Penny huffed as the Mayor told Sharon that her mother’s murder wasn’t important. All things considered, he wasn’t wrong, but even Penny had enough social grace to never say something like that. She stared at the glass sheet the Mayor held out to the group and prayed it was shatterproof. At least they didn’t need to go to the library—assuming the others grabbed the map. She tried to reach out to Justin telepathically: We found something useful here and are heading back. There is a map in the library. Did you find it?
"... Because in the next minute or so, I am going to die."
“From your injury?” asked Penny. “Or…” She looked down at his gun and frowned. None of them had anyway of really helping the Mayor, and if it was that then patching up his wound wouldn’t be what he needed anyway. She sighed and called out to the group. “We need to head back. Here, Min,” she handed him the glass map, “You seem like the least likely to drop this. Britney, Lynette, if you could help Paige. Billy, stop dicking around. Caelea, take point. I’ll be right behind everyone.”
“I know you don’t believe me,” said Penny, turning back to the Mayor. “But I am going to stop this thing. Maybe it’ll eventually get out, but it won’t be while I’m alive. So thank you. Really.” She smiled softly. “That might sound totally empty but if you actually knew me at all you would’ve realized how difficult it is for me to say that. Is there anything else you’d want to get off of your chest before, well…”
Library
Rita frowned. The Speaker’s answers had not satisfied her itch but instead created even more questions. It seemed like the obvious thing to believe was that the Speaker was full of shit and that nobody in their group would betray them, yet Rita had her doubts. Britney lied to them every single second she could. Billy had tried to use her like a canary in a mine. Sharon practically committed manslaughter. Not everybody in their group was a good person.
Hell, did she really know any of these people well enough to trust them? She liked Tuyen and Rien, but she didn’t really know them. They were just all stuck in a horrible situation together She respected Penny, but the girl was so gung-ho about destroying the Glutton that it was at least plausible that she might’ve made a secret deal with the Child. Rita felt her pulse quicken, and it had already been going fast. She tried shaking the thought from her head. She had spent the night in Penny’s room, and the girl never made any move to try and steal her abstraction.
“Yeah, let’s leave.” She felt Tuyen near her as another burst of far-off cackling filled the air.
“Yeah…” said Rita, following along with the group, her mind elsewhere.
[E S R A B I R K A N] [27] | [FEMALE] | [5’6”] | [AB+]
General Information
NAME: Esra E. Birkan
PSEUDONYM: Tallulah Bernhardt
APPEARANCE: Esra is of Iranian descent with black, straight shoulder-length hair and dark eyes. She has the compact, muscular body of a ballerina and a dark olive skin tone with a smattering of freckles. Her left arm is covered with a sleeve of flower tattoos interconnected with leaves and lace. Esra has wide, wandering eyes and a sly, confident smirk, as if her observations are constantly keeping her amused. She dresses in an aggressive, artsy fashion, favoring bright, bold colors and outright weird design choices that make her pop out like a peacock—the more ridiculous the outfit, the better. Esra moves with a kind of graceful flamboyancy and speaks in a slightly hoarse and very rushed voice, as if every thought must be forced out of her before she breathes.
OCCUPATION: Esra is a lover of theater and acting, and has several uncredited roles starring in friends’ college film projects, community theater productions, and as an extra in a movie that was released directly to streaming. She dreams of working on Broadway one day—Hollywood is just soooo corrupt—and has gotten a few callbacks off of off-Broadway productions but never landed a named role, let alone a paying one. She did manage to land a serving job at a high-end restaurant on Broadway, so technically her dream came true.
Esra is a woman who thrives on interacting with other people. She can draw the most retreating person out of their shell and charm the hell out of even the biggest sourpuss. She may never have made it to celebrity status, but she still carries that kind of energy that just pulls people in. It’s not a put-on, either. Esra is just naturally charming, friendly, and so easy to talk to that she can feel like an old friend to a total stranger. She can make just about any environment into a welcoming one through her warmth, and feels like it is her duty to keep people entertained. If she’s capable of feeling awkward, then she most certainly doesn’t show it.
VICE: Dishonest
That part about it not being a put-on? Yeah, that was probably bullshit. Life’s easier if people like you, and the quickest way to get someone to warm up to you is to feed them whatever nonsense they want to hear. In all honesty, Esra believes that lying is usually nicer than being honest—better to say that their stupid hat looks nice instead of pointing out that it’s clear they’re hiding a bald spot. Besides, boil acting down to its most basest form and it’s really just pretending to be someone else. Therefore, lying so much that it’s practically compulsive is just practicing her passion. Really. It’s totally harmless, and she’s really fricking good at it.
