She swears, vociferously, as - 

Well, she doesn't even know what that was, except that it felt like there might have been between two and an infinity of her for a singular, eternal moment, before she landed in a damn desert.  And her without her waterskin, and in her formal robes, not her travel robes.  Blast it.  She'll have to improvise.  At least she has been to a desert before, during her youth; she knows some of the tricks to surviving.

At least she had enough pockets for her important things and she hadn't been passing any around.  And...there's no sign of Nerat?  (Who is no longer an Archon, in her mind.)  Which could be good or bad.

She turns in a circle from her position at the top of a small hill, looking for --

...

Sweet merciful ancients what the fuck is all of that!

A city.

Far off in the distance and on the horizon from here, gleaming metal and glass in the setting summer sun. Small shapes flit through the towers, barely visible through the haze. A thousand lights shine from within the glass, steadier and brighter than any torch. High above, a long thin shape like an arrow slowly arcs downwards, leaving a trial of smoke. It's painted blue and white, but too distant to see in much detail. Another is climbing, rising from its place somewhere deep in the city. And in the desert heat there is the distant sense of something incredibly heavy- A low rumble of background noise that seems to spread from the place, a hint of something acrid and unwanted on the wind.

The distant city is vast, vast. She can see the tops of the towers, dozens of them, but surrounded by thousands more smaller constructions. Square blocks of stone, growing shabbier and more irregular the further they are from the core. She must be miles and miles away from the place, and yet it's so huge as to take up a good portion of the horizon. Closer at hand there are signs of neglect. A crumbling concrete block, and an old barrel full of trash. A raised stone - road? - in the distance, worn and cracked and partially collapsed. Tracks of some sort in the dust, relatively fresh.

Something perhaps like the Oldwalls and the Spires, were they new.  And such a wealth of metal it's used for discardable containers!

She doesn't like the smell, but at least it's not shit.

...Well, she may as well follow the - strange cart-track?

The desert continues to be hot and unwelcoming, but the track is reasonably clear at least.

It comes to a junction after a minute. There's a pair of long ramps that join the raised road. There are a couple burnt-out metal husks of something boxy and wagonish surrounding the area. Atop the high-way is some sort of camp, a few tents at least, and a figure walking back and forth dressed in covering tan garb and carrying a long weapon of some sort. Masked. They're obviously being deliberately visible, a lookout and a warning. They stare directly at her but don't look especially aggressive or alarmed.

Interesting that these - boxy metal things - is that an axle?  She thinks it is - were burnt like that.  She'd almost expect the Chorus, but it doesn't look like their fire.

And then - the watchman.

"Ahoy the watch!  Sorry to trouble you, but I've gotten a bit off-track - you mind telling me where the absolute fuck I've fetched up?"

Who does not dare, cannot win.

A nod to Ophelia's right, towards the city, and a slight gesture with the weapon. "Cinci's that way. Nice duds, not really a great fit for the badlands. You some kind of tourist, head? Lost your muscle? Got peeps who'd pay to see you home safe?" The voice sounds feminine.

Her voice sounds, if anything, archaic.

...There is a moment as she attempts to decode the novel words, only to give half of them up for a bad job.

"I suspect that if you knew any of the people who would pay to see me returned to the task I was previously attending to, which the..." She places the descriptive words delicately, "grievous breakdown thereof, brought me here, you would rather wish you didn't."  And she doesn't see the Interloper, either.  This does not seem to be Terratus.  There's still, perhaps, the faint echo of a buzz in her teeth, and she still feels her magic, though unpacking the memorized copies of old lore into spellwork beyond her best-known Sigils will take time if she has to do it herself.  "But as far as your question about misplaced muscle...I like to think I can handle myself, in a pinch."

Some kind of corpo 'crat? Who the fuck knows. She doesn't want it to come bite her, she know that much.

"...Sure, okay. We mind ourselves out here. Don't start none, won't be none."

"An eminently reasonable standard."

And it's good to know she's managed to convey enough 'don't fuck with me' that they expect such information to be necessary.

"Might I approach the camp?  I imagine your lungs must be getting a bit tired of projecting this far."  Indeed, she has been carefully standing exactly where they first noticed eachother the whole time, almost eerily still, hands clasped before her and staff planted in the sands.

(She, by way of contrast, has a positive barrel of tricks for speaking to be heard, and something almost akin to a forge-bind with herself to push them beyond limits instinct would balk to breach, but reason permits.)

"I don't fucking know you, okay? Go to the Bordertown if you want conversation."

"Which would require me to be oriented, bringing ourselves back to the original question I raised."

There's a strange note of...almost wistful pride?  That slips into her voice, from the watchwoman telling her off.

"Which is to say, I will need directions, if you wish to send me some specific elsewhere from your bivouac.  It's rather hard to entirely miss..." she languidly waves a hand at the city, "All of that, if you'd just rather be rid of me, but as I said prior, I am unfortunately...misplaced, and worse, without a decent map."

"Look, head, I don't know what game you're playing but we're not a charity. It's hard to fucking miss. The buildings outside of Tower's perimiter. That's Bordertown. And unless you have drugs or some shit to sell, you ought to get going before Rex starts wondering who I'm gabbing with."

"Ah.  My mistake.

"Really, I ought to trade at least for water, making that trek, but I've a suspicion that I've nothing you'd want, unless you happen to be wanting for metals, or writing supplies."

"...If they're as classy as your robe thing, might be worth something! Collector's shit, like. Okay, sure, you can come closer and show me, but don't come up the ramp, just down below the highway."

...Sure, she can, faintly bemusedly, show them - those are literal actual scrolls and a glass vial of ink like you'd use with a quill pen.

They're not - specifically ornamented, but they are each of them unique.

And if the other side of the transaction happens to know what vellum is, well, it's quite possible that the scrolls are intensely valuable to the idle rich, in an age where nature is for sale.

Another has joined the first figure by now. Presumably Rex. He's a bare chested man, heavily tattooed and with two colorful hard spikes a few inches long sticking out of his head just above the ears, and also carrying a rifle. He glares suspiciously.

They peer down at her stuff and discuss it for a bit, then conclude, yeah, antiques. Fancy paper, maybe vellum or a real convincing synthetic if not. Rich people are into that stuff. Or not. Who knows. Worth buying, it's interesting even if it ends up not being a profit.

The conclusion is, "Fifty bucks per scroll! Twenty for the ink and if you have a real old quill or something. I'll give you my spare canteen, full, and a ration pack for twenty bucks back off that number."

She'll trade a scroll; she has quite the surfeit of them, given what she had intended to be doing today.  "It's real vellum, by the way.  I don't think the people that made it knew how to synthesize imitations.  Pleasure doing business with you, Rex, and...I don't recall ever learning your name, miss guard."

The spikes are very intriguing.  What purpose they serve she knows not, but she suspects they are a status symbol of sorts.

The woman snorts, Rex laughs. "You hear that, miss guard?"

"Oh, shut it! She's probably gonna get shived and dumped in a ditch anyway." She complains, while tying a brown pack, a green canteen, and three slips of paper together with a bright red rope.

She lowers it down; The canteen is painted stainless steel, the brown pack is shiny plastic with something gooey inside, the paper is green and black, very tough looking and also kind of plasticky and has the number '10' on it in amongst the odd designs and other words, like 'FREE REPUBLIC OF OHIO' and 'LIBERTY AND PROSPERITY' and 'SI VIC PACEM PARA BELLUM'.

"That's all then. Tie the scroll to the rope, then move along before the convoy gets here to pick us up, yeah?"

"Politeness costs nothing," she rejoins.  "And while I sincerely doubt some random murderer will do for me, the warning's appreciated."

The package comes down, the scroll goes up.  The request to move along is made.

"Caaan do," she drawls out, getting a bit of a better feel for these folk.  "Like as not you'll run into me later, though, if the convoy's heading city-wards; I was figuring to just follow this road on in.  Shade's good.  This your people's money, by the way?  Or just what you're gettin' paid in?"

An eye-roll. "Maybe literally if you don't get out of the way. Ohio Dollars are good pretty much everywhere this side of the Badlands. State of Ohio and all. Go on, get moving."

"Ayup.  Safe travels."

And she's off.

The pair continue to bicker as she heads off. Staying in the shade of the old overpass is, at least, mostly doable. As she walks through the barren land- Not entirely lifeless, but certainly worthy of being called 'badlands'- She will encounter:

A huge steel box just lying there and rusting, doors open with trash and dust filling one corner
A large tan lizard lounging on a cool rock, scampering away from her
A white plastic drone buzzing along overhead, pausing near her for a bit before moving on
An old convenience store, now little more than rusty shelves and broken glass.
A cardboard box full of more old trash, including dirty (literally, not metaphorically) magazines, cloth scraps, empty bottles, and an unlabelled packet of pills
A squad of motorcyclists audible well before they approach, eight people on six big chrome bikes, dressed in black and with white-and-black face paint. One of them idly tosses a green glass bottle of beer in her direction as they roar past at speed; Dodge, catch, or hit, he laughs as the bikes roar past and kick up a huge cloud of dust.

...What the fuck kind of - thing - is that?  It's smart enough to see her - or in direct contact with someone that is.  Ugh.  It's worse than Nerat's Eyes.

...Actually it may be just as bad, come to think of it.

She actually takes a bit of time to page through the magazines.  Someone thought them worth making.

...What's motorcycle guy's response to 'throw back'?

The most recoverable magazine is some kind of - catalog? Attractive people in weird clothes, or with 'augmentations' like shining eyes or glowy bones, with prices attached. Strange advertisements for Toho (clothes), SensPerience (who apparently sell 'spikes' like Rex's), Serisse (it's unclear what they sell), Touchstone (security??), Green Dragon (food???).

At thirty miles an hour, his response is a manic grin and a clumsy grab for the flying bottle- A successful one.

"Slick move, head! Enjoy!" He shouts over the roar, and tosses something else- A few single dollar bills wrapped around a plastic baggie of some white powder with a rubber band. And then is gone.

...Serisse sells an image, clearly.  An image in contrast to the vast majority of the market.  Not that she's sure why someone thought it necessary to make a magazine of advertiser graffiti.

(The powder in the baggie goes in a pocket somewhere; she's not even sure what the fuck it is.  She peels off the dollar bills, sees if any of them are different issuers.)

Augmentations, you say?  Those sound...interesting.

She wonders if the names are their variant of Archons, because profound magic is certainly the only way she can think of of giving someone glowing bones.  Why even would you do that, though?  Why would you want that to begin with?

(The magazine does not seem to answer her.)

The listed prices for augmentations are all in the tens, twenties, thirties thousands of dollars. Or more. They're described in flowery sales patter, "a premium supportive integration offering unmatched stabilization of nerves and musculature, to ensure you hold steady even under the heaviest workloads". But it's not that hard to figure out what they're supposed to do. Make you stronger. Faster. Tougher. Keener. Concealed weapons. Life-saving devices carried within your very body. And give you the ability to slot in 'spikes', which seem to have two variants- Ones that replay memories or experiences, and ones that grant new skills or abilities.

The desert wind blows on.

Interesting, certainly.

She doesn't trust it, but...interesting.

The wind blows on, and on she walks.

She sees another bike run past her, heading the other way this time. The rider doesn't so much as acknowledge her. There's a wild dog, starving looking, that slinks along one of the hillsides warily before vanishing out of sight.

A huge land train trundles past, practically a whole fortress on treads moving at a horse's gallop. The rear areas of it are loaded with eight metal boxes similar to the empty one she saw. And then another. And then a third. She can spot Rex atop the last one. They turn off the path ahead of her, heading off somewhere else in the rolling hills.

And then over the next hill, and she seems to be on the Bordertown's outskirts. It's still brown and dusty out here, the structures made of junk and trash, but there's more of said structures. Shacks here and there along the outskirts, with no particular plan or layout. Deeper in are larger structures- Old silos, or mostly-solid dwellings. People wandering around, lounging in whatever shade is at hand. Crowds milling around and haggling, almost universally looking dusty, haggard, worn out. It's a rusty maze of a place. The stench is a lot stronger here. Something polluted and rusty, like ore tailings or old compost, but worse. And beyond it, high grey walls with watchtowers. More drones patrol overhead at odd intervals. There's a main gate - guarded by black-suited individuals and more towers. The long tubes must be weapons, surely- A series of large turrets atop the towers have really big ones.

Was it ever in dispute that they were weapons, the way they were carried in the mercenaries' hands?  She wonders what they do.

Old, well-honed instincts seize her as she sees the crowd, and she looks for disputes in need of a Fatebinder's intervention - irreconcilable conflicts.  What she'll do when she finds them...  She's not sure.

There's an equilibrium here. It's not a kind one, but it's there. Wary faces taking her in over and over, evaluating her for trouble. One woman, bloodshot eyes and wearing a see-through mesh top, rambling almost incoherently. Her - sister? daughter? - is trying in vain to steer her towards an out of the way niche. A guy slouches at the entrance to an alley, grunting at passers-by, "Got ice. Got bangers. Need painkillers? Got it all." Someone sleeping on an old couch, a defenseless mark at first- Until you see the glint of metal in the shadows where a long-haired woman crouches, eyes darting around.

She doesn't know this place, not yet- But some things are obvious. Violence underpins it all.

The obvious place to start would be a bar, perhaps. There's a few places- Shacks, really. A guy in a Tower uniform is having a tense standoff with two armed women at the front of that one over there. Alone. And without the concealing helmet. Everyone else is surreptitiously vacating the area, or else lurking around and watching.

...The woman with the bloodshot eyes finds that she feels more alive, and the woman tending to her both more alive and more effort-full, as Ophelia brushes past them towards the guy in the Tower uniform and the two ladies.

She observes, at a polite distance.  Which is to say, not close enough to stab.

There's something of a family resemblance between one of the women and the Tower man.

"This is just the way things are, Mateo. You ain't gonna argue me out of it, for the fourth fucking time."

"No, just- Why? Christ, all I want is some beer. Is my money no good or something? Don't like 'my type' around here?"

"Well you could at least fucking take off the uniform, yeah?"

"No, can't, the supers yell at us for that."

"Oh, boo fucking hoo."

"Come on, what is up with you!? You know me! I used to come here, right?"

"Yeah, you did. Before you got hired by Tower. This is just how it is, man."

"You know me! Lissa knows me, Kev knows me. I miss the place, alright?"

"So?"

"I really need a break here. Just a chance to unwind. It's hard." Tower guy sighs.

"The answer is no."

"Oh yeah? Well, what if I talk to Threat Assessment and- Er..." Tower guy grimaces and thinks better of what he was about to say as a very skeptical eyebrow is raised. "I could bring more business in. We get paid okay."

"We don't want your money. We don't want a scene either. There's Tower bars, go to one of those."

"...Never knew you were such a bitch, Val."

Val sneers. "Only reason I ain't cutting you for that is because of your badge, cuz."

"...A word of advice for you, young man, if you want it."

Val stares levelly at her. Mateo turns with a glare that he then tries to smooth over, then makes a sort of 'get on with it' gesture.

"To align yourself with a source of power is to make its enemies your enemies.  Even the ones who know you must fear you - and you have seen the power you wield with Tower's sigil.

"'Threat Assessment'.  Such small words for what could bring your friends' lives crashing down around their ears.

"Don't lie to me and say you don't know that.

"Don't lie to yourself about what you're willing to pay for Tower's money.

"And don't lie to your friends by trying to pretend it's all the same when you're serving on another side of the battlefield, now.

"You can help them.  But they can't help you.  Not anymore.  You swore that camraderie away when you signed up for this, and you'd best hope you've a way out, if you ever want it back.  Keep in touch, quietly, if you want - but don't bring trouble knocking on their doors.  And you are trouble, here.  You know that.  You tried to use it.

"Do you really want to succeed?"

"...Goddamn it, you're right. I thought- It doesn't matter what I thought. Fuck. Fine, fuck it. I'm out of here... Sorry."

He turns with a scowl and starts walking away.

(...This moment, precisely when he makes to leave, is when a bearded man in the corner of her vision gets a sharp look in his eye and vanishes down an alleyway himself.)

...Hm.

She murmurs to the bouncer that's not been busy engaging with the argument - "The fellow with the beard that just cut out," she thumbs at where he was, "was he one of yours?  Or have I just made my life interesting.  'cause he sure looked like he saw something up, and now he's gone running."

To all other appearances, she's watching Departing Boy.

An old man, actually, or at least middle age. He's out of sight already.

"...Oh. Shit. Val-!"

"What?"

"Trouble. Maybe."

"What kind of maybe?"

"...Trouble if I tell you how I know that, kind of maybe."

"Oh come the hell on."

"Head ducked out, might be following Mateo. And who does that?"

"...Shit." Val frowns at Ophelia. "Nothing we can do about it from here."

"Don't you want to... Warn him?"

"You heard this preppy chica, we can't help him anymore."

"Damn.  I have what one of my friends has charmingly called 'an overinflated sense of responsibility', and here I am, having meddled.  I'll go keep an eye out, shall I.  Thank you, ladies.  Luck be with you."

She vanishes into the crowd, Vigor thumping in her veins, and spins minor illusions around herself to look just less obvious enough as she catches up to whoever this guy is.  (And if she can't find him direct, well, she can tail Mateo too.)

