Titans Having Tea

“Coffee?” asked a bored-looking waitress.

The skull-faced man glanced up with an unseen smile. “Please.”

“Make it two more,” sighed the Academy professor as she sipped the last from her mug.

The Cuck Factory had a fair number of people at lunch time, even on Tuesdays, and the low chatter of families and couples who ate there created a pleasant background noise as the two mages enjoyed a coffee break. No one was screaming or panicking. There was no television playing news at this diner, but even that would report nothing out of the ordinary.

At the Academy, a shadow clone of Wentworth was currently berating Yulie Sanchez for her subpar answer; in a barrier now returned to its normal design and function, a hologram of Magoi lectured Jimmy on the projects that would secure the young man’s new “fast track” in the Fateweavers. Both knew, or thought they knew, what calamity was brewing only a few miles away. Neither spoke or addressed the other for a time; Wentworth had arrived first, and then the raptor skull-bearing man, but neither had truly walked in.

“So, about that favor,” Magoi casually whispered. If any in the diner found strange the way his lower jaw hinged as he spoke, none offered any sign of it.

“Be it a day or three months, aren’t you being a bit eager?” Wentworth sighed.

“Let me be brash! It’s been centuries and I enjoy the sensation.”

“You cannot imagine I’d let you have the boy.” Wentworth checked the newspaper she had brought. On its face danced reports from the Abyssal Audit, a newsletter that only materialized when its reporters were reporting live, rare as that was in this new era of Order presence. Perhaps out of duty, perhaps out of spite, this media outlet almost sang about explosions and gunfire at the Brighton Manor... as well as their knee-jerk predictions about why it was even happening. “Hah! They think the Cabal is attacking.”

“You didn’t put any conditions on this favor.”

“Reasonableness is an implied term.”

“Under what doctrine?”

“Under my doctrine.”

“Then what is unreasonable- ah, thank you,” Magoi offered with another unseen smile at the waitress. He pulled out a $20 bill and gave it a touch of magic before handing it to the waitress. “Please keep them coming.”

The waitress managed a surprised smile before pocketing the cash. She’d later find out she mistook it, now that it transformed, out of sight, into a stack of hundreds... but for now, she’d keep bringing coffee for the nice man who emptied the cup without apparently touching it. She would struggle to remember what he looked like, though she’d die old remembering his smile.

“The boy was my sole interest, and you know this. Have the Gorbachev, Collide, the barrier, the Order—whatever pleases you, save the boy.”

The raptor skull clicked dismissively. “Well... then my favor might be to have you tell me what I’d find out if I had him.”

Wentworth offered a threatening smile. Without looking back at the paper, she read aloud, “‘The tyrannical Order of the Golden Rose remains under siege, but reports are coming in of aerial support, a caravan of reinforcements, and contract mages closing in on what we now believe might not be Cabal mages at all, despite prior reports. The Audit will remain on site and reporting as long as it can.’”

“You can’t even answer that?”

“I’m wondering why you’re wasting your time here... when that clutch of infants you just trained are now at risk of being captured.”

“They only think they remember who I am, and stop changing the subject.”

“The boy has properties of magic that intrigue me. Perhaps he is something of use, perhaps not.”

“Opening portals anywhere with a thought, being a bona fide summoner in 2018, and apparently being inhumanely resistant to harm goes beyond intriguing.”

“You’ve all three, presuming we consider your little company a pack of summonable minions.”

Magoi scoffed at the dig. “Then let me just come out and ask: is he the Champion?”

Wentworth nearly spat her coffee in a moment of fumbling so rare that Magoi wondered if he was the only man alive to see it. “The- the Champion of what exactly? Certainly not Civics.”

“The Champion.”

“If he is, then my interest is forfeit.”

“What a coincidence,” Magoi whispered, “because that’ll mean my interest peaks.”

“You... can’t still be on about the First Leyline Theory.”

“It should’ve been my predecessor’s finest work-”

“He was a lunatic whose mess you cleaned up for two generations... and whose mess nearly saw my predecessors killed before their time.”

“An unfortunate cost of business, certainly... but is it so mad to believe?”

Wentworth rolled her eyes as she took up the new mug the waitress produced. “Where do I start? Finding fixed leylines in an ever-expanding universe through which we rocket at over a hundred miles per second?”

“How about where they intersect?”

“A tempting idea, and one oft repeated in those who worship Gaia... but still, absurd.”

Magoi turned from her to walk down the garden path. The two were now at a small fruits and flowers event held at a municipal park on the outskirts of Springfield, comfortably far away from what would become ground zero of the Order battle. Both glanced up as another silent helicopter zipped overhead towards the city. "You're familiar with the Oracles of New Rome?"

"Oh, did they predict the coming of a Champion?" Wentworth wryly asked as she held, and appreciated, the head of a violet orchid. "Well then that must be the one teenage mage I happen to take interest in."

