Putting me smack dab in the ‘regret’ column.

On that same topic, I regretted not being just a little more protected against the cold. My mind was on the coat I’d picked up and put down while at the Wardens’ ‘Bunker’. Cold got to me even though I had the Wretch up, a creeping loss of warmth inside me as the environment eroded at my stores of energy.

I was cold and there was nothing I could do.

My friend was hurting and there was nothing I could do.

In the distance, I could see the shape of the Dauntless Titan. ‘Kronos’. Where portals riddled the city, taller than some buildings, slices of another sky against our sky, the titan was pure white, unmoving, with only a periodic distortion around it. The Simurgh came and went, and when she came, the light seemed just a little darker in the area around her roosting point.

He existed in Shin, and Shin was concerned. He existed in Bet. He existed in Earth N, in the corner world ‘Q’, and other scattered realities. We had every reason to believe he existed in every variant of our world, standing there, ignoring every stimulus, including one of the most evil creatures I knew of.

On a rooftop below me, I saw people burning something in an improvised stove. I flew close, passing through the smoke and warm air, and saw it was construction material.

Lineups around a block, mid-afternoon. In the summer and fall it had been to buy the latest line of clothes or tech, when options were so few and far between. We’d peaked over the fall where a bunch of new options landed, and then… this. A paradigm shift that came with the colder weather. I was willing to bet the line was for food. To stock up and prepare.

There were streets where people shuffled forward on foot, the sidewalks so clogged that people were forced to go the speed of the slowest person. Some people walked in the road.

We weren’t at the hard part yet, but the bite of last winter had been bad enough that people had learned to conserve, prepare, and wait.

But this was going to be different, I was pretty sure. Last winter had been something we’d collectively endured, with the mindset that we could get through the difficult patches, and if we could make it through then things would be okay. This winter, the titan loomed on the horizon and the portals shattered the sky. This winter, we had someone to blame. Mayor Jeanne Wynn. Citrine. I was sure she was trying, and I was sure it wouldn’t be quite enough to satisfy.

Blame was a hell of a thing.

Fuck, I wished I could fly faster, to get to Sveta and Weld in a workable span of time.

Fuck, was I cold.

Fuck this character assassination bullshit, fuck the people who had done it.