neonblessing

[neonblessing]

11.

⚠️ SPOILER ALERT! ⚠️ Click here to read Neon Blessing from the beginning!

Kurtz led her to a booth on the balcony, raised up on a dais to provide a view of the rest of the club. Gauzy red curtains offered some semblance of privacy. There were no bodyguards in sight, but Kurtz didn’t give off the impression of someone who needed guards. “I need to find someone,” Shiv said.

“You’ll be wanting to talk to Odie, then.” Odie, the panoptispex. Kurtz’s pet info mage.

“Yeah.”

“It’s gonna cost you. Its time is my money.”

“I can pay.” She made the sign of the bird under the table, silently thanking Ornarch for his help.

“The usual rate is one thousand credits a minute. Does that work for you?” Fucking hells.

“Yeah, that works.”

“Alright. Do you have an ID chip?”

“Yep. Untraceable.” Ornarch had taken her old one the day she met him, leaving a new one in its place. Whatever he’d done, it hadn’t even left a scar. 

Kurtz smiled. There was something perfunctory about it, about all of her actions, really. She moved and talked and smiled to get to the next thing, always to the next thing. She held a small tablet out to Shiv. “Transfer the money, and I’ll send you in to see Odie.”

Shiv tapped her card against the screen and transferred more money than she’d had at any one point in years, all to talk to someone for a minute.

“Basement. Second to last door on the left. Your minute starts when the door opens.”

“Thanks, Kurtz.”

“Mhm.”

Shiv wove her way through the dance floor, dodging elbows and flailing bodies as an electric guitar wailed with almost as much passion as the woman playing it. Now that Shiv was closer, the keyboardist, bassist, and drummer had the hazy, smoky look of holograms. Good holograms, sure, but it was undoubtedly a solo act. She absentmindedly wondered if anyone else had noticed.

The door to the basement was right of the stage, presided over by a woman cut from the same cloth as Headset and Scanner out front, who opened it as she approached. “Right this way, miss.”

Shiv smiled as she descended. The halls of the basement stretched off to both sides, all pristine and utilitarian, equally devoid of decoration and dust. Shiv turned left, and walked until she reached the door. It was obviously her destination. There were many rooms with many doors, but the rest were all sliding panels of white plastic, and this one was built like a vault door. The winking red light of a camera stared down at her, and a buzzer sounded as the door swung open, revealing a second door. An airlock.

Shiv stepped inside, and the huge door closed behind her. A voice came over a speaker as a portion of the wall opened up to reveal a shallow tray. “Turnoffyourphoneandputitalongwithanyweaponsinthetray,” it said, the audio remarkably clear in quality but the words were spoken too quickly to parse easily.

“What?”

The voice, with tremendous deliberateness and only slightly less haste, repeated the phrase, inserting each tiny pause between words as if it hurt. “TurnOffYourPhoneAndPutIt,AlongWithAnyWeapons,InTheTray.”

Shiv complied. “Does this count against my minute?”

“NoWorries.YourMinuteWillBeginWhenTheSecondDoorOpens.ThankYou.” The interior door swung open. “YourMinuteBeginsNow.”

The room was dark. Its only illumination came from dozens–no, hundreds–of screens that covered every surface. Each showed a different scene, each one cycling a few times every second: snippets of security footage, market metrics, news articles, primetime TV, and bird’s eye views of the streets of the Diluvian District.

In the middle of the room sat Odie. It was facing her, cross-legged on a mat on the floor, wearing a helmet which appeared to be composed of a single, shining obsidian surface. IV lines trailed from its arms and back to hidden reservoirs in the ceiling. Besides the helmet, it was naked, its body emaciated and pale from gods-knew-how-long spent without seeing the outside world. At a second glance, the helmet was neither helmet nor uniform in its composition: Odie had a thousand cameras set into its skull, a thousand unblinking eyes all fixated forever on the screens that surrounded it. It was a panoptispex, all-seeing and all-knowing.

“You’reLookingForSomeone,ShivGodschild.”

“Yes. For my…”

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[neonblessing]

10.

⚠️ SPOILER ALERT! ⚠️ Click here to read Neon Blessing from the beginning!

Club RED was a labor of love. A cyclopean eye of neon tubes stared down at the street from the facade of a beautiful temple to excess, bathing the darkening street in bloodred light which played through the mist kicked up by a nearby waterfall. The building was dark glass and darker stone, three stories tall and culminating in a domed roof. It wasn’t even 5 pm, but the line was pouring out the door and onto the sidewalk, foreign raincoats and umbrellas standing side by side with wet-haired Diluvian partygoers.

Shiv had never entered a nightclub through the front before. There’d been one club, the Magpie, that she’d frequented with her friends, but the owner was one of Ornarch’s devout and always let them skip the lines. Huh. She hadn’t been to the Magpie in years. She wasn’t even sure if it was still in business.

