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Author Topic: Lola  (Read 941 times)

RollinsCat

Lola
« on: November 02, 2014, 02:14:33 pm »

It was time. She didn't ask why. It was only that it was.

Comb. Clothes. Shoes. Mirror. 

It wasn't that she didn't care for them. They were good people - Andy and Elly, Eddie and Mel, Mike and Elaina, Helly and Paddy and all their kids.  The renters, a lot of the patrons. Almost family.

Incense. Perfume. Paints. 

Almost.

Cat's paw. Spare eyes; green, blue, brown, black. 

It wasn't that she wanted to "adventure". Seeing the world through more than stories would be nice. She didn't need to meddle. But she was curious. She had not forgotten the mines. She wanted to see that her miner "almost family" was well. She would like to see where she was born, if she could find out.

Lantern. Candles. Flint. Steel. Crow's feathers. Pixie dust, taken from one of the chests in the basement. Small painting of her as a child? ....no.

It wasn't that Binky haunted her here, although there was some truth to that.

It was, in part, the magic. It flooded her with sunny tickles at times, moved through her veins with a feeling as if she'd drunk cold water at others. Elly had told her. Told her she'd feel the power someday, although it took years for it to happen. Explained to her the kinds, the theories. She listened even when she'd rather have been cutting gemstones. Lola's magic wasn't like Elly's had been, though. Lola’s was like Andy’s - wild, natural, bound to her being through her flesh and blood, surging and fading at first but more reliable now, if weak.

The magic wanted out.

Gem chisels. Polishing oils. Loupe. Cigars taken from Andy's office.

Soap. Towels.

And...it was, mostly, the other thing. The head pictures. The tiny dreads a second before something happened. Deja vu before the event. Elly could tell her little of this condition aside from theory; Andy, nothing at all. He'd said a name though. Rose. And another, Jaelle. Women who knew. She would try and find them. One was human, the other an elf. She did not know more than that but she did have a starting location: The Leringard Arms. Andy let that slip one night when he'd snuck a bit too much wine. 

It would mean long days on foot or in caravans and long nights in a tent or cheap inn. It would mean not bathing regularly and eating unforgiving food dried to teeth-cracking consistency to avoid rot. Leringard is very far from Center. But the portal meant avoiding being trapped on a ship for weeks. Ships were not a healthy place for a young lady traveling alone.

Parchment paper, ink and quills. 

She was afraid.

Dried fruits, hard bread and cheese, water skins. Bedroll. Done. 

It was time.

 

RollinsCat

The eyes are sunken in,
« Reply #1 on: November 02, 2014, 03:36:35 pm »

The eyes are sunken in, glazed. When she props them open, the lids stay up for a bit. The right one in particular likes to slide down, though, after a few minutes. It looks like Ravana is winking at her. The pupils are slits - a frosted turquoise blue, perhaps more greenish when they'd moved on their own. 

Would a tiger's eye fit in her socket?

The tiger head is big, bigger than a human's - human like the rat-king's, whose most boring face now shows. She wonders if she knew him. Maybe they passed in the streets. Maybe he sold her cloth or candied apples. She doesn't recognize him. Death has stolen him. He's just brown eyes, thinning brown hair, pocked skin, moles, rotten teeth. A puzzle put together from a box of human bits. Two dimensions pushed up to look like three. 

No. No tiger's eye. The idea of it rotting in her face turns her stomach. The heads don't bother her though. Ravana won't hurt her now.

I offered myself to you. I offered to be the sacrificial child. She turns cold. Sacrificial child. Click - click - click - snaps and locks - you didn't exist before the shiny gnome found you. You didn't exist before then.

She had such magic, Ravana. Such power, such control. What is the seat of that? Is it the soul, or the tissues that hold it? How do they combine? How do they separate? No one is looking. She puts her hands on ice-damp fur and focuses. She knows what the rakshasa's illusion magic feels like. Is anyone home?

