Legend of Ransera

Ava was asleep when he returned to the hotel. He sat on the balcony and watched fake things move in the fake sky, occasionally letting his new eyes see through the illusions, but only in little doses. He didn't want to vomit over the balcony like an amateur.

"I wanna fly," he said to the blue artifice of a sky. "I truly do wanna get high, you know? Mystic fucked all that up, and whatever's inside me waiting to fuck me over... fuck it all. I wanna fly."

Rather than attempt to fly by leaping off the balcony, he left once more without waking Ava, or so he thought. He could never be sure with her. She had taught him both to school his breathing and to read the breathing of others.

Orin shrugged tension from his shoulders and climbed. On his way up, he fell into step beside an elf in spotless white bearing something that looked like a miniature oar. She looked as though she were off for a fast game, but he had no idea what.

On the roof was a meadow, and he made his way through a grove of trees and umbrellas until he found a pool, naked bodies gleaming against turquoise tiles. He edged into the shadow of an awning of a bar and saw they were serving food. He ordered and ten minutes later, an enthusiastic Kalzasern waiter delivered his food. Orin munched on raw fish and rice and watched people tan.

"Mists," he said to his tuna, "I'd lose my shit."

"Don't tell me," someone said, "I know it already. You're a gangster, right?"

He squinted up at her, against the band of sun. A long, young body with a carefully maintained bronze complexion that came from sun worship rather than parentage. She squatted leaned against the bar beside him, dripping water on the tiles.

"Kata," she said.

"Aleppo," after a pause.

"What kind of name is that?"

"Hytori."

"Are you really a gangster?" He was looking at the freckles spangling her cheeks, but she didn't know that.

"I'm a junkie, Kata."

"What kind?"

"Uppers. Extremely powerful uppers." Although he would have taken just about anything right about then.

"Well, do you have any?" She leaned closer. Drops of water fell upon his arm.

"No. That's my problem, Kata. Do you know where we can get some?"

Kata rocked back on her tanned heels and licked at a strand of hair that had pasted itself beside her mouth. "What's your taste?"

"No alchemized coca leaf," he said, "but up. Has to be up." And so much for that, he thought glumly, holding his smile for her.

She considered, then decided. "All right, but it's your silver."


"You must be joking," said Kata's partner and roommate, when Oren explained the peculiar properties of his 'healing,' which involved a new inability to get right and truly intoxicated. He hoped it would wear off. His name was Itiés. He looked like he could have been Kata's twin, down to the freckles. He didn't know that they weren't.

"Well, it's just one of those things, you know?" Oren had a knack for telling just enough of the truth for to make a lie believable, while twisting things a bit to make for a better story. But Itiés' eyes had already gone numb with boredom. The attention span of a gnat, that one, Oren thought, watching the boy's brown eyes.

Their room was smaller than the one Oren shared with Ava, and on another floor. Five huge charcoal drawings were tacked to the wall, suggesting an extended residency.

"Well, about this stardust you want to buy..." Itiés began.

"Thing is, can I even enjoy it?" Oren raised his eyebrows.

"Tell you what," the boy said. "You do a taste. If your Mystic curse means your body passes on it, it's on the house. First time's free."

"I heard that one before," Oren said, taking what looked like a bright blue candy-coated sweet that Itiés passed across the black bedspread.


"Oren?" Ava sat up in bed and shook the hair away from her eyes.

"Who else, Mama?"

"What's got into you?" The eyes followed him across the room.

"Stardust," he said, taking a sheer pouch from his pocket filled with blue candies. They did seem to glitter in the light, in fact.

"Mists," she said, "just what we needed."

"Truer words were never spoken."

"I let you out of my sight for two hours and you score." She shook her head. "I hope you'll be ready for our big dinner date with Galeas tonight. We get to watch Len'Falas strut his stuff, too."

"Yeah," Oren said, arching his back, his smile locked into a rictus of delight, "beautiful."

"Man," she said, "if whatever that is can get in past what that Mystic did to you, you are going to be in sad shape when it wears off."

"Bitch, bitch, bitch," he said, unbuckling his belt. "Doom. Gloom. All I ever hear." He took his pants off, his shirt, his smallclothes. "Is it hot in here? I think I ought to take advantage of my unnatural state." He looked down, bounced his knees a bit. "I mean, look at this unnatural state."

She laughed. "It won't last."

"But it will," he protested. "That's what's so unnatural about it."

Oren hoped he was making her uncomfortable, but he wasn't in his right mind. Of course, he hadn't been in his right mind for some time now. He realized she was staring, not at his unnatural state, but at his eyes. Oh, right.

"Well, I'm going to go take care of this..."


Aurin untangled himself from the other limbs. How many had actually passed out in the bed with him in the end? He couldn't recall. He got up, went to the bathroom, and pissed. Looking in the mirror, his face had a bit of the drag of sleep as well as debauchery. He leered at himself and flexed the muscles of his arm, leaned down to sniff at himself. Of course, he smelled like sex and a mélange of body scents and eaus de parfum, but not bad.

"You're a piece of shit," he said to the man in the mirror, who only laughed.

He shook himself just shy of playing with it, but it started to react all the same. He washed his hands and then went back out, peering at the pile of nubile courtesans in his bed.

It took a special kind of piece of shit to take such pleasure in occasionally swanning into his old workplace and seeing how many of his old coworkers he could persuade to come to his little place around the block to party. There was a man who was too good for him, a man he didn't deserve, who was no doubt sleeping in his bed not so very far from here.

Aurin could have been there, too.

He wasn't cheating. Their relationship had rules of a sort, but Aurin supported Torin's other love, and Torin never opined against Aurin having everything and everyone he wanted in the world. What made him a piece of shit in this instance and in his own mind was how he felt there was something lacking in himself and the way he knew to prove his worth to himself was rakish idiocy like this, as if manipulating a few young things into an orgy made him something or someone impressive.

Aurin grabbed a shapely ankle and turned them over. If he was going over territory already explored, well, they could always have gone home.

She gasped awake, then moaned a little, sleepy but not protesting too much.

"Again?!"

"Suit yourself," he said, and extricated himself, finding another sleeping lover to love upon.

"Aww, nooo..." She was more awake now, and feeling the loss.

A young man awoke with confused pleasure. The woman continued to pout.

"What about me?" she whined prettily.

Aurin laughed, indicating the array of flesh laid out on his bed, then brought his hand back to the man's hip.

"Take your pick."


Aurin awoke once more to a truer morning, light streaming in through the high windows, shrouded with the thinnest muslin to allow for light but prevent peeping. He had to piss again, but his body also had that morning condition that prevented a proper piss.

The fox-faced man was also pinned to his bed by young lovers who clung to him like they loved him. Fucking idiots, he thought. Well, it had only been his job to protect them when he was working for Madame Lunaria. If they still thought of him as a safe person, a person who would take care of them, that was their own fault.

"Oy!" He slapped someone's ass. "Someone put on the tea and make breakfast."

A squeal. A giggle.

They were so easy to please, so easy to use. He tugged one along to the restroom with him.