Re: The Vivacious Deadlock: S3G6: Round Three: The Sable Masque
08-03-2012, 11:19 PM
Originally posted on MSPA by SleepingOrange.
"Enough of the tantalizing, mysterious non-information." Cascala growled. While it might have been wiser and more advantageous to cooperate, she had had quite enough of playing charades for watching statues. Besides, this kind of overt aggression was the exact sort of thing she needed to maintain to prevent being caught up in another story about a place she could not care an iota less about. "Tell me who you are and why you want me or I walk right back out into that corridor. Now."
A more cautious person might have realized the tenuous position they were bargaining from, but Cascala believed that if this man had gone to such lengths to introduce her to his group, he knew or thought he knew something that made her valuable to him. As far as she was concerned, she had the advantage. Whether that was true or not, the Baron responded.
"Haven't heard of us, then? You're even more unusual than I had guessed."
A white-clad woman doing her best to effect the appearance of a swan clucked to herself as she rudely manipulated the mana around herself and Cascala. "She tastes... foreign. She's not supposed to be here. Not anywhere here. This isn't her world. She's an Outside spirit, John. Are you sure about this?"
Far from being discouraged, he rubbed his hands together. "That's even better than I had hoped!"
"Yes, but–"
"Look, you can feel how powerful she is even if you can't simply see it. I know you can. She's just the trump we need for tonight's game."
"Enough!" Cascala made as though to sweep out of the room, but the Baron grabbed her sleeve. She yanked her arm away and glared through the mask she still hadn't seen. "Then you intend to explain yourself?"
"There are no ears here but ours. I may as well. The Club has a long and illustrious history–" Another glare stopped him mid-pontificate, and he grinned wider. "Alright, the short version then. We're a group of nobles and merchants and Talents greater than our station. We organize little events at larger events, just something to keep people on their toes, to test their strength. Really, at the heart of it all, we think everything's gotten a little too set in its ways. We shake things up for everyone, do everyone a service. How could anyone advance if nothing changed?"
The Grand Magus narrowed her eyes again, this time in thought rather than anger. After a few moments, the obvious occurred to her and she nearly laughed. "You're a bunch of rank anarchists? Decadent assassins?"
Another man lounging on a pouf that was probably more valuable than the totality of the village Cascala had been born in drawled out a sentence that was barely more than a warbling yawn. "What a classless way of interpreting things."
On the one hand, having been accosted by a group of pointless stone-throwers was almost insulting; on the other, their obvious lowness put them even more in her power than she'd believed when she'd been assuming they were actually important in their backwater world. They knew enough of how their world worked to be useful if she pretended to go along with them, to make them allies. Pretended to go along with them, she reminded herself redundantly. Do not forget that they are as unimportant and disposable as the basest reagents. She made up her mind to play their game and use them to find her targets in the process, but still had to effect aloofness for the appearance of the thing.
She chuckled as airily as she could, but she'd never been an actor a liar. "You can all see what you're speaking to if not whom. What would that, would I, possibly gain from deigning to set firecrackers beneath thrones with you? Why should I not simply leave, possibly revealing you all to the sort of people who would be very interested in your plans?"
The Baron laughed much more naturally. "Because you'd reveal yourself in moments out there. Not many Talents are even close to what I presume your grade would be, but every one of them will be at the Masque, and most of them won't be as interested, and thus forgiving, as we are. By all means, go. We'll be fine with or without you, but we all have reasons for being here and aren't already being monitored for suspicious activity."
Cascala doubted that she'd be as helpless on her own as he was implying; it was certainly just a bluff to convince her to join their nihilistic revelry. Still, if she wanted to use their resources to her own ends, it would help to have them think she was in their power. Or at least amenable to their suggestions.
"Fine," she spat. "You still haven't answered the question of what I gain from playing along with your dark impulses."
"Well," he mused. "I can't give an answer I don't have. Who can say what a spirit like you wants but you?"
"Then you'd see me leave, each of us forgetting the other."
"No, I'd see you tell us what we can do or give for your cooperation."
Excellent. Cascala thought she kept her face carefully blank, but her life hadn't given her the tools she needed to hide the satisfied smirk that crawled across her lips.
---
The man who'd left his station to alert the Kings of Mozghan's portal's appearance stopped outside of a surprisingly dull door. It was wooden, and thus incongruous with the rest of the palace, but otherwise uninteresting and tended to slide away from a viewer's eyes and out of their mind. Pitted and ancient, it looked about three termites away from collapsing into a pile of pulp; the handle had already come unscrewed in a couple of places and dangled limply. Wisely, the man pulled a perfumed handkerchief out of his plain robes and held it to his mouth and nose before apprehensively pulling the door open.
