Milo was coming to a realization. The greatest strength of The Blue Scene Manual was also its greatest fw; it was exhaustingly principled.

  The Blue Scene Manual - Core Sympathic Practice

  Sympathy is the physical form of a magician’s soul, and therefore to develop it is to transform the self. To increase the physical strength of your Sympathy you must prioritize resilience in all things. The manner in which one endures the trials set out by the world determines whether one’s Sympathy reaches the strength of stone or of steel. And of course, meditating on the symbolic form of one’s Sympathy is necessary to expand its functionality…

  With each grand epiphany tied back to the Sympathy’s nature, ancilry functions will develop in its workings. Sympathy is an interface; an understanding of the divine that takes mental energy to communicate intent.

  Milo frowned and set the Manual down on its face. That stresses the spine of a book, he remembered. Then he shrugged and shoveled a burger into his mouth.

  Sandra flipped the book up and slipped a business card in as a bookmark. Sandra had a lot of business cards, Milo had noticed. Most of them were for different jobs. “That stresses the spine of a book, Bellhop.”

  “That’s fine,” Milo tried to say through a mouthful of patty. “I don’t respect it anyway.” But all that came out was crumbs, so he quickly gave up.

  The problem, Milo thought, is that all this self-empowering cultivation of virtue the Manual rants about reads mainly as self-help gobbledygook to me. I can’t take it seriously when I know what magicians are like now.

  His arm wasn’t in a sling anymore. Sandra had healed it st week when she woke up to burnt eggs. She didn’t tell him anything at the time, but he recognized her expression. He’d worn it himself in the mirror as he stumbled from the shower with a knife in his shoulder. It was a familiar guarded gre. Like every human face was a fickle skin over a violent jungle; one that should be stared into sensible submission, just in case.

  Milo swallowed.

  “Can you take me for a drive today?” he asked again.Sandra tilted her head. “I think I’m free this time, yes. Where do you want to go?”

  A relieved smile cracked Milo’s expression. She’s been coming by so often, but this is the first time she’s had time to give me a ride. “There’s a certain bridge that’s too far to walk to if you want to be able to fight. I’ll text you the address. It’s easier.”

  She zily reclined in her chair. “Why would you want to fight?”

  Milo waved his hand vaguely. “Well, it’s an unsanctioned gathering point for mage-trespassers, so obviously you can’t look exhausted and weak.”

  Sandra’s eyes shot open and she snatched the phone from Milo’s hand. “Don’t text me that. I’ll get in trouble. My boss is very… harsh… on mage-trespassers as an ideology.”

  Milo cocked an eyebrow. Sandra’s boss reads her texts?

  He filed that thought away in a part of his brain dedicated to Sandra’s red fgs, where it would collect dust forevermore

  The bridge was one of those old pioneering types, all ttice and pnks that rumbled beneath the wheels of Sandra’s car. Milo threw up out the passenger window and winced as his vomit dripped off the wooden side. I hope I didn’t nail anyone. Failing that, I hope they think it’s bird shit.

  “There goes burgers,” he muttered.“Sorry. I’m going as slow as I can while driving safely. I didn’t know motion-sickness could get this bad,” Sandra probed.

  “I’m not motion-sick,” said Milo. “I’m car-sick. There’s a difference. I wouldn’t barf in even the shakiest of bipnes.”

  She scoffed. “What, you allergic to wheels? You weren’t this bad during the hospital drive.”

  “There was no other recourse,” he muttered.

  There was a trailer-park off to the left. Free 4-hour parking to the right. Sandra pulled beneath a pine-tree with the smallest, wimpiest cones. It was being strangled by oaks and ivy; an unfortunate fate for the pnt, but this meant its seeds wouldn’t damage her windshield.

  “Pnes have wheels too,” Milo argued as they stepped out under the mottled sun. “And anyway, we’re almost there. The Scrawl’s set up under the bridge.”

  Beneath the bridge, the Anomaly was pstered in graffiti—a thin cave tunnel, several tags and initials gathered around it like flocking gulls.

  “We’re here,” Milo said.

  “There’s nobody,” Sandra said at the same time.

  They looked at each other. Milo chuckled. Then he walked up to the painted tunnel and stepped through it. Milo submerged into the paint.

