Open The old haunt

[Durvekral Wormwood]

Spring 12th 512AV

Durvekral was exhausted when he woke up this morning. He didn't feel quite "rested." None of that mattered, though. He still had a job to do and he was almost out of his apartment. A job... He had a job. How had it come to this? This whole charade was supposed to be a coverup for his illegal activities. And yet here he was actually having to motivate himself to go to work! This was actually proving to be difficult.

As he started to doubt whether or not "this was all worth it," he exited his living space and locked the door. Upon turning around, he was greeted with the visage of the man whom he had met two days prior.

"Good day to you, Postman!"

The cheery greeting nearly sent Durvekral sprawling off of his concrete steps due to the sheer surprise of it all. "You again. I demand to know your name!"

"My name?"the man repeated. "What's the point? Giving you a label with which to address me isn't going to reveal anything to you. You won't know me any better with a word by which to identify me! That's what you really want isn't it? You don't want me to assign a phrase for you to call me; you yearn for the knowledge of where I come from, of who I serve and what my motives are. Am I right?"

Durvekral ignored the questions. They were all poignant. Durvekral was itching to know everything about this man. It drove him to severe frustration that someone could repeatedly slip in and out of his life at will. The only solace in all of this was the likelihood that this creature was some kind of charge of Ionu's and that a citizen like Durvekral was far too unimportant to draw Ionu's hand."Reveal your identity to me or stop following me, but you will not stalk me like I am some game to be hunted! If you press me any further, much like a wolf in the Unforgiving, I will be forced to strike and defend myself."

"Now, now," the man soothingly taunted Durvekral. "I didn't realize that you were feeling threatened. It wasn't my goal,"he admitted. "Fine, you want an identity?" The man grew silent. "I know, how about..." his eyes narrowed into a self-satisfied smile. His lips slowly formed the words; the man simply reveled in taunting this Symenestra. "Velanos Firefern. Isn't that what you tell everyone your name is, Mr. Firefern?"He giggled with a childlike, innocent, almost unknowing kind of brief laughter. He quickly cut off the laughter and spoke again. "Okay, okay, okay. You can call me...Gary. How about that? I've always liked the name Gary!"

Before Durvekral could respond with just how silly of a request that was, the man descended the concrete stoop and ventured into the street. He walked behind a crowd of people and did not emerge on the other side. An attractive, young, brown haired woman emerged on the other side and smiled directly at Durvekral. She casually waved goodbye with a suspicious smile on her face and then turned around a corner and out of sight.

[Durvekral Wormwood]

Durvekral started the working day in what was apparently Kalinor. His initial response was to simply shrug and to accept whatever Ionu decided. His delivery route had, at some point, taken him through a small arch in Alvadas but when he emerged on the other side, he was in a great, lit cavern. Dwellings hung from the ceiling of the cavern and a sprawling civilization was apparent. He easily recognized this place as his childhood home. If the familiarity of the city itself, wasn't enough, other symenestra citizens were all around him. There were no humans and no one spoke any language resembling a dialect from Alvadas.

So Ionu wished to make him believe that he was back in Kalinor. Fine, there were still buildings to be seen. There were still streets to travel down, Durvekral could happily complete his job. As he walked on, something seemed strange. Strange, even, for Alvadas.

All of the faces just seemed so familiar. These didn't appear to be citizens of Alvadas whose appearances, in Durvekral's sight, were altered to look like the Symenestra. These were characters from Durvekral's childhood. Without recognizing specific faces or stories, Durvekral knew that he had somehow seen these people before.

"There are no secrets in Alvadas." Gary's voice was far more calm and collected now. There was a certain suaveness about the quality of it. It felt as though, just by standing here and talking, Gary was actively shaping the rest of Durvekral's life."The only ones are those that Ionu chooses to keep from us."

"Why show me this?" the personal touch of bringing Durvekral back to his childhood home was terrifying. He didn't want this kind of attention. "What is the point of bringing me to this hallucinatory state?"

For a moment, Gary looked genuinely confused. It wasn't the confusion of being completely lost and it wasn't the confusion of being taken by surprise. It was a content, curious, engaged kind of curious that one experiences while studying a particularly tricky riddle. "Now that, I do not know!"He quietly took a few soft steps toward Durvekral."I know everything that has happened to you in this city and I know every plan, for you, that has been concocted. But I have no idea why..."

