The Wreckage Wrought in Rhaena's Wake

Re: The Wreckage Wrought in Rhaena's Wake

Postby Carnath-Emory » Wed Oct 02, 2013 2:21 pm

Here, a certain thing in uncertain times - and take it for comfort or take it for caution, but have no doubt that it is fact: that this act spells the clear and absolute end of Genevieve Tolleson's anonymity in Myrken Wood.

A matter of moments, it was, for the talented inquisitor to burn like gentle lightning through a Marshall's unmarshalled mind. A thousand things glimpsed, a quick succession of conclusions determined, and all in the space between one breath and the next; all in the time it took for a swordswoman to reach out her hand. How differently things might have gone, had Genny come to her a week later; if inquisitor were better rested, if the marshall were better recovered. But like so much in Myrken, they are in some ways as much the product of their circumstances as their histories: the marshall's hand had not hesitated to knock the girl breathless; the inquisitor's mind was helpless but to startle away the barricade which distinguished one woman from the other.

Quicksilver bristles like wildfire across her limbs, and it is only a symptom of a mind overwhelmed by the sudden flood that is all of Genevieve Tolleson. To grasp fruitlessly against this limb is to provoke its fingers into tightening, but all the same the swordswoman's eyes have startled wide; the whole of her has slightly staggered. This is speech absolutely bypassed. This is emotion as communicated directly to the heart. It shakes her, stilling the outrage in her throat and gentling fingers that had wanted to crush, and Genny courses through her like a sudden, salty tide -

They'd promised each other oceans.

"Why do we not live on the coast?" he'd asked, and she gave the question more serious thought than he might have intended. A moment earlier he'd had her laughing with ridiculous melodrama and easy jest;
laughing so hard that she'd nearly spilled her wine, but the idea intrigued because the coast intrigued, and they spoke for a time then of endless seas and their careless violence. Of other sorts of violence, as well, and of a Governor's missives and an agent's dire commissions, and before they knew it, they were decided. A week upon sun-drenched shores, just he and her. A promise they sealed with wine: "To days to come," she'd laughed, "days filled with as many drops of sorrow as we are about to leave in our glasses," and he'd drunk his cup dry; flung it aside in a clatter and grinned as he leaned -

She stumbles back a step, this steel-wrought thing, all that furious conviction sundered beneath the rush of sudden earnestness. Stumbles a step, this thing which for an instant had longed to lose itself in beautiful violence, and the frown which she cannot shed is all at odds with the stunned-quiet features beneath.

She'd needed to know. Of course she had.
She'd needed to be certain. Of course there was no other way.
Gloria would have done the same, if she could. Count on that.

"No." Bloodless lips; her voice is flat and quiet. "Not without my permission. Never again."
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Re: The Wreckage Wrought in Rhaena's Wake

Postby Tolleson » Wed Oct 02, 2013 3:10 pm

((*Edited to include the end in case we end the thread here*))

It is pure reflex that has her grasping her throat over the red mark forming on pale flesh. Ruddy cheeks, an unhealthy pallor, clad in the darkest clothes in which surely dark things had been done, Genny stands tall, awkward and meek, but she still stands and still fights. In some ways, the very symbol of everything that was not Rhaena’s new Myrken.

For a long moment, making light of her desperate gasps for air, Genny's eyes simply follow the woman in retreat. Disarming as the former pie-maker may be, she nods to the request, but not a word regarding it is said; no confirmation, no dismissal, no explanation, or excuse. These reasons must be understood. Perhaps there were other ways, but without prolonging their affair, how and how to be absolutely certain. If it had been explained what needed to be done, or it was asked, the answer may well have been, ‘no,’ either because the Lady possessed her or because of the recent trauma she endured. Similarly, she may have agreed, but the lady Marshall would not be the first to have a link to Rhaena like Glenn Burnie, or even like Giuseppe. This one time, she could not afford to be courteous.

“T-t-though it may be m-meaningless t-to you, I am … I am very sorry.” It is with a sort of pity or sympathy she watches the sudden withdrawal. The onslaught of emotion was primal, unintentional, and likely overwhelming to anyone un-expecting the deluge. It had been the first way she had learned to communicate mentally and a lingering sign that she still had much to learn in balancing her physical self with the mental presence she projected.

In the assault and ensuing surprise, the small volume the Marshall so suspiciously eyed had been lost, once again, to the floor. With slow and careful movements Genny kneels to retrieve it, dusting it off as she stands.

“ What she did… it is, it is monstrous… t-t-there are so many affected, I… t-there must be a way for… us t-to undo t-this without… without losing anyone else.”

Her book is almost ceremoniously untied, it's tie wrapped around her wrist as it is freed from the confines that would have done little to protect it’s content. An offering, she held it from a single side with both hands, mindful that the Marshall may not be eager to touch her, even though the link had been formed and it wouldn't be necessary.

“You wanted t-to know, what I know,” in regards to all that happened with Rhaena and Glenn, and the book was by no means symbolic in gesture. It is an unattractive, well weathered thing, small and very clearly carried everywhere. Contained within its wrinkled and stained pages she would find, likewise, a list of names, many in fact. Some of the names were people to trust, others known to be under Rhaena’s influence. What was more, it included notes about the Golben, the Teahouse, the Inquistors, Berdini, her brother, and journal entries of events like the fires, of all the meetings with the Golben worker’s widow, Giuseppe, Calomel; pieces collected and letters written. It even held the short missive that brought her here, telling her to trust the Marshall.

