(Archive 2) A Wayward Light - Storyteller's Journal

(( This journal are small vignettes of NPC actions and reactions to what happens in the game. Typically, you won't know this is happening. But I always love keeping these!))

Our lives are as a wayward light, moving in steps that stutter and stop from here to there. At moments, we seem to find a care or path. Others we carve it. I can only hope, in the breadth of the accounting, it held meaning and enjoyed and fine happenstances. To say we live in interesting times is far more poignant than fruitful. ~Shepard of the North Star

How long is suffering truly, when you have the time to contemplate the knife seeking your throat. I often considered these thoughts when father would return home from his butchery. Oh nothing so elaborate and grand as a madman or thug working for the guild. He truly was that. A butcher. Every day he worked in the chilled chambers with so many carcases of beef, raptor, lamb, pig, and many exotic things best left unknown when sipping a soup.

By his hand did I learn the trade. So careful with the turn of blade around a joint. The twist and yank until vertebrae gave. There are moments I wish I had taken the knife from his hand and made mincemeat of him. Alas, only now do I perfect my knowledge of the tender flesh of man.

Eyes bloodtinged and beady followed the ropey words as they fell from a plain quill dribbling black ink across parchment newly made. His last journal had sold quickly in the markets, and this one...would be a far grander masterpiece. Why Vile Whisper had not considered such a cornerstone prestige. "I have a mind to make jade in penning the suffering of others." Smiling he added that on a scrap of parchment for a later entry.

The soft clicking of heels announced the other entering, unsure and staccato. "Oh, I did not mean to interfere in your work. Are you...writing again?"

His eyes never left the page, though his attentions unfettered from his own history to that of the woman nearing. If he held his tongue, and feigned pain, would she...? Curling tighter upon himself, he snarled and pulled the tome with a spine closer, nearly marring the drying words. Do not speak...just...touch me...

As if willed so, did he feel those soft, dainty hands lay on his shoulder, travel his arm. Peering from within his bone mask, he gazed upon...perfection. Despite his liege's demands, Vile Whisper wished nothing more than to tear her apart, to taste those tears, and indulge in screams.

"Whisper...please, I never intended harm. I know you feel betrayed that one of the circle stole your last--" Her voice held such rich emotion, far to poignant and true for a charm's enhancement. Why oh why did the Mask of Winters keep her so?

Now did he turn, twisting her heart and earning a horrified gasp to see how blood-rimmed and tightly pulled his eyes seemed. Fingers trembled on his robes, as she ever seemed unable to accept what befell him. He never cared, in all honesty, and yet, using his marred visage gained her touch, her attentive regard. Their liege swore Vile to never touch or destroy her, but he could lure her to do so on her own regard.

PAIN. PANIC.

He clutched the book so roughly to his chest the spine tore at his fingers. Shorn Heart gasped and called his name, clutching to him all the tighter.

WRENCHING METAL. THE FIRES...BACK TO THE FIRES!

The book flung from his body as he bent back in an arch that would have snapped a living man's neck. Desperately did screams echo through the library and halls to gain the help of their circle. Shorn could not stop this agony.

When it passed, Vile Whisper could only roughly motion with a hand, touch it upon her cheek, and collapse. Something had destroyed his seer's vessel. And now...his vision into hell itself had winked out with his own mind's smothered night.

Azure waited until every heart beat had left his sanctuary. When certainly alone, he closed his eyes gathering the embers of his essence, pooling them through every vein of his body, until they felt quicksilver and sharp. Only then did his eyes open, breath ease from his lips, as a shimmering of blue took control. A man's hand now laid upon brushes, dipping into the one jar of limitless paint, a gift from his friend Demetrius.

Visions whispered and danced about his ears, through his mind as a lance, yet he remained in the lost bliss of meditation and trance. Essence poured through the manse into him, through him into the brush, through the brush unto the star kissed paint. And did such a painting give birth.

The swirls and eddies of faces, eyes wide and lips pulled back in screams. The skies boiled with a writhing of fire, scarlet caught in a figure that held aloft arms trailing shadows. The figure offered death and redemption. The shadows themselves held a history, courses across the canvas and beyond. For a moment, something broke through his meditation, as a claw about the heart, squeezing until he gasped and cried out in a roar. Flesh gave way to fur and claw, armors gathered in moonlit wonder around him and the brush fell from his hand.

