Step lively, now…

Look, my sources are 100% clear on this. We’ve got the motherload. The big one. Okay, so you’re lookin’ to get the biggest juice-up imaginable, right? Apparently there’s some lucky suckerina out there what carries the greatest gift a ‘mancer can ever wish for.

See, she’s some Russian chick, the bloodline’s Ruskie anyway… no, I can’t pronounce her name, let’s call ‘er Smith for short. So, Miss Smith’s fam’s got a history of bad magic shit. Supposedly, her great gramma was at Tunguska when the Big One came down. But, it wasn’t the Big One that came to her in the forest; it was she that called the Big One down from the stars. Her ma, what was born in Virginny after WWII, is said to be the chick who called the Mothman from fuck-knows-where. So, how does she do it?

Get this: she just walks. On the ground. And every some-odd steps she takes, a couple hundred or so, she racks up a little magick. It’s been like that for every Smith-ess going back 150 years. They’ve been responsible for a lot of bad stuff–so the stories go.

The gist is, it’s not just any kind of soil they have to tred upon to get that groovy flow running. It’s gotta be relatively hallowed ground–nothin’ special, just not any kind of pavement more advanced than a well-walked path between the trees. Speaking of which, it’s roots that they get their magick from; there’s a reason so much craziness goes on in the forest. Lying in the dirt so long, soakin’ up the excess magick that just kind of gets shat into the world after it’s used. It’s like Red Bull for the upstart adept, ‘cept no ‘dept has figured out an ironic enough way t o tap that root ass. But this chick, you know, it’s all inborn. Maybe there’s lots of people out there like her, and she’s the only one we know about. Anyhow, I’m getting off on a tangent…

So, there’s two components: walking, forest. We get Tunguska, the Mothman, shit like that, all ’cause some broad took too long a walk over some old tree-roots. Now, here’s where it gets interesting. See, the reason my source found this out is because Miss Smith the Current figured this out. You know those disappearances what be goin’ on in the woods lately? It’s ’cause something she called up when she got lost. It’s still out there. Give it a few days and rumors ‘ll start about a hairy biped or giant bug or some other freakin’ nonsense hangin’ in the forest, and you know what? Smith just picked up on this after she found her way out o’ La Foreste; she knows there’s a damn monster in the woods and it’s all her fault for not bringin’ a map along and avoiding the step-to-ma-loo debacle. She weren’t too happy “I’ve caused a bunch of people to get slaughtered and possibly eaten” thing.

She cut her fucking feet off. Think she heard about us-folk, or was she just makin’ sure nobody can make her take a long walk? Or maybe she just got crazy up in the head and had a breakdown. Fuck of a breakdown.

But, shit for her but great for us, a Fleshworker I know got ’em, preserved ’em, and he’s gonna graft ’em on in place of his own, soon as he gets enough mojo for that kind of craziness. He’s sure it’s gonna work, saying it’s a quality of the foot, not the gal herself. The step that has seen a thousand charges or somethin’ like that. It’s all a bunch of fancy schmancy poetry shiz, but it’s better than just giving up, right? Better than letting ’em go to waste.

You want in? I’ve got a good feeling about this. Way better than that light-thing. Yeah, let’s not bring it up. Jinx us an’ all.