OC sample

It was a pleasant time of the year to wake up to, though this was an opinion that Dion may well have found himself alone in thinking. To most, the creep of fog rolling through the forest would spell disaster for any plans once it managed to pass by his cabin and settle itself in the village proper. The oppressive heat of summer was behind them now and the heavy mountain snows still to come, which meant no more labouring with the sun beating on his back, allowing Dion to concentrate more on his work. The passing of the seasons meant his property was devoid of visitors seeking him out for odd jobs, autumn making the wood feel more foreboding, less hospitable to all except the reclusive woodsman who toiled in its heart.

This suited him just fine, since it put an end to the shrieks of children, giddy with fright and adventuresome imaginings, weaving through trees and snapping off branches and making utter nuisances of themselves. Worse still were the parents filled with excess caution, though Dion himself had long since dealt with anything that could truly be considered a threat unless one were a particularly slow and dull-witted child. More pressing than warnings of rabid bears were all sorts of tales of his own supposed exploits, told over a round of drinks or while haggling on fruit prices. He no longer kept up with the gossip, but some choice stories had made their way to him nonetheless.

He whisked naughty children away and forced them to work for him for all their days. (Untrue; he much preferred steering them back toward the path to the village and having little else to do with the little monsters.) He spoke to the forest creatures. (Truth, but only of a sort. A man had to have some company, and after all, what really mattered was if they listened or not.) He’d once wrestled a one-eyed grizzly bear and nearly lost an arm for it. (Truth(?) He’d managed to drink quite a lot that night and only had testimonies to go on.) He was the bastard son of a great lord and held the titles to the entire wood and its surrounding villages. (Blatantly untrue, Dion owned nothing he hadn’t made himself and being situated so close to the great peaks of the Titans meant no lord could hold claim to their lands.)

There was forest all around him, the vibrant greenery dampened by fog that still stubbornly clung despite the morning waning on, with sounds of friendly bird chatter and the smell of green and growing things and the familiar weight of his axe comfortable in his hand following Dion down a route marked by habit rather than paths. Though no one man could truly call this land his own, this was his element, one he considered private and as apart from the humdrum of everyday life civilization had to offer as he could make it. Mine, he thought, and meant it.

Dion didn’t dislike people, not really, he was too willing to offer another pair of hands tempered by hard work to be a surly character, but being so isolated and of few words meant that he would forever be an outsider, something he had been accustomed to for far too long to go changing his ways. Folk knew he bothered no one, knew not to bother him in return, and he would help with this or that which needed doing while they would provide him with food, drink, and supplies that he couldn’t make himself.

And so things continued on in that way, a satisfying enough arrangement that nobody saw fit to go changing at the drop of a hat.

Dion stopped, a frown working its way onto his features as it often did, brushing his fingertips against the trunk of a particular tree he’d had his eye on for some time now, feeling them come away sticky with sap. Though most all of these trees had blemishes easily cut away when finishing the wood for carpentry, the bizarre marks he’d caught a glimpse of seemed too tidy to be natural happenstance, and made too deep for them to look anything but deliberate.

Someone had been cutting into his stock.

It often happened closer to the outskirts of the village, bold youngsters marking their territory, lovers trying to be romantic by scarring a healthy tree with inane poetry and declarations of forever and always. The only thing Dion considered able to last ‘forever’ and ‘always’ was the ancient wood that had seen the comings and goings of countless human beings as they steadily rose to greater and greater heights, silent and protective of their secrets, but could only remain so as long as folk took care with their bodies.

Probably ironic, given that he himself was a woodcutter, but Dion respected the forest and highly disapproved of senseless acts of gouging knives into the skin of something timeless. There was a time when every tree fell; he facilitated that with sure, steady strokes, but when he took an axe to a trunk, it came down then and there. None of this halfway, decorative nonsense. Putting aside his own hang-ups about causing them harm, from a purely practical standpoint, it ran a high chance of ruining his business. Nobody wanted to use damaged goods for their lumber, and he wasn’t about to let these strange symbols end up marring the side of some poor man’s home or shopfront.

There was a rustling from above him. Dion glanced up, expecting a squirrel foraging for nuts to sustain it when winter was finally upon them, but to his surprise, it turned out to be a person, though whether it was his culprit or just another youngster fancying themselves a bold adventurer remained to be seen. He couldn’t get a clear view of them with the leaves obscuring his vision, but what he saw, he didn’t recognise. (Not that it meant much in itself; Dion was notoriously poor with faces.)

“ ‘scuse me!” Might as well try to be polite. “Mind tellin’ me just what the hell you’re up to, all the way up there?” Well, so much for that.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Good morning, patients! The time now is 6:30am on March 25th, 2117. Let's all make an effort to have a healthy and productive day!"

The tinny voice that comes from the speaker system placed in each cell is the same as always, no deviation from the prerecorded script, no inflection or change in tone to suggest the words he hears came from an actual person. Mateo doesn't think he's had any human contact or heard any human voices in months, and the thought is suddenly oppressive, an elephant ripped straight from a history book and plopped onto his chest.

He's been awake for hours now. Dozens of hours. Despite his contempt for medical professionals that has absolutely nothing to do with his time spent in isolation-- honest, he swears-- there may be something to the idea that sleep promotes function after all. But what kind of guy could sleep on a stark white cot with stark white sheets set against equally stark white walls? Everything in the facility is devoid of color, devoid of personality, devoid of meaning, and Mateo can't help but think of how satisfying it would be to have something to break right about now.

As it turns out, that is a bad, bad thought to have, and something in the minute changes to his pulse and breathing tip the system off that old Matty is up to no good, even if it's in the privacy of his own thoughts.

"Patient 102511: Rivera, Mateo. The Delphi System has detected that you are under an amount of stress, and that your Hue has clouded from Yellow Gold to Forest Green. Please stay calm, do not make any move to harm yourself or others, and take deep breaths. Medical attention may be administered if you do not comply."

