Blades in the Dark (GM Sarah)

Game Master Sarah 'queen' B.

Finraeth gives Casia a sardonic look. "As ever, dear sister, you see but you do not observe. The solution to our problem has been pre-created - by our earlier actions. I refer of course to the young woman whom Lolo so fortuitiously shot dead before burning down the building she was in before the Spirit Wardens could, er, spirit her away."

"All we need to do is find her spirit, bottle it, and sell it to Quellyn. We get well-paid and Naty gets a reprieve. I would call that a win."

He holds up one finger, as if to pre-empt any objections to this insanely dangerous plan. "Now, is the dead girl the daughter of a gang boss who hates us? Yes. Does this require us to infiltrate said gang boss's turf? Again, yes. Will said gang boss likely take grave exception to us taking away his daughter's ghost? Almost certainly. But as the poet almost said, what is life if full of care, we have no time to put ourselves in mortal danger?"

Jonah scoffs when he first hear's Fin's supposed deal. Surely the young man was suffering from blood loss. Or perhaps he hit his head harder than anyone realized yesterday. It is only after several seconds pass and the Skovlander sees the all to serious look on Fin's face as well as the disbelieving look on his sister's that Jonah realizes this isn't some ridiculous joke.

"Putting ourselves in mortal danger would be a vast understatement." He says drily as it sinks in that this was indeed the proposed plan of action. But then something else clicks within the chaotic whirlwind of thoughts circling within his mind. Something had changed over the last weeks. The four of them gathered here were no longer the ragged group of strangers trying to survive and make a bit of coin for themselves. Oh, we are still ragged and still barely surviving. The Whisper thinks as he looks at Fin, Casia, and Lolo. The cutter standing slightly hunched because of his ribs. But we're certainly not strangers anymore. In fact, these...friends, comrades...are willingly offering to put their lives on the line to save Naty.

That realization of what's being suggested and why cracks the usual mental and emotional armor worn by the whisper and former soldier for a doomed cause. His eyes take in the faces that surround him in their drafty, musty, shadow-filled tower. He swallows.

"I...I thank you all. Not just because you didn't simply sell Naty and I out. But for even contemplating such a dangerous and fool hardy solution." He says quietly, clearly moved and put somewhat out of his depth by recent events. "After the war. After what those of us who fought saw and experienced, I thought I'd never get close to anyone again. I see now, that I was wrong. Thank you, my friends. Thank you for your help and standing by me and my rather careless ghost of a sister who somehow got herself Traced and created this most unfortunate circumstance."

He bows his head and closes his eyes for a moment. Clears his throat. Pulls one of his rolled smokes from the little case. Lights it. Draws a long deep burst of the sickly sweet smoke into his lungs and slowly releases it. Steel gray smoke still hangs and swirls around his face as he looks up again. The spark of action once again flickering brightly in his gaze. He grins at Fin, Casia, and Lolo.

"So if we are actually going to pull this one off, we're going to need a plan."

Lolo's thinking on this issue was more direct - one well-placed bullet from a sniper's nest would solve the Quellyn issue - but as she tosses over Finraeth's idea she's forced to admit that it is a good, if incredibly risky plan.

They'd get rid of yet another ghost that wants vengeance on them - well, particularly Lolo - and there was perhaps more to come of it as well.

"Eh," Lolo says, laying a reassuring hand on Jonah's back, "You'd do the same for any of us. Hell, you've done the same."

"And there's something that occurs to me. What if we bottle the Grinder ghost and then wait until she's safely with the sisters - and then tip off the Grinders that she's there? There's going to be no love lost between the two groups, and we may just get rid of a rival or two."

Casia shakes her head incredulously. "And, as ever, dear brother, you, and that poet you endlessly quote, are off your nut," she declares with a roll of her eyes. Making her way to one of the rough cots, she sits on it, pulling her feet up to wrap her arms around her knees.

At Jonah's declaration of comraderie, she declines to contradict him. Surprisingly enough, with the exception of the ghostly sister, she has begun to think of the others as family. Which, based on her experience over the last year or so, meant that something horrible was waiting in the wings to break them apart.

Pulling a brown bottle from one of the deep pockets of the cloak she wears, she pulls the cork and draws a long swallow to push back the fears.

"And there's something that occurs to me. What if we bottle the Grinder ghost and then wait until she's safely with the sisters - and then tip off the Grinders that she's there? There's going to be no love lost between the two groups, and we may just get rid of a rival or two."

Finraeth raises an eyebrow, before giving the redheaded woman a grin. "Ruthless and underhanded. I like it."

For several seconds, Jonah stands there stone-faced, staring at Lolo. It is unclear whether it is some sort of seizure or if the Whisper's odd experiments have finally started to take their toll. Then slowly his mouth opens. Closes. Opens again.

"Daring. Possibly suicidal. Clearly too insane for any normal person to even consider. Most certainly ruthless and underhanded." He adds with a head tilt acknowledgement toward Finn. Then he shrugs and breaks into a wicked grin of his own. "Sounds like a Dusk Mite job through and through."

