(tagclosity)

I run as fast as I can, not daring to look behind. Knuts steps are a steady, swift boom behind me. I also hear noisy crunching, but I can't stop to ask questions. Ten minutes should be enough to get us to Miracleman, assuming nothing screws up, which is something I try never to assume.

We round the corner, barely keeping on our feet. Half a block more, and we're home free. I feel a momentary glow of smugness. Working out has really paid off.

Except, of course, for the rather obvious minions of the damned jiggling all over the path between us and Miracleman's door.

I glance at Knut. "Ideas?"

He barely pauses before striding over to the nearest thing, grabbing it bodily and stuffing it down his mouth. It goes down in a single slurp.

"Jesus, Knut!"

"They're jello. Not bad." He grabs another, and another.

Jello? Fuck! I can't eat jello, it would kill my blood sugar levels. Besides, I never liked the stuff. I pull a handful of powdery spheres from my pack, and fling them to the pavement.

The Instagolem rise, ready for instruction.

"Eat those jello guys, whole! No chewing!"

The great thing about Instagolem is that they never look at you funny, no matter what inane blathering come out of your mouth.

Bloody Unicorn horn in hand, Deimos start the trek back to the lair. I have Deimos review the procedure as we walk along. Every once and while a bystander casts a curious glance at the horn, or maybe they just like my cape.

"Boss, it says the horn needs to be dipped in the lifeblood of a living sentient creature as they draw their last breath before use." Says Deimos as he continues his analysis.

I stab a passerby in the heart, pausing long enough for him or her to die off. "Good of you to mention that before we got back." This seems to have elicited a reaction from some of my fellow pedestrians so I summon a few hell hounds to keep them busy and out of my way.

"Anything else we don't have in the lair?"

"Nope, we're good boss."

"Excellent, then let us not delay." I summon up a horse, well sort of a horse. It's huge, black, horse-shaped thing that snorts flames, leaves burning prints as it's hooves wound the earth with every step, and just generally give everyone evil looks with it's beady little red eyes. I mount the beast and help Deimos up and the beast swiftly takes us back to the lair to start the ritual.

On my way home from school, I pass a morose-looking Ringwraith. He's noticeably horseless.

"Hey, don't you guys usually have, you know, mounts as black as night whose hoofbeats make the very earth tremble?"

He nods. I didn't know it was possible for someone with no visible face to look so gloomy.

"You piss off Sauron, or did some new Big Bad take it?"

He hold up two skeletal fingers. Damn. Better go warn the proper authorities.

"Okay, then. Good luck finding the Ring, dude."

He shrugs, give me a thumbs-up sign, and heads on down the sidewalk. I continue in the opposite direction.

note: I'll have class most of tomorrow, so feel free to write me in wherever you see fit until I get back.

The thundering stops and is replaced by a silence more deafening. Smoke rises from where the great beast's hooves rest on the ground.

Made for motion and not for posing, it shifts its weight impatiently from leg to leg. The wizard is astride him, frowning, and a minion clasps tightly to maintain balance.

He frowns at me. They both do.

"Where do you want to start?" I ask.

"I fear I'm busy at the moment."

I raise my hand and a blinding sliver of light appears. Out of the sliver steps a demon. Not a very imposing looking demon. Not even a very demony looking demon, appearing rather like a slightly too-slender bald man with eyes slightly too large. If not for the fangs, forked tongue, and demonic tattoos, it could easily pass for a human.

The demon draws two hilts from it's belt and they grow blades so dark that the light simply collaspes around them. It advances towards the warrior, limbs flowing as if the bones were liquid.

"Have fun warrior." I will the stead foward and the landscape accelerates to a blur. I am too close to waste time with any more distractions.

The balance needed to be tilted towards the dark, but the wizard refuses my help.

As blade meets blade meets blade, the part of my brain unconcerned with fighting for my life pokes at the fabric of Blood to see how it shifts.

The demon's swords spin and crash towards me again. It's taut. I duck one and block the other, grimacing as the shock reverberates up my arm. But how taut? I dart aside, spin behind, and slide a blade between his ribs. Maybe the wizard can win on his own. The demon's not hurt, but being impaled is what's important -- now I can slice its head off from behind.

There's a pop, a sizzle, and an extremely noxious spell as the body falls apart around my longer blade.

Well, if I'm not going to aid evil, the least I can do is have a really long hot shower.

The wolf looks up at me.

"What? You heard him!"

"No, no he can't do it on his own. But I don't have to care precisely exactly right now, do I? Thank you."

Jasmine, I'm thinking.

I've been in possession of this place for about a month now. A three-storey house in the Georgian style (though it's apparently called al-Nahr'eysh -- it's not far from the border with the Medina), it presents an image of having reached some state of quiet equilibrium, and so has lost the need to keep pace with the changing world. The large first-floor windows welcome light and air into the house, while the smaller windows of the second floor allow me to watch some of the goings-on in the neighbourhood with a modicum of privacy. They also provide an uninterrupted view of the grounds attached to this property.

These are substantial. Dalrymple experienced its heyday when it was the centre of Sang Sacre's gay community. Since then it's struggled to find a new identity, and so the housing here is surprisingly affordable given its location. Al-Nahr'eysh used to be two separate residences, each fairly large in its own right. Yet it's located at the end of a cul-de-sac; for all its size the street frontage is no wider than that of a row house. It's roughly triangular, with the front gate at the apex. At the far end there's some river-frontage, and a stream cuts one corner of the property away from the rest. From the top floor the back yard would be about as large as a small park; but from ground level this isn't apparent. Hedges and birch-stick fencework has turned the better part of it into a maze of paths overgrown with flowering creepers, winding between numerous distinct sections. It's hard to tell just what the previous owner hoped to achieve; it has a slightly unfinished feel to it. But it's perfect for my purposes.

I've been busy with the gardens especially; most of my belongings remain packed in crates inside the house. They can wait; but with the delivery coming today, the grounds need to be ready. More than I could do on my own, of course.

Took a crew of four the better part of a fortnight to get it all in place. Good workers too, didn't ask too many questions; though they clearly thought one or two of the gardens were ill-advised, at best. People, I find, have an instinctive sense of balance. Even if they can't quite articulate it, imbalance makes them feel ill-at-ease. Apparent imbalance, I should say. It can be so hard to see the big picture sometimes.

In any case, I'm grateful for Sang Sacre's accommodating climate; there aren't many places such a diversity of vegetation could be expected to take root. Granted, they would only need to hold out for a week or so. The weather here won't be such a concern thereafter.

I can hardly wait.

Ugh. If the ad execs who first said "There's always room for Jell-O" were here, I'd grind them into gelatin.

"Is that the last of them?" Penny asks as one of the Insta-Golems peels a strawberry-flavored rib cage (complete with imbedded bananas) from the door of Miracleman's apartment.

I try to answer but belch instead. I think the skeletons are still fighting me. Lucky I have a stone stomach.

Zar scratches at Miracleman's door.