| Welcome to Imythess, the border between dreams and reality. We hope you enjoy your visit. Imythess is a creative writing board where you narrate the story of a character in the medieval land of Imythess, on the planet Chaon. Each topic is an opportunity for your character to interact with the world and its peoples by cooperatively writing pieces of a story with other members, one post at a time. We call this role-playing, because you assume the identity of your character as if it were your own. In order to play, you must register an account for each character you would like to write about, and begin their tale by filling out their basic profile information: Race (human, elf, demon, etc.), class (warrior, mage, etc.), physical appearance, and any other personal details you would like to describe. You are also encouraged to come up with some background history information for what your character's life has been like up to the point at which their story in Imythess begins. There is no approval process or application required to join, so long as you follow the rules then you are free to write whatever character details you choose. Registration is simple, fast, and completely free. Create a character now! If you're already a member, you can log into your account below: |
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| Twilit Crossroads [P] | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Sun Nov 12, 2017 9:02 pm (569 Views) | |
| ♥Cordelia Brooks | Fri Dec 22, 2017 6:01 am Post #16 |
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“You’re kidding me,” Rhys shouted. And yet the volume of his voice did not change that the document was gone, stolen by some miscreant. A plume of anger shot up in his chest and he smacked his hand down on Vigaard’s desk. Mouth parted with disbelief, he ran his tongue along his lower lip, holding back a spew curses by sheer will alone. Sheer will and, truthfully, some measure of feeling impressed. Rhys had little doubt the little shit who’d stolen the documents worked for none other than Red himself. Markova employed children sometimes; the urchins of Balefire would do anything for coin. “Aye aye, captain,” Rhys said. He gave Vigaard a loose salute as she exited the room, then sighed. A job half-accomplished left more work ahead. Grisha asked him to persuade the station of Red’s fault, and he’d succeeded—but now he needed to learn the identity of the jarkman, with little time and fewer resources. Nodding to the Sheriff, Rhys left the office to consult his vast records for any jarkmans previously arrested. As he crossed the station, a junior inspector returned, looking pale, uncertain: “The body was stolen,” he said. Rhys paused. He looked to the junior inspector, who explained a debacle concerning Sanitation. A wagon of two people had arrived when he’d ordered a full crew—nevertheless he’d helped them load the body of the stone-man into their cart. And then the full crew had arrived, saying no one else had been dispatched to handle the removal— Rhys barked a laugh. “What a cluster[removed],” he said. No motive. No body. No documents. After rolling his eyes, Rhys took two steps toward his office and then paused. “Wait. The two sanitation workers. Give me a description.” |
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| Ioann | Tue Dec 26, 2017 3:24 pm Post #17 |
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“One was big – real big – must’ve have some Stribergian stock in ‘er,” Deputy Inspector Karstov stuttered, voice slipping back into the clipped brogue of his Morozhen backalley roots. He fiddled with the chunk of metal in his pocket, but after a determined pause, consciously removed the hand. Didn’t want to contaminate the chrono’s read on it. “Nose was all crooked, like...” Damn. “...like she was a bruiser. Shit. Sorry, sir. Should’ve put it together. Was the other one that did the talking – average height and build, graying hair, mustache.” He gulped, that recurrent, fearful nightmare of being led away in irons didn’t seem such fantasy anymore. “I- I’d recognize ‘im if I saw ‘im.” He pulled out the sphere of splitter shrapnel and presented it to Rhys. “Sorry sir, but I should’ve run this over to the chrono a hour ago. If you let me drop it off on the way, I’ll go with you. Let me make up for...” he paused, inclined his head for a moment, trying to find the right words. “I can ID ‘em, sir. Even without the bibs.” “He touch anything other than the documents?” Vigaard kept one hand pressed against her flank. Her forehead was slick with sweat, hair disheveled. But she kept a steady pace of slow, deep inspirations and pursed-lip expirations. She was woozy, but if her eyes were closed, she could almost pretend... “Not that we know, ma’am,” Aldrich interrupted, “Saw the perp as he fled the scene. Me and Grinkov pursued for a few blocks but he-” “-Yeah, we’re clear on what happened next, constable. During pursuit, the perp remained visible the whole