgusted hiss when her hand slipped through cool wetness.

Her nose instantly told her she had just put her hand in a puddle of vomit. “Fuck." She drew back and sidled around to one side, just using her fingertips across the floor to prevent her crawling through still more rank fluids. Her hand reached his shoulder and she pushed gently, feeling dry crust flake from the fabric of his clothing. “Kai?" The body rocked under her tentative prod but did not otherwise move or react. Feeling from shoulder to neck she traced up to his face only to find the fur against the floor damp with vomit. “What the hell happened?"

The skunk was unconscious, so deep that his body had voided itself without control. The smell, at such proximity, was overwhelming and she had to fight her gorge down before she only added to the mess. The fact that she was starving only confused her gut all the more as it fought to rise and demanded food simultaneously. When was the last time she had eaten, she had to consciously dredge for that memory.

In a vendor's kiosk outside of her office, while she waited for the cab that would destroy her life. Noodles and beef, barely more than a snack.

The stench of vomit turned that memory into a torture device and she had to turn away and cover her mouth with her hand, only to yank it away when the biting scent of vomit caught her nose. She knelt there on her knees for several long moments, throat gulping convulsively to fight her stomach back down. Filtering the odors out barely seemed to dampen them.

Once she felt she had a modicum of control she drew back and stood, removing the robe and lying it on the bed where its plush, warm comfort would be safe from the skunk's revolting loss of control. She kept her bra and panties on, those would be much easier to wash, and sidled cautiously around the skunk. Her toes found unpleasant, cold wetness twice before she was able to kneel and slip her hands under the comatose skunk's shoulders.

Oh, this was going to create a mess, she thought as she levered him up to get a better grip and began dragging him toward the shower. Slight as he was she lacked the strength to simply pick him up. The trip across the room to the shower was moderately easy, using her feet behind her to feel her way and her Sight revealing the materials of counter and shelf to steer. She pulled him into the bathroom nook and eased him into the shower stall, propping him in the corner with the elegance of sacked beans.

Using one hand to keep him from slumping down she turned the dials, suffering the momentary bite of uncomfortably chill water once again before it warmed. The skunk made no reaction to the sudden chill bite other than a briefly more intense pulse of his wracked mana.

She had to manhandle his boneless mass to work the soap into his clothes which seemed to be more rag than raiment, scrubbing the dried crust of blood and bile loose. She had no idea, considering the condition of his clothing, to know how effective her efforts were. Then came the more delicate part.

Stripping those clothes away.

It was not difficult in the simple task of it, he wore only a tattered, overlarge shirt and a simple pair of elastic waisted pants roughly sheared off at what passed for his knees. He wore nothing on his feet. Underneath was all fur, bereft even of undergarments, and she tried not to think of what she was putting her hands on as she worked lather into his surprisingly deep, surprisingly dense pelt. The urine was a simple affair, a bit of lather and a rinse, but the vomit had soaked into the fur of his face and she had to delicately, disgustedly, pick out bits and pieces of whatever he had previously eaten.

And the feces was no better, worked into the fur of his rump, hip, and base of his thick, muscular tail. If she had not realized it long before there was no mistaking, whatsoever, that he was male under the careful work of her fingers. After delicately working around the objects for some time she simply let out a self-deprecatory grunt and bent to her task.

She'd had men in her hands before, traced every small bump and ridge of naked, aroused masculinity, felt the softness of the fur or flaccid flesh that sheathed them. Had felt them in her hands, in her body, tasted them in her mouth many, many times with more lovers than modesty would care to count. This one was no different in that regard, merely the shape and feel of its flaccid state which, owing to his species, held a firm core that kept it straight and semi-rigid. She could not say if his testicles were more or less than expected, but certainly far less impressive than some, such as the rat-morph who sometimes attended meetings of her circle.

Again, nothing new. She was surprised at the girth at the root of his tail, easily as thick as her wrist beneath all of that considerable fur. That was a chore to clean without a shower wand and the water coming from two meters above. The immense furry plume became quite heavy once wet which probably accounted for the stoutness of the core. At least the soap and shampoo canceled the stink in short order, even the unpleasant, lingering reek of the baboon's blood and guts.

After cleansing away the worst of what she had encountered she paused, regarding the somnolent heap slumped before her, and began a more meticulous measure of him. Her fingers told her almost everything about those who allowed her so close, her other senses offered only framing for that tactile picture. His fur was deep, but her Sight and the clear definition etched by his ever present pain had shown her the physical form it concealed. To another, someone with normal sight, his sodden form would have looked half as large as would have first been assumed.

His legs were powerful, slim and toned, with very little fat under the flesh her fingers found delving through the wet, lathered fur, as was the uninjured arm she mapped with her fingers. The other arm, though still showing dim tendrils of pain, was a disquieting collection of patchy fur and smooth, naked flesh. She felt no overt injuries, but the divots and scores left by the baboon's attack were stark reminders of what she could have suffered. She had heard something snap, quite distinctly, when the beast had laid into the skunk's arm but her fingers could find no swelling, no overt signs of a broken bone. His elbow and wrist moved smoothly, without the tightness of gritty feel of strained joins.

