The Day after the Ball: Folly

[Glenn]

The back of your head aches. The world swims. All is darkness.

The ground is cold and wet beneath you. Unseasonably. Your head throbs.

There is the scent of mold, of fungus, of blood, of gore. The sounds are strange.

With effort, you open your eyes.

Burnie winced, putting his hands beneath him upon the ground. He was wearing gloves. Strange. He barely owned any. They were hardy, fashionable perhaps, but mainly for work. The rest of the his clothes seemed to match, though they were int he earth tones he'd worn for the last year or two. The sun beat down upon him and there was a sense he'd been seeping in it for some time now.

With a grunt he sat up, rubbing at his eyes. How did he get here? The previous night was a blur. He'd returned from Razasan, had gone to the ball, had met with Giuseppe and...

Off in the distance, you hear a distracting, inhuman growl.

You smell strange and mundane plants nearby.

Your world finally comes into focus.

Hedges around him, unnaturally tall. There was a pack beside him. His sword was at his side. His head ached, still, but he'd made it to his feet, at least. Glenn Burnie was still in Myrken Wood. Somehow he knew it. A flutter and crinkle caught his attention. There was a note attached to the pack, comprised of beautiful, expensive paper. He rubbed at his eyes and opened it.

He read and a look of fatalistic exasperation came over his face. It'd gone all wrong, not all of it, but most, so much of it. The memories were streaming back now. There was little question now where he was, but his bethrothed (his wife? He didn't remember that part, certainly) sorely underestimated him. One does not put a mapmaker in a place like this. One does not put a man like Glenn Burnie with his back against the wall in a trap of geography and logic. Ones does...

You turn your head.

You see the remains of the man against the nearest hedge.

His body is mangled.

The gore is intense. Something had eaten off chunks of him.

You hear the distant growl again.

"Oh Stefan," Burnie's was soft as he recoiled one small step at the sight of the very recently created viscera. Delegation had been necessary both morally and due to time constraints. This was a lapse and while in some ways it was useful or important, it was mostly a way to relieve the pressure of the Governor's ever-lessening madness. Perhaps it was the last floodgate that needed to be opened on the uneven road to sanity. "What have you done?"

What had Golben become?

[Glenn]

Dearest Glenn,

It was not supposed to happen this way. In a perfect world you would have come home and understood... but Myrken isn't perfect, is it? Not yet.

It will be. It won't be long now. A month, perhaps two. Then you will see, you will understand.

A month. Two at most. Then everything will be perfect.

All of my love,

Rhaena Burnie

[catch]

glenn burnie is a hand
drawn away
a subtle insult that even a broken mind could grasp.
he lay there, as he had lain of old
in a dark place
with boot-black skin -
and he would do what he could,
what he must,
for his Myrkenwood.

here in Golden, twisted by magic
twisted by mind
bent by artistry
the hand of man in every curve of
her making; and they made her well
made her above, and beyond, the
grasp of the man
who lay there
now

to survive until Rhaena's thoughts
been brought to breath
Glenn Burnie's Golden Myrkenwood.


there is a man who stands before him,
silent
daring not to intrude in
his note-taking; waiting
for a hand to reach for him, so
that he might take it. the man
was no subtle insult.

for he was Glenn Burnie.

he was a Glenn Burnie wrought beautiful,
a beast's worshipful image, every part
of him enhanced, improved,
so that even the plain became a God
his keen mind throbbing behind
eyes of precious stone.

yet not all of him was whole. he was
after all
only reflection. he could not speak
for a Glenn Burnie who could not speak
how odd.
for Glenn Burnie enjoyed his speech,
the weaving of words; yet the answer
is there, for all the same, he opn's his mouth,
and
maggots
fat, red, gorged with blood and brains
leak beyond those perfect lips.

Glenn Burnie is full of Maggots. Glenn Burnie is full of Maggots.

his hand comes up; he beckons, he waits
for in this, does Dante need his Virgil
and the Maggot-Glenn waits
silent
for Glenn Burnie would do what he could,
do what he must, and
everyone holds breath for Myrken's Fate.

[Rance]

And he, one of them,
in saggy-brimmed hat and peculiar veil
outside
he blackened boots for passers-by.
And boot tar
was a resilient substance.

