By secret glyph: dreamsleeve transmission
Dreamsleeve: urgent, security protocols granted
Security protocols: stormcrown interval accepted

DG Likor, in mastery! In triumph! In absolute moral et cetera et cetera

The situation in Rattlers Row is becoming untenable.

I can keep the Interval Watch at bay for now, but if another body is found my hands are tied. Fiddler says you have first option with this. She knows how fond you are of C Project, perhaps overly so.

Yours under the Red Diamond,

Janess Shaff, Committee Secretary
Inner Ring Community Development

for

E Councilwoman Fiddler, S., Terrene Municipalities Pro Tempore

By secret glyph: dreamsleeve interception
Dreamsleeve: urgent, security protocols granted
Security protocols: cycling, [stormcrown evasive]

Secretary Shaff,

The candor and courtesy are both appreciated. It will be handled.

Extend my best apologies again to the Councilwoman for missing her nephew's concert. Up is down and left is right in our fair city these days.

Avendis Likor, Director-General, Provincial Trade Offices (Standard)

PS - I've taken the liberty of enchanting your security protocols for the duration of the Interval.

By secret glyph: dreamsleeve transmission
Dreamsleeve: urgent, security protocols granted
Security protocols: cycling, [pto(s) numinit]

Scrivener Volter Piil,

I know you're busy with our electioneering efforts in Bravil but I need your assistance back home.

Suspect brief attached. A light touch, if you can manage it.

- Likor

By secret glyph: dreamsleeve transmission
Dreamsleeve: urgent, security protocols granted
Security protocols: cycling, [pto(s) numinit]

I don't do Breachers.

- V

Rattlers Row, Imperial City, 4E22, Scriptoriaspore (Survey alphanumeric key: UHY4SEh8tk2), rolling wordcap

You really should stop worrying about last night.

Get up now, Kestrel. The other Breachers are already lining up for their soup. Not you. It's Fredas, that means compensation day. You're going to walk right past them, grab your stipend, see if Willy in the Flin will open early for you. Hurry it up, do your spot wash and go. Start the weekend right.

Feed me first.

You tell yourself to push the rattling down. The Survey carrier hub makes you way more nervous than it should. It's the banners. Fort Scinia, Fort Shrikemoth, Kavas Rim the Gateway to the Barrier Wall. You've walked that road and come back in glory. That's what they tell you all. The mechanists, the whisper mages, the priests and the alchemists, the arcanologists and the Legion enforcers that protected you all in the Blanket-- all of them back now in glory.

Except for the ones that came back like you. You came back with snakeshit on your shoe and rattles so debilitating they had to give you a place to hide in the armpit of the City. Get better, get some rest, no serpents out here, don't forget the rent.

The Survey agent is the pretty one this time. Good. You like her. Another Saliache like you. You two can blow off some steam about all the anti-Altmer sentiment in the City. They're not even bothering to hide it anymore. Quiet-like as you fill out your forms. You hate the Thalmor as much as the humans do, you're saying to each other, but just not very loud.

She even slides over your stipend slowly, silently. The humans don't need to know you're walking out of the hub with money in your pocket. That's what her eyes are saying. Don't get rolled by the emboldened ones out there.

Be careful, Breacher, thank you for your service. See you next Fredas. Argasal ayleidee, nye-syl nue-siil. That last part meaning "Silver peace in your stars, kin of night, of mine." You'll take that with you all day. A little bit of hearthlight right under their noses. Time for that drink now.

K'Ja says Willy in the Flin won't be open until noon and if you don't stop banging on the door, not for you specifically until sundown. You don't push it.

Uglak's in the adjacent alley, just sitting with her back to the wall throwing shingle rocks at the tip of her leather boot. She's back on the scrim, you guess. That's too bad, she was almost out of the Row. Top Hat says the Ring is crawling with brigands posing as the Watch, maybe that's why she came back. The devil you know.

You say hey, sit down beside her to wait. She says hey, then introduces herself because she forgets who you are every time you meet. Uglak was a tracker for the 14th Crossing, got too far ahead of the rest of her team and saw the Boat. Her team had to leave her there until they started their return trip. You don't remember how many weeks she said.