15 MARCH, 847 IE

After a few weeks of prep adn rest, you gather again in your hideout as Jonah begins the rituatl that will allow you to use the ghost field as a way into the Grinder turf. Whatever ingredients have been gathered together are ceremonially burnt, which should leave the room filled with choking smoke, but instead it gathers to a point and billows away, through a doorway that appears in the middle of the room. The door is wooden, old beyond imagining and pitted with woodworm and mildew. The cast iron handle is white with frost. it's not the door from some cosy wardrobe which leads to a child-friendly adventure where everyone comes back for tea. It's the sort of door that would make you quicken your steps if you walked past it in the street. It opens, silently. Inside, you can see a road of mist that leads you out of your hideout and into the Dusk beyond - the Dusk as it is/was/will be/never were. If you can navigate it, you can walk straight into your destination without worrying about the Grinders. If.

As you enter the doorway, each of you is met by a different smell, something deeply evocative from your past. What scent is it, what memories does it bring up, and how does it make you feel?

The smell punches him in the face like an imperial cannonade. Stepping through the open black maw of the doorway, Jonah finds himself back in the trenches weaving across the rotten fields north of Lockport. The war had settled into a brutal stalemate for the last several years. The rebels never having the resources or manpower to breakout. The Emperor never willing or able to invest or commit enough for a real breakthrough. So the two sides fought over the same patches of devastated semi-frozen mud and death.

That first day arriving in the trenches taught him the true hell that was war in the Shattered Isles. The smell creeps up on you. As you march closer and closer to the front line. At first it is just a hint of death or filth. Something you might pass while walking along the docks at any given time. There and gone with the next breeze. But with each step closer, the foul vapors grow stronger and stronger until all the breeze brings is more rot, more gagging stench of overflowing latrines and cesspits. The occasional rat eaten body rises from the sucking, sticky mud on a nauseating bubble of gas that bursts polluting the air even further. It is a horror that even the Twilight Sisters can't recreate with their dark magics and mysticism.

It took the young soldier Jonah nearly two weeks to finally become accustomed enough to the stench that he didn't wake up gagging every couple of hours. Now. Stepping into the ghost field, a veteran of more atrocities than he would ever care to count, Jonah stifles that kneejerk need to empty his stomach. It takes a few minutes, and his face is still pale with a bit of green tint, but eventually he swallows hard checks on the others to make sure they are okay and then puts one foot in front of the other just like any good soldier. After all, they had a job to do and Naty's unlife depended on them getting it right.

With as many daggers as she can stash in her clothing, Casia stands facing the doorway for some time, building up the courage to walk through it. She reaches out and clasps at Finraeth's hand for a single panicked moment before releasing it and stepping forward and through.

Jonah blocks her view and she has a hard time taking in their surroundings, but she's immediately hit with the scent of sandalwood and vanilla and her gut clinches. That was the scent Desmona always wore. When she was still stupidly innocent, that scent was enough to fire up all her nerve endings and kick her arousal into overdrive in anticipation. But all it does now is generate a low level of nausea and she tries to wave the smell away. It does fade to be replaced by the feint wisp of pipe smoke, musk oil, and just the lightest bit of stale sweat. She frowns.

"Papa?" she murmurs, looking around for the source.

This time, though, the scent is quickly overcome with the smell of burning wood. And then the sickly smell of burning flesh.

"I'm sorry, Papa," she whispers. "I didn't know. I was stupid." She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath to clear her head. She realizes her mistake almost immediately as the now, almost overpowering, odor of a burning body causes her to choke back vomit. She coughs and tries to get control of herself.

"We need to keep moving," she says to the others in a hoarse voice.

Finraeth frowns. Whatever undead stench he was expecting to waft from that dread portal (yes, it looks like a door. But any entry into something like the Ghost Field gets called a portal and that's all there is to it), this was not it. The smell of home cooking greets him as he steps through. Not just the cooking. The thousand, thousand small familiar scents that he remembers from his boyhood, that greeted him every time he stepped inside the front door of the home he shared with his family: mother's floral scent; the myriad myriad different perfumes Cassie tried out before finding the one she liked (even now, his skin prickles at the memory of lavender); the smell of father's pipe; and everywhere the subtle tinges of wood polish and floor soap - cleanliness, in the Spinther household, ranked far above piety (and now that he knows, he wonders idly to what extent his parents were literally trying to scrub away their criminality and emerge into respectability).

Dozens - hundreds - of nostalgic memories flit across his mind, memories of things he thought he had long forgotten.

He would gladly stay here and linger in those memories of a happier time. But it was built on a lie, and the past is not somewhere you can visit. Shaking his head to clear it, he bites his lip and does his best to press forward.

Lolo is through the door as fast as she can be, intent of making sure she - and the weaponry she carries - are in the way of whatever lies beyond. What she expects to find, however, is not Fiona. Not this Fiona, mewling and new, a girl borne in the dark, yes, in the rickety, dripping, gusty flat that Lolo and her husband rented at the time, the flat seemed to creak and breathe as if it were settling in on itself, comfortably shabby, and comfortable with its state of disrepair. Fiona - they'd decided, but it was her father's idea - her cries echo in Lolo's ears, plaintive and upset, crowding out even the rise and fall of Lolo's quickly relaxing breath.

