Voidhearts Chapter 2: Distraction
Alicia gets to run for a bit. She and Felipe gets help from an unexpected angle to break up a potentially disasterous brawl.
Once she was sufficiently convinced Lex wouldn’t blow up anything too important, Alicia wasted no time getting to the delivery run she had signed up for. Leaving the pleasantly chilly halls of The Castle for the hustle and bustle of Therafter’s crowded streets didn’t seem like a good trade, but then again, Alicia wasn’t going to spend too much time in the streets themselves. After taking a few turns she knew by heart at this point, dodging tight packs of bickering wizards and the odd oblivious stomping Rhinofok in a way that was more or less routine, Alicia found the Alley.
While it was a very chaotic-seeming city, quilted together from thousands of building fragments with magic both subtle and powerful, Thereafter was a very inorganic and ordered city. The streets were straight and the buildings were built to provide as much usable space out of their footprints as possible. It reminded Alicia of home in a way. There were, luckily, exceptions to this utilitarianism, little niches where whichever of the city’s builders had made that part had put away some small wedge of space for a purpose they forgot before they got to it. At least that’s how Alicia assumed these small nothing spaces, of which the Alley was one, came to be. They could, she had to admit, serve some magical function she was unaware of, or perhaps they were meant to remind of how the Council were still human, like how middle-eastern carpet weavers would include an intentional flaw in their carpets because only God was without flaw. Alicia held all of these to be possible, but she didn’t lose any sleep over it, the important thing was the function these little nothings held to her routine.
While Alicia wasn’t agoraphobic, she was going to need some elbow space for what came next. She was, after all, going to draw on the Deep Song, and that could make things messy in a hurry. Drawing on the Deep Song, she realized, was a skill one could improve on. Not to increase its intensity, but by increasing mastery to make it safer and more convenient to use. A fresh user of the old magic that weaved into the very earth was an earthquake that walked like a man, sudden, unpredictable and devastating. Some times you needed unpredictable and devastating, but some times you needed to get things done without destroying a city block. Alicia had heard tales of masters of the Deep Song who never drew on it, but merely kept it up until they day that they died, but Alicia had her doubts. Self control or no, if you had the ability to flip a VW Beetle without breaking a sweat, that’d have to lead to shenanigans, no matter how careful you were.
Even so she could see the logic of it. She had been able to draw on the Deep Song for a little more than a month now, and she could already feel her precision and regulation of it get better. It was especially easy to notice this in the Alley, as the crater she had left the first time was still hard to miss. She did feel bad about busting up the cobblestone, especially mostly intact as it had been in here, but she figured the odd accident while getting the hang of ones powers was acceptable. This was, of course, not a blank check for lack of discipline in her future endeavors.
Alicia closed her eyes and drew a deep breath, holding it in for a little while before exhaling. The next breath was unremarkable, just one in the thousands you take every day, although much training and what she came to understand as no small part of natural talent allowed her to recognize the subsonic vibration that she could still, somehow, hear. Her next breath drew in a trickle, a silvery string, originating in every molecule around her, in the air, in the rock, in the dirt between the cobblestones, weaving flawlessly together as the impossibly deep sound vibrated in her mind. Alicia had spent a lot of time thinking about how the Deep Song worked exactly. It could have something to do with oxygen, as the manner in which one called on it would shape the resulting powers. Calling on it silently would give you a middle-of-the-road kind of boost. Chanting would flood your system with it for a burst of incredible power with a rather harsh come-down, while Singing would give you less power, but last for a long, long time. It could be a coincidence or the connection could be more ritualistic in nature, but Alicia couldn’t help but see the parallels between Chanting and hyperventilation. It was, after all, quite possible to draw on the power without making a sound.
Alicia opened her eyes, and there was no mistaking the results. The Deep Song was within her. Her vision got a little dimmed from it, but she suspected that was more a consequence than the bright light that shone out of her eyes. It was an odd side effect. Alicia wasn’t sure if the light was filtered out by her own eyes somehow, or if there was some kind of magic going on. Either way, she found herself unwilling to spend much time pondering things. Especially now, that she could run, especially now, that she could jump.
At some point Alicia had jumped, shot straight up to land on the surrounding buildings’ roofs. She had planned to jump, but the action had been preformed with such ease and so little thought it was like she hadn’t moved at all. The Deep Song, for all its power, was not so great for perception. That was, however, quite ok. Alicia wasn’t up here to look at shit, she was here to run.