And there it was. The all-knowing, all-seeing oracle, the Delphi System set in place not long before Mateo was born. With it came the concept of Hues, the personalized colors representing one's stress level and their probability of committing a criminal act. The darker the Hue, the worse off it was for the person being measured. Once someone has reached past a certain threshold (oh, happy day, he's one of those lucky few), they were carted off to a facility for "rehabilitation" until they were "fit to rejoin society."

What a crock of shit, the stank so repellent he had to plug his nose and join the rest of the mouth-breathing proles to spare his nostrils.

Delphi couldn't read minds so much as it was highly attuned to changes in organic matter, making snap decisions on how likely it was that said change could prove dangerous. He could be thinking about strangling his classmates or kicking puppies or, in his actual case, pushing himself to the breaking point for the sake of academic excellency, and the System would be oh-so-helpful in suggesting therapy and other forms of mental health care to reduce what it thought to be unhealthy amounts of stress.

He could have handled it on his own. He had everything under control. Until he didn't.

18 is a stressful time for anybody. It's the age of adjustment, of new beginnings, of stepping up into the adult world and taking one's place in a society built upon what was best for them. The System had determined that what was best for Mateo lay in the arts. An honor, he'd been told. Not many people could claim to have an aptitude for what was considered a dying craft. Too many artists poured so much of their being into what they created that it was deemed dangerous, but Mateo had been talented enough and capable enough to make the cut.

Not that he wanted it. Doodling horse dicks all day didn't appeal, and Mateo had his sights set on something much more ambitious.

The Ministry of Welfare's Public Safety Bureau was what passed for a police force in the age of security drones and Delphi's watchful eye on the whole of the population. No matter how much weapons-grade drones had improved, there were still holes that only the experience and intuition of human beings could fill. The Inspectors were considered the arms and legs of the System, upholding its law and delivering its sentences when necessary. It was Mateo's aim to join the Criminal Investigation Department and become an Inspector in his own right.

Until it had blown up in his face.

See, the thing about going against your recommended career path is that while there's no real rule against it, nobody is going to sit back and make it easier on you, and it's something that Mateo had grown intimately familiar with. Jealousy had turned his classmates into ugly, spiteful things, his instructors went from praising his intellect to undermining his every decision, and it seemed that no matter what kind of ill intent the people around him harbored, the Delphi System just sat back and watched.

It was sometime after his sixth bloody nose that Mateo had finally allowed the pressure to crack him. Training for a future in law enforcement was no joke, the schedule was grueling, and the emphasis on keeping a clear and balanced mental state was paramount. It wouldn't take long for somebody to notice that something was amiss, and it would be all over for him. The threat of what could result in his stress was almost worse than the actual stress itself, but whatever the road he took, it led him to the same place.

In other circumstances, Mateo might have been happy to know that his resistance had resulted in brand-new safety measures applied to all drones currently on the market to counter against archery arrows, lemon soda, and graphite pencils jammed up some interesting places, but as it stood now, he was only bitter.

Rehashing the details of his Tragic Backstory isn't exactly doing him any favors where it concerns staying calm, taking deep breaths, and thinking about sunshine and unicorns. It isn't long before his lack of a response is taken as a show of rebellion, or maybe a sign that he was considering how best to dismantle the security system set in place to make sure that all the good little latent criminals don't stage a prison break.

He barely has enough time to sarcastically imitate the scolding he'd get for comparing this hellhole to a prison in his head before he hears another robotic voice ordering him not to resist as vents in the ceiling slide open and he's hit with a dose of gas able to knock down a long-extinct elephant in 30 seconds flat.

Mateo doesn't even remember hitting the ground.

"--30am on March 26th, 2117. Let's all make an effort to have a healthy and productive day!"

Oh, fuck. Alright, he doesn’t remember feeling this bad since convincing himself he was too much of a hardass to start off on the synthetic liquor substitutes and went straight for the real stuff. Man, 16 year old him could go suck a dozen dicks. Current him isn’t faring too well either. Mateo finally snaps awake not knowing how he got deposited onto his bed, but it might have something to do with the drone standing just outside his quarters, looking expectant despite its smooth, featureless interface.

“What do you want?” is what Mateo means to ask, but given the grogginess still holding his ass hostage, it comes out more like, “wuhyawan’?” This doesn’t pose a problem for the drone, which is apparently a savant at deciphering the slur of gas-addled latants.

“A visitor for Mateo Rivera, patient 102511,” it chirps, and then as if he were incapable of hearing the first time, repeats itself.

Maybe he is. Maybe he’s still asleep, because this certainly doesn’t feel like real life. He never gets visitors, not once in the six months he’s been here. No next of kin, nobody to care if he--

“A visitor for Mateo Riv--”

“I get it, shut up and let me think!”

“You will now be escorted to the designated visitor’s lounge.”

His chaperone doesn’t seem to give a shit that this is a Very Big Deal for him, nor the fact that he hasn’t showered in a full day or done anything to his hair. Instead he’s hustled into the quickest change of his life, exchanging dull white pajamas for a set of dull white clothes that hardly make a difference but at least help him feel a little cleaner. Next stop, visitor’s lounge, a place he’s heard about in distant legend but never considered himself stepping a foot inside.

Mateo doesn’t expect to come face to face with a man in a crisp suit, all black with a startling red undershirt that sears his retinas. His eyes are so starved for color and a break from the monotony that all he can do is stare, mouth agape like his brain’s been replaced with hospital slop.

It falls to his visitor to break the ice. “Hello there, Mr. Rivera,” he begins, voice as crisp as the rest of him. “I understand that you have just awoken; were it up to me, you would have much better accommodations, but I’m afraid our time is short.”

All business, this guy. For a moment, Mateo wishes he would keep talking and then berates himself for getting so excited he’s ready to piss on the floor just for the chance to actually talk to someone for a change. No matter what their supposed time constraints were, he seems content to wait for an answer from Mateo, who finally remembers to close his idiot mouth with a click before finally responding.

