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

The rain struck the roofs and roads, timpani-prelude to some grand cacophonous spectacle that drew Robin to the window like siren-song. Something in her wanted to follow the rain down, down and through the insolent ground to where everything had been washed away.

Robin shuddered, skulled her tea. "Hey, Amaranth. Thanks for the drink. And the nap." Something approximating a rueful grin. "I forget about this kind of stuff, when things get hectic."

Amaranth nodded, hand straying to her mask at the foot of her pile of pillows. "We can't stay here for the whole round though, can we?"

"Well, no, but, well, if you could help me with something - two somethings, actually - then we could stay here longer? Theoretically, anyway, taking one the uh, accelerants out of commission would definitely give me some room to-"

"-what are you planning?" said Amaranth, a little too quickly for Robin's comfort.

Shit. "Sorry." Poor choice of words. "That came out wrong. My intentions are good, I promise. I'm going to find Florica. Have you met her? No?" Good. "She's one of us, just, harder to spot in a crowd compared to Arokht or Rachel. She's like a - well. You remember all those bodies, on the Kelriz? How they became puppets for ghosts?"

Amaranth stared, the pollen alone keeping the calm in her voice. "How could I forget?"

Robin laughed, a noise both disarming and vaguely off-putting. She crossed the room to where her coat and rucksack lay, revealing to Amaranth as she turned around the possessed hand. The knuckles were bruised, along the back of it ran red welts and scratches, and the fingers still scrabbled for the cuff of Robin's sleeve. The necrologist paid it no mind, instead fossicking through her pack with her free arm.

"Ok. So, under normal circumstances, ghosts or souls or whatever you want to call them can't just 'jump into' things." She seemed to Amaranth far more animated suddenly, open. "Not even people-shaped things, and that's because souls are elaborate-as-all-heck arcanic signatures with this whole impetus to maintain their structure, that's at odds with the core properties of the energy they're made of. Blows my goddamn mind that that ship had the technology, just, lying around, to make all those ghosts bio-compatible like that, en masse-"

"Sorry, souls are what?"

Robin's smile faltered a bit. Ugh. Right. Religion. "Listen, I'm sure whatever you've been taught isn't wholly incompatible with established scientific findings. I can't claim (in a gathering of my peers) to know where it's headed (yet); I've just got a pretty good idea what it's made of."

"That's... not an answer."

Robin sighed, but good-naturedly. "Well, if you're still antsy for answers after I go and find Florica, I'm happy to give the both of you a crash course in arcanics and necrology."

"That... sounds lovely, but you still haven't explained how or why I should help." Robin didn't immediately respond to that, because of a mouthful of sterilised syringe packaging she was trying to tear open.

"Nnngrf. Right. Yeah. My point is, ghosts can't interact with physical objects. So if you want a ghost, and that ghost specifically, you'll need a physical configuration that fits them. Florica is a configuration."

"Oh."

"Right, so. Those corpses on the Kelriz? Imagine that happening to you while you're still alive." Amaranth said nothing. "She needs my help before-" she re-powers a wrecked space station and everyone on board's slaughtered by cultists or zombies. "She needs our help. If I can find her, before anything with a grudge does and uses her to start agitating the locals, we can breathe easier but. More than that, I should help her. I'm probably the only person who can."

Amaranth took a deep breath, then strode over and gestured for the rucksack. "Tell me what you need." Robin beamed.

"Ok, for starters, pass my laptop, that's the big flat square thing - gently! - then there's a black box about yea big with my animeter in it. If you can plug it in for me, I can set those up before you help me trance out-"

"Again? You don't even know what kind of ghosts are here."

Robin tried to wave dismissively, but Cathedral turned it into a clawing motion. "I can't get a sure read without the animeter, but I'd hazard there's less mass violent murdering happening in this world. I promise you, it'll go smoother this time."

Something nagged at Amaranth about 'this time', but Robin was already motioning at various vials and drawing tools. Rather, she was already booting up the laptop with one hand, and the other was scrabbling angrily in the direction of the soon-to-be banishing apparatus. Robin looked up from her screen and nodded at her hand.

"Cool. So what I'm gonna talk you through next with Mr. Won't-Let-Me-Keep-My-Hands-to-Myself there is a modified construct dissolution. If you can start with - uh, fuck. Do you have arcanic engineering where you come from? Magic or spellwork? Hell, electronic devices?"

"What do you think?" said Amaranth, with an admirable lack of testiness.

"Eh. We'll figure this out."

---

The rain struck the roofs and roads, a million tiny sounds each marking an insignificant journey's end. We've travelled so far. We've. We've we've.

A million messages mashed together into a ceaseless force. Rain bore down on the sky like it had come from beyond, crushing heaven into the earth, pummelling it into rooftops where it slithered off and away under any surviving shelter. Here hid that sky's worth of air, thick and crammed into these spaces, with anything else that didn't want to be washed away.

Here lay Florica, the ghosts possessing her unaccustomed to gravity. They'd dragged her out of the downpour after one had slithered out to investigate and been pulverised by rain, screaming in terror.

