Topic: Star Trek: The Scales of Eternity
Subject: What?!?!
Stardate 2365.05.16 - Impact minus 51:32
USS Peregrine, Captain’s Ready Room - 14:01
Silas’s gaze fell to the pips for a second and then, as his ears reddened and his eyes narrowed, lifted to frame the Trill’s face. “Tochi,” Drake’s voice seemed almost strangled, “have a seat.”
We will not, Zai thought, giving the chair only a cursory glance out of the corner of an eye before reclasping his hands at the small of his back and lifting his chin in a small gesture of defiance.
“I said,” the Captain reiterated, the heat of his anger becoming almost palpable, “SIT YOUR SPOTTED ASS DOWN! NOW! That is a DIRECT order.”
The Trill’s jaw tightened, his spine stiffened, and his own eyes narrowed a fraction as he indulged in another split-second of insubordination. He knew Silas well enough, though, to be assured that his resistance wouldn’t fly in this situation. Thus, before he provoked his CO and friend to round the desk and put him forcibly into the indicated seat, Tochi let an irritated puff of air skim past his lips. “Aye, sir,” he chuffed, settling not quite comfortably into the chair.
“First off,” Silas rumbled after massaging his exasperation into submission, “there is no way in any version of hell that I am accepting this resignation. I won’t let you do this to yourself and, selfishly, I need you, damn it.”
You may not have a choice in the matter, my friend, Zai thought, tightly pursing his lips in order to keep from saying the words aloud. His only answer in that moment was to chew his tongue and keep his gaze leveled at the man across the desk.
“It has been a pleasure?” Drake went on, a disbelieving tone tinging his voice, “What, that’s it, and we aren’t friends anymore?”
We will always be your friend, Silas. Again, he let the words go unspoken though he did heave something of a sigh to protest that assumption. A nearly imperceptible shake of his head followed and Tochi folded his hands in his lap.
“That’s an awfully fatalistic proclamation…” Drake went on, his eyes narrowing. He continued by laying bare Tochi’s plan as if he were privy to the Trill’s very thoughts. Silas’ interpretation was a bit more grim, however, than Zai’s true intent. This whole thing wasn’t presented as some sort of suicide mission. He wasn’t planning on sacrificing his life if it could be avoided, only the Angel was to be given over for the cause. “...I think not,” Silas said, shaking his head, “This sounds far too much like some maudlin Vulcan ‘the good of the many versus the good of the one’ nonsense, and there is no need for anyone to sacrifice themselves to save these people.”
Tochi lifted a brow and offered a shrug. “Sacrificing myself wasn’t the idea, Silas” he muttered in reply, “nor was it…”
The retort was interrupted by the boom of Drake’s fist slamming down on the desk. “Did you know that they are begging for our help,” Silas demanded, “Have you heard the transmissions?”
“I have,” Tochi nodded curtly, “and the urgency of those pleas are…”
Once more, the Trill’s response was interrupted, this time by Drake cueing up the aforementioned transmissions despite Tochi’s profession of having heard them already. It was all he could do not to squirm beneath the uncomfortable weight that the recordings pumped into the air. His stomach tightened, much like Silas’ lips, and he allowed a slow blink as his hands lifted from his lap and clutched at the arms of the chair.
“I’m done debating whether or not we will interfere,” Silas declared, stabbing the button again and putting a merciful end to the desperate pleas of the Calicans, “That broadcast is enough justification for me…”
For us, as well, Tochi scowled inwardly, again, offering only another clipped nod by way of response, Which is why I don’t understand why you’re so opposed to…
“...I will order the Peregrine to reposition close to the asteroid, within optimal firing range of a properly placed barrage of torpedoes,” Drake went on, causing Tochi’s eyes to widen a bit and his jaw to clench, “If we don’t come up with a better idea by tomorrow, I will order us to fire on the asteroid…”
The rest of what the Captain said was lost to the sudden ringing in Tochi’s ears. His face reddened and his eyes narrowed as he leaned forward and finally managed to loosen his jaw. “We have just laid a better idea before you, Silas,” he insisted almost angrily, “but, for whatever reason, you’re refusing to accept it for what it is!”
“You’re too noble for your own good, Tochi,” Drake sighed, his tone softer as he leaned back in his seat, “And you’re hurting - badly. Your judgment is clouded with pain…”
“And yours isn’t?!”
“...I bet if you asked some of your other personalities, they would agree with me,” Silas suggested, ignoring the Trill’s question.
“I’m sure that all of our personalities are of a mind where this is concerned, sir,” Zai scowled, on the verge of tearing himself out of the seat and storming out of the office.
“I frankly don’t trust you right now not to kill yourself in some misguided attempt to do the right thing,” Drake offered, shaking his head, “But the thing is - this isn’t your choice to make.”
That professed lack of trust, regardless of whatever perceptions may have prompted it, was a slap in the face. Tochi was both stunned and angered by it. His eyes widened as he rose out of the chair and his mouth fell open as if to offer some protest but, in the moment, he found that he had no words.
“Effective immediately and until further notice,” Silas intoned from behind his stoney gaze, “you are grounded, Commander Zai…”
“Are you frillin’ kidding me, right now,” Tochi demanded, gripping the edge of the desk as he glowered at Drake, “You’re frillin’ grounding me out of some misguided concern for our mental state?! You can’t…”
“...You will not pilot your Angel, any shuttlecraft, a worker bee - NOTHING,” Drake barreled on, unperturbed by the Trill’s rising ire, “You will not leave this ship except by my personal say so. I will coordinate with Ensign Owen to divvy up your shifts until after this crisis has passed. Do you understand?”
F*** you, Silas Drake, the curse reverberated through his skull three times as he fought to keep from letting it fly. His knuckles were white from his increasingly tight hold on the leading edge of the desk and, for an instant, he entertained the notion of flipping the thing over in offense and anger. That thought would only serve to bolster the Captain’s position, though, he realized and any expression of anger, verbal or otherwise, would be akin to throwing pebbles at a Bird of Prey. He was fighting a losing battle.
He relinquished his grip on Drake’s desk, his spine stiffening as he straightened up into a frustrated mockery of standing at attention. “Sir, aye, sir,” he snipped.
“Thank you,” Drake nodded (the words felt almost condescending), “I trust that you will not behave in a manner that would require me to have you confined to quarters? Don’t think that I won’t go as far as to put you on a psych hold or simply toss you in the brig for the duration, if that’s what it takes.”
Tochi’s brow furrowed and his hands balled into fists at his side. The curse rattled through his mind, again, and he scowled in the face of the threats but, in the end, he simply offered a short nod. “I will do my best not to be a nuisance,” he hissed through clenched teeth, “sir.”
“Very well,” Drake nodded, “I am sorry if this offends you Tochi, but I’d rather you hate me than you hurt yourself…”
I don’t hate you, Tochi bristled, but at the moment we’d really like to punch you in the face!
“...I need you. The crew needs you. Starfleet needs you.”
“We have a plan and something of a justification,” the Captain continued after a somewhat burdensome pause, “If there’s nothing better… well, it will be what it will be. And that will be the right thing, regs be damned.”
Which is exactly what I proposed, Tochi fumed, once more refusing to loft the retort out loud, but we suppose that only matters when it’s your decision. He sucked in a slow breath and offered a nod; “As you say, sir.”
“Thank you for caring,” Drake nodded, “for being willing. But I cannot allow this to happen. Dismissed.”