He ducked into an alley; The alley has a bunch of doors, none obviously having just been opened, and splits into two directions, one of which turns another corner and one that lets out into a street. The footprints lead to the corner-cutting one, and that leads to a little courtyard with lots of doors where a couple of kids are being hurried inside by a man who's glancing at the other entrance at the far end, and then that lets out back into the dusty open areas.

The middle-aged man has put on a baseball cap and shucked his tan jacket, but might still be recognizable from behind.

And from his tracks, if the sand's still around.  And the purpose in his core; that's really hard to hide.  (She manages.)  And his beard.  Really, that wasn't a fake?  Amateurs.

She walks very quietly, as illusions continue to be thumbed into being - when she has eyes on him again, she's practically unrecognizable, though no-one who saw her at any one step of the way would notice anything off.

It's the little details, really.

Now what is this gentleman up to?

Tailing Mateo as he attracts plenty of wary looks in that Tower uniform heading back towards the gate, apparently. While casually strolling along and telling a long-winded story into a handheld phone about his kid's friends. If he's speaking in code it's not an obvious one.

There's codes, and then there's codes; what sort of story is he telling?  Other than 'long-winded and rambling', of course.

(It is a good tactic, she'll admit.)

Oh, you know, they had this stupid bar crawl, and didn't realize what assholes they were being. But you're still an asshole whether or not you know you're one, right? And then they got jumped by some punks to prove that same point, near this one burger stand. (He has just passed a burger stand). They were alright, even the punks know not to bring down too much heat. Stole his wallet, but that's all. They were doing it just to prove a point, you know? Not out for blood. He was an asshole, but makin' bodies brings down way too much heat if they're connected.

Aaaand she's going to intervene.  "I think," she says directly into the phone, hand on the man's shoulder so he doesn't run, "that you may have forgotten the important detail where some preppy chica managed to send your kid spinning 'round to go home and think about his life, and she'd be rather upset to see her hard work wasted by some punks, you know?  If your kid gets the message that they really are out to get him right now...Well, that seems like the sort of thing that makes someone double down on their allegiance to power.  And if you want to turn somebody 'round from the enemy...You can't send them running into its arms.

"Just a thought."

"-Hold on, I gotta take care'a this."

He beeps the phone closed and shrugs the hand off his shoulder with a shove and turns to face her.

"'Kay. One, fuck you for interrupting my conversation. Who does that shit? Dos, don't fucking touch me, crazy lady, what the fuck's your problem? C, I have no idea what the hell you're on about."

"If I believed point C, I would be much more likely to apologize for the presumption.  As it is, my 'problem', as you so eloquently put it, is that I do not believe point C.  That little story you were telling to your friends sounded rather too relevant.  So I corrected a necessary detail, and offered some advice.  Assuming you don't want to drive folk into Tower's arms, hm?"

"I don't fucking care about Tower. Buzz off, tourist."

"Tower cares about you; seems a bit boneheaded to not care about it.  But have it your way."

Off she looks like she's going.

(She is not going.  It's harder to send a mirror image meandering off stage left while she's also blurring herself into the walls...but she's good at this.)

"Bitch."

He glares after her, texts `ag ttyl` to someone, and goes and gets a burger. And then eats it and doesn't obviously plot anything.

Well, she'll go follow Matteo around a bit, then.  Make sure those punks don't do the stupid thing anyway.

She knows Choristers all too well, they will absolutely do the violent and stupid thing given half a chance and boy do they.

Nah, something's fishy with this mark. Not worth the risk.

Mateo gets back to the checkpoint area without issue, sticks his helmet back on, and starts gabbing with the guards there, looking guilty and frustrated in body language.

Hmm.

Anything in particular coming up in that conversation?

He winces every time one of the others jokes about bribes, 'muties', or casual violence.

Saaaaaay. Do her illusions happen to also cover millimeter wave RADAR, infrared, and UV scans? Plus some similarly exotic stuff? Because she's either hanging around in eavesdropping range, or being illusioned near a lot of Tower's sensors.

Why shouldn't they?  It's not like they don't know Beastfolk see strange colors.  If anything, it seems like their radar coverage just kind of petered out for a bit right here.

Still, she's heard all she needs to hear.  She'll wander back to the bar, she thinks.  Let them know Mateo's off safe, and he seems to be genuinely thinking.

The console is flagging an anomaly, but it's probably just some sort of weird glitch? Still, better safe than sorry. After a while, several Tower guards look over in her general direction. One of the drones flies down to almost exactly where she is standing to check things out.

It's interesting, that they noticed her.  She wonders how.  Well, she's not going to overhear anything useful, she thinks - so they can have an inconveniently conveniently disappearing anomaly perhaps a bit sooner than she'd otherwise like.

Back to the bar, she thinks.

The anomaly retreated when investigated. An infiltration attempt! This definitely seems like something to pass up the chain!!

The second woman is gone, and Val is sitting inside. Behind the bar, actually. There's salsa music playing from a boom-box bracketed to the ceiling.

"Hey, no trouble in here," Val comments. "I don't want to hear it, no. And you gotta buy drinks if you want to hang, or have a good story to tell."

Other figures in the bar include:

Two white-and-black face guys like the ones who threw booze at her earlier, though not members of that specific group. Drinking and complaining about fuel prices.

One woman smoking a joint with a single spike slotted in her head, looking rather out of it and just chilling. She has a metal hand.

Two different tables of ragged guys and gals playing cards and shooting the breeze; The current scuttlebutt is that Tower kid (fuck Tower, seriously), and how it's actually pleasantly cool today, for summer, and did you hear that one guy cooking up meth blew himself up, that's what you get for sampling your own product.

There wasn't anything there, is the thing, which investigation revealed.  So it probably is just a weird glitch.

(Is what she'd say, if she were hovering over their shoulders and knew more about the system.)

"Nah, no trouble, just thought you might want to know Mateo got where he was going safe enough.  Some punks were dissuaded from giving him a bit of trouble; he's already gotten the memo, y'know?  Can practically smell the smoke comin' out of his ears from thinkin' so hard about it.  Sendin' it again so soon 'll just piss whoever gets the duplicate off, and I've never been a fan of using fists where words'll do, anyway.  Don't reckon he'll darken your door like that again, 'less it's desperate.

"A-ny-way.  Have I got a story...

"...Damn, my life really doesn't do a lot of featuring me as the protagonist.  Much prefer a good mentorship role, honestly.  Or haranguing someone who's being a proper idiot.  Suppose I could talk about the dumbasses who thought they could dissect someone to get the secrets out, but a lot of that shit's just too distant from to hit home right even then.  How much indulging my people-watching habit can I get for..." She consults the folded-up dollar bills, "three bucks, then?"

The inside of the bar is fairly nice, all told. It's reasonably quiet in here, aside from the music. The furnishings are hardly dusty at all. And cool- A nice spring day rather than a searing summer one.

Val takes the three dollars and fixes her a glass of ice water from under the bar.

"I think the memos get caught by his spam filter, hon. You can stay a while, I'll let you know if your welcome's wearing thin, and it goes a bit faster if you're not actually drinking."

The bloodshot-eyes lady Ophelia encountered earlier comes into the bar, wearing a T-shirt in addition to her mesh thing now, and rather filthy on closer inspection, and slaps four dollars down on the counter. "Washroom?"

Val frowns and pockets the cash quickly, replacing it with a cold beer bottle. "This a bar, not a street stall. I saw you stumbling around earlier. The showers are down by the market, head."

"...Got a nanite shot. I'm good now."

"And you immediately came to get drunk again, huh?"

"No, I'll save it, I'm - Just - the toilet and to wash my face."

"...Door on the left. I'll remember you if my bathroom's fucked up later."

"Thank you."

Off she goes. Val sighs.

"Tough job, carin' 'bout people," she murmurs.  "Feels like it never ends, huh?  'specially with the big men in their towers, trampling over the little people."

She sips her water, slowly.  Watches where the lady in the mesh shirt went.  "On the other hand, the opportunities to make miracles happen...Sometimes they're worth the effort.

"...Wonder what could've happened with her, if she's feeling like she needs the privacy."

"You ain't fooling me with that stupid accent. You have to watch your own back, not someone else's. Not that I want to talk about it or anything."

"Bad trip, I think," one of the card-players comments as he walks up. "Another round for the table, please."

Val starts fetching bottles.

"Meth addict. I've seen her around. Name of Reilly. I don't know the full story, but any of us could be her, honestly. And it's worse out here than in the slums- I mean, I've got a steady line of work at the fuel plant, but plenty don't. I don't know if Tower has her blacklisted or she's avoiding someone or what. That's bordertown life."

"Not tryin' to fool.  Just figured it'd be more comfortable than - well.  The sort of voice I use for proclamations.

"Also, not gonna lie, I am so used to doing that sort of thing that I'm not sure it turns off.  Have to get pretty used to talking in three and a half separate languages at the drop of a hat when your day job is - well, was, my boss - okay actually my boss would probably handle this fine, but my boss's boss ain't here and he ain't gonna be, he'd make a damn fine mess fucking around - but yeah, wrangling gangs you can't just stab because they've got this most important pissant little fuck behind their culture on the one hand, iron-faced soldiers who at least do what you tell them on the other, and a whole city's worth of disputes in need of judgement on the third hand you don't even have, tends to leave your accent sliding around like who-knows-what as you try to improvise juggling.  And then you have the fucker who's been doing all your siege run off and start his own damn gang and your boss's boss tells you he's going to make you bring the whole province crashing down around your ears if you don't kill Mr. Practically Invincible, when come on there have to be better options --"

She cuts herself off with a firm shake of her head.

"Somehow I survived that shit, but the reward for attempting the impossible was, in this case, having what I'm pretty damn sure was my boss's boss decide to make me responsible for getting the aforementioned pissant little fuck himself and the soldiers' big man to sit down, play nice, and stop tripping over the sort of thing that should not have been even a roadbump to their powers combined.

"Called in the locals and threw the pissant under the cart instead.  Proudest moment of my career.  No chance to see how it played out before my attempt to interrupt the pissant's escape plans went all squiggly and I ended up out here, but I daresay that if someone's still in my shoes, it'll turn out alright.  ...Maybe not Rhogalus, he couldn't or didn't arbitrate his way through an obvious loophole to save everyone trouble, but other than him I like the chances I'd give for even my notes to pull off an 'everyone wins'.  ...Except Nerat.  Fuck Nerat."

"...Damn, I did not mean to say all that.  Guess I needed to get it off my chest.  But yeah.  Get where you're comin' from; there ain't a lot of good people."

"...There's always a bigger fish, they say. And even if there isn't, if the little ones get hungry enough..." The guy shrugs.

Val raises an eyebrow. "Iron-faced? Province? You're a real hoplite or something arent'cha?"

"Or classical theater or something."

The guy's table calls. "Dale! Dealing in?" "Fold!" He shouts back.

"Anyway," Dale says, "Whole bunch of crews murdering each other, it's gonna be hammer down if collectively-you don't get your shit together, stuff happened, the shit is not together, so you nailed one of the players to the wall, Nerat? Then ended up out here. Sound about right?"

"Or something," she murmurs.  "That sounds like it's not a wrong way of putting it, for sure.  Wish I could've nailed him to a literal wall; he deserved it if anyone does."

"This is probably bullshit but it's somewhat entertaining bullshit. So what was so awful about Nerat?"

"He ate people.  Like, 'never found the bodies' ate people.  Part of setting him up to take the much-overdue fall was dragging up some evidence of that.  And like, more prosaically, he was just...

"So my boss's boss, in charge of all this shit, he has a few rules that he enforces harshly, and then he lets the people, like, on the same level of the hierarchy as that guy all run their own little kingdoms so long as they keep to that.

"Except that this little pissant had been around for a long, long while, maybe before my boss even - never really bothered to check - going steadily insane with bloodthirst the whole time - and his little faction, the Scarlet Chorus...

"I'm supposed to judge disputes between factions, in this system, most of the time.  How their rules interact with eachother.  And my boss backs my word to the hilt, that's one of his few additional rules.  But I most often found my grounds for giving the Scarlet Chorus a verbal thrashing, in the underlying laws that my boss's boss declared to be the laws above all others - because near half of Nerat's policies were just directly in conflict with 'em.  Fucking...lateral promotion by bloodsport, by which I mean 'if you murder anyone you run their things now'.  That just isn't right, and even if you take certain interpretations of my boss's boss's exclusive right to kill you, as derogated downwards - it's commonly held to be the foundation of the chain of command of where I'm from, that, though I'd argue that the portion of command implied by Right of Destruction is not affirmatively having to take orders, so much as providing a consequence for their refusal; I wrote a monograph on the duty to obey adhering more distinctly from Archon's Privilege, actually, as part of the legal assault on Nerat's position - anyway, he was still setting up and openly perpetuating a culture that refused to abide by even the most favorable reading of that law, while purporting to obey the whole damn edifice.  Which is fucking idiotic when you know your boss would be just fine with you dead and there's someone who has the authority to say everyone can and should kill you because you've done.  So many crimes, I think I could not count them all.  Waste, waste, waste as far as the eye can see in heavy-handed methods and management by bloodsport and quiet but practically open sabotage of an ally.  And the treason.  I'm pretty sure he was planning treason, and not even just a civil war sort of treason.

"That last meeting, when I had the locals and the proper soldiers and myself sitting down at the diplomatic table -

"Half of it was because I thought the locals and the soldiers and my predecessor in that post had gotten off to a really bad start and I wanted to wipe the slate clean.  Half of it was because I was pretty sure the both of them would unite behind the rallying cry of 'fuck Nerat'.  And he was there, being eminently fuckable, and then we fucked him.  ...Excuse me, that came out wrong."

That was totally intentional.

"Really, though.  He just marched in, started off by declaring the whole exercise of talking a waste of his precious time otherwise spent making garters out of human guts or whatever he does for 'fun', tried to outdo me on the law - idiot - and resorted to literal actual childish insults when everyone else actually took things seriously and he didn't like it.

"Then indisputable evidence of him eating someone Ashe cared about came to the table, and things promptly went even more sideways than - my expectation that he'd get pissed off enough to try something stupid if I called him on his everything so I could declare him persona non grata - had been assuming they'd go.  And now here I am."

Everyone hisses in shock and recoils at the first mention of cannibalism, and the whole bar is paying attention now. It's clearly a taboo, above everything else. A knife gets slammed down into wood when she mentions someone's kid getting eaten, and the guts thing.

Yeah, FUCK NERAT. With a rusty colander. No, with a spinal tap syringe full of the river water. And then pour gas on what's left, burn it, and shoot it some more.

So where was this? Europe? The Middle East, maybe? This shit about Archons and the formal 'right of destruction' and writing fuckin' monographs about it sounds like some sort of religious thing. Especially if it's actually obeyed. Only the guy at the very very top can kill you? Some kind of neutral arbitrator that's actually respected? Yeah, right. Still. Like the serious and formal side of the Triads, sort of.

"Only the guy at the very very top can kill - can have killed - anybody.  Your boss can still kill you.  If my boss had an egregious disagreement with the way I ruled on something he'd throw the court assassin at me and that was legal.

"And I suppose, since I mentioned them, that I can say that - an Archon, according to the law of Kyros, is a person, appointed to a purpose or a principle, by no one other than Kyros themself - and that remit is absolute; while one instance lives there shall be no other, though sometimes a title passes.  I was - am, in spirit, still - a Fatebinder, chosen as hands and voices of the Archon of Justice.

"But yes, you're right that the place where this happened is very far away from here, and very different, too.  Though I look at the corporations and see some strange similarities."

"Yeah, that doesn't sound familiar at all. Some weird honor system. Corps are a viper pit, head. Glad you got out, if you did."

"More like an 'if you cross Kyros you die' system, in practice, because Kyros just flat-out Could Kill You no matter who you were, but I do see the thing about honor.  Comparing Graven Ashe and the Tower...even if they both have remit over war, I think no soldier of Ashe's would be caught dead harassing civilians, especially not just to get into a bar.

"Looking down on them, so much, absolutely, and heavens help you if you've done something like hurt one of theirs because you'll die screaming, but, despite the ways in which their internal practices were a lot like what I've overheard of Tower's prejudice - I mentioned the 'dissect someone to get their secrets' thing?  That was them, the whole stupid plan, and they didn't ask me about doing it the first time - but when I told them their plan was stupid and they shouldn't do that, you got more information out of alive people, even if they were - some very disliked sorts - they stopped."

"Tower's not actually the worst ones to cross. They'll beat the shit out of you and haul you to prison, they'll even shoot you if you've got mutations, but there's no... Targeted cruelty. They aren't out to get you in particular, they're just out to get someone. Not like the pimps, or triads, or the fuckin' Projects. Like, Tower's a known quantity, stay out of the way and you're mostly fine. The Jags and Modes aren't bad either, they've got clear lines and will only fuck with you if you cross 'em. But there's some real monsters out there too. Small time and big time both. I heard Naas tests new augs in shitty little hellholes in Africa- 'Donating' some untested hardware on the condition that detailed combat data gets sent back to them, knowing full well that they're letting some shitty dictator put 'em in little kids who probably die of the shakes in a few years if the bullets don't get them. You can't believe anything the big corps publish."

"Yeah, there's a reason I compared them worse off to Ashe's soldiers and not the Scarlet Chorus.  I bet most of those would fit right in, here."