Nothing. It's dead. So magic resides in the soul, it must. How? How can dead things use magic, then, and how can skeletons call on a god's power such as the one in the crypts of Center? How can a soul stay behind? Or do some things have more magic than others? Is her magic bound to her as a sorcerer, will it stay with her body when she dies? Was Ravana a wizard?

The tiger's head is mostly white with black and brown streaks. It sheds easily. She withdraws her hands and brushes off loose fur. No point in checking the rat-king's head; he was a were. So long as she's careful, and doesn't get near his teeth, he offers nothing to her.

You could use a cantrip to make her eyes blink and her mouth move. Play with her. She could be a toy.

NO. That's horrific. Did she think that? No. Snap - snap - snap. I'm too old for toys.

It sounds like Binky. Her heart is racing, very suddenly, out of the starting gates of fear. She looks up at the sound of beating wings not even realizing she's called her friend. He settles on her shoulder in a fluffle of black feathers. His weight is comfort, the tips of his claws on her shoulder a prickling reassurance. He eyes the two heads in the ice chest. 

"No dinner for you, BB. These are bounty." 

She has a report to write. Everyone else on Layonara seems to pay for heads. Mariner's Hold should do the same. Jetta had been impatient with her clumsiness, annoyed with her inability to pay attention for long, but the long-haired woman had taught her one thing and taught her well. "Get your agreements in writing and make sure you get paid."

 

RollinsCat

The gnoll's body is bloated
« Reply #2 on: November 18, 2014, 02:16:03 pm »

The gnoll's body is bloated now. It's day three. What is happening inside? What kind of insects are living in it? She wants to know, but doesn't want to get too close. There are other predators around. And it really does stink. But it is so fascinating...the slow rise of the belly, how fast the eyes are gobbled up by insects and birds, the swelling of the tongue in the mouth. A cycle's end and re-sowing into a new future. The hole in the fur where her arrow killed it has spread, the break teaming with small white wrigglers. The bones are not visible, not yet; too soon in the moderate sun of this mountain-ringed plains. But they're strong. She tested them when she first killed it. Very strong. The tendons too, latched in to niches and crevices around the joints. It could stand, with the right magic.

Why is it wrong?

A fly buzzes close. Two crows, looking much like BB before his prank was revealed, hover - but they smell her and won't come to the body. She wishes she could sketch. Maybe the Buckle has some anatomy books she can use. The clinic must.

Why is it wrong? Flies eat the flesh, fish and frogs eat the flies, birds eat them - we eat birds - it's not wrong to kill and eat. It's not wrong to kill in defense. She could, well, she couldn't, no, but she could theoretically raise the gnoll's bones to walk, and fight. Why is this wrong? Why is it different? If you pick up a femur to use as a club, or use bone to make arrowheads, you don't ask permission of their previous owner. The owner is gone. The bones are alone, just chalky white remains like rocks or sticks. Inanimate. So if you make the bones walk, then you're evil. She's not evil. But it doesn't make sense. And skeletons don't have any identifiers, aside from race perhaps. Why are they wrong? Do the dead take umbrage? Do they cling to their remains? Don't most of them go with their gods? Why do they care?

BB won't come near the body. He doesn't like it when she pins them open to look inside, either. She usually sends him off to play before she examines a kill. He's off by the trees confusing mice for his own amusement. His new form delights her - his long prank, or test more likely, doesn't bother her. She loves him. Would she be able to call his body back to fly, if he died?

...no. 

He has meaning. It would be strange to watch a guant, decaying version of him, knowing the spark that was BB is no more and never will again. So that must be it. That, and fear. No one wants to see thier eventual fate face to drippy face. Mortality is the ultimate bogyman. People don't like being reminded that life is a distraction. It's all glitter and flash. You are born to do one thing - reproduce - and then you spend the rest of your life struggling to forget that you've met your purpose. That, she thinks, is what makes people afraid, irrational. What drives them to worship. What is wrong with just ceasing? Why is it so scary? This life, this moment, each breath sitting on a warm rock, every laugh shared, all one's friends and accomplices, are what matters. It's greed to want to hold on past the limits of form. It's fear to beg a god to assure your soul a place in immortality. Death is simply new life. The remains don't matter.

