Chapter 1.22 - In which the storm arrives

Percy

Month 11, Day 28, Saturday 3:40 a.m.

Count Fluffbutt easily outran Viv and Percy, disappearing into the dark.

When Viv eventually ran out of breath, hands on her knees and chortling with delight, she pointed to a small cemetery across the street. “Let’s dance!”

Percy squinted against the wind, which was picking up and smelt of a storm. “Dance? Over those people’s…graves? Can’t we at least go to a tavern? Maybe there would be music,” he added cajolingly.

“Any taverns still open legally would belong to the Rouse Family.” She was silent for a moment, and then said, “You’re right. We should go there.”

Percy followed her once again. “But not to burn their taverns down, right?”

Viv laughed.

Percy did not find this reassuring. He wanted to suggest that he just take Viv home, but this felt churlish after he had been the one to foolishly suggest a tavern.

After a half hour or so, they arrived in the brightly lit entertainment district, where the majority of the establishments were either part of the Twelfth Crown Family’s guild or owned by them directly. Each of the Thirteen Crowns was supposed to oversee and control a particular area of industry. But, Percy remembered, the Assistant Ambassador to the Public had been a Rouse. How did public relations, taverns, and brothels fit together? He set his curiosity aside as Viv dragged him into a music-filled hall.

It turned out that she did not actually know how to dance.

Together, they fumbled their way through, trying to imitate the people who seemed to know what they were doing. Eventually, they managed to get a grip on a simple dance that mostly involved a lot of prancing around in a square and bowing to each other before spinning away.

To his surprise, Percy actually enjoyed himself. He was too afraid to set the Vista 500 down anywhere in case it got stolen, and the weight of its strap around his neck made things slightly awkward as he bounced and spun, but he barely noticed. Instead, he found himself laughing along with Viv and watching her hair spin around her in the dim light, her cheeks flushed with delight.

It was wonderful! Right up until Percy stepped on a man’s foot. “Oh, so sorry,” Percy said, not expecting it to go any further than that.

“You scuffed my shoe and interrupted my dance,” the man snapped at him, catching Percy entirely off guard.

The dancing adjusted to move around the two stationary couples. When the man’s partner pulled at his arm, whining for him to ignore Percy and pay attention to her, the man only shrugged her off and took an aggressive step forward so Percy was looking almost straight up at him.

“You’ll have to answer for this insult. Why don’t we go outside and settle this like men,” he urged, pushing Percy.

The shove wasn’t hard, but considering the man had at least twelve inches and a hundred pounds on Percy, it didn’t take much. And thus, Percy went stumbling back and would have fallen if not for Viv’s hold on his arm.

Viv clenched her jaw and bared her teeth. “I’ll beat him until he cries like a little boy. I’ll tan his hide! I’ll pulp his ass like a peach!” she said, growing louder with each proclamation.

People laughed behind their hands, and the man’s glower grew darker.

Like she had done to him earlier, Percy hooked his arm backward through Viv’s and hauled her out of the tavern.

Out on the sidewalk, she swung around and hopped onto his back, her legs around his waist and crushing the contents of his emergency backpack between them. “Wooo!” she screamed in his ear, high-pitched with exhilaration.

Percy flinched, almost stumbling under her weight. “You’re as light as a feather,” he mumbled.

“I feel like it!” she agreed. “Onward, mighty steed Percival!” she cried. Then, in a slightly quieter voice, she added, “I’m hungry. Let’s go get meat skewers. I know the best stall.”

“A stall? Will it be open? The sun’s not even up,” Percy grunted, panting with each step.

“It caters to the night shift workers coming out of the factories. It’s right next to my house.”

At this, Percy perked up, and he headed off in the direction of her pointing finger, though after only a couple of blocks, he was forced to admit that he needed her to descend from his back.

They walked for over half an hour to reach the early-morning food stall, and by the time they arrived, Viv had started to feel woozy again.

Percy suspected that Healer Clements had either made a mistake or scammed them. Surely a sobering draught shouldn’t be wearing off so quickly?

“I’m fine. I’m just hungry. It’s been too long since I’ve eaten,” she insisted, lifting her hands and holding her palms parallel to the ground to show him the faint trembling in her fingertips.

“Take a break here. I’ll get the food,” Percy said, settling her on one of the stools the stall owner had placed in a row at the edge of the road.