"...Frustrating, that there's all this this, and not any that y'all can get or trust.  Kind of makes me want to fix it, not that I'm remotely set up to actually do that, as I am."  Sip.

"Sounds like a good way to die and get a lot of other heads killed in the meanwhile to me," Val says.

(The poker game starts back up. The thing with Nerat or whoever was interesting, but they're moving on now to more practical realities, like how there's a filcher hanging around the market lately, white guy, tall, or how Kevin's old squat is available now, he got a place in the slums and left it, and other low-level gossip.)

...Reilly finally comes out of the bathroom again. She sits and takes the beer she paid for that's been sitting, alone, on the bar. Starts slowly drinking it, thinking hard. Val gives her a look but doesn't move to evict her.

"Sure, but who here really, truly believes they aren't gonna die anyway?

"Way I figure, the people at the bottom of the ladder have the least to lose - all you can go is up."

Oh, hey, it's Reilly.

...

"Thinkin' 'bout something important?"

Val just snorts and starts restocking some drinks.

"...Important to me. Not to you. I'm thinking about work. Need something better than random day labor hauling stuff around or digging latrines for a buck. But I don't have any of my tools anymore, pawned 'em. My own damn fault, yeah? Who wants to hear a head complain about their own shitty life choices in a bar? I'm just glad I didn't get into whoring. You don't get out of it. Would've pawned my support aug if I could have too. Huzzah. Look at my party trick."

She holds up one arm in a clearly awkward and unbalanced position, twisted around and stretched, and- Just holds it there, perfectly still, without it seeming to take any effort.

"I could keep this up for an hour."

"Everyone's important to me."

The mention of whoring being a thing you never leave, a bad ending...

Ophelia's knuckles whiten as she takes a sip of her water.

"...That is indeed a very neat party trick.

"What sorts of tools could you use, if you had them?  What could you do with them, if you did?"

"You know, electronics stuff. Not really a mechanic, and nanotech and hacking and med-tech stuff is beyond me too, but. Phones, radios, lights, networking, to the extent you even can network without inviting everyone with a radio link to spy on everything you do. Drones. Sensors. Appliances, though that's edging towards mechanic again. I can work with most of it. Just not much opportunity. Parts aren't cheap either."

She nods.  "Sounds like a very useful skillset, in my opinion.  I'm very sure my old boss and some of my coworkers in a different branch would have highly valued your expertise.  It's unfortunate that they aren't; I know a bit of how they do things, but I'm no master of making.  Still...I think there may be opportunities for us.  Because depending upon what parts...Well, I even have some raw materials to hand.  And then...we can leverage that."

Reilly gives her a side-eyed glance. "...What, you see a random girl and want to go into business with her?" She's clearly suspicious. "Heads who can fix stuff aren't exactly rare as diamonds, and it's not like I've ever heard of you either. I won't turn down paying work, but you sound like you're selling something else."

"I see someone down on their luck but trying to make something of herself, and figure that if I'm in the same boat, two people trying is better than one.

"I'm - well, you wouldn't know a Fatebinder, you were in the bathroom.  But I'm Fatebinder Ophelia Vaudelle, and I've done far more difficult things than undercut people who're charging exorbitant prices for parts, before.  Plus, I did help you out a bit earlier, you might have noticed, and I'm sure Val can attest to my chronically overinflated sense of responsibility.  I wouldn't say I'm in your debt, per se, but - I try to make sure everyone whose lives I touch comes out better for the experience, and yours isn't quite better yet, despite what's happened so far.  I'm not done.  And if I'm not done...

"An unfinished duty is only marginally less viscerally painful to my psyche than one I have failed, and I appear to have picked up 'get your life to a stable and healthy equilibrium' as one to get myself moving in this new place.  If you'll have me.  If you want to throw me out on my ear, that's your decision to make; I'll respect it."

"Never seen you before in my life, so I'm sure you didn't help me earlier." Reilly glances around the bar.

Val says, "She's some kind of foreign. Maybe corpo, maybe some other big player. Talking a lot. Fucked up a cannibal pretty good, or so she said. Normal levels of bullshit, not too high or low."

Reilly nods as if things make much more sense than before, now.

"Also, it'll be time for y'all to buy another drink soonish."

She also nods to this, and sips her drink again.

"I won't turn down charity, or good paying work, but you're not buying yourself - lifelong gratitude or anything, head."

"You were very out of it, at the time.  Your sister would have a better recollection, I think."

At Val's comment, though... "...Well, that's interesting, I had not expected my sense of self to be so direly offended by being described as being only a normal level of bullshit.  I suppose I pride myself a bit too much on my exceptionality."  She shakes her head, allowing herself a bit of self-deprecating mirth.  "Regardless - I'm not expecting lifelong gratitude, not unless I put in lifelong effort.  That's how relationships work.  Or at least how they should.

"Anyway.  Speaking of business matters, I've a few bits of miscellany from my old job with little practical use here, and no particular direct value to me; I figure I want to sell those on to folk with more money than sense, because they sure do love status symbols, but I don't know the locals."

Eyes narrow. Glare.

"I guess I can help you appraise them, or whatever... Sort through, see if there's anything of use... I don't really have the contacts to sell anything classy close to what it's actually worth, though."

"You have more contacts than my none, I think."

"Don't spread a bunch of goods out on my bartop," Val says. "I buy and sell booze and grub, that's it. If you're talking business maybe time to head out?"

"Wasn't planning on it.  Was hoping I'd have an idea of where I'm heading before I headed out, though, if you don't begrudge me the extra few minutes."

"Don't push it," Val warns. "You get some credit for Mateo but a bar is for drinking."

"I was planning on heading over to the market soon. Always a head or two who needs heavy stuff shifted for a few bucks around."

She nods.  "Don't want to overstay my welcome; I'll get myself out of your hair.  If we're heading to the market, then let's head to the market, Reilly?"

"Yeah."

The market is well off to the right of the big gate. They don't want to be within line of sight of Tower's checkpoint. A few people are eyeing Ophelia with interest now.

They pass someone lying face-up on a moldy couch, trying to staunch bleeding from an arm and breathing shallowly. Reilly - keeps a wide berth and makes to just keep going.

Ophelia's thumb traces a pattern inside her sleeve; this person is going to feel much better in a few minutes.

Healing's not the stuff she's used to casting sneakily, but she knows how to do it.

The Border Market is a roughly square collection of stalls, with wary faces watching the customers and fellow merchants just as warily. Serving people who can't get in. People coming. People leaving. There’s always a bunch of weird stuff floating around. Old junk off blankets in the dust. Magazines, plastic tchotchkes and colored glass beads. Baskets of old coins, watches, dirty glasses and cracked plates lorded over by women with weathered faces. Haggling is perfunctory, with prices only changing a teensy bit.

In terms of decent deals on stuff worth having that Reilly points out as they wander around a bit, currently the Border Market has:

Random clothes- An old T-shirt, an ammo belt, tough old boots, a big sturdy survival backpack. $20-$80.
Dirty old knives of a variety of sorts, with one or two that might not be as worthless as they seem on first inspection. $50ish.
Bolt cutters ($40), a 'filter mask' that the seller swears is still good ($12), and a few miscellaneous tools- Wrenches and stuff ($25).
Ration packs and first aid kits out of the back of a pickup truck ($22 each), along with a large tank of water and a drink called coffee that you can have for a few bucks.
Some head selling an old dirt bike for $450 because they're heading into the city and don't need it anymore. That's a steal if you want one, it'll be gone in an hour.
A stack of old construction materials. Plascrete blocks, dented siding, compress board crumbling at the edges. Heavy and bulky. $130.

And two usual features. There's a big garage on one side. Dusty's place, Reilly explains. Dusty is a they, not a he or a she, quiet sort, mechanical wizard, works on vehicles and can't be hurried for love or money. Admirable, the place they've made themselves here, a local fixture. And then the Junk Guy. Or a half dozen of them, really, sharing the only other permanent structure in the Border Market. They'll take random bits and pieces off you for cheap, sort and stack it, and sell it back to folks for more.

Sheeeee will take a closer look at the metalcrafts.  She has her own emergency knife, because she's not stupid, but she expects that there's a few of these knives she could clean up and sell that none other than a Forgebound could.  (She also knows exactly where the flaws are.)

Kind of a lot of things are metal? Lots of the random junk, the bolt cutters and other tools, belt buckles and the construction materials. The knives are mostly damaged through neglect- Long use, dulling, rust, rough treatment, and time. Some more obviously worn down to near-uselessness ones can be had as low as $20-$40 or so, ranging from big rusty slabs of cleavers to savage serrated machetes to nasty little switchblades and butterfly knives to overly flashy serpentine segmented things that have locked up into uselessness long ago.

"So are you gonna actually try and sell something or what?"

"I'm pretty sure this market wouldn't know what to do with the things I presently have; to that end, I'm investigating opportunities to refurbish some existing products; it's an opportunity to get connections and survive day-to-day.  I'm not exactly trained as a smith, but I know my way around a forge and I know how to maintain a knife properly.  Unlike some people, it seems.

"Knifeseller.  Your stock's mostly in shit condition but it's still got good iron underneath the rust.  I've got the skills I think I need to get that iron back into shape with a bit of effort, maybe even turn some new blades out - but what I don't yet have is knives.  I figure we might have ourselves a mutually beneficial opportunity.

"Now.  I get that you don't know me from Kyros - but I've got funds to buy one knife outright.  What I want to do, as a trial run, is buy a piece of cheapass shit, fix it up, and turn it around, getting my $20 back and splitting the gains in your sale price.

"Worst comes to worst, you've still sold something you know you may as well hand in over there, otherwise."

Reilly's mouth gapes. "A... Forge. A fucking forge? Like, rocks and fire? Like some sort of fucking caveman? 'Cause I sure don't see a scrap smelter out here."

The seller glares at her. "Plus one on that, head. I don't know what you're trying to pull. Prices are on the stuff. If you take one of these knives and send back one in better condition, I'll be checking it thoroughly and give you what it's worth."

"A lady must keep her secrets, but yes.  Fire.  Sometimes even rocks, depending upon the rock.  I'm not sure why you're surprised; smelting is the same principle."

"Anyway.  That one, if you please."  A $20 knife; this one is large and rusted and blunt, but it's cheap.

The seller will calmly take two ten dollar bills and hand over the knife.

Reilly... Turns and walks away quickly.

...Well, that certainly is happening.  Does Reilly look like she wants Ophelia to be coming with her (expectation: probably not), or will Ophelia be finding somewhere with the appropriate thematics and some decent isolation by herself?

Nope. Reilly has pretty clearly decided that Ophelia is too sketchy or playing some some sort of joke and is being rid of her.

The bordertown is one massive sprawling set of old holes and improvised construction. There are empty boltholes, old stashes, people living behind a metal flap. A bit further out there are bigger abandoned buildings, like old rail yards, or an empty strip mall inconvenient enough to the city to not have squatters.

She'll have to make do with an old rail yard, she thinks, being as it's at least not likely to catch fire should she need to start hammering things - though it's horribly insecure.  She just doesn't have time to search for proper privacy.  Not if she wants to get this done today.

Really, though, this isn't going to require much novel thought from her, just a farming ritual wildly misused; she's going to need some extra seed oil to get all this rust off.  (Not for necessarily this blade, but certainly for every future knife to pass through her hands.)

It's a simple job to immerse the blade in blade oil, then use a careful modulation of pulsing Force, imbued into the blade underneath, to get the rust off.  If this - cleaver, yes - had taken battle scars and been allowed to rust for this long, it would be pitted as deep as the spires are tall - but it hadn't, despite being quite firmly rusted all over, which was why she picked this particular item.  It didn't require an improvised forge to fix up properly.

After removing the blade from the rust bath, all that remains is a bit of whetting.

She's left with a pretty nice cleaver, then. The wooden handle is still pretty beat up.

The wind has been picking up for a bit. It looks like a huge dust storm is blowing in soon- The sky is darkening with the wall of dust rolling in from the Badlands.

Right, time to put some wards up, then.  She'll decamp to one of the outbuildings.  It's easier to ward small areas.

There's someone else running for cover, seeing the oncoming storm. Better dressed than the most unfortunate souls out here, dedicated desert gear and a big mask. They see her, and seem to mentally shrug and start waiting for her to be out of sight.

She also gives a shrug as she sets up to make some scales for the knife, since she's going to be stuck here anyway.  "Nice weather we're having, huh?

"This place yours?"

"Yeah, this looks like a big one," the guy says. "I can find somewhere else if you're..." He trails off and shrugs. Taps his goggles. "Geared for it, see."

"Eh, I'll hold up fine; had to ride out a days-long sandstorm in a ripped tent with a camel, during my misspent and adventurous youth.  I'm not exactly dressed for the occasion, but even without my tricks I'd survive, y'know?"

"...Sure, head."

A camel? Who even has one of those outsize of fuckin' zoos these days?

"Let's just batten down before the grit gets everywhere..." He glances at the oncoming dust and heads inside the sturdyish-looking outbuilding.

Hmm de hmm, de doo bee doo, she's totally not doing magic while she battens down the hatches, no siree...

The guy finds a corner to lurk in. He takes out little bit of weed, rolls it into a small blunt and lights it up, just a couple puffs.

He doesn't seem the sociable type. A little curious, but also very wary and just kind of an introvert. And not inclined to explain why he's here.

She'll busy herself with repairing the scales, as best she can given that she can hardly do blatant magic right now.

"You must have steady employment.  What sort of things do you do for a living?"

"Much as anyone does. This and that, here and there. In the slums, usually, up near Palisade. Buying and selling, you can get a lot done doing that if you're careful. You?"

"I appear to be repairing knives, since most of my management skillset is quite useless when I've nothing to manage."

"Lost your crew? You'll stand back up if you've got it." Shrug.

"More like my crew's lost me, though you wouldn't believe the story if I told you; still, I can only hope you're right about that."

"You'll be fine. I can hear the sun in your voice. Mm. There's more mystery to the world than some think. Crazy shit going down. Lies, rumors, mistakes, and reality. Who's to say, sometimes."

The sand-blasting of everything outside has gotten fairly loud now. Loud wind and a rattling as specks hit the structure.

"...This place is sturdier than I remember."

"Must be one of those mysteries you were talking about, huh?"  There's a bit of levity to her voice.  "What's the craziest thing you've seen?"

He smirks. "Crazy unexplainable rather than crazy fucked-up, I imagine. So imagine this- I'm checking out this alley, out of the way place, for completely legitimate and mundane reasons-" He pauses for a beat. "-And I hear fighting. A scuffle, at least two people running. Figure I should intervene, so I hurry over. Maybe not the wisest choice, but it came to nothing because as I turn the corner- Nothing. Place is quiet and empty. There's footsteps in the gunk, but nowhere they could have gone- Three sheer walls, no doors, no manholes in the ground. Vanished." He puffs the blunt. "The boring explanation would be a reasonably well-hidden exit, or me going crazy. But personally? I bet one or both of 'em was a mutant. Gecko pads for climbing walls. They could've gone over it when they heard me coming."

"Ah, yes, totally legitimate reasons.  Definitely."  She nods.  "Depending on the wall, I bet there's people who could've climbed it when you were about to catch them necking even without augs.

"Surprised you're enough of a charitable sort; I saw someone just bleeding out on a couch with nobody helping."

"Takes all kinds, head. Triumphs, tribulations, jobs, kids, love, parties, drugs, death, hopes and dreams. The wheel turns. Cinci grinds on. Cynically speaking, a certain reputation makes some things easier, less hassle. Makes other things more hasslesome, whatever. And there's no more real a test of your med-techie chops than a guy bleeding out in a filthy alley, and besides that grateful chicks put out easy. Those the lies I tell myself sometimes. But I find that what goes around tends to come around. Then again, weed always did turn me into a sentimental bastard."

"What goes around comes around indeed, and the wheel of fate keeps on turning."

She hums softly.  "People aren't nice to the whores 'round here, I gather."

He snorts. "Yeah, it's real bad. The violence inherent in the system and all."

"The what.  Or, no, I understood you, I think, but -

"How dare they.

"That's not sex work anymore, it's rape, enforced by those in power, plain and simple!  A profession you can't leave...that is then repaid with violence by those whose utmost duty is to protect?  How dare they!  I've never been in that line of work myself, but at least the brothels back home let you quit!"

"Ha. You must be European then? I hear it's nice there. Not that I disagree."

"I'm not from around here, certainly.  Where I was from...

"It had its good parts, and its bad parts, like any place does - I'm sure you'd say it was cripplingly poor, for one - but while I can most definitely say there were some policies I disagreed with, it was, at least, from the top on down, trying.  'In times of lean, you will be fed; in times of wealth, you will feed others'.  That was one of the first laws my training as an adjudicator had me memorizing, right along with 'Loyalty is freedom from hunger, hostility, and hopelessness'.  That's not to say that - political realities didn't leave some asshats where they should not have been, or that I necessarily believed that this was the truth of things - but I was entrusted with the power and right to change that, delegated to me two steps from the highest power we had.  And I wasn't, I think, alone in trying.

"I've honestly lived rather a privileged life, I think.  This is going to be - an adjustment."