By no means is it a massive text. With small and neat letters is it merely exhaustive in record keeping. And though she offers the journal freely, she lingers, willing to help the Marshall decode the mess. At least for the time. There are several likely possibilities as to where Giuseppe has gone, but even knowing that does not make it any more plausible for her to follow to save him or her employer, if he was even still alive. There were some things, that no matter how dire the situation became, no matter the necessity, were simply impossible. She would only make a further mess, slow them down or harm the progress in rescuing anyone. Perhaps it was not even possible. If things truly were as she had been slowly discovering, her place was here, ending with Rhaena.
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Re: The Wreckage Wrought in Rhaena's Wake

Postby Carnath-Emory » Thu Oct 03, 2013 5:27 am

This book, this slim little journal. Armoured in leather against curious eyes, page after hidden page filled with more words than a swordswoman has numbers for. It is an exhaustive history of Rhaena Olwak's Myrken. It is also a tribute to an Inquisitor's keen intelligence and unflagging, desperate devotion.

She will realise this. The Marshall cradled this book in one hand as the other flipped through its pages, had become a long silence as her eyes scanned the words - reading very little, plucking out only the words that were most familiar, the names that were most familiar of all. But when her eyes lift from this narrow journal, when their gaze sets upon Genny's own, the inquisitor will require no mentalism at all to discern the other woman's opinion.

There is no mistaking the look of eyes grown intent; grown solemn and stunned.

"This is - "

Genny's apology hangs bright and fragile in the air between them, and instinct would have her dash it apart with a glance. What forgiveness could there be for a violation which was unacceptable even before Rhaena Olwak transformed steel into fractured glass? But to stand here in this moment is to hang poised on the precipice of inevitabilities; this is an atmosphere grown heavy with the weight of years-ago crimes, and nevermind that it's only she who tastes their taint upon the air.

Her fist wound through Rhaena's hair. Burnished copper spilling loose across her fingers, because circumstance had
flung them together and the girl was helpless to prevent the swordswoman from seeking a
reckoning. It should have
mattered that Rhaena's was the most innocent of sins. It should have mattered that the girl hung terrified and weeping
from her hand. But in the moment that a soothing word might have solved so much, her condemnations were unrelenting,
and after that there was no hope for any of them at all.

It could be that again. That dreaming-time that was all too real; she could recreate it over again, here and now and with nothing but a glance, nothing but steel unleashed upon the woman who is far from the source of all her terrible anger. It would be the simplest thing in the world, the most satisfying. It would be a statement: Never Again.

She closes her eyes.
Draws a slow and shuddering breath.

"What she did was an atrocity. What you have done was the most - regretful - necessity." This is what it is to walk through flames: you emerge unscathed and still it burns. "What you have given me - "

Her eyes open.
Quiet. Intent.

" - is invaluable." And the tremour at her mouth's corner suggests a half-birthed smile. "Inquisitor Genny. You are a - remarkable asset. This is more than I knew existed. When must you have this back from me? There is so much." It will take time. If she were to drag 'Siris back into her service, if she were to have an architect read it to her, page after page; it will take time, and they have so little of it left. "This - " A name catches her attention, a name shouts from the page, and: "Berdini?" she whispers; barely breathes the word.

But what she finds next, slipped folded against the page, empties this consideration from her mind.

There is so little time left, but she makes time for this. Slow with her reading - functionally illiterate only years ago, and a resentful learner ever since - but proves simpler to read upon a page than to listen to ear to lips, and it's thrust towards Genny in demonstration now. This very short letter, in the hand of a woman who is a frowning uncertainty.

"This. What is the meaning of this?"
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Re: The Wreckage Wrought in Rhaena's Wake

Postby Tolleson » Thu Oct 03, 2013 8:06 am

As the Marshall flipped through the pages and history coalesced with memory; Genny’s arms lowered and she watched. Letting the moment breathe before she spoke again, “we… we will end t-this.“ The statement is not nearly as final or demanding the woman’s tone, not nearly as heavy with history. It neither addresses her statement or her concerns. Some promises simply couldn’t be made until it was all ended. It was blunt, truthful, full of loyalty, obligation, determination, and guilt. The words are plain and said with such conviction that she would, absolutely complete this task even if it would be the last thing she ever did. Even if it meant that end at Ariane’s hands.

She had apologized, but for what she needed with the Marshall, forgiveness wasn’t necessary. Any sort of mind intrusion was surely looked down upon now, but even Glenn had refused before. And it had been difficult; of course she knew how intrusive the act of peering into someone’s mind was. When Zilliah had done it to her the first time she had been furious. It was unacceptable, then and now. An unacceptable necessity. And she had no intention of doing it again, not without permission, and even then it was not a natural gift she’d learned to wield like a limb. It was a disparate piece of her mind, a side effect of compartmentalizing madness, a malformed scar.

