The Weeks After the Ball: Golben

The Weeks After the Ball: Golben

Postby Rance » Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:04 am

First, he had returned, an occasion of merit and celebration.

There had been the folly, a discarding of the rubbish when the merriment abated.

These acts bred truth even here in Golben, where the air reeked of sulfur and stagnant mud.

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.


The last thing Glenn Burnie might have remembered was the sky of Golben falling down upon him like so many pieces of shattered glass. Disembodied hands had become braces around his legs, dragging him into an inevitability: the ground had become ravenous for him, an entity desperate to consume him, wrench him into its depths. The last thing he’d uttered had been a cry for Catch, a desperate hope that might be answered by a name alone.

When his eyes snapped open through scabs of mucus to stare at the sky swirling like a child’s scrawl of sloppy blues and feather-edged clouds, the word was still on his tongue. A cry that transcended a nightmare, pushed through the membrane of the false and found reality.

Hunger clawed at the inside of Glenn Burnie's guts. Starvation. It sucked at him, not like a small and menial urge, but a racking pain, a burning, hollow scream inside of his body – as if he’d not eaten for days, weeks. His tongue was a swollen eel in his mouth, as thick as leather and wrinkled by the sun.

THIRTY-TWO DAYS, said the shadow in his mind.

His skin was red and boiled over with blisters as if he’d laid for days without shade, flakes of white skin fallen away from sun-scorched dermis.

THIRTY-TWO DAYS SINCE YOUR IMPRISONMENT BEGAN.

The governor’s muscles had once been healthy and wiry things, but now, his sinews were like leaden cores in his limbs, the malnourished flesh highlighting the thinness of his arms and legs. He was windchime-thin, could have had played rattling songs against his bones. His legs throbbed with strain and agony; they begged for this rare rest, this chance to know stillness and relief.

THIRTY-TWO DAYS SINCE MINE BEGAN.

A memory. A memory inside a memory, a truth hidden in a lie. A fading candleflame of thought forced upon the governor.

A hunger flared in his belly and twisted within him, grinding against his ribs, begging him to answer it; the hedgerows were endless, one unremarkable corridor leading to the next, and the next. Freedom awaited around the next corner. No -- the next. No -- the next, and that which came after, and after, and if only he could find something simple to eat...

Glenn Burnie's hands were the bloody maps of torment and desperation. The skin had been flayed in ribbons from his fingertips, and several of his fingernails were no more, replaced only by the bleak and dirt-strewn divots where nails should have been--

Scrambling at the hard soil, scraping his fingers on the minute shards of stone until they went red. There was the elbow of a rock there, visible and gray, and as old as war. A weapon. His fingernail caught on the lip of it, ripped with a screeching tear from the base of his middle digit, leaving a strip of torn flesh and jagged nail-shard over the soft, wrinkled skin beneath.

The stone would do. When he dislodged it, clenched it in his bleeding fingers, he turned to swing it--


A quilt was upon him where he lay at the meeting of hedgerows; there was an odor of something sweet, an aroma that pried at his nostrils and begged him to follow it -- a real sensation, not muted even by his damage.

Boiled turnips. Oversalted broth. A stew.

If Glenn turned his head, he'd come to realize several very sudden revelations.

He sat where the ordeal began, well before he'd found the Storyteller, long prior to the mirrorkin.

YOU SAW THE STORYTELLER OF WEEKS AGO, THE DAY SHE AWAKENED [stirred] HERE AS A PRISONER [captive]. A VEIL FOR A FRAGILE MIND, AS WAS IT ALL.

All around him were sprawled hundreds, thousands of footsteps impressed in the cracked soil. They wound about one another, paths retraced, directions altered, the evidence of a walking confusion. And each print of heel was the same, some hardened in mud after days and weeks, others as fresh as this very morning.

LOOK UPON THE CORPSE [remains, shell] OF THE CREATURE THAT BROUGHT ME TO THESE DEAD LANDS.

Against one of the hedgerows, crumbled over itself, was a dessicated corpse; its eyes were gaping holes, its black complexion faded mottled and gray. Bulbous swells on the limbs promised the gasses of decay might they be poked or prodded. The cheek was misshapen, gravity drawing down a sagging visage until the mouth was a yawning pit. Fat black flies danced on the skin.

Audmathus, the bootblack guide in the Golben of Glenn Burnie's mind, rotting only several meters from where governor had first seen him.
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Re: The Weeks After the Ball: Golben

Postby catch » Thu Aug 01, 2013 7:20 am

Catch. Catch.