Florica couldn't help feeling sorry for the worms, though to be fair she'd not been witness to the massacre the cult of the Kelriz had performed for them. These souls hadn't revelled in the death of all those people picking apart their ship. They'd just wanted to go home. One of the less selfish goals among spectres she'd played host to, if she were being honest-

An apparition swooped into the shelter, not quite a ghost, not quite a stranger. Florica couldn't turn to look, the worms having not gotten as far as sitting her up out of the mud, but billowed above and around them like it didn't quite have its bearings. One of her ghosts braved sticking its head out, hissing a warning-

-and the smoky thing seized the worm, tore it out
and apart
and reached for another. The little souls scattered, panicked, and Florica was back just long enough to twist around and face her foe-

Hey! Woah! It's ok!

"It's..." Her vocal chords, strained this way and that by unaccustomed passengers, rasped. Florica winced. "It's you."

I'm sorry I kept you waiting, said Robin. Can you walk?

---

She ambled the streets, humming, unhurried, trailing Inderigan finery and a moongrass scarf between outstretched hands where her not-quite-ghost companion hid, keeping as best it could its not-quite limbs in Florica's slipstream.

We're looking for a three-and-a-half-spired church, next to a footbridge. Upriver where it's still in its banks, said Robin. Her voice sounded underwater. In a house down the street from there, Amaranth's waiting.

Florica looked around. A waterlogged park took up one side of the street, townhouses more-or-less stood on the other. Dim lamps glowed in a scant few windows and doorways. In others, ghosts. Don't stop, said Robin, but Florica was already heading for the park. Please. Thank you. I get caught in this too long, and I'll... have to go back to my body, I guess? I don't know. I'd rather not find out.

Florica kicked at puddles, quite content under these rains in a way she wanted to explain to Robin, but couldn't. "Clears my head, it does."

I'm glad that like, not being possessed feels good, but until I can help you it's tem-

"Oi! Miss! There's some somber bird out in the domain who looks could use some divinity in her face!"

Robin groaned. These seemed exactly the kind of agitated locals she'd been hoping to avoid. There were a whole crowd of them, hauling chunks of machinery and marking their passage through the street with a plume of steam. A jet of flame lashed overhead like a swipe and there were shrieks of delight.

Rachel. The tone of Robin's voice gave Florica pause. Florica, let me in. I'll handle this.

"Is she dangerous?"

Very. If you upset her, you'll be lucky if you get a chance to run from that mob.

"She doesn't seem all that upset."

Florica, trust me. She's the kind of person who's directionless without something to be upset about. I'm going to make sure you're not that something.

Florica could've said no, could've told Robin she'd handle this herself and Robin would actually respect that, probably, maybe. But when the dead turned to her in desperation and the most she'd came to expect from the living was their keeping fearful distance, the idea they might spend their fleeting time wishing ill of Florica was just... exhausting. Violence simply begat more vengeful souls, trapped on earth until someone like Florica might cross their path.

If there was anyone else like her. The crowds parted, letting through the sun, whose first words were:

"Oh. You."

"It's Florica."

"Right." Her constituents were milling around until she shooed them off. "Take all that machinery and set it up in the Downtown Station already. Those flyers aren't printing themselves!"

Seeing this Rachel up close brought Robin's warning into a new light. There was the terrible, wasteful anger achievable in a mortal's fleeting lifetime, then there was this... divinity. "Listen-"

"I should, go help these guys dismantle the ruling class. They've commandeered one of the bigger intact buildings, so I guess you could stay? If you wanted?

"That's... real good an noble of you, miss, but I've another place to be first-"

"-I'll escort you there, if it's going to be quick."

"Thank you, again," said Florica, gesturing to her sodden robes in what Rachel mistook for a curtsy, "but I've got-"

"Look, I don't know who else you've run into so far, but you definitely do not want to meet Sonora-"

"Robin?"

"Robin?"

---

Robin jerked awake with a cough, hack, and a couple more splutters for good measure. Amaranth hastily put down Robin's printed-out manuscripts, and slapped her between the shoulder blades until the coughing stopped.

"Fuck. Thanks," she said, then immediately stood up and headed for the door.

"What happened!?"

"Call it a wash, if an informative one," muttered Robin. "Hold down the fort, draw up a fresh circle. I'm gonna go and meet Florica at the church."

---

"Robin? What do you need her for?"

"In that first place, she promised to help me. Stop me been a host to spirits."

"That's your thing? Getting possessed?" Florica nodded. "Great! And I suppose while she was off domesticating Sonora last round, you were worm food somewhere else on the ship?"

Florica wished she could explain, but more and more of the rain falling around Rachel was evaporating. She could only shake her head, and wish Robin were here. Rachel swung as if to slap Florica, who ducked aside and reached for a dagger however useless it would be, but the searing flame shot past her and melted a bronze statue to slag.

"Go," hissed Rachel, over the rank smell of molten metal. "But don't expect the 'good doctor' to fix you. The only fixing she'll do is of problems she's caused. Everything else is meddling."

Florica ran, and didn't stop until she found the river's new edges and followed it back up to the church, where Robin waited with a blanket.