Settling Into Routine

[madimpossibledreamer]

So The Secret World does mention some really dark topics, so I feel like this chapter deserves some sort of content warning. There's about a sentence mention of a (dead) rapist at the end of the third paragraph. Given that the guy was preying on tourist minors, I'm leaning towards 'yes'. The sheriff didn't bother asking us to find him, but otherwise it's only mentioned in the database--and Desmond took special note. I think Desmond is leaning toward 'yes', too, but he's not comfortable with admitting that in his head. He absolutely would have murdered the guy in cold blood, but he would've gone for a clean kill.  There's also a mentioned mob killing four paragraphs after the texting portion. This chapter is more laying the groundwork for the world and a bunch of side missions, so can probably be skipped without losing too much of the main plot. Stay safe, readers.

Main Points:
Assassin's Creed/The Secret World
Summary: Desmond pokes around a little more.
Word Count: 1554
Rating: Teen
Warnings: the above.

 

         Being a ‘faction agent’, Desmond finds, is very similar to being Ezio and Connor, in that there’s a lot of people who want his help and other things marked in gold in Eagle Vision that he apparently should follow up on. He’s really busy, but then, some of that might actually be his fault, in that he spent a bunch of time in London. Still, he’s not turning down the rewards. He’s supposedly a Dragon; he might as well get started on that hoard, and he does even have a (kind of) lair. Anything he needs fixed, he takes to this guy, Sandy “Moose” Jansen, who’s just hanging out inside the Sheriff's Department barricade. He does take out a few more of those gold enemies, including glowing green balls of energy that like to keep duplicating (wisps, apparently) and a slightly more intelligent zombie directing other zombies to dig near the mountains (which is disconcerting, but given that there’s nothing gold in the soil when he squints, if there’s anything to find they’re looking in the wrong spot). Finds a trail of blood that doesn’t seem like the work of zombies, only to run into semi-humanoid things on all fours that seem like someone twisted a human form into some weird predator. They’re fast, but they’re honestly kind of cowards, given how often they run at just a little pain, and it’s a workout just keeping up with them (Shaun calls them wendigo).
        He delivers some mail to the church and a little fortune-teller shop that’s completely untouched (he’s not sure why, but, well, the packages were gold, so it was worth doing). The ravens were apparently a bad omen, the last time they showed up, about twenty-five years ago, so maybe it wasn’t such a great idea trying to talk to them.
        He is kinda surprised when Bannerman talks to him, though. “Hey. I appreciate it. Not many folks go outta their way to look for survivors, or try to pare down this ‘missing’ list.” That...doesn’t actually make too much sense, to him. It’s one of the first things he did, back before he’d even talked to her, and—okay, maybe it’s the Assassin in him, but proof of death, proof of their fate, seems kind of obvious, and if he can bring them back alive, all the better. Sure, there were the six listed on the board, but he finds more—like the two tourist’s twins that wedged themselves under the bed and haven’t come out all this time (how long has it been)—because he’s got Eagle Vision. He had to lead them out the window and then jump across to the other porch roof, which has a ladder.  Though that one guy who got his foot caught in the bear trap was too slow and he'd decided to just throw the guy over his shoulder and make a run for it.  He's not sure if Jason is joking or not when he asks if Desmond is a superhero, though.  The sex offender in the database didn’t make it, thankfully, because that takes any choices out of Desmond’s hands, although he’s torn on whether being eaten alive is a fate anyone deserves.
        He helps out the old woman with the shotgun. Norma Creed. That’s a weird coincidence, but he’s been having a lot of those lately. And apparently, her fire’s magic, because he can dispose anything in it, and the fire turns blue. According to Shaun, that’s a good thing. He throws this weird idol, like a lion with wings, in there, too, because it’d been surrounded in protective runes and cultist zombies, as weird a combination of words as that is, and as much as he’d like to get it to Shaun for study, getting it there would be a hassle and he gets a really bad feeling from it.
         Time doesn’t exactly seem like it’s progressing normally. Which he’d think was just perception, but then, the Stationmaster guy in Agartha mentioned that time would bend in there, so it’s not out of the question that something’s going on here, too. Part of it is that without any markers tracking the passage of time, it becomes an open question—it’s always that dusky twilight of really weird fog, no one’s working jobs or attending school, and if not for his phone and Shaun and Rebecca checking in Desmond would have no clue about the time passing at all.

