Post by Joliette Thorne on Mar 7, 2010 5:55:27 GMT -5
The Hanging Corpse, Vailkrin
Jolie still smelled of the ocean, and was looking a deal more fresh and cheerful then she'd been, last she stood behind the bar of the Corpse. She was humming softly, polishing glasses to a high shine, while Steadman lurked about trying to look busier than he was.
Taeme slips silently over the threshold into the bar weary from the day's studies and mishaps, violet robes whispering softly with each padding step that carries the sightless druid into the room's heart. Feathers rustle gently as the rustic-orange hawk perched on one slender shoulder casts his rapturous gaze from side to side taking in each detail allowing the young looking girl to see through its eyes those present. Sure steps bring her to a vacant stool which she claims with a relieved sigh.
Shishi enters the tavern and holds open the door for the rest of his party to enter in through. It's Orange and Yellow, walking shoulder to shoulder and tossing a small bag of peanuts back and forth between each other while grinning brightly. The spider monkey, Belulah, is on Orange's shoulder opposite Arius and the girl feeds the monkey a peanut and passes the bag to her brother. Belulah follows the bag and moves between the children onto Yellow's far shoulder where she's treated to another peanut and the children repeat the process.
Jolie turned toward the sound of the door's creak, with an affable smile, a clean cloth flipped over one shoulder. "Evenin' folks, can I get you... Oh. Hey, kids!" Her gaze moved from the blind sister of the Knight, to the group who came after, and the mortal waved to both kids. And Belulah. But her chin tilted up a little on sight of Shishi for a greeting, her eyes speaking the desire to say something perhaps not for the children's ears. "Kids, I just scared a spider out of the cellar, so it's safe down there." Probably. "Want to play in the cages?" She returned her attention to Taeme, then, "Miss! You with the hawk. Get you something?"
Taeme 's head cants to one side, a single raven brow arching thoughtfully as she mulls over the familiar voice. Needing no time to remember its owner, but time to regain her severely lacking temper, the lycan inclines her head politely. "Good eve."
Taeme said to Jolie, "Depends on if it'll be drugged, Ma'am."
Jolie gave the girl a flat look she wouldn't see anyway. "That in turn depends on whether you annoy me any further. Perhaps it's best you do not."
Sade came down the steps with a yawn, dragging her hand through the blonde hair. She waggled her fingers at the room at large before slipping behind the bar, cleaning glasses in anticipation for incoming orders.
Taeme snorts softly as pale lips quirk upwards in response to the glower given. "Its not -that- intentional, annoying you."
Jolie canted her head to the sleepy girl, in the direction of Taeme. "Ello, pet. Would you see to that lass over there?" The eye roll to follow might indicate it'd be a personal favour.
Shishi raised a brow just slightly in Jolie's direction right before Orange and Yellow looked like mirror images of each other as they look from the woman at the bar to the monkey on their collective shoulders and then to each other, saying simultaneously, "Monkey Bars!" and running towards the entrance to the cellar. Once Blue suspects the blonde duo is out of earshot and he's approached the counter he asks, "What's up?"
Terra appears from the north.
Sade grinned at Jolie's eyeroll, a knowing expression of camaraderie. "Sure thing," she replied easily, approaching the blind lycan-- not that she really identified the blindness, at first. "What can I getcha?" she asked in a friendly tone.
Jolie leaned her elbows on the timber inlay, as she leant in to speak quietly to the vampire. "That .. thing I asked you about. The help.. I was wondering if we might go about it, soon?" Her gaze flicked over to cellar door, where the kids might be heard descending the stairs, eager to play in usually forbidden territory. Keeping her tone low, she continued, "If there was any other way, Shishi.. but I have tried, and failed to find one. It's my last hope, really." Guilt suffused her face, at the thought of how selfish her request was. But the children had been exposed to Chaos, and seen much other children had not, and her fondest hope was that they'd come through this, unscathed. "If you're still sure it's alright?" Peridot eyes were full of that hope, and more besides, when they fixed on Shishi again.
Taeme turns sightless hazel eyes unnecessarily towards the unfamiliar voice. Erythros's feathers ruffle in warning, soothed moments after by gently petting fingers. "Shh, Ery. Just a water, Miss, if you don't mind."
Krystann makes his way into the tavern for the first time this day, a surprise to the man as he has become strangely drawn to this place. Platinum-flecked azure eyes peer out into the crowd, the hood having already been drawn back, as in this town an assassin is the least of your worries. Thinking himself in the mood for a drink, the rogue killer makes his way to the bar with a swagger all his own.
"Comin' right up," Sade said smoothly to Taeme before turning on her heel to approach the bar. As she filled a (relatively) clean glass, Krystann caught her eye. "And how 'bout you, sir? Anythin' to drink?"
Krystann eyes the barmaid as he sits down, and what a site she is! But Krys is far from a flirt, and simply says. " Vodka."
Terra trailed in after Krystann to make quite the unremarkable entrance. Once Shish was spotted she'd head that way with a friendly wave to Jolie since they were in the middle of conversation.
Taeme nods politely though her attention has turned towards the hushed conversation passing between mortal and vampire. While doing her best to be nonchalant, the lycan leans inward, senses focused on catching each word though she lack the practice her alpha would have from experience.
Shishi nods slowly while listening to Jolie, "Aye... aye. We're ready when you are." It seems any trust issues that might have arisen from Jolie's kidnapping of a Knight hasn't affected his confidence in her decisions on what she is and isn't willing to ask Orange and Yellow to do. "It's too late for me to back out now anyway. They so have their heart set on helping you... Err... hearts, I guess. They each have one. Don't look too down about it... you'll prolly be making their day."
Sade nodded, turning around and standing on tiptoe for a bottle on the shelf. She filled that order as well before sliding the glass down the bar to the mortal man. "Here ya go." Then the water was brought to Taeme with quick little steps, the half-elf setting it before her carefully. "Anything else?"
Krystann downs the shot with practiced ease, the nasty afterbite ignored by the seasoned drunk.
Jolie raised a hand to wave Terra a hello, which turned then so fingers might beckon her into the conversation. She said to Shishi then, "I'm ready now. I think. I have a plan..." It wasn't much of one. But she wouldn't admit this aloud. "I'd feel better if Terra came, too."
Taeme flutters her fingers in dismissal, the rudest one she'd given thus far to any, though the flash of smile playing across her lips should make up for the abruptness. She hopes. All attention focusing upon the conversation that draws her interest with each word. She'd not heard from her brother since that Knight and the events happening after Mahri'd dragged her off were still a mystery, leaving her curious to this woman's intentions.
Terra tried not to intrude on the conversation until she knew what they were talking about. A plan? She should come? "Sure. I'll go." What's the worst they could do - go to the Obsidian Pool? A look at Jolie suggested that and a groan was stifled as she tugged on Shish's sleeve.
Krystann eyes the barmaid as he covertly listens in upon some conversations. Though with Sade as a distraction... well, Krys was hard pressed to listen hard.
Caedan appears from above, a relatively tame entrance compared to others. She's also had a bath, and got into somebody's perfume; she might have smelled less noxious unbathed. The psychic descends half-way down the stairs and abruptly takes a seat, cupping her chin in an open palm and scanning the room with an indifferent stare.
Shishi blinked when Jolie waved and turned to see Terra. The elf earns a grin from the assassin, "Hey Ter." and then a couple blinks, "Oh~. You're going to come with us?" He doesn't wait much for an answer before looking back to Jolie, "Should I call them back up then?"
Caedan said to Spawne, "It's possible I'm not speaking to you. I can't remember."
Caedan looks contemplative.
Jolie almost visibly went rubbery with relief, when Caedan was .. well, scented first, that perfume almost eye-watering from twenty paces.. and then was seen. She'd note Red, too, with a nod. And felt distinctly more courageous, with every familiar face that gathered there. Could she? The mortal frowned at herself. Should she.. ask them to come, in case she herself failed to keep the children safe, and their father, and.. "Terra. Are you sure?" She assumed Shishi had told her where they'd be going. Forgetting whether Shi had been informed, himself.
Shishi looked towards his tugged sleeve and offered Terra a sweet smile while asking, "Something wrong?"
Krystann said to Sade, "Another vodka."
Spawne said to Terra, "Let me know when you do."
Krystann looks over his shoulder to look at Jolie. What was she goin' on about?
Taeme blinks a few times as the overpowering scent washes over her senses several seconds before the mortals are hit with its nauseating scent. "Oh my, I know you..."
Krystann wrinkles his nose at the smell of overbearing perfume. Damn that stuff was strong.
Jolie glanced away while the couple spoke among themselves. To the blind girl, and the man she thought of as "the carpenter" since he was hired in that capacity.. and to Sade, with whom she was most pleased.. at all the tavern, which she would soon fight to keep. For how could a mortal with no affinity for the dead keep her place here, in Vailkrin, make a home for her people here, and justify it?
Caedan said to Spawne, "You can't even decide who you are talking to."
Sade arched a brow, lips pursing in displeasure at the impoliteness. The smile certainly didn't make up for it, but she-- however useless of an effort-- gave a wide one in return. Hell, smiling at least made -her- feel better. "Yeah, well, just let me know," she said, though perhaps her tone had more of a bite. Somewhat oblivious to Krystann's eyes as she headed back to the bar, Sade was about to wipe down the bartop when Caedan's perfume assaulted her nose. A hand was lifted, and Sade pulled a face before shaking her head and turning toward Krystann. "Yeah, of course," she murmured, pouring the shot and setting it in front of him.
