[flashback] and all our orisons.

by **Caelum** on May 26th, 2011, 5:32 pm

DisclaimerPossible to be considered of Mature Content.

Beloved,

Pain makes you fearless. In the lightning heat of its travel through you, it consumes, it obliterates. Caution dissolves beneath its blast, concern dissipates.

There is only pain and pain does not care.

Yet the moment its razor edge dulls to a bearable burn every ounce of courage it granted you dies, thrusting you through the floor of cowardice that bleeds the begging from your lips.

It is the line between those two extremes that will break your mind.

Like a trapeze artist, you try to balance upon it, the arms of your soul out-flung in reckless ignorance that this attempt will crucify you. You are ruined, however, by the driving need to be at once fearless and free of pain. Your heart thrusts itself into your throat as the first thin breath is managed through the agony and your tongue trembles on the verge of pleas and prayers. You try to hold onto it, to horde that moment, but it slips like hope away and you are begging by the time the next blow falls.

- - -

I thought that I knew it all
I'd seen all the signs before
I thought that you were the one
in darkness my heart was won
you build me up then you knock me down
you play the fool while I play the clown
we keep time to the beat of an old slave drum
you raise my hopes then you raise the odds
you tell me that I dream too much
now I'm serving time in a domestic graveyard
I don't believe you anymore ... I don't believe you
never let it be said I was untrue
I never found a home inside of you
never let it be said I was untrue
I gave you all my time
- dead can dance; the ubiquitous mr. lovegrove.

1st of Autumn, 508 AV

"Get up," Diarmid Bodei spat. The words were so sharp they blistered his tongue. Light pricked at the tips of waves where they were being absorbed by the horizon, the first evidence in a long while that the sun was going to make good on its promise to rise again. The Crack of Noon felt like a phantom in Leth's last hours, sails shrouding the rigging, strapped down against the storm that had walked away on legs of lightning. It had left the skeletons of the sailors still trembling with thunder while they slogged through ruins and debris, attempting to clear and repair.

"Get up," the first mate said again, punctuating his words this time with a kick to the ribs of the bloody man sprawled upon the deck. In response, Diarmid received a grunt that broke into a groan. "For petch's sake, up. Up. We're screwed if you can't at least stand."

A whistle sharpened the night from above, the clank of the hoist jerking up Diarmid's chin so that he could glower at the starboard rail. Curses tumbled from his mouth as he watched his captain, arm still in sling, signal a scrub rat ready the throw lines. Out of the pearl fog had long since loomed the rounded hull of their target vessel, the surrounding water throwing back echoes and booms of deck hand calls. Captain Bruin stood with lips pursed watching as the ship lulled, as the respective mates exchanged flashes of tattered flags and the man they had come all this way to meet, braving storms and gin soaked fables of giant squid, prepared to come aboard.

It was widely accepted that a captain who consented to parley on another captain's deck was the lesser, the beggar and certainly not the wronged. This cold morning Captain Bruin stood with his boots planted firm as red oak roots on his own deck and knew damned well, right down to the dregs of his rotted soul, that Caius Delucia of Hanged Fate was conceding absolutely nothing by coming aboard. An agent of Rhysol offered over their upper hand only when their lower lied in wait.

“Welcome aboard,” Bruin muttered while eying Delucia drop over the rail, a dark skinned mountain of a man half a startlingly graceful step behind him. Heedless of the blood the northern seas had not yet had the chance to wash away, shined boots carried the Ravokians over the boards.

“Storm found you, eh?” Delucia offered by way of greeting, casting lightless eyes across the battered scene.

“Amongst other things,” Bruin sniffed and rolled his injured shoulder, delivering the inquiring look from Delucia a stone faced stare. “Got m’ damned gold? Greasers down water been bitin m’ coin of late.”

“How irritating,” Delucia opined, a gloved hand rising to rub a bit of left over soot from his cheek. He was peering over Bruin’s shoulder with an intensity of regard that might have cowed a lesser pirate than Amadeo Bruin and certainly set the nerves of Diarmid Bodei alight. The first mate dropped like a stone to haul with heavy hands on the shoulder of the body yet at his feet.

“Well?” Bruin prompted and drew the Ravokian’s attention back to him. He had a strange face, did Delucia, at least in the eyes of the grizzled Bruin. The cheekbones were too flat in the weakly waking daylight, the mouth too bowed, the expression interminably contained no matter what emotion it was conveying. Truth was, he liked his chances better with the scar seamed monster playing Delucia’s shadow. He just could not say why.

“I brought the gold. What do you have for me?” Delucia answered and then tilted his head to follow Bruin’s gesture backwards in the direction of his first mate. “A poxed sailor? Dira’s cunt, mate, let’s not be miserly.”

“The sack of skin at his feet, y’ fool,” Bruin’s eye roll to the jest was almost audible. “There’s what’s yours now.”

“That?” Delucia dropped his chin and lifted his eyes in the same, incredulous motion.

