Closed A Poisonous Proposition (Rayage)

[Keene Ward]

Winthrope took the bottle in his hands and gave it a good shake, his displeasure evident. "These aren't the spider sacs, Harrison." He blinked, seeming to see her for the first time. "Oh, hello!" With a conspiratory sideways stare, the old nuit whispered behind his hand. "My idiot lab assistant got millipedes mixed up with venom sacs!" He let out a happy chortle as he set the container onto the table. "You know, a millipede only really deals in making muscles stop muscling, slows them down!" He rolled his eyes, hitting the side of his head with the heel of his palm as he muttered to himself, "Oh of course he knew that, he's Rayage after all."

Blinking a few times, he turned back to her, the gaps in his teeth showing through a loose pucker as Winthrope seemed to think. "You... don't happen to have any venom sacs? I swear they were on that shelf..." As he spoke, he literally followed his thoughts, stopping at the pages of Nader with the crude sketch of a scorpion. "Oh! Weakness when injected, nausea when ingested!" His voice rang as a sing-song, waggling his finger in rhythm before he let his hand fall to his side, a look of sadness on his face as he surveyed the dead rabbit. "Harrison." He stuck a finger into the cage, prodding the animal. "How long?" He whirled to face Rayage, eyes wide and voice excited. "How long!?"

Before she could reply, Winthrope nodded, removing his hand from the rabbit's fur to pluck several containers from the rack before snatching up a mortar and pestle from the middle table as he rounded it to get back to work. "You can't just throw whatever you want in - won't mix and that won't be any good." He muttered to himself, the second part a bit nasally as if he were impersonating someone. "Grind it up, toss it in, works best fresh." He did as he spoke, sprinkling in the addition before picking up the rod to stir it. "Painless but slow, sneaky. Drowsy." He turned a happy grin to Rayage, offering her the concoction as if it were some fancy cocktail. "Death's Sleep!"

He withdrew the offer, for a moment, a hand raised to keep her still through gesture alone. "Venom of a snake, augmented with magic. You can do that, you know? Make a poison more... poisony? It's a process, I tell you." He shook his head. "Can't make my own, but I can certainly use it." He chuckled, pouring some of the liquid into a small flask. "Some snakes melt your face, some snakes melt your brain!" He chuckled. "Some snakes only wrap you up tight. Don't want those. No good." Handing the vial to Rayage once more, Winthrope set about scribbling in his journal. This time, what he wrote was clearly visible, though it was entirely illegible. If he wrote it code, it was a complex code indeed, but there was no telling whether that was the case or if his hand writing was simply terrible. He busied himself, muttering about this and that, leaving Rayage up to her own devices. There were several more pages about the middle desk, most of the detailed sketches of a snake's anatomy, though they were incomplete and some were smudged. Whatever they had been used for before, they seemed napkins now.

There was a soft hiss from the vat behind her, a sound that had been playing in the background of his madness for some time, but indistinguishable from the sound of his voice up until that point. There were still a few living things in cages, one of which seemed to be a very dour looking, malnourished cat, the other something that could easily have been mistaken for a nuit in the body of a rat. Winthrope was in his own world, oblivious to questions save a short, expectant glance at the tube in Rayage's hand before going back to his notes, muttering about "lotus root".

[Rayage]

Winthrope babbled on. Rayage almost sighing as her mistake was called. She had handed him millipedes, not venom sacs, but wasn’t that what he had asked for to begin with? The nuit had no time to be confused about the situation as it seemed that only Winthrope truly knew what was going on inside that head of his. Her frown deepened on her face, but she nodded, noting that millipedes, as Winthrope so elegantly put it, ‘made muscles stop muscling’. Another useful tidbit from the drabble he usually was going on about. This world of his was consumed by poison, so much so that it had idled his mind. One did not need to practice magic to go mad. It just so happened that only the mostly mad dared to practice magic, or something of the sort.

The mans grasp on reality was thin, and the world in his head seemed to explode from his lips in the form of phrases and his poisons. This much was apparent towards his reaction, again, of Harrison the rabbit. To cause this much trauma the third time, the rabbit must have been somewhat special to the man. It made the nuit feel somewhat guilty from having killed it, but it was under his instruction. So she did not allow herself to feel too concerned about it. Death, after all, was inevitable for the mortal races. This rule too was no different for rabbits, no matter how special they may be.