Spawne said to Caedan, "At least I can remember that, no?"
Caedan huffs and turns away from the red man, standing to descend the rest of the way into the room and act generally snide toward everyone -- perhaps an effect of the expensive, half-bottle of perfume someone didn't hide. She's entitled.
Terra said to Caedan, "You smell ... nice."
Terra continued to tug on his sleeve but only because it was a distraction. Too many people were around ... but if they all went their odds of survival increased, right? "Sure, Joles. Traye's not a ghost there anymore..."
Taeme winces at the barmaid's back as she turns to fill the second shot. Not wishing to cause strife within a gathering obviously familiar in dealing with one another, she calls out in hopes to amend her manners. "My apologies, Ma'am. Thank you for the water, I appreciate it." Nimble fingers slide round the afore-mentioned glass, lofting it to her lips for a long pull.
Caedan said to Terra, "Yes I do, don't I? It promises to ensure nights of passion and satin kisses. Very exciting."
Terra said to Caedan, "You should give me some."
Jolie said to Spawne, "I could use a little company, Red." There was a great deal less guilt in her asking the Catastrophe along for the ride.. and perhaps some back-up. "If you're not busy."
Sade 's grin widened with Taeme's apology, and her tone warmed considerably when she said, "You're welcome, miss. Jus' let me know if there's anything else." Pleasantly satisfied, Sade couldn't help but overhear Caedan's comment to Terra, which left her giggling behind a discreet hand.
Krystann places a gold coin down before the barmaid. " That should take care of it, and give you enough to give me your name." A rare smile escapes the trained killer. Perhaps it was the vodka?
Shishi said to Terra, "Eh~!?"
Caedan said to Spawne, "Yes, I suppose. Where have you been? I've had to walk everywhere. Everywhere."
Caedan said to Jolie, "Because of him I've had to walk, you know. Right on my own two feet and everything."
Jolie scrubbed at a non-existent spot on the bar, with the cloth she'd abandon afterward. Speaking once more in a low tone, not directed at anyone in particular as far as anyone that wasn't Caedan was concerned, she added, "Maybe there'll be butterflies. And that’s criminal. Make him pay."
Caedan said to Terra, "Your brain seems to think that is the last thing you need."
Taeme chuckles softly at the melting pot of words and phrases passing around the room, each conversation filed away...for no reason she can think of at the moment.
Terra said to Caedan, "Trying to tell me something?"
Terra said to Shishi, "It sounded like a good idea... you know?"
Shishi said, "Hmm... aye. Just maybe you don't need to put on as much as the psychic has tonight to get the desired effect..."
Sade blinked a few times before a childish hand pocketed the gold. The grin returned to her lips; a brow lifted. "Name's Sade. And yours, sir?"
Spawne offered an enormous hand to Caedan. The invitation for his company would be extended also to his lithe companion, "Sure... Where're we headed?"
Terra took that moment to give a nudge and very teasingly ask, "Are you saying I need to wear it for that effect?" Call it pre-Pool jitters. That place wasn't high on her list of fond memories.
Jolie lifted her musing face to the colossal man. "The fortress. We're going to the Pool."
Spawne said to Jolie, "For a change..."
Taeme pauses momentarily as these clear words strike at potent memories. She knew of this place, she did and the necessity to visit it must be great indeed. What she wouldn't give to have her vision returned to her, the ability to see all that could not be seen with mortal eyes. "Why, The Pool?" She wasn't sure her words would be heard above the rest, but what would it hurt to ask?
Sade didn't know what the Pool was, but she sure as hell was curious now. That little fact could be detected by a twitching ear and a covert glance toward Jolie as the half-elf nibbled her lip.
Krystann let the smile stay, for now, as he answered. " Jason." Old habits die hard, and while the barmaid was gorgeous, he didn't trust her one bit. Leading his life would make anyone like that. Jolie's conversation was noted once more, as he has been picking up on her tone when she speaks of going somewhere. For a woman making a living in a place where she is the item on the menu, it strikes the assassin as odd that she has a tone of reluctance and... is that fear? No. Not quite, but the man is picking up that she is not too happy about going to this place, which tells the assassin she has been there before. He wonders to himself, as he downs another shot, of what kind of place seems to have this group on edge.
Jolie snapped a sharp glance to the sightless girl. "And what do you know of it?" The mortal remained unaware of Taeme's interactions with her son and the Labyrinth, and so narrowed her gaze, in high suspicion.
Caedan is reluctant to make physical contact with the giant man, but eventually places her hand in his and steps onto the floor. "To the pool," she echoes.
Jolie murmured, to Shishi, "Perhaps we ought to gather the children.." It probably wasn’t a good idea to leave them alone down there too long, anyway.
Taeme said to Jolie, "I learned a thing or two aboard the Labyrinth. Many things, actually, most things I ought not know, but then sometimes you do stupid things around chaos. Mahri, Arien, Drake and Lucien were there, they can vouch for my presence if you don't believe me."
Caedan shoots a rather intense, scrutinizing glance in Taeme's direction, and though Taeme wouldn't see it, she might feel it, along with a strange sensation in her head, as if someone were sifting through her brain.
Shishi twitched just a bit after the nudge and put on an innocent grin for the empath, "I'm sure you'd be fine without it." There's no pre-pool jitters detectable on the assassin, having no experience to instil any fear in him.
Taeme hisses softly as slender hands rise to press fingertips against her temples as if attempting to fight off the eerie sensation that someone, or thing, had access to her thoughts.
Sade nodded at the assassin, trying to conceal her growing fascination with the conversation surrounding the Pool. "Nice to meetcha, Jason," she said rather distractedly, though the human did manage to receive a grin.
Jolie stared at Taeme, for a silent half-minute. Her scrutiny ended when she said, "Perhaps it's best you come with us, then." Those forewarned were only of use, when it came to these places. "There's a chance we'll find nothing but stones and rubble as it is." She figured it a good time to simply address everyone concerned, lifting her voice. "You should be aware, the fortress is in ruins. I don't know what's become of the Pool. It might be gone.." But her face said she felt otherwise. "Might not be. But I do know the place feels empty of..." She swallowed, licked her lips. "The greater Darknesses who've dwelled there." Then she was bending, to slip on her boots, take up her pack and sling it to her shoulder. "Are we ready?"
Spawne would hoist Caedan atop his right shoulder, a quick nod tossed toward Jolie.
Shishi nodded once to Jolie and started towards the cellar, pulling the girl tugging and nudging at his arm if he had to. Descending downstairs to find Orange and Yellow climbing all over the bars of the cages. It only takes giving them the information that their time to assist Jolie had come to coax the trio back upstairs and have them eager to move out.
Caedan continues to stare pointedly at Taeme, even as she situates herself atop the Catastrophe's shoulder.
Spawne whispered something to Caedan.
Terra did not need to be pulled down the stairs and waited patiently at the top with a careful eye on Caedan and Spawne. No mistrust for the large being but ... it was Caedan and she's a bit protective. When Blue returned and they all nodded their consent for the journey she'd give in, pass a thumbs up towards Jolie.
Caedan whispered something to Spawne.
Taeme slips from the stool amidst a rustle of swishing robes and shifting feathers. Excitement bubbles through her blood, the barely tamed wolf lifting her head as the scent of adventure awakens something dangerous and wild within. Well, the druid is always dangerous to those who don't know her. "I'm ready." She was ready, she was quite willing actually.
Jolie gave the room one last, long sweeping glance and then Steadman quiet orders to keep the place tidy. Was it worth it? Was it, really? The fireplace let out a stony crack, as if in reply. Yes, it was, she thought. It really was.
Shishi said to Caedan, "Now's your chance to see them, Stargazer."
Jolie moved off, then, making swift, determined strides toward the door.
Caedan said to Shishi, "Oh good. Very exciting. I'll wave and everything."
Sade just couldn't stand it: she had to follow them. She nodded to Steadman and stepped out from behind the bar, waiting until the group left before making a break for the door.
Terra gave Shish a nudge for the road and followed the parade.
Taeme falls into step as there is movement towards the door and the chilly night.
Spawne whispered something to Caedan.
Caedan said to Spawne, "Oh do."
Krystann needed to know more about who he was working for, and so, he follows.
Krystann exits north.
Spawne said, "Come along, then."
Caedan said to Spawne, "Children! Two of them! Non-edible, though."
Shishi's twins bounced out of the tavern after Jolie, Orange at least hoping to catch up with the woman and walk with her. The children are tailed closely by Belulah, who Arius stops to wait for, letting the spider monkey onto his shoulder so that the pair might look like a miniature version of Red and Caedan. At Terra's nudge Blue starts moving as well, walking out with her.
The Ruined Fortress (Cabal "HQ")
Taeme appears from the shadows, silent padding steps no longer hesitant and misplaced, but sure as she continues onward following Jolie's scent. Where they were going she didn't know, but oh what fun it would be. She hopes.
Caedan looks a little queasy. It might be the noxious perfume, or having to get used to riding a giant again. One never knows. As they get closer to the Pool, she gets a bit paler, and shifts uneasily.
This was the one place that Terra always managed to find her way back to. Even without the long line of people that proceeded her she was capable of locating it in a timely matter. There's no conversation to be had on her end or smiles or nudges. Every step that brought her closer to the Fortress caused her to pull further away from the group, hovered in the back.