The line moved quickly, and before long, she was at the door. “Let’s see some ID.” There were two bouncers, identically dour and militaristic-looking men who loomed over her like a pair of sunglasses-clad statues, their suits custom-made to fit over the bulky structure of a mil-spec exocloak. Thin seams in the skin of their faces suggested the presence of subdermal armor plating to protect what the mechanized armor didn’t. One of them handled a scanner with the practiced care of a guy whose grip could crush a human skull.

Shiv showed them the card. “Kooler sent me.” The one with the scanner stared her down while the other barked a few quick words into a headset. If shit went south, the only viable exit was ducking the rope to the left, but Headset would make a grab for her and if those huge hands got a grip it was over. She’d need to distract him first, maybe blind him. Throw her coat in his face? She started to shrug it off her shoulder, just in case. Scanner continued to glower at her in a prolific display of disdain. He should be too far away to do anything, but just in case-

Headset spoke, snapping her out of her planning.

“Hm?” She’d missed what he’d actually said.

“Go on in. The boss is on the second floor.” Shiv pulled her coat back over her shoulder and brushed past the bouncers and into the club. She pushed her way past a heavy curtain of soundproof fabric and replaced the endless roar of the streets with the endless roar of Club RED’s speakers.

Water poured down gilded fountain walls and colored lights arced and scattered through thick smoke, produced by a mix of sweet-scented cigarettes and industrial fog machines. Waiters and waitresses wearing practically nothing served a very peculiar clientele: half of the patrons were exactly what she’d expected, the sort of wealthy-looking folks willing to spend fifteen credits on a can of beer; and the other half were all grizzled paramilitary types. The burning coal glow of their cybernetic eyes stared out at her through the fog, automatically seeking out her vital organs before flicking back to their drinks.

Shiv scaled the stairs to the second floor, taking a moment to look out on the dance floor from the balcony. The band’s frontwoman was more work of art than human, her limbs all formed from sweeping lines of carbon fiber and steel. Her guitar plugged into a port on the back of her neck, her quicksilver fingers dancing over the strings with surreal grace. She had a voice like an angel with a smoking habit.

“She’s quite something, ain’t she?” A woman’s voice came from behind Shiv. She turned to see Kurtz, for who else could it be? The owner of Club RED was maybe forty years old, a little shorter than Shiv, and built like a brick. Her head was clean-shaven, revealing dozens of tally mark tattoos, in sets of five, spreading from near her temple and across half of her head. Unlike everyone else, she was dressed simply and practically, in sturdy black pants and a tank top, and unlike everyone else, she had a gun at her hip, an antique revolver. Both of her eyes were red: one eye was flesh, with an iris that had either been dyed or transplanted. The other eye was metal, the iris glowing the exact same shade as the vast eye on the front of the building. She carried herself with an easy confidence, bordering on arrogance. “Are you the one Kooler mentioned?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m Joan Kurtz, owner of Club RED and REDEYE PMSC. What brings you to my door?”

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[neonblessing]

9.

⚠️ SPOILER ALERT! ⚠️ Click here to read Neon Blessing from the beginning!

“Look, you don’t have to give me a map. Just point me in the right direction.”

“Shiv, kid, I get it. You want revenge. But-”

“I don’t want revenge,” she said. She wasn’t certain if it was a lie.

“Then what do you want?”

“Answers.” Hell, she didn’t even know the finer points of what the two of them had stolen. The house had been full of valuable art, they’d passed a poorly-hidden wall safe on the way to the owner’s office, and they ignored it all in favor of the data drive that had sat atop a messy stack of papers. Ornarch hadn’t told them what was on there, just that it would go for a hundred thousand credits at a minimum, or a million from the right buyer. Most drives its size were just something convenient to hold, with the data itself stored on a chip a few nanometers thick. Whatever was on that drive had been complex enough that the whole damn drive was dedicated to memory. A sphinx glinted darkly on its surface, mirror finish set into matte black. There was something captivating about its sheer scale and the precision of its construction. Something a little sinister, too. Then he had shown up, and the rest of the night was a blurry nightmare of burning, screaming, and blood.

Kooler pursed his lips. “And once you have those answers, what are you going to do?”

“My job. Ornarch wants me to-”

Kooler’s eyes narrowed, and he tilted his head. “Isn’t your job breaking and entering? At least, I think that’s what you told me the first time we met. Forgive an old man’s memory for its failings, but I think I would have remembered hearing a teenager call themself an executioner.” He suddenly sounded very old, and very tired.

“Maybe I’ve changed. Why do you care?” It came out a little colder than she’d intended it to.

“Sorry, sorry. You’re right. None of my business.”

“So you won’t help me?”

“Staying neutral is how I stay alive. Everyone knows old Kooler keeps his mouth shut.”