“I’m listening.” Lacking in punch, but given that his brain feels like it just got run over by a tank, he figures that’ll have to do.

The stranger leans forward, making Mateo take an unconscious step to close the gap. “It's come to my attention that your time at the wellness center--” He doesn’t miss Mateo’s involuntary grimace. “--hasn’t been the best constructive outlet for you. I’ll be blunt with you, Mr. Rivera, as you look dead on your feet, so let us skip the song and dance of asking me about my intentions. We believe you would be a good candidate to join us at the Public Safety Bureau, to put your talents to good use instead of wasting them in a psychiatric facility.”

The words are a punch to the gut, cutting through all of his brain fog and leaving him painfully clear-headed. His mouth is so dry it takes him a try or two to work up the words. “... You mean… as an Inspector?” Had that been an option the whole time?

His visitor looks genuinely taken aback, which makes Mateo instantly regret the hope in his voice. “No, no, I’m afraid not. I meant as an Enforcer.”

Welp. Second punch to the gut. He thought for a split second that even if his position wouldn’t be on the field, he could at least serve as technical support or something, anything else, but an Enforcer? Him?

There were stories of the Criminal Investigations Department employing latent criminals to act as hunting dogs, bringing down other latents just like them because of their similar psychological makeup. To be sure that they didn’t try to escape on duty or cause havoc among the general public, they were accompanied by an Inspector at all times with the option of being put down at any time for misbehavior, with the Delphi System’s own blessing.

It was beyond insulting.

Beyond unthinkable.

It was the only option he had if he wanted freedom. But what kind of freedom came with willingly donning a collar and considering his life forfeit if he didn’t kiss his handler’s ass fast enough? Was he really willing to sacrifice his pride if that meant getting out of here?

It seems Mateo’s indecision was written all over his face. “Of course, you will need some time to decide. If you consider this a good option in the future, I have my card here.” Out of the man’s breast pocket and into Mateo’s hand. With the majority of the print hidden under his thumb, he can just manage to make out the word ‘Holt.’

Holt makes some comment about needing to return back to headquarters that Mateo barely pays attention to, staring at the whorls of the clouds that represent the Delphi System with mute agony. The wheels in his head are turning for the first time in almost half a year; here was a possibility in front of him, dangling like the spider’s thread of a myth he'd once read. Would he really have his chance to think it over, or would he think of any reason it took to stay cooped up here if he hesitated?

“Of course,” Holt continued, finally getting Mateo’s attention, “you could always come with me.”

Though nothing about his overall demeanor changed, his voice was mild. Suggestive. Inviting.

“I’ll do it.”

Mateo Rivera, a modern day Faust in his own right, shaking hands with the devil and spending a blissful 20 minutes in the devil’s air-conditioned police-issued vehicle. When Holt had mentioned getting him some hands-on experience right away, the sudden transition from endless monotony to frenzied activity left his head spinning. Welcome to the real world, kid. It's time to put on the big boy pants and get to stepping.

As it turns out, getting experience never ended on the job. It developed into a chaotic sort of routine, but diving into Delphi's underbelly was like nothing else. Even if it wasn't in the way he was expecting, Mateo grew into his role and found satisfaction in bringing down the ones who deserved justice. Sometimes he felt he was no better off tethered to his superiors than he was undergoing so-called criminal therapy, but all it took was the reminder of those restrictive walls and the haunted look in the eyes of the other patients that had mirrored even his own for him to think differently. For better or for worse, hunting dog or no, his lot in life was still better than rehabilitation any day of the week.

Four years passed with his unpredictable work, and here March is again. It's an anniversary of some kind, but Mateo isn't the type to celebrate, so the date passes without comment.

The inside of the armored truck transporting Enforcers from the main offices to the on-site location is silent and dark but for the holographic screen that lit up the small space with the details of their latest assignment. Mateo pays that little mind, squinting against the unwelcome light source from behind his shades. More often than not, it's one of the Inspectors in their team that brings him up to speed on the situation, which suits him just fine.

Free at last, and Mateo is finally able to stretch his legs. "Glad we could stop when we did because god damn, I don't know how well the holo-interface would have taken to contact with piss. Didn't exactly want to be footing the bill for repairs, but hell, a man's got to do what a man's got to do."

Flippant is less an adjective and more a way of life for him on the job. Let no man, woman, or variation thereupon say he can't be dead serious when the need calls for it, but every so often, the switch flips and he goes from stoic chessmaster to chatty jackass at the drop of a hat. It's an unfortunate genetic habit that leaves him predisposed to rambling, but if it gets a few cracked smiles eases the tension before a case, then it works out.

“Alright then.” Enough horseshit; it's down to business. “What’ve you got for me?”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

After a lifetime spent with every breath another moment closer to the day he would eventually lose everything he had, Mateo feels he should be better equipped to handle death when it comes knocking at his door, slips its way into his bed, and gently, lovingly, chokes him the fuck out.

He wakes knowing something is wrong.

It's a feeling that settles itself in the confines of his ribcage, expanding and contracting with each shallow breath he gulps down, hair damp with sweat, heart pounding as if he'd just finished the flight of his life. He fights his way out of bed, tangled sheets tripping him up as he struggles to rise, and doesn't bother changing from his nightclothes before he's out the door and in the corridor separating his chambers from the rest of the palace suites.

Dawn hasn't yet arrived, but it feels like he's overslept because the sounds of servants bustling from place to place just beyond his private rooms is apparent. Mateo hears a wail from somewhere distant and can't tell whether it's real or something his racing mind and paranoia spurred on by nightmares made up. There are no guards stationed at his doors, and that's worrying. No matter how much he maintained that he was fully capable of defending himself, there had always been a pair of shadows looming long after he'd retired for the night, steady, silent, and watchful of any threats that might catch the youngest prince unaware.

The Hawk's Keep is in mourning.