Shishi was the one supplying the nudges and smiles for once on this trip, a perhaps futile attempt to brighten the empath's spirits with his subtle imitation of her habit.
The former -- and hopefully soon-to-be-again -- necromancer spoke little, if at all, on that long trek from Vailkrin to the plains, her mind a gorgon's wig of thoughts, fears, hopes. Now and then she'd glance toward the children, and smile, or reply to some question with a curt sound, but on the whole kept to herself as she led the motley party closer to the ruins. At last she'd halt at the edge of a visible and sharp divide between healthier re-growth and the wide ring of still-barren ground surrounding the fortress.
Where some would recall a staunch and looming building, there was now a pitiful wreck comprised of scattered stone blocks that had somehow escaped shattering in the meteoric disaster that'd unmade it in one fell strike. No bird nor insect will fly over it, no animal makes its home among the oddly-planed stones. A wind blows, a mournful breeze that carries a strange sense of ill-boding to linger in the air.
Spawne peered upward to check on Caedan, she swayed uncomfortably in her nest. His strikes remained long, confident, as they approached, though he'd not make criticism as the pack began to grow uneasy.
Sade was at the back of that little parade, too, but for a different reason. She wasn't exactly invited along, after all. As she crept along, hiding behind trees, the girl shivered in the dark. Oh, how tempting it was to light one of those wonderful orbs of light! But she resisted, not giving away her cover, unsure of how much she was wanted as they approached the chilling ruins of a once-impressive fortress.
Shishi 's little girl stopped beside Jolie and puffed out her cheeks in a well executed impression of her father before she says, "Wow... What happened here?" Yellow stayed back, closer to Blue and Terra, feeding Belulah peanuts every so often to keep the animal from pulling at his blonde hair.
Krystann trails the group from a distance, keeping hidden well in the shadows and using the night to his advantage. Curiosity had gotten the better of him, and the way this rag-tag bunch seemed on edge was the reason why. So the assassin made sure to keep to himself for now, trying his damn hard to remain unnoticed until he saw fit. He wasn't invited after all, and he needed the job Jolie gave him as a cover for a big hit he had planned.
Taeme pauses to take in the scene before them, the hawks beady gaze turning to catch every detail. The mourning whisper forces a shiver down her spine causing the fine hairs on her nape to stand at attention. What place was this? The question bouncing in her thoughts echoes the small girl's.
Caedan doesn't answer Taeme, mostly because she's not around long enough to answer the girl as her mode of transportation is sentient and out of her control. By the time they reach the crumpled fortress, she's forgotten the girl's thoughts about Lucien. The psychic sucks in a breath, and blows it out, sending surprisingly untangled pieces of hair from her eyes. Another session of fidgeting takes place on Spawne's shoulder, and eventually she just peers upward and watches the clouds drift by, instead of the building and its eerie shadows.
Jolie knelt in the grass, though here it was thinned and yellowed and the daisies nodded stunted heads. She patted the ground, invited the girl to sit. "The sky fell on it," she said, keeping it simple. "Under all that mess is .. a monster. Maybe. But the people who used to tell it what to do are gone." She most sincerely hoped, and at this thought would cant a look to Caedan, briefly. "It ate things, things people needed, once. It ate all my power. I've come to see if I can steal it back."
Terra searched and found a couple of Blue's fingers and gave a half-hearted attempt at a smile. Even with the Fortress in ruins there's still the touch of calamity that haunted her for months. Did the Pool still exist without its home? It must or they wouldn't be here... but with its destruction and no masters to serve, where did that leave it? It's a bone-chilling thought that pulled her near, warmth sought.
Sade sucked in a breath as she overheard Jolie's explanation of the place to Caedan, each word being caught in her sensitive ears. Biting her lower lip, she tripped over a root, biting back a groan of frustration as she pulled herself to her feet. Unaware of the man which followed as well, she brushed the leaves from her attire and left a few remaining in her hair, tangled amongst the blonde locks.
Taeme doesn't think much of Lucien beyond knowing him both in name and in passing, he didn't linger on her thoughts much. Silent steps bring her parallel with Jolie and the little girl though she remains a few feet off. The monsters here must have been akin to those she'd faced down before. This is what she's been led to believe through conversation with Mahri and the she-elf. Thoughts wander back to those eventful hours aboard the ship, deadened eyes peering into the ruins until some command is given to move forward or something worth noticing occurs.
Spawne half-turned in Jolie’s direction as her intentions became slightly clearer, though eye contact was interrupted by the heavy iron pauldrons resting atop his shoulders. He'd lower himself into a seated position atop a fallen tree, brief glances around the area at the relatively uninformed party.
Shishi 's little mimic drops to the ground where Jolie indicated she should and listened to the story she had to tell, "A monster?" Orange repeated in the form of a question with less fear in her voice than someone who's previously been inside a monster's stomach should, "How are you going to get your power back?" the girl asked curiously. In the meantime Blue reciprocated the squeeze felt by his hand and offered a warm smile to the elf in such close proximity to him.
Bushes adorned with white flowers shuddered violently, their rustling the announcement of the half-elf tripping again. "Damn," Sade swore under her breath before creeping into the open with an apologetic flash of a grin. "Er, hope you folks don't mind if I tag along."
Below the blasted earth, the sundered mortar, the vast weight of tons of stone, a sluggish darkness lay -- sleeping, if such a thing could be said to sleep. Inert, perhaps a better term for it. Long it had lain here, starved for purpose, and for the energies it requires to function, and without either, the being had no momentum or desire to stir. But of late, in its strange and almost-mindless 'dreams', it has scented a familiar presence, even its in its somnolent state. Now, below the rubble, the amorphous blackness writhed, its awareness lost to the world for now, and only a kind of primal instinct causing it to flex, to stir, like a puddle of oil given the ability to hold itself together.
Caedan slides off Red's shoulder and sidles over toward Jolie and Orange, the latter of which is stared at intently, and eventually greeted with a slow, savant-esque wave. Without looking at the sineater, the psychic declares, "I don't want to go in. It might not hate me anymore, and then where will we be? Sucked into oblivion, I bet. No more rides, no Jack, no Lu--lucite. Lucite jewelry. Yes."
Jolie said to Orange, "It was once a man. Made into a monster." She rose, brushed dirt from her knees sheerly for the comfort of the act's normalcy. "I don't know what it is, now." She paused a moment to turn, assess the group gathered, to reply to Sade with a grim and disapproving, "Spose you may as well, now you're here." The assassin who slunk out of view in the background went unnoticed, for now. "As to how... Well." The mortal huffed a breath, not sure how to explain easily. "I need you, Leralynn. You can do things.. things you find in other people. Once we're closer to those stones, I need you to find something in me." If it was still there, at all. "If you can. The part of me that eats the bad in people." She dropped her gaze to the sickly flowers. "Then I need you take the bad out of your dad, and anyone else who will let you, and... breathe it all into me. Think you can?" She was crawling on the inside, asking such a thing of a child. But she did, anyway.
Jolie turned toward Caedan, then. "You don't have to. It's alright." But a part of her shrank at the declaration. Still, she managed a smile. "I'll say hello for you."
Caedan said to Jolie, "I haven't been to oblivion in a while. You might need butterflies."
Jolie said to Caedan, "I might." But she needed something else more, right now. "Will you help me, with something? I need Orange to see what it is... the thing I used to do. Like when you and I and Feathers were here and we ki... I ate the bad in you."
Shishi said to Terra, "But I'll get you it anyway, if you like."
Terra smiled then even as both eyes trained on what lay ahead. "Yes please. Something to look forward to..." The empath glanced towards the gathering that had formed and stifled a frown. "She'll be able to ... get rid of everything she consumes right? She's still so young..."
Caedan said to Jolie, "You want me to show her? The memory?"
Caedan looks a bit excited at the prospect of putting thoughts into the girl's head.
Jolie said to Caedan, "If you would be so.." Kind? "If you would. Yes."
Jolie's lips pressed together firmly, her eyes averted from the empath toward the broken fortress. "Yes." If it worked. She wasn't terribly religious at the best of times. But here, at the worst, she prayed it would be so.
Caedan sorta ... lunges ... at Leralynn.
Shishi 's little girl brings her small hands to her head and finally starts looking just a bit nervous as she gently and repeatedly pulls at a few locks of her hair, "Mmm... I can try. Was it hard for you to do when you could do it...?" Blue eyed his daughter, frowning slightly at her sudden loss of excitement for her task. Moving towards the girl he gives some reassuring words, "Orange... You can do it for sure. remember all that work we did, yah?" to which the girl slowly nods and forces a smile, "Mmmhmm~"
Spawne remained seated, elbows resting atop his knees. A match was struck, its flame raised to the tube of dried tobacco leaves, they charred and crackled, pouring plumes of heavy smog from their rolled confine. Jade eyes rested firmly upon Jolie. There was much sin to consume, especially with the company she k- His train of thought was snatched away; a tug at his back. An agitated snort of pollution and a swat of his palm would chase whatever it was away before it was seen, and Red would move himself closer to the others.
Blackness stirred, from its dreams, though dream and reality held little difference to this being anymore. Pseudopodic tendrils stretched from its gathered shape, slowly, slowly, seeking up like reverse-motioned rootlets, through cracks in the tight tumble of stone blocking the way into its place of unrest.