Durvekral indignantly glared at the wildly dressed jester. "I don't have time for this. I'm going to continue on my way now. I want to get onto the next block and onto the next irrational, childish hallucination already."

Without another word, Durvekral continued on his way. He waited for Gary to taunt him with something else but the call never came. When he turned his neck to look behind him, Gary was, of course, gone. Durvekral angrily muttered while shaking his head and walked on.

To his disappointment, nothing changed when he turned a corner. He was still in a cave, he still felt haunting sense of Deja vu and he was still in Kalindor.

The next familiar voice that he heard terrified him. It was angry and it was scornful. It was feminine and full of strength and confident and resolute.

"Durvekral!" Sandari yelled. "Now isn't that a face I hoped to never see again," she spat.

Sandari was no longer a child. Like himself, she had grown into a full adult now. She stood before him with shoulder length, clean white hair and smooth skin the color of rich pearl. Her eyes were a captivating shade of purple and her lips matched. Her teeth came to smooth, unblemished, dangerous tips. She was tall and lean and everything a male sym could possibly hope for in a mate. And Durvekral was disgusted by the sight. He wasn't disgusted by the memory of her or the notion of a chore of having to speak with her.

He was disgusted by how much he longed for her in this moment, how much he pained to have her as his wife and at his side. To have her as a partner to hold him and help to cast off the worries of the day. It was wholly unsettling and completely humiliating.

"Stop it." he commanded. "You aren't Sandari and you have no right to take from my past."

"Well you're right," the figure admitted. "But could you imagine if I had ended up with you? How awful my life would have been having to put up with your selfish need of control?"

"Or if I had to put up with your insufferable whims and emotions..." Durvekral flatly responded.

"Yes, keep telling yourself that others are too given to passion and that we're all horribly unreliable," she smiled evily. "It's a nice thought to soothe you to sleep, in't it?"

"We were childhood friends, Sandari, nothing more. Stop pretending that this is more than it is...." Durvekral was starting to lose his grip on where he was and what was happening.

"That's right; it was. We never stood a chance. Not with what Urakrel did to you. We never have a chance... You never had a chance."

"Urakrel was....He..." Durvekral was caught on his own tongue. He didn't know what to say. He left at such a young age that he hardly remembered much of his father's appearance or personality. The only thing that he remembered was the morbid depression which had swallowed that house. He remembered the cloud of hopelessness that would just surround him as a child. He didn't remember Urakrel so much as a person as he did a lesson in the cold, harsh realities of Mizahar. Part of him hated Urakrel but it was because he hated how severe and joyless the world was. Quite frankly, Durvekral barely knew who Urakrel even was.

With an exasperated sigh, he looked back up to the female Symenestra.

"Look at yourself," she shook her head in disgust. "You'll have to do better than that." Like a foggy over a field in the late morning, Sandari faded away and left Durvekral alone on the street.

[Durvekral Wormwood]

Durvekral pressed on through what was apparently...the expanded Kalinor district of Alvadas. He was beginning to grow frustrated at the realization that he hadn't delivered a single piece of mail, yet. Sure he hadn't been out here long but it didn't look like he would be delivering anything quickly. He hadn't seen one building from Alvadas yet. He hadn't even seen one human looking building yet. If this kept up, he might not even make it home.

Luckily there was something to distract him from his poor attempt at working for the public good. It was a very special house along the route he was walking. He craned his neck up to get a better lock but then recognized it immediately. It was his old house. He knew that there was nothing for him up there. He knew that this was all part of Ionu's twisted game but as he stood there, Durvekral was unable to fight off his sense of curiousity. He had to find out why this was all happening.

He climbed along the wall to reach the threshold into the hanging chamber. Inside the home was a complete mess, the stench of which surrounded the building like an intense aura. The floor was littered with various junk organized in no particular pattern. There were old bits of food and unused clothing strewn about.

This was not a place to live, it was a place to die. Whatever Urekral had been doing in here, he hadn't been cleaning anything. He looked old and sick and was lying on his bed. Durvekral certainly didn't recognize the man by his face but something told him, this was the visage of his father. This was the representation that Ionu had prepared for the symenestran.