time, right? Didn’t shadowstep or teleport or any other magecraft?” “No, ma’am. We maintained line-of-sight the whole time.” Vigaard sighed. “You brought the dogs in here yet?” “The... dogs?” “Yeah, the [removed]ing dogs, Aldrich,” Vigaard replied, calmly repeating the slur. “Our perp is either the world’s most gifted ten-year-old sprinter or he’s a bite-sized little vamp. Not much else moves fast enough to outpace Grinkov. Now unless you got a better idea, I'd like to call in somebody who can sniff the bastard out.” Aldrich frowned. “Of course, ma'am. I’ll call in Temple. She’s on patrol, but just over on Forty-second. Brody’s off duty.” As Aldrich went to fetch the werewolf, Vigaard groped around for the nearest chair in the station’s bullpen. When she found one, she sat heavily and let out her breath, eyes still tightly closed. Ioann twisted out the sequence of glyphs on the lock’s faceplate. It gave a click of acquiescence, followed by a heavier series of clunks as the deadbolts slid free one after the next. With a protesting creak, the reinforced gate swung up and outwards. Ioann climbed back aboard the wagon beside Tossack and reined the nag into the warehouse, then jumped off to secure the door behind them. “I... can’t look at him again, Ioann.” Tossack’s voice was resigned. From where he stood behind the wagon, Ioann couldn’t see her face. But he could picture it. “It’s fine, Benji. We can just... Why don’t you head inside. Take a moment. I’ll be in in a few.” He heard the wagon creak as the big enforcer let herself down and stumbled into the safehouse. Ioann sighed, then pulled himself up on the wagon’s backstop and opened the back flap. Inside, the body of the stone-man was well into rigor, arms frozen at his sides, face contorted. Ioann climbed in and, crouched beneath the canvas canopy above, studied the corpse. The stone-man’s unyielding carapace was all glossy black, except where a few scuffs had tarnished it around the eyes and over the joints on its hands. His eyelids were stuck open, and despite Ioann’s efforts, resisted the attempts to close them. Branded over the clavicle, Ioann saw the mark Tossack had referenced. It wasn’t a wyrm, it was an ouroboros, wrapped around two uneven stacks of coins. Ioann’s let out a slow breath. He knew what the sigil meant, even if he didn’t know who placed it there. But he knew how to find out. “Zaxibus.” Under his breath the name came out like a curse. TEN BELLS Karstov pounded his boot against the squat doorframe, still sodden with the morning’s drizzle. Purple paint flaked off, shedding like dandruff with each kick. After a pause, he started up again, harder this time. No lights winked back from beneath the drawn shades. The lazy fool was still asleep. On his fifth iteration of thunderous kicking, Karstov finally heard the telltale clicks of the locks. And then the door swung inward a crack, revealing a single eye and sliver of face that gazed up at him from the shadows. The silver links of the door chain were visible in Karstov’s lanternlight. “What?” a nasally voice croaked reproachfully. “Open up.” “’stoo early. Come back in the high time.” Again the image of being led away in irons flashed in Karstov’s mind. He stuck his foot in the doorway, reached down through the gap to grab the lapels of the chronomancer’s maroon velvet robe, then wrenched him forward, into the edge of the door. The creature let out a grown on impact, but didn’t resist. Didn’t, or couldn’t – the strength differential was actually in Karstov’s favor for once. That didn’t happen often for a human in a place like Balefire. “Open the door, Tem.” The fey groaned, but Karstov heard him slowly rise. The door closed for a moment, then reopened once the chain was withdrawn. Tem beckoned them inside, one hand rubbing a blooming bruise on his otherwise flawless, bald forehead. He closed the door behind them. “We need you to run this,” Karstov produced the lump of splitter shrapnel from his pocket. “Tell us who shot it.” Tem blinked for a moment, eyes narrowed on the object, then turned back to Karstov with a sigh. “Why don’t you constables ever learn? That’s not how chronomancy works. It’s not that simple. And please, don’t give me an assignment right after inflicting head trauma, ya? It... slows down the whole process,” he gestured vaguely at his head. “Listen Tem, I don’t want to hear excuses.” Karstov crouched until his eyes were level with the chronomancer’s. “Two constables were butchered in the street this morning, and the third took these bolts to the gut.” He didn’t say how his own mistake had delayed the investigation, but then, it really wasn’t any of Tem’s business, was it? “I don’t care how chronomancy works. Just give us a name.” The little fey shook his head slowly, hesitantly exploring a newly-formed lump that had risen beneath the bruise, then extended his diminutive hand. Karstov slapped the sphere into it and turned back to the street. Edited by Ioann, Tue Dec 26, 2017 5:23 pm.
