Come to Call.

[Varian]

The scarred, young girl had returned to the tavern. Those there that were concerned for her had taken her in again, sought to protect her from some unknown threat, some manipulative creature that she'd named, that she now called her father. They had no way of knowing what had transpired between the girl and the vampire. They had no way of knowing that the girl called out to him, without words, like a beacon in the night. It was that beacon that led him back to the Broken Dagger and, more specifically, to a room in its upper level.

As he so often did, he made his visit in the darkness. His presence was kept discrete from the sparse crowd that was still gathered, so late. In cloak and cowl, he drifted like an apparition through the parlor and made his way to the sleeping quarters above. His steps were silent and he did not knock upon the door. Instead, he simply stood beyond the fragile barricade.

A debilitating pressure began to grow around him, like that of the air before a devastating storm. His presence could be felt within the room, as if it were laden with iron. The oppressive weight was accompanied the scent of disturbed earth, crushed lilac and the acrid, metallic sting of blood wet the air. Despite all of this, the silhouette in the hall was slight and ghost-like, albeit unfathomably black.

Whether Dameena had ventured so far from him on her own, or if she had been coerced to do so, it no longer mattered. The woman beyond the door had taken something that belonged to him and Varian had come to collect.

[Rance]

On her bedstand, the candle guttered. At first, she thought an errant wind -- some ambient whisper of autumn stealing in from the night -- had caught the lip of flame, tugged and twisted it, but the lone shard of light sagged and swayed on the wick like a drunkard teetering home.

She folded aside the coverlet and drew herself up to sit. Forefinger and thumb squeezed against her brow, applying pressure to the ridge of her nose. A smell. Like the overturned earth when the pups had been buried. Immodestly seeking out the source, she drew her patched gownsleeve across across her lips. There, the only aroma was that of her own sulfurous sweat, a spoor that clung to every cloth she wore. No, not that... Her tongue darted against the back of her broken teeth. Something else. Something else...

The bed moaned underneath her pregnant weight as she clambered to her bare feet. That was when the miasma struck her: a hard, unrelenting vapor, simultaneously vile and peculiar and lovely, an aspersion to her senses. Clumsy fingers darted out for the porcelain chamber-pot at the bedside, fearing she might be ill.

Instinctive, sudden, as if the whole world had tilted on an axis to drag everything within the room toward the portal, her eyes flicked up to the doorknob.

(Just a passing phantom in the night, Gloria, or a wind gone wrong. Or maybe that dullard laundress three rooms down stumbling her way to bed after a hard night stealing happiness from a bottle.

You're talking to shadows, that's all. You're letting your mind spin fables.)

"Yes?" she asked the door.

[Varian]

The cold leaked in from the gap beneath the door. It infiltrated the humid warmth within, striving to creep over the woman's feet and eagerly up her legs. Outside, autumn was still struggling to retain its grasp of Myrken, but that chill breath was from some deep, frigid winter and it was unrelenting.

At first, the phantasm in the hall was still and silent as the grave and, in further response to Gloria's quiet question the hefty presence increased in another, nauseating wave. This time, it quickly receded, replaced by a whisper in reply. The voice had an echo of her own, as if it borrowed the sound and recycled it, but twisted it enough that she might discern Varian's as well, on a subtle level.

"The child." At first, it may have been near unintelligible. It was too loud, lisping in her ears, as if the thing were standing just over her shoulder. The elaboration was more controlled, more pronounced, more demanding. "I've come for the child."

Another uncomfortable swell in the weight of the world around the two of them. It was a superficial assault, one that could likely do Gloria no other harm than stir mild discomfort, but the sum of its parts made the sense of danger seem all too real.

[Rance]

I've come for the child.

Confusion and misdirection had power enough to bend the words of another to conform to the dormant fears in an already-fragile mind. When those came ebbing through the wooden barrier -- was that her voice reflected back at her like a blurry, distorted image in a broken mirror? -- she teetered forward, spurning the assault of sickness and nausea that crawled through her, slithered up along the leathery skin of her legs, froze her spine, and caused the tha-thum, tha-thum, tha-thum of her heartbeat to scream against the insides of her ears.

Books cascaded off the nightstand. The drawer snapped open. Her sweating hand found the worn handle of her longknife. The scabbard clapped to the floor.

(Why not the baton? Why not the artifact Bern gave you?)

She slinked -- defying every throbbing, snarling sense -- toward the door and flattened herself against the wall just beside the jamb, her lone hand clutching the unsheathed dagger between the crease of her bosom. Underneath the pommel, her swollen belly rose and fell with each gasp.

"My child," she whispered, her faint voice offering tremulous warning, "is mine alone. Whether you're placing tricks upon me or -- or you've come with foul intent, I promise you this:

"You will need to carve her out of my body before you may call her yours."