Except that’s also a bunch of crap. Esra doesn’t just tell harmless white lies, and sometimes one lie leads into another. She has to pretend to her parents that she’s engaged to her ex-boyfriend who dumped her six months ago and pretend to her work that her parents are dead because she already used all of her grandparents and step-grandparents “deaths” as an excuse to miss a shift. It’s a good thing that Esra can easily make someone her friend, because she’s absolutely gone through a number of them by spreading rumors about them and lying straight to their face. Big or small, almost every one of her lies are told to either make people pity her or make people respect her, but either way it is all about her.
PERSONAL GOALS: Besides the never-ending, unachievable pursuit of happiness? Esra simply wants to have some kind of validation. Originally she figured that the joy a crowd would experience from viewing her in a theater performance would achieve that goal, but things haven’t worked out for her. She knows she’s a nobody and is powerless to force some major change of the status quo—nor does she consider herself radical enough to want some kind of extreme revolution. Still, she seeks to be a part of something that gives her a sense of self-worth. She’s tried activism, charities, and volunteering, but her efforts still leave her feeling hollow, mostly because she’s only doing that shit to have someone tell her that she is such a good person.
PERSONAL PHILOSOPHY: Esra believes that the world is a cruel and uncaring place, and it’s the responsibility of everyone to make it a little less hateful. She enjoys being friendly and goes out of her way to make things hospitable for others. She can find purpose in anything as long as it also benefits someone else (and assuming they recognize her herculean efforts and shower her with adoration). Small, little good deeds add a bit of positivity into the world, and while it may suck, perhaps it will eventually balance out the negativity. She believes most people are ultimately morally good, but the problem with that idea is the word most. A single asshole can ruin everything, but as long as the asshole isn’t her (or can’t be proven to be her) that means she is doing the right thing.
QUIRKS: ►Esra is almost physically unable to stay still. She managed to screw up being a tree in an elementary school play. ►She tends to have a particularly aggravating habit of humming or quietly singing show tunes and Disney hits to fill silence.
Background Information
”Well if they wanted me to root for the protagonist then why give the bad guy such an absolute banger?”
Esra spent the first twenty-some years of her life growing up near Cincinnati, Ohio, and had a fairly typical early childhood. She served her time at school, avoided being killed by her older sister, watched Dad move out and Mom’s new friend Steve move in, and attended dance class. She had friends and summer jobs and really, really big life changing moments that were only big and life changing because she was in high school and are actually quite banal. The only thing about her early life that really shaped who she is as a person now is her love of theater and how she acted in just about any school play she could. Well, that and how she managed to get her stupid Mom to break up with Steve after lying about him intentionally walking in on her in the shower. Boy, was that a fun fight to listen in on. It had almost been too easy.
After graduation, Esra attended the University of Cincinnati for Performing Arts, splitting her time between acting lessons and dance classes. Actually, well, perhaps it was more like splitting her time between getting stoned, getting drunk, getting laid, and getting up at noon—well after most of her classes. Yet despite this productive lifestyle, she still somehow managed to fail out of school. However, none of that mattered to Esra. Acting wasn’t something you learned how to do in a book, it was something that had to be experienced, lived, breathed, and whatever other bullshit she could come up with to stop her Mom from freaking out about the considerable student loan that had been wasted. Like, she had to live in the scene, not listen to some English teacher explain to her the intricati...the intrica...the dumb shit about Shakespeare. Besides, Shakespeare didn’t go to college! At least as far as Esra knew he didn’t go to college; she never attended that class about him.
Anyway the point being was that she had to move to New York, because that was where the acting scene lived. She hoped in a van with her boyfriend and headed to New York City, which looked a lot like New Jersey because it was New Jersey since NYC was too expensive. Esra took to joining improv groups and trying out for plays while he took to mostly playing Xbox and smoking weed. Neither of them were making money, so she took up a part-time waitressing gig and he, well, got really good at first person shooters until they got evicted. They broke up, she moved in with a couple of girls she knew from an improv group, and it was finally time to make it big in NYC.