As for devotion, that was it wasn’t it? It hadn’t started with Rhaena, Giuseppe, Elliot, the subtle, at first, pretty plague that had consumed Myrken whole. It had been about Glenn. It sill and always had been. The countless times he had been there for her and very literally saved her. And what had she done? Failed him. Regardless of how ‘remarkable,’ she was or ‘invaluable,’ her work would be it hadn’t done any good. Kept her alive perhaps, though whether or not that was good for anyone was yet to be seen.

Perhaps it was wisdom that had warned her against confronting Berdini directly. While meeting him may have been illuminating, it was a matter of purpose. To what end? The satisfaction of knowing? She had the answers she needed. Poking around would best serve to give away her position and so it had been the widow Millie, the wife of Horace, a recently and mysteriously deceased Golben worker. After a month’s of digging it have proved one of many unsolved mysteries, a case for condolences, that when offered were repaid with insight into Golben’s architect.

“Councilor Berdini?” She repeats, recognizing the entry as only the eyes of the author would. “He… I suspect he needed… little of Rhaena’s influence to comply with the Lady’s wishes… “ Even talking about him left a sour taste in her mouth, though it was a mystery not entirely solved. If Glenn had contracted his help, surely he could not have known about what was being built, the stripped memories, the lives lost.

“When t-the Gaol will not suffice… t-there is t-the pit, t-the Golben,” her tone is grim. “It is … very probable t-that Mister Burnie is t-t-there, the Story-t-t-teller." Her cool finger raised to the page, tracing some invisible line, recalling more than reading.

“T-the widow of his… his former employee, Horace… she said, he had… t-t-there were nightmares of a prison. T-though… I… I couldn’t imagine the Lady would send… t-the Governor there… knowing.” But then again, she very well could imagine it now, Rhaena had lost her grip on all things reasonable. And how could she not know?

“Best t-t-to stay away from him, Marshall,” she cautioned, certainly this was advice she herself had followed. Else, she too might be in that nightmare pit.
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Re: The Wreckage Wrought in Rhaena's Wake

Postby Carnath-Emory » Thu Oct 03, 2013 10:10 am

We will end this.

These should be the last words spoken between them. They should part ways now, each with her own firm nod, exchanging a gaze charged with conviction. The lady that she'd been would have insisted upon it, lost as she was to the waking dream of dramatic instinct, of fairytale rules and unquestioning Belief. The lady she'd been would have seized this moment in hand and made it so.

But the Marshall requires so much more.

"Very little," she's murmuring now - of Berdini, of the influence required to redirect a man's art towards atrocity. A distracted confirmation; for all that seeing his name had startled the question from her lips, her eyes are for this book, for the pages turning endlessly beneath her hand. She's missed so much. "He spoke against her, at Council." A glance. "To Agnieszka's delight, of course, but clearly he was not fallen beneath her hand. Not as - "

We, she'd very nearly said; it choked, unspoken.

" - so many were. Is she aware of this? The extent of his malice. All of these things. Agnieszka," she elaborates after a moment. "Does she know?" And spares a second glance, but only that: within the space of a breath her attention is for the book again, and for the second folded thing she's found amongst its pages. The name signed to its words startles a blink from her; the words themselves have her breathless.

And all the same, she very nearly drops the thing when Genny mentions Golben.

"Such a thing can be built," she begins, when she is properly able to speak again. "A pit, a gaol; a labyrinth," and how the idea had sickened her when first she'd begun to learn of it. It had been but a trickle of information, ideas delivered piecemeal to the ears of a woman who lacked the imagination to flesh them out into lurid truth. But perhaps in the end she'd hardly needed to: Golben was not her first encounter with labyrinthine gaols set deep into the earth. Cold places; dark and dank and helpless places, where a man may be chained and buried, and left forgotten to very slowly die -

That Rhaena Olwak would commit the Governor to such an end is inconceivable. But this might mean only that she has failed to fully comprehend the breadth of the Lady's cruelty, and what does it even matter in the end? For if he is there, if he is sunk into that place then she will very simply -

"Why has he written these things?" Words to fill the space during which she thinks, thinks; the hand is hungry, suddenly, to fling this book aside, to send this brilliant asset away in favour of a sword and a horse's reins. Away to that place, and she could be there within hours. "The Lord Inquisitor." Less than hours; they could be fast, fast like murderous winter winds. Because they'd lost that boy once, and to something worse than labyrinths. They'd lost him once, and every word she'd spoken on learning it had amounted simply to this: Never Again. With that for its context, what does Myrken really matter to her?

If she hadn't hesitated long enough to ask that question -
If she hadn't lifted her eyes and seen what dwelled in Genny's own -
If not for an architect's laughing defiance and tender hurt, if not for the sorrow Catch had bled over their hands and Cherny's gentle, insistent efforts; if not for those poor fools dancing themselves to madness in the gardens twenty feet from here and a Militia that requires direction and deserves all the answers she can give -

There is nothing in her eyes to warn of the moment in which she realises. There is only the sudden lurch of her body and the fist which it drives into the wall.
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Re: The Wreckage Wrought in Rhaena's Wake

Postby Tolleson » Thu Oct 03, 2013 12:11 pm

How readily Genny would leave, eager to be done with the matter. Her task complete with the information in capable hands; she was ready to have Myrken returned to what it was. It hadn’t been perfect, of course, less moral, less clean, less frilly or kind. But it had been itself. It had been a refuge for the broken, a place like no other in the world. So, she cannot part now, she stands her ground. Even knowing she could trust Ariane with the book, even if that was all she could offer, there was an unflagging responsibility that wouldn’t let her leave.