“That’s a no?” Her heart sank. She’d known it was a long shot, but even still, Kooler was the closest thing she had to a lead.

Whatever he saw in her face gave him pause. “I… offered them ten thousand for the drive. I don’t even have half the hardware it would take to decrypt that… monster. I told them I wasn’t paying a credit more than that for a piece of software I couldn’t validate, no matter what rumors I’d heard. They took their business elsewhere. I don’t know where.”

“Rumors?”

“Have you been online since you stole it?” She hadn’t. “Half of the criminals in the Diluvian District are hunting after that sphinx drive. It’s anyone’s guess what’s on there, but Ebrelurge put a bounty out on it and then a few gang bosses joined the bidding war. As of this morning, the best offer is 1.6 million.”

Lord of birds. One point six fucking million?

He went on. “I don’t know where they went, but I know someone who might. Don’t go telling everyone I lent you a hand, but you’re- you’re a good kid. Just- hear them out when you see them. Don’t rush headlong into being a killer.”

“Yeah.”

Kooler pushed off the counter, sending his chair on a practiced arc towards a shelf of folders in one corner of the shop. He returned bearing a business card, a thin sheet of crisp white plastic stock with “Club RED – 1191-3962” embossed on it in brilliant crimson. The back side of the card was decorated with a staring eye in the same shade. “Kurtz–the owner of Club RED–knows me, and she’s got a panopt. Ask to see Odie. If it can’t help you, no one can.”

Shiv grinned. “Thanks, Kooler.”

“I’d say ‘any time,’ but really I’d rather not stick my neck out again.”

“With any luck, you won’t have to!”

The door squealed as she left.

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[neonblessing]

8.

⚠️ SPOILER ALERT! ⚠️ Click here to read Neon Blessing from the beginning!

As she climbed the stairs from the train station, she was assailed by the riot of color and text inherent to any District’s downtown. A thousand ads warred for her attention, wielding punchy slogans and brilliant hues. Unable to compete with the noise of the falls, the ads screamed in vibrant silence: ONLY 70C! TAKE A BREATH OF BLACK SUN! CELESTIAL COLOSSEUM: DEATH MATCHES WEEKENDS AT 9! LIVE FOREVER! Half-nude models leered down at her from thousand-foot-tall billboards. One caressed a rifle as if it were a lover and winked at her. The ad had no text indicating whether it was the woman or the weapon on sale. Hell, it could have been an ad for fruit juice.

Her destination was only a few miles from the parking garage. This morning, she would have walked that distance, but the 3C train fare was more appealing with twenty thousand in her pocket. If she was going to find Raz, there was only one place to start.

The Big K was a small shop, the only sign of its existence from the street being a grimy neon sign half-visible down an alleyway. Compared to every other business on the street, it had a tasteful air of desperation and disrepair. She stepped around a sleeping form at the entrance of the alley, slipping a coin into their pocket as she did so. She could spare the change.

The door squealed loudly as she swung it open. It was so perfectly Kooler: why spend money on grease or an entry chime when he could kill two birds with one cut corner? The Big K was a pawn shop, of a sort. Kooler would buy from and sell to anyone, but above all else he was a cornerstone of criminal life in Diluvian 22. Kooler knew everyone, everyone knew Kooler, and most importantly, the cops didn’t fuck with him or his clientele.

The store was empty, save for the owner, who sat in a swivel chair behind a glass counter filled with a vast assortment of pricey trinkets. Kooler was a fat man in his early fifties, dressed in a perfectly-tailored, if shabby, suit. He was meticulously clean-shaven, his long hair up in a ponytail. He blinked away his HUD, then produced the practiced grin of a salesman when he saw who had entered his domain.

“Shiv!!! How’re ya holdin’ up, screamer?” His gaze flickered to her shoulder and the arm that conspicuously wasn’t there.

“Hey, Kooler.” Shiv liked Kooler. He was cheap, but he was honest.

“I saw your buddy in here last month–asked ‘em where you were. They said you nearly got memorialized!”

“That’s actually what I’m here about.” She realized her fist was clenched.

Kooler had kept on talking. “--was some haul you two birded! You puttin' your share towards a shiny new arm? I could hook you-”

Shiv cut him off. “I didn’t get my share. And neither did the old man.” Kooler’s mouth closed like a vault door. “Raz skipped town.”

“Ah.” His good cheer had evaporated.

“Yeah.”

“Playing headsman for the thief-god now, are we?” For as long as she’d known him, Kooler had never particularly approved of violence, for all that his business depended on it.

“I intend to do a lot more than play.”

Kooler sighed, then leaned over the counter, pressing fingertips together. Down to business. “Well, kid, what can I do for you?”

“I need to know where they went.”

He frowned sympathetically. “Shiv, you know I like to stay out of shit like this.”

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[neonblessing]

7.

