Thirty minutes latter, washed- scrubbed, really- and garbed, Dolly strides forth into that great, strange hotbed of intrigue, Earl's Court. She does not cut an imposing figure; slender and of only average height, garbed in white stockings above high black heels, a frilly white skirt and matching public-school blouse, with a ribbon in place of a tie and a blazer to complete the image, she looks like the bunraku idea of a schoolgirl, and with no weapons or gear to distort the image, doubtless that is what many would think.
Those in the know, however, step lively to get out of her way and she makes it up through the dripping, near-lightless devil-rat's nest beneath Earl's court and into Butcher's Square, the geographical center of Earl's court unmolested. The square is half a kilometer across, and all the tunnels and streets in Earl's Court lead to it. Dominated by an obelisk of Malachite twenty meters high, Butcher's Square- named after some atrocity twenty years ago- is a vast natural cavern, and one of the few large open areas of Below. From Rat's Alley whence she came Dolly can see The Street of Gods, where The Courts of The Holy hold sway, bisected by the lurid red light of the Path of Pleasures, at the end of which lies the House of Pain. Across from the Street of Gods is the Earl's Manor itself, an imposing edifice sheathed in marble and traced with veins of copper and silver and gold where the self-styled Lord of Below keeps his court.
There are other locations as well, some seen, such as the deeply unsettling purple light of The House of Barimen's tower, where Florimel and her daughter Brannagh are rumored to do unspeakable things with the dead, and others only heard or smelled, such as the House of Flowers' lush, poisonous garden, home to a thousand drugs and toxins that perfume the air with their heady fragrances or the constant, bell-toned music of The House of Vitaris, where they hold court and congress with demons called from far-flung metaplanes.
Dolly turns and heads for the Street of Gods. She has business with the Houses of Pain, and she suspects with the Courts of the Holy as well. When one acts, so too does the other, usually.
The Street of Gods is, as usual, a lively place. In a region so steeped in magic and mystical occurrences, religion and belief are easy and readily available comforts to make sense of a senseless world. The Street caters to all, with a double dozen temples, churches, and shrines. She passes a Henge, standing alone on a large patch of grass, home to a group of Neo-druids she's never met more than in passing. A green apparition floats through the trings of standing stones, and the grass lengthens and brightens at the nature spirit's passing. Further, there is a Shinto temple, complete with Fu Lion statues on either side of the broad granite steps. Dolly's heightened senses smell incense: lotus, chrysanthemum, and something else, lavender and english watercress, maybe? One of the priests trying out a new mixture, she assumes. At the top of the steps stands a young woman with white hair and pale pink eyes, garbed in an abbreviated blue kimono and strappy sandals that come to her knees. She holds a katana in a white sheath loosely in one hand and waves at Dolly as she passes. Dolly waves back, smiling at Kiyomi Tamino, the duellist whom the streets refer to as Kenku.
Dolly walks on, passing a synagogue protected by real golems, a Mosque guarded by a militant Imam bearing Khanjar and Charra, and a Hindu temple boasting a sandstone-inlaid plaza on which a Nartaki tattooed and painted to represent Kali practices dodging, twirling and flipping and otherwise evading bolts of fire thrown by an Evoker named Agni. These last two stop to bow to Dolly, who makes a complicated mudra with her fingers before passing on. The Brahmastra are a competent shadow team, and Dolly has liased with them before.
Finally, she reaches the T-intersection where The Path of Pleasures and The Street of Gods Intersect. Ahead of her is a massive church done in the Gothic Style, the heart of the Courts of The Holy. It is a great white thing, sheathed in marble and hung with samite banners, and traceries in aqua, silver, gold, and peridot limn the outside with colour, bespeaking a dozen sects of christianity. The plaza outside is guarded by a three meter fence sheathed in artificial mother of pearl, but the gate is not watched over by a man with a harp. Instead there are two Seraphim, tall, graceful figures in mil-spec armor done up to look like stylized plate armor. Spinrad Holowear projects startlingly real images of wings behind them, great white-pinioned things, and their helmets are featureless expanses of silvery metal crowned by holographic silvery halos. The stand immobile, their hands folded over the pommels of their meter-and-a-half monoswords, and Dolly knows from experience that they will be either combat mages or carry built-in weapons for distance fighting.
Beyond the two Seraphim, the plaza is alive with activity. The Courts of the Holy may be a non-denominational Christian sect, but they are also the heart of the Street of Gods, and a lot of business is done here. A Sikh with an Efreet in tow converses with two robed and hooded Goddess Wiccans, a Jaguar Warrior argues with a Cherub- some sort of drone messenger- and a Pixie hovers five feet of the ground so that he can snap and snarl in the face of a trio of Oni who style themselves as minor demons.
Dolly stops to watch the Demons and the pixie. Emissaries from the Houses of Pain don't usually come to the Courts of the Holy, and it would be good to have locals to follow as she makes her way to her destination. Dolly stands outside the gate, watching disinterestedly to see if the three horned, red-skinned ork variants in their battered leathers and chains are on their way in or out, and only muses for a second as to whether they'll get out alive at all.
