RE: Grand Battle S3G1! (Round Four: City of the Dead)
04-19-2017, 08:40 AM
A weekish hence, Port Danake Harbormaster’s office
Dragged from the Styx dumped rotted and ramshackle at a bend in the river, it was hard to tell where the wooden docks ended and the heaped flotsam began. Both were recognised points of entry for immigrants to the City, who comprised a consistent portion of imports. The lower stories of an underground parking lot had subsided through the roof, and some wall-crawling dockworkers had dangled extension cords and power strips down the elevator shaft and plugged in it far too many strings of fairy lights. Their glow was steady - if dim - in the still cavern air.
In a couple of hours, when the city woke up and the parking lot’s residents let their bats out to feast on cave-gnats, the fairy lights would twinkle like stars.
Jetsam looked out over the port from the harbormaster’s office. He’d been awake for at least 150 hours straight, and felt moderately ok about everything. This view of the town through this reception window was nicer than that in his office proper, which was dominated by the open water of the (a?) Styx. Dark and still and quiet, it had an intensity that subsumed watercraft’s noise and motion, idle threats to the mere notion of unlife disrupting repose. Jetsam kept the blinds down, mostly.
The lich strolled over to his personal assistant’s desk, a compact fortress of filing cabinets with the scant plyboard space occupied by a beige tower computer and peripherals. The monitor was halfway dismantled, the guts of it spread out in something that might’ve been a pattern over the remaining desk. Jetsam touched nothing, but the calendar gave him pause.
Fuck.
Tonight was the night, wasn’t it?
Jetsam headed for the door, almost pushed it open without thinking,then doubled back and grabbed a cloak draped over the back of the chair. Checked the time while he was there. No rush just yet. Great, Jetsam thought, as he knocked and entered.
Behind the walnut desk sat Tor, burnt leaner in the limbs and sharper in the face than Jetsam had seen in a decent while. He looked ready for a fistfight as he pored over manifests and ledgers, and seemed so supremely in his element that Jetsam felt something stirring. Envy. Probably. Tor tensed a little, relaxed when he saw it was Jetsam, and gestured to the seat across from him.
“I’m just about done here. The cab’s going to show up in-” he glanced at the clock. Jetsam was - ｈｅ ｆｅｌｔ - what if it hadn’t been him interrupting Tor’s accounting, what if Octavius had stopped by - “twenty minutes.” Kajan, she’d banish you if she found you in my seat, probably kill you when that didn’t work-
“Kajan,” he said, then stopped and tried again so it sounded more like a greeting, less like a warning. The room smelt faintly of smoke; Tor must’ve been up and working here for a few hours. “Kajan.”
“Yes, boss?”
It took him a second to figure Tor was joking: that he’d taken this whole contrived situation in his stride, could put aside his resentment for the role he’d been shoved into long enough to be civil to Jetsam, to show restraint, to joke about it-
-The “demonic familiar” angle had been the Chancellor’s idea. The lich that “summoned” him would ensure his infernal minion(s) caused no further trouble, and cover the costs of their altercations with local law enforcement. The (draco)lich who orchestrated the whole coverup would happily cover Lord Bane-jamine’s costs gratis.
Make sure Tor wore a heavy cloak while out and about in the City, accept the out-of-the-limelight job of Harbormaster as per Octavius’ arrangements, and the two had for the most part stayed out of trouble. Tor - with actual business experience, and with his only standing order being to punch Jetsam’s skull off if he ever actually told Tor what to do - divided most of his time between managing the port and visiting Tengeri while the City slept. Jetsam went mostly - and was Seen - wherever people (Octavius, mostly) told him to go.
He wanted to thank Tor. Apologise. He placed Tor’s cloak in the empty chair; paused on his way out. “I’ll be waiting downstairs.”
He closed the door behind him, let the negative energy stream deep from his marrow as cold fire. Just stood like that for a dark and stormy minute, clutching at the onyx ring like it was his better half, like it wasn’t any old cut-whichway half of a liar, a fraud, a ki-
“Pull yourself together,” he hissed.
---
Cypress Ridge Apartments, Room 102
Jimmy rang the doorbell, a tupperware container under one arm. When Siobhan answered the door, she seemed to process the goods before the courier.
“Oh. Jimmy. How do you know where I live?”
“I asked around the-”
“Is that soup?”