Then that didn’t happen. Esra doesn’t know how things fell apart. Callbacks were never made, or when she got offered a role it was so far beneath her talents and the pay was below even that. It was absolutely boggling. This wasn’t how things went in the movie. At some point the girl was supposed to make her big break and have all of her dreams come true, or at least meet a really rich guy who could pay for her shit and she could pretend to like. She wasn’t supposed to be waiting tables and playing make-believe with a bunch of losers. What gives? Esra felt defeated, but she never let others know that. Prospects were coming along, she had talked to a couple of producers, and things were in the works, or so she said.
And they stayed in the works. As creeping doubt began to fill her head, Esra started branching out from the stage—clearly, it was all a bunch of people playing favorites when it came to casting. She had no shot unless she got down on her knees and well anyway she started to look for different outlets. The best part of acting was the applause, after all, so if she couldn’t get lauded there she’d get lauded elsewhere. Esra began volunteering, doing this and that to put some good karma out there for herself in hopes of getting some cosmic reward. She mostly got scared by the weird people in the soup kitchen. Meanwhile, she did manage to get a better serving job at a nicer restaurant. Things weren’t ideal but she was doing okay money-wise. Eventually, everything just sort of settled into a routine. She acted and danced in community shows, worked most evenings, did the occasional volunteer work, and drank just about every night. Her New York dream was now just her New York life and it was a bit of a grind but ultimately she could pretend that it was okay.
And then June 6th happened, and Esra screwed up. She found herself huddled in the corner of a coffee shop with a good view of the TV when the news broke. Still sore from her latest breakup and desperate for some attention, she pulled out her phone like she was on autopilot and tweeted: “Trapped in #TheBeacon. Safe, but scared. I love you all.” She thought nothing of it, turned back to the TV, and caught the subtitles just in time to read the part about how no information had come from anyone inside of the Beacon since it had gone into lockdown. She felt a knot twist in her stomach as she turned her attention to her phone; the number of retweets and messages were staggering. Several of them were from news outlets. Feeling sick, she quickly deleted the message, skipped work, and spent the rest of the day with her phone off.
However, people who knew her had seen the tweet. The next day at work she was bombarded with questions about what happened at the Beacon, ones she answered with cagey lies about how she still hasn’t even begun to process it and really doesn’t want to think about that. People from her life that she thought had completely burnt their bridge with her reached out to make sure that she was okay. Even her mom called her up—the first time they had talked in years. She enjoyed her little fifteen minutes of absolutely unearned and totally fabricated fame, spinning more and more lies constructed out of whatever information she could get from the media. Even a couple of strangers recognized her. It was totally cool. She was like a mini-celebrity, on they showered her with pity instead of love. Still, better than being alone.
Maybe that’s why she didn’t pretend to not speak English when an older guy with a cane came and sat down beside her at some bar one night and began talking about the Beacon. At first, she thought he had come over there to tell her how incredibly brave and amazingly strong she was like the rest of the schmucks. That wasn’t the case, and Esra was about to up and leave before he bought her a topshelf cocktail. She stayed for that drink, and then another, although by the second she was already hooked in to what he was saying. Liquor bribes weren’t necessary, but they were appreciated and helped her swallow up his conspiracy theories. She was thoroughly drunk by the time he tried to convince Esra to join his cause to take down some shadowy corp.
“Wait,” she said, waving her hands in front of her face as if to clear away the drunken haze as the man began to leave. She stared at her befuddled reflection in the bar mirror and then cocked an eyebrow over at the man. “What’s your name?”
“Gage.”
Then he was gone, and Esra was left with a bunch of questions and woke up the next morning with a sugary hangover from hell. Her life continued, but she even though she was drunk off of her ass she still remembered bits and pieces of her conversation with Gage. She could spot a bullshitter—it was easy to see her own kind—and he didn’t seem like one. Still, she was about to write the whole thing off when an unmarked letter arrived for her, or rather, it arrived for Tallulah Bernhardt and that lady was getting paid bank. However, it wasn’t just the money that convinced Esra that maybe she should check out Gage’s little project. The best thing that had happened to her recently was pretending to be in a hostage situation, and even Esra was willing to admit that was sad and pathetic. Maybe this would fill that void growing inside of her. And even if they cocked it up, at least she’d be famous.