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| ♥Cordelia Brooks | Sat Dec 30, 2017 8:48 pm Post #18 |
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“You better be able to ID them,” said Rhys. And so he went with Karstov to visit Tem, the chronomancer who would be able to determine who shot the piece of shrapnel into Vigaard’s abdomen. The entire situation was laughable—or it would have been, if he didn’t feel that his own life were at stake. He didn’t care so much that Karstov had been tricked; it didn’t reflect well on the department, but nothing ever did. What he cared about now was making sure Markova didn’t kill him, or worse. He’d done what Grisha asked. He’d persuaded Vigaard that Viskovien was their man. But now he was tasked with pursuing the jarkman himself, along with the errant gang members who had duped Karstov. If Markova’s men didn’t come after him, Viskovien’s would—they hadn’t hesitated to attack the carriage, and were audacious enough to send someone into the station to retrieve the documents. Once they’d finished with Tem—Karstov was showing off a bit, Rhys thought, but it made no difference to him—the two were back in the street. “Do you have any idea where they were taking the body? What direction they went in?” he asked. He looked around, mapping Balefire in his head. From where the body had been discovered, where might two criminals take it? Anywhere, he thought. There were still too many safe places for the underbelly, some of which the department knew about and some that were still utterly unknown. “And gods, please tell me you’re competent enough that you noticed whether or not they were human.” “The body’s gone,” said Agata. She waved her hand over the mirror, dismissing the image of Rhys and Karstov. Their voices disappeared at once from the room. She lifted her head to look at Natasha, but her older sister was across the room, pouring a heavy serving of wine into a goblet. A generous moment passed and still she did not acknowledge the vision Agata had seen. “Natasha,” said Agata, “I said—” “I heard you.” Natasha turned. “I didn’t tell you to stop scrying.” “And I told you it doesn’t work that way. It isn’t safe.” “Give me the mirror, I’ll do it myself,” said Natasha. Natasha crossed the room to the round table where the mirror lay. Agata moved to stand in front of it, head bowed in the way that rams duck their heads before a fight. The pair of sisters each had ram’s horns spiraling from their skull, and each was thickheaded enough to fight over a scrying mirror. “We watch in short bursts. That is how this works. You make the rules for everything except this,” said Agata. “Do you want Grisha to go help them follow the scent of the body?” “I don’t care about where they took the body,” said Natasha. “The body isn’t what I want.” Sighing, she backed away from the table, and slumped into a cushioned chair near the window. Nursing the wine, she looked outside, watching the shadows flicker in the motion of the lanterns’ flames. The door swung open and slammed against the wall. Agata turned at once, but then she was frozen. She could not move her head, or her arms, or close her eyes for even a second. She could not reach for Grisha, or spring across the room to Natasha. “You did not pay me.” There was a voice that filled the room with sound, but no body from which it came. A chill ran down Agata’s spine. Grisha could not move either—the only person who could move was Natasha, and that was only to speak. “I did pay you,” she said, “with my own eye—” “An eye which you replaced,” said the voice. “I will be taking what is mine.” “I already paid—” Natasha’s voice cut off into a scream. The figure appeared at last like dismal fog, with hands of roiling mist and a body of pure smoke. Despite the softness of its frame its claws were sharp enough to sink into Natasha’s skull with ease, popping both the replaced eye and her single remaining natural eye out of place. “Thank you,” said the voice. The door slammed shut. Agata sucked in a deep breath. Her knees buckled. Grisha stumbled out of the chair. And Natasha kept screaming, loud enough to fill the house and the street. |
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| Ioann | Sun Dec 31, 2017 4:07 am Post #19 |
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Ioann flicked out his pocketwatch again. Ten minutes after tenth bell. Bales was late. And if Bales was late, Ioann would be late to his appointment with Zaxibus. The temperamental old coot would be furious, if he didn’t cancel the meeting outright, and no one else could translate the ouroboros and coins as quickly and painlessly as the Speaker. With a sigh, Ioann replaced the watch in his frock coat and snapped open the newspaper, trying to blend in with the mid-morning traffic at the Morozhen Central Station. The station had grown considerably in the last few months as intrepid scorchliner barons capitalized on the booming industry. On the platform upon which he waited, leaned up against one of the support pylons, a young mother about to board one of the ‘liners was arguing with her son who’d decided the perfect time to assert his independence was right before climbing aboard. A clerk looked on with irritated boredom. Elsewhere hundreds of other passengers and pallets of cargo filled a dozen and more platforms. Ready to be corralled, loaded, then shipped on the spikes to Cascadia or New Salem or one of a score of other stops along the way. It was a risk meeting Bales at the station, but crowds tended to offer surprisingly better cover for clandestine meetings than lonely alleyways. The downside, of course, was you never knew who would overhear you, but that risk was omnipresent in a place like Balefire. “E-excuse m-me, sir, but can you spare some ch-change?” Ioann felt tugging at the corner of his frock coat and turned sharply, newspaper forgotten. “H-have to get home for dinner with me m-mum.” Bales gave a wicked grin, then let it fall back to his best impression of a meek urchin. “Knock it off!” Ioann whispered fiercely, but it only seemed to encourage him. “J-just a ha’moon or two’d do it!” Ioann stole a glance. The mother and child, and their scorchliner, had already departed. The platform was starting to fill up with the next group