Dismissed… Tochi’s spine stiffened so much that he thought for a moment that it might actually snap …F*** you! He still managed to refrain from lobbing the curse, though, and instead rendered a stiff salute. “Aye aye, Captain,” he replied in a low tone that was dangerously close to a growl. He took a step back, performed a sharp about face, and strode stiffly from the Ready Room without another word - though there were many that he considered - leaving his pips on Silas’ desk.
“Grounded,” Zai grumbled under his breath as he stormed across the bridge, tearing his jacket off as he neared the turbolift, “Kiss my dappled ass!” He whirled around as the lift door began to hiss shut and, when the thing sputtered, he drove a fist into it to goad it closed.
=/=Command not understood,=/= the computer said in response to the assault and the string of half-muttered curses, =/=Please state your destination.=/=
“Deck Two,” Tochi snapped.
((Probably a decent place to stop for the time being. I figure that, since he’s been sidelined, Tochi’s heading for his quarters to strip out his reds and don civvies “in protest.” Might open things up a bit for other cast and crew to cross his path en route, although those interactions might not be as pleasant as Zai usually tends to be.))
Posted on 2022-03-03 at 09:51:42.
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Topic: Shyndyn Chronicles Q&A
Subject: Notice:
You may have taken notice, dear reader, that the opening post for Dark Stars is titled "Interview with the Assassin Part II," and, may be asking yourself; "Well, where in the heck is part one of that interview?"
As it turns out, the whole Interview with the Assassin bit started out as a 'side-story' I was working on whilst Meri was on her hiatus and, following her return, we decided that we might just work these interviews in as Preludes and Epilogues for each of the books, so, technically, Part I (both the prelude and the epilogue) got left on the cutting room floor, so to speak. By way of remedying that, I've decided to post Part I, here, for your reading pleasure (or heebie jeebies as the case may be).
Fates of Fortune Prelude
“Assassin…”
The word was not so much spoken as it was hissed back at me from the gloom-shrouded bench on the opposite side of the table. And, perhaps, now that I think on it, ‘hissed’ may not be the appropriate word, either. It wasn’t a hiss meant to impart a threat or a warning as one might hear from a cat or a snake, for instance; nor was it of the sort that intoned surprise or fear or displeasure. Rather, I think, it was something about the speaker’s curious accent – the way that each syllable was drawn out for a half-breath longer than it should have been, lengthening each letter just so – combined with the way he seemed to almost savor the word as it filled his mouth lent to the striking sibilance of it. And the soft beginning of the chuckle that followed, too, had an almost eerie rasp to it. It carried like a chill breeze across the scarred and stained planks that separated us and, I’m not ashamed to admit, sent a shiver through me the likes of which, I imagine, I’ll not feel again until my last breath.
I tried to mask my discomfort by lifting a goblet to my lips but was betrayed by the way the thing shook in my hand even as the wine it contained warmed my throat. I offered what was likely a too sheepish smile as I sat the goblet down and, as much to calm them as to warm them, rubbed my hands together before I took up my pen and found my place on the page before me once more. I still fought the shivering as I returned my inquiring gaze to the dark shape that lurked in the penumbra opposite me.
“…a rather politic way to put it, yes?”
“Perhaps,” I tried to smile diplomatically in reply as I watched the shadows ripple, “but it is what you do, correct? And it is how you are known, is it not?” I glanced at the small sheaf of papers stacked at my elbow, only long enough to check my notes for the moniker as I had heard it spoken or, rather, whispered for most of my life. “The Assassin Prince of Drasnia,” I read with possibly too much reverence coating the words. My recitation of them evoked another coldly mirthful chuckle from my subject.
“Assassin Prince,” the voice laughed as the shadows from which it issued seemed to somehow roil across the table toward me. “I suppose I have heard that one a time or two,” it said on the tail of that laughter, “though rarely to my face and certainly not in the way you’ve just spoken it.” The shadows produced a hand, then – long, alabaster fingers reaching out to finally claim the wine I’d poured for him some time ago – and the shadows roiled back again taking the cup with them. “You make it sound as if it is some grand title, yes? As if adding ‘prince’ to it makes it something more than it is… a crown… lands… riches, hm?”
I blinked at this response, fascinated at his reaction. Had my usage of that particular name truly offended him? In all honesty, of all the names I had ever heard applied to this individual, Assassin Prince seemed to convey the most respect. “You object to this term, then,” I asked as my pen scratched a note on the paper before me.
The shadows sighed, it seemed, and, as they returned a slightly emptier cup to the table, the voice murmured; “No. No more than any of the others, at least.”
“Others?”
“Tsk,” that clucking of the tongue, at that moment, struck a sharper rebuke in me than his hissing of the word assassin had earlier, “Do not play coy with me round-ear. You know the others as well as I. You have them all scribbled out on your papers, there, yes?”
“I…” I blinked, again, swallowed too hard, reached for a drink, and tried to cover up my notes with an elbow in one awkward motion, “I…uh…”
“Go on,” the voice demanded flatly (I’m unsure if I actually saw him gesture impatiently at the spill of my papers, then, or if it was simply a trick of the shadows in which he sat), “read them off. I shall let you know if you miss any, hmm?”
I indulged in another clumsy sip of my wine and glanced nervously down at the spray of documents. I took another sip as some of the names he asked me to read emboldened themselves and seemed to leap from the pages on which they were inscribed. Some were dramatically evocative…
The Terror of Thamaburgad Road. The Demon of Labaram. The Moon-Eyed Devil. The Mad Mith’ganni. The Edge of Prien’s Axe.
…Others were simpler, more direct, but no less descriptive…
Bogeyman. Nightmare. Kinslayer. Killer. Murderer. Death, itself.
…None of them, I realized, did I want to speak aloud in his presence. Especially given the reaction I’d received from ‘Assassin Prince.’
I blinked, again, looked back up at the swath of shadows across the table and attempted another diplomatic smile. “I’d rather not,” I admitted.
“Of course not,” the shadows sighed, again…
There was a pause, here; a pause brief enough that it might have been that he was only indulging in a sip of his wine but, also, lengthy enough that I was beginning to wonder if he was awaiting another prompt from me before saying anything else. I had just swallowed the lump in my throat for the umpteenth time and had let my eyes drop back to my notes to remind (and perhaps caution) myself of what path of conversation I should or shouldn’t pursue when those pale fingers emerged from the shadows, once more, and pushed a now empty cup toward me.
“…Allow me, then, while you pour, yes?”
I nodded dumbly and, as I reached for the bottle to oblige, the voice in the shadows began to recite all those monikers I had written down but refused to speak aloud. Something in the way the names (and, I suppose, epithets) sounded on his tongue sent a prickling heat to my neck and a cold ache to my guts at the same time and I couldn’t keep my hand steady enough to keep from splashing a bit of the wine on the table when I refilled the cup.
“…Mad Mith’ganni, kinslayer,” the voice was saying when I set the bottle aside again and the shadows reclaimed the refreshed cup of wine, “Ah! And horse f***er. Let us not forget that one, yes?”
He was laughing softly – into his cup, by the sound of it – but I couldn’t laugh even had I wished to do so. Instead, my lips sewed themselves together into a tight line across my face, that cold ache in my gut twisted itself into a knot, and the prickling heat at my neck burst into an inferno that rapidly spread to my cheeks. I twiddled my pen nervously between my fingers, nearly snapping it in two more than one time before I forced myself to stop, and, involuntarily dropped my eyes to the sheet of paper in front of me. ‘Horse f***er’ was not one of the nicknames I had listed in my notes but, of course, it was one that I had heard before. More than once, in fact, and not applied exclusively to him. That sobriquet, along with others such as ‘grass-eater,’ ‘prong humper,’ and ‘moon-eye’ were derogatory terms that were freely tossed about whenever most humans encountered any Mith’ganni (as rare an occurrence as that might be)… I’d even said it, in my youth, to a half-Mith’ganni stable boy owned by the Bolstoii family… and, for lack of a better term, it embarrassed me.