Operative Information
[T H E C H A M E L E O N]
ROLE DESCRIPTION: Esra’s observant and extroverted nature allows her to get a deeper understanding of how certain people behavior, and when coupled with her years of amateur acting experience it allows for her to become the Chameleon. She excels at playing roles that allow her to get into advantageous positions to assist the group. Not only does she have a variety of “disguises” purchased courtesy of the thrift shop and the chops to rift up a new persona, she also connects so deeply with that fake individual that, much like a method actor, she just about becomes them. Therefore, Esra can serve the group in a number of ways, like scouting ahead to give them a sitrep or infiltrating an off-limits area.
However, pretending to be someone she isn’t is sometimes a risky move, and having her cover blown can be absolutely devastating to a plan. Fortunately, Esra’s completely duplicitous nature can actually be a bit of a boon during these times. Her commitment to a failed character, glibness, and argumentative attitude might just be enough to coerce a person into leaving her alone, or at the very least buy the others some valuable time to pull off something grand.
POSSESSIONS: ►Makeup Kit, Extensive Wardrobe, and Wigs.
SKILLS: ►Character Actor Although she never made it, Esra is actually a really talented actor. She can play a wide-range of parts, easily changing subtle things about herself like her posture, her gait, or her facial expressions to better fulfill that role. Likewise, she can adapt a number of accents that all sound fairly genuine. Years spent memorizing a bunch of lines in a hurry has helped improve her short-term memory, making it easy for her to craft some truths into the total lies she’s going to be giving the people around her when she is in character.
►Community Theater Esra’s stage talents doesn’t just end at being able to walk different and talk differently. Thanks to her no-budget community theater background, she’s also pretty handy with wardrobe, makeup, and styling. While perhaps some of the group could use a bit of a makeover, it’s really more useful with helping to craft a disguise to keep everyone incognito.
►Dance Number Esra has been doing ballet and other forms of dance for nearly as long as she has been pursuing acting. While it would be delightful if everything could be settled in a dance off between her and the head of Pyramid Microsystems, the chances of that happening are only middling. Still, ballet has given her an incredible balance, extreme flexibility, and a surprising amount of strength for someone her size.
FLAWS: ►Fatigued A lot of energy gets spent on other people or just being exuberant for the sake of exuberance. Then there is her job, her acting passion, her volunteer work, the fact that she hardly gets a full night of sleep, and now the part where she joined a super secret group hell bent on destroying some kind of Neo-Illuminati. Face it, Esra is flipping tired, and she’s on the fasttrack to burning out.
►Jealous Esra can pretend to be happy for the success of others. She can also put her hand in a blender, but you don’t see her making any fist protein shakes. Even if she can muster a lie to congratulate someone for getting what they most certainly did not earn her face can completely betray her feelings.
►Needy Esra doesn’t have to always be the center of attention, but she does need to get a spotlight shined her way on a rather frequent basis. God forbid the squad get a couple of walkies; she’ll be buzzing in every minute.
►Suspicious For some reason, Esra believes that most people are usually lying. Sincerity is strange to her, and the more adamant someone is about a thing the less likely she is to believe them.
SECRET COUNT:
NOTES: Esra’s tweet got some mild media coverage before it was deleted, but her story was pretty much lost under the current of ones about the actual victims of June 6th following the raid.
@OppositionOh hey, missed the interest check but I really dig this idea. I'm toying with a few ideas at the moment, but I'm leaning towards a wannabe stage actress who can take on different "parts" to help the team out, be it hiding in plain sight as a new intern, pretending to be an exec from the home office, or just bullshitting someone long enough for the others to come up with a plan of action. Kind of a mix between the bait/distraction and a scout/plant.
Kill or be killed. When Prudence had first heard her captain say that, she had taken it as some kind of morbid encouragement—either you kill the enemy, or the enemy will kill you. It was simple enough for her to understand, and she proved to be pretty good at it. When cannons sounded in the distance and waves of salt water splashed them as they prepared to be boarded, she could always hear the captain’s words echoing in her head. Kill or be killed. The words were on her lips as she weaved her sword like crimson paintbrush through pirates that had come to plunder the riches of people she didn’t even care about. All that mattered were those words.
She had never considered until this morning that those words might’ve been a threat.
Prudence stood shoulder-to-shoulder with four other mariners. The captain stood to their side while the rest of the crew flanked behind them to watch the scene unfold despite the chill coming from the light rain. The sailor next to her mumbled some concern about their muskets getting ruined by the rain, and Prudence prayed for him to be right. She’d take a backfire and a couple of missing fingers over what was about to come. The captain called for them to raise their arms. She did as she was told and hoped that the others wouldn’t notice the shake in her arms. It was so strange. She never hesitated once when it was a pirate. Then again, a pirate was never survived long enough to get pulled in front of a firing squad.