of passengers, but in the lull, he and Bales – to any observer, a man fending off a beggar-child – might attract attention from the guards, if only to shoo off the child. “This isn’t the time, Bales. Did you get the documents?” “P-p-please sir, not the knife! You knows how I hates the kn-knife!” “Bales! Do you have the documents or not?” “Course I got, Ioann,” Bales snarled, whimpering façade dropped in an instant. He patted his coat. Beneath it, Ioann heard the crinkle of paper. “You got my money?” “I got your money, kid,” Ioann muttered, a trace of resignation soured his relief. “It’s wedged under the bench, there,” he inclined his head at the seat a few paces behind the vampire. “Go wild.” Bales pulled out a yellow-and-black striped envelope and held it to Ioann. ‘EVIDENCE’ was stamped on it an alarming number of times in red ink. As Ioann reached for it, the vampire jerked it back, just out of reach. “I don’t like playing fetch, human,” he spat. “And I’m not a ‘kid.’ Next time the price doubles.” Ioann’s stomach churned. It wasn’t wise to forget that Bales was a ruthless little shit. That unique mercilessness of childhood had never been outgrown – only sharpened by immortality. And there were too many people around to risk his temper. “Fine.” Bales grinned and handed him the envelope. “Good-” he stopped, eyes widening suddenly to something behind Ioann. “How the fu-” “What?” Ioann turned to see what had captured the little vampire’s attention. A group of constables led by a lean werewolf whose nose tracked low to the ground was walking toward their platform. One – an inspector by the look of her uniform – pointed at the two of them. He couldn’t hear her words over the buzz of the growing crowd, but the intention was unmistakable. He snapped back to Bales, but the latter was already gone. “Watch your tail!” he hissed, as much to himself as his departed associate. A man in a handsome navy frockcoat raised an eyebrow at him, but said nothing. He started pushing his way to the opposite end of the platform, but a pair of constables materialized at the steps, walking up. Ioann let the crowd pull him backwards, toward the center of the platform and the approaching scorchliner. It let out a warning whistle as it decelerated. In front of him, mana spikes criss-crossed each other in tangled trails between the platforms, the curvilinear and intersecting geometry nearly impossible to follow with his eyes. Other ‘liners embarked and disembarked, switching tracks with perfect timing, avoiding collisions among the labyrinth of spikes. Ioann glanced again to his right. The inspector, a brown haired woman with a wan, shadowed cast to her face, made eye contact with him for too long a moment. The ‘liner was close now, slowing, but still fast enough to liquefy the innards of anyone stupid enough to step in front of it. But there wasn’t a better option. Ioann shoved toward the front of the platform and stepped off, right into the path of the ‘liner. |
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| ♥Cordelia Brooks | Fri Jan 5, 2018 8:11 pm Post #20 |
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HALF PAST TEN BELLS You could call this off. There is still time. You haven’t got to give them up. You have sacrificed enough. More than anyone in Chaon. You can stop. But she couldn’t stop—how could she stop, so close to the end of all this, mere minutes from the full blossoming of knowledge? Cordelia swallowed down a lump in her throat and, with trembling hands, uncovered the cabinet in which she had locked the box of letters. Pulling the tin from the open compartment in the wall, she set them down on a nearby table, closed the little door, then hung the painting back over it. It seemed so needless. There was no need to protect this space anymore. The most precious thing she owned would be gone, soon, traded in exchange to know what had happened to her, why she had lost herself and come back to the world hollow. Tracing a hand over the rounded edge of the tin, Cordelia popped open the lid. Inside lay a life she couldn’t remember. Wrinkled by water and splotched by brown stains, the ink had faded and the parchment itself wasn’t worth salvaging. Only here and there were a few words actually legible. The headings, where the swoop and curve of alphabet could be discerned, had proved to her that she could trust him. Had proved to her that she had liked him enough, at some point in time, to write to him. And the vast amount of pages—how many hours had she spent at the task of opening her mind to him? And yet—what did it matter now? Whatever she’d written was obscured by time and damage. The woman who had written them was gone, scooped out, cored like an apple, and whatever she’d thought was lost to eternity. With utter irreverence Cordelia forced the letters haphazardly under her arm and left the room, slamming the door behind her with enough force to knock the tin and its lid onto the floor. It was her own fault. She’d let herself think Not the letters. And as soon as she’d thought it, she’d damned herself. The Ethereal takes what you don’t want to give. The innkeeper, Sten, tried to stop her as she left, but she ignored him and passed through the threshold like a storm. The same inn Eliel had brought her to, her first night in Imythess. The same inn where he’d kept the letters and shown them to her. How she’d wept. Gone, gone, all of it gone, all of it purged, with every step she took toward the clocktower, where she’d promised to meet Zaxibus and finish this damned chapter of her life once and for all. Sneaking into the clocktower was an easy enough task for one who could travel through shadows. She sank into the darkness and emerged on the other side, then climbed the rickety wooden stairs to the top. Ascending from the bowels of the building, she left behind dust and darkness and found herself in the light of a hundred lanterns, each burning behind the face of the clock to light Balefire with the hour. Above her head, gigantic cogs worked slowly, teeth grinding into each other. Small golems perched above, greasing the gears and pulleys to ensure utmost efficiency. They didn’t seem to notice her, and if they did, she wasn’t interfering with their purpose, and so she was not a threat to the tower. “I have the letters,” she said to Zaxibus. She pulled them out from under her arm and extended them. “Give them to the Ethereal. Make the trade. I don’t care.” Her face was stone, the jaw clenched tight with pride and the mouth a thin frown, as if she’d experienced little more than minor inconvenience. Her eyes were hard. But there was a slight twitch in her lip, just a single small twitch, that made I don’t care resonate with falsehood. |