The wind whipped at Alicia’s face as she bounded across the roofs of Thereafter. She had no idea how fast she was going, no idea how she could even find out. Fortunately, she thought as her last leaping stride terminated and she kicked off with the other foot, further accelerating into the next one, she didn’t much care, the correct answer was “not fast enough, yet.”
The tranquility of Felipe’s rooftop perch was all but total until Alicia touched down with a loud crack. Seeing that she had built up too much speed to stop without a chute once her destination approached, Alicia had leaped high into the air to waste the momentum on ascending. It had been a decent split-second decision, but probably not the optimal solution, she realized as her head broke through the field that separated the atmosphere of Thereafter from the cold vacuum of the Void. The sudden need to hold her breath sobered her up some, and although her rapid descent helped some, she also couldn’t help but notice that gravity was going to get her back on the very momentum-based problem she had looked to avoid. Fortunately, she found herself thinking as the roof below her came rushing up to meet her, that particular roof looked pretty solid.
Alicia wanted to live in a world where she landed in such situations in a cool way. Maybe one of those stupid-looking three point landings they did in superhero movies, or crouched in some kind of power stance. The reality, however, was less cinematic, as she landed like a sack of flour. It was, perhaps, for the best, but Alicia’s dignity couldn’t help but protest.
“Mother of god and the blood of Christ, Crazy.” Felipe exclaimed “What the fuck are you doing”
“Good morning to you too Espino,” Alicia croaked as she stacked herself back on her feet. “Went a little faster than I planned to today, that’s all.”
“I’ll say. You training to become an ICBM when you grow up or what?”
“Good work if you can get it, right? Anyway what are you up to?”
“Oh, the usual,” Felipe sighed. “I’ve been keeping an eye on the plaza, rumors are there’s some Organization business going down there, but I haven’t spotted anything more serious than pickpocketing.”
Alicia swallowed a grimace. They hadn’t exactly decided to talk about the group of shady individuals that Michael had taken over “The Organization,” per se, but it was a pleasant enough euphemism to discuss the interest they had in what would be a criminal gang of some sort if Thereafter had any laws to break.
“So you’re just brooding up here, is what you’re saying.”
“You might describe me as a caped crusader of sorts,” Felipe winked at her. Of course he was wearing that ridiculous mantled cloak. Alicia was a bit surprised he wasn’t wearing the peacock-feathered one from his “formalwear,” but she supposed it would be rather conspicious even for Felipe. “Anyway, what do I owe this kineticly spectacular visit? Lex calling for a meeting again?”
There had been no shortage of meetings after Michael departed. They had been pissed off and confused, and figuring out what to do next wasn’t easy. “There’s no polycule best practices for when someone joins the mob,” Lex had sad, as if this was a serious oversight on the part of whoever was responsible for these kind of things.
“No meetings, but I do come bearing gifts. Well, a gift.” Alica held out Felipe’s phone. “
Oh my god,” Felipe snatched up his phone. “If you’ve gone through my pictures, there’s some context you should know…”
“Don’t worry about it flyboy, I’m just the messenger. If anything you should lay your context on Lex.”
“Oh I am all about the context on Lex” Felipe’s gift of the gab was such that he, through some strange alchemy, could make anything sound dirty. Even the neutering layer of the translation field was powerless when pitted against Felipe’s legendary powers of innuendo.
“You’re a pig, Espino,”
“Prime Iberian Pork,” Felipe said triumphantly, “and when you get the taste for this h….” He stopped suddenly. That wasn’t very much like him at all, so Alicia instinctively turned to try to trace his gaze.
“We have a situation down there,” Felipe said, the jocular tone gone in a flash.
“Those two kids by the center of the plaza?”
“I’d describe them as youths myself,”
“We should get down there,”
“Yeah, this way.”
Felipe and Alicia hurried to climb down to the street. While the sight of the two young men shoving each other with the unmistakable body language of aggression wasn’t a great sign for the peace of the area, what made the two exalted heroes haul ass were that both of the youths were clearly dressed in the furs of the Steppefolk, and that their eyes already shone with a nascent light of the Deep Song.
