Mae-Ying leads Niva up to the bedroom she currently calls home. Mae-Ying packs clothes and toiletries into an old backpack she’s borrowed from Regina, while Niva walks around the room wide-eyed, pausing to admire the floral wallpaper, the doily on the dresser, the lace curtains.
“This is a splendid room,” she says. “It is so big!”
Mae-Ying smirks. “It’s probably bigger than my apartment was...”
“I did not ever see the inside of your apartment.”
“You didn’t miss anything.” Mae-Ying glances over at Niva and catches her wringing the hem of her sweater. “Niva, are you okay with this?”
Niva lets go of her sweater. "I am concerned. Miss Cockburn is being very… secretive."
“Look, one way or another, I’m going. But if you want to stay here--”
"No! I do not want you to go out into the world alone, Mae-Ying, much less into the situation in Washington!"
“I just don't want you to think I'm taking your cooperation for granted," Mae-Ying says.
Niva looks down. "I think perhaps this is the only chance I will have to matter, in the Knights.”
"Come on. What about the time you saved them from a corrupt Marshal?"
Niva sits down heavily on the edge of Mae-Ying's bed. "It did not seem to help..."
"Maybe it didn't help with your image, but it sure as hell mattered," Mae-Ying says. "You care too much about what they think."
"It is not that. Until you pointed it out to me, I did not even notice. But now I am thinking..." Niva grabs a throw pillow and hugs it to her stomach. "The angels, they tell me so many important things. And I try to convey them, but since you have come I am beginning to see that I am not being listened to. The angels tell me what must be done, but I cannot do it all alone."
"We'll work on that, okay?” Mae-Ying touches Niva’s shoulder. “We’ll try to make people listen."
Niva looks up at Mae-Ying. "If Miss Cockburn cannot be my patron when we return, where will I go?"
"I don't know, but if Miss Cockburn is backing us, and we need to leave this particular location, there are other places we can go, right?"
"We could go to another base, yes..."
"Then we'll just do our best on the mission,” Mae-Ying says. "And we'll see where it takes us.”
Niva sighs and nods, though without conviction.
Mae-Ying shoves the last few things in her backpack, zips it shut and grabs it from the bed. “Okay. Let’s do it.”
She stands in the center of the room, facing Niva, who shoulders her own backpack. Niva puts her hands on Mae-Ying’s shoulders. Up close, Niva smells like old wool, probably because of her shapeless sweater.
"Please do not pass out this time,” Niva says. “You are heavier than you look."
Mae-Ying laughs. "I can't make any promises."
Heat waves surround Niva in vast pulses. Mae-Ying calls up the letters in her mind, channelling Logos so she can try to see what Niva’s doing. A dozen ribbons of ice-blue Logos whip around Niva and herself, faster and faster, until they blur together and seem to become a whirlpool, or vortex
A vicious pulling sensation starts at the soles of Mae-Ying's feet and moves upward. She feels stretched into a thin ribbon of essence, flowing out of the room at an impossible angle. All of her physical senses vanish, but this time, rather than descending into unconsciousness, the vast gulf of blackness becomes an ocean of flashing colors, reminding her of her night in the Chamber of Kings.
Suddenly, the vortex of Logos around her seems to slow, and almost reverse, cradling her and bringing the pulling sensation to an end. She looks around; her room is gone. Somehow, she’s standing on asphalt. Grey mist hangs heavy in the air, obscuring anything more than a few yards away. Niva is once again in front of her, her hands still on Mae-Ying’s shoulders.
"Where the hell are we?" Mae-Ying asks.
"The wilderness between earth and the heavens," Niva says.
Mae-Ying turns around, taking in three hundred and sixty degrees of grey nothing around her and trying not to panic. "I had the impression this was going to be like teleporting."
"No,” Niva says. “Teleportation is not possible for the blessed of Law. At least, not that I know of. It is said powerful Sorcerers can learn to do something like it, though."
“All right, then." Mae-Ying takes a deep breath. “I guess I’ll follow you?”
Niva nods. "Take my hand. Do not let go for any reason."
Mae-Ying takes hold of Niva’s hand and follows her through the mist. The vapor is thick, neither cold nor warm. Everything is deathly quiet; the sound of their footfalls seems to be muffled by the fog.
"The Knights call this place the Wild,” Niva says. “It is ever-changing, so that is a good name."
"Is it dangerous?"
"Yes." Niva grips Mae-Ying's hand tight. "There are spirits; spirits of Order, spirits of the wilderness, or Chaos. Sometimes you encounter the blessed of the Wild, here, what the others sometimes call Shamans. And there are other things.”
"Okay..."
Niva presses forward over the flat, featureless terrain. As they walk, the mists slowly thicken, and the grey horizon deepens toward darkness.
“Does it always look like this?” Mae-Ying asks.
“No. There are thousands of layers. Maybe an infinity of them. I took us deeper than I meant to, and also, we are heading westward, into the night,” Niva says. “It is always worse, this way."
Mae-Ying can’t manage to form a response. In the distance, she can just barely make out the shapes of impossibly tall buildings looming on either side of their path. As they move forward, the path narrows and the skyscrapers close in.