“From what I gather, everyone t-that is… affected, is affected differently… I imagine, rather… I t-think it is purely on how best she sees you… everyone fit in t-to her … plans… her… idea of what Myrkentown ought t-to be?” Another clear indication of how highly she thought of herself, assuming, perhaps wrongly, that she had either been lucky or ignored because there was no place for her.

Not that the Marshall would likely know how caustic and distant the relationship with Tennant, her brother, had become. But even then, Genny had known, had heard about his pursuit of Catch, the disfigured body that was left for Rhaena. He hadn’t been changed as Elliot had, but he was no longer familiar to her. Elliot had a specific purpose, as did her brother, as would Agnie and all the others.

“Agnieszka,” there is a sigh that spills out and pools thickly around the woman’s name.

They had never been friends, Genny’s Thessilane roots a point of constant contention, but so dire were the times that the two had been thrust together. “She… I wrote t-to the Inquisitor… Aleksei River, some several days into Mister Burnie’s disappearance.” It really didn’t need to be said what hogwash she thought the official story was, how likely it would be for Glenn to be on some mission to Thessilane or Razasan.

With each word her speech would become faster. Her breathing more impassioned as she accelerated into the rant about what she knew, about how she had lost Agnie to Rhaena as well. They had planned to confront her, together, to end the matter. But time had run out then and ran now for those who lingered and clung to their minds, defenseless.

“I t-told them both all I knew at the t-time… but t-this, this I did not know t-then. Perhaps she does. T-though…” her frantic tizzy slows, guilt straining her expression as her hand drops from the book and she shakes her head. “she hasn’t t-the mind now to care. She… we had met and were t-to meet again after her visit t-to the pit, and t-then, she never came … “


It does not take a mentalist or whatever she had become to see the gears turning within the Marshall’s head. Though, it had helped to know some history, heave read what few files there were, ever the apprentice of Glenn, she hadn't come entirely unprepared. Though with so little warning, Genny flinches against the sudden violence that propels the woman’s fist.

What follows is a mouse-like voice, “Giuseppe?” Not the Man in Black or White, nor the Lord High Inquisitor, she speaks his name as a friend.

“I… he… t-there is something more, I suspect,” idle speculation, “perhaps Rhaena is not t-to be blamed entirely, …he doesn’t sleep, or eat, he is different but his mind, there is much unchanged,” and of that she is certain.

He had always been kind to Genny, even if he wouldn’t or couldn’t say it, even when his clothes had changed. She wore his old clothes now, offered out of kindness and not any amorous relations; after a declaration that he would never need the Black again. That itself was another indication, in retrospect, of the finality he anticipated from his present actions. Which lead to even further questions, why did he feel his end was near? Had he gone now to meet it?
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Re: The Wreckage Wrought in Rhaena's Wake

Postby Carnath-Emory » Thu Oct 03, 2013 1:20 pm

She'd listened. As the girl spoke, as she rifled through pages teeming with Genny's thoughts, the swordswoman had listened. Words becoming phrases, phrases cascading into statements; Ariane Emory may be the single soul in all of Myrken Wood who is benefited by the inquisitor's hesitant stammer. Words cannot overwhelm when they hesitate from one moment to the next.

"She didn't 'see' - you," she'd murmured very early into this, with a speculative narrowing of pale grey eyes. An asset, she'd said long ago. An asset and a clever one, to have hidden so much for so long. But the moment does not allow for such words; her mind does not, and of all Myrken, Genny might be best positioned to understand this. The things she'd glimpsed, in that lightning-swift merger of minds; the things she'd immediately known.

But only that. Only that, as one word tumbles haltingly into the next: as Agnieszka becomes Rhaena-swain - had the very breath stilled in a swordswoman's throat? As a Governor absent became a Governor stolen; as the girl gathers momentum and there's no mistaking it then, the weight that must have been crushing her all this time: the weight of whole months spent as the sole sane historian in a province gone increasingly mad.

Not a word. Not one, the realisation - not of what she must do, but what it would cost - launched her fist against the wall, and again, and then again until the knuckles are stinging raw, and she has left a girl flinching who'd deserved far better by far. Even knowing this, she pauses here. With her hand flattened to the stone and narrow shoulders that do not sag, even when it shivers through her like exhaustion.

"He - "

Pauses, because the word had felt ashen and she hated the sound of it. Because it seemed to herald ignorance and it seemed to be the beginning of so much more: things that were unsane, things that had ceased in particular ways to matter, burned away upon sunlit stairs beneath the everywhere scent of summer flowers. Lost beneath the tender weight of a thousand rushing recollections, but they were things that were hers all the same, hers as surely as any other part of this, and for that alone mattered as surely as the breath in her lungs. She might have said

he promised me moonlight

but is this is not so much madness, as an artifact of the lady-thing that once she'd been. A fever dream half-recalled and as elusive as oil on glass, and when the soft, soft earnestness of Genevieve Tolleson describess the man as 'unchanged'

my lady, we have been swept up in this belief -

half-formed suspicion swells slow through her nerves, crystalising into an understanding that she does not want; that she accepts because by her very own reluctance she cannot avoid it. Some sound escapes her, soft and stunted; a chill crawls silently across her skin, and she does not speak until she can trust her voice to be steady; says not a word until she can trust it will not be a shout, careless steel swiftly following. None of this is Genny's fault. It would be criminal to allow her to pay the consequences for it.