Terra inhaled a sudden and sharp intake of breath. Birth mother or not, it all seemed very risky. Faith was placed in all of them and even a being that may not have heard the similar echo of Jolie's prayers. Blue's movement was enough encouragement to move closer but she'd go near Yellow and the monkey, "When all this is fixed we should get that puppy. I know a guy who has one with three heads. He'd be a rainbow of Colors, huh?"
Shishi 's boy smiled sweetly up towards Terra for a second, Belulah tugging at the boy's hair when he stopped handing her peanuts one at a time, but Arius didn't seem to mind much as he remarked in a hushed tone, "Oh... One of Blue's doctors had a dog like that once... We'll have to trick him though, cause of 'no repeats'... maybe put bunny ears on it or something..."
Jolie watched the small girl and the psychic closely, her petite frame stiff in stance, her eyes twin beacons of expectation, not without a little terror.
Caedan might have tackled the child were it not for the iota of common sense that occasionally prevailed over madness. Instead, the psychic plants her hands on Orange's shoulders and begins to thread the memory of her own sin-eating into the girl's head. At first, it is a jumble of excited images, bobbing and shifting and repeating. Eventually it settles into a pattern of a woman, dark haired and impossibly sharp-eyed. She's bent over an image of the psychic, lips pressed to hers, sucking tendrils of inky blackness out of her lungs -- no ... her heart-- no, her soul. A thing is standing by, watching -- a horribly defaced thing, something that had feathers once, but is now hideous and beyond recognition. Truly, her representation of Demont is much, much more monstrous than he had ever appeared in life. Smirking at her own representation, and unnaturally pleased by its growing grotesqueness, she's oblivious to whatever effect it's having on the young girl she's feeding the image to.
Shishi watches with some obvious fatherly worry as the psychic shows his daughter the vision of the ability she'll need to copy. The girl is only distracted by the gruesome image of Demont for a moment, befriending a rotting corpse has probably left the girl jaded to such imagery. Her focus is on the sin eating act, watching it as it is presented to her, confident in her own ability to retain the information she's given without particularly trying to memorize every detail, the mimicking, after all, is left up to the family's curse, the girl just a vessel.
The blonde seven year old comes out of the vision as one would awaken from a nightmare, her breathing heavy and quickened and it is not with her own azure eyes that she stares back at Caedan, but with eerily familiar peridot eyes, the vision along with the girl's own anxious anticipation forcing the girl's accursed eyes through their transformation to enable her mimicry...
Caedan doesn't like that peridot in the girl, not even a little bit. Of course, the girl's mind is of great fascination, but the creep factor has been upped substantially. The psychic drops her hands to her sides and stands; a second or so later, she's back beside Spawne, a safe distance away.
Jolie saw that transformation, and experienced a shudder to gaze into what were, essentially, her own eyes. "Leralynn..." Her hand was held out, to take the girl's. "It's time." A hasty glance to the others, and she added, while a cold gust stirred unbound hair into an inky billow. "To the fortress."
Spawne lowers a palm atop Caedan's right shoulder, his stare remained where she'd been, rather than where she is, "Y'alright?"
Caedan jumps, unusual for someone that predicts, well, whatever. Eventually she parts with a subdued, "Uh huh."
Shishi 's girl blinked those stolen eyes at the hand offered before taking it and looking back at her father, "Blue... There's alot of them here, huh? Weird ones..." The vampire blinks and rushes towards the girl, removing the scarf from around his neck and wrapping the blonde girl in the enchanted thing as he nodded, "Aye... You'll be alright with this though... Just focus on what you have to do... Let me and Yellow worry about them." With that, the entire family seems ready to move forward, Yellow slapping at Belulah's hand when she pulls his hair too hard.
Jolie would lead the girl, and whoever deigned to follow over that demarcated line between hale earth and sick and hence, toward the ruins. Closing Leralynn's hand in her own tightly, for a moment, she said, "Best you start with me. Then the others..." She would speak to them, over her shoulder. "If I am not enough for her, I may need help." Jolie hadn't been horribly sinful, since her emergence, and her soul did not carry the burdens it once did. Most of those had been left behind, along with the other things she'd lost. Picking her way across the stones, around the larger ones, she carried on until the pair faced a monumental stack of blocks no leviathan had hope of ever shifting. Deeming this close enough, she sat on the edge of one of them, bringing herself level to the small girl's mouth. Trying not to look into those eyes.. she'd try to give Yellow a reassuring glance instead, until she could avoid that gaze no longer. "It's like a kiss, Orange. Only it makes you breathe in." Jolie closed her eyes.
Caedan said helpfully, from behind Spawne, "Suck in all the black."
Shishi was curious to say the least as he followed Jolie and his daughter, taking Yellow and Terra in tow. The vampire did a kind of extend wink as if he was aiming a bow or something, allowing his open eye to flicker through it's accursed transformation, on and off in rapid succession just to get a taste of what Orange had felt from this chaotic place before he had wrapped her neck in that psionic diluting scarf. His reaction was a slight shiver and a short lived frown towards his daughter as he watched her interaction with the clan leader. A rather sharp glance is spared towards the psychic after her comment.
Orange nodded to Jolie, brushing back blonde hair behind her ear as she said, "Mmm... I saw it..." Moving forward with a tilt of her head the mimic's power becomes clear, the dark tendrils reaching out kind of eagerly towards their previous user's lips before contact was made.
Spawne swatted again at an unseen tug on his upper back with his free hand, an accusing state tossed downward at Caedan as if she were to blame for the nuisance.
It was the lightest, most innocent of kisses, and for a moment Jolie was drawn deep into the memory of her own past, being lifted up, being held over the body of a fat corpse who'd sinned sins so black they almost choked her.., and stole from her her innocence that first time, filling her head with visions of it all and her heart with the feelings, the guilt, the evil and selfish justifications.. When Orange presses her lips to the mortal's own, the trembling woman felt a heave in her chest, as if some lurking beast had risen there, and her lips and eyes fell open both, and from her mouth streamed the smoky residue of.. what? What darknesses lay in the soul of the woman once named for that very quality? Leralynn would feel it first- lust, visions of a pirate Captain, greed, the satisfaction of robbing Finn, envy, as she'd stared at women and their babies with new eyes, sloth, in her lack of willingness to aid those who needed aid, gluttony, the craving to drown her fears in drink.... all small things, when it came to sins. But it was wrath that nestled in her mind and heart, and had been buried under the pall of nicety, in the name of getting on with life. Leralynn would see a wish, a dagger driven into an unbeating heart, a fire set, a head cut off. And all perpetrated on the blonde woman who stood not far away, and all the result of a different kiss, something at once less dark, and less innocent. Wrath spilled into the child like a soupy black poison, and the borrowed alchemy of the sineater would suck it down, transmute it, swell the girl's own shadows into snaky vines that whipped about her. And Jolie at last felt that old hatred ease, the bitten-back betrayal go, the past recede like a stagnant tide, finally let free to wash out to the deep. With a teary face, she farewelled that pain, that secret want to cleave Terra's fair head in with an axe, and it was through those tears she saw the girl, and then the others, before her hands covered her face and she wept.
Jolie whispered, to her hands, "I'm sorry...." Whether this was meant for the woman whose harm she'd wished, and didn't fully know it, or to the burdened child, it wasn't clear.
Spawne plucked the cigar from his lips, a final trail of smog flowing from his breath. He watched Jolie with interest, at least, not bothering to grapple with such nuisances as empathy or pity.
Shishi folded his arms, idly rubbing biceps as he watched, with a wary frown, his daughter take in the clan leader's sins. This part of the process complete, the blonde girl blinks teary green eyes back at Jolie. Orange frowns, biting lightly at her bottom lip. When she's able to look away form the clan leader she immediately has Jolie's stolen gaze forced back towards Terra, sharp and... well, wrathful. Swallowing hard the girl is able to pry her gaze away from Terra as she wipes at the tears in her eyes with her arms. A smile is forced towards Jolie along with a weak laugh as Leralynn asks, "I did it right... hmm?" looking rather desperate for the woman's approval.
Jolie sobbed anew, folding the girl in with her arms, nodding, murmuring 'yes'es until her heart, torn rootless of that bitter secret, could bear to let her pull back and look into the child's newly arctic gaze. "Did fine, honey." How she'd make this up to the family, she didn't know.. but a debt had been incurred, and she would see it paid, somehow. The mortal studied Leralynn closely now. "Does it feel.. too full?" The black wisps writhed, gently, hardly what they'd been when Jolie owned them. "No.." the girl looked suddenly worried, as if that was a fault. "Should it?" Jolie shook her head, cast a dulled look toward the group standing witness to this odd exchange. "You'll know when it's enough. And you need more, pet. I'm sorry, but you do." Her next words were spoken in a hoarse call, "Who will help me?" Help fill a child's head with things that rightly belonged in hell? There was one among them who carried less conscience than anyone she knew, and it was on him both pairs of eyes next fell.
Spawne turned toward the broken voice, a knowing stare. What gall to make a request as this! Was there something he owed her? Help, he most certainly could. A man once invested in knowledge, now consumed by a darkness. An evil which licked at his ear, whispering vicious prompts. Garland, Khasad, Ner'Roth... Beasts of the Underdark which had pulled at his strings, brought forth abominations into Hollow at the hand of a man: Kaine 'Red' O'Bannion. His sin was upon his flesh. The colour of choked blood, a hide thick and leathery from years of abuse at the hands of his masters. Another tug from behind him, this one went without acknowledgement. She dare consume what he had become? The child would try to... Separate... Us? "Go on then, kid..." He spoke, a haunting rasp wrapped in his baritone, "...I dare you."