⚠️ SPOILER ALERT! ⚠️ Click here to read Neon Blessing from the beginning!

She wandered the streets in a mindless daze, eventually settling into a familiar path, the steps hewn into her body’s memory like an image seared onto the screen of an ancient television.

There was a parking garage by the interdistrict freeway, where autonomous levcars flew past in vacuum-silent tunnels at a thousand miles an hour. You could skirt around the security cameras and duck the barricade if you were short enough, though Shiv had needed to hunch ever since she hit her growth spurt at fourteen. From there, it was a quick climb up the stairs to the roof, where no one could see them and no one cared and they would never grow up and never kill each other.

Hauling herself up onto the concrete wall at the edge of the lot one-handed was an undignified affair that had left her arm aching and face red. As she slipped for the second time, she could have sworn she heard Raz’s voice asking if she needed a hand. It was the exact joke they would have made if they’d been there, and she would have punched them for it and they would have laughed and she would have laughed. Swearing, she finally got herself up onto the wall and lay there, panting and embarrassed. She was glad to be alone and had never wished so badly that she wasn’t.

It was a hot summer day. Whoever had built the City, all those centuries ago, had left the seasons in, their influence felt through the artificial heating and the glow of the lights than through the glare of the sun. It was the same time all around the world, and it was summer everywhere.

On hot days sometimes someone would bring popsicles.

That was the thought that did her in, that one simple fact. On hot days sometimes someone would bring popsicles. One of her friends–now long stripped from her by time, by petty disputes, by death, or by treason–would get their hands on a box of popsicles, and they’d pack them into a beat up old cooler and share them here, up above the world and its problems. On hot days, sometimes, someone would bring popsicles.

Shiv made a choked little noise as tears made their unwanted presence known. They’d all deserved better. Gin, shot in the head by one of the Weeping Lady’s cop-cultists. Ogre was serving twenty years with GGC. Noro was–well, Noro was fine. He just hated her and the feeling was mutual. The same went for Johnny and Fish. Keene went missing, and Ben had still been waiting for her to come back when his cough took a turn for the worse. And Raz, oh Raz, oh fuck.

What were you thinking, Raz? Why did you leave? I needed you here. Did I really matter that little to you?

She thought she’d known them. If it were any other question, she could have given their answer for them, word for word, but when she dug for their answer in the little part of her soul where her best friend had lived, she found nothing but grief for a person she hadn’t killed yet.

“FUCK YOU! FUCK ALL OF YOU!” She screamed at Raz, at the Sorrows, at the gods, at everyone and everything. The cascades of the Diluvian swallowed all sound within their eternal churning, and though she yelled until her throat was hoarse and her eyes ran dry, no one heard her.

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[neonblessing]

6.

⚠️ SPOILER ALERT! ⚠️ Click here to read Neon Blessing from the beginning!

Shiv pocketed the phone, then reached out and took Ornarch’s withered hand. “I’ll do it.”

Her god smiled. “I knew I could count on you.” With a twist of his long, thin fingers, a sleek black card appeared and found its way between her fingers. “Twenty thousand credits.”

Shiv nearly dropped the card in surprise. “Twenty thousand?!” The payout for picking a pocket was three digits at the highest: cards would be canceled long before they could be used, and there was always the risk that the mark might have augments or trackers. B&E paid better, but you needed to find a fence who could break into stolen electronics, and they were almost universally scum. The shit she and Raz had looted on the botched job could have been worth a hundred grand, even after a steep cut from both Ornarch and a middleman, but that had taken weeks of planning and cost her an arm. Twenty thousand up front was unthinkable.

Ornarch waved a hand dismissively, rings glinting in the industrial glare. “Grease some palms, hire some muscle, buy a gun. Whatever makes the job easier.”

“Thank you, lord.” She hesitated a moment, realizing she had no idea where to start looking. “Do you have any leads?”

“How were Raz���s finances?”

“About as broke as me, I think. Those implants cost a lot.”

“So they’d need to sell off some of the haul to get away from here. They aren’t safe in the Diluvian, and fare out of here is pricey.”

“I’ll ask around.”

“Wonderful.”

“Any idea as to why they did it?”

“No. No clue.” She almost choked on the words. That was the worst part, the bit that kept her up at night. What could have been so important that they’d just leave her?

“Ah well. Good luck, Shiv.” The dismissal, unspoken, was irrefutable. She would do what he wanted, he would give her what she wanted. The conversation was over. For all his immortality, Ornarch was not a patient god.

Shiv turned to leave, the roar of water rushing up to meet her as she approached the exit of the pipe. Could she even kill them? In a fistfight, even down an arm, definitely. Guns were a toss-up given that neither of them knew how to shoot. But of course, Raz was a skulljack, and a good one at that.

