The Crawling Sickness

Maro, Madeira and a mystery

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Considered one of the most mysterious cities in Mizahar, Alvadas is called The City of Illusions. It is the home of Ionu and the notorious Inverted. This city sits on one of the main crossroads through The Region of Kalea.

The Crawling Sickness

Postby Madeira Dusk on April 9th, 2017, 12:50 am

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"Maro!"
 
Madeira watched the ghost's wrists disappear into the Kelvic's chest before he sank to his knees with a sharp stutter of air. The ghost's shriek and Madeira's yell were magnified in the enclosed space, and a cloud of flies took flight in the disturbed air. Just as Madeira was about to raise her bow and demand that the spirit get away from him, he held up his own hand to ward Madeira away.
 
Caught between protecting him and trusting him, the Spiritist wavered for a long tick before finally dropping her bow to the ground with a muffled curse.
 
But Maro, even on his knees gasping for breath, spoke with empathy. Madeira could not help but watch with admiration as he spoke for the people she had left behind; and for the friend that was no doubt looking for her.
 
And for whatever reason, Djamila seemed willing to listen to him.

Madeira left her bow where she dropped it, and put the jar of the death bell down quietly by Maro’s splayed hand. With one last moment of hesitation she looked between the Ghost and the Kelvic, before ducking into the narrow cave and out to the beach. She left them alone to speak to each other, and for Maro to soothe her exorcism with his particular kind of empathy. There were other things Madeira could do. They still needed a pyre.

There was a beached log a couple meters from the waterline. It’s bark had been smoothed by waves and bleached by sun until it looked like some monstrous bone. That would be her coffin. The young blonde shaded her eyes against the encroaching midday sun looking for other such treasures to decorate Djamila’s final resting place.

Many chimes later, arms aching from load after load of smooth, salt-gorged sticks, Madeira stood back to admire her work. She had never built a campfire before, much less a funeral pyre, but she was proud of her work. Over the original log she had used the longest of the wrapped sticks to steeple against each other. The sticks too short to reach had been broken over her knee into the smallest possible pieces to be used as kindling. And the greenish-black seaweed left dry and crispy from the last high tide was laid on top of the log as a crackling bed.

Madeira brushed the sand and salt from her hands and returned to her abandoned pack. From it’s depths she produced her flint and steel. Both pieces were as smooth as the day she bought them. She’s never had to use them before.

The return to the vibrating, fetid cave was made all the worse by her brief break to the fresh, open air. Unable to manage the short journey with backbreaking dignity again, she crawled through the narrow passage on her hands and knees, the stone and steel cutting sharply into her palms.

When she reached the cavern she paused for a shallow breath of the rotting air.

“Djamila? It’s time.”
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The Crawling Sickness

Postby Maro on April 14th, 2017, 10:15 pm


Panic, like a fish out of water, rushed through Maro as Madeira stepped into the cave entrance and out toward the beach. She was abandoning him? That didn’t seem right. If there was anyone who ought to be handling this, it was someone who was experienced with sending ghosts on, someone like Madeira. Not scrawny, little Maro. As with most emotions, it passed quickly, and reason began to take over. Then, something dawned on him, and for the first time since meeting Madeira, Maro felt proud. She wasn’t abandoning him. She was leaving to build the pyre as she had suggested before, and she was leaving him in charge of bringing Djamila to the point of readiness, to the precipice of this life and the next. Madeira was leaving him, because she trusted him to handle this. Having only known her a day, the reasoning part of his mind tried to tell him that to feel this way was ridiculous, but he smothered that thought in its infancy and embraced the warm glow of pride as it filled him. Madeira actually thought he was as qualified for this as she was.

Turning back to Djamila, he let that feeling subside. This was no time to be congratulating himself. Today, this moment, was about the frightened ghost in front of him, maddened by the death she had had to endure and by the undeath that had followed it. Flicking back and forth between her corpse and him, Djamila’s eyes said she was about to slip back into the madness he had encountered when they first met. He had to get her attention, and he had to do it fast.

“The shells, who were they for?”

The question startled Djamila, and her eyes focused on Maro once again. “My friend, Te’Ela.”

“Te’Ela,” Maro repeated, letting the syllables trip off his tongue. Memories were all Djamila had left, and the ones that wanted to surface weren’t the good kind. He had to remind her of what life had been like. He let the name tumble out several more times, the word and the tone of his voice taking on a hypnotic quality, and only stopped when he knew he had her full attention. “That’s a beautiful name. What was she like?”

There was a flicker of a smile, as Djamila’s mind took her back to the life she had known before this horror, the one of peace and happiness. Her voice came, more calm than he had heard it yet. “She was the most beautiful woman you could ever meet. She had the ocean in her eyes. Te’Ela was Konti. That’s why she loved the shells so much. She reminds me of your friend a bit, just a little less plastered in blood and grime.”