But it is the smell, that new born smell, once the birthing fluid and blood is rinsed from her in the bucket the doula brought with her, that stops Lolo in her tracks. The doula placed Fi on Lolo's breast, and Lolo leaned in and her daughter's scent overpowers her. It is almost indescribable, something and nothing all at once, the smell of potential, of a vessel waiting for love to be poured into it, something so full of promise, with no trauma or disappointment or fear yet within it.

"Gods, just another minute here," Lolo mutters, plaintive, as the others brush past her. The smell is already fading, and guilt sweeps into the vacuum as Lolo realizes she wasn't even sure if she'd seen Fi today. Lolo stands her head held high, eyes closed, gathering what she can of Fiona's smell while the others push on.

The memories of your poast threaten to overwhelm you at first, but after a few momemtns you all manage to push them back. Even better news, when you stubmle forward through the doorway you all ememrge together on the other side.

You are standing in a street in the Dusk. It's probably a street near where you were - the memory of your tower is nearby, but it hasn't been built yet. Etiehr that, or it has been demolished. Crow's Foot is empty of poepole, but it makes up for that by being *full* of buildings, all imposed on top of each other like some mad architect's plan. Out the corner of your eye, you see the tower that is/was/might be your lair, but as soon as you turn to look at it, it is swallowed up by scaffolding and stone and tarpaulin. Entire streets and avenues open up in front of you, before disappearing again as houses and plazas and canals loom in to take their place. It's an entrancing, slow motion feast for the eyes. But it's not taking you any closer to your destination.

And alwasy, at the edge of your senses, the shifting flutter of the unquiet dead - not seen yet, jsut as they have not yet seen you. But time is fleeting on. Maybe.

Now...in the Ghost Field

Jonah pulls what looks to be a pocket watch from a pocket in his coat. Arcane runes circle the cover and back of the watch, each one glowing with a bright crimson that pulses like a beating heart moment to moment. Clicking the cover open, the watch releases an eerie, ghoulish moan that simply echoes into the nethervoid of the Ghost Field.

Seeing the looks from his companions, he shakes his head. "Don't worry, it always does that."

Handing the watch to Lolo, he clips it to her belt and points at the blood red watch face inside. There everyone can see the marbled silver hands etched with more tiny, tiny runes and the stomach twisting numerals of the outer circle.

"Here, here, here and here." He points to what should be a 12, 3, 6, and 9 but seem to constantly shift into strange, unknowable symbols. "Generally north, east, south, and west by the longer hand. Smaller hand is distance. Twelve is right on top of it. Six is too far for a descent reading...I think."

"Visualize the girl." He says to Lolo knowing this could be the hardest part for her friend. It was never exactly easy to take a life. To have to relive it as clearly and vividly as possible. It was no easy thing to ask. "Anything you remember of her and those final moments. We're trying to strengthen the connection between you and her ghost. That'll activate the watch."

Casia looks over Lolo's shoulder at the now-haunted watch, waiting to see it react.

Even knowing that they probably won't do any good, her hands grasp nervously at the daggers she holds. But it's something better than what she'd like to be holding. No. She'd told Fin that she'd be clean for this mission and she's going to hold up her promise. Of course if any mission warranted a drink, it would be this one. Travelling through the Ghost field, by any stretch of the imagination, is utterly insane. And with a potential leviathan to avoid or deal with ...

"How long does it take for that bloody thing to work?" she snaps.

The girl was easy enough to visualize; that moment, no matter how much she'd tried to wipe it away with any vice she could get her hands on - Lolo casts a wide-eyed glance back at Finn - that moment was seared into her brain. The green eyes, not so different from Lolo's widening, the soft grunt she let loose, her hand rising to the ceiling, slicked with blood. Her eyes rolling backwards, her fingers sagging, her head tipping, as the girl fell backwards, dead before she hit the ground.

Woman, Lolo corrects herself, she was an adult, and she made her choices ending where they did, just as much as you.

A frown crosses Lolo's face, the watch-face glows, its arms spin, and Lolo steps forward, looking to Jonah, certain her friend would keep Lolo on the right path...

Strange wisps of vapour-taht's-not-vapour seem to tangle around the watch as Lolo holds it up, and just at teh edge of hearing you can all catch what sounds like grumbling, a small child that knows it's morning but isn't quite ready to wake up just yet. The dials on the clock spin, first one way, then the other, but it seems to make sense to Lolo at any rate as she confidently points teh way forward from here. The tendrils of not-fog brush at you all as you walk through the memories of Duskvol as it might be and never was, your footsteps ehcoing through the emptiness of the dreamworld.

Mabye it's because Casia is used to living her life in a fog and seeing things that arent there, or maybe her senses are honed from her trade as the team's theif and burglar. Either way, she is teh only one who spots the next obstacle just before it becomes a real danger.

"D-do you smell that?" Casia asks with a frown, sniffing the air. "Something's ... burning." As she takes another breath to sniff, she begins coughing and the others smell it as well - burning wood - and it's growing stronger. Smoke that fills the lungs and makes it hard to breath.

The fog around them appears to transform into the interior of a old warehouse, neatly kept, but filled with an acrid smoke. Flames lick at the edges of the area, surrounding the group. "We ... we need to get out! Now!" the girl calls out, panic filling her voice.

"Cassie?" a man's voice calls out from up above ... somewhere. "Fin? Help ... help m..." The voice fades and Casia shakes with restrained sobs. "Out! Now!" she shouts through her tears. Another voice can be heard faintly among the crackling flames; A woman's laughter.

