Desecration Chapter99: Nothing Can Ever Be Simple, Can It?

"Are we being serious right now?"

I didn't deign to acknowledge Terra's complaining with a glance, she'd been doing a lot of that since we hit the streets. Instead I took another pull from my fanciful pipe and observed all the foot traffic punishing the streets. It was made of bone! My pipe that is, carved from one of the many limbs an atrus aranea carried.

Kogan warned that the magic in its bones wouldn't add anything to the smoking, but I didn't care about that. I wanted it as a symbolic gesture, one of the cunts almost killed after all.

I wondered if that ant I'd be smoking from witch bones eventually.

Damn. That got dark fast.

"I don't know what you expected," I said after a marvelous exhale. I was getting better at this! "I don't investigate, I cut shit. Or punch shit, but I haven't been doing that for a bit considering everyone in this city's a fucking coward."

One of the passerby's stopped to give a glare when I said that, but he shifted his gaze to the ground right quick once he recognized who I was.

I let out a snort. "Point being, I don't actually know what I'm doing and pretending that I do isn't going to get any better results. Fate or whatever the fuck you communicate with said you needed , right? Trust the process."

"This process looks a lot like you posing dramatically on a wall."

"That's part of it, yes."

Terra let out a groan, and I had to suppress a smile. This was fun! The witches I interacted with weren't people I could ss with (not including the boy), but Terra could only threaten with bluffs.

Sure, maybe her magic had no combat applications whatsoever, but neither did she know how to fight. I could tell. Like a skittering mouse wandering past its cage.

It wouldn't be a challenge to kill her.

But I didn't, because of the coven and all that. Neither had she actually done anything to yet, other than being a bitch. Still, the reassurance was almost cathartic. I didn't have to be weary around her, didn't have to analyze body language or subtext and all that jazz because her hostility ant nothing.

Didn't an I was going to be a complete ass, just a partial ass.

"Can we at least go sowhere else," Terra grumbled. "We've been here for two hours."

I shrugged. "Sure, but I'd be surprised if we end up finding them today. Your prophecy didn't give a titable after all."

"Still better than watching you being an idiot."

"I was observing the crowd." I tilted my chin up to appear haughty.

"Which doesn't serve a purpose!"

"Of course it does!" I chirped. "It's a very nice crowd. Deserves a bit of professional admiration."

Terra stared at for a long mont.

I gave her a pleasant smile.

I think the face she was giving was her contemplating her life choices, but it also might've just been anger. Probably anger. She moved along instead of saying anything, guiding to our next stake out.

Not that far. The killer had a preference for the north, specifically the artisans.

Everyone they'd murdered so far was a mber of the trades, which was still a decent chunk of the population considering electricity didn't exist. Labour workers got left alone though, as did the slums. I doubted they were doing it out of a sense of morbid altruism, else they'd be going after the leeches east rather than the backbone of the city.

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Bleh, I didn't care for their reasons.

There was a high chance this would end in a fight rather than conversation. Anyone who could avoid Alvir? Didn't an they were strong, but it did an they were sneaky.

Giving them any chance to slip away would be stupid.

I found a nice wall to lean on as I smoked my pipe, enjoying the simring frustration radiating from my compatriot. It was nice, like a tea kettle brought to a perpetual boil. Except a bit—

Hmm?

What was that?

A tickle on my ears from sothing farther than I should've been capable of hearing. Sothing I'd never heard before and didn't follow the patterns I was used to.

I tilted my head to focus on where it ca from and...there it was.

Like static, purposeless noise.

"This killer of ours doesn't happen to be a mage, do they?"

"No." Terra shook her head. "Mortal as mortal can be. Why?"

I humd and pushed off the wall. "Stay here, there's sothing strange I want to have a look at."

Terra didn't say anything, but her expression changed to sothing more serious. She nodded, and with that I went in the direction of the noise.

One step at a ti.