Golben. A place forgotten by men.

Forgotten in the way that all things must be: a blemish upon the landscape, a black tattoo of hedgerows and nightmares, labyrinthine and inhuman. Memories had been here once. And families. Families, crests, farmers, workers, until it became this abandoned pit in the earth, a place where men and women threw away their detritus, that they might turn their backs on it forever and let it fester and rot amid its own kind.

Golben had been something once. But now, it was a prison. A nation all on its own. An entity of the butchered and the foul where the condemned were sent to die by the gavel-hands and condescending smiles of those which thought themselves the betters. A maze named Golben; a challenge named Golben; a Golben where only the strong and willing persevered.

In distant human myths, when ancient gods reigned and fools in robes called upon them for sun and stars and rains, it had existed not as Golben, but as Laboron, an endless confusion of dead ends and turnabouts where creatures roamed and men were slaughtered trying to secure their freedom. Even its creator had been cast into its winding halls and endless predation. Laboron had been only a legend, a tale to frighten children to sleep and to study in yellow-paged literatures. But this, this--

Golben was real.

Boot tar meant a shine; boot tar was stuff for the hard leather of shoes that would dance, dance, dance at a ball. Boot tar for farmers, boot tar for tradesmen, shining rags snapping across hobnails and flat-tips. Tallow and dubbin, a small bit of spit--

and boot tar was, beyond all other things, messy; it left stains, and that's why it was best meant to be worked outside, away from finely-cut floorboards and the vine-laden latticework of decorative rugs.

Only fools, criminals, and governors found their way unwittingly into Golben.

But only those with an agenda followed them.

Glenn Burnie and Rhaena Olwak argued. They stood in opposition to one another outside the ball, while tradesmen and jewelers tried to pawn off their wares. Even the boot-blacker watched, turned, listened. And discovered, with averted eyes, that a single droplet of his ash-black wax had fallen to the tip of the governor's boot.

And that was why he stood by in that moment, still unseen, with his veins smoldering from the strain of the spellwork. Boot-blacking alone was why he watched from beneath an overgrown bristle-hedge. He looked upon the ragged form of Glenn Burnie while the displaced governor discovered a mangled, misshapen, nightmarish golem-reflection of himself. The boot-blacker

with boot-black palms
and tar-blackened skin

said from behind the weave of an abundant, gore-matted hedgerow, "Offered hands and decencies to the foul mean nothing here."

The words were hissed, a whisper-thin rattle of warning from amid the vines and the branches, though no figure, no presence was visible behind the curling brown vines of thorns and burs and limbs. In punctuation, two small objects rolled out across the mud and grass from the Golben shadows, bouncing and tumbling like a child's lost toys. Two miniscule marbles -- one white, one black -- came to rest between the governor and his maggot-mouthed analogue. The speaker only had several more seconds to say what he must, and like snakes, his advice slithered from the thorns--

"This is no place for diplomacy, Glenn Burnie. Do not look yourself in the eye for too long, or take that creature's hand. Nothing, nothing comes from greetings given to dead men."

[Glenn]

The mangled body was the first sign that this may be a little harder than the Governor initially thought.

Still, he was Glenn Burnie. His head might have hurt; there may have been deadly obstacles here, but he was who he was, the man who had escaped from Underdark, a mapmaker, the person who devised the initial idea behind this place. It would not contain him!

Of course, that's when things got very, very strange.

This could be a ploy of Rhaena's. This could be a ploy of Galacia's. This could be anything. This could be the shared dream for all he knew. It could be Sarayn returned. It could be a thousand things.

She had provided him such nice adventuring clothes. It was a shame when he ripped down the collar to make sure that his tattoo was still there. A black, gnarly scar was inked into his collarbone, and upon seeing a corner of it, he exhaled slowly. This was real. He was a awake. Dammit.

"So," he said finally, looking at the horrific apparition before him. "I've got something that looks like me, but full of maggots, and then I have a disembodied voice tell me that..." His voice faded off. There was a bravado that came from madness, that came from resentment and arrogance and everything else that had made Glenn Burnie who he was. His head ached, there was betrayal behind him and dark decisions ahead of him. He didn't have it in him to tap into any of that currently.