It was an arrow that went wide, made for punching through air resistance and finding its mark of feathers and flesh. Despite the danger of flying in the open where a squad of raven guards could only be half as effective should something go amiss, the avian king had insisted on flying to the border between their lands and the Serpiente territory personally. When their charge had been shot down, it was up to the accompanying ravens to shift back to human form and find safety at the Hawk's Keep, where he spent the night fighting for his life. Mateo might have found it in him to admire that sense of responsibility once, but look where it had gotten him.

Now Mateo has just lost a brother, a father, and a mentor in the span of a few desperate hours.

His people are restrained as a matter of course; outward displays of emotion are seen as a dishonor to the dead and a disgrace to the living, but in that moment, Mateo thinks he could forget every belief of avian reserve drilled into his head as a child who wept his way through every tumble of flight practice and yelled himself hoarse at each lost contest of strength. Still, he isn't that child anymore, and it's the knowledge that there is more left on his shoulders in the wake of this terrible certainty that keeps his expression in place where it belongs.

Inhale. The king is dead. Exhale. Long live the king. Mateo closes his eyes and shifts into a form whose every feather is as familiar to him as the feel of his own skin. The process is quick, natural as breathing. It's said in tales meant to frighten children that there exists a race of people whose transformation is an abomination, their punishment in the form of unwilling shifts and gruesome, painful transition, a horrific in-between state that one will suffer forever if they don't brush their teeth or stay away from strangers.

The golden hawk puts that thought out of its head completely and thinks only of the air current beneath its wings. The Keep is designed for air to flow in from outside, providing enough of a lift to keep Mateo buoyant as he glides past the many suites set aside for guests the royal family favors and into an area populated by palace staff. His avian form isn't missed, now that there is one less member able to take a hawk's shape.

The reminder is enough to make his bird's heart beat in a frenzy even louder than before. He needs to stop. The sudden shift back, too quick for him to get any true enjoyment out of flying, only serves to disorient him further but this time, there are witnesses. Mateo braces himself against a wall, the stone cool against the elevated heat of his palms, and waves away the concern of Keep servants. He's got this. He just needs to take a moment to put himself back in order.

Unfortunately he isn't allowed that much, since before he can truly get his wits together, he catches a sparrow waffling over whether to approach him when he's obviously distressed. Weary beyond belief but still no shirker, Mateo waves her over and listens as she tells him that his presence is needed in the receiving chambers. Guests, at this hour, and after so much chaos? At least it explains the lack of guards; the Keep's soldiers must be on high alert and eager to prove their competence in the wake of a failure that had cost them their ruler's life.

Mateo the man will have to grieve later. Right now, Mateo the heir to the throne is needed on the welcoming committee.

Some distant part of him wonders what could await him, whether it was another avian rushing to pay their respects, a serpent soldier captured and held for questioning, or perhaps a member of another race like the Mistari tigers. Whatever the case, Mateo is hardly in the mood, but a good little nestling needs to bow his head and keep calm like all is right with the world no matter the circumstances.

The Hawk's Keep boasts a spacious area for receiving guests, the chambers bright and airy even now that the sun is only just beginning its ascent. Mateo sweeps in, refusing to let his eyes jump to the pair empty thrones set in the middle of the room, preferring to stand and looking for all the world like he hadn't just rushed in wearing only his pajamas.

Score one for avian hospitality. Mateo's gaze is as keen-eyed as his second form, giving all occupants of the chambers a once-over. The guards are stone-faced, the perfect example of their race's famed reserve, maids are waiting in the wings with the hopes that he'll have need of them, Mateo himself is looking rumpled and unprofessional, and the reason for this abrupt meeting... Well. They're another story entirely.

"Welcome to the Keep." His voice is still hoarse from sleep and from grief, but he's pleased to note that it's kept even. That would have to be good enough. "I'm sorry that we couldn't offer better accommodations, but given recent events..." Mateo trails off there, unable to articulate the enormity of it all. Pressing forward and ignoring that train of thought completely, he instead changes tactics. "What brings you here?"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The streets were deserted. His footsteps were the only ones that sounded against the pavement where there might have been thousands of people milling about, surrounding him in a sea of other bodies in an effort to attend to whatever business they had. In fact, there were plenty of people only just that morning, before something had caused all of them to abandon their pursuits and run to whatever shelter they could find as fast as they could find it.

The mists were out today.

They came along suddenly, covering cities and suburbs alike in a dense blanket that lasted far too long to be natural. People mostly ignored them and went about their day anyway, if only to show that they wouldn't be beaten by what they considered a slight inconvenience. After all, it only showed up on occasion in the early mornings, and who would care if it meant just a little extra caution when driving to work once the day began? Until they began to arrive earlier, stay later, and grow thicker as the months passed. Technology shorted, power failed, animals ran for cover, and humanity had no idea of what to make of them.

That was when the mists had started killing. Not everyone and not all at once, but it did happen to those that risked stepping out into the mists, drawing in the air that billowed around them only to have it invade their lungs and stay there, filling all airways and choking them. The only way to stop the attack would be to retreat indoors, where the mists didn't encroach and people could breathe easy. If alone outside, one could claw and gasp all they liked before they eventually dropped like stones, but with nobody there to drag them back to safety, they were as good as dead. No one left their homes alone.

No one except Vin, that was.

The mists welcomed him, curling around him like a playful pet, thin white tendrils circling his outstretched hand and tickling his fingers that danced as if he were striking ivory keys in midair. He figured they liked the attention, and while he'd be called a hundred different kinds of idiot for thinking that they had something like a personality, it was more based on gut feeling than anything he observed for himself. They never behaved oddly if he was in the company of somebody else, acting only as ordinary mists would, and so that left him with nobody to show the phenomenon to.

