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[P] Discovered; Ioann
Topic Started: Sun Sep 10, 2017 7:28 pm (565 Views)
Ioann
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A wave of nausea wracked over him and he stumbled forward, hands on his knees, stomach belching forth its contents in a putrid yellow puddle at his feet.

“I hate shadow-jumping. Now it would please me greatly, Ms. Brooks,” Ioann continued, wiping a soot-stained shirtsleeve across his mouth, “if you would not pull me with you again. While I have no desire to be brought under the Marquise’s Judges, I’ve even less inclined to be an accomplice for crimes I didn’t commit.”

He sighed heavily, nudging a bit of what had been his noontime meal with the toe of his blackened boot, and leaned against the stacks behind him.

“...Though it seems you are quite intent to bring me into whatever game you’re running. What is it, exactly, Ms. Brooks, that you’re after? What would bring a criminal of your - pedigree - into a library, of all places? Surely reliving your past brutalities could be easier accomplished at say, a back-alley chronomancer’s den? That way you could have a little private booth in which to murder your family over and over again. Maybe even pay extra for the staff to splash you with chicken blood at the appropriate times to complete the experience? What use have you of me, anyway?”

It was cruel - and the rumors of her family’s murder simply the unsubstantiated hearsay of underworld fear-mongering - but the time had long past to treat his de facto captor with any semblance of civility. Ioann sighed again and sunk down into a weary crouch, head in his hands.
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♥Cordelia Brooks
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“Do you think they will show you any mercy?” Cordelia looked at Ioann with her eyes narrowed in bewilderment. Awe bent her eyebrows forward, creating deep furrows in her forehead. “Do you think you can just explain that I dragged you along and they would believe—? Don’t be stupid.” The government of Balefire hadn’t cared to hear any excuse she could give. When she returned to Imythess, it was with a piece of paper that had written on it Imythess, Balefire, Cordelia—she barely even knew her name when the law came for her. It hadn’t mattered that she didn’t know who she was, that she didn’t remember the crimes they accused her of.

She couldn’t defend her actions. Balefire didn’t care. Balefire wanted her dead.

And Ioann, now that he knew her name, scorned her in equal measure.

Did you expect any differently?

The austerity in her features softened into pained surprise. This was a rumor she hadn’t heard before. Not even old friends could tell her of the family who raised her. They all claimed not to know, to never have met them. You never even spoke of them, her old friends told her. Was it possible she had killed them? These people whose names she was searching for now—did she kill them?

“Where did you hear that?” Cordelia asked, half-breathless. “Who told you? Were they reliable?”

“Check the entire perimeter!” the Celestial woman called. “They must not escape!”

Cordelia jerked her head in the direction of the sound. Heavy footsteps echoed on the stairs and in the stacks. Not in their corner just yet, but they would arrive soon. Swallowing roughly, Cordelia set her jaw with a look of determination and turned back to Ioann.

“I don’t know who my family was. I don’t know what happened to them. I am dangerous, and yes, I am a liar. You can’t trust me. But I wouldn’t risk my life returning to Balefire for a game. I came to find out where I came from and whether they’re—alive—”

“We can’t find them!”

Look harder!”

“If you’re foolish enough to think they’ll believe you’re innocent, go turn yourself in. I can get out on my own. I have no use of you, not anymore. But you know they won’t believe a word you tell them. They’ll torture you into a false confession. And we are standing here wasting time.”
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Ioann
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It was the last accusation that brought Ioann back to his feet.

“You’re right,” he murmured. The Constabulary in this new era, let alone their Cascadian deputies, was far less interested in due process than prompt sentencing. And forgery was a crime punishable by dismemberment. He eyed his long, tapered, ink-stained fingers for half a heartbeat, then nodded at Cordelia.

“Let’s go.”

He began to climb the shelves, feet wedged between, atop, and beside a rainbow of book spines, unleashing swirls of dust and the occasional satisfying crunch of a ruined parchment scroll. It rocked precariously with Ioann’s added weight and threatened to topple upon him. When he finally crawled atop the bookshelf, he caught his breath and gained his bearings.