(Catch is a being of great purpose and danger; you carry a jewel, Gloria Wynsee, that you always imagined men might shed blood over.)

With knees quaking and her cheek pressed against the wall, she rolled her eyes toward the door.

Waiting.

[Varian]

Whispered words, carefully chosen and perhaps purposefully cryptic.

It came again, this time tinged with a tone of something else.. What? Amusement? Had it found enjoyment in her confusion? In her defensiveness? In her bravery?

"My child. The girl. You need only release her to me. You needn't come to harm."

It was a simple request, simply fulfilled.

The voice was far more precise, even reasonable in its explanation. *Open the door.* The inky darkness around her seemed to utter. *Open the door. Invite me in.* It was persistent, but only delicately suggestive. A willowy, insubstantial hand pressed against the wall where, on the opposite side, she now pressed her body. If her constitution wavered, she might feel that icy touch offered in mocking reassurance.

"Gloria." The phantom pryed. "She belongs with me now. There is nothing for her here. This is not your burden. You cannot care for her." More of the same, the voice continued on, trailing off into the ambient noise of room again. All was silent, but he was still there.

[Rance]

She swallowed.

Not her baby.

Dameena.

This being, this presence, was just on the other side of the wall, the invisible tendrils of its will seeming to slink through the cracks in molding and wood, winding like a carnivorous vine around her foundations. And yet, if asked, she'd never know how to describe it: just a piercing, ragged stripping-away of logic and mind, (Open) unseen claws and hands whittling down her (the door) composite parts. Chewing through the meager mesh of (Invite) her conscience. Sliding its oily tongue into the tubes of her (me) ear. Noshing at her brain, at her brain, at her--

in.

And she desired to do nothing but that, to relieve this throbbing, insurmountable pressure crushing in on her skull, do as he asks do as you're told let him in slide the latch and he could we could you could have a tea a spot of tea a dash of tea a spot of...

The point of the longknife slid down the wax-dipped laces of her sleeping-gown, scraping the fabric until its tooth-like edge found the useless stump of her severed arm.

She jabbed the tip into the mound where a wrist once waggled, a minor nick of dwarven steel bidding a blotted bead of blood to the surface of her skin. Dragging the blade, carving an inch-long smile into the pink-scarred flesh--

Pain. Clarity. Don't obey.

"No," the seamstress rattled, a hoarse denial. "My mind is mine."

Think for two.

Her jaw hinged open; saliva dangled from her lips, a gleaming specter strewn across her chin as she summoned a scream.

Varian. This was Varian; this was Dameena's papa.

"Murrukh!"

[Varian]

The revenant's echo of her scream was unintelligible. It held all of the volume, but none of its purpose, it was simply a poor mimic, made up of their paired voices, piercing and continual. It hung in the air, long after she'd called out for the half-orc, then it went suddenly silent again. The shadowy spectre erupted violently and crashed against the door of Gloria's room with such force that the hinges whined. The legless figure flattened against the surface, while tendrils of blackness searched for weakness in the structure.

As the door rattled in its frame, the direness of the situation became more pronounced. The voice changed, both in volume and in field, no longer focused on the woman beyond the wall. "Give me the girl! Give me the girl! Giivmeeethagurrl--" The knob twisted feverishly. Undefined hands pulled at the thing and made that area of the wood bow out, toward the hall.

Silence again.

"Daaameeenaaaaa..." He whispered affectionately, through the flaws in the timbers.

[Taleinara]

Thus far, Dameena had slept on, undisturbed in the chill of the night, but as the chill took on a decidedly more familiar turn silvery eyelids fluttered. A soft, almost feverish moan escaped the little girl before her eyes drifted open, though she lay still and silent, listening to nothing in particular. She was vaguely aware of the fact that Gloria was no longer present next to her, and further did not care that the woman was not; all that mattered to her was the presence, that presence. It sang only for her, called only to her, and finally she sat up and turned to the door with an eerily bright smile, just as that voice sang out for her through the door.

"Papa. You came!" Her smile brightened and she turned then to Gloria, as if just noticing the woman standing there, oblivious to the fact she was fighting Varian's presence and equally oblivious to the scent of blood from the cut the woman had given herself. She didn't even seem to heed the girl calling for Murrukh. None of that mattered. He'd come! "See? I told you he'd come for me," she chirped.

Quickly she slid out of bed, moving to Gloria's side to tug on the woman's night clothes, trying to grab her attention. Instead of saying anything however, she simply giggled softly then moved for the door, to grasp the handle with her own flawless right hand, intent on opening it and rushing out of the room and into the hall, where she knew Varian was waiting for her.

