by Glenn » Tue Jan 14, 2014 9:05 am
"It's not how it's done." This was from Burnie, or from whatever was left of him, which wasn't much by this point. There was a simple truth here, perhaps a few, quickly apparent to both sets of observers. The storyteller needed an audience. Glenn Burnie was an unwilling one. He was also only human. Only. Only Mortal. Only. That was his strength, but in the here and now, it was his weakness as well. It was a plague and a curse and something he fought against every day, not by using magic to change who he was but through gritting his teeth and trying to change the world around him.
Starvation would overtake him. Feebleness would win out. Eventually, he would be lying upon his deathbed with two options, either he could helplessly hear her story, or he could end his own life to prevent her escape. Golben had, in and of itself, taken away his original options as judgment and sentencing. He had yet to find another. His decision would have made a fine tale for the Storyteller if they were not so rudely interrupted by those who would save him and end her.
Burnie's voice was a bit of a rasp by now. His eyes were deadly clear. "Tell her, Giuseppe."
"Ah, my bellita," the Southerner began, his tone a bit more relaxed now that they reached their destination, one lie out of a hundred, one piece of a lie that made a tapestry that was the man. "I am afraid the Governor is right. We're here. We must parlay. The stories can end and everyone can go home to their suffering instead of experiencing it here. This involves you after all. We would not have reached this moment without you, Wynsee. I could not kill her for you, Nonnina." He smiled his dark, fading smile to the Storyteller. "One task you give me, a murderer, a scoundrel, an assassin, yes? One task, and I cannot do this. I know the spell you weave, one of beginnings and endings. I do it now and I live. You weaved the rest already. I just have to end it. I end you, though, and I end myself."
Yet he had brought Gloria Wynsee here, to the Storyteller, to her power, and here he could save himself by finishing a tale already begun. "Get on with it," Burnie all but hissed. There was a human tendency, an all too human tendency. The body gives away more and more as you reach your goal, in the anticipation of it. He would be conscious for this, helpless but conscious.
Giuseppe nodded direly. "I could not kill her then, Nonnina, because I know a thing. A plain thing," his glare was for the Governor, who seemed to want him to walk a direct route instead of the proper one. "This girl, this lumpy, stubborn, fool of a girl, who cannot see so many truths because her vision is taken up entirely by the truths of her own heart, she will someday be a better story than either of us. I cannot be the one to make it end so tragically early, to cut it so tragically short. She has to unfurl, to extend to all the, ah, how should it be? Yes, yes, the consequences of what she shall do and what she shall be. Look at what you made me, Nonnina. Look at what I was before. I could never blaspheme so wonderful and terrible a tale before its time. It is," and then, having taken firmly for himself the space, the precious time, that his former employer had tried to deny him, he would look to Burnie with a shrug, a request.
The Governor simply sighed, his legs starting to give way. It was all he could do to stand, yet he always did all that he could at times like these. "Quality over quantity. The choice of a man who cares far too much about wine and nostalgia." His stomach made a noise far louder than his voice and many times more violent, "and what I'd give for either right now."
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