“Look,” Bruin exhaled, swinging testily around to pace on broken boot heels towards Diarmid and his merchandise. “You went n’ sent out the call, promisin’ high pay outs. I went n’ got it, dealt with more shyke than you’d care to learn ‘bout to get here, so aye. That’s yours. Gold’s mine. Where’s it?”

“Mm,” Delucia considered. Following Bruin, he balanced broad shoulders back and nudged at the blood and ink striped arm of the mostly unconscious man. “Did you seriously flog him in the middle of a petching storm?”

“Storm came after,” Bruin snorted with an uneasy glance exchanged with his first mate. Diarmid crab walked backwards a few feet, wisely unwilling to remain in such close quarters with Caius Delucia’s steel toed boot.

“Isn’t that interesting.”

“Haste, Delucia. Know the meaning?”

Black eyes lifted, catching the sharp wariness lurking in Bruin’s face. “Is he good for it?” He wanted to know.

“Think so,” Bruin grunted.

“How?”

Bruin squinted past the patched mast and into the east. “You’ll see.”

Realization widened Delucia’s eyes and as the sun finally finished emerging from the storm lit deep, the sack of skin seemed to ignite in a flurry of daylight and transformed into an ethereal, if still blood smeared, creature.

“He’s good for it,” Bruin cleared his throat.

Delucia’s smile cast a shadow a lifetime long.

by **Caelum** on June 5th, 2011, 10:58 pm

30th of Autumn, 508 AV

Everyone had always said that Diarmid would be a great ship's captain when he grew up, just like his uncle. Only Diarmid Bodei, the fourth and forgotten son of a late member of the Sailor's Guild, had hopped ship the very same morning his eldest brother was bent on packing him off for fostering with slave ship out of Sahova. He ran with the threat of a sound whipping at his heels to no other city but that of the dead god Sylir's. He was meant for great things, Diarmid decided with all the certainty an eight year old could muster, and everyone knew that playing rat-catcher for the chain breakers when he ought to be learning the way of swords was not the beginning of a bard's tale.

Seven and twenty years later, Diarmid had yet to hear his name sung sweet on a bard's lips. They still sung songs about the Syliran knights with their precious honor and sharp swords. Songs of the heroes claimed by the gods and fiddles poised for any ribald ballad. It did not matter that Diarmid had lost an ear fighting with the knights when caught on the wrong side of a skirmish against Wildland bandits twelve year back or that he had toiled and wasted all the glory of his youth in the service of the miserly merchantmen of the waters, hoping for even half a sundered miza in acknowledgement of the stalwart duty he had delivered them since Captain Bruin had purchased his sword's service in Sunberth for lopping off the head of a rival captain. When he had first bribed his way through the Ironoak gate stinking of the fish-rot quays all those years ago, he had seen the armor of the knights upon the walls catch the sun in the color of a goddess dreamed of one day kneeling amongst brothers to be granted with honors for all his valiant deeds.

Staring now into the foam of piss poor ale and listening to his fellow mate Josh Lassiter complain again about the tavern's whores-for-offer, Diarmid wondered what it would have been like to have the steady hands of a captain. Captain Bruin had been more mad and miserly than usual since the death of his son, Daston, and the Crack of Noon had churned and hissed unseemly as the tides clattering against mermen's chains. He did not believe he would ever forget the smile upon Captain Bruin's mouth when he and Josh presented themselves before him a month or more back, the stench of decay still fresh on them; but Diarmid would like to forget. Yes, he would like to forget that very much. One smile and he had woken as if from a fevered dream, red blood rather than golden honors in his hands.

"Here now, Diarmid, drink up," Josh slammed a fresh round of mugs onto the table before Diarmid. "Now I know it's not so fine as that elderberry wine, but it's well enough for tavern swill, ain't it? Damned Bett over there, look at her bouncin' her boobies at the sharp faced boy. Meh --" Josh spat into the sawdust before settling his weight into a chair. "What's she think? He's mizas for her used slit?"

Diarmid did not bother to glance at yellow haired Bett and her new patron, merely exchanged his empty mug for the full one. "More n' we got, if he does," he muttered.

"Captain Bruin'll pay us soon, with fat stones, eh? Lots of shinies, Diarmid, a god's weight in them."

"Shut your gods damned mouth, Josh," Diarmid narrowed his eyes at his fellow mercenary. Josh shrugged and twisted around to eye the dice game going on in the corner.

Diarmid returned to his ale and thought about the man for whom they were here. He himself had stood a night's worth of ethaefal's vigil few weeks back, before Delucia's dark sails had appeared out of the clearing gloom of a the northern sea storm. Someone had to keep the fool alive, after all, fevered and flogged as he had been. All he wanted at this point was to get back to the Crack of Noon and out of cursed Ravok. Captain Bruin was a fool, he thought privately, for sending them back with Delucia to wait for the last half of what was owed him. Of course, maybe Diarmid was the real fool, letting the captain sail his livelihood down towards Nyka while he hauled off here to sit and wait.

He should have been less a coward, asked some questions; but his share of the take had been upped and he had debts to pay.