Instead he thrust his hand forward to take that of his mirror image. "Simple logic. If I go with him, I know that I've got a mysterious voice to help save me. If I go with you, all I have is this handsome maggot-faced ass here." He looked off to the shrubbery, to nothing at all. "I know it doesn't seen it, but it's actually a sign of faith in you." He was not smiling.

[catch]

that hand is real
real as flesh being eaten
by a thousand, tiny mouths.
keeping the skin alive
and not much else.

and it does not draw back, that
hand
until it is firmly grasped; then
he pulls, a step back,
for Glenn Burnie must
stand tall.

the warning-voice was met
with bowed head, handsome head
and the image of Burnie smiles,
a sad, slow smile
his once-clear eyes lingering on the
tattoo
meant to warn. meant to anchor.

what warning had it given him?

Temperance, the image says,
and with it's word spoken
in the harsh rasp of a bird
it turns, this Virgil,
and waits a Glenn Burnie's pleasure.

[Rance]

"Your faith is as useful here as a broken sword. So is your unflinching confidence. You do not have influence over this place, Glenn Burnie, or anywhere else. It's been stripped away.

"Stripped away," the voice finalized, "by a fine little gown and a smile that you should have known hid daggers and poison behind its perfect white teeth."

He was a phantom hiding in the shrubbery, never staying still, but moving, moving, his heels falling with silence upon the grass. He could have slipped through each and every one of those shadows like liquid, but Golben was an infected place; Golben throbbed and ebbed with deceit and madness, and to make oneself a part of it -- melding like a puddle in the darkness, turning flesh to unlight -- would to be in its employ.

In his weakened, crumbling state, he could not risk such foolhardy showmanship.

"I honor you with an offering," he said from within a shining circle of boot-polish, "that you might help me."

The creature before him was white and wet, its flesh like dripping wax, an oversized candle left to burn too long at the will of some studious boy. It towered above him, twice his height, and its single, bulging eye was spangled with little flecks of blood. Its breath was curdled milk, and though its ever-shifting mouth was never round nor firm, its oozing lips splattered back to reveal bone-shard teeth. This handmaiden of caustic wax did not speak, but projected, inspired its response to come to life in its summoner's mind like a rancid half-thought. Its clicking, prattling mind-tongue slithered damp, sloppy paths through the boot-blacker's conscience.

WHAT WILL YOU [what will have, have of, have of, will you, have] ASK OF ME [of me], BETRAYER.

"Your favor," he said, the demon's will driving him to a knee, the unseen wall of the circle bending, leaning in on him, pressing -- threatening to shatter him. "Your willingness to do me one task, and one alone. I shall pay you," he reminded it, for all things must hinge on barters, "efficaciously.

"Bring me to him. A man," he said. "A human."

He shouldered his way from the hedgerows behind Glenn Burnie, chin tucked against his chest, the ribbons of his tattered cloak clinging to the edges of flesh-hungry thorns. He watched from beneath the lip of his hood as the governor, against his advice, took the maggot-ridden reflection's hand. As if he, proud statesman, could govern this place; as if he might manifest some control over it, some agency--

--but Golben did not belong to those who had been tossed to its depths.

From beneath a cloak flap, an ebony blade jutted out like an angry talon, held in the clasp of his bootblack hand. Its length was tarnished and weary, but it thirsted for shadows, for blood, for maggot-flesh.

"I did not come here to save you," the figure informed Glenn. "I came here to speak. From one man who has made too many follies and detrimental misdjugments--"

The sword raised, angling toward the wrong Glenn Burnie, the twisted one, the corpsical reflection. He held the weapon out before him, circling around the governor's right to place himself only feet away from the rotting analogue, his red eyes a hot storm beneath his hood, temperance--

"--to another."

[Glenn]

Maggots. Temperance. Catch. He never did appreciate that damned bird. It had cost quite a bit to have it sent to Myrken. Blasted Mary and Maxwell and desperation with the lake.

Oh, no. The scar told him something. There was all the difference in the world between being oppressed by powers beyond your ken when awake and when asleep. Your options were different. Your responses were different. Everything was different and it meant the entire world.