Cowards, on the other hand, found their attempts to save their own skin often put them on the fast track to the one thing they had tried to avoid. So was the case for the man before them now. He had been caught hiding in the kitchen during the last attack, and the captain saw fit to make an example out of him. His head was covered with a bag, his mouth had been gagged, and his arms tied before he was attached to a pulley and hoisted up high so that all could see his legs kick in a panicked, arrhythmic fashion. Some of the men prodded one another and pointed at the dark stain forming in the coward’s pants, laughing at the sight. They usually did that. Piss themselves and get laughed at. Normally, Prudence laughed at them too.
This wasn’t a normal case.
She wiped her face and tried to steady her musket. Maybe the others would think she was wiping rain from her eyes. The captain’s voice roared above the sea. Shots rang out; she fired her gun, too. Prudence knew the rules. If she didn’t fire she’d be the next one up there. She aimed her musket high, but she had always been a rubbish aim. The legs stopped jerking and the coward’s body hung slack, the sack over his face quickly turning a muddy red. It was her bullet. It had to be. The captain smiled. The crew cheered. Only the men and women in the firing squad were quiet.
On the captain’s order, the body was swung out over the sea and cut free. Prudence passed her musket to the quartermaster and headed underdeck. Her job was done for the day. She made her way to her cot and pulled out something from beneath the mattress. She sat down on the edge of her cot and buried her face in the green scarf. It still smelled vaguely of coward.
Great Hall/Throne Room — Late Morning
“Look lively you rotten mutts.”
Salty air and a wet deck was replaced with the scent of despair and the feeling of cold, wet stone. Prudence stirred from her uncomfortable sleeping position and the memory of the past slipped away. Too exhausted to try and argue, military routine took hold of her as the guard’s orders pulled on her strings to make her dance the prisoner’s waltz. Her cell was opened and for the briefest of moments she thought about attempting an escape as she was unshackled. Before she could figure out the best way to inadvertently get herself killed she was chained up and marched out of the dungeon with a handful of other prisoners. They were lead through a twisted route of halls and stairs. Prudence bit the inside of her cheek, the fresh pain served as a distraction from her old aches.
Eventually they were led into a grand room. It was nicer than anything Prudence had ever seen, and it was certainly nicer than the gallows she had been expecting. The Red Sail Brothel had a certain sheen to its environment, but there was a cheapness and dirtiness to the sheer curtains and gilded bannisters that made it abundantly clear that there wasn’t anything fancy about the business that was conducted there. This room was fancy. A single decoration from that room was worth more than any one of the poor bastards chained up with her. Taperesties and pretty lights and all sorts of other rich bullshit just lying around surrounded by a bunch of guards decked out in the most expensive armor there was to dissuade anyone from snagging some art.
Vallec was busy talking with the High King. Perhaps it should’ve been strange for someone so low as Prudence to be in the same room as the king, but she hardly even noticed them. Servants had arrived and presented a massive feast on the table before them, and she felt her stomach growl as she looked at the food. Thoughtfulness, never her strong part, fled instantly as the guards guided her to a chair and freed her from her chains. She didn’t go for a weapon, even though her dagger was right there, although she did take a second to grab her green scarf and tie it around her head before she began to dig into the food.
She didn’t even bother to sit as she ate greedily, shoveling whatever she could get her hands on into her mouth between gulps of wine. It blew away the meal Selena had made for her yesterday, although there was hardly anytime for Prudence to actually taste away the food. It was only after eating more than her share of the food that she collapsed back in her chair, grabbed a horn of mead, and kicked her boots up on the table.
”Now that almost makes up for everything,” said Prudence as she picked over a bone before flicking it on the floor behind her. She looked up at the King on his throne. “So this the usual treatment for crooks around here? Cause then I’m pleading guilty to whatever crap reason it was that your goons arrested me. Otherwise, I’m already in a business with someone else, and this meeting is just gonna be a waste of my time.”
@Ruler Inc Town Hall Holy shit, the idiot defense actually worked. Penny felt a heavy weight lift off of her as Billy stumbled away from the Mayor, but tensed up again as the Mayor lit up at the sight of Britney. Penny hemmed as he started spilling the beans. For such a big secret, it seemed like half the town had been involved in this damn conspiracy. What if her parents had known? Were they even still alive? Worse yet, what if they were Corrupted? She lit a cigarette so she’d stop biting on her lip. She doubted the Mayor would protest between all of his nihilism.