Names had power. It had never been explained. He had screamed for the Eight, and it had come until it was past all power to be summoned. Giuseppe's name was never said, out of fear that he could be summoned.

Rhaena's was said, in the hope that she would come.

Catch was not his name. It was a flickering, a memory, of a wide, fat mouth pulling into a smile, a Glutton-that-was that gazed upon him with glimmering, avaric eyes, a Thing that embodied a vice that called him a Grand Catch, a Grand Catch indeed, followed by wet, thick clearing of a throat. For the Glutton, that had been thousands of lifetimes ago. For Catch, it had been only his childhood, when the call of the untouched had been sweeter, when iron bars against an iron cart meant nothing to him. When he learned the terms of Imprisonment.

To say his name would have burned Glenn's tongue from his mouth. To say his name was the ruin of a town in Derry.

To say his name, one had only to read the scars of old tattoos on his hands.

But names had power. And for a long time, he had been called Catch.

There is the feel of a quilt upon Glenn. There is someone nearby. It is the shuffle of hard feet, the sense of someone kneeling.

"Glenn,"the voice says, but it is smooth, untouched by a stutter. It carried a power, a confidence, that Catch-that-is had never had. Hard fingers touch his eyelids. If he were to to focus, to move his head, he would see him.

A Catch-that-was. A Catch-that-will-be. He was a barbarian lord, in leathers and trimmed fur, and there is a golden collar clasped against his milky neck. He is Catch, because those eyes are mismatched above that gentle-curved nose, full of concerned indifference, bland benevolence. It attempts these emotions, but cannot quite get them right.

The forehead above his brows is smooth, unblemished. Whole.

"Glenn, can you eat?" he asks, gentle. In his other, broad hand, there is a crude bowl, and steam rises from it, the smell of turnips and roast vegetables and salty broth, thickened into puree for a belly that had not eaten in a long, long time.
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Re: The Weeks After the Ball: Golben

Postby Glenn » Fri Aug 02, 2013 2:32 am

Glenn Burnie chose his fate. That was the entire point of his existence. When born into a monastery to live a very specific, very planned, very detailed life, he ran away at the first chance. When doomed to continue running forever due to a terrible choice of youth, he learned to love Myrken, learned to plant his feet and fight back. When caught in a dream that he did not make, tied to a woman that he would not have chosen, he yanked the gem out of his own collarbone, ending it on his terms. When warned by everyone not to continue his mental tryst with Rhaena Olwak, he found ways around it. When trapped in Underdark, he leapt out of a window rather than give Sarayn her pleasure. Upon his return, instead of sulking and hiding he stepped forth and eventually became Governor. Every single one of those decisions had consequence, often leading directly to the next situation, yet he made them, and he would continue to make them.

Golben was his creation, a release of pressure, a side effect of his choices. Delegating it to Berdini was a choice, a way to avoid more pressure building up in the releases stead. He chose to avoid responsibility here and look what it had gotten him.

That night, the night of the ball, he had made a choice. In the end there had been seconds to act after the betrayal. He could have tried to shut down Rhaena, could have killed her, perhaps, maybe restored her. He struck out in another direction though. There were some things that even he simply could not endure the thought of, things that were worse than Rhaena Olwak gone bad.

Perhaps if he had chosen otherwise, things would have been different. Perhaps because he chose as he did, things... well, it was an odd time for hope.

He had made that chose when dragging himself out of Underdark. He had already gone through a phase, after Rhaena lost her hand where he wore a cloak with a hood, where he sulked, where he whined and slept on Dulcie's couch and was a teenager at his worst. He'd already been through the starvation of Underdark, the powerlessness, the sacrificing of one's soul to achieve vengeance and freedom only to lose sight of the reasons behind such action, of being reduced to a clever animal in order to survive.

There would simply be none of that now. He was trapped in three prisons. The first, Golben, was clear enough. The second was his own body, but he had been there before. He spoke, and it was a rasp, an oscillating pitch of syllables that successfully escaped his lips and ones that did not. "stroy," and "cane" were very clear though, the last since he said it two or three times with a dry, hacking cough to separate them. The third, however, was the cage of his own decisions. He saw all things so clearly now. At the puppet show Catch had poked a whole in Lamai's protection, had made the smallest connection within him to his own soul even as the brunt of his efforts bounced off him to create a new Rhaena. It had taken years, it had taken failure, it had taken this month of nothing but emptiness, but the shield was gone and the connection was complete. He knew himself once more and he looked back at years of bloodless atrocities and all the good that they had wrought. It was impossible to say "unsustainable" in his current condition, so he did not.