“I… uh…” I murmured, still blinking at my paper but not really seeing it.
“What, round-ear,” the shadow across the table queried, not bothering to mask the condescension in it’s voice, “that one offends you, does it?”
“A…a bit,” I admitted, still deigning to look up for fear that the moon-colored eyes which I had yet to see but, nevertheless, knew were burning into me, would set me ablaze. “My wife… uh… My wife is elven, you see… not Mith’ganni… Dur’manni, actually…”
“Ah,” he interjected into my stammering, “so, you are one of those that claims to have some sort of ‘tolerance,’ yes? Actually took one of us for a bride instead of for a whore, hm? And you think this gives you the right to be offended for her?”
“Yes,” I said, too quickly, as my gaze snapped sharply away from my notes, lifting to glare into those shadows but, instead, finding myself cowed and transfixed by the very glittering, golden-eyed stare that I had so feared to see but an instant ago. The moon-hued eyes stabbed at me from a pale, Mith’ganni face that was no longer obscured by the penumbra but was, instead, scant inches from my own, smirking at me with an ominous, razor-lipped smile. I tried to swallow but couldn’t and, so, I croaked rather than said; “No?”
“No. Be offended for your wife,” he said flatly, “It is good that you do. Makes me almost believe that you mean what you profess to, yes?”
I realized that he hadn’t yet blinked and, for some reason, found myself wishing I were able to look away and almost terrified that I couldn’t. I couldn’t look away, I couldn’t swallow the lump that seemed to be growing ever larger in my gullet, and, in that instant, I’m quite sure, that I couldn’t even move; not even to force a nodded response.
“Would you like to know what truly offends me, breeder,” he asked just as I imagined my heart might stop, as well. He didn’t wait for me to answer that, either; he simply pressed a finger to where the list of his aliases were scrawled on my paper, and continued; “What truly offends me is that, of all of these names you have scribbled, here, of all these things that people of all races have called me, you have omitted the same one that every paching one of your kind has ever done.”
My confusion at that, it seemed, was the catalyst that began to thaw my paralysis. My brow furrowed and arched, first, and, then, somehow disbelieving that, given all of the research I had done in regard to this meeting, I could have possibly missed anything, I finally broke my gaze free of his and inquiringly eyed my notes to discover what it might have been. “I don’t… I’m sure that…” I shook my head, then, and looked back up in capitulation; “Which one is that?”
“Nyx Shyndyn,” he sneered, melting back into his shadows, then.
Instantly I felt my mouth fall open and every drop of blood drain out of me. Yet before my mind could begin to fully ingest what he had said a small chuckle rose out of the darkness behind the Prince, and I realized that we were not alone in this room.
A voice followed the chuckle. This was not the same wind caressed hisses of the assassin. Out of the dark corner came a seductive purr that seemed out of place in this darkened crypt, because it resonated with a soft velveteen quality. "Now Nyx, you know how I hate it when you lie."
Material rustled and a moment later pale fingers came to rest on the assassins shoulders before they slid down his chest most possessively. Another face pressed down into the little shaft of light that occasionally illuminated my subject. The Witch.
"He forgot at least three names. Each just as important as Nyx Shyndyn." She had yet to look my way as she was whispering sweetly into his ear. White light danced upon the profile of her face, declaring the mixed blood running through her veins without question. A scar danced along one cheekbone and into a mess of thick dark hair. Already my heart had begun beating again, too quickly, and the blood that had drained from me was now pounding against my temples. Staring at the line of scar tissue, which did not detract from her beauty, I wondered what was under that hair, if the rumors of her mutilated ears were true.
"Ithilamin. Moreiramin. Melamin."
The words fell breathlessly from her lips a moment before she pressed them against his neck. I watched his hand slither out from under his cloak and take hers into its folds as a warm smile graced his lips. The intimate kiss turned into another light tinkling of laughter. "Or is that last one just for me?"
In a fluid movement the witch came fully into view for but a moment. If he was a Prince then certainly she was his Princess. While certainly shapely, the figure draped in the long flowing lines of her dark purple gown exuded more grace and confidence than any other woman I had ever met. Details were lost, though, as she melted into a puddle of satin near his feet. The corona of dark hair coming to rest upon the elf's knee.
"Oh... and be careful melamin. They are called 'humans,' not 'round ears,' least you forget what might offend your wife."
“Humans… But of course, elen en cormamin,” I heard the assassin concede, his fingers entangling themselves in her hair and tenderly, lovingly I might even say, stroking those locks that spilled across his knee, “I’d not want that, at all, yes?”
The smile on the Mith’ganni’s face, just then, was pictured in my mind and heard by my ears more than it was seen with my eyes, for those were still enrapt by the face of The Witch as she gazed upon me with no small hint of amusement playing on her features.
“That last name is yours alone to call me by, though, hm?” The silk rustled as her gaze abandoned me and, smiling, lifted to regard her husband, somehow forcing mine to follow in its wake. “No other has my heart, after all.”
My mouth had gone as dry as the deserts of Garangrad, I realized, then, and, after only the briefest of instants after having met the moon-hued eyes that bore into me at that moment, I blinked in an attempt to break the spell of paralysis that this pair had just woven about me and reached for my cup in order to slake my thirst…. And, if I admitted it, also to mask the fact that I had been momentarily struck dumb… Ithiamin meant “my moon,” Morieramin was “my Dark One,” melamin meant “my love,” and elen en cormamin, “star of my heart,” if I was properly translating from the elven… None of these terms had I ever heard spoken in regards to this couple before me, now, and, had this been any other pair, I might have been struck by how sweet those endearments and the closeness of those who uttered them were. However, this wasn’t any other couple and, given that fact, I found it almost eerie as opposed to sweet. Cayrimsa Etellenya, Drasnia’s very own half-elven Witch of the Wharf, and Nyx Shyndyn, the Mith’ganni assassin from the far off steppes of Shanurdir; I had heard tales of these two for as long as I could remember, and those tales (along with numerous others, I’m sure) had been whispered in guarded tones for longer than that to be sure. Their legends, both alone and together, could never have shone even the palest light on the side of them that I was witnessing, now. The darkness of those legends would have surely consumed any light that dared tried to pierce them, after all, and I couldn’t help but wonder, now that I had been gifted with seeing this glimmer in the dark, if I would even be allowed to escape with the knowledge of its existence.
As those tales chased through my mind all at once and I tried, in vain, to grasp the threads of them all and weave them into some cohesive tapestry, I still sat in an almost awed silence, blinking only rarely and forcing wine into my uncomfortably dry gullet more often than that. That silence, I realized, had gone on far longer than it felt, though, when the Witch’s velvety purring laughter reached my ears, snatching me out of my reverie to become vividly aware that a razor’s edge had carved a smile across the assassin’s lips whilst he glowered at me.
“So, human,” Nyx hissed past that smile as I blinked myself free of the trance in which I had been held, “you have more questions, yes?”