And she doesn't know enough about it. She needs another teacher. Eril-lyn is wonderful, inspirational, and patient. She'll keep learning from him. He's a friend. Master Celador is also a good teacher. Neither of them particularly like to follow her conversational rabbit-holes into the shades between the living and the dead, or what kind of morality can be applied there. There must be someone else.

 

RollinsCat

Th-hak-uk -
« Reply #3 on: January 06, 2015, 11:54:53 pm »

Th-hak-uk - Wanderer.

Kuhan-hugoh - Goat lover.

The orc is small, for an orc. Not more than a half-foot or so above her.  

She's met five, now, all tribeless. One, the one who loves his gran so, she quite likes aside from his smell - one, the short one, will teach her the language, perhaps, that her rough voice is oddly suited for - one who seems reckless and ammoral, like his wilder kind. She believes he would hurt her if she provoked him but not much worse. One, a six-foot greatsword wrapped in eggshells, is quieter, more cunning but not very bright, and, she believes, perfectly willing to kill her on a moment's whim. And one, the half-breed, she truly fears. That one she knows will kill her if she breaks their agreement or if he were paid enough perhaps. He tells her so. It is in the open and she can stay or leave as she wishes. He could gut her with his toenail, dismantle her, stuff her in a box. all while combing his hair.

It is he that she likes best of all.

But he is not this short one. She must keep the small orc talking. The bigger one, the greatsword in eggshells - Morghoul? - speaks orc to her as well, but his common says he doesn't have a teacher's wits. The little one does.

Rruho - Hello, greeting. Don't kill me I might be useful.

'u'ho phootakk - You're bleeding.

It is useful to know this, this language that so many revile. And she likes the way it sounds. Keep him talking...

 

 

RollinsCat

Eye Spy, Part I.She's thrown
« Reply #4 on: January 21, 2015, 09:12:38 am »

Eye Spy, Part I.

She's thrown up three more times.

Her left eye is quiet, for now. "You've only dipped your toe in". 

She doesn't bother to clean her dress, or the slop bucket. She didn't know she could be this tired. Her head throbs to split. Her lips are cracked, and the elf’s spell didn’t help any of it.

Just a toe.

She's lying across the bed cross-wise, the bucket on the side nearest her head. She can lunge if needed. Her sweet bread breakfast is mostly on Lake Splendor's beach, but enough of it is puddled in the crusted wooden container to stain the room in the smell of warm yeast bathed in digestion.

She closes her eye, shutting out faint candlelight. A pinpoint of yellow remains behind her eyelid, turning green, splitting into two, staring at her. She can almost feel a bony caress - smooth, cold, tracing her skin the feathery way they slipped across the leaded glass ball.

THINK HAPPY THOUGHTS.

In the behind-the-bookcase room. Alone. Trolls don't decompose as swiftly as other things, especially if you have to keep them dead. It was one of the more satisfying sessions she'd had. The kobolds were all gone down the box, boring - most things that walk upright are the same. Brain, heart, lungs, stomach, liver, kidneys, intestines; skin, veins, muscles, tendons, bones. Variety is all in the size and toughness of the bits. But trolls provide a longer experience, more learning. They're somehow different, although she was unable to discover exactly why - what it is that keeps them coming back and back. She knows how to stop that. She hopes very much that G'ork will forgive the scorching of the walls and floor. And his instruments. She tried to rub it off but the metal seems discolored now. Maybe he won't notice.

He'll notice. 

HAPPY THOUGHTS.

Eril-lyn. Learning from Eril-lyn. And Neema. Tending the body of the dead woman with Neema, washing her hair, preparing her for the pyre. Neema understands, is not afraid of the deceased. Neema understands that it matters what they look like; that they are in death who they are in life, not some caricature. That they are handled properly. With care. With love.

