Apple of Discord: Chapter 5

The BELCH opens into a park very much like the one you visited earlier.

The land is full of junipers, spotted with oaks, and is bordered on all four sides by city streets. A broad concrete sidewalk sweeps across the park landscape in relatively straight lines.  

You walk the sidewalk, keeping your eyes open, and spot a familiar looking face in a vaguely marshy area of the park. It’s one of the Fishman brothers.

“Hi, Mr. Fishman! You didn’t happen to notice any evil pieces of the Apple of Discord, laying about?”

Mr. Fishman looks both surprised and pleasantly overwhelmed all at once.

Well, that didn’t exactly help anything. You decide to take a different tack. “Seen any plague spirits lately?” you ask, cheerily. 

“Oh. There’s a big circle of them performing an angry, floating, toilet dance around a bathroom, down the path and to the left a bit further.

Also, I think the baseball circus is in town. Very strange people in the park today. Yeah, that’s weird, even for Austin. Don’t you think?”

Answering that, you decide, is a trap and will invite more conversation. You smile and wave. “Thank you, Mr. Fishman!”

You decide that Baseball Circus would make a good band name.

You head in the direction Mr. Fishman indicated and cross through a section of juniper that hugs either side of the path before opening up again.

It only takes a moment for you to spot the stout cinderblock building that marks the restroom facilities.

All around the building, rotating in an obscene mockery of a child's carousel, is the host of plague spirits. The strange red and green vapour-trailing disembodied heads and torsos of creatures once loyal to Lord Apollo have quite literally circled the wagons. Except, in this case, the wagons are plague spirits.

Since being cast out of the palace on Mt. Olympus, the former god of the sun, archery, healing, music, art and yes, plagues, servants have run amok in the world.

You spot a small cardboard box on the ground outside the entrance to the washrooms that appears to have a caduceus printed on the outside. All the plague spirits give it a wide berth.

You don’t see a way to get to the box without drawing the attention of the plague spirits. So, instead you slide into a stand of trees and come out the other side to scan the other half of the small park.

In the distance you spot another structure with a modest deck that juts out over a small open field doubling as a drainage basin. Probably another bathroom. You head that way.

Thankfully the park is completely empty. You shudder to think what a concentration of plague spirits would do to some poor unsuspecting mortal wanting to use that bathroom. 

As you approach the building, you can hear someone playing a guitar off in the distance. Rather than making you smile, it fills you with worry. That poor mortal has no idea what’s across the field. If you do your job correctly, it’ll stay that way.

You make your way to the observation deck just outside the second bathroom. You catch a glimpse of something odd.

It’s a muscular man wearing what looked like some kind of animal head. It reminds you a little of the Roman vexillarius who carried the standards of Rome for the Legion to which they were assigned and wore the skins of bears, lions, or wolves on their heads.

This guy walks like he doesn’t have a care in the world. He’s also carrying a bat over one shoulder. Was this what Mr. Fishman’s baseball circus reference was about? 

Suddenly, a gurgling moan comes from  behind you. As you spin to see what’s making the sound, a black hooded figure materializes out of a green mist and hobbles toward you clutching a withered-looking cane.

It’s face is covered in boils and pustules.

It’s a plague spirit.