“We need to head that way,” Ioann whispered down to Cordelia, arm and finger extended in the proper direction.

“Hello, bobbin!”

Ioann lurched backward as a massive creature of fur and nails and teeth exploded onto the bookshelf beside him, its leap carrying it from a half dozen rows distant. The shelf groaned under the added weight and began to lilt to the side. The lycanthrope stalked toward him on two powerful limbs, yellow eyes glowing, a lupine grin stretched across its face. Its wickedly clawed fingers flexed in anticipation. Then it stopped and sniffed the air with exaggerated mockery.

“I knew I smelled a rat!”

The creature’s malicious, staccato laugh descended into a fit of yips and snaps. It swiped contemptuously at him, playing with him like a cornered rodent. Ioann stumbled away. His incautious steps followed the declining surface, and it began to tilt in earnest.

“Careful where you step, my dear,” the lycanthrope’s warning was twisted with malign amusement, “or you’ll bring the whole house down!”

The creature stomped its paw down on the shelf and was answered with another sickening groan. Ioann’s eyes danced frantically between the ground, the other shelves, the lighting fixtures too high above, before the entire bookshelf beneath him fell into the aisle. He leapt during the descent, extremities pin-wheeling, stomach revolting, breath tight, and smashed headlong into the next stack. The falling unit followed a heartbeat later, battering his new perch with cacophonous thunder and pelting him with tomes various size. One thicker than his thigh slammed against his fingers and he stifled a yelp, nearly losing his grip. Another dozen showered his back and neck and head, planting blooming bruises in their wake.

He felt the new shelf shift sickeningly beneath him, and then it was falling too, with even greater speed than the last, excited to upend its disorganized contents. It landed with a too-heavy crash against its neighbor. And like the roaring dominoes of the fallen gods, stack after stack after stack slammed to each other and the floor, spewing forth untold centuries of documents.

Ioann dug himself from the blanket of texts and scrolls. Deafening crashes still echoed forth as the entire section collapsed around him. He took a breath to orient himself once more, eyed the centrally-located spiral stair that led up from the ground floor, and began to run.
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♥Cordelia Brooks
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As he climbed the shelf, Cordelia almost lunged to tear him down. Height revealed their position—but it also allowed them to gain their bearings. Following his arm with her eyes, Cordelia nodded sharply and slinked toward the spiral staircase. Her body shimmered as, all at once, her appearance fragmented into camouflage. The covers and spines of the books reflected in her body from her face to her knees, and the horizontal lines of the wooden shelves easily stretched across her shoulders and waist. She blended into the background so well it was difficult to detect her.

But the commotion above her head worried her.

While she moved, she looked over her shoulder and up, catching a glimpse of Ioann’s interaction with the werewolf. A frown twisted onto her face. Fight or flight? For so long she had chosen flight. Even now, when she could fight, what she wanted was to escape unscathed—she began to move more swiftly toward the staircase, weaving in and out of shelves, when she felt something hot strike her shoulder.

The bloody bitch herself!”

Cordelia stumbled against a bookshelf with a loud yelp. As soon as she fell against it, the camouflage fell away, revealing her true form and color. A ball of fire had burned through her clothing, scorching her shoulder and part of her ear and neck. Already blisters swelled up on her skin. Whirling around, she came face to face with a horned man who wore a sickening grin of satisfaction. A second fireball rested just above his palm, ready for a toss whenever he ordered it. Facing him, Cordelia began to back up little by little. The demon advanced on her in equal measure.

“The reward money on your head could feed my family for five years,” he said. “I’ve been waiting for this moment for—”

Cordelia disappeared.

She reappeared right behind the demon, a fraction of a second later, and pressed her claws hand against the bottom of his spine. When he cried out, it wasn’t because she had sunk the claws into his kidneys—it was because, with a touch, she had broken vertebrae with a touch. The demon collapsed to the ground. She doubted he’d be standing on his own again.