Maro had to laugh at that, and the noise echoed around the cavern. Djamila didn’t laugh, but her smile did brighten. That was good. There was some sign of her former self and less of the psychosis that had come with death. He had to continue to remind her of that. “What were you like? Madeira said you were a tailor.”

“How’d she know that?”

“When you possessed her, whether you realized it or not, you shared some of your memories with her.”

“So she knew what I was like before I was… this?” Her eyes went back to her body to emphasize what it was she meant.

“And so do I,” Maro reminded her. “But I only got a glimpse. It was a beautiful glimpse, but I still hardly know you. Tell me more.”

She did, for many chimes, as they waited for Madeira to return. Whenever she seemed about ready to run out of things to say, Maro asked another question, and Djamila started up again. The ghost seemed to enjoy the talking. Maybe she wanted to forget about her corpse and her death as much as Maro did, but her eyes always kept wandering back toward the thing that had once been her body. It didn’t take Madeira long to return to the cave, but every moment she was away was too long. Maro wasn’t sure he could keep Djamila’s mind off her body much longer.

“Djamila?” Madeira spoke. “It’s time.”

The spiritist’s voice jarred the ghost out of some pleasant memory she was recalling and back into the gross reality of the present. Her eyes lost some of their lucidity as they returned to her corpse. “No. No. You shouldn’t be here.”

“Yes, we should,” Maro reminded her, “because we both know who you were before this. And we can cure you. We’ll make the flies go away.”

Djamila turned her eyes back on him, but the searching, trusting eyes, the ones that had been hopeful for an end to this, weren’t the ones that that were behind her ghostly lids any longer. There was one thing left in them: fear.

“We’ll take your body and burn it as it should have been burned when you passed. The flies won’t bother you anymore. See? Look.”

Taking a few nervous strides over to the Eypherian corpse, Maro was aware of Djamila’s slowly maddening eyes on him every step of the way. As he reached down and grasped the elbow of two of her arms, he kept his motions gentle and slow, trying to placate the spirit. He gripped her elbows tight and pulled up, getting ready to drag her body toward the entrance of the cave and open air. He should have asked Madeira for help. He should have taken his time.

With a fleshy squish, Djamila’s skin burst open beneath the pressure of his hands, and with the slickness of her decay and the larva of the milling flies, his hands slid up her arms to her wrists, stripping them of any skin and revealing the mess of the creatures beneath. There was a second sickening squish, and Maro was left holding nothing but rotten flesh and writhing maggots.

“No, no, no, no, no.” Djamila moaned as she watched her arms disintegrate and the bots come spilling out. Her soulmist surged around her body, ephemeral wisps rising, bursting, disappearing, and reforming like the flames of a fire. Even the fear seemed to leave Djamila’s eyes and was replaced by a crazed emptiness.
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The Crawling Sickness

Postby Madeira Dusk on April 21st, 2017, 4:06 am

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As the pulpy flesh sloughed off the corpse, exposing the oily yellow gleam of bone and the wiggling things gorged on her liquifying muscle, Madeira thought of peaches.

That nostalgic smell filled the small space, and the wet patter on the floor became the nectar of that ripe fruit. Her skin was not mottled and bloated, it was soft and supple enough to split. The flesh was not glistening with oily rot but with ripe juices. She closed her eyes and the maddening droning of flies became the gentle hum of her mother,
the wicket basket balanced on her hip piled high with fruit.

She was aware, at least tangentially, that her overloaded mind was saving itself with this delusion. But that was ok. It was all peaches and that was ok. Madeira's body shivered as the air froze around them. There was a crackling in her ears, like the amplified feeling you get right before a thunderstorm. And the ghost of Djamila the tailor stood
in the middle of it all, already burning. No, that wasn't right. It was her soulmist, twisting around her like tongues of flame snapping in an invisible gale. Her hands crawled over her ethereal body, her mouth repeating her one syllable mantra, and her eyes...

Fear rocketed through the Spiritist. Djamila’s eyes were empty. Hollow except for a deep, howling madness. They had lost her. They were doing so well, and they lost her.

Madeira wasted no time with consoling the ghost, or trying to pull her back from the madness that had consumed her. She scrambled on her hands and knees to her discarded, loaded crossbow. Her hands were shaking, so she rested the bow on her raised knee. Her finger danced over the trigger as she aimed the shaft into the middle of the thickest concentration of soulmist.

She took a deep breath, and fired.

The shot was off-centre, but it hardly mattered in the small space. The ebony bolt ripped through ghost unimpeded and splintered on the stone behind it. As it passed, it seemed to drag something out of the spirit on it's leaded tip.

And the poor ghost, who only wanted to save others from the her own hell, contracted into herself with a scream of pain. It wouldn't be enough to stop her, but with part of her soulmist ripped from her body she should be weaker. At least Madeira hoped so, since the remaining nine bolts were still outside in her rucksack.

In the precious ticks before Djimila recovered from the blow to her soul, Madeira stumbled to her feet and almost flew the half a dozen steps to the corpse. Her stress and exhaustion battled each other in her pitifully stung muscles.