Skulljack. It was a dirty word, the worst kind of mage. Raz’s brilliant blue undercut hid dozens of neurocranial implants–translators and antennae and arcane batteries–all bent towards one terrible purpose: the subjugation of the will. In that dingy waiting room before their first operation, she’d told them not to do it, but she’d come to rely on their skills in the years since: skulljacking took too long to be useful in a fight, but it was priceless in an interrogation.

Of course, skulljacking was easier the better you knew someone, and they’d grown up together. Over a decade and a half, she and Raz had bared every last rotten secret–had aired out every scrap of encryption around their souls. They promised they’d never fuck with her, but would she know if they had? Even if they hadn’t, how long could she hold out against someone who knew her first crush, all her fears, and everything she’d ever dreamt of?

As she climbed the stairs back to street level, her nervous thoughts sublimated into a mantra, repeated with every step. 

I’m not who I was a month ago. That woman could never imagine killing them. I can.

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[neonblessing]

5.

⚠️ SPOILER ALERT! ⚠️ Click here to read Neon Blessing from the beginning!

Shiv drew her hand back slightly. “What do you want?”

Ornarch silently took a seat in a plush armchair which appeared beneath him like a supplicant. He set the phone on the arm of the chair and folded his thin hands contemplatively. He met Shiv’s eyes for a moment, then spoke, his voice like velvet. “What happened that night, Shiv?”

Shiv went to open her mouth, but he was speaking again.

“It was supposed to be a simple burglary. You had a key. Raz had the building plans. You were both professionals. And you did half the job! A little bird told me the theft was reported to the Church. But despite that, you’re missing an arm, and Raz is, well, missing. Along with my cut of the money.”

Ornarch tilted his head like a vulture inspecting a roadside corpse. “Shiv, darling, my wonderful protégé… Did you get your share?” Unspoken, a simple fact they both knew: he would know if she lied.

“No.” After carrying her to Maggie’s couch, Raz had left, with all the money and without explanation or goodbye.

Ornarch leaned back and breathed a sigh of relief. He met her gaze again, grief lining his aged face. “Oh how they have wronged us, Shiv.”

“What do you want?”

“It’s a dreadful business. Tasteless, even. But we both know there’s an honor among thieves. You wouldn’t rob one of your brothers or sisters, would you?”

“No.”

“And I would never take anything from you, save for my rightful cut.”

“You never have.”

“And yet your little friend,” he said, putting the same venom into the word as one might put into “tumor” or “cop,” face twisting with contempt, “well, they seem to have forgotten about common decency.”

“What do you want.” It came out less as a question, more as a challenge.

“This really is a dreadful business, Shiv. You can take the phone now, no matter what you decide. A gift from an old man to his favorite daughter. To his loyal daughter.”

Ornarch had taken her in when her parents, long forgotten now, had left her to die. He’d first called her son, and then daughter, always proud of her in his distant, transactional way. She was suddenly very aware of the tattoos on her shoulder blades.

He continued, lips unmoving as the beak in his throat spoke. “And if a certain traitor happened to suffer their rightful punishment at your hands, well, I’m sure we could do something about that arm of yours.” Unbidden, a vision of cold steel and titanium flickered through her mind. An enticing prospect.

He held the phone out to Shiv. His nails were long, talon-like, in bad need of a trim. His hand felt ice-cold as she took the box from his grasp. “We rule these streets, Shiv. No one steals from us.”

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[neonblessing]

4.

⚠️ SPOILER ALERT! ⚠️ Click here to read Neon Blessing from the beginning!

A rickety access stair off the side of the road led below street level, a rusted railing the only thing between her and a ten thousand foot drop into the churning sea of waste at the bottom of the Diluvian. Everywhere, banners hung from the grates and pipes, extolling the virtues of the god at the bottom of the stairs.

Shiv couldn’t read the Eldest Tongue, but Raz used to tell her what all the banners said: Prince of Birds, Father of Thieves, Bright-Eyed, Swift-Tongued, Dark-Winged, Clever-Handed, Purse-Cutting, Theft-Fed, Ever-Hungry, Ever-Proud, Ornarch. The same symbols on every banner, repeated a thousand times, more and more frequently, as candles began to crop up along the railings and the heady scent of incense suffused the misty air.

A magpie sat on a pipe that snaked out of the wall, looking down at Shiv. “Hail, brother. I bring an offering for our lord,” she said, waving the uneaten half of the tart. The magpie chattered at her mockingly, then flew off. Fifteen years she’d known Ornarch, and she still didn’t know if the birds could understand her.

A few hundred feet down the path, under one waterfall and over another, lay the entrance to Ornarch’s home. It was once a drainage pipe, but it had long since fallen into disrepair, now the domain of rats, birds, and the god of the gutter. She hesitated a moment outside the pipe.

“Come in, Shiv.” His voice sounded frail, but was clearly audible over the roar of the water. She stepped inside, and laid eyes on her god.