.
Jolie still smelled of the ocean, and was looking a deal more fresh and cheerful then she'd been, last she stood behind the bar of the Corpse. She was humming softly, polishing glasses to a high shine, while Steadman lurked about trying to look busier than he was.
Taeme slips silently over the threshold into the bar weary from the day's studies and mishaps, violet robes whispering softly with each padding step that carries the sightless druid into the room's heart. Feathers rustle gently as the rustic-orange hawk perched on one slender shoulder casts his rapturous gaze from side to side taking in each detail allowing the young looking girl to see through its eyes those present. Sure steps bring her to a vacant stool which she claims with a relieved sigh.
Shishi enters the tavern and holds open the door for the rest of his party to enter in through. It's Orange and Yellow, walking shoulder to shoulder and tossing a small bag of peanuts back and forth between each other while grinning brightly. The spider monkey, Belulah, is on Orange's shoulder opposite Arius and the girl feeds the monkey a peanut and passes the bag to her brother. Belulah follows the bag and moves between the children onto Yellow's far shoulder where she's treated to another peanut and the children repeat the process.
Jolie turned toward the sound of the door's creak, with an affable smile, a clean cloth flipped over one shoulder. "Evenin' folks, can I get you... Oh. Hey, kids!" Her gaze moved from the blind sister of the Knight, to the group who came after, and the mortal waved to both kids. And Belulah. But her chin tilted up a little on sight of Shishi for a greeting, her eyes speaking the desire to say something perhaps not for the children's ears. "Kids, I just scared a spider out of the cellar, so it's safe down there." Probably. "Want to play in the cages?" She returned her attention to Taeme, then, "Miss! You with the hawk. Get you something?"
Taeme 's head cants to one side, a single raven brow arching thoughtfully as she mulls over the familiar voice. Needing no time to remember its owner, but time to regain her severely lacking temper, the lycan inclines her head politely. "Good eve."
Taeme said to Jolie, "Depends on if it'll be drugged, Ma'am."
Jolie gave the girl a flat look she wouldn't see anyway. "That in turn depends on whether you annoy me any further. Perhaps it's best you do not."
Sade came down the steps with a yawn, dragging her hand through the blonde hair. She waggled her fingers at the room at large before slipping behind the bar, cleaning glasses in anticipation for incoming orders.
Taeme snorts softly as pale lips quirk upwards in response to the glower given. "Its not -that- intentional, annoying you."
Jolie canted her head to the sleepy girl, in the direction of Taeme. "Ello, pet. Would you see to that lass over there?" The eye roll to follow might indicate it'd be a personal favour.
Shishi raised a brow just slightly in Jolie's direction right before Orange and Yellow looked like mirror images of each other as they look from the woman at the bar to the monkey on their collective shoulders and then to each other, saying simultaneously, "Monkey Bars!" and running towards the entrance to the cellar. Once Blue suspects the blonde duo is out of earshot and he's approached the counter he asks, "What's up?"
Terra appears from the north.
Sade grinned at Jolie's eyeroll, a knowing expression of camaraderie. "Sure thing," she replied easily, approaching the blind lycan-- not that she really identified the blindness, at first. "What can I getcha?" she asked in a friendly tone.
Jolie leaned her elbows on the timber inlay, as she leant in to speak quietly to the vampire. "That .. thing I asked you about. The help.. I was wondering if we might go about it, soon?" Her gaze flicked over to cellar door, where the kids might be heard descending the stairs, eager to play in usually forbidden territory. Keeping her tone low, she continued, "If there was any other way, Shishi.. but I have tried, and failed to find one. It's my last hope, really." Guilt suffused her face, at the thought of how selfish her request was. But the children had been exposed to Chaos, and seen much other children had not, and her fondest hope was that they'd come through this, unscathed. "If you're still sure it's alright?" Peridot eyes were full of that hope, and more besides, when they fixed on Shishi again.
Taeme turns sightless hazel eyes unnecessarily towards the unfamiliar voice. Erythros's feathers ruffle in warning, soothed moments after by gently petting fingers. "Shh, Ery. Just a water, Miss, if you don't mind."
Krystann makes his way into the tavern for the first time this day, a surprise to the man as he has become strangely drawn to this place. Platinum-flecked azure eyes peer out into the crowd, the hood having already been drawn back, as in this town an assassin is the least of your worries. Thinking himself in the mood for a drink, the rogue killer makes his way to the bar with a swagger all his own.
"Comin' right up," Sade said smoothly to Taeme before turning on her heel to approach the bar. As she filled a (relatively) clean glass, Krystann caught her eye. "And how 'bout you, sir? Anythin' to drink?"
Krystann eyes the barmaid as he sits down, and what a site she is! But Krys is far from a flirt, and simply says. " Vodka."
Terra trailed in after Krystann to make quite the unremarkable entrance. Once Shish was spotted she'd head that way with a friendly wave to Jolie since they were in the middle of conversation.
Taeme nods politely though her attention has turned towards the hushed conversation passing between mortal and vampire. While doing her best to be nonchalant, the lycan leans inward, senses focused on catching each word though she lack the practice her alpha would have from experience.
Shishi nods slowly while listening to Jolie, "Aye... aye. We're ready when you are." It seems any trust issues that might have arisen from Jolie's kidnapping of a Knight hasn't affected his confidence in her decisions on what she is and isn't willing to ask Orange and Yellow to do. "It's too late for me to back out now anyway. They so have their heart set on helping you... Err... hearts, I guess. They each have one. Don't look too down about it... you'll prolly be making their day."
Sade nodded, turning around and standing on tiptoe for a bottle on the shelf. She filled that order as well before sliding the glass down the bar to the mortal man. "Here ya go." Then the water was brought to Taeme with quick little steps, the half-elf setting it before her carefully. "Anything else?"
Krystann downs the shot with practiced ease, the nasty afterbite ignored by the seasoned drunk.
Jolie raised a hand to wave Terra a hello, which turned then so fingers might beckon her into the conversation. She said to Shishi then, "I'm ready now. I think. I have a plan..." It wasn't much of one. But she wouldn't admit this aloud. "I'd feel better if Terra came, too."
Taeme flutters her fingers in dismissal, the rudest one she'd given thus far to any, though the flash of smile playing across her lips should make up for the abruptness. She hopes. All attention focusing upon the conversation that draws her interest with each word. She'd not heard from her brother since that Knight and the events happening after Mahri'd dragged her off were still a mystery, leaving her curious to this woman's intentions.
Terra tried not to intrude on the conversation until she knew what they were talking about. A plan? She should come? "Sure. I'll go." What's the worst they could do - go to the Obsidian Pool? A look at Jolie suggested that and a groan was stifled as she tugged on Shish's sleeve.
Krystann eyes the barmaid as he covertly listens in upon some conversations. Though with Sade as a distraction... well, Krys was hard pressed to listen hard.
Caedan appears from above, a relatively tame entrance compared to others. She's also had a bath, and got into somebody's perfume; she might have smelled less noxious unbathed. The psychic descends half-way down the stairs and abruptly takes a seat, cupping her chin in an open palm and scanning the room with an indifferent stare.
Shishi blinked when Jolie waved and turned to see Terra. The elf earns a grin from the assassin, "Hey Ter." and then a couple blinks, "Oh~. You're going to come with us?" He doesn't wait much for an answer before looking back to Jolie, "Should I call them back up then?"
Caedan said to Spawne, "It's possible I'm not speaking to you. I can't remember."
Caedan looks contemplative.
Jolie almost visibly went rubbery with relief, when Caedan was .. well, scented first, that perfume almost eye-watering from twenty paces.. and then was seen. She'd note Red, too, with a nod. And felt distinctly more courageous, with every familiar face that gathered there. Could she? The mortal frowned at herself. Should she.. ask them to come, in case she herself failed to keep the children safe, and their father, and.. "Terra. Are you sure?" She assumed Shishi had told her where they'd be going. Forgetting whether Shi had been informed, himself.
Shishi looked towards his tugged sleeve and offered Terra a sweet smile while asking, "Something wrong?"
Krystann said to Sade, "Another vodka."
Spawne said to Terra, "Let me know when you do."
Krystann looks over his shoulder to look at Jolie. What was she goin' on about?
Taeme blinks a few times as the overpowering scent washes over her senses several seconds before the mortals are hit with its nauseating scent. "Oh my, I know you..."
Krystann wrinkles his nose at the smell of overbearing perfume. Damn that stuff was strong.
Jolie glanced away while the couple spoke among themselves. To the blind girl, and the man she thought of as "the carpenter" since he was hired in that capacity.. and to Sade, with whom she was most pleased.. at all the tavern, which she would soon fight to keep. For how could a mortal with no affinity for the dead keep her place here, in Vailkrin, make a home for her people here, and justify it?
Caedan said to Spawne, "You can't even decide who you are talking to."
Sade arched a brow, lips pursing in displeasure at the impoliteness. The smile certainly didn't make up for it, but she-- however useless of an effort-- gave a wide one in return. Hell, smiling at least made -her- feel better. "Yeah, well, just let me know," she said, though perhaps her tone had more of a bite. Somewhat oblivious to Krystann's eyes as she headed back to the bar, Sade was about to wipe down the bartop when Caedan's perfume assaulted her nose. A hand was lifted, and Sade pulled a face before shaking her head and turning toward Krystann. "Yeah, of course," she murmured, pouring the shot and setting it in front of him.
