H130, Day 190, Peak [Wraith, Open]

[Uathach Blackmantle]

The Gatehouse; the bleak, overcrowded home to the Madmen, the destitute, the homeless, and the barmies of the Cage. It was a dismal and hopeless scene, Wraith observed, as she trudged aimlessly through the muck up to the long line that snaked down the curve of Bedlam Run.

She would've looked just like any other hopeless sod - or a Collector, for that matter - if not for the black, gothic robes marking her as a wizard of the Dead. But then again, on the outside, she could've easily been here with the dread intent to lure more into the Contract; plying the line for those who looked desperate enough to agree to it.

But that wasn't why she was here; nor was she here to commit herself to the insane asylum, though sometimes, in her darkest hours, when the crushing weight of the world felt it's heaviest, she wondered if she should. At least there, boxed in by four secure walls, she could rant, and rage, cry and scream her lungs out, until her throat was sore and dry, and none would even notice.

But around the Dead she couldn't do that. The Dead who didn't seem to feel or care, still noticed and watched her with dispassionate eyes. Why? Because she was close to slipping back into the web of lies that was the False Life.

Wraith drew her hood and cloak close about her thin body, wiping the oily rain from her eyes, and strode up the long line. Driven by purpose and determination, she ignored her weariness, ignored the stares - but stopped to drop a few spare silver coins into the grubby hands of a small urchin boy - occassionally pausing to question some of the beggars and hungry families in the line.

Her questions were the same; have you seen a female tiefling with long horns, dressed in the colours of the Bleak Cabal? Her name's Ahinabura. She works here with the orphans. I need to speak to her.

But it was useless, really. Who could tell one tiefling apart from the other? Indeed, who would care to? But she wasn't about to give up, either.

Wraith was here to speak to Ahinabura, a basher who helped out in the orphanage, in the vain hope that some information, however small or insignificant, might've turned up regarding her missing son.

I'm going about this all the wrong way. I'm not going to find him here. He was abducted, remember? And his nursemaid was cut open in the ritualistic manner performed by worshippers of Grazzt! It's hopeless... Wraith chided herself, again feeling that crushing weight press down upon her thin shoulders, and swiped at the amber trickle of tears, beginning to spill from her eyes.

[Uathach Blackmantle]

Wraith didn't know how long she wandered like this for, trudging up and down the line as though in a torpor or a numb daze. The rain fell harder and heavier now, driving down upon the lines of the downtrodden and desperate, but Wraith took scant notice. She was beginning to feel like she didn't even know what she was doing or why she was here. The looming structure of the Gatehouse overshadowed her movements, and blackened her already bleak mood.

She'd turned her head to wipe away the tears and the brackish rainwater streaming down her face, when she collided unnexpectedly with a wan looking middle-aged human, dressed in the drab attire common throughout the Bleak Cabal. His eyes were faded and sad, but a kind smile danced upon his thin lips.

Wraith nearly fell upon him in her confusion and grief, clutching at his arms and the sleaves of his robes. "Excuse me, kind basher, but could you... could you please help me. I implore thee. I-" She sobbed, pausing to wipe the tears from her eyes, but it was hopeless. "I'm looking for someone - anyone - Ahinabura or Hadrian will do. I-I think they can help me. Please... please, help me find them. I-I need to... to find my son. He was taken from me..." She can't contain her grief anymore; hunger, exhaustion and desperation it seems, has taken the best out of her. She collapses to her knees, weeping bitterly, and buries her face in her hands.

[exile]

With unseeing eyes, Hadrian paced about the somber halls of the Gatehouse lost in a world all of his own. Indeed, the Lady’s own mazes could not more completely remove him from his surroundings. He was not anxious, nor was he restless but simply thoughtful. This mindset which now consumed him had seized him shortly after he had left the company of his master and its grasp upon his consciousness had scare released him in the ensuing time.

”Oh, Falla,” he whispered to the shadows in his memory. ”What has become of us?”

Even as he spoke these words, the Aasimar became aware that he had been staring uncomprehendingly at the wizened figure of a venerable Bariaur doe. What’s more, the dark and lonesome corridors he had stalked on so many occasions were now behind him and he found himself standing in the shadow of the great pillared entry from which the Gatehouse derived its name.

“I’m sorry, basher, there must be some mistake. My name ain’t Falla. I was just hoping for a room and a hot meal is all.” The demure look she turned upon him spoke volumes about hardship and humility.

Hadrian blinked his eyes back into focus, forcing his thoughts into the present. ”Hmm? Oh, yes of course. Speak with the clerks inside, yes…” he was drifting off again. But just as the mantle of blissful detachment began to settle upon him a voice caught his ear; a sound both mournful and expectant like the sighing of willows.

”Wraith?”

He took a step towards the sound, and then another, each stride parting the wretched sea of humanity in his wake. And then he spied her, broken and alone amidst the uncaring eyes of strangers.