Ornarch looked like shit. He’d aged twenty years in the month since Shiv had last seen him. His once-ageless face was carved through with lines, his raven-black hair faded to a dull grey. His threadbare black suit couldn’t have gotten any more dilapidated, but the wings that swept from his back looked tattered and mangy. Even his gilded earrings had tarnished. Only his eyes were completely unchanged: hollow voids that expanded as Shiv met his gaze, wider and wider, deeper and deeper, until points of light shone through an infinite expanse of nothing, and nothing else was real. Shiv had never seen the night sky anywhere but those eyes.

In contrast to his wretched appearance, his home was more or less unchanged since last she’d seen it. The pipe in which Ornarch held court was easily thirty feet in diameter, its curved floor dotted with the melted-down corpses of innumerable tallow candles. Censers dangled from the ceiling at regular intervals, smoke transmuting the industrial lighting into something soft and warm. A thousand black birds stared down at her with beady eyes.

God clung to a wheeled IV drip like a drowning man to a board. How he’d gotten it down here, she had no idea, and as far as she knew mortal medical technology did nothing for gods. The bag glistened red in the dim light of the drainage pipe, a line of crimson curving down and disappearing under a shirtsleeve.

“I brought breakfast.” She once again pulled the pastry from her pocket.

“Put it on the altar with the rest.” Ornarch’s altar was a flat stone carved with circling birds, piled high with worthless trinkets and stolen treasures in equal measure. Every god was fed by sacrifice, and Ornarch demanded a cut of his congregation's pilfered goods. She gingerly placed the tart atop a wallet and a jeweled locket.

“It’s been a while.” His lips didn’t really move as he talked. Shiv had seen him open his mouth all the way, had seen that cruel beak that jutted from the back of his throat.

“Yeah.” Unspoken, the fact that she’d lost her arm on a job he’d sent her on. The job she’d failed. A month of recovery, the burning pain of the blade parting her flesh, all for nothing.

“You haven’t been answering your phone.”

“I lost it.” Some time in the panicked escape from the botched job, it had slipped from her pocket.

Ornarch’s thin lips curved into a frown. “Well that simply won’t do.” He patted his pockets before procuring a thin box from nowhere. “The newest Obol model. Top of the line. Trackers removed.” He offered it to Shiv.

She hesitated.

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[neonblessing]

3.

⚠️ SPOILER ALERT! ⚠️ Click here to read Neon Blessing from the beginning!

She could really go for a croissant, not that it was up to her. The people with money and jobs ordered their breakfast off of Cafe Kuro’s real paper menus, and she ordered her breakfast off of unattended plates.

Reckless thieves got caught, or killed, or lost an arm and nearly died in their friend’s arms. For example. Shiv had resolved to be less reckless. As she saw it, there were three problems that needed solving if she was going to eat.

First, there was the issue of her silhouette. Being down an arm hopefully wasn’t a permanent problem, but prosthetics took cash she didn’t have, and in the meantime it was an obvious identifying marker. She ducked off the main road, and squatted down next to a dumpster overflowing with trash, just one more broken piece of garbage no one who was anyone would look twice at.

Working quickly, she opened her bag, digging around until she procured a shirt and pants. Unpinning the sleeve of her coat and stuffed the clothes into it before sticking the end of the sleeve into her pocket. It wasn’t the sort of thing that would hold up to close inspection, but a stolen pastry shouldn’t garner too much attention. She calmly stood and exited the alley like she’d just been passing through.

She’d solved the second problem the first time she robbed Cafe Kuro, over a decade ago. Gin, a kid a few years her elder, had walked her through figuring out the blind spots of the street’s security cameras. You didn’t have to avoid the cameras’ notice all the way, merely confine illicit activity to those safe harbors.

As she approached the cafe, she double checked that the angles of the cameras were unchanged. As she made almost-but-not-quite-eye-contact with the rectangular bulk of each camera, Shiv recalled what Gin had told her: “Big cameras like these aren’t really to watch people, they’re to remind them they’re being watched.” They existed to make the desperate amateur think twice before trying anything, but to Shiv they might as well not be there at all.

The last thing she had to do was order off the only menu she had access to. There were seven tables in the blind spots, and six of them had plates. She sat down on a bench, wishing she still had a phone to pretend to look at. She settled for affecting the glassy stare of someone with an implanted HUD.

The first time someone stood from one of the tables, they quickly gathered their things and left. The second person to stand turned and walked into the store, to piss or to pick up a drink. He looked like an asshole in his dark blue suit, and his hands flashed silver as he pushed in his chair.

The most common mistake a novice thief made was moving too quickly. Running, a quick grabbing hand, they all triggered some animal part of the brain and attracted attention. You couldn’t be slow, either. The movements had to be smooth. You practiced what you could beforehand, and planned out what you couldn’t practice.