It seemingly reacted to my approach. Almost like it was reaching out to hold my hand. It felt...right? It wasn't sothing I'd ever associated with the World before, almost like a glitch. I wondered If I was hallucinating. But it was there, and it was friendly.

I kept walking, crossing five alleys and quite a few blocks before I stood in front of what looked like a warehouse.

I considered for a mont that this might've been a bad idea, but the World almost seed to urge on. Separate from the static at least, like it wanted to find whatever was in there. I had no reason to doubt the World, so I stepped forward.

No one was there to stop , there wasn't even a single soul inside.

I looked around, it seed like a place to store grains. By the sll of mold there likely hadn't been anyone to check how well it was stored. That or they were absolutely shit at their jobs. I shrugged. Not my problem.

Instead I walked.

Towards the static that almost seed separate from the World, louder and louder, until it was all I could hear. It wrapped around , tight against my skin like a familial hug.

I blinked, and I was sowhere else.

Where before I was surrounded by haphazardly stacked bags of flour, now there were trees, reaching so high into the sky that the two might as well have been homogenous. Yet sohow there was wind, zigzagging around to deliver a cool breeze.

In the gaps between the arboreal titans was a colorful array of flora I'd never seen before. Bushes filled with berries and smaller trees that carried fruits of red and blue. Sotis pink.

It wasn't silent here, I could hear the calls of mammals and birds in the distance.

Yet I couldn't find them, no matter how hard I searched.

Throughout all of this I was...calm. Strangely calm.

This place felt like ho.

"Beautiful, isn't it?"

A voice that wasn't quite human, like the sound was filtered to match sandpaper. When I turned I saw a giant of a man, tanned of skin and bulging with muscles. He was looking out into the ocean...what?

I looked around, and oddly enough I found myself sowhere else again. The trees were still here, but they were sequestered behind the rocks that I stood on.

The stranger was sitting in a lawn chair, wearing ripped denim and a floral button up that was left open to show his muscles.

I turned back to the man(?). "How are you doing that?"

"It's nothing fancy," he said without taking his eyes off the ocean. "Most of my kind can do it past their second century. Just takes a bit to grasp compared to the other fae."

"Fae?" I tilted my head.

"That's what you mortals call us, right?"

"Fae aren't real."

The giant of a man let out a deafening snort. "That's by design. Father prefers us separate. I don't get the appeal considering how interesting you all are but I don't make the rules."

I nodded and accepted that a little too quickly.

"Are you fucking with my head?"

He shrugged. "Get's past all the panic and annoying explanations, so yes?"

"That's a bit rude."

"Not my fault you're weak enough that ssing with your mind is as easy as skinning a bunny. Practically an open invitation."

"Do you skin every bunny you see?" I raised a brow.

"Would if I could," He said. "We don't have any of your animals in the Courts though. They'd die pretty quick and a corpse is no fun."

I let out a sigh. "Do they also have lawn chairs and strangely futuristic clothing?"

He chuckled.

"No. I picked these out of your mind. All the fae that've seen a reincarnated with their past mories intact act all smug and now I can too! Thanks for that by the way."

I tilted my head, there was a lot of very interesting implications with what he just said, ones I might have probed if I didn't feel so...sedated. So instead I went with what I was here for.

"Are you the one killing people in the city?" I said.

The man barked a laugh. "Is that what the Djinn-bonded told you? How I forget you witch types love to lie. No, I haven't been killing them. I've been collecting them."

I imaged my face was the picture of incredulous. "All the victims are corpses, how wouldn't what you're doing not count as killing?"

He finally broke his gaze with the ocean to look at , and each eye was filled with Irises and pupils.

He smiled.

"That kind of question has a cost."

"Alright, moving along then." I nodded, which got another laugh. "Can you kindly stop?"

He humd for a mont. "No, I think not."

"Not even if I said please?"

"Not even then unfortunately," he said with a solemn nod.

I shrugged. "Welp, I tried. Mind taking back now?"

His smile widened to an unnatural degree. Too many molars to mark a caricature of insanity as every pupil dilated from delight.

"Now why would I do that?"