“Then you shouldn’t have wasted your chance talking,” she snarled.

Not far away from where she stood, bookshelves began to fall into one another, knocking each other to the ground in a neat row. Seeing Ioann rise from the rubble and begin to run, Cordelia grinned widely. On each of those shelves was a string of lanterns—it was that way throughout the Historical Society. A string of lanterns on each shelf, lighting the titles of the books, that were now crushed beneath flammable papers and flammable wood…

It started slowly, with smoke. With an orange glint.

The beginnings of a great fire.

Following Ioann toward the stairs, Cordelia knocked down every lantern string she encountered on the way. She darted into different rows, concentrating effort into destruction. The glass broke against the floor, freeing each small puddle of oil to scatter widely across the floor, where it instantly rose into hulking flame.

OOC
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Ioann
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The wolf was faster.

Ioann was halfway across the intricate checkerboard of brown, orange, and yellow tiles when his legs were swept out from beneath him. He tumbled forward in disarray and landed facefirst, sporting a split lip and chipped tooth from the fall. He scrambled to his knees, but a heavy thump to his back sent him sprawling.

“You look familiar, little piglet,” his captor growled thoughtfully. “Maybe it’s those big eyes you have...”

Ioann rolled over to his back and began inching backwards. It was only a dozen paces to the stair, if he could only make it, and then, and then...

“And those beautiful lashes...”

But the staircase was his life’s distance away. All he had was the thin wooden tube, somehow still strapped over his shoulder, utterly useless in a fight. No fangs, no claws, and no knives. Ioann swallowed drily. He was helpless.

“...Your dear sweet grandmomma didn’t get eaten by a wolf recently, did she? I eat so many grandmommas these days.” the creature sighed softly and ran its tongue over its lips.

It was the hungry, growling flames of a thousand burning texts that distracted it. Ioann watched as Cordelia elatedly dash lantern after lantern into the pyre, coaxing the inferno ever higher.

“Don’t move, my little piggy,” the lycanthrope snarled as it took in the blaze. “I need to blow this fire out.”

Ioann didn’t wait for the creature to form the wards with its clawed hands, nor exhale whatever thaumaturgy it could summon. He surged for the spiral stair, taking the steps in dizzying pairs and triplets.

There was no use waiting for Cordelia. A woman of her reputation could handle the pooch.
Edited by Ioann, Wed Nov 22, 2017 7:19 pm.
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♥Cordelia Brooks
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Sizzling, black energy bolted from her fingers like thin strips of lightning toward the lycanthrope. The magic sliced through his clothing to lacerate his flesh in five deep gashes. Though minor, the wounds were bloody, and the pain was so sudden that it sufficiently distracted the werewolf just long enough for Cordelia to disappear—

—and reappear at the top of the spiral staircase.

Come on!” She shouted down to Ioann. He took the steps so quickly he would reach her in no time. Below them, a great fire roared, and confused authorities tried to catch up to the two criminals who had somehow eluded them. Visitors to the Historical Society scrambled to find a way out of the smoke, while clerks attempted to preserve whatever tomes they could. Authorities were split between following Ioann and Cordelia, helping visitors escape, aiding in the clerks’ efforts, and quelling the fire—and without a clear order, or even clear air to breathe, it was difficult to organize a cohesive decision.

“This way!”

As he neared the top of the stairs, Cordelia gestured sharply for Ioann to follow her. Once she took off running, her shadow lifted from the ground and began to run in a different direction. It took on a more solid, dimensional form, with even the impression of a dark cloak billowing behind it. The goal was to misdirect anyone who came after them, though the first floor seemed blissfully unaware of the churning activity below.

“There’s a window!”

It was tucked away in a reading nook, where on a rainy evening any normal person in Balefire might enjoy sitting with an array of research and a cup of tea. Tonight, it served not as a cozy corner, but as a route of escape. Standing on the built-in windowseat just below the window, Cordelia forced open its old, almost rusted lock and pushed the windows outwards, where like shutters they smacked against the outside of the building. As soon as she did this, a high pitched alarm sounded like a banshee’s wail.