"She was sweet, eh? Wasn't she, Diarmid?" Josh reminisced, turning bleary brown eyes towards Diarmid as he grew bored with the die. "All that pale hair n' --"

"Didn't I tell you to shut up 'bout it?"

"Petch it," Josh complained, shoving back from the table with a tug on his faded red tunic. "The hell's takin' Tem so long with that whore? I'm sick've waitin' on the captain's son to finish his business. Go on n' pull him outta bed while I get the ravosala, will you? Boy thinks he's a gods damned man since he blooded his blade."

"Shht, his da thinks the same since tha' foul service. Go on," Diarmid grimaced, "I'll fetch 'em."

The tavern's stairwell smelled of dust and gloom as Diarmid climbed up, listening to the dull roar from the common room below mingle with the wet, muted sounds of men and boys spending themselves above. Upon reaching the room the tavern master had indicated, Diarmid slammed his fist against it three times. "Tem!" He raised his voice. "It's past time you're 'spected back. Tem!" No answer came from within.. "Tem! We got to be goin' now! Tem?"

Diarmid cast a glance down the dank corridor. It was empty save for him, damnably empty, and dark eyebrows drew tight with a frown. "Tem?" He called a final time, somehow softer than before, and bent a shoulder against the door. It opened with a creak of hinges, a stale wind whispering past. It filled the room with the smell of the docks the tavern sat upon, quays and rot and all the dead things that lived in this floating pit. Diarmid's shoulders tightened as he stared at the open window, and his hand found the comfort of a his sword before he looked to the bed.

Temothan Bruin, Captain Amadeo Bruin's eldest son, lay sprawled on the thin, stained mattress naked as the day he was born. Fitting, Diarmid thought while bending over the man, considering this was the day he was killed. The dark stains were blood and still damp with it, and seastorm eyes were wide and empty in wait for the crabs. There was no sign of the green eyed whore, not even a stray ribbon left before the cracked looking glass. There was but an open window with a frayed sailor's rope still dangling from the sill, and on the bed the body of a trumped up pirate with no purse or gold coated buttons or even the ruby ring won off Delucia in cards anywhere to be found.

"Damn," Diarmid muttered. "Damn fool."

With calloused fingers, he closed Tem's eyes. Grabbing a fistful of the dirty sheet, he yanked it over the man's head before turning on his heel. The room's door was slammed shut behind Diarmid, and he was fishing coin from his belt to toss the tavern keeper before he even reached the common room.

"Don't let anyone near that room," he ordered the pot bellied man without breaking stride, flipping him the coin. "You hear me?"

"What? 'Aight, man -- What's --"

"Anyone 'til I get back, else it'll be your head," and Diarmid squeezed his broad frame around the dice game and shoved his way out the back door, heavy boots squelching against the weathered boards of the dock. Taking the dark, shifting waters Diarmid considered thieving one of the many ravosalas tied up. Josh would do it, in a heartbeat, had he been the one to find their captain's son knifed by a common whore while under their guard. Josh would do it anyway once Diarmid told him, and make like haste to escape Captain Bruin's wrath. There was ill luck upon Ravok, Diarmid thought, for one son to die on an other's heels. Listening to the gull's shrill cry over the waters, he shivered.

"Damn," he cursed, and swung around to make his way across the pilings in the direction of the tavern. Moonlight shot blasts of ghost light over the warped boards, but the shadows of salted barrels and long poles were sharper still. It was not until he had maneuvered his way around an overturned crate that he saw the sword, glittering in the gloom beside a streak of still red blood at the dock's edge. Diarmid narrowed his eyes, taking a step closer; and his hand tightened on the hilt of his own sword as every eerie bard's tale he had never been in remembered itself to his chilling blood.

That was Josh's fucking sword.

He moved to draw his own, but it was already too late.

The wind whispered behind Diarmid and pressed steel against his throat. "Dead men keep their tongues."

"B-But I ain't --"

"Exactly."

A month or more later a sailor from the Crack of Noon arrived at the Southern Trading Post of Ravok. Captain Bruin had died mysteriously in his sleep while lodging at an inn in Nyka. He had been in the prime of his health, yet there was nary a mark upon him. It just went to show how Dira would take whom she would when she wanted, the sailor eventually told the Ravokian tavern keeper, and now the Crack of Noon and all it goods had been bought up by a local, one Captain Caius Delucia. Later, after being let into the stinking room above stairs and after hearing the tavern keeper's tale, the sailor would wonder just exactly how much time Amadeo Bruin had thought to buy with his living sacrifices.

Clearly, it had not been enough.

by **Caelum** on June 5th, 2011, 11:53 pm

69th of Autumn, 508 AV

The room finally fell silent. A quiet Caelum desired to keep, to hold in his arms as if it lived and breathed into the hollow of his throat. He kept his eyes closed, willing the sunlight to retreat back from the spills laddering the rumpled bed. One hand opened, spanned long fingers into the fine-spun cotton, and twisted with enough force to cause the sheet to purr a rip. One, then another, and another until that was the only sound he heard over the sounds of canal traffic outside and temple bells calling the faithful to pray. Over a matter of minutes his fingers were down to the mattress, scoring through the heavier weave, digging in until he felt the threads give and open like over-ripe fruit. Bit of stuffing, whatever filled it, were pulled out. Not in handfuls, but pinches between his narrow fingers that soon fell to the floor in a strange drift.

