Disillusioned Delusion

[Seven Xu]

Seven’s eyes flashed as he loomed over the yellowed card thrust before him. The creak of Wolfe’s chair tickled his ear; a breathy laugh washed over the table from Noelle’s clever lips, and his already flat mouth tightened into an exaggerated frown. He should have folded; left the game to those better attuned to the odds, those that had a thirst for something pints of watered ale could not slake. Instead, Seven loosed and rolled five gold-rims towards Victor’s knuckles, stealing a sideways glance at a gambling dog.

Hoping to find some clarification in better posture, he squared his shoulders and straightened, splaying ten fingers across the relative warmth of the tabletop, “What’s in the cellar?”

“Rats,” Charles broke an unintentional vow of silence, fingering his beard, “cobwebs. Darkness. Either way, I’m out. Gentlemen,” he doffed an invisible cap and let his chair jerk noisily across the floor beneath him as he rose. The halfblood dug into the crooks of his eyes, aching to steal a gaze at the hazy brunette in his peripheral. She, too, seemed to twist her face at the mention of a cellar, but begrudgingly tapped the tabletop with a single lithe finger when her second card revealed the Five of Arrows. It almost looked like relief when a third card, the Nine of Spears, pitched her total far above the limit of twenty-one.

Two down, Seven chewed his lip, but for what? To his left sat the hulking form of an Akalak, the so-called child of the Goddess he had spent several evenings investigating. To his right, the grinning maw of Wolfe, who seemed to be sharing some mutual amusement with the girl on his opposite arm.

A meaty hand pushed four stunted blue fingertips against the table, and Somakal wordlessly received a well-used Page of Spears. After an audible exhale and an exchange of thoughts the Akalak signaled for his third card. A laughing Knight of Spears tossed the Riverfall native from the hand and his muscle-bound shoulders rose and fell like mountains as he lifted a tumbler smelling of whiskey to his parched and smirking lips.

“Jus’ the three of us, now, Lhavit,” Wolfe stank of the drink, and his yellowed teeth reminded Seven of century-old ivory. “T’would be a shame if the lady hadta’ spend the evenin’ cleanin’ out a dingy ol’ basement,” a beat, “I wager Noelle wouldn’t appreciate it, either.”

The young woman tittered, closed a small fist against her painted mouth, and shook her head. “Stakes are too high for me,” her discerning blues darted between the two remaining gamblers and she flicked away her single card and her wager with a dismissive thumb. Two to go.

Thup! Hot surprise surged through Seven’s bones and caught thick air in his throat as Wolfe heartedly slapped the table in a request for his second and last card. Doubling was a bold move, but bold moves were what made Ionu’s Wager what it was. Fear sank hard in the pit of the halfblood’s stomach when a wretched Tree of Swords nestled down beside its companion, the Page of Arrows.

“Ha!” Wolfe barked, turning his noxious smirk on his diminutive rival. “Twenny-one,” as if Seven could not add it himself, “Yer friend’ll have a hard time beatin’ that, Lark.”

Unspoken innuendo forced a giggling snort from the ever-bawdy Noelle. Seven rolled his eyes, unable to quell the creeping warmth that grabbed onto the pale column of his neck and turned his cheeks a fleshy pink. He tapped the table.

A trio of Shields met his wordless request. Fourteen. Shoulders sagging, he repeated the gesture, unable to meet a set of stormy eyes with his own. How fitting, that he needed a seven to tie Wolfe; he would have smiled, had the thought of a cellar dreary enough to dissuade half of the game was not waiting on the other side of the lavishly-decorated card between Victor’s fingers.

Six Swords sucked the color from Seven’s face.

