12/09/21 Snippet, TINSEL RAIN.

Flying monkeys! I FORGOT ABOUT THE FLYING MONKEYS AND THE ICEMOLD. Also, the revisions have shoved the book past the 70,000 word mark. Huzzah!

As I approached the monster, at first I thought it was just that rogue flying monkey I had seen, the first time I left the Magpie’s lair. The old-style television set it had for a head — now cracked, and showing a distorted rainbow — would be pretty distinctive in a lineup, you understand. So would the general aura of decrepit menace. I figured the Magpie must have kept it around to ostentatiously spy on Cin City. Which made me wonder why I wasn’t getting attacked yet. These things were Dominion toys: I wasn’t sure why she would want to try to kill me this way, unless of course she was bored. That’s always enough reason for an Archmage to get nasty.

As I got closer I started to smell — well, I started to smell a bunch of things, all jammed together. There was the flying monkey itself, which was as rank as I remembered. And there was a sharp alchemical tang, too. But what really set my nose and my gorge off was the reek of icemold. It was all over this thing, the filthy stuff, and when the flying monkey moved one paw more rotting icemold fell from the rips in its arms.

I hate the Universal Dominion. I hate things like flying monkeys, because they’ve been used to beat up people for centuries. But I caught myself hoping that this poor thing wasn’t aware of the corruption it had been forced to endure.

On the other hand… I pulled my gun, and aimed it right at the center of that mocking TV screen. If this thing had icemold growing in it, the gun would work just fine. “I don’t know if you’re going to Hell, creature,” I muttered as I took aim, “but if you do, I hope they make you the roommate of the bastard who did this to you.”