He doesn't really know how long he stands there staring into the mist. Finally, slowly, like a statue coming to life one ounce of stone at a time, Jonah raises his hand and wipes the tears from his face. He takes in the sight of Fin and Casia. Brother and sister.
For a heartbeat, the Whisper nearly falls back into despair. For all their difference, the two children of a fallen noble house still had each other. How Fin holds Casia is how Jonah had hoped to hold Naty after having brought her safely back home. Alas it was not meant to be.
He pulls a tattered rag from one of the pockets and wipes again at his face and forehead. As he lifts his hat, all can see his salt and pepper hair is now mostly salt. His beard a granite grey. He slaps the hat back on his head, ready to wrap up this accursed journey into the underworld.
Suddenly a frown furrows his brow and he spins around three times. Fear clutches at his heart.
Somewhere in the mist.
tick-tick-tick-tick-tick The soft sound of a gold pocket watch counting away life's seconds. Leading them to their destination. Carried by one of their own. A friend. A companion. His eyes glance to Fin. Something even more.
"Lolo." Jonah whispers. He puts his hands to his mouth. "Lolo!" He shouts. Spinning back to Fin and Casia.
"Can either of you see Lolo?"
plink
plink
plink
plinkplinkplinkplinkplink
Like a coin that fals to the ground and bounces and spins before coming to a stop, the watch Lolo was carrying lands a few feet in front of Jonah, appearing from nowhere. The rest is silence and mist.
Jonah stares at the watch as it spins to a stop about where Lolo might have been standing. Cursing he reaches down and carefully picks up the cobbled together bit of magic and mechanism.
"I'll see if I can find out what's happened." He says to Fin and Casia.
Drawing on his remaining reserve and what little inner peace he could muster following the ghost fields recent assault on his mental past, the Whisper drops into a trance. He pulls a thin, short length of metal dowel with a cap on one end from his pocket and then somehow grabs a handful of the surrounding mist. Sticking the rod into the center of the fluffy aether glob, the whisper starts to spin the dowel with his fingers causing a thin thread of arcane magic to wind up the metal and gather near the top. Slowly he spins the aether thread onto the dowel until a good sized mass is lumped there like a bulb of glass at the end of a blowers tube.
Taking up the watch, he anchors one end of the thread to the center of the watch where Lolo's blood is mixed with his own. The other end he tosses up into the air, speaks Lolo's name and watches. The dowel begins to spin wildly as the thread rapidly unravels, the sparkle of magic at the end disappearing into the mist back along the path they so recently traveled.
Finally the thread snaps tight and the dowel drops into the mist, lost in the aether of the ghost field. Carefully, cautiously, Jonah removes the thread from the watch and brings it up to his eye, closes the other. Peering down the length of the thread he feels his vision stretch before him. Ballroom, fiery warehouse, a black shadowed doorway. His stomach churns as his vision races like a fish back upstream. Drawn along Lolo's path, guided by her own blood's link to her self.
The wet, shadowy streets of Doskvol, the true, current Doskvol streak past. This causes him to breath out a sign of relief.
"She's been drawn back into reality." He says in that eerie, somewhat flat voice used when he's in the midst of a casting. The thread continues to wind through the streets until he spots their shabby little tower in the distance. Then with a jolt the vision comes to an abrupt, eye jolting, stomach lurching end as the length of aether runs to the end.
"Ooof. Urp." Is all he can get out for a couple of moments before he lowers the thread from his blinking eye. Looking a bit green at the edges, he nods to his remaining Duskmites. "I think she's okay. Got dropped from the ghost field, but back in town. Somewhere near home I think." He says.
"Best we try and move on and finish this job before another of us gets pulled back." He leaves off saying 'or worse' even though the thought rumbles in his mind as he reorients the watch and sets them back on course for their quarry.
Finraeth holds Casia tightly as she hugs him, glad that she is safe and unhurt. It takes him a moment or two to realise that Lolo is missing, and he stares around wildly trying to locate the sound made by the watch as it hits the streets. Jonah's explanation mostly goes over his head, but he fastens onto the reassurance that she's probably okay.
"Very well then, let us keep moving, shall we?" Drawing his blade again, he takes the lead position. If anyone - or anything - tries to take another of his companions, they will have to go through him first.
Casia reluctantly releases her brother and draws her short blades. Following closely behind him, she steels her nerves expecting any moment for the familiar voice to call out from the mists. For neither the first nor last time she regrets not bringing anything to drink with her.
It's the smell that hits you first. The salt spray of the sea, of decaying seaweed. Water - real, imagined, hell who knows - laps around your feet as it rises out of the paveing stones, gathering itself together in a tidal wave that knocks you all down, leaving you breathless and spluttering, eyes stinging from salt water. Bone by bone, scale by scale and fin by fin the houses fall away from you, tubmling to pieces as the leviathan shrugs them away, hausling itself back together. Eyes - many eyes, too many to count - glare at you from squid-like sockets, darting this way and that as the beast shakes itself back into being. Several pairs of hinged jaws open vastly wide, as if to swallow you all.
Or it could just crush you beneath its vast bulk. So many options, so little time.
What do you do?
Spluttering and coughing as he blows water from his nose, Jonah picks himself up from the flooded cobblestones. Eyes blurry from the stinging salt it takes a few moments for his vision to clear. Once it does, he wishes it hadn't. The Whisper's head tilts back and back until it like he is trying to peer at the peak of the Imperial palace from its front gate. All the time, his gaze takes in the enormity of the skeletal beast emerging before his own tiny form and that of his companions.