[Victor Lark]

Without a beat, Victor gave a smiling sigh and flipped his hidden card: the not-so-prophetic Seven of Shields. It did not matter that his number matched his friend’s twenty, because Wolfe beat them both. A growling chuckle sang over the rumbling percussion of coins as the man scooped them in his arms and brought them to his edge of the table. Victor stared at him as he collected the cards and began to shuffle them, a look of humble concession masking his irritation. There was no angering this fellow, especially when he was winning; he would never get clumsy with his cards, because he was so reckless in the first place. Luckily for the Wager, he usually played until he lost. Victor just had to keep him playing.

Noelle laughed, and rippling mercury sank into flat secrecy as it snapped toward her. But it seemed she had forgotten whatever trust she had shared with Wolfe, favoring instead of the happy whispers of the blue-muscled man beside her. The dealer hated that he did not know what her motivation was, the details of her game. He had not guessed that she was simply capricious.

“Another round,” Somakal ordered with a careful wave, “The lady wants to try the whiskey.”

Though she had apparently not known her opinion before that moment, Noelle shrugged her acquiescence. Victor flashed a pair of fingers at the barkeep and eagerly began another round. He turned the conversation away from Seven. “Careful with that one,” he teased the woman, nodding to her newfound date. “You know what they say.”

She took her drink and cradled it between her long fingers, without a taste. “And what is that?”

“Leave with an akalak, never come back-alak!”

Noelle tittered, then gasped when Somakal shook the table with a hard slap. He said something furious that Victor did not recognize, but the dealer maintained his teasing smirk. There was a different man behead those eyes, a tension in his shoulders and a depth in his voice. He made as if to stand. “I and my people are not—”

He shot a glance at Noelle suddenly, who had dared to lay a hand on his wrist. Djed pulsed beneath her velvet sleeves as she offered a wavering smile to his mounting anger. “It’s a joke, Somakal. He’s an ass. Only idiots believe that nonsense. Don’t worry about it.”

Victor held their gaze, Somakal’s and whoever else resided inside him; he watched as one turned into the other, as a raging glare turned into prioritized restraint. It was too much, Victor realized, but at least he had discovered the line. It sated his own frustrations to return to that game, even as he was forced to raise his arms in surrender twist his face into apologetic submission. He dealt the rest of the round.

And so the game continued. Wolfe’s pile of gold undulated like dunes of sand as Victor’s slowly grew below the table. Seven bet against the cellar with every hand in the beginning, but as the invisible moon began to dip into the sky, he tried (with as much help as his friend the dealer could legally offer) a more strategic approach. He gambled it to the akalak once, who was becoming beyond rash with every calculated jab and retreat from Victor’s amused tongue; the woman at his side took it off his hands by betting he would not kiss her, then promptly lost it to Seven again. The arguing men in the corner made their peace, shared drinks they had bought for each other, and left on good terms—much to Thorren’s chagrin. After that, his attention was focused wholly on the Blind Men and their Bets. The rest didn’t last much longer.

Somakal asked for another drink.

“I don’t think you need another, man. Wouldn’t want to lose yourself!” The blue man fidgeted, but ultimately settled with a scowl. Contrary to Victor’s anticipations, he had begun to find discipline the easier choice as the night wore on. Noelle had been amused at first, but she had become clearly impatient. Victor liked her all the more for her occasional winces.

But then she said something he did not expect, straight and serious. “We should go.”

She guided Somakal to his feet, and he stood better than his slurred words would have suggested. The same frown Victor showed every night accompanied that usual moan of disappointment. “So soon?”

Her smile was courtesy and exasperation at the same time. “Yes.” Then she whispered something to him, and they both smiled. Wolfe stood with them, pocketing what was left of his winnings.

“Can’t win every night,” he mentioned. “Have fun downstairs.”

And before he knew what was happening, the hall was silent. The bartender was finishing wiping down the rest of the tables, and Thorren had disappeared. Victor stared at the wall behind Seven’s shoulder for a moment, then he reached down to the dealer’s pot and began to count its contents. The flesh at the back of his jaw flared as he resisted glancing at those exhausted rubies. He was tired of seeing the distress in them, and somehow he decided that starving them of his iron emptiness might remedy that.

