Canon: Charm of Magpies series

[etherics]

SETTING ONE: Prose or Brackets

Ah, Victorian London. The Thames, the clock tower, the palace. The crowded dirty cobblestone streets, the ever-present pall of coal smoke belched from trains and factories and steamers, the curling fog around the lamplights in the darkness. There are handsome gardens and lush concert halls waiting for the wealthy and privileged, private rail carriages and cut crystal on white tablecloths, but for the poor and the working class there are crowded boarding houses, dark alleyways, and the echoing footsteps of someone following you in the roughest parts of town where they'll never find your body.

Perhaps this is your first time here, and you're staring about in awe or disgust. Or perhaps this is all old news to you. Perhaps you, like everyone else, are about your daily business hailing a hansom cab or perusing shops or solving mysteries. Perhaps you don't even notice the whip slender, shabbily dressed little man until you've bumped into him, or until he's come alongside you trying to pass by, or has accidentally started for your cab. In a city of first appearances he's not much to look at: sickly pale like someone recently ill, five foot, and so thin as to look almost a youth, unfashionably short cropped red hair and patches on his jacket.

The edge of a cheap cotton glove pokes awkwardly from a pocket. He's wearing the other one, cradling his left forearm close to his body to obscure the sight of it for the same reason the glove had been hastily stuffed away - both are entirely covered in blood, his left arm soaked to the elbow.

Whether it's his blood or someone else's is anyone's guess.

Perhaps this meeting is in the dead of night, when no legitimate person has any business on the streets, in which case another detail might make itself alarmingly known to you as he materializes out of the fog. The man's unnaturally dilated pupils are ringed in gold, and faintly glowing.


~


SETTING TWO: Brackets, Text, Video or Voice

[ Oh my stars and garters, it's a jamjar. Is it a space station? A magic castle? An island governed by capricious gods demanding sexual sacrifice? Whatever it is, it's bloody irritating, and justiciars aren't allowed vacations. ]

Excuse me.

[ The voice that raps out is lit with annoyance, the owner clearly clinging to a veneer of courtesy by his teeth, which are clenched tight beneath pressed lips. ]

I don't have time for this. I'm expected - and I will be missed, if I don't turn up. I won't be kept here, understand.


~


SETTING THREE: choose ur own adventure!

Comments

[asset]

[something is very wrong. he knows this the moment he wakes up somewhere that is cold--cold but not ice and not permeating. he wonders if this is just another nightmare or trancelike state that overcomes him during the long, hourless periods of time he is kept in the dark. it's been at least thirty-six hours since he awoke in this place and there are no signs of his handlers, the strike team, or a safe house. the communicator he has kept diligently in his ear is nothing but static, crackling occasionally but never with the voices that steer him in the way he is used to.

he's growing more and more erratic--restless with no sign of his target or what he is required to return to. and the people here? it's as if they are suspended in time, their technology so far behind what he is used to over the decades of ever-changing items that he is not certain this is even present time. even more evidence that this isn't real--

but the sudden smell of blood that hits him in a rush--that's very real. the small figure that accompanies it is also real, and for one impossibly slow moment there is something that practically assaults him in realization. punches through the simmering surface of half-thoughts and broken bits of...things that he cannot connect. they hold meaning to someone, but they make little sense to him. this though--this sudden vision of a cold day in a cramped apartment with creaking floorboards floods him so fiercely he stops dead in his tracks.

"you're gonna catch your death like that, jesus christ [---], c'mon into bed, sit up just like that for me, yeah--" sit up to clear the air passages. keep him warm. keep him breathing.

who was he? he can't remember a name, was it the very same as this man?

it's the only thing resembling a lead that he has and he's into pursuit before his mind can catch up, quietly tracking behind him through the sudden fog. if this is an erroneous pursuit punishment will come. but the pain he is used to. the uncertainty? no. he has to know.

what was his name--yours?]

[etherics]

[ the man in question allows this for several streets, perhaps checking that the set of footsteps echoing behind him in the fog are indeed following his exact path. he doesn't change his pace, but at the next dim alley mouth he hesitates a moment and then turns in, quickly swallowed up by shadow. it's a dead end, full of stacked boxes, and any windows are high above and shuttered tightly. there won't be anyone coming to look in on them.

he turns to face the mouth of the alley and his pursuer, scuffed shoes braced wide apart and hands loose at his sides in readiness. blood drips from the still wet fingers of his bare left hand. ]