I nodded, still dumbly, for a moment and, then, when I finally managed to force a semblance of my voice past the desiccation of my throat, offered a smile of my own that, certainly, came nowhere near to matching the sureness in either of theirs. “Y… yes,” I croaked, tearing my eyes away from those discomfiting gazes across the table and forcing them, instead, to study the sheaf of papers before me, “yes… So many…”
So many… so many…
Those two words echoed, over and over, in my mind as I consulted my notes, frantically rifled through the stacks of papers, and consulted some more. They tore at my concentration almost as much as catching my first glimpse of Nyx Shyndyn had; almost as much, too, as had the sudden and quite unexpected appearance of The Witch of the Wharf in his orbit. There were so many questions; so many that I had prepared myself to ask when first this meeting had been set, more, now, that the meeting seemed to be with the two of them as opposed to just the one.
“…sooo many…”
“You have said this,” I heard the assassin’s voice murmur and, only then, realized those words hadn’t been repeating only in my mind, “many times, yes?”
“Perhaps, ithilamin,” the witch purred, her head shifting subtly against his knee, “his first question is which question he should ask first?”
The tinkling of her bemused laughter punctuated that non-question and, at the same time, caused me to choke down those words before I allowed them to pass my lips again, and brought a flush of embarrassment to my cheeks. I felt the heat of it spread from my face to my ears and across my scalp. I felt as if all of the sweat in my body would suddenly find its way to my hairline and course in rivers down my face until I drowned in it…
“Perhaps,” Nyx murmured in reply, the pale fingers of one hand still absently toying with Cayrimsa’s hair as both of them stared, half-amused and half-bored, at me, “or, perhaps, his tongue has cut itself from his mouth before anyone has even touched him, hm?”
…Tongue cut out of my mouth? What?
“No!”
I spoke the word too loudly, at first. Whether it was because I suddenly feared that my tongue had suddenly been cut from my mouth or, rather, because I checked and, quite joyously, discovered that it hadn’t; whatever the reason, I said it too loudly. The tone and force of the word as it exploded from my lips was enough to have raised an eyebrow – and perhaps a smirk – from across the table. Maybe before this is all over, I thought, I may inadvertently lose my tongue or more, but it wouldn’t … couldn’t be for that word.
“No,” I said again in a less, shall we say, emphatic tone. I tried a smile, as well, as further evidence that I wasn’t regaining my composure as quickly as I would have hoped. “Your lady is correct,” I said from behind that smile before I cleared my throat and, at last, willed my scalp to stop prickling, “I had had a rough outline of what I wished to discuss with you, but…”
“But I took him by surprise,” Cayrimsa cooed from her pool of silken shadow.
“Quite,” I agreed, my uncomfortable smile cracking into a foolish chuckle, “and now I’m not sure where to begin.” I blinked at the papers in my hands, shrugged, and dropped them to the table, letting them fall into the same state of chaotic disarray that my thoughts had been in these last moments. “Do I start where I had originally intended; the hows and whys of Nyx Shyndyn leaving the steppe for the cities of men? Or…or do I start with The Wit… er… Cayrimsa’s first memories? I…I…. I don’t understand how my thoughts are so…” I made what must have appeared as some kind of mad gesture when I couldn’t vocalize the words I was searching for because I heard a sudden rustle of silk and, possibly, the hissing of steel. I let my hands fall (slowly) to the table, then, and sighed; “I don’t understand, now, where to start.”
“Do you understand hate, human?”
The hissing of that phantom steel reversed beneath those words and so, strangely enough, did some small bit of the tension. “Hate?” I repeated, blinking in the Mith’ganni’s direction and finding it just a bit easier, if no less uncomfortable, to meet his gaze directly.
“Yes,” he nodded faintly, “hate. You understand hate, and fear, and darkness, yes?”
I felt my brow furrow, felt the waves of confusion beginning to threaten my thoughts once more… Did I understand these things in a literal sense? No. Not really. Did I understand the concepts to which those words referred? As well as the next man, I suppose… Just as I thought the sweat might break at my temples, again, I found that, when I nodded an affirmative response, my mind untangled. I wasn’t going to be able to lead this interview in the same fashion I had with the countless others to whom I’d spoken over the years; I was going to have to be led through it or, quite possibly, it was going to drive me mad.
“Yes,” I said out loud, then, straightening my shoulders as well as my papers before taking up the pen I had abandoned a few minutes ago, “yes, I think I understand these things well enough.”
“Then that is where you begin,” the Mith’ganni smirked, “for that is where all of this begins…”
I was, perhaps, perplexed by this statement more than I had been by the question which had preceded it and, given the soft giggle that escaped the Witch, just then, my puzzlement was plainly evident on my face. Aside from that laughter, though, neither of them was quick to offer any further clarification. Instead, I was left to wrestle my thoughts alone as the darkest of Drasnia’s shadows looked on with some strange amusement. Was I to believe that all of the tales I had ever heard, all of the written accounts I had ferreted out and read, everything that legend and lore told of Nyx Shyndyn had been born of something as simple as hate?
…and fear… The assassin’s voice echoed in my mind… and darkness…
Once more, I reached for my wine and poured a generous sampling past my lips in order to aid in my swallowing of that damnable, razor-edged, lump in my throat and, also, afford myself just that much longer to make some sense of the tangled web which Shyndyn had made of my thoughts. Licking the remains of the taste from my lips, and doing my best to even my expression, I let my gaze slip back into the shadows across the table. My mouth opened and closed more than once before any words escaped… I think I may have been still at a loss as to exactly what question I had wanted to ask or, at least, the best way in which to ask it… When I did find my voice, the words I spoke seemed far too simple for the true complexity my mind had made of the query.
“Everything you’ve done,” I asked, “has been because of your hate?”
“No, human,” the Mith’ganni’s yellow eyes flashed, “everything I have done has been because of your hate. Without that, my hatred would not exist.”
I know that, in that moment, I hesitated – I hesitated because, in all honesty, I wasn’t exactly sure how to interpret what he had just said… I thought I knew… I could certainly guess based on tales I’d heard over the years… but certainty was far from my most tenuous grasp, just then – I hesitated, though, far longer than I thought I had, and I only came to realize it when a coldly impatient sigh chuffed out of the shadows across the table.
“You are to just sit there and blink, then, yes,” the shadows grumbled.
“He’s thinking ithilamin,” the witch purred from the patch of dappled light that fell across Shyndyn’s lap, her scarred beautiful face turning, almost pacifyingly towards his, “Exercise the same patience with his words as you have with your marks, hm?”
The shadows sighed, again. “Of course, elen en cormamin,” came the conciliatory whisper. The shadows moved a bit and sighed, once more, softly this time, as they seemed to settle into themselves. I couldn’t truly see those yellow eyes, just then, but I felt them on me, and that, perhaps, was worse.
“He struggles with where to begin…”
It was Cayrimsa’s voice that followed the Mith’ganni’s exhalation, and there was something of an irritation in it. She heaved a sigh of her own, then, spiced with mild annoyance, and her cinnamon eyes flashed, catching the light, as they moved from his to mine.
“…As my you are fond of saying,” she cooed through the cool air that partitioned me from them, “Should you seek the end of the trail, find its beginning.” She planted a light kiss on his knee, then, just before patting his thigh and getting slowly but gracefully to her feet. “I, however, have heard this tale more times than I care to count…”
I found myself disappointed as her face slipped from that patch of light and melted into the shadows behind him. For all I had heard of Cayrimsa Etellenya, she was the second to last person I had ever imagined might have given me some sort of comfort or condolence in this situation, but, as she disappeared from that little sliver of brightness in the predominating gloom, I, oddly enough, felt the reassurance in my own thoughts fade with her features.
