Interlude 1: Of Serpents, Secrets, and Shawarma

Of Serpents, Secrets, and Shawarma 9 SEP/18 In the apartment upstairs from her Apothecary, a woman sometimes called Naga sits before an antique vanity. She removes her jewelry slowly, actions guided by years of routine. Her mind is elsewhere, churning over events she once thought nothing more than distant possibilities.   Something unknown, subtle and soft, eases her from reverie to contemplate her own face staring back in the mirror. It is familiar, though worn by time, much more than she cares to admit. With a selfish wry smile, she runs her hands over her skin, pulling back corners and smoothing out wrinkles. Somewhere beneath it all is the face she once had. She pulls her hair back, remembering her younger days.   With a tilt of her head, she notices the scar – faint to most, unless one knows to look for it. It runs between her jaw and her ear, falling down her neck and then moving across her chest to climb up the other side. Her fingers trace it with contemplation. If things are moving in the direction others claimed, perhaps it is time for her to consider a new face again.   But maybe that is just vanity speaking. And she doesn’t even know who wears the mantle of the Flesh Crafter these days. She remembers hearing something about a surgeon in a downtown high-rise. Half-resigning the thought to a fickle fantasy, she begins to twist her hair up – another of her slow, personal rituals.   Without warning, the air about her seems to shred itself, and the world she knows disappears. She stands, trembling, before a stone temple, a seven-headed serpent coiled the altar. All of the heads are screaming, desperate and violent into the star-heavy sky above. Their fangs are sharp and dripping with venom. She feels her own skin grow cool and slickly familiar with scales, her tongue twists in her mouth. She screams along side it, somehow her sibling, somehow herself. And she tastes death.   When it is over, when the fury of it all subsides and she can think again, she finds herself on her bedroom floor. As she pulls herself up, she checks the clock – the vision itself was but a brief moment. Shaken, she sits on the edge of her bed, wringing her hands and feeling for the rings that she has already left on the vanity.   They had told her what it could be, but she had never expected that – not something so wretched familiar and alien. The woman called Naga by many collects her breath and her wits, and begins to plan.   ~ ~ ~   Following the Epic Hunt, the crew decides to gather at ScorchRain to debrief on what has been a hectic past few days. A confused, but decidedly still awake Miranda ushers them all into the main common room of the artists’ co-op, urging caution as to not accidentally sit on Couch, asleep on the old sofa. Everyone gets as comfortable as possible in the disorganized space, while Priscilla and Krys offer to go get late-night food from Lucky Shawarm’s down the street.   The conversations twist and turn around bright facets of information. Each share the problems they have faced since Wednesday morning, particularly the events of the Epic Hunt. Eugenia discloses Lawrence’s suicide. Dee divulges what she has learned about the prison. Kit opens up about events by the river, trying to focus on the strange funeral Kat’s family held. Mora cautiously opens up that she had been warned away from the river by Betty, which causes Miranda to turn on Betty’s late night radio call-in show in the background. Francis admits he left Ian Chow tied up in the basement of the old church.   With a slight sigh, Eugenia charges Priscilla to go release Ian and buy him breakfast.   There is much information before them all, and they sift through it between bites of Middle Eastern take-out and the occasional shot of whiskey. Miranda tries to fill in the gaps with what her hunters have learned for each of the crew’s questions. Lines begin to be drawn, but still the pattern, though haunting in the background, cannot be fully seen.   ~ ~ ~   Priscilla does not like churches, but it is a dry sort of revulsion – the kind that can be tolerated when required by a command. And it is such a command that brings her to the Church of Santa Teresa de Avila in the dead of night. So she calmly puts aside her distaste for the pomp and circumstance, for the hypocrisy and willing ignorance, and drives into Cross End.   She parks a few blocks away, and with the spire looming in the distance, begins a purposeful yet discreet walk towards the church. Immediately, her skin begins to crawl. She looks about her, keen for any other figures out this late, but finds only empty shadows. She cannot shake the feeling, though, and it only grows as she gets closer to the chapel doors, as if the building itself watches her.   The doors open for her, though for a moment she was sure she would find them bound against her. There are some places she cannot go, and this… sensation is much akin to that. Steeling herself, she sneaks in quickly, not wanting to rouse whoever watches the door for those who seek midnight comfort. It takes a little while, wandering quietly in the dark, to find the way to the basement that Francis described. She continually watches over her shoulder, worrying at the sense of foreboding that only grows as she takes each stair.   At the very back of the basement, near a wall that seems recently repaired, she finds her target – one Ian Chow, bound by Francis Burke and left here to stay ‘out of the way’ for a time. Priscilla expected a man gagged and panicked by the situation, desperate to be free. Instead, she finds Ian sitting calmly, eyes closed, with no struggle against his bindings.   He opens his eyes at her soft approach, and she holds her hands open wide to show she means no harm. He does not twitch at all, merely waits for her to cross the room to him. She puts a finger to her lips, and he nods in understanding. Slowly, with her sidearm readily at hand, she unties the unlucky informant.   True to the nod, he keeps still until free, at which point he calms pulls himself up from the floor. “Thank you,” he whispers, still slightly too loud for Priscilla’s comfort. She motions him to silence until they carefully traverse the Church again and emerge out into the street.   “Ah, the night air feels good,” Ian says, stretching his limbs with abandon. “You have my deepest gratitude, again. It feels as if I have been down there for an eternity.”   “And you have our… apologies for the inconvenience,” Priscilla responded pointedly. She hopes the meaning is clear, but she is having a tough time reading Ian’s responses. The warning in her gut hasn’t lessened. “As a gesture of good faith, may I take you to breakfast?”   Ian stops to consider her, and Priscilla barely stiffles the instinct to put a hand on her gun. The look isn’t lascivious, or violent, but she wants it to stop. “Appreciated, but unnecessary. I think I will be able to take care of myself. It was wonderful to meet you…. Oh, I don’t think I caught your name?”   “No, you didn’t,” she says, measured. He only laughs, and walks down the street, thankfully in the opposite direction of her car. When she is finally able to unclench her jaw, she finds that the strange sensation in the pit of her stomach is gone, even though she still stands in front of Santa Teresa. If Priscilla believed in what churches taught, she would cross herself.   ~ ~ ~   The late night continues to creep under the eyes of the crew. But suddenly, in one moment, a dire threat seems to be deduced. The gaping hole in the floor of the Excalibur family vault; the closure of PS 192 for several days due to ‘basement issues’; the destruction of Gio’s normal stashing location; the damage to the Lowbridge; and most importantly, the image of the Serpent that revealed itself to every person. The crew is worried that a giant snake is tunneling under the City.   There are still gaps – how does this play into the scandal at the prison? What role does Lawrence’s incognito contact Tourmaline play in all of this? And what of the ghost that plagues Kit’s new boyfriend? Or the mysterious folks at the Akhet Tea House? But now there is a plan for action, and it is immediately focused on confirming the fearful possibilities of a Great Serpent.   Francis, Kit, and Mora will converge on PS 192 the next evening, trying to get to the basement to see if it is indeed more tunnelling, and perhaps even where it leads to and from. Eugenia and Dee will reconvene the next night as well, with plans to see if Gio is willing to talk more about what happened to his hide-a-away, and what else he might know about the goings-on in the City. Miranda, still bound by obligations around her sister’s upcoming wedding, will continue to sic her digital hunters on questions that the crew asks.   With plan in mind, the crew goes their separate ways, to recover from another difficult night. Priscilla picks up Eugenia in the town car, and together they offer Dee a ride back to the antique shop. Mora disappears quietly out the back, through the deepest shadows she can find. Kit hops on the back of Francis’ motorcycle, and garners the strength to ask Francis to help him confront Naga in the coming days.   Couch wakes up, grumbles something incoherent, and falls back asleep. Miranda shakes her head, and then eagerly crawls into bed next to Krys, who had already retreated to slumber.   ~ ~ ~   She knows it is a calculated risk. Standing outside the decrepit little building, a former car wash from what she can deduce, she knows that the Theta was inside at some point this evening. The little mouse told her as much, before it collapsed back into a heap of tinfoil and finger bone. But she doesn’t know why, or if it was still there. She had seen others depart, faces she still turns over slowly in her mind, memorizing for a later time. But has the Theta left as well? Is it truly so stealthy as to evade even her eye?   She takes the risk.   With an unnatural grace, Jennifer crosses the street to the sad structure. She rolls her eyes at the gauge graffiti declaring the place ‘ScorchRain – The People’s Artist’s Commune’. Misguided idealism grates at her like a coarse brush. The door is not locked, of course, and there is no one there to greet her as she slips inside. Her footsteps do not echo in the large gallery, with insipid art dangling like a child’s proud mess. She can think of no reason the Theta would have come here.   She moves to explore the back, but it stopped momentarily by a sculpture. It is a hand… or maybe a tree? It is crafted from string, somehow, and reaches out earnestly towards the sky. She circles it, strangely entranced by the way the string emulates the muscle and sinew of a human arm… yet at the same time, impersonates the fold and texture of a twisting oak. She almost reaches for it, until some muffled nighttime sound reminds her of herself.   She finds the residential quarters, with sleeping figures draped across couches and pillows. The stench of so many people living together curls her nose. It is only made worse by their kitchen, strewn with the evidence of a recent meal. There is movement at the back of the area, and she dares to hope that the Theta still remains. Clinging to shadows, she slowly makes her way across, knives beginning to sing to her, to tempt her to take them out.   She finds a curtain waving softly, a separation between ‘rooms’ for the residents. On it is the image of the hand/tree, the same resonating visual as the sculpture before. She is momentarily transfixed, and thus is caught by sudden light streaming from a newly opened door. Her heart leaps to her throat.   Qiao Chow stands before her, pale and lovely as if she had stepped freshly from decades ago. The memories barrage Jennifer unexpectedly, and she almost calls out to her once dear friend.   The small gesture makes the girl recoil, and it is then clear that this not Qiao. But the resemblance, the curve of her brow and the fall of her hands – could this be her daughter, the young squalling infant Jennifer had known long ago, now grown to adolescence? If so, it is with an uncommon sense of regret that she pulls her knives, ready to end the young girl’s life.   “You don’t belong here,” the girl says with a crack betraying the confidence she intends to show. Jennifer has already shifted her weight and thrown herself towards the girl when a green mist coalesces between them. She is struck with a terribly weight in her chest, and all her momentum is thrust back at her, sending her flying through the room and out of the window into the alley.   She knows the feelings that assault her body now. Bruises, lacerations, more than a few cracked ribs, and likely internal bleeding. Nevertheless, she rights herself quickly, waiting for whatever it was to come out the window at her again. Her hands are clenched around the hilts of her knives. Nothing emerges. She knows when to retreat. She has learned enough tonight. She has faces, ones that surround the Theta, and faces are a powerful thing.   The night welcomes Jennifer back into its arms.