Hovering Below The Fray

Cerebus returns to his hotel to find Bran waiting for him and he was very aware that it was a fake Elf, in fact you could almost see the wires. As always Bran tells Cerebus that he is a God.

Powers is still trying to find a way around the Cerebus question, with Weisshaupt indisposed and near death Cerebus is the most powerful person in Iest and they need to find another President. Powers is the only person in Iest who can appoint a successor to Weisshaupt, but who exactly should he choose?

As Bran and Cerebus discuss the culmination of his plan to gain all the gold in Iest and Powers and his flunkey talk about the new President and how to bring Cerebus to heel Gerhard's marvelously drawn gargoyles appear at the bottom of many of the pages as a sort of harbinger of doom.

Bran takes Cerebus to the room where he has all the gold he's collected stored. Bran seems to be able to divine the history of every coin by simply looking at it. All is well until Bran tells Cerebus that one coin was struck by Tarim himself. Cerebus flings it down like it was on fire and tells Bran to leave it alone immediately.

Back in Powers quarters the first applicant for President walks in. It's Julius. Powers doesn't like him anymore than anyone else does and has no intention of giving him the job. Lord Julius probably wants the job, but acts like he doesn't and takes the opportunity to insult Powers roundly. There's a particular line where Julius credits all the insults to Powers' superior; the Lion of Serrea and finishes it off with: "You should have heard what he said about your dog." Powers' reaction is priceless. This big seemingly emotionless hard man of the church suddenly gets a stricken expression on his face and says in a small voice "Spike? Spike's a good dog." It was such a funny scene and so well done that for years a friend of mine and I only had to mention it to provoke fits of laughter.

Back in the hotel Cerebus is seriously spooked by the coin that was struck by Tarim and cannot even bring himself to pick it up.