You've never been all that religious.
It's not surprising, given who you are and where you're from. Faith has always been a private thing, at least in your experience, something pursued in quiet isolation outside the bounds of normal, everyday life. You've heard tale from across the pond of how your foreign cousins live, with prayers on politician's lips and blessings bestowed on congregations numbering in the thousands, and it's always felt a bit unreal, a bit alien. So far removed from your experience that you cannot really imagine it, even when you try. You were baptized according to customs held by maybe two in every three, by a vicar who later expressed doubt in the very nature of the divine, given back to your parents to be raised in a culture where maybe one in ten attends church even once a week…
Well. The point is, you're pretty sure the big guy in front of you is meant to be some kind of god. He's certainly got the looks for it - huge, imposing, wisened and stern, garbed in robes that went out of style two millennia past, seated on a throne fit to crush the world beneath its bulk… he checks every last little box on the list, to be honest, and none of it means a damn thing.
You're not going to bow to him, you're not going to pray. You're going to eat his heart.
You're walking forwards before the full weight of that thought even truly registers, but when it does there's really not all that much to it. Blasphemy, hubris, rebellion… what do these words mean to someone like you, someone born at the very bottom of the cosmic shit heap, someone who clawed their way up every last blood-stained inch without the aid of god or faith? Sure there are people out there who have it worse, sure there are people who manage to find meaning in their suffering and wisdom in the cruelty of the divine, but that's not you, that's never been you.
Pain doesn't make you stronger. It just hurts. You're done with hurting.
You reach the base of his robes and begin to climb, your hands hooked into claws that sink into fabric worth more than your parent's house and tear great rents in the side even as they haul you upwards. You've always been fit, always been healthy, the legacy of a mother who knew better than most what would happen if you were weak and went out of her way to feed you well, even when it meant that she went hungry. You put that strength to work now, dragging yourself up out of the dirt, and if you curse and swear with every painful pull why, it's only seems fitting given the situation at your hand.
You remember them, your parents. They seem to dance before your eyes as you climb, which is a fucking stupid idea because you doubt the old man has ever danced a day in his life but there it is. You can see him clearly, the old bear of a man with skin stained brown and hands set to trembling, racked every day by the harsh legacy of a life in the mines and factories, the scars of a life given over to Britain's glory and never once repaid. He taught you well, he did; how to throw a punch, how to fix a bike, how to stand your ground and take a beating and how to get out of a fight without treading on anyone's pride. He'll be dead within the decade, most likely, that's what all the data says, but you'll give anything if it means he can last long enough to be there when you make it through this shitheap of a school. If it means you can hold him close and thank him for giving you what you need to make something of yourself in truth.
And then there's Mum, dear old mum. The teacher, the child-minder, the weary old woman with a tired smile who always knew the value of a penny, who taught you what she could that you might have a chance to make it through your life without starving even on the pittance the government calls a dole. That look of pride in her eye, the embers of hope not quite dampened out by cynicism and regret, that surging flame that lit in her gaze the moment you first came home from school with a sheet full of A's and stars, that is what you remember of her. That is what drives you on even now, the thought that you might see that hope justified, that you can spare her the need to rationalize away another kick in the teeth by the almighty boot of fate.
You reach the giant's lap and it hasn't even noticed you yet, which is just about typical really. He's big and mean and rich beyond compare, why would he even notice a little thing like you, why would he even
care for someone so incredibly, transparently far beneath him, even if they were crawling up his robes? Well, that's nothing new, now is it. You've faced that kind of indifference every day of your life since the moment you were born, seen the way that people look right through you even as they speak, and it's nothing new. Getting noticed, now that's new, and while the spite and cruelty and affronted pride that your so-called betters like to display whenever you are so rude as to make yourself known is hard to bear, there's a real triumph in it all the same.
You won't make it to the top. No one ever
gets there, they either get born into it or find a niche for themselves somewhere further below, but oh, you'll get close enough. Close enough to see, close enough to touch, close enough that even the pricks with the bluest of blood flowing through their veins have no choice but to acknowledge that you exist, that you exist and you might actually matter.
Then you'll stab them in the dick, and laugh like a hyena all the way to the grave.
You're halfway up the titan's gut when the other faces start to come to mind, the vertices in the web that is your life, your community. You remember the blokes from down the pub you chipped in when your mum couldn't afford a babysitter, the old lady at the school who helped walk you through some of the trickier problems in the half-mouldering books you had to use, the friends that kept you company when you snuck into the old mining shafts outside of town on a lark. Gone now, all of them, left behind when you moved south and enrolled yourself in this finest of institutions, moving off to live their lives and in all fucking likelihood dead or unrecognisable by the time you finish and go back home to visit, but oh you remember them well. You wouldn't have made it half as far as you have without them, and that is the strength that every man who ever did more than the powers expected owed for his success.
You can feel the thunder of the giant's heart, now, feel it in your bones as the flesh beneath your hands trembles and shifts with seismic rhythm. It's close, close enough to feel, close enough to smell, close enough to make you abandon your climb and start your
dig, flesh and blood and bone coming away in great clumps beneath your hands as you burrow into the flesh of the divine.