Deaths Sleep, painless but slow, sneaky. Drowsy. The properties of Deaths Sleep. The nuit seemed to be obsessed with this poison. It was interesting, and as a vial was offered to Rayage she reached out to grab it, but was stopped when the invitation was revoked and nuit said something more. You could enhance the properties of snakes poison with magic, to make it more effective. The nuit Master let out a small smile, noting the fact before she took the vial and looked about the lab. In his wordless way it seemed that Winthrope wanted her to test the serum on another animal.

She looked at the poison in the vial and considered it for a moment. Crushed venom sacs, from a snake. The nuits eyes were drawn from the poison towards the parchment detailing the snakes. It seemed discarded and half-hazardly thrown about, like it was yesterdays news. On the parchment it detailed some rough anatomy of the snake. It seemed simple enough, looking at the drawing, or maybe it was just drawn simply? The jaws opened to fangs, the fangs dripping poison in the illustration. From the fangs is where the poison come from, but not from where it originates. There is a small sac inside the snake containing the poison… She bit her lip looking at it observing the drawing in more detail than the rushed scorpion. She could not make out the writing, but she could at least attempt to learn from the drawings. Rayage tried to note the anatomy as quickly as possible, walking in a slow pace about the lab, headed towards the cat.

She looked at the feeble cat in the cage, and repeated the act in which she had administered the poison to the rabbit.

[Keene Ward]

The liquid within the container landed as harmlessly upon the dour looking feline as rain upon muddied earth. The cat stared back at Rayage with clouded, milky eyes, each blinking seemingly independent of the other. It let out a wheeze of a noise before letting its head lie back down on the floor of its prison, tongue lolling to the side. The time that had passed between contact of the poison and the effect on the rabbit extended past that with the cat, until it was quite clear there was to be no effect.

The vial in Rayage's hand still contained a small amount of the poison, and Winthrope seemed wholly unaware of her perceived failure for the time being. He continued to mumble to himself, the scritching of the quill filling the otherwise silent room with sound reminiscent of a creature pawing at a door in request of entrance. There were little to no changes in anything else, though the rat seemed to be looking with a contemptuous sneer - or however close the creature could get to such an expression - at the woman who's efforts had been for not. It let out a small, sigh of a squeak before turning back to some rotting chunk of something that it proceeded to reluctantly begin eating.

[Rayage]

Rayage watched for a reaction slightly disappointed that such a show, as what happened to the rabbit, did not happen here. After a couple chimes of uncomfortable anticipation, the nuit was stumped, looking at the creature rather stupidly. The Master did not like feeling dumb, stupid, or anything of the sort. The shock of the emotion turned inward and caved into itself until it became a ball of frustration. The frustration seemed to dissolve and flow within the wizard as he watched still, waiting for reaction, not wanting to look like a fool who just splashed poison on a target expecting something to happen, when nothing would.

The thing seemed to stare into her very soul, its eyes piercing the nuits body and mind, as if mocking the wizard itself. She could see her own stupidity reflected in the creatures stare, and in her mind the creature took on a more human role than anything. Its very existence mocked Rayage. Its very life mocked Rayage. Its every move, every breath, served to slap the Master in the face.

Her hand began to ache. The throbbing pain was a physical symptom that she had lost her cool. Inside her thoughts were racing, her own mind calling her an idiot, probing her for an answer. She looked around, once back at Winthrope, and then back at the cat, only to catch the glance of the rodent, on the other side of the enclosure. It openly mocked her, laughed at her, before returning to its food. It ate happily, munching away at the cheese block it was afforded.

Her clam had melted away, the feeling of being dumb morphed into that of frustration, and frustration was quickly turning to anger. She realized these emotions within herself, and she tried to take a step back from the situation, to calm herself down she counted slowly to ten. Once in her head. Though the numbers did not help, they did not dull or take away the humiliation she was feeling right now. She was her own worst enemy, and with that realization and in an act of complete hate and malice, she moved the remainder of the liquid over the rats cheese and dumped the rest of the contents onto the cheese.

She watched the poison drain from the small tube she was handed and with that she smiled. The act and the assumed knowledge that it, the poison, has to work now, had soothed her mind and put back into order the emotions within. Her eyes widened with almost childlike fascination, transfixed on the rat and its cheese, hoping that, now, it surely would die.

x

[Keene Ward]

As the liquid dribbled down onto the rodent's meal, the thing paused for a moment, as if considering whether it would or would not continue ingesting the already unappetizing mess before it. In the few ticks, the rat made eye contact with the woman to stared down at him with such frustrated hatred, its beady stare one that, unlike the cat, did not lack for intelligence nor did it hide behind the milky haze of age and disease. The creature, while dirty, ragged, and with a bit of mange on its lower back, regarded her, its ears flicking slightly as if, finally, in defeat before it took the fatalistic bite, as if it knew what was in store for it. Methodically, it chewed, tiny crumpled whiskers twitching as it did so.