[Kestrel]

Gloria's cry shattered the stillness of the quiet night. The door rattled, smashed against its hinges with the fury of the dark being seeking to reclaim his adopted child. There were others who slept not a stone's throw away.

She dreamed of her home, of her childhood. She twisted and turned in her starched sheets and sweat beaded upon her brow. Eyes flew open, pupils wide and nostrils flared. She sat bolt upright, her muscles screaming in protest for just a moment. The floor was chilled against the bare skin of her feet as she flew across the room. One of her robes was tugged around her shoulders and she raced for the door.

It creaked ajar and the Lady Warden emerged with her blade out and ready. Her hair was sleep-mussed and there were lines from her pillow creased into the skin of her cheek. Her eyes searched out the threat.

[Rance]

It could have been anyone she called for; it could have been Edmund, could have been Egris, but Murrukh's was the first name to flash across her addled mind, muddied with suggestions she knew weren't her own. The frame of the door bent, buckled, creaked, rattled against the pressure from outside.

I told you he'd come for me.

Dameena -- stirred from the bed by the raucous span of mere seconds that had separated Gloria's awakening from the present -- was suddenly there, tugging on Gloria's nightclothes, tumbling over with praise and excitement for the unseen being beyond door and threshold. The longknife tumbled uselessly from the seamstress' startled grasp. Tiny girl-fingers sought out the doorknob in front of her eyes, a little child overly desperate to be reunited with a father, a papa, that wasn't hers.

With only one hand of her own, grace was impossible. Only function. Only necessity.

"Don't," Gloria hissed, snapping out her arm--

--so that sweat-blackened digits sought to snare the collar of Dameena's sleeping-clothes, and whether or not the door was tossed ajar, the pregnant woman's recourse was only this: to try and fling the littler girl back from the portal with a brutish tug, a desperate maneuver the immediacy of which betrayed any attempt at tenderness.

[Urukhin]

A sickness in the air, a presence, a pressure, something dark and forbidding in the upstairs hallway; seeping under doors like autumn mists, sibilant syllables oozing through the cracks between door and frame, soaking through thin layers of lathe and plaster. Enough to trouble those in the rooms beyond, enough to crawl into the liminal realm between sleep and waking.

Blood and lilacs.

Enough to rouse the half-orc from slumber, to have him sitting up in bed, nose wrinkled in distaste, coarse hairs prickling on his neck; a hissed whisper from the hallway has bare feet upon the floorboards, bed creaking as his weight shifts, head tilted to listen--

The hallway erupts into a clamour of rattling wood, of raised voices - Gloria's shriek, Meena's laughter, and the inhuman gibbering of something else.

The halfbreed throws wide his door, features twisted into a snarl; barechested, barefoot, a heavy-bladed sword hefted in one brutish hand. A step past the threshold as his head swings towards the seamstress' door, yellow eyes glaring from beneath scowling brows to fix unpon the shadowy thing that befouls the hall with its presence; an instant later and he's barrelling along the corridor, tusks bared, a shout of exertion as he lunges for the spectre, sword sweeping round in a ferocious slash for the middle of the shadowy form.

[Varian]

"Fool!" The echo cried as the warrior-orc tore down the hall, into the abyss. As he neared and even as he entered the cloud of black, it opened around him, like a the cape of a matador. Murrukh would find himself past, beyond the thing, when it recombobulated. And as it did, it became more solid, more substantial. It gained form.

Shadows pieced themselves together, before the eyes of the new witnesses. The phantasmal disguise served no more purpose. Instead, in place of the wraith, came the figure of Varian duMonde, a man, in all immediately apparent respects. Tendrils of inky black slammed together, writhing and wrapping until they solidified. Just flesh.

Orchid eyes settled on the half-orc, but the angle of the man had him at the ready to engage both Murrukh, as well as the roused Warden. He was the same, for the most part, in appearance, but fiercer, darker, more predatory. He was beast-like, but in a way wholly different than even an orc.

Clad in simple clothes, he might have seemed ill-prepared for battle, beyond the rapier brandished by his left hand. The blade was thin, narrow and long. It dripped with the same darkness that had created its wielder.

*You aren't fast enough. You aren't strong enough.* The same voice -- or thought, hung in the air, but this time around Murrukh alone.

Varian bared his teeth, behind thin, pale-pink lips. His lateral incisors were elongated, thin and sharp like those of a viper. His eyes had turned black. Regardless, he made no verbal challenge. Instead, he just called out for the girl, his daughter, again.

"Daaaameeenaaa..."

While he never turned away from those who had confronted his ghostly form, he appealed to only the child.

"You see, now. They would take me from you." His wicked whisper cooed, though his lips never moved. "To me. We must away."

