Chapter 1.6 - In which Percy activates the talisman

Percy

Month 9, Day 27, Sunday 4:30 p.m.

Hours later, Percy finally left the copper station, having given his statement and apologized to Copper Shelleck, who merely grunted, giving him a suspicious and wounded look—until Copper Alma elbowed the man sharply in the side.

Percy looked up at the grey autumn sky and then, with weary paranoia, checked for any obvious danger or opportunities to hurt himself. He was comprehensively miserable.

The coppers had been kind enough to mostly dry his coat and scarf, and his shirt and pants had mostly evaporated, but his shoes were still wet, and the harsh friction of his darned dock against the leather was sure to give him a blister by the time he made it home.

Percy carefully avoided a huge horse patty that had somehow been deposited in the middle of the sidewalk, then stepped over the missing brick just beyond it. He would have changed his shoes out for his backup pair, but those, like everything else in his backpack, were also soaked.

He had lost his glasses in the canal. He could wear his backup pair for now, but he would have to pay to replace the main set sooner rather than later. His mother had made it clear when he got his first job that replacing his own belongings was his responsibility, and Percy knew it was dangerous to own only one pair. “What happens the next time some stranger tackles me to the ground and breaks the ones I’m wearing?” he muttered. That was how he had lost the last pair. The pair before those currently lying at the bottom of the canal, that is.

Percy stopped at an intersection, eyeing a nearby horse warily as it snorted and stamped its foot. When two men stepped forward to cross, Percy followed along close beside them, keeping them between himself and the horse while watching the other direction for surprises.

But no matter how miserable he was, the worst part of the day lay in the fact that Percy had never made it to his delivery. All of the pastries, along with their container, had been destroyed and trampled in the fighting. “Should I go back to the shop and let the boss know?” he wondered, already dreading the interaction. The man would be angry and he would shout. And maybe Percy would be fired.

Again.

Percy’s shift was technically over, and he would much rather go directly home, change into something warm, and curl up in his bed feeling sorry for himself. But the pastry shop was one of the better jobs he’d ever had. It paid well, and they allowed him to stick to the non-dangerous work, where it wouldn’t matter if he was unlucky.

Percy turned away from the direction that would lead him home, eyeing some birds in the branches of a tree that stretched over the sidewalk suspiciously. He could see the white splatters on the ground from where they had released their bowels. “How do you tell if a bird has to poop?” he muttered to himself, slowing down before he reached them. He held his hands over his hair and hurried past quickly.

He could swear the birds cheeped at him mockingly, but he didn’t care. Getting bird poop out of his hair was horrible. And walking around with it, starkly visible agains this black curls, was so embarrassing.

Percy didn’t go directly to the pastry shop, but instead to Schubert’s Photo Emporium, which sold camera obscura artifacts, a relatively new invention that allowed one to capture a perfect image of the world in black and white.

When he arrived before the wide stretch of glass windows—something only the most profitable of shops could afford—Percy gazed in at the Vista 500 resting proudly in the center of the display case. Careful not to actually touch the window glass and smudge it, Percy stared at the artifact’s sleek bronze casing and ultra-clear focusable lens. He had memorized all of the specifications already, but he still read through the sheet of crisp white paper displayed next to it, and then gazed for the moment at the example photograph of a bee landed atop a flower on the other side.

The wings were barely blurred, the details so crisp. A tiny, perfect moment captured forever. It didn’t even matter that the flower had no color, instead a light grey against a different blurry grey of the grass below. Something about the loss of color only made it more poignant. Percy had heard that dreams were always colorless, and while he knew that wasn’t actually true, the photograph was a little like a dream in that way. The surreality only made it more precious.

Finally, Percy’s gaze fell to the prominently displayed price card in front of it all. Two hundred ninety-nine gold. Percy believed the Vista 500 was worth every copper, but that didn’t mean he could afford her. Percy raised his fingers, wistfully curling them over the artifact from behind the window, as if he was caressing it. “Someday,” he whispered, his words a promise to the Vista.

Mr. Schubert, the owner, frowned at Percy from behind the front desk.

Percy waved to him and turned to walk on toward the pastry shop, his determination renewed.

As he ducked into an alley to avoid two men carrying a table down the sidewalk, Percy shoved his cold hands into his coat pockets.

The silk talisman was still there, still intact and already dry. He pulled it out and got lost in the delicate design—embroidered spellwork, or something meant to look like it. He ran his fingers over the gold thread, wondering if it was real, and how much the metal might sell for, melted down. Perhaps not very much. After all, thaumaturges could create copies of precious metals and gems, but magic-created materials were never worth as much as their authentic counterparts.

After all, there was no way the gold crown coins could be so large if they were pure, authentic gold. They would be even smaller than the coppers.

Percy hesitated, but ran his fingers through his curls until he found a loose one, held in place by the others. Shimmying open the silk pouch, dropped the black strand inside. He tugged the cord woven through the mouth closed, and then tied it shut tight, as the hag had instructed.

Percy shook it a little, then chuckled to himself and went to tie it to his belt. If he put it in his pocket, he would probably lose it. “Imagine, a luck talisman whose power is all used up just keeping itself from being lost!” he muttered.

But somehow, Percy had failed to properly tie the knot, or it had come loose, because the mouth of the pouch was gaping open, revealing a surprisingly dark interior.

Percy frowned and lifted the talisman to re-seal it, but before he could, a whole swarm of moths flew out of the darkness. First a dozen, and then a hundred, and then so many they obscured his vision.

Percy shut his stunned mouth as one of the moths actually flew inside, his shock and terror snapping into a shrill scream.

Spitting and sputtering expelled the repulsive bug, but it left some of its dust behind. He hurled the talisman through the cloud of moths, which somehow still seemed to be thickening.

Percy sucked in a breath through his clenched teeth, held his hands up in front of his face, and lunged forward, toward where he remembered the mouth of the alley being. No matter what was on the sidewalk, it was better than sticking around in a cloud of moths, which would fly erratically into his hair, where their legs and antennae would get trapped in his curls, their filthy wings shaking dust all over him as they tugged and struggled, and maybe ended up tearing their own limbs off in the desperate attempt to escape. Each of them would have to be plucked and combed out individually, and even then he might find bug legs trapped in his hair days later.

But somehow, the cloud seemed to follow him.

Percy hunched forward and kept going, only to slip on something that felt much thicker and slimier than ice. Half a second later, a bright burst of false light bloomed behind his eyes as his skull impacted something with enough force to create an audible crack.

Author Note: 

#1: I just got the audio back for all of the recent bonus content, including The Honeymoon Suite. It takes some time for me to make the audio version covers and for Book Funnel to process the files, but I will be posting all of that content over the remainder of the week for people at the Grandmaster of Divination tier. ($25).

#2: I've got a huge sale running on my Seeds of Chaos LitRPG series, and I could use all the help I can get spreading the word.

Word of mouth is more powerful than any marketing I can do. It would be fantastically helpful if any of you could share a short message like this:

"Azalea Ellis's entire seeds of Seeds of Chaos LitRPG series is on a huge sale, and first book is free! You can check it out here: www.amazon.com/dp/B012CLCCAK"