Finraeth looks puzzled at first, but his narrowed eyes - have you been drinking, sis? - suddenly widen with alarm as smoke billows from somewhere, and the roar of flame glows through the endless fog. "What the-?" His curse is lost as he splutters from a mouthful of smoke, and he wraps one sleeve across his face and looks around for the others. He knows this place, he and Casia both know it, and he points. "The door - that way - follow me!" Bent double to try and avoid the acrid smoke, he leads the others to the way out.

As teh ghost field draws on Casia's inmost thoughts, the smell of smoke and the scorch of flame becomes more and more tangible until you are almost surrounded by it. This memory of a warehouse, once neat, starts to fray almost as soon as it comes into appearance - rows of shelving, once ordered, buckle and warp and what was once a claer path to the exit starts to shift and lead you astray. You break into a run, but the ground itsel starts to crack below you and gouts of flame shoot up like marsh gas.

And out of the flames, a figure walks towards you. Once a man, now horibly burned - in fact, still burning, their clothes and flesh igniting into flame which they try to beat out as they stagger towards you. "Casie. Fin." The voice is cracked, the trhoat and mouth parched byond healing. "Fin. Cassie." The melting face looks around, the eyes pits of flame, blind.

"Cassie. Fin."

Finraeth's expression passes through a number of different stages as he gapes at the tormented, scorched, husk that is shambling blindly towards them. "F- father?" The expression he finally lands on is one that he rarely permits to see the light of day, and his companions might not immediately identify it as he runs towards the man, throwing his arms around him heedless of the flames...

...and flinging him, as hard as he can, against the nearest wall, before pummelling him over and over again with his elbows and fists.

"BASTARD! YOU ****ING BASTARD OF A ****ING ****!!!!!"

Oh, yes. His expression: it's pure, unbounded, rage.

He continues to thump the memory shaped like his father, even as he continues to shout.

"Why! Did! You! Never! Tell us! A damn! ****ING THING! You! Liar! You! Lied! To Us! Our! Entire! LIVES! BASTARDBASTARDBASTARDBASTARD ****ER!!!!"

As the memory-form crumbles beneath his fury, he still isn't done. He picks up the skull with both his hands and holds it aloft, forcing it to stare at Lolo and Jonah. "Look at them. F#+@ing Look! At! Them! Did you trade in their lives, buying and selling their people like they were just some... Commodity?!" He turns the skull around, staring directly into its eye sockets. "I'm ashamed of you. I've abandoned the family name and I will never take it on. And I'm not even going to let you look at Cassie. You've lost any right to call either of us your children. Now Get. Out. Of. My. Sight."

He lets the skull go; as it falls, it connects with his boot as he drop-kicks the memory of his father's remains as far as he possibly can, before dusting himself down and readjusting his waistcoat as he regains his composure.

"I'm glad we had that little chat. I feel much better now we've cleared the air."

Casia stumbles to a halt as the simulacrum of their father appears. She opens her mouth to speak. Whether what followed would have been a plea, apology, or something else entirely, will never be known as her brother takes the initiative to vent his long contained frustration.

Once he's finished, she continues to stand stock-still with the sole exception of her hands which shake.

Fin's rage tears apart the scene, flames and all, disapearring back into the void of teh gohost field. There's a "thunk" from soemwhere in the distance as the skull that he kcicked lands back on the ground, but the only other thing remaining is the sound of the woman's laughter, and it sounds different to each of you.

Jonah watches the skull of Fin and Casie's father sail off into the aether as the ghost-flames of the warehouse fire slowly dissipate along with the cutter's rage. The whisper starts to breath a small sigh of relief only to have it catch in his tightening throat as feminine laughter echoes from the fog shrouded ghost-alleys.

He spins back and forth, peering into the darkness for any sign of the source, which just cause the laughter to grow wilder.

Each word drips into his ear like ice forming a spear directly into his heart and soul. Naty! Naty no! He shouts in his mind.

"I've tried...tried to be there. Tried to save..." The words escape his lips filled with panic, heartbreak. Guilt. Oh so much guilt. In so many ways she is right. If he hadn't left her alone at home. Sure there was little choice when the conscription squads came through, but I could have escaped. Could have at least got out sooner. Instead I fought and fought and fought. For what? A pathetic cause that was lost from the beginning. Too late! I came back oh so late! It all threatens to overwhelm him. Tears run down his weathered, haggard face. He takes a step toward the darkness his eyes boiling with madness and guilt.

"Fair...yes....should....go..." Jonah stutters, taking another step away from the path. A third step and he is nearly halfway there. Can feel the luring grin eagerly drawing him forward.

Somewhere deep within his mind a tiny voice screams of danger and warnings and foolish pride. Screams to reverse course before it truly is too late. Too late to save himself. Too late to truly save Naty. Slowly, ever so slowly, the voice grows in strength and volume until it's cries drown out the aetherial laughter and mocking malevolence. She is not gone! It shouts across the broken towers of his mind. You fought because you must. You saved what could be saved. Kept her from the oblivion of the Wardens. Stop now and she will truly be gone. DO NOT ABANDON HER AGAIN! His mind rages. The words snap him awake and he stumbles backward. His lungs gulping air until he can finally compose himself well enough to lurch forward along the path pointed out by the watch.