"We need to get her out of here." she spoke with clipped and clinical tones. But the bloodshot eyes that rolled over the Eiyon said something else:

Look what you've done.

The unspoken accusation sizzled from her skin like an electric charge. They were so close to saving the tailor who just wanted to pick seashells for her friend. What Madeira said to Autumn bells ago came surging back, and she almost laughed: ‘he paved his road with good intentions and ended up getting in the way’. The good man who could do nothing right.

Peaches flooded her mind as she bent over the corpse and slipped her bleeding hands under the pit of it's arms. This close she could see that the pit of it's eyes were not as hollow as she had assumed. Something had congealed in the sockets, and in the gummed fluid a snail with a horned shell had made it's home. But it was ok, it was
just peaches.

She had just started to lift her when the ghost finally righted herself.

"Get away!" she screamed with a voice that was half panic, half anger. In less than a tick she had blinked behind Madeira and had her materialized hands on the Spiritist's back as if to pull her away.

The energy in her touch hit Madeira’s soul like a bolt of lightning. Her knees turned to liquid and she dropped to the floor as spittle flew from her white lips. Only a hand braced on the wall of the cave kept her from landing on top of the corpse.
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The Crawling Sickness

Postby Maro on April 25th, 2017, 3:09 pm


Something told Maro to be calm, that Madeira would handle this, that if he remained calm Djamila would too and Madeira would then be able to get through to her. Turning to the spiritist to see what she would do, Maro watched her dive to the ground, pull up her crossbow, lay it against one knee, and fire a haphazard bolt at Djamila. This was not what he had been expecting from her. The bolt found its mark, ripping through the chaotic soulmist that made up Djamila’s essence, and the ghost screamed. Madeira, for her part, was at Maro’s side a moment later. Maro stared at her, stunned.

“We need to get her out of here.”

Something burning lay behind the eyes that met his. An accusation. This was his fault.

Madeira was already at work, grasping Djamila’s corpse from a more advantageous position than Maro had used. The skin didn’t fall away from Damila’s body the way it had for Maro. Madeira lifted. Djamila screamed. She was gone and, in an instant, was back again, this time right behind Madeira. The dead woman’s hands reached for the living one’s shoulders, and Madeira crumpled under her angry touch.

Maro knew how that felt. He had felt it twice already today, but neither time had the spirit been this worked up. He would have shuddered, empathetic to her pain, but there was no time for that. Instinct, pure and beautiful and raw, was always there when it was truly needed. In times like these, it couldn’t be suppressed.

In a swirl of brilliant color, Maro changed back to a jackal. There was the brief sensation of falling, and then the air was driven from his lungs as he landed on his side on the gritty cave floor. Ignoring the pain and lack of air, he kicked madly at the pants that were wrapped around his back legs until they fell away, then leapt to his feet.

Djamila had rocked back from the flash of light that was his transformation, and Maro stepped into the space between her and Madeira. This was his fault. It always seemed to be, but he wasn’t going to let anyone suffer for the mistakes he always made. The Maro that stood between the two women was nothing like the mild Maro from before. He stood angled, his front end dropped into a low crouch, lips drawn back into a primal smile, and hackles standing on end. Cackling out his defiance, he stood his ground.

Maro had never been in a fight before, and he didn’t want to be in one now. He didn’t want to hurt Djamila. She didn’t deserve it, and he wasn’t sure he could win. Still, he wasn’t about to let more people get hurt. Well, more hurt than they already were.

With another swirl of her soulmist, Djamila reached for Maro. He ducked out of her reach, his jaws snapping together several times in rapid succession, the clip of his teeth echoing off the walls. Startled, Djamila withdrew her hand, and in an instant, she was gone. Instinct, once again, saved him. She reappeared to one side, her hands reaching for him again. Dropping even lower, he gave a warning nip at the outstretched hand. His teeth never made contact, but they came close enough that Djamila felt the soulmist on them. She disappeared again, but Maro could smell the scent of her death in the air.

There was a pause, followed by a feeling Maro had only ever felt once before, a soul sinking into his body and pushing his out of the way and out of control. Something Autumn had said earlier came to mind. He is too empathetic. It had made him easy to possess and made it difficult for him to expel the possessor. His curiosity helped him to believe that everyone had a purpose for their actions, and his empathy made him believe that purpose was good, at least in that person’s eyes.

Djamila, in Maro’s body, tried to take a step forward, but her lack of experience with such things and Maro’s body not being attuned to spiritism as well as Madeira’s made the motions difficult. Not to mention, Djamila had never walked on four feet before. Her clumsy understanding caused them to stumble, and Maro went face first into the cave floor. Djamila pulled them slowly back to their feet, and Maro’s body sneezed of its own accord, clearing their nose of the sand that had found its way in.