”It is you, sister.” He knelt down upon one knee as he spoke, a gentle smile upon his lips. Reaching out to cradle the sobbing Tiefling in his arms, he continued ”Come, let us get out of the chill and you will tell me what is troubling you so.”

[Uathach Blackmantle]

Wraith looks up in recognition of the haunting, familiar voice, but no smile touches her lips. Instead, her tears cut tracks of grief, mixing with the dirty rainwater streaming down her hair and face. Her stricken eyes light up for just a moment as Hadrian approaches, and kneels beside her, then it is gone again; lost to the tide of her amber hued sorrow.

She falls into his arms with an agonized sob, and clings to him like a small child. She shakes like a leaf with each wracking sob that takes hold of her frail form. She cries as he holds her until there are no more tears left to shed, and instead she moans pitifully; a wretched sound torn from the heart of a mother, mourning for her lost child. For indeed she is childless, bereft of hope and her only anchor to sanity and reality. Everything else has paled and lost meaning in comparison.

If Wraith hears him, she seems oblivious to his voice and his words. She's trapped in her own dark despair, bogged down by the weight of her lamentations and an emptiness that slowly consumes her alive. "I-I can't go on like this, basher. I can't... keep living this lie. I'm coming apart at the seams. What's happening to me? Am I losing my mind? Am I going insane again? What's happened to my grip on reality? I always... that is, I used to... have such a firm understanding and certainty of what this-" She gestures wildly at the sea of wretched faces, and the delapidated slums rising up from the mire of desperation,

"Is all about. What it all means. I was sure of myself once, of my ability to heal and help others, to assist in shouldering all of the Cage's burdens, because no other basher could give a damn about them. But... now... now I'm not so certain."

She stares down at her hands; they're chapped and pale from exposure to Death and formaldehyde, and clasps them before her. They're hands of a surgeon, a Dustman, and musician by trade, but even that feeble flicker of identity pales before the blackness rising up from her soul to bar her path.

She stares at this thing, this expression of her blackest rage, her darkest nightmares and her deepest fears; this mirror-identity, her own Shadow given life and breath by her own mind... and heaves a despondent sigh. It reaches for her, wraps it's cold enervating tendrils around her heart... and begins to suck her dry.

Wraith doesn't fight it, merely confronts it with glazed dead eyes, falling heavily back into the Aasimar's arms, and stares up at the leaden sky. Her tears have long since dried, although the rain continues to bite into her ashen, upturned face.

Her lips open, and for a moment, no sound comes out; only a faint whisp of black frost. Even the perpetual charnel miasma about her has lost its foul, cloying edge. "Let Apathy consume me, Hadrian, for there is nothing left to give. There is no hope. I am... dead." When she speaks, her words are barely a whisper, rolling flat and lifeless from her dry, cold lips.

[exile]

As the mournful tiefling bares her grief, Hadrian’s warm smile of recognition fades into a pained expression of deepest concern. With a firm but gentle grasp, he lifts his Dead counterpart to her feet.

”Do not be so quick to write your name into the book of the dead, sister.” The Bleaker’s tone is kindly if admonishing. ”At least not so long as you yet draw breath.”

Casting his gaze about over the heads of bleary-eyed onlookers, Hadrian searches for some inviting establishment that would tolerate mixed company such as their’s. Unfortunately the Gatehouse itself would accept the poor woman only as a patient or boarder, it did not welcome visitors.

The sign post of The Weary Head, meeting point and stage for the Bleaknik movement, was the first to catch his attention. Hadrian sighed. He did not care for the ‘artists’ that composed the lion’s share of its patrons, but it was close and nothing else presented itself.

”This way, sister,” he gently steered her towards the drab entrance of the tavern. “We’ll get you something warm to eat.”

(OOC: The Weary Head is mention in Factol’s Manifesto page 31. It is not detailed anywhere that I can find. I had a mind to use one of the other establishments Stix has put up in the Hive, but I can’t find a description of most of them and the ones I can find aren’t really conducive to this thread.)

[Uathach Blackmantle]

exile said:

(OOC: The Weary Head is mention in Factol’s Manifesto page 31. It is not detailed anywhere that I can find. I had a mind to use one of the other establishments Stix has put up in the Hive, but I can’t find a description of most of them and the ones I can find aren’t really conducive to this thread.)

OOC: That's cool. The only other appropriate tavern that comes to mind is Zero, another watering hole for the Bleak Cabal. There's descriptions for that and many other places listed on the boards in an accessory called In The Cage: A Guide to Sigil, if you have the softcover or D/L version of it. A very handy read.

I've been meaning to help Stix pin up a brief descriptions for many of the places listed here, but I wouldn't know where to put said description, and I don't get online all that much. I can always try to compose something at home if need be, then copy it outat the library. I'm almost always carrying a notebook and pen around in my bag.