“Hold up, man,” said Billy as the Mayor revealed the nature of his Abstraction. “If you can see the future, then why even draw a gun on me? Wouldn’t you know I wasn’t one of those loonies?”
“Billy, I doubt he ever considered you at all,” said Penny, exhaling a cloud of smoke.
“Fuck that, dude,” said Billy. “Fuck that, man.” He turned to the Mayor. “How do you even know your Abstraction even works? Mine doesn’t even do shit. It’s worthless. How come yours works then? If you tell us something is the future, then we don’t do it, then you didn’t see the future. And if you tell us something is the future, and we do it, then we were really just doing what you said.” He waved his hands around as he tried to make some kind of point. “Maybe you just see something and you think it’s the future when really it’s all just a big coincidence so far, or like, it’s not just the future but a future and there are ways to go about and change it or—”
“Or maybe fucking Nostradamus here actually creates a reality just by thinking of it and just because we’re in a goddamn basement doesn’t mean I’m going to pretend to be high enough to have this kind of fucking conversation with you, Billy, so go search for the map while the adults talk,” snapped Penny. She ashed her cigarette and turned to the Mayor, annoyed with his attitude as much as she was with Billy.
“Listen, I haven’t fought an indestructible, axe-wielding bully, a swarm of human-hungry insects, weird zealot zombies, some avatar of a thing I can’t even begin to understand, and the urge to bitchslap half the people in this room just to have some shitty, schlubby politician that I didn’t even vote for tell me that the future is futile. I literally do not care if all I ever amounted to be was just some pesky little gnat buzzing around the Glutton’s head, because I will at least die knowing that, for the briefest moment in time, Penny Lawson stuck it to the biggest asshole in the universe,” she said, smirking. “So—”
“If you knew the future how’d you get hurt?” shouted Billy from behind a shelf. “Fucked that right up, didn’t—”
He shut up as Penny’s cigarette went blasting past his head. She lit another one.
“So since we really don’t have time for this,” she continued, “how about you tell me where I can find a map for the mountain’s mines so I can find the Glutton and kick him in the dick.”
Rita wasn’t glad that Justin practically dragged her along, but she didn’t let go. It was such a strange feeling that the library, something she once considered a safe haven, now filled her with so much dread. When the Speaker appeared she barked out a noise of surprise before covering her mouth, embarrassed that her reaction wasn’t a cool display of annoyance. If it could just pop up wherever, what else could do the same? She didn’t like cowering, but there wasn’t much else she could do. It wasn’t like her Abstraction gave her the power to talk something to death.
She grimaced at the recollection. They didn’t need to see that. Why did it think that they needed to see that? It was just a cruel joke, another sick game. When they couldn’t be physically beaten down by Scott, they’d be mentally beaten down by the Speaker. She hated this. Why didn’t they just grab the map and beat feet out of here? She was ready to tell the others just to start going when the Speaker said something that struck a nerve buried deep down within her.
The Speaker said, "I speak the truth, and the undeniable truth. I feel it is the duty of higher being such as myself to enlighten the deceived."
And Rita doubted that very much. In fact, it was utter bullshit, right? As another recollection played, Rita glowered. The Speaker kept showing them half-truths to get them to turn against the Child, and Justin made a good point about it possibly just being a fabrication. She didn’t want to even play its game, but she felt compelled to go through with it. Hell, maybe she did seek the truth after all, whatever the hell truth even was. Fortunately for her, she could get all of the answers. Rita stepped out from behind Justin and Tuyen. She took a breath, and then looked up at the Speaker’s orange eyes.
”Did that last thing you show us actually happen? Who was the hidden person?” She grinned. ”Or did you just lie to us? Are you even capable of lying?”
She didn’t know if her Abstraction queued questions up. She didn’t know if it even worked on non-humans. But it felt good to ask. She had a couple dozen more start forming in her head. Where’s the Glutton? Can we escape it? How do we kill it? Are you the same thing as the Child? How do we get rid of both of you? Are you called the Speaker because you never shut the fuck up?
Neziul
Antlers
CassidyTheButch
ML
Simply Not Real
NoriWasHere
Blizz
Passable Writer
Evil Ghost Note
