[open]

[verminius]

WHO: Vandren et al.
WHAT: A Tevene defector slithers into the fold.
WHEN: Presently.
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: A couple of loose starters, wildcard ok, brackets ok.

[ Q&A ]

Here sits Vandren Verminius, first and no doubt last of his name, summoned to an office, or a workroom, or some other private quarter fit for polite interrogation. He has been nothing if not accommodating of Riftwatch’s whims these past few days.

He’s unassuming in trousers and tunic, a rug of an old coat thrown over against the cold. It’s black and gold. Ornate, and threadbare.

No weapons, no armor.

Just an old man slouched in an old chair, gone distant in his struggle to reconcile that this place was once at the heart of the Imperium’s slave trade, screams ringing through the caverns below, flagstone sticky with blood enough to thin the veil. The stone halls are quiet now, between meals. Empty and still.

His seat creaks beneath him when he shifts, pricking his attention back to the present.

Sorry, he could say, or What was the question?

“No,” he guesses, instead. As blind answers go it feels like a safe bet, fifty-fifty, until he reflects more fully on his circumstance.

“Perhaps.”


[ nighttime yoga routine for better sleep ]

It’s late enough to be early when he finally makes his way out into the courtyard one dark night, his breath drifting after him. The statues he’s seen illustrated in historical tomes are long gone, sheer walls and pedestals stripped bare under the stars, to say nothing of all the damage and subsequent repairs.

The idea was to do some stretching; some meditation. Warm up and then jog a lap or two in the bitter cold.

He might yet try, depending on how long he has between finishing the cup of wine he’s just started and inevitable interruption.

Some of the people here are slow to trust, and it isn’t hard to imagine why.


[ WILDCARD ]

Dazzle and/or disorient me I'm still getting up to speed on what the world is like these days.

Comments

[boeric]

"Pfah," He's seen the city: "Mage beats me to this."

Time and time over. She's not the only one delayed, nearly a year since his people knocked these towers in. A haphazard little scramble down the wall — old knees and no athlete — draws her abruptly close.

It sure isn't warmth in her voice. Maybe a little like familiarity, when she asks:

"You share that wine?"

The probable answer hasn't stopped her from reaching.

[verminius]

As a mage, and so as an expert in blowing things up, he can clearly survey that there is still plenty of masonry here that survived last year’s effort --

The scuffle of her spidering down towards him pulls his attention back around.

“Maker,” he tucks the cup back in closer to himself as one would lift a plate away from an untrained dog, reproach, mild alarm, not with you, why are you like this, and so on. “Absolutely not.”

But she’s already reaching and is he really going to plant a hand on her face to shove her off with his longer arms.

No.

[boeric]

Fingers tangle about the cup – and his own, if he doesn't let go, nails angled sharp toward skin.

"Could be poison,"

Here. She'll check.

[verminius]

”Tch --” he relents with a show of an eye tooth, cup relinquished so that he can step back to put that afore-considered arm’s length between them. No sooner is it done than he’s sulking, resentful, deprived of his two in the morning treat by this clawing opossum of a woman.

The cup is warm, the wine spiced, and the courtyard is so cold and she probably doesn’t even go here, or hasn’t for long. Plausible deniability.

Everything about the line of his shoulders squared under his side eye tells he’s running the numbers on whether he could kill her without his staff quickly enough not to get killed himself in this the moment of her victory.

But if his heart was really in it, he wouldn’t be bothering with the odds.

[boeric]

She drinks. Watches him watch her, petulant and childish and stooped, and only more frightening of it. That's how it is with dangerous people, dangerous things.

(Saare-bas, And still recalls stumbling over the word, misshapen: Sorry, bas. Sorry,)

She isn't sorry. She's running numbers of her own. The world where she overtakes and kills him, bashes a fragment of these battlements into one lucky blow, then two-dozen more diligent – that world doesn't exist. They both know it.

Victory's sweet. Indulgence rankles, sours the taste of clove and honey. So she turns, and spits it into the yard, and briefly considers faking her own asphyxiation. Just to see, would he turn white or red?

"Poison," She affirms. Shoves the cup back, near-empty, "Come, we find you mittens."

[verminius]

“Why?”

Whining despair leaves Vandren without his consent, all of that wound tension discharged in incredulity over the waste: spat wine dulling swiftly into the flagstone. Creature comforts run thin, here.

Poison is her answer, of course.

He accepts the cup, having no choice, and too baffled to push it back on her besides.

“Are you part of this organization?” he asks outright, pre-managing his own disbelief, all wrinkled brow and no desire to follow her. Mittens are for children and grandmamas. “You’re so awful.”

[boeric]

"We have agreement," You're so awful, I agree, it passes right over her head in stilted Trade – "They make new thing, I look. Maybe I tell them how to make it better."

And certainly she tells the city's remaining converts, the ones who forward her letters. She glances over her shoulder. He'll come or he won't.

"Now you and I, we have agreement, too." If he means to freeze his little paws for Riftwatch. "They give you rules?"