Tepic stepped back from the Book, a slight frown of worry on his face. The last page to be written talked about Sebastian the Knight bringing a Could Angel to the Old Imperial Theatre, and that it could help fix the problem of the Dark Aether. It was what else he had said, according to the Book, that worried Tepic. That this was the last of the ones he had brought, and that the others were used to destroy the machines under the City, that was troubling.
Cloud Angels, as could be seen by anyone who had ever come across one, were wonderful, beautiful and gentle people, the idea of using one as a weapon, not asking but using, that was wrong. He remembered the book on Cloud Angels he had been reading some months before in the CocoJava, the Angels had helped people, and only gone away when people tried to use them to hurt others, which also killed the Angel.
He hoped he had misunderstood, and that the Cloud Angels were helping the people of New Babbage because they wanted to, and that Sebastian meant that the others had used their power but were still alright….. otherwise, what good would winning be, if they had done it at such a terrible cost to the Cloud Angels? How would they be any different than Moriarty, and the Van Creed people, who used others selfishly to their own ends?
Wandering back to his camp, he hoped that Myrtil would be back soon. He had heard that somehow she had word from Triky, and maybe what he had said to her would be the key, so they could stop this before the Book even started writing.
They can’t use cloud angels like that! It’s monstrous!
Avariel Falcon read the page with interest as it was the first real description of the cloud angels that she has come across…
The entity in the box was indeed glowy but did not look like a human baby. So it appeared that the cloud angel in the book was not the entity in the box. Also if the entity in the box did not look like the cloud angel in the book then that would support her theory that the entity was something else, maybe some sort of related but different creature.
The comments about others being used to destroy machines were interesting, did that mean there were multiple cloud angels out there somewhere? The idea of finding them only to destroy them seamed like a poor state of affairs, if they were anything like the entity in the box then they should be protected, not waisted as ammunition to destroy some infernal machine.
Myrtil is having slight problems with air pirates attacking the airship she hid on, at the moment, so she decided to send a full account of her encounter with Triky to her friends via Bob the pigeon, cause she thinks it is important they get it. ((ie, you can consider my earlier blog post about Triky as IC knowledge now :op ))
i wonna hear how Myrtil escapse the sky pirates!
That will be if she actually escapes…
either way, i want to hear it too!
A runner tumbled out of the mayor’s elevator, where Mr. Tenk sat happily piecing out a new escape wheel while Mr. Underby read him the important comings and goings of the day.
“Mr. Tenk sir! The Writer has written a new page sir!” barked the messenger.
“Well? What does it say?”
“It says that Mr. Sebastion,” started the child nervously.
“What does it say, exactly?”
Underby sneered, enjoying the discomfort of the messenger under Tenk’s directed stare. The boy stood there, mouth working wordlessly.
“Go back and read it again. And don’t come back up here until you can tell me what it says. Exactly. Every word.” Tenk measured his words slowly, so he was certain he was being understood. Every messenger feared making a mistake on one of the Mayor’s messages now, for it would earn them a session with Father Pizzaro. And no one wanted that.
The boy gulped and nodded, backing into the elevator and pressing the button, glad when the view of Tenk’s office slid from view behind the brass grate.
The elevator groaned and screeched, letting the messenger back into Tenk’s rickety shack he called an office. The boy stuttered and stammered through his speech, eyes rolling as he forced his way through every memorized word that was on the page of the writer’s book down on the floors below.
As he mentioned the cloud angel, the blood drained out of Tenk’s face.
As he continued his recitation, the clocks in the room began to stop, and the two little brown birds in the copper wire cage cowered under each other in the floor of their cage.
But the time the boy was finished, nervous and sweating, Tenk’s fingers were clamped into the edge of the table. Underby noted it all.
“That will be all,” soothed Underby as he ushered the boy into the elevator.
Tenk’s face was drawn and pale. “I am going to knock the head off that thing and strip it down to its parts,” he hissed in barely a whisper.
“Mr. Tenk…” Underby used his most soothing tones on the little man.
“Then I am going to Piermont.”
“Mr. Tenk. Calm yourself! You can’t let them see you like this.”
“And if I find Mornington has built one of those machines….”
“Let me make you some tea, Mr. Tenk.” Underby eyed the little brown birds still cowering in their cage, with the sudden realization that they were used to communicate with Maggie.
“…I am going to take every bone in him and grind it into mortar,” finished Tenk.
Underby did what he could to contain the Mayor, but the elevator was already on the way. The gears in his brain were turning with new plots and possibilities. Whatever had just happened was a windfall from the gods, for Underby had learned something new.
There was something that Tenk was very, very, afraid of.