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Cam is out flying. There's a decent cloud of atmosphere around the gold plane, now, millenia of demons making air around themselves for comfort and not sealing it up because why would you bother. There's a small forest, here - the effect is kind of ruined by the lamps it has to grow under, but it's still pretty.
He feels an open summons and lets it grab him -
the Connecticut Yankee summons Demon Cam
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from_scratch
from_scratch
"And torches and pitchforks could mildly inconvenience me. Okay. Have you got someplace to burn these or whatever once I've taken 'em off?" he asks, waggling a wing. "I don't think I'd better try just layering feathers on top, easier to copy angel wings wholesale. I could do without entirely, I guess, but my balance is for crap sans wings."
connecticut_yankee
"This entire castle is vacant; we can dispose of them easily and no-one will know. Getting them off sounds like the hard part."
from_scratch
"Nah. A little messy, though. Hmmm, probably no one in 536 expects angels to wear jeans, either."
connecticut_yankee
"You could wear anything you like and they'd believe whatever they're told. But I suppose a robe and halo would reinforce the message."
from_scratch
"Right. Unfortunately, I can't do the proper halo the way angels really do, because they do it by changing bits of their skulls into magnets to make the halos float, and I'd be looking at major surgery. Wings, I can do." He reaches over his shoulders, hooks his fingers into thin wires that are suddenly there, and yanks. The wings flop to the floor. Cam does the same thing to his tail, then starts unpeeling spontaneously-appeared gauze and tape and the blood thereon from his back.
connecticut_yankee
"Well, there's an effect and no mistake."
He stares for a bit, then picks up the pieces and sends them down a chute in the hall.
"We'll have to fire up the incinerator on the way out, but waste disposal is nowhere near as bad as it used to be."
He stares for a bit, then picks up the pieces and sends them down a chute in the hall.
"We'll have to fire up the incinerator on the way out, but waste disposal is nowhere near as bad as it used to be."
from_scratch
"Good for it. Right, big white feathery wings sound good to you?" inquires Cam, removing further gauze from the location of his former tail and dropping that down the chute too. "I'm thinking swan-style feathers."
connecticut_yankee
"White and feathery sounds like what they'll expect to see."
He takes a book from the nearest shelf, flips through it, and shows Cam an illumination of an angel matching that description.
He takes a book from the nearest shelf, flips through it, and shows Cam an illumination of an angel matching that description.
from_scratch
"Okay. Here goes."
And then there are big white feathery wings. Cam rustles them experimentally.
And then there are big white feathery wings. Cam rustles them experimentally.
connecticut_yankee
"Do those enable you to fly? In my magician persona I get often asked about flight, but alas it is more than thirteen centuries away."
from_scratch
"Yeah, I can fly - I might be a little clumsy with the new wings at first, like if you were learning to walk digitigrade, but I should be able to get off the ground. I can't hover, though."
connecticut_yankee
"Then you might not even have to tell people you're an angel for them to believe it."
from_scratch
"You don't think I should throw in, oh, warm cedar-scented wind prefacing my approach, and a choral background, and descend from dramatically sculpted clouds?"
from_scratch
"Sure. Air is a thing, so I can make it, complete with little cedar particles. Teeny little music players are things, so I can make 'em. Clouds are things, so I can make 'em, although I can't get rid of preexisting clouds, so this might be an activity for a sunny day if we want to do it properly."
connecticut_yankee
"And then we can tell them... what? That we come to usher in the Millennium with no mortal king? The Church would object to that even in the face of a whole choir of angels."
from_scratch
"I'm admittedly not up on theology, it has not been a focus and I imagine it's changed some in sixteen hundred years. So we should compose me a speech, or I suppose I can just land and introduce all of the recalcitrant types to the modern equivalent of - have you got chloroform when you're from?"
connecticut_yankee
"Yes, but we usually use ether for anesthetic purposes. It's safer, and if we wanted the knights dead we could let them walk into our electric fence."
from_scratch
"Yes, I said 'modern equivalent of', I do not know when chloroform fell out of common use except that it was well before I began peering at medical textbooks. I can knock people out nice and safe, is my point. I will also be fine if they decide to shoot directly at me or something."
connecticut_yankee
"Oh, the people with the weapons will believe anything you tell them. They haven't been told any theology either, beyond the obvious essential fact that every man's station is where God wills him to be and he ought to accept it.
It's the Church that would be hard to convince, and they're the ones we need to withdraw the Interdict."
It's the Church that would be hard to convince, and they're the ones we need to withdraw the Interdict."
from_scratch
"I think I would like a general rundown of what you have been up to since your head injury."
connecticut_yankee
"After I convinced everybody I'm a magician, I took Merlin's place as the king's minister. There is at least one position traditionally filled by merit, even if it is merit as a charlatan. Everyone calls me 'The Boss,' because 'Hank Morgan' sounds like a name without a title and their world runs on rank.
As for what I've been doing with that position, mostly I've been kick-starting an industrial revolution. Factories I mentioned, but the schools and universities were more important. Convincing people that they can think and not simply accept whatever an authority figure decrees, though apparently that only worked on fifty-three of them.
At one point the king and I went out disguised as commoners to show him what life is like for his subjects. When we returned, he abolished slavery and I took care of smallpox. The queen took a disliking to me after I got in the habit of pardoning her prisoners when they haven't committed any crime.
I've been working improvements of that sort since arriving, toward the eventual goal of establishing a republic after the king's death.
A few months ago, my infant daughter became ill, and my family left for France while she recovered. My wife and daughter are still safely out of the country, thank God. I only just returned, and found everyone absent. The Church has proclaimed an Interdict, so nobody is to receive any sacraments until the King, Mordred, and I are all dead. Arthur and his nephew killed each other, I hear, and now all of superstitious England opposes my few faithful. Clarence, my right hand man, did proclaim a Republic, but it lacks standing at the moment."
As for what I've been doing with that position, mostly I've been kick-starting an industrial revolution. Factories I mentioned, but the schools and universities were more important. Convincing people that they can think and not simply accept whatever an authority figure decrees, though apparently that only worked on fifty-three of them.
At one point the king and I went out disguised as commoners to show him what life is like for his subjects. When we returned, he abolished slavery and I took care of smallpox. The queen took a disliking to me after I got in the habit of pardoning her prisoners when they haven't committed any crime.
I've been working improvements of that sort since arriving, toward the eventual goal of establishing a republic after the king's death.
A few months ago, my infant daughter became ill, and my family left for France while she recovered. My wife and daughter are still safely out of the country, thank God. I only just returned, and found everyone absent. The Church has proclaimed an Interdict, so nobody is to receive any sacraments until the King, Mordred, and I are all dead. Arthur and his nephew killed each other, I hear, and now all of superstitious England opposes my few faithful. Clarence, my right hand man, did proclaim a Republic, but it lacks standing at the moment."
from_scratch
"Sorry, I missed the part of the story where you married some lady from Camelot...? Whatever, I suppose that's relatively unimportant. Have you considered faking your death?"
connecticut_yankee
"Yes, but if I stay dead then the country goes back to sixth-century feudalism. I don't know if the abolition of slavery would survive the next king's reign, let alone the idea of representation. And if I don't stay dead, then nearly everyone would try to remedy that."
from_scratch
"Well, you could go to France and industrially revolutionize France, if England is so keen on being a backwater. I would be happy to periodically steal large quantities of slaves for manumission overseas."