The skeleton handed it over, more to free his hands up than anything. “Mmm. I had to ask your neighbor which place was yours, and she gave me this to pass onto you.”
“Ugh, it’s seaweed isn’t?” She opened the lid a crack and sniffed. “Bleh. Yup. I never want to ask if it’s her hair she’s making this out of… ugh.” The soup’s mysteries exhausted, the banshee had to look up at Jimmy. “If this is about my deadlines-”
“-it’s not.” The whole story. “I just want to know-” -if you’re okay- “-how your investigation was going.” She bristled, not once considering Jimmy would be the last guy in necropolis to laugh at her, so he hastened with, “annnnd if I could help at all?”
Siobhan uttered a rather endearing groan. “Uuuuuuuuuuughiiiii guess you can come in.”
“Just, ignore the mess, okay?” Siobhan called from the kitchenette, a little too late and lost in the auditory jumble of a TV and radio. Jimmy tried finding a path between haphazard stacks of paper to turn one or the other down, but the only standing room was in front of a whiteboard on wheels. It leaned against one wall, fridge magnets holding handwritten notes in place. “Siobhan, did you take this from the meeting room?”
“Basement storage, actually. We got that replacement in last month.” Jimmy didn’t respond; how had she gotten the police dispatch on the radio?
“Siobhan, I’m really not sure-”
“How these police incident reports, list of notables from Satanday’s charity gala, a university newsletter, and all these notes from the tip line I made all tie in with that incident outside Burnt Offerings?”
“Siobhan.”
“Don’t blame you for losing interest - I mean I kind of can, the press’ job is supposed to be keeping the elites accountable - but it’s like everyone stopped caring! After Octavius issued that statement Viduusday!”
“Elites- Siobhan. Stop. The guy was quarantined, successfully desuscitated, and he’s being discharged this week. The Brainzfeed gif listicle of ‘Signs Your Mortality Is Catching Up To You’ got more traffic than our combined-” Jimmy shook his head; the various sources of noise in the room were giving him a headache. “Sorry, seriously, Siobhan, the elites? You were looking for some soon-to-stop Living. Why in the Mag Mell are you making this about the liches?”
The banshee’s eyes lit up. “So you do think there’s something up with them!”
“No! I mean. Who doesn’t? Nobody’s going to prove it, though.” Siobhan brandished her wad of papers again, but Jimmy merely rattled his teeth around in his skull. Twisted the volume dial on her TV down, and looked her dead in the eye. “No, Siobhan. An apartment full of newspaper clippings and a ‘tip line’ which is at least fifty percent prank calls, none of that is proof. Of anything.”
The banshee tried to turn flush with indignation, but just went intangible and dropped all her notes. Jimmy took the opportunity to turn down the radio too, then wished he hadn’t. Siobhan didn’t respond, and the shade of a city outside couldn’t make up awkward aural difference. “Please come back to work. I- we’re worried about you.”
Siobhan still didn’t say anything, so Jimmy took that as his cue and began his hazardous trek for the door. Just as he was about to leave: “I felt him cross.”
If he’d left the radio on, he might not’ve overheard her. Helped her finish seeing sense. “Who? The guy you were looking for?”
“It’s not him. Because - I felt him cross, Jimmy, and it was like, like someone moved a boulder off my chest but - there’s still a whole six feet of it, Jimmy. Whatever I felt, it wasn’t for him.”
There was a wail in her voice, borne not of volume but in the cadence. “He didn’t die, Jimmy. He just. Kind of. Grayed out, like everything else in this city. That guy, whoever he is, he’s going back to his job when he’s out of the hospital and nothing’s really changed for him, just… muted. Mute-ated.”
She looked at Jimmy. Tears were rolling down her face, utterly detached from the tone of her words.
“They found a Living in the City and everything’s back to normal. Except me. This - this feeling’s not going away and-”
“Sio-”
“But it will. And when it does, because someone, some Living, somewhere in the city, actually dies, when this feeling passes I don’t want to be left here forever wishing I knew what happened.”
“There’s someone else, Jimmy. Somebody’s going to actually die.”
“I have to know who. And you have to help me.”
Dragged from the Styx dumped rotted and ramshackle at a bend in the river, it was hard to tell where the wooden docks ended and the heaped flotsam began. Both were recognised points of entry for immigrants to the City, who comprised a consistent portion of imports. The lower stories of an underground parking lot had subsided through the roof, and some wall-crawling dockworkers had dangled extension cords and power strips down the elevator shaft and plugged in it far too many strings of fairy lights. Their glow was steady - if dim - in the still cavern air.