Unless I dissect them. But those people are bad people, right? She doesn't open nice people.

The Vehl crypts with Delia the cranky woodswoman would be a pleasant memory, but for the end. She's heard of the scry-balls, she's never seen one. Now she has. Why her? She is nobody!

No! She's Lola Notabard! The laugh dredged from her throat sounds like a cat drug it out.

She checks her eyepatch. Again.

You can see me, the same way I can see you. But I won't let you look through me.

An eye for an eye. Glass, with a brown iris, stuffed inside the orb of some other poor soul.

"You should walk away, little witch, while you still have your sanity."

She'd felt the divination on it, and the necromancy, but that was probably from the eye that had birthed it in a squirt of death-fluid and stringy nerves. Water and soap, scrubbing, that took care of the darker magics. And - pop. It fit. Exactly. Too exactly. 

Despite how wrong it felt, it felt so right. Happy memories? How about looking around and seeing with binocular vision for the first time? Not having to turn around to see behind you? Looking in the mirror and seeing someone...normal?

It was wrong. It was a stupid thing to do. She should pluck it out. Except - now she can't. Trying to remove it felt like trying to yank her natural eye out and she nearly fainted from self-inflicted agony.

She doesn't want to give it back anyway.

Maybe she won't. But the thing watching her has to be dealt with, and now she's sure it won't be within spitting distance of nearly impossible. Whatever the thing is, it's not weak. It's not even alive. She saw her observer, briefly, as she stared into the tarnished mirror hanging on the wall of the Harpy's one slightly habitable room; staring into that plain brown iris, into the black pupil of the newly inserted eye that glistens and moves like a living thing. So angry at the intrusion that she smashed through the reflection straight through to him. PEEKABOO.

Pale face. Two pulsing green eyes. Skeletal hands. A smile or a smirk, or a smirl - yes, a smirl. He's leaning over a crystal ball, touching it. She sees herself trapped inside. Momentary vertigo.

He looks familiar. She can't shake that feeling. She's never seen him before and yet he looks familiar.

Then the vision breaks and she's left with a scrying eye tempting her from inside her own head. Look...look...

Her skin is abraded around the edges of her eyepatch. She wants to peel it off, so badly. That desire isn't magical, or she doesn't think it is. It's her own. No longer blind on her left? Knowing how far a glass really is from her, instead of her usual putting-her-hand-on-the-table-and-sliding-it-toward-the-object-until-she-touches-it? The stars alone know how she can hit anything with her crossbow.

She was lucky that time. She had no runes or circles up, not that she knows how to cast them properly. Not a wizard. She only knows of one person who has the same talents, and assumes it's as easy as asking.

"I cannot teach you what I myself do not know."

There will be no easy answers. There are no recipes. No instructions. After finding out about the second scry-ball at the Center fire, and asking for assistance, and watching Acacea set a scrying circle brought another epiphany - it's personal, or so she thinks. There is no right way, if you even know a way. Music and finger-drawings are as good as gold-filled channels. Whatever works.

The halfling woman’s circle, the Aeridinite elf, Delia – those she found examining the second glass eye concealed in the scry-ball – all there on the beach. She's not alone and that informs her decision. Right there in the damp sand she plops the eye down and kneels. She's seen him once. She can do it again. With these friends she can do it again.

A thought frosts her stomach. Is he letting me? 

No time for fear. Acacea is saying to use the object as a rope, or a path. She sees the magic surrounding the eye and follows it. It's strong enough for a novice like her to trip over. She sees him again, this time with others, chanting and praying and making arcane gestures. The Bone Lord’s skull-and-sword hangs around the necks of the chanters. Instruments of torture and poorly cleaned heads are everywhere. She tries to get a location, but can't. She tries to listen to the chanting, but can't make most it out - she is weakening. Never in her life has any magic been this hard, taken this much from her - it's like the line to this vision is made of her own bodystuff. "You will be torn apart by the ripples of walking through time..."