Djamila searched Maro’s thoughts and found the inherent knowledge on how to change. There was another flash of light, and Maro was back to his human self once more. The form was minus a few arms but much closer to one Djamila was used to. The spirit looked over at Madeira through Maro’s eyes, and Maro, spectator in his own body, could do nothing to stop her as his body grabbed Madeira by her arm and dragged her to the ground. Before Maro could even attempt to stop Djamila, one of their hands was wrapping around Madeira’s jaw while the other dug deep into the ground next to the spiritist’s head, pulling up a fistful of sandy earth.

“Get away. You’re too near. The flies. They’re everywhere. I can’t let them do this to you too.”

Maro remembered being on the other end of this situation and the raw amount of fear it brought, and he wasn’t about to let himself do that to Madeira. Focusing every ounce of his will, he battled Djamila for control of that arm. Inwardly, the struggle was colossal. From the outside, there was little to see but Maro’s right arm tightening up and his hand crushing down around the sand.

A small amount of him remembered Madeira telling him that she had searched Djamila’s memories. If they could share a ghost’s, then a ghost ought to be able to share theirs. Autumn had once stumbled on some of his thoughts when possessing him. Pulling every happy memory he could, including the ones he had witnessed of Djamila before her fall and her death, Maro flooded his thoughts with them, hoping she could see and experience these memories inside his head.

Whatever little control he had over his arm dissipated as his concentration turned to his thoughts. Through eyes barely his own, he watched his arm raise up.

Djamila, stop, he screamed in his mind, hoping beyond hope she’d hear him. This isn’t you. He flooded his mind with single image. A woman standing on a lonely beach, a basket of shells in one hand, a smile playing at the corners of her lips at the feeling of the sea breeze, thoughts of a friend on her mind. This is you.

His hand stopped, and his own voice, his physical one, answered him in muddied words. “I have to save her. I have to save you. I have to save you both. The flies. I can’t let them in.”

You don’t understand, Djamila. You can’t save her, no matter what you do. Drowning her in dirt won’t keep the flies away, because eventually her flesh will still rot, and when that happens, the flies will come. You can’t save her. But she can save you. She can make the flies go away. She promised, and she will, but you have to trust her.

There was a moment of nothing. Nothing happened. Nothing changed. Everything seemed to deaden, and his breath paused in his lungs. This was what Maro imagined death might feel like. An instant of nothingness before the soul became aware of its presence in the afterlife, before it came face to face with fate who would decide where it would go from there.

And then, something happened. It wasn’t much, just a little motion, but he felt it. His hand twitched and loosened, and some of the sand fell from his grasp back to the ground.
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The Crawling Sickness

Postby Madeira Dusk on April 27th, 2017, 1:48 am

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It took a moment for Madeira to remember how to breath. Her eyes blinked in and out of focus. She was hurt. But it wasn't the compounding stress on her body and all it's bumps and bruises, it was her soul that was in pain.

The Spiritist turned in time to see Maro the Jackal step between herself and the distraught ghost. His tail sat high and bushed, the tough fur between his shoulders stood on end, and from the mouth she couldn't see came a hideous sound. He was protecting her.

As the canine snapped at the reaching ghost, Madeira tried to take stock of their situation. The cave was long and narrow, and they were at the wrong end of it, with a distraught ghost in between. They had to somehow move a the soft, waterlogged corpse of a grown woman past her ghost, past the low entrance, down to the water and onto the pyre. It was impossible. But they had to try.

Just as Madeira was struggling to her feet she saw Maro go still. It was an unnatural stillness. A waiting stillness. Suddenly, he stumbled. The man who had mastered two bodies with a natural grace she had never seen outside of a Kelvic, stumbled. And at once Madeira knew what had happened.

The soulbeads were half a dozen steps away, laying in an imperfect circle on the other side of the low pool. If she could reach them...

A flash of light, a bolt of pain, and the human Maro grabbed Madeira by the meat of her upper arm and dragged her to the ground. A white light erupted behind her eyes as her head bounced off the rocky ground, and a shock of icy cold bloomed across her legs as they slipped into the water. The possessed Kelvic crawled atop her as she had once done to him, and she watched with horror as the beautiful black sickle on his palm descended on her and pressed with desperate, bruising strength under her jaw.

As her mouth was pried irrevocably open, and she heard the scrabbling sound of his other hand digging into the ground by her ear, Madeira had a red-hot flash of understanding. Her wordless, guttural scream bounced around the narrow cavern above the endless droning of the flies. She tried to buck her hips, there was a froth of splashing as her heels tried to find purchase in the rocky pool, and she pushed and clawed at his chest with both hands. But nothing would move him.

The ghost was speaking to her in the same words she once hear from her own possessed mouth. Get away. The flies. Cant let them in.

A fingernail peeled off of Madeira's damaged hand and was left dangling off one of the many shallow scratches she had carved into Maro's chest. Djamila was going to kill them both. They were both going to rot in this hole next to the tailor with every crevice packed with sand. She had promised Autumn to bring Maro back safe, and she had pulled him straight to his death.

