Fear and Despair in the Valley of Hinnom

[Ebivoulya]

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Out of character:
Closed to Necathys, for now

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Twittering chirps composed a delicate symphony to herald the new dawn, their crescendos queuing the fingers of day to stretch across tiled roofs of pale red and gray. Beams of hardened cedar reached down from two or three stories to settle on cobbled streets, and most splintered shutters barred the approach of the sun. Wrapping the roads were dull walls of brown, their monotony shattered only occasionally by stone or painted wood. The damp and heavy air grew lighter as a morning fog lifted from the riverside capitol of Corone, and the lilting aroma of cinnamon bread wafted downwind through the clatters and creaks of merchants transporting their wares in burlap-covered wagons. Occasional alleyways darted between thinly-spaced buildings, and were often filled with mountain ranges of miscellaneous boxes that varied as much as their natural counterparts.

Nestled within one such valley of crates was a cloaked and curled form slumbering in the last few minutes before the dawn broke over wooden peaks, crusted crimson cradling his shape in the twilight and coating the boxes below. The sharp stench of a dog's relief pooling nearby brought the taste of copper back to sleepy senses, and startled a corpse into the realm of the living. A rough and sickly cough splattered the nearest box with blackened mucus as mortal lungs recovered from inhaling more pipe-smoke than a burning Inn. Thick stubble hid a stretching yawn, which turned to a grimace as dried and cracked lips split further from dehydration, begging for what little water remained in the canteen nearby. It was hastily opened and deprived of its last few drops while the bleariness of an unusually restful sleep cleared, and ushered in memories of nocturnal escapades.

The horrible stench of bowels strewn across the cobblestone returned to the mortal man as he lurched toward an open crate and drizzled bile onto the packing straw. A sputtering cough forced the vile burn out of his nostrils as well. The blurring morning light gave way to flashes of a pursuit through darkness and screaming guards; he brought a gloved hand to each injury as he relived it, finding the skin under his left arm somewhat slick from still flowing crimson. Idle shouts of greeting from a nearby street brought sunken eyes to the crest of either hillock of crates, and an idle hand slid a long and bloodied dagger from its brown sheath beneath his thick leather belt. Paranoia receded into confusion as the memories of cleaning out a pipe’s bowl with a spotless dagger after losing his hunters gave way to the deeper, darker recesses of the previous evening.

An amazed stare met unbroken skin on the underside of each wrist, despite the dried blood staining his arms; the blood coating his sheathed blade was also his own. Surrealism surrounded the swordsman as the pain of his deep gashes returned to him, now a mere memory of that final contentment before the world faded to black. It was an unnerving conclusion, that the mortal man might not even be in control of his life enough to even die. Only the hazy and dissociating hangover that persisted allowed the blade slinger to gather what little belongings he had into his torn and bloodied leather vest; he checked the large blade at his back as steel-plated leather boots carried the wanderer from that valley of crates into the desert of civilization.

I may have changed my mind and healed them before passing out. Stronger memories have failed me in the past…

Denial gripped the yet unbelieving mind of the grizzled man, but the gnawing of his stomach drew him upwind from his one-night grave, the luxurious scent of cinnamon bread almost overriding the creeping dread, that positive uncertainty of his own sanity which even now he struggled to ignore. Steel smacked the cobblestone as the swordsman dropped from the last crate filling the scene of his rebirth into the unending dream of a life not wholly his own, and raven eyes peered from beneath a blackened mane for escape routes, threats, and targets. He stiffly but swiftly walked between lazy people and annoying carts until the grip of his hunger almost had him reaching for what few coins he had left. Nervous eyes remained locked on the plump, auburn-haired woman tending blackened brick ovens behind a few sparse racks of warm bread.

He timed his walk down the street nearly perfectly with a group of grimy street urchins. Above their heads his arms didn’t even move as he passed the outermost rack of fresh bread, but he pressed two loaves tight between his elbows and his vest as he hitched his cloak and continued at the same pace for a few more blocks.

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Night shrouded the few remaining people lining the grimy cobblestone, and even swallowed candlelit windows like fireflies in a cave. Several stone serpents met at an open square, their tails trailing off into the city to carry ever more people where they need to go, and the walls of their surrounding buildings were lined with slumbering forms and racked with the quiet roar of many snores. Only an old wooden well broke the cobbled monotony, and the sole slumbering stone-dweller was curled up against it, steel-toed boots digging into the street as if to escape even that reminder of the world outside. A black and tattered cloak wrapped huddling shoulders, and almost masked the musky despair filling the air around a truly homeless man. Despite the chill biting through the night, his huddled form lay still as death, one hand gripping the dagger at his waist as tightly as if he were already using it; or knew he would have to.

[Necathys]

The gutter of gaslight dimmed the tavern in silent black flashes, warning that the flame would soon starve away. The room eventually fell away into darkness, but there were no groans of annoyance from the patrons. When the owner failed to resurrect the firelight with a turn of the brass valve, he palmed the veneered walnut of the counter for an old lamp and, with a drop of a fizzing match in that fetid pool of whale oil, instilled it feeble life. The reddish glow only allowed vague shapes to break away from the pitch dark, enough for what few people could be seen to navigate between tables and chairs as if they were shoals and reefs under the glare of a faulty lighthouse.

