Red Flux: A New Weird Quest for Justice, Freedom and the Self

[x] Run faster than you've ever run, straight through that window. They'll never find Atyche.

You turn, knowing you have only second, feel you breathe suck in deep, the rush of your blood, your legs pump as you hit the floor. You've got to get away. You've got to deny the thing inside you. You're across the room, remembering each thumping step, through the window. Glass crashes down all around you, a cascade of mirrors, a waterfall of screaming eyes.

Through it you see the witch standing, eyes locked on you. In the compressed flashbulb of adrenaline memory you see her smile. And then the pain hits, the glass and the fall. You feel a moment of weightlessness. That instant of flight, and then the street rushes up and you hit, pain everywhere, blood red rain splashing all around you, pouring onto you, onto everything. You're up again somehow, still running, legs pumping, the moist, strange taste of the air in your lungs, no breath to scream, no breath for anything but the pump of your legs, the desperate acceleration, passing windows and walls, clotheslines and ground cars. The bright lights of the city above, the glitter of the spotlight from a flier high up. A road ahead, empty and shattered concrete.

Silence, not even the sound of your breathing. The world blurs, acceleration. Red shift. Finally the world breaks around you like the window.



You wake up, shading your eyes. Your whole body aches down one side. Near you, a dumpster is overturned, the metal side dented and split open, a mass of black and orange rubbish bags across the street. Rain pours down, dripping on the dented metal. Did you do that?

You can't feel the Watcher's control. You blink, lifting your hands. It's absurd how good it feels.

Faint music drifts over to you, the leak of a headphone jack. You also can't feel rain on your face. You blink again and look upwards. A large plastic umbrella stretches over you, held in the arms of the dusky-skinned witch. She's put on a long leather coat with deliberately crude seeming runes painted on it. A headphone cable leads to one pocket, she's listening to music as she waits, and smoking a long gold tipped pipe. It doesn't smell like tobacco. Up close, in the sudden strangeness of what has happened, you almost forget to be afraid of her. The city dwellers believe that your people worship witches, but the truth is the Elindove fear them most of all, for you know of their power.

"Well now. You survived. I'm glad."



"The Watcher…"

"Still inside you, but disconnected from instructions." She helps you up, leaning you against the wall under the umbrella. "They don't handle the unexpected well. Don't really handle it at all. I was able to prevent this one from receiving further orders."

"Is it safe?"

"Not really, but you wouldn't need to take precautions for a while." She traces a finger down your arm. "Tattoos to keep it in, a few deep jewel settings to let you control it better."

"Can you remove it right now?"

"I could, but I'd need to blind you. Is that what you want?"

You think for a moment, weighing the terrible thing inside with the anticipation of what it'll feel like if she pulls out your eyes . . . You almost don't register what she said previously. "Wait, control it?"

"Yes of course. It must have told you. Used sweet words like symbiosis, harmony or duty to convince you you were becoming something more than you were. It's still there." Inside yourself, you feel it is true. There is a deep well of power within you, released by the ordeal you just experienced. Something else… something that you can only conceive of by its proximity to you.

You reach out to it, feeling the inert second presence at the margins of your mind react. It's not just in your thoughts but your body, your bones, your breath. Even your shadow seems different now, the edges less firm in the crisp lamplight above.

Prioritize 5 Hues
[ ] Amaranth: Protects you from attacks by exerting an inviolable causality.
[ ] Crimson: Channel orgone and water, the ingredients of the living world.
[ ] Flame: Channel primordial fire and prima materia, the ingredients of the world before life.
[ ] Oxblood: Allows you to upgrade the parameters of your physical body.
[ ] Vermillion: Dissolve into the tapestry and traverse vast distances.

"Or would you rather not have a watcher's abilities at your disposal?" Atyche remarks on your long silence.

"No… no… I… I can feel it." You hand crackles, the red rain swirling around it in a way that you'd find beautiful if you didn't intimately know the health risks of orgone this color. Your clothes too, seem to have mercifully survived the worst of all outcomes and left you in a decent state. "I'm going to need a moment to process this. How did this happen?"

"I can't say for sure." She sits down next to you, floating a little above the pavement because of her coat. "I must admit, when you broke through my door, when I saw the red rain start, I didn't think I'd survive. I'm very glad I did."

"What was… why… is this thing inside of me?"

"It's difficult to say." Atyche knocks her pipe. "From what I've seen, they prefer people who've been beaten down into compliance by arduous lives. The wretched poor, the desperate… policemen and corporate yesmen, all the same. My father once told me it was those with awful fates, but I don't think that's true."

"Heh…" hearing that stings, even though you resisted. You remember moments ago how it called your life wretched, as it was so purposefully. "I suppose even the Gods make mistakes."

"Oh, the Watchers aren't your or my gods Miss Sheridan."

"Servants of… something like one, then. Why did it make me try to kill you?"

"We are natural seers and fortune tellers. Before the modern age the people of my clan gave counsel to kings and heroes, and in this one performed activism and wrote philosophy to guide society away from dire fates." She looks less happy, resentful. "Imagine you are the servant of an ineffable machinery. The world obeys clockwork whims, turning in perfect harmony. The best outcomes are maximized. Would you not find it repugnant that someone is helping bend the course you set?"

"With my life? No."

"It's rhetorical, Miss Sheridan. And irrelevant. My clan are all dead, and I am the last. The young children have been spirited away to the corners of the world so that they might never know that once, they set the course of kingdoms."

"So now you're here. Hiding at the very bottom of the city in a tiny flat, with no one at your side."

"What exactly could I do? You saw, I could barely fight one watcher. No, it's better to hide, to play dead, to hope the world passes you by. There is no fighting this."

You snarl, feeling pour build inside you, and pull yourself up, the rain drawn in by your breath and swirling in your blood. There's a heat in your chest, a golden shimmer on your skin. It's making you whole. "And where are you intending to go now?" Aytche asks.

"I'm going to…"

[ ] Find Rayburn.
[ ] Get the book you borrowed.
[ ] Just get out of the rain and collect your thoughts.
[ ] Go home and sleep.