Law is the chain that binds the land from one end to the other, the scaffolding that holds up the world you know and keeps everyone in their place. You always thought by learning it and wielding it for your own you could obtain a measure of power, but that was foolish, an ignorant dream born out of a child's misconception of what true power really is, what it really looks like. You will find it here, and take it for your own.
The titan's heart it a church, a cathedral of bloody meat, a chalice of burning blood five times the height of a man. It is all of these things and more, for your ability to tell one thing from another is beginning to fray, and you know that you must act soon or forever lose what little strength yet remains to someone in your meager position. You fall to your knees, ignoring the way the viscera stains your jeans, and cup your hands to hold a portion of the giant's own blood.
You lift it to your lips and drinks, and the world dissolves in flame…
-/-
You wake, aching in muscles you didn't even know that you
had, and find that you are flat on your back on a narrow bed in the middle of a strange concrete cube. The walls are painted an offensively cheerful shade of pale yellow, a thin stream of light comes pouring in through the glass pane on the door, and a series of friendly yet ominous posters hang from the wall.
You're in a cell.
You roll off the bed with a virulent curse, muscles screaming as you hit the ground and scramble to your feet, and stare around the room with panicked, frantic eyes. There's no one else here, you don't have cuffs on your wrists, your bag is still propped up by the far wall and…
Someone knocks on the door.
"What…" is about all you manage before the door opens and a beam of fluorescent light hits you straight between the eyes. You stagger back, hissing and trying not to swear again, and hear an apologetic chuckle as the person from the hallway steps inside.
"Right, right, sorry about that," she says - and it is a she, a middle aged woman with shadows underneath her eyes and bright blue plastic gloves on her hands, "didn't think about the light. Take a moment, get your bearings, alright?"
There is a monster standing behind her. A thing, wretched cadaver with pale skin stretched tight over too-obvious bones and blood red eyes peering at you over a mask of dirty white. It realizes that you see it and raises hands that end in gleaming syringes in a half-hearted wave, bringing them down a moment later to rest on the woman's shoulders.
"Hey, are you alright?" The nurse says, or at least you assume she's a nurse, no one else talks with that weird blend of compassionate concern and utter, mind-numbing fatigue, "You look like you've seen a ghost…"
Can't you see it is what you most emphatically do
not say, because if this is a nurse then you're in a hospital and the absolutely last fucking thing you want to start doing is start ranting about invisible monsters with medicinal equipment for hands. You close your eyes and grunt a brief acknowledgement, hoping with all your will and being that when you open them again the thing will be gone. You give it ten seconds or so, just to be sure.
Strangely enough, when you open your eyes at last, it actually is.
"...yeah, sorry," you say, hiding your confusion as best you can given the utterly bizarre circumstances, "I… bad dream, basically. Uh, not to be rude, but… where am I?"
"Oak Hill hospital, non-emergency observation," the nurse says with a friendly nod, "the police found you wandering around the streets late last night, pretty much completely out of it. You weren't dangerous or anything, so they just lead you in here. We checked you over, then decided to keep you in for observation. How are you feeling?"
Shit. Shit shit shit, you were brought in by the police, that is absolutely
not the sort of thing you want to go down on your record, not if you want any chance of having a proper future further down the line but… wait, yeah, non-violent, not charged with anything, you can make this work, you can get out of this with your hide intact…
"Christ, really?" You say with not entirely feigned horror, "Gods, I'm going to kill Jen, she said… uh, look, we had an exam, and she…"
The nurse nods in sympathy, the familiar look of someone who has seen this kind of story play out a thousand times or more, who knows the ins and outs of what it contains better than anyone of any age really should.
"Ah, say no more. Took a little pick me up a time or two myself, back in Uni," she says with a friendly smile, "Just, uh, don't do that again, right, and I'll put down on the form that you took a knock to the head or something. We kept you in just to be sure, there were no complications, everyone went home… that sound good?"
"Like you wouldn't believe," you say with a breathless rush, "Yes, please, I'm sorry for the trouble but…"
The nurse waves it off, and you both know there are more reasons than simple sympathy for her to be so blasé about this. The budget for the hospitals got cut again last year, at least in real terms, so chances are Oak Hill doesn't even have the resources to give you proper treatment for a serious drug overdose or a genuine psychotic break, but if you leave with a convenient excuse they don't have to strain what they do have trying to care for you.
From there, everything is quite literally routine. You collect your bag and follow the nurse to the front desk, sign the paperwork she hands over to you, and then head out the door and into the freezing pre-dawn black. You take a chance, on the threshold, and look back at the reception,
looking for that strange thing you saw just after you woke up.
It smiles at you from behind its mask, and the air stinks of antiseptic. You shudder, return the nod and a half-hearted wave (costs nothing to be polite, your dad always said) and walk out into the night.
Now what the fuck are you supposed to do?
Like the man said, what do you do now?
[ ] Go to class. Dream vision or no dream vision, you have an early morning lecture on campus and if you want to get there on time you'd best head straight off. You can sort out what the fuck just happened in your copious free time.
[ ] Find Jen. She gave you those pills, and it was just after taking them that everything went so utterly fucking insane. You need to find her and get her to explain what the hell she gave you and why.
[ ] Birdwatch. As crazy as it sounds, you're reasonably sure you got guided through at least part of that whole mess by a blackbird with a cockney accent. See if you can find a bird nearby and… ask about it? You might as well, right?