There was a fourth prison, the pressure, the power that had caused the last month. There were carefully planted drow fungi in the Labyrinth. Its initial concept was a prison and that was something he made sure was slipped in early, a gift from his Alessandra, the last that he'd ever use. It was probably her attempt to eventually conquer Myrken but they did work with what they had. If he had been aware, he could have stopped for them. What was, for him, and hour, was a month for his body, though, and such chances never arose. When he felt the hunger, he fought it off, defied it as unnatural. What was it then? Had his pride brought it upon himself? Had the necessity that he had created brought it upon himself?

The pain he had dealt with before. This was different though. After years of having his senses cut off from himself, detached, he felt everything as if for the first time. In truth, feeling the pain, the agony, the wrenching, churning sensation of even being alive, of one's body rejecting every movement, every notion, it should have been the worst thing he ever felt. It was vaguely satisfying. For the first time in years, he felt alive, and maybe that, if nothing else, gave him the strength to eat. There would be a struggled silence with intermittent slurping.

Finally, finally, he would try to speak. His voice was still raspy, but willpower alone would push him forward. "Collar. Don't like the collar, Catch. I never did that to you. Never wanted it. It's not nature, it's nurture." There was a nod to the corpse. "Only drow I half liked. Would have made a man out of him. Anyone sentient, who can understand himself, can become human. It's a choice to win out over one's nature. It's a war." It was a war and it was time for Burnie himself to stop capitulating, to stop offering terms and to actually win it. "Lose the collar. Furs look good though. They suit..." a hacking cough, hand going to his belly, food threatening to leave him. He clenched his eyes shut. "I need help." He would lean in near desperation, trying to drape himself over Catch. His voice was ultimately little more than a whisper. "Thank you for coming."
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Re: The Weeks After the Ball: Golben

Postby Rance » Fri Aug 02, 2013 4:16 am

Glenn Burnie was his own man.

With every passing second, it could have become clearer and clearer still that his interactions with the dark elf had been, at best, the shadows of true interaction. The conversation had only been as real as Burnie had wanted it, but the frames of that conversation, the circumstances around it--

The stew was breathed warm, rejuvenating life; it might have been a wonder what vegetables and broth could do after thirty-two days of...

Of whatever Glenn Burnie had done to survive.

He worked with what he had, after all.

In this clearer, more tangible and ultimately more deadly reality, the labyrinth and its endless tangle of mazes and hedgeworks seemed to throb and hum. The simplest wind became a rustling wildness amid the twisted branches; the sunlight, however much there might have been, was devoured by the earth, bathing the world around Glenn Burnie and his companion in shades of brown and sickly green. The hedges reached for the sky not to praise it, but as if to block it out, blind its single burning eye to the soil in the pit of Golben.

In the mangled depths of Glenn Burnie's mind, one of his own words echoed, the cry of a miner forgotten in a kingdom of coal, his lantern taken away, his voice the only thing he could think to use to push back the darkness--

CONSEQUENCE.

But he and the fur-lined Catch were alone, save for the endless sprawls and spirals of bramblewalls.
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Re: The Weeks After the Ball: Golben

Postby catch » Fri Aug 02, 2013 6:20 am

"Easy, Glenn," Catch would say to him, a hand meant to ease him back to the earth, half-finished bowl still held in his hand. Glenn needed to eat more, if he could. He needed to sleep, even more, for food was sleep, and sleep was food, and that was a truth that Catch had learned from the Place that he had come. The leathers, the furs, in a strange, sophisticated cut, spoke of the sunless days, the harsh howl of an artic-wind in which snow-cats and sightless dragons stalked. Catch would set the food aside, his great, warm hands covering Glenn's, supporting him, even as he leaned.

Catch cannot help but laugh a little, even now, dire as things had been. He has been here for three days, you see, laboring to save a Governor's life.

"Maybe not one so fine as this," Catch said, his voice gently chiding. "But you had collared me, all the same." Had. Had. A thing long in the past. He had become Catch for a very, very long time. "I needed you. I needed my friends, Glenn, as sure as you need this food. I won't be the same. You'll have to watch me very closely, Glenn. I've - done things. I did things. I lost something more dear to me than a horn, and maybe it's better, for a man like I was, to have the comfort of a collar he can feel. The uncertainty is worse."

His fingers come together in a fist, and then they relax. His head turns, and Glenn could see the bestial curve of his ear. His body shifts, and he can see the fur that lay against the ground, fur that was not fur at all, but a long, curl-infested tail.