The jump from the window’s ledge to the pavement below was not a steep one—it was a drop of maybe six or seven feet. Once she landed, Cordelia looked over her shoulder to make sure Ioann was still there, then darted off at a powerful sprint.

“Hideout, underground!” Her voice, while running, was breathy and harsh. She pointed toward the end of the block, where a sewer grate sat lifted up just a bit too much from the street. It was false, and never secured to the ground; it would lift away from the surrounding street easily, and lead not to a sewer, but to an underground system of dark tunnels meant to aid the escape of criminals.

Balefire was not quite as tame as Karstoff wanted it to be. There would always be criminals here, and they would always find a way.

OOC
Edited by Cordelia Brooks, Sat Oct 14, 2017 1:30 am.
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Ioann
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Ioann slid through the grate and secured it behind him, breathing hard. It wasn’t the first time the Delver’s Path had saved him. He paused for only a moment to pull the stub of a candle from his pocket and light it carefully, then turned to his companion.

“We need to keep going,” he urged, face cast flickering orange in the glow.

The criss-crossing highways of the Delver’s Path were all too well-known to the authorities. In fact, it was the detainment of the Cartographer, and subsequent acquisition of hundreds of his meticulously detailed subterranean maps, that heralded the first major cycle of arrests during Karstoff’s Taming. But the Delver’s Path, like a skein of axons in some vast neural network, had adapted, and pruned its thoroughfares into a labyrinth of dead-ends, false passages, and choke points. As long as they kept off the major arteries, the likelihood of discovery was low.

Already the pounding of too many feet on the cobbled streets above was audible, echoing through the stone and alchemical crete and stagnant flow of sewerwater. Ioann nodded once at Cordelia, then ducked ahead through claustrophobic twists and turns, darting across wider tunnels and choosing the most branching, obscure paths available. Some were vast avenues, twice as high and as wide as the complex sewer system that plodded along above them. Others were narrow and low, and required the jarkman to crawl on hands and knees, or even slither on his belly like a serpent, to pass through. Only twice did he pause at multi-headed junctions, foot tapping in time with his mind, before selecting a route and hurrying forward once more.

Ioann finally stopped just before their pathway emerged into a wider tunnel and shimmied up a diagonally oriented shaft to one side. He emerged in a small circular stone chamber whose curved walls bled into the ceiling and met at a low-hanging cast iron chandelier secured above his head. Reaching up, the jarkman shared his melting candle’s tiny fire with the chandelier’s many bare tapers. The entire chamber gradually lit in a viscous orange glow, revealing a room of unblemished stone too-like an air bubble trapped within the depths of Balefire’s belly.

“So, Ms. Brooks,” Ioann began as he adjusted the wooden tube filled with documents at his shoulder. He turned to regard this dark, dangerous, inexplicable woman. “I have the unfortunate sense that we may be here for some time given the - conflagration - at the Archives. Let me properly introduce myself, since I don’t believe I’ve yet had the privilege. My name is Ioann Gregori.”

Pausing slightly as if considered the talons she’d used to so effectively dispatch the imp only an hour earlier, Ioann gave a resolute bob of his head - more to himself than her - and offered his hand.
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♥Cordelia Brooks
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Only once or twice had Cordelia used the tunnels of Delver’s Path to escape the authorities. The first time she had lifted the grate fully expecting to land knee deep in sewage, but instead her feet found solid purchase. She hadn’t quite known what the tunnels were, then, nor where they lead. Above her, three-headed dogs barked madly and pulled at their leashes, while she had run through the tunnels searching for an escape. The second time, she had a better idea of what she was doing.

But even now, Cordelia did not have a solid grasp of the paths. Having never seen a map of the serpentine tunnels, she subjected herself to the mercy of Ioann’s experience. Alternately running, crawling, and skittering after him, Cordelia matched his pace so as not to fall behind. Among her various talents was the ability to run for her life—it was, after all, the first thing she’d learned, before she’d learned a single spell or how to hold a dagger as if it were an extension of her arm.