He held the gritty sand above her mouth, and bits of sediment trickled onto her cheek. His eyes, once so bright and inquisitive, were empty. Madeira tried to twist her head away, but he held her fast. She was forced to look him in the eye as she screamed liplessly for him to wake up, to fight this and to please, please not hurt her.

He spoke again, but though the inflection and expression did not change, she could have sworn the ghost spoke with... Confusion, hesitance. The sand paused in it's decent. Everything paused. Even the flies seemed far away as Madeira searched Maro's eyes for insight into the battle raging in his soul.

Then, something changed.

She wasn't sure what, and she wasn't sure how. But there was something behind his eyes that flickered. A incandescence in the soulless green pits of his eyes that told her the tide was turning.

She seized that lapse like a drowning man. She rolled hard, pushing up with her hips and pulling with her hands until the wiry man toppled to the floor. Icy water surged up the shallow lip of the pool as Madeira dragged herself to the other side of the cavern and seized her soulbeads in her bleeding hand. She turned, ready to throw the beads over poor gentle Maro. But she didn't want to make his mistakes. She paused pulling hard at the sour air to fill her neglected lungs.

"Djamila, I need... I need to speak to Maro. Can I see him, please?"

It was dangerous to be possessed. People were not as sturdy as they liked to believe. It would be a simple matter for Djamila to drown her vessel in the foot of water in the shallow pool, or dash his head against the wall. If the whim possessed her, she could simply hold his breath until he died, soundlessly screaming for help and trapped in his own skin.

But Maro had something Madeira had lost along the way, and it made her think that he could best Djamila. He was good and kind and empathetic. He opened the mad spirit up in a way Madeira, with all her supposedly superior skill, couldn't manage. If he could tuck her away, keep her calm and safe inside his body while Madeira worked, they might still have a chance to send the mad ghost on without further violence.

Because it pained Madeira to realize that she would not hesitate to hurt Djamila if she fell apart again.
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The Crawling Sickness

Postby Maro on May 5th, 2017, 3:50 pm


There was a sudden rolling of the world as Madeira took advantage of Djamila’s hesitance. Djamila, merely puppeteering Maro’s body, didn’t feel the sudden jarring of his shoulder as he was driven to the ground, but Maro did. There was the splashing of water, and by the time Djamila turned their eyes back to Madeira, the spiritist was standing on the other side of the cave, clutching her loop of soulbeads in one hand. Hesitance was in her eyes though.

“Djamila, I need… I need to speak to Maro. Can I see him please?”

Maro felt his eyes narrow in Djamila’s distrust of Madeira. The response that came in his own voice was blunt and flat. “No. Talk to me. He’ll hear.”

Maro didn’t struggle for control. The immediate danger to any of them was over, and Madeira had a way of controlling Djamila if she needed to. Instead, Maro went with a more subtle approach. It’d be easier if Djamila gave up control, rather than having to wrestle it from her.

Hear her out, Djamila. Maro kept his inner dialogue with her as calm as he could. She’s not here to deceive you. She’s here to help. She’s the only one who can make the flies go away.

It was risky to remind her of that. On one hand, it was the truth, and Djamila had to be shown that Madeira was the one she should trust. On the other hand, any thoughts about the flies and the condition of her corpse was likely to push her deeper into her madness, and he could feel that building in her, building in himself in the cramped quarters of his head.

“Wait.” Maro’s voice stopped Madeira from whatever she might decide to do at Djamila’s refusal. “Let me talk to him.”

Inside Maro’s mind, there was only silence. He waited several moments for Djamila to speak, but nothing happened. Djamila?

There was no response. The world inside him felt silent and empty, but he knew it was not. He could sense her presence but couldn’t hear her voice. Maybe he wasn’t listening hard enough. Calming his racing mind, he let his focus settle on one thing, that which was supposed to be the most important at the moment, Djamila. With every gentle emotion he could muster, with every peaceful memory he could recall, Maro reached out to the spirit possessing him.

Djamila, listen to her. Trust her. She can fix this. And she will fix this.

Once more, Maro was greeted with nothing. He was about to reach out to her again when his eyes fixated on the spiritist standing ready with her soulbeads.

His voice spoke to her. “I’ll let you speak to him now.” His eyelids closed for a brief moment, and when they reopened, his eyes were not the same erratic eyes that had been behind them before. These eyes were calmer, more focused, less prone to jumping about, and they stayed on Madeira, rather than leaping to every few moments to the corpse lying not far away. But it wasn’t Maro behind the eyes. It was still Djamila. She was cleverer, more in control, than he had thought. She wanted this to be over, but she wasn’t about to give up any control she had over the situation. Maro continued to watch, powerless to bring change.

His eyes looked up and met Madeira’s, feigning exhaustion. “It’s me. What do we need to do?”
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The Crawling Sickness

Postby Madeira Dusk on May 16th, 2017, 9:05 pm

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"Oh gods, Maro, you're ok." Madeira let go of the breath she didn't
know she was holding when she heard him speak. He look worse for wear,
standing barefoot and naked on the rocky lip of the pool. The bruise
of her hand on his throat was coming in with a sweeping pattern of
blue and yellow, his chest was carved with shallow trenches beading
blood, and every line in his body spoke of exhaustion.