“…Begin at the beginning, Morieramin,” the Witch’s voice purred from the dark, “I’ll join you again if I have anything to offer.”
“Thank you,” I stammered, my eyes straining to discern any indication of her continued presence in the shadows beyond the shadows, “m’lady…”
“So,” Shyndyn’s voice rasped, snatching my attentions dutifully away from the darkness that lingered beyond his own, “you wish to start from the beginning, then?”
“Y-yes,” I answered (why did I suddenly feel so much more apprehensive about seeking out his eyes?), “The Wi… er… Cay… er.. your WIFE seems to think that to be the best place to do so…”
“And, like many a wise man,” Nyx laughed softly in response, “you agree quickly enough to spare your berries from the harvest…”
“I’m a bit smarter than I may look to you, sir,” I chuckled, myself, in reply.
“We shall see,” he answered flatly.
I realized, then, that his goblet had disappeared from the table, and imagined him sipping away the remnants of that cup.
“Which beginning should I relate, human,” the assassin queried once I had imagined him swallowing the wine, “I cannot begin with your peoples’ hatred of mine, but I can tell you of my peoples’ fear of yours… and how that lead me here. That is what you seek, yes?”
“Yes,” I answered aloud… and so much more… “please. And, if you would, Nyx,” I chanced the familiarity, “do call me Tyoma…”
“Tyoma?”
“A… uh… diminutive for Artem,” I explained without really knowing why, “My name is Bazin Artem Vadimovich. Those who know me, though, call me Tyoma.”
The snickering that erupted from the penumbra, at that point, chilled my very bones. “And you tell me this freely, Tyoma?” The Mith’ganni’s laughter was nearly unrestrained. “Do you have any idea the power which a being’s name holds, or, perhaps, Bazin Artem Vadimovich, are you quite a bit stupider than you might look?”
Even if I had known the correct response to give, then, I likely wouldn’t have given it. Instead, in the wake of the uncomfortable flushing that fell across my visage, I tried to smile and, after I cleared my throat, asked; “What was your life like before…. Before whatever happened to bring you into the cities of men?”
“Whatever happened,” Nyx sneered with the same derision in which he had repeated the word assassin just minutes ago, “As if ‘whatever’ is a suitable term for the massacre of my clan?!”
“I…I… I didn’t mean…” My gaze, I found, had turned downward and, again, I felt shamed by my own thoughtless turning of a phrase.”
“I know what you meant,” the assassin’s voice susurrated from the dark, now strangely soothing in it’s tone…
Tentatively I looked up and, to my surprise, found the Mith’ganni closer than I would have imagined given the distance of his voice. The weight of his torso was supported by the wide placement of his elbows upon the scarred surface of the table. His yellow eyes gleamed like twin moons on a clear, midsummer’s night, and his smile was, at once, sharp and soothing.
“…and to answer the question you dare not ask; yes, had you spoken to me so before I met Cay, I would have killed you without hesitation…”
I swallowed… hard.
“…Since I have known my wife, however,” the Mith’anni continued, softening the lump in my throat a fraction, “I have also come to know that you humans are not as tactful with your language as might be expected….”
“Our tongue is nowhere near as old as yours,” I conceded with a smile.
“…and so your reprieve.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat, though, I’m fairly sure it cut a long gash on its way down.
“Nyx…” a purr emanated from the darkness again, “you prattle on. The beginning… tell the round-ear what he wants to know. Tell him about hate, tell him about the first time you kissed me…” Her tone began sharp and impatient, but faded into velvety intimations by the time she came to the word kiss. It lingered in the air as if she were still wrapped in the moment it had happened.
Hate? A first kiss? My mind wrestled with how two such disparate things could possibly be woven together and, when I looked imploringly to the assassin for clarification, I found his features to be set in a similarly contradictory melding of awkward wickedness.
“The first kiss,” he inquired of the shadows at his back, “are you sure, melamin?”
“It was the beginning, ithilamin,” the Witch’s voice returned silkily, “Our beginning.”
“So it was,” Nyx acquiesced with a faint nod, the sheepishness melting from his expression as his eyes turned back to mine, “and so we shall.
Take up your pen, Tyoma,” the Assassin Prince urged me, reaching out for the cup of wine before him, “and I’ll tell you the tale of a time when my wife would have much rather preferred to see me dead than suffer my attention, yes?”
Nodding enthusiastically, I hurriedly pulled a sheaf of parchment in front of me and, as he watched me over the rim of his glass, readied my pens. When I had a freshly inked nib hovering over a blank sheet, I lifted my eyes expectantly to Nyx.
“Cayrimsa and I had only worked one other job together before this,” the assassin began, “and, while we were successful in our task, the two of us did not necessarily get along, yes?”
A tinkling of laughter rose up behind his shoulder, “That ithilamin is a great understatement…” the assassin simply raised his hand to wave off her sweet mocking and continued on.
“I am sure, after that contract, she hoped never to see me again. As fate would have it, though, she would be burdened with me, once more, only a couple of weeks later…”
My pen scritched furiously across the page as, in a notably nostalgic tone, Nyx began to relate the tale that I would later come to title Fates of Fortune.
Fates of Fortune Epilogue
“...and that, scribe, is how love was born of hate,” Nyx offered, coming to the end of the narrative and the bottom of I cannot recall how many glasses of wine, “and how verne’amin and I found ourselves woven into the tapestry of the revolution, yes?”
For a moment, I could do little more than blink my burning eyes, rub at them with ink-stained fingers, and gawk at the spill and spray of the numerous pages on the table between us. My hands were cramped, my eyes were heavy, and my mind was still trying to find its way out of the web of the fantastic tale he had spun. “This… I…” I struggled to find my voice, to find words that could truly frame my wonder. “It’s incredible,” I managed as I began to sort the dishevelled array of parchments into a more orderly stack, “and so much more than I had hoped for when you first agreed to speak with me. Diola lle, heru en amin, for sharing this.”
“Mmm,” the assassin rasped from where he had reclined back into his patch of darkness, his voice scarcely above a gravelly whisper, “seasamin.”
In the midst of my organization of the papers, I noticed that my inkwells had been all but emptied and, also, that I had woefully few blank pages on which to continue transcribing. The exasperated sigh that escaped me at that realization evolved all too quickly into a yawn of near exhaustion and that vexed me almost as much as my dwindled sundries. After all, Nyx and Cayrimsa’s impromptu wedding on the cliffs of Skalkbluff was far from the end of the tale, I was sure of it.
My notes told of a span of months in which neither the Assassin Prince nor the Witch of the Wharf were seen in Drasnia (or any other Imperial city, for that matter). I had accounts of rumors that purported Nyx killing Cayrimsa before leaving the city in his wake. Other myths that told of the Witch abandoning her wharf in favor of Drasnia’s sewers and luring children into those cesspools for her own dark purposes. And, too, there were details of the pair’s involvement in the elven uprising, itself, that had yet to be touched upon; loose ends where the former crimelord, Vadim Dmitrova’s dealings had urged them onto the path of it.
As I tucked the stacks of paper into my satchel for safe keeping, I sighed and yawned again before turning my eyes to where the mith’ganni lazily watched me from the shadows. “You’ve given me so many answers, Nyx,” I acknowledged with a grateful smile, “but left me with twice as many questions. Unfortunately, I find myself short on paper and ink, now…”
A low chuckle emanated from the dark, then, and a glint of yellow flashed just beyond. “Short on sleep, as well,” Nyx noted, “given how you yawn and how red your eyes, yes?”