The gun in her hand shakes, Lolo takes a deep breath, closes her eyes, and opening them again, speaks, her voice calm. "If you're really here, Jelsya, then I've failed my daughter and myself. Because I'm the one supposed to send you here."

Spinning slowly in a circle, Lolo takes her companions in for a second, but they all seem - physically at least - unharmed, so she keeps talking.

"But, if you're really here, getting to talk with you is almost as good as getting to send you here myself. I am responsible for a lot, that's true - but my husband's death, my tumble into criminality? That's all on you, boss. You brought the ghost ship in without any real planning or contingencies. You treated your employees like serfs, not like the free beings we are. You reaped, and now you will sow, even if you are here."

"Because I'm going to build your workers up, get them what they deserve, if not at your expense, then at the expense of your family, of your name. They'll build a statue of me in your shipyard before I shuffle off into the dark."

Lolo sighs, runs her hand through her hair. "But, I think I'll get to tell you all this to your face. Or Jelsya's face, at any rate. You're not her. You're malevolent, for sure, but if you could hurt me - really hurt me, not just taunt - you'd do so. And that you don't show yourself, not-Jelsya? That just means your afraid of me and my gun, which I assure you, I have no plans to turn on myself. Why don't you come out of hiding, not-Jelsya, so I can prove it to you?"

With all the resistance seemingly drained out of her, Casia drops to her knees. It would be so much easier just to give in. No one would have to deal with her and her weaknesses and failures any more. Without even noticing that she's done it, Casia finds one of her knives in her hand. She looks the blade over and wonders whether it will actually hurt or not. She touches it to the thin skin of her wrist, feeling the slight twinge as the edge lightly breaks the surface. Not so bad at all. The woman's voice continues, twisting words spoken in the dark of the night under warm sheets into slivers of pain that this blade could never match.

She shifts the blade's position and readies herself for one neat slice to end the pain. Just then, something swings into her vision, blurred by tears. The ghost charm slung around her neck. She moves to push it out of the way, over her shoulder, but notices that something else is tangled up in it. The silver rose. But that's not possible. She sold it weeks ago. Didn't she? In frustration and annoyance, she pulls the tangled charm from around her neck to look at it more closely. No charm. Nothing but an illusion and a tease. Anger surges over her fear and self-loathing and she flings the broken piece of bronze away from her and wipes her eyes.

Stabbing her blade back into its sheath, she wipes the traces of red from her wrist and pulls her sleeve back into place. Nothing but illusions and lies.

Jonah - opver to you :)

Jonah wipes a sweaty hand over his eyes and takes in a lungful of smoke-free air. Nodding wearily at Fin, it takes a few moments before he realizes the others aren't there.

"S$%t! Casia! Lolo!" He calls into foggy void. Distorted echoes are the only grim response. He makes a quick, wild spin, but there's nothing but those eerie shadow buildings, roiling fog, Fin and himself. No real sign of the others. Until...

A figure slips down an alley waving the all clear. A flash of red hair and the gleam of a pistol in the dim ghostlight. "There..." He says to Fin grabbing the young man's arm and hurrying him down the alley. A door whispers closed just as he and Fin arrive. A glance up and down the alley, reveal nothing but emptiness.

Jonah quietly opens the door and slips through into the narrow hallway. Footsteps. Soft shoes brushing stone. He hurries along. Music plays. A quartet doing a passable job at some imperial waltz. Up a narrow set of stairs. The soft tink-clink of crystal glasses toasting wealth and excess. Laughter and chatter. All of it drifts from the top of the stairs.

Jonah and Fin slip up to the landing and suddenly both are surrounded by a gaggle of middling imperial nobility. Sipping wines from thin fluted glasses and dining on enormously expensive pheasant, peach tarts, caviar. The Imperial Governor of Skovol stands near the front of the room, holding court with the Colonel Anton 'The Butcher' Scaldi and several other members of the military staff for the Imperial Expeditionary Force.

Dancers twirl and swirl in a dazzling display of gold and silver trimmed fabrics, all in time with the latest music being sent forth from the Royal Conservatory.

"There!" Jonah hisses to Fin nodding his head to where he just caught a glimpse of Lolo and Casia entering the opposite side of the ballroom. He starts to raise his hand to get there attention when a icy cold river of fear crackles down his spine. He twists his head back to Scaldi. Saw both cold blue eyes sparkling as the killer of nearly five hundred unarmed Skov men, women, and children tilts his head back and laughs at some seemingly witty remark from the governor. He looks beyond the governor, sees young Pritchard, the man's son and the groom for this little affair amidst war and famine and poverty. He sits waiting for his Skovlander bride to return from freshening up. A wait that Jonah knows will last an eternity.

Eyes wild and filled with fear, Jonah spins to Fin. "We've got to go! Now!" He says, spinning back toward the door.

Only it is much too late. The explosion is already ripping through the massive silver tureen's. Planted by his own squad earlier that day and wheeled in by Jonah himself. The devices were meant to cause as much damage as possible while offering an even greater distraction. For the true threat wasn't the flying metal that catches The Butcher in the left eye and ends up decapitating the Imperial Governor of Skovland. The true threat is the humming, buzzing, ghost swarm that comes swirling out of the massed Imperial centerpiece.

