Hair of the Dog (private)

[Sondra]

TS: 1st day of Winter, 510


“Where is the petching cat?” Sondra moaned.
“What cat, lady?” the keeper asked.
“The one that crapped in my mouth while I slept.”

“Slept” was a generous term for what Sondra had been engaged in. It was closer to passing out and had been for about three months.

“Lady-lis,” her voice wavered, “Where am I today?”

Did it matter? She cast a bleary look around the room: dirt floors and broken wooden furniture paired with the wonderful fragrance of piss and apathy. This was beginning to feel like home, the home of an abused and neglected child, but home nonetheless. Which was why she felt the burning need to leave.

She pushed herself up from the table as the keeper looked on, stunned she had even awoken. Good thing, bodies were heavy and for all he knew dead Konti might smell like rotting fish.

Sondra made it to her feet and even remembered to reclaim her coat on the way out the door. As she staggered into the terrible sunlight, she took stock. Her knuckles were cut, no surprise and she had a monstrous headache, also no surprise. It was the strange bruising on her forearm she had no explanation for.

“By Ivak…”
Her recently adopted deity had already secured a place of honor in her oaths.
“I need a better hobby.”

[Sondra]

Sondra had been teetering on the narrow way for a bit, enthused by Ivak’s belief in her potential. She’d held on in Syliras, biding her time with the trio. But Glav had bigger plans than shepherding them and the trio suddenly diminished to a duo. Terminas was a good man, someone of character, which was precisely why she felt so horrifically awkward in his presence. It was like being naked all the time.

The Konti began to sweat the days and the pressure of starting a fire without the light of the first sparks. What in the gods’ names was she supposed to be accomplishing? Sondra barely had enough where-withal to keep herself from exploding in some violent spectacle, nonetheless foment a change with universal repercussions.

Fear wedged itself between the gates of her thoughts, making space for bitterness and anger to enter. Leo had vanished after all the talk of trust and purpose. Most galling of all was the strange fondness she had for the kid. He was unnerving, no doubt, but he could speak the language of the broken. It was like hearing your mother tongue when marooned on a foreign shore.
Anger rotated between self-loathing. She pondered her inadequacy in the face of a large task, and the fact she had not been deemed worthy of further explanation. But then anger would rear up again and she’d swear to show them all.

The vacillating became wearying and Sondra eventually chose to mute her thoughts with copious amounts of cheap liquor. Syliras was too orderly and maintained for a proper bender, so Sondra crawled to Sunberth. A city she both needed and loathed.

[Dusk]

Shame and fear, anger and self-loathing. It was a great deal for anyone to deal with - not that Sondra had been dealing with it. More like running from it, and had run across the entirety of Syliras to get away from it, only to find she'd brought it with her. As she stood in the glaring light of Syna's face, a moment of stillness settled over the filthy roads of Sunberth. Strange, that, for the city was not known for peace or calm. But as her bleary eyes adjusted and she stared out at the thatched roofs and wretched people who made up the Anarchist's City, everything quieted and she was able to finally see it. The stink of it, the awfulness, the murder and greed and humiliation of it, as if the entire city suddenly shouted its Sins for her to hear. Her skin hummed for a moment, and without realizing she reached up to wrap her fingers around the medallion that hung from her throat. As she did, the silence stretched and covered her, an unmistakably heavy feeling stealing the breath from her lungs. Anticipation. Time slowed and finally stopped, leaving only the slow, steady beat of her heart to know that she still existed. Blood flowed through her veins, sluggish and unwieldy with the damage she'd done herself in this place. The scales that littered her body went suddenly cold, and as she managed to finally draw a deep lungful of air, she felt it scratch against her throat. Enough, a soft voice whispered, feminine and sweet and achingly familiar. Her palm flattened, pressing the medallion against her chest, and as her fingers settled against her skin she felt a sickening wave of vertigo sweep through her. Her vision faded suddenly, and then the darkness lightened to be replaced with a colorless scene, painted in dull greys and whites that denoted a moment that had not yet happened, but would if she continued on her current course. A dark tavern, one usually filled with the worst that humanity had to offer, soaked in ale and despair, and in the very center of it lay a bright splash of pale skin. The White Witch lay on the floor beside a table she'd obviously spent the entire night at if the number of empty bottles upon it were any indication. Drunk again, and passed out as she had often been. Only this night there were those who'd paid the barkeep for his silence and the lack of his presence, and three men descended on the helpless Konti. What followed was what always followed when evil men are given easy prey. And even as Sondra watched the men take their fill of her while she tried in vain to fight them off - unable to truly defend herself with that much poison in her veins - the sickening vision came to a close as the last of them drew a crude dagger and slit her throat, bathing the grey-toned tavern with a splash of scarlet. The vision went suddenly black, leaving the Sinspeaker hanging in a dark void, a victim of her own powers. Enough, the voice said again, and this time there was a deep wellspring of pity behind the word. Be done with this, my child. There are greater works for one Blessed by the gods than this. Sondra blinked, and found herself back on the streets of Sunberth, that strange silence still all-encompassing as she managed to draw another breath. Then that was crushed out of her as she was hit with a wave of yearning so intense that it felt as if she might die of it - a need that she'd never felt nor really even comprehended, never knew could be held by a beating heart. Moments later, the yearning eased and the world returned to its normal pace, the sound and stench of Sunberth resuming its previous assault on Sondra's senses. Eased, but remained, and there was no question that it pointed west and north, back where she'd come from.

[Sondra]

Sondra’s temples began to throb with a new intensity. It was no longer the stiff ache of a wound from the night before, but a fresh vibrant pain. Her illusion of squalid, pedestrian living bled out and she was keenly reminded of the austere gifts from gods and mothers.

Sunberth changed faces. The worn down town darkened with malice and leered at her. A new play began with a cast entirely of devils and shades. The windows swelled with dark, palpable as the greasy smoke from the city’s slagheap. Her gift was radiating and doubling, overwhelming her senses.

Involuntarily Sondra reached for her talisman. Wielding it as a ward against the world. She teetered, holding her breath for an undeserved miracle.

The voice was bittersweet. Sweet in that it deigned to speak to her in motherly tones and bitter in that Sondra had not remembered it for decades. While the ground remained still, her thoughts began to lurch and swing making her stagger.

Sondra watched her future that may be. It made her swoon and put rot in her thoughts, but it did not shock her. One day her self-destructive quest would move past cowardice into earnestness. What other end would it find?

The voice spoke words of encouragement, but Sondra could not fully accept them. She doubted the greater works yet felt guilt for not pursuing them.

Sunberth returned. Bland and cold with a reeling Konti in the middle of its street. Sondra was staring into dour sky trying to reconcile her realities.

Avalis’s lily seemed to swelter and itch, blooming uncomfortably under her skin. A natural mandate was beginning to enflame, crude and imperative as hunger. There was ragged want, a rare beacon for the Konti.

The feeling raged then wilted. At its end Sondra was far from cured, but she knew for damn sure the north was calling.

The Konti shook her shoulders and ran for the miserable “room” where she kept her things. It was time to seek the white witch.