Like before, it seemed the poison took a bit of time to take effect, but this time the symptoms presented themselves differently than the potion before. It began with the rat's natural twitches, the quick, furtive motions gradually becoming more and more lugubrious until the thing was unable to lift its head from the floor of the rusty contraption it was imprisoned within. It let out a sigh, audible as a withering squeak as its eyes fluttered shut and a whitish foam seeped from between its lips as it drifted into unconsciousness, its sides no longer rising and falling as they had done but remaining still. If it were to be investigated, the rat was, for all intents and purposed, dead; its heart beat could not be felt and little to no air passed into it lungs.

When Winthrope spoke again, it was from directly behind Rayage slightly to left. His footsteps had gone unnoticed, allowing him a soundless approach that was broken by the click of his tongue. "Fed it to him, did you?" The man muttered quietly after that, more to himself than anything else. "Serves that petcher right." He took several steps forward, his fingers blackened by the ink he'd somehow managed to get over most of the front of his body. "Well then," A darker edge had taken over his tone, posture straightening some as the hints of malice and lucidity played in Winthrope's surprisingly articulate words. "You should have killed me when you had the chance, Winthrope." An air of severity hovered around the figure for a few ticks more before he turned with a perplexed frown, his semblance already returned to as it had been only a chime before.

"Not dead!" He repeated the words several times, slipping his hands into the cage to pick up the limp body of what was almost certainly a carcass. Swinging it around in a sort of macabre dance, Winthrope shuffled back over to the middle table, dropping the rat's body onto the table and knocking several empty jars over in the process, he muttered in the same sing-song manner, "Venom for venom and a root to boot..." Spindly fingers quivered over the array of items until they pulled a dark, half filled bottle that actually had a label on it. Though faded, the small bit of paper had the caricature of smiling face on it. Holding it up a bit closer than was typical for one showing something to another, Winthrope chuckled. "Antidotes!" He uncorked it with his teeth, the liquid giving off an earthy stench of rot. "Poison to beat poison. Sometimes, it's other things, most times?" Unceremoniously, the wizard squeezed the sides of the rat's mouth until it opened involuntarily to the pressure. "It's this."

The liquid poured from the spout, soaking the little animal with a single splash before Winthrope set it down and corked it. He then held the rat out towards Rayage, an expectant look on his face. "That's it, that's it. Careful now! Don't want him to-" The creature shuddered for a moment before it released an impressive amount of stinking bile with a gurgle. It splashed to the floor, narrowly missing Rayage's feet. "Oopsies!" Another round of chuckles came as he ambled over to the cage to - for lack of a better word - throw the rat back where it had been procured from. Slapping his hands together, Winthrope nodding back at Rayage. "Who are you again?" There was no indication that he remembered her in the slightest amidst the dark, sunken eyes of the elderly looking poisoner.

[Rayage]

There was a certain pleasure in watching the rat eat now that its food was laced with the poison of Winthropes. It chewed, and if Rayage did not know better, then she would have assumed that it was human merely transformed to be an animal. A horrible affliction, but the rat seemed to possess character. It was infuriating and as chimes ticked by the nuit master watched, waiting for the inevitable to happen. This time the poison had to work, right?

The nuits suspicions were correct as she noticed the rat seemed to ‘slow down’. Its movements became labored like its body had grown heavy and the thing seemed all of a sudden weary. It was not as dramatic as the other poison that she had tested, but the transition to darkness and death seemed more finite, more subtle, a better way to die ultimately. Foam escaped the mouth of the rat as it lay down one last time, and Rayage smiled.

Her moment of victory was ruined by a voice from behind her, Winthropes. How long had he been observing her? It did not matter, but the man had a way around his lab. A sneaky way, just like the poison that he made. Rayage could not help but to nod at the words ‘serves that petcher right’. She thought the same too. The rat annoyed her, and poison did the trick.

When Winthrope came forward, enough to be observed by the nuit, she noted that he was covered in ink. She wondered how he managed that. Spilling the inkwell in a moment of excitement? She had that happen to her. Not often, but it happened, and she idly wondered if it happened to other wizards. Though then something strange happened, or maybe it was rather normal for Winthrope. The old poisoner straightened and with the most articulate and style that she has seen since stepping into the lab, he proclaimed that Winthrope should have killed him when he had the chance. It served to confuse the nuit for a moment, but considering his attachment to the animal subjects within the lab, she assumed that he was portraying the ‘personality’ of the rat which lay dead due to the poison.