I’m certain there was no small measure of embarrassment etched on my face when I nodded in reply. “I’m afraid so,” I said, stifling yet another yawn with the back of my hand, “but I would dearly love to hear what happened next. Where did the two of you go after Skalkbluff? What happened to, as you said, weave you so tightly into the tapestry of the revolution? How were you brought back to Drasnia after so long away?”
“The hour grows late, Bazin Artem Vadimovich,” the shadows laughed, “and I have spent enough time with you for a day, hm? Those are tales for another time.
Go home to your wife, now, and leave me to mine,” his voice had started to dissipate, growing softer with each word as if he had already begun to take his leave of the room in which we met, “When you have rested and restocked your supplies, seek me out, again, and we shall see what can be done about answering your lingering questions, yes?”
“Of course,” I apologized, securing the hasp on my satchel so that the volume I had just tucked inside would be safe, “forgive me for…” I got an eerie feeling, then, that I was addressing an empty room, and so I let my last words go unspoken.
Shouldering my satchel, I left the room through the same door by which I had entered. Behind me, some distance and perhaps bouncing down a corridor or two, a sound drifted out of the darkness. A teasing purr, “Assassin Prince…” it echoed my words from earlier. The purr was followed closely by a low growling laugh that I had heard from the moon-elf several times throughout the night, a brief pause and then a long silky moan full of lust. I felt my own loins tighten slightly at the sound of it. Then quickened my steps and retraced my path through the deathly silent corridors of the tower, lest I be accused of overhearing something I shouldn’t have. After a time, a doorway opened ahead of me and I found myself squinting against the light of the dawning sun. I took a moment, once my eyes had adjusted, to gaze eastward across the bay where, beyond the ships and skiffs that bobbed in the harbor, the sprawl of Drasnia had begun to come awake. From where I stood, now, on the high reaches of the island of Ty’vaal, I could easily pick out several landmarks that had been mentioned in the telling of the Shyndyns’ tale - the lighthouse, the Grey Arm docks, Vergal Seaport, the Three Gates Bridge, and the River’s Mouth Market - and those sites prompted the story I had just spent a night recording to start afresh in my mind.
As I trod the long, winding path down to where Ty’vall thrust its way through the waves of the bay, I resolved myself to take a route home that might take me by more than a few of those points of interest and, when I reached the small pier that issued from a craggy cave at the island’s base, I climbed aboard the skiff awaiting me there and asked the silent ferryman who attended it if he might drop me at the Grey Arm dock.
With a nod, the ferryman untied the boat, pushed us into the deeper waters, and angled the boat toward where Drasnia’s seawalls separated the city’s harbor from the broader expanse of the bay. I watched the island fade behind me as the city grew ahead and, even as tired as I was, then, found myself filling with excitement at returning to Ty’vaal very soon… with twice the ink and paper I had brought this time.
Posted on 2021-03-09 at 16:05:52.
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Topic: Dark Stars Among the Steppes
Subject: Prelude - Interview with the Assassin Part II
I am almost ashamed to say that I did not return to Ty’vaal the very next day. Nor did I return the day after that. In fact, despite my anxiousness to hear the tales continue, it had been nearly a full week before I had found it in myself to brave a trip to the harbor and, from there, a similarly lengthy paddle across the bay with no one but the reticent ferryman to keep my company. I might have blamed the delay of my return on the time it took to replenish my supplies... Or, possibly, on the fact that, once I had relayed the details of my first meeting to her, that Serra practically begged me not to chance another night in the presence of Nyx Shyndyn and his wife… The truth of it, though, is that, like Serra, I was afraid that I might not survive a second encounter with the darkest shadows of Drasnia as easily as I had survived the first.
When I stepped out into the light of day following that first interview, I could not help but think that, with the amount of information the Mith’ganni had imparted as to the couples’ “crimes,” I was allowed to leave with my fingers, tongue and testicles, let alone my life. For days, as I awaited my reserves of ink and parchment to be replenished, and in the face of my wife’s incessant pleas, I weighed my options - take satisfaction in what I had and, almost assuredly, live to see myself to an old age or, quite possibly, venture to the island, again, and, once again, risk not returning and ending up a pile of salted bones at the bottom of some obscure pool beneath Ty’vaal. Conventional wisdom, of course, argued for the first option - Nyx had long been known to kill on a whim (round-ears in particular) and Cayrimisa, while known better for letting them live, was also remembered for sending them back into the world gibbering and half-mad from the pains she had wrought on them. In the end, though, my curiosity and my need to hear the story told unto its end won out and, so, through the channels I had carefully cultivated, I arranged a second visit.
I made sure to time the visit so that I arrived on Ty’vaal’s rocky shores hours earlier (and, of course, with twice the paper and ink) than I had before. The half-hour it took to climb the path from the pier to the tower’s entryway, too, proved fruitful as, when my feet finally came to a flat place in the morning shadows cast by the tower, I found the mith’ganni moving amongst the tiny gardens that spotted the lawns sprawling from the tower’s foot rather than having to seek him out in the higher floors.
“Quel amrun, Tyoma,” he called from behind a bush of nightshade as my feet took the cobbles of the path, “Finally decided that the story was more important than your life, yes?”
I froze in my tracks as those yellow eyes peered at me, with no small amount of amusement, through the spear-blade shaped leaves. The lump in my throat that I had nearly forgotten reintroduced itself and, as before, I tried in vain to swallow it. “Quel amrun, heru en amin,” I croaked, doing my best to sketch a bow that showed a due amount of respect without leaning into condescension, “I hope I am not too early.”
A snort of a chuckle chased more from his nose than his mouth, then, and he wandered from the nightshade toward a patch of white-flowered hemlock. “I hadn’t expected you, at all, scribe,” he chuffed, wrapping the blue-violet flowers he had harvested from the nightshade in a rag and stuffing them into a pocket, “Until I was made aware that Sanev had taken you aboard at the docks, I had expected never to see you again.”
Despite the fact that nothing in Nyx’s tone or demeanor told me that I should, I offered a throaty laugh in answer. “I found myself wondering much the same these past days,” I couldn’t help but admit as the Twilight Elf’s captured me sidelong. Beneath that gaze, I felt my feet freeze to the ground and my throat tighten around the already too-large lump that had formed within. “Y-you’re not going to... kill me… are you?”
“Hard to say,” the assassin shrugged casually, moving from the hemlock toward a small spread of jimson weed, “What sort of price is on your head?”
Price? I wondered for a perplexed instant. On my head? What might I have done to warrant someone taking out a contract on my life?
I am ashamed to say that, despite my self-purported mental acuity, it took me far too long to realize that the off-handed question was his idea of a joke. My cheeks flamed with embarrassment when the realization struck me, though, and I began to laugh, nervously at first, but more heartily when Nyx’s own guffawing rose to match mine. That laughter withered and died when the mith’ganni’s came to a sharp end and, moving purposefully toward another huddle of leafy plants, he said; “Each of our threads comes within a breath of being cut more times in a day than most of us care to admit, Tyoma. Neither laughter nor tears changes that, yes?”
My brow furrowed, and my footsteps fell still again. “I’m not sure that I understand your meaning, Lord Shyndyn.”
“No?” he asked, not bothering to take his eyes from their scrutiny of the plants at his finger-tips.
As I slowly shook my head in dumb response, I felt my hand slip a small notepad and freshly inked pen from an outer pocket of my satchel. Even if it wasn’t obvious to me in the moment, some part of my brain had the wherewithal to know that whatever Nyx said next would likely play into the parts of the Shyndyns’ story I was to be blessed (or cursed) with, today. “No,” I returned simply, my pen poised to scrawl out the next words he uttered.