It had taken his infiltrators nearly three weeks to gather the hundreds of bits and pieces of souls from the ghost field. Most swarms consisted of animal spirits. Rats, eels, the occasional goat or cat. Simple, primitive spirits who almost always died under duress. Thus making their ghostly remnants especially angry and deadly. Pure instinct. Pure drive to survive.

The hungry buzzing ghosts rise up like a waterspout over the Dark Sea and then come crashing down upon the screaming, stunned, crowd. Feeding. Killing. Decapitating the cream of the Imperial War Effort and stalling the inevitable for a few more months.

Finraeth's last sight of Casia before she fades out of view is of her dropped to the ground, the glint of metal in her hand as she presses it to her wrists. "Cassie! No! Don't...!" He gives a despairing cry as he dives for her, only to end up face-planting on the ground as she vanishes from his sight. He helplessly pounds his fists into the spot where she was only moments ago, before getting up and dusting himself off.

"I have decided I do not like this place." He makes the announcement to Jonah, but anything else he was about to say is cut off as the whisper grabs at his arm, apparently having seen something he himself did not. Bemused, he allows himself to be led into a scene like something from a novel: music plays while officers in full military regalia chat and toast one another over their imagined victories. He's just starting to brighten up - now THIS is more my sort of place - when Jonah calls the alarm and runs for the door.

In the Ghost Field, a whisper at full sprint outranks everyone. He doesn't ask questions, he just nods and follows Jonah - or he would, if the shockwaves of the explosion didn't slam him into the floor hard enough to make his teeth rattle.

"Amendment: I have decided that I definitely do not like this place." Over the chaos and confusion, he barely hears his own words.

Shoving all the fear and insecurity back into the little box dedicated to it in the corner Casia's mind, she stumbles to her feet. With neither Jonah or her brother in sight, she grabs Lolo's hand. Casia's skin is cold and clammy, with a trickle of crimson running down her wrist.

"If we don't want to stay here forever, we need to move forward," she says through gritted teeth. She looks around, clearly having no idea which direction is actually forward. "That way," she says finally. "We need to go that way."

Finraeth shakes his head to clear the ringing in his ears, before grabbing hold of Jonah and shouldering his way forward through the press of bodies (both living and dead). He trusts the whisper to keep the path clear of any ghosts while he focuses on clearing a path at all.

Feeling Fin's grip on his shoulder, Jonah shakes himself out of the immediate daze and stumbles along after the fallen noble. He tries to avert his gaze from the surrounding chaos and carnage, but it is a futile effort. To his left a trio of rat-sized ghosts plunge their toothy maws into an Imperial guards back ripping flesh and pulling out a rapidly fibrillating lung. To his right an richly dressed courtier claws wildly at a bat-winged spirit with half a dozen probing tentacles that jab out at the woman's eyes, mouth, and nose. Across the room, the Butcher pulls himself to his feet, one eye dangling against his cheek. His enchanted blade, said to have been bathed in the blood of one hundred Skov prisoners, swings on a diving imp spirit. With a flash of eldritch power the blades cleaves the small spirit in half and the Imperial warrior starts to stagger off.

Wrapping the harpoon ghost charm securely around his wrist, the Whisper lashes at any of the small swarming partial spirits that fly toward them. One, two, three vanish in quick, rancid puffs of ectoplasmic spray as the leviathan slayer's magic proves as potent as the colonel's dark magic blade.

Continuing to follow Fin, it takes several minutes for Jonah to realize they just keep circling the room. Locked in a never ending loop of chaos and death. His arm was starting to grow tired. The weight of the charm heavier and heavier until. His reflexes slower and slower. He barely manages to block a long, six legged, reptilian thing before in could seize Fin's leg.

He pulls the cutter to a stop, lungs gasping in an attempt to gather enough oxygen.

"Going...circles....no...out..." He puffs.

That is when his gaze lands on the young woman sitting crosslegged in the center of the room. Hovering actually. Over the body of the young groom. Her long ginger tresses are curled and piled atop her head only to cascade back down her shoulders like a blood soaked waterfall. Her eyes burn with fury and hatred. A rage aimed at those dying around her, most especially her betrothed.

Like so many in those circles, young Verretta Vale, whose family were the owners of the Vale Electroplasmic Consortium, was betrothed to Aldo Davva, Imperial Governor's son, so her family would gain a substantial foothold in the larger Imperial markets of Doskvol and Imperial City. When war broke out in Skovlan, the Vale's believed they were above and beyond such petty disputes. The wedding went forward. Unfortunately for them, their daughter was a patriot and young Aldo, was an abusive, mean spirited boor who had wild, impossible, aspirations of being Emperor some day.

Verretta had come to them with the plan. Clelland was still in charge of Jonah's company at that point. They'd infiltrated Lockport and were under orders to create as much havok as possible with the Imperial supply lines. There was simply no way the Captain was going to pass up the golden opportunity to behead the Imperial snake that held the city in its grip.