"It's pretty hard to believe that you used to be important, gotta be honest? That there's any place on the globe that's not dominated by avarice. Maybe you were a big fish in a tiny pond. Cinci's an ocean, mon. And yeah, the people at the top are not even really trying anymore. The thin veneer of civility, peeled back to reveal the cruel animal within. And even if you want to help, to get power, to keep power, you have to play the same game. The resource wars didn't help, of course."

He pulls on the joint again.

"I think my pond must be - an ocean the size of the stars away, if it's here at all."

She looks up into the ceiling, storm rattling away.

She flicks her fingers through a practiced symbol, and unfamiliar stars paint a sky upon the roof.

"After all, I'm the only person I know of on this planet that can do this."

"And there's not a single Spire, not the sort the Ancients built, that draw magic to and through them as they pierce the sky.

"And no-one's heard of Kyros.  Nor even the concept of an Archon.

"You really would have heard of Kyros.  Trust me, he's, she's - they're impossible to miss.  I've felt their voice scour through me as I spoke their words and a province quaked; I've proclaimed an Edict of Execution and I felt their axe loom.

"Not to mention that neither has Kyros heard of you.

"Nor did the people who taught me how to care for knives, know the secret to having so much metal you can leave burnt-out hulks of it just sitting in the wastes.

"No, I rather think I'm quite far from home.

"But that doesn't mean I can't keep to my duties.

"This place...

"The first posting I undertook as a Fatebinder, beyond - the routine of day-to-day justice - was service as a coordinator, adjudicator, and combatant as Kyros's armies marched upon the Bastard City.

"The Bastard City had its merchant houses cast unto the depths, quite literally, and its people rejoiced.

"And I'm not Tunon the Adjudicator, Archon of Justice of the Empire of Kyros the Overlord -

"But the thing you wouldn't believe about how I got here, is that I was facing down an Archon, the Archon of Secrets, who had made of his army a force as despicable as any gang but much more organized -

"And I had outmaneuvered him.

"So he escaped, I tried to keep that from happening, and the teleportation I didn't know he could do, landed me here."

He peers at the stars.

"That could be a projector in your retinas or skin, or any number of other hidden tricks. I know memories are not necessarily reliable and that's all I'll say about that for now. You should not trust me, head. I certainly don't trust you, for all that I hear something genuine in your words, head. Maybe we can get to know each other, though. Over time. Nothing too rushed."

"That sounds like a plan.

"You know, I never did ask your name?"

"I go by Roland. If you need a way into the city, I can get you sorted for two hundred fifty and a name and fake history to go with."

"Pleasure to meet you, Roland.  I think I may take you up on that when I have two hundred fifty dollars, or if you're willing to gamble on there being a market for scrolls of genuine vellum amongst the moneyed folks inside."

He perks up and puts out the remains of his blunt, smiling wide.

"Oh, I'll take vellum scrolls off you, kinda niche, but I buy and keep lots of niche stuff 'till I find a buyer. Won't even rip you off much. People know the name Roland means that. Weird obscure stuff is just fun, too. Let's see them?"

She can indeed show him a few scrolls!  "Handcrafted, too."

He takes off his gloves and handles them carefully for a minute, feeling them and rolling them open slowly before carefully closing them up again.

"Preem stuff. Seems to be real, adds to your mystery. I'll probably be able to sell these for close to a grand, eventually. Raising real animals is expensive compared to synthetics. But I do take on a lot of opportunity cost and burden of risk doing this kind of stuff, and have to let it go for less in the end. So it's only natural I need to make a profit. How does two forty per sound?"

"Hmm."

She flips open a small - almost a little notebook, made of bronze and wax, and poises herself as if to take notes with the stylus strung onto its frame.

"If I expected this to be the only transaction I wished to undertake with you, or rather the only sort of transaction I wished to undertake, I would begin haggling, at this point.

"However, I would rather -

"Cultivate an ongoing relationship.

"So.  I propose, as an alternative structure -

"The first scroll, I trade you for your services in establishing my access to the city proper.  I assume I'm going to need them; I'm not from around here.

"You retain all profit from that sale.

"The remainder, we split; you are the agent of a recently unemployed corporate supplies middlewoman from somewhere far away, who was a bit caught out by a sudden dissolution of her division.  These scrolls were purchased as a private errand from my now-dead boss, whose tastes trend to the positively archaic, and his death left me with little better to do but sell to the highest bidder."

"I hear what you're saying, but nah. One scroll for a Cinci-standard forged border pass, sure, deal. Acting as a broker for a deal on a bunch of other copies of the same luxe curiosity? I'm not in the big money business, just the day to day, working the streets. It's not gonna be all going to one person. These are living room wall pieces, or office toys, one per head at most. I can't be keeping you looped in on a dozen different deals yet, maybe when we actually do know each other."

She nods.  "Makes sense."

"I wonder if you could get a few heads in a bidding war, if you measured out the scrolls one or two at a time.  Or rather, I imagine one might, and I expect that you've enough savvy to pull it off, so I'm raising the option, because it communicates my goals.  I'm thinking I want to maximize my gains, is the main thing, rather than go for immediate profit.  If I need immediate profit, I can turn some knives around.  ...The nerve of some people, to so ill-treat their tools - but their loss is my gain."

"We'll see what happens. Cinci's big, and everyone's a hustler, folk are mostly too wise to get drawn into that. From my point of view I don't want to spend an extra twenty hours to bump the price by a couple hundred bucks, that's not gonna happen. You'll get the best price I can fetch for a serious but measured effort, if we end up doing things that way."

He looks at the knife for a bit. "You can tell a craftsman by their tools. Once saw a head with stupid numbers of different tools, wrenches a quarter-inch apart in size, all lined up nice and neat and clean on hooks on a wall, looking like they've never actually seen work. Stupider way to show off than a fancy car or expensive augs, those are both actually useful."

He digs out from the big backpack a pair of phone-like devices and a large cylinder, the length of a forearm, but wider around. There's the medical '+' symbol on it. "Gonna need to take biometrics for your border pass. That's a blood prick, handprint, and retinal scan. It will also show me if you're a mutant, and if you are deal's off, I can't get mutants past Tower unless it's real subtle."

She nods.  "I'm certainly willing to trust your expertise on the market."

The comment about telling a craftsman by their tools prompts a sage nod, but no other comment - unlike the 'mutant' one.

"Glad I'm not Beastfolk-kin; that might've been trouble.  ...Actually I'm not sure if they can interbreed with humans, come to think of it.  Regardless - pretty sure I'm just an ordinary human, as far as there's anything ordinary about me.  How's this thing going to check, though?  If you'll humor my curiosity on the subject.  Presumably something to do with the blood sample?"

"Some corp's vat-grown soldiers? Those are usually sterile, yeah. Easier to control that way. It's just a DNA and protein expression assay, nothing fancy like you take for serious medical treatment." He shrugs and pulls out a small tube with a tiny needle at the end. "The one-shot nanites in the medchem kit are commanded into diagnostic mode and then send electrical impulses based on what codons and proteins they encounter in the blood. Encrypted coprocessor chews the math for a bit and turns it into something readable- And more importantly to Tower, consistent enough between checks to make impersonation harder. Though they don't use these kits, they have dedicated devices for it, these are first aid."

"...Wow, that is a lot of words I have never actually heard before, though for what's obviously professional language it's surprisingly understandable."

Her stylus positively zooms across one panel of her diptych as she makes notes, expanding on detectable roots.

"...Beastfolk can definitely breed, though; I've seen Beastfolk kids and they don't come out of vats.  But you're not wrong that they have the - weapon mindset - always thinking about who'd win in a fight.  Don't understand mercy whatsoever.  Or the strength of intellect, necessarily.

"Not that it matters; you won't see them here, I think.  Unless another impossible thing happens, which..."

She seems to be delving deeply into memory, as she holds up a finger for holding a thought.  "I suppose if the one assassin that tried to kill me the once manages to pull off some of the bullshit a different assassin on my employer's payroll is capable of, there might be one, if either of them can follow me here.  It depends.  Wouldn't be trouble for you, though, she'd just be mad at me for what I couldn't avoid doing to her boss.  Though now that I think about it, I wonder if making a walking avalanche scream is a show of strength enough for Beastfolk culture...

"...Doesn't matter; nobody else would know what actually happened when I declared open season on Nerat, took my shot at him, and - if not missed, still failed to land a meaningful hit - so why would they look for me?

"Anyway.

"As long as you don't do anything nefarious with the blood sample, which - well, I'm going to have to trust you a bit on that - I'm okay with giving it, if it's necessary.  And I believe you that it is.  So you stick me with the tube, then?  Anywhere in particular?"

"I can theoretically get uncomfortable levels of detail about your health, or even more theoretically use it to imitate your blood sig. No fantasy shit like curses or whatever. Who the hell would bother engineering something to target your DNA specifically when they can just shoot you, right? Fingertip or arm vein. It doesn't hurt, there's just a little puff of air. You need basic tech literacy or a better backstory, nameless head."

"Unfortunately I come by my backstory honestly.  Good news is, I've never seen blood curses either, eh?  Tech literacy sounds like a wonderful investment, though."

She'll just stick herself, then.

Beep! He does things with the screened devices.

"I don't even know where to start. You grow up with this stuff, most folk."

"Point me to a library and I'm sure I'll pick it up.  I gather that - if there's one primary trick to it, it's harnessing lightning?  I - can hardly think of anything else that that warning symbol could mean, at least.  And the other thing to know would be what DNA is; it seems - rather core to your understanding of life."

"Caveman." Sigh. "Or some kinda long-term psy-op? Memory fuckery? ...Fuck. Palm." There's a flat pad for her to press it on. "And then look into this. Computers read off stupidly long lists of very precise instructions and do math really fast. You can set it up to give them examples of math that looks good and examples that look bad and it makes guesses about how to make it look good, that's a VI, a computer that can sorta learn but still isn't really thinking. Lightning is a form of electricity, which can be used in creative magnetic-fuckery ways and for computers. DNA is the computer-instructions that drive a living thing, except the human is ten times more complicated than the worst chaos-brain VI because evolution's the only one editing the source code and it doesn't leave comments."

"More the former than the latter, I'm rather confident.  Though I'll have you know we didn't live in caves.  Why, we could work iron.  Even make some that was of comparable quality to this knife, here."  She's poking a bit of fun at herself with that line.

Palm, indeed.  She peels off a long blue glove, first.

And then she will gaze into the machine as if she can get it to reveal its secrets by peering hard enough!

"I can hardly imagine the necessary convolutions to get an electrical abacus to show you all of that, in a format you can just read.  It's really quite a wonder.

"And - evolution, is that to do with why you can breed animals?"

"Iron. Right. In small batches by individual people? That's another thing, most manufacturing is by big machines like Serisse makes. Twenty tons of stainless steel alloy at a time. Also, not much easily accessible ore left, it's all recycling these days. Haul in an old cargo container from the badlands to the dump and you can get a couple hundred bucks for it, scrap value. I should fucking think there's no large uncontacted tribes left anywhere on the globe. Even those Tuvalu island guys or whoever got evicted for some CEO's new vacation mansion, I heard. And yeah, that's artificial selection. Evolution is when predators and hunger and shit are doing the breeding."

"Not exactly small batches, but compared to twenty tons, certainly the total production was tiny.  Twenty tons is - grain shipments, not iron.  Iron...If my numbers are right, and I do think they are...

"Mm.  The forges at Lethian's were putting out pretty much all the product we had, at least ever since the last mines got fucked over, but they were more limited by their ability to bring in ore...

"I'd still hazard that the shipments I have particular records of, multiplied by five or so because it's just the one finger of supplies, has the Forge-Bound comparing decently well to one of those.  Albeit only one, for a hundred people's labors just on the processing, let alone at the mines digging it out of the ground.  That was a right mess to make happen; everybody wanted iron, nobody wanted to haul the fucking ore.

"I do think we made what you call steel; it just wasn't by that name.  The properties resemble ones I know well.

"By the way, what's your calendar like?"

"Yeah, mass production really doesn't give a shit compared to handicrafts. I could theoretically hand-assemble a capacitor given the right stuff and an hour but it's better to pick up five for a buck off a street seller, or get them new from Bob's Tools. It's just that a highly profitable factory needs a huge military force hanging around to defend it, or someone would steal shit or blow it up. Nothing just straightforward makes money. If it does, you get shot for it. Still, lots of old abandoned industrial facilities in Cinci's guts. Cheaper to manufacture in China and Africa these days. I even salvage stuff out of them sometimes."

"Yeah, been there, done that, reorganized the mercenary company into a guard force for strategic materials that still somehow didn't catch --

"Mm.  Really ought to take a look into how it took so long for the ongoing theft to come to my attention, let alone Welby's; that's the sort of thing that people should tell other people.

"...Although I'm hardly going to be able to get in touch with them to do it, so, it's rather moot.

"Anyway, being annoyed at my past self's inadequate procedurecraft aside...

"What makes it cheaper to ship a thing off to be manufactured over there in an identical factory?  Seems kind of fake, if you ask me.  You want your final processing steps as close to the destination point as you want your initial processing near the inputs so you're not hauling around waste."

"Do I look like a corpo director of operations or whatever? Stuff does totally get made in Cinci- Everyone in cinci's eating algae and catfish no matter how processed it is, honestly, and they're actually mining the old dump because people used to just throw out perfectly good metal- Maybe it's the poverty. And the Badlands. This used to be the edge of the American midwest, or so I heard. Corn fields as far as the eye could see."

"No, you just sounded like you had some idea of what you were talking about when you said it was cheaper to make things Over There and not here.  Kinda thought you might have an idea why that was.  Still, you aren't an operations manager, so, yeah, fair enough."

And then...the algae and catfish and the Badlands being a new thing.

"...The Badlands were not always like this.  Is that what you are saying."

"Resource wars." He shrugs. "Wasn't any one thing. Global warming and climate change. Sabotage here and there, in dribbles. Land that'd been overfarmed for generations unable to cope with a sudden switch back to 'normal'. The old 'States fell apart, and all the people fighting didn't realize that what they were fighting for was slipping away until it was over. A hundred years ago, maybe even forty, yeah, the Badlands were probably fine. Forests, farms, whatever."

She swears.  Vehemently.

"Let me guess.  If someone fixed it, or looked like they were trying to.  That would be worse than an unguarded factory."

"I don't know. Maybe. Seems too big to fix- Way too expensive. The kind of thing whole nations would have to align to do, and there's no long-term gain to that when Ohio, Texas, Ontario, Michigan, and the Mississippi Combine would all suddenly be very interested in historical documents about how exactly the 'States used to be shaped. Not to mention the Felmann- They pretty much own the Dakotas for whatever they're still worth as farmland and would be pissed at the supply of farmland going up."

"Whole nations - or the right single Archon.  When the Orphan Midwife walked the land, fields bloomed in her wake.  Kyros locked her away, for sharing her Sigil - the way of echoing her magic - with nominal enemies of the Empire - and that affected the yields of the entire continent.

She seems to be getting into telling stories as she continues.

"I expect that if I had continued upon the path I had been set upon when I spoke the Edict of Execution, I would have been the first Archon of the century to achieve the title primarily by the merit of her labors, rather than mostly by quirk of fate.  No-one expected me to make Cairn scream in pain as he bore down on my city - or at least a city I was presently sworn to protect and administer, if it was not necessarily mine in the sense of ownership.  He was a walking avalanche, an invincible weapon of Kyros - until he decided he was not.  Yet I did hurt him, no matter that the task I'd set myself was yet more impossible and uncompleted.  And in turn I was asked an even more impossible task.  The Archons of War and Secrets had been tasked to suppress a rebellion of territory recently claimed - and were failing miserably.  Whether it was incompetence or treason, Kyros had had enough of that - and so the Overlord of the Empire gave unto me the gift and burden of the Edict of Execution.  A burden, because from the moment it was spoken, it fell upon me to save the lives of everyone in Vendrien's Well - no other force cared to, not even the rebels, who wished only to die gloriously and inspire greater revolt, as hopeless as that was.  A blessing, because the goal was simple enough to achieve: Take custody of the rebels' citadel beneath a Spire, to lift the Edict before it killed us all.  By whatever means I saw fit.

"I saw fit to bring everyone to the negotiating table, and unite them against the worst fucker in the room: Nerat, locus of the Voices of Secrets.  A monster in the guise of a man, the worst sort of weapon - there was no safe way to handle him, for if you thought there was, his blades would turn in your hand.  He ate people.  Consumed them as grist for the mill, as fuel for the fire, as a source of secrets no-one would tell.  And his Scarlet Chorus...

"It was a mockery of the laws of Kyros.

"As was he, for that matter, before he revealed to all present at the blue table irrefutable evidence that he was forsworn of them.

"I had not, precisely, planned for that to happen, nor for things to devolve into violence while I was arranging for diplomacy - though I cannot say it wasn't expected.  But I acquitted myself well - for even as he tried to flee, in the wake of his own body betraying him, I landed a blow upon his otherwise unchallenged Eye, who held Nerat's escape route.  Teleportation, Kyros only knows how, was hidden within the Sigil Fifth Eye cast, as dazed as he was by being thrown across the pavillion.

"And because I'd struck Fifth Eye at exactly the right wrong time, I was caught within the ritual's effects, and thrown far from Terratus.

"That sort of story...

"It would make an Archon of me to survive Nerat's direct attention.

"I outmaneuvered him.  I won a fight he picked, no matter that it was one mostly of words - and made him run, when I had not even come into the full flush of power that claim to a Spire would bring.