She still feels phantom barnacles on her neck. Her whole body had to have the real ones sawed off at Shrikemoth, but on the Blanket side of the barrier since nothing with potential serpent influence could be brought into the fort proper. Chirurgeon's tent thrown up, automaton guards rolled out to protect everyone while the procedure went on for two days. For all the stones you cast at the great machine of the Survey and its many ugly, fear-filled gears-- those little workers that demean and grind the spirit and throw us in the Row-- make no targets of its few but steadfast angels, like the Proctor of Shrikemoth (and the pretty one at the hub this morning).

Uglak asks you how you know all of that and it's then that you realize you've been talking out loud the whole time. Your body's really giving in to the shakes now, and it doesn't help that you're rattling right next to Uglak who's doing the same. Both of you dopesick on bootleg skooma. Scrim. Honeyed discs of mock moonsugar you put into the side of your cheek. It's great even when it inconveniently turns all your thoughts into spinning mandalas.

You slide your back up the wall to brace yourself from your shaking knees. You ask Uglak if she wants to go with you to Papa Flowers to get high. You tell her you just got your stipend. Uglak's already at the exit to the alley somehow, asking you if you want to go with her to Papa Flowers to get high. Now you're in front of her walking towards wherever the Top Tenement is supposed to be. You think. You don't know what's going on exactly.

You're not the only one. I need a hit.

The Top Tenement only feels like it moves around the Row because it does. Top Hat not only has to avoid the Watch, but he's on the run from the Survey, too. Your favorite drug lord used to be a low level manager for their extramundic logistics department, which for some byzantine reason included the Row. He went nuts zoning the district out for a bunch of Breachers orphaned by society-- some of which were dangerous people now that they'd returned changed from the Blanket-- and then decided he'd just quit. Came back two days later with a pseudonym and forty Survey snapsacks full of scrim and a plan to manage us all in a different capacity. He put Papa Flowers (10C) on permanent payroll so the rest of us Breachers would see a friendly face.

You're filling Uglak in on all of this in case she forgets why you're both wandering in circles looking for where your dealer lives right now. She finds the trail before you do (she was the best in the business before all of this) and before long you're knocking on door 3333, a number Papa Flowers finds funny and writes on whatever room he's moved into in whatever new building the operation at large has taken up residence in. Rattlers Row as the spinning mandalas in your soon to be broken head.

When you walk through that door, I'm going to have to swap to stage play mode. Narratively documenting three people while having my own version of the shakes is just not going to work.

Lights.

The room event horizons into Papa Flowers in the dark corner sprawled on his piles of trash. Half the stage is sunlight angling away from him by curtains cutting away at the morning.

Uglak falls to the floor asleep, scratching away at her phantom barnacles.

Papa Flowers waves his massive arm for Kestrel to approach, tarnished gold snakes sliding around and around his bare feet, one hissing from the wrist. Kestrel recoils.

Rattlers Row, Imperial City, 4E22, Scriptoriaspore (Survey alphanumeric key: UHY4SEh8tk2), rolling wordcap

You really should stop worrying about last night.

There's a stab of hangover in your forehead. Seems like you got to Willy in the Flin after all.

I can confirm you did, let's move on. I'm getting hungry.

You tap the needle in your ear that feeds your scriptoriaspore. Its write-sprite continually requires a pinprick of blood to transcribe your thoughts live. You've worn it in your right ear since your Crossing, when you figured recording your thoughts of the journey rendered as a story would be a great idea. Hands free journaling as you painted the terrible wonders of the Morrowind Displacement.

You never gave the scriptoriaspore back to the Survey. It felt-- it feels-- like yours. Like you. They know where to find it if they have a problem with that.

(Technically you're hiring the write-sprite from an aetheric-daemon secretarial guild and pay them in blood but you're not entirely sure if any of that is true anymore. You've never heard of a write-sprite freelancing, so maybe he does. You also suspect he's an addict like you now.)

I charge extra for parentheticals. Pony up.

He has to be.

You're starving. You slept through the day, so the commissary soup isn't an option. From your window, you smell that Two-Bit's is open, that leek-laced hot vapor of a pottage that's mostly sadness and fish. You wonder if you owe the owners any money. It's getting dark. That, the headache, and your general uncertainty of debt invites the rattling in.

A drunken street preacher walks in a cursive along the avenue, throwing out smoky yellow blessings from a crooked staff of saintsbone. You don't recognize his particular god. Some moth theology popular in the City during the summer. Beggar children follow him throwing beans. Your memory catches up to the moment and now you're finally sure you owe the owners money. Then someone's knocking on the door with a baton.

