3!

2011 NANO Part3

    Deven shook his head as he hoists the virgin over his shoulder, “Hubris will be our downfall you all know that right?”
    Almost bitterly Alexander flashes a smile, “Our downfall was almost 11 years ago and the last time I checked we all survived that more or less.  So what else do we have?”
    “Each other”
    “Friendship, some of us for the very first time” adds Stephan.
    “Alright then where we going to do this?” Deven asks suddenly realizing that a lifetime of having people do things for him has left him unprepared for his brave new world of hauling around virgins himself.  The blank looks on the faces of the others causes him to drop the virgin and as she collapses to the floor he began to understand the phrase “like a sack of potatoes.”  Cause that is exactly how she hit the floor, so different from if she were awake.  It is strange how consiousness changes the body, she would of at least tried to put her hand out or something like that but instead, her body just made a series of thumping sounds and remained still.  For a long time he always wondered why only his most callouse of minions would dump bodies just like he did and now he understands.  Perhaps John’s bizarre 12 step plan is working or perhaps it is because this is the first time he’s ever picked up a body on his on and just tossed it to the floor when it became to heavy to lug around himself.  He doesn’t regret it, not exactly.  However, next time he vows to find someone else to pick up the body.
    Everyone else is aguring as they seem to do at any given chance at every given moments.  It always starts so simple, get a virgin, cast a spell, and now it is spiraling into this strange disaster area.  With the exception of Stephan every single one of them has commanded dozens sometimes hundreds of people all of whom would do their bidding mostly because their lives depended on it.  Which it did even if they didn’t always know it.  For his part Stephan always wondered how people got to that point.  People seem to want better lives, and no one grows up thinking they are going to join a satanic cult that is devoted to bringing about the end times, and yet they would end up in his care carrying around bodies for him doing things that they would never imagine doing in their precult life.  It is almost as if because Stephan commands it, it becomes permitted.  It is almost sad in a way.  Why would people do that to one of their brothers.  People may not always be the nicest to each other but overwhelmingly most of his minions weren’t true believers but rather people who just didn’t really seem to fit in anywhere else in life.  It is almost as if they joined up as if they didn’t have anything better to do. 
    Deven dropped the body in the way he did because it was heavy and he just didn’t think about it.  No one else didn’t think anything of it either.  They’d all heard the thumping of a an unconscious body before as it hit’s the floor probably none of them have ever really handled a body themselves.  They were all busy trying to figure out the best place to hold their ritual.  He knew they would decide on the front yard, no one wants to go deeper into her house, it is creepy and her place of power.  Her authority here is absolute and with her not here there is no way they want to go deeper into her house, even as a group.  The only thing stopping them is that Alexander doesn’t want to put up a dome.  The dome makes it so that they can preform large scale works without being observed.  To be fair they are complicated structures.  They combine illusionary, psychological, and good old fashioned force field technology.  It isn’t enough to keep everything inside in, and it isn’t enough to keep everyone on the outside from seeing what is going on, on the inside.  People need to be convinced that there is nothing there in the first place and that they have no reason to go anywhere near the area.   A sudden realization that you forgot something and you need to turn around, or you missing a street and taking an unplanned detour, or even sudden wanderlust.  More than likely they are just things people are doing.  Sometimes though, it is a world shaker at work either frantically covering up something that has gone terribly wrong, or resolving a disagreement that has gotten more than a little out of control.   Not everyone can make one and not all of them are good for every occation.  Jerimia could make one but he is elsewhere doing his own thing.  Also Deven couldn’t imagine Jerimia having any real interest in their little exparament.  Alexander didn’t want to make one because he likes to pretend that he doesn’t want to sling spells all over the place.  The whole fireball, magic missle, speech?  Nonsense.  Alexander wants to kick back, let loose, and blow up huge tracts of land.  He just feels that he shouldn’t.  John’s influence.  In a way it is amazingly brave, Alexander is just a person without magic.  A person who should be dead long ago. 
    Deven could make one himself, but not without a significant amount of sacrifice, at least two people and perhaps a couple of animals just to be safe.  Satan is unusually excited about sacrifice.  Something Deven himself has never understood.  Though he suspects that Satan has never moved to far past the old testiment excitement.  It is hard to believe that anyone would say that life became more interesting after Jesus hit the earth.  Deven would of given anything to visit either Sodam or Grammora before their destruction.  What an amazing place they must have been.  Not one but two places that were so vile that god himself came down out of heaven and wiped them off of the face of the earth with such righteous fury that not even dust remains.  To piss god off that badly, not that is something to strive for.  It almost makes Deven want to get the old crew together and strike off, maybe of Africa and construct a city of sin somewhere deep in the jungle, but that would involve turning his back on John.  Also there is the point that Stephan brought up one day that Soddom and Grammora is more than likely the result of some Star Things getting loose and rampaging around and the only way to save this universe was to make sure that not even ash was left.  Still Deven preferred his way. 
    Alexander, starts to relent which is good.  The night isn’t getting any shorter and it would be a shame to get everyone together with no results.  The back yard has been decided on.  Deven frowns at this mostly because they decided on something he hadn’t considered.  He still hasn’t gotten used to that.  He doubts he ever will, and secretly he suspects that if he ever does he will end up becoming one of the normals, the square johns, the people who are just like everyone else.  Who don’t see the secret world that happens all around them.  They decided to walk around the house instead of through it because, after all walking through it would be insane.  To his relief Stephan picked up the body with suprising ease.  No one really knew or understand Stephan’s body except that it is weird and, much like his blood, full of suprises.  She seems wieghtless in his arms and has since regained consoisness.  She looks up at him with a dull uncomprehending terror.  A silent pleading in her eyes that he doesn’t even notice.  It is funny how easy it is to miss these sorts of things when you are all caught up in the moment. 