In a couple of hours, when the city woke up and the parking lot’s residents let their bats out to feast on cave-gnats, the fairy lights would twinkle like stars.
Jetsam looked out over the port from the harbormaster’s office. He’d been awake for at least 150 hours straight, and felt moderately ok about everything. This view of the town through this reception window was nicer than that in his office proper, which was dominated by the open water of the (a?) Styx. Dark and still and quiet, it had an intensity that subsumed watercraft’s noise and motion, idle threats to the mere notion of unlife disrupting repose. Jetsam kept the blinds down, mostly.
The lich strolled over to his personal assistant’s desk, a compact fortress of filing cabinets with the scant plyboard space occupied by a beige tower computer and peripherals. The monitor was halfway dismantled, the guts of it spread out in something that might’ve been a pattern over the remaining desk. Jetsam touched nothing, but the calendar gave him pause.
Fuck.
Tonight was the night, wasn’t it?
Jetsam headed for the door, almost pushed it open without thinking,then doubled back and grabbed a cloak draped over the back of the chair. Checked the time while he was there. No rush just yet. Great, Jetsam thought, as he knocked and entered.
Behind the walnut desk sat Tor, burnt leaner in the limbs and sharper in the face than Jetsam had seen in a decent while. He looked ready for a fistfight as he pored over manifests and ledgers, and seemed so supremely in his element that Jetsam felt something stirring. Envy. Probably. Tor tensed a little, relaxed when he saw it was Jetsam, and gestured to the seat across from him.
“I’m just about done here. The cab’s going to show up in-” he glanced at the clock. Jetsam was - ｈｅ ｆｅｌｔ - what if it hadn’t been him interrupting Tor’s accounting, what if Octavius had stopped by - “twenty minutes.” Kajan, she’d banish you if she found you in my seat, probably kill you when that didn’t work-
“Kajan,” he said, then stopped and tried again so it sounded more like a greeting, less like a warning. The room smelt faintly of smoke; Tor must’ve been up and working here for a few hours. “Kajan.”
“Yes, boss?”
It took him a second to figure Tor was joking: that he’d taken this whole contrived situation in his stride, could put aside his resentment for the role he’d been shoved into long enough to be civil to Jetsam, to show restraint, to joke about it-
-The “demonic familiar” angle had been the Chancellor’s idea. The lich that “summoned” him would ensure his infernal minion(s) caused no further trouble, and cover the costs of their altercations with local law enforcement. The (draco)lich who orchestrated the whole coverup would happily cover Lord Bane-jamine’s costs gratis.
Make sure Tor wore a heavy cloak while out and about in the City, accept the out-of-the-limelight job of Harbormaster as per Octavius’ arrangements, and the two had for the most part stayed out of trouble. Tor - with actual business experience, and with his only standing order being to punch Jetsam’s skull off if he ever actually told Tor what to do - divided most of his time between managing the port and visiting Tengeri while the City slept. Jetsam went mostly - and was Seen - wherever people (Octavius, mostly) told him to go.
He wanted to thank Tor. Apologise. He placed Tor’s cloak in the empty chair; paused on his way out. “I’ll be waiting downstairs.”
He closed the door behind him, let the negative energy stream deep from his marrow as cold fire. Just stood like that for a dark and stormy minute, clutching at the onyx ring like it was his better half, like it wasn’t any old cut-whichway half of a liar, a fraud, a ki-
“Pull yourself together,” he hissed.
---
Cypress Ridge Apartments, Room 102
Jimmy rang the doorbell, a tupperware container under one arm. When Siobhan answered the door, she seemed to process the goods before the courier.
“Oh. Jimmy. How do you know where I live?”
“I asked around the-”
“Is that soup?”
The skeleton handed it over, more to free his hands up than anything. “Mmm. I had to ask your neighbor which place was yours, and she gave me this to pass onto you.”
“Ugh, it’s seaweed isn’t?” She opened the lid a crack and sniffed. “Bleh. Yup. I never want to ask if it’s her hair she’s making this out of… ugh.” The soup’s mysteries exhausted, the banshee had to look up at Jimmy. “If this is about my deadlines-”
“-it’s not.” The whole story. “I just want to know-” -if you’re okay- “-how your investigation was going.” She bristled, not once considering Jimmy would be the last guy in necropolis to laugh at her, so he hastened with, “annnnd if I could help at all?”