"I don't know," he was trying to rouse some level of verve or enjoyment or even energy but the situation didn't seem to allow for it. He was fatigued. "At least this one is smiling at me. I like his skin condition better than yours too." Crawling maggots beat those dark glimpses and what they represented any day. "He's a little more optimistic too."

Deep down, very deep down, he could feel the tug; the insane smile that had been his constant companion for a year's time upon his return from Underdark. It was such a tiny thing now. it almost made him laugh. "It's that attitude which is your problem, though, first and foremost." Chiding, lecturing, matter-of-fact. Glenn Burnie spoke and he spoke truth. "If you say you have no power, then you have no power. It's that simple. If you don't, at least you have a chance."

The presence of this other being was bolstering him far more than the facsimile of himself. It challenged him and he almost had enough within him to rise to it. Almost. "You speak like someone who's had too much power and not enough time spent working for it. Effort builds character. Failure does as well. You know, Roschen visited me in Underdark, disguised as a drow. Perhaps you're another friend in disguise. Is that you, Aloisius? You're truly sucking it in, aren't you?"

[catch]

to speak, to speak
and there is nothing that this
Glenn might say, save for
Temperance.
a raven-word, a parrot-word, a
thing
meant to contain a mind
meant to occupy
while little unicorns and fat men performed
on a stage
while a mind was built, twisted,
infested. and Glenn Burnie, then,
had approved.

but there is one who could speak. who
in bulging, twisting, it became
from Glenn to pitch-black, eyes of red,
and Jirai wore her maggots easier
for this fraction,
this second,
writhing under her skin.

"A tailor's mind is worth as much
as a drow-maggot's dreams," said she,
"A boot-black's hands
should be black,
and not the red of broken lands,
broken minds,
and who greater than that, than me?"

and Glenn it was, once more, a maggot-Glenn,
and he laughed, the maggots
falling
from his lips.

Know I better than you both,
the feel of power stripped free,
and through the ages
that I wept
still, myself to be, to be.
Glenn Burnie's Myrkenwood for me.

the last came not from lips, but from
a place somewhere 'round,
and the plants raised voices, sour songs
and Glenn's maggot eyes smiled,
and his fingers beckoned once
more.

[Rance]

The shifting mass before them was curious; it would take a fool, indeed, not to question its potential for power, for destruction. Mimicry was often a parlor trick for those things that could decapitate mountains and upend whole towns.

"I have no power," the figure confirmed. "We are powerless creatures here, Glenn Burnie. This suits men like you and I. But blinding oneself with lies is an errand for fools. A king upon his throne will trick himself into believing he is still mighty, even when his killer's metal begins digging into his throat."

He adjusted his stance, poising the edge of the gnarled blade he wielded in the direction of the Maggot-beast; Temperance, he would call it -- fitting, simple, indicative. The sword, though short, was vicious, aged by splatters of old blood. Its edge seemed to whisper, sing, a little dirge lost in the cacophony of the endless hedgerows. An ornament such as that weapon was forged for no child; it was possessed for years by no weakling.

Temperance was a thing of many skins. It eschewed the governor's, then took on a blacker form, a familiar one, drow-but-not. Jirai.

Jirai, who -- at some point in the past -- loosed crossbow bolts at him and laughed, laughed with overconfident humor as they dueled; he matched her every strike, deflected her oncoming blades, and retorted with his own. Red eyes against red eyes, like home--

"Outside of Golben, I'm no friend of yours, Glenn Burnie. No Roschen, No Aloisius," he said, though his familiarity with the names was all too clear: they were old, comfortable sounds on his tongue. "No Ariane Emory with silver blood. No friend you know.

"Here, the rules are different. I am either the last friend you will ever have, or the resilient old memory that ends your life merely for the satisfaction of it. That decision is entirely yours, mapmaker. You may have meandered out of the Underdark before, but this place is not so forgiving; it is not patient, it is not malleable to your will."

But they were bantering, discussing, speaking too much in the presence of this towering golem, this Temperance. The plants all around began to writhe and rattle as a choir. He stepped forward, grinding a heel down to smear the corpses of fallen maggots like discarded fat into the earth. The arm which held his whisper-thin sword was solid, prepared, willing. Here, the blade was his only strength--

Know I better than you both,
the feel of power stripped free,
and through the ages
that I wept
still, myself to be, to be.
Glenn Burnie's Myrkenwood for me--

--and he raised it, toward the gaping, rotten throat of Temperance, not so much with threat, but with curiosity.