Durvekral was better prepared this time, he wouldn't let himself get swept into the lie like he did with Sandari.

"So what's the point of this one?" Durvekral angrily demanded.

"Its to show you what you did to him..." The figure weakly returned.

Durvekral was incredulous. He laughed a mean spirited, humorless, hateful guffaw. "I did to him? You're too bold in your illusions now! He was so determined in his obsession to make me see the world for very hateful note within it! He barred me from a childhood!"

"He tried to make you a man. An honorable, respectable man."The figure sternly returned.

"He tried to horde me for the wife that he couldn't have..."

"Its a shame that your dagger isn't as sharp as your tongue," the man flashed a tired, strained smile. "Then you wouldn't have to deliver the mail in a city of aliens..."

Durvekral started to feel an uncomfortable heat. It was like a searing fog had suddenly enveloped him. He didn't feel comfortable where he stood, not in his clothes either. He just felt restless; he was full of unpleasant, unwelcome hostile energy.

"Remember the time you first got to Sunberth? the elderly man mocked again. "You just wandered around like a helpless fool? You were beat up, taken advantage of and nearly starved to death? Do you remember that? Do you remember that the only way you could make it was to betray the only people who showed you any decency? I'm sure you made your mother so proud that day. She was an Estarian, right? The sanctity of Symenestran blood? If only she were alive so that you could have proved it to her with that whole mess."

This was too much for Durvekral, with a fierce scream, he lept upon the man, dagger drawn. He sought to press the dagger into the flesh of that figure's throat but when he landed, the man shattered like glass. There was no one in here. In fact, there was nothing in this room. He was alone, once again, to contemplate his place in Alvadas.

[Durvekral Wormwood]

When Durvekral exited his childhood home, he still wasn't in Alvadas but he wasn't in the section of Kalinor where his home was located, either. He was in a tunnel; this was the sewer in which he had spent so much time as a kid. Specifically, his time here was spent with Valen.

The grizzly visage of the dead child, didn't say anything. It wasn't even clearly apparent that it could. This wasn't Valen standing in front of him. It was the decade old corpse of a cold, dead child. Its empty, corroded eye sockets seemed to stare through his eyes and into the back of his skull. Like a neglected corpse, parts of the skin were eroded and had disintegrated, revealing a sickening pattern of muscle, bone, fluid and fascia across various parts of the body. In places, tattered and ripped skin still existed. The corpse didn't move. It didn't make a noise, it didn't open its dislocated jaw. It only stood and stared, as if propped up by some sort of string.

"What do you want!?" Durvekral spun around, looking for any sign of Gary. "Enough of this!"he demanded. "Gary! Scion of Ionu!" Perverse hypnotist, whoever you are... reveal yourself!"

When Durvekral turned back around, the hands of the corpse would be reaching for him. They closed around his throat and with an almost unfathomable strength whipped the Symenestra off of his feet. With uncanny ease, the animated corpse forced his head under the water of the flowing stream.

Durvekral fought for a few seconds but couldn't even budge a fingertip. The illusion may have been fake but the asphyxiation was very real; he couldn't breathe at all.

"You know, the last person to do this job was driven insane..."The voice of Gary suddenly warned. "Maybe Ionu just wants to make sure you're up for it..."

This, nearly giddy, comment was the last thing that Durvekral heard before he frantically lost consciousness and passed out. He regained his consciousness some unknown period of time later. Finally, he was no longer in Kalinor but back in Alvadas. With a pounding headache he craned his neck around, attempting to get some idea of where he was currently laying.

He saw the arch behind him; it was the arch through which he had walked this morning. He also noticed a disgusted looking older man step over him, nodding his head disapprovingly. Durvekral didn't guess why, he looked like some kind of drunk, sprawled out in the street here.

The symenestran picked himself up and picked up his bag. He only had a few letters to deliver. Six deliveries were to be made today. He assumed that Ionu must have been done toying with him for today because all six addresses were right next to each other.

[Fallacy]

XP Award! Name: Durvekral Wormwood XP Award: Observation- 2 Lore: Velanos Firefern/Gary Reliving Childhood Memories The depth of Alvadas' Illusions The Fate of his Predecessor Notes: Another interesting thread. Keep up the great work! Any questions or concerns about the rewards gained please send a PM