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New Threads ,[OTA, Short Story]
Topic Started: Fri Mar 23, 2018 12:22 pm (45 Views)
Dusker
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"Where's my arm?!" Dusker demanded, gripping the weaselly-looking man by the throat with his remaining arm, fury boiling in his blood-red eyes. He just knew that he was there to find what he sought, and the possum-like individual had the answer.

"What?!" The possum or werepossum or whatever this was managed to squeeze out a confused and panicked reply, his body going absolutely stiff with panic as he was caught somewhere falling to death and clinging on for any dear way to get out of this sudden situation as quickly as possible.

The pseudo-vampire's grip softened as he saw the confusion in the pitch black eyes of the possumy individual before taking a look around at the confused and scared faces of the audience around them, "What?"

"We don't have your arm!" Protested the man whose throat was at his fingertips, fear and confusion turning to outrage, though his already deaddened half of his face was causing him to slur his words. To be put into such a predicament of fear at the crazed whims of a madman was embarrassing.

"No?" The necromancer inquired, slowly releasing the throat of the marsupial man.

"No!" Reiterated the unfortunate individual as he fell back against a nearby countertop, gripping his own throat defensively as he continued to glare with beady black eyes into the void of the hood of his attacker.

"Wait, where am I?" Dusker wondered aloud, taking a look about the face of individuals who were as intrigued in the madness unfolding before them as they were apprehensive that he could just lash out against any one of them without a moment's hesitation, much as he had with the possum.

"This is a hattery, why would we have your arm?" The possum asked rhetorically, spitting his words through the slight slur that invaded his speech.

"Oh." The hooded man pivoted about to face the hatter, lifting his arm as a question sprung to mind, "Well in the case, could I get a hat?"

For a moment the possum paused, considering the lunacy that he had fallen victim to, the strange unpredictability of this individual that had gone from intimidating to baffling, but it all righted itself in rage as he once more spat his words, "You can get out of here!"

"What kind of hat is that?" Dusker inquired with a genuine confusion and intrigue, "Is that the kind with the--?"

"Leave!" The shopkeeper forced himself to stand on a half-deadened body, limping his way towards the tall and lanky stranger that had invaded his place of business.

"Leaf? Like from a tree?" Definitely not the sort of hat that the necromancer had been wondering about.

"What? No-- leave Get out of here you stupid maniac!" The possum reiterated as he began shoving the tall man towards the door of the establishment with as much force as he could put forth given his situation. Finally he was coming to understand that he was only under threat because this person was too crazy and imbecilic to even know where he was, let alone what he was doing. It was like a smaller, weaker vreten had invaded the shop, and smelled about as bad.

"By the way, have you seen my arm?" Dusker asked, allowing himself to be shoved easily towards the exit, but not giving up on the optimistic tone in his voice, "It's hard to miss, it's big, and made up of a bunch of black tendrils, and covered in eyes."

"No!" The possum cried as he finally managed to push the intruder out through the door opened by a charitable patron, fury overtaking him as he began hyverventalating before doing his best to gesture out and towards the horizon of the well-lit street, "Go away!"

With that, the patron shut the door rather than slamming it, not wanting to risk damaging the hatter's establishment. Dusker was forced outside in a heavy downpour of Gloomwood rain, the cloak he wore keeping him dry beneath it. He was left more confused than he had been a moment earlier, trying to collect the scattered thoughts of his ruined mind and understand precisely where he was and why he was under a lightless sky.

"Why did I come to a hattery? Oh right, I wanted a hat. Why did I think they would have my arm?" The pseudo-vampire chuckled as he began to examine himself, eyes from the darkness settling upon his upper limb, "Oh, there it is! Wait, no, wrong arm. Yeah, there it isn't, that's the one that's missing. Lzhacthau."

His farplanar companion, his arm that replaced the one he lost and gave him a source of knowledge for incredible power, that fed on his sanity. The entity had consumed his mind for so long that being without it required a recovery process far longer than he was expecting, leaving his thoughts scattered and hazy, but he could tell that he was regaining them. Somewhere through the madness was clarity, like streams of light filtering through a hole-ridden sheet.

While he was in Gloomwood on his hunt, he thought he could deal with a wardrobe change to match his recovering mind, something to replace the modest cloak that had kept his identity obscured in case any problems from his past arose and decided to track him down.

"That was a hattery, but why. . . Oh, right! Balefire! I came for. . . The Ethereal! Let's make a deal! I want my arm back!" He called into the darkness, throwing his head back to look into the sky as if speaking with a god, his arm thrown outward from his body as if pleading with the higher power, yet his voice that of an eager merchant's ready for precisely what he said. There was a moment's pause as the chilling rain decided to fall upon his face, his arm dropped down but he stayed bent back, "How about its location? How about just a new, normal arm? You've got to be kidding me, your prices are insane! Forget dealing with you, I'll find Lzhacthau on my own!"

He swatted at the rain in front of him and turned around in place, the Ethereal that stayed among Chaon more than willing to strike a deal, but its prices all simply ridiculous, wanting him to trade parts of himself and the good times that he had before his series of unfortunate events. It was those good things that he clung to for his sanity, that let him stay. . .

Well, Dusker was not exactly his name, was it? No. Dusken! Tighe Dusken! Dusky to his friends, Dusker to the farplanar, and Tighe to his family because no lovers would take him even before his first death. Too bad the Ethereal did not want that part of his mind in exchange for a deal, but he did as he always did and shrugged it away with a sigh.