The green-eyed apparition lifts a huge heart in his left hand and a short, glossy-black dagger in his right. Slicing into the overly large, warped, muscular vessel, he glops black blood onto the crystal. He reaches out with his skeletal fingers and makes a fist over the divining orb. She sees it all. He wants her to see it all. The vision dissolves as the halfling lady cuts the connection, and she vomits on the spot. Then - a hand reaches up through sand, right into her face. The elven man catches her as she topples and almost screams. The rotting hand grips the eye and vanishes under the sand. The sand bulges, the surf churns, and bodies rise – this is real, she’s back on the beach – call the magic! – the fire doesn’t respond, not for a few seconds, she’s still somewhere between here and there. The others are fighting, and finally the words come and she fires missiles that are completely unnecessary as the Lightbringer’s friend wrecks the bloated, fish-chewed bodies with a few words. He reminds her of Elly. Gentle. He spells her with healing to help with the sick but that’s not what is making her stomach turn over.

They’re aghast, wanting to know what she saw, and she tells them. She desperately wants to feel normal, or even the way she did before she looked into the glass eye on the sand, so she starts taking apart some kind of body-part monster that also attacked. It should have calmed her, but she leaves her filleting knife stuck in the creature after removing just an arm. Bael-mara says she should rest. He’s right.

And here she is. Desperate for sleep as her mental pages flip. He wanted her to see. He’s watching her. He’s – those dead things he sent, the scry-ball attacking, is it a test? “Maybe he wants you!” But why? Her caretakers taught her right from wrong. She’s nice to children and animals. She doesn’t hurt people, and has never opened anyone who was alive, maybe the troll excepted. She’s never called a single thing back from the dead, not once. Whether she questions the immorality of it doesn’t matter. She’s never done it. She doesn’t know how. She’s never asked to be taught.

Well, almost never. But maybe the gaunt, charming man at the Arms was implying something else. He was only a mortician, after all.

Fenthon Quill. Neema will go with her, and Eril-lyn. Maybe the man with the name of Quill can help. Skeleton Hands can see her wherever she is so long as this thing is stuck in her head. So that is her next move, just as soon as she can get some sleep. She calls for Binky Bane, asks him to watch her. For just a heartbeat the dust from the little dragon's wings makes her smile, then she rolls to her side and closes her eye. Sleep, but for need only – it won’t be restful. She knows what her dreams will be like.

 

RollinsCat

Eye Spy, Part II. Daddy
« Reply #5 on: February 04, 2015, 10:16:41 am »

Eye Spy, Part II. Daddy Issues.

 

 “Yes, miss?” The guard is tall, blonde, with a handlebar mustache and an expression that seems chiseled out of disappointment.

“What? Oh – “

“Can I help you.” A monotone with a hint of ‘what now’.

How long have I been standing here?

Are my hands shaking?

“Could you tell Mister...um...Captain? Sir? Stargazer that Lola is here to see him? Please?”

Why is he looking at me? Is something wrong? My eye!?

“Lieutenant Stargazer, miss. Door to your immediate left.” He immediately returns two matching, unmarred brown eyes to paperwork stacked akimbo across his desk.

The door is not locked, of course it wouldn’t be – beyond is a plaster-walled space, twice as long as it is wide, with one privacy screen, one small table, one scarred wooden desk, two chairs, one human male, and nothing else.

“Mister Stargazer?”

No, the patch didn’t slip. This is a big office. Is he important? Is Lieutenant good?

“Greetings, child. Indeed.  What can I do for you?” Tall. Light skin. Hawk nose. Predator’s eyes. Lips draw back in an imitation of a smile over teeth that belong on a man younger than the one standing behind the desk.

Why is he looking at me like that? Did I do something bad again? I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I won’t -

It’s not him. I’m here, not there. Here, not there.

Why is he looking at me like that?

“I am indeed Lieutenant Stargazer.” Deeper voice than the guard, accented with strained patience.

“Mister Quill told me you....you....were involved in the cases with – he said you'd know about – about Mort.”

“Mort…you say?”