She wondered how much Maro regretted finding her half suffocated on the beach.

"We need..." Madeira ran her tongue nervously over her lips and caught
the salt of her sweat. "We need something else. This isn't working.
She's scared and I don't think even your bell will keep her calm."
Madeira wrapped the beads around her arm and carried them with her as
she picked her way across the pool and back to Maro's side.

"I'm sorry I hurt you. Did you break anything?" her eyes softened as
she looked him over, noting the bumps and welts and worried about
deeper damage. Her discomfort regarding his nudity and animal nature
had evaporated some time ago. Seemed social niceties didn't last long
when in peril.

Who knew how much time Djamila would be willing to give them, so
Madeira had to simply conclude that none of his wounds were
life-threatening. But before she backed away she reached up almost
absently and plucked the fingernail from the wound in his chest. A
line of torn dark skin unfurled beneath it and fell to their feet.
The Spiritist paused and looked the man in the eye. His face was
twisted into a grimace, but she couldn't help but feel that something
was not right.

"We need to move her gently" Madeira was saying, continuing the
conversation, while she shimmied her sleeve over her palm and made to
dab at the scratches on his chest. Sorry, Maro, she inwardly
whispered. With her thumb still tucked into her sleeve she dug
slyly into his wounds with one of her few surviving nails as she
wiped away the blood. She was prepared for him to push her away or
otherwise protect himself from the stabbing pain, but all she got was
a theatrical grimace. It was like he didn't even notice.

The realization soured on her tongue, and she fought to hide the emotion.

Had she even seen the Eiyon since he was a jackal? She thought she saw
some spark in his eye, some glimmer of consciousness, but now she
wasn't so sure. Or it could really have been Maro all along, made
exhausted and numb by what she was putting him through.

Djamila, you liar. Are you in there?

Madeira dropped her sleeve and backed away. She gave Maro/Djamila a
defeated kind of smile. It was all about control. They had to find a
way to control the tailors emotions in order to control her madness.
Her moments of lucidity were erratic and fragile, but they needed her
on their side. How do you manufacture trust?

Liar.

The Lie. Lie to her. They couldn't manufacture trust, but they could
manipulate a trust she already had.

Madeira turned away, as if to regard the corpse. She had already
applied the soulmist to herself, she had done it after she had imbued
Maro's teeth. All that was left was the person. Who did Djamila trust?
A fluttering vision of the chaotic images in the Eypharian's head
scrolled past. But the memories were shallow, and she couldn't be sure
of any of their relationships to Djamila. Then she remembered Maro
babbling on the floor, having witnessed her death. She was picking
shells for a friend. A good friend. Te'Ela.

Who was Te'Ela? It didn't matter. If she had a name she had the
ability to steal her likeness. Madeira closed her eyes, and through
her thin blouse her shoulders stiffened with concentration as she
wrapped her entire being around that name.

When she turned back around, to Maro nothing would have changed. Her
posture was more relaxed, perhaps. Her smile easier. But to Djamila
the bloody, broken teenager was gone. And in her place was a young
Konti woman with sad blue eyes and a curl of opalescent scales on her
cheeks.

Truely, Madeira had no idea what Djamila could be seeing. She pushed
hard at the name, flinging it before her like a shield to hide behind.
The concentration to keep up the perception was consuming. But it
worked simply because Djamila wanted it to work. Her friend was back,
and when she spoke it was with a sad, knowing smile.

“What are you doing here my friend?"



OOCThanks for the patient wait! And sorry about the weird format. I'm having some bizarre computer troubles.
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The Crawling Sickness

Postby Maro on May 25th, 2017, 12:37 am


Cursing silently in his mind, Maro tried to pull away as Madeira dug a finger into one of his wounds before his body’s lack of action reminded him he was no longer in charge. What was Madeira doing? He appreciated any show of pity and kindness at this point with every little pain biting worse as it piled on top of the rest of them, but she wasn’t helping. In fact, she was being a lot more heavy-handed than he had thought someone of her size could be. Before he could ask Djamila to ask Madeira to be gentler, the spiritist turned away from them, considering the corpse one more time.

Maro felt the change in Djamila when Madeira turned around and posed the unexpected and confusing question. “What are you doing here, my friend?”

There was relief in Djamila’s soul. It didn’t translate over so well to his body, but Maro sensed it. Like a deep sigh that took all worries with it, her soul calmed, and the torment inside of him stopped. He imagined if Djamila were standing outside of his body that her soulmist would have performed the equivalent of a sigh, a brief surging of the mist as emotions reached their height followed by a sudden but gentle settling of the mist about her. As it was, a relaxation descended over the rigid muscles of his body as a lopsided smile came to his face.