There was gloom beyond, but not the gloom of a carefully-sinister tomb or the darkness of a secret chamber; it was simply the shade of somewhere everyone had forgotten or tried to ignore. Three shapes loomed at the far end of a small room, crammed into wooden thrones that seemed as decrepit as the door had. They didn't stir as the man entered and they blurred back into the shadows as he closed the door behind him.
"What is it, Hematite?"
"Your predecessor never troubled us the way you do, Hematite."
"Perhaps we should find a quieter Stone to guard us. Hematite."
Muffled slightly by the hand and kerchief on his face, the man called Hematite spoke unhurriedly. "I only serve as you ask me to, Majesties."
"Blind adherence is not a quality we seek in the Hematite."
"Yours is a station of discretion."
"My apologies for the intrusion, but my I wouldn't have come unless I truly believed you needed to see the information I have. Majesties."
"Your competence has outweighed your bothersomeness in the past."
"Speak, then leave us to our celebration."
Hematite cleared his throat and transferred the handkerchief to his other hand. "We have a significant, but very subtle, dimensional breach."
After a few moments of silence, he nervously continued. "We can't tell who created it, or even where it's coming from, but it's definitely not of this world. It doesn't even originate in this one, so either one of our Talents left existence and has begun meddling from Outside, or something genuinely alien has touched reality."
There were several more silent seconds, followed by one of the hissing voices from the dark belching out "Show us."
Dutifully, Hematite raised his free hand and wove a tapestry of light for his Kings. With the glow from his arcane diagrams spilling into the room, his lieges and their surroundings were regrettably revealed again; in a parody or pale imitation of the sumptuousness of the surrounding palace, this room's walls were bedecked in cloth and weavings, but these ones were dark and rotting and could never even have approached the craft their counterparts had even if new. Frescoes depicting scenes of bleakness and hunger climbed the ceiling; the higher they went, the more they degenerated into incoherent madness, eventually abandoning narrative and form and simply crawling about as meaningless and unsettling shapes of bizarre geometry.
For all the decorations' unappealingness though, they were all easier to look on than the Kings themselves. They squatted in their thrones, bloated and decaying, corpulent and fetid forms spilling over the arms and legs they were bound to. Finery that must once have matched the transcendental outfits worn by their subjects struggled to contain the putrefying mass of fat and bone and blood that seemed to have been poured into it: it bulged everywhere and snapped or tore in places, constantly giving the impression that one gasp might send it disintegrating; in some spots the bulk beneath the fabric seemed to have grown into or through it, or perhaps the clothing had replaced skin that had never been there. What of the Kings was exposed was cracked and oozing, or pock-marked and scabrous, or simply liquefying with rot. Their faces glared in the sudden light, melting gargoyles of flesh and spite topped with eyes that refused to reflect a single photon.
Hematite put it all out of his mind as he had done a hundred times before and returned to his job, splaying his spell out and explaining what he could divine. It was little and fragmented, which made it all the more worrisome.
When he was finished, mercifully dispelling the glow and shielding his eyes from the creatures that faced him, there was more silence. Eventually, a voice rasped out and broke it.
"Did you come here without any suspicions of the culprit?"
"Yes and no, Majesties. Opal should have compiled a list of those capable of this manner of intrusion by now."
"Contact him."
Silence, interspersed with small gestures from Hematite, then ended by his recitation of the Opal's information. One of the Kings raised a hand, magic gathering around calcareous fingers like sludge, then splaying out like a noneuclidean spider's web.
"No."
"We can account for those you have brought to us. They cannot be responsible."
"Are your lists accurate?"
"I trust Opal's competence, despite his inexperience. As I said, the intrusion may be completely unrelated–"
"No. Not tonight."
"Forces beyond you, and beyond us, mass tonight."
"Tell us of any other suspicious incidents."
Hematite almost dropped his handkerchief in his nerves, snatching it back as the smell assaulted his sinuses. "Little that seems related, Lords. Mostly events I'd expect at a gathering this size. A few 'gen users that overestimated themselves, peasants porting in, small fights quashed by Moppets, that sort of thing."
"There are guests uninvited."
"Aren't there always? We've found more than a few Talented spacewrights when they were able to–"
"Show us."
"Begin with any that arrived simultaneously, even if not together."
Hematite wove another informational spell, careful to focus only on it rather than anything it revealed. After displaying several clusters of information he and his partners had gathered over the evening, one of the Kings' hands shot up.