“Hmm,” he said, still not deigning to look my way and, instead remaining focused on sorting through the slightly fuzzy, green-grey leaves before him. “So, of all the times you could have been killed since you left your home, this morning,” the assassin probed, “not one of those moments gained notice as potentially being your last?
Not when the loose tread on your stoop gave way as you left home? Not the cabbage cart that nearly ran you down as you emerged from the alley into the River’s Mouth? Not your passage across the bay where, at any moment, a wave could overturn the boat, sending you to the bottom of the Daranjaya? None of these moments - and these are only a few in the hours you’ve been awake, mind you - none have made you consider that, were it not for a faltered step or a spared glance, a whim of the weather, it could have been your end?”
Again, I offered a slightly baffled shake of my head, unsure of precisely where this might be going but, now, painfully aware that, in the past few hours, I had come closer to death more often than I had let myself realize.
“That is another difference between you and I,” Nyx smirked, inclining his head toward the dark doors of the tower’s entryway, “aside from the shape of our ears and our native tongues, yes? I have not had the luxury of being oblivious to the fact that death awaits us in each passing moment in more than forty years…”
I fell into step at his heel, my pen scratching madly across the tiny pages of my notebook, as he led the way to the tower.
“...I had that, once, when I was young.” A puff of breath, I couldn’t tell if it was a snort or a sigh, escaped the mith’ganni, then, and he shot a narrow-eyed glance over his shoulder at me.
“I was born before your kind set foot on Tuu’Palurin,” Nyx continued, “It was an age shortly after the last of the dragons had gone and left the world to glean their knowledge from the stars. I grew up learning the tales of how Yarra’maskan and Atara-loki spread the stars through the skies and how my people were created to continue that legacy after they had taken their places… It sounds a weighty inheritance, yes? But it made for a simple life.
We kept to ourselves, we tended our horses, we cared for our women, and we followed our stars and the seasons across the steppes.” The tone of his voice drifted from sentimental to indignant; “But then you breeders came to our shores and, as you do, crept and conquered inland, destroying as you went in the name of your so-called progress. By the time you reached the borders of my home, we had long known of your hatred and brutality. We were taught to fear you before we ever saw your faces.”
He shook his head, then, and the thick plaits of ebon hair that hung down his back swished between his shoulder blades. “When my clan first laid eyes on your kind,” Nyx said, pausing at the foot of the time-worn stone steps that led to the tower’s doors,, “they succumbed to the fear they had not faced and were stolen and sold or slaughtered for it. I was robbed of that, too, because your people chose to raid our village while I was out hunting. When I returned, all that was left were bodies and burning lane’eska, hm? So, when I first laid eyes upon one of you, I was angry, not afraid. You had left me evidence of the worst of which you were capable and I swore I would revisit it on all of you…”
Nyx’s gaze ticked sharply away, then, as if something else called for his attention. Curious as to what it might have been, my own eyes followed his along a footpath that wound deeper into the gardens that spread from the foot of the tower. After a moment, my ears picked up on an indistinct but obviously irate voice ranting somewhere amidst the plants. The voice drew closer and, as it did, the words it spoke became clearer…
“How the f**k are there rabbits?! I live on an island!”
...My breath caught and my heart stopped, at least for a beat or two, when Cayrimsa emerged from behind a wide swath of sparrow grass. Rather than the elegant dress I had last seen her in, though, she appeared in simpler, almost rustic, garb. A pair of dark, close fitting pants, tucked into a pair of well-worn boots encased her legs. A deep violet tunic, which was obviously too large to be her own, cascaded from her shoulders and was cinched at her waist by a thin belt and a half-apron. In one gloved hand, she carried a basket, brimming with her harvest and, in the other, she held a dead rabbit. When, from beneath the brim of her hat, her eyes fell upon Nyx and me, she stopped in her tracks and glowered.
“These f***ing things,” she snapped at her husband as she held the rabbit aloft, “are eating my plants! What kind of assassin are you that you can’t kill a bunch of rodents that don’t even belong out here?!” Her fingers released their grip on the rabbits legs, then, and the thing launched through the air with such speed that I couldn’t track it until it thumped solidly into Nyx’s chest and then fell at his feet.
My eyes went wide at the assault but Nyx’s narrowed as they fell, first upon the rabbit draped limply across the toe of his boot, and then lifted to scowl at his wife. “For pach’s sake, woman,” he sniped back, kicking the rabbit from his foot as he did, “I didn’t know we even had paching rabbits! They do not bother my plants!”
Cay’s eyes went wide in annoyance at his rebuke, particularly at his utterance of the word ‘woman,’ but the fires behind them flared as they narrowed again and stomped angrily toward him. “Well that makes them smarter than you, Nyx Shyndyn,” she seethed, “If they ate your plants they’d be dead and we wouldn’t have this problem to begin with, would we?”
The threatening glare he fixed her with might have frozen anyone else in their tracks but it didn’t serve to falter a single one of the Witch’s steps. She stormed right up to him, met his glare with her own, and poked a gloved finger into his chest. “Paching hwandi!” she hissed, “Dolle naa lost! If there is so much as a single rabbit left on this island by nightfall, I swear by all your stars, I’ll skin your lilly ass!”
“You may try, ruthaer,” he growled through clenched teeth. His lips moved as if he were about to say more but the gloved finger at his chest lifted to jab at the tip of his nose, then, and cut him short.
“Dinalle,” Cay snapped before her finger swept away from his face and indicated the general expanse of the gardens, “Ndengina sen ilya! Sii’!”
“Tereva,” he grumbled.
Her molten amber eyes flicked in my direction, then, taking me in and dismissing me all at once, before they snapped back to Nyx again. “Ar’sana lle mellon’ai vassen lle,” she demanded, “I’m in no mood for company, today!”
“Ascenie!” Nyx scowled, giving a faint shake of his head as she pushed passed the both of us and disappeared into the tower, the heavy door slamming shut behind her.
When she was gone, the assassin sighed softly, rolled his eyes, and turned his gaze back to me. “Do you know how to make a snare,” he asked, eyeing me somewhat skeptically, “or use a bow?”
Dumbstruck by the quarrel to which I had just born witness, I could do little more than blink and shake my head in reply.
“Of course not,” he murmured in derision. He stooped down, snatched up the dead rabbit, and turned for the door. “Wait here,” he commanded as he whispered up the steps, “I’ll be back in a moment, yes?”
Before I had finished nodding my acknowledgement, Nyx had disappeared through the doorway and, for a moment, I was left alone to try and gather my thoughts. It took a bit to shake the feeling of discomfort to which the couple’s spat had given rise but, by the time the mith’ganni returned, with a bow and quiver slung across his back and a loose coil of thin wired held in one hand, I had quieted my apprehension well enough to find my words again, at least. “She seemed terribly upset over a few rabbits,” I said (unnecessarily, given the sidelong glare he gave me as he skulked past me).
“It’s more than just the rabbits,” Nyx rumbled in reply, gesturing for me to follow, “I have no doubt.
Do you recall where we were,” he asked, leading me down the very path from which Cay, in all her fury, had approached only minutes ago.
“I do. You were speaking of your life on the steppes and how my kind had changed it,” I answered, “but, you’ll forgive me if I confess that I’m not sure I yet understand where this is all going. I thought we were to speak about what happened after you and Cayrimsa left Skalkbluff?”
