++An elf myself, I have seen the inner-workings of our society and have found its critical weakness as openly displayed as anything else about it. We lack solidity. The humans are unified in their suffering, and even now some among our own kind join them.++

  Chapter 47

  Reggie started sprinting once he was out of the asylum, and he’d already regretted his impulsive spasm of conscience by the time he was a half-mile away. What the fuck had he been thinking? It was so miserably obvious who’d done the breaking there, Walyn’s account alone would see it traced back to him.

  He had a few more hours to kill before his next meet-up with the union. Now that he knew the cockroaches were down there, Reggie had the sudden, mad urge to go down into the sewers again.

  Don’t, Sycily warned him.

  [I bet you’d win,] Dvo interjected.

  Reggie knew better than to try that, even if he’d not already been aware of how desperately Dvo wanted him dead. Instead he hunted out of the city, settling on a few ants—just like old times—and managing to find another of the oddly large ones now that he knew where that tunnel system was.

  +1 Celerity

  Progress to next Tier, 50/50.

  Evolution available. Would you like to evolve now?

  He thought about it for all of a second.

  “No.”

  Reggie needed more strength and fast. If he was suddenly restricted to feeding on Tier 3 creatures or above, he’d probably die before hitting Tier 4.

  He returned to town with time to spare, and decided on killing the hours with a bit more searching for a suitable weapon should he end up coming to blows with any of Lorwick’s vampires.

  That, and just a gun. With his transformations limited by secrecy, a firearm was suddenly far more useful than before. And Reggie had the money now.

  He also had his pick. There were rifles, which he’d read about in books but never gotten the chance to look into, and interesting multi-barreled things made to be handled with a lot of Strength that could hold several shots if you were able to haul around the extra iron. He even saw a nock gun, which he promptly ignored due to not being a fucking lunatic.

  [You are a lunatic.]

  Oh yeah, he’d forgotten. Well he still wasn’t using a gun that would disintegrate everything within three feet of its target.

  Reggie took his weapon of choice—a normal gun for a normal person—back to his accommodations and promptly stashed it under his shitty bed. If anyone broke in they’d probably find it, but then there were easier marks in richer parts of town. After that was done he headed off to meet with the union.

  He was nervous, still, approaching. The day hurt his eyes and left him irritable, the city surrounded him with life and made him…twitchy. Reggie hadn’t had the best experience with people and here they were all around him.

  Relax, calm down. You’re going to change things. You and the unions.

  His own optimism shocked him. When had Reggie started seeing this place as having actual hope? When had he started putting his bets behind the unions?

  Lots of things sounded good, it was the doing of them that made them messy. But most fell short of even trying. What more could he do than try with them?

  More people were gathered around the meeting place this time, and to Reggie’s shock they weren’t just human either. His first instinct at seeing the elves was to panic, maybe start throwing haymakers or sprint back to get his gun. Then he made himself pause and pay attention, noticed the obvious.

  The elves here weren’t wearing uniforms or badges of office, as far as he could tell they were just more workers. Workers without the capitalisation that was, any elf would hold one of the higher Classes after all, but nonetheless there seemed to be some degree of…solidarity was probably a strong word, but that. Maybe.

  Reggie kept his eyes to himself all the same as he moved past them, not in any particular mood to be friendly with any elf. It wasn’t that he hated them all of course, just that he hated all the ones he’d met, seen or heard of and had a hard time imagining any that he wouldn’t.

  Norman was looking hassled when Reggie finally found him, and not alone. There was another man with him, or rather an elf. Dressed no more nicely, though still seeming as if he wore a king’s finery. The illusion of elfishness, perhaps, bleeding through and warping the very stuff of his attire.

  “Finally,” Norman sighed as Reggie entered, “I was starting to worry you wouldn’t show up.”

  “Wouldn’t miss this for the world,” Reggie told him. He was glad for something to talk about, but it didn’t distract from the asylum. If anything Norman made it harder to keep from thinking about what he’d seen there. Reggie’s mind kept returning to the union head’s promise.

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  They’ll make it better, together they’ll do what you can’t. He told himself that half a dozen times before finally realising that Norman had kept talking. Reggie quickly sharpened his focus back and tried to catch up again.

  “This is Strygai,” Norman told him as he gestured to the elf, “and he’ll be doing most of the talking for us.”

  “Why?” Reggie asked, trying not to sound rude but accidentally spitting the question out like it were a burning projectile. The elf bristled, like elves did when they considered themselves slighted, but didn’t start screaming yet.

  “Because my diplomatic skills are well suited to this,” he explained with the tone of a man addressing one of the stupider living things he’d ever spoken to. Reggie eyed him, eyed Norman and got an almost apologetic look shot back at him.

  “Strygai, do you mind giving us a minute or two so I can brief Reggie?”

  “Of course, I shall wait outside,” the elf replied, gliding out and leaving them alone.

  “We’re using Strygai because elves don’t respect humans, and most of the people in power are elves. Our terms will be accepted far more, said the same way, if the speaker is one of them.”

  Reggie had started to suspect that anyway, nodding at the confirmation.

  “He’s a dick,” he pointed out.