Siobhan uttered a rather endearing groan. “Uuuuuuuuuuughiiiii guess you can come in.”
“Just, ignore the mess, okay?” Siobhan called from the kitchenette, a little too late and lost in the auditory jumble of a TV and radio. Jimmy tried finding a path between haphazard stacks of paper to turn one or the other down, but the only standing room was in front of a whiteboard on wheels. It leaned against one wall, fridge magnets holding handwritten notes in place. “Siobhan, did you take this from the meeting room?”
“Basement storage, actually. We got that replacement in last month.” Jimmy didn’t respond; how had she gotten the police dispatch on the radio?
“Siobhan, I’m really not sure-”
“How these police incident reports, list of notables from Satanday’s charity gala, a university newsletter, and all these notes from the tip line I made all tie in with that incident outside Burnt Offerings?”
“Siobhan.”
“Don’t blame you for losing interest - I mean I kind of can, the press’ job is supposed to be keeping the elites accountable - but it’s like everyone stopped caring! After Octavius issued that statement Viduusday!”
“Elites- Siobhan. Stop. The guy was quarantined, successfully desuscitated, and he’s being discharged this week. The Brainzfeed gif listicle of ‘Signs Your Mortality Is Catching Up To You’ got more traffic than our combined-” Jimmy shook his head; the various sources of noise in the room were giving him a headache. “Sorry, seriously, Siobhan, the elites? You were looking for some soon-to-stop Living. Why in the Mag Mell are you making this about the liches?”
The banshee’s eyes lit up. “So you do think there’s something up with them!”
“No! I mean. Who doesn’t? Nobody’s going to prove it, though.” Siobhan brandished her wad of papers again, but Jimmy merely rattled his teeth around in his skull. Twisted the volume dial on her TV down, and looked her dead in the eye. “No, Siobhan. An apartment full of newspaper clippings and a ‘tip line’ which is at least fifty percent prank calls, none of that is proof. Of anything.”
The banshee tried to turn flush with indignation, but just went intangible and dropped all her notes. Jimmy took the opportunity to turn down the radio too, then wished he hadn’t. Siobhan didn’t respond, and the shade of a city outside couldn’t make up awkward aural difference. “Please come back to work. I- we’re worried about you.”
Siobhan still didn’t say anything, so Jimmy took that as his cue and began his hazardous trek for the door. Just as he was about to leave: “I felt him cross.”
If he’d left the radio on, he might not’ve overheard her. Helped her finish seeing sense. “Who? The guy you were looking for?”
“It’s not him. Because - I felt him cross, Jimmy, and it was like, like someone moved a boulder off my chest but - there’s still a whole six feet of it, Jimmy. Whatever I felt, it wasn’t for him.”
There was a wail in her voice, borne not of volume but in the cadence. “He didn’t die, Jimmy. He just. Kind of. Grayed out, like everything else in this city. That guy, whoever he is, he’s going back to his job when he’s out of the hospital and nothing’s really changed for him, just… muted. Mute-ated.”
She looked at Jimmy. Tears were rolling down her face, utterly detached from the tone of her words.
“They found a Living in the City and everything’s back to normal. Except me. This - this feeling’s not going away and-”
“Sio-”
“But it will. And when it does, because someone, some Living, somewhere in the city, actually dies, when this feeling passes I don’t want to be left here forever wishing I knew what happened.”
“There’s someone else, Jimmy. Somebody’s going to actually die.”
“I have to know who. And you have to help me.”
peace to the unsung peace to the martyrs | i'm johnny rotten appleseed
clouds is shaky love | broke as hell but i got a bunch of ringtones
eyes blood red bruise aubergine | Sue took something now Sue doesn't sleep | saint average, day in the life of
woke up in the noon smelling doom and death | out the house, great outdoors
staying warm in arctic blizzard | that's my battle 'til I get inanimate | still up in the same clothes living like a gameshow
clouds is shaky love | broke as hell but i got a bunch of ringtones
eyes blood red bruise aubergine | Sue took something now Sue doesn't sleep | saint average, day in the life of
woke up in the noon smelling doom and death | out the house, great outdoors
staying warm in arctic blizzard | that's my battle 'til I get inanimate | still up in the same clothes living like a gameshow