I probably won't reply IC tonight, although I'll try to pin up something during the week.

Thanks for the Birthday Wishes.

[Uathach Blackmantle]

IC: Wraith follows numbly as Hadrian escorts her away from the Gatehouse line, and down a muddy litter-and-razorvine clogged side street, to a tavern marked as The Weary Head. It's little more than a boarded up shant really, with a rusted sign hanging above the door. It squeals, grating on the nerves of passersby, as it swings back and forth in the wind on a single nail.


The Dustwoman issues a disconsolate sigh, and mutters belatedly. "Why bother? Everything I eat tastes like ashes in my mouth, and fails to nourish me for long." The words are soft and monotonous, like the soughing of the wind through the Yew leaves in a graveyard. Still, she leans upon his shoulder, taking what comfort she could from his presence in light of all that's transpired. "Very little means the same as it used to, since he was taken from me."

Truth: It was undustmanlike to allow herself to sink into such a deep, and dark depression, to express any kind of emotion at all, and to just feel like giving up when one should stoically shoulder one's burdens, learn from them, and move on towards a greater Truth.

Wraith was doing none of that. She'd fallen backwards, slipped down into a deep, black hole, only this time she no longer cared. The Apathy loomed over the precipice, big and black and oppressive, blocking the light of the only way out. Fight me, deny me all you like, Uathach, but I'll alays be here, watching you... and waiting. You can't hide from the Shadow within.

A cold involuntary shiver passed through Wraith's fragile body. She stared down at her hands, pale, chapped and scarred from many years of toil and sacrifice in the Mortuary, and clasps them in front of her. She sighs again. "What am I going to do, Hadrian? I can feel my own life, my own will, slipping away from me." She meets his eyes for just a moment: utter helplessness and the tell tale signs of fear cloud the murky amethyst depths. Then she turns away again. Her stare remains fixed upon some point, likely a stain on the rough tabletop, just beyond her clasped hands.m

[exile]

Like any other Bleaker establishment, the interior of the Weary Head is a somber and depressing affair. However to a careful eye, or at least to the eye of a Madman, there is something subtly different about this dreary place. In most Cabalist establishments, anything beautiful and cheerful will gradually wither or fade with the passing of years in silent reflection of the patronage, just as all things good and colorful are slowly leached from the Grey Wastes. The ambiance in the Head however was a deliberately crafted affair.

Every table in the room, every bottle behind the bar, every work of art littering the walls had been placed by design. Many had been intentionally placed to look haphazardly strewn.

‘This is why I can’t stand Bleakniks,’ Hadrian thought. ‘They’re all words and no understanding. They really have no comprehension of what our faction represents.’

A portly Gith in sackcloth robes stood behind the bar, polishing a mug. His sharp features were grimy and streaked with soot, and disinterested eyes swung about in deep-set sockets to regard the new arrivals. Catching sight of his faction mate, the bartender offered an unenthusiastic nod of recognition.

”Hello, Tav,” Hadrian began. ”Whats on the menu today?

“Battered stygian devilfish, with a side of Madhouse mushroom caps picked fresh in Pandemonium this morning,” the Gith replied. “I calls it Merciful Madness. Three stingers a plate.”

”That’s very poetic, Tav,” Hadrian said dryly. “Send a couple round to the table in the corner and two glasses of that Ysgardian Heartwine if you still have a bottle.”

With Wraith still huddled under his arm, the aasimar trudged further into the tavern. Up on the raised and rickety stage an overly dramatic fensir was reciting lyrics while another such bespectacled creature beat out a staccato rhythm on a mephit-hide drum.

“-broken, trampled, crushed, ground to thick paste.
I lie beneath the boot sole of the planes.
Why? I long to call out.
Because.”

Hadrian shudders involuntarily but there is a smattering of applause from the other patrons as the orator takes a deep bow. “That was Death number four-hundred-twelve. This next one is one of my favorites…”

Stopping shot beside the ale-stained table in the corner, the aasimar pulls out a seat for his guest before taking one himself. On the wall beside the pair is a study in oil paints called “Grey”. It is difficult to decide for certain which of the four canvas panels of murky grey is the most profoundly vacant.

”What am I going to do, Hadrian? I can feel my own life, my own will, slipping away from me.”

The tiefling lass was staring at her hands morosely.

”No one can decide your path better than yourself, Uathach,” Hadrian began. “For a while now I suspect you have been searching for answers beyond yourself. Any such answers will ultimately ring hollow. You must instead look inside yourself. If you truly want my advice I can offer only this: Walk away from the mortuary, drop your scalpel, and find your boy. Otherwise, lay his memory to rest. You will tear yourself apart otherwise.”

The aasimar reached out to cup Wraith’s hands in his own. “You have stumbled on your path, sister, but there is still time to find it again. I pledged to help you before, and I will do so.”

[Stix]

(Please remember to move posting to the new establishment when the characters relocate.)