[Taleinara]

Her elation at Varian's presence, false though it was, could not have been more real to Dameena. She had no frame of reference to think that her new-found Papa was anything but human, loving, that he was nothing more than the image he'd created in her mind of himself, and so when Gloria--who saw things for what they were--reached out to snag her back from the door, Dameena squeaked, the sound cutting off quickly as she found herself being thrown back and to the floor, against the bed. She lay there a few moments, regaining herself, staring up at Gloria with horrified silver eyes.

"You see, now. They would take me from you."

She sat there, stunned for a moment, unblinking, while Varian's words sank into her mind, while they took root. The truth of it, if not the reason behind it, slowly dawned in the child's mind. They were trying to take her papa away from her! She shook her head a few times, as if rejecting the notion, or maybe rejecting that Gloria -would- do that. She had been so nice, so gentle.

And then she opened her mouth and screamed at the top of her lungs.

"NO! PAPA! PAPA HELP ME!"

She was up in an instant as that desperate cry died on her lips, and when she was up she flew at Gloria the way she'd once done with Cat, except this was uncharacteristic of the child in its ferocity. With Cat, she'd been angry and embarrassed at the waif's teasing, but she hadn't really been trying to hurt Cat. This time however, in regards to Gloria, she was very -much- trying to hurt the pregnant girl, and she hit and kicked blindly and with every ounce of her strength, even with her feeble and withered hand, screaming nonsense at her, the sounds angry.

"To me. We must away."

Rage ebbed, for what reason she could not say, but in response Dameena suddenly stopped her mindless assault. Only the fraction of a moment was taken to think of what to do, what she could do to escape the prison she'd found herself in, to get to her papa so they could get away. She could vaguely hear the goings-on beyond the still-closed door, had heard Murrukh's bellow, his charge, but only from a distance through the fog of intense focus she had for the presence of Varian beyond that door, cozening her, calling to her, bidding her to come. Her soul ached to obey, her mind feverish with the desire to do whatever he called her to do. Even right then, his words were an order she had no choice but to obey. Gathering up her diminutive strength she moved to shove Gloria, in an attempt to get the woman clear of the door long enough for her to get out, to escape, and whether or not it worked she lunged for the doorknob again, doing her best to get the door open so that she could obey that command.

Because nothing else mattered in her mind, nothing but Varian's command, his presence, his voice. That was all that really existed for the child anymore, and she was determined to do whatever it took to do as he'd bidden her.

[Kestrel]

The half-orc charged like a bull at the shadowed figure down the hall. The Lady Warden, clad in her nightclothes, leapt backwards and into her room for him to roar past without her slender form to hinder his progress.

There were raised voices - Gloria and the child - within the room. The door threatened to come lose from its hinges.

Egris stepped out into the hallway and her blade was leveled at the shadowed demon demanding his ghoul to returned to him. "You will not take the girl. I will forcibly restrain her if I must. Better my prisoner than yours, don't you think?," she questioned, teeth bared in violent grin.

"Leave this place or I will be forced to find your nest and destroy you."

[Rance]

Dameena's voice crescendoed to a scream. The little girl unfurled herself from the floor, set her body in rage, and threw herself at Gloria.

Even pregnant, ready nearly to burst, Gloria Wynsee was no frail young woman: she had been fired in the kiln of Jernoah, made sturdy and thick and tall because it was necessary to be to withstand the climate, a life with scorching Sun above and glassy sand burning underfoot, beating other girls who stole her seamwork until their teeth were bloody pebbles shining like rubies on the ground. Individuality bred a need for violence; survival had taught her how to rely on her knuckles.

Dameena, with force betraying the girl's usual waif-like state, shoved Gloria back against the wall. "No," she hissed, a nebulous command -- she turned her stocky frame against the child's swings, giving her ribs and spine to the atrophied fists. Each blow landed with a thump, thump against her broad spine. Her lone hand tried in vain to keep the girl at a distance, the seamstress' every instinct demanding she protect the fragile life still throbbing in her womb--

"He's meddling with your mind, Dameena; he's--" she caught herself against the wall with an elbow, "--manipulating you."

But the child sprang away, sought out the door, managed to wrench it open so that, in a burst of sound, they could both hear the clatter ringing in the hallway.

Egris. Murrukh.

Frantic, her hand scraped for one of the heavy tomes -- A Historie of Myrken Woode -- stacked on her nightstand.

She whipped around, employing the book in a great, parabolic hammerfall.

Pages fluttered free; flowers preserved between passages that spoke of old wars, ancient political demonstrations, and shifting allegiances scattered through the air.

Gloria swung the spine of the leather-bound tome for the back of Dameena's skull.

It is better this way.