Scurrying up the diagonal shaft, Cordelia pulled herself onto the chamber’s floor and then stood. Brushing dirt and grime from her person as best she could—some of it clung no matter how hard she swiped at it.

“Ioann,” she said, testing out the sound and pronunciation. Her eyes flickered down to his outstretched hand, then back to his eyes. A sly grin spread across her face. “So formal. What do you think I am, a duchess? Cordelia is fine.” Rolling her eyes, she took his hand firmly in her own and gave it a decent shake. By now the claws had disappeared, and thus she gave him her hand as it usually was: roughened and calloused, the nails bitten and scrabbly, and cold as death to the touch.

“The fire worked, though, didn’t it?” Pulling her hand away, Cordelia’s sly grin widened. At last she shrugged. “I didn’t mean to get you so involved. It’s hard for me to know who to trust in Balefire. You looked like my sort, and I thought I could use you. Didn’t think I’d get you into so much trouble. The census should have been easier to get a hold of.”

Pinching the bridge of her nose with her fingers with frustration, Cordelia looked around the chamber that was to be their hideout for—how long, exactly? Perhaps a couple hours, at least.

“I still want to know whether it came from a reliable source,” she said. “What you said about my family. What I did to them.”
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“It did work,” Ioann admitted slowly, “but perhaps it was a bit overdone?”

Her grip was the cold of the grave. Ioann withdrew his hand a bit more promptly than was strictly polite and crossed his arms over his chest.

“Yes, I’ve never heard of the Archives being audited before. Nor the complexity of the layout of the stacks on the ground floor. Strange.”

He paused for a moment and began to stroke his mustache with his fingers.

“It’s almost as if... I know this sounds implausible, but hear me out here... it’s almost as if the Archives itself was placing roadblocks in front of you. Admittedly, I’ve heard of sentient buildings before, as I’m sure you have. But that’s usually limited to lower functions: pain, pleasure, fear, and the like.”

Ioann was growing excited.

“But think about it! The stacks, the imp, and exactly how many constabulary agents were there? A Celestial, a demon, and a werewolf? All at the same time? On a quiet evening in a library? And did you feel that burst of pain and anger when we left? I certainly did – I could barely crawl out the window behind you! Didn’t fade until we’d entered the Delver’s Path, and then only just...”

“What? Oh, the rumors? I-I apologize about that,” he mumbled sheepishly, breaking eye contact. “And the whole bit about visiting a memory-monger and animal blood... that was a cheap shot, and wrong of me. I know what’s it’s like to lose your family.”

Ioann cleared his throat, pushing aside the bitter memories that threatened his composure.

“The source - or sources, I guess - were completely unreliable. You know how gossip spreads in our circles. You’d think all of us were a bunch of schoolyard vamps or something...”

His voice trailed off. After a pregnant pause, he looked her in her cold blue eyes.

“Again, Cordelia, I’m sorry.”
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♥Cordelia Brooks
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Again, Cordelia, I’m sorry.

With a dismissive wave of her wrist, Cordelia rejected his apology. “You didn’t hurt my feelings,” she said. “I’d have to have feelings for that.” She gave a hollow, self-deprecating laugh at her own poor joke. The disappointment in her features, evident in a frown and a sudden softness around her eyes, emphasized that sorry wasn’t what she’d wanted from him. Even if she’d murdered her family, at least she would have known what happened to them. A mother, a father, a sister—what were their names? Where had they lived? What happened to them?

The answers lay in ashes.

Unfastening her cloak, Cordelia eased it off and grimaced as she moved her shoulder. The fabric of her cloak, where it would have rested over her shoulder, was eaten by flame—a chunk of it was missing, and the surrounding threads were blackened and scraggly. Twisting her neck, she glanced at the red, blistered skin as best she could and hissed at the sight of it.