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| Ioann | Sat Jan 6, 2018 4:56 pm Post #21 |
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Zaxibus stepped out of the shadows of the Clocktower’s clockwork and snatched the tattered documents in one giant hand. “I’d be careful about shadowjaunting, Mme. Brooks,” the Speaker flicked out his pocketwatch from habit and returned it without so much as looking at the time, then gave her a lecherous grin. “Never know who might be monitoring the highway. Wouldn’t want to pay a toll you hadn’t been expecting, now would you? The Shade I’ve arranged for you to meet is a particularly gentle fellow, as Shades go. Efficient.” He waved his hand vaguely, “Professional.” Zaxibus ticked his head a fraction to the side, but his towering hat didn’t so much as waffle atop the well-oiled black curls. “Though I wouldn’t exactly use the term trustworthy.” In a rare motion, the toad perched on his shoulder croaked in a way that could only have been amusement. Without waiting for Cordelia to interject, the Speaker shrugged off his frock coat and slung it over the vertically aligned tooth of a spare cogwheel next to where his too-short cane leaned. He continued to undress until he was stripped above the waist, save smoked glasses and tophat and inexplicably, that fat, gray toad. Across broad shoulders and chest insulated by a heftiness verging on burl, a sheen of sweat glistened despite the cold. And scattered everywhere were mouths. Dozens of mouths, with lips thin and full, pale and dark, some still, others moving – licking lips with inset tongues, smiling, chewing. A few boasted predatory fangs or blunt tusks or sharpened incisors. Like the scars of a much-flayed prisoner, they aligned themselves in rows upside down and rightside up and every which way in between. One on his left shoulder stuck its tongue out at the vampire as Zaxibus turned to face her again. He tilted down his smoked glasses, revealed empty eye sockets corrupted with black, necrotic skin that curdled up in tiny flakes like dandruff – or perhaps burnt embers – and drew her attention back to his face. “Well, I suppose we should give it a holler, eh?” The Speaker let his glasses fall back into place as he cupped his hands around the mouth set beneath his nose. As one, all of the others mimicked it, drawing together in anticipation. And then, taking a deep breath, he roared a silent shout with each and every one of them. The toad crooned along, its salientian ribbet the only sound in the Clocktower apart from the mechanical clicking and clacking of clockwork gears. Edited by Ioann, Sun Jan 7, 2018 4:50 pm.
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| ♥Cordelia Brooks | Sat Jan 6, 2018 9:58 pm Post #22 |
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What have I done? Cordelia recoiled. The many mouths along his torso glinted under the lamplight, lips and teeth and tongues cast under the flicker of orange light. A hand shot to her own mouth, fingers bent almost protectively across her lips, while she stared at the hulking figure before her. Seeing him like this now, she wished she could reach forward, snatch the letters back, call off the deal. She had underestimated him, thought him simply a bit touched in the head, a little too inclined toward showmanship. Her stomach lurched, dread and disgust mingling into an amalgamation of potent regret. And yet—this was how it worked. This was the Ethereal. She had been brave enough to face the natives of that plane before. She would not lose her nerve now. He was no less nor no more monstrous than she. Yet the creature that began to materialize in the clocktower, at the behest of his silent shouting, was far more than anything Cordelia was herself, more than Zaxibus, more than anyone of the mortal plane. It was something entirely other, something that filled the space even before it appeared. The gears ground to a standstill. The working-golems froze, the lights of their beady eyes dimming until the mana powering them short circuited. The minute hand on the giant clock twitched, finding itself unable to move forward, but it could not wholly go back: it was trapped between moments, consistently trying to move one way or the other but unable to do so. The Shade slowly gathered its form: dust and wooden detritus from the tower congregated not to form a body, but to cling against a body unseen. The Shade perched on the hour hand of the gigantic clock with its hands between its feet, utterly weightless. Though it had no face, the Shade peered down at both Zaxibus and Cordelia; she could tell from the angle of its dust-outlined neck. And then, head first, the Shade climbed down from the hour hand, descending the inner facade of the clock to the floor, where it remained on all fours. It walked forward, and as it did, the assorted grime fell away as it chose to present itself at last to the material plane. Scaled, digitigrade legs led to an equally scaled torso, and around the waist the Shade was lined with rows and rows of teeth, up the hips and up the spine, around the shoulders, down the arms, to the very tips of taloned fingers. The teeth were mostly humanoid, though not in any particular order—molar, incisor, canine, canine, premolar—they were trades provided, successful bargains worn like badges of honor. Yet the Shade did not have a head, or even a neck—shoulder to shoulder, seamless. When it lifted its hands toward the Speaker and the vampire, the reason why was clear: its palms and each digit of its fingers were lined with rows of eyes. Three of the eyes were new additions, if the blood still surrounding them were any indication. “What do you offer as tribute?” it asked, in a voice that was a hundred different voices speaking in unison. Edited by Cordelia Brooks, Sat Jan 6, 2018 9:59 pm.