“Te’Ela,” Djamila exclaimed in Maro’s voice as she wrapped Maro’s arms around Madeira in a warm embrace. Then, holding the spiritist at arm’s length, Djamila looked her over once to ensure that everything was alright. “It’s me, Djamila. I’m inside this body. His name is Maro, and-” The ghost paused in the middle of their sentence, casting her gaze to the ground as she realized what she was telling her friend. She met Madeira’s eyes as she braced herself to deliver the bad news. “Te’Ela, I’m a ghost now. I’m dead.”

Te’Ela? Maro was confused for a moment. What had gotten into Djamila’s head? But then, he remembered something an old spiritist had told him on Black Rock. The Lie. Living in Black Rock, it was something he had heard of many times, but this was the first time he had seen it in person. It seemed a cruel trick to play, but it was one lie for another. Djamila had tried to fool Madeira, but the spiritist had seen through her ploy. Besides, this was the best for Djamila, so Maro focused not on his perceived cruelty of Madeira’s Lie but on imagining her as Te’Ela. It wasn’t hard to do. As Djamila had said, the two resembled each other a bit. They had the same striking blue eyes and similar blond hair.

“We need to get my body out of this cave,” Djamila told her imagined Te’Ela. “There was a spiritist here before, and she built a pyre. We need to get me out there and put me to rest on the flames.”

My pants, Maro suggested to her in their thoughts. We can set your body on that and use it to drag you out. Madeira had my shirt in a pack outside. We can use that, too. Let Te’Ela know.

As Djamila relayed the information to the Te’Ela played by Madeira, Maro added in quickly.

Tell her not to worry about what the smell will do to my clothes. It’ll be alright.

Inwardly, in a place far secluded from Djamila’s shared thoughts, Maro salivated. Again, there was that almost irresistible urge to roll.
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The Crawling Sickness

Postby Madeira Dusk on May 31st, 2017, 3:38 am

Image

When Maro reached out to her, Madeira almost caved. Almost.

Her breath hitched in her throat, and she imagined the rough fingers sliding over her shoulders would clench and throw her to the ground. When his cheek pressed against hers she imagined his head tilting, just a bit, and his over long teeth fastening around her throat. Te'Ela flickered on the wave of Madeira's uncertainty, and the beautiful Konti was for a moment a scared human girl with clenched fists and teeth. Thankfully, the ghost was folding her into the arms of the Kelvic and did not see.

"Te'Ela" Maro sighed, happiness and relief on his breath. At once Madeira relaxed, her muscles unspooling to hear her success spoken out loud. Maro let her go and held her firmly at arms length. And with halting words, the ghost of Djamila the tailor explained to her friend that she had died.

This was a conversation she has had before, but never on this side. Madeira let Te'Ela's eyes soften, let her hands cup Maro's face with tenderness.

"I know. I'm so sorry."

Having Te'Ela there almost seemed to act as a balm to the cracked wound of the tailor's mind. She was more lucid than Madeira had ever seen her. More than that, she was helpful, almost eager to go along with the plan that Madeira had laid out. She even spoke about the clothing outside, and how they could use that to drag the body.

How did she know it was out there?

And assured the Spiritist that it was ok if the clothing got ruined.

Maro?

She couldn't imagine what was rattling around in their shared head. She had never even attempted a graceful possession. And while his possession was not a 'graceful' one by the technical term, where the spiritist shared the vessel almost symbiotically. His was more civil than she had ever managed. They were communicating through each other, somehow.

Madeira did not have the luxury of extra brain power to manage working out that puzzle while keeping up the Lie. Instead she smiled, nodded her assent, and left the cave to gather the necessary items.

When she came back she had Maro's abandoned trousers, and a bundle of faded strips of blue linen from the bottom of her rucksack; the last pieces of the dress she sacrificed on a different exorcism what felt like a lifetime ago. She breathed shallowly as she approached the corpse again, one eye warily on Maro for signs of reaction. She passed a hand over the corpse's brittle black hair in what she hopped looked like a comforting gesture from her friend. She could feel something wiggling beneath the scalp.

Over the next several chimes Madeira had secured the corpse as best she could. All six arms were bound to her hollow chest, her swollen legs were tied together at the knee and ankle, and her jaw was tied firmly to her skull. They couldn't dare repeat their mistakes, not while this close, and have her fall apart. All that was left was to peel Djamila's back off the stone wall. She angled herself between Maro and the corpse so they could not see the tacky, rotting skin that stayed fused to the stone, but nothing could disguise the wet ripping sound or the smell it released.

Before she could let herself think about what she was doing, she pressed close and slipped the trousers behind her shoulders, then moved down and tied the legs around her thighs and hips to make a poor, makeshift transport for her rotting bones.

