Al’Corvo woke up, surprised to see sunlight trickling into his apartment. He must have forgotten to close the curtains. Compared to the darkness of the prior day, Al’Corvo had to blink a few times before his eyes finally stopped ‘closing’ (unfocusing to the point of blinding itself) automatically.

Taking care of the various household tasks, of which there were many, Al’Corvo realised that it was already at least noon. Poking his head outside, Al’Corvo was firstly greeted by a light shower that coated his face in freezing water. Then he saw the sun, still hiding behind an overcast sky, directly overhead.

Al’Corvo was distracted when he heard a loud clanking knock on his door. He tried shuffling over to the door before his legs gave in under him. The clanking continued.

“Just a minute! I’ve been in hospital for a few days dickhead!” Al’Corvo yelled, roughly grabbing at nearby furniture in order to pull himself up. The knocking stopped. Al’Corvo heard a chalky whistling noise coming from the balcony outside his door.

When he got his legs working, Al’Corvo finally opened the door to see Al’Shor without his armour. He was wearing simple linen clothes, although he still had a gauntlet on his hand. Rather than waiting for an invitation, Al’Shor immediately walked in, sitting himself on the couch.

“Al’Shor.” Al’Corvo had an icy tone.

“Hi Al’Corvo, heard you were out of the hospital, so I decided to pay a visit.” Al’Shor was cheery as always, and began looking around the apartment with an almost sudden interest. “Oh yeah, by the way you can call me Shor you know. I ‘ave zero clues as to why you lot stick to those… what's the word?”

“Honorifics.” Al’Corvo began subtly grinding his mouth-plates together.

“Yeah, those. Don’t see why you need ‘em in the first place really.”

Al’Corvo took a seat at a nearby desk covered in old tapes and cartridges. “I assume you’re a foreigner then. I suppose they’re not technically important, but it’s more about how familiar you are with the other person. And I am not familiar with you.”

“Well firstly, I was born in Raqmu, though my ma and pa came from Byzantine. Secondly, what do you mean we’re not familiar?” Al’Shor feigned shock.

Al’Corvo sighed, before loudly grinding his mouth-plates. “Well firstly, yes I know you and are okay with talking to you. However. That is only in a professional setting. What I am not okay with,” Al’Corvo moved his chair closer to Al’Shor, “is someone barging into my fucking house a day after I come back from a crippling injury.”

Al’Shor began to speak but Al’Corvo quickly cut him off.

“I am also not okay with you using my name without the honorific. As I’ve said before, you use it, or you don’t fucking say my name at all!” Al’Corvo shouted. “Also, why the fuck didn’t you just call me? I know a Ward like you probably has a phone plugged in, and you should damn-well know that an electrician of all people has a fucking phone! So why, pray-tell, didn’t you just fucking call me?! LIKE A NORMAL PERSON!” Al’Corvo was screaming at this point.

“Roots Al’Corvo, calm down man. I’m sorry.” Al’Shor looked dejected. “I just wanted to see you. You considered how shitty it felt seeing you come out on a stretcher? Besides, I was only going to ask you to come down to the pub with me and two of my friends.”

Al’Corvo had his head downcast. At this point he was feeling the slightest bit of regret. Well, no point backing down now, he thought.

“Just… leave, Shor. Please. I’ve had a rough time if you couldn’t tell. Next time just call yeah?” Al’Corvo sounded precisely as he felt. Tired, hurt and overall like he had just had his arm torn off a day after having his ribs bashed in.

His head was still low when he heard the click of the door shutting. Al’Corvo got up and moved the chair back to the desk it belonged to. Looking at the scattered cartridges, Al’Corvo thought the best thing to do was to bury his head in work.

Sitting down at the desk, Al’Corvo opened a draw to find several tightly wound, but messily arrayed music tapes, without cases. At the foot of the desk were several other tapes, but instead of being properly wound were instead messily tangled together. Al’Corvo set a mental reminder to remove them later. Pulling out one of the smaller pieces of tape, which only had about 4 minutes of audio, Al’Corvo opened another draw and took out a pair of small scissors and some glue. Finally, he pulled forward a small cartridge player from the back of the desk, and popped out the empty cartridge.

