The Night of the Ball: Old Times

The Night of the Ball: Old Times

Postby Glenn » Sat Jun 29, 2013 1:33 pm

Of all Glenn Burnie's children, he loved the Inquisitory the most. It was not impossible to fake paperwork. It was not impossible to change paperwork. It was still difficult though, especially given the sheer amount that the institution processed. It meant that within a matter of minutes storming through his building's door, the events of the last few weeks unfolded before him. One needed to be a mapmaker to navigate it, perhaps. Thankfully, Burnie was up to the task. The need was great. His will was strong. Results were immediate.

An hour later he found himself across town in a dark alley. It was, truly, the only place to have a meeting like this. The Man in Black was waiting for him. "You need something, I take it." It had been close to two years since the two men had said even one word to each other. "You'll allow me to bask for a minute or two, Burnie?" He leaned against the wall of the alley, his own body seeming to force the darkness into this particular corner, to push it together until it became denser, more accented.

"Bask, yes," the governor's words were terse, "but not play your games. We haven't time."

Giuseppe laughed. It was a rough bark. He had been restored through the very finest tales Ariane Emory had to offer but a few days ago but even that was already slipping away. He was near the end. "Why should I help you? You abandoned me, left me to die."

Burnie rolled his eyes impatiently. "Better if you did; you know that as well as I do. You crossed a line. You made your own fate."

"There are no lines. You understood that, Burnie. It's why we worked so well together. There is just the goal. There is just the need." It wasn't quite a sneer but it was still dark and dank, unpleasant.

The younger man shook his head in response. "There's always some line. Looking out forever, seeing no line that you wouldn't cross. That's madness."

The laugh returned, this time with more of a cough than a bark. "Then you were mad, and now..." He started, only to be cut off. Even as the Governor spoke over him, the man in black smiled.

"And now she is. You well know it." Burnie wasn't smiling.

Giuseppe knew so much about this. "She can't touch me. She would have if she could," for he knew Burnie would know about his averted attempt on Wynsee's life. Oh the Man in Black knew all about Rhaena Olwak's madness and the causes thereof, the special push that had taken her to a wonderful, magical place where one could simply take whatever she wanted and remake the world in her image, but he'd say nothing at all. Let Glenn Burnie drown in his own ignorance for once. Let his actions be limited by the limitations of his knowledge. "You're sure you don't like this? You're sure I don't?"

Glenn's headache was severe. He had been feeling more and more over the last many months, over the last year and a half; one of those things was the sort of physical pain that he could have just skirted past before. "You care about people having choice as much as I do."

This time there was no laugh, just that gaunt smile."There's no point in living if you're not alive, no? The stories are all so dull if the endings are predetermined." It lingered upon his face like a boil. "A man must ask though, yes? What is in this for me? I look for neither redemption nor absolution. My ideals are overcome by my hunger, you see?"

"I see," he clenched his eyes, but did not give Giuseppe the privilege of seeing him rub at them in pain. Upon the word absolution, he'd opened them again to stare the man down. "I also see that you're dying. You're leaking and you were fine not long ago, close to fine at least. There are reports from only a few days back. You're not hard to miss, Giuseppe. You can't hold back death with bandages." This had the sound of a Glenn Burnie speech about to happen. The Southerner knew it well. "You can't fix yourself, but I'll be able to. It's what I do. Come back in from the dark and we'll find a solution. We'll..."

There was the bitter laugh again, a way to break that speech straight down the middle. "And all I have to do is what? Help you enslave your woman? What a noble choice I have, as always. I save my life by helping to cow a lady in skirts. I could have done just that by killing Gloria Wynsee, you know. I did not."

Now it was Glenn's turn to smile, not laugh but to smile. It was a wane, tired expression at best. "That was the wrong thing. This is the right one."

"That was a sure thing, Burnie." He snapped back, almost snarling, not regretting his mercy necessarily, but instead the hunger and desperation it had ensured.

"As am I," said as the smile threatened to become a grin. "I can fix her. She's powerful, but my will is stronger and I have access to everything that she is. We're one, she and I, and it's time to make her whole again, once and for all. I just need you to watch my back and to clear the way for me. As you yourself said, she can't touch you."

Oh, how he wished for a wineglass to raise here, for a toast and a stare where they could take each other's mettle one last time. Instead, all he could offer was a slow, tormented nod. "My arm is, how do you say, twisted, yes? Come along, Burnie. We've got another bloodless atrocity ahead of us, another urn to desecrate, and might i say, old friend, that she is the prettiest one of them all."

With a bemused grunt the Governor nodded back and the two men started out of the darkness and back towards town, the man that Myrken needed walking beside the man that Myrken deserved.
Glenn
Co-Founder
 
Posts: 3218
Joined: Fri Jul 06, 2007 4:00 am

Return to Myrkentown



Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 10 guests

cron