The moment of lucidity vanished from the features of the old poisoner, and he, once again, returned to himself and his old antics. He sang ‘not dead’ and the words ran about, echoing off the surfaces of the lab, or perhaps it was only Rayage that imagined such an effect. The words had a way to bore themselves into the mind, not like hypnotism, but there was a light airy quality about them, as she observed what was going to happen.

He was going on about antidotes, and produced a bottle, finally a labeled bottle, with a smiling face on it. He fed the antidote to the rat, and soon enough held it out expectantly towards the nuit, as she watched, with horror, as the rat survived. It expelled the poison from its body in one messy heap, and that act alone set the poisoner off. He was happy, successful in saving the rats life. Rayage was not. She frowned at the thing as it was thrown into the cage and looked at the bile on the floor. She was about to ask the specifics of antidote making. He had made it clear that it was made from poison, but she did not get how poison could counteract poison. Though her thoughts were interrupted when he asked her name again.

”Rayage.” she once again reintroduced herself, ”Master Rayage, and Ive come here to learn about poisons, antidotes, and snake venom.” She reaffirmed her purpose as well, ”You had the request for material redirected to your lab…”

[Keene Ward]

"Master Rayage?" Winthrope blinked in confusion. "Oh I- I'm terribly sorry but the Master is out, and I don't know if I can help you with that!" The old man bumbled over to the table where it was evident the ink had come from. It coated everything, including the man's journal that he picked up with spidery fingers to hold out to Rayage for a tick before pulling it back and staring at it. "Oh, he's not going to like that." There was a little chuckle then, before the book was flipped open and several pages were torn out with seemingly little thought. Holding out one of the diagrams to the alchemist, Winthrope put an ink stained finger onto the diagram of a relatively realistic diagram of a snake. "Venom comes from there. They've got hollow teeth, you know?" Dropping his voice to a conspiratory whisper, he added, "Sometimes they spit!"

Shoving the papers into Rayage's hands, Winthrope headed over to the pot. His hand darted into it, pulling out a snake that was very dead. "You can have this one!" Instead of throwing it putting into Rayage's hands, Winthrope just discarded it onto the table. "Now... I..." He paused, a blank stare into nothing for a few ticks before he shook his head. "You need to leave. I'm very busy. Busy busy busy."

Whether Rayage had grabbed the snake or not, she was promptly half-shoved, half-guided to the door upon which Winthrope handed her a stoppered vial of the venom he'd used in the Death's Sleep as well as an old sock. "Bye-bye!" After which, the door was thrown shut and a small click could be heard before a raucous singing swelled up from behind it. It seemed the man had finished with the exchange. Of the paper's she'd been given, aside from the diagram of the snake that had smudged, inky prints on it where Winthrope had gestured, there was a half finished recipe to create something scrawled down in a messy script, a three quarter page of notes detailing the natural habitat of a black mamba, and a list of herbs with the words "Poison for Poison" scrawled across the top.

[Rayage]

Rayage was just as confused as the old poisoner as he kept on, saying the master was out and that he wasn’t sure that he could help her. She frowned, but listened carefully to his words. Winthrope was definitely back to his old ways. He talked about her like she wasn’t Rayage, and Rayage was someone else, something more knowledgeable than her. Or so it could be assumed by the patterns of his speech.

A journal was quickly nabbed from its resting place, covered in ink, the man made a note that ‘he’s not going to like that’ before flipping through the thing and tore out several pages. The state of the book was not her concern, but her attention was drawn to the pages as Winthrope approached her once more, pages in hand. The drawings on the page were detailed, and she smiled at them, finally something useful. She nodded when he said that snakes teeth were hollow, and pointed to the picture. She looked at the rather realistic drawing, it even showed a diagram of what the snakes tooth looks like from the inside, poison drawn in, ‘dripping’ from the fang pictured.

Before she could observe the ink smeared pages anymore they were shoved in her hands. He seemed in a rush, as he went over to another part of the lab and grabbed out a dead snake. It did not move, and he flopped it on the table telling her that she could take it. She barely had enough time to retrieve the thing before a sock and vial was put in her hands and she was outside the door. With a bye-bye the door slammed in her face. She barely had enough time to think about what she was given and looked at the small collection of items in her hands. She was lucky that the snake did not get shut in the door, the pace at which she was ushered out.