"Tell me where he has gone. And then, sera, it is time that we part ways."
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Re: The Wreckage Wrought in Rhaena's Wake

Postby Tolleson » Thu Oct 03, 2013 2:14 pm

Oh yes, the Agnie they knew was gone, or had the lady Marshall really believed that the onslaught of new laws regarding lace and cake was truly Agnie? Genny may have known sooner, a week or two at most, but the signs of her change were the only thing that even mimicked her former self; loud and garish.

And as for the man better suited to be a mercenary than an Inquisitor, High or otherwise, there is an ever so subtle lift in her brow, gauging the reaction. He was changed and he wasn’t, it was so very difficult to explain how Rhaena still controlled him, still guided his actions, but how so much of himself remained. There was some minor hint of it in the letter he had sent, he wanted Genny to tell Ariane that he had tried his best.

Silent for a time, she will take a deep breath, allowing everything to sink in, allowing the calm to wash over herself. But the stillness lingers, perhaps even longer than it should. The electricity that animated the Marshall to further violence, the stunted passion behind her demanding tone, is left to dissipate in the air. It must, because the explanation she has is surely not what the lady Marshall will want to hear. And brave as she might be, her face did intend to be wall for Ariane’s fists.

“I… I… Would t-that I could, but I…” Though, she did know or at least have an inclination where it was he went. She had even half a mind to follow him herself. But was that really the right choice for either of them? Was she really the one who ought to decide that? Perhaps the key to stopping Rhaena lay in the depths of the pit as well. She might then find Glenn and set to rest the bones of poor Horace.

Her sigh now is substantially different, it is far more doubtful, the sort of long, deep breath that precedes a great effort. Her eyes glancing to the inquiring woman who seems entirely capable of beating out of her all of the information she required.

“I...” She tried again to speak, to continue her previous and unfinished phrase.

“… Do you know him… …well?” Her eyes might have looked to her pensive and mischievous if she had the mind or even the heart for it. But with a matter of such importance to her company there was an economy of expression.

“If I… I… could show you…” her words trailed off, implying that within some memory her past interaction he might have alluded to where he had gone. What he meant by ending things and what or whom he intended to end. She had met him on several occasions in the last several months, yet she hardly knew him, not as Ariane would, or perhaps, did.
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Re: The Wreckage Wrought in Rhaena's Wake

Postby Carnath-Emory » Thu Oct 03, 2013 3:07 pm

For how long had she sequestered herself away from Myrken, the lady-thing that she'd been? To venture into the local tavern was to be met by an instant's explosive violence, since which she'd spurned it utterly. The Council meeting which Agnieszka convened had burned her: faced with betrayal on one side and bewildering scorn on the other, she'd disdained her fellow Councilors' company since. Darkenhold had become her home and her prison-cell, not by necessity but choice: she had become the lady in the tower, unattainable and remote; the gentle gardener, quiet amongst her flowerbeds and her hazy dreams.

One day, a man came bleeding to her gates, and despite all her fear she could not turn him away.
His words were incendiary. His laughing defiance was a revolution.
A thousand distant recollections came loose in her mind, and everything began to come apart.



Perhaps, hours from now, the swordswoman will begin realise how strange she must have seemed to Inquisitor Tolleson. How ill-informed, how thoughtless. Perhaps, at that distance, the realisation will matter. But in this moment she is the consequence of her own half-birthed suspicions, her own regret and sickly sorrow; her own guilt, and what room do such things leave for anything else? So little, even when she meets the Inquisitor's eyes again; when she hears the girl's first question, hardly any at all.

"Yes," she answers, and hesitates almost immediately; a sudden contradiction hovers at her lips. Perhaps because she wants it to. Perhaps because the inquisitor's question involves a matter of Belief, and such matters do not come naturally to her at all. Perhaps, in the end, only because wracking guilt and terrible anger would have her play the liar, and how she fleetingly wishes it could be so; that she could deceive even herself. No. The things he'd said, after all. The things that both of them had said -

"Yes," she repeats after that hesitant quiet, and cannot bring herself to elaborate further. It swiftly ceases to be a possibility, in any case, when Genevieve Tolleson suggests the unthinkable and has the swordswoman openly staring all over again. Her reluctance is clear; her anger, no less-so, for she is a stiff-limbed stride across the breadth of this corridor passage, hands restrained carefully at her sides. She is a jerking twist of the narrow body, a hand raking back through the dark of her hair; clutching there as she frowns tight-lipped at the wall. The mouth hesitates at the edge of abrupt words; swallows them back; a breath falters and dies in her throat -

"Do it." This sidelong glance, as sudden and quiet as her assent had been. "Just do it."
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Re: The Wreckage Wrought in Rhaena's Wake

Postby Tolleson » Thu Oct 03, 2013 3:41 pm

Isolation was no stranger to Genny either, but hers was less of a physical isolation. After all, she bore the knowledge of certain things around her, things others wanted or needed to know and stayed her hand when every piece of her brain screamed to intervene.