Catch listened, and when he spoke, it was with a low, soft urgency. "I can't stay long. In this, it is more powerful than I. Glenn, if you can eat a little more, then try to sleep, I promise I will do what I can with what I have left." A quirk of his handsome lips. "I'm not as... as powerful as I may have been. It was my price to pay, but I would almost take it back to see you healed. Give me a day or two more, and I will sniff out your Storyteller. After that, I must be done. Everything must proceed - don't trust me, because I won't trust you, and the horn is not a horn."

The spoon was held to Glenn's lips, trying to coax one more bit of broth into him.

He then said, softly, "I would have come for you, any time. I would have come down the maggot-holes, and given them such a sight to see for hurting you. Maybe you should call on yourself less, and your friends more."
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Re: The Weeks After the Ball: Golben

Postby Glenn » Fri Aug 02, 2013 6:35 am

Burnie ate. It helped. Catch's presence helped. There were things he couldn't ask for, but very likely, he didn't have to. He would stay close to the madman who didn't seem that mad at all. He would stay nearby and hopefully that was enough. Catch would know. He saw when things were empty. He saw when they were damaged. He would see whatever there was to see here.

"I need context." Said simply. Horns and Storytellers and lost friends. Consequence. Another word that stood on its own in Myrken. All they needed. His laugh was a rasp but he needed to respond to Catch directly. "I did many things. I'll do more before it's all done. I still want what I want despite what you say. You barely knew me before I ended up down there, and the damage was already done, even before I left. You should have known me before Jirai, before I chose to spend six months with her. You would have liked that Glenn." The words were becoming easier as he ate.

Easier but not easy. He took a breath, swallowed, his throat a swollen and dry well of pain. Sensation. Sensation was almost worth killing for. "I need things, Catch. I need enough that I need not bargain with the Storyteller. That's how one ends up like Giuseppe. It's the wrong way for me to go right now."
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Re: The Weeks After the Ball: Golben

Postby catch » Fri Aug 02, 2013 6:56 am

Context. And, in this, catch shakes his head, regretful. It is not in his face, this regret. He could not make such a face; he should not be able to feel such a thing, but he does. Glenn feels. That would be enough to cause a tear, if Catch had any tears left to shed. He spent a quiet moment feeding Glenn, and - would the mapmaker feel it? - for he had, often enough, been Put Together by Catch, and the old pulls are there, slow and steady and oh, how achingly slow.

"I can't. It's a part of the rules. I know how tired you must be, of me speaking in riddles. It will become clear, Glenn, that I promise you. It will become very clear."

The steady spoon ceases, for now, to hold to Glenn a water-skin of cool, iced water, the spigot a clever thing that Catch twists with his fingers, held to the Governor's lips.

"You found me when I hungered," Catch said, his voice an intonation, a memory. "You found me as I found you, bones and skin and filth and blood. You took me, and you fed the flesh on my bones, and you and Dulcie wiped the filth from my body, and I had a new way of seeing things. I had kindness, for the first time in a very long time. I had acceptance, even with all your questions. Yes, I could have lived on that alone. Perhaps what would have come to pass would have come, eventually. That, I don't know."

"Then you went down the maggot-holes, and I waited for you. I waited for you like a child, my ear set to the ground, the cold biting my skin. I waited for you to call me."

Catch pauses, his too-bred face a mingling of remembered pain, of betrayal. He would wait for Glenn to drink his fill, but like a high-bred horse, he would take the cool water away, so that Glenn would not swamp himself in it. Then it is the soup again. Almost finished.

"Then you came back, and all the good parts of you were walled off. You began suggesting, training, twisting. Everything I did, Glenn, was a silly need to bring you back. I missed your questions. I missed the way that you could spend hours with me, doing nothing but coaxing me to remember. A better Myrkenwood, and I was afraid of it. I still am afraid of it, knowing what I know, and being there when it happened."

I still want what I want. The last spoonful stilled, and Catch settled back on his haunches, regarding Glenn with a cool air.

"Long before I made her different, Ser Glenn, you used her to change people. You used her on Zilliah. You used her on me, and you tore it free. You still want what you want. What is it you want, Glenn Burnie? Do you want a Myrken, no matter the cost? Because it's not your cost, Glenn. It never was. It is the cost of Ariane squeezed shut. It is the cost of a boy who's choices were taken from him. It is the cost of a girl and a boy weeping into their pillows for the anxiety of being Changed, the sorrow of losing their friends. It is the cost of a brother ruining his life to save his sister, to serve his Lady."