She fumbled in her pocket and tried to hand him a coin purse. “Here. My treat.”

“Oh, it’s no problem. I can get it.”

“I’m shift lead. I make more than you.”

“But I…have fewer expenses than you?” Percy tried.

She rolled her eyes and jangled the purse at him until he took it.

The streets were beginning to wake up, late night workers coming home while those who needed to start before the sun rose were beginning their day. The stall was just growing busy, and Percy only waited a moment, idly waving away a couple of flying insects attracted by the light and the heat.

Viv yelled her order to him, slightly too loudly. There were no plates or bowls, and Percy struggled to hold everything. He noticed the lens cap was hanging free of the Vista 500, and when he moved to try and press it back on, a gust of frigid wind caught his hand, and he dropped one of the skewers.

“Hey!” Viv called, her tone strangely tense.

“Don’t worry, I’ll eat that one,” Percy reassured her, looking up from his task for a moment. “I have a strong stomach,” he lied. It would probably be fine if he tore off the sections of food that had touched the ground.

“Hey, you!” she yelled angrily, one hand pointing accusingly toward Percy.

A boy not much younger than Percy had been sidling closer, and at Viv’s yell, he reached down and snatched up the dropped skewer of food and raced off.

Only it wasn’t a skewer. It was Viv’s coin purse, which is what Percy had—apparently—actually dropped.

And before Percy could register the gravity of the situation, Viv was up and racing after the thief.

Percy hurried to follow, his camera obscura bouncing against his chest as he awkwardly removed one arm from the straps of his emergency backpack so that he could shove the skewers inside it.

Viv and the thief were both surprisingly fast, and Percy struggled to keep up. He considered the irony of this situation. After his last run-in with thieves, he had promised himself he wouldn’t be chasing after any more criminals. And yet here he was. The fact that, technically, it was Viv he was chasing after didn’t make him feel any better.

By the time Viv caught up with the thief, tackled him in the middle of an intersection, and wrestled her coin purse out of the young man’s hands, they were on a street filled with warehouses. It was in the poorer part of town, and the cold of the wind and the scent of the oncoming storm did little to disguise the stink.

Percy slowed to a jog before stopping beside Viv as the thief struggled free. He raced away again, hurling some choice insults over his shoulder that were quickly carried off by the wind.

Thankfully, Viv didn’t try to chase him down again to beat him up for the offense. She remained crouched, breathing hard. With one hand pressed to her forehead, she said, “Oh, I don’t feel so good.”

A flash of light caught Percy’s eye, and he turned his head slowly to the right.

Down the street to the west, a group of people were standing under the protective half-dome barrier of a glowing spell. They were grouped up against the corner of a building whose walls held an impressive amount of glass—especially for this part of the city.

A couple of blocks further down, another group peeked up from behind what seemed to be a barrier of stone, which was somehow standing right in the middle of the street. Even with Percy’s glasses, it was too dark and too far to see clearly.

A flash came from the people inside the glowing spell barrier, shooting out toward the people behind the stone defenses.

The stone defense group ducked down. One lifted a hand over the stone roadblock and shot back a glowing spell of their own. The spell hit the barrier spell and, with a bright flash on impact, disappeared harmlessly.

“Battle spells,” Percy whispered.

People from both groups were shouting, but most of the details were lost to the howl of the wind.

There was a strange, deep rumbling that Percy had at first thought was due to the oncoming storm but now realized was trembling through the ground itself. It was as if an earthworm the size of a dragon were tunneling underneath them.

“Oh, crap,” Percy breathed. He grabbed Viv by the elbow and hauled her up. “We have to get out of here. Now.”

Viv nodded silently, took one step, and crumpled.

If not for his grip on her arm, she would have hit the ground without any attempt to save herself.

“Viv? Viv!” Percy rolled her over.

She moaned incoherently, her eyes rolling up and around in their sockets as her lashes fluttered.

Author Note:
I wonder what adventures Count Fluffbutt the Bloodthirsty is getting up to right now.

Nobody:

Azalea: Spinoff of a spinoff!? *_*

Also, I'm just about to update Chapter 13 with the final publication version, which includes Chapter 13 AND Chapter 14. (Because if I just post it as a separate chapter it will be all out of order if anyone wants to read through the story here on Patreon instead of on my website. I recommend reading on my website for a much better reader experience. And by the end of the week all previous website chapters should be updated with their publication-ready/final versions.)