It fractured the silence, that soft tearing, the quiet drift, but he paid very little attention to it. His mind roamed in other ways, slipped from where he currently lay with hips cradled in a tangle of sheets not yet destroyed under his hands. His jaw tensed and relaxed by turns, moving faintly with the path of his thoughts.

Furious.

In the end, the ethaefal, always so removed, so well contained, so oblivious of what was needed, desired, found rage trembling in his blood. With a curse not fit for the ears of gods or men, he launched himself from the bed. Sparkling hair swung across his eyes as he grappled his way, barking a shin into the edge of a low table. Another bout of cursing as he turned on the ball of foot, read to strike and saw the impression left in the bedding.

Not the ruin of sheet or mattress bothered him. It was the pattern of brilliant red staining them. A perfect mold to where his back had been pressing while he lay twisting his mind around itself. His stomach knotted as he sank to his knees. The horror of this was a slow dawn as he stretched out his hand to run fingertips over the wet design.

Blood. His. He knew it as he smelled it more often than he ever would admit to. The cat knew nothing about how he suffered. His other self…and he shuddered. Syna might have an inclination, but this was different. This wasn’t the sun singer reaching out for something shared between he and his fallen reflection. This was something they meant only for him.

His belly spasmed. He hunched forward with one arm wrapping over his middle while he bent. Forehead to knees. Breath shallow. Swallow, he told himself, swallow this down. Expect he choked. With his awareness pulled away from where it had been to the slitted pain arrowing through his muscles. Still bleeding. He saw a trail of it as baffling as the ancient tongue marking the small amount of space he moved.

Crumpled into himself, the ethaefal wept silently into his marked hands. Shamed. Alone. Wishing for a thing that would never come.

Release from all of this.

Pale pink swirled around his feet and down the drain as he slumped into the wooden wall of the bath house. With water sluicing through his hair, across his shoulders and hips, he made no move at all. Not to finger the damage done. Not to work the clean scented soap over his skin. Nothing at all other than pray to whatever gods might have bothered to listen to him while the water nearly scalded.

Sickness still knit his stomach. It took forever to move from the floor to here. The last time he felt pain like this, a complete tearing of himself into pieces had been when the heavens spat him up. They cleaved without any neatness or care through the invisible umbilicus tying him to his goddess. They changed his body, his soul without hope for salvation. They tore the woman he loved from him as if they’d reached in for his heart and pulled it still beating from the cavity of his chest instead.

So much more than sorrow, this. Despair, sorrow’s scarified mistress, wrapped arms about him. Whispered a litany of doubt and pain through his agony until his hands rose with fingers fisting into his hair.

The water washed over his face. Stung his eyelids. Beaded into the shadow stubbling his cheek and jaw. He forced himself not to think.

For a while, it worked. At least until the heat and water became too much and drove him on.

It took an eternity. Extreme care when he moved, though that was only after. Before, with the damp still clinging, he stalked room to room. At each mirror, each reflective metal surface, he paused and howled silently for his goddess. A keening demand, a hopeless fear and each piece of silvered glass or polished silver, whatever it happened to be, gave nothing more but his image back to him.

One by one they were subsequently destroyed. A fist to some. He’d taken a chair to the oak framed monster in his bedroom. Glass stabbed under his bare feet. He tracked his path of ruin throughout the suite until nothing was left that could show him his face. It wasn’t the face he wanted. Not what he needed. And all he heard in response was a dull roar like the sea already spanning between them.

In the wake of this, he eventually grew still. Never looked at his reflection repeating itself over and over again. Broken past breaking. He licked the blood from his torn hands without realizing he did so. Only then did he bother to dress himself fully. The customary black embellished coat. The fine trousers. The boots that now made his feet ache more than they ever had. He finally saw to his hands, wrapped them as best he could before leaving the outward damage of internal turmoil for someone else to discover.

Never so careless. Always so careful. Save now as he slipped away, let the shadows take him as somehow the sun changed between when he woke and now, but to step outside, to leave the place he should have remained let him breath a little easier. Even if that wasn’t much more than an elaborate lie to himself, he needed to believe something.

The streets wove. The canals braided. The ethaefal ignored the names canals he walked alongside, the bridges he crossed. All that mattered to him was to find a way away. If he could have stripped his soul out of his body, left it somewhere better, he would have. Without another thought. Instead, it remained trapped with him.

He tailored his way past the brighter, safer places. He found himself deeper to where dens trailed opiate smoke. He knew the inside of such places now. He found, at times, those who believed him to be a dream while they wasted away in filthy bunks made into beautiful palaces thanks to the pipe between their lips.

His eyes canted to the flesh dens. He would never, not in his life, take the cat to such a place. She would sink into oblivion. He wanted to sink into oblivion.