“Mortimer.”

Don’t come closer don’t come closer.

“I guess we are starting with the wrong situations miss.” He gestures to the chair nearest here, across from his. “Please take a seat.  And who is it that comes to my office and asks this.”

“Lola, sir. Lieutenant.”

“ Lola…my my…Lola of the Reids , in Mariner's huh?”

“Just Lola, sir. Yes, from Mariner's Hold.”

“My you have indeed grown up.”

He knows me?

“Yes, sir.”

“Well…now…Lola of the Reids. About your questions. Yes the name rings a bell. I've been involved with a lot of criminals and other data so my memory may not be as fresh as it used to be…but why is that you are asking?”

“I would - what....would you charge to share that with me. I am looking for information.”

“Charge? My my…you’re getting into something you shouldn't, aren't you? What kind of information you seek?”

Why does he smile like that? Stop it!

Why isn’t he saying anything?

Say something!

Oh – I mean me.

“I'm already up to my eyeball in it. It's too late to not be involved. I want to know what he is, how powerful his is, if he has any weaknesses. If anyone knows where he – lairs.”

“You sound like a hunter ready to go on a hunt miss…is this man currently reappeared? Why is that you need this information? To be clear, I can help you with the information you request...”

“He's watching me. Maybe right now. You are powerful? I heard you are.”

“Why he would do such thing? I am a man milady. I've seen a lot of things and in this experience some may call me a learned man, but I won't presume of power.”

“Oh.” A laugh that isn’t a laugh at all. “He's my father you see. I see. I saw. Mister Quill helped me see. I know now. I bet he's watching me, just to see me fall apart...”

The hawk-faced man stands, arms folded, lips pressed together. Perhaps amused.

“I can see him if I concentrate. I can see the room.”

Here, not there. Here...no, there.

The room with the skulls and the men and the big crystal ball. Somewhere in a corner lies a slimy heart from an outsider creature, decaying inside a crust of black blood. The men chant with their heads down. The thing grimaces because he can’t do otherwise. It’s the first time she remembers him smiling at her and its purely involuntary.

No, the second – the second time. There were no men the first there, not here – what is here anymore?

The chanting makes you sleepy, once you listen long enough.

The hawk-faced man puts a cool hand on one quivering shoulder.

DON’T TOUCH ME!

“Lola, miss. Try to calm down, fear and rage is the first enemy we have to face. If we lose to those and to ourselves then the enemy has already won…”

He removes his hand. Tears wet a youth-rounded right cheek. A sheen of diluted blood stains the left.

“If this man is your father…and it’s looking for you, it is indeed a dangerous situation.”

“I hate him.”

Large, steady hands pour water into a glass that is grasped in two much smaller ones. The room is silent but for sipping until the glass is nearly empty.

“Well, it’s hard to point out of the weakness of such man. I'd like to ask you first, to avoid repeating…what is what you know of him till now?”

More silence. When the explanation comes it starts in flat, rising as it goes, a shark at depth but angling toward prey at the surface.

“I didn't know anything until maybe a month ago. I was in the crypts here with a woman, helping her learn the corridors. Delia. Her name is Delia. It's not important.”

The man gives a measured nod and motions for her to continue.

“We went to that room that's always got mummies in it - and left - and there was an eyeball in the hall. Mages sometimes use them. An eyeball with wings. It watched us for a moment then flew away so I followed it. I was curious. It attacked me. I killed it and it exploded.”

A near-smirk fades to an arched eyebrow. He stands near the paper room divider, to the side of the desk, forcing the chair’s occupant to turn her head to see him. She doesn’t.

“Inside it was another eye. A glass one. With a brown iris.” The empty cup turns counterclockwise in slim fingers. “I was curious.”

It was sized perfectly. It matched perfectly. How could you not? How could you not want to know?

“So I took it to the Harpy and got a room and cleaned it and tested the magic and put it in.”

Faster.

“Divination. It's got divination on it.”