“You try to clear us some space,” Alicia said as she touched down on the cobblestone. “I’ll go talk to them.”
“You sure about that? Pretty lady can make hormonal boys do all manner of rash things.”
“I’m practically kin, plus if you go up to them and they get Deep Song-violent you’re salsa. I have a fighting chance”
“You have such a way with words.”
“Crowd control Espino, now.”
“Yes ma’am”
Alicia took a deep breath as she approached the circle of people who had surrounded the squabbling boys. She didn’t draw on the Deep Song, coming in hot with powers on could only escalate things. No, she needed to be calm. The adult in the room. She hated being the adult in the room. All the same, the room needed an adult, and barring anyone better, she would have to do.
“Hey, you two!” She called out as she pushed her way through the circle with the gentle but firm shoulder movement she had come to think of as the NY Subway Shuffle.
“Bit early for the Trial of Steel, ain’t it?”
The two boys froze. Alicia realized that calling them youths was a bit ambitious, if those two were teenagers it was by a year or two. They were young, but then again, Alicia had flipped Steppeworld on its head when she was their age, so you could never be sure with kids. Kids or not, though, they had hit their teen growth spurts. Their limbs were a bit gangly and awkward as muscle mass hadn’t gotten around to becoming proportional yet, there no doubt the Deep Song could help them level any number of adjacent buildings if it came to that, peach fuzz mustaches or not.
“You’re…” The tallest of the boys said, his voice cracking slightly.
“Alicia Thorn, yes. The Mountain Wind. Exalted Hero of Thereafter. Nice to meet you both.”Alicia showed both her palms and exhaled, as was the custom for showing one came unarmed and with non-violent intentions. The boys, she noticed, did not answer the gesture.
“This is no concern of yours Alicia of Thorn” the shorter boy said, he didn’t quite have his back to her, but it was close enough that Alicia had no choice but to read him as more closed off than his opponent. “Ola has dishonored my tent and my family, and it is both my honor and my duty to see that he pays for it.”
“Perhaps he has,” Alicia couldn’t say she was sure either way. It seemed harsh to call for trial by combat for anything a kid could do, but she was acutely aware that she neither knew the situation or the laws of the Steppefolk as they had been before it was destroyed. Back in her day? Oh, she could’ve argued circles around this kid, but given the constant violence and raids of the Brother Wars, there were strict rules against intergroup violence. Nobody had the manpower to see two combat-ready clanmates maim each other over some stupid bullshit, even if they were just pups like these two. “But you must know this is not the time nor is it the place for such a thing?”
“It is he who has seen us meet up here,” The short boy spat. “When he spurned my offer to settle it outside his tent.”
“We don’t have a tent, Imi, and you damn well know that. We live in one of the dead tree boxes… and I didn’t do it, c’mon.”
“You LIE like you ALWAYS LIE,” Imi’s voice rose to a fever pitch.
“Hey hey hey, friends, confederate brothers, let’s not be hasty with this.” Alicia said, but she could see it was too late. Ola drew a deep breath as Imi sprung into action, the bright white of the Deep Song shone strongly in both their eyes. She could see it as if in slow motion, the shoving match escalating to a fight, a superpowered fight.
Someone stepped out of the crowd, between the two men. Whoever it was moved like a blur, but also somehow with a very sedate pace, leaning on a fine wooden cane the entire way.
The sharp sound of unsheathing steel froze both combatants in their tracks. A man stood between them now. Tall, chubby in a kind of square way, wielding a blade that Alicia surmised had to be drawn out of his cane, there was no mistaking who it was that had come to the rescue this day, although Alicia struggled to parse why exactly.
“Michael,” She said.
“Oh hey Alicia,” Michael said without taking his eyes off Imi. The sword was pointed towards him, while Michael held the cane sheath towards Ola more as a matter of propriety than tactics. He had, like Alicia intuited that Imi was the likely aggressor. “Fancy seeing you here. I was just explaining to these two gentlemen that there’s a time for everything. A time and a place, one might say, don’t you agree?”
Alicia couldn’t be sure, but the stiffness in Imi’s shoulders hinted that there was some kind of staredown going on.
“Step aside, this doesn’t concern you,” Imi said, presumably through gritted teeth.
“Oh, but I’m afraid it does,” Michael said. “You see, I happen to enjoy this plaza, I do some of my best networking, ah, work, here. Can’t have fights breaking out and ruining the mood, or the architecture”
“I could snap you like a twig.”
