Render Unto Moloch v2 (MtAW)

The lecture hall is an ornate, almost unreasonably stuffy amphitheatre located in near the very center of the university campus. Presently, it holds several dozen students in various stages of fatigue and withdrawal, a pair of vaguely sadistic assistant lecturers drawn from the upper years at least as much by the prospect of seeing their prior suffering inflicting on a new generation as anything else, and a single tenured professor of such excessively concentrated starch you're quietly amazed he can actually bend his limbs.

"Very well then, ladies and gentlemen, that will suffice for today," the professor - Brown by name, and brown in garb, specifically an immaculately tailored tweed suit that you're amazed someone can actually bring themselves to wear - says in an arch voice, "I expect to have your assignments on my desk at least one hour before our next appointment, with all the usual stipulations and consequences applied."

You stifle a groan, not so much at a onerous nature of the work so inflicted upon you as at the almost tangibly condescending way the man insists on providing it. There is no possible explanation that can square the laboriously specific requirements Professor Brown requires with any practical gain, but it is almost insultingly easy to credit it with more ideological motives. The man is one of that infuriatingly common breed of aristos so fucking convinced of their superiority that they wrap all the way around into assuming those without their elevated pedigree must be dumber than the proverbial two short planks. It's ridiculous, god knows 'Brown' is a name as common as fucking mud, but if your professor was the kind of man to let that stop him you wouldn't think so badly of him in the first place.

Other students have applied for and received exemptions to some of the requirements. You know better than to bother asking.

Your laptop powers down with a half-audible hiss, and pausing only to rub the grit from half-forgotten sleep from your eyes you slide it away into your back and make for the exit at a brisk pace. The one virtue of an early morning lecture is that everyone else is sufficiently slow of mind and wit that you can generally slip out of the place unnoticed before you cross the path of someone inclined to give you shit for it, and despite your lingering paranoia to the contrary today you manage to achieve just that. The side door to the auditorium opens with a faint clang of misaligned joints and you slip out into the crisp autumn air beyond, slinging your bag onto your back as you go.

You'll need to set aside a decent chunk of time to work on your essay and brush up on the material that you'll be covering in the next class, but that won't be too difficult, and while you'd normally make a point of getting it out of the way as soon as possible in anticipation of the unexpected complications that bedevil you every second of every fucking day… well, today you have other plans.

You cross the courtyard at a brisk pace, half-frozen leaves stirring fitfully in the wind as you pass, and this time at least there are no throngs of birds to clutter the path. There is a faint itching between your shoulder blades, a twinge in your neck, small signs to be sure but you know, you know that if you stop to look there will be real weight behind them. You ignore the feeling as best you can and press on, shivering with what you tell yourself is only the cold as you pass through the shadow of the library's imposing bulk.

You had considered heading inside once your lecture had finished, seeking some clues or guidance among those tomes and grimoires you remember seeing among the more distant stacks the day before, but in the end you decided against it. There would be wisdom there, of that you have no doubt, but the trouble with an archive of supernatural lore is that it's the kind of thing that only exists by virtue of someone deliberately assembling it, and you'd rather not stumble across whatever weird or mysteriously powerful curator is in residence while still so fresh to the whole experience of… whatever this is.

Magic is real. It still seems faintly ridiculous, and yet…

You leave the campus grounds a few minutes later, slipping out through one of the wrought iron gates and blending in with the stream of foot traffic heading into London proper. There are halls of residence within casual walking distance of the central facilities, but there was no way in hell you were ever going to be able to afford that kind of rent, not even with all the help your parents could muster and what felt at the time like a generous loan from Her Majesty's Government. No, your accommodation is a good thirty minutes away, plus whatever margin of error you can afford to leave to account for delayed trains or other perils of a lower class commute; infuriating, more often than not, but it does at least give you the time to think.

Prior to your recent revelations said reflection was normally used to marvel at the sheer unmitigated insanity that was the City seen from up close. You'd heard the stories of course, just like every other kid back when you were growing up, been aware of the capital's presence as a distant weight that distorted the fabric of society and politics around it, but to see it up close is another thing altogether. You spent your first week wandering around in a fucking daze, trying to come to grasp with the sheer scale of the place, and it was only through the condescending kindness of some of your less overtly arrogant coursemates that you learned enough about your new home to build something resembling a functional life here.

The crowds alone took some getting used to, and truth be told you still haven't quite managed it. Rivers of flesh and grey-black coats that run through the streets and alleys, welling up from tunnels and stations beneath the ground to carry the workforce to and from their destinations in great tidal flows, fit to sweep you off your feet and carry you along, just another face in the seemingly endless crowds.