Cocking her head, ever so slightly to the side she listened to the first and the second confirmation. But even after the third, more demanding request she is still a moment. Her pause is most certainly considering how wise the decision is, last time she had been very nearly strangled. Gods forbid the Marshall actually retrieve her weapon.

Trepidation marks the first slow step, each that follows after more certain until she is no more than a forearm’s length away. This thing, this was not necessary, it would prove nothing and it would only test the new-found stability of the woman’s mind.

“Are… if you’re certain.” With a voice so meek, what might have followed was a small plea that the woman not unleash hell or harm her.

In one hand Ariane held the book, so it is to the other that her long limb reaches with an upturned palm held out. This was her choice, she would have to take her hand this time. The connection now is more for her own benefit than out of necessity.

“You… I won’t see your t-thoughts, Marshall, I won’t hurt you,” not that she could, or that she had ever tried. But it was a promise meant to comfort her, considering all that had been endured.
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Re: The Wreckage Wrought in Rhaena's Wake

Postby Carnath-Emory » Fri Oct 04, 2013 2:33 am

It's as well that Genny hesitates, that she carefully considers. Under different circumstances, the swordswoman would never have accepted; would never have forgiven the inquisitor for offering. But in this hour there is a hand extended, however cautiously, and the swordswoman to which it is offered has not answered its presence with steel.

This is what Myrken has come to.

"My skin will start to blacken, as you begin." Quietly, now. A measured undertone as Genny approaches, and what she describes is nothing the inquisitor hadn't already learned; this time, though, she will proceed forewarned. In this one aspect they are alike, these women: each with their quiet determination to make the other prepared for what is to come.

"It is only a - reacting, to your art." An offered hand; her own then, poised inches short of touch. Hairline scars mark narrow fingers, knuckles angrily bruised. "It will do you no harm." Her eyes lift, hold the girl beneath their even gaze. "I'm certain. There is nothing I care for that is not imperiled. A boy that I promised - " Promised; it never mattered that it was only to herself. A shake of her head then, short and sharp. "No more of this. Not one hour more." A slow and quieting breath -

And her palm, rested lightly upon Genny's own.
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Re: The Wreckage Wrought in Rhaena's Wake

Postby Tolleson » Fri Oct 04, 2013 10:23 am

This was what Myrken has come to. Smiles hardly seem appropriate, but there, at the corner of her mouth there is a small pull. A soft breath. She is cautious and curious about the skin thing, but Ariane was one of those names written on a file with pages missing, surely locked away in some secret stash of Glenn Burnie’s if not committed to memory and burned.

Poor circulation, the result of personal neglect and sleep deprivation, has left her hands cool. Her touch as soft, attentive and tender as a lover’s as she wraps her fingers around the hand she takes.

There is a pause as breathes deeply and gently squeezes the hand now in her possession. But then she stands still and her eyes blink. Neither her appearance nor any sensation will change, the corridor is just as it was in every way.

The smell, the light, the very solidity of the wall that bore whatever mark Ariane had left. It was as if they still remained planted in the physical space, as if they’d never gone anywhere mental or physical. The only discernable change will be at the corner’s of her vision, the rippling reality that shifted with movement, like the distorted reflection over the Silver Lake. And Genny, she is entirely the same, except for her hair, her red hair appeared as actual flames, defying all physics and burning no warmer than the air itself.

What followed then was a voice, it was entirely Genny’s though it would surround them both, while the lips of flame haired woman were still.

‘I cannot, nor would I, force you anywhere Ariane. Simply let free my hand if at any time you wish to leave,’ her name had been used as if it were the most natural thing in the world, as if they were friends. After all, what closer bond was there?

Unless she let go, Genny would pull her along. Guided back down the cooridor for only a meager few steps until they stop at one of the many closed doors that line the hall. As if the world were entirely solid, it’s physicality excisting in real space, Genny reached her other hand to the knob and turned it to open the door.

Before them was a dark room that slowly took shape, it’s transition gradual, intentional efforts to keep from startling the visitor now inside her mind. They would cross the threshold into a space that made little architectural sense, where one moment they were in Darkenhold and the next they stood just inside the former Govenor’s office. The over-plush chair a clear sign that the memory is from Giuseppe’s reign over the Inquisitors.

That chair is remembered with exacting detail for the special attention it had been paid, other areas of the environment however are hazy, crudely reproduced sections and swatches of blurry color. The mis-remembered fragments of unimportant detail.

The scene is soon populated with Giuseppe, seen from Genny’s point of view, the transaction of words and gestures replayed. It had been the memory of a specific incident, the last she had seen him in person. The morning she had reported Niall’s murder.

For Genny there had been a different focus, and though she will be able to keep much of the remembered emotion at bay it is not entirely successful. Moments of worry, surprise, suspicion, they are subtle but potent feelings that seep into the fabric of the memory and dye the whole of it. She couldn’t help feeling afraid or suspicious, frightened when he had thrown the familiar black garb her way. Or curious when the Man in White so wrongly assumed it had been Elliot's fault and revealed Niall had been his 'target' for months. Still, there is much the Marhsall might see. How he had delayed, how he might be linked with Rhaena mentally but still spoke and acted of his own volition. Perhaps she even saw something more.
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Re: The Wreckage Wrought in Rhaena's Wake

Postby Carnath-Emory » Fri Oct 04, 2013 11:54 am

It will be like this: two girls walking hand-in-hand down a corridor that seems too ordinary for dreams. It will be words communicated in a manner that bypasses the clumsiness of speech; an inquisitor wreathed in gentle flame, and a swordswoman whose runes vanished in the moment that they sank into this state and gazed through an open door.