He hesitated with his finger on the already-counted pile, staring through the table as he tried to remember his place. Then suddenly the thick stillness was filled with an abrupt rush of vexation; there was a guttural groan and a flourish against the table, and suddenly Victor was staring at a mess of coins as they spun against the floor.

[Seven Xu]

The night grew long and a mask of polite acquiescence had all but dissolved into a defeated frown; Seven’s heavy eyelids drooped—their discrepancy more apparent than usual—over a pair of distended pupils that had all but devoured the vermillion rings that surrounded them. Every so often, he stole a glance at his dealer but no iron reward was proffered; Victor’s lashes refused to even chance in his direction when he gave the retreating gamblers a honey-sweet smile that reeked of his deliberate sincerities.

And so Seven had retreated into his head: his father a rancid memory, haunting the ink black of his sleepless nights; his mother a faceless whore and a stranger. His sisters were like to hate him, for ending the life of their provider, never having done them any injustice. So, where did that leave him? Red eyes darted upward again, but for nothing. Seven pressed his tongue against the back of his teeth; his nostrils flared. The strings of his heart were wound and tangled so steadfastly around that stubborn Ravokian; he could not have wrenched them free if he found the resolve. He wasn’t alone. They were fated. They were good. So long as they were they, the unwritten rules that bound humanity to their eternal game could not touch them.

The sudden thump-and-clamor of coins vacating the tabletop abolished the thought before his mind could attempt to pry apart its fallible logic. He sucked in a startled gasp, flinched from the table, and nearly lost his stool to the floor as he slid off of it to watch a flock of gold-rims roll between his feet. Seven stooped, gathered what he could reach, and wordlessly set them handful by handful back on the table.

“I liked the adage,” he finally mumbled; a feeble smile curled the edges of his lips. “Not much rhymes with Akalak.”


The cellar lived up to the reputation it had earned at the table. Victor had lead the way, struggled with a rust-riddled lock, and heaved open a door that spent so long on its derelict hinges that they screamed in stiff protest. A breath of hot musk air greeted them, swallowed them; the door thumped shut. Step by step, four feet descended a dilapidated wooden staircase that was the only means between the main level and the fabled cellar. Seven’s bastard-born eyes adjusted, plunged further into the cellar than Victor’s blinded grays could; a colorless world awaited them, piles of barrels and nebulous mounds of white linen emerged in a haze from impossible black.

Seven remained at Victor’s back, ushered there after defiant disregard turned into a frivolous promise of protection. Despite being spurned a heartbeat earlier, Seven had already forgotten and forgiven; he could never find a reason not to. A glib smile tipped the halfblood’s lips, and a gathering of fingers found the bend of an elbow, climbed the curve of a shoulder. The whisper that passed between them was as much a lighthearted dig into the past, as it was a desperate attempt to draw a significant conclusion from the outburst upstairs. He licked the stale air from his lips, and brushed a folded collar with the blackened tip of his index finger. “Tell me what you feel.”

[Victor Lark]

Frustration.

Everything he felt was just a version of it. Jealousy, boredom, curiosity, desperation... if he felt anything, it could be boiled to the hollow frustration of searching for something and finding nothing. It was what he felt every time that stupid brute ended his inner deliberations with a patient sigh; it was what he knew now, in this darkness, as he stepped out of the shadow of light that trickled out though the open threshold above them, groping around in his memory for the position of the cellar’s lantern.

His fingers were tripping over the splintered and dusty wood of an ale barrel when they were halted by that too familiar touch; he turned back to see only a black shade within the hazy halo of yellow light around Seven’s lately oily hair. Those invisible, inhuman eyes could see the arc of his own as they searched for a shape to hold, seeming all the emptier for their blindness. Managing that intimate grin that suggested as much as it teased, Victor returned the touch by holding the hand that had reached for him and fondling a white hip through the dark fabric that caged it. “I feel you,” he answered, but even levity in privacy could not move old thoughts from his mind.