“Evenin, darlin.” A painted doll in her cheap finery paused beside him. She marked him as foreign now with the windmarks weaving out of his collar and the coil of braids heavy at his nape even if his hands were bandaged and his eyes empty when he looking into her face. She only lifted a shoulder. A red mouth flashed into a meaningless smile.

Caelum watched her. Silent. Waited for her to continue on to her offer or to leave him so he might find his way.

“There’s better houses,” she, unlike him, didn’t wait. “Ones without old men drooling into their chests and women that’ll never please.” She tilted her head to the side. Angled the jut of her hip. Turned her shoulders to give the best view of throat and collarbones edged with ruined silk lace.

“And what do you want, lady?” The sound of his voice grated. Nothing but torn notes, ripped. Except he saw how her eyes widened once he finally spoke. The very things she tried to spark within him collided in her. Longing. Want. His mouth indented at the corners. Not with humor. Not with anything. She could read what she wanted.

“I know a place,” she began. A step closer to him and brought the scent of perfume stretched with drops of gin. She lifted her hand up to brush along his shoulder. Her fingers plucked at the embroidered line of his collar. “It’s a fine place.”

He met her eyes. Not bright or warm or particularly dark. Her eyes, he thought, were hungry and empty at the same time. Lit now with just a flicker in the muddy brown of a false hope. “You’ve no place for me, lady.”

“But I do. I do.”

Her pleading reminded him of the girl he took in his rooms and ordered from them without a second thought. All of them were the same. On the next corner it could easily be a young man wringing his voice the same way.

“Then perhaps it’s I without a place for you. Find another for your fine trappings.” He scanned her from crown to hem. Though of how simple it would be to corrupt each dream she held in her heart and easier still to open the veins of her Ravokian faith until he was drunk with her tawdry life.

Her expression fell. Dashed by his words this woman who knew her worth only thanks to what she was paid. He only saw the initial droop of her mouth. How the wound to her pride, that belief she could give a person what they desired most, flake into the real dross it was. Beyond that, he lost interest in her. Shrugged her seeking hand from his coat and turned away.

He never heard what she called him after that.

She never knew his choice would grant her another few years of life before rot and breakage claimed her.

But the ethaefal knew exactly what he condemned her to. A far worse death than what he would’ve granted with the press of his mouth. The knowing was almost enough to make him smile.

Caelum woke thanks to urgent hands tugging at his shirt. He blinked, slowly, into the guttering light of an oil lamp. Swallowed a rusted, dusted taste at the back of his throat. A girl’s pallid, worried face hovered into view. Wide green eyes. Silvery hair spilled down to veil them both.

“Where have you been?” she asked. Her voice knifed into his aching head, through his aching heart. “Damn it all. Where have you been? Why did you make it like this? So I had to search for you?”

Her fingers trembled as she struggled to pull in a breath. Another rush of words exploded, though he heard very few of them. Why seemed to be very popular. And that he didn’t have an answer to as he took in the dismal surroundings of where she found him.

Peeling paint on the walls. A mirror already shattered in its rusting frame over a dressed with mismatched drawers, though he couldn’t remember if he broke it or he walked in with it in such a state. A single ladder back chair missing a few rungs of it back angled toward a window set with bars on the inside. He felt the straw of the mattress stabbing into his hip, the small of his back as the cat pressed her small weight into him.

Clumsily, he touched her hair. Her cheek. Wiped the track of tears through the dirt smudging her. He wondered what she went through to find him. A lot, he knew, whatever it was, it took a lot out of her to manage this.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. He knew he left the woman on the street before the flesh den. Did he find another, den or person, later? More than one cheap drink burned his tongue. More than two or three or even four as he no longer recalled what happened after that. Where he went. What he did. How, even, he got to this particular place.

Cora nuzzled into his shoulder. She sneaked her arms around him. Wedged her lithe body to the long line of his. Her words ended up mumbled, murmured, a mix of language expressing nothing at all other than hurt. Confusion.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

For what, he didn’t know. For the grief lacing into his body and mind. For how that spilled over into her. For making her come here. Everything. Even breathing.

“You’ll need to come back. Delucia says you have to come back. You have to.” Her eyelashes feathered his skin.

He shuddered. “I can’t. Not just yet. I’m sorry.”

“Caelum…”

“Not yet.” A breath and he closed his eyes. “I’m sorry. Not yet.”

by **Caelum** on June 6th, 2011, 12:12 am

69th of Autumn, 508 AV

Cora stumbled in behind a pair of drunks with arms hooked together for some sort of mutual, staggering support. Dull eyes glanced toward her as she edged close to the wall, breathing shallow, through her mouth, as if that would keep her from smelling the place. Tasting it. One leaned a bit toward her as they passed in the narrow foyer with its chipped blue and white tile forming a mosaic of the sea or the sky on the floor beneath their feet.

“Know a man, honey,” the drunk rasped with laughter phlegming his voice. “Know plen’y-a men.” His lips peeled back showing blackened stumps and raw gums.

“No,” she whispered. A hand rose to ward them away. The one leaning with rotting ham breathe. The other with rheumy eyes blinking in the flickering electric light coming from a single naked bulb hanging above their heads thanks to a snaking black cord. “No thank you.”

