The Boxes Precinct, Pt 02

It stopped abruptly, the clumsily darted to the right, down an alley. I let it run while I looked on; it was too interested in finding its card to leave me behind.

Alley it had entered was actually a street, but just barely. The usually white corrugated walls were a dull grey here, and wrinkled as if they’d been left in the humidity too long. They bowed over the debris-strewn street, blocking off the natural lighting from overhead. Indirect light, dully emanated from around corners where the street intersected others, leaving the source just out of view. I sighed as the myr returned, pushing up piles of dead sticks and leaves as it did, mists clinging to it as they did everything in the street.

I sighed, “Scarecrows.”

Scarecrows are impossible to work with. Most cards like hanging around each other; Elves around Elves, Soldiers around Soldiers, Green creatures around Green creatures. It’s not rocket magic; like goes with like. Scarecrows turn that on its head; the Rattleblaze likes blues and black creatures, the Hoof Skulkin likes green creatures. None of them like each other, and most are resentful about being grouped with the rest of the artifacts in the Gilded Row. If most of them weren’t ambivalent about The Precinct, we’d be spending a lot of time out here. Most scarecrows would just as soon fight each other than do anything productive and they were never Chosen, so Scarecrow Alley just sits here and festers.

I wasn’t quite sure where to start. The myr hadn’t been at all helpful beyond getting me here, just repeating its flying pantomime and limping along as both of its head darted anxiously around to see if it could find its target. I tried climbing over some piles of garbage on my way to a door, only to discover that it was nothing more than a resting, angry scarecrow. After a few mumbled apologies, I tried to ask if any of the other scarecrows were missing, but it simply rolled off, end over end, as the miscellaneous junk that it was comprised of clanked off of itself in a rude cacophony. I looked at the myr to see if that was a message in an artifact language, but was met with the same blank, wedge-shaped face and a three-armed shrug that melted back into that familiar swooping wing motion.