Spawne said to Caedan, "At least I can remember that, no?"
Caedan huffs and turns away from the red man, standing to descend the rest of the way into the room and act generally snide toward everyone -- perhaps an effect of the expensive, half-bottle of perfume someone didn't hide. She's entitled.
Terra said to Caedan, "You smell ... nice."
Terra continued to tug on his sleeve but only because it was a distraction. Too many people were around ... but if they all went their odds of survival increased, right? "Sure, Joles. Traye's not a ghost there anymore..."
Taeme winces at the barmaid's back as she turns to fill the second shot. Not wishing to cause strife within a gathering obviously familiar in dealing with one another, she calls out in hopes to amend her manners. "My apologies, Ma'am. Thank you for the water, I appreciate it." Nimble fingers slide round the afore-mentioned glass, lofting it to her lips for a long pull.
Caedan said to Terra, "Yes I do, don't I? It promises to ensure nights of passion and satin kisses. Very exciting."
Terra said to Caedan, "You should give me some."
Jolie said to Spawne, "I could use a little company, Red." There was a great deal less guilt in her asking the Catastrophe along for the ride.. and perhaps some back-up. "If you're not busy."
Sade 's grin widened with Taeme's apology, and her tone warmed considerably when she said, "You're welcome, miss. Jus' let me know if there's anything else." Pleasantly satisfied, Sade couldn't help but overhear Caedan's comment to Terra, which left her giggling behind a discreet hand.
Krystann places a gold coin down before the barmaid. " That should take care of it, and give you enough to give me your name." A rare smile escapes the trained killer. Perhaps it was the vodka?
Shishi said to Terra, "Eh~!?"
Caedan said to Spawne, "Yes, I suppose. Where have you been? I've had to walk everywhere. Everywhere."
Caedan said to Jolie, "Because of him I've had to walk, you know. Right on my own two feet and everything."
Jolie scrubbed at a non-existent spot on the bar, with the cloth she'd abandon afterward. Speaking once more in a low tone, not directed at anyone in particular as far as anyone that wasn't Caedan was concerned, she added, "Maybe there'll be butterflies. And that’s criminal. Make him pay."
Caedan said to Terra, "Your brain seems to think that is the last thing you need."
Taeme chuckles softly at the melting pot of words and phrases passing around the room, each conversation filed away...for no reason she can think of at the moment.
Terra said to Caedan, "Trying to tell me something?"
Terra said to Shishi, "It sounded like a good idea... you know?"
Shishi said, "Hmm... aye. Just maybe you don't need to put on as much as the psychic has tonight to get the desired effect..."
Sade blinked a few times before a childish hand pocketed the gold. The grin returned to her lips; a brow lifted. "Name's Sade. And yours, sir?"
Spawne offered an enormous hand to Caedan. The invitation for his company would be extended also to his lithe companion, "Sure... Where're we headed?"
Terra took that moment to give a nudge and very teasingly ask, "Are you saying I need to wear it for that effect?" Call it pre-Pool jitters. That place wasn't high on her list of fond memories.
Jolie lifted her musing face to the colossal man. "The fortress. We're going to the Pool."
Spawne said to Jolie, "For a change..."
Taeme pauses momentarily as these clear words strike at potent memories. She knew of this place, she did and the necessity to visit it must be great indeed. What she wouldn't give to have her vision returned to her, the ability to see all that could not be seen with mortal eyes. "Why, The Pool?" She wasn't sure her words would be heard above the rest, but what would it hurt to ask?
Sade didn't know what the Pool was, but she sure as hell was curious now. That little fact could be detected by a twitching ear and a covert glance toward Jolie as the half-elf nibbled her lip.
Krystann let the smile stay, for now, as he answered. " Jason." Old habits die hard, and while the barmaid was gorgeous, he didn't trust her one bit. Leading his life would make anyone like that. Jolie's conversation was noted once more, as he has been picking up on her tone when she speaks of going somewhere. For a woman making a living in a place where she is the item on the menu, it strikes the assassin as odd that she has a tone of reluctance and... is that fear? No. Not quite, but the man is picking up that she is not too happy about going to this place, which tells the assassin she has been there before. He wonders to himself, as he downs another shot, of what kind of place seems to have this group on edge.
Jolie snapped a sharp glance to the sightless girl. "And what do you know of it?" The mortal remained unaware of Taeme's interactions with her son and the Labyrinth, and so narrowed her gaze, in high suspicion.
Caedan is reluctant to make physical contact with the giant man, but eventually places her hand in his and steps onto the floor. "To the pool," she echoes.
Jolie murmured, to Shishi, "Perhaps we ought to gather the children.." It probably wasn’t a good idea to leave them alone down there too long, anyway.
Taeme said to Jolie, "I learned a thing or two aboard the Labyrinth. Many things, actually, most things I ought not know, but then sometimes you do stupid things around chaos. Mahri, Arien, Drake and Lucien were there, they can vouch for my presence if you don't believe me."
Caedan shoots a rather intense, scrutinizing glance in Taeme's direction, and though Taeme wouldn't see it, she might feel it, along with a strange sensation in her head, as if someone were sifting through her brain.
Shishi twitched just a bit after the nudge and put on an innocent grin for the empath, "I'm sure you'd be fine without it." There's no pre-pool jitters detectable on the assassin, having no experience to instil any fear in him.
Taeme hisses softly as slender hands rise to press fingertips against her temples as if attempting to fight off the eerie sensation that someone, or thing, had access to her thoughts.
Sade nodded at the assassin, trying to conceal her growing fascination with the conversation surrounding the Pool. "Nice to meetcha, Jason," she said rather distractedly, though the human did manage to receive a grin.
Jolie stared at Taeme, for a silent half-minute. Her scrutiny ended when she said, "Perhaps it's best you come with us, then." Those forewarned were only of use, when it came to these places. "There's a chance we'll find nothing but stones and rubble as it is." She figured it a good time to simply address everyone concerned, lifting her voice. "You should be aware, the fortress is in ruins. I don't know what's become of the Pool. It might be gone.." But her face said she felt otherwise. "Might not be. But I do know the place feels empty of..." She swallowed, licked her lips. "The greater Darknesses who've dwelled there." Then she was bending, to slip on her boots, take up her pack and sling it to her shoulder. "Are we ready?"
Spawne would hoist Caedan atop his right shoulder, a quick nod tossed toward Jolie.
Shishi nodded once to Jolie and started towards the cellar, pulling the girl tugging and nudging at his arm if he had to. Descending downstairs to find Orange and Yellow climbing all over the bars of the cages. It only takes giving them the information that their time to assist Jolie had come to coax the trio back upstairs and have them eager to move out.
Caedan continues to stare pointedly at Taeme, even as she situates herself atop the Catastrophe's shoulder.
Spawne whispered something to Caedan.
Terra did not need to be pulled down the stairs and waited patiently at the top with a careful eye on Caedan and Spawne. No mistrust for the large being but ... it was Caedan and she's a bit protective. When Blue returned and they all nodded their consent for the journey she'd give in, pass a thumbs up towards Jolie.
Caedan whispered something to Spawne.
Taeme slips from the stool amidst a rustle of swishing robes and shifting feathers. Excitement bubbles through her blood, the barely tamed wolf lifting her head as the scent of adventure awakens something dangerous and wild within. Well, the druid is always dangerous to those who don't know her. "I'm ready." She was ready, she was quite willing actually.
Jolie gave the room one last, long sweeping glance and then Steadman quiet orders to keep the place tidy. Was it worth it? Was it, really? The fireplace let out a stony crack, as if in reply. Yes, it was, she thought. It really was.
Shishi said to Caedan, "Now's your chance to see them, Stargazer."
Jolie moved off, then, making swift, determined strides toward the door.
Caedan said to Shishi, "Oh good. Very exciting. I'll wave and everything."
Sade just couldn't stand it: she had to follow them. She nodded to Steadman and stepped out from behind the bar, waiting until the group left before making a break for the door.
Terra gave Shish a nudge for the road and followed the parade.
Taeme falls into step as there is movement towards the door and the chilly night.
Spawne whispered something to Caedan.
Caedan said to Spawne, "Oh do."
Krystann needed to know more about who he was working for, and so, he follows.
Krystann exits north.
Spawne said, "Come along, then."
Caedan said to Spawne, "Children! Two of them! Non-edible, though."
Shishi's twins bounced out of the tavern after Jolie, Orange at least hoping to catch up with the woman and walk with her. The children are tailed closely by Belulah, who Arius stops to wait for, letting the spider monkey onto his shoulder so that the pair might look like a miniature version of Red and Caedan. At Terra's nudge Blue starts moving as well, walking out with her.
The Ruined Fortress (Cabal "HQ")
Taeme appears from the shadows, silent padding steps no longer hesitant and misplaced, but sure as she continues onward following Jolie's scent. Where they were going she didn't know, but oh what fun it would be. She hopes.
Caedan looks a little queasy. It might be the noxious perfume, or having to get used to riding a giant again. One never knows. As they get closer to the Pool, she gets a bit paler, and shifts uneasily.
This was the one place that Terra always managed to find her way back to. Even without the long line of people that proceeded her she was capable of locating it in a timely matter. There's no conversation to be had on her end or smiles or nudges. Every step that brought her closer to the Fortress caused her to pull further away from the group, hovered in the back.
Shishi was the one supplying the nudges and smiles for once on this trip, a perhaps futile attempt to brighten the empath's spirits with his subtle imitation of her habit.