He starts to turn to flee, but a voice screams in his head. NO! To flee is to die. It is the voice of Nathanial. A Master Whisper and his instructor for those few weeks of initial training he got before then sent Jonah and the handful of others identified as having a knack for such work back up to the front lines to battle the Imperial whispers and arcanists. Let a spirit see your fear and it'll feast upon your rotting corpse. Nathanial used to say at least three times a day, everyday. The ghost field, it amplifies and exaggerates emotional energy. There are a many theories as to why this is as there are deadbeats in Dusk. You don't need to know why. You do need to know how to keep your blasted mind shrouded and calm when facing the worst nightmares you'll ever imagine.
Jonah had forgotten that bit of sage advice earlier and it almost gotten them all trapped and lost in the ghost field for all eternity. Now he tears his vision away from the massive, multi-eyed manifestation. Stares instead at the center of the watch, making sure they still followed the correct path. Uses the moment to calm himself. Think. Come up with something. Anything that could give them the slightest edge up in getting through this nightmare. Finally, a rough idea forms.
"Don't look directly at it." He hisses to Fin and Casia. "And gird yourself against any desire to flee. Fear will feed it, draw it toward us. Bring us further into it's gaze. Give me a moment and I'll try to provide a little bit of distraction."
While talking he scoops up several handfuls of aether from the sloshing misty water. He then snaps the harpoon ghost charm from around his neck and begins wrapping and weaving the aether around it until it is nearly the size of an apple. (He'd seen the ancient fruit in some pictures while researching at the university library.) Bringing the aetherball up to his lips he puffs out his cheeks and blows directly into the center of the mass and immediately starts to countdown.
"Eight...seven...six...five...get ready...four...three...RUN!" He he hisses to the other as he tosses the aether wrapped bit of harpoon as far in the opposite direction indicated on the watch as he possibly can. He hurries Fin and Casia forward. "Two...one..."
Off in the distance where the charm lands and bounces across the sloppy ground the aetherball flares to life. Glowing a brilliant canary yellow and screaming with all the fear and fright Jonah could muster into the ghost field mass. And given the circumstances, the Whisper was able to siphon off a sizable amount.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Finraeth (as a fan of both the classics and the archaic) nods approvingly at Jonah's use of the word "gird" but deprecates the idea of fleeing. "Where, then, shall we flee unto? Fortune favours the bold, after all." He sincerely hopes.
As Jonah's distraction gambit flares into bright light, he pulls the harpoon charm off his wrist. This is the Ghost Field, where memories have power; ergo, this fragment of a harpoon should "remember" what it once was. For a second or two, as he stands there, nothing happens; the small fragment in his hand looks as feeble as a matchstick. But, with a sudden flaring of electroplasm, there is a crackle of sparks and the stink of ozone and he holds in both hands the potent memory of a leviathan's bane. It sputters and sparks, like a firework on the verge of exhaustion, its odd light reflecting in his eyes as he moves forward, caution thrown to the winds, to stalk the beast.
"Have at thee." He jabs it ferociously.
"Don't be an idiot! RUN!" Casia yells, grabbing her brother by the arm and pulling him away from the manifesting behemoth. "Trying to be a hero will only get you killed!"
Casia's action may be wel intentioned but it has the effect of throwing off Fin's aim - the harpoon jabs into the leviathan's side, with a sizzle of electroplasm and the smell of singed blubber, but it doesn't pierce as deep or wound as greatly as it should. The great beast gives a furious screech as it rears back, its two twin tails thrashing against the cobblestones with a wet thump, before surging forward to try and crush you under its vast bulk. You dodge out of the way, but in the maelstrom of noise and movement one of its long, squid-like tentacles wraps around the harpoon and yanks it out of Fin's hands!
What do you do?
Finraeth wasn't expecting that, and being grabbed by Casia throws off his aim; although the leviathan is too big to miss entirely. He stays alert enough to duck not only its attempt to crush them both, but also manages (just about) to hold onto the weapon.
He sees an opening and drives it into the beast once again.
Jonah ducks around the corner of an hexagonal tower made of glass and steel. The great ghostly beast lets out it's ear piercing screech like a banshee amped up on deathcap shrooms. The strange building flickers and becomes a broken down stone tower not so dissimilar from the little place they all called home. In that moment, he thought he actually recalled the tower. It was just around the corner from the dive that was their destination.
Gasping for air, Jonah does his best to take stock of the situation. A string of curses follows as a massive tentacle rolls down the street knocking over ghostly carts and market stalls like so many bowling pins. Ignorance might be the better course. A small, rational part of his mind says. A part of his mind usually ignored otherwise he likely wouldn't be in his current situation. Ignorance may be bliss, but when it comes to the Ghost Field, it'll certainly mean death.
So, he once again ignores that other voice (Who simply curses him with a quick universal gesture of disgust and goes back to reciting Skovlander poetry in some dark corner of the Whisper's mind.) and leaps out into the street and back to where Casia and Fin wrestle each other as much as they wrestle the leviathan's ghost.
"We're close!" He shouts over the rumbling screeches of the beast. He glances at the watch, the hands wavering back and forth. "Definitely close. The girl's spirit is probably nearby somewhere, but the beast blocks our path. Maybe even protecting her. Certainly, no way around it." He adds leaping away from another sweeping tentacle.
"Stubborn, stupid, thick-headed, ..." Casia grumbles under her breath as she pulls her curved daggers. "Go find her!" she shouts out to Jonah. "We'll keep this thing occupied!"
She knows that, unlike the token that Finraeth still wields, her blades will have no effect on the phantom other than to enrage it. But if the twins can keep it occupied long enough for Jonah to accomplish their goal then perhaps it's not in vain.
Dashing in, she slashes at the thick-skinned beast, rolling back to try to avoid any counter attack.