She sighed, going over in her head what she had learned from Winthrope. Looking over the pages in her grasp curiously she shook her head. She needed to get back to her lab before she could look over anything in much detail. So, she turned and headed back.

---

Returned to her lab she found an open table and placed everything Winthrope gave her about it. Producing a stool from under the table she looked at the notes and sat. She placed the papers side by side looking at the contents of each one individually. The snake diagram appealed to her as she glanced at the dead snake on the table, which she placed just above everything else. The sock to the right of the papers and the vile on the left. ‘Poison for Poison’ she muttered looking about the pages.

[Keene Ward]

The notes were just that, notes. They were scrawled in a hand that was far more legible than the scribbles that Winthrope had employed earlier, but they were by no means easily decipherable. Aside from the label of "Poison for Poison" the only immediately recognizable words were "poison" and "eat". Upon further investigation, Rayage would find that the page contained a relatively basic list of poisonous herbs as well as a small, seemingly unrelated section outlining an unnamed snake's venom. Underneath the the heading, the words were as follows:

"Bunwol! Bunny's Wool! But it's not a bunny. Greenish, fuzzy... Orange berries, like an owl. Owl's Wool? Marshy marsh. Doesn't like the dry. Too dry, it'll die! Poison. Make an oil? Good, bad plants not a problem. Boil down? Sicky sick!

Acson. Axe On? Axe Off! Not for eating, worse for tea! No tea, please! Unless... Tea to sleep. Forever. Dark green on top, white on the belly with a purple hat! So fashionable! Tastes like shyke. Make a bite not so bitey. Snakes? No thanks!

Berridon. Poison! Doesn't do good. Just poison. Tried to make unpoison, antidote? Sick sick sick. Sometimes, Harrison gets a a lokk look. Gets a look in his little bunny eyes, like flying? Maybe not poison. Pretty sure poison. Green red and purple. Like a fish.

Jile. Berries! Old berries, no that old. Double one? Eat for a not sick. Not good for a big sick.

It bites. Fangs in, venom out, pain everywhere! Neurotoxin. Pain pain pain, not in the brain in the skin. Rots quick. Bad for health. Mixed with magic, had him do it for me, flesh melts now. Fire reimancy? Philtering confusing. Alchemy? No. Maybe. Snake venom too much, snake dies. More snakes. No snakes. Fed the snake the other snake, both dead. Venom better made for poison not for snakes unless snakes... Can eat the venom? But the venom too strong. Too strong. Weaken it? Maybe. Water? Liquor? Snakes like wine. Did I like wine? Can't put it there. I want-"

After which the notes then quickly degraded into nonsense.

As for the second page of notes,

"Mamba. Lives somewhere? I don't know. Black mouth, nuit tongue but everywhere! Likes it hot. South. Good for it. Big. Pretty big? How many Harrisons... Three? Seven feet. Not feet feet, feet. A metered foot! The snakes don't have feet. Note: Give snakes feet. Why? Don't need feet to get venom. Silly. Every year, new eggs! Eggs for season, then a snake! My eggs... Only half snakes. Not warm enough. Aggressive!

Live in the woods. In the grass. In the mountains! Like it hot. Hot hot. Humid? Maybe? Golems delivered, ate one. Didn't like it. Too big, so big. Venom? Very nice. Very... Augment it? Fast acting, act faster maybe? Add it to the Painpricks... More death, less pain. Still pain, but dying. Don't want to kill them with it. Mamba, black, too black, kills them quick. Want them to suffer, otherwise, why poison? Bite quick. Bite fast. Bite a lot. Got bit a lot. Stupid mambas. Feed them to- Note: Get Harrison a bath. He smells like rabbit."

As for the diagram, it was unlikely Winthrope was the one who drew it. The lines were fairly concise, and if paired with a dissection of the snake above, it outlined mostly the flow of venom from the teeth. The rest of it detailed the organs, though there were no labels nor descriptions. The middle of the snake had a large fingerprint on it, but it was otherwise relatively unharmed.

The vial was, as Winthrope had snickered, "Death's Sleep". As it had been with the rat, the poison put one into a deathlike sleep with the effects last up to a bell. The vial Winthrope had given her was about half full and had something floating in it, though whether it was supposed to be in there or not was difficult to determine.

Finally, the sock. It was, essentially, a woolen tube for feet that smelled faintly of cinnamon and mostly of feet. There was nothing in the sock, though it was a bit unnaturally scratchy.

The snake above was dead, and there was a small cut around the bottom of it's head where the majority of its fluids had been drained before it was preserved. All the organs were in place, the only thing missing from it being its venom.