Still holding Niva’s hand, Mae-Ying looks to the right, towards the buildings. Something catches her eye: a flickering light in a sickly shade of green that turns her stomach. She looks away immediately, wondering if her looking made the light appear. Her looking away doesn’t make it disappear; she can still see it in her peripheral vision. It seems to be following them.
"Do you see that?" Mae-Ying asks in a low voice.
Niva nods slowly.
They continue moving forward, and for several long minutes the light follows them, keeping itself at the very edge of Mae-Ying’s periphery. Suddenly, Niva grabs Mae-Ying around her waist and pulls her out of the road. She presses a hand against Mae-Ying's mouth.
A few paces ahead of them, beside the path, a towering shape moves in the fog. A huge leg, plated in a slick-looking carapace, emerges from the mist and comes down with a crack against the asphalt. The flickering color that has been following them bobs in the mist just once, then seems to turn to flee. Like a bolt of lightning, the titanic pedipalps of a gargantuan spider flash out of the mist and seize on it. An animal shriek echoes through the silence.
Niva backs slowly away from the tableau, towards the buildings. She pulls Mae-Ying between two of the buildings and removes her hand from Mae-Ying’s mouth. She looks around quickly, then grabs Mae-Ying’s hand and starts off deeper into the alley.
Soon they emerge into another street. The mist is thinner here. Mae-Ying can see forms, human-sized or smaller, skitter and dart amongst the shadows. A crescent moon rides cloud-studded skies above them.
Niva pulls Mae-Ying down the street. Mae-Ying keeps her eyes on the back of Niva’s head, afraid of attracting any more strange creatures. The outer walls of the buildings around them gradually take on a bark-like texture. Soon they’re surrounded not by buildings, but by towering trees. The path changes from asphalt to gravel to fallen leaves. Moonlight falls dappled through the canopy above.
Niva slows, panting, and eventually comes to a stop.
"You had to carry me through this?" Mae-Ying whispers incredulously.
Niva nods, gulping air. "We are almost there."
“Just take a minute.”
Niva shakes her head. “The longer we pause, the more dangerous.”
She pushes forward. As Mae-Ying follows her, the trees grow smaller and smaller. So does the path, narrowing and winding and eventually disappearing altogether. Niva stops at a certain tree and places her hand against the wide bole.
“This is it,” she says. “I know this one.”
“All right,” Mae-Ying says. “Here we go.”
Niva turns to Mae-Ying and pulls her close. "Deep breathing..."
Mae-Ying takes a deep breath. Her form expands outward, becoming vast and amorphous, encompassing the trees and shrubs all around her. Her vision expands higher and wider, above the canopy, above the sky, until the moon resolves into the half-seen sliver of a green stoplight.
They’re standing at the corner of E Street Northwest and 7th Street. The leaves of a tree move back and forth in front of the stoplight, making it appear almost crescent-shaped. Niva staggers away from her and leans heavily on a lamppost. Somehow, the few pedestrians on the street at this hour didn’t seem to notice their abrupt arrival.
“Now what?” Mae-Ying says.
“First, you must Cloak, you are supposed to be dead,” says Niva. She pulls Mae-Ying into a dank-smelling alleyway. Mae-Ying takes a deep breath and closes her eyes, focusing on her Logos letters. “I will keep an eye out.”
After running through a list of possible personae, Mae-Ying decides to focus on a mousy, shockingly lazy girl who worked as an intern for her three summers ago. Just as before, as she concentrates, her mind floods with subtle details about the young woman--her quiet, shaky way of speaking; her quick but insincere smile; her unassuming posture; her wide-eyed gaze. When she opens her eyes, Mae-Ying is wearing the same clothes as before, but her hands are paler, her body is larger and her long hair has turned from black to a short, light brown bob. Her clothing still fits, but not well; she’ll have to take that into account when she’s deciding whose face to steal, next time. When she looks back at Niva, the latter has become a raven-haired woman with brown skin and roughly the same proportions as Niva’s normal form.
“Are you ready to go?” Niva asks, suddenly possessed of an Australian accent. Mae-Ying nods. Niva pulls out one of the burner phones. “Next we should find a base of operations. A hotel room is usual. I should call a cab?”
Mae-Ying nods. “That makes sense. Use Shuttle, they went fully driverless in the district last year.”
Niva nods and dials a number. A few minutes later, a small white vehicle pulls up a dozen feet down the curb. The light atop it begins blinking red and green to alert them of its presence.
As the cab traverses the city, bearing them to the Holiday Inn on Silver Spring, Niva is quiet.
“Do you want to talk about plans?” Mae-Ying asks.
“What plans, silly? We’re on vacation! Try and relax!” Niva’s voice is light, but she glances around the cab meaningfully. Mae-Ying almost slaps herself. Of course there are listening devices. She suddenly feels desperately out of her depth. Niva puts a hand on hers. “Don’t worry about things so much. I’m here to help, right?”
Mae-Ying swallows and nods. She glances at Niva’s hand and the other woman removes it hastily. For the briefest second, it’s Niva who seems unsure. Mae-Ying turns slightly and looks out the window, feeling uncharacteristically awkward.
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