Chapter Eight

I’d seen Saori use one of these grenades before. I hadn’t gotten a very clear look at it then, and I wasn’t watching at all right now, but I could make a pretty good guess at what was going on behind me. There would be an immediate blast of flame, and then waves of choking, disorienting black smoke. The flame wasn’t normal fire, though I wasn’t sure what the difference was, chemical or magical or both. Whatever the means, the result was terrifying, fire that clung to flesh, that refused to go out, accompanied by smoke that scrambled vision in a way smoke usually didn’t.

Within a second, I could hear screaming behind me. I could smell charring flesh, noxious and disgusting, and that spoke volumes about just how intense the fire was. Normally, flesh took time to burn, and in the process it smelled like roasting meat, appetizing regardless of my feelings on the source. This skipped cooked and went straight to charred, and it smelled vile.…

Dice and Card Games

So characters play games in this story a lot. It’s a character trait that comes up a lot, particularly with Saori and Raincloud. What games they play, when, and how is something that I put a fair amount of thought into.

Dice games are the most commonly referenced. The reason for this is pretty simple, and it’s one that will show up in actual life a lot. Dice games are easy to play. You don’t need much for it. You can play a game of liar’s dice with nothing more than a flat surface, a bag of dice, and some cups or screens. It’s simple, easy, and portable. You can pack up quickly and with little fuss. You can play anywhere that there’s a reasonably flat surface. Dice are durable, and if you lose one, you can use any other die of the same type to replace it.…

Chapter Seven

I met Saori in Fox Chapel. Which really wasn’t something either of us was a huge fan of; I didn’t like it because the borough reeked of conspicuous consumption, and she didn’t like it because it was a joke at her expense. Giving the kitsune a house in Fox Chapel was just…her benefactor had a terrible sense of humor. And there was also the fact that it was associated with Saori’s benefactor.

I didn’t know much of anything about that whole topic. Didn’t know what situation she’d needed out of so badly, didn’t know who she asked for help, and didn’t know what she paid for it. But favors like that usually came with a serious price tag. And, really, the fact that she hadn’t talked about it at all was a statement in itself. I highly doubted she liked to be reminded of them.

But it was where her house was. And, as a result, it was where her connection point was. My understanding was that Otherside portals could be opened from anywhere, but the destination point had to be somewhere you knew very, very well. Otherwise, they had a tendency to fail, and that apparently did Very Bad Things to someone. So, Saori only had a limited number of places she could travel to this way, and she only had one in Pittsburgh, which she’d learned to use as soon as she moved here.

I got there early. It was still distinctly morning, and I wasn’t thrilled by that. But I was also already awake; the nightmare last night had made sure of that. And I had no particular reason to stay at Derek’s for a few hours longer. Raincloud and I just left once she’d woken up properly, and went to wait on site.…

Werewolves

Derek has some comments here about werewolves and the experience of being one. Some of this has been mentioned already, but other parts are new information, and it seems like a good time to talk more about it metatextually as well. A lot of information about them isn’t widely known, and some of those details may be revisited later, but for now I’m going to be focusing more on basic information that’s easily learned in-setting.…

Chapter Six

Derek lived east of Pittsburgh proper, around the border between eastern Pitcairn and Monroeville. This, in and of itself, would be enough to make it an unexpected place for me to be. Pitcairn was an odd mix of abandoned and stuck-up, and Monroeville was worse, the kind of suburb you’d hold up as an example of why suburbia is a diseased phenomenon. I liked Derek enough to visit his place, but I sure as hell wasn’t prone to dropping in because I happened to be in the area.

But I could cope. I had the rideshare driver drop us off several blocks away outside a Chinese restaurant, just in case someone had both the ability and inclination to trace it, and we walked the rest of the way. It was significantly less pleasant than earlier. It was solidly night by now, and it was cold, and “walkable” was not an adjective I could apply to Monroeville with a straight face if I tried. By the time we got there, I was feeling drained as hell, and even Raincloud looked a bit bedraggled. I told her as much, and got a flicker of amusement from her at how specific the adjective was in its mood.…

Chapter Five

Saori left a few minutes later. The innuendos and public display of affection hadn’t exactly been a joke; I knew from experience that she wasn’t bluffing. If I’d expressed interest, she’d have been absolutely fine with ignoring an urgent situation in favor of hedonistic indulgence. Caution and prudence were not on the list of words anyone sane would apply to Saori, except perhaps to use her as a bad example. Safety wasn’t first for her, and was generally lucky to come in a distant third.

But it was, ultimately, a relatively urgent situation. I wasn’t sure when the next attack might come, or from what. I didn’t know how much said attacker would know about me, but my address was hardly a secret. I wasn’t going back there until this was done, and while that didn’t fuck with me like it would some people, it was inconvenient as hell.

So I wasn’t terribly interested in delays. And Saori was reckless, not stupid. She knew this needed done. She only lingered a few more minutes, and then she was off to start reaching out to her contacts. I’d offered to come with, but she said it would be likely to cause more issues than it solved. Her contacts were not fond of strangers, and given that she seemed to be expecting strain on those relationships already, I was forced to agree it was smarter not to bring me along.…