"And now I'm here.

"Looking up at a city of Spires, and facing a problem an Archon has solved before.

"You say that the problems of this world are too big for one person to solve.

"All I can say is that I intend to rise to the occasion."

He stares deadpan throughout this.

"...Look, head, dramatic speeches make me think less of your chances at this early juncture. You're talking like you're out of a goddamned TV show and it does not inspire confidence. Something's incredibly fucky with you and that does not inspire confidence. Who the fuck are you, huh? Reciting some kind of speech like I know who any of those people or things are? You gonna go crazy and stab me? Flip out and fuck me over for having introduced you to my contacts later? Fuck this. Free advice, it's hard to trust so at least learn to speak the language. I'll be around the market some time tomorrow afternoon with your border pass. Payment in advance, though."

He stands and shoulders his backpack.

She sighs, as whatever semi-manic force animated her through that speech subsides with the sandstorm.

"You're right; it was not the time for dramatic oration.  I'm not quite sure what came over me.  Perhaps cabin fever.  Perhaps pure need to - assert myself in my own mind; to control the story I'm in.  But to answer your question -

"I am, as I have ever been, a duly appointed Fatebinder, and moreso a scholar, a healer, a governor.  My name is Ophelia Vaudelle, and I swear upon it that I won't make you worse off for knowing me."

She hands over a scroll.

"...I hear that, surprisingly. Head's got to know who they are. Right, okay then. Pleasure doing business with you, Ophelia. Roland's my street name, for what it's worth, maybe I give you my real one eventually. See you tomorrow."

He puts the scroll carefully away in the depths of the big pack, fusses with his coverings for a bit - mask, goggles, boots, neck gaiter - and pushes open the door to the outbuilding with a grunt, letting the wind whip in for a moment, and then is gone.

...The dust storm does seem to be starting to die down though.

"Pleasure meeting you as well, Roland."

The wind does not in fact whip in!  Ophelia is glad her wards work.

The storm dies down in the next twenty minutes or so. The empty rail yard is still empty.

Then she'll proceed with her original plan of Now There Is A Tree; she wants to put better scales on this knife and she needs more blade oil.

The ground of the old train yard is concrete and gravel. There's plenty of dry dirt all around, though.

Well, it'll have to do; she'll get less yield, in nuts (and therefore blade oil) because the ritual that grows plants is going to be putting more effort in to compensate for the lack of water, but it's not impossible to press the issue, magically speaking, especially if she's just pumping it into the one tree.

A shame she doesn't have a chance to learn from that Tidecaster anymore.

...Shit, she doesn't really have anywhere to put the seeds once she's grown them.  Oh well.  She'll do it anyway.

And if a drone happens to be overflying this random patch of desert, it will see a person-shaped dot pacing a small circle that's made of some sort of sigil, while a tree visibly grows inside.

Or rather, if it could see through her illusion, it would see that.

She does not expect there to be such a drone, but she wards the area anyway.  Magic, or rather knowledge thereof, is something that should be spread by rumor alone, for now.

There are no drones flying over this patch of Badlands at the moment.

There's some wild dogs, though. Here they come, a pack, gaunt and skittish and sniffing around the scent of growth.

Well.  Hello there.  They can have a bit of Life too, gentle green wisps melting into their flesh and filling it out a bit.  It's not perfect; she's been meaning to work out a proper melding between Life and Vigor for a long while.  But it will do.

She rather hopes she won't regret this.

They're very skittish and Something has happened. Plus, this human is standing up confidently and aware of them. And this smell is weird but not food.

So they will circle around and investigate for a while, staying together, but not actually get close to her or attack. Looks like there's nine dogs here, same breed. Three 'puppies' that are half grown.

Well, then, that's probably fine.  She'll be heading back to the markets; she needs to sort out the handle scales, there's something weird about their construction.

(The ritual circle gets irreparably mussed up before she goes.)

They follow her for a bit before slinking away.

The market remains as it was. The dirtbike is gone. Someone's trying to sell big stacks of spiky coiled wire, apparently for keeping dogs and thieves out. The exact varieties of junk on offer have shifted a bit. Knife Seller (no name given) eyes her while bickering with a kid that can't be older than ten.

She'll wait for the kid to finish; she has time.

...Really?  Pokey wire is supposed to keep thieves out?  Verse would not even flinch at picking her way through it.  She expects the dogs to be more readily dissuaded, but still.  You'd just need thick gloves, and maybe a cutting tool or two, to get by.

If the seller heard this objection they would counter that it makes some approaches more difficult, at the very least. More time for watchful guards or drones to react.

Kid seems to be trying to sell some mismatched small metal objects. They swiftly move on, still in sales patter, when the seller makes to stand up.

She'll approach the seller.  "Didn't have the supplies on me to properly handle the handle, but I did get the rust off fine.  Blade's gonna be a bit lighter, but it still balances."

She'll let him name his price, first.

"Well I'll be. This does seem to be the same knife."

He motions for her to set it down on a clear spot and takes a good look.

"Thirty eight dollars."

"It just needed proper maintenance, really.  Little bit of blade oil - perhaps a bit more than a little, but still - and either some tools or a lot more elbow grease will set most of your stock right, really.  I figured you'd prefer the handle as-was, since I didn't have the right stuff to replace it - there's a more permanent sealant whoever made these slops on, I think, where the folk that taught me just went for a bit of oiling - same oil, yearly - but I could fix the handle up, too, if it's worth our time for this market.

"Anyway.  Counteroffer at forty even?  Polite of you to make sure I can eat today even if I roll that same twenty back into knives, which I'm inclined to."

"It's not my concern whether you eat or not."

Tap tap. He splits a fingernail on the edge.

"Sharp. Okay, forty. Forty-one, even. If you wanna shop around you can prolly get more but if you want the cash here'n'now..."

"Forty-one it is; you're the knife-seller here, it makes more sense to return this knife to your care."

She presents him with the knife.

And he hands over forty-one dollars.

"By how long it took you to fix that thing up it's probably not the most profitable use of your time. You might call this a low trust society, head. It's different in the city, at least a little. You can earn a hundred, hundred fifty a day on one of the neighborhood crews being dumb muscle. And I mean one of the hard working, hard beating cleanup crews. Blue collar, road repair, street cleaning, demolition work. If you don't look too flaky. Take that as you like."

"It didn't take me all that long, got stuck in a sandstorm coming back in.  Thanks for the advice; I'll take that under advisement."

"'Kay. Stay cool. Think I'm gonna pack up now, anyway."

He puts the cleaver away and starts gathering up merchandise.

After the necessary exchange of pleasantries, she'll go to the people that're selling ration packs, keeping her eye out for anything that looks like a good pack on the way.

Big, capacious, sturdy desert backpack, square and stiff and hard-wearing with many pockets, quite similar to the one Roland had: $95. A small purse: $22. That's what's on offer right now, at least.

Ration Pack Guys is one guy wearing a Hawaiian shirt and wrap-around shades and jeans and a merc-coded man lurking in a pickup truck bed with a gun. Looks like they've worked their way through most of the boxes. On offer are Ration Packs (actually labelled Meal, Ready to Eat), bags of "Nutri-Gel", Green Dragon branded chocolate bars, and HiPro Energy Bars. The chocolate is by far the cheapest.

"Hey there, how's going?" Hawaiian shirt grins at her. "You don't look like the usual crowd. Nice to meet, I'm Xavier. Passing through the border anyway so I figured I'd offload stock we had building up while I'm here, yeah?"

She may have to make one herself, then.  A pity, she's not one for sewing.

"That does seem wise, or at least cunning.  What has you travelling, if I might ask?

"You may call me Kyra."  She had not yet decided if this persona of hers has a family name, but - even if it is a reference only she will know, and bordering on heresy besides, she derives some strength from its invocation.

$30 - $20 + $41 (-$25: knife budget) = $26.

That's her budget.

Now to find the most nutritious way to spend it.

"Family stuff, hope you'll forgive if I'm not too forthcoming but it's a happy occasion- Business one of us had to take care of is done, time to pack out back south to old Knox. It's not even that far, just that we had to wait for a convoy all going north, you know?" The MREs are $18, the gel is $22 but they're bigger packages, the chocolate is $1 per bar and HiPro is $8 each and proclaims "Optimal Nutrition!"

...$1 per bar?!

"Of course, I hardly want to pry.  Or rather I do want to know things but it's hardly my right to know your business.  I'm glad the occasion is pleasant, at least.

"If I'm on a tight budget, what would you recommend, of what you have?  Or, I suppose, what you don't, but I imagine you're trying to make sales, here."

(Ophelia, incidentally, has never once let her eyes slip off the caravan guard.  Just in case.)

It's a pretty small bar compared to the meal packs.

"Well, the choco's extra cheap, they had a whole darn shipping container of it get displaced for higher quality stuff last winter, I bought the whole thing on a lark and now we can barely get rid of it. But Green Dragon chocolate is, eh, you know. Not amazing. MREs are good stuff, designed to keep soldiers on their feet, nutri-packs are great if you're a bit less active. Tell you what, help break down all these empty boxes and I'll give you ten bars of chocolate for free. He doesn't wanna do it and I don't either, honestly."

(The guard nods slightly, no other motion.)

"Sure, why not.  I've nothing else to do with my time right now."

'Not amazing' chocolate that the common soul can buy on the cheap.  What a bounty.

A shame so much of it is hoarded behind those walls.  She'll figure something out.

(And sure, one bar is small, but what about twenty-two bars?  Not that she plans for her food to be chocolate alone for the next several days.  Desserts are not the same as dinners; there's things her body wants and doesn't want and she suspects that this does not have many things her body would want, bar sweetness, and possibly actual cacao.)

"Here, try not to tear 'em, you can just flatten them out like this-" He stands up and demonstrates on one of the many empty boxes stacked haphazardly. The bottom folds out and it collapses down flat. "And stack 'em, and then I'll bundle them all up when you're done. Anything else on top of your choco?"

Ophelia is surprisingly good at breaking down boxes, and even avoiding much tearing or bending.

(She may also be cheating with a spell to get it done faster.)

It's really quite an ingenious work of design, in her unprofessional opinion.  Much better than the average (wooden) crate.

"It'll get done quicker if we split the labor - one of us fetching boxes, another breaking, a third stacking and binding.  I'm somewhat surprised you didn't break them down as you emptied them.  Seems like it would work better than allowing them to accumulate.

"Though I suppose I shouldn't complain about things working out in my favor, hm?

"As for anything else I'd like - I suppose a Nutri-Gel."

"Maybe it would go faster, but I am being unashamedly lazy and paying you to do it instead. One nutri-gel it is. You passing through Cinci too, head?"

"Really, I'm not sure what I'm doing; I wasn't expecting to end up here of all places.  So I'm just trying to get by, get some solid ground back under me, right now.  Afterwards, though - who knows?  I suppose we'll find out when I get there."

(None of this stops her from efficiently breaking down boxes.)

"That's a lot of folks. It's not a great place to be. I know I'm lucky, maybe I'm no rich cyborg or corpo, but got something steady going, you know? But that's life sometimes. Little islands that are yours, huh..."

"A steady and fulfilling job is the sort of thing I bet a lot of people would kill for, 'round here.  And it sounds like you've got one, y'know?  I have a bit of a grander dream than just a steady life, but - it's good that you have yours.  And that there's - enough room in it to give a damn about helping - some random woman," she lets out a self-deprecating 'aheh', "that you'll probably never meet again."

"World's a fucked up place, you know. No need to fuck it up further. On the other foot, seen heads drive themselves to death trying to help, give too much. Balance." He taps a finger to his head as if delivering sage wisdom.

He handles another sale to a passerby, then stands and streches and packs up the remaining stock on display into still full boxes. And then starts passing her boxes. Last one gets left behind.

"Oh no. It looks like we forgot a box with a few odd bars in it. Woe. Calamity. Guess some scrounger gets lucky."

She is handed a plastic bag with ten chocolate bars and a big green nutri-pak, complete with plastic straw. "Twenty even and stay cool, yeah?"

It is sage wisdom, and acknowledged as such.  In times of lean, you cannot feed others.

"I'll do my best."

She hands over two tens, and her purchases find their way into her many pockets.

Hawaiian shirt waves cheerfully. He and his laconic guard pile into the old truck and trundle out of the market, towards the gate.

Metal Thing Salesman Kid is still around, taking a break in the shade of a stack of old tires. He eyes the leftover box, which looks fairly crumpled and unimportant now that the truck's gone.

Ophelia goes 'psst' at the kid, then nudges the box in their direction before 'wandering off'.

In fact, she'll do a bit of sleight-of-hand to 'grab a chocolate bar from there' herself.  (It's one of hers, actually, but it's still...  Allegedly food!)

The kid's eyes narrow and he stares hard at Ophelia. Skeptical-like.

But he stands up and goes for the box himself. Inside is a few more bars. He starts stuffing shorts pockets.

"What you want, weird lady? Everyone wants something. I don't buy it."

-Oh, it looks like he has a partner, a pretty subtle one. Girl, twelveish, dark skin, who was previously helping at a food stall. Only identifiable now because of the face she's making.

Oh, clever girl.

"I'm a weird lady, obviously I want things like 'fed kids' for inscrutable weird-lady reasons that wouldn't make sense if I told you.  'sides, this wasn't my stuff to 'accidentally lose' to begin with; you want to ask - oh, wait, he's already left; silly me.  ...but - hm.  If you feel like you owe me something, I wouldn't mind hearing what you've been overhearing lately.  Knowledge is power, after all."

Right, this makes total sense. He nods at the sudden lack of confusion.

"Little eyes, little ears. You, mostly. And the usual griping 'bout tower. Pumas beat up a bunch of CoolCool's crew for one of 'em knocked over a bike. I heard CoolCool's not even really interested in this place anymore, and his crew's just gonna dissolve soon. People pass through all the time, barely any'a these customers are actual Bordertown people. Sellers, more of 'em are. That's about all you get for free."

She nods, too, once he's done.  "You're a sharp kid.  So's your friend; almost would've missed her if she wasn't making faces at me, and I like to think I'm pretty good at reading people.  I have to admit I'm curious what has me the talk of the town, depending upon how much that'd cost me."

"It's something you can hear from anyone. You sound like an actress, you've got some kinda combat experience, you're looking for trouble, you're tryna peel someone off from Tower, you might be from Europe or might be just bullshitting everyone. That's about all you get for leaving this box here."

He makes a hand sign at the food-stall partner, who rolls her eyes and returns to her work washing dishes.

"I know things about some people who might not like you much. For messing with their plans, advertently or in. As for how I know these people might not like you much, it's not hard to make basic infer-ences."

Expectant stare: Initiate!

She nods.  "I presume this information costs something."

"Yeah. Friends tell each other things, but you're suspicious. Paying directly for information is not the done thing. But it's sometimes the thing that's done. Going rate's a couple bucks for relevant rumors, and more for hard facts. Even if you don't know me, you don't know anyone else around here do ya?"

He is being So Serious and So Grown Up right now. This is not just conversation but A Contact.

She would smile faintly, but he'd get the wrong impression.  There's still a twitch at the corners of her mouth anyway.  "I know some people.  But you're right that when it comes to information, I know only you."  One of her hands dips into a pocket for a few seconds; it returns with a 'choco' wrapper with $5 inside, and this is shown to the boy.  "What would, say, five dollars, get me, facts-wise?"

"That's about one relevant rumor, or in this case the general idea of what a group's about." He shrugs. "Give or take how desperate the seller or how easy the info is to find."

"Well.  Here, you should have this."  And the five dollars inside a 'choco' wrapper make their way into his hands.  "Dealer's choice on the dossier to give, mhm?"

He snatches it into a different pocket than the rest.

"You should watch out for the Cinci Anarchists. They claim to be fighting for freedom from tyranny, defending from Tower's overreach and that's fine... If you ignore all the people that die when they get into a dust up with Tower. Based way out in the Badlands, they've been poking at Cinci forever and are why Tower doesn't range out anymore. But come to think, it's a little weird that a bunch of anti-government rebels have what it takes to get their hands on big weapons and know where and how to use them, innit? We're not just talking shotguns. Armed drones, machine guns, rockets, APCs like Tower's... Enough to be a pest, nowhere near enough to win." He shrugs. "Plenty of people hate Tower. Enough to supply a thorn in their side and forget about the ones they squish. This is just gossip, though. Just wild guessing."

A hiss of indrawn breath.  "...Oh that is very suspicious indeed.  I've seen that pattern before.  Someone with power and not a single scruple sneaks some patsies into something that would pass for a rebellion if you squint, and points them at people they don't like in the local administrative structure - mayors and such.  Then they're damned if they do and damned if they don't, because the rebellion happened on their watch.

"I'd need to know more about their operations, and Tower's for that matter, if I wanted to really figure out if that sort of thing is happening, though."

"I'm too young and innocent to get too close to sophisticated operations like that," the kid says, completely deadpan. "But I hope the rumor serves you well, I guess. I don't suppose you're looking to buy some ammo?"

"Unfortunately, I don't have any weapons that would use the ammo you have, I think."

"Okay. Be careful around other kids. Some of 'em are psychos, especially Riverside. Riverside is not a nice place."

The kid leaves the now-empty box in the dirt and walks away, pockets stuffed with chocolate.

