#i hope instead his grubby little evil heart craps out on him on day one | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

uovoc · 5 years ago

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Jon does his best, but he’s still only human. Well, humanish. Based on a true human. They can have omniscience, or they can have Jon, but not both at the same time. Consequently, Jon still has that most human of traits: he makes mistakes.

Case in point: the merry horde of flesh-creatures having the time of their lives chasing two grubby Englishmen across the rolling countryside. It's probably karmic payback for all the foxhunting that used to happen here.

"Are you sure," Martin puffs, "that you haven't got any karate moves" – gasp, pant, leap over a small bush – "stuffed into your brain somewhere?"

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Out of all the fears, Martin decides, Beholding is the most fucking useless one to have as a patron. All right, Elias was legitimately scary, but even he had other people do his dirty work for him. The Eye is all well and good for evil masterminding, but when it comes to practical skills? Nothing! Nada! Not a lick of actual, useful powers when you need them.

This is not a judgment upon Jon in any way. Jon has been doing his best. He warns them about the upcoming crap they have to deal with and whether any given stopping place is likely to kill them within the next 10 minutes. God knows they wouldn't have been able to make it this far without him acting as their tour guide. Martin refuses to credit Beholding for their continued existence. That has all been Jon, cracking open his door again and again to let in the oncoming tide. No, Beholding would have been perfectly happy to let them burn in whichever circle of hell they stumbled into first. It would have been happy to let Martin burn, anyway.

"Are you sure," Martin puffs, "that you haven't got any karate moves" – gasp, pant, leap over a small bush – "stuffed into your brain somewhere?"

Jon gulps and nods. His state of relative invulnerability has not, unfortunately, improved his base level of physical conditioning. He died an office monkey, and now he lives again as an escaped office monkey. No rippling abs for this avatar.

In contrast, the things chasing them have rippling abs out the wazoo. They also evidently have never skipped leg day, or arm day for that matter. Brain day does not seem to have made it into their training schedule, though. Jon had tried to do his Archivist bit when they had first attracted the attention of the gang, but had run into an impenetrable wall of blank stupidity. The whole debacle has Jared Hopworth written all over it.

Martin and Jon pelt over a rise in the land and the sloping meadow opens up ahead of them. They’re treated to a lovely view of gold-green field peppered with taller tufty bits, complete with a second band of flesh creatures coming round to cut them off in front. Despite being too brainless for statements, the things apparently can still execute strategic maneuvers. There is just no justice in the world anymore.

Jon and Martin stumble to a halt. From behind them comes the rumble of meaty hands and feet hitting dirt as the rest of the pack catches up. Jesus, they’re even waxed. Martin frantically flips through his mental catalog of their packs, searching for something combat-worthy. Matches? Dental floss? Beside him, Jon has gone very still as he draws upon his own resources. Martin feels a telltale prickling on the back of his neck, and the static rises around them like pressure in an airplane cabin.

The flesh horde senses an avatar at work and hesitates. The static builds until Martin can barely think. He stuffs his fingers in his ears and braces.

Static.

More static.

Static with a side of static.

He glances over at Jon, who has beads of sweat standing out on his face. "Any minute now," yells Martin.

The horde shuffles uncertainly. They've lost their initial wariness and are edging closer. When none of them are immediately blasted into smithereens, they start to move in for real.

We need to get out of here, Martin thinks desperately as the wall of glistening biceps begins to blot out the sky. We need to leave–

Martin grabs Jon's arm. The flesh horde lunges. Martin steps in, pulling Jon with him. The horde closes on empty space.

Their prey is gone.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The static fades by degrees. Martin gradually loosens his grip and lets Jon extract his face from being smushed into Martin's torso. They have not been torn from limb to limb. They are no longer in the rolling green hills. Instead they are… Somewhere. Here.

Martin runs through their litany of usual checks.

“No injuries here. You?”

“I’m-I’m fine too.”

"Are we in immediate danger?"

"… No."

"Is there anything in the vicinity that could cause us harm?"

"Nn... Probably not. Not right away."

Are we safe, Martin wants to ask, but he knows the answer to that one. The best he can hope for is to be safe for now.

For now, they are standing in a place. Looking up, he sees blank white brightness. When he takes a step, his footprint leaves a divot that fills with water before melting back into smooth sand. Jon is turning around slowly on the spot, taking in their new surroundings. It's flat, but not quite featureless. The bare sand is textured with gentle ripples, with the occasional sheen of puddled water. It stretches away from them into the vague distance. There is a damp haze hanging at about the height of their shins that smears the horizon line into the sky.

Jon has finished acclimating – archiving, Martin's brain hisses at him, but he pushes that thought away – and is ready to take a more active part in their newest adventure. He looks over at Martin. "Did you do this?" he asks.

"I-I think so?" Just what this is, Martin isn't quite sure, but he has a pretty good suspicion. He sighs. "We should probably get going. I don't think it's healthy to stay here too long." Martin reaches out his hand, but it closes on empty air. Jon's arms have not moved from his sides. "What is it?"

Jon says, "I don't want to go back out there."

“Neither do I, but we haven’t got much choice about it,” Martin points out. They’re going to have to run the gauntlet whether they like it or not, all to get to the stupid Institute that they had worked so hard to leave.

“I know, but can we –" Jon swallows. "Can we stay? A little longer?" He closes his eyes. "Please. It's, it's quiet here. I can think. It's so quiet."

"Jon –"

Martin doesn't know he should say to this request.

Are we in immediate danger?

No.

"Just for a little while," says Martin.

Everywhere looks like everywhere else, so they choose a spot at random and ease themselves down. Martin immediately feels the dampness seeping into his butt. Jon leans against him and closes his eyes. Martin isn't sure what that means. Sleep is unlikely, so he chooses to interpret it as a generic resting state. He finds himself straining to hear the sound of nonexistent waves. At some point in his life, grade school probably, someone taught him that the ocean disappearing meant that you should run for your life. A tsunami seems out of character for this place, but he raises the issue to Jon just in case.

“The ocean was Peter Lukas’s,” says Jon without opening his eyes. “It’s not coming back.”

Everything is equally flat, no subtle slope to show which way the water went. It’s equally impossible to tell which direction is uphill, for that matter. Relatively safe as they may be, Martin thinks it’s a little too quiet.

"There's no one here anymore," says Jon, not helping. His eyes are still closed.

Martin waits to see where this is going. If it starts turning into a statement, he'll have to deploy fingers in ears.

Sure enough, after a suitably dramatic silence, Jon opens his mouth again. Martin has his hands halfway to the sides of his head, but Jon addresses him directly. "Martin. This could be your place. You could take it. We could stay here. We wouldn't have to, to go through… out there. We don't have to leave. Martin?"

Martin doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have to.

Jon deflates. "I know," he says. "I just had to say it."

“It’s all right,” says Martin.

They lapse back into companionable silence. Martin runs his hands through Jon's hair. Jon is thinking Jon-thoughts, which he has the privilege of being able to share in his own time, if he wants to. Martin will let him enjoy that luxury. Martin is thinking about the satisfying smack of his fist hitting Jonah Magnus’s smug face. He keeps that smack in a special place in his heart, ready to pull out as a treat whenever they get a bit of downtime.

He’ll make that scene happen soon. They’ve gone through more than half the fears already. The left hook will just be a preamble, of course. He’ll figure out the rest when they get there.

When they reach the tower.

#uovoc fic #The Magnus archives

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