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344 checks

A gray, wrinkled hand holds a red pen, drawing circles and arrows around the capital cities of the Eastern Republics.

Birdsong, dread. Footsteps ascend a staircase.

Obsidian, reflective, a pool of blood spills out beneath a mound of broken concrete. The sound of a keyboard comes from somewhere within, stuck on a diminished C.

Upstairs, something screams.

A missile flies through the sky, screaming its arrival. They pick up their instruments one last time.

In a nearby office, a middle-aged woman lifts her glasses, focusing on a younger person sat behind a large desk. The woman's insides burn with a malice that is realised as rhyming couplets pieced together in her head.

A chorus of figures from your past shout the words at you in unison. All will be forgiven.

A voice rises from a room you know to be empty. Immaterial and absent power. Ten thousand celestial limbs.

Gleaming discs fall like a strange plague upon the city below. The sun blooms little rainbows between them. From the tram windows, children laugh.

Years of regulars move in and out of the bar's entrance. Among them, a pair that was recently halved, a lonely silhouette amid the rest.

Inside a dark desk drawer, contracts and architectural drawings for a sixteen-story luxury apartment building and retail complex await the day the Palace's ceiling finally caves in.

He even began to distrust those towards the end.

Drunks in a bar celebrate their team's victory. Across the street, a crowd in opposing colours wait, broken bottles in hand. Among them, a young woman, gritting her teeth harder with every cheer.

'Angel, keep him away, keep him away from me for good...'

The ancient huntress raises her hand to the troupe behind her, stop. She felt the soil move, bouncing with the force of a megaloballer's gait. A meat they dare not hunt.

Naturally, if this were the Paleolithic, and if you were the Paleolithic huntress, you would experience this sensation all the time.

You hear catches of the song, words, a man's voice and a guitar.

The sickly-green horizon of the Noscorrentes Sea encircles the lonely radio vessel 360 degrees.

Strange things tend to happen around world-shifting events such as these. Synchronicities. Reverberance. Repetitions.

To the extent that our lives matter even one iota, it is only under the gaze of this cat. The moment it closes its eyes, we may as well cease to be.

The ghost-remnants of a consciousness long lost, impressed upon the only part that's left.

Not for the last time, you sense.

In a very real sense, he has already passed beyond your reach.

A little voice somewhere intones: 'No take-backs'.

Whose cat is that?

That cat over there.

A man, white-knuckled, spits on the stone yet to be engulfed by the plants. 'Traitor', he says afterwards, curling his lip in contempt.

His nails are white with the force he uses to grip the rifle. His gaze is fixed on the dark line of grit beneath them. Brown or red? Dirt or blood?

His fellow patriots were killed in the street, or by sniper's bullets. A few of their bodies are still in the compound behind him.

The rebel hero lies on the ground, haloed in red, a smile on his face. He knows his sacrifice will not be in vain -- he was able to inspire people to follow him in life, and so too in death, his voice will carry.

A voice from the dirt. Bullets in stucco behind him. Ears ringing, throat tight with panic. He shifts in the muck, clutching his gun, and whispers a prayer to an unnamed star: Not here. Not like this.

The plumber fills his cup with ice and a little bit of water first thing in the morning. By the afternoon, sweating away in the hot, dark, half-flooded humidity, he sips at the lukewarm liquid.

You become aware of an infinitude of tiny movements. A total convergence on your surroundings -- all drawn to you, here, right now...

Somewhere down the line is a makeshift switchboard with six phones manned by six bored assets. One of those assets is listening in on this call.

The Housing Campaign, bathed in purple light. A man in a brown jacket and no pants looks up into the face of an angel. She regards him with radiant indifference.

Upstairs, your double twitches, electrical reflex running to a dead switchboard.

She feels his eyes on her, through the bag, through the paper, the second she enters the room. She shuts the door quickly and totters back down the stairwell with a shudder.

A lonesome utility shack high above the city, its door broken on its hinge. A white cat tracks bloody prints in the dirt. Sadness overwhelming.

You've not seen the last of him. The two of you are bound by a hideous orange thread.

Her eyes reflect the glow of the terminal screen. She's been at her desk for fourteen hours today.

A pen stands to attention in a long-fingered hand.

The heavy thud and sway of the Kohilan National Railway. She knows every jerk and bend along the route.

Chewing the inside of her cheek.

The window rattles. Some night-bound animal scratches at the door.

A woman glides upside down, chanting. The sun revolves outside the window.

Spring morning. The girl tugs her father's hand. She presses her nose against the cool glass. A double-deck commuter train, 1/160 scale, rattles across a miniature country scene.

Five-thousand kilometres away, in a small office deep underground, a mid-level controller of the Operant Bureau leans forward and cups a hand over her earpiece.

The tendrils of a watery, alien intelligence.

Somewhere in subterranean Novessa, an Opera controller's nose twitches.

344 skill checks - ZERO PARADES field manual - Page 4 of 7