Finraeth rolls his shoulders, and then his neck, with an audible sound as joints and muscles pushed to their limit make their protest known. Keeping the harpoon in one hand, his other arm reaches across and back, shoving his sister away from the beast and behind him without taking his eyes off the enormous mass of his opponent. He speaks, but to Jonah rather than to Casia. "No way around for all of us, certainly. But for one of us? Perhaps."
He gives a rare grin, his teeth gleaming white in the flaring of electroplasm that sputters off the harpoon. Jonah gets a brief nod before he raises the weapon above his head, brandishing it defiantly before whirling it in a wide arc, the spear seeming to grow ever brighter and ever longer until he is at the centre of a circle of almost pure light. Assailed by the brightness, the thing's many eyes retract on their stalks back into its body - which provides him with just the opening he is looking for. His strike drives the tip of the harpoon deep, just into the spot where a fleshy, lobe-like fin protrudes from its otherwise near-impenetrable armour. The disgusting smell of burnt blubber and the ear-splitting screech of pain both almost overpower him, but he points at the opening created as the vast behemoth of the seas rears back. "Go! Go now, go swiftly, go safely!"
He puts both hands to the spear, trying to keep the thing at bay as he braces for its monstrous rage.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
The vast leviathan rears back as Fin's actions cause it to flinch and Jonah takes full advantage, running past and into the building behind.
What he sprints into is the stuff of nightmares. Bodies, doezens of them, sprawl across the floor, which is slikc with blood enough that the Whisper has to catch himself from falling over. On second glance, it's the same body, with the same wound, the scene endlessly repeating itself as the grim-faced redhead fires her pistol at the young woman, killing her instantly with a headshot - even as the body falls to the floor, slithering down the pile of corpses and rolling in the slick of blood, the shooter fires again at her target, killing her with the exact same shot, the exact same wound, the exact same spray of blood, bone and brain.
"Do you like it?" The voice is behind Jonah - whichever way he twists and turns, it's always juuuust behind him. "It's my meomorial to myself."
The scene pauses, frozen in an instant of time, Jonah can see the regret and resolve in Lolo's eyes and the flare of the gunshot. He can even see the bullet, hanging in the air on the way to its inevitable destination.
"Well?" Her voice is impatient. "I asked you a question."
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Chills skitter up and down Jonah's spine as he slowly realizes the scene playing out before him. The bodies, no, the body, singular. It is only one. No matter how many copies litter the floor. He reminds himself, swallowing hard as the voice whispers in his ear. He spins a few times, but the motion in the ghost field starts to play havoc with his balance.
The voice. Young, feminine. The Skov accent. Sweat starts to prickle Jonah's forehead as it is suddenly Naty's voice whispering in his ear. For several seconds he is simply too afraid to open his eyes. Too afraid to see what could be put before him. Already the ghost field had delved into his innermost fears and guilt. But for a few differences. A few attempts by Jonah to fend off such a thing, this could be his sister. Could be her spirit replaying a scene of doom and death, stuck within its horror until complete madness drives her to further destruction and death.
Which is why you need to do something, fool! His internal voice hollers in his head. Prevent this all from getting worse than it already is. You can't save this one, but you can keep her from roaming the city feeding on other innocent folk. Neither you or Lolo need that on your conscience. And so Jonah takes a deep breath. Braces himself and opens his eyes.
"So your life all comes down to a single, tragic, moment?" He says, his voice quiet as calm as he can manage. "We all die. I've seen plenty of deaths far worse than this one. A man's face melting as the Green Gas choked off his dying screams. A friend and comrade who'd saved my life only the day before, his legs gone from an Imperial barrage, his arms still pulling forward a dozen feet before he even realized he was dead. A woman, her head crushed because she leaned over too close to the back of the wrong mule. More than I can count taken over days, weeks of dysentery."
He takes in the room with its constant scene and shrugs, trying to make it look casual even though his heart breaks at the repeating scene and the waste of it all.
"Did you ever know peace? Did you ever know any kind of warmth? Happiness of any small kind? Why not dwell among those memories. Fill this room with the comrades you sang with, drank with, slept with. For that is much more what you were and what you still are, if you wish it to be."
"Do you seek peace? Do you seek revenge? A chance to strike back?" This was the big gamble, could he convince this creature he had anything to offer besides simple annihilation. He tilted his head to the side, listening, waiting. Waiting to see how the cards would fall upon the table.
The voice is savage, spiteful, inhuman. "This was MY death! Why should I care how many others you've seen die? But I remember - I remember warmth." The voice trails off. "The heart beating, the blood flowing."
The bodies - all of them - start to stand up, trying to gain their footing on the slippery floor. "Give me your warmth, so I can remember it better." Arms - lots of them - start to grab at Jonah, and he can feel the spectral chill that ebbs from them.
The voice is now just a snarl. "GIVE! NOW!"
Jonah braces himself for pain. What did you expect, trying to bargain with this creature. This isn't Naty, fool! This one is filled with hate and rage. Raised on it, born to it. Now you and everyone else will die. The reprimanding voice shouts as he waits for the the slashing, flesh cutting, cold-as-the-void spectral tendrils to lash his body. What he gets is euphoria.
As the specter's arms wrap themselves around and into his body, every muscle tingles and relaxes. Days, weeks, a lifetime's worth of tensions are suddenly drawn away. He can feel it all being taken. Finding Naty too late, the moral desolation of the war, the Dimmer Sisters and their trinkets of ghastly ancient power. All washed away as if he were instead lying dreamily upon a cloud in the arms of the Emperor's own concubine. For what seems like a lifetime, but is in truth only a few heartbeats, Jonah considers giving himself over completely to this creature. Giving up on it all.