The former -- and hopefully soon-to-be-again -- necromancer spoke little, if at all, on that long trek from Vailkrin to the plains, her mind a gorgon's wig of thoughts, fears, hopes. Now and then she'd glance toward the children, and smile, or reply to some question with a curt sound, but on the whole kept to herself as she led the motley party closer to the ruins. At last she'd halt at the edge of a visible and sharp divide between healthier re-growth and the wide ring of still-barren ground surrounding the fortress.
Where some would recall a staunch and looming building, there was now a pitiful wreck comprised of scattered stone blocks that had somehow escaped shattering in the meteoric disaster that'd unmade it in one fell strike. No bird nor insect will fly over it, no animal makes its home among the oddly-planed stones. A wind blows, a mournful breeze that carries a strange sense of ill-boding to linger in the air.
Spawne peered upward to check on Caedan, she swayed uncomfortably in her nest. His strikes remained long, confident, as they approached, though he'd not make criticism as the pack began to grow uneasy.
Sade was at the back of that little parade, too, but for a different reason. She wasn't exactly invited along, after all. As she crept along, hiding behind trees, the girl shivered in the dark. Oh, how tempting it was to light one of those wonderful orbs of light! But she resisted, not giving away her cover, unsure of how much she was wanted as they approached the chilling ruins of a once-impressive fortress.
Shishi 's little girl stopped beside Jolie and puffed out her cheeks in a well executed impression of her father before she says, "Wow... What happened here?" Yellow stayed back, closer to Blue and Terra, feeding Belulah peanuts every so often to keep the animal from pulling at his blonde hair.
Krystann trails the group from a distance, keeping hidden well in the shadows and using the night to his advantage. Curiosity had gotten the better of him, and the way this rag-tag bunch seemed on edge was the reason why. So the assassin made sure to keep to himself for now, trying his damn hard to remain unnoticed until he saw fit. He wasn't invited after all, and he needed the job Jolie gave him as a cover for a big hit he had planned.
Taeme pauses to take in the scene before them, the hawks beady gaze turning to catch every detail. The mourning whisper forces a shiver down her spine causing the fine hairs on her nape to stand at attention. What place was this? The question bouncing in her thoughts echoes the small girl's.
Caedan doesn't answer Taeme, mostly because she's not around long enough to answer the girl as her mode of transportation is sentient and out of her control. By the time they reach the crumpled fortress, she's forgotten the girl's thoughts about Lucien. The psychic sucks in a breath, and blows it out, sending surprisingly untangled pieces of hair from her eyes. Another session of fidgeting takes place on Spawne's shoulder, and eventually she just peers upward and watches the clouds drift by, instead of the building and its eerie shadows.
Jolie knelt in the grass, though here it was thinned and yellowed and the daisies nodded stunted heads. She patted the ground, invited the girl to sit. "The sky fell on it," she said, keeping it simple. "Under all that mess is .. a monster. Maybe. But the people who used to tell it what to do are gone." She most sincerely hoped, and at this thought would cant a look to Caedan, briefly. "It ate things, things people needed, once. It ate all my power. I've come to see if I can steal it back."
Terra searched and found a couple of Blue's fingers and gave a half-hearted attempt at a smile. Even with the Fortress in ruins there's still the touch of calamity that haunted her for months. Did the Pool still exist without its home? It must or they wouldn't be here... but with its destruction and no masters to serve, where did that leave it? It's a bone-chilling thought that pulled her near, warmth sought.
Sade sucked in a breath as she overheard Jolie's explanation of the place to Caedan, each word being caught in her sensitive ears. Biting her lower lip, she tripped over a root, biting back a groan of frustration as she pulled herself to her feet. Unaware of the man which followed as well, she brushed the leaves from her attire and left a few remaining in her hair, tangled amongst the blonde locks.
Taeme doesn't think much of Lucien beyond knowing him both in name and in passing, he didn't linger on her thoughts much. Silent steps bring her parallel with Jolie and the little girl though she remains a few feet off. The monsters here must have been akin to those she'd faced down before. This is what she's been led to believe through conversation with Mahri and the she-elf. Thoughts wander back to those eventful hours aboard the ship, deadened eyes peering into the ruins until some command is given to move forward or something worth noticing occurs.
Spawne half-turned in Jolie’s direction as her intentions became slightly clearer, though eye contact was interrupted by the heavy iron pauldrons resting atop his shoulders. He'd lower himself into a seated position atop a fallen tree, brief glances around the area at the relatively uninformed party.
Shishi 's little mimic drops to the ground where Jolie indicated she should and listened to the story she had to tell, "A monster?" Orange repeated in the form of a question with less fear in her voice than someone who's previously been inside a monster's stomach should, "How are you going to get your power back?" the girl asked curiously. In the meantime Blue reciprocated the squeeze felt by his hand and offered a warm smile to the elf in such close proximity to him.
Bushes adorned with white flowers shuddered violently, their rustling the announcement of the half-elf tripping again. "Damn," Sade swore under her breath before creeping into the open with an apologetic flash of a grin. "Er, hope you folks don't mind if I tag along."
Below the blasted earth, the sundered mortar, the vast weight of tons of stone, a sluggish darkness lay -- sleeping, if such a thing could be said to sleep. Inert, perhaps a better term for it. Long it had lain here, starved for purpose, and for the energies it requires to function, and without either, the being had no momentum or desire to stir. But of late, in its strange and almost-mindless 'dreams', it has scented a familiar presence, even its in its somnolent state. Now, below the rubble, the amorphous blackness writhed, its awareness lost to the world for now, and only a kind of primal instinct causing it to flex, to stir, like a puddle of oil given the ability to hold itself together.
Caedan slides off Red's shoulder and sidles over toward Jolie and Orange, the latter of which is stared at intently, and eventually greeted with a slow, savant-esque wave. Without looking at the sineater, the psychic declares, "I don't want to go in. It might not hate me anymore, and then where will we be? Sucked into oblivion, I bet. No more rides, no Jack, no Lu--lucite. Lucite jewelry. Yes."
Jolie said to Orange, "It was once a man. Made into a monster." She rose, brushed dirt from her knees sheerly for the comfort of the act's normalcy. "I don't know what it is, now." She paused a moment to turn, assess the group gathered, to reply to Sade with a grim and disapproving, "Spose you may as well, now you're here." The assassin who slunk out of view in the background went unnoticed, for now. "As to how... Well." The mortal huffed a breath, not sure how to explain easily. "I need you, Leralynn. You can do things.. things you find in other people. Once we're closer to those stones, I need you to find something in me." If it was still there, at all. "If you can. The part of me that eats the bad in people." She dropped her gaze to the sickly flowers. "Then I need you take the bad out of your dad, and anyone else who will let you, and... breathe it all into me. Think you can?" She was crawling on the inside, asking such a thing of a child. But she did, anyway.
Jolie turned toward Caedan, then. "You don't have to. It's alright." But a part of her shrank at the declaration. Still, she managed a smile. "I'll say hello for you."
Caedan said to Jolie, "I haven't been to oblivion in a while. You might need butterflies."
Jolie said to Caedan, "I might." But she needed something else more, right now. "Will you help me, with something? I need Orange to see what it is... the thing I used to do. Like when you and I and Feathers were here and we ki... I ate the bad in you."
Shishi said to Terra, "But I'll get you it anyway, if you like."
Terra smiled then even as both eyes trained on what lay ahead. "Yes please. Something to look forward to..." The empath glanced towards the gathering that had formed and stifled a frown. "She'll be able to ... get rid of everything she consumes right? She's still so young..."
Caedan said to Jolie, "You want me to show her? The memory?"
Caedan looks a bit excited at the prospect of putting thoughts into the girl's head.
Jolie said to Caedan, "If you would be so.." Kind? "If you would. Yes."
Jolie's lips pressed together firmly, her eyes averted from the empath toward the broken fortress. "Yes." If it worked. She wasn't terribly religious at the best of times. But here, at the worst, she prayed it would be so.
Caedan sorta ... lunges ... at Leralynn.
Shishi 's little girl brings her small hands to her head and finally starts looking just a bit nervous as she gently and repeatedly pulls at a few locks of her hair, "Mmm... I can try. Was it hard for you to do when you could do it...?" Blue eyed his daughter, frowning slightly at her sudden loss of excitement for her task. Moving towards the girl he gives some reassuring words, "Orange... You can do it for sure. remember all that work we did, yah?" to which the girl slowly nods and forces a smile, "Mmmhmm~"
Spawne remained seated, elbows resting atop his knees. A match was struck, its flame raised to the tube of dried tobacco leaves, they charred and crackled, pouring plumes of heavy smog from their rolled confine. Jade eyes rested firmly upon Jolie. There was much sin to consume, especially with the company she k- His train of thought was snatched away; a tug at his back. An agitated snort of pollution and a swat of his palm would chase whatever it was away before it was seen, and Red would move himself closer to the others.
Blackness stirred, from its dreams, though dream and reality held little difference to this being anymore. Pseudopodic tendrils stretched from its gathered shape, slowly, slowly, seeking up like reverse-motioned rootlets, through cracks in the tight tumble of stone blocking the way into its place of unrest.
Terra inhaled a sudden and sharp intake of breath. Birth mother or not, it all seemed very risky. Faith was placed in all of them and even a being that may not have heard the similar echo of Jolie's prayers. Blue's movement was enough encouragement to move closer but she'd go near Yellow and the monkey, "When all this is fixed we should get that puppy. I know a guy who has one with three heads. He'd be a rainbow of Colors, huh?"