“It sounds stupid and paranoid when you say it out loud,” she said, “but maybe it isn’t so implausible.” Maybe her friendship with Keelin affected her in such a way that she leaned toward believing conspiracy theories. Maybe her predilection toward distrust, in combination with her status as zakona, resulted in an intense paranoia when it came to the lengths Balefire might go to trap her.

“Do you think the building knew? That I’m zakona.” Worrying at her lip, Cordelia began to pace in long, slow strides about the chamber in thought. “It’s a government building. I disguised myself with magic when I walked through the doors, and even used a false name at the front desk. But maybe—maybe when you cross the threshold, the building is somehow… alerted? There was enough time…” A fire lit in her eyes as realization dawned. When she began speaking again, she was excited by paranoia, as if she had just made a connection.

“There was enough time. From the time I entered the building, to the time we went downstairs to that imp—in the time between, the authorities could have been alerted. Three of them could have come. The Celestial, the demon, the werewolf. Three on one: they couldn’t have known you were with me. You’re not zakona, are you? Just a regular criminal. Not wanted dead. That imp—maybe it was the imp’s job to keep us occupied long enough for the proper authorities to arrive. Stall us. Gods, what if it was an illusion?”

Cordelia wrung her hands. She was electric with thought and hot with panic. Her hairline felt damp with budding sweat.

“Maybe the records aren’t burned. Maybe we were just supposed to think they were. That whole room—it seemed wrong, didn’t it? Like it wasn’t really the census information? The imp put you to sleep. Maybe they didn’t want you to be a problem when it came to arresting me. Maybe I didn’t kill him because he wasn’t real. Maybe the authorities just needed to know where we’d be so they could trap us. Me? Us?” She gestured between them, unsure whether both of them had been wanted or not. It didn’t matter. They were both wanted now.

“Wait, wait—you burned your hand, didn’t you? Touching the door handle? I can heal it.” She nodded her chin toward his hands, unsure which one he’d burned or how badly.
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Ioann
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“Uhhh,” Ioann sunk into a crouch, burying his face in his hands. “I’m an accomplice now. And no, I’m not important enough to be killed on sight. Or at least I wasn’t.” He winced and offered up the ink stains on his burned hand as evidence, “These hands are more capable covered in ink than blood, sorry to disappoint.”

He let out a long sigh, then rose to his feet and began to pace the narrow confines of the chamber.

“You’re right though – the whole thing with that imp was just odd. I mean, I’m no wizard, but I understand the basics of planar wrinkles,” he offered a quick grin, “as a layman, at least. Red always keeps a few hedge wizards on the payroll, and I always keep my ears open. Anyway, so the gateway to that little anomaly was set into the bookshelf, and as soon as we crossed the threshold, we were in a pocket that’s bigger inside than out. Simple. What I don’t understand is, why let us out again? Why not just shut the door and slam a heavy padlock on it?”

He did a few laps.

“I mean, Red’s done it a few times with some of his... business rivals, I guess you could say. It’s a effective way to make someone –POOF–,” he gestured vaguely with his unburned hand. “Unpleasant as the thought is, if they’d have sealed the gateway, we’d still be stuck there. Well, we until you got bored enough to kill me, then it’d just be you.”

The last he meant as a joke, but his inflection flattened given the context, and he stopped pacing.

“Er, sorry.”

In an effort to change the subject as quickly as possible, Ioann continued, “Oh, yeah, I did burn my hand – my good one, the right.”

He showed her his palm. It throbbed; the pink, angry skin was already blistering up.

“Oh,” he swallowed, mind drifting to the implications a ruined hand would have on his work. “That’s... quite a bit worse than I thought it was. You can heal it? You won’t... suffuse it with necromancy, or anything, right? I don’t want to wake from sleep strangling myself or anything.”
Edited by Ioann, Thu Oct 19, 2017 12:59 am.
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♥Cordelia Brooks
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"Guess you'll just have to take your chances, won't you?" Cordelia grinned a cat's grin. "Unless you want two bad hands." Wiggling her fingers with playful malice, she took Ioann by the wrist, and fixed his palm upwards so she could get a good look at it. Blisters swelled out of the angry flesh. Then, curious, she glanced to his left hand. She exhaled a soft breath of a laugh through her nose.