But then he remembers Fin and Casia, somewhere close by, fighting the impossible. Giving of themselves so that they could complete a job that they'd no real need to fulfill other than their friendship with Jonah and his own spirit sister. And so his mind turns to Naty. The playful, smart, innocent sister of his youth, her smile sparkling in the starlight and the spectral, whimsical, otherworldly, caring sister whom he struggles to save. With those three faces locked firmly in his mind he wrestles himself back awake. Back into some control.
His eyes flutter open to look upon horror. His own horror. The ghost of the youth hovers slightly above him. At some point he had fallen to the ground. Sprawled helpless upon the fog shrouded stone of the ghost field. Her hate-filled, hungry eyes are bright with growing power and energy. Below that youthful face with its smirking grin is a aetherial mass of dozens of wrapping, squiggling tendrils each ending with a lamprey mouth currently attached to himself. Draining him of life and soul.
His arms are pinned by the girls leviathan arms, but calling upon every ounce of his remaining strength Jonah slips his wrist and forearm just loose enough to twist his hand into his coat pocket. Desperately his fingers pluck at the instrument. Flailing against sweat slick metal for a few more heartbeats whose remaining numbers are rapidly dwindling. Slowly over an eternity defining pair of seconds he manages to grab the prize.
The lightning rod crackles to life as it emerges from the pocket. Sparks fly and the tool expands out to its full length with an expert flick of the wrist. A wrist now completely free after the tendrils pull back from the rod's electrical charge. The arcane power reverberates through the girl's ghostly form causing it to ripple like oily pond water churned by a thrown brick. A high pitched, agonized scream deafens the Whisper. He does everything he can to ignore it. Ignore the cries, pleas, threats, and everything else the ghost begins to spout as he twists and turns the lightning rod. With each movement more and more of the ghost's essence is drawn onto the charged whip-like filaments, until her entire being is gathered in great shapeless lumps of crackling aetherial ooze.
Shaking, unsteady. Jonah pulls the spirit bottle from another pocket and after a couple of tries connects the bottle valve to the specially designed transfer spigot of the rod. The whisper mutters a few ritual words of power and opens the bottle's vacuum seal. The effect is nearly instantaneous. With one last lingering, angry screech the entirety of the ghost is sucked down the central tube of the rod and into the pocket void within the bottle. Jonah slumps forward upon hearing the final hiss of the bottles reestablished seal. Carefully he detaches it from the rod and slips the icy cold steaming container back into his coat pocket.
"I....I'm sorry." He rasps quietly, not knowing if the creature in the bottle can hear or cares. "And it certainly isn't fair or really even your fault, but there are other lives a stake and they are more important to me."
Leaning on the lightning rod, he turns and limps off to find Fin and Casia.
There's screams and threats and snarls and curses - blood curdling curses - but it's nothign Jonah hasn't dealt with before. The dead are not known to be creative or imaginitaive in their wordplay. The spirit bottle ices over as he seals it, steaming with cold, but the deed is done. When Jonah exits the building he gives a nod to Fin and Cas and the three of them break into a springting run. The leviathan thrashes and screeches its rage but ti is tehtered to the spot, it can't follow you.
Or can it?
Finraeth keeps brandishing the harpoon, the light from its electroplasmic glow being the only thing that holds the vast bulk of the leviathan at bay. He keeps a wary eye out for any further attempts to wrest it from his grasp; the safe thing to do is to withdraw slightly but he wants to keep an opening for when (not if, he firmly tells himself) Jonah returns triumphant. As time passes and his arms tire and the leviathan screeches its rage and malice at him and every minute feels like an hour, he does slowly start to wonder whether or not just possibly, this time, the whisper has over-reached himself.
His fears are of course groundless and he breaks into a wide grin when Jonah re-emerges from the building with the soul jar in his hands. "What kept you?" He charges forward with a final surge of strength to bury his bright lance into the creature's side and draw it away, allowing Jonah a clear path back to them. "Now would be a really good time for us to get out of here."
Jonah races through the opening created by Finraeth's attack against the manifestation of the ghost field. "She was...being a bit...stubborn." The Whisper says, sucking air into his lungs as he reaches once again for the gold watch. Nodding his understanding of the need to get out of the ghost field as rapidly as possible, he pushes the hands of the watch toward the high Honor. Not taking the time to wind and reset the little device, he instead just smashes his thumb down on the release button. The action sends the ghost field swirling and screeching all around the three of them. Tosses Fin, Cas, and Jonah around like rag dolls in the hands of a child's tantrum. Light, shadow, blackness, time, breathing, living all stops...and then kicks back in with the ferocity of a god flicking bugs from their shoulder.
What follows Jonahs - possibly rash? action - is a very short eternity of incredible pain. With a screech like the agnoised death of a thousand whales, the vast bulk of the leviathan is torn free of its bindings - ultimately fatal, even for something that is really only a memory - and comes after you! There is no way to call what faollows a fight, in any sense of the word. Its octopoid grsp lashes around each of you as it does its best to wring the life out of you. With only a little more time, it would - but as you blur back into reality, landing in the streets of Doskvol with a wet thump, you have returned to the one place it cannot follow. Bruised, crushed, splintered, coughint up blood, you are at least alive.
You are alive. Dead people aren't in so much pain.
A rib...ribs...definitely more than one." Jonah contemplated the largest source of pain as he lay sprawled in a pile of...he really didn't want to know...while rain pelted his face with each piercing breath. Slowly, carefully he wiggles his various appendages and with some relief finds that they all seem to function, albeit with more than a little complaint. His body was definitely putting his mind in its place as to exactly how much punishment and abuse it was willing to put up with.