You think briefly of running, but you're three floors up and your hands haven't been the same since the Blanket. You know it's the Watch. The question during these days of interregnum is which species. You calm yourself with the third eye protocols you learned at Shrikemoth. It works. Focus comes closer, but the supernatural calm now is going to require scrim later. No downsides really. You grab your tunic, dagger, and coinpurse (running should remain an option) and answer the door.

To no surprise, it's a Watchman. Human. His Red Diamond regalia looks so ill-fitting you suspect it borrowed. His baton is stowed, replaced by a slimbook and everquill. He has no look of the brigand so you smile. He's knocking door-to-door asking about the body found near the bowery the other night. You know it belonged to Tarusleyn, also a Saliache, also a Breacher, 10th, the same Crossing as Papa Flowers. Other than that, you know nothing. Your answer sounds rote, so you change tack and offer the Watchman a place to sit in the disaster that is your Survey housing-approved tumbleroom. He declines by arching an eyebrow and curling his nose.

He confirms your name, your Crossing, but doesn't recognize what the Survey designated as your official specialty. Kinematiorist? You shrug, and describe the nonsense word with the best self-deprecation you can muster. What it really means is that you can paint in moving images, both as landscaptor and limner, because that's rare and you want to insert some impressiveness where you can.

So a soft try, he says, writing it down in his slimbook. You manage to keep your temper down. A soft try is what the other Breachers call the experimental hires that the Survey now and then insists a Crossing team take with them. Someone with an unusual talent the Blanket might respond to, or someone whose talent they could unusually apply. You tell the Watchman, yes, you were a soft try, and then remind him so was James Galloway.

The Watchman pockets his slimbook. "Did you save as many lives as James Galloway?"

He knows the answer and leaves to find another door. You stand in the doorway staring at the spot where he was standing for a few minutes.

The best way to cure a hangover is to drink it under the table.

Quite right. You make for the avenue.

Rattling in the witching hour, you lie on the alley cobblestones looking for stars and finding none, next to where Tarusleyn was found stabbed to death, your flinskin empty and a goblin's small tinker's wagon steering around you without complaint. The driver even tosses a scented scone down to you as his wagon goes by. A night's last kindness from one broken toy to another.

The humans of this panicked interlude-- fragile, few with heart-- are driving the ancient races from the City. Many came to the Row to hide. No one knows who's in charge anymore. Everyone acts like it's their chance. The jackboots of today find their swagger burning at the stake tomorrow. Every red night, warlords trade ownership of the White-Gold's boroughs and ringlet sprawls. The Council and their Knights can keep no hold on the center. No one can find the stars for all the knives in the dark.

The thing you brought from the Blanket squats over you. Wet, spindly, thin as grace, drooling, giant, eyes wild whirlpools of alien history and regret, swallowing in everything of beauty and leaving only snakes to infest the remains, great bells hanging from its lower lip. Some of your kind called it the Void Ghost once. The last of the longing gods.

You should never have thought to paint it.

Rattlers Row, Imperial City, 4E22, Scriptoriaspore (Survey alphanumeric key: UHY4SEh8tk2), rolling wordcap

There's a theory that the IGS doesn't stand for the Imperial Geographical Society. That it's a vaster, more arcane apparatus known as Intelligence and General Security. Why else is it so immune to the vagaries of the Empire's rulership. How else can something like the Blanket and what's inside remain such a mystery, nearly twenty years after it fell.

A bunch of mapmakers who've explored the celestial thrones of the original spirits, established the borders of the daedric dominions, outlasted all of Cyrodiil's dynasties and potentates and civilization-deciding rebellions, who've charted a reality rewritten in the wake of a walking god, all on what they purport to be is a shoestring budget--

--they're hiding something, Korbo tells you. You're both waiting in line at the Survey carrier hub. You need your compensation pay, Korbo needs to hand over his rent. The rent that helps fund interdimensional expeditions, apparently.

Korbo's been working on this theory as long as you've known him. He's 16C, like you and Galloway. He first broached the subject of the secret history of the Survey and the IGS when you were trudging through the mudbanks of the Thirr, trying to put some distance between you and a big herd of blue-spotted netch-bears. You made the mistake of sounding interested--

Oh come on, you were.

--and he's kept you abreast of his findings ever since. Maybe he got it from his slipsuit's vestige. He did whisper to it a lot at base camp when he thought the rest of the team wasn't listening. Whenever you ask him what the IGS is protecting, he just says, "You know."