The man stands without fidgeting, without distraction. His eyes are slightly narrowed, looking down upon their target, as far above the surface as she is below it.

“Then I looked in the mirror and it was like I had an eye. A real eye. I could see through it. I could see through a glass eye. It felt wrong though. Bad. A little bad.”

“And you saw the same room you were in…or…?”

“So I wanted to know who was watching me so I looked into the mirror and started into the eye...my eye...left eye...and I was mad that someone was watching me so I looked back. Through the mirror. And I saw him. Watching me. I saw myself in a crystal ball. That made me sick. And a man with skeletal hands - him - glowing green eyes. Smirking. I didn't know who he was. Then the connection broke and I felt very stupid. So I covered the eye.”

“It’s been some time indeed.” It’s sympathy, perhaps, or patronization. Irrelevant, it dissipates, unnoticed.

“Then a week later I was in Center and I went out to the fire and there had been another eye flying around. Some people had already killed it. This pretty halfling lady with uncombed hair had the eye - another glass eye. Just like the one I have in here.  She said she could show me how to make a scrying circle so we went to the beach. And she did. And I saw him again.”

Only now does he take out a notebook. The quill scratches like a cat at the door.

“He was watching me again. And there were men behind him, they looked human, and they had Corathite symbols on. They were chanting. The room had skulls and candles. It was big. He saw me watching him. I think it amuses him.”

Faster.

“Then he picked up a really big heart. It was purplely and too big to be human. He cut it with a dagger. It was glossy black, I remember that. And the blood was black. Not red. He squeezed the blood onto the crystal that I was in. That my image was in. Me? I don't know. It is confusing. And then they were chanting and closed his fingers....all bone - no flesh left....over the ball, and a hand came out of the sand and grabbed the eye. And then dead things came out of the surf.”

Faster! You can see the sun and the shadow of your dinner among the rays.

“So he turned your scrying into a conjuration device against you…” He frowns. “Interesting.”

“Then the glass eye exploded. We killed the dead things. I think they were maybe sailors, but mostly just bits of flesh stuck to bone. Then the eye exploded, under the sand. I gathered it up.”

“Is this the last you have learned of him?”

“No sir.”

“Then continue please.”

“I heard Mister Quill knows things about strange magic and medicine.”

He smirks at the mention of Quill. “That is a way of putting it. Yes.”

“So myself and my friends Neema and Eril-lyn went to see him. He liked that Neema and I are not squeamish around the dead. So he agreed to talk to us. I cast a protective circle around us in his office. I think I did. Maybe. And Neema and Eril-lyn helped. And then I showed him my eye. I tried to take it out back in Vehl when I first put it in you see. But it hurt as badly as if it were real. I couldn't. I couldn't yank it out. I almost passed out trying. He wanted to know about the man as well so he put me under hypnosis to see what we could find out.”

Her words are footsteps in the tower. They are her blanket pulled over her head, woven together in clumps and ragged at the edges, but keeping the truth off her skin. They are Binky, perched on the edge of her bed, whispering in her ear. They are the thing at the surface, flipping, thrashing, finally aware of what comes from below.

It looks delicious.

FASTER!

“I don't remember my life before I was a slave. I was very young. I thought maybe my parents were slaves who died. But they weren't. I walked back in time inside my head, past the wall...the place where memories stopped. He was behind it in a tower. He was a man then.”

The words slam into each other.

“He would invite people, travelers, in. Talk to them. Feed them. Drug them maybe, I don't know. Then cut their hearts out. I couldn't find my mother, she was never there. I walked around the halls, hiding, trying not to be seen...I don't know why I was alive at all. If I asked him about her I got beaten. One day he took a man down to the cutting room and I followed him.”

Her jaws open against her will. The surface is foamy with panic.

“And I saw him cutting, I could see better, I was afraid, I made a noise, he heard me and it must have messed something up. He got really mad and came over and – “

Teeth too old, too sharp to be her own close on the febrile struggles of memory.

Say it. SAY IT!