Catch's eyes are hard, immobile. They devour his face; the devour Burnie's, until all the world was settled within those pits of blue and gold and silver and black.

"This has never been about you, Glenn. This has never been about a collection of mud-huts and dead-tree walls. You cannot make such choices for others. That way - That way will see everything you tried to do destroyed, that way leaves everyone in collars."

"How are you different from Rhaena, Glenn. if you can tell me that - I may leave you with something for the Storyteller."
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Re: The Weeks After the Ball: Golben

Postby Glenn » Fri Aug 02, 2013 7:23 am

"Rules." He rather liked rules. Rules meant a game of some sort. Games could be won. Rules could be exploited. Systems could be understood. All-powerful beings always made games out of it, sometimes because they were bored, sometimes because of natural limitations. He could work with such things. It felt like home.

Then Catch spoke and asked his question. Glenn had told this to Rhaena. Giuseppe had told this to someone else since then. It was, in some ways, the entire crux of everything. Why had Glenn Burnie fallen out with Rhaena Olwak when she had only been furthering his own plans, it seemed. If more people asked, it could well be the talk of the town. Too few knew, though. Catch had so many words while each one Glenn formed as agony. Still, he tried.

"When I was at my worst, I plugged holes. I represented the victims against the magic. You, Zilliah. You were victims yourself, but I couldn't save everyone. Not at first. Not in Myrken. She doesn't understand what makes Myrken Wood special, though." He'd said it to Audmathus too, speaking about humanity. "It's the struggle that matters, that makes us better than we could be, stronger, smarter, that makes us appreciate life and that makes us care. We're specks in the grand scheme of things, and that makes us value every little thing we get and also understand how fleeting our possession of it is. Rhaena forces progress by gutting out everything that means anything and replacing it with a pleasantness that means nothing. I tried to build a structure where it might come to be. It meant I stepped on people, but never on their hearts. They would need those when the time had come."

Then, with, if not regret, than with frustration in his eyes. "You and yours I saw as threats, as repressive nature that would prevent growth, a brush fire to burn out all of the deadwood and a good many saplings in order to start growth anew. That's no better than what Rhaena wants. I don't want those struggling saplings to die so that everything can be started over. I want them to strive. So I did whatever I had to.

"I saw a place for what you were, Catch, but not necessarily who you were. Maybe we can all strive together. Maybe separating you from what Myrken is will never work. Maybe we need to embrace you. After seeing such inhuman horrors, though, all I saw were holes that needed plugging or else everything would be as hopeless as it'd ever been."
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Re: The Weeks After the Ball: Golben

Postby catch » Fri Aug 02, 2013 7:37 am

"You gave to Kacela," Catch says, a long moment after Glenn spoke. The food is done; Catch sets the bowl aside, for though Glenn may need more, his belly must be considered. To feed him too much, too soon, would make him ill, as surely as the cold water would to a shrunken, thirsting belly. "You gave to her a silver bangle. A thing that she had no choice but to desire, for the enchantments put upon it, even though it pained her, festered on her arm. Did you wish her to die, I wonder, so that your Myrken could flourish? You looked at her, and saw not that she was a protector - a killer of that which you say would cause chaos - but only that she was a Wolf. You wanted her dead, or you wanted her under control. Which was it? Which choice had you made for her?"

Catch sat, and he stretched his long legs aside Glenn, and in the cool, summer night, his heat was as blazing as any fire, his presence alone enough to keep the tigers away. He lay on his back, his fingers knitting behind his skull, and he looked up to the stars, a comforting presence beside Glenn, even if his words were not.

"You looked at Renea, restored, her soul given back to her empty shell so that she may live once more, and thrive. You sent out your inquisitors. You whispered in the right ears, you coaxed that which would not be easily led. You put the stones in one hand, and their torches in the other; you sent them against her, using their fear of the dead past. What were you hoping for her, Glenn? What were you hoping for a woman given a new chance, a new choice, since your man Giuseppe poisoned her and left her with nothing, so a Thing that she loved took her soul so she could not die from it? What choice is there in 'serve me, or die'?"

"Others. Countless others. You put collars on them, invisible ones, and when they chafed, you sent your Black Man to do the things you were unwilling to do. You are ruthless, single-minded. You will do whatever it takes to shape Myrken into that stronghold that you desire, the stronghold you describe. You say you are different. You set yourself in adversary against the world, so that your people might grow stronger. You sit on your throne of smug knowledge, and watch as those magical things you claim anathema struggle and cry out and strive, strive, for the sake of friends and adopted families and a home that they love too much to leave."