 

Me: im thinking there was something in the water before all this

Rebecca: You talked to the deputy, didn’t you

Me: ??

Rebecca: He’s like that to everyone. You know, “doesn’t every town have the occasional cult sacrifice” kind of thing?

Me: what is wrong with these people?

Rebecca: Welcome to Solomon Island. Shaun would say it’s because of the proximity to Innsmouth Academy, but then I think he’s got a years-long academic war going on with the headmaster. Though they’re using magic to communicate. I’m not sure if it’s because he doesn’t want me able to listen in or if it’s because Montag doesn’t even know how to text.

         A plus side of being an Assassin during a zombie apocalypse, apparently—none of the zombie horde even think to try to climb. They do kind of lumber into the side of the building and pound on the walls, but it’s enough to let him sleep; he’d gotten used to sleeping in weird places once he was kidnapped, and at least he’s not waking up to creepy Templars standing over him.  Though sometimes there'll be ravens nearby, but they're not bothering him so he's not gonna bother them.
         He’s not doing it in the church or sheriff’s office, even if they’re both pretty safe—he’s almost certain, at this point, that Bees don’t actually sleep, or if they do it’s nowhere near as often as a normal human, so that would probably give him away, and he’s already given some hints there about him having been ‘dead’ for hours, probably, and actually getting headaches. It is interesting that Shaun and Rebecca didn’t wait days to check in; some of it might be that Rebecca is acting like his handler. Shaun, too, to some extent, but he seems preoccupied. Some of that might be that he’s busy picking up the slack; they kind of have been reassigned to projects involving Desmond, from what he can guess, and probably with the go-ahead of Sonnac, but it gives Desmond the rare insight into Other Shaun. When he’d snapped things about being busy, he probably was, because both Shaun and Rebecca are talented people and, this time, Desmond knows explicitly that they have other work that they’re doing. Some of it, weird as it is to think, is possibly actually Shaun being shy. It’d help if he actually apologized so that the Assassin could tell him he’s forgiven, but even if they’re back to talking easily, it doesn’t seem like Shaun can actually trust that. He never texts, but occasionally when Desmond and Rebecca are actually talking on the phone will join in on nothing resembling a schedule with some sort of historical tidbit about the latest thing the Sheriff mentioned or, occasionally, a rant.
         The influence of the Illuminati in this place is pretty strong, from what it sounds like. That, or the town was just plain weird all on its own. They’d actually had a burning at the stake twenty-five years ago, which...okay, so he was a kid, but still, that was during Desmond’s lifetime. Some woman named Carrie Killian, with a mob burning her house, and yeah, it’s witchcraft charges. Sometimes human beings are the worst.
         The local government had secret meetings at Town Hall. Which might mean a secret room, or something, so Desmond’s going to poke around, there. And Shaun does confirm there absolutely were either Illuminati involved, either personally or by bribery, though he doesn’t share how he knows.
         The thing is, there’s definitely something going on out at sea. Everybody keeps mentioning the Lady Margaret, which is apparently a ship, that brought the fog back. Even Doc Bannerman caring for the guy who got bit at the station had mentioned that he’d been studying the sailors, who’d gotten sick, but he had to leave his personal notes behind. And down by the beachfront, past the little tourist restaurant, by the pier, he gets an up close and personal introduction to those...he wants to call them lobster-humans. Blue lobster-humans. One of them’s even bigger than the infected zombie he’d fought near the dumpster (though, interestingly, this one’s hanging out near the gas station, too, is there something in the oil or what), and he carefully stays out of the way of those claws because they’re longer than his arm and they’d be ridiculous if they weren’t so deadly. Well, okay, some of them look more like tall blue undead with barnacles or carapace-clubs or carapace-spikes for a hand, but still. Apparently they’re a very old type of undead called Draug, which means they’re cramming pretty much every variety of undead they can into this little slice of Maine, but he’s personally calling them blue lobster-humans in his head. So he figures he’s going to go check out the boat that started it all, see if he can’t spot any clues. None of the other Bees have seen much of anything, but then, they don’t have Eagle Vision.