Shishi 's boy smiled sweetly up towards Terra for a second, Belulah tugging at the boy's hair when he stopped handing her peanuts one at a time, but Arius didn't seem to mind much as he remarked in a hushed tone, "Oh... One of Blue's doctors had a dog like that once... We'll have to trick him though, cause of 'no repeats'... maybe put bunny ears on it or something..."
Jolie watched the small girl and the psychic closely, her petite frame stiff in stance, her eyes twin beacons of expectation, not without a little terror.
Caedan might have tackled the child were it not for the iota of common sense that occasionally prevailed over madness. Instead, the psychic plants her hands on Orange's shoulders and begins to thread the memory of her own sin-eating into the girl's head. At first, it is a jumble of excited images, bobbing and shifting and repeating. Eventually it settles into a pattern of a woman, dark haired and impossibly sharp-eyed. She's bent over an image of the psychic, lips pressed to hers, sucking tendrils of inky blackness out of her lungs -- no ... her heart-- no, her soul. A thing is standing by, watching -- a horribly defaced thing, something that had feathers once, but is now hideous and beyond recognition. Truly, her representation of Demont is much, much more monstrous than he had ever appeared in life. Smirking at her own representation, and unnaturally pleased by its growing grotesqueness, she's oblivious to whatever effect it's having on the young girl she's feeding the image to.
Shishi watches with some obvious fatherly worry as the psychic shows his daughter the vision of the ability she'll need to copy. The girl is only distracted by the gruesome image of Demont for a moment, befriending a rotting corpse has probably left the girl jaded to such imagery. Her focus is on the sin eating act, watching it as it is presented to her, confident in her own ability to retain the information she's given without particularly trying to memorize every detail, the mimicking, after all, is left up to the family's curse, the girl just a vessel.
The blonde seven year old comes out of the vision as one would awaken from a nightmare, her breathing heavy and quickened and it is not with her own azure eyes that she stares back at Caedan, but with eerily familiar peridot eyes, the vision along with the girl's own anxious anticipation forcing the girl's accursed eyes through their transformation to enable her mimicry...
Caedan doesn't like that peridot in the girl, not even a little bit. Of course, the girl's mind is of great fascination, but the creep factor has been upped substantially. The psychic drops her hands to her sides and stands; a second or so later, she's back beside Spawne, a safe distance away.
Jolie saw that transformation, and experienced a shudder to gaze into what were, essentially, her own eyes. "Leralynn..." Her hand was held out, to take the girl's. "It's time." A hasty glance to the others, and she added, while a cold gust stirred unbound hair into an inky billow. "To the fortress."
Spawne lowers a palm atop Caedan's right shoulder, his stare remained where she'd been, rather than where she is, "Y'alright?"
Caedan jumps, unusual for someone that predicts, well, whatever. Eventually she parts with a subdued, "Uh huh."
Shishi 's girl blinked those stolen eyes at the hand offered before taking it and looking back at her father, "Blue... There's alot of them here, huh? Weird ones..." The vampire blinks and rushes towards the girl, removing the scarf from around his neck and wrapping the blonde girl in the enchanted thing as he nodded, "Aye... You'll be alright with this though... Just focus on what you have to do... Let me and Yellow worry about them." With that, the entire family seems ready to move forward, Yellow slapping at Belulah's hand when she pulls his hair too hard.
Jolie would lead the girl, and whoever deigned to follow over that demarcated line between hale earth and sick and hence, toward the ruins. Closing Leralynn's hand in her own tightly, for a moment, she said, "Best you start with me. Then the others..." She would speak to them, over her shoulder. "If I am not enough for her, I may need help." Jolie hadn't been horribly sinful, since her emergence, and her soul did not carry the burdens it once did. Most of those had been left behind, along with the other things she'd lost. Picking her way across the stones, around the larger ones, she carried on until the pair faced a monumental stack of blocks no leviathan had hope of ever shifting. Deeming this close enough, she sat on the edge of one of them, bringing herself level to the small girl's mouth. Trying not to look into those eyes.. she'd try to give Yellow a reassuring glance instead, until she could avoid that gaze no longer. "It's like a kiss, Orange. Only it makes you breathe in." Jolie closed her eyes.
Caedan said helpfully, from behind Spawne, "Suck in all the black."
Shishi was curious to say the least as he followed Jolie and his daughter, taking Yellow and Terra in tow. The vampire did a kind of extend wink as if he was aiming a bow or something, allowing his open eye to flicker through it's accursed transformation, on and off in rapid succession just to get a taste of what Orange had felt from this chaotic place before he had wrapped her neck in that psionic diluting scarf. His reaction was a slight shiver and a short lived frown towards his daughter as he watched her interaction with the clan leader. A rather sharp glance is spared towards the psychic after her comment.
Orange nodded to Jolie, brushing back blonde hair behind her ear as she said, "Mmm... I saw it..." Moving forward with a tilt of her head the mimic's power becomes clear, the dark tendrils reaching out kind of eagerly towards their previous user's lips before contact was made.
Spawne swatted again at an unseen tug on his upper back with his free hand, an accusing state tossed downward at Caedan as if she were to blame for the nuisance.
It was the lightest, most innocent of kisses, and for a moment Jolie was drawn deep into the memory of her own past, being lifted up, being held over the body of a fat corpse who'd sinned sins so black they almost choked her.., and stole from her her innocence that first time, filling her head with visions of it all and her heart with the feelings, the guilt, the evil and selfish justifications.. When Orange presses her lips to the mortal's own, the trembling woman felt a heave in her chest, as if some lurking beast had risen there, and her lips and eyes fell open both, and from her mouth streamed the smoky residue of.. what? What darknesses lay in the soul of the woman once named for that very quality? Leralynn would feel it first- lust, visions of a pirate Captain, greed, the satisfaction of robbing Finn, envy, as she'd stared at women and their babies with new eyes, sloth, in her lack of willingness to aid those who needed aid, gluttony, the craving to drown her fears in drink.... all small things, when it came to sins. But it was wrath that nestled in her mind and heart, and had been buried under the pall of nicety, in the name of getting on with life. Leralynn would see a wish, a dagger driven into an unbeating heart, a fire set, a head cut off. And all perpetrated on the blonde woman who stood not far away, and all the result of a different kiss, something at once less dark, and less innocent. Wrath spilled into the child like a soupy black poison, and the borrowed alchemy of the sineater would suck it down, transmute it, swell the girl's own shadows into snaky vines that whipped about her. And Jolie at last felt that old hatred ease, the bitten-back betrayal go, the past recede like a stagnant tide, finally let free to wash out to the deep. With a teary face, she farewelled that pain, that secret want to cleave Terra's fair head in with an axe, and it was through those tears she saw the girl, and then the others, before her hands covered her face and she wept.
Jolie whispered, to her hands, "I'm sorry...." Whether this was meant for the woman whose harm she'd wished, and didn't fully know it, or to the burdened child, it wasn't clear.
Spawne plucked the cigar from his lips, a final trail of smog flowing from his breath. He watched Jolie with interest, at least, not bothering to grapple with such nuisances as empathy or pity.
Shishi folded his arms, idly rubbing biceps as he watched, with a wary frown, his daughter take in the clan leader's sins. This part of the process complete, the blonde girl blinks teary green eyes back at Jolie. Orange frowns, biting lightly at her bottom lip. When she's able to look away form the clan leader she immediately has Jolie's stolen gaze forced back towards Terra, sharp and... well, wrathful. Swallowing hard the girl is able to pry her gaze away from Terra as she wipes at the tears in her eyes with her arms. A smile is forced towards Jolie along with a weak laugh as Leralynn asks, "I did it right... hmm?" looking rather desperate for the woman's approval.
Jolie sobbed anew, folding the girl in with her arms, nodding, murmuring 'yes'es until her heart, torn rootless of that bitter secret, could bear to let her pull back and look into the child's newly arctic gaze. "Did fine, honey." How she'd make this up to the family, she didn't know.. but a debt had been incurred, and she would see it paid, somehow. The mortal studied Leralynn closely now. "Does it feel.. too full?" The black wisps writhed, gently, hardly what they'd been when Jolie owned them. "No.." the girl looked suddenly worried, as if that was a fault. "Should it?" Jolie shook her head, cast a dulled look toward the group standing witness to this odd exchange. "You'll know when it's enough. And you need more, pet. I'm sorry, but you do." Her next words were spoken in a hoarse call, "Who will help me?" Help fill a child's head with things that rightly belonged in hell? There was one among them who carried less conscience than anyone she knew, and it was on him both pairs of eyes next fell.
Spawne turned toward the broken voice, a knowing stare. What gall to make a request as this! Was there something he owed her? Help, he most certainly could. A man once invested in knowledge, now consumed by a darkness. An evil which licked at his ear, whispering vicious prompts. Garland, Khasad, Ner'Roth... Beasts of the Underdark which had pulled at his strings, brought forth abominations into Hollow at the hand of a man: Kaine 'Red' O'Bannion. His sin was upon his flesh. The colour of choked blood, a hide thick and leathery from years of abuse at the hands of his masters. Another tug from behind him, this one went without acknowledgement. She dare consume what he had become? The child would try to... Separate... Us? "Go on then, kid..." He spoke, a haunting rasp wrapped in his baritone, "...I dare you."
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