Patricia Wilson
Stories
10
Chapters
3,347
Words
163.4 K
Comments
0
Reading
13 h, 37 m
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Sophia didn't even blink. The asp wand flicked up and she tried to shoot from around knee high. Incisive saw it coming. Between the warning and her concrete-slow movement, he flicked it away with an outstretched foot. “Glad to see I raised you right.” His voice was bone dry. “Why don’t you grill me on details of our childhood instead? Or ask what happened? You won’t win a fight.” “You have no idea what I am capable of.” Her voice was deadly calm. “Yeah, but why don’t you go ahead and…-
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“The season very sickly everywhere of strange and fatal fevers.” Truth had no idea where the words came from, or why he thought of them as the explosion drove him towards Sophia. She looked like she was ducking in slow motion, a sleepy bird in front of Truth’s terrifying reflexes. He tackled her, pinning her to the ground as the blast roared over them. He was so used to fighting, it was a little surreal watching the people in the lab fail to react to a woman exploding. There were bodies on the…
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Truth woke, having slept poorly. He had opted for a vacant office in a mostly empty office building. It looked like the previous tenants hadn’t even cleaned out the place when they left. All the office furniture was there. All the old files. Strange that the landlord hadn’t disposed of it either. Maybe it was tied up in a lawsuit or something. He poked around a little before bed. It seemed to have been a travel agency. He slept in the fanciest office. It wasn’t the least bit more comfortable, but…
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Truth awoke, cold and sticky. “The Hell?” He pulled at his fragile pants and watched them come away in a gooey mess. There was a metaphorically pregnant pause. “No. No way!” Truth couldn’t be bothered to argue. He dashed off to the bathroom and spent some quality time scrubbing with a washcloth. The underwear and trousers were a complete loss. They were so fragile, even a hand wash had them disintegrating. He did have another pair in his backpack, but they were only marginally better. New…
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Truth spent the morning doing moving cultivation. He had the space now, and just sitting around had never felt right to him. Every few hours he checked the scry- lockdown still in effect. It turned out that people were being allowed out to buy things, but you had a fixed time of day to do it at, based on your tax ID. And if that time happened to be three in the morning, too bad for you. The cops were out, and were checking. Had to be playing hell with the economy, but these days, what wasn’t? Around…
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Truth slept on the floor of the main room of the apartment. It was sort of like the apartment he grew up in- there was a bathroom, a bedroom, then a combination living room, diningroom and kitchen. It wasn’t large, but for a single man, it was entirely enough. It wasn’t decorated, exactly. There was an icon of St. Mechivus on the wall over the Scry ball, and a long row of empty whisky bottles along the top of the cabinets. The walls themselves were stained a yellow-brown color, matching the nicotine…
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Truth’s eyes were glued to the Scry. They didn’t get his face exactly right, he thought. It was a drawing. Must not have caught a clean picture of him on a recording talisman. Thank you Blessing of the Silent Forest? Or maybe they just wanted people looking at the drawing instead of the picture. No idea why. Wasn’t any harder making an illusion of a recording than making a picture. His mind was skittering away from the reality in front of him, and he knew it. He was seen. And he was being…
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The door just pushed open from this side. No need for any locks. Truth had a vague idea that he was the first person to set foot in this room since the Eminence's shadow was summoned. Why would anyone go in at all? But you had to have a door, because if something went wrong in there, you He managed to push the door open and crawl out. The door swung shut behind him without his help. Truth lay on the side of the roaring torrent of sewage, sucking in breaths of too-thin air. For a moment, he thought the…
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The Prophet stood on a stump and chanted their favorite hymn. Truth sat on a rock and listened. Some of the other villagers had followed them around for a few days, but by the end of the first week, the Prophet had vanished into the village like a rock into a dry stream bed. Truth sometimes wondered if he was the only one who remembered what a strange, new person they had in their midst. The Prophet was facing the sky, waving grandly as they spoke, but Truth could spot them peeking at him now and then. He…
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The serpent turned, forever eating its own tail, forever grinding down, refining and returning to life- refashioned into something new. Better. Whether it wanted to be destroyed and remade or not. Truth didn’t want to be destroyed. He had died once already. At least once. He didn’t enjoy it. But he needed to hide for a while, for as long as he could, and this was the best rathole he could find. He threw himself into the Meditations of Valentinian, losing himself in the visualization. Letting the…
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