When it was done she had to back up and hide her face from Maro as she scrubbed her palms against her pant legs. Te'Ela was becoming harder and harder to maintain. The smell and the buzzing and being up close and personal with a long-dead corpse was jangling her nerves and left her with a sticky, crawling feeling and a certainty that she would never be clean again. But she couldn't fail now. She wouldn't. So she swallowed her bile and forced her mind into uncomfortable shapes as she hid behind the borrowed name.

"Are you ready?" Madeira's revulsion and pain was masked by the tissue thin Lie of Te'Ela's comfort and concern.

Only when she received an answer did she take the knotted end of the pant legs and began to tow the trussed corpse out of the cave and into blessed, beautiful sunshine. She did not pause for longer than it took to fill her lungs with clean, salted air and appreciate the gentle quiet before she stiffened her feeble muscles and gingerly dragged Djamila's corpse down the shore to her white pyre.

She enlisted Maro's help (or was it Djamila?) to lift the crawling, swollen corpse into it's bed of kindling. When it was done, she turned to him with a sad smile.

"Perhaps this is something you need to do." She pressed the flint and steel into Maro's calloused palm, and placed a gentle kiss on his cheek, where it left a spot of blood. "Say goodbye, my dear. And know you are going somewhere infinitely better than this."
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The Crawling Sickness

Postby Maro on June 7th, 2017, 12:49 pm


Through shared eyes, Maro and Djamila each watched a different scene. To the latter, it was an emotional one, as her dearest friend gently handled her corpse, displaying the kind of affection that only a true friend could in the face of such a rancid situation. To the former, it was a harrowing masquerade of deceit as the spiritist tried to hold on to her fragile Lie all while attempting to wrap the rotting body in such a way that it could be transported to the pyre without disintegrating. The Kelvic observed through his ever curious eyes, waiting to see who would win out. Nothing in his view would change if Madeira’s Lie broke. Only Djamila would know if or when that happened, and with the cunning she had already demonstrated, Maro couldn’t be sure if Djamila would let it slip that she knew until it was too late for either spiritist to do anything about it. So he watched, hiding any thoughts of Madeira’s Lie in a place as deep within himself as he could muster.

Madeira, as always, was stoic and unfailing. Continuing her work despite her revulsion at the smell, she wrapped Djamila up neatly or, at least, as neatly as one could with their limited supplies. Maro was so buried in hiding his thoughts that when Djamila spoke in his mind, it startled him.

Maro, where’d Madeira go? She was here one moment and gone the next. There was a brief pause as Djamila’s mind went to work putting two and two together. Is Te’Ela really Madeira?

Maro couldn’t be sure if there had been a break in Madeira’s Lie or if logic had just overpowered its effects. The sudden appearance of Te’Ela and disappearance of Madeira had to have been jarring as far as the timing of things went. Though he wanted to brush the idea off as ridiculous to keep himself and Madeira safe, Maro couldn’t bring himself to lie to such a tortured soul. As his hidden knowledge on the Lie was made known to Djamila, Maro kept his response as cam as he could.

Does it really matter?

No. That response surprised him, so he let her go on. I’m just happy Te’Ela is here.

It’s good to be surrounded by friends. It was his gentle way of reminding Djamila that neither he nor Madeira meant her any harm, that they were here to help her.

It is.

“Are you ready?” Madeira interrupted them.

Djamila smiled a smile that Maro was sure would’ve looked prettier had she done it with her own face when she was living. “Of course.”

As Madeira proceeded to drag the body out of the cave, Djamila began to follow her corpse, but Maro stopped her.

Don’t forget the shells. I’ll make sure Te’Ela gets them.

They backtracked for the basket with its little treasures, then followed Madeira again, catching up with her at the entrance to the cave. Despite her constant drive to get Djamila to the pyre, it wasn’t difficult to see her relief at being in the open air again. Together, all three of them got Djamila’s body over to the pyre and up on top. The pyre itself was a beautiful creation. It was certainly more organized than anything Maro would have been able to come up with. He envied Madeira’s sense of refinement.

Madeira placed flint and steel into Maro’s hands and a kiss on Djamila’s cheek. “Say goodbye, my dear. And know you are going somewhere infinitely better than this.”

Djamila wrapped Maro’s arms around Madeira in a warm embrace. The act lacked the finesse it would have had in Djamila’s body, but the intent was unmistakable. It was a friend saying goodbye to a friend. Djamila whispered in Maro’s voice. “Thank you, Te’Ela.” Her arms tightened a little more. “And thank you, Madeira. Please, keep my friend here as long as you can. I need her.”

With that, she broke the embrace and started the fire with a confidence that said she’d done this a time or two in her life. A glow started within the kindling, and a few moments later, coaxed by Maro’s breath, a small, bright flame burst into view. Stepping back, Djamila watched her body burn, and the sorrow that built within Maro, a sorrow not his own, was too much to bear. Since he couldn’t control his body, he wept without tears. As the smoke built, the flies dispersed, and the crackle as the flames met her flesh was more than the crackle of a person’s flesh. Maro could almost hear the larva bursting under the onslaught of the fire. His own eyes watered with the proximity to the heat.
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