Cormac watched the rain from a rooftop two streets over, close enough to see it, far enough that no one below would think to look up.
Besides him, corpses of various kinds were sprawled, some he made himself with the members of Manus Vindictae while others were the starving and dying masses from eating gold and money.
He knew it now, to be a Corpse Collector is to be introduced to the dead, you are not even a servant yet, just an audience studying those who achieved the second best thing in life.
That is why Corpse Collectors gain knowledge about corpses.
‘The pathway provides the tools to act, one must simply do it’
It was raining again, the same wrong direction it had rained in London, and this time he did not bother pretending to be offended by it.
He had changed and he could feel it, the Storm had weakened the symbols of reality allowing him to manifest his divinity further.
It widened his connection to his divine half yet it also helped him deceive the Oldest One’s mental imprint for reasons unknown.
He could feel his digestion rising, it was as if he had already done so long ago and both of them had simply forgotten it, he was not quite sure if understanding all of his pathways triggered it, he will have to experiment further.
This phenomenon was indeed likely the reason why he got transported to the river in his first Storm, another theory has been confirmed in exchange for another question.
It was not all positive however, he has not yet built up enough humanity to resist the uncaring nature of his own divinity.
Thankfully this body that his consciousness currently resides in only has sequence 9 beyonder characteristics, weak enough to not allow the Original Creator’s will to eat him from the inside.
‘Remember that you’re only acting, ‘ he tried to calm himself.
Something else also changed, he could feel his Astral Projection connecting to him, he just realized now that he did not have it before and could not have known unless he tried divination, which he did not because he knew he was never going to be particularly good at it, but now he felt more complete, as if it had been waiting for him.
But now he could also see the images that he should have seen before, pale darkness converging into a single point where a piercing light shines through clearly.
He felt cold and nothing at the same time, unable to clearly describe the feeling.
Then it all disappeared, abruptly, like the end of a dream.
Once he came back to his senses, the buildings past the shelter had already started to melt at their edges, soft and slow, the way a candle melts when nobody’s watching it closely enough to notice until half of it is gone.
No one below mentioned it.
That struck him as the strangest part of all of it, stranger than the rain, stranger than the melting stone, the fact that a street full of frightened, exhausted people had simply decided, collectively and without discussing it, not to look directly at the thing eating their world.
‘Humans can’t see it, Arcanists can… and me I guess,’ he thought, watching a lamppost fold gently sideways into the pavement without a sound.
‘It’s actually starting now… I should get going, I have another experiment to observe’
Cormac felt it from his rooftop, the same patient, hungry pressure he’d learned to recognize the first time he’d stood in a London street and called it rude.
He did not put on theatrics this time.
He only watched, arms folded, in front of him now, as the melting world started to collapse and he quickly followed the pulling sensation on the back of his head again.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Inside the suitcase, warm light spilled from a makeshift kitchen crowded with refugees.
Sotheby’s Chew-Chew Hallucinogen XII was working exactly as advertised.
Bowls of what had clearly started as thin, cold soup sat steaming in front of people who were, by every visible sign, eating something considerably better than soup.
“Ahh…!
I’m exhausted!” Sotheby said, wiping her brow with the back of one flour-dusted hand.
“How tiring it is to cook!
Finally we delivered the meals to all the refugees, but our soup became cold.
Aww!”
X tilted his head over his own bowl, one eye catching the kitchen light at an angle the other didn’t quite match.
“Oh?
Thanks to your hallucinogen, what I see happens to be a parfait,” he said.
“Chewing it also tastes the same.”
Druvis sat further down the table, hands folded neatly around her own dish.
“I had the souffle,” she said.
“Miss Sotheby, thank you for the meal.”
A man in a plain black coat shoveled another spoonful into his mouth before anyone could stop him.
“Fi-filet steak!” he said.
“Sorry, I gotta have some more…”
He gagged, loud and sudden, spitting the mouthful straight back onto his plate.
“What happened?” Sotheby asked, already halfway out of her seat.
“What’s wrong?”
“Whoa,” the man in black said, wiping his mouth with the back of his sleeve.
“What is that taste…
It tastes like corned beef, dust, and baseball gloves someone was just wearing…
oh…”
Laughter rolled down the length of the table, tired but genuine, the first real laughter they have heard all day.
Sotheby planted both hands on her hips, entirely undeterred.
“Sir, you have to believe what you see!” she said.
“If you don’t believe it from the bottom of your heart, even the hallucinogen won’t help!
Don’t be fooled by the ‘Storm.’ What I prepared for you is definitely the best food in the world!”
Somewhere near the head of the table, an older man in a butler’s coat coughed once into his fist.
“Mr.
Karson!” Sotheby said, already turning toward him.
“What happened to you?
Is there anything that doesn’t suit your appetite?”
“No,” Karson said.
“It tastes amazing, my lady.”
“What did you eat, Mr.
Karson?”
“A burnt Welsh rabbit.”
Sotheby’s hands went still in her lap.