“Someone’s gotcha then,” laughed the first. The desire for personal space, for her attempt to escape, seemed ignored as he brought a yellowed finger up to touch the curve of her cheek. “Someone who can afford fancy priced ass. Not us, eh? Not petchin' us.”

Her teeth sank into her lower lip with the recoil at their sudden explosive laughter.

“Shame,” the second man spoke for the first time. “Seem a pretty thing.”

Swallowing, she backstepped with her heart rocking her ribs and turned on her heel to flee into the building threatening to overwhelm her with the smells of stagnant water, decay, and sweat. Her heels clocked too loud across a lobby where no one sat and the only decorations were a crooked print of a fat woman with a come-hither look and a dead plant in a bucket.

Nervous the pair from the entryway might have trailed behind her, she glanced over her shoulder. No one was there. Just the urine-tinted light and shadows.

Maybe it was the wrong place, her worried mind began. Maybe he wasn’t here at all. Except she’d followed the sharp scent of his blood. A tangled mess, which began in what had been a beautiful set of rooms and took her through the horrors of a city she knew she didn’t understand at all. Her trust in the rightness of the scent, of the ethaefal's blood, brought her to places lower than she ever imagined. She couldn’t picture him walking through the cesspools both human and otherwise. The idea of him stopping anywhere gave her moments of panic as she thought he would have circled his way back.

But Caelum came here, to this place, for some reason or another. A place that made Cora walk up with her arms tight about herself to a boxy counter.

She hesitated to bring her hand up to knock on the counter. Sickness crept up from the pit of her stomach when she managed to force her knuckles to rap. On the wall behind the desk, she saw a list posted. Squinting at it made it no clearer. Not that she had much time to study it as footsteps clopped in her direction and she found herself faced with a bulky man in a splattered cotton shirt.

The look he gave her was worse than even the touch of the drunk man. His stare carried the weight of a hand rubbing down her throat and breasts. She found herself very thankful the counter made the rest of her body an unknown. Cut not neatly in two, but halved all the same. Eventually he brought pallid blue eyes up to her face. A study of her mouth.

“Yeah?” He met her eyes but quickly turned his attention to the ivory skin framed by the edges of elaborately embroidered ribbon shaping the bodice of her dress.

She shifted and hugged herself a second time, obscuring his view, which caused a dissatisfied frown to catch his mouth. But at least he looked at her now. At her face again. “I’m looking for a man,” she started.

His frown moldered into a grin. “Lookit that. You found one.”

“I..” that wasn’t what she meant. Hadn’t realized how it might be taken. “Oh...”

The grin leered. “Who you belong to, girl? Don’t keep no runaways here. Says it right there.” Not taking his focus from her, he pointed the jumble of words behind him.

Belong to? Taken aback, her mouth opened for a protest. She belonged to no one but the gods. Color flushed her cheeks. He thought she was a kept woman. Lower than that. He thought chains wrapped her wrists or throat. He thought she was like Caelum.

“You either tell me or you get on. Got no time for silly sluts. Not gonna hide you in some room cuz you failed t’do whatever you were told. He here, your man?”

Not meaning to, she shook her head. “Delucia,” she heard herself say. “It’s who…”

The lust consuming the night-clerk’s sharpened into greed. “Don’t say, girl. You stay right there.”

She saw him reach under the desk before shifting his rotund body from where it had stationed itself. A clack echoed in her ears, made her startle. The door to his protected cubicle opened and he strolled toward her. There hadn’t been time to escape out the front. Not that she could. Caelum was here. He had to be. Somewhere.

“Now,” said the clerk, “what’s it you need a man for?”

Her nose crinkled because he was so close to her. Smells she didn’t know. Couldn’t identify other than there was an illness in him. It ate him from the inside out. The bloat stretching his stomach wasn’t fat. It was whatever the thing in him was. As she tried to move away, his thick fingers grasped her shoulders. Before she knew it, he yanked her to his chest.

“Cuz I can probably help you out. ‘Specially if you’re tryin to hide from someone like Delucia.” His hands moved over her. Bold. Uninvited. “That whatcher wantin?”

“My friend…” her voice shook. “I’m looking for my friend. He…he’s here. But I don’t know where.”

“Well, why don’t we go talk about where he might be. I could be a friend to you, girl. A really good friend.” He propelled her toward the door of his office.

Beyond the desk’s area, through the archway he first came from, she saw the splintered wood of a bed-leg. Her soul attempted to fly from her as she put together what this would cost. A moan escaped her. A sound he took the wrong way.

“Me’n Delucia're good friends, girl. Friends always help each other. I’ll help you for his sake. First, tho’, you help me.”

Her thoughts scattered completely as he pushed her through. Shoved her toward the bed and down to it. Nothing felt real to her when he yanked her skirts up and pushed his tongue into her mouth.

The cat pulled whatever pieces of herself trying to break free deep inside of herself.

Sacrifice.

Blood often required a sacrifice.

This time it was hers.