Gasping, he eases himself into a more upright position and grimaces at the filth and gore he finds himself sitting in. "Ugh! An eel cutter's offal pit?" A brief but potent curse is directed toward the long dead gods. Somewhere an ethereal ghost-voice cackles. But it broke your fall, you ungrateful mortal fool.
His eyes narrow at the disembodied response. But he quickly shoves that particular mystery aside and focuses instead on carefully climbing out of the filth and finding Cas and Finn. Every movement...every breath is like having a dagger jabbed in his chest, but he needed to make sure the others had made it out safely.
Finraeth is (against all the odds) upright, looking a little the worse for wear and somewhat paler than usual. When he catches Jonah's eye, he gives a wan smile. "Let's never do that again, old boy, if it's all the same with you." His insouciance falls away as he looks around and spots Casia slumped on the ground, barely moving. "No! No no no no no no!" He sprints over to her and kneels down beside her prone form, trying to shake her awake. "Cassie, please be alright, please be alright, please be alright...."
As he places his hands on her, Finraeth realizes that she's not breathing. At the first shake, though, she gasps frantically for air. What follows is a ragged coughing fit as she groans in pain, wrapping her arms around her belly. "It hurts so much, Fin," she manages in a rasping voice.
Her face turns pale and she turns to empty the contents of her stomach onto the filth-covered ground. Finraeth can't help but notice a copious amount of blood among the remains of her breakfast.
Finraeth nods, weakly, aware that his own insides have been turned into puree as well. "Come on, let's get you up." He falls over several times in the process but eventually both of them manage to get upright, leaning heavily against one another for support. "See? Between us we make one healthy person." He gives a tearing, wet cough and a spray of blood. "More or less."
He looks around, trying to get his bearings. "Where did your escape spell drop us, do you happen to know?"
Jonah's guess is right - you landed in a rubbish heap, which probly saved you from more injury. Looking around, what little you can see is unfamiliar and a heavy unnatural fog stops you seeing very far at all. You're somewhere that feels old, though. Old and decaying - and that has ntohtning to do with the rottng smells of the midden heap. You become aware that you aren't alone when a pair of red eyes blinks at you from out of the murk, first one set then another and then several more. Set low to the ground, the figurtes of several large and very muscly dogs gather round you, shepherding you down a path towards a vast and crumbling manor (it's definly a manor, possibly even a villa but not a house). The dogs don't growl and they don't attack, but they do sort of manage to suggest - they can't talk, obviously, or at least they *aren't* talking, perhaps not teh same thing - that attacking is an option if you try to walk somewhere they aren't herding you.
Ahead of you, through the murk, the large building looms, its ancient curves and towers, buttreses and minarets soemhow making the eye water as you try to look at them. It is - or at least was - clearly the house of some wealthy noble family. But who?
Jonah helps Finraeth help Casia onto her feet. When Fin asks, he looks around in the gloom but eventually just shakes his head. "Not...not exactly." He says, one arm pressing up against his side. "I'd hoped ending the ritual would just draw us home, but given the circumstances, it felt more important to just get us out rather than try and calculate for possible distortion parameters."
"Technically, we shouldn't be..." His thought is cut off as the various sets of eyes suddenly emerge from the darkness. Unable and unwilling to try and argue with the burly beasts, he limps along with his two companions.
Not wishing to contemplate the damage those canine jaws could easily do to mere human flesh and bone, he spends much of the journey pondering the emerging building with its ancient architecture. After several wheezing, painful minutes Jonah suddenly snaps his fingers.
"I've got it....Scurlock Manor. It was shortly after I'd arrived in the city. All the broadsheets were covering this place. Pictures on the front page for a week or so. Something about old Lord Scurlock, his wife's sudden disappearance, and a bunch of rumors and accusations by half the gentry about Scurlock trafficking illegal relics and artifacts. Stuff from before the Shattering." He shakes his head unable to recall any details. "Nothing much ever came of any of it I think. No real proof. Most just chalked it up as the usual politics and power games that the big noble houses are always playing."
Finraeth pales even more and pinches the bridge of his nose. Sometimes he forgets that Jonah is an outsider to Duskvol - the man clearly has no idea who - or more precisely what - Lord Scurlock is rumoured to be. "I would consider it a great personal favour if you didn't say that name out loud again, please." He looks uneasily at the hounds, as if he is weighing up whether trying to fight his way past them represents a better option than proceeding to where they are being led.
At Jonah's revelation, Casia almost collapses to the ground again, her face going ghost white.
"Fin, we've got to get out of here," she manages in a trembling voice. "If this is ... we can't stay." She looks ready to brave the fearful hounds rather than face the master of the manor.
Jonah provides a steadying arm to Casia, helping to keep her upright as she reacts to where they've landed. Judging by the fear bouncing back and forth between the two siblings, Jonah can't help but assume this Lord Scurlock, like nearly all high nobility in the Whisper's experience, is not someone they wished to trifle with under the best of circumstances. In their current state, well...Jonah would abide by Fin's wish and leave that unsaid as well.
Instead he simply nods and continues to be herded by the dogs . "Nice doggy...niiiice puppy." He says to the dogs before turning his gaze upon the surrounding grounds and their path forward. "Anyone see any better exit verses wherever or whatever we are being escorted toward?" He says, looking for any way to get out of the manor without having to fight their way through a pack of burly canine beasts.
Finraeth looks around without any particular hope of seeing a way out. "I think we go where we're bidden, for now." He doubles over, coughing some more, before straightening up. "If those dogs wanted to kill us, they'd have attacked. Let's see what's in store for us. But keep your weapons loose." He puts one hand on the butt of his pistol, wishing he had some of Lolo's electroplasmic bullets. Or that the redhead herself was here in person.
