Saturday, January 10, 2015

Page 942

Socorro doubled over onto the pavement, hands spread wide as her breathing turned irregular and the muscles in her body began to twitch. Then a blade of wind split her head down the middle, and a gale picked her body up and sent it flying over the side of the bridge, leaving her to fall into the empty gorge below.

The old well erupted once more, and Zeff felt the response another time. He clenched both fists at once, and a boiling tidal wave fell upon Parson, converting to steam in midair as it tried to melt the man alive.

A whirlwind blew it all away.

And Parson smiled. “There’s that devil’s blood in your veins! A second emergence!”

Spikes of ice now. Hundreds all at once, shooting at Parson from every conceivable direction as if fired from hundreds of invisible guns. A whirlwind took them, too, and then came for Zeff and Evangelina, propelling them both skyward and holding them there with pressurized air currents.

“Too bad it’s still not enough,” said Parson, rising to look him in the eye. “Story of your life, eh? Always a step behind. Always needing someone to hold your hand and protect you, despite acting like you’re the one doing the protecting. And Angie--oh, you’re even worse than him!”

Hardly able to move, Zeff clenched his teeth and finally just yelled, “Why are you doing this?! Parson! What possible reason could you--?!” But the sentence went unfinished as oxygen flew directly into his lungs and filled his chest nearly to the point of bursting.

And Parson gave a snort. “Reason? Singular? Dear boy, you really did learn nothing from me, didn’t you? Never run with any plan in which there is only one desirable outcome. Fundamentals, Zeff. There’s no substitute for a good grasp of the fundamentals.”

Zeff and Evangelina both struggled there in vain. The soul-strengthened air currents might as well have been concrete.

But of course, Parson wasn’t done talking. “Ah, well. It doesn’t really matter, anyway. Because it’s not about the plan. It’s never about the plan. It’s about what you do when the plan blows up in your face--how you react to unexpected problems. Because plans fail all the time, especially the complicated ones. That’s why it’s so important to leave yourself some wiggle room--so that you can improvise later. You understand?”

14 comments:

  1. I missed a page this week, so there'll be two tomorrow.

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  2. This kind of ending is where someone's going to come to save the people in distress. I can feel it coming.
    Now I wonder who will it be?

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  3. it's a trick don't fall for it.

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  4. I get the sense that Sanko wanted to take every single one of the people here prisoner, and when she finds out that Parson murdered someone he obviously could have spared, especially if she also finds out that he did it in cold blood after they had surrendered, she will be furious. Even if she does think that they were being irrational, I don't think she ever suspected the Rainlords of true treachery. Under any circumstances, unless Parson gives himself into custody after the fight ends she will likely assume that he was a traitor (which he was) and I doubt even someone as clever as him could really best a well-conducted investigation by someone with no tolerance for his crap and no ability to do anything personally.

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  5. Beautiful. That's exactly how bad this situation can blow up in Parson/Lamont's (not to mention the Vanguard as a whole) face. I'm eager to see just how Parson is gonna spin this how thing to his advantage.

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  6. Sometimes I think that Parson is a spy from Abolish, his main job is destroy the Vanguard from the inside.

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  7. W...what the FUCK is up with this guy?! God, I can't decide if I don't like Parson or not, but the way he did away with Socorro (I liked her) is making me lean toward the negative.
    But holy shit, Zeff! Two emergences in the same day?! Hell, they're barely an hour apart! He seems to be even more of an anomaly than Hector or Harper.

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  8. The only way this whole mess was what Parson wanted is if he's a triple-agent for Abolish (completely possible). Either way, like Steve said, Sanko is already sniffing his tracks. Parson is gonna have to do some serious maneuvering to profit from this near catastrophe. I'm interested in seeing this gambit

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  9. I just realized the opposite -- no matter how evil Parson will get, I'll still like him.


    And yes, I'm kind of crazy. I can't help it, I just have to love a character who embraces chaos.

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  10. I find myself with an interesting question. Does a reaper have to be escorting a soul to the other side in order to go there? If not, then wouldn't it make for a very effective escape? Just make the trip to the other side and back, as garaval said the trip can take a few hours. Take your time in transit and by the time you get back, the enemy would have moved on. That is, unless you can re-emerge into the world at a point other then the one that you left.

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  11. I think he is, personally. And I think the long con is precisely what he's up to. I also suspect Sanko isn't supposed to survive this either, He intends to use the Rinlords to grind her down and then finish her off.

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  12. If you remember when Jeffery attacked hectors house, Geraval was escorting a soul to the other side. If he was still present and vulnerable, then hector would have stayed to protect him. And in the hospital, geraval took two souls over at the same time.

    And something else just occurred to me. Ibai was able to bring out his secondary power by feeding on animal souls. So could a reaper use that, taking the animal soul to the other side as a method of escape?

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  13. That or Octavia has turned into a burning black hole that sucked herself, Sanko and Rayen in!!!!

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  14. The thing is, he admitted that he plans on his schemes frequently going wrong. If one like that did, and he was evil, he would have done a huge amount of good, which also didn't actually help his cred much and would have run at least a small risk of letting someone know he was faking his incompetence.

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