“Oh no doubt, no doubt, I’ve seen the kind of power you have up close. I also happen to know that steppefolk bleed like everyone else, and that I am armed and you are not. I also know that our silent friend here is hiding a little surprise of his own, and is planning to exploit this very combination of factors right this…” before Michael could finish, he spun around, batting Ola’s knife-hand away with the cane sheath.
Alicia sprung into action, she knew an opening when she saw one. She still hadn’t seen Imi’s face, but could readily imagine it holding an expression of utter surprise as she grabbed him around the waist, her arms locking around him, arms and all. Imi produced a sound that wasn’t quite the roar of a dragon, but certainly had taken multiple notes of the draconic sound. Alicia didn’t need to see his eyes to know he was drawing on the Deep Song now, it hummed in him, on his skin, resonating in every sinew. She lifted him off the ground by leaning backward. It wasn’t the most elegant of moves, but it didn’t much matter how strong he was if he had no leverage, and seeing as Imi was shorter than her this was the safest way she could stop him from doing something stupid.
Somewhere in the background, Alicia could hear Michael and Ola fight, terminating with a meaty thwack that she hoped was that of a cane sheath against a steppefolk head. Meanwhile, Imi had no intentions of being handled, safely or otherwise, and twisted and bucked in Alicia’s grasp like a sack full of eels. She dodged his clumsy attacks of elbows and feet, knowing full well that a lucky hit could cave whatever part of her it hit all the way in.
“Stop squirming, snake, it’s time for you to call it.” Felipe’s words got Imi to freeze. “Get nice and calm real quick now, or I’m going to slice you too thin to fry, understand?”
Imi grunted.
“I said DO YOU UNDERSTAND?”
“… I understand.” Imi went slack in Alicia’s grip.
“Alright, now I’m going to let you down now,” Alicia said. Imi didn’t answer, but she didn’t push it. The kid had most likely gotten humbled enough for one day. No need to lay it on him.
Imi didn’t collapse as much as he sank down into a sitting position on a nearby bench, leaving Alicia able to finally check out how the rest of the scene looked. Felipe, as always, looked like his shit didn’t stink, nonchalantly leaning on his polearm in a way Alicia struggled to describe in any other way than “strangely slutty.” Michael, for his part, paid no attention to Felipe’s peacocking. He was too busy sheathing his cane sword, a process that, it seemed, was harder than it at first appeared.
“Ah, great work, you two,” Michael said as he noticed that Felipe and Alicia's part of the brawl was over. “That’s as close to a nonviolent takedown as we’re going to get, I think.”
“How’s your kid doing?”
“He’s dazed, had to clock him across the head to get him to drop the knife. His folks should see too it that he doesn’t pass out for a bit, but otherwise he’ll be fine.”
“Alright. Hey Imi,” Alicia said. “You two get out of here now, give each other a hand. When you’re both feeling a little better you sit down and talk… whatever this shit is… through like adults ok?”
Imi nodded mutely and went about helping his former opponent up from the ground.
“Well,” Michael said once the crowd of watchers had dissipated. “I think we handled that about as well as can be expected.”
“They’re just kids Michael,”
“Kids that could fold me like a newspaper, I stand by what I said”
“Right. Want to tell me what this whole display was about?”
“What makes you think it was a display?”
“I’ve got eyes in my head an a brain in my skull, don’t I?”
Michael laughed, it was meant as a disarming laugh, but Alicia was not in the mood to be disarmed. Michael coughed to break the silence that followed.
“I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to tell you. Walk with me?”
And so they walked. Three former heroes in the synthetic sunset-light of Thereafter. Only time would show what they were now. Alicia for her money, didn’t feel very heroic.
Author’s Note: One of the most fun parts of having rotating POV duties is the opportunity to contrast how our heroes see the world, and explore how the are seen by their compatriots. It’s especially fun with somewhat neurotic characters like Alicia and Michael. There was a some point a version of this scene where de-escalation didn’t work out and things got rather disaster movie-esque, but I decided it’d be better to give our poor protagonists an unambigious W for once. After all, things’ll get plenty messy eventually.
Catch you next time, when we take another slow but sure step towards disaster. It’ll be fun!
VSD