Shiv walked into the seating area like she intended to enter the cafe. At the threshold, she turned around–not quickly, but purposefully–as if she’d remembered something she had to do elsewhere. As she passed the abandoned plate, her arm swept the fancy tart upon it into a pocket, and then she was out.

Cafe Kuro was on the way to Ornarch’s domain, and, on second thought, not far from where Gin had died.

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[neonblessing]

2.

⚠️ SPOILER ALERT! ⚠️ Click here to read Neon Blessing from the beginning!

LAYER 22 - THE DILUVIAN DISTRICT

EST. POPULATION: 100M HUMANS, 12 GODS

POINTS OF INTEREST: CHURCH OF MANIFOLD SORROWS, THE SACROLITH, A DISUSED DRAINAGE PIPE

Maggie’s house wasn’t the nicest place Shiv had ever crashed. That honor went to the hotel room the Floodkin had broken into for the night of her eighteenth birthday. Maggie’s wasn’t her favorite, either–that hideout was long gone, torn down and turned into a casino years ago. That said, she’d definitely slept in worse places: Mags didn’t expect anything from her besides chipping in on rent where she could; and the house was soundproofed, an essential in the Diluvian District.

Shiv stepped outside and slipped in a pair of cheap earplugs to drown out the roar of water. They deadened the sound but couldn't outright eliminate it. Distant waterfalls thundered at a trillion gallons a minute, kicking up the famous Diluvian Mists that could be felt anywhere in the district. The water cascaded down from the layers above and went coursing through a thousand canals and rivers on its way further down and deeper into the city. In the late morning glow of the street lamps, brilliant rainbows played about the skyscrapers. The ceiling of the layer was invisible under a blanket of fog.

Thankfully, most of the filtration happened on Diluvian 20, so the water here was clear and more or less safe to drink. The fountains were fed by the channels, and people huddled around them, holding cups out to the metal mouths of the godly statuary.

The streets of Diluvian 22 were full of people no matter the time of day. A train swept by overhead on suspended tracks, while cars careened through the narrow, twisting streets, and on every sidewalk and bridge and platform people of all sorts went about their business.  An ear-splittingly loud torrentpunk song filled the morning air, courtesy of some band of street performers a block or two over.

Everything in the Diluvian was loud: the music, the people, and the fashion choices. It was always easy to tell when someone was new to the district: they tended to speak too quietly to be heard above the waterfalls, and wore shapeless and utilitarian raincoats. The dark fabric of formal suits and ties stood out against the riot of color, islands of corporate pretension amidst a sea of high-vis vests and neon street clothes.

Maggie’s house was located along Grief St., a little closer to the Church than Shiv would have liked. She was always careful to give it a wide berth, staying at least three blocks away from its stony facade where possible. By Shiv’s reckoning, there were twelve gods who called Diluvian 22 home, and Aluel was the worst of them.

The Church of Manifold Sorrows policed much of the district, from way down in layer 24 and up to 19, but the 22nd layer was where their goddess had built her cathedral. Aluel and her Sorrows (or Crybabies, as the Diluvian public called them) didn’t have that much weight to throw around, and mostly busied themselves protecting VIPs, confiscating firearms, and breaking up rowdy parties. Every few weeks they killed someone.

Nine of Diluvian 22’s gods were inconsequential: homeless, powerless, without domain or altar, too weak even to be conscripted as labor or as batteries. Even the Diluvian's mightiest were frequently ignored in prayers, with people choosing to throw their lots in with more influential gods. 

As for the two remaining major gods, Ebrelurge’s name was cursed more often than it was praised, and no one of repute would be caught dead consorting with Ornarch. Shiv had gotten Ornarch’s black wings tattooed onto her shoulder blades when she was fourteen years old, and she figured she owed the old man a house call.

As she passed by a corner cafe wafting the smell of fresh-baked bread out into the foggy air, her stomach growled in appreciation. She hadn’t had anything to eat since yesterday’s lunch.

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[neonblessing]

1.

The cats were fighting, and Maggie was singing to them. It was Tater's birthday, apparently. How wonderful.

Shiv cracked her eyes open. The ceiling looked like shit: the paint was peeling, and there was some sort of stain spreading from one corner. The harsh morning light of the street lamps streamed into the room through the busted shade, casting crooked bars of shadow across the room.

The rest of the house looked worse than the ceiling. The cats had left scratches on everything they could reach, and time and neglect had left their marks on anything the cats couldn't. The furniture all looked out of place, collected over decades and haphazardly repaired.

From somewhere in the mismatched house, Maggie was babbling to her cats. "Come on, Candy. Share the fish with your brother. It's his birthday. Share the fish with the birthday baby!" Potato Chip's mournful wail filled the air, accompanied by the sound of chewing and a wary hiss.