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| Ioann | Sun Jan 7, 2018 6:46 pm Post #23 |
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The Speaker, panting, nudged the toad into the perceived safety of his curls. “Enough with the theatrics, Apofhes,” he drawled. The Shade hissed and though Zaxibus’s upper lip beaded with sweat, it didn’t quiver. “Let’s start this conversation properly, and all of us may find ourselves satisfied. Mme. Brooks is seeking information from you. I am the broker. You will speak to her through me, and she’ll do the same. If we reach agreement, we can create an accord, but only then.” The Shade rattled its teeth. The chamber was filled with the sound of wind through cold-scoured bones and the simultaneous chattering of a thousand slowly freezing children. “What information?” “A name,” Zaxibus’s face lit with that rictus grin, eyebrows venturing upward from their refuge behind his smoked glasses. “Names are fleeting, Speaker,” the Shade intoned, its chorus of voices chiding, amused. “They can be shed as any corporeal trapping.” As if to demonstrate, smoke began to condense between the creature’s shoulders. Dark shapes swirled in the turbulent and roiling depths until a ghoulish visage formed from the chaos. The Shade raised its hands to the hollows where eyes would have been, then snapped its head over at Cordelia. The face within was recognizable, even with the extra appendages and still-bleeding eyes. Intimate, even through the depths of amnesia. But then the Shade’s teeth were rattling again and the ghostly head dissolved. “This is a particular name.” “Names have very different worth, depending upon their particulars.” “This name would be known.” The entire Clocktower seemed to fill with the Shade’s avarice. The clockwork gears with their tiny golem stewards and every flickering orange candle and even the iron hands on the clock’s great face quivered, as if trying to flee but unable to escape. “What name?” “The name of the Lord who acquired her memories.” The Shade’s hunger was a weight, and even great Zaxibus seemed to stagger beneath it for a heartbeat. “And what is offered as tribute?” The Speaker produced one of the letters. Ink-stained, smudged, ragged. He drew it to his chest and caressed it over the lips of his many mouths. Tongues flicked out to taste it. Savor it. And then he brought it to his face, breathing deeply, nostrils flaring. He watched for rising discomfort on his client’s face, then flicked his gaze back to the Shade. “You would enjoy this,” he whispered breathily. “It’s really quite exquisite.” The Shade was still for a moment. It stared at Cordelia, drinking in her reaction. And then, “Settled accounts are not so easily surveyed, Speaker. Let me... inspect your offering. Measure its worth.” Zaxibus waggled a single finger at the creature. “Not so fast, Apofhes. No samples until the accord is made.” “It will not be enough.” The Speaker replied without even a glance at the vampire. “My client may be able to liquidate further assets, dependent upon the quality of your results. It’s just a name, Apofhes.” “And you, Cordelia Brooks,” the Shade snarled. “You trust this Speaker to represent you? You prefer to deal with intermediaries?” “Apofhes! This isn’t-” A force swept Zaxibus to his knees. The Speaker found the Shade’s taloned fingers probing his face. Then it cast him aside sharply, running a finger wet from the man’s sweat across its many teeth. The vision of the ouroboros entwined in coins flashed in the candlelight. “Apofhes!” “Quiet, Speaker! Your words exhaust me.” Zaxibus and all of his mouths began to sputter. “Cordelia Brooks...” The voice was of a cat toward its cornered mouse. “You ask me for a name, but that’s not what you really want, is it? You want something more than a name. You want something far more delectable.” “Cordelia,” Zaxibus interjected, “don’t-” And then he grasped at his throat, choking, as his face purpled. |
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| ♥Cordelia Brooks | Fri Jan 12, 2018 5:47 am Post #24 |
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For a moment the Shade looked like someone, and Cordelia felt as though she had been pierced to the core by a long, thin knife. It was a face she knew but did not know how she knew it; the knowing was a part of her, somewhere so deep and unknown it had never seen light. The apparition faded within moments, but the disconcerted stone weighing down her stomach did not. There was very little inside her. The sight of her son had not moved her; she had not known him by his eyes or his voice, in the way she had known the face adopted by the Shade. If there was anything in her capable of recognizing the ghouls of her past, she would have known by now. There was not. Which meant only that the Shade could see more than simply inside her head, emptied now as it was: the Shade could see through her, beyond her, to the shadow she carried but could not claim. Swallowing over a dry patch in her throat, Cordelia’s mouth twisted into a deep, sneering frown and her eyes narrowed, watching with mounting disgust as the many mouths of Zaxibus defiled the most sacred thing she owned. Hers was the patient fury of the caged panther, stabbed at and jostled and poked and prodded, all the while biding its time, with little more warning than the scheme evident in its jeweled eyes. She said nothing. She made no sound of horror. The two of them wanted to provoke more from her. She had given enough already. The Shade used her name. It knew her name. Zaxibus has not given it her full name. Only the surname, and yet it knew, as all creatures from the Ethereal knew. Slowly she fixed the creature with her unrelenting stare. Of course she wanted more than the name of the Lord who sank its teeth into her memories. She wanted to know what had happened to her. Why she had given them up. What prompted her