|
|
|
|
|
|
|
RogueKazimeras Vice Captain
|
 Posted: Thu Jan 03, 2008 7:19 pm
Perhaps the most gloomy place you'll ever see in Kingsreach, day or night, would be the Slums. Here people wallow in their own filth, wearing nothing but rags and sometimes even less, wading about their fellows and begging for every scrap, every Crown that they can get...
They aren't the kindest lot, either.
Every one of them has at least had to defend themselves, literally tooth and nail, from another. These people are some of the most desperate, most hateful and deceitful that you'll ever meet, and pray that you don't have to stay here for long.
Nobody chooses to be born in the Slums, and I pity the child that is. Children here are often sold as slaves, prostitutes, or simply abandoned. This is also of course the most crime-ridden place you'll ever see. Guards don't want to come here, and therefore the Guilds will always have a haven here.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Tue Jan 29, 2008 9:05 pm
Twilight was the passageway of the lonesome into the streets, like open-mouthed wraiths in their universal sorrow, their collective
longing. It was the time in which vain hope could be bought for a few coins' worth, a wry grin or flick of the wrist enough to satiate the sub-human filth that scuttled about the slums on their inverted, blackened hearts. It was the perfect time to both conceal and reveal oneself, and Disraeli took the opportune moment to her advantage as she wrapped her ebony cloak tight around her face until the skin dissipated into black shadows, and she was extinguished completely as an object of the night rather than a human; a pair of yellow eyes against the night.
Disraeli truly lived for the night. She wallowed against a street corner as if she were a flicker of the shadows, legs crossed, the dirt coalescing about her frame yet never seeming to truly touch the black garb wrapped thickly about her thin figure. The girl's unused scimitar lay buried in a belt against her hip, concealed from view and yet caressing her side like the consoling of a protective lover. And her other scimitar, which she could greedily, gluttonously, envision as blood-caked at the moment...well, Disraeli wished her dear "friend" a good remainder of her life, after gutting that fool, and setting herself up so thoughtlessly.
How people could climb the ranks of the Redhands with such blind trust and faith in their companions, the Channeler would never know--and yet
it never failed to amuse her when another underling would fall prey to the venomous vice of the elite. Her eyes narrowed in perverse
pleasure at the thought, yet her fevered, sickly fantasies of death and mutilation were stopped by a distinctive, low murmur at her side.
"Please, miss...Allfather bless you..."
At once, the body beneath the garb twitched in an outwardly inconscpicious yet violent shudder; Disraeli's eyes flicked rapidly towards
the man who had approached, rancid bile rising in her throat at his words.
Allfather.
Keeping herself steady, one pale hand clutching hold of the scimitar beneath her long cloak, Disraeli allowed a long, crooked
smile to outline itself within the black fabric over her mouth, raising a black brow as if to appraise him,
"And what were you hoping to ask of me, my handsome master?"
Master.
Yes. All of them in this guttural hole of existence which they called the slums would grow so weak and malleable at the title.
My master, how your servant aches to serve you, among the filth of the rats and the roaches, against the cold stone and
jagged rock...
And wasn't he a pretty one? She bit back a twisted chuckle at the sight of him; scraggly, disheveled white hair in knotted, blackened tangles across his bony shoulders, his lolling jaw a broken memoir of teeth save for a rotting, yellow canine against black gums, wide, bulbous eyes like a bloodshot owl. His wrinkled flesh made him appear a skeleton who, in vain, sought to clothe himself in scraps that desperately sought to imitate flesh, his body wrapped in a blood and waste-caked tunic that billowed about him like a torn sack. Yes...a pathetic sight, made decidedly more pathetic by the desperate, wanton hope in his eyes, the sickeningly piteous lust and craving for attention, affection...
To let him live was a sin to the Goddess in itself.
"I..."