He had been good to his word, though, the night-clerk. He let her wash up before taking her up creaking stairs to a floor a few levels above the street. He talked to her, called her pretty, told her he’d never been with a kelvic woman before and of course he remembered the man she looked for. Figured that Delucia would have a damned pair.

Cora said very little while she trailed behind him. He still scented her skin. His soap had been poor quality. Something mixed with a kind of ash. Her clothing felt corroded to her flesh. A few tears pulled through her frail skirts. He ripped the ribbon from her bodice, cut a lock of silvery hair. Mementos, he told her. Nothing anyone would notice.

But she noticed. Unless she wasn’t anyone now. She no longer knew. She couldn’t think about it. Wouldn’t think about it. Refused to have it settle. All she had been able to manage was an empty murmur of thanks when the clerk brought her to the proper door. He slid a key into the lock, twisted, and with a lingering hand falling down the small of her back, pushed her inside.

The agony of waiting followed. Waiting as she circled the room with feet tangling into scattered clothing or bedding. She hadn’t been sure until she found a candle stub to to light from the grate. The darkness might have been better kept.

Caelum sprawled on the bed. A ruin of himself. Deathly white other than the windmarks to her eyes while his hair bled in braids across the rank pillows. How he managed to lay there caused no small bit of unease. Enough to shove away what she did to reach him from her memory. As quietly as she could, she’d crept to him. Laid her fingers to his cheek and slid them down his throat. The low, slow pulse was as she knew it to be. Bending down, ear to his chest, she could hear the faint beat. The shallow breaths he took as well.

Eventually he woke. Unfortunately while she tugged at his collar, trying to open it, thinking it would make things better for him. She never meant to sound like she accused him of leaving her, of hurting her, or any of the things he might have read in her eyes. An argument that never needed to be made. His wounded apology before she hushed him over and over.

Like children, they clung to each other. Cora twined her arms about his shoulders. Twisted one leg through his even as he shifted onto his side. Desire, no. Though she knew what it was like to desire him. Here, at this moment, she wished only a closeness to him. To be closer still, she extended her throat to him.

“It’s unclean here. This place. All of it is unclean,” she whispered. Her voice grew thick. A gemmy sparkle on her lashes before she blinked them away. “I am, too.”

Why else wouldn’t Delucia remember? She knew she torched this path Caelum followed. He couldn’t hide all of the loathing when he saw her. He stroked her hair as she pressed her shoulders into his chest, settled her hips into the cradle of his. When he sighed, it strayed to tickle the back of her ear.

“But never you.” Those words sounded like promise. “Never you, Caelum. You will never stop being holy.”

It made her want to weep, his silence in response to it. To be alone, completely alone for a little while, with him. Her eyes peeked through her hair at the smoothness of his brow and the way his dark hair shadowed. She might have said something more but his mouth skated across her pulse, over where the night-clerk stroked her skin with his eyes.

It robbed her breath, curled her tighter around him in an effort to hold him together. Sleep finally came and they clung together as if one would shield the other from the world.

by **Caelum** on June 10th, 2011, 1:16 am

80th of Autumn 508 AV

"What was Bodei to you?" Alander Jin demanded of his partner while jumping a pair of steps to catch up to him. Tarnished hair hung in a heavy plait down the center of his back, a few jagged ends cutting into an empty, white eye. The steps hardly dared to creak beneath his weight, graceful as the sluice of canal water beneath a rippling wind. Met with silence, the Ahnatep expatriate hopped another step and swung around, the abrupt motion forcing Caius Delucia to come to a halt.

"What," Alander said with a heavy tongue, "Was Bodei to you, Caius?"

"A medium." Caius raised his eyebrows a touch and released the stair rail he had instinctively latched onto when Alander's sudden imposition threatened his balance.

"As in for a wave?"

The captain of Hanged Fate cast his eyes towards vaulted ceiling and stepped past Alander, bumping his shoulder hard enough to force him to be the one to grab the rail this time.

“Momentum,” Caius expounded.

“Not to mention covering your petchin’ ass,” Alander fell back into step with him at the top of the stairs and the partners continued down the gleaming hall in mismatched strides.

“It couldn’t have been that well covered if you found out about it.”

“Unless that was the point,” Alander suggested.

Caius’ smile was bland.

Alander heaved a sigh and glanced at the heavy wooden door they had stopped in front of. “Your cat’s not a chatterbox.”

“She’s bonded.” Caius folded his hands behind his back, the water light from the window dappling exotic features in shadow.

The exile hesitated and looked at the door. The scuffle of feet, the muffled thump and thud of physical exertion could be heard through it. As if compelled, Alander slowly flattened a palm against the polished door and dragged his regard back to his partner. "You were saving her," he said thoughtfully and realigned his puzzle pieces between one heartbeat and the next, one muted thump and last. "No," he breathed.

"Yes," Caius rejoined, black humor surfacing in his stare.

"Leth or Syna?" Alander demanded. "Tell me it's Syna's."

"Syna's and I'll do you one better." Caius unclasped his hands to bring them up, palms facing the ceiling.