He found it easier to travel alone anyway, and as he passed by a fruit stand left toppled over by somebody else's quick getaway, Vin figured nobody would miss an apple if he plucked it from the ground, shined it on his shirt, and took a bite. The crunching followed his footsteps as he continued on his way. Street signs were hard to make out with the mists obscuring the lettering and without mentioning his already weak eyesight, but Vin could just manage to make out the one that signaled he was on the right track.

He had to get his bearings now before trying to travel any great distance, because when it came to his particular method, while it was pretty freakin' convenient, it wasn't exactly the best when it came to navigating. Vin could only point himself in the right direction to prepare and off he went, hoping and praying that no stray breezes set him off-course all the while. The mists around him grew agitated, as if sensing what he was about to do, and within a few moments, the space surrounding him was completely clear.

Vin inhaled. Exhaled. Then closed his eyes and felt himself scatter apart.

It wasn't as if he'd just blown himself up in some cinematic shower of blood and guts, although that would have been pretty cool in its own right if he could figure out how to put himself back together. The feeling was a difficult one to try and explain, but it was more like he was pushing something away from himself, and if he concentrated, that something would give way and he would find himself light as a feather. Even lighter than that! He had no body to speak of, but the parts of him that were Vin mingled with the parts that were Not Vin, and to anybody else, it would seem as though he had disappeared into a whiff of air. In fact, that might be exactly what had happened; he'd never seen himself do it, after all.

That done, the mists were eager to settle back into the place they'd left vacant where he had just been standing, and Vin felt buoyant as they greeted him with even more enthusiasm than before. He held the picture of the direction he wanted to go in his mind (did he even have a mind at this point?) and allowed the mists to carry him along. This ability of his was only useful when the mists were about, and he could only travel as far as they were able to reach before he had to pull the pieces of himself back in one place again, but as long as he was under their cover, he could go anywhere within their confines and even move along with them during their slow crawl onward to other nearby cities and towns.

He had been going on like that for some time before he hit a sudden... Something. It was as if there was a wall in front of him, at once there and not there and totally unlike a typical building that he could simply go around and regroup on the other side. Feeling panic beginning to mount, Vin scrambled to call each scattered bit of him back, forming his body into solid matter again, but in his haste, it seemed he had forgotten a few key parts.

Vin dropped heavily onto the ground, folding like an an abandoned rag doll, and looked up only to find that it was a person he had run into. Never once had he gotten wind of people going out into the mists while he was testing out the limits of his newfound power, and now it had to happen while he was stark naked, of all things. "Uh..." Vin cleared his throat, words proving difficult with the necessary muscles so newly-formed. "Any chance you could... scrounge me up something to wear, maybe?"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The summer heat was a palpable thing this time of year, a sticky, ugly thing that came into your house uninvited and settled its sweaty ass on your couch and started tearing into your bag of chips without so much as a quick, "Hey, how ya doin'." It was underneath an oppressive blanket of the stuff that Luca toiled in little more than boxer shorts (patterned with pink hearts and cherry-red lips) and a wifebeater (patterned with perspiration and a lifetime of sadness.) Bed unmade, all imaginable surfaces strewn with clutter. There he was on the floor, a centerpiece in a collage of shitty Polaroid photos, hurried sketches of upcoming comic strips, a world-weary laptop set off to the side looping a remix of a remix of a cover of some song that was so underground, nobody even knew the name of the group that produced it. The night air was muggy and there wasn't even a breeze, much less anything able to serve as a replacement for his piece of shit air conditioning unit that had finally given up the ghost a couple months back.

Luca Reyes was a self-professed jack of all trades who dabbled in too many aspects of the arts to count, and he was being stalked by one of his nightmares.

He could see it there, peering at him through a crack in the door he'd left slightly ajar, gawking at him with too many eyeballs and reaching out with its feelers to taste the air and catch a whiff of his terror. It might have worked, another day when he felt diminished, when there was less of him to hold together and not enough left over to care about not completely freaking out. Today was a good day, he could feel it, and so he kept his poker face in place and willed his heart to get the fuck out of his throat and back into his chest where it belonged.

The problem was sleeping. It always was. Luca had no idea how he'd managed to get such a bum rap, but where other people dreamt of freefalling and showing up to class in nothing but their underwear, he'd gotten forests where the trees spoke to him in a language he was never able to understand, darkened catacombs where the dead watched, and birds. Always the birds. Among other things. For as long as he could remember, Luca's dreams had never been his own. He was a bit character in a play that would have made Lovecraft and Freud mutually jack each other off in complete and utter glee and it was something he had never quite learned to live with. Tolerate, maybe. Barely. But the terror that came with closing your eyes for even a second wasn't something anybody should have to live with.

When he was eight, Luca recalled waking up to find a cup in his hands. An ordinary enough cup, smooth and white and perfectly featureless, but one that he'd never seen before in his life. When he'd used it to pour a glass of juice, it started singing a tune that was both whimsical and foreign to his ears, as though he were hearing the sound from underwater. Everything that popped out from his head came with their quirks. An apple that pulsed in different pastel colors. A Zippo lighter that shot tiny fireworks into the air instead of a flame. There were all sorts of party tricks taking up space in his room, begging to be used. He'd found no way to get rid of the things he dreamed up short of destroying them, and that wasn't really much of a solution at all when there were other things that ended up getting out when he couldn't stop them.

The only thing that seemed to work even some of the time was to simply wake up. If he stopped sleeping before the dreams finished, there would be nothing in his hands, nothing new trailing after him practically oozing with malice. Luca has died in his sleep more times than he can count and he shuddered to think of what the dreamthings would do if they ever got a hold of him in the waking world. Alarms were what he turned to, on his phone, on his nightstand, every hour on the hour. Sometimes things managed to squeak through with less than an hour of sleep, but those were the innocuous things, ones he could handle.

It seemed his subconscious needed a little more time to craft something truly horrible for him.