Honesty was what he craved and what he had killed for; Seven deserved as much. Victor’s lips parted, but a moment passed before the words found his tongue. “I’m fine. The akalak was... frustrating. But he lost, in the end, and we pulled a profit. I’m fine.” And that was all he was.

He kept his smile up; sometimes that was enough to distract him from his thoughts and inspire a change of activity. A chuckling sigh bowed to Seven’s chin as Victor’s hands wandered upward, savoring the skin between the Lhavitian’s collar with a cold thumb. His gaze parted from where it might have accidentally discovered a pair of seeing rubies, glancing in the general direction of a lamp on a table, one that hopefully had a few matches remaining at its foot. Resisting the urge to reciprocate the question, he added stiffly, “Help me find the light, will you? We’ll find some brooms, chase off the rats, tear down the cobwebs. As long as none of the stores are damaged, we’ll probably make it home before dawn.”

[Seven Xu]

The apple in Seven’s throat bobbed as he swallowed consideration; his bird’s eyes had grown dim and his voice stiff in the crush of ink blackness, but the clarity that was offered by an honest, thoughtless response, had nearly knocked the stale air back out of Seven’s lungs. I feel you, it could have meant nothing, but for a heartbeat it had meant everything. The halfblood took a shuffling step backward, starving clammy thumbs of a warm neck; a hand fumbled for the slick tabletop not an arm’s length away. “Light,” he rasped, “right.”

I feel you. Seven’s nostrils flared, his fingers worked a matchbox clumsily. He had never thought Victor a simpleton, but he had never missed the emptiness that clouded his eyes when conversations ran dry and smiles grew flat. It was always Seven that rekindled some form of expression on the man’s face; even the most inappropriate—like laughing in the face of one sin while draped in the blood of another—were reciprocated without hesitation. The match head broke, Seven cursed under his breath, and he pinched another from the flock.

No. He wasn’t dense, this man, who could draw emotion from complete strangers as easily as a fisherman drew his catch from a baited line. I feel you. His wits were sharp, his face was dull; Seven’s candid countenance could fill in the blanks Victor’s mind could not. The third match caught, and Seven stifled a dangerous sigh of relief as he cradled the flame to an oil-drenched wick. The lantern caught, flooded the room with yellow-orange light and the darkest of shadows that trembled and danced with every shuffle of feet and flourish of musk air. Flame licked Seven’s fingertips when it had devoured the match, and he hissed and shook the spark into a trail of white smoke.

“Fine means a lot of things,” the statement was half a laugh and was drenched in prodding accusation. Seven let his eyes tip towards Victor and he chewed his bottom lip. Words died on the end of his tongue. He smiled, pressed his palms against the lantern’s table, and stole another short inspection of the cellar before settling on zealous iron and glass.

It was Seven; only him that could ignite a flame to scare off that frustration, replace a night-blind face with an echo of mirth. If relief from constant aggravation was happiness’ succor, he would not be the one to take it away. A leather boot scuffed the dust-fettered ground, a smile begat a playful grin. “I’ll sweep if you kill the cobwebs, I petching hate spiders.”

[Victor Lark]

On the edge of an infant flame’s shining reach, Seven’s face danced between a frustrated frown and pained surprise. Startled by the sudden sight and subsequent change, Victor stepped back and forward again before he adjusted his smile into a hasty laugh, acknowledging the accusation without answering it. He approached the lantern as soon as a pair of helpful hands retreated from it, drawing a finger toward the hot glass as if in idle consideration. He might have dared reflex to move his arm and watch what came of it, but then his favorite voice distracted him. His arm dropped.

Victor’s face had fallen in curiosity, but it rose again at the soft-spoken strategy. He let himself be diverted, grateful to melt in Seven’s fire. “Sure,” he replied, immediately retrieving a couple of brooms from behind the stairs, now that he could see them. He tossed one to Seven. The one that remained in his hand dragged a mess of dark lines through the floor’s thick dust as he approached him again, glancing around for the first cobweb to be cleared. Before he lifted the broom against anything, he stopped close to Seven. “Come on. We’ll start in the back and gather it all by the stairs.”