The laugh began in Alander's stomach and crawled up his throat until he was gnashing notes of it between his teeth. "Bodei?"

"Like I said, momentum. It's all going as planned."

Alander's hand fell away from the door, but he curled his fingers in the last inch. His nails scraped the wood, digging up splinter as he bounced up to his toes. "Let's go increase that velocity."

Caius gestured and Alander pushed open the door, the ring of their footsteps off of plush carpet and onto sanded wood causing the pair already within to turn towards them. The fighters could not have been more opposite in appearance. The larger of them was nearly a head over his opponent, ebony skin twisted by scars as old as his teeth which gleamed in the fading daylight from the windows. Massive shoulders and limbs made heavy with muscle created a shadow to yawn monstrous across the floor, cutting the second fighter near in half.

It was that one, the smaller of the fighters, who drew Alander Jin's hungry stare.

Syna's lost lover and these Ravokians' manifestation of ambitions, usually considered tall, looked shrunk beside Delucia's bodyman. Tapered horns curved back against his skull the color of iodized copper and jagged lengths of hair burned like blackened embers into a face that could have been stamped on an archaic coin. Violet shadows weighed beneath eyes that no darkness could find, sun-swallowed and steady; and being stripped the waist brought about the revelation of long, noble bones wrapped in skin sewn from a summer sun. Drops of sweat slid down, mingling with bruises young and old scattered like rioting flowers over his body.

And when Caius said, "Go on," and the ethaefal turned reluctantly back to his teacher and torturer, Alander got a long look at the half healed cuts decorating his back in shifting patterns. They existed over what was already a neat sheet of scar tissue, leeched of all the color the sun's love of him had loaned.

"Your artistry with glyphing has never been greater," Alander sighed to his partner as the spar began again before them. Watching the dark skinned man demonstrate a defensive stance moments before destroying the ethaefal's attempt to replicate it, the exile shook his head. The heavy braid twitched along his spine. "Gibran is eating him alive."

"You should have seen Caelum a week ago," Caius pointed out. "He's learning."

"He's cooperative?" Surprise lit sharp features.

"Lay into anyone long enough, show then how to fight back. They'll learn."

"And Cora?"

"He fights harder for her." Caius looked at his partner as Gibran pushed Caelum to the wall for the second time. "He's somewhat of a physician. Not very skilled, but better at it after dark."

Alander snorted and rubbed a hand over his mouth. "You've really out done yourself this time." The light from the window was weakening almost in synchronization, he thought, with the increasing combination of pain in fatigue of the ethaefal. Alander rolled up to the balls of his feet and back down again. "It's time."

"Gibran, we're finished." Caius stepped backwards until his shoulder blades brushed the wall beside the door. An elegant slump found him, fingers catching in the pockets of his trousers and chin dropping though coal colored eyes remained hooked upon the scene before him.

Gibran left his pupil bent over with his hands on his knees, sides moving with gulping breaths, to grab a scrap of worn linen from the table against the far wall and mop his face. Alander remained where he was, elbow caught in the opposing hand and fingers fanned across his thought. Caelum's eyes rolled up warily, starting at the toes of Alander's boots and working his way up. There was a narrowing in Alander's eyes, a glint to the one not washed white perhaps, that warned the ethaefal with just enough time left to suck in a breath.

Alander's arms dropped boneless to his sides half a heartbeat before invisible hands caught Caelum in an unrelenting grip. They shoved him back through the glow of the sunset over Ravok's surrounding waters and slammed him against the thick, bubbled glass of the window pane. It rattled, sharp and threatening, while the massive Gibran pressed himself deep into the farther corner as if attempting to bleed out of sight.

It was a matter of seconds before Caelum's head went back, burning hair splattering against the warped glass even while it began to drain of color in direct proportion with the gradual appearance of stars in the coming night. By the time his horns vanished, he had lost all control of his limbs as one joint after another was released with violent reverberations from the stranglehold of his soul. It was when the projectionist began to suck the very self out of his skeleton, ripping his astral body with the force of stronger, far more experienced djed from the tangle of his musculature that Caelum began to scream.

The scream was cut off by the final fall of night, that too stolen from him while windmarks nonetheless walked themselves back into place upon his skin and what was left of him collapsed.

Caius Delucia looked on with an eerie smile.

- - -

I remember too, beloved, the night swarming over me and thinking that one should be free of pain once robbed of soul. I remember trying to maintain balance on that slippery edge between agony and oblivion, the arms of my soul out-flung. Yet despite all of my orisons, I slipped, Syna. I slipped and then I begged. I remember begging, begging and You still did not hear me. I gave you all my lives and You left me in this one to the dark.

END

by **Verilian** on July 6th, 2011, 12:05 pm

Caelum

+1 Brawling/Unarmed Combat (choose one)
+1 Projection

You Question My Logic? :

Lores: Sold, Losing Oneself, Reflection of a Broken Soul, Turning away the Whores, Kitty Love, Having One's Soul Detached

Notes: Wow.. I loved every moment of this. Thankyou for the amazing story.