"There."
"Did you miss it, Hematite?"
"These six, they came from Outside."
"Well Outside."
"I don't see..." Holding his breath, he brought out his eyepiece again while maintaining the spell. Nothing stood out still, until he noticed a few errant trails of mana where there should have been none. "Ah. Your insight dwarfs my own again, Majesties."
"It should not have to, Hematite."
"This failure will have its consequences."
"Perhaps the Grey Nobles will see another Stone join their ranks, hmm?"
Hematite's face fell before he could stop it, but before he could protest he was interrupted by laughter that sounded as though a swamp was clearing its throat.
"No. Your usefulness in the past will save you for now."
"You are merciful, Majesties." Hematite's hands shook as he squinted further at his spell, trying to calm his heart. "But... these six don't come from the same source as the breach."
"No."
"But tonight, we do not believe this is coincidence."
"We will speak with one of these interlopers before we decide how to proceed."
Hematite nodded. "We have them under surveillance by Tireless Men, my Lords. I can fetch any at–"
"We will fetch them ourselves."
The King in the middle raised both hands, chains rattling as they were dragged through the air, leaving an oily tear in space behind them.
---
Klendel had come to the inevitable conclusion that there was little to do but return to the party and see what more he could learn before attempting to move forward with... Well, with whatever plan he came up with between now and then. One had certainly started forming, but it was barely more than a few concepts, completely disconnected temporally and causally. In the meantime, there was mingling and extorting to do.
He'd returned to the large, uncomfortably bright room and found another group of disposable partygoers to ply information out of. He hadn't really learned much worth knowing, but it was better than floundering alone in a corridor. A few goals were forming in his mind, but without really understanding the social structure of this place, or even common etiquette, it was very difficult to put them into action. What he needed was –
Midthought and without warning, Klendel dissolved. His shadowy body melted into the air, his cog following as though it was no more substantial than he. Disembodied and confused, he felt himself being dragged painfully through... Well, he didn't know what. If he didn't exist what was he moving through? And why did it hurt? But before he could think, and as abruptly as he'd disappeared, he reformed.
The first thing he became aware of was the darkness. The second thing he became aware of was the tendril of foreign thought pressing against his mind. The third thing he became aware of was a croaking voice.
"This is 'Klendel', it would seem."
"Enough of the tantalizing, mysterious non-information." Cascala growled. While it might have been wiser and more advantageous to cooperate, she had had quite enough of playing charades for watching statues. Besides, this kind of overt aggression was the exact sort of thing she needed to maintain to prevent being caught up in another story about a place she could not care an iota less about. "Tell me who you are and why you want me or I walk right back out into that corridor. Now."
A more cautious person might have realized the tenuous position they were bargaining from, but Cascala believed that if this man had gone to such lengths to introduce her to his group, he knew or thought he knew something that made her valuable to him. As far as she was concerned, she had the advantage. Whether that was true or not, the Baron responded.
"Haven't heard of us, then? You're even more unusual than I had guessed."
A white-clad woman doing her best to effect the appearance of a swan clucked to herself as she rudely manipulated the mana around herself and Cascala. "She tastes... foreign. She's not supposed to be here. Not anywhere here. This isn't her world. She's an Outside spirit, John. Are you sure about this?"
Far from being discouraged, he rubbed his hands together. "That's even better than I had hoped!"
"Yes, but–"
"Look, you can feel how powerful she is even if you can't simply see it. I know you can. She's just the trump we need for tonight's game."
"Enough!" Cascala made as though to sweep out of the room, but the Baron grabbed her sleeve. She yanked her arm away and glared through the mask she still hadn't seen. "Then you intend to explain yourself?"
"There are no ears here but ours. I may as well. The Club has a long and illustrious history–" Another glare stopped him mid-pontificate, and he grinned wider. "Alright, the short version then. We're a group of nobles and merchants and Talents greater than our station. We organize little events at larger events, just something to keep people on their toes, to test their strength. Really, at the heart of it all, we think everything's gotten a little too set in its ways. We shake things up for everyone, do everyone a service. How could anyone advance if nothing changed?"
The Grand Magus narrowed her eyes again, this time in thought rather than anger. After a few moments, the obvious occurred to her and she nearly laughed. "You're a bunch of rank anarchists? Decadent assassins?"
Another man lounging on a pouf that was probably more valuable than the totality of the village Cascala had been born in drawled out a sentence that was barely more than a warbling yawn. "What a classless way of interpreting things."