Eight and a half million. It's ridiculous, lopsided to an almost comical degree, the home of one in every eight souls inside the kingdom's borders, dominating a land where only one other city even breaks into the seven figure range. You see more people on your daily commute than you did in a whole year of living back home, and after a while you simply gave up on trying to make sense of it at all. And the variety… you read somewhere that one in three residents of London was either born abroad or had a parent who was, and based on what you seen on a regular day you find it easy to believe. A quick glance around gives you a glimpse of at least half a dozen ethnicities, from the Indian guy working in the newsagent to what you think is a Chinese businessman chattering rapidly on his mobile and the distinctive purple turban of a Sikh.

The river carries you along and sweeps you down the steps of one of the many entrances to the underground, tiled stairs clattering dully beneath your scruffy feet. You're well past the rush hour but still the station is full almost to the point of bursting, hundreds of men and women buying tickets or consulting maps or feeding themselves into the elaborate array of stairs and escalators that will take them to the trains waiting far below. You pass through the clattering gates and descend in your turn, knowing the way well enough by now that you can actually spare a thought for some of the advertisements lining the way. Electronic posters flicker and shimmer at the corner of your gaze, attempting to entice you with perfumes and plays and works of fashion you lack even the slightest fraction of the budget necessary to obtain.

That's the other thing that took some getting used to, of course; London has the people, so London gets the money. Back home you'd be lucky to see a bus every half hour and the council budget was an extended set of creative accounting and substitution stretched desperately thin in an attempt to empty every bin and repair even every other pothole in the road, but here? Here a half dozen rail lines service any of a hundred different stations, running trains that groan at full capacity every three minutes or less, carrying the rich and poor alike in speed and something approaching comfort far beneath the streets of one of the world's oldest capitals. Here, money might as well grow on fucking trees, and while that is no guarantee that even the tiniest portion of it will ever reach the hands or wallets of those who actually need it the most even untouchable treasure glitters like the rest.

You catch your train and get as comfortable as you can for the ride, unable to find a free seat and instead relegated to standing and hanging on to one of the low bars that run the length of the carriage just below the roof. The floor judders and hums with every stretch of track, rocking you from side to side with every corner, and while you haven't quite mastered the unthinking stability of a born Londoner you've got enough of it down to spare time for more theoretical concerns.

Needless to say, having been initiated into the shallowest reaches of a whole new world of wonder and mystery, your first course of action is to stop and get your bearings. Plunging on ahead with no thought for anything but the gleam of gold beyond the horizon is an excellent way to drown, and you'd hate to cut your new life short in such an ignominious fashion. Having decided to consolidate and experiment, then, your path forwards was obvious; if everything in this world has a spirit, and at least a few of them seem capable of recognizing and addressing you in a coherent fashion, then you should retreat to somewhere you can be sure of privacy and see if you can get any of them to, well, talk to you. Answer some questions, ideally, but even responding in a visible manner that you can observe and use as a point of comparison will be valuable.

You've always been a methodical sort, at least when given ample space and time to choose your response to something instead of reacting on instinct. There is a whole new world of mystery and insight out there now, it seems, and already the thought of sifting through it in search of something that might actually qualify as truth fills you with an unreasonable glee; so much so that you have to spend several moments with your eyes closed chanting a quiet litany of restraint and good sense before you go off entirely half cocked and ruin everything. Now is not the time for rash action. That comes later, perhaps once you have started piecing together an explanation for why the hell no one else seems to know about this.

...then again you vaguely recall remembering that certain eastern religions held to a kind of animism, a 'spirit in every thing' view of the world, so maybe people did know and they just happened not to be British. That's a possibility. Not an especially likely one - your ancestors would have stolen the truth along with all those relics in the museum if it were too obvious - but at least a little plausible.

Your train arrives at the next station with a clattering whine and the dull fanfare of tannoy announcements, and with an act of will you force yourself to your feet and disembark. Up you go, ascending stairs and escalators that rise for a hundred feet or more, and emerge at last into the chill evening air to be greeted by a sky just starting to darken with the coming gloom. The failing light casts everything in shades of grey, and you hunch your shoulders and hurry along your way, trading neither word nor glance with your fellow commuters as you go. You do not shun company out of fear or social distaste; that is just how things work here.

This station is not the closest one to your apartment, but you have made a habit of disembarking early all the same; exercise is important, and without a chance in hell of affording an actual gym membership any time soon you have chosen instead to squeeze in what you can through a dozen little tricks and improvisations such as this. A form of masochism, you have often thought, but you've seen enough uncles and 'uncles' laid low by crippling infirmity before their first grey hairs to ever take chances with your own well being. Fear and thinly suppressed horror is an excellent motivator, it seems.

As you wind your way through the streets and passageways, turning half a dozen times in the confusing morass of London's twisting streets, there comes a moment when your shoulder blades start to itch and you find yourself glancing around with carefully considered curiosity. It might not have done the cat much good, but you've always found an interest in your surroundings a boon in life, and after discarding the possibility of the nearby alleyway and a few half-seeing glances from your fellow passers by you finally glance up and notice the pristine white box of a camera on its pole at the corner of the next intersection. It seems to be looking right at you, and you can't really remember it being present before hand, but… no, it hardly means anything. Shaking your head, you carry on.

