The Bang and the Clatter as an Angel Hits the Ground (Mage)

Surprisingly, Rosemary is proving relatively easy to find - all Phenex has to do is follow the trail of blown speakers and stoned angelheads shouting at each other over the ringing in their ears. She's making her way towards Fata's camp, which suits Phenex fine, because he's got a nasty suspicion about who might have started all this.

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Storm's coming. It's weird seeing the clouds rushing around the sky like that like they're in some kind of almighty hurry like when Daddy said the seals would be broken and the sun the sun the sun's on fire and I really think there's something wrong with me even though I don't feel sick. Sunstroke. Maybe I've got a fever and Mama's giving me iced tea and sponging my forehead with a cool washcloth and I'm gonna wake up with two weeks' worth of homework to do and wanting to eat everything in sight horizon to horizon and that thunder's giving me a heck of a headache. There's that tree again pretty all bright and silvery with little lights but that's not where I'm supposed to be right now and here comes the lady with the cards and she's looking all worried which is awful sweet of her but you know I think I'm okay now and I try to tell her that but I don't know if I'm talking or if it's just my inside voice.

"Two spoons... it's two spoons."

Two spoons of what? Sugar sugar water in my iced tea I never did get that lemonade but the tea was pretty good even if it was kind of bitter like wormwood the water tastes of ashes and wormwood where's Median where's my mom? Cardlady puts her hands over her ears all of a sudden and I think I might have given her my headache sorry cardlady cloudlady storm's coming...

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Median and Inri catch up to Phenex as he's shouting questions at Fata, who seems to be having trouble hearing him. She's moaning and holding her head, and as they approach Median can finally make out what she's saying:

"Too soon - she's starting too soon."

Phenex is furious.

"I know it's too fucking soon! That goddamn little weasel ratshit bastard thought it would be funny to dose her up, and now she's waking up and probably giving half the fucking sensitives in this camp an aneurysm with the noise she's been generating. We're going to find her first, but after Inri's talked her down, if she manages to talk her down, I'm coming back to feed Alias his nuts."

"Sonofabitch, I should have guessed," Median mutters, "The Devil and the Moon..."

* * * * * * * *
Time stutters and surges increasingly erratically around Rosemary as she staggers aimlessly through Black Rock City, trailing a cone of psychic feedback in her wake. She's no longer even thinking in words, much less in complete sentences. The less sensitive inhabitants of various encampments attempt to entertain, soothe, or restrain her, because she's obviously on something heavy, but she always manages to slip away, moving along a wobbly spiral path towards the epicentre of the festival, The Man. The flourescent tubes and strings of twinkling LED lights start to flicker as she approaches, then explode as the storm around her overloads the circuits.

She looks up, a rabbit frozen in highbeams, as the Man becomes a fountain of sparks. Her father's voice thunders passages from Revelation in her head.

* * * * * * * *
A lot of people... well, our kind of people, anyway, never really get why I ran. Other people mostly do, especially if they've been raised religious. Anybody who's read the Bible knows why people fall on their knees when an angel comes. Nowadays it seems everyone talks about their guardian angels and has coffee mugs or tote bags with cute little babies with wings on them, and that's not what they're like. That's not it at all.

Angels are... they're huge and terrible things with wings that blot out the sun and voices like every window in the world breaking at once. When they come, you can be pretty sure that someone's going to die. Or at least wish they were dead. So I ran like hell when I saw the angel. And yeah, from the outside it was just the Man, but where I was it was also an angel, with a spire of light stabbing into the sky behind it. And the light was all around me and it just wouldn't stop or fade away, so then I fell on my knees, because I figured maybe if I stayed down it wouldn't see me.