• Mature • Blackwing, Free Thing: Part Two

[Alistair]

85th of Ashan, Arc 718

Follow-up to this thread.

Tana had died. Molested by the cruel ministrations of a Revenant in her final hours, she had been sent withering into the plateau of death. Alistair felt, ultimately, justified in his actions . . . no matter how crude they had been, and how greatly she suffered. He would have done the same to any of them - all of them - including the one who had previously uncovered the erroneous actions of the Laysisters of Mercy, who now clung at his side like a leashed animal.

None of them, ultimately, mattered to him. It was - again - his observance of their actions among the great extremities that brought him to remain. Now that he thought of it, Alistair's first meeting of Syroa had followed after similar procedures. He had begun to put El'ganneth Rhovanion to the test, his great serum for providing mortals some glimpse at immortality, and totally stalling the progress of virulent disease. His experiments had been bloody and brutal - he had created monsters, who cannibalized one another, initially poor Dust Quarter dissidents who wanted nothing more but to receive treatment for their wilting state of being.

He watched their minds and bodies change, and in the case of their minds, a total degradation of their cognitive faculties. The tests in creating his crude preservation serum had been far more brutal than his Laysister Reunion, and those actions had been what initially lured Syroa into his chambers, where she'd raked the image of wings across his back, and had awakened emotion within his previously stoic psychopathy.

This was a return to normalcy. These actions. As immoral as he was acting, he felt right in doing so, goaded by what he perceived to be his own positive development. Though he had never been filled with more sorrow than in these trials since becoming a Sesser, he had equally never known such joy.

[Alistair]

When he returned to the room where the remaining Laysisters sat, he looked upon all of their faces, woeful and pitiful and angered. He recounted their names. Zadia, Kessa, Lei'lana, Lena, and Mary. Five remained, one was already his own, so in truth four. Already, they had begun to break, weaving terrors through their minds as they sought liberation. Mary Clarke, the once-soldier who hated and feared mages for her own inability, spoke bitterly through her wide cheeks and underbitten lips.

"What... did you do with Tana?" she asked.

"I cleansed her," he stated. "In her deathly state, she still found a bachelor, one equally matched with her in the lifeless, desperate hungering that she teemed with. Andreas Axton, my beloved thrall. Such a capable partner, even in death."

The women all stared, gruesomely, but confused. They did not understand what he meant. Until, then... it clicked. Necromancy. Alistair had forced Tana to endure - in her final moments - the thoughtless, empty sexuality of an undead warrior. One of the women gagged; it was a fate too cruel for any of them to rightly imagine. To be wronged by magic, death and lust all in one - Alistair was a vicious host, and this was a terrifying game.

And he was so . . . justified. Even in his cruelty. He had fallen deeper into Syroa's embrace, prey all on his own to the tempestuous machinations she lived by. The once honorable Venora was now an arbiter of lust and rage, goaded by the suffering and humiliation of others. Cruel was not an appropriately measurable word for his deeds, and equally his descent. It had all gone far beyond that.

But for now, the women were guided to their rooms, five separate chambers within the upper corridors of Alistair's borrowed estate. The women sighed relief as they were brought to their lonesome sanctuaries, no longer under the supervision of the man nor his deathless demons, though the fear still wretched their heart and pulsated in their thoughts.

Their only method of survival was embracing profanity; lust, anger, all the vileness they had sworn away. Becoming an agent of Syroa merely for the sake of one man's whims, though without acting upon them, they would forever be locked in this estate or slain and abused as Tana had been. Martyrdom, to none of them, seemed wholly appealing.

In the dark of night, one opened quietly her room, and stepped out into the hall where the floorboards silently creaked. Alistair observed quietly from the dark shadows that consumed the hall, crouched quietly beneath a tall table-drawer. Inside was a weapon of murder, a butcher's knife, and a collection of tonics and blends meant for producing sexual satisfaction.

The woman opened the drawer, perhaps still unaware of Alistair's condensed form beneath it, and drew out the knife. She must have examined the contents of it earlier, and now she had made her decision. It was Mary Clarke, the one who had spoken earlier, questioning Tana's fate.

The loomed over Kessa Ronbrek's door, before twisting the knob and opening it, drawing into the room. She remained there for a few bits, with no booming sounds returning, nor the screeching of a dying woman. Just a few, quiet thuds. Alistair opened the soundless, whispering door of a scrying portal within, observing the room. There, he witnessed Kessa's corpse, with a gash running from her neck down to each of her thighs. She had made the mistake of sleeping, and Mary's decision had been clear. She intended to survive, regardless of the fate of her sisters. Quietly, with an expression no different than before, the Laysister returned to the lantern-lit confines of her room, and sat still upon her bed.

The next trial came. The sisters gathered at the first notable noise; the sobbing, yelling voice of Lei'lana, who had been the one to shepherd and guide Kessa into the group.

"Kessa is dead!" she exclaimed, calling all of her 'sisters' from across the house. All of them, equally, demonstrated their shock and horror - Mary included, with preening gasps and hands covering woeful faces. It was all a lie. He knew that. Perhaps even they did.