It was a temporary fix at best. There was only so much disruption Luca could cause to his sleep schedule before his body gave out and he was forced to sleep for hours on end, and that's when the nightmares waited for him upon waking up. No two were exactly alike and ran the gamut of disturbing to absolutely terrifying, and the only way to get rid of them was to kill them. (He'd always known there'd be some use to the swords stashed away in the linen closet, and even if it made laundry a bitch and a half, it was worth it in the end.)

Now, though. Now one watched him, and Luca made every effort to appear unaware of what he was seeing. He'd gotten good at that (had to, nobody liked seeing a kid jumping at shadows and running from nothing), because sometimes pretending made them keep to themselves and just watch. It was when they caught him looking that they turned on him, and Luca didn't know what they were, not exactly, but he knew what they wanted, and it was him. Dead. Done for. They'd managed plenty of times in the dream world, but it was never enough.

The summer heat was a palpable thing this time of year, a sticky thing ugly as a nightmare and just as mean, and on the floor there he was, a centerpiece that had just made the mistake of meeting one of its dozens of eyes. Shit. Gone were his plans of feigning a stretch, getting up, and getting the hell out of dodge. He needed to be gone, now, and so it was without any sort of preamble that Luca shot to his feet and dove out the window.

Had he been back in the apartment complex he'd grown up with, it would have been a deadly drop, but luckily here and now there were these amazing things called fire escapes, and he used one to clamber down to the ground and tear out of there as fast as he could. From the cawing that was part raven's croak and part hound baying for blood, he knew the nightmare was in hot pursuit, but if he could just put enough distance between the two of them, if he could just get somewhere else, he could calm down enough to think of a game plan and holy shit was it normal to feel like your heart was beating faster than the Energizer Bunny on some seriously good coke?

No time. At this hour in the night, there weren't many people around, but the streets were far from deserted as he shot as far away from his building as he possibly could. Bare feet pounded against the sidewalk, and it was only dimly that Luca realized he'd left without getting dressed or slipping on some shoes. There were better things he could think of now, but all that looped over and over in his head was: "Aw, fuck, I'm gonna die in my boxers."

Not pleasant, to say the least. He could feel the hairs on his arms raise despite the heat and knew his pursuer was close. It was only a matter of time before he finally tired, gave out, gave up, and then the dreamthings would finally get what they wanted, and he would be gone with nobody left to even give a shit about--

About. About the fact that Luca's nightmare had just barreled past him and headed straight for somebody else. Oh, hell. "Oh, holy shit," he couldn't help gasping out, the shock enough to make him slow but not enough to stop. This was no time to be thinking, not now, so Luca turned that part of his mind off and made the rest concentrate on the only thing he could do now: Throw himself in the monster's path.

Luca thought he'd be no stranger to dying by now. He would be wrong.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Again?"

The protest came naturally, delivered with equal parts exasperation and impatience at having her no doubt Very Important Business interrupted. Said business happened to be a book whose cover boasted a key to the inner workings of the human mind and how to navigate the treacherous threads of thought and flow, but in actuality, Azalea had switched the dust jackets and was thumbing through the Lord Anton Calfeld’s torrid exploits involving his brother's betrothed with reckless abandon. "Ooh," she murmured, her attention momentarily captured by a particularly ridiculous descriptor of the human anatomy. If she could only find her highlighter, her motivational list of instances that proved beyond the shadow of a doubt she could out-write any of these published hacks would grow ever-larger.

"Azie." The sugary sweet nickname made her cringe, only to press her nose even further into the spine of her book. At eye level, so close she could focus on nothing else, the word 'moist' was displayed proudly in stark black ink, which was so much worse that Az reluctantly withdrew to face the music. Liza Goodwin--"Miss Eliza" to her students--besides being her mother, was also the handler for a zoo of supposed adults that behaved more childishly than the underclassmen at her previous school. It went to show that age was not an indicator of maturity, as even though she was three years younger than most of her peers, Azalea at least could manage to keep herself from passing out in the attractive bushes that dotted the school grounds on a Saturday evening.

Miskatonic University might not have normally granted entrance to a girl just shy of her seventeenth birthday, but Azalea had managed to cut a striking figure. Her every action was precise, her words carefully chosen and intimidatingly complex, and her self-assurance that onlookers thought effortless all added up to a girl that seemed wise beyond her years. It also helped that her mother happened to have a mysterious amount of pull with the Dean of Admissions, given that she was a prominent figure in the science department and could charm any miser out of his fortune.

Az was not so charming. Her area of expertise focused on getting underneath others' skin, intentionally or not, and it didn't do her any favours when it came to jealous colleagues. She was weary of the accusing stares of her peers, the whispers that followed her, the condescending tones of the rare adults who deigned to interact with her. She was already unusual enough that lying low and keeping her head down might have been a smart course of action, but Az always had a bit of a problem with her pride and made it a point to outperform in any areas she could.

Pride or not, her mother was not to be dissuaded. Saccharine to strict in two shakes of a cat's tail, she was met with the dreaded kryptonite of all moody teenagers intent on rebellion: The Full Name. "Azalea Marie Goodwin, you are going to march straight down to the boys' dormitory and give your brother his lunch. Who knows what kind of things those rough-and-tumble boys would get up to if they're left alone? How else will Mommy know if he's eating properly? It's a good thing that I don't have to keep an eye on my little baby now that you're here with me. Worrying over the both of you is turning this poor old woman grey!"

Az bit back the urge to remark that William was eating properly and then some; he had the jaw-dropping ability of any growing boy to consume anything and everything in his path, edible or not. Why she was stuck as the errand girl whenever poor Willy needed a tissue for his sniffles was beyond her, but she was fairly certain that he liked her visits as little as she did. Lord Calfeld would have to wait. It was with a heavy sigh and much unintelligible grumbling that Az swiped the offending package from Liza's flawlessly manicured hands. It was the worst stereotype imaginable, a brown paper bag with her brother's name scrawled on it in looping cursive. She knew that if she bothered to check the contents, they would be equally pedestrian and probably accompanied by an encouraging note she'd pulled straight from some handbook or another.