As he spoke, his smile became mischievous; he wrapped his free hand around a thin white wrist, pulled it through the narrow aisles between randomly organized stacks and barrels. They were retreating from the very light that had comforted Victor’s frustrations, and yet the playful (albeit forced) flippancy of old times still knocked his broom handle carelessly against those obstacles which he could not see. Rats scratched and scattered away from their noisy progress, even after Victor stopped and turned again to face his train. They were just on the edge of the light, where the clutter thinned and color turned grey, close enough to see but far enough to assume the edge of the room was close.

Stray cobwebs tickled lines over his nose and ear where he had accidentally caught them and pulled them from where they hung; he rubbed his face of them and then took to Seven’s, dusting what he could see from his hair and shoulders. The cellar seemed too large for the modest space that the Wager had to offer, but Victor hardly took notice of such discrepancies any more.

Tell me-- “How are you?” He asked, but not before choking on that familiar question reciprocated. It was only polite, he knew, and yet he also wanted to know whether his fool had been similarly frustrated, whether he still felt failed or abandoned, and what it meant if he did. Loath to drop the act of happiness, he did not dwell on the question for which he so yearned an answer. He looked up and poked at a nebulous patch of grey on the ceiling with his broom; he broke it away, where it flitted benignly to the ground.

[Seven Xu]

Revelation still sat heavy in the pit of his gut; that of his father’s demise, the culmination of years of loathing, regret, and pain; that of freedom from his mind’s repression paid in the blood of No One; that of his dearest, emptiest friend, who even now was trying in earnest to draw some recognition from a face well-studied. Fated, good—no, better: that was the promise he had made half an evening ago. Those revelations pulled at his knees, forced his eyes to sting and his chest to tighten, if he dwelled on it; so he did not, he could not. The past was forgettable, but it was no less irrevocable.

“How am I?” Victor’s question echoed in the feather-light cadence of his fool. Seven’s tongue darted into his cheek as deliberate hesitation blossomed into silence; his thumb scrutinized the deep grain of the broom’s wooden handle. Crimson drank deep of suffocating black, drawing the outlines of murky stacks of rotting crates and forgotten shelves; then, back to a figure that sat in unspoken impatience at the limits of the lantern’s gilded glow. As Seven’s darkened brow bent, as lips poured the warmth of compassion over cool marble white, he countered with a rhetorical, “Why don’t you tell me?”

Seven leaned forward to close what remained between them and claimed Victor’s bottom lip beneath acerbic points of white; his upper jaw tingled in venom’s deliberate release, and he lingered, sharing a breath of stale air before the dull end of his broom saw fit to part them with a light push against Victor’s chest.

“You know me,” he said, flicking a tongue over the burning remains of caustic bitterness and the taste of his bird on his lips. “You know me better than anyone ever has, or ever will.”

A short laugh struck the darkness, Seven slipped past Victor’s shoulder into the hug of comfortable black. A thread of light danced in the corners of his eyes, when he turned from it, dim enough to disappear if he tried to catch it in his culling stare, bright enough to turn his attentions from their lost wager. Tendrils of cool air prickled his skin and drew him towards a corner, where a colorless shelf sat against the wall. There sat a wedge of black at its foot, displaced dust; a line of dreary grey light was drawn between the wall and the towering shelf.

“What …” A broomstick clattered to the floor, as forgotten as a game of simpers and scowls. Eight fingers hooked the cool sharpness of a wooden ledge and pulled. Seven grunted, and the shelf gave him an inch, two, three. Fingers of pale light reached from the opening, chased off inky blackness from an insipid line drawn across the floor.