"No, that's not... quite what they predicted. They see only so many hours into the future, you see... Romulus has them only predicting world events in twelve-hour windows now for greater accuracy."

"He collects seers like a boy with figurines and props them up inside one chamber to have them vote on Gaia's roll of the dice... you know," Wentworth coyly whispered, "I think this goes back to your addiction to gambling-"

"They're dead," Magoi bluntly replied.

"Romulus didn't like what they had to say?"

Magoi smiled... and held his hand aloft as the only other three guests loitered near the wine-tasting booth. "I think it would better serve to show you."

Wentworth waved a hand dismissively, which the great Magus took for consent. The garden vanished... and the two now stood in an illusion barrier--one constructed from the past and in an inner sanctum of New Rome, a feat few could do or would dare--of the Senate of Oracles. A raised dais of marble stood on a marble platform; all around it, sitting upright in cushioned chairs and whispering into bubbles of light that took their mutterings and floated upwards, were all manner of men, women, children, and creatures. Bulbous eyes, odd mannerisms, and in one case such colossal size as to squat on the ground like a house with leathery green legs, the Oracles were a visual cacophony of colors, races, and creeds, united only in two ways: the flowing white togas and the solid gold brace put on one appendage or another. Each was a **** to the Caesar; each continued their reports diligently without hunger or need or discomfort or freedom.

Wentworth wrinkled her nose at the display. She had come to New Rome only once; it did not agree with her. She looked back to the two massive golden doors that led into this indoor forum of seers in bondage. She looked back at the sea of rising bubbles as they slowly went into the ceiling where, with gentle pops, a forcefield of golden light absorbed their predictions and tallied the future for its owner somewhere. Wentworth waited calmly for the figure of Romulus to appear and slaughter his "guests"; it was the first, the last, and the easiest guess as to who might dare slaughter the possessions of the Caesar of Roma Nova. But the doors didn't open.

"Romulus does not appear for another two hours, and then only to appreciate his loss and contemplate its meaning."

“You’ve permission to share this?” Wentworth wondered aloud with a wave towards the hundreds of what she viewed to be fortune tellers.

“Of course not,” Magoi chided, “but what’s a favor between friends?”

Wentworth grimaced. "How long ago was this?"

Magoi's mask jittered. "A bit less than twelve hours ago."

The Oracles continued their mish-mash of different predictions in all manner of languages; Wentworth could hear and understand them all and grew amused at their various predictions. The Order collapsing on itself. Two Wardens fighting each other. Two Wardens making love to one another. A tsunami hitting the Philippines. A comet changing course to bring it dangerously close to Earth. A social shift in Russia once the leader of a political group dies mysteriously. An American assassin killing a Firesmith mage without knowing what he's done. Some were impossibilities, others inevitabilities, but each was some key event or important turning point in everything from the meager to the apocalyptic, and every set of eyes seemed turned to Earth. Amusing to Wentworth, of course, was the futility: no single opinion failed to have a dissenter, and oftentimes a fractured collection thereof. There would be no tsunami, the comet would pass harmlessly, society would move on, and the Firesmith mage wouldn't be surprised. Their hushed and confused whispers as they glanced though potential futures were the barest of weather vanes, collectively, and none dared speak too loudly for fear of confronting those who predicted otherwise.

Romulus' obsessions proved timeless and, to the old witch, timelessly pointless. "Well," she began, "while it’s yet another reason not to visit New-"

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah," began the single note, calmly sung, from a moon elf.

"Oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo," came the belly chorus of twin frog men.

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!" shrieked a few more men and women in the crowd as fluids and pheromones and other excretions began to leak from them.

Wentworth slowly turned to regard them all with wide eyes. The Oracles sang together... and their song, a monotonous cry, became one of fury, panic, and a bottom terror that saw the chorus become a mob. None could stop their screaming song; the bubbles continued to fill and inflate before them until they popped, none ever coherent enough to float upwards and render opinions. One woman, some kind of half-demon, began scratching at her face until black blood began to drip down upon her toga. A two-headed man banged both skulls against the floor as both heads continued to scream until, with one fatal crunch followed by another, they were silenced. Yet more bludgeoned themselves with their bracelets; those with collars tried to hang themselves by their own hands and, when that failed to work, began joining their brethren in bashing their own heads in. The screaming only stopped with the dead. There were no dissents. The room was joined in one final silence.

"... What in the Mother’s name...?"

"Whatever they witnessed," Magoi calmly explained, "will be happening in a few minutes."

Wentworth blinked at Magoi from across the diner table. The waitress came by, somehow happier and pluckier than they had found her. "More coffee?"

"I think we've had enough," Wentworth muttered deadpan without looking at her.

"Well, one more with the check for me, thank you," Magoi happily replied.

The waitress left with some pep in her step. Wentworth's expression remained unchanged. "You believe whatever they saw... has to do with Newman?"

Magoi chuckled coyly.