A low, throaty laugh. "I ask again, Glenn, how you are different from Rhaena. Because at least she does not torture her victims, first."
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Re: The Weeks After the Ball: Golben

Postby Glenn » Fri Aug 02, 2013 9:40 am

"There was no leverage, Catch." He'd explained it in general. Catch, in turn had kept pushing. That was fine. More sins for the ledger, more bloodless atrocities listed for the world to see. "Kacela could not exist in a social setting. She couldn't control her impulses, not then, not later, maybe more so now. She destroyed the teahouse trying to help people that didn't want to be helped. She basically proved me right. My aims weren't the issue. My means were. I needed to find some other way to invest her, some other way to make her care. I needed to meet her halfway. I didn't and because of that I closed the door on trying to deal with her more openly later. Kals Olwak met her halfway, later and I'm happy for them and grateful that he did." He was gaining strength with every word as only Glenn Burnie could. That had been at his very worst, right when he'd come back. He was more drow than man then. "I couldn't do that now, what I did to her, not even to save people. She meant well. I wouldn't be able to poison her in the face of those good intentions, even for the sake of everyone else." He'd find some other way. He was Glenn Burnie and damn it if he couldn't.

Renea then, and that's what upset the most. That's what made his stomach wrench, what gave him strength he ought not to have had. "I tried to help Renea, Catch. Any government in the world would have killed her on what Agnieszka said, on the cries of treason and all the evidence to back it up, should have. She was tainted by the tome. She broke the spell being cast because she was bullheaded and arrogant and ignorant. People DIED because of that. It was the right decision to kill her before she reached Thessilane, but she was my person, my Marshall, mine, and I was loyal, and I sent Giuseppe to figure out the truth. Since it was her life on the line, I gave him permission to do whatever he had to in order to get that truth, the truth that would save her." And he got enough of it, sent a message along, gave her the antidote and bought Renea her life back only for her to be cut down not long after out of the blue. "I should have had her body burnt. It's what we do and we do it for a reason. I thought it was suspicious and I was trying to get to the bottom of it, because she deserved that much. I was trying to do her right. When she came back to life, she did every single thing that she shouldn't have and the townspeople, people scared for what they had lost at the hands of the Ashfiend acted exactly as anyone would have expected them to. My people had nothing to do with any of it. Renea refused my attempts to help her and Mary Ford, brave Mary Ford, my person, almost died trying to defuse the situation and make it so I wouldn't have to have you exiled too for swinging an axe at people, Catch, for cutting people down. Renea dug her own grave twice and it was all I could do to save her once and then help her and her find her way out of Myrken the second time."

He sat up, started to move away now. His body ached but the sensation, the feeling, only roused him. His words roused him for there was emotion behind him that he hadn't been able to call upon for the longest time. "I regret much of what I did, Catch, but so much of that is regretting that it had to be done and that for the longest time I was incapable of regretting it at all. If I was, I would have at least made efforts to find other ways. I saw it as a war. The people, the humans and mortals of Myrken Wood, against nature itself, against those who were part of it, those who would use it, and those who would twist it. Against fate and all of its agents. Against the night and everything we did not know and could not see in it, whether those were friendly or dangerous. Since we couldn't see them, we couldn't know. That was obviously the wrong war to wage. It was the wrong war to hurt people over. It was the wrong war to sacrifice for.

"It makes the sacrifices tragic, Catch, but it does not make them in vain, not unless we let them be." Too much, too soon. Too much emotion. Too much food. Too much effort. Too much exertion. Glenn Burnie's will was more than his body, than any body starved and broken down, could hold. He was almost to his feet now but collapsed down, landing face first upon the ground. He would get that sleep one way or the other, it seemed.
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Re: The Weeks After the Ball: Golben

Postby catch » Fri Aug 02, 2013 10:06 am

Glenn gives his excuses, his stories, his regrets. He flings aside the quilt, raises himself from the leather mattress so that he may pace. It is a familiar gesture. It is not unexpected. Catch unhooks his fingers, and props himself up with elbows and forearms, and watches Glenn as he paces, as he Rhetors, as he Speechifies. Excuses couched in regret. And when the inevitable happens, when he falls, Catch is suddenly there. There would be no hard-packed dirt, marred by a thousand, wandering foot-steps, for the Governor's nose. Catch's strong arms hold him; they carry him, as if he were nothing more than a babe, back to his bed.