It is not unlike viewing the remembrances enscribed into von Drakken's dreamcatcher: an arcane construction which earned its name by replicating its owner's sleeping fancies for the entertainment of his waking hours. For far more than entertainment, too, as it happened - years ago, when half of Myrken fell into a lasting sleep and woke with blood on its hands and an appetite for more. But perhaps her use of the thing had prepared her for this moment, in some small way; perhaps it eases the transition between Darkenhold-that-is and Inquisitory-that-was, so that a swordswoman who loathes such talents as Genny's nonetheless stands quietly enough as the girl transforms their world.

That lasts until the moment this world becomes populated. The Lord Inquisitor's chair, occupied by the lord inquisitor himself; Genevieve Tolleson, arriving in a state of shocking disrepair. They materialise; they speak; it is a moment enfolded in closed doors and quieted tones, it is in every way theirs and should be no-one else's at all; the swordswoman flinches, appalled -

But her hand does not loosen from Genny's own.

Having asked. Having required this. Four years ago she'd made a very similar request of a very terrified girl: smaller than Genny, copper-haired and flinching. Four years ago she'd framed it as a demand, and when Rhaena Olwak complied, she unleashed her outrage upon her with words that threatened to become bloodshed. "The answer is No," she'd breathed, that cold, cold day."When someone demands an atrocity of you - me, anyone - the answer is No - "

Not this time.
Not this girl.

She watches steadily - hating it, needing it; watches as a man's essential character asserts itself in a moment's reminiscence; as an instant's quiet surprise gives way to quieter musing, when young Cherny comes to play a role in what they discuss. Comprehending this matter of dragons and knights does not restrain her fingers from tightening down hard upon Genny's hand, but the moment passes soon enough; becomes something else entirely when a southern's dark eyes grow distracted, remote -

Had she ever -
Had she ever seen anything like that happen before? To this man, this man with his particular instincts and his well-honed inclinations; would it even have been conceivable if she hadn't seen it with her own ephemeral eyes? But what's important is not precisely that it happens, but that it happens so briefly: this is no lasting influence, this is no addled thing enslaved to a miles-away Trader and all her mad designs. And she must struggle to retain her grasp upon this sudden certainty, must struggle her way through the clinging ambience of Genny's fear, of her potent suspicion and plain unease, and does it not only echo her own but magnify it?

But a door begins to close

My thanks for everything, of course, the wine least of all.
and it is the end of their conversation. No. As Genny had said, it is the end of everything.

I do not know how not to live with my choices, bella.
She lifts her head, in these final moments. Lifts her head, filled with a familiar sense of Farewell, lifts eyes grown quiet with inevitabilities. For a single, fleeting instant glimpses a Lord Inquisitor wreathed in the lurid flame of Genevieve's hair -

The problem is not Myrken, Ariane Emory.
The problem is you.

and the world is a swarm of acrid woodsmoke, of blood and sudden flames; the bond between them lapses, because the swordswoman has staggered free of it. A lifetime's devotion to equilibrium asserts itself through the vertigo of Then and Now: instinct, written bone-deep into the flesh and muscle of her, and the lurching shock of her regathers itself, straightening where it had stumbled. But with a hand clasped to the scar that bisects her cheek from mouth to hairline; with eyes that for an instant cannot hide the sudden shock of a months-long betrayal.

"Where has he gone."

And let it be so very, very far.
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Re: The Wreckage Wrought in Rhaena's Wake

Postby Tolleson » Sat Oct 05, 2013 9:34 am

Not that the hall likely had any reliable method to measure the passage of time. But the scene in the mental projection would have felt as it lasted exactly as it had when it originally took place, half of an hour at most, a quarter at least. Outside of this memory, however, where Genny’s hair was plain and her pallor sickly, it was only the span of a breath.

Genny had neither demanded the link nor was she terrified, maybe naively so. Perhaps there had been a time, but any emotion that lingered now were shadows of what once was. Remembered suspicion perhaps, in watching Giuseppe be summoned mentally by the mindwitch, without so much as a flinch, as if he were an extension of her. But he had called Elliot, ‘Brown,’ a name that Rhaena had stripped from him. She found meaning in these small things, so too then might Ariane.

The hand is released, but Genny’s hold on the Marshall’s mind did not break away as clean. It would not have allowed her to be thrust violently back to reality, not if she could help it. Ever understanding, it had been the whole purpose of her gentle transition, creating the corridor, a realistic environment, a familiar space from which they could depart into the recess of memory. Surely there were more efficient ways, more abrasive, less kind. Even though she tries, pieces of Genny were sucked back into the woman’s mind as instinctual striving for equilibrium yanks her back.