His chest was broad and firm, his stomach lean and chiseled though lacking the same muscular definition of a human man's six pack. He wore a staggering number of items about his solid neck, braided thongs of materials that felt like leather, sinew, and horsehair. From those thongs hung an assortment of odd objects. The skulls of bird and rodent, beads of polished mineral, smooth faced tokens of metal or wood. All of them glimmered to her Sight with subtle hints of magic but none of exceptional power. Among them the ubiquitous contraception blocker seemed starkly out of place with its modern shape and feel and its obvious magic. When she tried to remove them to bathe the fur beneath, shorter and more coarse for their resting against his breast, they proved held fast about his neck by still another spell.

His face was the familiar angular shape as any other mustelids she had encountered, closer to badger than ferret, with numerous long whiskers and a nose pad cool and damp under her touch. He did, indeed, wear a patch over his left eye fashioned of intricately tooled leather with three stones that each gleamed a different hue in her Sight. No thong secured it around his head, however, proving that, like the necklaces, it was bespelled in place. She did not lift it to see what manner of hollow lay beneath but the muscle tone of his cheek and brow hinted that something had been placed there to keep them from collapsing around an empty socket.

In all he was lean and surprisingly muscular, like an ascetic monk who had allowed her a similar exploration of his body during her time north of the Holy Land. He, however, she had not groped and felt up to gauge his maleness. Such explorations had come some time later, during her few short years in Silvassa and to a much greater degree in the delightful, sometimes shocking, variety of Metamor's curse-altered populace. The Hedonists had shown her the countless ways of exploring that variety, though she eschewed Suspira's church.

What had this skunk gone through in his life that left him in such a state of privation, a mage of such strength and skills if those trinkets about his neck and upon his face were any indication. The life of an accomplished mage was one of wealth and luxury, not the filth of the Street or austerity of a hidden storage unit.

As she rinsed the thick lather from his pelt, delving her fingers deep to let the water soak under the outer layers, she mapped out his body again, from his head to the large paws of his feet, lingering curiously at the unique shape that made him male. That was unlike any mustelid she had known; more like a dog. The slim shape was ringed by three subtle ridges and, at its base, was the quiescent curve of a knot, if considerably less pronounced. In all it was more canid than mustelid, though she had to admit to herself that her experience with either was far from exhaustive.

Once she had completed two passes to get the soap from his fur she turned the water off and the drier on. After her hair had, once more, dried to a state of frightful frizz she left the skunk propped in the corner of the stall, pulling his lush tail around to one side so it could properly dry, she left the shower.

The filth left behind from his dissipation still had to be cleaned before its stench suffocated them both. Odd, she thought, as she scrounged through the kitchen for something to hold water, that she was no longer aware of his mephitic stink. Sure, it was there when she consciously thought about it, but if her attention wandered the stench faded from realization entirely.

Shit, vomit, and piss smeared across the floor by a dead weight of fur being dragged through them, however, could not be forgotten into the background. She found a small bucket secreted away beneath the sink and a stack of small wash rags two shelves below the towels. She also found a two-element cooktop, though thankfully not by turning it on, and a shelf above the counter containing numerous unidentifiable packages of what she assumed were dried foods. None of them were printed in braille and the overall stink of the room forbade the thought of food despite her hunger.

Filling the bucket with soapy water she set about mopping. Not wanting to locate any of the reeking mess by nose or by touch she simply scrubbed the entire floor. That did not take particularly long, an hour at most, and her back was once again protesting louder than her hunger. She was well used to cleaning, she had spent her entire life with her father cleaning house and, sometimes, making a little money on the side cleaning the homes of others.

Inasmuch as her lack of sight allowed, at any rate. Usually it was simply scrubbing floors or other easily accessed and touch-mappable surfaces using easily identified cleaners.

The detergents she had identified in the kitchen proved sufficient to the task of eliminating the stink and, she fervently hoped, the source of it from the floor. By the time she had finished the magic of the drier had more than completed its task in the shower stall and turned itself off. The skunk, now dry, was still comatose though breathing easily, with a steady if slow pulse despite the chaotic flicker of his mana.

She laboriously dragged the skunk's limp form across the freshly cleaned floor and eased him up onto the cot, breathing hard from the exertion and groaning as twinges of pain throbbed in the overexerted muscles of her lower back. Shifting his legs up and lying him relatively straight, arms across his chest, she returned to the shower and retrieved his pants. His shirt was so tattered she could not tell which hole was a sleeve and which was just a hole. The pants were, at least, in an understandable state, the elastic telling her waist from cuff. Working them on over his legs was simple enough, levering up his hips to get them all the way up not nearly so, and she had utterly no way of figuring out how to get that huge plume attached to his backside through the hole designed for it.

Better low riders than naked, she thought, as she sank down on the edge of the cot again to catch her breath. Her not-very-relieved exhaustion warred with the twinging ache of her back which pushed down her ravenous hunger until she decided to give in to at least one of the demands of her body.

Sidling awkwardly over the skunk, putting her back to the wall, she pushed his tail down out of the way and settled down with the skunk's warm, dry, ungroomed fur against her. Better behind him, she mused sleepily as she stretched and settled in the now far too cramped curve of the cot, than in front of him in her current state of near nakedness. No need to give the male any ideas when he awoke, if he awoke. If that did not happen she would have to figure out what to do then, but not at the moment.

At the moment all she wanted was sleep and rather quickly found it.