On the one hand, having been accosted by a group of pointless stone-throwers was almost insulting; on the other, their obvious lowness put them even more in her power than she'd believed when she'd been assuming they were actually important in their backwater world. They knew enough of how their world worked to be useful if she pretended to go along with them, to make them allies. Pretended to go along with them, she reminded herself redundantly. Do not forget that they are as unimportant and disposable as the basest reagents. She made up her mind to play their game and use them to find her targets in the process, but still had to effect aloofness for the appearance of the thing.
She chuckled as airily as she could, but she'd never been an actor a liar. "You can all see what you're speaking to if not whom. What would that, would I, possibly gain from deigning to set firecrackers beneath thrones with you? Why should I not simply leave, possibly revealing you all to the sort of people who would be very interested in your plans?"
The Baron laughed much more naturally. "Because you'd reveal yourself in moments out there. Not many Talents are even close to what I presume your grade would be, but every one of them will be at the Masque, and most of them won't be as interested, and thus forgiving, as we are. By all means, go. We'll be fine with or without you, but we all have reasons for being here and aren't already being monitored for suspicious activity."
Cascala doubted that she'd be as helpless on her own as he was implying; it was certainly just a bluff to convince her to join their nihilistic revelry. Still, if she wanted to use their resources to her own ends, it would help to have them think she was in their power. Or at least amenable to their suggestions.
"Fine," she spat. "You still haven't answered the question of what I gain from playing along with your dark impulses."
"Well," he mused. "I can't give an answer I don't have. Who can say what a spirit like you wants but you?"
"Then you'd see me leave, each of us forgetting the other."
"No, I'd see you tell us what we can do or give for your cooperation."
Excellent. Cascala thought she kept her face carefully blank, but her life hadn't given her the tools she needed to hide the satisfied smirk that crawled across her lips.
---
The man who'd left his station to alert the Kings of Mozghan's portal's appearance stopped outside of a surprisingly dull door. It was wooden, and thus incongruous with the rest of the palace, but otherwise uninteresting and tended to slide away from a viewer's eyes and out of their mind. Pitted and ancient, it looked about three termites away from collapsing into a pile of pulp; the handle had already come unscrewed in a couple of places and dangled limply. Wisely, the man pulled a perfumed handkerchief out of his plain robes and held it to his mouth and nose before apprehensively pulling the door open.
There was gloom beyond, but not the gloom of a carefully-sinister tomb or the darkness of a secret chamber; it was simply the shade of somewhere everyone had forgotten or tried to ignore. Three shapes loomed at the far end of a small room, crammed into wooden thrones that seemed as decrepit as the door had. They didn't stir as the man entered and they blurred back into the shadows as he closed the door behind him.
"What is it, Hematite?"
"Your predecessor never troubled us the way you do, Hematite."
"Perhaps we should find a quieter Stone to guard us. Hematite."
Muffled slightly by the hand and kerchief on his face, the man called Hematite spoke unhurriedly. "I only serve as you ask me to, Majesties."
"Blind adherence is not a quality we seek in the Hematite."
"Yours is a station of discretion."
"My apologies for the intrusion, but my I wouldn't have come unless I truly believed you needed to see the information I have. Majesties."
"Your competence has outweighed your bothersomeness in the past."
"Speak, then leave us to our celebration."
Hematite cleared his throat and transferred the handkerchief to his other hand. "We have a significant, but very subtle, dimensional breach."
After a few moments of silence, he nervously continued. "We can't tell who created it, or even where it's coming from, but it's definitely not of this world. It doesn't even originate in this one, so either one of our Talents left existence and has begun meddling from Outside, or something genuinely alien has touched reality."
There were several more silent seconds, followed by one of the hissing voices from the dark belching out "Show us."
Dutifully, Hematite raised his free hand and wove a tapestry of light for his Kings. With the glow from his arcane diagrams spilling into the room, his lieges and their surroundings were regrettably revealed again; in a parody or pale imitation of the sumptuousness of the surrounding palace, this room's walls were bedecked in cloth and weavings, but these ones were dark and rotting and could never even have approached the craft their counterparts had even if new. Frescoes depicting scenes of bleakness and hunger climbed the ceiling; the higher they went, the more they degenerated into incoherent madness, eventually abandoning narrative and form and simply crawling about as meaningless and unsettling shapes of bizarre geometry.