  Behind the Anomaly, there was a sandbar of graphite stubs. Electrical generators thumped steady in the air, lighting bulbs strung on poles throughout the milky oil-paint ocean. The sky was white like an empty canvas. Sketches of clouds drifted zily through.

  Sandra appeared behind him with a gasp. Unlike Milo, who focused on the alien ndscape, her eyes immediately locked onto the market proper, which stood on a central pencil-shaving ndmass. Shifty men in burp roamed it in packs, tilting their chins to the sky. Burgrs’ Society. Urban monks in appropriated cīvara stepped decisively through pastel puddles which reflected the glow from their nimbuses of fme. Arsonists. Two tall, ghoulish men shook hands and exchanged business cards. A short crone with her hair like ravens down her back hawked pstic charms from a bnket. Unaffiliated mage-trespassers and opportunists.

  “Welcome to the Scrawl,” Milo muttered. “We’ve got to return The Blue Scene Manual before nightfall, or the broker will hunt me down. It’s good that you decided to drive today.”

  “Is it an arena?” Sandra asked quietly. Her eyes had finally nded on the false sky and chickenscratch clouds.

  “Not anymore,” Milo said. “The Anomaly here was too gullible. Before even being digested, it obeyed the whims of mages. It gave up everything to build this pce.”

  She frowned. “Why would it do that? Why kill its identity for a bunch of… trespassers?”

  Milo turned his gaze over. His eyes swam with painted reflections. “Because it believed in community above all else. The Scrawl is a martyr.”

  The Scrawl had become an ugly pce.

  Ramshackle buildings were formed from scrap and childhood whimsy. Rope and cord tied together lean-tos and shanty-tents. Just breaks my heart, Milo thought. It didn’t want anything. Just to bring its friends joy and a pce for them. But the streets were lined with beggars, and the local factions patrolled like packs of hyenas. Patient worms ate their way through the painted carcass of the Anomaly.

  They stopped before one such building, jutting out of the nd like a fang. Milo proffered his Manual to a bck barred window.It slipped inside and vanished. A voice whispered from inside: “Would you like to leave a rating out of five for the Blue Scene Manual?”

  Milo gnced around at the nguishing magicians.

  “Yeah. Five. It’s doing something strangely and sometimes poorly, but it’s trying to stick to its principles above all.”

  The broker rasped a ugh. “You’re too nice, Milo. Here. Take it.”

  It slipped him a pstic zip-bag of something dark and tangled. It came in a loosely packed square. “Your hair?” Milo asked. He slid it into his pocket.

  “Yes. You should get it to the Saint as soon as possible,” cackled the shifting darkness inside. “He doesn’t take too kindly to fair-weather friends.”

  Sandra turned to him casually. “I’m going to tell you something, Milo. Don’t freak out. We’re being followed by a group of three monks.”

  Milo clicked his tongue. “It’s probably the Arsonists. They might set themselves afme with sheer will, but they burn slower than we do. I hear they believe in reincarnation, but also in rapture via fire. Their doctrine says that this world is hell. Says matching illusory fire with literal fire is the way to exceed Samsara towards Heaven. When they turn wood to tinder, their Sympathies grow hungrier. It’s a poor match-up for me.”

  The lead Arsonist stepped from behind a scruff of wood. “Did someone say… matches?”

  His head was bald, shone beneath the fires of his nimbus-like Sympathy, and was littered with circur burns like craters of the moon. Two more monks slid into pce behind Milo and Sandra. One wore a bandana that procimed in broad yellow letters: VOW OF SILENCE. The other, an elderly man, wore two gss eyes and a mild smirk.

  “They call me Hearing Of No Evil,” said the head monk. “Hear for short. With me are Seer and Speaker. May I know your names?”

  “Milo,” whispered Sandra. “What happens if Sympathies csh in an extant arena?”

  “Something normal, probably,” he said. “But this isn’t just an arena anymore, Sandra. It’s the Scrawl. It’s specifically designed to permit team combat despite the usual rules of magical engagement.”

  “Figures,” she spat.

  Milo sighed. We can’t fight them. We’re outnumbered, and it’s sandy, uneven terrain.

  There’s only two proper walls in the area, and even if one is right next to me…

  Is Revolving useless in this environment?