The fog up ahead of you disperses as a light shines out - a lantern that sheds flickering shadows that seem to dissolve and shift, before assmbling into the form of a person. He's quite hard to look at, but you can see he's defeintely - well he's definitely there. He's dressed in clothing that went out of fashion long before your grandparents were even born, and his pale face is lined with age. Maybe it's just the shadows flicking around him. Why won't they stay still? The dogs all lie flat on the ground before him, muzzles touching the earth as they bow before their master. He gives them a wave of his hand - the monarch acknolwedging his people - before he turns to you. His red lips part in a smile of welcome. "Greetings, strangers who chance and fate have brought to my door." He stands aside, and becknos you in. "Welcome to my home. Enter freely of your own will and leave only some of the joy of youth you all bring."
All the stories, rumors, and legends of the Master of Scurlock Manor crash through Casia's brain as the figure greets them politely. The edges of her vision begin to darken before she realizes that she's not breathing. She gasps at the air like a drowning woman and clings even closer to her twin's side.
Finraeth is wary, but it's not as though they have much choice. He gives a look to the other two - we might as well do this - and a courteous bow. "Thank you, my Lord." He takes refuge in the formality that is being offered. "Hospitality is a sacred duty, and one we accept with gratitude. Please know that the others are under my protection." For what little that is worth, but he does his best to reassure his sister who is clinging to him hard enough that he can feel her fingernails even through the sleeves of his greatcoat.
Jonah rubs his eyes and squints at the figure at is materializes from the fog and shadows. The lantern light an ominous yellow beacon that does little to drive away the cold hand of uncertainty that scratches between his shoulder blades. Fin's sudden shift into noble, 'I'd be delighted to dance with your shrew of an over-privileged daughter mode' helped even less. Still it was likely the correct course, surrounded by the lord's beasts and barely able to walk, they had little choice. And so Jonah politely slips his hat from his head and offers a painful bow, barely able to suppress a cry of pain.
"Indeed, many thanks my Lord." He says after catching his breath. "I apologize for the intrusion. I'm afraid we lost our way and inadvertently landed upon your doorstep. There's really no need to trouble yourself further, we'd be happy to just be on our.....way." The last word comes out as despondent sigh as the creature before them simply maintains its smile and gestures onward.
"Aye, m'Lord." Is all Jonah can say before shuffling forward and wondering exactly how much of his youth this was going to really cost and if he could reasonably pay. For at the moment, he felt much, much too old.
Your host gives a slight smile and a raise of one gracious eyebrow. "Ah, you have hit upon exactly the point I wished to discuss with you! But come in, you are weary. Ease your souls and bodies with such small comfort as I am able to provide."
Lord Scurlock ate earlier - or so he says, and the hour is late enogu that it's believable - but from somewhere, a fine meal is deliverd to the dining room. There are defiinitly servants - you hear tham, as Lord Scurlock gives orders and they obey, shuffling from one room to the next with trays laden with food: piping hot netle soup, sutffed fish, roast chicken - no mushroom and eel pies for the lords - but you never quite *see* them directly. You turn back, and your wine glass has been refilled, and you maybe catch the sugestion of an arm withdrawing from your field of view, with the bottle in hand. Mostly your brain just fills in the details that aren't quite there.
Your host sits with you, and lets you eat your fill in peace. But as the plastes are cleared away - again, you don't quite see it happen, but they were on the table and now they're not - and the brandy is passed around, he gives a smile. "As I said earlier, I would be most interested to hear how you arrived in my poor home. For historical reasons, I have alwasy kept up the wards which my ancestors placed upon this house and grounds, and yet you arrived without a whisper. Had my faitful companions not sniffed you out, who knows what you might have wandered into!"
He gives a long, apreciateive sniff of the brandy before setting it down again. "I must confess, my fist thought was of wrongdoers, perhaps some burglars or even assassins. It would not, I'm afriad, be the first time. But one glance at you was enough to know that, despite your weapons, you were no threat to me." It's a simple statement of fact, not a boast. "And so, something has happend that has not happend in - well, a long time. I find I am *curious* about you, and your tale of how you came to be here. You *interest* me. Tell me more."
He leans forward, his eyes hungry for information.
Finraeth does his best to eat in moderation and not to stuff his face, but it has been far too long since he ate food of this quality and he partakes in everything. Even the fact that everything about this house (down to and including the servants) is somehow weird and/or creepy doesn't put him off his appetite. When their host questions them more deeply about how they came to be here, he is at something of a loss. He strongly suspects that Lord Scurlock's stated interest in them is the sole reason that the dogs were not set upon them, so he feels that a mere shrug and a disclaimer that his guess is as good as anyone else's would not be the life-affirming choice here.
But he truly does have no answer to how they ended up here. Hells, he isn't even sure how they got into the ghost field in the first place; it was just something that Jonah magicked up for them. He seriously hopes that the whisper has an answer that will at the very least prolong his lordship's interest, and thereby their lives.
Jonah's ribs pained him with every breath and the mere act of sitting was more than challenging. Yet, the food before him was something simply unheard of for someone of his lowly status. Actual real chicken, soup that didn't have the stark, harsh taste of eel. Wine from real grapes. It was a feast that he couldn't help but partake at least to some degree. Carefully sipping his soup and plucking another bite from a chicken leg, Jonah's eyes flash between Fin and Cas as their host begins to ask questions. Seeing the others looking back at him he nods as dabs his napkin across his lips.