Blinking, his eyes lost the strange glow and only stared in a mockery of horror, for such fear he had never felt before. The image moved and shifted, as if the figure waited in the middle of his creation, nothing of what he wished to see. He only wanted to know the fate of his son, his city, those he loved more than all others. And now, some figure watched him, cloak and hooded in scarlet blood and black shadow.

It raised its hand as if to touch him through the painting. His feet felt rooted, breath quickened. Raising his claws, they glinted with moonsilver to slice and crash through his creation. In tatters, the figure remained for once crafted it could never be unmade.

He gathered all he could of the pieces, the hide them and await a day he could contemplate what he wrought.

All but one.

"Life IS a box ...of chocolates. And I shall nibble every one." The air literally hummed with music, a thumping sound that rose and fell with an unfettering of strings and a woman's voice threading through, as if she peaked from under covers to lure him back. Smiling, Jakaou laid his head back upon his divan, crafting elaborate smoke shapes from his long curling pipe. The vaults had every single treasure he had placed in them, yet the ship was still lost.

"Will the master be leaving soon...for I very much would wish this, you simpering rodentia of exalted form..." The manservant of the manse stood in a mountain of treats and offerings as directed by his new lord and master. Oh how he hated him.

So blase was the hand that motioned dear 'Mumbles' to leave, that he wandered from the chamber murmuring his hatreds until the door shut. Pulling forth a bauble on a chain from his shirt, Jakaou willed the manse to place a maze about his room. He wished not to be interrupted or found, not for a time at least.

Twirling the locket round and round on his chain, he could only wish a different vision when opening it. And yet when he did, it was still pitch black. "Where are you, Lucien? What has become of you and our ship these many centuries? Damn that woman. And now undoubtedly, Starless Sky is dead, and the knowledge of you both lost."

For the first time in eons, Jakaou felt the pang of...regret...and loss. Lucien had been a hard won friend, and the ship his final act after safeguarding the west. Leviathan hated yet needed the tactician, if only he had accepted his refusal of crown. Jakaou never wanted to be a king, despite the potential his soul afforded. Sun and gods be damned, he had better things to do than dictate the course for an entire nation.

"What am I to do now? Seeking war with this...Bull of the North? Will he demand I hold and lead a nation too? I have no...interest. No will for it. But I heard them speak another name. Ma Ha Suchi..." That electric smile of the eclipse curled his lips. "I wonder if all those deals still hold. If neither of us died, my pacts remain intact. And the ol' wolf is nothing like he was. Finding him though, would be difficult. If I was a lesser man." With a bright laugh, he leapt from his divan to dig through the gathered items for parchment. Slowly he crafted an elegant bit of origami from paper dappled and covered in oricalchum and jade, until a most lovely ornament of hummingbird laid in his hand.

Essence flowed through him, cascading unto the precious metals and folds as he whispered poetics in old realm.

"Though I go to you
ceaselessly along dream paths,
the sum of those trysts
is less than a single glimpse
granted in the waking world.

"Yet now many new ghosts cry,
The solitary old man worries and grieves.
Ragged clouds are low,
And dusk hold a dance of snow.
Shall I not remain so blinded,
so many views blocked by trees.

"So rise, rise and give light,
For me to follow..."

Tossing his hand into the air, the origami came to rich life, flying and floating as a small hummingbird. "You shall be my gift. And they will lead me straight him. I'm coming Ma Ha Suchi."

The city had endured, yet changed. Hands played, tipping over the buildings as a child with blocks. Water filled the streets, stonework fractured, shadows hungered and ate at the inner workings. In the dusted chambers of gear stations, emergency crystals flickered to life, pulsing like a map of tiny red stars deep within the bowels of Sal'Maneth.

It was long moments before Krellis noticed a new little crystal flickering to life, throbbing a little higher than eye level. Once realizing what she looked upon, the mountain folk squinted. She blinked. She leaped from her chair sending it careening on tiny wheels across the room. Book after book peeled open as she tried to find the notes left by her grandfathers. "What in de worlds of metal could this be? I've nevar seen this one a'light."

(tbd)