White Chain may be unfamiliar with the specifics of this “Halloween” festival, but she has seen the general case more times than she can count. (Well, no. She could have kept count of them - her memory is excellent, even for an Aeon - but doing so would have been an inefficient use of her mental resources.) The trappings change, but the core activities are always the same - singing and dancing, rides and games, food and drink, and the ever-present intoxicants. White Chain is an angel and a Concordant Knight; she is pure, resolute, and unconcerned with such carnal human desires. By all accounts, she should be busy meditating, or training, or planning further disruptions. At the very least, the festival seems an obvious distraction on the part of the Protocols, and she should be trying to discover what it is meant to distract them from.
These thoughts spin through her mind over and over as she wanders the festival grounds. Sometimes, she sits in on a barn dance, letting the synchronized vibrations of so many stamping feet echo through the hollows of her armor. Sometimes she wanders the carnival grounds, awash in cries of triumph and despair. She even spends several hours casing the fortune teller’s tent, looking for signs that its proprietor has true sight. Always, though, she is on the outside, looking in. And always, always, a knot of unnameable bitterness deep in her chest.
This festival, White Chain thinks, cannot be over soon enough.