At the time, young Verretta conjured memories of Naty for Jonah. Similar thin frame, blue eyes. But where Naty's hands were already calloused and her muscles hard from work on the farm, Verretta's hands were soft, pale, with lacquered nails that sparkled in the lamp light as she glided across a dance floor. Jonah had tried to talk her out of the plan. To let any of them, him, be the ones to release the containment spell. But she was adamant and she would have access. He always hoped she'd died in the initial explosion rather than the subsequent carnage that took place until the Imperial Wardens arrived in force.

Looking across the room at that floating figure, Jonah struggled with his memories. Naty's voice whispering guilt and betrayal in his ear earlier. Now Verratta's hatred and rage, all of it a wasted sacrifice for a lost cause.

Laughter echoes in the grand hall. Dark and menacing. Youthful and vengeful.

"Who are you?" Jonah shouts, anger and frustration tinting his voice. "Show yourself or let us pass, else you face your own doom."

Laughter echoes. A mocking counter to the lingering cries and screams of the ballroom vision.

Four little gangsters, listen to them plea.
Murderous scoundrels, watch them bleed.
Smell their fear trespassing through the dark.
Feel the pain lancing malformed hearts.
Killers. Rivals. Fools.
Dragging tragedy and chaos in their wake.
Prisoners chains they'll never break.

Each word rebounds across the high ceilings and stone walls of the massive ballroom. Feminine pitched. Childlike at times. Like nails across slate. Sending chills along bones. A blend of Naty, Verretta, Fin and Casia's mother, Lolo's former crewmate, Jelsya. And one other. A voice Jonah doesn't recognize. Can't recognize, because he had never heard it before. Only a dying gasp had he ever encountered, as a girl collapses against the wall of a burning bar.

The Whisper staggers backward. Jonah retains enough forethought to drag Fin along with him. Desperate to escape, he spots the loose duct, the grate knocked free in the explosion.

"There!" He shouts, pointing in the direction of the narrow black opening. He breaks into a run, even as the laughter intensifies into a ear bleeding screech of fury

Finraeth steps forward past Jonah, and reaches beneath his longcoat to draw a weapon of his own: a heavy, curve-bladed knife of Iruvian steel. Here in the ghost field, it resonates with age and the blood of those it has killed in the many long years since it was forged (it has had many owners before it came into his possession). It's not the sort of blade that has a name - it is a weapon, a tool made for the single brutal use of killing and dismemberment.

He doesn't bother bringing it up in a salute to his dread opponent; he simply steps forward, blocking his enemy's sword and plunging his knife deep into the man's chest.

Even as his enemy grasps and throws him, Finraeth is rolling with it; he feels the jarring collision with Jonah in almost every bone in his body, but he jumps back to his feet, the lessons of dozens of fights now engrained in very core of his muscle memory.

Protect yourself at all times.

Stowing the knife back in its sheath, he instead pulls the ghostbane charm out from under his shirt and brandishes it commandingly at the Butcher. As he does so, he moves to put himself protectively in front of Jonah as the whisper struggles to his feet. "I don't know or care what grievance you or your memory have against this man. He travels in my company, and you shall not have him. Now I suggest you leave, before I truly start to show you my displeasure."

Jonah reels under the spiritual assault. But it isn't the Butcher's gruesome visage or the deadly glow of malevolent power in his dark blade. No, it is the words the draw carve the aethereal wounds upon his heart. Each mention of the innocent lives lost seems to diminish his physical presence little by little until he himself feels as if he were the ghost haunting the halls of the world.

He tries to rally his mind. Throwing up all the usual defenses he'd used since the horrible conflict came to an end upon the death of the Skovlander Queen. He spouts these off at the leering ghost even as Fin draws forth his harpoon ghostcharm.

"They were traitors, knowingly serving the enemy."

But the ghost shakes his head.

"They were Skovlanders, doing what they needed to do to put food on their table, a roof over there heads. What choice did they have in an occupied city?" The ghost counters. The same argument that had long lay buried within his own mind.

"I was only following orders!" Jonah shouts desperately.

"Ahhhh...the true plea of the guilty. Someone else told me to do it. How many times was I simply following orders Skov? Most think I am called Butcher because of a few small incidents with prisoners and the occupation. But the moniker began with the Battle of Jibbering Pass."

"I'd...orders...to take the pass at any cost. And so I did. Lost four-fifths of the Second Division that day. Blood rain like snow melt among the rocks. My men hated me for driving them ever up and onward into your Skov positions. A thousand or more fell for every hundred paces gained. But in the end we took the pass. I followed orders."

"Does that wash the blood from these hands?" The ghost rages holding out a hand dripping with crimson. "No...I think not. Nor will that simple minded thought wash it from yours."

Jonah tries again. Yet another rationale for the atrocities he'd been responsible for committing. "I always did my best to limit the losses, but we were at war with a far superior force. We fought in the only ways we could."

The ghost throws back his head and cuts loose with a mocking, chilling laugh.

"So you held back to save lives? Reduced the power of your magics? Your bombs? So one or two would be saved, perhaps only maimed horribly rather than killed outright. And what if those weakened blasts, the changing of targets to spare lives simply LOST YOU THE WAR!"

The final shouted words drive like stakes into Jonah's gut, doubling him over. His breath comes in great wheezing gasps. Shaking hands try to find a cigarette in his pocket, but he pulls out nothing but a handful of worm riddled grave dirt.