"I defer to your logic in this matter, Governor. As any powerless man should."

[Dulcie]

Screams of pain still echoed in her mind as Grawnya's eyes opened slowly, her vision rimmed by the iron eye holes in the scold's bridle that she still wore, her vision blurry as she tried to make sense of her surroundings. Plants and trees swirled about her, spinning for what felt like hours until finally they slowed and then stopped. A mirror seemed to be facing her, and she caught hints of her reflection. The cold gray-black of the bridle, the green of her dress, a few shocks of red hair.

She tried to pull herself up to a sitting position, but collapsed in a soundless scream after the attempt, every sound stifled by the cold metal on her tongue. She gasped for air to sooth the pain as she lifted her hands up to her eye level, staring at the bloody image of her wrists pierced by a singular iron nail in each one, rimmed by a cuff of iron.

The memories flooded back to her, the cold stone that they stretched her arm across, her own shrieks and howls as the large man hammered the nail down into her wrists. The dark stares of the people that had watched with satisfaction as she had writhed in pain before them until finally she had lost conciousness altogether. She collapsed back into the ground again, focused on each breath. The pain was consuming and overwhelming and for that moment all she could do was to focus on one breath in and one breath out, her green eyes shifting as she tried to figure out where exactly she was. She remembered the word Golben, but a word without a story meant very little indeed.

[Glenn]

Burnie gave the shifting creature a deadpan stare. "You're not helping your cause, you know. Vanity goes to hell when you start looking like Jirai. The maggots I can handle, but a man has limits." As for what the creature said? Well, that was another story. "I thought the tailor was a weasel. A weasel that lived in a mind. If his thoughts are less than a drow maggot's dreams, then what's in my mind is more impressive than what's in yours, no?" He liked to poke at things. Give him a sentence and he'd turn it into a flail or a lever or a key or a bottle. A sentence made bottle had less uses than you might think. Words could not be carried that way, only ideas, and those tended to slip away from you no matter what you put them in, except for the ones that clung too tight, like a noose around your throat.

Like a jewel lodged in one's collarbone. Like Belief in one's heart. Like a glamour that turned one's skin black. Like a cane that went tap-tap-tapping forever and ever more.

"Can I convince you to coalesce into a giant maggot and I'll ride you out of here? No?" It wasn't his first choice either but Glenn Burnie never was the one to get to ride a dragon or wyvern or other such beast. That just wasn't his lot. Maybe it was because the wonder in his heart was a damned practical thing at best.

That avenue likely blocked, he looked back to the dark, tattered man. "You're not Selenthis. I'm fairly certain he stuffs a sock down his pants at all times. You never know when your sister might be looking at your crotch, after all." He mentioned rules though, and this brought another wane smile to the mapmaker's face. "Myrken had rules when I arrived, friend, and I'll call you friend, because you're a friend here even if not out there and using 'you moody naysaying ass' as a name is tiresome even for my tongue, so until you give me your name, friend. Granted, once you do, we'll probably have to fight to the death on principle, but I'm sure we have a few pleasant minutes of you ruining the mood and me being frustrated about the fact I'm here first," and frustrated he was. Emotion welled as he stormed over and kicked the only viable target, Horace's half mangled body. It felt surprising good to kick a corpse. It had just the right weight to it, the right sag.

With a small sigh he continued. "Where was I? Oh, yes. Myrken had rules when I arrived. If I followed them, I would have never gotten anywhere, certainly not stuck in a Labyrinth with the two of you."

[catch]

to a golden throat be held,
no maggot-Glenn; no Temperance
but Virgil still, for despite his words
he would not leave Glenn Burnie be.

on a drow-daggers edge, that throat
curving, coquette
a creature the boot-black had
no need for,
no use.

shining, white
all-colors, no-colors
a roiling mass; a flickering
vague equine, vague deer,
a mockery and a improvement, both
and what stood there, tendrils
waving
weaving
was a Catch, a Grand Catch wrought whole.

his mismatched eyes, pinpricked, wild
regard the boot-black with uncomprehensive eyes
for power, he knew, intricate
carved into his very flesh
and could not imagine being without.