    That is when it hit Deven.  An icy wave of realization that rockets up from his subconscious to the forefront of his throught process.  He is not into all of this.  As they trooped out of the house he considers calling a stop to all of it.  It would be easy.  Just tell them something and they would take the virgin home wipe her mind and everything would be just fine.  They would go their separate ways and they would never talk of this again.  Not even at their months group meeting.  It would become a non event.  Just another night.
    Then for the first time in a long time he looks around at his companions.  Jared and Alexander are talking to each other excitedly about the nature of humanity.  Two people who couldn’t have anything less in common are joined together, not arguing or even fighting but discussing how the fundaments of the world and our minds work.  They seem like they are close to coming to some sort of breakthrough in regards to how a body is capable of directing mystical forces.  Stephan is walking out ahead and he’s talking pleasantly to the virgin, explaining that they only need a  couple of drops of her blood and while they all would off been much more comfortable with just taking it from her and being on their way, it had to be fresh from the vein.  The whole virginity thing was just a formality and probably not even true, it has just never been tried any other way and magic is weird.  For the first time in a long time, since childhood, Deven realizes that he has friends.  Not a group of people who you surround yourself with because they worship you and they will do anything you tell them to.  Not a group of people who are all exactly like you.  No these are people who are unlike anyone else.  Possibly on the face of the planet.  They want nothing from him and they have no real reason for hanging around him other than because they want to.  There isn’t a single one of them that doesn’t have at least one hundred other things they could be doing and all of them have even more things they should be doing.  None of that matters though, they are together because they want to be.  The virgin is here because they need her to be for the moment and there is no reason to get moody over the nature of the world.
    Uncounsously Deven caught up with Stephen.  He looks over and smiled, his young body effortlessly holding onto the virgin despite his slight build.  Stephen looks over, “Hey, you’ve been quiet for quite a bit anything up?”
    “No not really just pondering the nature of things.  You know we are quite a remarkable group of people.  All of us together, all of our artistry so far and away from anything anyone can even imagine and here we all are doing our best to live normal lives?  Isn’t that strange?”
    Stephen is quiet for a bit, “I know what you mean I was wondering about our course of action tonight myself.  I mean we start off all gathered together for something that was innocent enough and now we are walking around, Alex is preparing to cast a major spell and we have a virgin in our midsts.  There is something to be said for wondering how we got here and where we are going to go next.  Like this is the sort of thing that John doesn’t want us to do, but at the same time this is something we are all doing together as a group of friends, and in all honesty that seems more important to me.  Besides it will be fine and even if it isn’t the world won’t end if this girl doesn’t make it back alive.”
    Deven looks over and his more recent words seem to have upset her, “Oh don’t worry Miss Virgin I am sure you will be fine.  I mean you dieing is definetly going to be a worse case sort of senario.  Don’t worry more than likely nothing will come of this and tomarrow you will wake up and it will feel like you’ve just gotten yourself blackout drunk and you’ll have no idea what happened.  Don’t you worry.” Awkwardly, he reached out and tried to pat her head comfortingly.  However, with him and Stephen both walking at a slightly different pace, along with Deven’s lack of experience with this sort of then he ended up just sort of swating her head once.
    Stephen laughs, “You aren’t very good at comforting people are you?”
    “Well no.  Actually, come to think of it I don’t think I’ve ever had to comfort anyone at all in my entire life.  I mean I’m sure I did once or twice as a child but I don’t really remember that.  But yeah!  I don’t think it has ever really come up.  What about you?”
    “Well other than my Dad I haven’t really had any need to comfort anyone.  My little cultist people have so much wrong with them that at any given time anything could be right or wrong.  You know what I mean?  As for the Star Things well they are what they are”
    “Hey speaking of which how is your dad?”
    Brightening visably Stephan smiles, “Oh he’s doing great!  Much better now.  The doctors have got him on some different medications and Jerimia has been working with me.  I can most certainly see where I got it all from.  I think if he wanted to he could have been just like me.  It is just that he lived to long as a normal and that does something to lock your preceptions into place.”
    “That’s great I am glad to here he is doing better, John tells us we should ask about little details like that because it is apparently part of the way normal people live life or something like that?  Isn’t that strange a bunch of people sitting around asking about each other’s families?  I don’t understand it, but it is nice to know that your dad is doing alright.”
    Stephen nods, “Yeah well not to many of us have families left, Alex’s family is long dead along with everyone he’s ever known.  Rebecca has some distant relatives somewhere, and Wilson has got a decent part of his clan lying around somewhere.  What about you, you got any family kicking around?”
    Deven thought about how he could answer that question.  He knew that Stephen would understand, he is a great guy, but still it is nothing he’s ever spoken about before, and right up until this very moment he had no idea that he possessed no desire to speak of it.  It is something he did.  He doesn’t regret it but at the same time he’d rather talk about anything else, “Well you know I don’t talk to mine much.  The less said about it the better”
    “Don’t worry about it Deven I understand.  Families are tricky business.  Believe me I know this better than most”.