QUIETUS [S!5] [Round 3: Deluge]

Many of the huddled masses were refugees, from towns and townships further abroad whose homes had been drowned in the approaching storm. They’d come searching for safety, for warmth, and for a way out. They found none of these things, not at first. There were others, of course, who had not fled in whatever way they could. The aristocracy in their ivory towers, the people who served them their wine, and the magistrates, who still pretended to uphold the illusion of law and order. Never mind that most of who could get it into their minds to leave had found a way, up until now, and the police force had been particularly disloyal on that front. A skeleton crew braved the rain, now, rousting the huddles, moving them on - though the huddled would inevitably move on to the next marginally dry place they could find, and the bobbies would have to follow.

Batons and nightsticks were the choice of the day, Thomas A. Swift or his counterpart not having been born yet in this particular history, so sometimes the bobbies left behind them bruises, blood, and the occasional body limp and lifeless in the rain. Such was the way of things.

The way of things took a distinct turn for the different on this day, which to be fair was known to most to be one of the last days.

And so it came to pass, in a strange and twisted way, that sunlight struck the streets again.

***

Burn, burn, baby bird, burn. There were no birds anymore: all that which could fly had flown from the doomed, drowning city, long before the rain could unslick feathers or force flying fowl down with the sheer force of falling water and gravity together, a force that now struck the streets with spatters and splatters. Soon, not long now, soon it would begin striking the ground with jackhammer force, cracking the cobbles. But not yet. Right now the cobbles were melting.

A metal helmet, shield-badge partially burned off, came rolling comically off a scorched, blackened skull, down the street, down towards the swollen river-edge. Tinkle, tinkle, splash.

She waited a few seconds, and exhaled a deep breath she hadn’t been aware of holding. A plume of purple-ultraviolet plasma jetted from one hand, involuntarily, and carved a sigil into the empty face of the nearest store. A blue smudge spun crazily across her vision, again, again, again. She wanted to take it, hold it, stop that irritating immortality from not being in her, with her, of her, being Her -

It was then she realized there was a faint cheering around her, muffled by the ever-present rain, but there nonetheless, worship, worshipful, almost. They watched her unfold from the ground, from where the bobby’s baton had laid her, visibly evaporating the rain that fell upon her into clouds of steam. An awesome sight, a word once reserved only for the acts perpetrated by the gods themselves.

The vagrants rose up, chased down the other bobby, who was by then halfway down the street, slipping on the cobblestones as the ragged masses bore him down, venting upon his body the injustice that had now been given the impetus for an outlet, any outlet. His helmet went flying. Someone tore his badge from his chest. Someone tore his heart from his chest.

Blood sacrifice to a god.

***

“Okay, folks,” Rachel subsequently said, at the head of a long and definitely stolen table in a big and more questionably purloined conference hall, “what we want to achieve here is a radical overthrow of the existing hierarchy. Yes, a question?”

“Why don’t you just burn down the banquet hall where all the fucken knobheads are doing their party?” said a heckler in the back of the crowded room.

“Too wet. Besides, this cult isn’t going to be about fire-worship, or anything, all right? We’re here to instantiate an organized response to the current weather and to create a better social situation for all of us, provided we don’t all die. Yes, you again?”

“Why don’t you use your sun powers to stop the rain?”

“You think the sun has that much power here? Besides I’m kind of just filling in for another sun god on a temp basis and even then I’m mostly coasting off of your goodwill and willingness to worship as opposed to any actual divinity at this point, did I say that out loud?”

“So what you’re saying is, we don’t really need you?”

Rachel incinerated him. “Any more questions?”

None.

“Good. Now chalk won’t work, so we’ll need about six hundred thousand flyers…”