Ares rolled five meters before smashing into a tree. The tree shattered into splinters and slowly toppled to the ground with a sound not unlike a dozen firecrackers going off at once. As quiet slowly returned to the forest, Ares sat up, hissing as his palm cupped his shoulder.
He hissed as he felt the burn. Blackened flakes of his shirt crumbled away under his fingertips, and smoke continued to curl and wisp from under his fingers. He slowly stood up and glared around himself. The vast, dark forest that he had landed in was... somewhere. The where was less important than the fact it was several thousand kilometers from where he had been.
Kilometers.
Gods. He shook his head and let out a rueful smile at the memory of trying to wrestle with pygme and pygons and pechys. It had seemed easy enough during the Peloponnesian War, but realizing that units could be segmented into easy units of ten and multiples of ten after millennia of fractions and messiness was like, well, it had like been becoming unbound by the restraints that humans put on him. His rueful smile vanished at that thought. He glared at his wound, willing it to close.
It did not want to close.
He had been in the middle of a talk with a rather unfriendly Russian. Their particular faction, the Communists, had been rather interested in retaking their government. They had been few in number and nearly unarmed, their dreams little more than fantasies. That was what made them such delicious converts. But as he had drawn power into himself to bless them, that four-armed, blue-skinned bitch had literally flown through the roof and started to vaporize the place.
Ares shook his head. He strode forward through the forest, trying to burn off some nervous energy. Slowly, his focus let his skin re-knit and his flesh reform. But he was still missing a good chunk of shirt. He stepped between two trees and emerged, between eyeblinks, in a city called Istanbul. It had been founded literally a decade or two after he had been banished – and yet it oozed with age and antiquity that matched anything on Purgatory. Striding through its streets, Ares wondered if maybe it had anything to do with Byzantium, the city he faintly remembered being here before Istanbul and her mosques.
The question was moot. The furious and the disenfranchised were everywhere and after a time, they began to blur together, as all humans did. They were little better than batteries. Troublesome batteries. But sometimes, they were useful. Such as now, when he arrived at the tiny tailor, tucked between two older buildings. Stepping inside, he smiled.
“Mr. Blacke!” the cheerful, round-cheeked tailor exclaimed.
“Mr. Susskind,” Ares said, his voice clipped. “I’m afraid I’ve torn another one of your suits.”
“I should be more suspicious!” Mr. Susskind chuckled, his Turkish flowing thick and fast. Ares had learned it in roughly two hours. And humans sometimes wondered why he looked down at them.
As Mr. Susskind worked on his suit, Ares let his persona of Mr. Blacke fill the air with some quiet conversation. It was better to let his subconscious mind handle the lies and deceptions, so that he could focus on how to deal with the slight frustration of his every open move being dogged by those damned Hindus. His brow furrowed as he noticed an old magazine sitting on the pile near the chair that he was supposed to be waiting in – save that Mr. Susskind had no other customers.
The cover asked: Is Another Cold War on the Horizon?
The art showed a sleek missile, looming in silhouette behind a bustling city.
Ares began to smile.
“Maybe,” he murmured, “I don’t have to do all the work after all...”