  “He’s an elf,” Norman shrugged, “many of them are. He’s also useful, so I will use him. This movement of ours doesn’t have a chance without certain…compromises.”

  Compromises. One side says the other should starve and serve, the other says they should be equal. And they compromise. It made Reggie sick, but then he’d already debated pragmatism against doing what was right with himself enough times that he pushed past it quickly.

  “Alright,” he said. “Fine.”

  Norman seemed to know what he was thinking.

  “It’s for the best, John, it’s what we need to do.”

  “I said fine,” Reggie snapped. He said it with more heat than he’d intended, but then this whole thing was pissing him off. “I’ll do it. I won’t like it, I won’t accept it. You’re never going to make me do either. Just stop mentioning it so I can let it sink into the back of my mind and forget what it is I’m doing.”

  Norman smiled. “Fair enough, I was much the same in my youth. If you don’t mind one last bit of advice, though…I think many of us have been where you are. It gets easier, over time. It gets cooler. You accept things as they are, and if you never stop working to change them, you stop feeling that itch to do it all at once.”

  Reggie felt dread at that, rather than comfort. He didn’t want to stop feeling that itch. That itch showed he was still sane, it reminded him that the world was wrong rather than him. That itch was the itch of the only cow in a field that didn’t want to be cattle.

  “Thanks,” he said, instead of venting all that, “I appreciate that.” By which he meant the effort, though as usual Norman seemed to realise exactly what Reggie was thinking. He knew better than to push, as well, just nodding curtly and heading out of the room.

  “Let’s go,” he invited him.

  There were plenty of other people accompanying the group, which Reggie had known to expect already. He had no way of gauging their strength or competence, but if each of them was a Worker pushed up into the 20s for most Attributes then their little party was equal to…Maybe two Circumscribers, at a push.

  Sobering, but he didn’t think there was anything to gain by letting everybody else know of his insight. That Reggie already knew what a Circumscriber could do would only beg questions, and telling the lot of them that they had effectively no chance of mounting serious resistance against even a squad of the enemy’s elites would do nothing for morale. He kept quiet and walked with them all.

  Aldyral’s office was as towering and nasty-looking as ever. Reggie really hated giant buildings, or more specifically he hated that they were always for other people and not himself. This one seemed to be promising terrors held behind its walls. Once again, though, the luxury of choosing where he would go was not his, and so he just continued towards it with everyone else. They were granted swift entry at least, and found no impediments as they made their way up. Reggie counted guards on the way, as much to give himself something to do as for any practical purpose, and totalled around twenty eight. Not as many as he might have feared.

  But then, the four Circumscribers waiting outside the office were deadlier by far than all the human fighters on floors below them.

  “Everyone remember what they’re doing?” Norman asked the group with a whisper. Reggie did. Stand there and look scary, and hope that Aldyral knew better than to reveal who he’d seen him with when they last met. He nodded, and they entered.

  The office looked much as it had last time, save for one big difference. There was a dent in one of the marble walls. Kind of wide, a bit boxy. Easily two inches deep. If Reggie’s eyes didn’t deceive him, it had been caused by a fist. A very, very hard fist thrown into the wall with a great amount of force. Cracks crept outwards from the damage like strands of a spiderweb, and it left the otherwise pristine surface seeming diminished. Wounded, somehow. Like the wall would soon start bleeding and collapse.

  It didn’t of course, but seeing that drew Reggie’s eyes more cautiously to the man behind a desk right next to it. Aldyral had probably been the one to do that, might have even done it immediately after meeting with Reggie and Walyn as a way of venting his rage.

  Which meant that this elf’s physical abilities were very scary indeed.

  “Let’s get this over with,” he spat to the group, “I don’t have all day. What do you want to say?”

  Strygai stepped forwards and began speaking without further ado. Reggie had to admit, he was handling himself better—less cuntishly—when speaking to his fellow elf. He’d still have preferred Norman to be the one negotiating, but then Aldyral probably wouldn’t have and he was the one their choice had been made for.

  “We both felt that clash a few days ago,” Strygai began, “your guards as much as our Workers, let’s neither of us pretend otherwise. We both want to avoid having another conflict like that as much as the other does. Neither of us can weather the effects of it.”

  “You’re threatening me?” Aldyral asked, because he was an idiot.

  “We’re warning you,” Strygai corrected, “and letting you know that we’re aware you are not, in fact, able to ignore more than fifty wounded men among your force. Not while trying to police a city of millions. And we’re offering you the chance to avoid further problems like that. You have a vested interest in doing so just as we do, so why not cooperate and back us in our appeal for seeing our terms met? The City’s Patricians will be more likely to listen to us if you throw in your word urging them to.

  The overseer’s eyes narrowed with hostility.

  “You want me to betray my own peers?”

  Reggie didn’t know as much about elven ranks as he could have, but he understood the basics. Circumscribers were footsoldiers and guards, serving under Wardens. Wardens themselves were beholden to a Patrician, who tended to form councils of five or so and reign over a larger area.

  The overseer was one such Patrician. One of only five. As was so often the case, he seemed reluctant to turn his power against that of his social equals. This was going to be an uphill struggle…

  …But Reggie didn’t think the man looked impossible to convince, he was weighing things up in his head already.