Chapter Two: Babita
Og willed his feet to move, to carry him out of the way of the descending cloud, but nothing happened. It was as if he were rooted to the ground as solidly as an oak tree. He stood, motionless, and waited.
As the cloud drew nearer, fluttering shapes took form before his eyes. Og realized he was not looking at a singular object, but a great storm of individual… butterflies?
As the spiraling mass descended, he instinctively raised up his arm to cover his face and shield his eyes. Butterflies whirled around his head, his body, his toes. Bright golds, iridescent blues, and dizzying oranges flashed on all sides of him. He tried to watch, but the fluttering of wings was so intense he could scarcely keep his eyes open. Hundreds of butterflies landed on him. They perched on his head, his feet, and clung to his fur. As they alighted on him, a powerful sense of vertigo gripped his senses. Og’s head spun. His legs wobbled. His stomach churned. Some terrible force of magic was at work, he knew. But what could he do?
Og clenched his teeth and clamped his eyes shut. He waved his arms then growled at the storm. The butterflies swirled around him, oblivious to his defenses. Then—
They vanished.
Og opened his eyes. The world around him spun like a top. He stumbled backward then crashed to the ground, landing on his backside. He threw out his paws to steady himself then sat, dazed, in the middle of a dank, dark alley. He blinked, realizing that the scene around him had shifted completely. The warehouses and workshops were gone. He found himself surrounded by four story tall, weathered brick walls with dark windows staring vacantly down at him. A scrawny cat sitting atop a stack of boxes glanced at him then jumped down and padded away.
Og’s foot tingled. He reached down and turned it over. Wrinkling his nose in disgust, he rubbed away the remaining yellow chalk. He stared at the pads of his bare foot and shook his head slowly. He didn’t know what had happened. He didn’t know what force could have picked him up and disoriented him so badly. Befuddling a slodhi was no mere parlor trick. Whoever had created the glyph—and likely all the other glyphs around Oard—was no middling prestidigitator. Og reckoned that only a handful of beings in the city could have managed it. But who? And more importantly—why?
In a chaos city, of course, it was true that random acts of mayhem were merely run-of-the-mill occurrences, but this was precisely why Og regarded the glyphs as different—sinister. Someone had very deliberately drawn them, and to simply cause more chaos in an otherwise chaos-stricken town seemed a bit redundant and lacking in creativity. Why go to the trouble?
Og picked himself up then brushed off his legs. He ran his tongue over his arms, preening for a moment, then straightened his shoulders. He didn’t suppose he would find answers to his questions any time soon, and he knew, of course, that he would not find them sitting in an alley. He needed to move. And he needed to be careful.
Og scratched the back of his neck as he considered the possibility that he might be in danger. Had the glyphs been drawn with specific people in mind? It didn’t seem likely, given that anyone could have stumbled onto one. The glyphs had appeared all over the city in the last week but, as a slodhi constantly on the go, he was naturally more prone to seeing them than other people. Just because he had seen more than the average citizen was no indication that there was some plot against him. No, he concluded, it was unlikely that he was a target. Still, proceeding with caution seemed to be a reasonable attitude to take.
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