“Vic.” The discovery stole color from Seven’s face, when he turned; even his eyes’ vibrant red had been muted in unnatural light. He’d stolen that impish grin that Victor had donned a chime earlier. “Come here, help me.”

[Victor Lark]

Victor’s eyes closed, and somehow the darkness there was more comfortable than all the light in the world. Hot venom flared on his lip and below his gut, all in blindness. His hands rose to caress a waist he knew would be there, as he listened to a voice he knew would speak... but an answer that was not an answer pried his eyes open, made his curiosities flinch in the face of a retreating laugh. Victor pulled a conceding joke onto his smile, but he was more perplexed than amused. Seven escaped into the shadows and Victor wordlessly followed, mind reeling in the unknown.

He had laughed; he must have liked the game of their sudden retreat. They had kissed; maybe that was an unspoken apology accepted. Or maybe it was a dismissal and a grudge. Victor had to choose the former, if not because other signs pointed to it, then because it contented him. He hated not knowing, but he loved that he thought he could guess.

The lantern’s boon had become useless and forgotten, the last of its relief lingering on Seven’s enthusiasm. With tired lusts settling at the pit of his stomach, Victor stepped as quickly as he could, scraping his broom out in front of him so that it might catch anything his toe might have otherwise. Even it could not protect him from walking hip-first into a poorly placed table; he groaned surprise in the same instant that Seven seemed to whisper some discovery. Victor stopped mid syllable, holding the tender bone as he tried to look in the direction of the interruption.

He did not wait long. The cry of heavy wood on dust and stone heralded new light and a glimpse of his fool, struggling with the weight of the makeshift door. He set the broom against the offending table as his new eyes pulled him to Seven’s aid. He gripped the shelf, folded his arm against the side that faced the strange light, and together they moved the thing aside. Cool air tugged at the floor’s thick layer of dust and grime, danced with nearby cobwebs, reminded Victor of the sweat that encrusted his face. The light that illuminated the narrow stone passage beyond was dim, but constant; it vaguely reminded him of moonlight.

“I don’t... I’ve never...” Victor found fewer words than he could when faced with the early evening’s accusations, tripping over that tongue which was usually so agile. When he could not find the words, he decided he did not need them. He looked down briefly to find Seven’s hand and, holding it tight, walked into the unknown.

[Gossamer]

. Character: Seven Xu Experience:Rhetoric 4 XP, Interrogation 3 XP, Storytelling 1 XP, Gambling 4 XP Lore: Answering Riddles, Having Unresolved and Conflicting Emotions in Regards to a Friend, Realizing Victor is a Psychopath, Rationalizing Murder, Asking Hard Questions, Understanding The Core of Problems, Understanding the Core of One’s Own Feelings, I Trust Victor, Letting Go Of The Past, Understanding The Past, Reading Tells While Gambling, Knowing An Access Point to Alvadas' Underground Character: Victor Lark Experience: Leadership 1 XP, Observation 1 XP, Interrogation 1 XP, Subterfuge 1 XP, Gambling 4 XP, Storytelling 1 XP, Persuasion 1 XP Lore: Having Genuine Concern, Reading Between The Lines, Interpreting Situations, Stating the Obvious, Justifying Ones Own Actions, Noticing Tiny/Minute Details, Reading Tells While Gambling, Soothing Over Conflict, I Trust Seven, Knowing An Access Point to Alvadas' Underground Additional Note: Nice thread. I felt cheated at the end because I wanted to know where the passage lead! Let me know if you want any changes etc. EDIT: At Victors request, I changed Hostessing to Leadership. As for the morphing, when you morph in this game, you must focus, concentrate, and take time to do any sort of morphing. It is not instantaneous and especially at 6 in the skill, you can't actually do it with just a thought. Please RP that concentration, focus, and then the time lag (usually a few minutes to change things - larger morphs may take ten minutes to an hour). During this time you must be focusing on the morphing exclusively since you are such a novice at it. If you'd like to edit your post to reflect this, let me know and I'll award points. .