Most of the various music tapes that were around his apartment were actually his own custom edits of various songs he produced. He had two small analogue synthesizers on a nearby, small table. One of them had an attached keyboard, while the other was primarily used for creating sound effects. After recording something on the first synthesizer, he would mess around with the audio by adding sound effects on the second one while playing the original tape back. When he finally had both recorded, he would then physically splice them together with scissors and glue. The process was lengthy to be sure, but it produced interesting results and a unique sound that could only be made by combining two tapes rather than recording the two in tandem. Of course, it also produced ‘interesting’ results, as the clumped tapes at his feet attested to.

Again, the process of creating a single tape took months of work, even discounting the process of writing the song itself. However, that was precisely the reason Al’Corvo did it. In between his jobs, he found that a quiet, time-consuming task took his mind off of the stress. Besides, the other choices he had for leisure weren’t exactly broad either. It was either gambling, drinking, maybe even dueling or more esoteric pursuits.

Banishing outside thoughts, Al’Corvo focused on the music, trying to figure out the best ways to combine the effects and melody together.

Time flew by. Al’Corvo had been hunched over his desk for hours, with fingers constantly stopping and starting the tape he was working on. If his eyes could have had shadows, they would’ve. This was because despite waking up but a few hours earlier, his recent recovery made even simple tasks like pushing buttons and snipping (before subsequently gluing) tapes a herculean effort.

Tiredly looking at the clock above his desk, Al’Corvo realised it was 10 to 9pm.

“It’s getting late,” Al’Corvo’s stomach growled, “should probably eat something. Food if I’m lucky.”

Al’Corvo stumbled over to the kitchen, forgetting to turn the light on. Opening various cupboards and the fridge, all he found were old bully beef tins, hardtack, canned fruit and a single D ration, dated to approximately 1948 B.A (Al’Corvo had heard once that it stood for Before Apocalypse), which made it a whopping 170 years old.

“Great choices as ever,” Al’Corvo mumbled before grabbing some bully beef. While normally meat needed to be grinded up a bit before becoming edible, this particular brand of… what could only be roughly called ‘food’ was finely minced beef suspended in gelatin. The end product was a meaty brick with white chunks suspended in it, which while disgusting, was better than whatever the government put into their ‘nutrient bars’.

Al’Corvo cracked open the oblong-shaped can with a clawed hand, retching at the ghastly scent that emerged from the century-old can, which didn’t even have a label due to its age. Al’Corvo was, at least slightly, annoyed that he didn’t know who to blame for creating such a dreadful product. Usually he sustained himself on canned fruits, old jam and the occasional can of spam if he was unlucky. However due to the however-many days he was in hospital, Al’Corvo hadn’t managed to get any shopping done.

Al’Corvo shoved the bully beef into an old microwave and roughly closed the door, grateful to finally be rid of the rancid meat. The weirdest part about it was how it looked completely fine. Apparently it and the D ration ‘chocolate’ were recovered from a radioactive ruin, so they were heavily marked down. Safe, apparently, but certainly not delicious.

Al’Corvo decided to offset the meat with some of the D ration. Grabbing his sharpest knife and a grinding stone (for the tougher, and more solid foods), Al’Corvo began turning the ration from a brick into something edible. The knife wasn’t quite sharp enough however, as it quickly got stuck half-way through the bar of chocolate. Al’Corvo decided to try and break the rest off with his hands, but even with all four hands the bar wouldn’t break. Al’Corvo got the knife out of the brick and began roughly hacking at the bar, finally managing to break off a small piece of the chocolate bar. Al’Corvo re-wrapped the rest of the D ration and shoved it into his pantry before getting the now-warmed bully beef tin.

