Bealz, Prince Of The SouthSide

39 Askauri did not look forward to the conversation he was to have with his son, Bealz. There was a hollow sense of shame and loss swelling within his heart that he had been unprepared to confront. For more than ten years, he had been a parent in only the most abstract sense. He had spent so much time dreaming of holding his son, being with him, but in reality, had no idea what that was really to look like. How do you walk into a person's life after so many years of absence? How does that person's life fit in with your own? These questions had no answer as Askauri trudged back to the Angstrom Hotel and Residential Towers. What he did know is that prison broke a man. It took away all that he was, grinds it up and re-forms him into the preferred image of the state. Even the most leonine, the wildest, most dangerous of prisoners found their conformity somewhere within the concrete belly of the beast. Askauri's thoughts were heavy as he wal

38 It had been fewer years than one would imagine, the last time Decatur, nearly centralized within a landlocked Illinois, had experienced an earthquake of note. The town was, in fact, located not far from the New Madrid fault line that cut through Missouri and the southern most portion of Illinois and there was, over the course of time, several, if not necessarily notable, tremors. Some even graduating to the status of impressive. As the beast rose up from beneath her chambers, the impact of her arrival could be felt far outside of Decatur. The already unsteady Depot and its motley collection of shops, collapsed like a house of cards. When the dust from the rubble cleared, a beautiful, raven haired woman stood stark naked amongst the wreckage, her bronzed skin harkening back to an aboriginal nature, not long from the crossing of the Bearing Sea. She blinked rapidly against the bright sunlight splintering her vision. This was a strange, unrecognizable place

37 “My name is Monique. Other than that I don't know much else about myself, I guess...” Monique hesitantly begins. “It's alright,” Jo-Mel says comfortingly. “You and I are meant to hear each others' stories. I'm here to listen. Please, take your time.” Monique had been through a unique sort of hell. Even for an embattled black woman from the Southside of Chicago. It was an interesting sort of conundrum for her, to live in a city of millions, surrounded by the constant press of humanity, and yet to feel so alone. Black women in America bore the brunt of an entire nation's shame. They were required to be the indomitable pillars of a shaky family structure and yet still maintain themselves as the epitome of an unreasonably skewed male fantasy. Monique, well elevated above the simplicity of a hustler's mentality, possessed of the kind of smarts considered worthy enough for Wharton's, had it not been for the zip code, fe

36 “I am JoAnquis Melliofor, called Jo-Mel of the Wilds. I will tell you of what I am and how I came to sit here by your side...” And thus begins the chronicle of Jo-Mel's life as she sat with Monique underneath the protection of The Breaker, its warding concealing them, silencing the world around them. Through their words, they began to construct a working, a binding created through the traditions of the griot. Shared stories, shared experiences, formed an enchantment, a magical Telling that wove together the empathetic emotional patterns of the reciter and the receiver, forming a bridge, a bonding, between them. “I do not remember my journey's beginnings. Not many can, it's true, but my recollections do not start until after I had been left alone, a child of eight years or so, to fend for myself in the Border Realms on the far side of the Great Forest. These are the uncharted lands adjacent to the Long Plains Kingdom, known for their chao

35 During this time, Bealz found that the suites were warded. He could not venture beyond the vestibule doors. He was essentially a prisoner, despite being well kept and constantly and fastidiously attended to. He heard and watched the breaking reports play out in the background of his news feeds about the building collapse not far from here, but ultimately, it was meaningless to him. He has miseries of his own. Bealz had been left to pace the floor, with little more to do than to eat and worry for his mother. At this point in time, he had decided to dismiss his disappointment of a father. Bealz hardened himself to the fact that his dad was just another letdown in an endlessly difficult existence. Just another ex-con baby daddy, gone again just as quickly as he had arrived. Bealz couldn't help but feel sorry for himself because of it, though he tried hard not to show it. He instead looked to toughen himself, to steel himself against an

34 Askauri was two days digging himself out from beneath the rubble. Much of that time was spent attending to the dead and the dying; those poor fools whom he had trapped along with his enemies when he'd brought the building down around them. None of them could have known, in the midst of their grief, as they graciously accepted his assistance, that he was the cause of the calamity. Askauri held his tongue, along with his great regrets, in that regard, while surreptitiously utilizing what magics he could, in light of the extent of the damage, to alleviate the suffering. Up close and personal with the victims of his unchecked emotions, Askauri was horrified by what he'd done in the backrooms of The Passage. Acting without hesitation, without thought for the lives and safety of the others in the building, he had committed an act of atrocity, something he would have once thought himself incapable. Now, though, as he dug and scraped through the

33 The dead often go unclaimed in Chicago. So many bodies. So much death and misery. The summer time in the City is rife with gunfire. But not all of the City. Many parts, the Gold Coast, the Water Tower, beautiful Lake Shore Drive, were neatly striated, preppily and mysteriously litter free. From here the dull and dirty parts stayed hidden, if one chose not to look. Elsewhere, however, in the violent, alien worlds which ring the hundred million dollar properties that make up the world famous Chicago skyline, the dead often go unclaimed. Their bodies washed ashore and come to rest in gutters, alleyways and side-streets where they lay putrid amongst the weeds, stashed away in abandoned buildings, were stepped over and around in front yards and on building doorsteps. Dakari's body lay untouched for hours after Mook's dismantling. Tonio had not stirred either. He was in much better shape than Dakari, though, certainly. Being as though he wa