Patricia Wilson
Stories
10
Chapters
3,347
Words
163.4 K
Comments
0
Reading
13 h, 37 m
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Truth got up a little before dawn and made his way back towards the village. The information he got from Merkovah had listed Doctor Borges’ address and included pictures of the house. Truth thought he would start his hunt there. Not because he expected to catch Borges at home. He was never going to be that lucky. His hope was more pedestrian- that Borges would fail to practice impeccable security hygiene, and he would take some of his work home. Something that would give him a lead on where on the…-
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Truth knew that it was dangerous to make assumptions without enough information. Paranoid speculation, however, was different. He would explain why, but some bastard would take advantage. Right now, he had the horrible suspicion that the “good doctor” and his team at Happori Village were trying to minutely alter the rules of reality, creating a zone of complete control. Not straying too far from the established order. Just pushing. Slightly. Two immediate possible interpretations leapt to mind- one,…
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Truth woke up with questions. He took the heavy needler, some water, a little food, a drawstring sack holding a few useful talismans he had modified. It would do. After all, if he couldn’t get the job done today, he would come back here and plan for tomorrow. A job like this took patience. He set off towards Happori at a ground-consuming jog. A jog that would comfortably outpace city traffic, but he was used to that now. The Blessing of the Silent Forest always seemed to work better in the woods,…
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Truth had to fish around in the garbage heap to collect what was probably all the surviving pieces of a miniature spell bird. As best he could tell, it was some kind of kit project. The parts came together with simple fasteners, all the talismans were neatly marked where an unskilled assembler could line them up, and nothing in it was particularly unintuitive. And you certainly would be making this as a hobbyist. Truth couldn’t imagine a single commercial purpose. Every spell bird Truth had ever seen,…
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3 •
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Truth awoke in a minor panic, feeling smothered by the plastic and the gravel. For a horrible second, he thought he had died in his sleep. For a horrible second, he thought he was back in that well of nothing, feeling the pressure growing. He kicked his way up and out in a hurry. “How long did I sleep?” “Five hours, Great One. This stupid worm is quite slow, and we passed nothing and no one of any note.” Truth looked around at the crummy one-lane road jammed between the railroad track and the…
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Truth alternated between sitting cultivation, his least favorite sort, and trying to remember how his body worked. Everything hurt or felt wrong, or hurt while feeling wrong. In a brief moment of lucidity, he decided that “wrong” was unacceptably imprecise. If an elbow could feel nauseous, it would feel like this. And he had to remember that blood needed to pump and the lungs needed to inflate and deflate, and it all needed to happen without his conscious involvement, thank you very much! Because right…
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The Cevis bubbled pleasingly as it drowned. The grass-green pond scum frothed a bit around the smashed open windows, pouring in to give the interior the closest thing to a cleaning it had ever known. The fungal life within the carriage would finally have a real fight on its hands. This pond had never had anything good living in it. That rang a bell somewhere. No idea why. He wouldn’t worry about it. He would just enjoy watching the source of the last hour’s oppression slowly sinking to the bottom of…
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The needle was quite long compared to a standard sidearm. Truth knew from experience it could smash through people without slowing down. That’s what it was built for- smashing through problems and problematic people. Driven at brutal speeds by the enchantments on the talisman, it could turn even a Level Zero nobody into a legitimate threat… to someone completely not paying attention or with really shoddy personal protections. Assuming someone with a higher level nudged things along a bit. Truth…
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Truth started making his way towards the edge of Buran. He was wearily certain that there would be checkpoints on the roads, AGAIN, and doubly certain that the buses and trains would be filled primarily with plain clothed police officers and surveillance equipment. He morbidly wondered how there could be room for ordinary commuters under the circumstances. He’d take a damn boat at this point, but he was headed inland. As wondrous as his remarkable physique was, he was getting very tired of running…
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The sin eater looked at the scores of rings, chains, and earrings scattered across his desk, spilling onto the floor. Each worn and rubbed, the maker mark and serial numbers carefully removed by Truth’s patient effort, waiting for the service to start. They all looked like they had been dug up, some possibly cut off the fingers of their late owners. The sin eater gingerly lifted a plain silvery band. It was heavier than it looked. Frozen quicksilver, banded with platinum. He had a similar ring. “I…
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