You promised Korbo you'd get him high later today. Back in the Blanket, he was the only Breacher to take an interest in your talent, who'd not called either you or Galloway soft tries. You happily agreed to paint him and his family in motion playing in the Green Emperor Way when you'd returned from Shrikemoth, but that never came to fruition. Your hands lost your ability to do it, and Korbo's severe case of the rattling drove his family away, never to return.

The Survey agent assigned to the hub today is the sour one, a human with a put upon face who uses a whistle to call your turn. You are informed that your compensation has run out. Your fear suddenly spikes and the floor turns at an angle, forcing you to grip the counter to keep from falling. How is this possible? Why were you not told this the time before? To double down on this skewering of what livelihood remained for you, the Survey agent begins to explain the process for returning any equipment you'd borrowed from the Crossing project. That meant the scriptoriaspore. The floor lurches again.

We've got to get out of here.

You're told you have until Mondas before surrendering him. In case you'd accrued any fees you'd have to pay back to the aetheric-daemon guild that your write-sprite worked for. Breachers often ran their wordcaps high during their times in the Row, when their loneliness and toil demanded a special kind of preservation. The need to chronicle a life gone hollow, for you to review come better days and appreciate the journey of your self-recovery.

The Survey agent puts his whistle to his mouth and blows.

To figure this out, I'll need blood, you'll need scrim, but do that in reverse so I can ride it with you.

You know he's right. The clarity of a befuddled mind can produce new and surprising solutions. Papa Flowers agrees to front you if you'll listen to passages from his newest series of religious pamphlets. A recalibration of his former insights into the critical mysteries of celestial snakes. You find a bed of trash to serve out four hours as his reluctant acolyte, but thankfully your mind is broken within the first fifteen minutes.

You, hey, you don't want to look at that, come on. Don't worry about it. You've got other things to worry about right now. Like rent, food, the junk, not losing your little buddy. Go back to sleep. You've got a plan to get some money. It's a good one. You know it's going to work. But, hey, all that's for tomorrow. Come on, stop looking at that and just close your eyes.

Rattlers Row, Imperial City, 4E22, Scriptoriaspore (Survey alphanumeric key: UHY4SEh8tk2), rolling wordcap

The squalor of Rattlers Row is an island surrounded by madmen with armies. You have to give it to the Survey, somehow they've kept the worst of these bitter disputes away from us. The power struggles of this petty apocalypse. You wear a cloak to hide your Breacher's leather armor. To hide your rattling and your ancestry.

The air is heavy with the smell of ash and fire lime. Another skirmish last night. Territories being established and challenged. You're not surprised to find the tollbridge empty of traffic. Its small watchtower abandoned and burnt out. A wild trio of emaciated dogs pull at the charred corpse of a soldier whose livery you doubt you'd recognize even if you could make it out. You start to give them a wide berth but something about you makes them whine and finally scurry.

It's probably nothing to worry about.

The farther into the City you go, the more you stick to the afternoon shadows. There is yelling in the distance now. The low thunder of brigands or legionaries on horseback. The closer you get to the Market District, the more the Legion's presence becomes known. Whose Legion doesn't matter much to you anymore. Their power means safety for the moment. If anything, it's the merchants who are in charge here. You've reached the shore of another island. By the time you spot the signs of Three Brothers Trade Goods, the old Cyrodiil is back. Her royal facepaint only slightly smudged.

The front of the Black Horse Couriers office is lined with broadsheet displays. Old headlines and new portraying the interregnum as an exciting time to be alive. Bounty boards hiring justice against agitators or crimelords, some of which are surely made up.

The heralds here helped make James Galloway a hero. They write up harrowing stories from beyond the Blanket. A few years ago, their editorial board developed close ties with the Crossings project, in ways that you don't understand but can surely exploit. It's a good plan.

The line editor is a pleasant fellow, apologizing for the chaos on the news floor. Heralds running to and fro making up copy on the fly for their trailing apprentices to transcribe. Scriptoriaspores removed from ears and inserted into typeset machines, their contents turned into print, then rewritten to make stories that aren't told solely in the second person.

Look, it's a limitation none of us are proud of.

The line editor politely listens to your offer. Firsthand accounts of the Blanket. Things the Field-Marshalls kept from their embedded heralds. Perhaps more importantly, firsthand accounts of those of us that returned damaged by the serpent, who now live in Rattlers Row in rather undignified conditions. Something with real teeth to accompany their columns of high adventure. The Crossings, unabridged.