He knelt at the Governor's side, and touches a nail-blasted hand to his smooth, unblemished brow. He leaned further in, after a moment, and kissed those fluttering eyelids.

When Glenn woke next, there would be a merry fire, a rolled tent, a heavy pack which, when looked into, provided with bags of neatly-wrapped travel food. There would be a cane, a long, thick thing, and if he were to heft it, he would feel, sense, that it is iron. Over the fire, there is more of the heavy, hearty stew that bubbles in a small pot.

In the bag, there is a note.

"'Of all the words of mice and men,
the saddest are, "It might have been.'


Remember Violetsville, Glenn? Remember what happened there as a boy, when you tried to stay? There was a legend, a legend of a ruined, burnt church, and a great evil sealed within. That town was rotting even before I crawled out of that Hole. Remember the way the violets turned to blood, the way the dogs ran through the streets, eating the children and the dead and licking the gore from the cobbles even as the fire burnt them? Remember the way you can still hear the screams, sometimes, in the darkest part of the night, even if you can't remember where they came from? I'm no mind-reader, like Rhaena. You cried out as you slept. You have made Myrken your home in a way you had never been able to before, but you can't help but hear their screams.

Strange, how I still love you - will still love you - even after you have never fallen, never stumbled. Your virtue is lifeless. Life has never revealed itself to you. I hope it does so soon, before you make further regrets, more bloodless atrocities. Mind what I said about the horn. Mind what I said - you mustn't trust me.

My regards, my love,
Catch

By the way. She hates iron. Use that."
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Re: The Weeks After the Ball: Golben

Postby Glenn » Fri Aug 02, 2013 1:54 pm

There was a note. Had he ever gotten a note from Catch? He remembered once giving him charcoal in the middle of the Dagger just to see what would happen and what happened was absolutely ghastly. It wasn't this letter. The permanent damaged seemed to be gone. He was still weak, was still emaciated, but he felt better. Catch's doing certainly. A glance down to the now slightly faded tattoo on his collarbone confirmed it. There was a second glance over to the desiccated corpse of Audmathus. For all the good the tattoo had done him. His mind was vulnerable again. It was part of the cost to his last act with Rhaena. From what Catch said, it hadn't worked either, at least not completely. He pulled himself up with the staff. Tap. Tap. Old memories.

Old memories. Violetsville. One ruined place out of many, one island of horror upon the path that marked Glenn Burnie's cursed teenage years. He didn't talk about it. He barely thought about it anymore. Catch was the root of it, then? The far off root. "Damn it." It was a long time since he lost sleep over any of that. Now, though, now he felt it all, the connections made, again and again, the running, waking up somewhere else a little bit older, unsure of where he was, with a nearly empty map. It all began again. It was almost amazing that Catch was only responsible once. It gave credence to something that he'd hoped to deny forever. Don't trust me, Catch had said. So long as he was that much of a threat, he couldn't trust Glenn either. Could anyone?

Tap. Tap. It was annoying, frustrating, but it was there, until he was strong enough again. He marched on towards Audmathus, or whatever was left of him. The cane struck down upon the remnants, one, two harsh blows, the second to the shin. "You bastard. You were an almost likable drow at the end there." He glanced about. "Your ghost isn't about to pop up behind me or anything, no?"

No, silence. Silence that let him focus upon the letter, upon Catch's words. He didn't understand. He didn't know what it was like. Glenn regretted so much, but he would do a good chunk of it again, because he had to. Myrken Wood demanded it. All he ever wanted to do was to let it grow into a place which didn't demand that price anymore. It would cost people, he knew that, and it would cost him, and he would never, ever see it. Rhaena Olwak found all that unacceptable.

So here he was, alone and lost, and beset upon by Catch's good points, his truths, scalding things given in kindness and with care, none of which ultimately mattered given the practical state of Myrken Wood. It was enough to drive a man mad. He spoke finally, his voice raspy, talking to no one at all. "You may show yourself when ready, whoever you are, whatever you are," whatever it was that did this to him. "I'm waiting. You have a minute before I leave."
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Re: The Weeks After the Ball: Golben

Postby Rance » Fri Aug 02, 2013 3:08 pm

The staff crunched down into the deflated corpse. The skin was like torn burlap; it stretched, popped, pulled away from the bones. Dry like loose rawhide. A hornspine beetle, unsettled with the disturbance, crawled its way out of one of the drow's swollen nostrils and fell like a black droplet to the sleeve of a tattered cloak. There were no words from Cecinefien Audmathus Xhevus--

--just a guttural hiss from between the lips, a blathering fart of unliving air. A pocket of some fermented gas nestled in a patch of rot below the skin, jarred loose at the insistence of Glenn's staff. There would be no more movement of that tongue that had spoken against Myrken Wood so many years ago. The corpse was as real as the stew, the blanket, and the goods given to Glenn Burnie. As tangible as the wounds left in the wake of a forceful delirium.