There was so much more to be done, so much more Ariane needed to understand. And this book, helpful as it could potentially be, it would take time. And even in reading, it’s understanding would never be as holistic as the author who wrote it. But to argue with the decision to leave, when it was a matter of their own thoughts, let alone when it was a person who could very well kill her for the intrusion; well, it was a tricky matter. Perhaps it is a risk worth taking.

Staggering the Marshall might not even notice the several moments Genny lingered, muscles frozen in a half sleep, her eyes open, distant and dull. They watched vaguely, with no presence of mild, hollow green with unfocused pupils that followed motion more than they stared with any thought behind them.

For as many answers, even or perhaps, especially, unwanted ones; the scene might pose just as many new questions. One of which she asked now.

When Genny wakes from the trance she reels, stumbling backward, caught by the wall and coughing. It is as if their bond were sticky and when pulled so forcefully apart some aspect of the mental momentum transferred into her waking state. Unable to answer immediately as the break, the blood, the flames were surely there for her too, she covers her mouth to keep from vomiting. The wall is practically holding her upright.

“You… you know as well… as much as I,” her breath began to slow to a regular pace, the coughs subsiding.

“Without certainty… I… I imagine… I wager he… he goes t-to his master… either the Lady or Mister Burnie,” and perhaps in some way Ariane knew this too or could feel the truth of it. Glenn was likely in the Golben, she had told Calomel as much, learned as much, heard whispers of as much. For the Marshall it might be some tidbit of knowledge, a piece of trivia long forgotten and only resurfaced when the right phrase is mentioned. Perhaps it is just a sensation akin to recalling an old song, a spark of some half remembered thing. It is information that may well have been gathered from the book, now in her possession, a thread of a memory. It was very possible Genny had done nothing in the moments between, or everything.

Her voice then changes from speculative to more critical, perhaps she pushed her luck with the Marshall's patience. The tone that follows was as determined as it had been before. There was not echo of the patience and kindness that her mind had shown, in it's inflection she seems to say, 'if you do not end this, I will.'

“You… t-this choice is yours Marshall… you… he t-t-trusted you t-to end t-this… save t-them… perhaps make him… himself again.” after all, she had returned to more-or-less herself. Even if Giuseppe was an entirely different matter, her intervention might save him, somehow.
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Re: The Wreckage Wrought in Rhaena's Wake

Postby Carnath-Emory » Tue Oct 08, 2013 8:34 am

An elastic moment: time slips backwards and forwards and sideways through them, muddling the demarcation between one woman's mind and the other's. The Marshall might have staggered, unsteady with the wreching shock of abrupt realisation - betrayal; its scope burns the breath from her lungs - but not the Inquisitor. Frailer of the pair though she might be, Genevieve Tolleson stands distant and remote and firm upon her feet until the bond between their minds begins to fail

You are spectacular. You are silver flame. You are a monster rampant, and your restraint - the collar upon your throat - is the words
that he himself had abandoned in the end. The man who means to murder you has demonstrated himself as something more than
mindless malice, and this alone is a rarity that you cannot ignore. For all that there's a part of you which loves to kill, the idea of
destroying this person, the idea that he might actually die, gone forever beneath an instant's sudden steel -

Unacceptable.

Stop, you breathe: an instant's sound between your steel on his skin and his hand on a knife. You are a hundred realisations, coursing quick
like wildfire. The way his hand will move. The trajectory its angle betrays. The world is rushing details of motion and opportunity and bloody
intent, miniscule details sharpening into crystalline relief. His eyes are a predator's feral passion, his desperation as clear as his intent;
wine-bottles shatter into explosive flame and this is how you are going to die, Genevieve Tolleson: with half your face torn free of the
bones beneath, simmered in your cage of steel by the man you could not bring yourself to kill.

You mumble something, something that can't begin to matter. Four inches of steel drag through the meat and muscle of your shoulder: the
rush of blood is alarming, eager and hot. Wrenching pain like the end of the world. Furious - the stupidity of this, of his insistence; the
waste of it all - you send your steel flooding for his throat after all. To terrify, because your anger is large as the world. To eclipse. You are
both going to die here. In blood and flames and insupportable pain. You are both going to die here, for everything and for nothing and

Genny breaks staggeringly free; there is no shame in this, so little chance that a Marshall
seized in an unraveling deceit had even begun to notice. It had been so difficult to puzzle out the Inquisitor's place in her world, when first the Lady's grip had begun to loosen. Like oil on glass, she'd described those attempts, just days ago - to the architect that she'd shunned for weeks. Slippery, she'd said, and I don't even want to, she'd insisted when the frustration began to overwhelm, a days-long malady that reached its conclusion in the moment that Genny reached into her mind.

"To the Governor," she murmurs, soft through tangled thoughts; if only her glance were as gentle as the words had been. "He goes to the Governor." The Governor, sunk into the labyrinth which is Golben. She could be there within the hour, could make it faster even than that. If. If only.

The moment wants. Bodies through windows, steel through flesh and nerve. The hand is a white-knuckled clench, suspended low by her side. "Should he approach her again, it will not be with kindly intent -"

moonlight and kindling and pirate queens
and she disagreed because she could never
she just couldn't

she could never Believe

She shakes it away with a hard tilt of her head, and: "What he trusted," she murmurs - quietly now, quietly. "Was that I would be what I have always been. And that I would recall what it is that I do best."
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