"Get bit by a cerberus?" The sheriffs were fond of three-headed dogs. The additional teeth made for a frightening creature to deal with. Assessing his palm once more, Cordelia warned, "This will hurt for a second," then closed his hand between both of hers: one on top of the injured palm, and one beneath. Her hands began to glow with a faint white light, and then whatever pain Ioann might have felt upon her initial touch ought to dissipate. The spell soothed first with an analgesic property, then began to mend the damage. The glow intensified until, at last, it faded as the spell's effects tapered off.

If it didn't heal completely, it would at least put him farther along the road to recovery than he would have been otherwise. As Cordelia drew her hands away, it was apparent there was something odd about them beyond their temperature. Smooth as melted wax, her fingers lacked the whorls of her identity, and her palms lacked lifelines and heartlines.

"You're still not important enough to be killed on sight," she said. "Who isn't an accomplice in Balefire?" She waved a hand dismissively. "Anyway, I'm not sure I understand either. The clerk could have locked us in there. Maybe he forgot? But that seems too convenient. Maybe—the fire triggered some mechanism to unlock the cell? Balefire wants me dead, but I think they want to make an example out of me. Give me a proper public burning, something like that. They couldn't run a stake through me in the town square if I burned to ashes in a pocket plane. And so the lock mechanism released, and you opened the door, burned your hand… Moments later, Celestial lady shows up to make sure everything is okay, because they need us alive. However briefly."

This was exactly the sort of conspiracy Cordelia would have laughed at if her friend Keelin brought it to her. Even now, Cordelia couldn't help but laugh quietly—a hollow, surprised sound. "Gods, the lengths they'll go to," she said. "I don't even remember what I did. I'm sure it was murder. Probably more than one. But I've got no recollection of doing it. I even tried to be good for a little while, tried to do something heroic so they'd take my name off their list."

She shook her head. "Wasn't worth it."

She'd come to her senses now. If she was born with a crooked heart, then she would always have a crooked heart. No amount of trying to prove to herself that she could be good or kind would change the black, mangled, unbeating organ in her chest. Swiping a hand through her hair, Cordelia reached up to tie it back and hissed instantly at the pain in her shoulder. She'd forgotten about the burn until she had to move the affected joint.

Brows furrowed, Cordelia gave Ioann an impatient look as if to say just a second, then braced herself against a wall of the chamber. Setting her palm over the burned area of her shoulder blade, Cordelia drew a deep breath, closed her eyes, and grit her teeth as her palm glowed white. "Shit!" At first the injury appeared worse: the blisters grew larger, her bones were visible beneath her skin. Even as her opposite palm turned into a fist against the chamber wall, Cordelia didn't remove her hand until the glow dimmed, and her wound disappeared.

Panting, Cordelia let herself lean for a moment longer before reeling back. Tying her hair back quickly, she set her hands on her hips, forcing herself to endure the residual, lingering pain. "Vampire," she said to explain why a spell that didn't hurt Ioann would make her writhe.

"So who's Red?" she asked. "He gonna wonder where you are?"
Edited by Cordelia Brooks, Thu Oct 19, 2017 5:28 am.
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“So I gathered.”

Droll sarcasm hardened the response. If the gaunt, pale, icy blue-eyed stare hadn’t themselves revealed his companion’s vampiric proclivities, her teeth and talons proclaimed it beyond doubt.

Ioann flexed his healed right hand and lifted his left to mirror it. His slender fingers were smattered with the ink of his trade. Mostly black, but the decorative blues and greens and reds from the deed had bled onto the edges of his palms where the burn and Cordelia’s healing hadn’t cleansed them.