The man gliding over the rising words spots blood in the water. He dives, spearing prey onto blank parchment.

PLEASE NO PLEASE NO DADDY NO I WON’T DO IT AGAIN I’M SORRY PLEASE -

“He ate my eye. He ate it. He was mad. He said if I was going to ruin things I didn't need to see it again. I must have passed out.” Tears, clear and tears, red. “When I woke up, I was in the slaver's mines in a cart on the other side of the wall. And the shiny gnome helped me.”

The words are chewed out and they absorb any other sound. Then they pass, leaving only residual vitreous dripping from the memories of the listeners.

The quill is tucked inside the notebook, the book set on the table. The man frowns as if disapproval were a deity and he its Cherished Elder. The water jar is lifted from the small table, brought to the glass doing jerky pirouettes in her hands, poured.

She drinks.

He leans on the desk, facing her. While the hunter’s expression isn’t softened, the words are more carefully selected, pauses indicating a shuffling of the lexicon before a concept is verbalized.

“It was indeed something awful, alas in those tragedies and to learn what was of us before, it’s what makes us better. When we are able to defeat those memories, the path has started…as for your questions. This man, if we can call it like that…it’s been on the run for years. Mortissimer Bael, Mort Tallytee , the Toymaster, among many other aliases. This makes him as elusive and mysterious as he can be. He seems almost changing for each time I hear of him. A dangerous and pure evil foe nonetheless, yes.”

Listening is calming. She has no attachment to or preconception of his voice. It is what it is and sentence by sentence her breathing slows.

Tallytee. Horrible. What a horrible joke of a name. Not mine. Never.

“First. you must know that this…"man"…is also known as Father Strife. Have you heard of the "Sons of Strife"?

“Mister Quill said something about them. It was right after I - stopped screaming - and came back. I don't remember. Everything was too much then.”

Just by saying it, she’s there. Neema don’t let me go - Eril-lyn – The body is shelter, the smell only a fringe on the edge of her awareness. He is huge, and she can hide in the folds of the stiff arm and under the curve of the overfed belly, a child burying her head in a fort of cold flesh. How can HE be my father? Andy is wrong, wrong, wrong! I wasn’t made from love!

They’re trying to pry her out of the body’s unwitting embrace. Quill is more interested than helpful. Neema’s voice – her friend, calling for her to leave the tower and step back into the autopsy room – I’m here! I’m here…not there…and Neema holds her, not repulsed by her corpse protector, only concerned for her. Eril-lyn takes her hand. Dead things bother him more.

Elves.

The man speaks on, obvious. “Among his many abilities this Father strife seems to be a very capable social worker. He has founded this…"Sons of Strife" as his own "order" of chaos and destruction, a way to defy not only the society but the gods themselves. Their ranks are formed by the "corrupted views" of the dogma of the gods and he picks people who were in their former life servants of the gods to turn them into aberrations of the said dogma. So…we won't be facing him alone…and I want this to be very clear. In the past we had faced such ranks and each of those opponents has been formidable.”

We.

“Have you killed any.”

“Many of them, but most of the times death is not the final solution to a problem.”

“He can bring them back. Or make more.”

Oh, if he tries it would be most likely a new version of the same corrupted faith. And hearing of what you are saying now, it seems it’s now the cursed betrayer turn. We would be especially careful when dealing with an even more corrupt version of Corathites, if such is possible. The lairs we had fought have been dispersed thru the world…”

WE.

“I think I can find him. He can see me. But I can see him too. And I don't need a fancy ball.”

He smirks, his default smile – it looks natural on him. Here, there, it doesn’t matter. Anger sticks a boney finger into her brain. Not alone. Not alone in this fight.

To be continued.

 

RollinsCat

Rak - strengthHaro - axeHuhha
« Reply #6 on: February 09, 2015, 11:49:43 pm »

Rak - strength

Haro - axe

Huhha - crossbow

Aho - fire

Kuphak - Goblin

Nrhakgg - thank you

Kuutp'o - goodbye

 

 

 

anything