When Glenn Burnie spoke to nothing, Nothing spoke back.

THIRTY-TWO DAYS WITHOUT CONTROL; HE HAS MET HIS PUNISHMENT [consequence, retribution] ADMIRABLY. HE AWAKENS WITH HIS SENSE INTACT.

A voice that was not meant to be heard. Intended, instead, to be felt -- one that translated itself naturally though the insensible vibration of a man's bones and pieced together its sentences from the listener's most vivid recollections.

THE BETRAYER IS THE REASON I [we] AM [are] HERE, GLENN BURNIE. LEAVE ITS CORPSE [shell, remains] INTACT; I [we] SHALL DISPOSE OF IT WITH UTILITY.


In front of Glenn Burnie, a flicker of movement pulsed through the hedgerows. The brambles tightened, straightened, began to pull apart like knots of hair tugged by two impatient hands. It was without any visible influence that the hedges suddenly split like a sliding portal before him. Frayed edges of the thick, shadow-blackened hedges opened feet apart. As if of their own accord, a new direction was carved through the heart of Golben--

--for hedges beyond, and beyond that, and beyond that began to pull apart, offering to Glenn Burnie a fresh and uncharted path that cut straight through the hundreds of labyrinthine turns and corners that littered the floor of the crater.
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Re: The Weeks After the Ball: Golben

Postby Glenn » Sat Aug 03, 2013 7:18 am

Burnie knew regret for his harsh words for Catch. They were fevered, put upon. He had been weak and hurt and drained, but now he had time to think about them. Too much time. To linger would be to linger upon them and to, much to a potential chagrin for both himself and for the absent madman, focus overmuch upon the rightness of them. Things might be different elsewhere, but in Myrken? In a Myrken that he did not make but that he was slowly changing, they were necessary and right. In a Myrken that Rhaena was creating, they did not matter, but then neither did anything else.

The words were felt not in his head but in his heart, and all he could do was sigh. He had food. He had some time. He would not be so easily taken again. "I was just starting to like him. Death from a kick to the shin." Tragic really. Drow men were so fragile. Glenn shut his eyes. "Normally, at this point, I would shout out that I was going to find out what you were, find out why you are, and end you. I'm not going to do that right now. I'm still sort of thinking it though, just to let you know. It's also bullshit that I don't get to keep the sword."

He had a staff though. Some of his self-defense mechanism of flippancy had returned. Catch's words had awakened it even as his presence and caring had returned to him some of is strength. With no response coming, there was nothing to do but head down towards the newly opened path. With an unsteady tap of his cane, he did just that.
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Re: The Weeks After the Ball: Golben

Postby Rance » Sat Aug 03, 2013 9:38 am

DEAD, the voice clarified, BECAUSE ALL ERAS END [terminate, cease to be].

The new path was a winding route through the width of Golben. It had not been walked before. Glenn's footsteps were the only ones that made a mark, though he occasionally intersected swaths of his older paths, memories-but-not of the thirty-two lost days lost to him, as though without yet remembering it, he'd walked every inch of the labyrinth already.

But perhaps mapmakers, even in their unconscious delirium, the forced relinquishment of their awareness, could retain habits of their old lives. While here he may not have been a governor, Glenn Burnie had come from other roots; he'd been fired in another kiln altogether. A boy in an academy. A fellow of knowledge.

END ME [us]? the presence asked. I [we] AM [are] AN ARTIFACT OF YOUR CREATION, GLENN BURNIE. A PRODUCT OF YOUR THOUGHTS. A CHILD OF BERDINI'S INGENUITY [resourcefulness, industry], OF D'ZIR'S MILITANT WISHES, AND OF AUDMATHUS'S TRICKERY.

Each one of those aimless footprints had been an analysis: he'd walked, walked, walked, and walked, finding dead ends and walls of hedges that had forced him to turn around. And as this fledgling path unfurled before him, cutting through the hedges like invisible flame, Glenn might have realized that each old angle he walked past had left in his mind an innate and inherent understanding of Golben's layout.

Its every turn, its every terminating alcove, its every circular path.

This crow's-eye scar of a road slicing through the hedges was the only one he hadn't yet traveled.
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