"Thanks for the warning.  You be careful too."

...That's not a good sign.  Feral children, what is this society coming to?

She'd best start heading out to where she plans to rest for the night; that old railyard is not precisely going to be pleasant to sleep in, but she can at least ward the place properly.  Or rather, one of its outbuildings.

On the most obvious path out from the market, there's a man on top of a stack of old crates, wearing a ragged robe and pacing and preaching with intense gestures. A loose crowd is gathered before him, listening with interest, amusement, or simply because of the volume and force of personality. Some trickle in and out.

Ladies and gentlemen, gather 'round for a sermon like no other! Today, I shall regale you with the tales of the impending apocalypse, a cataclysmic event that will shake the very foundations of our existence. It will be the lifting of the veil, the breaking of the shackles! In the midst of chaos, there lies a glimmer of hope!

The reason for this is simple! We have already damned ourselves! Corrupted ourselves with the stain of technology. Plastic in the blood and circuits in the brain- Is it any wonder such an unnatural state invites divine reprisal? Truly, you have seen the world's grinding turn grow slower and slower! You all are the dirt beneath the heels! The lost! The ones that are not saved by the promise of profit and wealth- But fear not! Picture this: the skies ablaze with fiery meteors, raining down upon us like the wrath of God! The ground trembles beneath our feet, as if the very Earth itself is convulsing with fear. The oceans rise, swallowing cities whole, leaving only remnants of our once thriving civilization.

But amidst this chaos, there is a silver lining, a twisted beauty that emerges from the depths of madness. Is it not said that the Lord walked the earth in the form of our savior, Jesus Christ, sending miracles as the sign of God? So too the signs are evident now! For you see, my friends, the apocalypse is not just an end, but a rebirth. It is the ultimate test of our resilience and adaptability. It is a chance to shed the shackles of our mundane lives and embrace the unknown with open arms. In this new world, the rules are rewritten. No longer bound by the chains of societal norms, we are free to explore the depths of our own desires. We become the architects of our own salvation, forging a path through the wreckage and reclaiming our place as the rulers of this forsaken land.

Gone are the days of boring routines and monotonous tasks. Instead, we embrace the madness that surrounds us, reveling in the uncertainty of each passing moment. Every day becomes a battle for survival, a dance with death that invigorates our very souls. We become warriors, scavengers, and prophets all at once. Already we have seen the signs! The waters have risen in great floods, when the hurricanes of Twenty-Eight came! This was the first sign. The waters have receded and vanished, leaving only barren desert. This is the second sign! As written by Riare. And now soon upon us shall be the third sign, for the stars shall fall from heaven. Those unnatural stars, which mankind in our hubris have placed in the divine void, are one and all failing, decaying and disintegrating into a storm of glittering shards. It shall come apart, and soon!

But let us not forget the importance of community in these trying times. For it is through unity that we shall thrive. We must band together, forming tribes and alliances, supporting one another in our quest for survival. Together, we shall rebuild, creating a new world order that defies all logic and reason. And so, my dear friends, I implore you to embrace the end with open arms and a gleam in your eyes. Ain't none of us going to be saved- Unless we save ourselves! From the corporations, from the greed, the chaos, pollution and unnatural influence! For it is only through the destruction of the old that we can pave the way for the new. Let us rise from the ashes, like a phoenix reborn, and create a world that is truly our own! May the winds of chaos guide us, and may the fires of destruction ignite our spirits. Amen!

"Excuse me!  Question!  What are you actually proposing that people do about this that is not shouting loudly from on top of a box?  What have you done?"

(Though, it should be noted that she is not doing this with her actual face.)

"You must have faith and remember the teachings of the Lord. Believe in the existence- The holiness- God the Father, Jesus the Son, and the miraculous Holy Spirit! Learn the teachings of the faith, which shall save you from despair and strife! Keep to the Ten Commandments, but not only those, the spiritual wisdom of Scripture! And you must prepare! Gather tools and build a community- One that can thrive when all falls down! Learn to grow food and protect yourself!"

"...Leaving aside the teachings, since I don't have time to come to an informed opinion on those right now: Grow food in what fertile soil, exactly?"  She seems rather baffled.  "There isn't any around here!  Are you proposing that some will appear as if by miracle or magic?  Do you have a specific date on when, if so, or a backup plan if the intended miracle does not materialize?"

"And on the matter of self-defense - how are you proposing that the common person procure the weaponry necessary to defend themself from even the shattered remnants of what produced this," she waves at the City, "the convoys of a million tons of metal and more of that in product, the shotguns, RPGs, and APCs that only industry can make - how do you propose a village sustain themself against what would readily take all they have from them?"

"This is not to say that self-reliance is not a useful skill to have!  But it is to say that your pastoral idyll is no longer possible, and I may be bold enough to say it never truly was - we must live in the world we have, and struggle, not to be prepared for what can only come in dreams, but to make what we can realize a reality!  Let the stars fall; we cannot concern ourselves with the shifting heavens if nothing is right on the earth, and it is not!  Look at the palatial bounty you are denied by the corporate kings!  See what monuments to vanity they raise, at your own cost, extracted by the boot upon your face!  See what cruelties they demand of your brothers and sisters, your mothers and fathers, your cousins, your friends - for merely a chance to eat their scraps!  But they are merely men, not gods!  If the city turned its back to them tomorrow and said 'NO', all together in one voice - where would they be?  What could they do?

"Their powers are finite!  Every round they shoot is a dollar they spend, and they can and will go bankrupt!"

This reminds her all too much of the rabble-rousing she did in the Bastard City, she really has to say.  (Or, well, think.  She's not going to say it out loud, that would be stupid.)

"I see a sister in spirit before me, if not one in blood! Your words have power! And  yet we must all be concerned with Heaven and Hell, and our eternal fates! Not just this life you must prepare for, but the next- And for that, your spiritual health is worth more than gold! The corporate lords shall have their time when the Rapture comes and the Earth weeps blood- It is harder for a rich man to pass into Heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. And yet you speak truth! For did Jesus not in his day come to the temple where merchants and money-changers were deceiving and hoarding, and beat them with whips and overturn the tables and drive them out? So too shall the corporations which corrupt our land for their own gain be driven out! Already righteousness rises in the hearts of many. And yet fear, too, arises- This is where we must have faith! Must have strength, the strength of the soul to hold to your conviction and rise up to act when the time is right! Just as Moses led his people through the desert for forty years, and they made many sacrifices before returning to Israel, so it must be with Ohio. Enduring and keeping the faith will be rewarded, here or in the ever-after! And those who plunder and steal? Those who murder and cheat and lie, the fraudsters, the cheats, the liars! When death comes for them they shall know the keenest despair! They shall surely receive all the suffering they have inflicted a hundred-fold at Lucifer's cruel designs!"

(The audience is growing. They seem to be enjoying the show- And treating it as a show, not a serious debate.)

"But the Earth already weeps!  The corporate lords spill the blood of her children daily!  And to profess the keenest belief in something means nothing if your actions do not hold thereto!"

Oh, a show it is, in a sense.

The best works make you think about them, after all.

"This is why I call those who have faith to work together! To tithe what they can spare- One-in-ten of what they make- To charitable causes, or to donate what they can to the Mercy Crew up on the hill. Oh, what worn, sorry angels they are! Suffering the slings and arrows of exhaustion and thankless toil because they simply believe it is right! Truly, paragons beyond one such as I. And truly, great works must start from inspiration, from the well of belief and charity in the human heart. Alas, I have little to give this cause except my voice! Look at me! Do you see fine vestments and shining chrome implants? Fat flesh and clean teeth? Alas, alas! I know I am not destined for greatness, that all I can do is carry the call. All I can do is show the signs, and call the people to do what they can, what they must! Some may think so little of me for this, but I care not for their derisions. Do not give to me friends, if anything said here today stirs your heart- Help your friends! Feed the beggars! Be there for your family! Forgive the sins of those who have wronged you, and love thy neighbor as thy self. The joy of kindness and mercy is there for you to grasp."

"Ohhh, yes indeed you do speak truth, and when, when, enough of us have grasped kindness and mercy, we can wield them, the one single weapon those greedy fucks cannot comprehend, and send their gilded thrones to the depths ourselves; I do not believe that you are my brother in spirit, for the spirit I follow arose from a different scripture - but I would name you my brother in battle against the grasping hand, and if I may address the audience -"

She puts on her serious proclamation voice.

"There will be signs to come.  The walls of Cinci will fall in a single stroke, and with them the Tower; on that day and no sooner - but no later - do I ask you to seize what the corporations hoard, and give it to the people in the measure of their need."

"Thank you for your time."

And she will be vanishing into the crowd again, now, though she does still try to stay in earshot of the - ...priest? - to see if anything has changed, except insofar as that interferes with breaking the inevitable tails she's expecting to follow her.  (She really does expect it will interfere, unfortunately.)

The 'priest' begins listing the Ten Commandments.

Someone tries to pickpocket the fake Ophelia.

Whoops their hand slipped right into her (very painful!) grip.  "It's very rude to steal from those who haven't got enough themselves, you know."

(...Wow, she doesn't like those commandments very much.)

He notices her start to move to catch him, but doesn't quite react fast enough. So he curses and shoulder-checks her, doing his best to wrench free and bolt.

"You didn't need to be that emphatic about wanting to leave."

Sure, he can go; she's vaguely annoyed that the check landed at all but she rolled with it enough to not get knocked over and trampled and that's the important bit.

Next stop, 'up on the hill'.

All eyes went to them in the brief confrontation- Wary and trying to decide which direction to bolt, or how to intervene. Everyone around automatically checked for any accomplishes the pair may have had too.

When the guy in the muscle top bolts into an alley, everyone relaxes. Just a failed pickpocketing, see one every day. Not a dangerous shooting.

The Mercy Crew has a cordon on the far side of the gate from where the marketplace is. North. It is indeed on a big hill, a dozen formerly-white tents with the blue 'healing' sigil on them, and a wide field.

What she sees here is misery. Tired paramedics in scrubs lining people up and triaging them. Several hundred prospective patients for only a couple dozen healers. Anxious heads with shotguns and blue-sigil armbands marking them out as guards, eyeing the more unstable looking individuals. Standing around and being a threat. And the patients... All manner of untreated injury and disease. Nasty broken bones, compound fractures. All the consequences on display, of not having access to healthcare, and living in the harsh sand or letting wounds... Fester. Someone with a metal jaw, his whole face inflamed and blood slowly seeping from a cheek. A blackening scar where a metal prosthetic meets someone's wrist. A white, cloudy eye standing out on an otherwise pretty face. A row of bags near the back that are very obviously the correct size and shape for bodies.

The guards eye her suspiciously. The paramedics completely ignore her, focusing on their tools and patients.

"...I'm not exactly trained to the standards you're looking for in medicae, but I can do helpful things," she says to a guard.  "And I'd like to.  Especially if it nets me a bed for the night; I'm still - picking myself up from a sudden change of employment status."

Sigil of Life, don't fail her now.

"We don't like to turn away volunteers but we have enough unskilled labor. You know any first aid? Got a gun?"

"I can splint broken limbs and bandage wounds; I know how to sew which I've heard is useful in some situations - though I've never needed to do it to a live human and I wouldn't say I'm particularly skilled in the field to begin with - if you have directions for how to make what you need, raw materials, and glassware, I'm pretty good at brewing - and I can definitely handle myself in a fight, though I hope I don't need to.  I have weapons, but I don't actually have a gun.  For reasons that I don't want to get into.  I'm also good at making things stop becoming fights in the first place; you look like you're pretty worried about that.  I'm also very good at organizing, though it looks like you already have a system and I wouldn't want to just poke it without knowing what it does."

"I'm not in charge. If you wait for a lull you can talk with one of the medics and maybe help with triage or something. And I won't stop you from walking around and talking to folks if you think it helps. -It does, probably, for some. A bit of comfort and reassurance can even actually lower stress and reduce the strain on the body!" He says the last part like a Cool Fact that was recently learned.

"General 'you'.  Really, why don't we have a word for that...  Anyway.  Who is in charge, here?"  And perhaps she shall walk the line a bit, if they're busy right now.  (They're absolutely busy right now; if she doesn't get told they're available to speak to her, she'll go walking.)

"Today it's Nurse Anno. If you want to talk to a medical you'll have to wait for one to take their break."

The line contains sick and injured people, and their friends and family keeping them company, for some at least.

She'll go down the line, then, greeting people, asking what they're there for and taking notes, thumbing spells of Vigor to bolster those who are sick, and occasionally Life - that sigil is...not actually very good at diseases - upon someone who's injured in a way that could plausibly have been much less bad than it looked.

This line moves pretty fast- There's a man in a blue hat triaging people as they arrive, spending maybe 30 seconds with each person.

Some of those waiting will indulge her, with some confusion. Got in a fight. Tripped while setting up barbed wire. Set off a booby trap. Caught by flying debris during the dust storm. Just got sick, maybe some bad food. Nobody's exactly having a good time, but attitudes range from patient to despondent to frantic. A few of the people in line tell her to fuck off, more or less. Accusing her of being Up To Something by being so nosy. Some of these will sneer and show off their maladies- Do you like to see that shit, huh? Is it fun, looking at the sick and injured? Looking down on them? Like the defiance and show of will is the point, almost.

When she gets to the front, the line for triage is much shorter. Blue Hat keeps working through them, glancing warily at Ophelia.

She is a very calm presence, and the people she stands near feel better.  Not, precisely, well - but like they can stand more than they have felt before.  Some of them feel like their wounds are less deep.

At the first - outburst, she replies - in a voice that carries deceptively well, for how quiet it is.  "It's not fun, to see this.  It's horrifying.  It's necessary.  If I'm going to be helping out here, and I hope to do so, with what small skills I have - I need to know what sort of things I might be asked to treat."

And then, there is Blue Hat.  "I can treat things like broken bones, though generally not diseases.  I would like to do so here, if you'll have me."

He does something that's supposed to be a smile.

"Thank you. We have a system down pretty slick. It won't accomodate irregularities cleanly. Unless you have emergency room experience, you'd do better helping who you can out there. But if you know how triage works so we can focus on other stuff that would help a lot. We'll give you what we can if you help out, too."

"I do not have experience that looks remotely like what is going on in there; I am not used to having more tools than bandages and the occasional stick.  Field medicine - worse, battlefield medicine, though I do unrelatedly have some skill in chemistry, if there's aught that needs brewing.  I am familiar with the overall principle of triage, but do not know the specific guidelines that you are using."

"Uhh... No, please don't brew shit and expect us to use it. There's manufacturing standards, stuff gets hermetically sealed and sterilized, to reduce the risk of infection as much as possible. People donate stuff, we buy stuff. If you have any familiarity at all, might be worth training you up for it- Hold on-"

Someone's come running up to him, blood all over his bandaged arm. Blue Hat speaks calmly and investigates, is it just the bleeding, does he feel lightheaded, is he on drugs (he is, apparently, a whole bunch of painkillers, and shouts pointedly at the woman coming after him that it's fucking stupid to not tell your doctor stuff like that). He speaks calmly and smoothly triages him with an orange tag and spends a moment reassuring him that the doctors will see him as soon as more urgent cases have been cleared out. And then they clear away to the second-closest waiting area.

"-Yeah, uh, fuck, I don't know how to test for triage capability on zero notice, actually."

...She is going to take a minute to think of what to say next, because now is not the time for complicated wordsmithing.  (Why, yes, she is exactly the sort of person who would write shorter letters, if only she had the time.)

"...If your triage procedure is written down in sufficient detail to be translated from scholar into soldier, I am absolutely certain I can pick it up quickly; the primary nature of my prior career was almost entirely 'understand and apply a vast body of rules that you didn't already know on very short notice', and everything else was - trained ad-hoc.  Otherwise I may need to study it for a little while first.  Or you can give me a stack of splints and throw me at the broken bones.  That would also save doctor-hours."

"We gotta get people to rest areas, we gotta disinfect the wounds, we- There's more to it than just splinting, head. Anyway, uh, sure." He suppresses a yawn, then takes out a small pill bottle and swallows a little purple pill. "Okay, right. I think combat medic is like a six month course, but whatever."

He goes for a crate and searches for a bit, then digs out a tattered booklet: FIRST AID AND TRIAGE FIELD GUIDE, Ohio National Army, Rev. 2144.

"Here. Triage for jarheads. We follow eye-set, that's the International Standard for Emergency Triage, chapter three and four, considering ourselves to have a level 2 scarcity of medical supplies. With only a couple of changes, GSWs get prioritized somewhat, potentially violent individuals get prioritized somewhat and get more sedatives, we don't want them hanging around being in pain."

"I know it's not all splints.  I just know I know splints, and know I may not know other things that you might normally expect me to know.  My one accreditation is as a lawyer; the rest is all - lessons of painful experience, and attempts to avoid the same."

And then, he is the Focus of her Full Attention as he Declares Important Information.

(When you look into Fatebinder Ophelia Vaudelle's eyes, you see her like she sees you, and you see yourself in her reflection.  Some people have cried tears of joy.  Some people have cried tears of guilt.  This time it may be tears of sorrow.)

"ISET chapters three and four, under a level 2 shortage of supplies."  And a critical shortage of doctors, she does not add.  "Additionally you are prioritizing GSWs and patients who are a risk of violent behavior, and preferring higher sedative doses on patients who are or may become violent.  I hear and understand.  ...Give me thirty minutes.  Thank you."