Only the lonely took harbor here tonight, a little small tavern in the midst of a lonesome old town. One man sat near the uncharted gloom, far enough from the prying of the light, his worn boater hat tipped down and absent eyes staring vaguely at the mug in his hand. Dew slid to chill his fingers from the stained glass, cold from the chunks of ice stewing there at the bottom in a puddle of malt. After a brooding while, he raised the vessel and rattled its contents, beckoning the waitress to refresh his drink.

“Another one for me,” he muttered to her with a faint slur, settling the mug down with a long, deflated breath. “And one for my baby, maybe?” he added slyly, addressing the flaxen-haired waitress.

“I’ll take a rain check,” was her dismissive answer, deigning not even to spare the man a cat-eyed glance as she poured the contents of her pitcher.

“Guess I can’t even hang my tears out to dry, then,” he said with half a laugh, the other half a long and defeated sigh. As she walked away, he took a long draft of his malt before setting it down again, the liquor blurring his dark eyes as they sank once more into oblivion.

“It’s getting late, and business is slow,” the owner drawled in his countryside accent from his seat behind the counter. He had been gurgling copious chugs from one of his cheapest bottles, mud-crusted boots propped on the counter, already stained with a variety of rings and filth. “You can get on home, Ellie.”

“Thanks, boss.” Even though she knew he was only cutting her loose for the night to avoid overpaying her, Elliot had the courtesy to fake her gratitude. Untying her apron, she simply walked out.

“Sleep warm,” the solitary man called out, raising an empty mug in her departure. She merely looked back and nodded, some manner of a smile dawning on her lips. Then, she was gone with the wind.

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Like always, she walked with the blues in the night. When and where that would end, the girl had no idea, nor did she truly care to ever find out. Elliot weaved a path through the thinning masses, seeing naught but faceless ghosts flitting left and right, breathing in with familiarity that nipping air of solitude. Sometimes the lanterns hanging from the cast-iron posts would blind her in passing, but her stroll back home was otherwise unbroken in its routine tedium. After a set number of steps had been accounted for, she turned to plunge into a sloping alley, then took a series of poorly built stairways that snaked in between darkened bricks of rundown residences. All the while, she thought of nothing in particular, letting only the gaps in her heart sway to unknown and unanswered whims. In the end, she would always default to worrying about making her rent, knowing this was the only concern to which she had some semblance of a solution.

When she pulled away her downcast gaze from the slippery cobbles below, Elliot noticed an unusual change in destination. Rather than the chipped doorway of her three-room dwelling, she found herself at the mouth of yet another benighted lane, cramped with any matter of sundry she could imagine. Beyond it was a single lamppost that oversaw a vast five-way crossing, the wood-topped fountain at its core the only object to offset the emptiness of the intersection. It was a historical remnant of sorts, the fleur-de-lys finial at its crest a symbol of some past perfection, some vestige of royalty and halcyon days. The irony that no one seemed to visit it, save for the homeless and other such castaways who could find nowhere else to sleep, was a true testament to how little it mattered now.

Oddly enough, Elliot still felt some strange compulsion to see it in detail from a better vantage point. Thus, warily, she navigated through the trash and emerged from the other end into the intersection, where she tiptoed so as not to rouse any of the slumbering derelicts. One of them had stretched up against the well, head laying to one side with a hand loosely set on the hilt at his belt. She thought it best not to approach him, lest he spring up and behead her in his waking confusion.

The fountain was nothing awe-inspiring either from afar or up-close. There was a pageant of some sort carved along its stone spire, but the wear of time and water had made it impossible to guess who or what it depicted. A variety of coins, brass and copper and bronze from varying eras, lay resting in murky waters at the bottom of the fountain. Anything of actual worth, obviously, had since been looted and scoured clean.

Feeling yet another wind of whimsy pushing her along, she plucked a coin at random from her pockets, producing a battered disk of bronze that had somehow bent inwards. Elliot climbed onto the edge with one knee, considering the object in her hands it for a moment, then tossed it into the well with a flick of her thumb, wishing for nothing in particular. She thought of comfort, newness and peace, but when she heard the plop of water and the clink of metal against metal, her mind settled on a break from the routine.

Expecting nothing, Elliot turned her head back to the alleyway, deciding it might be time to stop with this childishness. Because of that, she could not see the roiling waste in the fountain quaver, could not see its surface bristling like a myriad glimmering needles. When she heard an electric droning, however, the woman spun back to watch the surface oscillate, bursting into summits and valleys that incessantly grew in size and intensity. The amorphous body of moving water had grown beyond the well, arcs of light lunging towards her until she could see no more.

She felt her body warping, twisting, stretching thinner than a thread – felt her entire self forced through an aperture smaller than the eye of a needle. Then, she felt nothing.