to seek the Ethereal. How she had gone about it. How was it that she had been gone for so long. What she wanted was everything “You are slow to answer, Cordelia Brooks,” hissed Apofhes. “I lose my patience. I will leave, unless—” “The name,” she snarled. “The name will suffice.” “You do not ask for what you want,” said Apofhes. “This will be your own disappointment.” “My disappointment is none of your concern. The letters for the name. This is the deal.” Apofhes many teeth clattered against one another, as if her resistance incurred great satisfaction. Cordelia crossed to Zaxibus and snapped the letters from his grip, staring down at him in the way a predator regards the worthiness of its prey. She did not care whether he lived, but she did not want to find herself alone with the Shade. All the same, it pleased her that he gasped for air, that his face grew livid with every passing moment. She spat at his chest, aiming directly for one of his many mouths. “Tell me if that’s exquisite,” she said. Then, turning, she held the letters out to the Shade with an outstretched arm. Apofhes took the parchment almost reverently between its talons, careful not to tear the fragile sheaf any more than age had already. The many eyes in its palms and along the underside of its fingers stared, reading words that had long ago faded. Apofhes’ sight saw more than what was there: it saw what had been of the words, of the emotion, of the hours and the life and the bittersweet could-have-beens and the painful almosts and the yearning that could only be described as terrible in the way the old gods were described as terrible. “Oh,” Apofhes breathed, “oh, this is delicious.” It rolled the sheaf and placed it between the rows of teeth, which bit down to hold the letters safe in the Shade’s possession. “Cordelia Brooks, you would eat the heart of this world raw if you could, wouldn’t you? Oh, yes… a dangerous quality… but how succulent to taste that audacity for myself. You want a name. You shall have it before the evening’s passed.” There was the sound, then, of many children whispering, though the words were unintelligible, perhaps even spoken in a language never known in Imythess, and Apofhes faded from sight. With its disappearance came the termination of its power over the clock tower. The gears groaned back to life. The minute hand started forward with a relieved click. With a metallic whir and catch, the golems eyes found light again. The flames of the lanterns began to flicker. And Cordelia gasped, then coughed deeply, and held at bay a visceral wail that loosed inside her soul. |
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| Ioann | Sat Jan 13, 2018 1:58 pm Post #25 |
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“See? What did I tell you?” Zaxibus croaked, rubbing at his throat. His toad replied in kind. “Efficient.” His face was fading purple. Tears and snot streamed unbidden from eyes and nose. “Professional.” He coughed, a weak, wet, pitiful thing, mirrored in silence by a few of his mouths. “But not trustworthy.” He stood cautiously, taking a moment to steady himself on the wall, then groped around for his shirt and vest. The Speaker’s movements were clumsy and slow and when he reached for his frock coat, he knocked it inadvertently to the floor. When he finally shrugged it over his shoulders, shirt untucked, vest and coat unbuttoned, he immediately collapsed back against a cog with a heavy sigh. “About the documents...” Zaxibus carefully avoided making eye contact with Cordelia. The unfinished sentence grew in the silence that followed, but the Speaker made no attempt to complete the thought. After a barely audible sigh, he began to tuck in the tails of his shirt with the same deliberate slowness, as if every movement was sharply painful. He drew out a kerchief from one of the vest pockets, wiped his face, then shoved it neatly away before buttoning up. Some semblance of dignity restored, he regained his feet and faced off against the vampire. His eyes still shied away from her gaze. “Mme. Brooks.” The façade was a thin one. Exhaustion and pain deepened the lines on his face and enlarged the hollows beneath his smoked glasses. “I do have another client at eleven bells, presently.” A nod toward the giant clock face confirmed the time. At that very moment, the Clocktower’s massive brass bells tolled. The sound was a deafening reverberation that repeated itself ten more times. Each GONG shook the chamber ever so slightly, unsettling what little dust the worker golems had missed. Zaxibus took the moment to grasp his too-short silver-headed cane. “Now, if you would please?” The fluttering motion of his hand didn’t hide a hint of restrained tremor. |
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| ♥Cordelia Brooks | Mon Jan 15, 2018 6:56 pm Post #26 |
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The Shade, upon disappearing from the venue, released everything from its paralyzing grasp—including Zaxibus. As he gasped and croaked, catching his breath, Cordelia felt more and more as if all the air had gone from the room. Clutching a nearby rail that lead down the stairway into the belly of the clocktower, she tried to keep a hold on herself: her innards quivered and her fingers trembled, knuckles white from the sheer force of trying to hold herself together. Zaxibus couldn’t look at her. Couldn’t even finish his sentence. She stared at him, daring him to look at her, to say anything more about the most sacred thing in her life. Was it an apology he wanted to offer? A warning that they would not be enough? What was she thinking, giving away those letters in exchange for a name? What would she even be able to do with a name? She had made a mistake. A massive mistake. And each of the eleven GONGS was like a hammer nailing the mistake straight through her, pinning her to the clocktower forever. “Bullshit,” she said. “Apofhes is coming back before the end of the night. I am not facing him alone. Your work isn’t done here. Bullshit I’m leaving.” Releasing the railing, she found her own hands trembling, and balled her fingers into fists to quell this. She looked up to the giant face of the clock, confirming the time, then looked to Zaxibus. “Have your meeting. I don’t care. But until I have the name of that Lord, until my business with Apofhes is entirely finished, you aren’t free to go. And neither am I.” |