And she will just start committing those to memory really quick - drawing, no, etching out a flowchart on what is clearly not even notepaper but is instead wax in a case, as she goes.

(Triaging will also give her the opportunity to pass things off as less-horrible wounds than they should have been!  She's very glad of it.)

Triage Guy seems to relax a little bit.

"...I do appreciate that you want to help. More kind souls like this are... Yeah. It's just I almost want to warn you away, it'll suck you in and consume you. But these people need help."

Aaaaand back to work.

The first aid manual seems to be what she is looking for. It spells out exactly what all of its acronyms and assumptions are in dead simple language, with checklists and the occasional table. For examples, GSWs are Gun-Shot Wounds. (The warning and accompanying diagram about not extracting a bullet unnecessarily lest you cause even more bleeding tells her that guns are essentially crossbows that go Bang.) There are lots of photographs and diagrams. This is how to apply a bandage. This is how to set a simple fracture. This is how to use Activated Enzyme Skin Sealant and Regrowth Solution (which everyone calls Dermal Glue instead). This is how to tie a splint. This is how to apply a detoxification nanite shot (a finger-sized vial with a ring of thin spikes). Prioritize getting your patients stable enough to move the fuck out of here (in politer terms) to safety and better care. This is how triage works. There are a bunch of acronyms and mnemonics meant to be used to remember what to prioritize even under stress.

"I've been long since consumed by duty; at least this is a straightforwardly beneficial one."

She rather figured the metal things with triggers like crossbows that otherwise looked kind of like dartblowers were a projectile weapon; it's good to know the name, though.

Very familiar set of priorities, this; the emphasis on sanitation as a means of preventing infection is very interesting.

And with the acronyms hanging in her mind like a constellation of sparkling stars, and the time spent observing Blue Hat, she will offer to start handling intake, though she thinks it would be a good idea for him to keep an eye on her work for a bit.

Oh, he definitely will keep an eye on her work. But if he can sit on a chair and drink water while she does it and she doesn't make any crippling errors in the first two minutes, that's already helpful-ish.

Then she will do triage!  She has a good clinical manner, firmly resolute - and a decent eye for when and how to code-switch, though she has to pick up the relevant slang as she goes.

(She most definitely does not make any crippling errors in the first two minutes, either.)

Another volunteer calls for Blue Hat- "Francis!" apparently- And he runs off to help deal with someone who's lying on an operating table.

People continue arriving for triage. Francis doesn't come back. Though a few minutes later someone else does, a woman, and asks if she's good to keep it up for a while? It's bad, today.

"I'll do what I can.  Depends on how long; I've had a day," said with a very weary overtone, "before all this.  But I can keep myself functioning for a watch or so before it becomes an unacceptable tradeoff.  Oh, excuse me - for around eight hours more, I think."

She makes a tradeoff in subtlety versus effectiveness, and starts routinely bolstering the high-priority groups with both Vigor and Life, as best she can - and also the doctors, when they're close enough.

They close up at 7 o'clock and everyone heads back into the slums except for a few guards, so that's fine. Anyone who has an emergency at night, sadly, is mostly out of luck. Heck, there aren't any ambulances out here either. Anyway. It's getting on to evening now, so... Three more hours, that is. And if she needs a break they won't blame her.

"Three hours I can most certainly do."

She is honestly surprised that this place closes.  It doesn't seem the type.

(...She can't become the Orphan Midwife.  Not if she wants to properly save the world from itself.  She is tempted to, nonetheless.)

They'd stay open all the time if they had more slack! They have to rotate people out all the fucking time anyway because no single volunteer can handle two days in a row of this except Dr. Anno. They just can't pay even as much as St. Joes, and it's a lot less safe out here.

...Maybe she will raise Dr. Anno to the Orphan Midwife's Archonate, or to the Sigil of Vigor.  The bones of a good story are there.

"...How often does danger come calling, here?"  The question is asked in a surprisingly soft tone, as if she's approaching a spooked animal.

Serious attacks? Basically never, there's some sort of gentleman's agreement. Tower doesn't come calling, the smugglers stay out of sight like always, Pumas take care of themselves, anarchists want to lay low almost as much as the smugglers, and small local crews aren't seriously threatening. But there's always some trouble on any given day. Fights breaking out among the patients. Drug-seekers stealing shit or going a little crazy. People trying to use the Mercy Crew as a shield from their own issues.

"I'm good at arbitrating otherwise-irreconcilable disputes, if they can be caught before the fights start.  ...Pumas?"

"The biker gang? Right, you're new in town. They ride motorcycles, live and breathe them, and make a solid living as escorts and couriers. Always dress in black, and have this face paint- They're hell on anyone who fucks with them, which can be a narrow and unpredictable line, but they famously don't hold grudges. You get punched and then you get forgotten about."

"Oh, those guys.  I'd been wondering.  ...Did I tell you I was new here or was that just the rumor mill?"

"Rumor mill, I guess. The girl with the red hair and fractured ulna from maybe half an hour ago mentioned it." The nurse shrugs. "I'd better get back to it. Thanks, I'll see what we can give you for helping out like this."

"Honestly I'd be glad enough of a place to bunk down for the night that has an actual bunk.  Just because I can camp out out there, doesn't mean I necessarily want to.  And - you're already trying to scrape by; I don't want to tax you further."

"We leave the tents overnight, yeah. And we try to compensate volunteers in cash or leftover supplies- Easier to get more if we 'use' it all- But not most of the gear. That goes to a lockup overnight. Sleeping on one of the patient beds should be fine? I'll ask Dr. Anno or Specs if I get them for a moment." And the nurse walks off.

Things slacken considerably as evening wears on. Her ""triage"" is turning the day into an unusually good one.

Dr. Anno comes over eventually. He moves like he knows exactly where he is going and what he's doing at all times.

"It's Ophelia, I believe? First, thank you. I thank all our volunteers. It's a dire thing to do, and a shameful state compared to the America of old, but anyone with the compassion to help the needy is a fine person in my book. I'm Dr. Anno."

"Doctor Anno."  She will do an appropriately respectful gesture, if she knows which one to use by now; she defaults to a small but perfectly crisp bow, hands clasped over her heart, otherwise.  "It is a pleasure to meet you and furthermore my pleasure to help as best I can - and, yes, Ophelia is my given name, though I may also respond to Kyra."

"...Mm.  You look like a man with questions that are not just what my name is."

"How astute of you to notice. They more or less boil down to whether you're going to cause, intentionally or not, enough trouble to more than counterbalance the benefit you provide here. Since the rumor mill is more uncertain about you than for the average flashy newcomer. It's something of a numbers game, really, for all that some deride me for it."

"I can't say I have more reliable information on that subject than you do; really, the problem is that I'm not sure what sorts of trouble my inevitable urge to do good will get me into.  I would greatly prefer to not bring trouble to your doorstep, and generally don't intend to do anything more drastic than - the impact I've had on your patient statistics - while I'm volunteering here; it would be very impolite to make trouble for a desperate charity."

"Yes, quite a significant impact, though one day can be a statistical anomaly... Well, regardless, I've seen you doing triage and you know what you're doing there, even if you don't know other aspects of medicine quite so much. A lot of our work is deeply technical, something between academic rigor and learned experience, programming the medical nanites and modelling how the body is reacting does a lot better than slapping on some antibiotic gel and calling it a day. I won't be welcoming you to the inner circle or what have you any time soon, but we're very glad to have help. I can certainly let you bunk overnight if you don't mind a barely-insulated tent, and also give you either a few odds and ends or twenty, cash, for your time."

"I've certainly slept worse than an insulated tent with a bed in it - and, having not previously had access to the body of lore you have, I'm quite looking forward to finding out everything I don't know about medical nanites.

"...My prior learning was generally operating on the assumption that I would usually only have access to - a fire, and a knife - with the availability of - even things like bandages, water, and painkillers, being... sporadic."

"...As for remuneration...

"If I operate on the general plan I find myself laying out, I think I will want the twenty dollars for the next few days I work here, to build enough momentum in - things I am particularly equipped to do, such as knife refurbishing - that I can ongoingly take care of my own needs; after that, though, I will happily shuffle supplies that need to be - where the auditors can't count them - off of your books; I'll note that I intend them to remain available to you and indeed even primarily 'your stuff'.

"I may need a couple hours to actually refurbish the knives, as far as your staffing requirements go; some of the process is - something I'd rather not have all and sundry watching."

"Medical equipment of mysterious origin filtering into the Bordertown- Through the correct hands, at least- Is an honorable tradition and helps some people we can't reach because they can't or won't come to us. But as you like." He shrugs. "And I'll certainly not ask you to give up the whole of your days. I was imagining three or six hours a day, and we don't usually have the luxury of scheduling volunteers when we like. If you end up helping us often I'll be able to justify real pay."

"Oh, I'm certainly on board with that, too.  I don't believe I'd necessarily be best suited - but perhaps that makes it even more important that I make the effort.

"And as far as my availability...

"Helping people is my first priority.  Of course I'll put my schedule in order so that I can maximize that."

"I would also," she murmurs a lot more quietly, "like to find the time to discuss the appropriate protocol for future occurrences of any 'statistical improbabilities'."

"Statistical implications are a pretty controversial subject."

He seems to be thinking more on 'what kind of trouble will this bring down' than 'how are you DOING that'.

"Well. Glad to have you on board, so to speak. Do you have a border pass? There's a quiet place we've outfitted as a sort of common room which has a decent chance of being unobserved. Alternately, long drives in the empty desert can be relaxing if you do it right."

"Not yet, though I will soon.  A gentleman who goes by Roland is kindly helping me arrange for one, in trade for some vanity pieces that do little good in my pockets.  I have to admit, though, that I'm much more used to hiking, so I'd actually appreciate the opportunity wrapped up in the latter option."

"I've heard of Roland. Sneaky sort, but not the bad kind of sneaky, I reckon. Cautious. Watchful? We get supplies from him sometimes, too." Dr. Anno checks a watch. "There's this old hill, used to be some kind of park. Decent views, used to be a waterfall. Makes you think. Want to drive there after we close up? It'll be a late night for me, but what can you do."

"...You can only do what you can, when the question is what you can do."

"...Excuse me.  That aphorism didn't even make sense; I'm not sure why it came out of my mouth.  But, yes, a trip to that hill seems like it would be - an interesting experience.  ...One hesitates to expect anything in this world to be pleasant, given."  She makes this - abortive gesture, clearly intended to be about the world around them.  "But I'm sure it does its best.  ...You do, as well."

She likes this guy, honestly.  (Not in that way.  Just...as a fellow professional, struggling against a similarly untenable situation.)

"I think there's good to be found still. Simple pleasures the same as always. People trying to help each other, same as always. They can't make everyone miserable, at least not since the days everyone was living in stone huts and throwing spears at animals or something. Okay, just stay on triage for now and we'll have that drive in a bit."

"...Even then, you'd be surprised," she can't help but quietly murmur.

And she'll do triage, and find Dr. Anno after the last few people are done treatment.

They see off the last few injured, mostly minor stuff and people who admit to waiting until it's less busy. The staff starts packing up the shinier equipment and most of the actual drugs into a flatbed truck converted for this purpose. A couple of white panel vans pick up the volunteers who're leaving and drive for Tower's gate. And Dr. Anno shows up in a beaten-up sedan and gestures at her to get in the passenger seat.

And she does!

He's already belted in. The radio is on - Techno Crystal music, which is something like chiptunes mixed with a church organ and choir, and glances over, waiting for her to buckle up.

She can undertake the obvious action, though it's somewhat obvious that she had to think about what was going on before she actually did.

He starts driving, rolling down the hill and zipping up to speed on the desert roads once clear of Bordertown. It's pretty bumpy. "This old beater isn't as good as a motorcycle or a real offroad truck for the desert, but it's not too far... And I have a few customizations. The suspension, the underbody. Four wheel drive. I'm sure you know unassuming appearances are useful. And I'm not even talking obliquely anymore, though the real subject should wait until we're a bit further from any drones that could read our lips... Not that we ought to be of interest to anybody serious."

"If it's just lipreading we need to worry about, I have some tricks for that."

"There could be something planted on the car."

"...Hmm."

She might well have some tricks for that, too.  "How would they have done that?"

"Taped or magnetized something to the frame, set it to record sound and thinking to pick it up later. I don't exactly have a secure private garage. I don't actually think it's likely either, this is just establishing mutual professional paranoia, really. Who even spies on the Mercy Crew? You can't get blood from a stone or enough money worth actual attention from the kind of people we help. At worst you boost our whole operation and get some twenty or thirty thousand in gear and piss the hell out of several parties who I've arranged to like the status quo."

She nods, the 'mutual professional paranoia' line draws out a thin but sincere smile.  Then she flicks her hand through a complex series of gestures, touches the car, and there is a pulse of something, feeling oddly like they've gone over a bump in the road.

"That ought to be sufficient to dislodge any hypothetical listening devices.  I'm glad you're not expecting that that was truly necessary, though, because I haven't tested it against tape.  I doubt it'd work on string, either, come to think of it.  Unless it was very poor-quality string."

Welcome to her circle of trust, Dr. Anno.  It's a bit of a dangerous place to be.

"Remarkable." He doesn't seem to feel like he's been entered into a circle of trust at all, to be honest. There's any number of ways she could have pulled off that bit of showmanship, such as planting some sort of charge on his car herself, or carrying some exotic high-tier implant.

They're rolling along one of the more intact old roads at a good forty miles an hour, now. "Fifteen minutes to the place I mentioned, by the by."

She's vaguely surprised that he didn't ask how that worked, enough to raise a questioning eyebrow back at him. 

(She isn't taking that 'Remarkable' as a true compliment, either - which she thinks is also his intended reading.  Remarkable is dangerous when you're doing shadow work.)

"Anything less fraught you want to talk about, til we're there?"

"Everything does seem very fraught sometimes. People who can do very surprising things are often trouble magnets. And to clear the stupid you know I know you know games, I am bearing in mind that you could be running some sort of confidence game but it doesn't add up. There's nothing to gain by doing it this particular way. I can't place your - role in the game, as it were. You're not a chump, you're not a thug, and you're not an established player here. You don't know how medical equipment or seatbelts work and have the oddest patches of ignorance, like you know your humint, but not something else obvious to local conditions."

"...You could say...I'm from very far away.

"...The stars are different, here."

And after that - veiled admission - after she conveys the shrouded truth in a murmur that is very careful to not tremble, she continues:

"...I'm curious what the obvious thing I missed is, because obviously it wasn't quite obvious enough."

"Cameras everywhere. Someone noticed you went after a known Anarchist patsy and got into a confrontation with him- But only because their sensor watching an alley entrance caught you heading after him. Even looking different, it's a reasonable leap. They reported it to me and God only knows who else."

She swears.

"Well that sure is..."

"Mm."

"Annoying.  I hadn't figured that anyone would be paying such close attention to that little ...warning... I handed out - to someone who was about to be quite an idiot by undoing all my hard work - though you can hopefully rest assured that I did know cameras existed by then.  I saw a sign on one of the burned-out shops on my way in."

And previously had no idea.

"Another world would neatly explain several things, which is why I don't buy it. I don't- Extraordinary claims requires extraordinary evidence. I don't believe in God, I just use him as a swear, but nor am I militantly atheist if you can produce extraordinary evidence."

"...Hmm.  What sort of things would constitute extraordinary evidence?"

"Telling you about some of them would obviate them, sadly. I'm sure you can think of some things."

"Well.  The 'statistical anomalies' clearly weren't quite enough on their own, but I could heal an injury without touching you?"

"After I make appropriate equipment preparations. I do have an internal biomonitor but more sensors are better. I can design a whole procedure later if you'd be willing to participate."

"Certainly.  I'd like to know what you're doing and how and why you're doing it, when that wouldn't obviate the experiment."

For all that her voice is calm, she seems really interested in this idea!

"Very well. The first experiment would be only myself- We can do that in a few minutes. The second would be a blind study, or whatever imitation of it I can manage, but the key point would be that neither you nor I know what exactly is being tested and on whom, and everything is analyzed by someone else who also doesn't know what's going on ideally, to isolate as many factors and unconscious biases as possible. Academia may be a pointless circle-jerk most of the time but the basic scientific method is still valid."

"-- I was going to say that I would need to see what I'm doing to target my spellwork, but actually, I see no reason why I couldn't define an area through a wall.  Or cast blindfolded."

"Yes, something like that. Hmm... Okay, the turn off is up ahead. Few more minutes after that. Would you like to occupy the rest of the time listening to me ramble about medicine, or just listen to the music?"

"Oh please do ramble, I'm fascinated by the capacity you have to do things for reasons instead of getting lucky with herbs.  Surgery seems like it hasn't gotten much less bloody since I was living in a stone hut, though.  ...You do know that nobody actually did that, right, making all that stone be somewhere that isn't a cave takes effort nobody expends on a hut in the middle of nowhere.  You mostly get stone houses in cities where people have enough resources to throw at laborers, or there's an old watchtower nobody's using.  Well.  A watchtower isn't not a house even during active use, but still.

