jhetley

I've floundered my way through Chapter 2 of POWERS, and in celebration...

A stream of yellow-brown dice spilled into my palm, small bone cubes hand-cut and less than perfect, the scratches and chips and grime of centuries not masking the runes slashed across the faces of each die. They'd belonged to Mother, and she'd left them when she vanished. Where she got them, God alone knows.

Sometimes they'd speak to me. I don't know how. Their magic lived inside them, came from the songs and smokes and potions and whispered spell-chants of whatever forest-witch or shaman had formed and smoothed them centuries ago. And if they spoke, they spoke true.

Generally, they didn't speak. No use at all for the stock market or picking horses. I don't know why. I've told you that my small power doesn't run that way.

I rolled them clicking in my cupped hands, looking off through brick walls into the distance rather than at them. I thought about their number, twenty-seven, three-cubed of cubes, probably important, if I lost or cracked one they'd never speak again, or would speak gibberish. I thought about the demon, behind me and making the skin crawl up and down my spine. It had manifested small, no larger than me, and I've told you I'm not a large man. I knew that it could grow to the size of a mountain in an eye-blink if it wished, or shrink to a gnat and fly up my nose to eat my brains out from the inside.