There are close to two million such cameras across the Kingdom, after all. What are the odds that this one is actually paying attention to you?

The looming bulk of your apartment complex dominates the skyline as you approach, a dull concrete behemoth jutting up from the rolling sea of glass and steel. You're pretty sure it's a member of the generation that sprang up all across the south in the wake of the war, mass scale housing thrown up to hold a displaced populace and built to last with ugly fortitude; certainly the quality of the place fits right in with that general aesthetic. Fortunately the lift is working this time, and you do not have to confront the prospect of climbing up thirty flights of stairs to reach your floor before you can make a start on your evening's work; a not-uncommon occurrence, but one that has been slightly less frequent ever since ownership changed hands in what you're failing sure was an elaborate and quite possibly literal mugging.

Home sweet home; three small spaces that technically qualify as rooms, a single bed, a rickety desk to hold your textbooks and a square window that gives you an excellent view of the glittering skyline nearer the city's heart. You used to spend whole evenings sitting by that pane of glass, staring at the promise of wealth and success on the horizon, dreaming of what it might be like to one day walk among its people as a peer. Now you have more pressing concerns.

Your bag goes under the bed. Your jacket hangs across the back of your chair. You park yourself atop your mattress, lay out a notebook and pens close to hand, and open your eyes.

Initial results are… underwhelming. There are spirits here, to be sure, but you really have to look for them in order to pick them out from the weft and weave of the world as a whole. They are tiny little motes of light, for the most part, dancing and swaying in symphony with some unheard rhythm, and merely looking at them for a few moments tells you that they likely aren't even sentient in a way that you would understand the term. It is difficult to properly articulate why you are so certain of this, given your utter lack of real experience or comparative knowledge, but something about the way they move and gleam and be puts the thought into your head and proves damnably hard to shake aside.

You are just beginning to contemplate walking out the door and trying your luck with what you think might well be the larger and more developed anima of the building as a whole when someone by the window clears their throat.

"Pardon me, sir, but you wouldn't be in a bargaining mood by chance?"

You pause, and then slowly turn your head to look over at what you can only assume is some kind of spirit. True, it looks at first glance to be a perfectly ordinary fox, complete with rust red fur and beady little eyes, but there are two factors of note that make you certain it is more. The first is that you are currently over two dozen stories in the air and the window at the canine's back is locked up tight. The second is that it appears to be wearing a pinstrip suit.

"... the fuck are you, and how'd you get in here?"

The Fox bristles - literally, you can see the hair along its muzzle standing briefly on end - and when it replies it is in a voice that is considerably less formal than the opening exchange would have led you to expect.

"Listen here you little shit," it growls, eyes glinting with menace for all that their owner stands about as high as your knee, "I don't care if you're fresh as a daisy, there are rules about this sort of thing, alright? Basic manners, common to all civilized folks from one shore to another. Have a bit of common fucking courtesy."

You are tempted to fire back with another scathing retort, perhaps based on how talk of courtesy and etiquette is rich indeed coming from a spirit that apparently just broke into your flat, but after a moment you master the impulse and hold your hands up in brief concession instead.

"Right, right, sorry," you say in a calm, self-effacing way that men always adopt when they're backing down from a fight, "just startled me, is all."

"Nothing meant, nothing taken," the Fox replies instantly, and in his haste you see the signs of someone only too happy to disarm the conversation in turn, "now, seeing as you did ask… name is Barnabus. Local spirit, as you can probably tell."

You nod slowly. You don't suppose it's really a surprise that the immaterial follows a similar naming convention to your own neighborhood… unless of course this is one of those 'form you are comfortable with' deals, but even then… well, like the well dressed canine said, common courtesy is worth more than you might otherwise expect.

"James Green," you reply, "not really a local at all. You... said something about a bargaining mood?"

"That I did," Barnabus nods briskly, "it's a simple proposition, a little icebreaker so to speak. You're looking for answers, and me, I'm looking for my next meal. Give me a bit of your mana… uh, spiritual energy, root motivating force of life, replenishes itself naturally, no risk or physical side effects expected… and I'll answer any questions you have for the next hour or so."

You frown. "And you… just happened to know when I might be in the sort of inquisitive mood that makes me open to such things."

The Fox spirit laughs. It's more of a chuckle, really, or a high pitched series of aborted yelps, but it gets the point across.

"Two points, Master Green," it… he?... says in an indulgent tone, "Both of them free, as a sign of good faith. One, you're a magi, so curiosity is basically your defining trait. Two… nah, I saw you stumble off the train this morning, been following you ever since, waiting for an opportune bit of privacy. Won't be saying any more than that, though, so how about it?"

Article:

An offer has been made by an enterprising little fox spirit, and you are going to say yes; nothing else is in your nature. The question, then, is what are you going to ask?

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