“Mm,” he nodded in vague remembrance, “yes. Right.” He sank to a knee, his fingers reaching out to touch a narrow strip of grass which seemed to have been laid flat by the repeated passage of small creatures. “I was leading you to Shanurdir with that,” he offered as his yellow gaze sought out the extent of the apparent rabbit run, “because that is where I led Cay when we finally left Skalkbluff…” There was an almost mischievous set to his features as he rose from his crouch, “...If you think that what you just saw was anywhere close to the amount of anger that my wife can muster, Tyoma, you are in for a surprise in the tales to come…”
Posted on 2021-03-09 at 15:54:18.
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Topic: The Fates of Fortune
Subject: Of the Crimelord and His Cutter
“Well,” Vadim queried, twirling one end of his mustache between his fingers as he studied the two large jars that sat on the front corners of his desk, “what do you think?”
Tselika sighed, wandered forward and, putting her hand on her knees, bent down to carefully study the pair of branded heads that floated within the jelly that filled those jars. “Well,” she puffed after a moment, running her fingers over the blood-red tips of her pasted up mohawk, “I think Kylo was an idiot to send the likes of these on Nyx’s trail, to start. I think that, if your men don’t return soon, you can write them off, as well. And,” she sneered, pushing off her knees and rising to her full height before turning to face the Hellkite Captain, “I think that you were an idiot for not allowing me to kill him to begin with…”
As expected, the back of Dmitrova’s hand lashed violently across her face, then, and sent her staggering a few steps to the left. “Huh,” Tselika groaned, thumbing the trickle of blood he had coaxed from the corner of his mouth with the backhanded slap. An expectant tingle ran through her as she sucked the blood from her thumb and stepped back into Vadim’s path. “I also think that you’re more than simple in thinking that making a memorial of these two’s heads will do anything to inspire aught but fear in your men.”
Vadim’s fist lashed out, then, crashing into her mouth and evoking even more of the hot, coppery tang of blood on her tongue. She had rocked back from the force of the blow, racked her spine painfully against the desk and, with that impact, sent the head-stuffed jars tottering precariously toward its edges. Breathless, bleeding, and bruised, Tselika crumpled to her knees and chuckled huskily as her fingers scrabbled to keep a grip on the desk in hopes of regaining her feet. “He’s going to come back and kill you,” she wheezed as his hand closed around her throat and hauled her limply upright.
He spit in her face and, then, spun her around and slammed her face first into the desk before tearing her leggings down around her knees. “He’ll kill us all,” she murmured as another punch to her head sent her spinning, “He’ll kill us... AHHHHHHHH!!!!”
The pain of Vadim’s violation was exquisite. She had expected this, even hoped for it, but the brutality he brought to her now set Tselika numb, and she sprawled in angry submission as he savaged her. When he had finished, she melted to the floor where his last punch was intended to send her, but she dared not let herself succumb completely to the pain. “You should have sent me,” she groaned, wiping blood from her mouth as he laced back up, “I could have brought him back…”
“Shut your paching mouth,” Vadim huffed as he stalked away from the assassin sprawled before his desk. “Just like him, if you had been truly interested, you would have been on his heels without my having to ask, you whore!”
“I would have,” Tselika croaked, hauling herself up along the front of his desk and groaning against the sharp ache in her backside that his angry attention had given rise, “but I am not that stupid!” She lifted her arms to stave off the violent stroke he threatened to level on her just then. She might have welcomed it at another time, but, not now. “After all you’ve done… all that we have done to him in recent days,” she winced, using the edge of the desk to pull herself to her feet, “we should count ourselves lucky that he’s not come for us, already, even in his current condition...”
As she jostled against the desk, attempting to straighten her clothes, the head in one of the jars bobbed in the goop that suspended it and turned its dead eyes in her direction. A faint smirk played on her blood-smeared lips before the act of settling her backside against the desktop turned it into a wince.
“...If I’d have gone after him alone,” Tselika continued, her gaze flitting to the other jar before finding Vadim, again, “and found him after he’d done this, there would be three jars instead of two… If he bothered to save that much of me to send back.”
Unable to argue her point, Vadim snorted in irritation and stomped past her to snatch up the jewel-encrusted wine decanter from where it waited on the other side of the desk. “You’re probably right,” he grumbled, pulling the stopper loose and tipping the bottle to his lips.
“Of course, I’m right,” she replied, still not having steadied her wobbling knees enough to leave her perch, “I warned you years ago that Shyndyn was a dangerous prospect… cautioned you about even giving him the opportunity to actually join the Syndicate, and this…” She flicked a nail against the jar in which Crestar’s head floated, evoking a dull ping from the glass, “...is exactly why.”
“I should have paid you more heed,” Vadim begrudgingly admitted, thrusting the bottle into Tselika’s hands, “but you were just a girl, then…”
“A girl that he had no small part in training,” she amended, wincing as the swallow of wine found every fresh nick and tear in her mouth, “A girl intimately familiar with just how easily that moon-eyed horse-pacher can turn on you even when you believe his loyalty is secured.”
Once more he was unable to truly refute anything Tselika said but, as he settled himself in his chair, he rolled his eyes all the same. “I’ve taken your counsel far less lighty since your return,” he offered by way of apologizing without apologizing.
“Except for when I counselled you to kill him when we had him on the rack,” she jabbed.
“Shut up and drink,” Vadim hissed, “You’ll feel better!”
“I don’t want to feel better!” Tselika fumed, finally able to muster the strength to push away from the desk, her dark eyes blazing as they turned on him. She slid the bottle across the desk and, then, shoved the grisly jars away from the edge before dragging a sleeve across her mouth. “I won’t feel better until I know that Nyx Shyndyn has left Drasnia for good or, even better, that I get a chance to see a corpse made of him!”
Vadim sighed heavily, tipped the bottle to his own lips, again, and said; “I’d prefer the latter, myself, but will accept the former if I could be sure that neither he nor the Witch will ever darken my door, again.”
“Accept the FORMER!!!” The assassin shrieked and tore at her hair in frustration as she stormed around the desk. “I thought you said that you’d no longer dismiss my counsel out of hand,” she snarled, her vicious right cross catching Vadim so off guard that the blow very nearly sent him flying from his seat, “and, yet, here you are ignoring everything I told you just moments ago,” she gave him the back of that hand, then, violently helping him back to upright in his chair, “All because you hope that he won’t come back?!?!
Did you miss the part where I said that he would return,” she demanded furiously as she wrenched her wrist free of the grip Vadim had caught it in, “with a taste for our blood on his tongue?!
Shyndyn is not gone, Captain,” she practically spat the title in his face, foregoing another attempt at hitting the man to, instead, stab a finger vaguely in the direction of where the Governor’s Gate separated the city from Thamaburgad Road, “He’s out there, right now, with that fetid carp of a witch, nurturing the grudge he holds! Digging up bones to build the pyre upon which he plans to burn everything you’ve built, here! Gods’ balls, but you are stupid, and arroga…”
“Don’t!” One of his hands had shot out to dam the words in her throat and the other had lifted to intercept the next blow she threatened to rain down upon him. As her face reddened, his grip on her neck tightened and he drew her face closer to his. “What exactly do you want from me, Tselika,” he demanded.
She fought for a breath, spit her blood into his face now that it was so close, and rasped; “I want you to call me whore, again… I want you to make me forget, even if it’s just for a while, that we haven’t just challenged Death to a game of his own design.”
Posted on 2021-03-07 at 22:05:53.
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What game do you own the 
Return to Charadun - Q&A
The Morphing Game
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