"...Most of the peasant dwellings I've seen were generally thatch, wood, or mud-brick, really.  You maybe have a stone hearth, but quarries take labor away from the farms, so you can't really have too much of that; you need to reserve it for essential labor like iron mines.  Or mines for copper and tin, I suppose; there wasn't enough iron production to stop using bronze in the everyday.  More limited by the ore, that, but there weren't exactly a lot of smiths who could do the sort of things I can barely touch on and you probably electrified."

"I have no idea how modern mining and smelting works. Society is a massive hive of incredibly specialized jobs, systems built upon systems built upon systems. Part of why it's such a fucking mess. If you're coming in on the level of getting lucky with herbs the most important thing is germ theory-" And he will carry on in a slightly dry-sarcastic voice about virii and bacteria and parasites and cells and organelles and DNA and genetic drives and the immune system and whatever other topics he free-associates to.

Eventually, they pull up to a place. It's on the top of a rocky hill, and there's a big cliff with an overhang, and a little valley. You can tell it's not supposed to be dry.

Dr. Anno gets out and grabs a duffle bag from the trunk, then goes and sits on a flat-topped rock with a sigh.

"So that's why you want to use Vigor for illnesses and Life for wounds.  I'd wondered why that was.  The theory of 'illnesses are also somehow alive' is...reasonably conclusively proven, then.  That's - honestly terrifying, but also intriguing."

And then, they arrive.

She sits across from him, and thumbs an illusion over their faces so that no-one can lipread them.  "Do you want to run that first test now?"

"Very well, just a moment." He pulls a MedChem kit, a stick of nanites, several screened devices, and a few other small bits and pieces and proceeds to hook himself up to them with steady motions. For the MedChem kit this involves a blood line.

"Test one, abrasion of the elbow, partially healed. Test two will be a fresh injury." He holds out his left arm- Yeah, looks like something scraped up his elbow pretty bad a couple of days ago.

And Ophelia actually backs away quite a distance before tracing a pattern with her hand, as green wisps flow from her to him to heal the wound, then scatter into the brush.  She normally wouldn't use a sledgehammer for a scalpel's problems, but she honestly feels like showing off, just a bit.

And what does this look like, biologically speaking? Any new nanites being detected? Changes in protein and hormone levels, or any of his vitals? Exotic drugs? Metabolism changing?

Well.  It's a Sigil of Life spell, so she'll repeat the effects slowly.  There's...More...Life...Now.

But more seriously, because magic does have physical effects...

There's an elevation in things like oxytocin, for some reason - note that it is, in addition to the so-called 'kissing hormone', in this author's poorly-researched model of human brain chemistry, associated with higher irritability and anger when deployed into the mind of someone who is not presently thinking about such subjects - but most of the effects are hyperlocal, so - can he and his diagnostic suite notice the spontaneous generation of small amounts of additional mass in replacement cells as they mitose at vastly-accelerated speed, the knitting-together of any remaining broken blood vessels and flushing of the bruises, and such?

It's measuring hundreds of different small signs, monitoring for cell damage, and conditions in various body systems. It notices the sudden rush of hormones, the increase in blood pressure, changes in signals of cell division and cell death. It concludes that he's probably been given fluids, there's no signs of any introduced drug or nanite that the biomonitor or MedChem kit can detect, and dutifully records lots of information. They do know more about brain chemistry in the 22nd century than the early 21st, but the body is an infinitely complex fractal and most of the research has been on getting it to play nice with various implants and genetic treatments, because you can sell those, rather than understanding the fundamentals.

Dr. Anno perks up and blinks. "-I am observing a conscious effect like I'm suddenly well-rested, well-hydrated. I feel active and alert. And... That sure looks like it could account for all the great outcomes today."

He is peering between the screens and his healed elbow. "Blood pressure's up, and some major cell damage markers spiked hard and are now trailing off, as if a whole lot of dead cells were flushed into my blood and now are being processed normally. Heartbeat accelerated, sweating. And lots of regulating hormones had a big spike, neurochemistry isn't my strongest suit but all these numbers are getting closer to something like an athlete in the middle of a workout... Some immune system activity... And at some point if it works it doesn't matter how. I don't suppose you know if this 'sigil' can lead to elevated rates of cancer, strokes, or heart disease?"

"I've never seen someone fall over dead from it - but I do know that if the problem is that - the body is growing, but it's growing wrongly - it won't fix that on its own.  It'll keep you alive despite it, but - growth is growth, mostly.  You can sort of pull it back from somewhere it shouldn't be, if you're careful, but you'd want to investigate medical uses of Atrophy for removing something, and there is nobody with the spleen to try.  ...Actually, no, I take that back.  There is absolutely somebody trying to invent that, but not for good reasons, and if I ever get back home I am going to have to go find them, steal their research, and judge them guilty of doing magic that's not 'for the glory of Kyros's Empire'.

"...The Orphan Midwife needed a better advocate; I could have made a persuasive argument that sharing Life outside Kyros's lands still spreads the Overlord's glory.  You're certainly impressed, and your ability to heal impresses me."

"The most dangerous part of most surgeries is shock and the recovery. Infection risk, too. Though surgical extraction of cancerous cells often isn't enough on its own, and I think cutting chemotherapy or radiotherapy short with this - effect - may well allow some cancerous cells to escape and come out of remission years later. But for setting bones, or gastro issues, or even cardiac surgery- If you can reduce the risks associated, the pain and recovery- Do you have any idea how much some people would pay for this? If you got a fair price you could buy Cincinnati. The whole place. You never would get a fair price, of course."

...It's going to take her a minute to process that, pacing restlessly as she does.

"The Orphan Midwife, from whose Archonate this sigil was derived...I believe the numbers show that she nearly tripled the harvest.

"Globally.

"To buy a city outright...  That is the scale upon which Archons operate.  Archons, and these megacorporations.

"I suppose my path is still fixed, then.  If I cannot stand as an Archon of my own right...then I will be crushed beneath the clashing titans."

She pauses, once more, debating with herself what she should share.

"When the Orphan Midwife's compassion led her to allow her followers to sneak her sigil out of the Empire, she was imprisoned for a hundred years.

"I presume I face similar risks, from the covetous."

"Yes. And those you associate with too, if less so. Though I'm not sure I'm following the more lyrical aspects of what you're saying. And I do also want to have a more thorough understanding of this before doing anything- Rash."

She nods.  "So far as I know, knowledge of sigils is transmissible.  ...What else confuses you?"

"What is a sigil, exactly. What is an archon. Who is the orphan midwife, if not literal. What empire are you talking about. That sort of thing. The more you tell me and the more it hangs together consistently, that's weak proof, at least."

He shrugs, then nicks his lower leg with a small blade. It bleeds sluggishly. "Fresh injury, test two."

And it heals!

"Mm.  Right.  My apologies.

"...I can't believe it, but I don't know the Orphan Midwife's name; that's her...title, I suppose.  The thing that - encapsulates her legend.  Except that her title for official purposes is 'Archon of Life'.  But let me explain to you the nature of Kyros's Empire, before we get into sigil theory, and the specific things I know.

"So.

"The structure of Kyros's Empire is thus:

"At the top of it is Kyros, the Overlord, who at the time of my unexpected teleportation incident had de jure if not de facto control of all the landmass Kyros knew of.  It's possible there's some other land on Terratus, Occulted Jade and her School of Tides went looking for it rather than face the Empire, but if there is it's farther than we can see.

"Beneath Kyros are Archons - individuals with a unique ability and mythos that allows them to - break the normal rules of magic, in a sense.  Cairn, the Archon of Stone, was a forty-foot-tall man-mountain.  Graven Ashe, who claimed the title of Archon of War by winning a battle against his predecessor, both bears and heals all the wounds of his loyal army.  The Frost triplets were born cold as ice, and that doesn't even get into the bit where somehow there's three of them.  That's not how it's supposed to work, but they're doing it anyway.

"Each Archon then has their own body of law, theoretically subordinate to Kyros's Law and incorporated into Kyros's Law by the law of Archon's Privilege.  ...I say theoretically because...well.  In practice Nerat - who the rumor mill would have passed on as the cannibal - got away with a lot of shit, and other Archons must have done so as well.

"This sounds like a mess, and that's because it is.  Laws will become entangled in irreconcilable conflicts whenever two Archons' domains touch, let alone when someone is facially contradicting Kyros's law.

"I served as a Fatebinder under the Archon of Justice, Tunon, who holds the right to judge those otherwise-irreconcilable conflicts - by Kyros's decree, because the right to judge and furthermore to enforce judgement is reserved to the Overlord by law - who has in turn further delegated that right to me.

"Beneath the Archons you have smaller organizations of various purposes, as well as some organizations that exist without an Archon, which is a bit of a risk because that means you can be conscripted by whoever scoops you up first.

"Oh, and I should probably go over the Laws; they tend to come up in my thought process rather often.

"Kyros's Peace, the root of the distribution system, protections against assault, right to travel and choice of profession when not conscripted...A lot of protections, really: All who bow to me shall be under my aegis.  Loyalty is freedom from hunger, hostility, and hopelessness."

Her voice has something of a strange echo to it, as she recites.  These words have weight.

"The Law of Archon's Privilege, establishing the right of Archons to declare subsidiary bodies of law so long as they do not contradict the Overlord's, and generally establishing a right to delegate power: The Archons carry my will, each in their own custom, all for my glory. Serve the Archons as you would serve the Overlord, but serve the Overlord first.

"The Right of Destruction, and the attendant corollary against self-destruction - as well as, indirectly, destruction of others not in your chain of command: Only Kyros may destroy a loyal vassal.  Trust the Overlord with the measure of your skein, and it will be glorious from the first moment to the last.  Your life is not yours to discard; the Overlord has plans for you.

"The Right of Adjudication, of which delegated - but final - exercise thereof is or was my job description, despite the fact that I was often also appointed governor of a territory and that ate into my time: If two sworn vassals shall come to an irreconcilable conflict, only the Overlord may adjudicate right from wrong, the living from the dead.

"The Balance of the Harvest, which reiterates that Kyros's Peace means what it says about the 'hunger' thing and that such will be enforced by arms if necessary, and generally serves as a backstop against theft even in the lack of specific Archonal laws: The harvest blooms and blights by the will of Kyros. In times of lean, you will be fed. In times of wealth, you will feed others. To oppose this balance is to starve your neighbor, and such thieves shall forfeit their labors.

"There's a lot of subsequent dicta about how that system is to be implemented, it's generally centrally planned, but it's dicta, not law of the Archon of Archons.

"Magician's Folly, which...mm.  I would, if I had to pick one and only one law to rewrite, rewrite this one, because it is...very much oft abused to attempt to skirt Kyros's Peace, but...well at least I hope it's meant as genuine protection from liability for accidents, rather than...ah...'accidents', such as 'Oh, no, Fatebinder, I absolutely didn't know that casting the boulder-throwing spell would throw a boulder at this person I don't like!': Those who work the powers of magic must do so with Kyros's explicit blessing. If, in the conduct of the Overlord's will, a mage inadvertently causes harm due to the unknowable perils of magic, the mage shall not be held liable if the magic was used for the glory of the Overlord.

"The prohibition upon the false use of the Overlord's Name - if I ever say something upon Kyros's name, for whatever reason, I mean it even if it kills me: The Overlord's name is not yours to give - whether to progeny, product, location or abstraction. Slander of the Overlord is punishable by death.

"And finally.  The Law of Forbidden Knowledge.  Kyros herself sets the standards of what can and cannot be known.

"It's a principle mostly used to implement a ban on researching certain things because they've gone horribly wrong before - Fatebinders are actually given specific permission to know some otherwise-forbidden knowledge, as we're more trusted - but...well.  It's not always benevolent and enforcement is pretty uniformly deadly.  There's also a more specific ban on interacting with certain structures of the ancients - the Oldwalls - that is declared as its own law, because there are specific hazards in there - but also, I hypothesize, to keep people from paying too much attention to the Spires, towers - much like those, if they were made of the stone of the city walls, rather than glass and metal -" she gestures at the city's spires in demonstration, "that are...amplifiers of magic, and serve as focus for the Overlord's Edicts - declarations of a thing that Shall Happen that then does.  Whether that's changing the seasons, darkening the sky, or killing everyone in a territory.

"...They do come with release conditions, but my understanding is that Kyros formulates them that way rather than that being a necessary element; Tunon sank a city with one once.  Sank another half of one afterwards - specifically the half with merchant barons in.  Seems like it would be useful to have here.  I...have declared two, over the course of my career, which is highly unusual.  One was intended to destroy a rogue Archon, and it is my deepest regret that I needed to use it, because - it turned a breadbasket into a craggy, underfertile mess, and Cairn isn't even properly dead for all the effort, damn him - but I didn't have enough oil of vitriol to kill Cairn outright and he was berserkering after I tried.  The other...executes the people within Vendrien's Well, should the Spire within that territory not be held by a representative of Kyros within...It's still Fourth Blood, presumptively, so...three hundred and sixty days, if time passes similarly here as there.

"Oh, I've been meaning to ask, what's your calendar like?  Kyros's calendar is three-hundred and sixty-five days long, divided into fourteen twenty-six day months - with Year's End Day left over - which are further subdivided into five five-day fists with one Kyros's Day left over - for rest - which are ordered into Warrior's, Healer's, Judge's, Farmer's, and Smith's Day."

He takes notes typing into a tablet, looking slightly exasperated. He's also recording, not that it's visible.

"I certainly don't have such a dramatic summary of this place handy. I'm sure you're picking things up, but the nastiest surprises are unknown unknowns, aren't they now? The archons were legendary figures, so they became figures worthy of legend? Kyros head of them all, the mysterious god hanging over all like a guillotine and ruling with an iron fist? I've read fantasy stories like that. The belief makes it real. Stories, of course. And our calendar's a mess left over from some ancient Emperor with attitude and cruft added on every century after that. Twelve months, either thirty or thirty one days, except for February, which can be twenty eight or twenty nine once every four years, except occasionally it's twenty eight again, and sometimes a they add or subtract a minute to the day to keep it in sync with Earth's rotation. We go by weeks, five days of work and two of 'rest', though that's never universal. It's Monday, today, start of the work week.

The belief makes it real, hmm? I'll have to think about how to study and prove that in a halfway reasonable way."

"...Hm, I wasn't even trying for drama with that.

"...even the ancient calendar wasn't that much of a mess, my goodness.  Anyway.

"Sigils have actually been derived from stories we know - that everyone knows - are false, so...Hmm.  I'm not sure how much it's the belief that makes it real, as much as...the focused weight of human attention?  And goodness knows how the Beastfolk do it; they have some sort of shamanic tradition I meant to inquire about but never found the time...Notwithstanding that Cairn - the Archon of Stone, I'm sure I've mentioned him before - did manage to teach them Sigil-casting, when he defected.

"And to say that 'belief makes it real' is an explanation of everything to do with magic - though it pretty much uncomplicatedly is, for Archons and artifacts...

"...Well, that's incorrect.

"The Sigil of Force was independently discovered by dozens of schools of magic, and behaved identically across them, to the best of my understanding.  Some schools had figured out different things, but theu'd found out the same different things.  That's not just belief, that's some underlying structure.  Though I suppose it may have been the structure of the Spires...but still, it was independent."

"You would know far more than I do what the origins of your weird physics-incompliant abilities are. I'm going to approach this as a novel application of physics- Or a novel medicine, or something."

"Physics-incompliant?  How do you mean?

"...And...Hm.  I want to see if I can teach you the spells I've been using, in the longer term.  Life and Vigor, and the various effect sigils.  You'd use them for the right reasons, and I need to figure out how possible it is in general.  My future plans vary significantly depending upon that, because I've seen no other casters here and I don't know why."

"I've never heard of any theory of fundamental physics that permits sourceless force or this - very targeted rearrangement of particles that Life represents. I want to- Ah, that counts as something you ought not know before I test it. Anyway I haven't looked at it enough to say it's complete nonsense but it is a very surprising thing given how I think the world works. Very, very surprising. I'm not opposed to learning it after bit more study. Depending on what exactly is required."

"Generally...Hmm.

"It's harder to explain than do, but the process of casting spells I know, is most like...

"You hold the story and feeling of a relevant Archon in your mind, as you reach to - a higher plane of some sort; we're not really sure - and trace the sigil.  You need both the mental state and the physical motion.

"And then there's rituals, which have that and props."

"We should head back now, I think. There's a lot to think about. Don't need to handle it all today."

"Mmm.  I suppose so, for all that I feel as though there's quite a few things that - want to be addressed before we go, still, let alone how you want me to use the capabilities I have demonstrated with the Mercy Crew."

"The problem is that you don't know and neither do I not really know how to avoid being noticed by the bigger fish in the sea, and eaten in one bite. Also I don't actually trust you. There's an don't adage of trust but verify and I'm skipping the first part."

"I've found 'looking like what they expect to see' to be usefully prophylactic, but that may well be blown, given..."  She gestures at the Bordertown, before continuing - "Well.  Everything, that's going around."

"I think you're good so far?" He starts packing up stuff. "Oddities and rumors happen fairly often. You're a weird foreigner or agent with some kind of disguise implant. A ninja, not a gold mine. Keep it that way and it's probably not an emergency. Obvious public mass healing would definitely be way too much."

"Alas, it seems my research on deriving a sigil for resurrection from the myth of this 'Jesus' fellow will have to wait until I have established myself."