For all the decorations' unappealingness though, they were all easier to look on than the Kings themselves. They squatted in their thrones, bloated and decaying, corpulent and fetid forms spilling over the arms and legs they were bound to. Finery that must once have matched the transcendental outfits worn by their subjects struggled to contain the putrefying mass of fat and bone and blood that seemed to have been poured into it: it bulged everywhere and snapped or tore in places, constantly giving the impression that one gasp might send it disintegrating; in some spots the bulk beneath the fabric seemed to have grown into or through it, or perhaps the clothing had replaced skin that had never been there. What of the Kings was exposed was cracked and oozing, or pock-marked and scabrous, or simply liquefying with rot. Their faces glared in the sudden light, melting gargoyles of flesh and spite topped with eyes that refused to reflect a single photon.
Hematite put it all out of his mind as he had done a hundred times before and returned to his job, splaying his spell out and explaining what he could divine. It was little and fragmented, which made it all the more worrisome.
When he was finished, mercifully dispelling the glow and shielding his eyes from the creatures that faced him, there was more silence. Eventually, a voice rasped out and broke it.
"Did you come here without any suspicions of the culprit?"
"Yes and no, Majesties. Opal should have compiled a list of those capable of this manner of intrusion by now."
"Contact him."
Silence, interspersed with small gestures from Hematite, then ended by his recitation of the Opal's information. One of the Kings raised a hand, magic gathering around calcareous fingers like sludge, then splaying out like a noneuclidean spider's web.
"No."
"We can account for those you have brought to us. They cannot be responsible."
"Are your lists accurate?"
"I trust Opal's competence, despite his inexperience. As I said, the intrusion may be completely unrelated–"
"No. Not tonight."
"Forces beyond you, and beyond us, mass tonight."
"Tell us of any other suspicious incidents."
Hematite almost dropped his handkerchief in his nerves, snatching it back as the smell assaulted his sinuses. "Little that seems related, Lords. Mostly events I'd expect at a gathering this size. A few 'gen users that overestimated themselves, peasants porting in, small fights quashed by Moppets, that sort of thing."
"There are guests uninvited."
"Aren't there always? We've found more than a few Talented spacewrights when they were able to–"
"Show us."
"Begin with any that arrived simultaneously, even if not together."
Hematite wove another informational spell, careful to focus only on it rather than anything it revealed. After displaying several clusters of information he and his partners had gathered over the evening, one of the Kings' hands shot up.
"There."
"Did you miss it, Hematite?"
"These six, they came from Outside."
"Well Outside."
"I don't see..." Holding his breath, he brought out his eyepiece again while maintaining the spell. Nothing stood out still, until he noticed a few errant trails of mana where there should have been none. "Ah. Your insight dwarfs my own again, Majesties."
"It should not have to, Hematite."
"This failure will have its consequences."
"Perhaps the Grey Nobles will see another Stone join their ranks, hmm?"
Hematite's face fell before he could stop it, but before he could protest he was interrupted by laughter that sounded as though a swamp was clearing its throat.
"No. Your usefulness in the past will save you for now."
"You are merciful, Majesties." Hematite's hands shook as he squinted further at his spell, trying to calm his heart. "But... these six don't come from the same source as the breach."
"No."
"But tonight, we do not believe this is coincidence."
"We will speak with one of these interlopers before we decide how to proceed."
Hematite nodded. "We have them under surveillance by Tireless Men, my Lords. I can fetch any at–"
"We will fetch them ourselves."
The King in the middle raised both hands, chains rattling as they were dragged through the air, leaving an oily tear in space behind them.
---
Klendel had come to the inevitable conclusion that there was little to do but return to the party and see what more he could learn before attempting to move forward with... Well, with whatever plan he came up with between now and then. One had certainly started forming, but it was barely more than a few concepts, completely disconnected temporally and causally. In the meantime, there was mingling and extorting to do.
He'd returned to the large, uncomfortably bright room and found another group of disposable partygoers to ply information out of. He hadn't really learned much worth knowing, but it was better than floundering alone in a corridor. A few goals were forming in his mind, but without really understanding the social structure of this place, or even common etiquette, it was very difficult to put them into action. What he needed was –
Midthought and without warning, Klendel dissolved. His shadowy body melted into the air, his cog following as though it was no more substantial than he. Disembodied and confused, he felt himself being dragged painfully through... Well, he didn't know what. If he didn't exist what was he moving through? And why did it hurt? But before he could think, and as abruptly as he'd disappeared, he reformed.
The first thing he became aware of was the darkness. The second thing he became aware of was the tendril of foreign thought pressing against his mind. The third thing he became aware of was a croaking voice.
"This is 'Klendel', it would seem."