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| Ioann | Sun Jan 21, 2018 4:09 pm Post #27 |
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It was a merry chase. After the scorchliner station, Ioann led his tails on a circuitous, criss-crossing route through the Morozhen District, jumping cabs, cutting through buildings, and even stumbling upon a back alley shakedown-turned-murder before wisely choosing another avenue of escape. But that brown-haired inspector and her wolf doggedly pursued, unflappable. Ioann caught his breath at the mouth of an alleyway stupidly close to the safehouse where he’d stashed Krnk-Krrk’s corpse and checked his pocketwatch. It was past eleven bells. The flight had been too long. He was tired – and tired criminals made mistakes. Not to mention Zaxibus’s inevitable ire. It would have to be the Delver’s Path, then, the fastest way to go to ground. He mentally mapped out his route to the Clocktower, where the Speaker waited. Even if his pursuers followed, he would be able to lose them in the labyrinth of subterranean passages. There were enough criminal scents down there it would be impossible to track his alone. Across the street lay one of the many false grates that led to the Path. But there was a problem. Wedged between the glorious freedom of the maze was a very wide street with not nearly enough cab traffic, and more importantly, two men who were very obviously constabulary inspectors. They sat on a bench directly before the grate, and though their speech was unintelligible at this distance, they were alert. Ioann stole a glance behind him. Dawdling only shaved away what precious little lead he’d been able to build. He sighed. Tired criminals made mistakes, and he was so tired. Ioann used the passage of a cab to slip out of the alleyway and jogged in its shadow, cutting across the street when he’d gone a bit out of the inspectors’ direct line of vision. He doubled back, cautiously, but his progress was achingly slow. He was the only pedestrian on the street and there simply wasn’t enough cover. Half a block away his ears could finally make sense of their conversation. They were searching for a suspect, but what of it? The Morozhen District had plenty, no reason to lose his cool. He walked toward them. A handful of paces away, their conversation took a decidedly alarming turn that stopped both his feet and pulse cold. “The Sani crew en route saw the perps fleeing the scene in a wagon, headed south. Purgatory is as good a place as any to start, sir. There only so many places here that can fit that sized wagon.” The younger of the two men gestured at the crammed together brownstone buildings, placed on the street like an overstuffed jaw filled with too many browned teeth. Was every inspector in the district looking for him? And why did the man look so familiar? Recognition and realization hit him like a stone to the groin and Ioann turned around sharply in the other direction. There were other entrances to the Delver’s Path, and he was better off- “Hey! Hey, sir!” Ioann ducked his head and began to walk faster. “Sir!” He heard scuffing on the cobbles, then the sound of footsteps. He ran. HALF PAST ELEVEN BELLS Vigaard swore. Her vision was starting to waver, colors smearing and bleeding gray at the edges. “You find ‘im?” she panted, words slurring. The shaggy constable let out a sigh that she decided had an edge of annoyance to it. More like a growl. [removed]ing dogs and their [removed]ing attitudes. Needed a proper master to break them. Train them. Make them obey. “It’s not an exact science, ma’am-” Temple replied between sniffs. Her nose was down in the filth of the streets. Streets that resisted Vigaard’s every effort to scrub them clean. What did these dirty little thieves and murderers not understand? Balefire was a dump. Too long the safehouse of every piece of shit in Imythess. It needed the Taming, just like this chirpy little wolf beside her needed to be tamed. “-Olfactory analysis isn’t like following a map that tells you when to turn in a pleasant Cascadian brogue, ‘scuse my bluntness, ma’am. Scent dissipates and the quality and quantity varies depending on air currents through the str-” “Don’t care,” Vigaard interrupted. Her thoughts felt muddy, fleeting. “Find ‘im.” It was a challenge to string even two words together. She stole a blurred glance at her abdomen and drew back her hand. It came away wet, dark. But not so dark as before. She shook her head, then tried to focus on that lumbering canine ahead. Why were her feet so heavy? Maybe she should take off her boots, and- “That’s him!” the wolf snapped. Vigaard looked up. They were at the little square beneath the Clocktower. She had a sense of movement near the base, but it was getting too hard to focus. Wasn’t there a little restaurant somewhere? She’d kill anyone and anything just to sit down. Sleep would be good. Good sleep. “Inspector?” The voice was muffled. Vigaard’s vision started to tunnel. Was that Karstov? She’s always thought her partner was attractive, but gods, was he dumb as a [removed]ing brick. He'd never make it past deputy, if there was any justice in the world. “Inspector? Holy shit! Temple! Look at her! Gods, how is she even on her feet? Get Zima!” Vigaard giggled when she felt Karstov reach for her. As if. And then everything went dark. |
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8:38 AM Jul 11