Now there was something new to focus on. He was in Gloomwood, in Balefire, searching for his arm and with the relief of something that had been far removed from him for quite some time. For the first time in however long since he had been joined with Lzhacthau, he did not have to hide from the sun beneath the heavy cloth of his cloak.

He pulled the cloak down from his head, revealing the white and red of his profile to only himself, though he lacked a mirror to truly appreciate it. He could feel not the stinging cold of the Balefirian weather, the wind that tried to nip at his warm flesh, but embraced the sensation of water dampening his face and wetting his red hair.

"To be free from the cloth trapping of anonymity without the fear of divine punishment from the boiling churn of the eye-singer." He laughed, excitedly removing the cloak from his person. The clothes underneath were nothing particularly special, clothes if they could be called that, rags, really, simple linen afforded to a prisoner from somewhere else that meant little to Balefire's people, or so he thought he had heard somewhere or somewhen. He bundled up the covering he had removed and tossed it to the outer wall of the hatter's business, taking a moment to consider his situation and the effect that his farplanar arm had placed upon the obscuring clothes, "I still want that hat, though!"

To get the hat, Dusker would need to re-enter the establishment. He managed to get to the handle of the door before considering the scene that had played out before his eviction from the premises. Cloak or no, he had made a big stink about his arm in the chaos, and going in without a left arm would surely inspire suspicion, especially with his madness, yet with clarity came inspiration!

With a simple gesture he opened a gateway to a plane indescribable and maddening, whose window appeared as a momentary glimpse into some mess of parts and noises. From it came a string of bones like a spine that diverged into a series of smaller pieces, almost like fingers but with too many segments. The bulk of the skeletal entity coiled around Tighe like a constrictor, making itself secure before easing up and unfurling as if muscles were being stretched. It was, for all intents and purposes, a working arm, yet he could not help but notice that it felt far less appropriate for him than he would have liked, "It just isn't the same without the nightmarish whispering in my mind."

A bit dejected but hopeful, Tighe entered not as the mysterious and mad hooded figure, but as the rather poor-looking vampire with the odd tattoos on his face. He still looked considerably out of place for the establishment, but he refused to leave without at least some sort of hat!

"I would like a one the hat, please!" He cheerily announced before the door shut behind him, all semblance of tact abandoned with his first words upon re-entry.

"I said to leave-- Oh, oh, sorry sir. I thought you were. . . " The possum screamed but cut himself short quickly as he looked over the strangely cheery figure that entered. The assault had him riled up, the stress still had part of his body locked down but it was slowly recovering. Just taking a look at the soaking stranger made him want to balk at the notion that this could actually be a customer, but he needed to at least pretend that things were perfectly normal. Perhaps this would not be a wealthy client, but maybe an investment in a poor one with something simple would be an investment for the future, "Right, a hat. Do you know what kind you would like? I'm having a sale on flatbrims."

"That one!" Tighe called out, pointing to a very nice one sitting on a shelf near the top, behind the sales counter where few could get to it. Just one look could tell anybody who was attentive that it was out of the common man's price range, let alone the rags-wearing man who wandered in from the dark and cold.

"Right, ah, Armand, could you please grab the leather top hat? The one with the-- yes, that one!" The possum man sighed, having a sinking suspicion that he knew exactly how this was going to play out. He had his fill of madness and stupidity for the day, but he might as well play along for the sake of his other customers, a good showcase that he could keep his professionalism despite the clear stress, "That will be five hundred Cascadian Notes, sir."

"Notes? Money, yes! Right! Shiny bits of delectable hard light that catch in the ether of reality!" Dusker gleefully spoke before coming to realize the complete lack of those very things on his possession. Living in a cave in the mountains was hardly a profitable location, and stealing things to steal other things and sell none of them were not a particularly good business plan. The downside of a farplanar arm guiding most of his actions, but he knew just what to do in this situation,. The pseudo-vampire recovered from his own behavior, nodding and speaking slowly, "I definitely have those! Let me just get my. . . Shambling Horror!"

With the call to action, Dusker once more ripped a hole through the fabric of reality to summon a gateway into the unspeakable horror of a farplane. From it came a being that was exactly as he described it, a vaguely humanoid form made up of many different parts that seemed as natural together as they were unnatural to any understanding of normal humanoids. Its form writhed as it limped towards the possum and the assistant clerk, its many-eyed gazes settling on the various individuals of the establishment at it simply followed the orders provided to it, stinking the building up with death in a slow march towards its target.

It carefully grasped the hat in tentacle-like protrusions, taking it from the stunned assistant before slowly moving in the opposite direction towards its summoner without any clear indication of turning. Its form in the light was somehow both disturbingly dry and moist at the same time, no visible trail being left in its wake. The possum man completely seized and fell to the floor in full rigor from the experience.

The pale man gingerly took the hat from his summoned monstrosity as it slowly left through the way it came in, the dimensional gateway closing behind it without a shred of announcement, as simply as one might exit through a door. The necromancer rapped his fingers on the hat, staring wide-eyed in shock at the state of the hatter before sprinting towards his own means of egress while shouting, "I didn't do it!"

The truth of the statement did not matter, nor did he stay long enough for it to be investigated. He sprinted off into the cold rain, gripping the normally expensive hat tightly to his head as he made his escape. He came to a sliding halt before pivoting on his heels and darting back towards the building, almost forgetting something rather crucial.

"Aah, almost forget the dark embrace of anonymity!" He cried, taking the bundle of his cloak from the ground and draping it over his right arm before resuming his hasty retreat, mumbling to himself through the noise of the rain, "I could really use a new hug to match the crown of sky tear's rejection, but I don't know where I'd begin!"
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