No time to waste. If she was kept waiting any longer, Liza might deem it necessary to pull out her next method of attack from a vast arsenal: The Foot Tap. Azalea stood from her chair, privately lamenting the loss of its plush cushion, before an odd sensation of vertigo overtook her and suddenly it wasn't her mother's office she was standing in. It was only for the briefest of moments, but she could just manage to glimpse the drab grey of fog and a dark expanse of water just beyond before it was gone and she was left with watering eyes and a pounding head. "Ugh." This again. She blinked a few times to find her mother staring at her anxiously, hands outstretched as if to calm a skittish horse.

"Baby, are you alright? Was it another one of--"

"I'm fine," Az cut her off, voice low and sounding not at all like herself. Rather than endure a round of rapid fire questioning, she swiped her coat as she left the room, shrugging into one side and letting the other sleeve trail behind her until she was outside. The day came with a chill that served as the first sign winter would be upon them soon. Alright, so maybe it was rude of her to turn tail and run when her mother was only trying to help, but Az didn't want her to know that she was having visions again.

It had started when she was thirteen, strange flashes that came without warning and only lasted for an instant. Azalea was terrified, convinced that it meant she'd gone mad, the scholarly texts she tore through telling her quite clearly that this was how it started. In tears, she'd gone to her mother, no longer able to keep it secret, needing five tries to make the words come as shaky and unsteady as she felt. Liza had pulled her close, stroked her feather-soft hair and cupped her cheeks until the sobs had petered out into sniffles, and told her she would be alright.

Distraught as she was, Azalea didn't miss the cryptic mumble of how her mother had hoped the day wouldn't come.

Though she had been instructed to tell her mother whenever she had one of her spells and to detail exactly what she saw, Az was stubborn, convinced she could manage it if only she could piece together what it meant. That was obviously information she wouldn't get from her mother, so she had stopped sharing and instead pretended that they never happened. All the while, Liza would pretend to let her get away with it. It was an odd sort of dynamic they had, but for all the fault she saw in her mother, Azalea could never bring herself to hate her.

Having walked the path to Will's dorm so many times, her feet carried her there even while she was focused so wholly on her own thoughts and on the wicked ache that still pulsed inside her head with every heartbeat. This had better be worth it. He had better get down on his knees and prostrate himself in front of her for deigning to deliver his PB&J and juice box right to his door. The campus was empty, devoid of boys lounging about here and there, and it might have been a bit nippy about but surely there must be someone--

No.

Not someone.

Something.

The word "monster" came to her unbidden just as the thing with rank breath and claws and far too many teeth rushed her with frightening speed. Suddenly, there were three perfect punctures in her gut where none were before, and Az felt herself fade as her body dropped to the ground.

---

Cold. The kind of cold that leeched all thoughts of warmth from her mind. Did she have a mind anymore? Or was her consciousness simply floating, buoyant in a current that had her drifting where she could think nothing and be nothing. It was so gentle that surely she could fight it if she'd had a mind to, but that brought the question of minds up again, and she was so tired of pondering for one lifetime. Better to let it take her where it would, much better than thinking troublesome thoughts of resistance...

There was nothing. But now there was something, a very real something that didn't seem the type of something to stick her in the middle. It was a person, dragging at her harder than the river did (yes, it was a river, that was right, she remembered the river from her vision.) Did that mean this was destined? If there was no fighting fate, she didn't see why she should bother, but this person seemed frighteningly persistent. Life. She had to think of life.

Her name was Azalea Goodwin, and her life was supposed to be a thing of greatness.

All at once, Az was fully alert, the lingering cold of the river causing her to shudder. One look at her apparent saviour left her unimpressed; couldn't they have invested in a gallant white steed or something similar? Thoughts of knights and dragons and other such fairy tale pomp was enough to drag a manic laugh from her, one that was quickly cut off. This was no time to get giddy, Goodwin. It was time for action. Azalea schooled her features back into what she hoped looked remotely professional, but take the frenetic energy away and that left her only with a bone-deep terror. Fighting all the way to put it in a snug little box where she could deal with it later, she took a deep breath to steady herself. "I'm going to assume that all hope is not lost and that I'm not quite dead yet. If you have any evidence to the contrary, I'll ask you to keep it to yourself while I figure out a way to get us both out of here."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

If there was one benefit that Azalea could ascribe to her own kind of fortune, aside from the fact that it was the only thing keeping her afloat as she drifted from town to town, it would have to be the awareness that came with it. People and objects held history, their every encounter shaping them if only slightly, and every small thing has an impact on every other thing in ways that weren't noticeable to anyone without her particular knack.

They'd called it the golden touch once.

The memory makes her laugh until it doesn't, and then it makes her feel as though she's ready for another round of sitting on mens' laps, blowing on their dice, laughing at the appropriate times, and trying her very hardest to inch her leg away from a straying hand at any given moment. It would be bad for business for Az to explain in between dry-heaves that skin-to-skin contact was a major faux-pas. By then she would be known as the very memorable woman who tossed chunks right onto the ugly paisley carpet of a casino floor instead of just another tittering floozy perched atop the knee of some high-roller or another, and she banked on being unremarkable.

The routine was perfect. Slip up to the second floor where the high stakes were set in her Saturday night best. (Any casino worth its salt has one; gotta separate the riffraff from the privileged somehow, after all.) Charm some arrogant jackass into keeping her as his good luck token. (As if she were some kind of trifle to be worn around one's neck.) Take her cue to laugh at his jokes and bemoan his missteps. (Not the other way around like her instincts told her; this was about survival, not saving face.) Graciously accept the offer to try her luck. (All it took was a bat of the lashes and a gloved hand dancing feather-light on a thigh.)

Off came the silk and her hands were finally bared for all to see.

Cards were easiest, each component of her hand eager to tell her which of its fellows had been shuffled beside it. That was simple work, piecing together a map of what went where and to whom, with no need for her to study facial expressions or feel any hesitation in asking for a hit. Then Az would sit pretty with a modest little sum, flounce away to go powder her nose, and leave with her spoils in hand while her latest Romeo went on the hunt for another rabbit's foot.