Shiv sat up, wincing. She wrenched her head from side to side experimentally, to no avail. Rubbing her neck, she awkwardly swung her legs off the couch and stood up. Shiv picked her way over to the kitchen, for once managing not to stub her toe on the cabinet that protruded into the door frame.

"Morning, Mags."

Maggie jumped as Shiv spoke. "Oh, good morning! I made coffee." Maggie was fucking old. Her eyes were older than Shiv: they were some vintage shit, with protruding lenses that stopped her eyelids from properly closing. An awful little part of Shiv figured their value was somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 grand from an avid collector.

"Where'd you get the fish?" Shiv took a mug off its hook and poured herself some lukewarm coffee. The slogan on the side of the mug demanded silence, at least until the bearer had finished their name-brand coffee. The winking face of a defunct coffee logo grinned up at her as she took a sip.

"A trader's in town, just for the day. Some sort of pilgrim."

"Anything else good?"

"Protein bars, holy symbols, ID chips, and..." she looked around, as if Shiv hadn't swept the place for bugs last week, and dropped her voice. "...ammunition. No guns."

"What did you give him?"

"Some of the kitchen knives."

"You gave him knives for a fish?"

Maggie wrung her leathery hands nervously. "It's Potato Chip's birthday! Besides, they were getting dull."

"You have a whetstone!"

"I don't know how to use it right, and you..." she trailed off, but couldn't stop the glassy lenses of her eyes from flickering to Shiv's shoulder. Or rather, to where her shoulder used to be. Maggie swallowed, her gaudily-dyed hair bobbing in distress.

"I could have taught you! And Tater didn't even get to eat his fish." A contented Candy Bar wound her way about Maggie's legs, purring. Maggie opened and closed her mouth a few times, but said nothing.

Shiv wordlessly grabbed her bag off the couch. It still smelled like the factory that made it, even after a month. Much as it irked her to waste money–she’d already owned a perfectly serviceable bag–this one had velcro. Zippers were too much trouble these days.

She tore it open to behold the extent of her worldly possessions. A change of clothes. Her knife, the one Raz had given her. Rope. A pack of bandages. Disinfectant. Four days of nutrient bars. A wallet, empty save for a credit card and a few coins. A well-worn prayer tablet. A needle and a spool of thread. A ballpoint pen. Content that everything was where it should be, she closed the bag.

Shiv swung her bag over her good shoulder, then fumbled with the doorknob for a moment, nearly dropping her mug. Maggie took half a step forward as if to help, but whatever she saw in Shiv's eyes kept her rooted in place. Shiv pulled the hood of her coat up over her head, and turned to leave. "I… Sorry. I'm going out. Be back by midnight unless I get shot."

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[neonblessing]

More Info

Neon Blessing operates on a roughly weekly schedule, though there may be hiatuses as life does what life will do. Each week, a new piece of the story will be posted, culminating in a poll. The results of the poll will determine where the story goes next, as well as flesh out Shiv and her relationships with the people around her.

There are many many gods in the city, and they reward their servants with Blessings. Each god offers a different Blessing to empower those who would advance their aims. A character may only have one Blessing at a time. Depending on the god, a Blessing can be single use or a passive effect.

This is not the Cyberpunk franchise. There is no penalty for absolutely covering a character in chrome and carbon fiber. It is, however, expensive as all hell.

Magic is infinitely varied. Shiv is not a spellcaster by birth, but she, like anyone, has the potential to learn. Or to steal something that can be used to cast spells. Or to sell her soul to a god for power.

Shiv is competent, but there are wizards and gods in this city. She is currently just some thief. Death is a possible outcome in Neon Blessing, and if the choices you make lead to Shiv's death, the next vote will be to determine which character will take up the torch as our protagonist. Shiv isn't an idiot, though, and choices which could lead to death will be rare.

Your choices will change the personality of the character over time. What might have once been a choice may later become an automatic response.

In the event of a tied vote, I'll pick which one I want to do.

This blog will be used exclusively to post installments of Neon Blessing. Send any questions or fanart or whatever to @that-house.

Header image by @hexoskeleton. Avatar by me.

Let's do this.

[neonblessing]

Welcome to Neon Blessing.

The city has no name. What need has it for a name, when nothing remains save for the city? Skyscrapers brush up against the firmament and alleyways force their way deep into the bowels of the earth. It has eaten all there is to eat; it has scoured the land of resources and slaked its thirst with the seas. -- Everything is a commodity in the city. Life, death, and divinity are portioned out and sold to the highest bidder. Everyone wants a piece of you: the only question is how much you're willing to sell.

Neon Blessing is a divine fantasy cyberpunk story. Gods, magic, and technology abound. The powers that be are corrupt. The system exists to turn warm bodies into cold cash. The people around you are fundamentally good, but desperation can drive good people to do terrible things.

Shiv is a thief in the deepest recesses of the Diluvian District, and it is with her that our story starts.

How it ends is up to you.

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