"Ah...yes. Well, it is a bit of a tale m'Lord." He says tilting his head toward Lord Scarlock. How do they manage to do that?! He can't help but wonder as his wine glass is suddenly full once again, the servants arm slipping back just beyond his vision. He does his best to focus his attention back on their host.
"To be honest, some of which, is still a bit blurry in my own mind. But I will share what I can." He says taking another sip of the wine which seems to help dull the pains in his side and chest. "In nearly all ways the entire endeavor was my fault. As you must have guessed from the paraphernalia hanging about me, I'm something of a Whisper. Mostly minor league, but learned a bit during the war and have been able to parley that into a meager living here in Doskval. As such, my companions and I were hired to capture a ghost recently released into the world by some kind of tragic accident." Another sip of wine to give himself a moment to consider how much this man...creature?...immortal ghost?...needed to know.
"Unfortunately, the creature was in a part of town, we were not able to travel into openly due to the local politics and whatnot. So we took the, perhaps foolish, route of reaching our quarry via the ghost field itself.." He closes his eyes, suppresses a shudder. "I'd done a bit of that type of thing back in the war, but nothing quite of this scale. To our surprise and ultimate detriment, we discovered the location of this ghost happened to match with a section of Doskvol built upon leviathan bones." The awe is still evident in Jonah's voice as he recalls those bones and the massive creature they encountered within the field. "A massive creature. A giant even among its giant kin. How or why it was decided to use the bones of such a monster to build a city upon, I can only imagine. Nevertheless, to get what we needed, we needed to slip through whatever spirit still lurked within." He grows quiet, his face pale as he recalls the various ways the ghost field itself turned upon them. Using their own thoughts, memories, and fears against them. His eyes look upon Scarlock.
"It was a most unpleasant experience being in the ghost field while it was under the...influence...power...control..." He shakes his head and shrugs his shoulders, clearly uncertain himself what to call it. "Whatever it was, once it became aware of our presence, we could not easily escape. It dredged our minds and memories. Used them against us. Loved ones. Old enemies. Pains I doubt any of us had experienced before. It was only through sheer willpower and by completely ending the entire ritual in a desperate last effort to flee that we were able to escape." Another pause, another sip of wine. "We ended up as you found us. Miles from where we thought we would be. Sprawled, battered, barely alive upon your grounds."
Scurlock himself is hard to look at, they eye dosn't want to focus on him for long. But there is an evident espression of glee on his face as he claps his hands when Jonah is finished talking. "Ah, so! You are here becuase you did not intend to be here! Indeed, had you tried, you would have found - well, it is no matter. The wards hold, of that I am content, and the only law at work here is the one of unintended consequences, of which we none of us can escape. It is enough, I am content." He looks at his poicket watch. "Please, rest here tonight, what little hospitaly this poor house can offer is yours. And in the morning I will send for a doctor, your little advenuture has led to much troubles, yes? Much pain, in body and spirit. Yes, yes, rest here and heed no nightly noises. Of course, here in North Hook it is always night, so I joke." And he does seem to be smiling.
"Of course, as the Dread Empreror once said to me in Their wisdome, there is no such thing as hapenstance. So it may be that your arival here, if unintended, still ties our fates together, hm? Yes, yes - somethin for me to think about, much to ponder. Well, go, go - find such rest as the young and vital acheive and the old are left to envy." You are dismiessed, at least for now.
You haeve an impression, or maybe a memory, of being shown to your rooms by servants whose shapes do not linger in the mind. The guest wing is newsly cleaned, the smell of wood polish and dusters still hangs in the air and the beds are ancient vast things of dark wood, silk sheets and seemingsly endless feathered pillows. Sleep is incredilby easy to find.
Finraeth can take a hint (no, really) and he stands to take his leave, with a bow. "You have been a more than gracious host to unexpected guests, and for that I - we - thank you." He decides not to dwell on whatever Lord Scurlock might mean about their "fates being tied together." Sometimes ignorance really is bliss, or close enough.
"North Hook" though, really? It hasn't been called that for - ah. Right. And if anyone else in his acquaintance had ever talked about meeting the Dread Emperor, he'd not believe them for a second. But this one... again, he chooses not to dwell on any implications. His thoughts, his emotions, are run raw enough after today. He's just alert and awake enough to be aware that any decisions he makes are likely to be bad.
With another bow, he allows the remarkably unremarkable servants to lead the three of them away.
Casia, who - in spite of the provided bounty - has barely touched the extravagant meal provided for them, remains silent during the conversation with the lord of the manor, sure that she'd say the wrong thing or that he'd question her teeth chattering as she spoke.
As the three are shown their accommodations for the evening, she moves up close to her brother and gives a nervous glance towards Jonah. "Would it ... I mean ... could I stay in your room tonight?" she asks Finraeth in a whisper that carries like squeaky hinge in the silence of the mansion.
The causal mention of the Dread Emperor sends a sobering chill down Jonah's spine. He knew the man, or whatever he truly was, across the table was powerful. Any fool could see that. Or rather try to see, given the odd obscuring shadow magics and other arcane forces that seemed to imbue every fiber and being of the man and his home. But to have even met [i]that One[/] would have put Scarlock among the most powerful of all the Shattered Isles. To so have actually spoken to Him in apparently casual conversation. Well, Jonah imagined, only a tiny few would ever have such a privilege. Certainly not a minor skov Whisper.
Suddenly, Jonah could barely manage to keep himself from uncontrolled shivering. He told himself it was just the wine on top of pain and exhaustion. But, truth be told, he'd almost rather be back fighting the ghost leviathan than trading tales with this Lord Scarlock. Relief hits like a tidal wave upon his mind when the Lord seems to bid the goodnight.