All in all, it made for a solid plan, and it was much easier to keep a low profile rather than do what she had in her early days of grifting, which included baiting each dealer into a challenge of wits and earning herself quite the reputation in the process. Older, wiser, and much craftier, she now recognised the behaviour for what it was: a one-way ticket to self-destruction. Which wasn't to say Azalea had mended her ways by any means, merely that she had gone about it with a mind for subtlety.

As simple as it was to get this kind of easy money, it certainly didn't mean that she was used to a lavish lifestyle blazing trails up and down each coastline in search of another mark. Caution was necessary, and so she used this little parlour trick sparingly. Her biggest worry lay in juggling her numerous expenses and making what might seem like a hefty cache stretch over weeks and months. It wasn't easy, but then again her only other choice was to stop this tour de farce and settle in one place again. Motionless. Static. Unable to move forward.

Trying very pointedly not to prod that particular sleeping bear, Az instead tried some mental calculations on her walk back to her motel room to figure out what needed paying immediately. Food, laundry, extra data for her phone should she need to leave the haven of free wifi in a hurry--

Drinks.

Not that Az had suddenly been struck with the craving to get plastered at some seedy bar (and not that she could afford it, either), but as the neon sign from Lou's Hole in the Wall cut through the rain, she had a flash of some niggling sensation in the back of her head that felt strangely reminiscent of her own brand of precognition. Though using it consciously produced much more focused results, every now and then this nagging feeling would arise and refuse to take its leave until she had dealt with its source.

There was the possibility that someone or something inside had the potential to cause her luck to turn around, and Azalea was determined to get to the bottom of it.

If nothing else, at least it would make for some easy shelter from the rain. Immediately after she entered, there came that distinctive cocktail of tobacco smoke, alcohol, and enough cheap cologne to drown in. Az had gained a certain tolerance for it during her extensive town-hopping, but it did little to improve her mood as she snagged the barstool closest to the entrance and ordered whatever looked least likely to give her gut rot.

One casual scan around the room while she sipped told Az nothing; the bar was full enough that no one stood out immediately, and her vague hunch wasn't enough to point her in the right direction either. What good did having spidey-sense do for her if it had to be so damn nonspecific? It looked like logic would have to be the one to produce results, and right now, it told her there was only one course of action. Mouth pressed into a grim line, Azalea finished off the remainder of her drink and decided it was time to do what she did best:

Turn up the charm.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In all its years spent in the service of unsightly creatures it could do away with using nothing but a thought, it assumed it had seen everything there was to humanity. They were all the same, stripped down from their social classes and races and all the silly distinctions they made all for the excuse to hate one another. The same hopes, the same fears, the same actions driven by greed, hatred, and terror of the unknown. Even their quaint notions of love, pure and true, were nothing more than possession wearing a mask with a fresh coat of paint. After so long spent repeating the same refrains over and over again, all throughout history, human hearts held no temptation for it anymore.

Human souls, however, were another story entirely.

For a human's soul, it would bear the indignity of servitude. For a human's soul, it would debase itself, use its power in service for another, fulfill any of their tiny, petty desires so long as it got what it wanted in the end. There was so much preaching about the dangers of one's immortal soul falling prey to evil and corruption, but what did humans actually do to protect the all-important culmination of their spirits? Too much talk, too little action. Each day offered a brand-new stain on the blank slate of a person's soul, another black tarnish or chip in the finish that left it damaged, blighted, oh so pitiful, and--

Exquisite.

For a long while, it had been without a fresh meal to sustain it; the results of its last contract had been enough to keep it occupied for a few dozen decades, but now, the faint pangs of hunger were beginning to creep into an overwhelming voracity that clawed at what passed for its innards and drove it to seek out another poor, unfortunate soul to covet once more. Human suffering was abundant, everywhere it cast its gaze, pain and desperation hid everywhere, but few were daring enough to resort to calling it in an effort to alleviate their burden.

Man must be falling on truly hard times to use such desperate means to accomplish their ends, but it was not one to judge; that was the work of some other, older power it had no interest in whatsoever.

The circle used to summon it was nothing but a beacon, a child's plaything providing an easy guiding light, but for lesser creatures, they could be used as a prison to trap them and keep them beholden to the summoner's will. It could feel the confines of the circle clench, attempting to shackle it and force it into the role of a tool waiting to be used. With all the effort it took a mortal creature to yawn, it sent a flicker of its power outward, and the barrier collapsed, the circle's light fading like a candle abruptly snuffed out.

It was a being of refined taste, but a creature that is not a human has no need of human conventions. For convenience's sake, its forms were many and its preferences shifted as often as the weather. To give its would-be master a scare, the shadowy mass that comprised its body shifted, forming the length of a massive foreleg, a bristling tail, and a long snout that held a row of vicious, hungry teeth. The dense fog, a product of its summoning, spread throughout the room and cleared enough space around it for its summoner to get a crystal clear view of just what it was they’d caught. Within that fog, what looked to be other shapes of hulking beasts circled just out of sight. A piercing howl split the air and held for a moment, then two, before falling silent.

Alright then. Enough fun. It was down to business, and that meant conducting negotiations in a form better suited to persuasion.

To say it was a man was fundamentally incorrect, but if given the choice, being seen as a man suited its needs more often then not, so a man he now was. The rest of the details were chosen in a hurry with no real regard for aesthetic sense or deeper meaning; dark skin, darker hair tied in a multitude of twisted braids, long in the face, limbs, and overall stature. The one aspect that never changed was the set of his eyes; a deep color so dark that only close inspection revealed them as an unnatural purple, and by then most were dead too fast to make special note of them.

"Well, now," he said, voice deep and with the sort of bland professionalism reflected in the generous curve of his mouth. "What is it you'll be requiring of me?"