[Alistair]

With Kessa and Tana dead, one already his own, and Mary corrupted by the vague instinct of survival, only two sisters were left wholly uncorrected. The rationalizations that ran through all of their minds were rather resounding - at first, of course, they blamed Alistair.

"It must have been him!" Lei'lana yelled, tears flowing from her eyes. Lena shook her head, refuting the claim.

"No, Lei'lana," she spoke. "Kessa was a sweet, gentle soul. She would not have invoked his wrath - it must have been . . . one of us. One who preyed on her weakness, her trusting nature. One who wishes to abandon the ideals to survive."

The women all stared, woefully, dreadfully. Their faces grew more stoic as they attempted to gauge the others around them, to ponder upon who it might have been. Who among them was the least trustworthy? Who among them would have performed a deed so foul?

"I bet it was Zadia!" Mary yelled, her chest rising and falling heavily, face growing red. "We all know she's a fearful twat! And what virtue did she uphold, anyhow? The hatred of alcohol? Never once did the man ever fuckin' defend the integrity of alcohol! She's at no risk here; she's already corrupted! A lustful, fuckin' whore!" she exclaimed, a seething mixture of confusion, guilt and fury grown upon her features.

Zadia simply quivered, staring fearfully with wide eyes; she had been accused of a deed so horrid, by one of her own sisters, and she could not register it.

"No," Lei'lana interjected. "It would not have been Zadia. She, too, is a gentle soul... as Kessa was. Mary, it was certainly you. You cast the stone, and so you place yourself into our view. Of all the three of us, you are the most wretched and foul, the most faltering. You killed Kessa, and so I will kill you."

Glorious.

Lei'lana rose, her two sisters beside her, as Mary drew into her apron and pulled from her large pocket the same butcher's knife, cleaned thoroughly in the wake of Kessa's murder. That, certainly, confirmed her misdeeds . . . though none of the three had any weapons with which to fight her. Mary ran forward and lunged at her founder and senior sister, Lei'lana staring in utmost surprise as the woman plunged her knife into her stomach, a hard thud sounding as the hit pressed into her chest, and Mary's twitchy hands kept the knife secure within their glorious, dying leader.

Alistair observed from the doorway, though he shifted to the side as Zadia fearfully skittered away, and Lena drew a thick wire from one of the crates, coming behind the twitching mess that was Mary and strangling her with a weapon akin to a garrote. The Hiladrathi woman, once an aspirant to the great orders of mage-hunters, was their most skillful warrior - and equally, the one that had broken from their creed and fallen prey to Syroa's will.

As Mary's head lurched forward onto the garrote, and her throat slit and succumbed to the pressure, the woman dropped her heavy form onto the floor, toppling over the shocked frame of still-dying Lei'lana. Everything had gone explosive, incredibly quickly. Far from succumbing to their lust, fear had led them all into fury, killing and accusing; recrimination, reprisal, leading into a mutual demise for all.

"What should we do with Zadia?" Lena asked.

Alistair stared, quietly, at the corpses - and at Lei'lana's pained expression, as all her ideals wilted before her, the many sisters she'd acquired succumbing to madness and the machinations of evil.

"She is a thing to be molded; weak, spineless, with an ever faltering resolution. As she became a Laysister, she can equally become a progeny to Syroa, without dying or suffering any more pain. I think we've clearly found the one we were looking for -- to Zadia, all of this has been naught but observation, and she separated herself from the fate of her sisters some time ago. You . . . can tend to her. Shape her. I believe you can."

The woman nodded. "Yes, Blessed," she called him.

Only one recruit, and a great deal of carnage. That was fine, he supposed. He never expected many to join - it was difficult to draw recruits from one's enemies. But Lena was a cold, sheer thing, filled with danger . . . and Zadia would soon be shaped like clay. Syroa must have been satisfied, looking down upon them. As brutal and short-lived as the game had been, it was . . . entertaining, to say the least.

Now, he was to clean up, and leave this place behind. A pity to whomever first found this nightmare, which would - certainly - smell as rotten as the women who died among these walls.

[Caius Gawyne]

Here's your sarding thread review already.

Alistair

Points

XP:
10 | These points cannot be used for magic.

Renown:
N/A

Goodies

Sesser (Favored) Ability: Scapegoat

Consequences

N/A

Knowledges

Skill Knowledge:
Stealth: Using inconspicuous objects to hide
Detection: Detecting personality traits amidst extreme emotion
Intimidation: Terrifying others into compliance
Investigation: Observing a murderer's actions before and after

Other Knowledge:
N/A

Comments

I'm not sure if I'm more disturbed that I had to go back and read the previous thread for reference or if I had to ask whether such a thing as revenant rape was possible or that I had to also finish reading the rest of this thread after all of that. Alright, I think the combination of all of those things, buried underneath this thread, has succeeded in skeeving me out completely.

Congratulations. Gross. You keep on doing you for Syroa your way. I'm gonna go over here and wash my eyes.

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Be not afraid of greatness:
Some are born great, some achieve greatness,
And some have greatness thrust upon 'em.

- Malvolio | Shakespeare's Twelf Night (II, v, 156-159)