“Ah,” she said.
“That’s…
that’s my…”
“The first cheese you made when you were eight,” Karson said, gently.
“And you burnt the tulips in the Chelsea Flower Show.
That’s a relief to me, my lady.
Please, take this.”
He set a thick, worn book on the table in front of her.
“What’s this thick book…?” Sotheby asked, already turning it over in her hands.
“The records of all the important transactions and dealings of our manor,” Karson said
“Some secret lists, and the location of the treasury.
These are Master and Madam’s favourite wine and weekly schedules.”
Sotheby flipped further into it, frowning slightly.
“Okay,” she said.
“But…
the second half seems to be all about…”
“All of your favourite menus,” Karson said.
“You want different dishes every day, and new preferences every time.
Hah, one book is barely enough.
My lady, please take good care of yourself.
Try to get in touch with Master and Miss Moissan after everything ends.
You will be a fair lady, Ms.
Sotheby.”
“I will do my best!” Sotheby said, and then, quieter.
“But why didn’t you hand it to father in person?”
A sudden, enormous sound of rain rose outside, drowning out whatever answer might have come after that.
“Whoa,” Sotheby said, glancing around her.
“What a heavy rain outside.
The rain turned upside down!
Oh my, come and see!
Mr.
Karson, quick!”
She turned back around.
“Hmm?” she said.
“Mr.
Karson…
where are you?”
There was no answer.
There was only the space where a man had been sitting a moment before, a chair pushed neatly back under the table, a coat draped over its back as if someone who wore it just left.
Vertin’s voice cut quiet and flat across the sudden silence of the room.
“The ‘Storm’ is here.”
A woman near the back of the shelter murmured her thanks to no one in particular, the words coming loose and unfocused, like a person speaking in the middle of a dream they didn’t know they were having.
“Thanks for your treat…”
The man in black, still seated where he’d been laughing a moment ago, reached for his empty bowl with hands that had started to blur faintly at their edges.
“I-I can have one…
more…”
Nearby, a woman named Marian, Shneider’s sister, folded her hands together, her voice dropping into a murmured prayer that carried the particular cadence of something said many times before, in many worse rooms than this one.
“Santa Maria, prega per noi…
Santa Maria, prega per noi.
Look after us.
Have compassion on us.”
Schneider knelt beside her, taking her hand, her voice low and steady in a way no one in the room had heard her before.
“Don’t be afraid, Mia Sorella,” she said.
“Take my hand.
Close your eyes.
Just like when we were born.
Everything will be fine.”
Vertin sat very still at the center of the table, looking down, unable to watch all of this happen.
“Goodbye,” she said, so quietly it barely qualified as speech at all.
Schneider coughed once, and turned toward her.
“My lord…” she said.
“Schneider,” Vertin said.
“I’m sorry.
Your family…”
“No, my lord.”
Schneider rose to her feet, unsteady, and crossed the small space between them before folding gently into Vertin’s arms, the motion soft and total, the way a bird settles rather than falls.
She looked, in that moment, like something pale and small enough to be carried away by the first strong wind that found her.
“Hold me,” she said.
Vertin went rigid with the shock of it, arms tightening around her without quite deciding to.
“I am sorry,” Schneider said.
“I’m not a real arcanist.”
“What do you mean?” Vertin said.
“I-I don’t understand.”
“I always wanted to be lucky,” Schneider said.
“But I think I should say addio now.”
“Addio?!” Vertin’s voice cracked wide open around the word.
“You mean the ‘Storm’ will also…
No!
Why?
You’ve never eaten the gold bar in front of us!
Are you always tolerating it?”
Schneider laughed, faint and fond, the sound of it already thinning at the edges the same way the man in black’s hands had.
“Heh heh.
Now it’s coming, my lord,” she said.
“Don’t forget me.
Don’t forget my heartbeat on the right.”
She was gone.
“It did not work, that makes sense in hind sight, this is a phenomena, not an attack, if it worked then she would not have been able to breathe”
Vertin did not have much time to process what just happened before a voice she instantly recognized came from the entrance.
Cormac looked at the window first, not out of squeamishness, he’d watched worse and done worse by now, but because some part of him understood, plainly and without needing to be told, that this particular moment did not belong to him.
He had not earned a place in this room, had never once sat at that table, eaten a bowl of hallucinogenic soup, nor handed anyone a thick book full of secrets meant to outlive them.
For Vertin, he was only ever going to be the phantom in the Storm, watching the rain fall the wrong way, and for once in either of his lives, that felt like exactly where he belonged.
Or so he thought.
Vertin looked at him with shock, this time he had control over his authority and as such did not subconsciously conceal himself.
She remembered, although he looked younger now, how could she forget that gentle smile that wished her good night?
How could she forget that gentle voice that sang her a song to rid her of her nightmares?
She thought it was simply a dream then and now she had entirely forgotten them until this very moment.
“Dad…?”
‘…
I need to go buy some milk.’
Perhaps his humanity wasn’t suppressed after all.