Although he doesn't really relish the thought of sleeping under this particular roof, when he finds himself standing next to the most luxurious bed he has ever encountered in his life, all resolve to leave simply vanishes.
He'd no memory of saying good night to Fin and Cas, but surely he had. Too late to find them now. Some instinct warned him that to wander this house alone was to wander these halls for all eternity. And so he does the only thing possible, he gets undressed and slides gently under the covers and goes to sleep.
The conversation in the rooms below has taken everything out of Finraeth merely to present his calm and urbane exterior; exhausted beyond power of speech, he simply nods to Casia's request and opens the door for her.
The folowing morning - or what pases for morning in a land where the sun went out a thousand years ago - you rise to find that Lord Scurlok is not around, but he has left a note on the breakfast table giving his apologies. Breakfast - which is of course served in a difernt room from the dinner you had last night - is plentiful and the servants keep you supplied with eggs, bacon, toast and coffee. After breakfast, your host keeps his word and a trio of pysicians arrive to tend your injuries.
After that, you get teh strong impression that it's time for you to leave. As the gates to his mansion close behind you, none of you can help shaking the feeling that it's not the last you've seen of him now that he is in your lives. But time wil tell, as the saying goes.
"That was...odd." Jonah says to Fin and Casia as the gates of Scurlok Mansion click closed behind them. His ribs felt surprisingly better after a nights rest, but their complaints weren't completely silenced by any means. Glancing back at the shadowy building he receives that same headache inducing queasy vision generated by its owner all evening long. Not dwelling on it further, the Whisper turns toward home and tells himself to just enjoy the fact he was upright and walking away. An outcome that was none too certain a short while ago.
Once the spirit bottle is delivered to Quellyn, he hurries back to their hideout and spends the next many days resting, recovering, and attempting to lock some of the darkest memories stirred up by the ghost field back into the depths of his mind. Each attempt met with only limited success. Visions of the war, the Butcher, Jonah-Butcher, young Verretta, and most of all, the ghost of Hutton's daughter. She was very much like Naty and yet so different. Now in the hands of Quellyn and the Dimmer Sisters. Another deed that would likely send his troubled soul to the Abyss. That is, if the gods still existed. Instead he would have to live with the deed. Hellfire and brimstone may have been easier than yet another weighty chain of guilt wrapped around his heart.
So to end his dark brooding, he finally levers himself out of bed and resumes his experiments and research into the ghost field and what causes a ghost to go feral, succumbing to darkness and a need for living blood. More importantly, a way to prevent that grim transformation.
Having not expected to walk out of the mansion at all, Casia looks around at their surroundings in surprise. She avoids looking back at it, though. Her experience inside leaves her wondering what was real and what was an induced fever-dream. She glances at Jonah and then at her brother.
Perhaps it should all be treated as a dream.
Her hand reaches out to clasp at Finraeth's.
"Deliver the bottle and then back home?" she asks, hesitantly. "I need a hot bath so bad and we have the coin for it, right?"
Dream or not, things have changed.
Finraeth has decided to resolve this episode by focusing on the empirical, that which he can perceive with his senses; and most particularly, his taste. The crisp snap of properly fried bacon, the aromatic bitterness of the coffee, and everything else which may or may not be real can be ignored.
As they leave the house (in the correct manner, by the gates, this time) he nods at Jonah's remark. "It was odd, I agree. Normally one expects to be served either streaky bacon or back bacon, never both. I wonder what etiquette book he was reading from."
As Casia reaches for his hand, he wraps an arm around her, holding her as tightly as he can considering the bruising and injuries he has suffered. "I was rather hoping to postpone a meeting with Quellyn until I have a little more starch in my spine. If I have our current whereabouts properly understood, then our path home could well take us past the most delightful Iruvian bath-house. Steam-room, sauna, full-body massages..." He trails off with a smile. "And as you point out, we have the Coin for it."
The place is seedy, but not dangerously so and Finraeth knows it as one of the places that Casia visits regularly. As he steps past the rickety door that serves as a portal to the dark, smoke and stink filled room, he sees her seated near the small stove that provides a modicum of warmth to supplant the heat of the many figures in the room.
Her companion sees him before his sister does and the familiar blonde-haired woman taps Casia's shoulder and gestures towards him. "Fin!" his dark-haired twin shouts out, her voice telling him in a moment how much she's had to drink.
"It's my favorite brother, everyone!" she calls out to everyone in the room. Eyes both neutral and malicious turn and give him a quick appraisal. Seeing no immediate threat, they return to their own business ignoring the drunk woman.
Stumbling to her feet, Casia makes her way to Finraeth with her friend following closely. "Look who I found, Fin! Cinna!" she says, turning and grabbing the blonde by the arm and pulling her closer.
"Hello, Handsome," Cinna says with a grin and a wink. She's clearly had less to drink than his sister. "Long time no see, eh? Casia has been tellin' me what you two been up to lately. Congratulations is in order."
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Min Al-Biruni wakes from the beautiful, dreamless sleep of the Black Lotus to threadbare sheets and a bare, cold room.
He sits up slowly and carefully. The aftermath of a Lotus binge is not pain exactly, but rather depression combined with a bone-deep chill. It will pass, Min knows it will pass, but until it does the world will be a dank and joyless place.
There is a swift corrective, of course: more of the Black Lotus. Min has a single dose left. He will not take it today, nor tomorrow either. He has seen men and women enslaved to the Lotus, writhing in need and despair, their eyes empty of anything but the hunger for the drug. But Min is not an addict, he tells himself once again. Not him.
Moving very slowly, Min begins to prepare himself a cup of tea. As he does, he struggles to piece together his memories of the previous day. He spoke with someone, about something important.
Who was it, now?