Path of the Necromancer - FACTION WARS

Chapter 6.1 - Val

Val was decidedly nervous, and she had every right to be. Her hazel grey eyes were twitching at every loud sound that clattered its way through the wrought iron complex. Her hair, which was never exactly stylised, was in such a disarray it looked like the left side of her hair had narrowly avoided a lightning bolt. Compared to the lines and purplish bags under Old Man's eyes, or how Bobby had eaten his fingernails so far down he'd actually drawn blood, she felt she was doing pretty well.

The room, consisting of four corrugated iron sheets loosely held together by cable ties and rope, held the solemnity of a funeral. Everyone was cast in dark shadow from the two overhanging bulbs. She wanted to say light fixture, but that would require the bare lights dangling on exposed wires to be concealed behind some sort of covering. They weren't. Much like anything found within the Night Watchs base of operation, it was a bodged job. Hand me down materials, scavenged resources or stolen equipment.

The room held its own brand of depression. Not that the others were depressed. Far from it. Everyone here was energetic with anxious anticipation. Yet, for that very same reason, nobody was speaking much - too enraptured within their own worries.

Morning wind wheezed through the slits of the room, bringing with it a refreshing sweep of cool clean air to the stifling oppression the room held so well. Val drew it in and ran her hand through her hair once more, bristling yet more strands, peered away from her own list, and back to the focal point.

Their cumulative stressors were all illuminated on a large map. The map, actually an interactive screen inset into a conference table, had on its left a small key to tell anyone unfamiliar with Night Watch operations what each item meant. Val didn't need this assistance, having been involved in decision making like this ever since her *mother/father* become a blood slave. Despite this, she felt her glassy eyes following these icons around the city.

Top of the list and most numerous among it's equals of fronts, stashes and 'suspected' rivals were the dark blue points that represented their vehicles. She watched two of them travelling towards one another. From her perspective, she watched the Northernmost blotch pause at an intersection as it's compatriot passed by unaware. Her eyes tracked that shipment and brought it's tracking number up on her tablet, inspecting it. A shipment from Pioneer Square headed back to base for offload. Val closed the tab. Back to the icon key her eyes drifted, meandering sluggishly through the districts, matching each to its overarching Faction. She paused when she landed on the warehouses the Shifters owned; a repressed snarl trembling her upper lip uglily.

Squinting her eyes at the text scrolling on her tablet, she forced her fuzzy brain back to work. It wasn't easy. There was so much to try and hold together all at once, a nagging feeling had now rotted the pit of her stomach; telling her over and over again that she was missing something.

'But what?!' She snapped at the elusive voice.

It, as always, refused to answer. The silence of her own mind seemed to laugh. It shifted, skulking beyond the reach of her periphery. The harder she tried to push herself to focus on it, the faster it moved, stealing away another piece of her jigsaw that she was pouring herself over. It was maddeningly frustrating.

Going through the list for perhaps the twentieth time this morning, Val tried again to unravel the dilemma. First and foremost were the movements of the various goods they were responsible for delivering. With the Shifters blockade on the city's ins and outs set to continue, the trade 'within' the city had escalated into fever pitch. It hadn't taken long for the magical guilds *capitalise?* to come to the consensus that the best way to weather the drought of trade, was to stockpile their goods for a trade war once the blockade lifted.