May I ride you out of here,
Glenn Burnie had said,
and he may not.
for the beast was turning, that noble head
those mad eyes
the cleft in a forehead, that begged a horn

took from himself the insult
of a knife;
follow, or not, the boot-black
the once-governor
the Catch has heard another cry,
and, like cursed Virgil,
will take them there.

[Rance]

Again, the creature shifted -- the tip of the blade retracted, giving wary space as the skin seamed to leak away; Temperance became less than Burnie, tangled amid itself. Flashes of the equine, the hallowed, the over-bent and the bestial; it dripped, leaked, and no smart man would remain in its proximity. His feet pedaled over fallen insects, crushing the little scavengers with each step.

Temperance became a mountainous presence, a horn-missing steed of a man-thing -- and had he not known better, he might have thought it a planeswalker, a yochlol. The minute figure steeled himself for its advance, expecting, expecting the interplay of blade and tentacle. Secretly hoping for it. Desiring it. He set his hips, loosened his ribs, softened his grip on the handle of his blade--

In the distance, a scream.

The mad eyes turned away, and like a lumbering, slavering giant of a beast, Temperance moved--

--and in its wake, Temperance left the echoing murmur of something powerful.

For a fleeting moment he was back in that

boot-black summoning circle, fortifying his broken will and splintering mind against a creature that could rend him in two with but a thought, bringing to it a bargain, an offering, that it might be his guide into Golben.

He put his back to Glenn Burnie, black sword lowering. From the ground, he scooped up the light and dark marbles he'd earlier dispatched, and clenched them like valuable baubles within his night-skinned hand. "Being abandoned here," the figure said, "is a result of your own short-sighted ineptitude, Burnie. It cannot be blamed on the bending of rules or obedience to them. Your presence here is a simple matter of your fingers having gotten too greasy, your command having slipped. You fumbled your sword and let a woman turn it on you.

"The greater part of your town witnessed your disagreement with your lady. A mere argument, perhaps, but a banner to all of fair Myrkentown that Glenn Burnie allowed someone to dislodge him from his station. You deserve to be here, boy."

He started down along the thorned hedgerows in Temperance's path, seeking direction, movement. He wrenched back his cloak-hood, his face as dark as obsidian and his hair a mane of tangled white braids. Not Jirai, Not Sarayn, not human.

Drow.

But before he went: "My name," he said over his shoulder, "is Audmathus, and I am the reason half of your precious rules were established in the first place."

[Glenn]

"Audmathus," Glenn began, voice cool, distant, almost disinterested. "You were the one with the spires, right?" He was not at his best, not in the least and for that reason and that reason alone, a hand went down slowly, carefully, towards his sword, just in case.

If no immediate violence would follow, the young man (and he was young, here, outside the trappings of power; he was no older than twenty five and probably a year or two younger than that) would smile wryly. "I always thought it was impressive that a drow male managed to cause so much trouble. They usually have you better leashed." Still, nothing? Fine.

He watched the Catch reform, or Temperance reform, or the friendly smiling maggots reform, and his headache started to come back. "It's probably just the Storyteller," though there was an unsure glance over to Horace. He looked like he might have been a sturdy sort of fellow once, a worker perhaps? That was a rather feminine shout. "Let her scream." His indifference was fading. If it was her, she had answers he wanted, just as Audmathus did, just as this ghoulish apparition of Catch did. None of this was what he needed though. They were all distractions. He was Glenn Burnie. He was Myrken's cartographer, guiding all of them towards their future. He wasn't about to get waylaid now. He started in an opposing direction, the right direction. He knew.

"I was harrowed in my return, if you must know," the frustration welling, but only slightly. "Things had gotten far worse than I expected. I was about to stamp it all down but I misjudged the need of my former subordinate." It was all clinical so far, even as he started, pack on his back, down an adjacent path. "There was too much emotion involved, with Rhaena and what she had done but most of all with what she was planning t..uhhhn."

That was the sound of Glenn Burnie walking headlong into a carefully positioned mirror and falling on his ass.