"No..no..no..." The Whisper whispers madly. His mind beginning to shatter as the doubts, questions, guilt that had been lingering in his mind for so long can no longer be held back. But even as he feels himself slipping away, he hears Fin's defiant words. Words based in the fact of who the cutter was now, not the rash noble youth he used to be. Using that thin thread of difference, Jonah manages to weave a rope just strong enough to keep himself from plummeting into the depths of madness.

For he to was different now than the ignorant youth of the war who thought he fought for noble reasons. Who believed it the righteous justice of the cause. Now he simply fought for folk like Fin, Casia, Lolo. His friends and companions. He fought for Naty and those other innocent souls who might be saved if his work truely flourished and he discovered ways to keep ghosts from turning into feral, deadly monsters. Slowly, painfully, he claws his way up that thin rope, struggling against the mental storm churning from the shard of leviathan spirit.

Finally, nearly exhausted he reaches the summit of the mental crevasse an slips safely back onto solid ground. Peering at the ghost, his eyes cold, colder than the dead spirits single black orb, Jonah smiles back at the ghost.

"You're right. That youth was no better or worse than you. We waged war and it turned us all into monsters. There is no escaping that fact. But while you continued to be a monster long after the fighting was supposed to be finished, I've become something...else. No angel, for certain. But I take no pleasure in taking life. I do what I can to help those who have helped me and those who cannot help themselves. It is a hard world we live in, with hard, terrible decisions to be made at times. Sometimes I will do right, sometimes not. I must live with those choices. As you must live with yours."

"Now begone Butcher, else it will be as Fin says. We will be more than obliged to deliver you to the true gates of death and oblivion."

Living with his choices. An easy thing to say, Johan whispers within his own mind. Hard thing to achieve. He raises his hand, ready to lash out at the Butcher's ghost with the harpoon charm.

*CRACK*

The sound of his spirit mask breaking startles the ex-soldier. The clatter of the pieces dropping to the floor, louder than an artillery barrage. His eyes watch the scattered remnants of his former self slowly dissipate into the aether of the ghost field.

He looks up. A crack runs along the butcher's face. The same angle as the mask. Half the bloody visage, that with the dangling, mangled eye, is gone. In it's place is a single guilt riddled, angry emerald orb, peering out over, stubble covered cheek and narrow chin. A small scar just along the jaw where Jonah caught a bit of shrapnel when he was in the trenches outside Arvaedh can be seen.

"Well come on then!" Butcher-Jonah shouts brandishing the black blade. "Come slay the great evil. Do battle with your most hated enemy. Let us fight to the bitter end."

Jonah's heart thumps in his chest, the blood pounds in his ears is like a kettle drum played by a drunken giant. For a moment he snarls, takes a step forward. He'd been trying to slay this particular beast for oh so, so long. It was time to end it all...

But something has truly changed within the Whisper. The shattering of his wartime spirit mask has shattered something else. That need to punish himself for deeds done under those horrible, inhumane conditions or war. The guilt driven anger and need for revenge. It is all...not gone...but no longer so all-powerful within his being. No longer the most important thing driving him in life. There are others now. Friendships. Studies. Folk who could use a second chance. A ghost of a sister who really does need his help.

He looks up into that gleaming eye and snarling face. Takes a long deep, shoulder shuddering breath. Releases it.

"I forgive you."

Three simple words. Each one rings with more power than a master arcanist's lightning generator. The words echo across the ballroom. Causing the entire scene to ripple. They are not part of a strategy to escape. They are not an excuse or mental justification. It is just simple, honest, and truly felt forgiveness. For himself. For who he was and what he did. But also forgiveness for all those other young soldiers on either side of the lines who were in much the same place. Fighting because they must, were ordered to do so, believed they were doing the right thing. Fighting, killing, dying, trying to survive.

The war was over. Tears run down Jonah's weathered, cheeks. He lowers the ancient piece of harpoon and waves the ghostly fragment away. Because, for the first time since Queen Alayne's death and the Skov surrender, Jonah felt at peace within himself. No longer felt the raging whirlpool of guilt, anger, and helplessness drowning him from the inside out. There were plenty of other monsters lurking within the depths of his soul, of that he was certain. But for now his internal ocean was becalmed and serene.

"Come on." He says quietly to Fin, wiping at his eyes. "Let's find Casia and Lolo and get out of here."

"We are not enemies, you fool! Why do you side with this Skov against yuour own? Can you not see we're at war?"

Finraeth looks at the man with an expression of towering contempt and opens his mouth to unleash a verbal demolition, ranging from his character to his dress sense, when he is pre-empted by Jonah's far more devastating act.

There is a long silence before he nods in response to the Whisper's words. "Agreed, let's get moving. And - for what it's worth - I'm sorry for what was done to you, your family, your country. I know I didn't do any of it, but somebody should apologise to you."

As the silence falls, the scene around you turns slowly into mist, the vaporous figures streatching out in impossible and awkward ways before scattering on the breeze. Fin, Cas and JOnah find themselves back on the ever-chanigng streets of Duskvol-that-neverwas. There's no sign of Lolo.

"FIN!" Casia cries out in a ragged voice. With no thought to any other threats she throws herself into his arms. Holding him tight as the sobs of relief shake her small form.