The Vivacious Deadlock: S3G6: Round Three: The Sable Masque

Originally posted on MSPA by Pick Yer Poison.

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"I'm not leaving!" Klendel exclaimed, clutching her hand desperately.

She turned her head towards him, its pearl color at odds with the off-whiteness of the hospital sheets. "But..."

He shook his head defiantly. "No buts. I'm staying right here."

She looked back with concern in her eyes. "But what about the court gathering? You have to be there, even if I can't be!"

"I'm not leaving you," he insisted. "The court will just have to deal without me."

"But it was so important to you that we be there!" she protested.

"You're more important," he murmured. "What if you need me? What if...what if that pain comes back?"

"Pain's all in the mind, love." She chuckled weakly. She pulled her hand free from his and brushed his cheek with it. "And we wouldn't still be together if I wasn't good at subduing mental problems."

Klendel's eyes snapped open, a remarkably hollow glint in them. He stumbled to his feet, took a step, fell down, and struggled back up again, where he stood, swaying from side to side like a grass reed in a windstorm, threatening to fall at any moment. He slowly reached back and grabbed one of the flaming blobs from his back, dropping it in front of his feet. After a few moments of lazy analysis of the result, he began pulling the rest of Merrifield off of him. He became increasingly crazed, stumbling around drunkenly whilst ripping flaming goop from himself, flinging each blob as far as he could the moment he had it off of him. Due to his current lack of strength, none of them went very far, but most went far enough to return enough of his energy that he could walk in a straight line without falling down, something he proceeded to demonstrate he could just barely do, stumbling down a dark side alley and collapsing next to a dumpster. The darkness wrapped itself around him, covering the weakened, semi-transparent shadow flesh, soothing the damage done by the fire. Klendel looked around blearily and was dimly surprised to find himself alone, but the pounding headache from the light exposure made it hard to analyze the oddity properly, and, completely spent, Klendel drifted off into a comatose state, allowing more of his energy to be devoted to restoring his shadowy flesh.

An indeterminable amount of time later, he found himself jolted awake, rising from a dream he could barely remember. Fire had played a part in it, but he suspected that was simply because of the traumatic experience he had just had. He stood up shakily; judging by the amount of shadow flesh he'd regenerated, he guessed that it had been less than twenty minutes since he had lost consciousness. He still felt weak and had a slight headache, but he didn't think it was safe to stay where he was any longer. He was lucky no one had found him, he knew, and luck was not something he liked to count on when he could avoid it.

The sound of falling rain finally registered with his mind, and he looked up to see a sky that had significantly more clouds in it than it had had when he had gotten into his fight with Merrifield, something he suspected had been caused by one of the contestants. And I doubt they summoned it to water their flowers, he thought drily. Even as he began walking down the alleyway, cautiously checking for foes, he thought back to the Spectator's introduction of the others, trying to figure out who was the most likely suspect for causing the rain, but quickly pegged Cascala as the most probable perpetrator. She had attempted to strike him down with lightning before; thus, it seemed only logical that she would be the one responsible for a cloud-related ruse, although he was lost as to what her plan might be.

But, he reluctantly admitted to himself, right now, I need to figure out what my next move will be. Hers can wait; I can't do anything about clouds, no matter how threatening they may seem. He froze when he heard bustling and voices nearby, then slowly snuck towards the source, which turned out to be a busy street market. Had it existed in his universe, Klendel would have instantly thought of One Thousand And One Arabian Nights. The only major disparity was that it was raining, but most seemed either prepared for or not bothered by it; the street vendors had pulled canvasses over their stalls to protect their goods, and the customers acted as if it wasn't even there. Klendel had passed this area before, when he had gone to plant the seeds of dissent in the minds of a number of underlings in the Arabian Knights, the gang whose territory this was. He did his best to combine this with the other information about the city he'd gathered, and came up with a somewhat vague direction that he hoped would lead him back to the warehouse Phere was in. He started brainstorming how to make it out that Abys had bumbled and prevented him from retrieving the Tome, not realizing that Phere had already seen the events unfold.