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Authors: Jonathan R. Stanley
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to the passenger side, grabbing Sabetha by the collar and pulling her onto the street.
“That was a low blow Sabbath ,” I taunt, using the nickname he once had for her.
“Don’t you ever fucking call me that!” she charges in but I drive a fist through her chin. Her feet lift off the ground with the force but she backflips, recovers, and comes around with a long leg across my neck. We engage in a barrage of punches but in both of our rages spend little time defending and wind up slugging the wits out of one another. I get sent backwards over a bench by an uppercut but I get her back with a tackle which sends her through a parking meter with a shower of quarters. She kicks twice. The first one is more of a knee to the ribs but I catch the second one and throw her down the sidewalk like a cat by the tail. She lands hard but rolls gracefully back to her feet before running into me and shoving me towards the car. I land against Rolla with my elbow and shatter the back triangular window. Suddenly not caring about her next attack I look disheartened at the broken glass. Sabetha walks over and casually picks up some of the diamond-like shards off the cement.
“Ah, shit,” she says.
I look over my shoulder at her and she looks back. “Come on,” I say softly, heading to the driver’s side. “Sun’s almost up.”
Sisters…
Six
I t’s now six nights since the break in and in retrospect, we have reacted pretty frantically. What we would normally accomplish in a month or two has taken us under a week, and I’m starting to remember why we usually drag our feet. Though no closer to figuring out the mysterious attack, things are already starting to wind down, and it feels like Christmas afternoon when there’s no more presents to open. The immortal tendency toward melodrama is both an unfortunate side effect of age and ego, and a deliberate need to create risk. Sadly, we haven’t milked the break-in enough, and as a result, are now growing bored.
We check on my sentiners but they’ve turned up nothing useful. With little hope for better prospects, we head to the subway. Lezar is now employing a zip line instead of the truck to get people off the trains and, I have to admit, it turns out to be the highlight of our evening, Lezar having turned up nothing new. My hypothesis is that this is just a kharmatic hiccup, and it’s beginning to seem truer and truer. The city’s essence, the consciousness, sometimes takes a swing at people like me, but since we have too much of a footing, too much of our own kharma to counteract the usual shit, Cycle’s usual methods like a car accident won’t do it. To get us, things have to build up over time until when it does break through the gauntlet between kharma and reality, like our friend Janus the flesh golem, it’s pretty disgusting.
We leave Lezar’s hall with half the night ahead of us and nothing to do but wait. And for an immortal and a sentiner at that, I’m abnormally intolerant of waiting. Bullworth, a high ranking soldier in the court and an old friend of ours, is escorting Sabetha and me on a safe route out. He’s a big guy to begin with, so as a millitus he looks like a twelve foot long hyena. A rarity but not unheard of, Bullworth has mastered his beast and can act rationally while a millitus. As if this alone didn’t make him a welcome guide through the tunnels, his senses, not affected by the kharmatic fog like mine, remain sharp.
Note to self: buy some of those specially crafted green flares.
We make a right out of a perimeter tunnel and begin walking down a raised cement walkway that Bullworth barely fits on, next to a set of tracks. A few minutes go by before he stops suddenly and sniffs the air. Freezing in place, we allow him to scan the area without distraction, but soon I can feel my pulse quicken in my fingertips as they rest against the gritty cement wall. Something is slowly building
“That was a low blow Sabbath ,” I taunt, using the nickname he once had for her.
“Don’t you ever fucking call me that!” she charges in but I drive a fist through her chin. Her feet lift off the ground with the force but she backflips, recovers, and comes around with a long leg across my neck. We engage in a barrage of punches but in both of our rages spend little time defending and wind up slugging the wits out of one another. I get sent backwards over a bench by an uppercut but I get her back with a tackle which sends her through a parking meter with a shower of quarters. She kicks twice. The first one is more of a knee to the ribs but I catch the second one and throw her down the sidewalk like a cat by the tail. She lands hard but rolls gracefully back to her feet before running into me and shoving me towards the car. I land against Rolla with my elbow and shatter the back triangular window. Suddenly not caring about her next attack I look disheartened at the broken glass. Sabetha walks over and casually picks up some of the diamond-like shards off the cement.
“Ah, shit,” she says.
I look over my shoulder at her and she looks back. “Come on,” I say softly, heading to the driver’s side. “Sun’s almost up.”
Sisters…
Six
I t’s now six nights since the break in and in retrospect, we have reacted pretty frantically. What we would normally accomplish in a month or two has taken us under a week, and I’m starting to remember why we usually drag our feet. Though no closer to figuring out the mysterious attack, things are already starting to wind down, and it feels like Christmas afternoon when there’s no more presents to open. The immortal tendency toward melodrama is both an unfortunate side effect of age and ego, and a deliberate need to create risk. Sadly, we haven’t milked the break-in enough, and as a result, are now growing bored.
We check on my sentiners but they’ve turned up nothing useful. With little hope for better prospects, we head to the subway. Lezar is now employing a zip line instead of the truck to get people off the trains and, I have to admit, it turns out to be the highlight of our evening, Lezar having turned up nothing new. My hypothesis is that this is just a kharmatic hiccup, and it’s beginning to seem truer and truer. The city’s essence, the consciousness, sometimes takes a swing at people like me, but since we have too much of a footing, too much of our own kharma to counteract the usual shit, Cycle’s usual methods like a car accident won’t do it. To get us, things have to build up over time until when it does break through the gauntlet between kharma and reality, like our friend Janus the flesh golem, it’s pretty disgusting.
We leave Lezar’s hall with half the night ahead of us and nothing to do but wait. And for an immortal and a sentiner at that, I’m abnormally intolerant of waiting. Bullworth, a high ranking soldier in the court and an old friend of ours, is escorting Sabetha and me on a safe route out. He’s a big guy to begin with, so as a millitus he looks like a twelve foot long hyena. A rarity but not unheard of, Bullworth has mastered his beast and can act rationally while a millitus. As if this alone didn’t make him a welcome guide through the tunnels, his senses, not affected by the kharmatic fog like mine, remain sharp.
Note to self: buy some of those specially crafted green flares.
We make a right out of a perimeter tunnel and begin walking down a raised cement walkway that Bullworth barely fits on, next to a set of tracks. A few minutes go by before he stops suddenly and sniffs the air. Freezing in place, we allow him to scan the area without distraction, but soon I can feel my pulse quicken in my fingertips as they rest against the gritty cement wall. Something is slowly building
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