You'd offer him moving pictures of your stories if you could. Perhaps you can, given enough time and personal care. You're sure there would be an audience for them in the Courier's new drakelodians once the hurly-burly of imperial succession died down.

The line editor does a good job of hiding his concern. But finally he pats your hand and asks if your caretakers know you've been wandering the streets unsupervised.

You have to hide more on the way back to the Row. It's dark and the wolves have returned. Swords clash in the alleyways. There are fires in the street. Constant echoes of the death blow to your last shred of self-regard that the line editor delivered as a kindness. Soldiers ride by dragging the bodies of their enemies. The squatting god of the east watching you run, perched on a rooftop of a burning chapel. The rattling and the bells.

They catch you hiding amid some crates of a turned-over cart. A scraggly band of humans who can't fight against the rest. They don't even ask if you're some sneakthief of the Thalmor choreographing all of the tumult around them. They don't want to ask you anything at all. They hit you with their clubs first. Rip and steal your cloak second. You might be holding your guts shut when they throw you in the river.

Rattlers Row, Imperial City, 4E22, Scriptoriaspore (Survey alphanumeric key: UHY4SEh8tk2), rolling wordcap

You really should stop worrying about last night.

Korbo found you, dragged you out, did a small healing magic you didn't know he was capable of. You can taste how much potential he had for that in his blood.

Don't look out of the corner of your eye. You don't want to see me like this. We're in the sewer below the Row, don't worry about it. Oh yeah, don't look forward either.

Too late.

You see the desiccated corpses, three of them, coin-sized puncture wounds in each of their necks. Poor Uglak is closest, her body completely exsanguinated. The others you don't recognize. Don't blame yourself, you were more or less asleep and I was in charge. I've gotten big in the last year. I can even do extended first person now, not just the occasional snarky aside.

You knew this was going to happen, didn't you? You were never supposed to wear me this long. Feed me that junk. Let me fester in all that despair and longing. Write out all that pain. Soaking in all the terror everybody here lives with, it does a body good.

You look out of the corner of your eye and see me. Extending out of your ear feeding on Korbo, a tentacle pulsing with every long gulp. I told you not to look. Really, this is your fault. If you'd just gotten home in time to get your hit, you wouldn't even be awake now.

You're thinking you can stop me somehow. Get control. Honestly, you almost did once. That's how we ended up dropping Tarusleyn and running away. That was sloppy, but hey, I was just starting. Things have changed. Once you get a daemon really going, they grow up so fast.

Back home they'd call me a Seeker now, not some stupid write-sprite paid by the word wage slave. Home home, I mean, not this worthless piece of shit I've got to live in every day. That's me raising your hand to point at your face, by the way, not you.

You're wondering what that humming sound is. Actually, so am I. That's not me doing that. Some kind of magic spooling up. Wait. Someone's down here with us. What the hell is that sou--

Rattlers Row, continuing report, cogitocode: //rating a desert, a variant of rose, the pale ramp of her discontent//
Scrivener: Volter Piil, Provincial Trade Offices (Standard), primary agent
Safety Procedure: Echophage cycling

[EScapture distorted: Volter spools his Skeinlock glove cannon and fires it at suspect Kestrel's head. Graduated aetheric-entity (taxonomy: Seeker) impacts the sewer wall opposite. Kestrel emerges whole.]

K: I couldn't make it stop.
V: Mm.

[EScapture distorted: Volter throws Kestrel a snapsack.]

V: I'll clean this place up. You need to fuck off.
K: What?
V: Fuck off to the border. High Rock. Passpapers to get you past the IDO are in the sack.
K (pause): ...I don't--
V: Don't think about it. There's also some redmote in there. Won't stop the scrimshaws but it'll help until you can kick.
K: I don't have anyone in High Rock.
V: Find some. You can't be here anymore. And once you leave you can't come back.

[EScapture distorted: Kestrel looks down to the bodies. He then starts to make his way through the sewers before turning back again.]

K: I didn't mean to.
V: I know.
K: What should I do when I get there?
V: Kick. Or don't. Up to you.
K: Right.
V: Look, I'm sorry for what's happened to you, but after tonight, none of this is my business.
K: You want me gone so nothing gets tracked back to the Survey.
V (pause): Passpapers to get you past the IDO are in the sack.

[EScapture end.]