Suffice to say that Al’Corvo preferred spam or even the basic pancakes that in all honesty could be considered a war-crime any day over the absolutely disgusting meat. Being a man who wasted nothing however Al’Corvo swallowed the corned beef without vomiting.

Running over to the sink, Al’Corvo washed his mouth out with the slightly rusty water, before grabbing the nearby chunk of chocolate and immediately stifling a scream as his mouth-plates slammed against the brick-like food. Spitting out the chocolate lump, Al’Corvo grasped for the grinding stone with his healing hind-arm, causing another round of cursing, and then slammed the stone onto the bar. After a minute of grinding, the piece of chocolate was still in its original shape, although cracks had formed throughout its structure. Popping the piece into his mouth, Al’Corvo was pleasantly surprised to find that it didn’t taste like absolute shit.

After sitting down for a few moments to let the whole meal go through his system, Al’Corvo heard a ringing noise coming from his living room. Walking over to the room he found that the noise was his phone going off. It was an older model, based on the few surviving telephone booths that were somehow recovered by the Immunes. This meant that unlike the newer models which could be plugged into any outlet that could support the city-wide telecommunication network, Al’Corvo’s phone was stuck into the wall.

Picking up the dated handset, Al’Corvo accepted the call.

“Hello, Al’Corvo Silksmith here.” Al’Corvo replied with slight trepidation, as he usually only received calls that told him where a malfunction had occurred or that he had (somehow) forgotten to fully file his taxes.

A gruff voice responded, “greetings, this is Al’Born representing the Wards here. Firstly, we require confirmation that you are indeed Al’Corvo Silksmith, either your job ID or social security number will do.”

Al’Corvo, who in his journeyman days had to constantly give out his Worker’s ID, automatically responded, “my Worker’s ID is as follows, ‘1109BD98’.” Al’Corvo made sure to say each number slowly for the benefit of the Ward on the other side.

The following minutes were filled with constant tapping and clacking as the Ward bureaucrat typed away at their decrepit computer. Finally he spoke again.

“Okay Al’Corvo, everything checks out. I am currently calling to inform you that as of today, all workers of the rank conscriptus have been honourably discharged under orders of the praetorian. Now, of course you can rejoin the Wards with the rank evocatus, however that’s going to require a bit of paperwork on your end.”

Al’Corvo pondered for a moment, “say if I were to re-enlist, what would be required of me?”

“Unfortunately I cannot disclose everything since the training will be different for each person due to everyone’s… unique circumstances, however I can tell you that due to certain time constraints you will receive training for seven days at most.” The Ward sounded tired and overworked. They had probably made dozens of calls before ringing up Al’Corvo.

“Do I get any time to think on it?”

“Not really no, again, time constraints.” The Ward was becoming increasingly annoyed.

Al’Corvo whispered, “fuck it, why not,” before saying louder, “sure. When will I should I expect the paperwork?”

“Sometime tomorrow. Have a good night Al’Corvo, good luck in the Wards.” The last line sounded rehearsed and, at this time of night, completely fake.

The phone clicked, and Al’Corvo shuffled his way over to his hammock, before collapsing in a heap onto the springy surface. It would be surprising for others to learn how taxing it was to work on music. It certainly didn’t help Al’Corvo’s dorsal plate, which functioned somewhat as a spine in its more structural aspects.

As Al’Corvo lay on the hammock, he felt pain in his hind-arm begin to flare up again. Bringing the regrown limb up to the soft moonlight that filtered through dirt-stained windows, Al’Corvo really took in the sight of the injury. The once pastel shell had turned into a sickly and pallid blue, and his dexterous fingers had become slightly longer, but much thinner. Overall the limb had become what could only be considered a mockery of what used to be a pristine example of story snatcher dexterity and grace.

Al’Corvo wasn’t one to be caught up in what-ifs or the potential long-term consequences of his actions, but as he stared at his arm, he did have to think, “how much more will I lose?”

As he slept, a single, gentle whisper echoed in the back of his mind, and the word it said was simple.

“Kin.”