He reached forward, then; a withered hand clutched upon her robe, causing her to jerk backwards slightly, eyes narrowing, nose curling in disgust at the mere presence of him. The man held onto Disraeli as if she were his Allfather, the wide eyes staring into her own and slopping over with tears,
"I...I just want...just..."
He came too cloose; the slobbering, sobbing old man was leaning against her shoulder, now, his eyes inches away from her own, his breath of rancid fish and what Disraeli imagined to be dung,
"I just want...a kiss..."
Disraeli's hand clung to the scimitar; she willed a smile to grace her face and pulled the top half of her cloak gently from her face,
watching him with her tight-lipped mouth, her mirth-filled eyes.
"Very well, old man. For the glory of your Allfather, I will give you affection you will never forget."
He leaned forward, eyes shutting, a sigh of sheer pleasure and relief escaping those dirtied lips, that quivering orifice of a mouth--
And Disraeli smiled, shutting her own eyes, and pressed the tip of her lips to his forehead, sliding her scimitar neatly between his ribs. The man gasped; a whimper of pain escaped his lips and she covered his rancid, filthy mouth with her own, numbing the taste and the smell with the
euphoria of the blood pooling about her fingertips and the slick surface of her blade, the heavy, straining pulse of his heart against his hollow, skeletal chest, the ease in which the metal slid perfectly through his gut, as she twisted in slow, jerking circles through his body, cutting his innards as if snapping a twig.
The man let out a sharp intake of breath before collapsing back against the ground, clinging to his reddened torso as if she had stabbed through his heart, his eyes wide and vacant, mouth opened in a futile scream.
That was how she left the body as she pulled herself to her feet, wiped the blood of her blade across his lips, and thrust his body into the
nearest alley. With a scowl she spat against the earth and wiped her own mouth of the corpse's taste, before swaggering across the road towards
the cluster of faceless homes ahead, sharp eyes looking out for the one which only she, among a select few, make out within the darkness.
Yet her pace was slow, and her wraith-like form in its black robes seemed almost to sway with a euphoric glee quite uncharacteristic of those
within the slums, for Disraeli would savor every aftertaste of every kill, no matter how frivolous or unneeded.
It would be an interesting twilight, she could feel it in her very bones.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
RogueKazimeras Vice Captain
|
Posted: Fri Feb 01, 2008 6:48 am
Alarik felt the distinct need to watch his back fade and then resurface, and it was just that he switched what he was watching for. At night, outside of the slums, you had to keep your eyes out for the Kingsreach guard, who would enforce the curfew rather brutally if you caught one on the wrong day.
Inside of the slums, it was a different story. Inside the slums, you had to watch for pickpockets, rapists, murderers, muggers, panhandlers, beggars, and of course, the ever-blasphemous Redhands.
Alarik had gotten into a few tangles with the Redhands before. Needless to say he escaped alive and relatively unscathed, but he still hated them. They were fanatics, beyond reason, and he hated unreasonable people.
He stood on a roof of one of the squat buildings deep in the Slums. The snow was piling up in some areas, as usual. The night was just beginning.
He had no idea where to start looking for this 'Disraeli' person. He knew that the Slums would be the best place to start, but that was like saying a forty-acre estate was a good place to start looking for a tie tack.
Only of course the Slums were much filthier than any estate he had ever heard of.
It was then that he stumbled upon a body. It wasn't an odd thing and it wouldn't attract much attention, and he stooped down as if searching for belongings, something any man in a gray cloak in this area would do.
He found a blade wound in the belly. Probably a Redhand offended at something he said... or worse, one of the ritual sacrifices, though he thought those were usually destroyed once the ritual was finished.
He stood up, and noticed a person moving away. They were close, but they had their back turned, and probably had not heard his silent descent onto the small muddy path that they stood upon.
"Excuse me!" He called out, his voice somewhat stern. He would have to ask a local, of course, to figure out where this 'Disraeli' was. That was the only way to get this done in any kind of quick and easy fashion.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Reply