“Certainly doesn’t look like a ghoul’s mangled claws,” he murmured. “Red? He’s my boss. Real name’s Yuri Viskovien, but everyone calls him Red on account of his penchant for violence. I’ve been working for him for nearly twenty years.”

He let out a long exhale and finally sat down, positioned directly across the small chamber from Cordelia.

“You know how it is in Balefire, everyone’s got a boss. The Morozhen District – that’s where I... I’m from, I guess you could say by now – it’s like any other place in the city. A dozen petty crime lords competing for the same stretch of cobbles.”

He stretched out his legs, musing.

“Twenty years. That’s a long time in a place I thought I’d be for a holiday. But then I found Red, and the time just flew past me. Never thought I’d be here twenty years later. Doing what I do. But it keeps food in my belly and a heavy lock on my door, and humans like me, well, in a place full of predators like you, we need to stick together.”
Edited by Ioann, Sun Oct 22, 2017 1:12 am.
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♥Cordelia Brooks
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Cordelia cocked her head to the side. Yuri Viskovien. Squinting with thought, she searched her memory for any mention of the name or the sobriquet, Red, but her careful deliberation yielded no results. Although she hoarded small details, scrawling even the most infinitesimal and frivolous of particulars into her personal journal, it was impossible to recall everything. Certainly she had no dealings with him, at least not in this second stage of her life.

Maybe a long time ago Red would have meant something to her. It was just a color now.

“I’ve never heard of him,” she said. “But then I don’t usually entangle myself in property squabbles.” As if what she involved herself in were somehow of a superior category. She shrugged her shoulders. The movement didn’t hurt so much now that she’d healed her injury. The skin still felt a little stiff, and tingled with traces of leftover pain—as if she’d burned it under unexpectedly hot water, and not been the target of a magic flame.

While Ioann sat, Cordelia leaned back fully against the opposite wall and looked down at him. Arms folded over her chest, she listened with a churning jealousy as he spoke of where he was from. How lucky he was to know where his story began. She had not been so fortunate.

A wry grin came to her mouth. “Careful. You’re alone with me now. No telling what I might do to you.” The statement, made mostly in jest, still possessed an eerie quality about it—perhaps because Cordelia didn’t altogether sound like she was joking. The amused smirk on her face made it difficult to discern whether the prospect of harming him seemed silly to her, or considering an array of options as to the precise method she would utilize to make her strike.

Deciding, at last, to make herself comfortable, Cordelia sat herself down cross-legged. Leaning an elbow on a knee, she perched her chin on top of her knuckles.

“So was it your lifelong dream to work for a mob boss, Ioann?” she asked. The amused smirk grew somewhat in her features. “Gods, a holiday in Balefire? Twenty years ago?” She whistled, as if impressed. “At the height of all the murder.” She didn’t remember it, but she knew she’d lived here. A Balefire native, she’d grown up here, married here, spent her life here—and remembered none of it, now.

“You were either very brave or very stupid.”
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Ioann
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“Gods... we were probably both,” Ioann murmured softly. His eyes, unfocused, gazed into the orange glow of the chandelier, his flippant comment a trigger for rememberings better left dormant.

“No,” he eventually interjected, “had you asked me as a child, I doubt I would have articulated dreams of villainy. Nor would most, excepting the urchins of our beloved city, I suppose. But we are as the world makes us. What choice is there between starvation and damnation? I, for one, am too weak of body – and probably of will – to let the former take me when the latter might grant me one last breath.”

Ioann shifted with obvious discomfort, voice a bit raw, unaccustomed to the length and depth of their conversation.

“What about you? The whole amnesia bit... I’ll grant you I’m no physicker or fortune-turner, but seems to me that your memory loss is a bit selective, no? What do you remember? Maybe if you put what you know in place, a few things will tumble after?”

He chewed his lip indecisively for a moment, then added, “And what’s next, now that you’ve been spotted? While the memory of the Constabulary is long, so too is their list of names, but you’ve undoubtedly jogged back to the top after tonight. Will you go to ground again? Or keep up your search?”
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