singillatim | open | i'll never die, i am a freak

"It was only one time!" Dorian giggles. "How the hell is one time an expert? If I managed to land a bullseye one time, I wouldn't say I'm an expert in archery."

“More than me,” Chloe insists, “if I'd never managed to land any! I don't even know if demons are real.”

Though if zombies and djinni are, the odds are good.

"They are," he points out. "I've found that if there are stories about it, legends, myths and fantasies, then more likely than not it's true."

He is shooting a massive hole in his 'I'm just a normal guy' facade, but Dorian is far too high to care at the moment.

“It's not always right, though.” Fortunately for Dorian, this is normal shop talk among the people Chloe works with. “I almost died so many times going after this legendary giant sapphire and it turned out to be evil tree sap.”

"Now that sounds like a story," Dorian muses. "I'll tell you one of mine if you tell me that one in return?"

Chloe shrugs with a little smile, ambling off toward the church.

“Sure. In your world, do you know Shambhala? Shangri-La? Marco Polo wrote that he’d seen a giant sapphire there, 'as big around as the reach of a man’s arms.' I was working with some guys who were looking for it and it got pretty ugly. Got shot, there was a train crash, the yetis…” Yeah, they were just guys, but they were super strong annoying guys! “Turned out there was this tree there, the tree of life or whatever, and the sap was blue, absurdly flammable, and had some wild effects if you ate it. We barely made it out.”

As Chloe mentions Shambhala, Dorian makes a little noise of acknowledgement. He's always had a fondness for mysteries, hideaways, stories of fantastic beings or places that may or may not exist. Of course he knows what Shambhala is.

The yetis and the sapphire and the tree sap is a bit new. But it's interesting all the while!

"Oooh, lucky. I've dealt with sea monsters and banshees, but never any yetis. I should find one and cross it off my bucket list."

“They weren't that great,” Chloe says. Those things almost killed her so many times. “They were just guys in suits, really. Yeah, they were super strong and in a sense immortal because of the sap they ate, but the fur and stuff was all fake.”

"What? Oh that's rubbish! Not actual yetis? I'd be put out."

Dorian is grumpier about the lack of real yetis than it might seem. Honestly, to go into something expecting the supernatural and end up with Scooby Doo is just unfair.

"Of course, that opens up new questions. Why the hell did they think dressing up as yetis was a good idea?"

“Right!? What a ripoff.” Not that being attacked by weird immortals had been a walk in the park, but it would have been cool to learn that yetis are real.

“Part of it was probably how cold it was outside the city, since the ones inside didn't wear the suits. Also I think they wanted to scare people away.”

"And they would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for you meddling kids and that dog," Dorian muses. He's already thinking this is Scooby Doo, might as well make the reference. Dressing up to scare away people? Proper children's cartoon nonsense.

"My golem was real," he points out. "Followed all the established golem rules. And it murdered a Nazi which honestly, you can't blame the thing, it should do that more often."

“Sure, let’s go with that.” Nate can be the dog, here, considering how all of that had ended.

“Also yeah, murdering Nazis is pretty much always the right move. The yetis did that too, but mostly the old-school 1940s ones. They'd wanted the stone back then and found themselves stymied by both the creatures, and a reluctant guide who turned on them once he realised what it was they wanted.”

"Technically speaking, mine was a Nazi sympathizer but as far as I'm concerned, a Nazi sympathizer is just a Nazi by a different name."

Even more technically speaking, the man probably was a Nazi. Julius Metzger, member of the German American Bund, one of those annoying little fascists popping up in the 1930s with their annoying little talks about building a new Germany and removing some of the riff-raff and undesirables. But Dorian is supposed to be modern. A bright, useless modern young thing, someone in his twenties, someone who wouldn't be mentioning organizations that went the way of the dodo in the 1940s.

"Honestly, even though your yetis got points deducted for not being real yetis, I'm making a decision to re-instate those points based on murdering some Nazis. It's a net positive, at the moment, though possibly not for long."

“Right? They took out the buyer who’d brought me in, too, and he was a real winner.”

Not a nazi, fortunately for her, but either way he’d still been a guy notorious for mutilating people he didn't like.

“Really I think any monster should get a pass for that.”

"This is how they'll rehab their image," Dorian muses. "Oh, werewolves are horrible monsters, vampires are bloodsucking fiends. Just eat a Nazi or two and you'll be grand!"

There's a lightness of tone in his voice: Dorian's obviously joking around a bit, but he's also slightly serious. Eat some Nazis! It's a net benefit for the world.

Chloe snickers. This guy is fun.

“The zombies were worse, since the ones who weren't nazis were conquistadors. But the mummy who cursed them pretty much only took out the worst guys ever so it's still a win.”

"Oh my God, zombie conquistadors? And I thought my life was insane," he muses. Sure, he did deal with zombies. But they weren't conquistadors! They were the friends and neighbors of the woman he was currently working with which alright, is horrible in it's own way, but let's just compartmentalize out that aspect of it all.

"Mummies are new, though. They probably exist where I'm from? But I've never spent time in Africa."

He sways a little, the off-kilter sway of someone high off his tits, before Dorian firmly leans himself against the nearest wall. Nope nope nope, we are staying upright and not falling over.

“Oh, I don't do Egypt either. Too much competition. This was a Mesoamerican mummy.”

Clearly a completely different sort of magic!

She almost dives in to grab him when he sways, but he catches himself.

“Easy. We’re almost there.”

Almost there? Where are they—oh, right.

"The church," Dorian says, as if to remind himself where he's going. Christ, he feels so wonderful at the moment, he damn near forgot. But he's sober enough to realize that after the high comes the crash, and better that happen where he lives.

"Unless, of course, your house is closer. I wouldn't mind having a deeper conversation. After all, you've got a story about a Mesoamerican mummy to tell me."

And, of course, Chloe's hot. Can't forget that part.

“We’re on the same side of town, then,” Chloe says brightly. “I’m at the farmhouse. At the fork, it's to the left.”

This guy’s fun, but she's not quite sure how long he's going to be able to hold out.

“I’ve got a boiler up there so the house is heated. Pretty sweet.”

A heated house? A boiler? Dorian's eyes light up as he immediately says,

"You're my new favorite person here."

Chloe. Chloe. Delightful, wonderful amazing Chloe. Let him take a hot shower and run your boiler dry.

“Beats a musty old church any day.” Who is this guy, Quasimodo? “Want to come up?”

"Yes please," said with zero hesitation and zero shame. "Lead the way!"

Chloe grins, heading down the fork in the road toward the farm.

“You wouldn't believe how happy I am to meet you. There are hardly any fun people here.”

Dorian lets out a low little chuckle before pointing out, "I am nothing but fun. And I'm certainly not going to let our time in some rinky-dink little middle of nowhere town change that."

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